Alien Devices: Tesla joins crew to prevent alien zombie apocalypse (The Secret War Book 2) (16 page)

W
ill looked around at the remains of the
camp with growing unease.
It hadn't taken much to find the crash site once
they knew where to look. A large gouge in the earth ran into the side of a
small mountain the locals called a 'hill'. It was easily visible from the air.
The signs of the camp placed in the gorge confirmed what was already obvious. 

Despite the wishes of Abigail, Tesla, and Chang, he had dropped
with Saira and some of her Tigers first, leaving the others aboard Wind Dancer.
The ship floated a few yards off from the camp, black snouts of the broadside
guns keeping watch over them.

“We have searched about two hundred yards out,” Saira said as
she walked up to Will. “There are no people and no tracks. I have set up Regan
and Tiku as flankers. Ravin and Sebastian are following the gorge to the
hillside. I told them to report at once if they find anything.”

Will nodded, continuing to look at the devastation of the camp.
Something about this smelled wrong to him. He eyes took in the smashed camp
table, the overturned chairs, a scattering of books and broken glass. His eyes
narrowed at seeing a stack of labeled provisions still sitting there. He
pointed at the boxes.

“You ever hear of bandits who would leave behind food that they
could easily carry away?” Hunting Owl asked suspiciously.

“I am thinking much the same thing,” his Arms master replied. “I
do not know of bandits neat enough to leave no traces of fighting except for this.”
Saira's arm waved over at the chaos. “There was a struggle here; you tell by
the way the dirt is disturbed.” She pointed around the remains of the table. “But
where are the defeated, and where did the victors go? Why is there no blood?”
She looked at him. “I have a very bad feeling about this Cap'n”

“Me too,” Will agreed moodily. He checked the little box that
Tesla had created to detect the plague rays. The needle of its dial was still
unmoving, which was good he'd been told. He squinted up, judging the sun.

“We have a lot of day left,” Will said to Saira. “Any reason
you can think of not to let the others come down?”

“No,” Saira said. “But I fear that Abigail will not be pleased
with this.”

“I'm not too pleased with it either, but I'm thinking that maybe
they may see something we've missed,” Will replied. He pulled a flare tube from
his belt, and pulled the trigger. A white star shot across the sky. Almost
immediately, the cargo lift began lowering from the belly of the ship. It held
Tesla and Abigail, as well as the rest of Saira's Tigers, their weapons
watchfully pointed outwards. 

Someone had found Tesla a vest that was too short for him, but
that he wore anyway. A pair of goggles dangled from his neck. Abigail was
wearing the pants and layered tops many of the crew wore, pistol holstered at
her side. She looked around grimly at the destruction of the camp as she came
towards them. Chang was still wearing the same silk suit, impassive as ever.

“Captain,” Abigail greeted him. He could tell by her walk she
was braced for bad news. “Have you found my father?” She asked it as flatly as
if she was asking about the weather.

Will had to admire her for that.  Saira had told him some of
the talk she and Abigail had shared topside in the night. Will had to agree
that the Englishwoman had the spirit of a warrior.

“No,” Will said simply. “No bodies either, which is good. You
said that your father would have brought some workers to help with the digging,
right?”

“Yes,” Abigail nodded. Her eyes searched through the wreck
around their feet. “We theorize any vessel that failed would have been buried deep.”
She gave a small cry of discovery, kneeling down among a scattering of books.

“Father's journal!” She held up a leather book in triumph.

“What's that?” Will had hoped that they might find some more
answers, but hadn't expected anything this fast. Abigail was turning the pages
rapidly, still on her knees.

“For every project he begins a new journal,” she explained
animatedly, reading as fast as she could turn the pages. Tesla bent over her
shoulder to read as well. She frowned as she scanned the dates on the pages.

“His last entry is dated more than a week ago,” Abigail said.
It says. . .” Whatever she was going to say was interrupted by Ravin racing up
to them.

“Cap'n,” he said breathlessly. “Sebastian and I have found
something at the end of the gorge. There is a wall of strange metal in the
hillside. There is no door or anything, but Sebastian said to report it.”

“Yes,” Abigail exclaimed springing up. “That is the artifact!
Father will be inside! Which way is it?” Ravin pointed behind him.

Something enormous had gouged deeply into the bedrock, leading
into the base of the hill. Will walked carefully across the bottom of the gorge
behind Ravin, the others stringing out behind him; Sebastian come into view
ahead. Sebastian was turned away from them, facing a smooth wall of
gold-colored metal with an odd green cast to it. He turned at the footsteps of
the approaching group.

“It's damn strange, Cap'n,” Sebastian reported to Will. “No
sign of what you'd call a door. It sounds solid if you knock on it.” He looked
disturbed. “It don't feel right when you touch it either.”

Will approached the wall. He reached out a hand, and then
snatched it back, surprised by what he had felt. Sebastian was right. It felt
plain wrong, in a way that was hard to put into words. It was not like any
known metal; nor was it like stone. The smoothness felt unnatural to the touch,
feeling neither hot nor cold. It felt like nothing Will had even experienced. It
made the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

“Well, it's something unnatural for sure,” he said wryly. He
saw Abigail go straight to a series of what looked like scratches in the wall.
She looked from the scratches to her father's open journal. Tesla was beside
her. She pointed to something in the book and then at the wall.

“It has to be; don't you agree?” Will heard her ask the Savant.
Tesla nodded, though he creased his forehead in thought.

Abigail began pushing against the markings. Will was about to
ask her what she was doing when the wall in front of him parted along a seem in
the middle, soundlessly. The air devils all stepped back at once, their weapons
raised to cover the new opening. 

Calming his racing heart when they were not instantly attacked,
Will peered over the barrels of his revolver into a strange darkness shot
through with green whirls. The smell of fetid dead things washed over them,
carried on a faint, uncanny breeze from within.

“Abigail,” he said softly. His eyes were still trying to pierce
the darkness for threats. The green swirls seemed to turn his stomach slightly
the longer he stared into them. “Did you just do that?”

“Of course,” Abigail replied. The Scholar was starting towards
the opening, book in hand. Saira silently blocked Abigail's way with her body,
her rifle still pointing into the opening.  Abigail closed the book, and made
frustrated motions with her arms.

“Really, you are all rather jumpy,” Abigail said crossly. “Father
found the way into it days ago. His explorations have shown that it is quite
uninhabited.”

Slowly Will crouched, gun at the ready. He nodded to himself,
keeping his temper down. She wasn't under ship discipline, and dressing her
down in front of the others would do no good. At times though, he thought that
Saira had it right, about the English being all crazy, even the good ones.

“And it would have been really good for us to know that before
you did what you did,” Will explained calmly. “From now on, I want you to tell
me before you do anything like that. It'll make us all less jumpy, I promise.”

“Well, alright,” Abigail promised, vexation in her tone. “But
don't you see,” she continued exasperatedly, “Father will have gone inside to
hide from whatever happened out here.”

Will stared into the maw of strangeness. The strangeness stared
back. He placed his free hand on his medicine bag where it lay against his
chest, under his clothes. Every instinct told him to turn the hell around and
get his people far away. He didn't need his totem to tell him that death laired
inside.  Still, he knew he couldn't do that without some obvious danger. 

 “Ravin,” Will ordered. “Go back to Dancer. Report to Rogers.
Tell him what we found, bring back bulls-eye lanterns and rope. Everyone else,
we all move back from the opening. Keep sharp, but nobody shoots without the
word.”

“But you can't mean for us to simply wait here,” Abigail
protested. “I assure you Father found nothing dangerous inside!”

“That’s as may be,” Will allowed to her.  He continued with no
give in his tone for all her entreaties. “But he is not here. We will wait.”

~ ~ ~

Will Hunting Owl would have called the inside a nightmare
except he never had nightmares this bad. Once Ravin returned, Will had them use
rocks across the opening like a doorstop. He didn’t want the only entrance they
knew of to close behind them.  Abigail told them what her father's journal had
described of the inside, but words couldn't prepare them for the reality of it.

Will tried to shine the bright light of his electric lantern
deeper into the darkness. Once again the light was swallowed up a few yards away.
All you could see beyond that was a darkness that was somehow lit from within. An
occasional, green glow gave no real illumination. The light from the entrance
had also vanished behind them as they went deeper inside the opening.   

Sound was swallowed up too. Farther away than about ten feet,
you couldn't hear anyone, even if they were shouting.  They’d tried. Will had
ordered them all to stay close together.  Even the dry surface they walked on
felt wrong. Their feet sank deep into it, making each step a slog as if through
mud. When he looked down, Will could see no trace of where he'd just stepped.
It would be far too easy to become lost in here. Eerie lights flickered in the
dark. Will felt like the will-o-the-wisps were following them.

One person had already been sent back to the entrance. They
couldn't stand the unnaturalness of it all. Will didn't blame them. The further
they went, the stronger grew the sense that this was some place no human was
ever meant to be. Evil and darkness hung in the air like a rotten swamp. Will
had pulled out his medicine bag while he kept moving. He muttered a short
warrior chant of the Ghost Dancers. That seemed to calm his spirit some.

 To keep the crushing sense of dread at bay, he went over the
Tigers' action plans once again in his head. Saira had drilled the Tigers in
most battle situations. It never hurt to review them for quick orders. Wovoka
had taught Will that when facing great evil, the warrior looked to his bow as
well as his Medicine.   

Will had ordered a rope tied around the waist of their rear guard.
The other end of it was back with the guards at the entrance. That was their
lifeline. The batteries in their lanterns were good for a couple of hours. That
gave them a time limit. Will couldn’t help feeling they would be easy prey in
this darkness.  One hour searching, and he would order them back. What else
hadn't he thought of?

Will stopped, allowing Saira to move past him and take the
lead. He waited until Abigail and Tesla, in the middle their small formation, were
beside him before walking forward again; this time he walked beside Abigail.

“How big did your father say this thing is?” Will asked the
Scholar. Abigail walked beside him, lantern in one hand and her father's book
in the other. Even the sounds you could hear were flat, as if all the life had
been leeched from them. It wouldn't be hard to believe that they had entered
some dark underworld of the dead, like some of the southern tribes believed in.
Will wished he hadn't thought of those stories right then.

“Father estimated that it must go on for at least a mile,”
Abigail replied. “He had only explored a fraction of it. Ah, here we are.” She
turned towards what looked like more of the scratchings they had seen on the
outside wall. These seemed to hang in the air on their own, glowing a sickly
green.

As they got closer to the symbols in the air, the lanterns
banished the glow to reveal that the marks were actually on a wall, much the
same as the outer one. Abigail handed her lantern to Tesla to open the journal.
She turned to Will.

“If I am reading father's notes correctly, this leads into a
power room,” she explained to him. “When I push these characters, another
doorway should open. There ought to be light we can see by inside. May I
continue?” Her hand hovered over the markings.

Will shifted his grip on his revolver. “Look sharp everyone!” Will
ordered. “Lady Abigail is going to open another doorway.” He pointed both
lantern and gun at what he hoped was the right place. It was hard to be certain
in this distorted place. 

“Go ahead.” Will nodded at Abigail. She pressed the characters
in a certain order, referring to the journal in her hand as she went. Without
noise the wall slid aside.  Will was momentarily dazzled by the swirling
rainbow of eldritch light that spilled through the opening.

As his eyes adjusted to the brightness, he could just make out
a large chamber lit by a huge ball that seemed to throw light as it turned. The
ball was in an alcove along the left wall, floating in the air. The right side
of the room vanished into the shadows. He saw no threats, but was going to be
damn sure.

“Saira,” he ordered. The small Arms master slid smoothly
between Abigail and himself into the room, rifle ready. She was followed by the
burly Sebastian who moved almost as fluidly. Will watched the two of them stalk
across the floor lit by swirling colors from the ball. They vanished into the
shadows on the right. A few moments later Saira reappeared, signaling that it
was clear of obvious threats.