The Conduit: Chapter 8

A launch departed the Oceanic Station below the gangway where Carter was running laps. He looked to the ocean, watching the boat as it roared to life, speeding away across the slight chop of the warm Pacific waters. Carter wondered where the doctor was going off to at such an early time of day, but as a senior member of the staff, she had clearances he didn’t possess. She could take a launch without going through Commander Shepherd’s office, or at least that’s what he thought. He didn’t know anything about the pleasure craft anchored a mile from the station.

Carter was one of five people outside of the control center that was active that early in the morning. His shift didn’t start for three more hours, but Carter got up each day to get in a ten-mile run. The weather was so nice that Carter decided to run on the gangway, which meant he’d run around the station fifty times. He’d see the sunrise, the beautiful reddening of the sky as it melted away the dark blues above them.

Carter could feel the cool morning sea breezes washing over his skin as he finished his tenth lap. He thought about what he’d be doing when work started. The first thing he’d have to do was go to the armory. The tasers were stored there, even though he couldn’t see having to taser a teenaged kid.

Being one of the Level VI security officers, it was Carter’s job to keep the girl at bay, monitor the system, and help control access to the level. He didn’t know why they were holding an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old girl, or what she could have done, but he understood the barrier cell was meant to hold monsters. If she was a monster, she would have yet to show the Oceanic staff that side of her.

The job paid well, and Carter was a good soldier. He knew how to follow orders and wasn’t the type to rock the boat. And when this assignment was over, he could go home and would have enough money banked to live the ultimate life. Carter was going to be debt-free and have enough money set aside for the immediate future. At 30, Carter was going to capture the American dream.

For a hired gun, Carter was good with money. He’d been planning his big move since he was twenty-one and was going to work freelance after this assignment. As he passed the halfway point of his tenth lap, he worked things out in his head. Pay off his house, buy a new truck, and focus on his portfolio for a year. After that, he’d have the time for a personal life.

Carter felt a change in the winds as he neared the end of his eleventh lap. There was an odor about that rancid. He stopped at one of the view stations and looked for signs of another dead whale, or even signs of a mass die off. Whatever it was, it was putrid in his nostrils.

Suddenly, he felt like someone was behind him. Carter lunged around, expecting it to be one of the roughnecks from the night shift. There wasn’t anyone there. He looked left and right, thinking someone passed him, but he was the only one on the gangway.

“What the hell?” he wondered aloud.

He decided to get back to his run. There were worse odors Carter encountered, but he wasn’t going to be deterred. As his feet hit the steel walkway that ran around the station near sea level, Carter felt an eerie tingle building inside him. His senses came alive. It was something he hadn’t felt before. Something made his heart rate spike. His heartbeat was as fast as his feet hammering the steel while he ran.

Carter looked over his shoulder. There was still nobody else around. He turned a corner on the southeast side of the station, and that’s when he felt the icy cold hand of something grabbing his shoulder. Lunging around to strike whoever was playing with him, Carter froze in his tracks. He knew he felt something grabbing at him, but he couldn’t see anything but the darkness of the early morning.

“Get a grip,” he told himself out loud. “There’s nobody here.”

When he turned back to go on with his run, Carter was face to face with a woman. She was stunningly beautiful and mystifying at the same time. He stuttered a hello, trying to find the words to talk to the caramel-complected beauty. Her long auburn hair flowed down and in front of her shoulders, framing her flawless features perfectly. As he stared into her chestnut brown eyes, the tunnel vision he was experiencing slowly faded and allowed him to see that she stood before him without any clothes.

“Um,” he stammered, “Are you alright?”

Carter knew everybody assigned to the Oceanic. This wasn’t a member of the staff or crew, so he wondered who she was and where she came from. The roughnecks had brought girls in from the mainland before, but he hadn’t heard anything about them having guests come in to entertain. There’d been no mention of approved visitors coming to see anyone, much less the working girls that occasionally would be allowed to chopper in and out.

“Who are you?” he asked, taking off his sweatshirt and offering it to the woman.

As she held it in her hand, she quizzically looked at it with the curiosity of a small child. Carter told her she could put it on and asked again if she was all right. The woman simply smiled at him, her eyes locking on his. As she approached him, the sweatshirt slowly fell to the steel beneath them.

“Wait,” he stuttered, “What are you doing?”

“I’m here for you,” said the woman, wrapping her arms around him.

Carter looked around the area, thinking he was being tested. He saw no one watching and looking at this tight-bodied specimen of a woman as she reached up to put her arms around him. Carter felt a different kind of sensation growing over him.

“Who are you,” he whispered, wrapping his arms around the stunning creature pressing against him.

In the middle of his lust-filled confusion, he barely noticed the foulest stench enveloping the gangway. The woman put her lips to Carter's, and he reciprocated, lost in the moment. His hands started moving freely over the bare flesh of the strange creature holding him. He felt himself being pulled into her, the two becoming one they were so tightly bound together.

As his passions boiled, and Carter fell completely under the spell of the captivating creature, his lips roamed down the side of her face, finding her neck and shoulders. He slowly tasted every inch of her as he explored her uncovered, fleshy body. As she began to move her hands down his chest, finding the waistband of his shorts, the stench around him grew stronger.

Carter didn’t see her changing, but her face began to morph into something bizarre. Her skin aged a thousand years, and her face transformed. Her once seductive lips and flawlessly kissable features opened, revealing the sharp, gangly rows of teeth. Between her thighs, as Carter’s hand roamed, opened another non-human orifice. An aged and foul stench poured out of the cavity Carter’s fingers slowly hunted for, and it revealed rows of jagged teeth waiting for an intrusion.

“What the fuck!” he screamed suddenly, as a blinding, white hot pain encompassed his hand.

Carter pulled his hand back to see a bloody stump where the tip of his finger once was. He pushed the creature away and grabbed his finger with the other hand, squeezing it tightly to stop the bleeding. Carter turned and ran from her, his feet banging heavily against the steel as his heart pounded in fear. This hadn’t happened, he thought to himself. Wake up, he told himself as he prayed that he was having a nightmare. But as the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps grew closer, he knew this was real.

Leave me alone, he begged as he looked over his shoulder and the woman, her face now more human. Carter felt weaker as he turned the southwest corner. He ran toward the next turn, begging to get to the lift before she caught him. Carter screamed for help. He knew he was in danger, but there was hardly anyone working in the night.

As he turned inward, toward the middle of the station, he could see the lifts. He wanted to speed up, but his energy was gone. He was running only on adrenaline and fear. Carter hit the button on the life station as he got to it but suddenly felt the power of his pursuer as she tackled him.

The creature-like woman pushed him to the ground and mounted him quickly. She held him to the steely plated platform outside the lift station. Slowly, she turned her eyes to his, mythically holding onto his gaze. He couldn’t stop staring at her, even as his energy was quickly flowing from his body. Somehow, he felt what was happening. It felt like she was draining him of his essence, even his very soul. As the fluorescent lighting slowly started to fade away, he saw her mouth again; that jagged toothed horror of a mouth was coming down on him. The last thing he felt were the stoney-like teeth of the thing that was taking his life away. With his one last breath, Carter uttered.

“Who are you?”

A chopper was kicking up tons of snow and debris as it landed in a remote area. As it touched down, Jonas Quinn opened the door and stepped out, tempted to kiss the ground beneath his feet. There was something about military chopper pilots that made his hatred of flying more pronounced. He took in a cold breath of air, quickly realizing he needed to get into a shelter.

“Are you Professor Quinn,” yelled a young woman.

“I’m Jonas Quinn, but I’m not a professor. I’m working on that still,” he admitted to the young Indian woman.

“Follow me, if you will,” she told him.

Jonas followed the woman across the snowy, rocky terrain. They stepped into a large tent near a generator. Jonas felt the temperature change as he entered. They had a portable system to heat the tents and generators to power the equipment. The group had spared no expense setting up base camp. As Jonas set his gear down, he marveled at the logistics already written on a board. They had everything planned out, except for the strange weather ravaging the region.

“I’m Anu Pataki,” the woman introduced herself. “I’m the assigned coordinator for the expedition. I’ve got all the permits, equipment, and weapons your employer requested.”

Jonas wondered aloud, “Weapons?”

“Why yes,” she explained. “After what the last team discovered they requested permits for an armed escort to the cavern. Think of them like condoms,” she laughed.

Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have one, thought Jonas. He looked in one of the crates, and there were several assault rifles and ten pistols. There were enough weapons on hand for everyone to be armed. He hadn’t expected the arsenal, but remembering the pictures from the village, it made sense.

“Have they completed the drone incursions?”

Anu shook her head. “The weather has made visibility impossible at that height. The storm yesterday was so thick that we could barely see the opening, even with binoculars.”

“What about today?” he asked.

“We were planning on sending up the first drone after lunch. We should be able to get a better look at what’s inside as your team prepares to go up there,” she explained in detail.

A howling wind rushed through the valley. It was unlike winds ever before it, sounding like the howl of a mighty beast. Jonas looked outside the tent, cautiously surveying the bustling activity and people scurrying about. Many were looking around the area, concerned by the howls they had heard.

“In all my travels,” Anu admitted, “I’ve never heard winds carry the sounds of the hell hound. It’s been unnerving since that began.”

Jonas wondered when it started, but she cut him off before he could say what he was thinking. The hellhound howl in the valley began after the cavern opened; it began when Jane Doe crawled out of that hole in the side of the mountain. The two looked at each other, both realizing the connection meant something, and probably not something good.

“You’ve had a long flight. It’ll be tomorrow before you can start your way up. Why not get some rest?”

With a nod, he agreed that her advice was the right thing to do. Anu showed him to his tent. He was glad to see that each tent had access to power and heat. It was cold enough that pissing outside was going to be an uncomfortable situation, but sleeping in enough layers to stay warm made sleep nearly impossible. He thanked Anu for showing him around, and she promised to come get him when the drone operation was ready. He had a few hours and just enough time to take a much-needed nap.