James Axler - Apocalypse Unseen

Mariah was walking beside Grant a few paces behind Brigid and Kane, struggling a little to keep up the pace that they were setting. They were soldiers while she was primarily a desk worker—gunfights and traipsing across battlefields were significantly outside Mariah’s comfort zone.

“There’s a lot of trekking around in what you guys do, huh?” she said, doing her best to ignore the feeling of damp sweat in her hair.

“Seems that way sometimes,” Grant agreed. Despite his recent exertion in curtailing the tripod cannon’s assault while wearing a long duster made of Kevlar, he seemed to be barely breaking a sweat. The shadow suit he wore beneath his clothes was regulating his body temperature, keeping him cool in spite of the fierce sunshine.

“So, what’s the formula you guys use in determining whether to use the interphaser or the Mantas to travel somewhere?” Mariah asked.

Grant looked at her and smiled. “No formula,” he said. “If there’s a parallax point or an old mat-trans unit, then we use that, unless we figure we might need to switch locations and stay on the move—in which case, we bring the Mantas out of the hangar.” The Mantas he referred to were superfast aircraft of alien design, ones which he, Kane and a few other members of Cerberus were adept in piloting.

Ahead of them, the bleak landscape stretched on and on, parched dirt dotted with stones like the debris from a mine, just a few leafless bushes here and there, rooted to the ground like the skeletal nests of birds. The terrain rose gradually, the crack in the ground widening and narrowing uncertainly but never closing to less than a four-foot gap.

The Cerberus team followed the line drawn by the crack in the earth, making their way up the gentle slope. The slope was made up of loose stones of all sizes and shapes, and as they went farther they found it became harder to keep one’s balance on the loose ground. Mariah especially needed help to keep moving forward, and Grant put an arm behind her back to prevent her from slipping. Brigid had put away the interphaser by this point, replacing it in its padded carry case, which could be strapped to her back. The unit still wasn’t operational; the bullet had evidently sheared through something important.

As they climbed higher, some of the loose rocks were dropping into the jagged rent that they were following. Once one started to fall, the rocks cascaded like a waterfall. For a frightening moment, Mariah slipped and fell toward the brink where those rocks had disappeared. Grant grabbed her in an instant, held her tightly by the arm as she dropped to one knee and continued to slide toward the rent in the earth.

“Hang on,” Grant told her with all the authority of the Magistrate he had once been.

“I’m—” Mariah began, breathlessly. “Can’t...” Her kneeling leg slipped out from under her as a landslide of stones began to disappear into the four-foot-wide opening of the chasm.

Grant tensed his muscles, spreading his legs wider to anchor himself in place. Kane and Brigid hurried back to join him, themselves slipping dangerously on the relentless stream of rocks that were now cascading into the pit.

Grant began to slip, his feet sliding along with the loose stones as Mariah’s weight threatened to drag them both into the chasm. Mariah herself was thrashing about, trying to keep from sliding into the darkness, her feet so close to the edge.

“Stop struggling,” Kane advised as he scrambled across the moving river of stones, struggling to get purchase. “Baptiste, hold on to me!”

“Hold on to you?” Brigid asked, confused.

“Yeah, I’m going to try to grab Mariah,” Kane said, reaching forward.

Brigid swiveled behind Kane, placing her arms around his midriff and locking her hands together.

Kane reached his hand out for Mariah, speaking through gritted teeth as he grabbed her flailing left arm. “Grant, you okay back there, bud?”

Grant was on his backside, still holding on to Mariah’s right arm as he struggled to stay in place. His grip had slipped down her sweat-slicked forearm, however, and it was now cinched painfully around her wrist. Mariah felt as though her hand was being wrenched off.

“Grant?” Kane pressed.

“Just grab her, Kane,” Grant told him. “Don’t worry about me.”

With Brigid providing counterbalance, Kane leaned in and reached his other arm around Mariah’s shoulders, still clinging to her left arm with his right hand. He pulled her to him in what seemed almost a consoling hug, drawing her face toward his left shoulder and chest. Mariah flailed, still fighting the stream of loose shale that threatened to throw her into the pit, and then she had an arm around Kane. Grant let go, anchoring himself in place as the stream of rocks beneath him rushed onward like an avalanche, accompanied by a susurration of noise as they disappeared into the chasm. In a moment he had stopped moving, though the rocks continued to drop.

“No one move,” Kane instructed. “Everyone just stay still, let the rocks settle.”

Brigid clutched Kane around his waist while Mariah clung on to him like a drowning woman clinging to debris from a shipwreck.

“You’re okay,” Kane told her, gently. “You’re not going to fall.”

Around them, the rocks settled finally as the last few fell into the darkness. The ground, such as it was, felt stable again.

Brigid let go of Kane and he let go of Mariah, while Grant pushed himself cautiously back to a standing position beside them.

“Now, let’s just proceed with caution, okay?” Kane said. “No sudden moves.”

Following his own advice, Kane took wary steps up the slope, testing the ground with his toe before he proceeded, guiding the group in a path that took them a little farther away from the dangerous chasm they were tracking.

The slope continued to rise, taking the group forty or fifty feet above the tallest part of the distant fort where they had materialized. Throughout the climb, they saw no one else, though the sounds of gunfire continued to echo from the distance where two armies—one made up of blind men—fought their lunatic war.

The Cerberus group reached the summit of the gentle slope unexpectedly. Unexpected, that is, because they had not foreseen that there would be an almost sheer drop on the other side. From above, it looked like a sinkhole, a perfectly circular maw in the earth, its sides so steep that they were almost vertical. A few scaffolds were dotted here and there with ladders leading down into the hole itself. There were figures wandering among the scaffolding, and they could see two simple, boxy buildings at different levels where the people here might take shelter. The nearest ladder down was sixty feet away, a quarter turn around the circular hole.

“What the hell?” Grant muttered, gazing over the edge.

Kane looked at his partners, his eyebrows raised. “Watch that first step, huh?” he said.

“It’s a mine,” Mariah stated, looking at the formations all around them. They now saw that the slope of rock that they had climbed was waste that had been removed from the ground to create the mine shaft. The shaft itself was a perfectly vertical drop into the ground.

“Not natural, then?” Kane checked.

“No, not natural.”

Brigid turned to Mariah, quizzical. “Could this be the cause of the quake?”

Mariah shrugged. “Possibly,” she admitted. “I guess it depends on what they’re using to bore into the earth.”

Kane eyed the figures on the scaffold, trying to detect a pattern that might indicate whether they were sentries. “Guess we’re going to have to take a look-see at what’s inside,” Kane told the others, reloading his Sin Eater.

“I think I miss my workstation,” Mariah muttered as she followed the Cerberus field team around the lip of the mine.