Part 1

Part 3

When I try to remember the fall of Delta Camp, there are two things that stand out in my memory. Only the knowledge of the truth, and Rodriguez’ mute urging, keeps me writing.

The first thing that stands out is how fast the defences were overrun.

The other is the first time I saw one of the things from below.

Major Rogers leapt past me, gun in hand. He slammed open the door of his office and ran outside, bellowing commands. After a second's hesitation, I followed. I didn't know what was happening, but somehow, I knew that to stay in place was to die.

Running out of the door, I got my first glimpse of Delta Camp. I was in a large cavern, a hundred metres or more wide, lit by industrial lamps hammered into the high stone ceiling. Capillary tunnels and passageways led off in every direction. Each was surrounded by a mass of defensive positions - redoubts, trenches, machine gun nests, bunkers.

Dark-clad soldiers ran about in chaos, trying to reach their positions in time. A siren was wailing incessantly, uselessly.

The gunfire began without warning. Within a single second, hundreds of weapons opened up. Tracer rounds seared into the darkness of the capillary tunnels. The muzzle flashes were an insane lightshow casting deranged, jagged shadows onto the walls. I couldn't see what they were firing at -

And then I could.

That is, strictly speaking, a lie. I never saw the things that came from the tunnels and tore Delta Camp to pieces. They moved too fast, or maybe they weren't even really visible, or maybe-

I never saw them. Only shapes in the corner of my eye, only peripheral glances and suggestions.

A shadow darted out of one of the tunnels - no, not a shadow, just the memory of a shadow, the ragged shape of a crow's wing. A soldier came apart, blood spraying out of a dozen wounds, and the thing was already gone, leaving corpses in its wake.

It wasn't alone. They were not there, and yet they were everywhere. Flitting out of shadows and strobing gunfire. As intangible as smoke. As murderous as knifeblades.

I stood in the centre of this chaos, dumfounded, unable to move. It was as if my mind was frozen solid, incapable of even the slightest action to preserve itself.

A soldier ran past me, stopped, turned back. An explosion blossomed behind her, casting her as a black outline against a field of red.

"Hide, damn you!" she yelled at me, bringing her face right up to mine and screaming over the deafening gunfire. "Hide, if you want to live!"

She motioned to the side, at a wide rectangular waste container standing half-full, propped against a bunker wall. I stared at her, mouth half open, not even processing her words.

She hit me in the face, and that did it. Snapping out of my trance, I ran to the container and lifted its hinged lid. Something red and spurting blood fell against me. I pushed it away, leapt into the container, and slammed the cover shut.

And then there is no memory at all. I don't know how long I crouched in that filthy hiding place. It may have been minutes, and it may have been hours.

The sounds of gunfire outside weakened, grew quieter, then went silent completely. Then there was only desperate screaming. And then there was nothing, only darkness and terror.

Slowly, my mind returned to me. I shivered in my hiding place, both in fear and cold. The temperature was dropping by the minute. I couldn't hear anything from outside.

Could I move? Could I take that risk?

Whatever had come out of the tunnels, the things from below... They had torn through Delta Camp in minutes. If even a single one of them was still out there, I'd be as good as dead the second I left my hiding spot.

But what if they could hear me, or smell me, crouching in the filth? I had no idea what they were capable of or what senses they could call on.

Suddenly, the container seemed not a safe refuge, but a death trap. Every second I stayed there might be filled with danger, bringing closer things that move like butchers' knives and ragged silk...

I made my decision. To move was better than to stay put. There was only a vague plan in my mind - find a gun, maybe a flashlight, and head into the tunnels. It wasn’t much, but it was surely better than staying put.

There had to be a map somewhere in Rogers' office. I'd find it, and then risk the tunnels back to the surface. Somehow, naively, my hopes all clung to that one concept. If I got to the surface, I would be safe.

Slowly, carefully, I eased open the container's lid, wincing at every creak and groan the protesting hinges made. In the dead silence of Delta Camp, every single noise seemed amplified to impossible heights.

Finally, the lid opened enough for me to slip through. The cavern was almost pitch black, whatever generators had powered the base long since destroyed. The only source of illumination were dark red emergency lights set in the walls, casting everything in an ominous crimson. I dropped to the ground and landed in something wet. I looked down and almost vomited.

Delta Camp had been the site of a massacre.

The dead carpeted the ground. Most had been torn apart, shredded and cut down without mercy. I had landed in a lake of viscera. I doubled over, retching. Not ten paces away, I saw the woman who had told me to hide. Both her arms and half her face were gone. White bone glistened wetly. I gagged, barely managing to wrestle my stomach under control.

Focus, I thought to myself. Don’t look at them. Weapon, flashlight, map. Focus.

Trying not to look down, I crept through the ruins of Delta Camp. Every shadow and little noise was filled with dread. With each passing second, I expected to feel unseen claws pierce my back, tearing me to pieces in less time than it takes to scream.

The stairs to Rogers’ office loomed up ahead. I slowly inched my way up them, wincing at the loud clanging my steps made. It seemed to echo around the cavern like thunder. At one point, I stopped, certain I’d heard something move in the detritus of battle below me. For a minute, I stood stock still, half-crouched, prepared to leap away into the dark at the slightest sign of danger.

Nothing. It was nothing. I had to keep moving.

Slowly, I reached the top of the stairs and snuck down the gangway leading to my destination. All I needed was to get inside, and then-

Voices.

I froze. Every sense I had was stretched to its limit, every muscle bunched and ready for flight.

There they were again. Whispers, barely audible, coming from behind the closed door to Rogers’ office.

Shit, I thought to myself.

I stood still, trying to calm my breathing and catch what the voices were saying.

“…move out as soon as possible. They’ll be back, that’s certain, and we can’t stay here waiting for more survivors to find us.”

“Where do we go, though? Who’s to say Gamma Camp hasn’t been overrun as well? Same goes for Beta and Alpha. We have no idea what’s happening up above - all our communication lines are dead.”

The first voice again. “If Alpha’s been taken, we’ve already lost the war. If we strike out for the surface, it’ll give us a chance to survive, at least. Staying here is suicide.”

A new, third voice. “Does anyone know what happened to the Major?”

There was a pause.

“The Major’s dead.” said someone. “I saw him get- I saw it happen. He’s gone.”

“God...”

“We can mourn later. Right now, we need to get moving. They’ll be back soon, and the tunnel’s will be crawling with ghouls, too.”

“Right… You’re right. Time to move out.”

Through the door, I heard footsteps.

Shit, I thought to myself, panic rising up to smother me. I scrambled backwards, desperate to get away from the door and hide. In my haste, I forgot to move silently. My foot clanged loudly on the metal stairs.

I froze.

The sounds from within had stopped.

The door swung open and dark shapes moved within, bristling with weapons. A flashlight stabbed at me, blindingly white.

“Don’t fucking move!” someone hissed. “Hands above your head! Do it now!”

I did as I was told. The dark shapes moved forward, resolving into a squad of seven soldiers dressed in dark combat uniforms. All were armed to the teeth. They trained their guns on me, edging closer.

“Who the hell are you?” said one of them, a dark-haired man with a goatee and angry eyes. He stepped closer, bringing the muzzle of his rifle up to my face.

“I’m… I’m Matthew Daniels.” I stammered out. “I’m not one of you, I’m a civilian. Please, I’m just…”

“Ain’t no fucking civvies in Delta Camp,” the soldier interrupted me. He half-turned his head to his comrades. “He’s a ghoul, damnit. We should just shoot him and be done with it.”

“He’s telling the truth, Anderson,” said a familiar voice. Rodriguez, I realized. One of the men who’d captured me. “I was there when we found him. Somehow, he found his way into one of the fallback tunnels.”

Anderson glared at me, clearly distrustful.

“Put your guns down. He’s not a threat,” Rodriguez repeated.

Slowly, grudgingly, the soldiers complied.

“What do we do with him?” someone asked.

“I-“ I began.

“Leave him,” growled Anderson, cutting me off. “He’s just dead weight. A civilian won’t make it five minutes down here.”

“We can’t just leave him down here,” someone said. “You’re right, he won’t last five minutes without us. It’s just as much a death sentence as if we shot him right here and now. And we’re not shooting him, Anderson.”

“I-” I started again, only for another soldier to interrupt me again.

“Gamma Camp is half a day’s journey away. He can keep up that long.”

“We’ll see about that.” Anderson muttered, half to himself.

“So, it’s decided,” said Rodriguez. “The civvie comes with us.”

The entire squad looked over at me expectingly. I nodded weakly, head spinning.

“Alright. Time to move out,” Rodriguez said. The group filed past me, weapons half-raised. For a second, I stood, dumbfounded. Things were moving too fast for me to follow.

Rodriguez turned around and raised an eyebrow.

“You coming?”

Finally, I nodded and fell in behind him.

Our group crept through the ruins of Delta Camp and entered a passageway sloping upward. We were a bobbing line of flashlights, illuminating the darkness with cones of luminescence. Every now and then, we’d reach a crossroads. At those times, the soldier in front would consult her map, exchange a few quiet words with one or two comrades, then set out down one of the corridors silently.

“I imagine you have a lot of questions,” Rodriguez whispered to me as we stalked through the dark.

“That’s an understatement,” I muttered. “Major Rogers said that he couldn’t tell me anything at all.”

“Well, the situation has changed a bit, wouldn’t you say?” Rodriguez answered. “If we’re going to get out of here alive, we’ll need all the help we can get. I’m sure the higher-ups won’t be happy about it, but considering the clusterfuck this whole operation has become, I’m pretty damn sure I can afford to let you in on a few secrets.”

I stayed silent. Rodriguez continued.

“There’s a massive network of tunnels beneath this entire area. It stretches out for miles, and it goes way, way down. There’s… things living in these tunnels. The official name is USL - “uncategorized subterranean lifeform” - but we mostly call them the “things from below”. We don’t know what they are, or where they come from - all we know is, they want to get out, and we can’t allow that.”

“I… I think I saw one of them, when Delta Camp fell,” I said. “Well… I didn’t see it, exactly. Just movement.”

“No one’s ever seen one,” Rodriguez replied. “There’s never been a confirmed visual. We’ve never found a body or caught them on video. You can barely catch them, just glimpses in the corner of your eye, or a blur of movement before they strike. It’s like your gaze skims to the side every time you try to get a proper look.”

“How do you fight them, then?”

Rodriguez rummaged around in his tactical vest and pulled out a palm-sized black box. Several wires led off from it, one leading to the earpiece he was wearing.

“We use these babies – we call them spectrometers, although I have no clue what kind of wavelength or radiation they actually pick up. They can detect the things from below – tell you their rough direction and distance. In the tunnels, that’s enough. You pre-sight your gun down where they should be, and you pray to God they don’t get close enough for you to get a glimpse.”

“And if they do?”

“You open up and hope you hit them. Quantity of firepower is just as important as quality. For each one of these things, every person in a squad will fire a full clip on full auto. Sometimes two, just to be certain. We don’t know if the bullets actually hurt them, but if you’re lucky, they’ll disappear or retreat or die or whatever the fuck it is they do when they get hit by our firepower. That’s why we need to keep this contained, keep it in the tunnels – if they ever get to the surface, it’s over. In the open, you just can’t fight them.”

“So… you don’t know where they are, where they come from, or if you can really even kill them.” I said, head spinning. “How long has this been going on?”

Rodriguez smiled grimly. “Whole generations. We don’t know how many, but rumour is, Anderson’s granddad was stationed here. His dad, too. Might explain why he’ so damn grim. This is the first time I know of that the things launched an attack like this, though. It’s always been ambushes in the tunnels, preying on our patrols and stragglers.”

“Wait, Anderson’s grandfather fought here? That would mean…”

“This war’s been going on since Stalin breathed his last. Longer, possibly.”

I cursed under my breath. Rodriguez smiled grimly.

“Until now, the war was a stalemate – they couldn’t get out, but we couldn’t move advance an inch. Once, a scouting patrol managed to get real deep into the tunnels, miles down, into an area we call The Pit. The single radio report we ever got back from them spoke of some sort of structures down there – a temple. We’ve never been able to confirm that, though.”

I trudged on in silence for a while, letting all this sink in.

“When you captured me, someone mentioned “ghouls”,” I said finally. “They thought I was one.”

“Oh, right,” Rodriguez answered. “I forgot about those.”

He sighed deeply.

“Every now and then, a patrol or a small camp will go missing. Sometimes, those men are found dead. Sometimes, they come back, but… changed. They worship the things from below, I think. The tunnels are full of them. They’re fast, they’re strong, and they can hide pretty much anywhere. The spectrometers don’t pick them up, either, so you need to stay on your guard.”

Looking up, I saw our group had stopped at a crossroads, the lead soldier once again checking her map. Left to think about Rodriguez’ words, I felt a wave of terror mounting inside me. It was as if I was suffocating, drowning in my own fear.

“What should I do?” I asked him, the words a choking whisper. “Everything’s happening so quickly… Can we even hope to live through this?”

Rodriguez put a reassuring hand on my shoulder.

“Keep your wits about you and stay as quiet as possible. We’ll see you through the rest.”

I raised my head to thank him.

The shadow standing quietly behind Rodriguez opened its eyes and smiled.

x