Matthew Reilly - Temple

‘All right,’ he said formally into his throat mike as he took his first step downward. ‘I can see some stone stairs in front of me. Descending—”

‘—the stairs nozom’ von Dirksen’s voice said over the Humvee’s speakers.

Race stared intently at the image of the five commandos as they walked slowly into the portal until finally the last soldier’s head disappeared below the floorline and he saw nothing but the empty stone doorway.

“Captain, report,’ Kolb’s voice said inside Kurt von Dirksen’s headset as the young German captain reached the bottom of the damp stone steps, the beam of his flashlight slicing through the darkness.

He was now standing in a narrow stonewalled tunnel. It stretched away from him, bending around and down to the right in a smooth curve. It sloped steeply downwards, spiralling down into the gloom of the temple’s core. Small indented alcoves lined its walls.

‘We’ve reached the base of the stairs,’ he said. “I see a curved tunnel ahead of me. Moving toward it.’

The entry team spaced themselves out as they began to move cautiously down the steeply graded tunnel. The beams of their flashlights played over its glistening wet walls. An echoing, dripping sound could be heard from somewhere deep within the temple.

Von Dirksen said, ‘Team, this is One. Call in.’

The rest of the entry team responded quickly: ‘This is Two.’

‘Four.’

‘Five.’

They ventured further down the tunnel.

Race and the others watched the Humvee’s television screen in tense silence, listened to the hushed voices of the German entry team. Race translated.

‘so wet in here, water everywhere—’

‘—stay sharp. Watch your step—’

Just then, a loud burst of static screeched out from the television’s speakers.

“What was that?” yon Dirksen said quickly. “Team, call in.”

‘This is Two.’

‘Three.’

‘Four.’

And then nothing.

Race waited expectantly for the final soldier to call in. But his call never came.

No ‘Five’.

Inside the temple, von Dirksen spun around.

‘Friedrich,’ he hissed as he walked back up the passageway, past the others.

They had come a short way down the steep spiralling tunnel and now they stood in pitch darkness, the only light - the beams of their flashlights.

Behind them, up the slope, they could see a wash of blue moonlight bending around the tunnel’s gentle curve, indicating the way back to the surface.

Von Dirksen peered back up the tunnel.

‘Friedrich!’ he whispered into the darkness. ‘Friedrich! Where are you?’

At that moment, von Dirksen heard a loud whump from somewhere behind him.

He spun.

And now saw only two of his men standing behind him.

The third was nowhere to be seen.

Von Dirksen turned back to face the entrance and was about to say something into his microphone when suddenly he saw an unusually large shadow slink around the bend in the tunnel above him and, in that instant, he completely lost the ability to speak.

It was silhouetted by the moonlight behind it.

And it looked absolutely terrifying.

The soft blue light of the moon glistened off its muscularly black flanks.

The beam of von Dirksen’s flashlight glinted off its long razor-sharp teeth.

The German captain just stared at the creature before him in stunned silence.

It was huge.

And then suddenly it was joined by a second, identical creature, stepping out from behind it.

They must have been hiding inside the alcoves, von Dirksen thought.

Lying in wait. Waiting for him and his men to walk past them, so that they could now cut off their retreat.

And then in a flash the first creature pounced. Von Dirksen never had a chance. It moved incredibly fast for an animal of its size and in a second its slashing jaws filled his field of vision and in that moment all Kurt von Dirksen could do was scream.

Shouts and screams burst out from the television’s speakers.

Race and the others stared at the screen in horror.

The screams of the last three members of the entry team being attacked echoed across the airwaves. Briefly, Race heard gunfire, but it only lasted for a second before abruptly both it and the screaming cut off together and there was silence.

Long silence.

Race stared at the television screen, at the picture of the open mouth of the temple.

“Von Dirksen, Friedrich, Nielson. Report.’

There was no reply from the men inside the temple.

Race swapped a glance with Lauren.

And then suddenly a new voice came in over the speakers.

It was a breathless voice, panting and afraid.

‘Sir! This is Nielson! Repeat, this is Nielson! Oh God… God help us. Get out of here, sir! Get out of here while you still—” Smack!

It sounded like a collision of some sort.

Like the sound of something big slamming into the man named Nielson.

Sounds of a scuffle ensued and then, abruptly, Race heard a blood-curdling scream and then—over the scream— he heard another, infinitely more terrifying, sound.

It was a roar—an ungodly roar—loud and deep like that of a lion.

Only fuller, more resonant, fiercer.

Race’s eyes flashed back to the television screen and suddenly he froze.

He saw it.

Saw it emerge from the shadowy darkness of the portal.

And as he watched the giant black creature step out from the mouth of the temple, Race felt a deep sickness in the pit of his stomach.

Because he knew then, in that moment, that despite all their technology, all their guns, and all of their selfish desires to find a new and fantastic power source, the men on that rock tower had just violated a far, far simpler rule of human evolution.

Some doors are meant to remain unopened.

Gunther Kolb and the other dozen or so Germans on the tower top just stared at the animal standing in the portal in awe.

It was magnificent.

It was fully five feet tall, even while standing on all four legs, and it was completely black in colour, jet-black from head to toe.

It looked like a jaguar of some sort.

A giant black jaguar.

The massive cat’s eyes glinted yellow in the moonlight, and with its furrowed angry brows, hunched muscular shoulders and dagger-like teeth, it truly looked like the Devil incarnate.

And then, abruptly, the soft blue moonlight that illuminated the temple’s portal was replaced by a harsh strobelike flash of lightning and in the deafening crash of thunder that followed, the great animal roared.

It might as well have been a signal.

Because at that moment—at that precise moment—over a dozen other giant black cats burst forth from the darkness of the temple and attacked the Germans on the tower top.

Despite the fact that they were armed with assault rifles and submachineguns, the members of the German expedition never stood a Chance.

The cats were too fast. Too agile. Too powerful. They slammed into the stunned crowd of soldiers and scientists with shocking ferocity—bowling them over, leaping onto them, mauling them alive.

A few of the soldiers managed to get some shots off and one of the cats went crashing to the ground, spasming violently.

But it didn’t matter, the other cats barely seemed to notice the bullets whizzing around them and within seconds they were all over those soldiers, too—tearing into their flesh, biting into their throats, suffocating them with their powerful clamp-like jaws.

Hideous screams filled the night air.

General Gunther Kolb ran.

Wet fern fronds slapped hard against his face as he hurried down the stone stairway that led back to the suspension bridge.

If he could just make it to the bridge, he thought, and untie it from the buttresses on the far side, then the cats would be trapped on the rock tower.