46

They stood in the dim hallway outside radar support. Ekberg kept her head averted, hands clenched and fingers interlaced, shivering despite the warm air. Wolff glanced at her, then looked away again. Conti stood apart, reviewing the footage he’d recently shot on the camera’s small viewscreen.

“Why didn’t you let me respond to Gonzalez’s call?” she asked.

“He probably just wants to smoke out our location,” the director murmured. “He clearly retreated following the attack, and now he wants to pull us back as well.”

“He probably fell back to the life-sciences lab,” replied Wolff. “Rejoined the others. If he was smart, that’s what he did.”

“I doubt it. Gonzalez is a soldier; he wouldn’t have let a setback like this stop him.”

“Is that what you call it?” Wolff retorted. “A setback? That creature just killed another of his men.”

Conti flicked a switch on the camera and the viewscreen went dark. “Gonzalez wouldn’t take it lying down. He probably got jumped. Now he’s learned from his mistake-trying to take the fight to the beast was a bad move. Better to choose your place of engagement. Let the enemy come to you.”

Wolff looked at him in disbelief. “Emilio, what do you think this is? Some film you can script to your satisfaction?”

But Conti didn’t seem to hear. “Let’s check out that stairwell we passed. He might have taken his team down there, set up a killing field.” Hoisting the camera back onto his shoulder, he began to walk down the corridor. Wolff stepped in behind him, still protesting.

Ekberg watched them walk away. The corridor was wreathed in interlacing shadows that seemed to grow more oppressive by the minute. She could not get the image of Creel out of her mind: the torn and staring head, the spreading blood, the dismembered corpse. Woodenly, she moved to follow them.

“Either we radio Gonzalez or we head back to the science lab,” Wolff was saying. “Wandering out here, with that killing machine on the loose, is madness.”

“You won’t say that when we’re accepting a Best Documentary Oscar. Besides, you’ve got a weapon.”

“Creel had a weapon, too. A nice, big weapon. And look what happened.”

“We don’t know what happened. It could have been anything. Perhaps he got separated from the others. Perhaps he lost his nerve and ran off-straight into the jaws of the beast.”

They were approaching the stairwell. The metal-walled shaft was a maw of blackness, only a small glimmer of light from below illuminating the treads and risers. Ahead, the corridor ran back to the intersection leading to the infirmary. Conti stopped at the top of the stairs to adjust the camera lens and switch on its supplementary light.

“I won’t let you go down there,” Wolff said.

Conti continued to fiddle with the camera. “Didn’t anything I said earlier sink in? This is simply too important. If they’re down there, I have to film it.”

“We should never have left the officers’ mess.” Wolff looked back at Ekberg as if to demand her agreement.

She said nothing. She was too full of grief and horror. The memory of being back in the mess, agreeing to run sound for Conti, already seemed a lifetime away. The notion that the good of the documentary outweighed all other considerations now filled her with revulsion.

“It won’t take me long to check,” said Conti. He lifted the camera back onto his shoulder. “Wait here if you want. Kari, I’ll need your help.”

Ekberg shook her head. “Sorry, Emilio. I’m not going.”

Wolff put his hand on the camera. “You’re coming back with us. Now.”

“You can’t order me around,” Conti said, wheeling away, his voice abruptly spiking. “This is my shoot.”

“I’m the Blackpool representative-”

Suddenly, Wolff fell silent. He gave a low grunt of pain and covered his hands with his ears. A moment later, Ekberg felt it too: a painful pressure that seemed to radiate from the center of her skull.

“I don’t like this,” she said.

“We need to get out of here,” Wolff replied. “Get out of here fast, before-”

Once again he stopped speaking. His jaw went slack and his frame seemed to sag. He was staring past Conti, down the corridor. Ekberg turned to follow his gaze with huge reluctance, fear buckling her knees, afraid to look but even more afraid not to.

Ahead, at the corridor intersection, the webbed darkness had begun to shift.

47

They made their way down through the levels in almost complete silence. Gonzalez led the way, M16 slung over his back and powerful flashlight illuminating a path through the clutter. A heavy monkey wrench hung from a cloth ring stitched to his fatigues. Logan and the scientists came next: Sully with a weapon in each hand, Marshall and Faraday carrying khaki duffels of hastily gathered tools and equipment that might or might not come in handy. Next came Usuguk, his tattooed face expressionless. Phillips brought up the rear, darting frequent looks over his shoulder.

They moved past the storage spaces of D Level, racks of ancient instruments and redundant sensor arrays like watchful sentinels in the faint light. As Gonzalez’s torch swung in an arc, catching new objects in its beam, sudden shadows darted at them from open doorways and storage niches.

The gloom and silence began to wear on Marshall ’s nerves. He hadn’t really wanted to leave Ekberg, Conti, and Wolff behind, but the possibility of fashioning a weapon that might harm the creature made it a chance worth taking. He slowed his pace, falling back slightly until he was beside the Tunit. “Usuguk,” he said, eager to turn his mind elsewhere. “Why do you call this mountain a place of evil?”

It took the Tunit a moment to answer. “The story is very old. It has been handed down from father to son, generation to generation, for longer than living memory can tell.”

“I’d like to hear it.”

Usuguk paused again before continuing. “My people believe in two sets of gods, the gods of light and the gods of darkness. Just as everything has an opposite-for happiness there is sorrow, for day there is night-it took both sets of gods to fashion our world. The gods of light are supreme. They are the ancient ones: the gods of goodness and wisdom. They bless the hunt, fill the sea with fish. They watch over the natural order. The gods of darkness are different. They control sickness and death, the human passions. They dwell in dreams and nightmare. Over time, their own veil of darkness began to poison them. They grew envious of the gods of light. The evil that was their instrument, their source of power, seduced them. And they themselves became evil.”

They turned a corner, continued past a series of repair bays.

“The gods of darkness tried to undermine the gods of light, twist their deeds into evil, pollute the land, turn the healing sun dark. When this failed they tried to use their evil to corrupt the gods of light, turn them against themselves. Although the gods of light were benevolent, this worried and angered them. And that was when Anataq spoke up.”

“Anataq?”

“The trickster-god. He is neither light nor darkness, but acts as a balance between them. He had seen the acts of the dark gods and knew them to be disruptive, dangerous to the order of nature. So he offered to help. He went to the gods of darkness and told them of a secret Tunit cave; a place, he said, where the fifty most beautiful and unspoiled women of the tribe were kept. Their beauty, he said, was of such rare quality that they were not to be had by men, but to be admired and revered. Their cave was deep within a mountain. This story aroused the lustful interest of the dark gods, and their blood burned hot.”

Following Gonzalez, they descended a stairway to E Level, lowest in the central wing, their feet ringing softly against the metal steps. “The gods of darkness asked Anataq where this mountain was. But the trickster-god would not tell them. He said only that he visited the mountain once a year, each midsummer eve, when the guardians of the women were away at the purification ceremony. That year, on midsummer eve, he went to the hollow mountain. The gods of darkness followed him, as he knew they would. And once they were within its deepest chamber, Anataq poured liquid fire down upon them, sealing them inside.”