The Cerberus Protocol (Hellstalkers Science Fiction Horror Series) Read online

  And with that he was gone, leaving them to get on with things.

  They had a rift to shut down.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Within moments of crossing the fence line it became apparent that they were in the midst of a war zone. Burned out vehicles and the bodies of dead intruders could be seen in several places as they quickly made their way across the compound to the LHC complex. Several times they saw large winged creatures cutting through the air above them and once they were forced to engage with the M134 minigun mounted on the roof, driving off what looked to Memphis to be a horse-sized dragon. If that particular class of intruder hadn’t been named yet, he was determined to convince Trent to label it a Nazgul, after the evil winged creatures from the Lord of the Rings. It seemed fitting.

  They arrived at the complex and parked as close to the main blast doors as possible. Alena stepped up to the lock controls, pulled a mini-toolkit off her belt, and within seconds had the doors rolling open.

  “Disable it,” Memphis told her, not wanting to be locked in a second time. She gave him a quizzical expression, but did as he asked. Until they could get a repair crew out here, those doors were going to stay open no matter what.

  It felt like deja vu to Memphis as they descended the stairwell just as he had previously.

  Let’s hope this time there’s a better outcome.

  Over the last few weeks they’d jelled into a cohesive team and now they moved as one, leapfrogging each other down the individual flights until they arrived at the bottom.

  HELLstalker One had entered the Collider complex.

  The emergency lights were on in this part of the complex, and so they began making their way through the facility, always headed in the direction of the rift. The bodies of the science staff lay where they had fallen and Memphis did his best to ignore them as he went past; there would be time enough to deal with the remains once the mission was over. Until then, they were just obstacles to note and store in the back of his mind.

  The grendels attacked just as the team arrived outside the control center for the electromagnets that helped power the Collider. They charged out of the open door as the team drew close. Jock and Memphis were out front and they met the rushing beasts with a deadly hail of gunfire from their PSDs. The new incendiary ammunition that Henderson had given them worked wonders, splattering grendel blood and entrails all over the walls around them.

  Within minutes the grendels had been beaten off.

  Memphis thought the encounter was a rousing success, until they turned around and discovered Ulf missing.

  “Where the fuck did he go?” Memphis asked Alena, who’d been standing just a few feet in front of her teammate when he’d disappeared.

  “I don’t know,” she said and for the first time Memphis thought he saw fear in her eyes. “One minute he was right there and the next...he was gone.”

  They shouted for him, no longer worried about the shouts giving away their presence after the gun battle they’d just fought, but Ulf either couldn’t hear them or couldn’t respond. They searched the immediately adjacent corridors, searching for any sign of him, some discarded equipment, maybe even a blood trail, but there was nothing.

  It was as if he had vanished into thin air.

  As much as he hated to call the search to an end, Memphis was forced to do so. With every passing second something more deadly and dangerous might pass through the rift and they couldn’t afford to leave it open any longer than absolutely necessary.

  They set off again, this time in a staggered line, with Memphis in front, Jock in the middle, and Alena bringing up the rear. They’d gone a couple of hundred meters deeper into the base when it happened a second time.

  The ceiling above them suddenly erupted in an explosion of ceiling tile and insulation. Several tentacles burst out of the hole above them, wrapped themselves around Jock’s waist, and yanked him out of sight.

  “Jock!” Memphis cried as he watched something large move along the other side of the ceiling tiles above him, tracking the motion with the muzzle of his PSD but afraid to fire for fear of hitting his colleague as he listened to Jock’s screams. Within seconds the sound had faded into the distance.

  “Fuck!” Memphis cried. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  It was happening all over again! He was losing the men under his command just as he had the first time. This couldn’t be happening!

  But it was. And it wasn’t over yet.

  Memphis and Alena went on; what other choice did they have? Alena had the WFM in her pack, so they could still carry out the mission if they could locate the rift. Memphis knew that all of them, himself included, were expendable; the mission was the important thing here. He knew his colleagues would want him to continue and he was determined to live up to that trust.

  The fact that two of their number were gone with the group barely firing a shot in their defense had unnerved Memphis completely. He was constantly waiting for something else to come charging out of a room or busting through the floor tiles that he almost didn’t see the figure standing at the far end of the hall.

  Almost.

  Half a second after Alena shouted a warning, Memphis caught side of their foe standing in the middle of the hallway ahead of them.

  It was the same spiked intruder he’d faced off against last time. He didn’t know how he knew; he just did. Something about its stance? Or the way it cocked its head to the side as it studied him?

  He didn’t know and didn’t care. All he wanted to do was kill it.

  He raised the PSD, intent on gunning down the ugly S.O.B. in front of him, when the fear struck.

  It was a thousand times worse this time around. Every little fear he’d every had in his entire life suddenly burst across the theater of his mind like a kaleidescope of horror, crippling him, sending him to the ground in complete subjugation to the fear filling his mind.

  He turned as he fell, his body striking the floor in such as way that he could see Alena lying a few feet behind him, wrapped in the throes of her own fear as she twisted and jerked on the ground.

  Even as the fear threatened to turn him into a gibbering wreck, in the back of his mind he was cataloging the fact that the spike demon was clearly manipulating their fear and that they would have to find some way of neutralizing that if they hoped to defeat it.

  As he lay there, unable to move for the fear turning his muscles into knots, the demon stepped over him with barely a glance. It stooped, picked Alena up off the ground and slung her over its shoulder, then walked out of the room, leaving Memphis lying there screaming silently in his mind as his body refused to obey him.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The fear kept him in its claws for another ten minutes. He lay there, trapped, unable to move and expecting the grendels to come along at any minute and feast on him, until the paralysis suddenly left him at the exact same time as the fear did. He came back to himself lying in the middle of the corridor, panting as if he’d just run a forty kilometer march uphill in the snow.

  As he climbed to his feet, he thought he understood what was happening.

  His greatest fear was not living up to the responsibility of command, but that he would fail and that failure would cost his men their lives. The spike demon — and yes, at this point he thought that a more appropriate descriptor than intruder — had somehow picked up on that fact and had used its ability to enhance certain emotions to take him down long enough so that all of his men could be taken.

  Effectively bringing his worst fear to life.

  But Memphis had learned a lot from his fellow warriors over the last few weeks and he refused to give in to the despair that threatened to overwhelm him.

  He was armed and able; while that was true he would continue the fight. To do anything less was not worthy of the men, and woman, with whom he fought side by side.

  Weapon in hand, he set out to find his comrades.

  *** ***

  He found Jock first, hanging half-in and half-out of th
e ventilation shaft through which he was being dragged when he’d managed to slash through the tentacles that had been wrapped around his chest. The creature had thrashed about in pain, breaking the shaft beneath him, but his leg had gotten caught in some of the wreckage and left him dangling in space, like a morsel left out for one of the other demons to feast upon. He’d almost shot Memphis when he’d appeared at the end of the hall.

  “Damn it, boyo, come anna get me down!” he hollered.

  Memphis did so.

  Together they continued moving through the hallways, until the sound of gunfire drew their attention. They found Ulf backed in a corner, making a valiant last stand against four grendels. Since their attention was on the tasty morsel before them, they didn’t see the other members of HELLstalkers One until they had been cut to ribbons by shots from their PSDs.

  Now all they had to do was find Alena, recover the WFMD, and finish the job.

  Easy-peasy.

  Figuring the demon would be near the rift, the trio found the main control room and then headed down the long tunnel that housed the smaller tubes through which the protons traveled when the collider was running.

  They had gone a few hundred yards down its length when they heard a strange, ululating sound coming from a doorway a short distance ahead of them.

  Cautiously, they crept forward, their weapons at the ready. When they reached the doorway, Memphis chanced a look around the corner and the sight that met his eyes would stay with him until the day he died.

  A massive rift was hanging in the air on the far side of the room. It was at least ten feet wide and fifteen feet high, stretching from floor to ceiling, and shimmering with an odd, oil-slick-like luminescence. Spike stood before it, his (could he even call it a he?) arms raised as he chanted in a tongue never meant for human ears. It set Memphis’ teeth on edge and made him shiver the way he would if someone ran their fingernails down a chalkboard.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it.

  Surrounding both the rift and Ole Spike was a massive circle drawn in what looked like blood, if the pile of pale corpses off to one side of the room was any indication. The circle had both an inner and outer edge. Between them were dozens of strange markings and runes that shimmered and changed whenever Memphis tried to get a good look at them. The sense of wrongness they gave off was enough to get his mind to shy away from understanding them; to do so might mean irreparable harm to his sanity.

  He didn’t need to see them clearly to know they shouldn’t be there.

  Worst of all was the sight of Alena, lying on the floor behind the demon, in the exact center of the circle.

  Seeing her there, Memphis suddenly made the connection. He’d seen a circle like this in the files Trent had given him of the Ahnenerbe incident - it was a summoning circle!

  Spike was trying to bring more of his kind, or perhaps something worse, into their world and he was using the blood of his enemies to power it somehow.

  Memphis pulled his head back out of sight and relayed what he had seen to the others. He quickly sketched out a plan.

  “You can’t look at this thing,” he said. “It’s like the legend of the Medusa — one glance and you’re turned to stone, except in this case you’re frozen with fear. But I think I know a way for us to do this.”

  It took him only a moment to outline his plan to the others. Ulf thought Memphis was nuts, but Jock highly approved, which almost made Memphis second guess the whole thing. Time was at a premium, however, for at any minute that damned thing in there might decide to bleed Alena dry and the three of them had no intention of allowing it to do that. They were going to get her out or die trying. And if in the process they could save the world from whatever hideous thing Spike there wanted to call forth from the abyss, then so be it.

  They could see Alena’s backpack lying close to her body and so they split the tasks between them. Ulf was the best shot, so he would do the firing while Jock called out directions and Memphis went for the WFMD and tried to rescue Alena in the process.

  They all knew it was a long shot, that if one little thing went wrong they were all probably going to die in that room in there, but that didn’t matter. They were here to carry out their mission and that’s exactly what they intended to do. Recusate, repellite, ruite. Deny, defend, destroy.

  Or die trying, Memphis thought.

  He turned to the others, made sure they were ready, and then counted it down on his fingers.

  Three, two, one...

  Memphis spun around the corner and, keeping his eyes on Alena’s prone form, raced toward her.

  Behind him he heard the crack of Ulf’s rifle and did his best not to shrink away from the sound. Ulf’s a good shot, he told himself. He won’t have any trouble shooting with his eyes closed.

  It was the best plan Memphis could come up with under short notice. It was his belief that the ability to generate crushing fear in a person required eye to eye contact and he was betting everything on. Right now Ulf was standing there in the doorway with his eyes closed, carefully not looking at the demon as he sent shot after shot in the creature’s direction, each one sent on its way with instructions from Jock who was using a small signaling mirror to direct the shots.

  It was crazy, it was foolish, and in this instance, it might just work!

  Memphis didn’t have time to worry about the others, however, he had his own job to handle. With the gunfire going off around him and the creature before him shrieking in rage and pain, Memphis slid to a stop next to the backpack. His hands were shaking as he ripped open the catches and pulled out the WFMD. It was smaller and more compact than the last one, which was good, but also curiously more powerful. He flipped the switches, punched in his code, and slammed his hand down on the activation button.

  The count began to roll backward on the LCD.

  Twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven...

  A shadow fell over him.

  He spun around and looked up at the demon leaning over him.

  Their eyes met.

  Memphis braced himself for the onslaught of terror to wash over him, but nothing happened.

  It was only later, when he had a chance to think about it, that he realized what had happened. The demon knew him, knew his mind, and tried to repeat the same tactic that had worked before, namely forcing Memphis to live out his fear of failing his men.

  But he had already faced that fear, had come to grips with it out of necessity more than anything else, and so that fear no longer had any control over him. He could stare it in the eye, dare it to do its best, and push through to the other side.

  Just as he did to the demon itself.

  Ulf was still peppering the thing with shots from his rifle, keeping it distracted, but Memphis knew it wouldn’t last for long. Any second the damned thing was going to remember that it was almost twice Memphis’ size and that it could simply reach out with those claws of his and slash him to ribbons.

  Unless he did something first.

  Beside him he heard Alena groan and his heart jumped in his chest. He hadn’t dared believe she was still alive but apparently she was and that simply gave him one more reason to make sure this worked.

  Memphis snatched up the WFMD and tossed it as hard as he could past the demon and into the rift.

  The creature snatched at it as it went by, missed, and then turned to watch it go.

  That was when Memphis grabbed his PSD and sent several rounds of incendiary ammo into the creature’s right knee joint.

  Like the 30mm rounds from which they had been designed, the incendiary rounds from Memphis’ PSD passed through the tough skin of the intruder’s leg and logged deep in the bone of the knee. Milliseconds later the explosive charge in their tip went off, blasting the joint into several pieces.

  The demon began to fall toward the opening of the rift, shrieking in rage and pain as it went.

  Memphis fired another burst into its chest to help it on its way and was already smiling in satisfaction when the thing�
��s hand shot out and wrapped around Memphis’ ankle.

  He began sliding across the floor toward the rift, pulled along by the creature’s greater weight.

  He pulled the trigger on his PSD, only to hear the dry click of an empty magazine.

  Memphis thought it was all over at that point.

  Short of throwing his gun at the demon, he was out of options.

  Suddenly a hand grabbed his wrist, slowing his movement.

  He craned his head backward to look over his shoulder and saw Alena lying on her stomach, one hand clenched tightly around his wrist and the other pointing the snout of the PSD in the demon’s direction.

  “Fuck you,” she said in Russian, and then shot the creature through the right eye.

  The hand holding his ankle suddenly let go and with a last long scream the demon fell into the rift.

  “Hurry, Stone! Hurry!”

  For a second he had no idea why they were yelling at him. They’d killed the damn demon, hadn’t they?

  Then he remembered.

  The wave frequency modulator disruptor.

  The one he’d activated and tossed into the rift.

  The one that was going to go off in just a few seconds!

  He tried to remember how much time had been on the clock when he thrown it. Fifteen seconds? Ten? He didn’t know. All he knew was that they were running out of time and it would be a damned shame to have survived what they had only to be killed by the blast.

  They had to get out of here!

  Memphis rolled over, scrambled to his feet, and helped Alena gain hers. Then he started running as fast as he could for the doorway while supporting her.

  Ahead of him, Ulf and Jock were screaming at him to hurry.

  What the fuck does it look like I’m doing? he wanted to shout, but he didn’t dare waste the energy. It was going to be close...