the aberration
chapter ten
Something disturbed the still serenity of the lake: the gentlest ripples expanding from a single point, signalling the presence of something lurking just below the surface. A bubble rose and dissipated.
Suddenly the ripples broke free from their concentric pattern, moving in an almost uniform direction away from their original position as whatever it was in the water moved in the opposite direction. It was travelling swiftly towards the shore.
Amelia Muse was not to be left in peace that night.
The battle with the unseen intruders echoed through the bare corridors. Looking about, Beef moved towards the stairs in the other direction.
'Don't you think you can go escaping!' Sam shouted after him. 'I won't let you!'
Beef glanced back at the marine, but continued to move ahead. 'That gun is empty,' he pointed out.
Sam glared and spat. 'I'll kill you anyway, Freak Ears!'
'The one thing you appear to be forgetting,' said Beef, pausing, 'is that I came after you. I'm not leaving until I get some answers.'
Sam once again looked like he was grudgingly struggling to make his mind up about Beef, who continued, 'We should approach whoever it is from the other side. That way we can cut them off, maybe even push them further in and get them trapped.'
'Yeah, and we'll have the element of surprise.' The marine grunted. 'At least with you we will.' He nodded slowly, considering the plan. 'We can go down a floor and push them up. That way we'll have the bastards surrounded.'
'Good,' said Beef. 'Let's go.'
Amelia opened her eyes. She had sensed, if not heard, that something was approaching her, and had emerged from a not-very-deep, uneasy sleep. She strained her ears to listen, thinking it was Hyde again and trying to determine the slightest sound that might be the careful tread of his boots.
Instead, she heard bubbles. With a start, she grabbed her hat and rolled onto her feet, stepping back from the edge of the lake and staring at the dark water. She thought she could make out something even darker, the shape and size of a pebble, peeking out at her; but in a second and a splash it was gone.
For a moment the detective merely stood there, watching the water. Then she cautiously approached the edge again. The water was at Amelia's bare toes as she peered into the resumed deadness of the lake. The creature, whatever it was, appeared to have vanished. After several minutes of no further discernable activity, the detective risked another couple of paces forward. She felt the cold water at her ankles, but her trousers were still damp from her last foray into the lake, so she paid little attention to this.
Besides, her curiosity had been piqued now. Suddenly all other considerations were less important.
Master Beef and Sam quickly made their way down the flight of stairs and crept along the corridor below. Sam ducked into several rooms in a hasty search for a full or even half-full magazine for his pistol, but came out unlucky. He cursed and grudgingly allowed Beef to lead the way. Beef paid little attention to him.
Sounds of the skirmish were close. Sam's grip on his empty firearm tightened. He had kept it in his hand anyway, figuring it would at least be better to appear armed.
Beef sidestepped and pressed his shoulder against the wall, rifle still in hand; Sam followed. They were several feet from the opposite stairwell, but the barks of gunfire had suddenly stopped.
Two elongated shadows with ridiculously tall heads danced along the far wall, silhouettes in the watery electric light from the floor above. Then feet appeared on the steps, smart black boots, quick but not hurried. The two figures then emerged and Beef was struck with the sudden, unnerving sensation that they had somehow stepped back in time.
They were men, very pale; and they were dressed in archaic military uniforms: black breeches and double-breasted, scarlet coatees, the two rows of buttons and those at their cuffs and coat tails gleaming gold. A white, sash-like belt was wrapped around their waists and join to the coat tails at the back. The reason for their ridiculous height was revealed to be their two tall hats, black belltop shakos adorned with a circular ornamental plate and a small white plume.
Even more strangely, their coats were externally ribbed with what appeared to be wide strips of copper-coloured metal either side of the parallel buttons where the coat overlapped, all curving across the width of the coat but for the topmost two, which met the others almost perpendicularly and reached diagonally up to the coat's rigid collar. To finish it off, two clunky, plated metal epaulets sat heavily on their shoulders. Their entire uniform was soaked in blood.
Beef had a very short amount of time in which to register all this before the two bizarre soldiers had already swung around and were retreating down the next flight. Beef pulled the trigger and his rifle chattered in his hands; the bullets snapped away at the hovering plume of the second man and bits of white fluff were blown into the air.
The soldier turned and fired at Beef as more metal punctured his hat, which, oddly, remained firmly attached to his head.
Beef ducked out of the way, pulling Sam, who was itching to fight, with him. Despite their appearance, the intruders used the same semiautomatic weapons as the marines. But while Beef had held back from shooting answers straight out of the marines, because something about them - their mannerisms, their reactions, their palpable fear - had made him uncertain, the anachronistic soldiers were somehow irrefutably, unquestionably repulsive. There was something about them that chilled him and made him want to dispose of them immediately - not least of all the fact that they were riddled with bullet holes and still on their feet.
The rifle rattled again and Beef charged forward. Gunfire was resumed from above, informing Sam and Beef that the others were still alive, aimed down the centre of the stairwell. Whatever the reason had been for the soldiers' attack, now their only aim seemed to be making their way back out.
The rally of bullets got the front man in the shoulder, in the leg, in the neck. His clothes tore and ribbons of blood burst from his body, but he kept on moving. Beef set to exterminating these figures of horror and raked the second soldier across the chest. The sheer force of his salvo knocked the soldier against the wall, upon which he was splattered copiously; he slid sideways and tumbled down the stairs. In a respite from above, Beef launched himself forwards, grabbed the rail and peered down. The soldier, slowly, was getting back up again.
Amelia had removed her jacket, cast it ashore, and waded deeper into the lake, her eyes scanning for movement. There had been something about that creature; something decidedly watchful, in a strangely impertinent sort of way. As the water reached her waist, Amelia realised that she was deciding a lot about this tiny thing she'd seen, but it was a feeling she couldn't quite shake. Something about the way it had stayed there--more curious than cautious. And, this also being a trait of her own, she felt inexplicably goaded by it.
But she could not see it.
'Where'd you go,' she muttered. Feeling a sudden wave of fatigue accompanying her disappointment, she added, 'How am I supposed to get any sleep with you swimming around?'
Then, in the deeper shadow below the clear water, a patch of dark detached itself from the rest, wriggling sinuously free and splitting into a tangle of very fine tentacles. The detective noticed it with a small gasp, her eyes locking onto it. She took a moment to admire its sleekness, its pebble head twitching in ever new directions. Even as it circled her so close, she could make out no more detail in the dark; but there was something else, if anything made more apparent by the darkness, which was that as the thing twitched and faced her, before it swam away again she thought she could make out the faintest of glows, like a green light from within, catching the circular edge of something -- an eye? -- at the front of its head.
A look of sombre calculation crossed Amelia's face, her mouth tightening in determination, and she reached out unthinkingly to grab it.
Sam, clutching the rail at his side, made a noise of despair. Beef looked at him, then back at the rising monster. This was why the marines were mad. This was why they seemed so confused, so disorganised, so lost: why they, marines, hardened, battle-ready men and women, were barely keeping their own minds, let alone their formation.
Beef stepped around the rail and unloaded the remainder of his round into the thing, who continued to climb to his feet regardless. The other one was nowhere to be seen.
'I bet the other bastard got away,' spat someone.
The soldier straightened up, his red coat full of bullets, and turned to face them. Beef lunged, aiming the rifle butt at his face. It impacted, hard; the rifle shattered, and something else -- possibly the soldier's neck -- cracked. The soldier reeled backwards, then forwards, and then had his hands around Beef's neck. Bits of rifle fell to the floor.
Most people, when they found themselves face to face with Beef, searched futilely for his expression. The soldier's face, right there in front of him, had no expression, yet stared right through the mirrored visor at him. And the hands were tightening.
Beef's arms fought to get him off; this in vain, he headbutted the solider and pushed him against the wall with all the force he could. His visor felt it might shatter like the rifle had, as did his head, but the soldier's solid grasp had prevented it from being as forceful as it might have been.
As black tinged the corners of his vision, Beef began to let the soldier force him back. He heard the cries of the marines, close but distant. Sarge was dead. He noticed, dimly, how the round, decorative plate on the soldier's hat, a series of concentric circles, looked strangely like a target. His feet moved towards the top stair...
...and then he felt himself go backwards. The soldier's hands stayed attached to his throat the whole way down, until he hit the stairs and rolled and the soldier did the same, thrown over Beef, both tumbling down the jagged edges. The soldier hit the bottom first.
When Beef struggled to his feet again, the soldier was gone.
Simon Hyde, after a brief nap against a tree, was just about to set off again when he heard the screams. He stood rigidly and turned his head in the direction of the noise: back the way he had come.
Before he had even finished mentally articulating what the screams could mean, he was sprinting through the trees and across the turf with impressive speed, his leather coat billowing slickly behind him. It was fortunate, he considered, that the nap had delayed his progress. His feet pounded the dry earth, stumbled rapidly down its sloping face and burst through the trees skirting the lake from their respectable distance.
For the briefest of seconds he could not see any sign of the detective, until the water let slip bubbles in the middle of the lake. Simon spotted it, threw off his coat and boots and charged with heroic splashes into it, breaking into front crawl halfway.
Amelia would not let go of it. With startling strength it had pulled her downwards, its strangely cold, hard body ever squirming to be free of her grasp. Thus, for all its struggling, Amelia cruised.
Their destination soon became apparent as a small hole at the base of the jagged east rock, a deep cavity just big enough for the detective to get wedged. This happened.
A noise of frustration issued through the water like some weird, distressed animal of the deep. The thing had churned the water and slipped free, leaving Amelia stuck in total darkness. Amelia then realised her predicament. She wriggled.
Two hands grabbed her by the ankles and pulled. The first time, out of sheer surprise, the last of Amelia's breath escaped her mouth in a large, elastic bubble. The second time she left the hole with a sound like the plug she had become. She flailed as the water entered her nose and mouth.
Simon worked furiously to get them both out of the lake. He managed to drag her ashore, her body wet and limp. Catching his own breath, he leaned over Amelia to attend to hers. The droplets that had formed on the dark surface of his seemingly irremovable shades were renewed as the detective spurted forth a fountain of lake water, almost headbutting him as she lurched forward and gasped.
'Hey,' she said, surveying him mildly. 'Look who came back.'
'You,' Simon Hyde said, grinning, 'are ridiculous.'
Beef found his hands were shaking. He steadied himself against the rail. Above him, the marines were moving bodies. One was the deceased sergeant; the other, alive, but bleeding badly from a wound in his side.
His carriers, one of whom was Sam, had been transporting him slung over their shoulders, one arm around each of their necks. They quickly set him down again at the base of the stairs as he started moaning and slipping out of consciousness.
'Pete?' said Sam. His voice attempted to reassure, but broke with panic. 'Pete, hold on in there. We're going to get you to the medical room, right? Mate, don't die on me...'
Beef watched Pete's half-closed eyes roll. He gurgled horribly, shuddered and coughed up blood.
'Shit,' moaned Sam, passing his hands over his short-cropped hair. He looked almost as white as Pete. 'No. No...'
Beef felt a strange sort of numb detachment. He gazed around at the stairwell, smeared and streaked with absurd amounts of blood. He sat down heavily on the step, his costume stained, his thoughts as blank as his visor.