The Devil’s Peak II, page 12
“Something, I think.” He turned, waiting.
Benny looked at each of his team. “On three, two, one...” He nodded.
Harper turned the door lever and shouldered the heavy steel door open.
Miasmic. The smell was like a physical force and made the air so thick it felt like it coated their nostrils and the inside of their mouths.
Bella gagged.
“Hold it together, people,” Benny said.
He suddenly didn’t think they were going to find anyone alive.
The team lifted powerful flashlights as they were in a pitch dark steel corridor that ended in a weak light about fifty feet ahead.
“Main flotation bulkhead area up ahead,” Bella said as it sounded like she was trying to stop breathing through her nose.
“How big?” Benny asked.
“This one coming is seven hundred by five hundred feet,” she said.
“Enough room for all of them,” Mike replied.
“Yeah, but why?” Benny nodded forward. “Nice and easy.”
“What the fuck?” Harper, leading them, stopped beside an alcove.
On the outer wall was a sign informing them of an emergency phone that would now never be used. But tucked into the alcove in its darkest depths was something that was about eight feet long and looked like a weird, wrapped sandwich. It was glistening brown and yellow in their lights, tapering at each end. Sticky fibers glued it upright to the wall.
“Fucking gross.” Benny turned to Bella. “What is that thing?”
“You’re asking me?” Her mouth turned down. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. And I’ll tell you right now, it isn’t part of this ship. Or any ship,” she said.
“Check it out,” Benny said to Harper.
The older man turned to look at him, his expression one of disbelief in the glare of all their flashlights.
“Really?” His forehead creased.
“Yeah, sure, just see what it is. Get a closer look.” Benny shooed him forward. “Go on.”
Harper muttered as he went in closer, keeping his flashlight up, and one hand on his firearm.
The last few steps, he shuffled sideways, taking baby steps.
He stood staring at it for a while holding his light directly on it. He frowned. It seemed to have ribbing all the way from the top to the bottom, and he slowly reached out.
“Careful,” Benny said sharply, making the older man jump.
“Jesus, man. Shup up,” Harper exhaled through bared teeth.
Benny grinned. “Sorry. Just, be careful.”
Harper carefully laid a hand on the thing.
“It’s warm. Hard.” He knocked on it. “It’s like some sort of shell,” he said.
Harper knocked on it again, and in the glare of his lights they saw the shell was sort of translucent and something wriggled inside.
Harper pulled his hand back. “Fuck this, there’s something alive in there.”
“Okay, let’s leave that for the Health guys,” Benny said. “Continue.”
“Up ahead.” Bella’s face was lit by the glow of her computer tablet.
They came to the end of the corridor and then out onto a steel gangplank that looked down a few steps to the huge open area that was the bowels of the North Star liner.
There was no light, but even their footfalls echoed, giving the impression of a large open space.
They shone their lights out over the massive void.
And then they saw.
“Oh my god,” Harper croaked as he backed up.
Benny’s lips clasped together.
There were bodies. Hundreds and hundreds of bodies.
There was a low lying mist hugging them and maybe that was the greasy odor of corruption that was so laden with decomposition gases it was laying heavy in the air.
Whatever it was, Benny was just glad they couldn’t smell it.
“This is where they all came. Where they all ended up,” Benny said in a whisper.
He didn’t know why he whispered, he just felt the need to be cautious and quiet right now.
“Why?” Mangione asked. “Why did they come here? How did they die?”
Bella craned forward. “I think there’s something on them.”
They focused their lights and saw beneath the layer of greenish mist that where the bodies had shirts pulled open or dresses hiked up, and anywhere else there was exposed flesh, there seemed to be things that looked like bottles stuck to them. They were milky white, wet-looking and stacked in rows.
As they looked along the mass of people they saw that nearly all of their bodies had them.
“I don’t know what I’m looking at here. But I don’t like it.” Mike turned. “Maybe now we can call in the authorities.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Benny nodded, transfixed.
“You hear that?” Bella asked.
***
Back along the corridor, the huge cocoon wriggled and bulged.
And then a split unzipped the tough casing starting from the center and then moving up and down its length. Something muscular started to swell from within.
The casing cracked and more of the muscular thing bulged outwards. Then came a crescent-shaped claw that gripped the edge on one side. And another came to grip the other’s side of the split. They levered it open further and a dark limb with bristling hairs began to fully emerge.
Falling from the bottom of the casing was a glutinous liquid and in amongst it were half-eaten human limbs – a meal to assist in its transformation – the head of the creature came next, part massive blowfly, and part human being.
It had sensed the humans passing by, and knew now they had arrived at their destination. It was time.
It sent its signal to the brood.
And they began to emerge.
***
“I hear it.” Benny frowned.
From down amongst the bodies there was a sound of popping and cracking, and then the soft sound of movement. Then what might have been frantic buzzing, but deeper, more powerful, like that of tiny machines starting up.
“Look. Those bottle things are moving.” Harper pointed, and then began to back toward the doorway.
As the group watched they saw the wet-looking bottles begin to wriggle and then bulge. They found out then where the popping and cracking sounds were coming from as they split and opened.
“They’re fucking eggs!” Mike shouted. “Goddamn big eggs.”
In seconds more the first of them burst open and things crawled free, big as a man’s fist, and stayed there shivering as their wings filled with blood and power.
“Fuck that.” Harper turned to run.
“Back up, everyone,” Benny said.
In the cavernous lower hold of the cruise liner the air was filled with the hum of strengthening wings. Then as if a signal had been given they took flight, and headed straight for the only exit – the one with the people standing in its mouth.
***
Allen Harper ran with head down and shoulders hiked. He knew he was being a coward. But even though he worked as a security guard he had never really confronted anyone or anything in his life, and certainly wasn’t going to take on a plague of mutant blowflies. No siree.
Behind him he heard his team yelling and the rise of a buzzing sound that rose to that of a jet engine revving up.
He turned to look over his shoulder to gauge pursuit, saw nothing, and dared to hope.
“I’ll call for help!” he yelled back down the corridor.
Just as he turned back to the dark corridor ahead he smacked into something that shouldn’t have been there. The thing blocked the passageway completely, and in the gloom of the emergency lights in the dank corridor he could make out the form of a bug as big as a grizzly bear.
He was on the ground looking up, and saw on the wall the yellow warning sign and knew exactly where he was – right where that massive cocoon thing was that wriggled when he touched it.
Like it was about to hatch.
And now it had.
“Fuck!” Harper went to scuttle backwards but the massive thing fell on him. In the twilight gloom he smelled its stink of corruption and sourness, and saw the abomination up close.
It had the fucking face of a man, or at least the top half as the bottom was one of those hairy pad-like mouthparts of a real fly.
Harper screamed and screamed until his throat rasped and he tasted blood. The thing bent forward and vomited something onto his face.
Immediately he felt the sensation of an excruciating burning. And then he remembered how flies fed – they extruded part of their stomach acid to predigest the food so they could suck it up.
The agony was like nothing he had ever felt in his life, and he screamed and screamed until his tongue and mouth were gone. And then the monstrous fly bent forward to feed.
***
“Ru-uuun!” Benny screamed.
The four people turned and sprinted, but were immediately struck from behind by a wave of the huge blowflies. They smacked into the people, and Benny felt the nips of sharp little mouths as pieces of their exposed skin was bitten away by the flies.
They were in a maelstrom of buzzing, zooming spiky-haired bodies so thick it shut out the illumination from the already weak emergency lighting overhead.
Benny heard Bella screaming somewhere – it might have been six feet away, or it might have been ten times that. But it sounded like it was getting farther away and for some reason he imagined her being carried off into the air by hundreds of flies.
Suddenly a gun was fired, once, twice, three times, and he knew it was Mike going mad just firing wildly while his team members were too close to him – panic did that, Benny knew.
Benny put his hands over his head and tried to slog through the storm of bristling fast moving bodies, but his foot struck something, and he went down hard.
He reached down and felt the body. Opening his eyes to slits he saw Mangione, dead, god he hoped he was dead, because his skin was near stripped from his face and there were dozens of monstrous flies burrowing their heads into his body and working furiously at the exposed flesh.
That’ll be me soon, Benny whimpered.
He began to crawl towards the way out.
The pain was excruciating as it felt like he was being cut by a thousand razor blades and stuck with needles.
He struggled to his knees. He felt wet all over and knew that most of his clothing and then skin had been stripped away. The nerve endings were raw, and he began to weep.
“Not like this,” he cried.
The gun shots sounded again, as Mike called out, firing his last rounds into the swarm, at the walls, and at anything.
Benny heard the last shot and felt the impact of the bullet strike him in the chest. Suddenly all the pain went away, and he flopped to the ground.
Thank God, he thought, as everything went mercifully black.
CHAPTER 18
Italy, Rome, Vatican City, the Vatican Library
“New York has been quarantined.” Marco looked up from the computer screen. “They’re calling it another flu virus, but, we know it’s not.”
Isabella paced. “It will break out in every corner of the world now.” She rubbed her brow. “And so far we can do nothing about it.”
Marco folded his arms. “The human race will be brought low, scattered. And when we are at our weakest, He will rise.”
Isabella groaned loudly. “Give me some good news. Someone. Anyone.”
Leonidas sat back. “I have news, and not sure if it’s good, bad, or nothing yet.”
Isabella turned. “Well?”
Leonidas read from his screen. “I’ve been researching any other occurrences in history of the twisted humans like we encountered in our journey to Hell. And I found one, a picture from the 1960s of something pulled from the water in the North Atlantic,” he said and turned the screen around.
Isabella and Marco approached and looked down at the image. It was of one of the dog people, severely rotted from a long time in seawater, but the flattened features and deformed legs were unmistakable.
Isabella folded her arms and narrowed her eyes. “They found one floating near the Devil’s Peak because there was an entrance to Hell there. But this thing is thousands of miles away from there – too far to drift, so…”
Leonidas raised his eyebrows. “So, there might be another portal.”
“Yes, yes.” Isabella stepped closer. “Where exactly was it found?”
Marco checked the coordinates. “Of course.” He began to laugh softly. “Within the Devil’s Triangle, where else?”
***
Isabella snorted. “But where exactly?”
“The supposed triangle, the Devil’s Triangle, is another name for the Bermuda Triangle, an area bounded by Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico, in the North Atlantic Ocean. It’s gigantic, millions of square miles.” Marco flat smiled. “Hundreds of planes and ships have disappeared there for centuries.”
“The lost bomber squadron,” Leonidas said. “I remember, most occurrences date back to the forties to sixties. But there are ancient stories of galleons vanishing there.”
Marco typed in some more details. “The Hell beast was found drifting closer to Florida.”
“Has anyone who vanished ever returned?” Isabella asked.
Marco typed some more. “Yes.” He brought up a picture from the fifties of a young man in a pilot’s uniform. “Lieutenant Mack Abrams, recon pilot. He was pulled from the water in 1962.” He looked up at his pair of Knights. “He vanished in 1955.”
“So where did he say he was for seven years?” Isabella asked softly.
“I think we know,” Marco said. “And he told us. Hell.”
“How did he get back?” Isabella began to pace.
“Mr. Mackenzie J. Abrams, retired colonel.” Marco swung in his seat. “He’s alive, 95-years old now and still living in Florida.”
Isabella headed for the door. “Find him. Then we’re going to talk to him. If he can get out of Hell, we can go there and get out too.”
“You’re going for Drake.” Marco smiled.
Leonidas gave a small laugh and looked up at Marco. “Here we go again.”
CHAPTER 19
United States, Florida, Sarasota
Isabella, Marco, and Leonidas turned the car onto Proctor Road and slowed outside the huge villa.
“This is it,” Isabella said.
They then pulled into Aravilla retirement villa that was a huge edifice of a resort-style group of buildings that would have done a four star hotel proud – it was well lit, well kept, Roman-style columns out front and smart dressed people moving about, gardening, cleaning, and through one of the fences they saw the glint of a swimming pool.
Marco whistled. “When I retire, this is where I want you to put me.”
“You’ll get your reward in Heaven,” Leonidas chuckled in the back seat.
Isabella stepped out. All three were dressed in sharp business suits with their fake military IDs. They headed to the front desk.
The young man looked up and smiled, but then got a little intimidated by the three formidable looking people in front of him.
“We’re expected.” Isabella gave him her winning smile and held up her ID. “We’re here to see one of our retired servicemen, Colonel Mackenzie Abrams.”
“Um, um…” He quickly consulted notes, then his computer. He began to nod vigorously. “Yes, here it is.” He peered at the three IDs. “Ah, Captain Montague, and Lieutenants Reardon and Carter.” He looked up. “Let me show you the way.”
“No thank you,” Isabella said. “Just tell us where to go, and you can carry on.”
He seemed a little disappointed, and perhaps was hoping for something more interesting to do than occupy the front desk for the afternoon. He told them where Mackenzie, ‘Mack’, was and the trio headed off briskly.
They found him easily. Mack was in a small villa room that overlooked the rose gardens. Isabella slowed as she saw a man sitting there in blue pajamas looking out over massed rose bushes, all in bloom. He smiled as he tossed bread crumbs to several eager sparrows with one hand while keeping the other tightly rolled into a fist.
“Wait here,” she whispered to Marco and Leonidas and then slowly approached. “Beautiful roses,” she said.
“It’s the manure. And the dry sunny climate,” Mack said as he kept his eyes on the birds for a moment more before turning to her. “You can tell your friends to come out now.”
Isabella grunted and turned to Marco and Leonidas and motioned them over.
Isabella approached a little more and stopped a few feet away. “Can we speak to you, Colonel?”
“Colonel?” He raised an eyebrow. “Haven’t been called that for nearly fifty years. Just Mack will do these days.”
“Mack, it is.” Isabella came and held out her hand. “My name is Isabella. With me are my friends Leonidas and Marco.”
“You FEDs?” Mack asked. “You’re dressed like FEDs.”
“No, and we told them that we were military to get in and speak to you without someone trying to oversee us. May I?” She pointed at the chair next to him.
“Of course. But there’s only one so your friends will have to stand.” He turned to the men, looking them up and down with rheumy eyes. “So, not FEDs and not military. Why do you want to speak to me? And no, I’m not reenlisting.” He cackled for a moment.
“You know why,” Leonidas said. “It’s something that happened to you sixty-five years ago. Something nobody believed you about. But we do.”
Mack stared for a moment and then turned away. “I don’t talk about that.” His gaze took on a faraway look as he stared out at the grass lawn for a while. “I learned to keep my mouth shut. Otherwise they were going to kick me out of the armed forces. Or lock me in the loony bin.”
“You were missing for seven years. What did you tell them? What did they say?”
Mack begun to chuckle. “They said that I must have washed up years ago. With amnesia. And was living a different life somewhere for seven years.” He bobbed his head. “Might have happened. And in the end I sort of agreed.”
