Prey Read online

  PREY

  by

  Jon F. Merz

  Don't miss the Lawson Vampire Adventures by Jon F. Merz!

  The Fixer

  The Invoker

  The Destructor

  The Syndicate

  The Courier

  The Kensei

  The Infiltrator

  The Shepherd

  The Enchanter

  Interlude

  The Price of a Good Drink

  Red Tide

  Rudolf the Red Nosed Rogue

  Enemy Mine

  Visit the author on his website: Jon F. Merz

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Epilogue

  Author's Note

  Prologue

  Alex Waters brushed a fresh layer of ice from his goggles and looked again.

  The opening was there.

  Not really a cave so much as a fissure in the frozen rock that jutted out of the barren icescape, reaching up for the overcast sky.

  Alex had never seen the fissure before.

  Of course, topographical overlays for this part of Antarctica were sketchy at best. Despite the latest advances in satellite topography, the changing snows uncovered as much as they covered. In most instances, yesterday's maps were rendered obsolete after only a week out of the printer back at base.

  "You see it?"

  Alex turned. He hadn't heard Jim come up behind him. But with the roaring wind rushing in his ears, Jim's shout hadn't startled him, either. Instead of trying to talk back, Alex simply nodded.

  "What do you think?"

  Another shout. Alex turned and smiled through the sudden whip of wind that sent a sheet of snow horizontally across his face. "We could check it out."

  Jim smiled back. Of course he did. Jim lives for this shit, thought Alex. The daredevil crazy wanna-be Indiana Jones type of geologist who'd come down to the bottom of the world because he thought it would be cool.

  Cool.

  Fuck me, this is stone cold, thought Alex. Even my piss freezes inside my dick.

  Jim tapped him on the shoulder and gestured behind them. They'd need to use the Snowcat to get closer to the mountain itself. Trying to walk the distance, even though it was just a few hundred yards, would exhaust them and needlessly subject them to the cold.

  Alex followed Jim back and climbed into the cab. Jim gunned the engine and then slid the tracked vehicle into drive. Instantly, the caterpillar treads bit into the ice sheet beneath them and found purchase. With a lurch, the Snowcat thundered forward.

  Jim whistled in the steamy cab. Alex cleared his throat.

  Jim stopped whistling. "You think it might lead somewhere?"

  Alex shrugged. "Where could it lead? It's a mountain. Probably only place it will lead us is into rock a few feet in, if that."

  "Yeah. I suppose."

  "What - you looking for something else?"

  Jim shrugged. "Be nice to, you know, find something new."

  "Maybe some cave paintings or something like that?"

  "I'm not that naive, Alex."

  "I don't think we'll find anything but more rock." He grinned. "But you're a geologist anyway - isn't that what you'd want to find?"

  "Looking at rocks gets boring after a while. I'd like to find something that would spice up my stay down here."

  "You've got a few more months yet, pal."

  "Unlike you."

  Alex nodded. His stint at the research station was due to end next week. He could hardly wait to climb aboard the specially outfitted C-130 that landed on giant skis and head back to civilization.

  Warm civilization.

  "What's the first thing you're gonna do?"

  "Lay out in the sun."

  "You can do that here."

  "I want to feel the sun, idiot. Anyone who thinks it's cool to put sun block on when it's minus thirty degrees outside is out of their noggin."

  Jim chuckled. "I'm telling Mayra when we get back you said that."

  "I didn't mention her specifically."

  "Who the hell else goes out trying to get a tan when the rest of us are trying to stay warm?"

  Alex smirked. "Fair one."

  Jim stepped on the brakes. "Here we are."

  Alex peered through the windshield that the wipers swept constantly trying to keep clear. Towering in front of them, the mountain seemed even more omnipotent than it had a few minutes before.

  "You think we can get up there?"

  Jim sucked his lower lip. "Probably. We gotta try at least. We've come this far. We go and give it a whirl. If we can't do it, we head back."

  "We ought to be heading back anyway. We've been out for a while now."

  "Base control is used to us being out for hours on these exploratory outings anyway. They won't get worried unless we're not back to cook dinner or wash the dishes."

  "Did you bring the rope?"

  "In back."

  Alex hopped out and felt the instant stinging of the frigid temperature. He glanced around. Only the specially coated goggles he wore allowed him to distinguish features in the otherwise white terrain.

  Antarctica. Jesus Christ, who would have thought he'd end up here? Certainly not anyone back in his hometown of Boise, Idaho. But then again, none of the people Alex had grown up with had shown any degree of ambition whatsoever anyway.

  Even Alex had come to this stage of his life late. Following a failed childless marriage that left him without a house or anywhere to go, he'd gone back to school and studied meteorology.

  Maybe he'd come here because it was the furthest place he could go to get away from everything he'd left behind.

  All the memories. All the sorrow. All the hell.

  As much as he was ready to go back to the relative warmth of anywhere else on the planet, Alex admired the peacefulness of the ever-white canvas that surrounded him. Unblemished, unspoiled, unmarred, it was one of the last places on earth man hadn't really screwed over.

  He'd leave here changed, he decided. No one who came to the largest continent ever went home the same way again.

  And that was fine with him.

  A sudden shrill whistle brought him back to reality.

  "You done meditating over there?"

  Alex hurried over to the base of the mountain. Above them, some ten feet off the ground along a thin lip of outcropping, he could see the fissure more clearly. It reminded him of the way a broken zipper looked on a pair of old pants.

  Jim was busy hammering in crampons to the rock. It wasn't much of a height at all, but even a fall from ten feet could be fatal out in the cold of Antarctica.

  He glanced at Alex. "Can you rig the rope?"

  Alex bent and started running the line through the c
rampons that would enable one of them to belay the other on the climb up. Once the first man reached the lip, he would then be able to help the other up.

  They finished in five minutes. Jim studied the positioning of the crampons and nodded to himself. "I'll go first."

  He ran a length of the rope through a carbiner belt and handed the slack to Alex who stood some distance back from the base.

  Alex watched him place a foot in a pockmarked depression and then search for two handholds. Jim found them and then hoisted himself up, his left foot searching for a fresh support. Alex watched him carefully. He would have to travel the same path in a minute or two.

  Jim made it to the lip and signaled Alex up.

  Alex ran the rope through his own belt and then studied the rock face carefully, recalling the path Jim had just traveled. He stepped into the first support, found the handholds and heaved off. His breathing felt labored. That was to be expected since he was wearing almost thirty pounds of specially designed clothing that would help keep him warm in the harshest weather Momma Nature could hurl his way.

  He felt Jim's hand grasp his a minute later. He huffed and pulled himself up to the lip with a final grunt.

  "Little tougher than it looks, huh?"

  Alex sucked some wind and nodded. It had been.

  Jim leaned close to the fissure. Alex could see it was roughly five feet high and maybe three feet wide. Just enough space for a man to get through.

  Jim looked back at Alex and smiled. "Going for it."

  "Keep the rope on in case you step into a crevasse."

  "A crevasse in a mountain?"

  "You never know."

  Jim shrugged and ducked through the opening. Blackness seemed to swallow him up and Alex suddenly felt very alone standing on the lip of the mountain. Even the Snowcat below him looked smaller.

  Wind kicked up, making him wobble for a moment. He felt his legs tense up, afraid he might fall. But then he bent his knees and leaned back into the mountain.

  The wind passed.

  At his feet, the rope's slack continued to decrease. Obviously, the fissure didn't end a few feet in. Jim must have found his cave after all.

  But there wouldn't be any paintings, would there?

  Alex had heard the bizarre theories for years. Fringe scientists and evolutionists who claimed that a race of men had inhabited Antarctica thousands of years ago. They had no evidence. No cave paintings, no skeletons of frozen natives, no nothing.

  But that didn't stop them from supposing.

  And Alex found himself wondering if maybe there was a chance...

  A small one.

  "Hey."

  Alex almost jumped out of his skin. As it was Jim had to brace him. Alex turned. "You scared the hell out of me."

  "Sorry, pal. You gotta come inside and check this out."

  "Check what out?"

  "What's in here."

  "No rock?"

  "Nope."

  Alex looked at the Snowcat. "We oughta call it in."

  Jim shook his head. "Forget it, this is too cool. We can call them later. Hell, once they find out what we've got here, they'll come out anyway."

  "It's that good?"

  Jim smiled and ducked back into the darkness.

  Alex waited a moment and then followed.

  The instant he stepped through the opening, he felt the change. The roar of wind suddenly felt a million miles behind him. The air felt heavier.

  It felt warmer.

  It wasn't hot, but whereas it was well below zero outside the fissure, inside the cave it was perhaps ten degrees,

  Ten degrees!

  Ahead of him, he could see the glow of Jim's flashlight bouncing along. Alex stumbled to keep up.

  Jim stopped. "You feel the change?"

  "Warmer."

  "Yeah."

  "Some sort of thermal updraft?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Then what?"

  "Let's keep walking."

  They traveled two hundred yards in to the mountain itself. Only Jim's flashlight kept them from tripping over the jagged rock edges poking out of the floor. Alex wondered what could have carved out the channel in the mountain itself. He ran a gloved hand over the wall. The edges were sharp. Not done by water, he surmised.

  But what?

  He bumped into Jim.

  He stopped.

  Jim squatted. "Look."

  Alex knelt down and removed his goggles. The temperature change felt more pronounced now. It must have been almost 32 degrees this far into the mountain. Balmy by comparison to the world they'd just left behind.

  Jim was pointing to an opening barely big enough to get a hand through. Light spilled out of it. Alex put his head down and tried to look.

  Green?

  He shook his head. Couldn't be. He looked again.

  And now he could make out the green.

  Blues. Reds.

  Color.

  From what?

  "Flowers."

  Alex backed away from the hole. "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "Those are flowers in there. We're looking down on them."

  "Don't be ridiculous. There can't be flowers in there. We're inside a mountain for god's sakes."

  "Take another look."

  Alex peered back through. As much as his logical mind couldn't accept it, he could clearly make out the edges of leaves and petals some distance below him. But how? How in the frozen landscape was this possible?"

  He eased back and looked at Jim. "We'd better radio base."

  Jim smiled. "Yeah."

  They started back. Jim leading the way again. "Did you ever hear stories about Shangri-La?"

  "Myths," said Alex. "Supposed to be a place over near Bhutan. At the base of the Himalayas there was supposed to be some tropical paradise. No one's ever found it."

  "A team from National Geographic found something a few years back. I don't know what ever happened to the report, though since it got hushed up awful quick."

  "You think we've found our own tropical paradise?"

  "You can't argue with the flowers."

  "Not until I confirm what they are."

  "Can you imagine how incredible a find this is? Flora in Antarctica. Incredible! We'll be famous - you and I."

  Alex wasn't sure how famous he wanted to be.

  "We'll need more lights."

  Jim's flashlight beam disappeared.

  "Shit."

  "What's the matter?"

  "Batteries must be dead."

  "Didn't you bring the hand pump one?"

  "That thing sucks."

  "Well, it never goes out."

  "Hang on a second. Don't move it's rough footing. You'll break a leg if you aren't careful."

  "Where are you going?"

  "Back to the opening."

  "I can follow."

  "Too risky. I've made the trip twice already."

  "I'm connected by the rope. I can stumble along."

  "Forget it. Just hang here a second and I'll be right back."

  "Jim, it's goddamn dark in here."

  "Jesus Alex, just chill out a second, okay. I'll be right back."

  Alex leaned back into the cave wall and sighed. "Go already."

  "Five minutes. No more."

  Alex could hear the scraping of Jim's feet as he moved off down the cave away from him. From the sound of it, Jim wasn't as sure-footed as he claimed to be. Twice he heard him stumble and swear loudly.

  Alex almost smiled.

  The darkness around him seemed absolute. He looked back the way they'd come trying to see the light from the small opening with the flowers but he couldn't see a thing. He looked toward the opening of the fissure - where Jim had just gone.

  He couldn't see anything ahead of him, either.

  He could hear his breathing. Surprised at how fast and labored he sounded, he tried to calm himself down. He couldn't remember ever being really afraid of the dark. But then again, he'd never really been in
absolute darkness before. Most times, he could see shapes and shadows from ambient light.

  He couldn't see anything right now.

  But he could hear things.

  An odd scrape sounded somewhere ahead of him. Alex frowned.

  "Jim?"

  The sound stopped.

  Alex felt his eyes squinting. As if that would help.

  "Don't dick around with me, Jim. This is not the time or the place for this shit."

  The sudden scream sounded much further away than the scrape. Alex recognized Jim's wail.

  "What th-?"

  He started running toward the scream. But then it died as quickly as it had begun.

  And once again, the silence loomed heavy over him.

  Had Jim fallen? Alex felt his lungs heaving as he tripped and fell down the corridor. He bumped his head off the rock wall twice, smelling a sudden draw of coppery blood. It streamed down his face from the cut by the temple.

  He might need stitches.

  His shoes felt heavy. Alex could feel his balance going and he lurched forward, crashing into the floor of the cave.

  "Goddamit!"

  His gloved hands scraped the floor and he tried to push himself off the ground.

  That's when he felt the sudden crushing weight drop on him.

  A rock?

  Breathing.

  He heard breathing.

  His own?

  Alex's lungs heaved. The weight felt like it was squeezing him to death. He tried to turn over, tried to dislodge the weight.

  A draft tickled his ear.

  Warm.

  Humid.

  And the stench of fetid...Alex gagged.

  He scrambled to get onto his back and finally felt enough room to do so.

  In the darkness, ensconced in the humid draw of breath, he saw the two glowing orbs above him, maybe ten feet away.

  And then saw them rushing in at him.

  Felt the crashing weight.

  Heard his own choked screech.

  And then the blackness swallowed him whole.

  Chapter One

  "Charlie 1-5 calling Howard Base. Come in, over."

  Julia Devereaux looked at the C-130 pilot for the third time in as many minutes. "Still nothing?"

  "No response. No, ma'am."

  Julia felt her back slump, a dull ache from hunching over the seat. She couldn't wait to get out of this damned plane. "Any chance their beacon's out?"