From a little further away she heard other screams. She hoped they weren't human.
Demidov fought, slashed, thrashed, cutting limbs and seeing them drop away into the darkness like exclamations of pain. A gush of warm fluid pulsed across her throat and face. She tried to close her mouth but wasn't fast enough. She tasted the dying thing, its rank spice, its hot sour blood, and as it dropped her and she fell, she puked into the darkness.
She slammed onto the ledge and the breath was knocked from her. Spitting, wiping a mess of gore and puke from her face, she rolled back against the wall and looked up.
Glowing like a ghost from the gore covering her, Yelagin was climbing down the rock face just a couple of meters above. She dropped and crouched beside Demidov.
"Captain!"
"I'm fine. Vasnev?"
"Vasnev fell. I saw him go, still fighting the thing that had him."
Demidov rolled again until she could look down... and wished she hadn't. She guessed they were fifty meters above the hole's base, and it was pulsing with the glowing things, all of them shoving forward to congregate around one place at the foot of the sheer side. Vasnev was plain to see, splayed across rock, broken, splashed with luminous gore. If the fall hadn't killed him, they soon would.
"We should go," Yelagin said.
"Go where?"
"A cavern. Just past the end of the ledge, I think we can make it. I saw it as I watched Vasnev fall."
Demidov stood, the two remaining soldiers holding onto each other to protect themselves from the dark, the fall, and the terrible glowing, monstrous things that lived in the depths. They moved carefully along the ledge, and just where it petered out was a crack in the rock wall. Standing before it, a waft of surprisingly warm air breathed out at them, as if this whole place were a living thing.
"What the hell was that?" Yelagin whispered.
"Doesn't matter," Demidov said. She had already heard the sounds from below, and a quick glance confirmed her fears. The things were climbing again. Coming for them, ready to avenge their dead. "We've got no choice."
Yelagin tucked her pistol into her belt and climbed away from the ledge toward the crack. Demidov followed. She had never been great with heights. Inside an aircraft or tall building was fine, but if she was on the outside, then the great drop below always seemed to lure her with the promise of an endless, painful fall. Knowing what was coming for her from below only made matters worse.
"Here," Yelagin said. She was braced in the crack, back against one side and feet against the other, and reaching for Demidov with her left hand. Demidov grabbed her gratefully, scrambled, and soon they were inside.
It opened into more of a tunnel, relatively flat and leading directly away from the great hole. The wet, stinking remnants of the things they had killed still provided a low luminescence on their clothing and hair, and Demidov hoped the effect would last. They both carried flares, but they would burn harsh and quick. She couldn't imagine anything worse than being trapped down here in smothering, total darkness.
She tugged the grenade from her belt.
“Are you fucking crazy?” Yelagin asked.
“What choice do we have? They’re coming!”
Yelagin drew her sidearm again and put it into Demidov’s hand. “With respect, Captain, you blow the mouth of this tunnel, you could kill us quicker than those things out there. You’ll trap us in here, if you don’t bring the ceiling down on us. Hold them off as long as you can. I’ll see if the tunnel leads to something other than a dead end.”
Demidov nodded, switched the gun to her right hand and the grenade to her left. The bullets wouldn’t last very long.
She heard Yelagin move away behind her, using the luminescence from the tumblers’ blood to see. As the footfalls faded, fine tendrils whipped up over the ledge, and the first tumbler spilled into the mouth of the tunnel. Demidov took aim, dead center, and pulled the trigger.
"We're to place you under arrest and take you back to base," the Lieutenant said. He hadn't given Budanov his name. He hadn't even seemed keen to give the private any medical aid, but his medic had come forward and started tending Budanov's wounds anyway. While she bathed and dressed, another man – a civilian – took careful photographs of the injuries. Two others had disappeared into the snowy woodlands, each of them guarded by a heavily-armed soldier.
Budanov had warned them, but they didn't seem to believe a thing he said. All but the civilians, who looked terrified and excited at the same time. More fucking scientists, Budanov thought. That's why we're here in the first place.
"But my captain and the rest of my unit might still be down there," he said. "The things took them down, and perhaps—"
"Your fault," the lieutenant said. He seemed eager to move, shifting from foot to foot and scanning the snowscape. One of the men had thrown Budanov a thick coat, and he was eager for the medic to finish so that he could cover himself. All he wanted now was somewhere warm.
Demidov and the others aren't warm, he thought. They're down there. Cold, afraid. Maybe dead. But I have to know for sure.
"Can't you at least look?" he asked. "Get one of the KA-52s to hover over the hole, shine a light down?"
"We're not staying long enough for that," the lieutenant said. He was a tall, brash man, young for his rank, but Budanov sensed a good military mind behind his iciness. He knew what he was doing.
"You were coming here anyway," Budanov said. "Before you heard from our pilots. Isn't that right?"
"Not for long," the lieutenant said again, staring him in the eye for the first time. "Just long enough for these white-coats to get what they want, then we're getting the fuck out. You're lucky we're taking you with us. Your pilots left an hour ago when they heard."
"Heard what?"
The lieutenant glanced aside. Frowned. One of his soldiers ran across and stood close, muttering something into his ear.
"Everyone, back to the chopper!" the lieutenant shouted.
"But we're—" one of the scientists said. He was hunched closer to the hole, examining something hidden in the snow. One of them, Budanov thought, and he wondered whether it was one he'd shot himself.
"Do as I fucking say!" the lieutenant said. He looked rattled.
"What is it?" Budanov asked. Bullets were his only answer.
The KA-52 that had been circling the site dropped low over the hole and opened up with its big cannons, tracer rounds flashing into the darkness and impacting the wall. The explosions were so powerful that Budanov felt their vibrations through the solid ground, and snow drifted down from trees as if startled awake.
"But we don't know—" one of the civilians shouted.
"We do know," Budanov said. He stood, and just for a moment he fought every instinct that was telling him to flee.
I can't just run, he thought. I have to help. They'd do the same for me.
He turned his back on the helicopter and sprinted into the trees. No one called him back; either they didn't see him going, or they didn't really care. That lieutenant had been scared, and he'd had more on his mind than capturing an AWOL soldier.
Skirting around where Zhukov's body had been marked with a red flag, he saw a heavy white rucksack, dropped by one of the civilians. Coiled around its handles was a thin nylon climbing rope. He ripped it open, and inside were various devices and sample jars, and a radio.