Callsign: King II- Underworld

“Try me,” Nina replied with a laugh.

King glanced over. As urgent as their present situation was, he couldn’t discount the possibility that Pierce might have gleaned some important bit of information. “Let’s hear it, George.”

In a rush, Pierce told of his escape from the camp and subsequent fall into the underground labyrinth. Nina questioned him about the behavior of the Mogollon Monsters—how they had initially ignored Pierce and De Bord, and then chased them out of the cave.

“It was like they were herding us,” Pierce confessed. “They could have caught us at any time, but they didn’t. It was like they were just trying to show us the door.”

“It makes sense,” Nina said. “They’re normally very shy. They don’t like getting close to people. The only reason they’ve been attacking is because of that Bluelight thing.”

“Bluelight?”

“I’ll tell you about that in a minute,” King said. “Finish your story.”

“Right. You aren’t going to believe this, but I think the caves we were in are connected to a much, much bigger network.”

Nina nodded. “There are a lot of people who think that’s the case. There have always been stories about a cave system under the Superstitions and stretching at least as far as the Grand Canyon, with entrances that periodically appear and then vanish. According to one legend, Geronimo escaped from a troop of cavalry scouts by seemingly stepping into the rocks—a cave entrance—but the soldiers couldn’t find it afterward.”

“I think these caves might connect a lot further than that. I found artifacts from civilizations all over the world. There might be an entire undiscovered world down there, a fully functioning ecosystem with its own evolutionary pathway. Maybe even civilizations. Those creatures are intelligent; they have a complex set of behaviors that are far more advanced than any animal species, except of course, humans. Particularly death rituals.

“There’s a researcher in Colorado, Jeff Long, who has proposed the theory that a global cave network might be the explanation for all our myths relating to the existence of an afterlife under the ground. Hell, Hades, Sheol, Xibalba…call it what you will, every civilization has a belief in an underworld.”

“That would also explain why reports of similar creatures show up in different parts of the world,” Nina said. “And why it’s been so hard to verify their existence. They come up for air once in a while, and then duck back down into their own world.”

“There could be thousands of them,” Pierce agreed. “Millions perhaps. And now for some reason, they’ve declared war on us.” He paused a beat. “So, what’s Bluelight?”

King was about to answer when he spied a pair of lights in the distance directly ahead. The beams were diffuse, and despite of the amplification from his PVS-7 they weren’t blindingly bright.

Blackout drive lights.

Because so many military operations were conducted under cover of darkness, all Humvees were equipped with a second set of lights, designed specifically to work with night vision, bright enough to illuminate the surroundings without rendering night vision devices useless, but practically invisible to the unaided eye, even at a distance of only a few feet. King hadn’t used the blackout lights in their vehicle because doing so would have betrayed their presence to the roving patrols.

He didn’t think it was the same group of soldiers that had caught Pierce. This vehicle—also a hard-shelled M1026 HMMWV configured as a gunship, with a crew-served machine gun—was directly ahead and moving toward them from a different position. He surmised that a call had gone out, warning of a renegade Humvee roaming the hills. That meant there was one still behind them.

“More company,” he warned. Pierce and Nina both ducked, as if his observation had been accompanied by another volley of machine gun fire.

King sorted through his mental map of the terrain. He had a pretty good idea where he was in relation to the Bluelight facility, and that remained his primary objective. Evading the troops now searching for him wouldn’t count for much if the facility went active again. The problem was, the Humvee now approaching was directly between him and where he wanted to be.

Maybe not a problem after all, he thought, punching the accelerator. The Humvee quickly picked up speed and began bouncing violently across the landscape, He knew it would take the soldiers in the other truck a few seconds to realize what he was doing, and hopefully a few seconds more to decide how best to respond.