Date point: 4y 10m 1w 5d AV
Time didn’t seem to have a meaningful presence in the underground city, quiet and empty for indeterminable stretches, only to have the illusion jarringly and brutally shattered as shrieks cut through the suffocating silence.
Skirting around the edges of the domed wall of the necropolis, they searched every building that they came across in total silence, Captain Durant stopping and looking daggers at anyone who took a footstep that was louder than he would have liked.
From the time they had set out, they had been forced to freeze and pray several times, as they saw inhabitants of the city cross pathways close by, oblivious to the intruders.
The actual reality of what they were doing was setting in harshly.
Absolute silence was bitterly taking its toll from the five men’s bodies, each of them doing everything they could to not be the one that got everyone killed. Cold sweating and shaking legs afflicted even the battle toughened Forester and Captain Durant, and Jackson, who in addition already had an injured leg, had actually removed his shirt so that he could press it over his mouth to cover his heavy breathing.
Trying not to betray his mounting panic at the knowledge that they were playing with fire on borrowed time, Durant came to the entrance to another supposedly empty and decrepit building and stopped inside the door, motioning the others to enter, again counting each man as he stepped over the threshold, as he’d done every other time.
Once they were all inside, they waited for their eyes to adjust to the new darkness inside the building, cut off from the soft glowing light of the fungus that covered the city outside of it.
Gazing at his fellows, Durant evaluated each of the men in turn, seeing that none were in good shape, but noting that Jackson was rapidly approaching his limit. His injured leg was slowly oozing half congealed blood through it’s gauze, and causing him a limp that was bound to get them into trouble soon. Jackson seemed not to trust himself either, and kept his wadded up shirt pressed hard to his mouth as he tried to wipe some of the blood away.
The other three seemed exhausted, but no less aware than Durant himself was that Jackson wouldn’t be able to continue for much longer. All eyes were on the man as he kept his head bowed while he used a torn piece of sock to soak up blood. He seemed to sense their gaze upon him as well, as he did not look up when he had finished.
Refocusing on the task at hand, Durant turned his attention to the building that they had entered.
It was, as all the others had been, completely deserted and totally empty other than some broken furniture and an oddly shaped desk tucked into a corner.
Three doors led from the room, ending in total darkness.
After motioning for Jackson and Carlson to rest and stay where they were, Durant pointed for Forester and Captain Williams to each check a door, as he made his own way towards a door on his right.
Leaning against the door frame, he leaned his head just far enough to see into the dark passage.
For the umpteenth time, he cursed his own ban on lights of any kind, as he could see absolutely nothing beyond the first few feet.
Behind him, he heard a sharp, “Tsst!” which nearly caused him to jump out of his skin, but he did a decent job hiding that fact as he turned around, prepared to end the man who had made the noise.
Instead he froze and his eyes widened as he saw Forester flailing his arms wildly and pointing at the door he had been sent to inspect. Forester had never before given any indication that he was capable of being so animated or have such terror in his eyes.
Then they all heard it.
Shuffling footsteps, falling like soft thunder as they grew closer.
For the briefest of moments, he believed that they were still far enough away for them to sprint for the exit, but a loud shriek which might have been just on the other side of the door frame told him that they were not so fortunate.
All eyes were upon him now, white hot fear in their eyes.
With nothing else to do, Durant pointed at the dark hallway that he still stood in front of and frantically motioned for them to follow him.
Out of sheer force of habit, he counted each man as they ran through the door, still trying to maintain their silence.
With Captain Williams the last to cross the opening, and running farther back into the dark, Durant followed into the pitch blackness. His own escape was cut short as he collided with Captain Williams, who had been forced to stop as well, after connecting with the dead end that all of them had found.
They were trapped.
Jennings jerked awake as he felt his foot nudged, stopping and glaring daggers as he saw that Kayla had kicked his foot.
It was apparently her way of saying, “Goodmorning.”
Beckoning him to follow and without a word, Kayla turned and walked back up the passage toward the surface.
They’d only dared to stay for as long as the storm lasted, perhaps six or seven hours, and the night appeared to be fading slightly, hinting at a morning that was still several hours off.
Just before Kayla managed to exit the cave, Jennings grabbed her by her pack, and shook his head, incredulous that she wasn’t at least going to check their surroundings, before exposing herself in what they already knew was a dangerous area.
“What the hell are you doing?” she snapped at him.
Angry at her obvious indignation, he hissed, “Are you out of your fucking mind?! This is enemy territory, and you’re just going to walk outside without a care in the world?”
Her own anger deepening, she glared and replied, “Do you think that they would still be outside just after that storm? We’re more in danger of them coming from behind us.”
“Why the fuck are you so stubborn? Just because they’re more likely to come from behind us, doesn’t mean you can fucking throw caution to the goddamn wind and ignore any other source of danger.”
Both glaring at each other for several seconds, Kayla rolled her eyes, and exaggeratedly leaned out of the opening and check their surroundings, swinging her head side to side dramatically.
“All clear, sir.” she said, disdainfully, giving him a mocking military salute.
Desiring strongly to punch her on the nose, he refrained from doing so, and instead did a curtsy and gave his own exaggerated gesture to the exit and said, “After you, your Majesty.”
Ignoring this, she walked outside, in the direction of their previous hiding place.
How the fuck did I get stuck with such an asshole? They thought, simultaneously.
Seconds lasted hours as the first of the creatures came into view, shuffling slowly across the room, much slower than they had seen them move earlier.
Rasping breaths passed through its mouth as it moved across the room, its jaws opening and closing with each lungfull. It looked gaunt, even compared to the creatures that they had seen earlier, its waxy carapace skin pulled painfully tight against its skull, its upper body devoid of muscle and clearly showing the bones beneath the same waxy skin.
As it continued to cross the room, more followed it, all of them shuffling as the first did and similar in appearance.
Seemingly endless, a line of creatures continued to stream out from the black doorway, though blessedly, none of them turned to enter the room that the five men had taken refuge in.
Finally, it appeared that the last of the creatures had exited the passage that supposedly led to the surface, and it gave a soft chirping noise, causing the others near it to stop and look around at it.
Then, they did perhaps the worst thing that any of the men could have imagined.
Every one of the creatures began to sit down upon the ground and started making the same soft chirping sounds at one another. To the silent and unknown audience of the hideous acapella, it looked as though the creatures were singing each other to sleep.
Inwardly, all five of the men swore in ways that would have made even the filthiest sailor proud.
Even as he felt his heart start to pound, Durant already found himself forming a plan and, mad as it was, it seemed to be the only way to survive the current situation.
Very slowly, he began to lower himself to the ground so that he could sit, taking the weight off of his legs for the first time in what felt like days.
Equally as slowly, he felt the others, one by one, follow his lead, until they all sat huddled together in their corner, watching the creatures go to sleep.
This is going to suck. Durant thought, settling into a kind of meditation pose, watching the monsters nearest to the door.
Kayla and Jennings met nothing as they continued towards the tiny cave that they had originally taken shelter in, before being driven from it by the sandstorm.
Neither had spoken since leaving the tunnels, and neither of them intended to do so in the near future.
Occasionally, Jennings dug the data pad from his pack, checking to see if any beacons were active.
Disappointed each time, it was the only point in which Kayla actually looked at him, checking whether or not he’d been successful.
Though it had only taken a short time to reach the tunnel at a dead sprint, with the storm licking at their backs, it took nearly an hour on the return journey, still traveling by the dazzling light of the pink night sky that shone like an ocean of jewels above them.
Still following Kayla, as he had now resigned himself to doing for however long they were on the hellish world, he allowed his gaze to wander the landscape again. Marveling at how it seemed to skirt the knife’s edge of habitable.
While the air still burned his lungs, he was beginning to get used to it. Whether that boded good or ill, he wasn’t sure, but he was glad it no longer hurt as badly as before. Still, the temperature must have been in the single digits, because the both of them still shivered terribly, only kept warm by their constant movement and drawing their limbs closer together, trying to huddle into their inadequate clothing.
As they crossed over hilltops, he could see into some of the deeper valleys that surrounded them, again noticing that the deepest of them all had lines where vegetation simply ended, as though even the plants could not breath the air past a certain point.
Dimly as they continued to walk, Jennings wondered how much of the world no longer was habitable. Or whether they were traveling along the last narrow strips of land that still bore life upon it.
Suddenly, while Jennings was in his thoughts, Kayla stopped ahead of him, and he looked up to see that they had arrived at their destination.
Not bothering to say anything to each other, Kayla dropped her pack from her shoulders as she walked into the cluster of boulders that concealed the entrance to the small cave.
As she went inside, Jennings dropped his own pack, instead choosing to keep his distance from her, and again digging through his pack to retrieve his datapad.
Flicking it on again, he tried to raise any kind of signal that might tell of other survivors.
After failing yet again, he felt his heart sink as it always did when he wondered if they might be the only survivors.
He began to fiddle with the data pad, opening a separate application that allowed him to scan individual parts of the radio spectrum.
There was simply nothing on VHF or UHF, nor did he really expect there to be, as they were for short range communications. The same as the higher frequencies, he found nothing in the High Frequency spectrum, which was more suited for long distance comms.
Eventually he became annoyed that there was simply nothing to see at all, and he went straight to the lowest frequencies available, Extremely Low Frequency, which the tablet wasn’t even capable of picking up, and began working his way up through the bands.
Finding that the data pad could not detect anything below Low Frequency, he began to scan manually through it, not sure what he was looking for, or if he was looking for anything at all.
When he was nearly sure that there was nothing at all to see, and about to go onto the next band, he came across the smallest rise in broadcasting power and stopped upon it.
Only barely above the noise floor, he wasn’t even sure that it was really there, but he focused in on it, even standing up in an attempt to perhaps receive a stronger signal.
Curiosity seizing him, he raised the volume of his tablet, sure that he was about to hear useless garbled white noise.
He was not disappointed.
But, just as he was about to carry on past the frequency, he heard a soft pinging noise through the tablet, only just audible above the static.
A surprised tingling sensation passed through his hands as he heard the noise, unsure if he could trust his senses.
He waited for the noise, and sure enough, after a few seconds he heard the tone again.
Immediately, he began to try finding the signals direction of origin, going so far as to stand on a boulder to get the best reception possible.
Unsure of how to really go about doing so, he simply held the data pad close to his body and turned every which way, trying to see in which direction the pinging noise sounded loudest. It wasn’t exactly the most scientific, but desperation drove that from his mind.
After several minutes he decided that the noise was loudest in the direction of a large mountain far in the distance, nearly at the horizon, silhouetted by the soon to be rising sun.
Squinting at the mountain, he said, “Kayla, come look at this. I think I… I think… I…”
Trailing off the end of his sentence, his eyes widened to be as round as saucers, as Kayla came outside, looking irritated.
“What?” she asked, in an annoyed tone that perfectly matched her irritated appearance.
His discovery driven entirely from his mind, and still standing on top of a boulder, he pointed into the sky which was still in semi-darkness, towards a pair of fiery streaks which had appeared in the sky.
“I think it’s the rescue team…” he said, hollowly.
Neither felt exultant at the sight of the two streaks of light in the sky.
Though still extremely distant, they were unmistakably both surrounded by lightning and the same blasts of blue plasma that both of them remembered all too well.
In silence, Kayla and Jennings watch one ship seemingly split into several as life pods ejected from the main vessel. And, just as had happened to them, the main ship was seemingly left alone to drift and crash to the surface as the life pods were set upon.
As explosions lit up small parts of the sky as life pods were removed from existence, they saw the other vessel continuing to fight for its life, still flinging coil gun fire and plasma into the cloud of copper that was now visible to the two people who watched in petrified silence.
After perhaps a minute, the crew of the vessel seemed to accept that it was for naught, and did as the first one did, abandoning ship and escaping in life pods. Like clockwork, both Kayla and Jennings knowing it would happen, the copper clouds split into several groups and slaughtered several of the life pods, simply leaving the rest be.
Feeling sick, Jennings sat down upon the boulder, feeling his insides churn.
If no ship could survive traveling to the world, it meant they had nearly zero chance of ever escaping from the planet.
Still sitting in silence, they watched the brightly flashing lights of the pods, which had been lucky enough to eject below the planet’s debris field, all converge in one area, roughly in the direction of the same mountain that Jennings had been about to show to Kayla.
Unable to speak, the two of them watched the original two ships drift, lit by the morning sunlight that they still could not see for themselves.
Eventually, after who knew how long, the two ruined vessels were caught by gravity and began to make their plunge towards the surface.
Catching fire in the atmosphere, they watched their progress as, with a finality that both humans felt seal their fates forever, they broke apart and crashed with a distant rumble several dozen miles from where they now stood.
His eyes closed, and his head now in his hands, Jennings steeled his will for what they now had to do.
Taking a deep breath, he jumped down from the boulder and reached into his pack, doing his best to ignore the fact that, for once, Kayla was crying, and looking for the emergency beacon that he had taken from his own life pod.
Flicking it on, several lights began flashing on it as he pointed towards the black smoke now rising in the distance, and said, “Let’s start walking.”
At least an hour had passed in the loudest silence Durant had ever experienced.
Sitting there, huddled with his fellows, he heard as each of the creatures outside their hiding place fell asleep, laying down from their sitting positions as their odd lullabies did their jobs, the rasping breaths becoming deeper and slower.
Feeling, or at least hoping that all of them would now be asleep, Durant moved to rise as slowly as he could.
The men surrounding him jumped slightly at his sudden movement, but moved to follow his lead.
Reaching to grip the handle of the knife at his hip, all five men held their breath as the blade made a slithering noise as it was drawn from its sheathe. When none of the creatures reacted at all, they all followed suit, each clutching their only weapons as if they were their first born children.
Durant took a silent step forward towards the door, and the sleeping creatures.
When, again, nothing happened, they all began to move more silently than any of them had thought possible, each movement and breath controlled by instincts awakened in them that had been honed over hundreds of thousands of years. Even Jackson’s previously shaking limbs might have been carved from stone.
They were at the door.
Side by side and clumped into groups, the creatures covered the entire floor and supposedly the ground outside of the building they stood in.
Examining the floor around them, Durant chose a path through the creatures, and motioned silently for the others to follow him.
Jackson giving a rather weak and out of place, ‘thumbs up’, Durant forged into the room of sleeping creatures, his blade still raised and prepared to strike.
The first step into the room might have been the craziest thing Durant had ever done, but he thrust his hesitation to the back of his mind, forcing himself to commit to the only plan that offered a way out.
Having no idea how long these creatures slept, or what they might do upon waking, escaping while they were asleep offered the best odds of survival in his mind, and he had made the decision for himself and all of the men now following him.
Step by step, inching forward, they moved through the sleeping monsters, each grunting and growling occasionally, apparently dreaming of things that none of them ever wanted to know.
Durant made it halfway across the room before he made a mistake, or rather, it was made for him.
Placing his foot in between two sleeping bodies, his insides turned to ice as a creature rolled in its sleep, and its hand knocked into his leg.
For a brief moment, he thought he was safe, as the limb lowered itself to the ground, but his eyes flicking up to the face of the arm’s owner, and he saw that its eyes were open and looking at him.
Opening its mouth wide, he saw it take a deep breath to utter its terrible shriek, but Durant was faster.
Crouching and jamming his knee into its throat, he closed its windpipe, letting only a choked hacking noise out, which was drowned by the surrounding growls and snores of the other creatures that surrounded them.
Carlson, who was next in line behind Durant, seized the arms of the creature and sat heavily upon its chest, even as Captain Williams grabbed the ankles of the awakened monster, the three men applying so much pressure that they heard bones creak.
Immobilized, defenseless, and in obvious pain, the creature’s eyes were wide, either with fear or fury, none of them knew. In the same movement of all three men pinning the creature to the floor, Durant had raised his knife and driven it directly into one of the wide and bloodshot eyes and deep into its brain, causing the twisted monster to go rigid, spasm once, and then become still.
Each man might have been carved of marble after the exchange was over, waiting, straining to hear if any others had awoken.
After a lifetime of silence, Durant rose to his feet, slowly pulling the blade from the skull of the slain creature.
Knowing that they would not get lucky again, Durant moved on, quicker than before, plainly desperate to escape the room.
Leading them towards the only route that he was sure led to the surface, they approached the door that the monsters had entered from, and which led into inky blackness.
At last, after several more close calls in which a creature shifted or one of them nearly lost balance, they each began to make the journey past the threshold until, finally, Forester was the last to cross through the doorway.
Giddy with their relief, they moved deeper into the passage, slipping into total darkness.
Just as they had found the tunnel through which they had entered the city, the stone wall of the dome had been dug through, ripping through lead walls that they could feel, but not see in the blackness. Walking deeper, they felt the concrete walls give way to roughly dug sandstone, which they eagerly began to follow.
All giddiness and relief turned to dust as they heard a shriek come from the room which was now several hundred feet behind them now.
The body of the slain creature had been discovered.
Once the shriek had been heard, a cacophony of hooting, shrieking and the stamping of feet, raised goosebumps over the men’s bodies. Even worse, Durant could swear that he heard words coming from them.
Raspy and hoarse, sounding thick and garbled, as though the words did not fit their mouths, ”Shekranesha! Shekranesha! Kulkaskana!”
Durant didn’t know what to do.
If we start running, they’ll hear us and chase us until we’re dead. If we hold still, they’ll come down here anyway and tear us apart the second they find us.
But, before he could come up with any kind of plan, the noise of shouting and chanting began to fade.
They can’t be leaving. We’re obviously down this way…
A kind of gnawing sensation began in his chest as he heard the creatures getting farther away from them.
He couldn’t resist. He had to know what was happening.
After turning around, Durant began to travel back the direction he had come.
Feeling a rough hand grasp him, he heard Williams whisper in his ear, “What are you doing? Are you insane?”
Ignoring that Williams was breaking the rule of silence, Durant replied, “I want to check a theory. It’s important. If I’m not back in five minutes, go ahead and I’ll catch up. If I’m not back in ten, I’m dead.”
Wrenching his shoulder away from Williams’s grasp, he padded back down the passage, until he could see the room that had until recently been occupied.
The body of the slain creature still lay upon the floor.
Crossing the room quickly, Durant looked outside, trying to catch sight of the mob that he had unintentionally created.
Ignoring his screaming instincts, he crept out of the building, and climbed onto the roof of a low building nearby, climbing onto a higher building that stood next to it.
Lying flat against the rooftop, he caught sight of the mob, which was still shrieking and yelling, running pell mell towards a large building several hundred meters away.
Rising to meet them, another group of creatures was spilling from the building like a hive of angry bees, preparing to meet the invading force. And it was not only the two groups making noise any longer. All around the city were the sounds of unmistakable war cries, though he could see no other movement near him.
Watching only long enough to see the two groups crash together and indeed begin attempting to rip each other apart, he jumped down from the building and made his way back towards the passage that the others should by now be taking towards the surface.
He found them quickly, as they’d apparently been reluctant to leave him behind as he’d ordered them to.
Whispering for Williams, he quickly found him in the dark and whispered in his ear, “They’re tribes. All these creatures belong to tribes.”
“So?” replied a bewildered Captain Williams.
“It means things are even worse than we thought. I thought they were just beasts, but I was wrong. Did you hear them earlier? They were talking!” Durant said.
Williams didn’t seem to be processing this the way Durant wanted however, saying, “But is knowing that worth getting your face eaten? You could have gotten yourself killed finding that out.”
Not taking the criticism well, Durant felt his blood rise, hissing urgently, “Know your enemy! Our lives are on the line, and we need all the intel we can get on these things!”
Relenting, if only to get the Captain to resume walking again, Williams said, “Fine, let’s just get the fuck out of here.”
“Fine by me.” Durant replied.
Both bolstered and troubled by the new information, Durant quickly moved up the tunnel, less cautious than before, sure of the fact that any nearby creatures were too busy either watching or participating in tribal squabbles to notice their footsteps.
They traveled again in silence, none of the other men speaking, and only hoping to see the sky again.
Turning a corner, they saw light ahead, which made all of their hearts soar. Hurrying forward however, they all soon realized that their bad luck was only getting worse.
The light was not that of daylight, or even the pink of the night sky. It was the same blue light of the fungus that they had left behind.
Feeling as if lead weights had fallen into each of their stomachs, they peered out of the exit, expecting to see another entrance to the domed city.
But they had not returned to the sheltered city.
They now found themselves on a cavernous highway, with a ceiling stretching several tens of meters high, and lit as far as the eye could see in either direction with strips of fungus covering the walls.
There were even vehicles on the highway, long abandoned and looking as though they could be analogous to cargo trucks and military vehicles, with rockets and cannons sticking out from what could only be troop transports and armored tanks.
Arrows and writing covered the walls, faded and worn, and barely visible against the dark stone.
Every single one of the arrows was telling them to go right.
“Seriously, what the fuck happened to this place?” Forester whispered.