Note: This is a draft copy.
The Standish twins, Charles, and Henry had talked the wives into going to town to do some shopping while the boys headed to the blue waters of the Mediterranean to do some snorkeling along the rugged coast of southern France. The weather was warm and the water was clear as glass. It was perfect for a boy's day out.
“Hey, look at this,” Charles said pointing to what looked like a crevice in the face of a cliff along the water. They swam up to the crevice and peered inside. Rocks and dirt were piled in the water at the bottom of the crevice. It looked like a small rockfall had recently uncovered what appeared to be a cave entrance.
“I think we could fit through this crevice,” Charles said. “What to check it out?”
Henry looked inside. “It looks big enough inside. Why not?”
Charles smiled and squeezed through the crevice. Henry followed him. It was a tight fit, but they made it through the crevice and stood at the entrance to a large, dark cave. It was very dark inside, as to be expected, and the boys stood for a moment to let their eyes adjust. Henry unclipped the diving torch he carried in his belt, flipped it on, and stepped into the darkness. Holding the torch aloft, he slowly swept the beam across the cave. It was a long cavern, with a rough ceiling several meters high, and when Henry swept the beam across the back of the cavern, something metallic flashed in the torchlight.
“Did you see that?” Henry asked.
“Yeah, something back there,” Charles said. “Let’s check it out. Not much chance of getting lost here. It appears to be one big cavern.” The brothers smiled at each other. This was shaping up to be a real adventure.
They slowly headed toward the area where the torchlight was being reflected. The floor of the cavern was littered with rocks and dirt, and Charles noticed that in places there were black patches, as if the ground had been scorched. “Look at this,” Charles said, pointing to a scorched spot on the ground. “What could have caused that?”
Henry shrugged. “I don’t know. A fire of some sort I guess. Maybe there was a gas build-up that ignited.”
“Yeah, maybe,” said Charles. “Maybe this was an old mine back in the day.”
“Think we will find any hidden treasure?” Henry asked. They both laughed and slowly made their way amid the rocks and heaps of dirt to the back of the cavern. What the torch revealed in the darkness made both boys stop short. “What the hell are those?” Henry whispered.
The back wall of the cavern had collapsed and through the hole in the wall, the boys could see a metal chamber beyond. In the chamber were two metal tubes anchored to the metal floor of the chamber. The metal wall of the chamber had been torn open by some unknown cause, and the inside of the chamber had been badly damaged. Some sort of strange computer equipment on the far wall of the chamber had burned leaving twisted wires and molten glass or plastic hanging out of the cavity that had held the equipment. What appeared to be a metal door on the right side of the chamber was twisted in the frame. Through the gaps in the door frame, they could only see darkness.
The twins looked at each other in wonder and carefully entered the chamber through the jagged opening. “What do you think this is?” Charles asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Beats me,” Henry answered. “I wonder what is in these tubes?” He walked over to the nearest tube and examined it in the torchlight. It seemed to be a sealed tube, large enough for a person to climb inside. It was made out of some sort of dull metal. He rapped the side of the tube with the torch and it sounded as if it might be hollow.
“I don’t see any openings or latches on the…” Henry suddenly trailed off and stood upright, dropping the torch.
“Hey, what’s up?” Charles asked, picking up the torch and shining the light on his brother’s face. Henry seemed dazed as if sleepwalking. Henry suddenly pushed Charles aside and walked around to the top of the tube. He reached under the tube and tripped some sort of lever and then walked back around to the side of the tube and stood there.
“What the hell?” Charles said. There was the popping sound of a seal breaking and the metal tube began to open. Charles grabbed Henry and tried to pull him away from the opening tube, but Henry shrugged off the attempt and stood beside the tube as if waiting for something. Charles turned the torch on the inside of the tube. Something lay in the tube, something with tentacles for arms and writhing tentacles sprouting from a horrific face. Charles screamed, dropped the torch, and turned to run, but he was grabbed from behind and lifted up in the air.
The creature slowly turned him around until he was facing the monster. Charles struggled against the tentacles wrapping around his body but he couldn’t break free. The torch on the ground cast a dim light in the chamber and he could see the tentacles on the creature’s face writhing as he was slowly pulled toward that terrible face. The tentacles gripped his head and forced it back and he felt the sting of fangs sink into his neck. He closed his eyes and heard a voice screaming as he felt his strength leave his body and flow into the sucking maw of the monster.
***
Jason Blythe was the caretaker of a small graveyard that had no name out in the middle of nowhere in the countryside of England. The graveyard dated back to the 1700s and was named an official historical site by the United Nations, but few visitors visited the site. It was a peaceful job, but a little boring at times. There wasn’t much to do in the graveyard itself. That wasn’t his main job. Rather, he monitored a particular grave, a grave with an iron cage over the top.
A grave that was wired to a deadly electrical current that would flow through the cage at his command. A grave that had three cameras on it at all times. A night vision camera, a thermal camera, and a normal camera. Jason’s real job was to keep an eye on that grave. Just in case.
His boring job suddenly became interesting on a Wednesday at midnight when the proximity alarm began beeping, waking him up from a sound sleep. For a couple of seconds, he wondered what the sound was, but his mind cleared enough for the training to kick in. He jumped out of the bed and ran into the control room scanning the monitors. “Shit,” he said. On the night vision monitor, he saw two unnaturally tall men standing by the caged grave. One of the men was cutting away the iron cage with a laser cutter.
On the desk was an old-style, black telephone with no dial. Jason picked up the receiver and heard a click on the other end. “Bravo delta omicron two nine nine,” he said into the receiver. “Breach confirmed.”
“Understood, “ a woman’s voice said. The line went dead. He replaced the receiver and stared at the monitor. There would be two fire teams heading this way at this very moment and his job was to stay in the control room and monitor the situation. He hit the button that would send several thousand volts of electricity coursing through the cage, but the jolt only momentarily slowed down the man with the cutter. He would be through the cage in a few minutes. There wasn't much else Jason could do except watch.
The man with the laser torch finally cut through the cage and both of them lifted the iron lattice and tossed it aside. The other man retrieved some sort of device that he pointed at the ground. Dirt began flying up in the air digging out the gravesite.
“Where the hell are they?” Jason mumbled. The fireteam should be here. A few seconds later a spotlight from a whisper-quiet helicopter illuminated the gravesite. Jason had no audio from the video feed but he could hear the steady burping of automatic weapons coming in from the window of the control room. The tall men seemed to jerk with the impact of the bullets but the one digging up the grave didn’t stop. The other man looked around and suddenly was gone, sprinting out of the camera view.
Through the window, Jason heard screams and the gunfire slowly subsided. The man returned to the grave and looked up at the overhead helicopter, pulled some sort of weapon from his pocket, and pointed it at the helicopter. Jason didn’t see any flash from the weapon, but the light winked out and in the distance, Jason could hear an explosion. The whole team had been wiped out, quickly and efficiently. This was bad.
Jason picked up the phone receiver and waited for the click. “Fireteam down,” he said. “Condition Alpha.”
“Understood, “ the woman’s voice said.
Jason replaced the receiver and stared at the video monitor. The men had exposed the casket and they were attaching some kind of mechanism to the metal casket. The mechanism glowed and the casket slowly rose out of the ground and hovered a meter above the ground. The two men grabbed the casket and pushed it out of sight of the cameras. Jason flipped a switch activating the GPS tracker on the casket. That was all he could do. It was up to Control now.
He sat down in his worn office chair and stared at the video monitors. The clean-up crew should be here any minute. In the span of about 30 minutes, twelve men had died and all the careful preparations had been for nothing. His assignment here would be over now, and he would be reassigned to some other strange place after debriefing. Assuming they all survived what was about to happen.
***
Deep in the Cascade mountain range in the state of Oregon in the United States, under a blanket of forest growth, a spherical spaceship was slowly coming to life. In a metal chamber in the spaceship, a tube-like the two found in France hissed open and inside an alien slowly emerged.
It was tall, two and a half meters tall, roughly humanoid with tentacles writhing around a fang-filled mouth and under four blood-red eyes that were equally spaced around the top of the skull. The alien didn’t have arms; a set of three tentacles sprouted from what would have been an arm for a human. Three tentacles on each side, with each tentacle ending in two smaller tentacles that were used for fine motor skills. The torso of the creature was a mottled gray color, stocky and thick, with a large bone patch covering the midsection. The alien’s brain was under the bone, well-protected. The alien was bipedal, with the two legs ending in what looked like large, prehensile hands that served as the creature’s feet. The alien didn’t wear any clothes and didn’t seem to have any sexual organs or any elimination organs either. The alien’s body was smooth and unbroken, except for the terrifying mouth and hideous eyes.
A reclining chair extruded itself from the metal wall and the alien slowly sat down on the chair and leaned back. An opening appeared in the wall and a metal arm popped out and quickly embedded a tube into the chest of the alien. A red fluid began to flow through the clear tube and slowly the gray color of the alien faded and its skin took on a reddish color.
The alien touched the side of the chair in a rapid sequence and the reclining chair changed shape and became an upright chair. A small screen slid up from the arm of the chair and an alien script began to scroll very rapidly across the screen. The alien stared at the screen intently as pictures, sounds and alien text flashed across the small screen. At one point, a video of the caged grave appeared on the screen and the alien froze the video feed. Tapping the screen with the tip of a tentacle, the picture zoomed in on the two very tall men at the grave. For long minutes he stared at the screen and then tapped the screen once again. The information continued to flow across the screen.
