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Walker and Alvin tried to follow the screams through the unfolding maze of dark tunnels that stretched beyond the Machine’s cave, but quickly found themselves lost when those screams died out. Though shrill and desperate, Walker knew the cries had definitely been those of a man. The cracking voice had called out in pain from the darkness, rising in agony, and then falling into a delirious and confused moaning, over and over again. The spiking screams suggested a prolonged torture was taking place somewhere in the network of caves. A torture that lasted for almost ten minutes, then abruptly stopped.
Alvin swung the torch back and forth, highlighting the labyrinth of interconnecting passageways snaking through the eroded cave system.
“Which way now?” whispered Walker.
Alvin pointed with the flashlight towards one of the larger tunnels. It appeared empty, yet full of dark promise.
“Right then,” said Walker, moving off.
“It could be a trap you know,” whispered Alvin.
“A screaming man to draw the rest of the troops in?”
Alvin nodded.
Walker shrugged his shoulders.
“What choice do we have?”
He motioned towards the tunnel. Alvin sighed and pushed on, lighting the way ahead.
At the end of this tunnel, Alvin again spotted a source of light creeping from the adjoining cavern up ahead. The old soldier immediately killed his torch and rested a flat hand on Walker’s chest.
“Careful,” he whispered.
He motioned to the dim glow at the end of the straight-ish tunnel. Walker nodded, unaware if the old man could actually see his response in the gloom. They slowly moved off again towards the light.
The cries resumed before they reached the end of the tunnel. Alvin and Walker froze. High, pain-filled shrieks echoed through the cave system. Walker sensed this was a new voice. The way the last caller had tailed off into a pitiful moaning made him suspect that man was now dead. This new victim was hollering at the top of his lungs with fresh agony. They remained motionless as the screams died down. A few seconds passed and the screams rose into the air again, prompted, Walker suspected, by a new, bright, fierce pain being inflicted on the vocalist. Alvin used the cover of the shrieking man’s voice to edge forwards. Walker followed him and the two men moved along the tunnel until it opened out into another, much larger cave.
This one was different to the last however, its thicker stalactites and stalagmites joined together to weave a forest of jagged rocks that filled the chamber, floor to ceiling, like a huge mesh of pillars. Walker and Alvin moved slowly and quietly between these trunks of stone, edging towards a flickering red light near the centre of the cave.
When the second bout of screaming finally subsided, Walker and Alvin could hear the fizzing, spluttering crackle of an angry flare lighting the way ahead. Both men carefully peered through the rock formations and flickering shadows, and spied the spitting flare at the centre of a clearing. The flare burned bright white, but cast the cave in a deep red, volcanic light that appeared to scorch the rock. The whole scene reminded Walker of the more clichéd imaginings of hell that popped up in films. As he moved forwards, he half expected to see a cartoon Satan laughing and jabbing a screaming victim with his pitchfork.
The truth was not that different.
There were three figures caught in the red glow of the fizzing flare. The first was one of the dead marines from Garris’s squad, slumped against a fat stalagmite. The man’s chest and abdomen were peppered with dozens of small, bloody holes. Across from this corpse and the spluttering flare was another of Garris’s men. This soldier was lying on the ground, groaning quietly. The Machine, still wearing Shelly’s torn and stretched hide, squatted next to him with its back to Walker. It raised its right hand and extended its index finger, then slowly pushed it towards the cowering marine. Walker watched the Machine slowly push its finger through the screaming man’s pectoral muscle and into his chest, as he writhed and kicked.
Walker stared at Alvin, but it seemed now that they were here, neither of them knew what to do. He saw another device lying next to the dead marine, identical to the one Alvin had taken. He felt for his own stolen controller against his waist and gripped it. He suddenly wished he’d taken the time to try it and somehow test it before he’d entered the cave. He didn’t even know what it was supposed to do. His eyes remained fixed on the Machine, as it wormed its finger deep into the screaming marine’s flesh, and then abruptly pulled it free with a sickening pop.
It had no idea they were there, thought Walker. Maybe it had a sophisticated array of man-made senses, but it had a man’s emotions too, and right now it was clearly enjoying itself too much to be aware of anyone else. It was revelling in the act of torture and lost to the moment.
Walker’s left hand closed around the remote device, as his right tightened its grip on the pistol. He watched the howling marine’s glazed eyes recover from the swirling pain of his latest injury, only to reignite with fear as the Machine’s finger hovered and prepared to drive into his flesh again. Much as Walker hated the soldiers for killing Johnny, he couldn’t stand by and watch this man be slowly tortured to death. And the more he thought about it, the more he was convinced this would be their best chance to get close to the lightning-fast Machine and inflict damage on it; supposing the device in his hand could actually hurt it.
Just as Walker began working his courage up to move from his hiding place behind the rock, he glimpsed something up ahead that stopped him dead. Major Garris, the officer who had shot Johnny, emerged from the darkness at the other end of the cavern. The major’s stern features slipped from the shadows, his piercing eyes bright with expectation, shining with the reflected glow of the flare as they focused on the Machine. Walker froze and watched another soldier appear at the back wall of the cave and take aim against the Machine with one of the controllers. Walker hoped that Alvin had spotted these men too, when he sensed a presence behind him. His eyes swivelled around and picked up movement, as a third soldier crept forwards and took up a position slightly ahead of him behind another rock. This marine evidently hadn’t noticed him. Each soldier was solely focused on their quarry – the Machine - in the clearing ahead.
Walker watched the nearest marine raise a controller identical to his own and turn it on. A colour digital screen silently pulsed into life in the black, oblong remote and revealed what looked like two energy bars, along with text that Walker couldn’t read at that distance. The soldier carefully took aim at the C19 with the device. When Walker looked up, he saw the other two men were preparing to use their devices too.
Suddenly the Machine raised its head, as if catching the scent of predators on the air. It whirled to face the soldiers. It then backed up and crouched near the cave wall, as the three soldiers advanced on it from the shadows. Walker could see Shelly’s death mask still covering the Machine’s face. The face looked from one enemy to the next, as the Machine let out a snarl like a cornered animal. For the first time ever, it occurred to Walker that the Machine might know fear.
“OK,” said Garris. “Hit him.”
A loud, almost religious, choral hum filled the cave and the Machine staggered back and shrank against the wall. At first, Walker thought the noise was coming from the Machine itself; yet another language in its vast and deceitful collection of sounds. Then he noticed a wavering, shimmering effect in the air around the Machine, and in the spaces between it and the three devices trained on it. It seemed as though some form of diffraction was taking place around the Machine, that the soldiers’ devices were emitting waves that bent and stretched the light in the cave, pulling everything in Walker’s field of vision apart. He then realised that it was the discharge of these devices, these weapons, which was causing the strange, rising choir-like humming.
“Keep it on him,” shouted Garris above the sound. “You’ve got to drain it fully for it to work.”
Walker dared to look across at Alvin during the confusion and saw that the old man was completely lost by the nature of this attack. He turned his attention back to the assault and watched the Machine drop down into an aggressive stance on its haunches, coiling, tightening, and aiming itself at the soldier to its right. The soldier saw this too and began to shake and back away. Garris caught sight of the soldier’s retreat and glared at him.
“Don’t let it past!” shouted Garris. “Hold your ground.”
Walker saw the Machine’s limbs compress, as it prepared to launch itself at the frightened soldier. The marine began to panic and fumble with the controls of the device in his hands.
“Don’t fire,” shouted Garris. “Not yet. We’ve got to break the field first.”
The Machine sprang at the marine, and he in turn fired. For a split second the space in the cave rippled and warped, as a near-invisible blastwave expanded outwards from the leaping Machine, accompanied by a sudden rushing sound, as if all the air was being sucked from the chamber to create an immediate vacuum. Walker stumbled and steadied himself, as the blastwave rocked him, and the atmosphere around him warped and gave. When he looked up again the Machine was disappearing into the tunnel behind them, and the marine that had been standing in its way was now nothing more than a pulpy smear on the cave wall. The humming ceased as the remaining soldiers powered down their devices.
“No,” said Garris, breaking from cover and giving chase.
That was when Alvin calmly stepped out of the shadows and aimed his pistol at the major’s forehead.