(a short Lara story with no disclaimer at the top)
by Tim Fletcher, 1998-99
'Which one?
'Greece? 1998? I suppose so.
'The whole story? What do you think I am?
'Ah, well that's different then, isn't it. Taking notes? It makes little difference. Look,
pay attention, because I won't repeat myself.
'Greece, 1998. Tranaj to be precise, an unpleasant little place near the coast. There were
nine of us - when we went in, that is. Argyle, Swaff, Gordonstone, Contors, Jeffries,
Masika, Rubery, Lafayette and myself. Now you know wht we were there, I'm not sure there's
anyone that doesn't, but for the sake of posterity I'll go over it again. Speckled Egg had
sent us - no, don't laugh. Is it any business of mine if a criminal mastermind wants to
call himself some dumb-ass nickname?
'Good. As I was saying, he sent us in there to get, well, we didn't know at the time, but
some gold thing. It was a huge place, all stone walls and entrances and gateways and
things. God knows how they went and bloody lost it.
'Still, we went in, all nine of us, and the first thing that clued us in to the Indiana
jones state of the place was the bloody huge great spike that came right out of the wall
at us. I was near the back at the time, but I hear it was only a bit of miraculous
contortion on Swaff's part that stopped him developing a sudden extra and far more
efficient hole in his lung.
'The tunnelly-corridor thing we were in rapidly lost its ceiling, and we found ourselves
at the start of a huge subterranean labyrinth.
'Yes, just like that one. The walls ended before the ceiling though. The ceiling just went
up and up, a vast cavern or something, with bats and all sorts living up there.
'Now, these guys I'm with, they're gunfighters and hitmen, not explorers and
archaeologists. Understandably they're a bit pissed at the prospect of finding their way
through some rat warren of a maze. So Rubery figures that if he gets up on some other
guy's shoulders , we can all just climb up on the walls and off we go. So up he gets on
Contors, and he can just about reach the top of the wall.
'"It's all sandy," he says, then clambers up. Next thing there's a horrendous
scream, and down he comes again, flesh sizzling like sausages on a barbecue. Lafayette's
the medical man, and he says Rubery's dead, first degree burns. The bitches that built
this place covered the walls in red hot sand. Still, none of us liked Rubery much. The man
was a bastard.
'So we dump the body there by the wall - which was cold, by the way, though we couldn't
see how or why - and set off for a more conventional exploration.
'Being a maze and everything, the first thing we came to, as you might expect, was a
t-junction. I know what you're going to say; don't split up, search together. You split
up, you're dead meat. You get hunted down by alien werewolves. But this is the real world,
and there were eight of us.
'So Argyle, Contors, Jeffries and Lafayette took the left, the rest of us went right. We
had radios and everything, so we could talk fine. I think Argyle was keeping a map. He was
like that. We stuck together in our groups of four: left, right, dead end, t-junction.
Argyle giving everyone hints. It looked like a pretty typical labyrinth. We were working
our way in towards something in the middle.
'Suddenly, there's this yelling and swearing coming from the radio.
'"What?" yells Swaff into his handset, "What's going on?"
'"Shit!" comes Jeffries' voice, "Took his head right off. Shit!"
'"What?"
'"A fucking six-foot long blade is what! Came right out of the damn wall. Shit!"
'It was Lafayette, we found out when they calmed down. Pressure plate, they reckoned. I
didn't think these prehistoric guys could do that kind of thing. I thought they made all
that up for King Solomon's Mines and stuff, you know? We all agreed to be just a little
more careful. The place was a flaming death trap.
<long pause>
'It went pretty smoothly for a bit, and we seemed to be getting closer to the centre. Then
something really weird happened. There was this sound, like a firework. We all
stopped and looked up in time to see a low flare illuminate the cavern. Several of us were
wearing shades - for reasons of cool, you understand. The others staggered around for a
bit, but I was watching when the bats started flapping about like clouds of flies. As they
cleared, and the light dimmed, I'll swear I could see a map of the place on the ceiling. I
suppose it could have been the heat from the sand on the walls or something. I thought I
could make out a route from where we were to the centre, in the afterimage.
'A few calls went around, and we established that none of us had fired the flare. Still,
plenty of weird shit was going on.
<long pause>
'Christ, the next thing that happened was just sick. In my group we had Swaff,
Gordonstone, Masika and myself. We had just reached a dead end - nothing interesting, we'd
had hundreds - and Gordonstone was slightly ahead of us. He waved to indicate the dead
end, and as we turned back there was this noise. I'll never forget it (I'm sure you're
familiar with the cliche), it sounded like a very, very large insect. Which it
was.
'We turned back as Gordonstone toppled backwards, the biggest-ass cockroach you have ever
seen ripping into his guts with razor-sharp legs. Gordonstone didn't even get to draw his
gun. Course, Masika has his rifle up and ready in seconds, and the metre-long bug is in
messy bits all over the wall, but that does nothing for the fact that Gordonstone has
already been shredded. I mean there was blood everywhere.
'The bug came out of a hole in the wall, and understandably we dont' want any more of
these things up our butts. So Swaff pulls out one of his tiny grenades and tosses it in.
Pretty muted explosion. No dust, shaking or anything. Another man down, off we go again.
<long pause>
'Still, traditional thing, the less of us there are, the more we each get. I'm sure that's
the greatest morale booster on the planet. So we're none too happy about this, but each of
us reasons that we're a lot smarter than the dead guys.
<long pause>
'How wrong can you be?
<long pause>
'We'll get to the good bit soon, I know that's what you're waiting for, but I'm not going
to miss bits out. The next poor sod to die was Jeffries. Pit trap, they said. You know the
sort. Sharpened wooden stakes and everything.
'So then there were five of us. Contors and Argyle over on the other side of the maze
somewhere, and Swaff, Masika and me watching our backs - and now the floor. By now we're
as scared of finding our way out as in, and Argyle's got the map. It looked, from the
ceiling thing earlier, like there were two paths into the central, well, thing, and we
were each going for one.
'Things went on - corridor, corner, junction, corridor again - and we checked the dead
ends a little more thoroughly this time. We must have been down there an hour by then.
Swaff was sweating, and Masika looked pissed off. I was knackered. Trudging around a maze
underground will do that to you, you'll find.
'Suddenly Swaff stopped, and held up his hand. We froze, and I'm sure I heard light
footsteps halt just after ours. Now Swaff knew the old London thieves' sign, like me, so I
signalled that we were being followed. He agreed, but by what neither of us particularly
wanted to think about. It was probably human. So now we've got to watch behind us as well.
'Masika found it though, whatever it was. The big lunk was coming back from a dead end,
then he yelled and raised his gun. Next thing you know he's dead, bullet through the
forehead, and footfalls were receding away from us.
'"We lost Masika," reported Swaff to the other two, "Someone's in here with
us, and they're armed. Watch yourselves."
'Ten minutes later, Contors went down too. First we knew was a yell we could hear from
across the maze. Then Contors started up with his uzi - never a subtle man - which
abruptly stopped with a single gunshot from our unseen assailant. How they got from our
side to the other we never found out.
'Then we had Argyle on the radio again:
'"Shit!" he said, and it's understandable as he was on his own now, "I
don't know what it is, but it isn't human."
'"What are you talking about?" demanded Swaff, "He's got a gun, hasn't
he?"
'"You didn't see it though," said Argyle, "It just appeared from
nowhere."
'Swaff managed to calm Argyle down - he's got the map, remember, and we needed him - and
we were pretty close to the centre. We agreed to meet there, collect the item and get out.
<long pause>
'Swaff was next, but not from a gunshot. It was the weirdest thing. He was walking along
an empty corridor, and suddenly he started bleeding from his arms. This worries him a
little, as you might think, and he raises them up. It might sound comical, but his arms
fall off. Literally.
'Look, it was horrific, not funny, so you can wipe that smile right off your face. Like
someone hacked at him with an invisible sword. He screamed, and leaned forward, but the
scream turned into a kind of gurgle as his head and shoulders sort of slid off. He
couldn't make any sound at this point, but I'm not sure how long it took himto die. Blood
is pumping out of his body like he's a fashionable garden water feature. I'm a little
upset by the sight of my comrade all sliced up, but self-preservation comes first, so I'm
looking for whatever did it. I turned my head around, and then I noticed a really tiny
bead of blood hanging in the air. I looked up and down, and lo and behold the bastards
that set this place up had strung a wire across, so thin you can't see in properly.
'So I was trying not to look at Swaff's dismembered corpse as I snapped the wire with my
pistol handle - it left a slight groove in the metal - and carried on, not vomiting
because I haven't eaten in a while.
'By my reckoning, I was nearly at the centre. I checked with Argyle, and he was coming up
to the last corner on his side. I could hear the sound of running water from somewhere.
Suddenly we emerged at either end of an wide, well, room, or clearing. Argyle looked... harrowed,
I can't think of a better word for it. We met up, and looked around. It felt like a
square, you know, in a town. There were statues, with urns pouring water, you must have
seen stuff like that. In the middle, set back against the wall, was this bunch-of-nudes
affair holding a platter. George Washington thing but with naked birds instead of
soldiers. All very Greek and everything. On the platter is the thing we're after. A little
gold pot with some face on it.
<long pause>
'I'm about to go and get it when I notice Argyle's face. The next bit happened all in slow
motion. It's the freakiest thing, but you know when your senses start to just work at a
reduced rate. Argyle draws his gun, and I turn around to see our stalker, in the open, gun
in hand.
'I'll never forget those eyes. They burned into my soul.
'The gun fires twice. Bang bang. Very film noir. I feel rather than see Argyle falling
away behind me, and a pain in my leg. I drop, and the intruder calmly walks past me,
stashes the gold piece in a satchel and returns to me.
'"One out of nine isn't too bad," says this person, "You tell our mutual
friend that this is my business, not his. Okay?"
'The last thing I see before blacking out is the medical kit left for me.'
The man who had been talking for some time set his glass down on the bar, refilled it from
a nearby bottle, and downed the brown liquid.
'Which is why,' he said, 'If I ever see her again, I'm going to kill Lara Croft.'