Excerpt from Hellmouth

Hellmouth is an adventure/horror novel about a group of engineers and scientists who discover what looks like the biblical version of Hell while on a deep-drill project in Africa. Or is it perhaps something else less supernatural; a physical realm beneath the earth with new lifeforms, or another dimension that only looks like Hell – one that perhaps inspired our images of that place? The only way to find out for sure is to explore it themselves. Along the way, science, religion, love and betrayal all clash as they discover truths about themselves, each other, and even the nature of life-and-death reality.

Excerpt:

The jeep bounced and bucked over the choppy terrain, and the men clung to their safety straps as if they were in a rough sea. Duke drove, keeping his attention on the ground in front of the jeep, while Lee kept his eyes on the lone figure walking through the landscape like a dark wraith, appearing and disappearing from view as the jeep rose and fell over the ground.

They crested a small incline coming out of a shallow dry streambed and were suddenly within twenty yards of the figure.

Lee tapped Duke’s arm, “Good enough.”

Duke slammed on the brakes and the jeep slid to a halt in the dry, sandy soil.

They climbed out and watched the figure stumble toward them.

It was a man wearing the blue coveralls of an Endeavor rig hand. Dark hair flopped down over a pale face and loose arms dangled at his sides. He walked with a strange jolting stride, as if he was slightly off-balance, or not paying any attention to the uneven ground he was walking over. There was a long, dark stain down one leg of the coveralls.

He walked straight toward the jeep, but didn’t seem to notice Lee and Duke, who were standing directly in his path.

Lee called out, “Hey, are you all right? Who are you? We’re from Endeavor.”

The man didn’t reply. He drew up to them and Duke had to step aside so the man didn’t actually walk right into him. The man didn’t seem to notice him at all.

“Look at his face,” Duke said and walked to keep up to the guy as he went past.

The man’s face was very pale, his eyes dull and milky. His mouth hung open and his lower lip wiggled loosely, though Lee thought he could see the guy’s jaw working, like he was speaking to himself.

Duke reached out and grabbed the man’s bare forearm, “Hey, buddy, hold up there – Jesus!” He yanked his hand back quickly.

Lee was reaching out to put a hand on the guy’s chest to stop him, “What is it?”

Duke was looking at his hand, “The guy’s burning up!”

The man didn’t try to avoid Lee and walked right into Lee’s hand.

Lee’s palm hit the guy square in the chest and it felt like he’d put his hand on a warm stove. Even through heavy denim fabric and likely an undershirt, the guy’s body heat was immediately obvious.

The man was still walking forward, pushing Lee backward. Lee dug in to hold his ground and the guy finally stopped moving and stood still. Lee was about to speak to him when the guy’s head dropped down to his chest, as if he were suddenly exhausted, and his legs buckled. He collapsed at Lee’s feet like a broken doll.

They both knelt beside him and Duke turned him over. The man’s cloudy eyes stared up past them at the endless blue sky. 

Duke put his fingers at the man’s neck, “Heat stroke, or…what the hell?” He took his fingers off the man’s neck and put his hand on the chest.

Lee was staring at the man’s eyes, confused, “What is it?”

Duke was incredulous, “The guy’s dead!”

“What?”

Duke put his ear to the man’s chest, “No pulse, no breathing. He’s dead.”

“Jesus Christ,” Lee grabbed the man’s chin and tilted the head back, “Give me some compressions.”

Duke started CPR, placing both palms down on the man’s chest and giving him thirty rapid compressions in a row. He leaned back and Lee fastened his mouth over the man’s, blowing in hard. He felt incredible heat from the lips and almost gagged at the whiff of a terrible odor coming from the man’s mouth. It was the unmistakable smell of rotting meat.

He pulled back as Duke applied more compressions and the smell worsened, becoming an invisible cloud in the air between them.

Lee put out a hand to stop Duke, “Hold on, hold on.”

Duke stopped and looked at him, “What? We have to-”

Lee shook his head, “I…don’t understand, but…this guy is dead.”

“I know! We-”

“No, I mean, this guy is dead dead. Really dead. You smell that?” Lee waved his hand around.

Duke wrinkled his nose, “Yeah…but-”

“And look at him,” Lee pointed at the man’s face.

They both leaned over the body, wincing against the odor. The man’s face was almost white, the lips blue in the corners, splotches of yellow and purple, like bruising, were on the cheeks. The face looked sunken and dry, the skin flaky and almost desiccated.

“The eyes,” Duke whispered.

The man’s eyes were cloudy, but not from cataracts or some other internal occlusions.

They were covered in a film of dust.

*****

The medic looked up at Duke, “Tell me again where you dug this guy up?”

Lee paced at the end of the table, his arms folded in impatience, “We didn’t dig him up. I told you-”

Duke cut in, “Bobby, like I said, this guy was walking around out there, basically heading this way. Lee saw him and we went out-”

“Bullshit,” the medic shook his head and flashed an apologetic look at Lee, “Uh, sorry, boss, but this guy hasn’t done any walking for a couple days, I can tell you that.”

Duke tapped the table with a sausage-thick finger, “He was walking I tell you. He came right up to us, walked past me, right into Lee and then just fell down in front of us.”

Bobby pointed at the corpse, “This guy has been dead and in the sun drying out for at least two days, Duke.” 

He drew his finger down the length of the torso, over the opened coveralls. The flesh underneath was as pale as that of the face, the skin of the abdomen stretched taut, “He’s as ripe as the last plum on the tree. If I stick so much as a needle in there, he’s going to explode all over this table.”

Lee grimaced at the image, “Then how do you explain it?”

“I can’t, so I won’t. What you guys are telling me simply can’t happen.”

“Not only was he walking,” Duke protested, “this guy was boiling hot at the time. The heat was radiating off him.”

Bobby patted the pale arm, “Well he’s definitely cold now.”

Duke sighed, “Bobby…”

The medic put up a hand, “I’m not calling you liars. I’m just saying that what you’re describing simply is not possible. It’s unbelievable in fact. Dead guys don’t walk all over the African countryside and this,” he waved a hand at the corpse, “is definitely a dead guy.”

They all stared at each other over the body for a few seconds.

Duke looked at Lee, “So where does this leave us?”

Lee looked at the corpse without really seeing it, “This is only one of nine men stationed here. We have to find out where the others are.”

Duke pointed at the ceiling, “I’ve got Rich up in the chopper right now doing a spiral search out from here. If anyone else is walking around out there,” he shot a glance at Bobby, “he’ll spot them and let us know.”

Lee nodded, “Okay. Beyond that, we have to find out what the hell happened at the rig. Any progress on that?”

“Before we went out on this,” Duke pointed at the corpse, “Jimmy told me he was almost finished with the recovery program rebuild. That was over an hour ago, so he should be done, or close to it.”

“And you said we were ready to go fishing?”

“Should be by now. We can’t set up on the main deck as it’s still too unstable, but the guys ran the fishing cables up from the ground and over the end of the collapsed deck crane. It should be good enough just for lowering the camera rig, but I wouldn’t put too much weight on it by trying to haul anything up.”

Lee nodded approval, “Noted. Let’s get a look down there first and then see what we need to do.” He turned to the medic, “Bobby, can you try to figure out what killed this guy?”

“I’m not a pathologist, Lee. I can’t-”

“Please, Bobby. We need to find out what happened to the guys here and it’d be a week to wait if we have to ship him out.”

Bobby looked at the body with distaste and nodded slowly, “All right. I really don’t want to, but I can go over him, cut into him a bit and maybe figure out anything that’s obvious, but no promises. And you’ll have to take the heat if there’s any flak from the company or his family.”

Lee nodded, “It’s all on me. Thanks, Bobby, it’s that important.”

They both headed out. Just outside the door, Lee almost ran into Angeline, who was about to enter.

“Oh there you are,” she blurted. She looked as impatient as Lee had ever seen her.

He tried to go around her, but she stepped in front of him, “I heard you found someone out there. How is he?”

Duke raised his eyebrows at Lee and just kept going.

Lee didn’t even know how to respond to her, so he just shot a thumb over his shoulder, “He’s…in there. Go see for yourself.”

He made to go around her again, but she put a hand up, “Wait. You look weird. What’s going on? I’ve got Corporate breathing down my neck about a restart and no one can give me an answer. Brent-”

Lee didn’t want to hear anything about Corporate or the company’s CEO, Brent Copeland, “Ang, I can’t tell you much right now, but maybe in a couple hours. We’re about to drop a camera down the shaft and the computers should be up and running soon. Can you and Brent just wait a bit?”

His tone was sharp and he saw her reaction immediately. Her eyes darkened and a furrow appeared between them.

She opened her mouth, but he flashed her a fake smile, “I’m sorry, but I really should be on the rig. Bobby will talk to you all you want about walking corpses,” he stepped around her and headed away. 

She watched him go with one hand on the door to the medical room, completely perplexed, Walking corpses?

It was one of the few times in their professional or personal relationship that she didn’t get the last word in.

I hope you enjoyed this excerpt from Hellmouth. You can find out more about it on my blog here and you can find all of my currently published novels on my Amazon website:

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