Chapter 12 Strange Aeons
As Jason and Salim descended into the unknown structure to find a way to truly fight back against the vampires, they came across more and more colossal metallic shapes, some looking like large wires, tubes, vents. and thrusters, like those of a rocket. Everywhere was covered in veins or mounds of the glowing green moss, which Jason thought appeared to be alive in some way. As the explored, Salim stepped onto something root-like, which had green spores on it. Once Salim stepped on it, it sent up many green sparks that exploded like little fireworks.
"What is this?" Salim said, looking down at the spores.
"I don't know, but I don't like it." Jason said.
Jason and Salim stepped over the spores and moved on. Jason suddenly saw something out of the corner of his eye, it was one of the vampires. Jason quickly aimed his rifle at the vampire, but it didn't attack. Look, Jason and Salim realized that it wasn't a vampire, it was a statue, no, not a statue, it was a cocoon like the one they saw earlier, except this one was fully intact and hadn't hatched, so it looked exactly like one of the vampires.
"Well, it looks like those things do come from those cocoons." Salim observed.
"This is just one though, there's gotta be more of them somewhere, a whole nest or something" Jason stated.
"I think so. Question is – where the Hell are they?" Salim said, speaking of both the cocoons and the vampires themselves.
Salim saw normal bats flying about the unknown structure, but no vampires, finding it unsettling they hadn't heard or run into any yet in this Godforsaken place and wondered if they were being watched. Jason and Salim left the lone cocoon behind, beginning to look for an area that had a large number of them where they could set some explosives or something to destroy them. Jason and Salim came to a ledge and helped each other up and ahead of them they noticed something. Walking forward they noticed strange devices that looked like some sort of chair and there were long dead vampires in them.
"Devil's heat." Jason said on seeing them.
Jason and Salim walked over to a part of the structure that jutted out like some sort of balcony and surveyed the area, trying to spot anything of interest.
"What do you make of it?" Jason said, staring into the ancient vastness of this foggy, glowing place.
"This place could have been down here for thousands of years." Salim said.
"God didn't make these creatures." Jason said.
"No. It's possible we've got this wrong way around." Salim said, thinking there was much more to the vampires than they thought.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Jason replied.
"Maybe we're intruding on them." Salim suggested.
There was no way further from where they stood, so Jason and Salim turned around to find another way forward, but as they did, Jason noticed a strange object on the ground. Picking it up, Jason saw that this was something that resembled a shell with a swirl pattern and what looked like tubes on the sides. The most fascinating thing about the shell-like device though was as soon as Jason touched it, it began to emit a sonic humming sound and it was eerily beautiful.
"Sounds like music." Salim said.
"That don't sound like any music from where I'm from." Jason said, fascinated by the device.
"Okay, maybe not music. Could be a, a language?" Salim tried to hypothesize.
"You've seen those motherfuckers, they're not exactly the chatty type." Jason said, thinking that if this sound was a language, it couldn't be the vampires in contrast to how horrifying their clicking and screeching was compared to the sound coming from this device and if it had something to do with the vampires, how could bloodthirsty, murderous monsters create something so beautiful.
"We shouldn't underestimate them. Look at this place. Those things are intelligent." Salim stated, knowing this device and the structures around them had something to do with the vampires and whatever secrets they had left for them to discover.
Jason set the device back down, the humming stopping the moment he pulled his hand away. Next to the strange seats the dead vampires were sitting in, there was a small ledge Jason and Salim could jump down to a path leading further into the structure. They jumped down and as they did, it made Jason think about exactly how far they were from the surface. He didn't even know what time it was and if the sun had risen again.
"How far down do you think we are?" Jason asked Salim, not knowing how many hundreds or thousands of feet they were from the surface.
"Difficult to say. It's easy to lose track of time down here." Salim said.
Jason and Salim passed another vampire in one of those strange chairs and this time, they stopped to look at it.
"It's one of those creatures, only older." Jason said, seeing that the body wasn't recently dead or even a couple years dead, it had been dead for a long, long time to the point where it had become fossilized.
"Ancient." Salim said.
"You don't think it's alive, do you?" Jason asked, suddenly wondering if this could be another type of cocooning the vampires did. "Touch it."
"You touch it." Salim said.
"Pussy." Jason said in a joking manner.
Jason stepped forward and touched one of the creature's fossilized claws. Immediately in response, angry cracks formed all over the creature's body and it broke into apart and fell towards Jason. Salim grabbed Jason and pulled him away from the falling fragments of the creature.
"Fuck that was close. Thanks." Jason breathed as he watched the rest of the creature's body crumble into a cloud of green dust on impact with the ground.
"Did you see that?!" Salim said, having not expected the creature to fall apart as it had.
"Of course, I fucking saw it!" Jason replied.
"That creature is fossilized! It must be millions of years old." Salim stated.
Jason and Salim followed the rest of the path, walking under a part of metallic structure and coming to another small ledge they had to jump down. However, next to the ledge, they saw a disturbing sight. It was a broken vampire cocoon with a dead body slumped against it and the dead body itself wasn't the problem, it was how it looked. The lower half of the body was all bones while part of the upper body was covered in a strange, slimy, orange, transparent liquid and under it they could see an adult man who still had skin or at least half his head still had skin on it.
"Holy shit…" Jason said in disbelief, getting down on one knee to get a closer look.
"Look at him!" Salim said in just as much disbelief as Jason.
"Check out that armor. This guy is goddamn biblical." Jason observed.
Salim flicked on his lighter, bringing it close to the dead man's face. Suddenly, much to Jason and Salim's shock, the man's eye twitched. Jason and Salim jumped back, raising their weapons at the seemingly alive dead man.
"D-did you see that?" Salim asked Jason, desperately hoping that it wasn't just him seeing things.
Jason just simply nodded.
"I think he's still alive." Salim said.
"That's impossible!" Jason said.
"In this place everything is possible." Salim said.
A very subtle raspy breathing suddenly came from the man as if to prove Salim's point.
"Holy shit! Fucker's been alive all this time!? Just sitting here with half a head?" Jason said.
Salim looked at the fluid that covered the parts of the man's body that still had skin and connected the dots.
"The fluid, it must have preserved his flesh. His brain." Salim pointed out and wondered what they should do with the man. "What should we do? We can't leave him like this."
"Well, shit, he's had enough time to get use to it!" Jason said, still shocked that he saw a man with more than half his body being just bones and still be alive to even think of what to do with him.
"I'm serious." Salim said.
Jason figured Salim was right and raised his rifle, but Salim quickly stopped him.
"No! The noise will attract the vampires. I'll do it." Salim said.
Salim took his stake and raised it towards what remained of the man's head.
"The time has come for you to rest, warrior." Salim said in Arabic before he drove the end of his stake through the man's head, ending his over four thousand years of suffering.
Afterwards, Jason and Salim moved on, jumping down the small ledge and walking forward till the came to another ledge they had to climb up. Walking around a circular structure and coming across more spores, carefully stepping over and around them to climb up another ledge. Jason and Salim were now standing in a large circular area where all around the sides were more of those strange seats with more dead vampires in them and there was a hole in the middle that swirled with green mist. Jason couldn't help but think this looked like it came out of some sort of sci-fi movie.
"Jason, look." Salim said, pointing towards the opposite side of the circular area.
Jason looked and saw on the other side what appeared to be an area with dozens of cocoons containing vampires.
"Do you think that's the nest?" Salim asked.
"Maybe. It could mean we're close; Let's get a closer look." Jason suggested.
Jason and Salim walked around the circular area towards the cocoons, but Jason made a detour over to one of the chairs when he saw something. It was a vampire skull, but it had no fangs.
"Salim!" Jason called over to his companion.
Salim walked over and looked at the skull, noticing the lack of fangs just like Jason had. Except he noticed that the skull seemed ruptured where the fangs were supposed to be, almost like there weren't supposed to be any fangs there to begin with.
"Looks like someone's been avoiding the dentist. No fangs." Jason said.
"Can you see? The bone is ruptured where they should be, as though smashed from the inside out" Salim pointed out.
"What are you saying?" Jason asked, wondering where Salim was coming from.
"Maybe these things weren't originally vampires. Maybe they got infected." Salim said.
"What, why would you think that?" Jason questioned.
"I just pointed it out to you, the skull is damaged where the fangs should be and the notes we found in the medical bay. They said that they suspected Mary Hodgson was infected with some sort of parasitic organism." Salim reminded. "That's gotta be why she and your friend Joey turned into one of these things. What's to say it can't happen to other lifeform besides human?"
"So wait, you're saying you think these creatures are just as much the victims here as we are?" Jason questioned, not sure if he bought it fully or not.
"Maybe, maybe not, it's just a thought." Salim said.
"Even if that's so, still begs the question, where did these things come from." Jason said.
Jason and Salim walked over to the cocoons they saw earlier. It was a hallway filled with dozens of them that had tendrils of green spores traveling out from the foot of each one of them. Looking, Jason noticed something way in the back at the end of the hall, but he couldn't get a good look.
"There's something back there behind these things, but I can't tell what." Jason said.
"You're thinking of walking through these things, aren't you?" Salim asked as if he knew Jason was.
Jason didn't say a word, just carefully stepped over a tendril of spores and began weaving his way through the rest of the cocoons, Salim closely following behind. Making their way through the cocoons was slow and suspenseful as it was like a maze they had to work their way through. There were many patches of spores that were to large to step over and neither Jason nor Salim wanted to risk jumping over and not making it, causing the spores to explode or to any sudden loud movements to disturb the cocoons and cause them to hatch when they were already making soft cracking noises like they were about to hatch. When they were over halfway through the cocoons, Jason was finally able to make out what he saw.
"Salim." Jason addressed.
"What is it?" Salim asked.
"I think we hit the motherlode." Jason said.
Salim looked and saw what Jason saw. Outlined by a sky of many blinking lights and flashes of lightning was a mountain, but not just any mountain, a mountain made entirely out of cocoons containing vampires; It wasn't just that, there were smaller, but still humongous mounds of more cocoons, there were literally thousands of them beyond count. Jason was surprised to see this many cocoons, he wasn't expecting it to be small, but he wasn't expecting it to be this large either or there to be a literal fucking mountain made out of them. However, Jason pushed those thought aside and focused on what he and Salim set out into this city of vampires to do.
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Jason said, looking to Salim.
"Are you thinking cocoons?" Salim asked.
"Yeah." Jason replied.
"Then I'm thinking what you're thinking." Salim said.
Jason and Salim continued forward, trying to find a way out of the smaller mass of cocoons they were in. Jason saw an area off to the side they could make their way to, to find a way down to those mounds of cocoons and figure out how to destroy them. However, as they made their way over, Jason accidently stepped onto a vine of spore that shot up and exploded. Jason and Salim instantly raised their weapons, thinking the vampires were about to hatch from the cocoons around them in response, but they didn't. After taking a moment to get ahold of themselves, Jason and Salim lowered their weapons.
"Try not to step on anymore spores. We might not be so lucky next time." Salim said.
"Note taken." Jason said, being more careful with his step.
Jason and Salim thankfully made it safely out of the maze of cocoons and jumped down a small ledge to relative safety. Jason noticed something off to the side and walked over, seeing the skeletons of two of the creatures. They looked like they had fought and killed each other.
"Check this out… They died fighting each other." Jason observed.
"Like dogs fighting over food." Salim said.
"Don't make sense. I thought these things were a pack." Jason said. "Trained. Disciplined. Why would they fight each other?"
"Every living thing on Earth finds a reason to fight its own." Salim said.
Hearing that, Jason shook his head.
"Not sure these things are from Earth." Jason said, thinking that after all the stuff he and Salim had seen since they arrived down here looked too… otherworldly for these things to be from this planet.
Salim looked at Jason at that comment, but didn't ask for further explanation, seeing himself why Jason would make such a guess.
"Come on, let's find a way down to those cocoons so we can destroy them and get out of this green Hell." Jason said uneasily.
Jason and Salim backed away from the vampire bones and continued to try and find a way down to the cocoons. They were about to jump down a small ledge, but before they did, they suddenly heard cracking in front of them. They looked and saw that some cocoons in front of them were beginning to hatch. Jason and Salim immediately made a run for it in attempt to avoid having to fight the vampire and risk the possibility of causing more cocoons to hatch. Salim took the chance to look behind him and Jason to see if the vampire was chasing them, but didn't see it.
Salim suddenly heard a screech from in front of him and before he could look, was pushed aside by Jason just as a vampire lunged at them. Looking at the vampire, this one's body looked cleaner and shinier than all the other's they've faced, which had been dirty from likely years of dust and grime building up on their bodies. Jason and Salim raised their, weapons, ready to fight off the vampire together. The vampire hissed, about to make another lunge at them.
"Hey fuck face!" a voice suddenly shouted.
The vampire, Jason, and Salim looked to see where the voice had come from. It was Nick and he was with Rachel and Eric.
"I got something for you!" Nick shouted at the vampire.
Nick aimed his rifle at the vampire and shot it with a white phosphorus round. The round didn't kill the vampire, but it incapacitated it for the moment. Nick than began to fire at it with normal ammunition, telling Jason and Salim to run. Jason and Salim ran off, coming to what appeared to be a dead end, but Salim noticed a space that was big enough for them to crawl through. Nick, Eric, and Rachel caught up with them, Nick staying back to cover everyone as they crawled through the crawlspace. When everyone was through and it seemed like there were no vampires coming after them, Nick made his way under. Jason helped Nick to his feet.
"Shit Nicky! You turned up like the fucking cavalry!" Jason said with relief, slapping his on the shoulder. "I thought you were dead!"
"Not my time." Nick stated, shaking his head.
Jason looked to Eric and Rachel.
"Colonel! Ma'am! You made it! Glad you here." Jason said, just as relieved to see them alive as well.
"Crawling through that tunnel was a… Highly unpleasant experience." Eric panted.
Now seeing that everyone was sound and together again, the five soldiers looked to see where they were. They were in a large room where one side was illuminated by mounds of that bulbous, glowing green moss, some veins of it traveling along the floor and walls. The other side of the room was bathed in some strange artificial light coming from the ceiling and shining down on a small pool of water or what them assumed was water. On the walls there were these tube or funnel looking objects and in between them were statues of the vampires with spread wings, looking like gargoyles on a cathedral. Scattered around the room were a few desks and crates, no doubt belonging to Randolph Hodgson and his expedition.
As for in the center of the room, there was this strange looking device.
"This place…" Salim said, looking around the mysterious room. "What is this place?"
Salim turned towards Jason and the others, seeing Nick taking off his backpack.
"We need a plan." Salim stated.
"We fuck those things up and get the fuck out." Jason said.
"Good plan!" Salim replied sarcastically.
"Sergeant Kay, what do we got left?" Jason asked, turning towards Nick.
Nick got out all the weapons and tools they had left and laid them all down on a table to assess what they had to work with.
"So, we got – um… Eight clips of 556 FMJ, Three 40 mil high-ex rounds, couple of nine mil pistols, 4 clips between them, we'll make that work. Plus two phosphor rounds and one block of composition C4." Nick listen out.
"Well, what about the UV lamp?" Jason asked, turning to Eric.
Eric took out the UV wand lamp.
"Took a knock, but I can fix it." Eric said, hoping he could fix it. "Just need a minute."
"All in, it's not enough." Nick said.
With what little ammo and resources they had left, Nick knew that they all could last probably a few more hours, but after that, they were basically lambs ready for the slaughter. Jason pulled out the dynamite he'd picked up in the medical bay earlier, three bundles, and sat them down on the table.
"We've also got this." Jason said.
"It old. Unpredictable." Nick said.
"We work with what we got." Jason stated.
Nick picked up the dynamite and took a closer look at them.
"Fuses are shot, but we can use the C4 to detonate them." Nick stated. "Let's just hope they still pack a punch."
"The vampires come from those cocoons." Salim spoke up. "You saw how many there were in that vault. There could be thousands in there."
"So, we blow them up. Burn as many of those motherfuckers as we can and head for the surface." Jason said before looking to Nick. "What do you think Sergeant?"
"Oorah." Nick said, reloading his rifle.
Jason grabbed one of the pistols off the table, loading and handing it to Salim. His iron stake was the most effective weapon in killing the vampires, but it couldn't fend them off from a distance. Seeing Jason handing Salim the pistol and Salim taking it, Rachel stepped forward.
"I'm not gonna allow him to carry a pistol." Rachel said, not trusting Salim.
"We are way past that point now, ma'am." Jason said, stepping forward to Salim's defense. "We stand together as one."
Jason glanced back at Salim, who gave Jason an affirming nod, which Jason returned. He than looked at the wounds Salim had taken to his chest from when he shot the vampire attacking Rachel instead of the one lunging for him in the sacrificial chamber. The wound Eric had taken to the arm when Dar shot at him and Rachel before she fell hours ago had reopened and was bleeding.
"If you've still got that medkit, now would be a good time to use it." Jason said, looking to Nick.
Nick pulled Joey's medkit of his pack. There was very little bandages to it, enough to where he could only patch up one person. Nick looked at Salim and Eric's wounds and figured it was better to patch up Salim, his wounds looking more serious.
"Press back home would have a field day with this." Nick said, beginning to patch up Salim.
As Nick patched up Salim's wounds, Jason looked back at the strange device in the middle of the room and the stuff the archeologists left behind.
"Looks like our explorer friends were here, too. We should search this place before we move out." Jason suggested.
As Jason said that, Eric after tinkering with the UV wand, turned it on, it's purple light shining.
"There! I got it." Eric proclaimed.
Afterward, Eric walked over to and sat on a crate near the glowing moss, Nick stood with their equipment, and Salim walked over to the strange device in the middle of the room, reading a book he found on a table. While those three did their own thing Jason and Rachel decided to look around the room. Next to the desk where Nick had set down the ammunition there was a sheet with musical notes and turning it over were written notes. The person who wrote these seemed to be wondering about the creatures, how old they were and how large their empire was. It even talked about the strange device in the center of the room, mention the constellation of stars known as Cetus, wondering if the creatures came from there and if they were trying to get back home.
Jason and Rachel looked towards Salim and the device, wondering if this paper could help him with trying to figure out what it was. As they tried to take the paper over to Salim, Nick walked up to Rachel. Rachel looked at Nick, wondering what he wanted to say, seeing as how their last conversation before the descended down here hadn't exactly ended well.
"What is it Nick?" Rachel asked.
"This thing with you, me, and…" Nick tried to ask.
"Forget it, Nick." Rachel shot down, not wanting to have this conversation with him again after she had made up her mind.
"I'm just saying-" Nick tried to continue
"Don't! Keep your head clear of everything but the task ahead. It's the only way we'll live." Rachel said.
Nick sighed and didn't look at her.
"Yes ma'am." Nick said.
A slight hint of resentment was clear in Nick's voice as he said that and Rachel was sad to hear that. She hoped that after all this, if they survived, that there was a way she could make it up to Nick. She understood now that her fling with him had been a mistake she never should have made, but it still didn't make her feel any less about Nick as he was still a great guy. However, they had to focus of survival first and making up later. Rachel turned around and walked towards Salim with the musical notes and as she did, Jason, having noticed the conversation walked over to Nick.
"That thing between you and Rachel. It's out in the open, isn't it?" Jason asked.
Nick simply nodded.
"Huh… needed to be." Jason replied, figuring that it was probably for the best.
"Can we talk about something else?" Nick asked, not wanting to go into it.
"Of course. Tell me about the explosives. You feeling good about them?" Jason asked.
"Good as I can be." Nick said.
Jason decided to give Nick some space caught back up with Rachel and Salim.
"Any juicy gossip?" Rachel asked Salim.
Salim looked up from the book he was reading to Rachel and Jason.
"It belonged to Mary Hodgson. It describes this as a means of communication." Salim said, gesturing towards the device. "A way we could talk to the enemy, perhaps? But of all the topics she wrote about, one thing stood out more than the rest." Salim explained.
"What's that?" Rachel asked.
"She wanted to go home." Salim said.
"Mary's not the only one… is she?" Rachel said, handing Salim the musical notes.
"Looks like your onto something. Find us a miracle Salim, keep us from ending up like those explorers." Jason said.
"Yes, just please allow me a moment to focus." Salim said, continuing to look through Mary's research journal.
Jason and Rachel, nodded, giving Salim his space to work and went over to Eric to check on him. Jason stayed back a moment, to let Rachel and Eric have a moment to themselves first. Eric, was working on his prosthetic, making sure it was secure, not wanting it to slip off if they had to run from vampires.
"Here, let me help you." Rachel offered, bending down.
"It's fine." Eric tried to assure.
"I've done it before." Rachel said.
"And I've done it many times since!" Eric snapped.
"I'm sorry." Rachel apologized, knowing he was just feeling the strain of the situation and that he was sensitive when it came to his leg.
Rachel tried to give Eric some space, but Eric spoke up.
"Rachel, wait… I'm sorry." Eric apologized. "You always were better at changing this thing than I was."
Rachel went back to help Eric make sure his leg was secure.
"If you need me, I'm here for you." Rachel assured.
Rachel walked off to further explore the room and Jason walked up
"How you doing, Colonel?" Jason asked.
"Most of my command are dead. Killed by Iraqis, or vampires, or swallowed up by the earth." Eric listed, thinking about how much he'd failed those they'd lost. "So to answer your question First Lieutenant, I am not doing well."
"We're not all dead, Colonel and while we're still breathing, we've always got your back." Jason assured Eric.
"At least there's one marine I can rely on to tell the truth." Eric replied, glaring at Nick from across the room.
Jason didn't respond to that and just followed after Rachel. On a crate, a few feet away from where Eric was sitting, Rachel found a paper and was reading it. One side was an equipment request from Pulman, but on the other side was a confession from Ellis van Huyten, admitting that he sabotaged the dynamite and while it didn't say it, he most likely the radio to.
"Son of a bitch. I knew it was that guy who was the sabotager." Jason said, reading the note.
"It's saboteur, and what was in it for him? Was it really all about these tablets?" Rachel said, finding what van Huyten wrote about odd.
Van Huyten wrote in confession about his belief that the vampires were the key to limitless power, like being able to 'reach across the stars' and the possibility of even achieving immortality itself.
"Salim and I found some of Hodgson's pages earlier and they talked about Bradshaw's desires to become one of those things to gain immortality like this guy is talking about." Jason said.
"From the way Eric and Nick described Joey to me and that thing that chased us as we were looking for you, I don't think the person that they use to be is even in there anymore and I wouldn't exactly call it immortality either." Rachel replied.
"Yeah, that's what I said." Jason agreed.
Jason and Rachel walked into and looked up at the artificial light coming from the ceiling.
"What I wouldn't give to see daylight again." Jason commented.
"Daylight and a cold one." Rachel said.
"Hey, by the way, I hear that that whole mess with you and Nick is out in the open." Jason suddenly said.
Rachel simply nodded.
"It's for the best, regardless of everything else. Secrets keep you sick." Jason said, remembering admitting to Salim earlier how he truly felt about the incident at the checkpoint and noting to himself that he had to tell it straight to Nick as well.
Jason and Rachel looked at the table behind the device and saw that is was another and possibly the final journal page from Randolph Hodgson's journal. Rachel carefully picked it up and read it.
"They are coming. We must end it here with fire and gunsmoke. If there is time, my last act will be to dictate this diary onto tape; perhaps, if it is found in the rubble, it can serve as a warning to any who follow us.
The bones of this temple are drenched in blood. We have set foot on an uncharted shore and roused something ancient and wicked; a blasphemy that comes in indescribable shapes and forms. For eons, we lived as children in this world, unaware of the horrors that slumber beneath our feet. Now, we have blindly thrown open the gates to madness. I fear being taken, but I must do what I must. We must seal this place for eternity. For all mankind. Mary, I'm sorry."
As Rachel read that, she could just hear the clicking and screeching of the vampires in the dark and the flap of their wings along with the screams and sobs of pure horror that must have come from the people they hunted and the gunfire as they tried to defend themselves; Rachel could even rehear the gunshot she and Eric heard on the tape recorder, which Randolph Hodgson had recorded his last diary entry on.
"None of them made it out alive." Rachel said sadly, placing the final journal page of Randolph Hodgson back down.
"Salim and I found Hodgson's body earlier, not too far from the elevator." Jason said. "He had in his hand a pocket watch with a picture of Mary inside."
"We saw the body earlier when we came this way. We didn't think to check it out." Rachel said. "Eric and I listened to a recording of him earlier. He took his own life, we heard the gunshot just as it ended."
"I figured as much, but we're not going to end up the same way. We're all going to get out of here and see the sun again." Jason stated.
"I'm all for it." Rachel said, determined more than ever to climb out of this Hell.
Jason and Rachel looked at the rest of the stuff the archeologists had left behind, finding a tablet next to the water, depicting a man falling into a river of fire and a tackboard with notes still pinned to it. One paper was missing a tack at one of it's edges and slightly hanging down. The paper was an arrowed circle with notes around it that read 'Hunts victim. Implants parasite. Parasite gestates. Host death. Parasite takes over.' Reading that, Rachel and Jason knew what this was, it was the vampires' life cycle.
"It's just like from Alien." Rachel couldn't help but say.
"What?" Jason asked.
"Oh, nothing, it just reminds me of this old sci-fi movie." Rachel said.
"This whole place is one big real life sci-fi movie." Jason said. "I told Salim earlier, but I'm beginning to think these creatures aren't even from Earth and with Mary and van Huyten's notes, it's looking to be just that."
"Oh, so it's not vampires we're dealing with, it's alien vampires we're dealing with. Halle-fuckin-lujah." Rachel said.
"Salim, Nick, and I even found more journal pages and medical notes all talking about Mary. She got infected and turned into one of those things. Salim and I even found her body in the medical bay." Jason said.
"I know a little something about that." Rachel said. "When I fell into the chasm, I found a journal page. Mary had been found unconscious in a place they called the Star Chamber."
Rachel than took a moment to look around the room.
"I'm guessing this is the Star Chamber and she must have gotten infected here." Rachel said.
Rachel looked back at the creature's life cycle, remembering that thing that attacked Eric, chased him, her, and Nick, and hearing about what happened to Joey. Rachel also thought of Clarice back at the chasm, wondering if she was still alright and if they could save her.
"After we blow up those monsters and head for the surface, we have to go back for Clarice." Rachel said.
"If we can, we will, but just to be honest Rachel, we might not like what we find if we do." Jason said, assuming the worst had to have happened to Clarice at this point.
Rachel's body suddenly trembled and Jason noticed.
"You okay?" Jason asked.
"I'm cold." Rachel replied.
"Yeah, you don't look so good." Jason said, though he was more talking about the blood that was still covering Rachel.
"Well, I haven't had the best fucking day. I'm fine!" Rachel tried to assure.
"Over here. I've found something." Salim suddenly called to everyone.
Everyone gathered around Salim to see what he'd found.
"It makes for an interesting read." Salim said.
"Never been one for books. I'll wait for the movie to come out." Jason said.
Salim placed his finger on the circular console of the device and moved it along it's carvings in a circular motion, between lines. As he did, a sort of music came from the tubes on the ceiling, similar to what Jason and Salim heard earlier from the shell-like artifact they found.
"Oh! It's singing." Salim said.
Rachel placed a hand on her chest, feeling an odd pain.
"Are you okay?" Salim asked, noticing.
Rachel didn't respond and just looked at the pedestal, noticing above the console were dots of glowing light arranged in an odd shape.
"There's meaning here…" Rachel said, knowing those dots and the music they were hearing had some sort of significance to the vampires.
"It's a language formed from chords. Musical scales. Sonics." Salim stated. "Mary was a pianist. She deciphered it. She thought these carvings represented the stars. Do you see?"
Everyone looked back up at the glowing dots. They were not just dots in strange pattern, they were meant to represent stars, a constellation of them
"It's Cetus. The Whale." Salim said.
"We're a long way from the night sky." Rachel replied.
"That language sounds a little like morse code." Jason said.
"No… it's more musical than that. It has a pitch, a rhythm, color." Salim said. "According to the journal, there was only one scale of sound in the device, but Mary was studying it alone. I think there may be another. This console is too big to operate single-handedly. I'm going to need your help."
Jason stepped forward, he and Salim dragging their fingers along the carving on the top and bottom of the console, the otherworldly music playing as they did. That wasn't the only thing that was happening though, as the music played, Rachel was starting to feel light headed and cold, and the pain she felt in her chest just a moment ago was starting to get worse and felt like it was traveling up to her neck. Eventually, the music changed from the sharp high pitch they were hearing to something more deep sounding. The group stood there for a moment in awe, listening to the fascinating sound of the music.
"Isn't that something. Mary believed that these creatures were once peaceful. Their language was one of music. How could they not feel emotion?" Salim explained, raptured in the odd beauty of the sound of the music.
Salim's demeanor than grew grim.
"Then a tragedy fell upon them. Their great empire… collapsed. Their music fell silent and they turned on each other. What happened? A sickness? A madness? What turned them from architects into killers? Whatever it is, it twisted them. Now they're creatures of hate. Animals! Dead things! No one left to kill. So, they slept and they waited… They waited for us." Salim explained.
Suddenly, everyone heard Rachel scream. Everyone quickly turned around to see her near the table where Nick had set their ammunition, falling to her knees.
"Shit! Rachel!" Nick shouted, worrying what was wrong with her that caused her to scream.
Everyone quickly glanced around to see if it was vampires that caused her to scream, but there were none. They slowly and cautiously made their way over to Rachel to see what was causing her so much distress.
"Rachel?" Eric said cautiously.
Eric hoped that Rachel would answer him back, but she didn't.
"Rachel!" Eric shouted.
Everyone suddenly saw that in her hand, Rachel was holding one of their two remaining white phosphor rounds.
"Oh shit." Eric said sharply, seeing this. "Rachel! Rachel!"
Everyone stood back, not wanting to be near Rachel while she was holding white phosphorus. Rachel placed her hands on her hand, her mind beginning to go foggy and dark and everyone and everything looking and sounding distorted.
"Rachel. Rachel, look at me." Nick tried to say calmly.
Salim looked and saw an unnatural movement in Rachel's neck and knew immediately what was wrong.
"She has it… It's inside her!" Salim pointed out.
Everyone looked and they too saw the movement in Rachel's neck.
"Oh shit." Jason gasped, remembering the medical notes he and Salim found in the medical bay, how it said Mary Hodgson had some sort of parasite in her.
Jason explained this to the others and how Randolph Hodgson wrote in his notes that Mary had turned into the same thing Joey had turned into. Hearing this, Eric and Nick wondered how Rachel could have possible gotten infected until they remembered what happened in the sacrificial chamber. After Rachel dodged that spear the ancient human vampire threw at her, she had rolled into another vampire that bit her, that had to of been when she got infected and from the looks of it, she was very close to turning. Rachel's world suddenly went dark and she closed her eyes tightly. When she opened them back up, she was still in a vast blackness, except there were millions of distant white lights all around her, stars.
Also, in front of here, she saw the planet Earth, except it looked different. The contents were all differently arranged as if this was Earth millions of years. Rachel heard a rumbling next to her and she looked to see what it was. Passing her was something colossal. She thought at first that it was an asteroid, but no, it wasn't, it was a ship.
Small and large explosions were happening all around it and it was heading for Earth, catching fire more and more as it entered Earth's atmosphere. From the looks of it, the ship was going to crash into where today was the Zagros Mountains in Iraq. Rachel, dumfounded by what she was seeing, watched as the whole scene played out before her. This, all this that she was seeing, it was so impossible that it couldn't be real and it wasn't real and yet at the same it was very real. It was than that Rachel knew beyond the shadow of doubt that what Jason and Mary Hodgson had suspected was true, these creatures, they weren't vampires, not originally.
The creatures were bat-like aliens and this whole structure was their ship, a ship they had made to escape whatever was threatening their race, but they had failed. The parasites had infected and destroyed the creatures, turning them into vampires and causing them to destroy their own civilization and they had unintentionally brought that very threat here to Earth, where the mountains formed and grew up and around the ship and them where they slept and waited until they reawakened and destroyed those who ruled this kingdom that had been built unknowingly on top of them thousands of years ago. Then the vampires destroyed the archeologists who discovered the temple and they were now threatening to destroy them. The hallucination subsided and Rachel was now back in reality, where everyone was looking towards her with worry. As she looked at them, Rachel knew she couldn't risk their safety, not when she was infected. Rachel held the white phosphor round between her legs and pulled out her combat knife. She looked towards everyone else, who looked upon her, terrified, knowing what Rachel was intending to do.
"I'm sorry…" Rachel said.
"Rachel!" Eric shouted.
"Rachel, no!" Nick shouted.
Her hand trembling, Rachel plunged her knife down towards the white phosphor round to incinerate herself to keep from turning and to keep what remained of her squad and Eric safe.
The team is all back together and yep, you read right. These aren't demons or vampires our heroes are fight, they're aliens or vamperic alien parasite that have turned these bat aliens into vampires. Bet no one who hasn't heard of House of Ashes was expecting that. Hope to see you all in the next chapter, until than have a good day.