Dark Dream

16. Samuel Woolf

"Please put all my calls on hold." Samuel said, through the intercom.

"Yes Sir, Mr. Wolf," the receptionist said nervously. She was new.

"Thank you."

"Will there be anything else?"

"No, just some time alone."

He withdrew his hand from the intercom and rested it on the green leather that topped his desk. He had no answers for what lay ahead.

Armed teams had been sent into sewers and basements. It was thought these creatures used these access points, through-ways and hideaways to seek out their prey. Large holes had been found in subterranean walls, blown out to aid movement from basement to basement. Crude tunnels had been formed to link the sewers with these dark pockets of dank air.

Sometimes they found these holes with dust still settling and sometimes they even felt the vibrations and the thunderous rumble as new routes were developed as they approached.

Although their creature's strength was formidable, dense concrete or steel impeded their rapid progress through the subterranean networks, hobbled together from modern and Victorian excavations.

Their confidence in this theory grew as they looked more closely at the data coming in. They felt safe in their concrete bunkers. Safe in the knowledge that these things had a limit to their strength.  Invisible phantoms they appeared to be but they could not change shape and get through smaller spaces than their bodies would allow. far from human but still bound by the same rules. One of the rules, they hoped, was they could die.

Toxic gas canisters were used, where possible. All manner of weapons were employed in an attempt to see which were more affective.  Strange though it sounded, these things anticipated their every move, sensing their tactics and adapting and learning faster and better than they ever could. One by one, their people found themselves without backup. Their radio and life signs would flat-line and their bodies would never be found.

Movement detectors that could  see through solid concrete or brick gave them the illusion of safety but the second sight of their enemies seemed far greater. While the operator placed the device against the wall in front of them, the enemy could materialise behind them or even from the floor or ceiling.  Exploding onto the scene like a Jack in the Box. Random gunfire would be the last they heard. This pattern repeated until they lost all contact with their people in the field. Their monitors would cease all activity and they would be left feeling empty.

Less and less were people being sent down in this way, merely to find the enemies' weaknesses? 

There was none.

They were starting to think their enemy was actively reading their minds. How else could their every move be determined?

Samuel opened a side cabinet and fished out a bottle of Jack Daniel's. Resting a heavy glass next to the bottle, he poured himself a double. Hesitating, he poured another double.

Savouring the aroma, he took a drink. He felt the warmth rush through him.

As the body count grew, teams were sent down to booby-trap these secret places. Big explosions were not an option because they did not want to destroy the buildings and sewers that these things lived-in. 

Sleeping darts and then deadly poisons were used with no obvious effect. They were finding their targets but no bodies were found after a search of the tunnels. Either they were impervious or their dead or sleeping bodies were being carried away by their counterparts.

Miniature tracking devices were also used to varying success. These tags helped track their movements by sticking to the creature's bodies, sending out a signal to installed receivers within the tunnels. If armed teams were sent in, the creatures would quickly react and move at high-speed. Much faster than a man could ever hope to.

Eventually it was decided to seal off the tunnels with thick metal bars and to weld down all the utility holes on the streets above. This had been done in other more sensitive areas to much affect. Now it was rolled out across the grid.

It was thought if their hiding places were taken out, they would have no choice but to surface. Battles were easily lost below ground so perhaps they would have more luck on the surface?

Of course, this did not work out once it was employed across the board as these things learned to tunnel round the barriers or make extra routes for themselves, tunnel to tunnel. They also started to use the subway more often, taking their chances with the fast moving trains and the revealing train lights.

CCTV footage, gained from the trains, was further analysed when they were caught jumping to safety. Their speed and reflexes were amazing and they rarely got a good picture in the bright light of the train. They were a blur on the senses. Even when flicked through frame by frame their forms looked out of focus and blurred. 

Of those reported missing, few had successfully escaped the maul of these creatures. Those who did were hard to interview. The authorities employed medication and counselling to bring descriptions out of the traumatised minds of the survivors' and onto paper or tape where it could be viewed in  plain-site.

Sadly, even hypnosis only worked to varying degrees. It was like landing a slippery eel or snapping shark. Each time they got close, the memory would shut the mind of the subject down with a snap and they would go into a catatonic coma which they often never recovered from. Their fishing skills just couldn't hook that all important information that they so desperately sought.

Their subconscious, poked and prodded, to reveal the nature of their attackers, seemed ill equipped to work under such strain. Just like the CCTV footage, the harder they looked, the harder it was to see. They seemed reluctant to reveal themselves to anyone except those they met face-to-face.

It was decided that their population was increasing (born out by movement counters and sightings); along with the steep increase in disappearances. They started using automated guns.

These gun turrets sensed the creature's heat signature and fired off rapid bursts of exploding rounds. The action was observed from above, and the mobile teams would move in to recover any body parts.

They would also reload the gun, once down there, as experience told them the guns had a limited life without bullets. They were quickly ripped off their mountings and destroyed, if left empty for too long.

Finally, they sensed they had hit a weak spot. The creatures seemed unable to sense inanimate objects like they could flesh and blood. They were taken unawares by this new strategy.

Finally their blood was shed, and put under the microscope.

Until this time they had no eyewitness account of these creatures. Any digital footage they had came up blank; they were like phantoms plaguing their world. Their genetic code was complex but simple, only having in it what was needed. They had no dormant code in their DNA, leftover remnants from past mutations both failed and successful, they seemed engineered to the point of perfection. They seemed mostly human but were fundamentally alien in origin.

It was at this point they knew only retrieval of bigger specimens would help them piece together a better picture of what these things were. Automated guns had been effective at catching these monsters off guard but the video footage of the advancing action had shown the creatures were merely winged by the rapid-fire and quickly moved out of range of the mounted turrets. 

This was when it was decided to use bear type traps to get one alive or dead or even just take off a piece of their unknown anatomy. Fixed to either the ceiling or floor they either spring loaded or employed a far more up-to-date mechanism that used compressed air to fire them off. Both traps worked well and over the coming months, they set up more and more of these traps below ground.

Legs were severed and retrieved using the spring loaded types but it was the upper body they most wanted. To be more specific, they wanted a head.

Finally it happened, the very thing they had hunted for the most had come to pass. Now they had the promise of finally seeing the phantom which CCTV cameras, from around the world, had not been able to show them.

Finally, they could finally look on the face of their enemy. Samuel Woolf's stomach lurched at the prospect and he downed the last of his Jack Daniels.