Callsign: King II- Underworld

“You’re the expert on this kind of thing. What do you think?

She laughed without much humor. “Being an expert on paranormal phenomena is a little like being an expert on Santa Claus. I can give you chapter and verse on the mythology and the reports, but no one is an expert on the real cause. That goes for paranoia about secret government conspiracies, too. You can’t really be an expert on something that’s completely imaginary.”

“It’s not all imaginary,” King muttered. His experiences, both with government shenanigans and phenomena well outside the accepted scientific norm, probably made him more of an expert than she, but that wasn’t something he was going to share with her. “The mist, those creatures…it’s all connected somehow. We’re not going to find our answers here.”

“Where then?”

King stared at the footprint, one of dozens—perhaps hundreds—that were clearly visible leading both into and away from the camp. The creatures’ path of egress was clearly marked, and it wouldn’t take the skills of a legendary Indian scout to pick up their trail…a trail that would almost certainly lead him to George Pierce, or at the very least, resolve the question of his friend’s fate. But his intuition told him that the answers to the important questions would not be found in the lair of the Mogollon Monsters. “Lightning isn’t supposed to strike the same place twice, right? I’d say that’s a good place to start.”





19.


De Bord continued to sweep the dead end with his light, muttering in disbelief. “It was here. I know it was.”

Pierce didn’t know what to say. He had no recollection of his fall, but the evidence that this was where they had both entered the tunnel was right there on the ground. He knelt and picked up the discarded plastic tie. “Maybe we took a wrong turn. Maybe one of those creatures picked this up and dropped it here.”

“There were no turns,” De Bord insisted. “And I recognize this place.”

“Then there’s some other explanation. Whatever it is, we’re not getting out this way.”

De Bord appeared reluctant to accept that assessment, but after several more minutes of searching with both his eyes and his hands, he relented. They made their way back to the niche where they’d earlier hidden, and then kept going.

The tunnel gradually opened up, and before long they saw—and smelled—evidence of habitation. Pierce resisted a scientific curiosity to examine the piles of fresh scat that littered the floor; a glance was enough to tell him that the creatures were omnivores, but there was nothing of behavioral significance in the distribution. The creatures were not marking territory or defining their living space, but merely answering nature’s call as they made their journey. Aside from the stench of their excrement, the air in the tunnel seemed to be fresh, and that was an encouraging sign.

Acting on a sudden inspiration, Pierce took out his phone and checked for a signal. There wasn’t one, but as they progressed, he watched for bars to appear. If he could get reception, it might indicate the proximity of an opening to the surface. He was about to explain this idea to De Bord when the soldier abruptly raised a hand, and then pushed him back a few feet.

“There’s a whole mess of those things up there,” he whispered, dousing his flashlight.

Pierce felt his pulse quicken. “What are they doing?”

“I didn’t take the time to look. Hang on, I’ll check it out.”

Pierce heard the soft rush of fabric scraping against the floor as De Bord crawled away, and then after a minute, heard it again indicating the soldier’s return. “They’re lining up the bodies.” There was a hint of disgust in the man’s tone. “Going through the pockets of the dead, it looks like.”

Pierce withheld comment on the unusual behavior, but it was another significant clue. While robbing the dead might be a contemptible act for a group of humans, it wasn’t something that mindless animals did; for a predator or a scavenger, a corpse was just so much meat. But these creatures evidently possessed the capacity to value objects, even those that had no utilitarian purpose.

“I want to see. Can you give me the night vision device?”

De Bord sighed wearily. “I guess there’s nothing else to do right now, but be careful. If they see us, we’re gonna be up shit creek.”