Operation: Yukon

- 16 -

It was as dark and uninviting as you might expect, but at least it was a tad warmer than being out on the hill. It smelled, the same rank meaty odor that had come up out of the cells in the vault earlier, so we knew we were on the right track. The daylight only reached ten paces in so I had to switch on my gun light. It showed a dry, rocky floor underfoot below timber-lined walls and a ceiling festooned with hanging tendrils of cobweb and lichen. The only noise was the pad of our feet and the whisper of our breath. After another ten paces the tunnel began to descend into the hill.

We went down.

The smell got stronger with every step, thick and cloying now and a constant reminder that we weren’t alone in here. The only good thing was the lack of side passages; the mine was a simple one, a single shaft cut deep into the hill. We’d long since passed the region where the walls were shored with timber. Now my light showed only bare rock on all sides, and we no longer had webs and lichen for company, just dry walls all the way down.

I brought the squad to a halt as a new sound wafted up from somewhere below. It took me a second to recognise it but once I did it was unmistakable. We hadn’t noted the instrument’s absence from the cabin above the vault but the mournful air of a slow tune being played on a bone flute filled the air around us.

We went down, even more carefully now.

When it happened it happened quickly, a blur of action and mayhem I only partially sorted out in my mind later. As far as I can tell, it went down like this. The order of events might be off here and there, but the end result was the same.

First off, the sound of the flute cut off in mid-melody. I think I knew in that instant that trouble was on the way. I raised my light from where it shone at my feet to wash it down the shaft ahead. I was just in time to light up a view of a wide-open mouth of teeth and a pair of eyes that looked silver in the reflected beam. I got off two shots, don’t know if I hit anything at all, then went down as what felt like a block of stone fell on me. I think my parka saved me; a taloned arm raked at my belly but got only the inner lining although I felt nails scrape on my flak jacket below that. Then I couldn’t breathe due to a stinking carpet of warm hair covering my nose and mouth. I squeezed off two more shots, heard another two from somewhere distant. Above me the beast let out a roar of rage and pain then it went limp on me.

It took both the cap and the sheriff to push the dead weight off me. I was covered chin to bollocks in warm blood that stank in the way only a slaughterhouse could and I still had the taste of it in my mouth; right then I thought I might be tasting it forever more.

I didn’t get time to thank the others. As I was getting to my feet, Wilko shouted out.

“Incoming.”

The two other big males came up out of the tunnel, bellowing their rage. They didn’t stand a chance. All five of us, lined up across the shaft, fired at the same time, the retort blasting at my eardrums like a cannon going off, the air in front of our lights filling with thin smoke, the shots blasting the things to the ground in a second that seemed like forever. They went down to join the other one with chests full of holes and heads that were mostly gone above the mouth.

I gave them all a kick to make sure they were dead, just in case, but it was obvious there would be no big movie-ending comeback from any of them.

“Is this what you mean by sanitised?” the sheriff asked, having to cover her mouth as the odor of fresh pish and shite rose from the bodies.

“Not yet,” the cap said grimly. “The worst is yet to come.”

He was right about that.

The female was waiting for us on the floor of the lowermost part of the shaft. She was no longer pregnant but cradled two newborns, one at each massive teat. She looked at us in silence, huge eyes accusing us as we filed into the chamber. It took me a few seconds to spot that what was left of Watkins and Jennings lay in a pile of dismembered limbs, white bone and hollowed out skulls in a corner. The female didn’t take her eyes off us.

“Couldn’t we just…” the sheriff began, but her voice tailed off. She knew, we all knew, what had to be done. That didn’t mean we had to like it.

An unspoken command had us all raising our weapons at the same time, and the best I can say about it is that it was quick. Afterwards we couldn’t get out of the shaft quickly enough and I think we were all feeling the same. I could hardly have felt any worse had it been a human mother and children we’d left down there and I knew I was going to see those eyes in my dreams long after the smell in my nose and throat dissipated.

“Okay, where’s this fucking wolf then?” I said. “I came here to kill monsters, not babies. It’s time we went home. I need a beer.”