The Nexus Colony (34 page)

They peered around in silence. Inside this dome, there were some similarities, but also different things. The same intestine-like conduits hung randomly from the ceiling. Only here, they all seemed to terminate into a large, cube-like object in the center of the chamber. The floor was perfectly flat, featureless. Off to one side was a huge parabola standing on a pedestal, and extending from the center was a needle-like protrusion, smaller but similar in design to the huge proboscis back in the other antechamber.

Abbott let out a long nervous sigh, and Ruger could detect the same foreboding he himself was feeling. “Jesus, Ruger,” Abbott said. “Do you realize what we’ve stumbled on?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“Those pit areas must be underground passageways. They must all interconnect with a series of structures. No telling how many there are.”

“You’re right,” Ruger responded.

“We’ve found an alien colony,” Abbott said. “A whole goddamn complex.”

Ruger’s heart thumped wildly. “I’m glad the owners aren’t home.”

Abbott peered around the chamber. “I’d say they’ve been gone for a long time by the looks of things.”

Ruger looked back toward the pit. “How’d they get down there? There’s no ladders.”

“They float, Mike,” Abbott replied. “They float.” Abbott was serious, and Ruger only looked at him.

“How do you know that?”

“Trust me, we know,” Abbott replied.

Ruger was beginning to understand that Abbott and his people knew a whole lot more about these entities than anyone imagined.

Abbott suddenly realized the time. He glanced at his watch. Fourteen minutes had passed.

“Want me to go back?” Ruger asked, recognizing Abbott’s concern.

“No. Just jump down and yank taut on the cord three times. Al will yank three times back. That’s a sign everything is under control.”

“I’m glad you think so,” Ruger responded, jumping down into the pit area and grabbing the cord. He felt it being tugged three times from the other end.

Prall. Where was Prall? Abbott suddenly realized that he had been caught up in the mystery of the new discovery, and had momentarily forgotten about Prall. He called out again, waiting for Ruger to return to his side. Abbott knew Prall all too well. Made his own rules up as he went along. More than likely he was off wandering around the place, but Abbott didn’t notice any of the lighting activated in other areas. Prall wouldn’t have gone down into one of the other pits without first checking out this chamber. Unless he was chasing something. The very thought made Abbott shudder.

There was no telling how many of these structures were down here, assuming they were all interconnected like he suspected. Abbott felt the fear in the bottom of his empty stomach. They had never before made a discovery about alien visitation like this one. At least that Abbott knew about. Question was, what in God’s name was the human race going to
do
with it?

“Prall!” Abbott called out again, but there was no response. Then suddenly, completely unexpected, Abbott became overwhelmed by the oddest feeling of terror he had ever experienced. It was like a malevolent presence became manifest inside his own being. “
My God!
” he exclaimed in a terrified whisper, disbelieving. “
They’re in here with us!
”

Ruger was just about to climb the wall when he heard the terrified voice. It wasn’t the normal tone of voice he had been hearing from Abbott. There was something up there, and Abbott was confronting it.

Instinctively, Ruger leaped to the surface of the chamber, positioning himself next to Abbott, fumbling for one of the handguns in his pouch.

“
They’re in here, Ruger
,” Abbott whispered, his voice quavering.

Ruger’s hands were shaking. “
Where!? I don't see anything!”

“I can
feel
their presence,” Abbott whispered again. In the soft lighting, Abbott saw the beads of sweat on Abbott’s brow.

Panic was growing inside Ruger’s body. “
Where?
” he exclaimed. “
For God’s sake, where? I don’t see anything!”

Ruger glanced one more time into Abbott’s face. He saw it suddenly turn pale, horrified. Abbott’s eyes grew large in his head. The words on his lips, barely audible, said, “
Oh my God…no…no…
”

It was behind him. Ruger spun around. The body of Colonel Prall was hanging suspended in the air ten feet above the floor by a blue beam of light that emanated downward from the pitch blackness above. It must have been illuminated only moments before. Neither one of them had moved from their position to make the lighting activate. Something else had triggered it.

And then things began to happen so quickly that neither man had time to even think about what they were doing, much less than worry now about the ill-fated Colonel Prall. Their reaction to the situation that began unfolding around them in the following seconds was mere instinct. Survival. The human brain was subconsciously conditioned for self-preservation.

More lights began illuminating throughout the chamber before Ruger and Abbott realized what it was that began happening all around their position near the pit. Section by section, each area was slowly illuminating, bathed by a light more ghostly than the light they had experienced thus far. They knew from experience that it was being activated automatically by motion, and Ruger and Abbott stood back to back, turning in unison until they had completed a full circle, but not before they both witnessed the horrid sight that was now culminating into the sum of all their human fears.

Prall’s body hung suspended in the ice-blue light as if the center of his large torso was attached by invisible wires, the curvature of his spine falling downward along the natural gravitational plane, his head bent back, his legs and arms dangling listless from his trunk. The body was turning slowly like a hanging mobile, and when his face came into view, even in the upside down position they could see the torment etched on his face. The eyes were bulging from the head, his mouth wide open in an oval though no sound emanated from within. Whether Prall was still alive at that point, they didn’t know. Their parting image of Prall was that the man must have died a horrible agonizing death, for it was now in plain view what it was that caused the chamber to illuminate.

The pallid figures were standing all around in small groups, their stringy forms exuding an eerie incandescence as if they were absorbing most of the ambient lighting and passing it back off through their bodies. The unearthly creatures at first stood unmoving, tightly ranked, and it wasn’t even possible to count their numbers because of their unnatural closeness to each other. Their sound was unnerving, a sound so utterly non-human that it sent a paralyzing fear down the spines of both men. Yet both men sensed, deep within the recesses of their brains, what the sound was suggesting to their cognitive thoughts. Their repulsion was a natural human reaction to the subtle, low vibrating hum of an insect colony.

Ruger’s hand shook so hard that he was unable to get a grip on the handguns in his pouch, and both fell loudly clanking to the floor as he fumbled to pull them from his pouch. The response triggered the attack, as simultaneously the entities began to move forward, each group in unison, guided by some unseen and incomprehensible signal.

They did not walk as a human would walk. They glided freely above the floor as if carried along by an invisible cushion of air. Within each group the harrowing insect sound intensified like the approach of an infestation of locusts, and it penetrated deep into the sensitivity levels of the human auditory system, feeling like a hot needle being driven into the brain.

It hurt. Hurt intensely, and Ruger’s and Abbott’s body each felt a tingling like an electrical shock was surging through their limbs. As the numbness was beginning to take hold, the sound still intensifying, suddenly the subconscious human will to live broke the spell of the alien’s powerful energy surge. Whether this force was physiological or mental, both men were able to shed the paralyzing grip that threatened to overcome them.

It all happened so quickly that neither man had even a moment’s time to rationalize what was transpiring before they both went crashing down into the pit, hitting the bottom feet first with a reverberating
thud
, breaking instantly into an awkward crouched run through the portal of the tunnel. Never looking back, driven only by primal fear, it wasn’t until Abbott broke the plane of the portal at the opposite end that he began screaming to get them out of the pit as fast as humanly possible.

The others—Lisk, Almshouse, Grimes—they had not even been remotely prepared for the instantaneous pandemonium that erupted when Ruger and Abbott reappeared through the passageway. Even though minutes earlier Lisk had received the signal when Ruger tugged on the line, he was ill-prepared for the spontaneity of the sudden reaction by his commander. Lisk had been all but resolved to enter the passageway to search for the two. He had been ready to drop over the edge when Abbott’s screams echoed without warning.

Ruger was hauled up first. The depth of the pit hindered a fast retreat, and to Abbott it seemed like a lifetime before he was scaling the wall being pulled frantically to the surface by the other four men. There was a momentary hiatus as both tried to catch their breath. Lisk asked, “Where’s Prall?”

“They got him,” Abbott responded, the terror in his voice multiplying the intensity of everyone’s fear. Out of breath, Abbott frantically gestured for them to retreat. No one questioned the order. As Abbott departed, he glanced one last time down into the depths of the pit to see if the entities had yet reached the portal of the passageway. It was still dark. A new pang of terror overcame him. If they were there in the other structure…
then they must be present here!

“Go, man!” Abbott screamed, and the group scurried toward the entranceway of the chamber.

“Where are they, man? Where are they?”

“Where’s the gun?” Abbott screamed. “Who’s got the gun?”

“Oh, Jesus! No! They’re going to kill us!”

“Move! Move!”

Then suddenly the lights in the chamber began to illuminate all around, and throughout the gallery the entities began to materialize as if out of thin air. The chamber was bathed by an eerie phlogiston, and it momentarily caused everyone to halt and glance backward.

“
There! They’re over there!
”

The entities floated on a cloud of air, and the penetrating insect-like hum froze their senses as the men all instinctively clutched at their ears to fend off the stabbing electrical pain shooting through their bodies.

Almshouse was screaming at the entranceway that the crates had been moved inside, leaving the opening unprotected from the closing of the door. In frenzy, they dashed toward the opening, Ruger already fumbling with one of the crates, frantically jamming it next to the door frame.

Lisk slammed the second crate into the door frame just as the panel overhead began descending like the trapdoor of a cage. Abbott was screaming “
Get out! Get out!
” as one by one they dove through the shrinking opening, and when the panel hit the top of the crates, for a instant Abbott and Ruger thought they were goners as the crates buckled under the downward thrust of the door. The strength of the crates held momentarily as both men dove through the opening, then as if by magic, both crates without warning shot through the air backward into the chamber interior as if being pulled inside by an invisible rope. The door slammed shut with a resounding metal
thud!
that echoed throughout the dark corridor. In the moment that followed, all five men sat for a brief few seconds breathing heavily, staring at the door panel that was back in place, perfectly blended with the honey-combed wall as if it had never been opened.

Simultaneously getting to their feet, it took a few moments for them to comprehend that now the corridor was bathed in the same icy blue light from inside. In the seconds that followed, the incandescence of the entities appeared from around the bend. It illuminated the corridor just as it had the inner chamber of the dome. And then came the growing crescendo of the insect-like hum.

“
Holy mother of God! They’re out here in the corridor!
”

“Go, man!” Abbott screamed. “Go! Go! Go!” and in an instant, the men burst toward the opening in the ice wall, which by fortune was in the opposite direction of the approaching entities.

Screaming frantically to get out through the wall, Abbott managed to gain some sort of control over himself as his combat instincts took over. Somehow he had managed to hold onto his weapon. Opening fire, the sounds of the bullets amplified through the corridor as the metal ricocheted off the walls, striking God only knew what. The crescendo of the alien whir only intensified.

The frigid air outside in the crevasse area shocked each man when they entered the harshness of the environment. The severe reality of Antarctica slapped each one in the face as the beads of sweat almost instantaneously transferred the coldness into their bodies, and it felt as if they were being blast frozen in place. Frantically each man struggled to secure their parka hoods and gloves, at the same time agonizing to gain a frenzied escape from their tormentors.

“
Are they here? Are they out here?
” someone screamed.

“
I don't see them! I don't see any!
” came the harried response.

Another great pang of fear suddenly arose in Abbott as he called out to Ruger, “The line! For Christ’s sake, did you drop the cable?”

“It’s here!” Ruger yelled as he scurried to locate the rappelling rope and the cable end. Frantically, he scurried to don the harness and attach the rope. “I’m going up to start the rig!”

“For God’s sake, hurry!” Abbott exclaimed.

“Hook up two men at a time,” Ruger yelled, pointing to the cable. “She’ll hold two!”

“Just go! Just go!” Abbott responded, spinning around to face the onslaught which had not yet emerged from the icy shadows.