Darkness Beneath the Earth

Eleven men and women passed between the roots of the storm-blasted tree to prevent all hell from literally breaking loose. Every step took us deeper into the darkness beneath the earth. There were no gun-mounted flashlights to light our way, only the quiet purr of night vision goggles that painted everything in varying shades of green.

Tamara and I were the only ones without because we had near-perfect night vision. The path sloped gently downwards, and we followed it for at least twenty minutes. The air had taken on a mix of acid and metal combined with now-familiar rancid meat and rotting fruit with something that smelt genuinely unnatural.

Tamara received an acknowledgement from Pharaoh, but it was the usual good news, bad news scenario: Reinforcements were en route but were at least 60 minutes away. Those reinforcements would be coming from all over Switzerland. Still, for now, it would be up to the eleven of us to hold whatever was lurking underground at bay until they got here.

A gesture from her and we stopped, consolidating our position as the copper and iron-rich scent wafted towards us, unmistakable, "Blood," I whispered.

"Lots of it," she agreed. The scent took on a sour note as the light appeared ahead, beyond a narrow passageway. Tamara shot me the same look she'd given me not long ago. We were perhaps halfway down the tunnel when the walls started to move, "Contact!"

The walls were not moving: Something was growing out of the blood-slick walls in clumps of organic-looking material that coalesced into a torso and arms before the head took form. It was like watching an invisible sculptor working to shape four at once.

Their lithe shapely bodies writhed out of the walls, and they seemed to be amid an ecstasy-induced dance until they lashed out with clawed hands.

The two most dangerous positions in any infantry formation are point man and sweeper. The things dropped from the walls like wet sacks. They shrieked like banshees and hurled themselves towards us. More grew and hurried to join the assault, leaking body fluids from the waist where they had severed their connection with whatever passed for wall down here.

Tamara and I were walking point and punctured the horde with sheets of buckshot to clear our path. A distant scream erupted behind us. It was wholly human as they swarmed and tore apart Legionnaire Cynthia McLeod.

In the tight confines of an underground cavern, weapons that do area-of-effect damage - like grenades - are a terrible idea. But on the verge of being overrun, we had little choice in the matter, "Ease!"

Training had drilled that response to hearing that word. You echoed it, letting your mouth drop open and get in cover or drop to the deck. The momentary silence was overwhelmed as the grenades went off, spraying everything with fire, shrapnel, clods of burning earth, and cooked stone.

Tamara gave a curt nod, and I gave her a slightly raised eyebrow. The result was not pretty and left us all with ringing ears and the usual morass of minor cuts and bruises. We were lucky: No friendly fire fatalities, and all of us still had our hearing intact. Having your mouth hang open prevents your eardrums from popping when the shockwave hits.

Not far ahead, the passage opened in what was the scene from a nightmare. It was a cannibal's den of delight, and the light sticks we tossed around the chamber only further illuminated the butchery and carnage.

What I witnessed is still engraved in my memory, and the nightmare of it wakes me occasionally. Eight stone altars dotted the cavern, each covered in deeply carved or clawed runes.

I refused to look at the runes because to stare at them was to invite madness to take up residence in your brain.

Blood flowed in those runes and combined from the eight slabs into a single river of blood that led out an arched doorway at the far end of the cavern.

The remains of at least twenty or thirty corpses lay scattered like paper, each with deep puncture wounds. The blood was collected for some dark purpose; that much was clear. But the worst was that the eight tables were all occupied.

When I saw the innocents, the beast was grateful that I had not eaten in a while. I agreed and prayed that someone would shoot us if I were in their predicament.

Jagged stone splinters erupted from her flesh at every major joint in her body, her blood oozing from the wounds, harvested like a crop.

Eight such alters, one woman on each one, and my eyes showed that something was wrong. On the closest altar, the victim had expired sometime earlier. However, I could see tiny stalagmites of red poking up through the half-dry blood.

At first glance, I thought they were small spikes to prevent the victims from slipping off the altar. But these pillars were not stone, but their blood, vibrating, pulsing and swaying in time to some unheard rhythm, like a bit of forest with the wind whipping through its trees.

That was when it clicked as I crouched down, looking at the altar from the side. She had been lying face down, but her hands, feet, face, and part of her chest had been absorbed into the stone altar.

I rose back, drove the barrel of my weapon underneath the body, and levered the headless remains off the table. The tendrils were ripped free of the flesh, and the ruined corpse squelched into a bloody heap. Whatever the altar was, it had filleted the body lengthways, separating the front from the back. There was only the barest bloody pulp to form the back of the head and neck.

The blood tendrils quivered in the air for a moment before slurping back into the stone surface of the altar. The stench of old coppery blood melded with the stink of fear.

I blinked. A face pulsed into form, trying to rise from the stone top. It was screaming and trashing in agony before its grey eyes bore a hole into my soul. I jerked back and found myself weak and slightly shaky as Tamara grasped my shoulder, pulling my attention to the bigger picture, "Legionnaires: Advance and purify."

It was an order. I still wonder whether Tamara meant this when she asked if I could kill a fellow human. She had meant people, not the lost and damned. I still wonder whether she knew what we would find down here, whether this was perhaps another test.

I couldn't trust myself to speak; my hands shook, my heart hammering a thousand beats in a second. I loaded a fresh cassette into the shotgun, took aim, and moved to the head of the second altar.

Whoever, she was, she was still conscious. She could see and hear everything, and when she saw me raise my weapon and point it at her, I felt a connection, so brief, so intense, so powerful, and yet painful.

I didn't blink or look away as my finger tightened on the trigger.

She was at peace. Six more times, I did this, and six times, their eyes seemed to thank me silently.

Their eyes will haunt me for the next few months and reappear in other nightmares. Had I done the right thing by killing them? I don't know if I have the right to be anyone's executioner. But I know that one gunshot spared them hours in slow agony, feeling death spread through you, a millimetre at a time.

If you think me weak for feeling some guilt for these deaths, then I do not know if I should condemn you or commend you. I could understand the necessity, but I still do not condone it.

A single piercing scream broke the silence, and everyone jumped as it ended in a gurgling death rattle. I then realized the scale of what Legion fought. Before, the Legion had just seemed like a good idea; I knew, at this moment, that everything I had seen had changed me, and I understood what and why.

All the answers lay in the next chamber, and my hands tightened as we passed from the antechamber into the heart of darkness, lit by torches hanging from sconces in the walls.