Black Mountain (41 page)

Alex grabbed a shelf of rock and together they hung there over the void, the monstrous beast gripping Alex’s wrist with an enormous hand that could have wrapped itself around his arm three times. Alex felt his joints scream. Even though his system was flooded with adrenaline, other natural stimulants and the synthesised Arcadian treatment, his muscles weren’t strong enough either to lift the creature up with him or to shake it loose.

Alex roared his frustration into the darkness as the beast threw up its other arm to latch onto Alex’s bicep. It was going to use his body as a ladder. He could see its silver nocturnal eyes as it edged itself towards his upper body; they were filled with hatred and cunning. He knew that when it reached the edge of the precipice, it would bite down on his head with its cavernous jaws and crush his skull.

Alex tried again to lift himself, but it was impossible. His arm was going numb in the creature’s grip. He had only one chance . . .

He edged the barrel of the gun he was still holding at an angle into the beast’s lower throat, and fired. The blast was deafening. The creature’s eyes went wide and Alex felt its grip loosen. The large face registered something like surprise. As it slid down his arm, its hand caught the gun, stripping it from Alex’s grip. He didn’t know if it was deliberate or by accident, but either way he’d lost his weapon.

The massive body fell into the void. There was no sound of it striking anything on its way down into the centre of the mountain.
Straight back to hell
, Alex thought.

He rolled himself back up onto the ledge, where he lay gasping for a few moments. He got slowly to his feet and rolled his shoulders. The one that had been dislocated lifted itself back into its socket, and he momentarily clenched his jaw from the pain.

He looked down the path to the band of silent, motionless creatures. They were all giants, but he easily picked out their leader, standing taller than the others. If they rushed him together, he knew he’d be dead.

Alex lifted the long blade from his belt and took a few steps towards the group, rage and battle lust making him grind his teeth. His grip on the knife handle was so tight, he felt its leather compress in his hand. He held it up in front of him.

‘Come on!’ he yelled at the leader.

The large creature didn’t move.

‘What’s the matter? Prefer old women and children? Come on!’

Alex drew back his arm and threw the knife as hard as he could. The silver blade flew through the air almost faster than the eye could follow. The creature hunched but the knife buried itself into its massive shoulder. It straightened and pulled the blade free; the knife looked little more than a splinter in its large hand. It puffed out its cheeks, making a snorting sound that Alex could have sworn was derision, and dropped the blade over the edge of the precipice. It watched it fall away into the nothingness before turning back to Alex.

Alex opened his arms to show he was unarmed, and yelled his rage at the giant. But instead of charging, as he expected, it half-turned and grunted to the huddled group behind it. Begrudgingly, they backed away along the path, clearly grumbling but obeying their leader.

Alex stepped closer. ‘You think I’m going to be that easy?’

The mighty beast bent to the rock wall and pulled free a block of stone the size of a small car. It strained to lift the boulder above its head, then held it there, sighting on Alex.

‘Ah, shit.’

Alex doubted the creature could throw the rock far enough to hit him, but the size of the boulder and the narrowness of the path would make it a near impossible juggernaut to avoid even if it simply bounced towards him.

The creature made a whooping sound, which was picked up by the other animals now out of sight. In one swift motion, it slammed the stone onto the narrow path before it. The explosive impact brought rocks raining down from the cavern’s walls, and the path itself crazed into deep cracks.

The creature pulled another stone from the wall and threw it down onto the same spot.

Alex backed up a step, suddenly realising what the creature was doing. ‘You’re cutting me off? No!’ He frowned and took another step back as pieces of the ledge broke off and fell away.

It fears you
, said the voice in his head.
Kill it now!

Alex tensed his muscles, filled with the sudden urge to leap at the creature. But a third rock came down on the pathway, causing a twenty-foot section to fall away into the void. The creature stood back, its chest heaving from the strain.

As it turned away, Alex, without knowing why, raised his hand, his fingers open. ‘Wait.’

The large beast turned back and stared at Alex for a few seconds, then it raised its hand too, fingers open, duplicating Alex. Its eyes locked on his for a moment, then it snorted and disappeared into the darkness. Alex could hear the creatures retreating deeper and deeper into the darkness of the mountain.

It wasn’t trying to kill me
, he thought.
It’s cutting itself and its people off from me
.

He frowned. The beast had signalled to him, had wanted to tell him something.
That there’s been enough killing?

Alex continued to stare into the darkness in the direction the giant bipeds had taken. Even if he managed to make it across the gap, what would he do when he caught up with the creatures?

FORTY-THREE

Hammerson went over to Matt and Sarah. He noticed Matt rubbing something small on his shirt, which he then held out for Sarah to see. As Hammerson got closer, he saw it was a broken canine tooth; a small yellow tusk about as long as Sarah’s finger.

Matt snorted. ‘Dragon’s tooth – fresh. But who’s gonna believe us, right?’

Sarah looked around at the human carnage. ‘What are we going to say about any of it? About Bill Logan being dead – all the officers, these other soldiers? How are we going to explain why we were even up here in the first place?’

‘Bear attack,’ Hammerson said. ‘Still get a few big ones wandering around this time of year.’

‘But they were damned well shot!’ Sarah said, pointing to Officer Markenson’s body and the head wound that had clearly killed him.

Hammerson shrugged. ‘Big rogue bear attacked in the dark . . . there was a firefight. Add in some gun-happy survivalists – they all shot each other in the confusion. Believe me, it happens.’ He looked at the bodies. ‘Don’t worry about the mess, we’ll clean it up. There’s a car coming for you. You’ve got to get to the eastern car park . . . and hurry.’

He waited a few minutes to make sure they’d left, then turned to look up at the ridge. He reached into his pocket for the last foil of stimulants and ripped it open, inhaling deeply. Energy flooded his limbs, but the excruciating pain in every joint and muscle remained.

He started up the side of the ridge.

*

Alex didn’t know how long he’d sat on the cold damp stone in the dark, alone with his thoughts. The only sounds were his slow breathing and the metronomic drip of mineralised water somewhere off in the distance. Not even his acute hearing could detect any sounds of the creatures anymore. They were gone, back to their nether world of darkness.

Good
, he thought. They weren’t suited to this modern, brutal world; it would have killed them.
He
would have killed them,
all
of them if he could. He understood why the beast had severed the link between their worlds.
Perhaps we seem even more monstrous to them than they are to us
.

They would have ended up in the hands of the scientists, and what type of life would they have known then? One of confinement and experimentation. Alex laughed out loud in the darkness. He was describing himself and his own future. Adira had told him that his own military had wanted to cut him to pieces to see how he worked. Hers wanted to do the same. He wasn’t perceived as human anymore; he was some sort of extraordinary science experiment or advanced weapon.

‘I should be going with you!’ he shouted, and his words bounced around the cavern’s walls and into the void.

Earth has enough monsters
. Who had said that to him? A young woman, years ago; she had dark hair and blue eyes, but her face refused to take shape in his mind. He let the memory slide away and looked back into the dark void.

‘You can’t hide forever, you know,’ he told the creatures. ‘They’ll find you somehow.’

Then he rose to his feet. ‘But only if they can get to you.’

He turned and jogged back the way he’d come. Now that he wasn’t focused on pursuit, he spent more time surveying his surroundings and saw that many of the alcoves he had passed without a glance on his way down were littered with debris. Not natural scree, but the rusted remains of helmets and shields and swords with jewelled handles, all now swollen with rust. There were yellowing bones everywhere too. He wondered whether these long-ago soldiers had been a last stand in the war against the giants, holding out in these tiny pockets of rock and then left behind by their generals. Such was the fate of all warriors: to be dispensable tools of war.

Alex closed his eyes as he passed the row of heads on display like trophies on a wall. Back in the main cave, he pulled from his pockets the two hand grenades he had taken from the Mossad agents’ SUV after the border-crossing ambush.

Earth has enough monsters
, he thought again, and popped both pins and pressed the caps down. For a second, he contemplated just opening his hands and letting the blast carry him away too.

Not yet
, he told himself.
That’s too easy
.

He dropped the explosives in a spot where the cave walls narrowed and the ceiling was significantly cracked from the previous earthquake. Then he sprinted to the exit and leaped out, just as a boiling orange thunderclap blew rocks out of the cave mouth like an enormous cannon.

He hit the snow-covered ground, rolled and then ran. As he’d expected, the mountain was starting to slide. In a few seconds, any evidence of the cave mouth would be gone, perhaps for another 10,000 years. The build-up of debris on the slip path below the cave caused it to loosen and fall with a thunderous rolling echo down the mountainside.

Where Alex stood there was now a sheer rock face and a drop into nothingness.

Earth has enough monsters.

He took a step closer to the edge.

*

After more than an hour of climbing, Hammerson reached the remains of the slip path. The enormous full moon had turned the peaks almost to daylight, and he immediately saw the source of the explosion and the freshly scraped mountainside. He laughed softly.
The Arcadian always does a thorough job
, he thought.

The HAWC commander examined the heavily churned pathway leading to the new drop that fell away into a mile or so of dead space. When he didn’t immediately see what he was searching for, he double-blinked the lenses over his eyes to switch them to thermal vision. All around him, footprints glowed with the last vestiges of body heat. He ignored the gigantic prints of the bipeds and focused on another set – smaller and wearing a man’s hiking boot. Their toe direction headed towards him, away from the precipice, but then they turned back on themselves.

Hammerson followed the prints right to the edge of the cliff. They didn’t look like they’d stopped at the edge.

He changed his vision back to normal and stared up at the moon for a minute, before looking around at his surroundings. He chuckled softly.

‘Not a chance, Alex. You’ve already been dead once.’

FORTY-FOUR

Hammerson stumbled along the snow-crusted road, limping from the wound in his leg that had burst open again. He felt like shit. His ribs and sternum were cracked, and he’d rigged a makeshift sling for his damaged arm.

He heard a powerful vehicle slowing behind him, and turned to see a big SUV with tinted windows filling the road. It went past, but pulled over just in front of him, and the front passenger door was pushed open with a boot. As he came level with the cabin, he looked in and couldn’t help his mouth falling open.

He shook his head and grinned. ‘You just made my fucking day.’

Casey Franks sat there covered in blood, her armour-plated suit shredded in a dozen places.

Hammerson’s grin widened. ‘And I thought
I
was in bad shape.’

Franks raised her eyebrows and her battered face pulled up in a lopsided smile. ‘Don’t ask. I’m just writing it off as another bad date night, okay?’

Beside her, the driver gave Hammerson a small salute. Seemed Sam’s taxi had waited for him, after all. Hammerson burst out laughing and climbed into the cabin. He grimaced as the warmth of the interior prickled his skin and brought feeling back to the open wounds over his face and body. He turned to see Matt Kearns and Sarah Sommer in the back, looking like they were about to nod off.

The driver leaned around Franks. ‘Destination, sir?’

Hammerson pointed forward. ‘Into town for our passengers, I reckon.’ He turned in his seat. ‘That okay for you two?’

Matt nodded and held up the tooth. ‘
Gigantopithecus schroderi
. . . for Charles.’

You folks ain’t gonna like the redecorating Hunter’s done to that cave
, Hammerson thought.

He sat back and spoke again to the driver. ‘Take us on to Raleigh – get the medic team to meet us and we’ll jump from there.’

When Matt and Sarah had climbed out, Franks moved to the back seat where she stretched out as best she could. She angled her head to look at Hammerson.

‘Survivors?’ she asked.

Hammerson shook his head. ‘A few, besides Kearns and Sommer. Captain Senesh . . . and probably Hunter, still up there somewhere.’

Franks puckered her lips in thought. ‘Kearns and the Sommer woman – can we trust them? And Senesh –’

‘You forget about Senesh,’ Hammerson cut in, and saw Franks’s eyes narrow. ‘That’s an order, soldier. If I know Mossad, a chopper’s gonna drop outta the sky any moment to take her back to Israel.’