Pulp Cereal part eight

(gary dirin hasn’t forgotten you. have you forgotten him?)

With the ripples of the walls subsiding and the scotch… or was it whiskey? With courage working its way through my body, I turned to Gary and forced a feeble smile. He laughed again, and pushed another button, and I saw the wall in front of us slide upwards, and I could see, across the vast cavern, a massive doorway open up in the far wall. Dark figures scurried about and peered our way across the bridge, which I realized was the section of walkway that I had seen far below, for the bridge widened at the far end and curved to either side, joining the walkway.

Gary laughed, and pressed another button, and the pod lurched and then I knew that we were floating on air. The pod bobbed back and forth a little, responding to Gary’s taps of the control sticks. One seemed to control the rotation of the pod, while the other controlled it’s movement: by the use of both levers and a foot pedal, Gary floated us around the room while still facing the open doorway.

And then the water rippled from impact, for a blue beam of light had shot out from across the void and struck the pod, knocking it back against the wall, where it slid out of the way. The beam hit the wall, which hissed and boiled like frying bacon, and then ceased.

Wasting no time, Gary reoriented the pod and hurtled us straight across the bridge and into the opening on the far side. Well, perhaps towards the opening would be more accurate, for the many dark figures carried what looked like some kind of weapon, and the blue beams that shot out of them held us fairly well in place. After some moments of swearing, Gary let off on the controls, and the pod sank to the ground, some halfway across the bridge.

Gary crossed himself, then pressed the central button again; as the water shimmered and the pod became opaque once more, he pulled from his belt two automatic pistols, checked that they were loaded, turned to me, and grinned. I took the rifle, checked that it had six bullets in it, swallowed, and stood at his side facing the door. I had seen, just before the water started to run back down the walls, that we were surrounded by the dark figures. Then we heard the outer door swing out, and as the handle of the inner hatch twisted to open, Gary whispered to me to keep moving lest they dare to use their weapons on living targets…

The hatch swung inward with a lurch, and in a moment Gary had fired off five shots through the opening and hurled himself outward. I heard more gunshots and him yelling and blue light flashed, and then more of the black clad figures were trying to claw their way inside, and so I swung my rifle and knocked them away, stepped forward into the doorway, and took aim. In the brief glimpses that I was able to get, I could discern only that they were wrapped from head to toe in various black cloth: not a patch of skin anywhere to be seen.

I fired my rifle and two of them fell, another shot took three standing together. I felled more than a dozen men before my gun was empty, and the few remaining I clubbed with the rifle. A slight glow ahead of me caught my eye, and I leapt for the floor as a blue beam of light tracked my movement. No blood had come out of the dark figures when I shot them, but when the beam hit the bridge it hissed and melted, and the bodies burst into flame.

The beam cut off suddenly, and I ran forward and clocked it’s wielder with my rifle, knocking him over the side of the bridge. I turned around and saw only still figures between myself and the pod, and towards the clock, Gary stood amid a pile of bodies. He strode forward to my side, kicking a dead man off the bridge so he had room to stand. His guns he returned to his belt, and with his free hands he pointed to either side along the walkway.

The dark figures were running in terror. The stumbled over each other in their clamor to escape us, and I could hear them screaming in some ancient tongue. Gary spoke then, and this is mostly what he said: “They are the old ones: the first men of this world. They have lived long away from Earth, and rarely fought their own battles even in olden times, preferring to let us fight among ourself while they remained hidden. They existed before the druids, before Egypt, before even the first stones laid in Atlantis or Shamballah. They have hidden their existence and locked away their secrets, and set such terrible traps againts those who dared what we now attempt… Even the might of Old Rome, which moved mountains on the Emperor’s whim, preferred to think them a legend. But that was long ago, and they have largely moved on, leaving slight and ancient defenses against those who dare to believe in legends.”

I began to argue that the slight defenses he spoke of had killed two of us already, but I fell silent, for what I now saw terrified me. The yellow lights that emanated from the many openings began to move out into the vast chamber. And as they cleared the doorways, I could see they were the glowing eyes of dark figures. But the dark shapes that moved towards us now didn’t move at all like men. They did not walk, they slinked like shadows. They fell across the bridge and advanced upon us, and as they approached, I could see they had no substance. The glow of their eyes pierced the soul and chilled the heart. As they grew nearer, the few remaining sounds of the fleeing old ones, even the rumble of the clock behind us, faded and fell silent. These were not the dark clad men who had attacked us before, these were something far more terrible.