The Anomaly(81)

It was very slow, the liquid still thick enough to make progress tough.

“Are we even going to be able to do this?” Molly asked me. “I’ve got swim game, but that looks hard.”

“We’ll be fine,” I said. There was nothing else to say. I heard Ken breathe out heavily behind me, however, and knew what he’d be thinking. That he was not light, or fit, and it was going to be extremely challenging for Pierre to swim for both of them. “We’ll be fine,” I said again.

We watched Pierre slowly progress toward the end of the room, Molly holding the beam of the camera light steady, until his head and arm became the only things we could see. At one point he seemed to lose rhythm, and his head sank closer to the surface, but he recovered and kept going.

Then there was a grunting sound as he wrenched his right arm out of the liquid.

“There,” he said. He sounded a long distance away—much farther than the length of the room. There was a thud as his backpack landed in the fissure. “Done it.”

“Good work. Take a minute before you come back.”

“Oh yeah,” he said. He was panting hard, and sounded exhausted. “I’ll be doing that, trust me.”

And then there was a really bad, loud sound, from the direction of the main room.

The three of us jumped and swung around in that direction, Molly unthinkingly bringing the beam of light with her.

For a fraction of a second I saw something, only about thirty yards away up the corridor.

A shape, momentarily lit. Not as tall as a man, only five feet high, but twice human breadth. Muscled like an ox. Hands like spades, totally out of proportion, spatulate fingers red with Gemma’s blood.

A huge, bald head, thick with bone.

By the time Molly whipped the beam across where it had been, the creature had slipped back into the darkness. It hadn’t gone far, though. You could hear it breathing.

“There’s two of them,” Ken said. “Turn off the light.”

Molly flicked off the beam. Everyone listened.

Two things, breathing in the darkness. Heavily. As if struggling to push air in and out of noses and chests still thick with the nutrient soup they’d crawled out of.

One made the sound again. The sound we’d been hearing. It was guttural, throaty. Over a couple of seconds, it changed in pitch three times. It wasn’t language, but it was communication of some kind. Not with us. With the other one.

They were planning how to attack.

“They’re coming closer,” Molly said. She sounded very unhappy and very scared.

Swishing footfalls on the stone floor. A low, rumbling growl. Deeply buried parts of your heart, soul, and most ancient DNA know exactly what that sound means.

Molly and I took a step back into the room.

Another growl, louder now.

“Go,” Ken said.

“What?”

“We don’t have time for Pierre to swim back for me. I’ll lead them away down the corridor.”

“Fuck off, Ken,” I said.

The creature nearest us made another sound. Not a growl. More like a roar. They had us cornered and they knew it. They were coming for us now.

“You hang around and we’re all going to die. Seriously. I’m done. We’re almost out of cigarettes anyway.”

“Don’t be a—”

“Molly!” he shouted. “Just do it.”

“But—”

She didn’t want to, but she was very used to doing what Ken said and in that beat of hesitation he grabbed the camera from her with one hand and with the other shoved me, hard.

I tripped over the lintel and fell backward into the room, winding up full-length on the floor. Ken flicked the light on, and for a moment was lit, grinning, from underneath. He winked, looking for a moment so much younger.

“It’s been fun, mate,” he said. “Really. But you’re still a twat.”

Then he ran away up the corridor.

I scrambled to my feet, pushed Molly hard behind me, so she went skittering across the floor and into the liquid. Through the pitch darkness, I heard a thick, gloopy splash.

“Go,” I shouted to her.

“What’s happening?” Pierre called.

“Come get Molly. Help her across.”

“What’s happening?”

I turned to where I thought the doorway was but was hurled backward by a thudding swipe, sharp nails tearing across my chest, shredding through my shirt.

I landed six feet back in the liquid and barely got half a lungful of air before my head was sinking under the surface. It was the thickness of dishwashing fluid and very warm. I didn’t sink as fast as I would have in water but I had no idea of where I was, or how far I was going to drop.

After a few seconds I felt hands yanking at me and let them pull me in a direction that turned out to be the right one because a couple of moments later my head was out. I gasped in some air before becoming aware that the room was now full of noise.

Molly and Pierre were screaming at me to come with them. The creature at the end was full-body roaring now, chaotic with blood-hunger.

“Ken,” I panted. “I’m going ba—”

“No,” Pierre said. He kept pulling, and Molly did, too.

“You heard him,” she said to me from between gritted teeth as they pulled me out of my depth and farther toward the other end. “You heard what Ken said. He said to go. That thing’s going to kill you if you go back—and I’m not letting that happen. I’m not letting it happen.”