SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest

When they stopped to catch a breath and take stock of their surroundings for a second, Flynn pressed home his advantage. “You bloody well will be if we don’t stay ahead of… whatever the hell that was.” The ex-soldier gave his charge a cold, emotionless smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

The archaeologist peeled off a pair of round spectacles and rubbed at them with the corner of his shirt. He perched the glasses back onto his nose and pushed them up to the bridge. His hands were shaking violently. He used the mundane act to try and ground himself while his brain attempted to process the carnage they had just seen. “I’m an archaeologist, Mr Flynn, not an Olympic sprinter.”

Colby Flynn turned his steely-cold, pale-green eyes onto the quivering academic, rammed home a new clip and primed his sidearm in front of the man. That always got their attention. Sliding the bolt back on the Glock 17 made that gloriously satisfying cher-chunk sound that all movie scriptwriters love. It acted as an underline, emphasising his determination to go down fighting no matter what. It also helped to make the archaeologist more frightened of Flynn than the thing that was currently snuffling and snarling its way towards them. And that was a good thing. Because it would mean the bolshy academic would now do what he was told for a change. “Good. That increases my chances, then.”

The bespectacled, owl-like man blinked curiously at Flynn. “What?”

“It means, buddy, that while mister bitey back there is chowing down and ripping your throat out like he did with your mate, he won’t be gnashing on me, will he?”

Oh no. Not again…

A snorting, snuffling sound that was so thick and black you could chew it like a piece of liquorice imposed on their momentary pause. “Seriously, will you just fuck off, you bastard!” Flynn abused the darkness and then emptied a volley of shots into nothing. Whether it actually made any real difference or not, he couldn’t tell. But whatever was back there yelped and snarled. Flynn hoped that the swarm of hollow-points at least gave the bastard cause to pause so they could focus on running again.

Move! For fuck’s sake, move!” Flynn spun the archaeologist around and shoved him hard. “I’ve got your back. As long as you stay in front of me.” Flynn put his mouth next to the sweating man’s ear. “And yet, you’re… still… here?”

The archaeologist suddenly developed a surprisingly-fast turn of speed for a Cambridge academic.

Normally, Flynn wouldn’t give anyone a head start. This wasn’t a school egg and spoon race where the ‘special kids’ got to jog a few steps before everyone else set off, and it was the ‘taking part that mattered, not the winning, little buddy’. This was a slime-covered stone corridor lined with spluttering, flickering lightbulbs that had been Jerry-rigged by Micky Cox — an ex-REME armed with a screwdriver, a happy disposition, and a real ‘MacGyver’ approach to fixing shit. Their only source of light was being produced by a wheezing, 40-year-old generator with carburettor problems combined with mile upon mile of gaffer-taped cable. And there wasn’t some happy-clappy teaching assistant cheering them on. There was a five-hundred-and-seventy-year-old psychopath with a taste for blood, violence and carnage just a few turns behind them. And he — or it, whatever the hell it was — was playing with them, the sick, twisted little bastard.

Flynn needed the archaeologist alive. What was in professor brainiac’s balding little noggin might just keep him and his team in one piece, if he could get the egghead to the safety of the citadel’s old armoury that was currently doubling as a control centre for the dig. Damn it, if he was going to be paid to babysit an academic, he’d make sure the son of a bitch stayed alive.

The twisting, turning corridors were slick with algae. These dungeons and corridors were built well below the natural water table and a musky, foetid atmosphere permeated every inch of the subterranean labyrinth. Rivulets of water seeped down and followed the channels between the huge blocks of granite. There was no mortar holding these blocks together. Stone like this didn’t need cement to keep it in place. These tunnels — deep under what would have been a massive, imposing castle — had thousands of tons of masonry and rock pressing down on them.