Hybrid (16 page)

The five men finished their equipment check and activated the lights upon their helmets. Each individual sounded off to the pilot inside the helicopter who would be forwarding their transmissions.

“Anderson, testing.”

“Rogers, testing.”

“Phillips, testing.”

“Takei, testing.”

“Harris, testing.”

The pilot acknowledged each transmission and responded as he fine-tuned the communications array in his cockpit.

“Spectre 1 to team, video and audio transmissions are positive, proceed to target,” the pilot responded to the team.

“Harris, you have the main video, you're up with Rogers and his flood light. Takei, stay with me; Phillips, you have the point,” Anderson said as he took charge of the mission. The team proceeded through the thick darkness of the campsite, checking each individual tent and piece of abandoned equipment in their vicinity.

“No sign of anything out of the unusual,” Harris observed, picking up a half empty Pepsi bottle resting on a small table.

“How far away are we from the tunnel entrance?” Anderson asked.

“Maybe 150 meters or so that way,” Takei answered, pointing into the darkness.

Anderson took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. “Let's go, people.”

The five men moved slowly through the woods toward the location of the tunnel entrance, the large spotlight did little to illuminate the massive darkness of the forest lying before them.

* * * *

The pilot was busy in his cockpit, aligning the ship's communications array with the designated orbital satellite while simultaneously monitoring the digital feed to make any fine adjustments to the signal bandwidth as the team descended into the tunnel. He wasn't used to serving as a relay tech, but they could not afford the weight of a seventh man on this operation.

He carefully adjusted controls and dials as instructed, and was rewarded with a clear signal from the team's camera unit. The pilot flicked a switch, which would activate the broadcast to the satellite. He was awarded with a flashing green light that signified a transmission.

“Spectre 1 to base, can you confirm transmission?”

“Spectre 1, we have satellite feed,” a voice over the radio set confirmed.

The pilot sat back in his chair and studied the images; there was nothing else for him to do until it was time for extraction.

* * * *

The team had performed a complete sweep of the area and found nothing. The five men headed toward the opening of the tunnel and began the long slow walk down into the bowels of the mountain. The powerful floodlight did little to illuminate the tunnel depths, and the men were huddled close together.

“What the hell happened to the overhead lighting?” Anderson wondered aloud.

“The generator probably ran out of fuel,” Harris answered.

The party proceeded through the 500 feet in relative silence, pausing to double check equipment readings.

“I'm getting a different reading up ahead, almost like an echo of a larger opening,” Takei reported as he paused, studying the readout. “The tunnel seems to open up after this leg.”

The group of men moved forward, straining to make out details ahead of them in the darkness.

“How much further?” Anderson inquired.

“I'd guess another 150 feet or so; I'm getting some weird readings on the spectrometer. There's definitely some kind of metallic structure ahead, but it's like nothing I've ever seen before.” He paused momentarily, adjusting the gain to its highest sensitivity. “Base, are you getting these readings?”

“We're getting it,” a voice on the radio replied. “Proceed.”

“Yeah, proceed, let them fumble around in this darkness,” Phillips mumbled.

“Typical bureaucrat,” another of their party answered.

The party continued their way forward and entered the large opening. They stood in awe as their lights reflected off the polished stone walls. Then their lights fell on the bodies of the tunnel party. The five men became nervous. They cautiously made their way toward the bodies.

“Can you see this, base?” Anderson asked in a voice filled with panic. “Some of them have been literally torn apart. They were murdered, butchered.”

“But by what?” Takei asked as he studied the body of Gillespie. Gillespie's body was lying in a large dried pool of blood.

“How the hell should I know? I wasn't here,” Anderson answered.

“Focus on the objective!” a firm voice called over their headset.

“Fuck you, pal,” one of the party answered. “It's easy being calm behind a freakin’ desk.”

“Hello?” Philips screamed into his headset. “Five men have been murdered here, five of your employees. Guys, let's bug out of here before what happened to them happens to us.”

“We're paying you to do the job,” the voice over the headset answered firmly. “If you wish to terminate your contract, you can leave now. Of course, you'll have to walk down the mountain; you will not be allowed back in the corporate helicopter. If you don't complete the job, all of you, I'll order the chopper back, right now.”

“Asshole,” all five men whispered simultaneously. They each paused and shared a nervous chuckle.

“Okay, guys, let's pull it together; whatever happened here is history now. Let's do what we came to do and get out of here,” Anderson remarked, trying to calm the men under him.

There was dead silence among the five men for nearly 30 seconds.

“Let's get back to work,” Anderson commanded. “Phillips, see if you can get the generator back on, let's get some more light in here.”

The party continued their observation of the uncovered chamber, recording images of the symbols on the wall and the huge gargoyle statues.

“What kind of symbols are these?” Anderson asked Takei, the team geologist.

“It looks similar to writings I've seen at ancient Aztec pyramids; this other stuff, I can't make out. It's like nothing I've ever seen,” he responded as he ran his fingers over several of the carved runes. Takei raised his small digital camera and sent several images digitally to the chopper to be relayed back to the company. He instructed Harris to shoot several seconds of the walls with the larger camera system. “We'll need to bring in a team of archeologists to study this.”

Phillips had little success with the generator, as they had expected. Its fuel supply was exhausted. He did, however, manage to retrofit power connections to the generators back-up battery, supplying some sparse overhead light for the team to work with. With the new light source activated, the men spent nearly twenty minutes photographing and taking instrument readings on the external chamber, and did their best to ignore the corpses and blood scattered throughout the cavern. Anderson had spent the last five minutes studying the large Argon laser; he studied the controls, trying to reconstruct what could have possibly happened.

“It looks like they used this device to break through the door into this other chamber,” Anderson commented absently.

Harris had been studying the stone figures at the entrance to the main chamber. Each member of the team was reluctant to enter. Something inside each one of them was warning them away. Silently, they all lined up behind Harris outside the chamber, each man peeking inside the doorway as their small halogen headlamp beams were swallowed by the vast darkness beyond.

“This chamber, it's huge,” Harris added as he aimed the large spotlight into the unexplored cavern. Even the powerful five million-candle power beam seemed pale in comparison to the dark void that lay before them. Harris took a deep breath, held it, and slowly entered the unexplored area.

The other men slowly followed him into the large chamber.

“Let's move further on,” the cameraman replied, his curiosity slowly began to replace his fear. “Base, are you getting all of this?”

“The images are coming through, proceed further,” the monotone voice replied.

“Holy shit!” Takei swore. “According to the scanner, this cavern is nearly a half mile from end to end! Who on Earth could have made this?”

“I don't know, but this is the archeological find of the millennium. It's bigger than the pyramids!” Anderson replied.

The party swept the entire area around them with the floodlight, noting the unusual architecture and tablets with alien symbols emblazoned on them.

“This looks like some sort of control panel,” Takei observed, “but to what? The surfaces in here aren't rock, or any geological substance that should be in this strata of surface crust,” he added in utter amazement. “There's trace granite almost like a tiling layer, but we seem to be in some sort of metallic chamber. I'm reading traces of granite, shale and quarts, almost as if there are pockets of earth or maybe gaps in the chamber.” Takei continued to sweep his scanner back and forth into the abyss.

They had covered a scant fifty meters, pausing to record and transmit as much data as possible. As they proceeded forward, it became more difficult to establish a solid footing. It felt as if they were walking on dried twigs. One of the men turned his light down toward the ground. He spotted a grayish mass protruding from the ground, walked over to it, and gently grabbed the object. As he tugged it, it snapped in his grasp. He studied the broken section carefully. Suddenly, it dawned on him.

“Bone, this is a piece of petrified bone,” Rogers observed.

“What?” another of the party asked in disbelief.

“Bones,” he repeated. “We're stepping on bones.”

The party carefully swept away several layers of dust and debris and began to unearth several other bone segments. Suddenly, one in the party gasped and jumped back. The other four men rushed over to him. He was staring at the remains of a skeleton, remarkably preserved. The bone structure, however, was not human.

“Base, please tell me that you're seeing this,” Harris asked as they all turned their lights on the discovery.

“We see it,” the voice answered.

“Damn,” Anderson began. “Is it just me or is it getting cold in here?” He rubbed his arms in an effort to warm them.

“Yeah, it is getting chilly.”

“We're only hundreds of feet underground in a tunnel, it's not going to be warm and balmy,” Takei replied.

“Truly, but it does seem remarkably cooler,” Anderson noted. “Let's break up into two groups. We can cover more ground that way.”

The two groups separated and headed deeper into the chamber, slowly and carefully photographing and measuring. The large light swept back and forth, illuminating several parts of the massive cavern. The powerful beam passed over a stone-like monument, illuminating it for several seconds. On the monument, a set of ruby-red eyes opened then quickly closed. The team of Harris, Rogers, and Philips made their way slowly toward it. They walked up to it and bathed in the spotlight.

“What a fantastic statue,” Harris commented as he studied the monument.

They filmed it and proceeded deeper into the cavern. As they were walking, Rogers heard the sound of footsteps behind him. He stopped short, alarming the others. Soon, all the men heard the footfalls. Rogers slowly turned his powerful light behind them. They saw nothing. The beam reached out to where they had studied the magnificent statue, only the statue was no longer there.

“Oh shit!” Harris scanned the area they had just covered. There were fresh prints—prints that were not human—leading away from the statues makeshift pedestal. Each man felt a wave of fear course through his spine. Harris’ head was tingling with primal fear. He knew something was out there, and that something wasn't human.

“Everyone stay together, head back toward the opening. Base, did you see that! The statue walked away! It's alive! Something is alive down here!” Harris shrieked into his headset.

From out of the darkness, something struck the heavy floodlight, the glass lens shattered under the impact, destroying the krypton bulb inside. The cavern became more ominous and oppressive as only the three halogen beams remained to light the darkness.

“What the hell was that?” one of the men screamed.

“I don't know,” another replied. “Stay together.”

In the darkness, just outside of the circle of light, something moved. The men heard the crunching of footsteps on dried bones and stone.

“It's circling us,” Rogers whispered.

“When I say three, make a break for the door,” Harris whispered.

“One, two, three!”

The three men broke in a panicked sprint toward the door to the outer chamber. They could barely see without the aid of their powerful floodlight. They were stumbling over objects as they scrambled toward the pale light source that marked the outer chamber. To their surprise, the light source vanished, to be replaced by two large malicious green eyes. The three men froze in their tracks, slowly backing away. They didn't realize that their other tormenter was scarcely three feet behind them; they were only aware of the two large green eyes rapidly closing in on them and cutting them off from their only possible escape.

They were trapped. Both creatures closed in on the small party, circling them in tighter and tighter like dolphins corralling a school of herring into a tight food ball that could easily be devoured. One by one, they screamed an agonizing wail that announced each death, their video and audio equipment recording and transmitting every sight and sound to the helicopter outside and through the satellite relay to the base corporation miles away.

* * * *

Anderson and Takei heard the shouts of panic, and rushed toward the voices of their companions. When they arrived, they discovered three severely mutilated corpses.

“Anderson to Base, we lost three men, there's something alive down here,” he shouted in panic into his headset. “We're out of here; keep that chopper waiting for us, we're leaving now.” Both men quietly stalked their way through the darkness toward the faint light of the outer chamber.

“Did you hear that?” Takei whispered.

“I didn't hear anything; just keep moving.”

As they moved, Takei heard faint footsteps directly behind them. He swung around suddenly; his light illuminated a being with searing red eyes. Takei had no time to scream, no time to react; he felt his body being run through by something. He tried to scream, but managed only to cough up blood and saliva.