Volcano - Chapter 1

A Space Horror Web Serial

I awoke to the rumblings of the thick blue sea outside the volcano walls. But there were other unusual sounds, hideous like a pig’s squeal. My parents spent a lot of money to live in this crevice on the volcano’s southern wall. It was centered far from other crevices in all directions. They hated the sound of neighbors and did not make enough money to live luxuriously on the cusp.

It was early morning and a loud noise disturbed my sleep several times so that my blood started boiling from frustration and I wanted to throw myself into the deep ocean. Just ignore the freakish sounds, I thought.

But I couldn’t.

“Woman, you’re coming with me whether you like it or not..” It was a Guard’s voice. My heart beat faster. Guards are usually seen and not heard.

“Leave me! The smell of you is vile.” It was a low voice, but indeed a woman’s. “Get your hand off me! Do you know who my parents are? Once they hear of this, your head will be severed from your flimsy body and donated to students of the Medicine Faculty! They’ll toss your body into the sea!” She screeched. “I’m sure students will be fascinated to explore all that is wrong with your brain. I thought Guards were supposed to look frightening, you just look silly!“

I got out of bed and crept towards the window. I could see South Lake below, as red and still as always. Layers of red, molten rock, gradually more solid the higher they were, separated our crevice from the lake. It looked like pictures of rice fields from the Earthen country of Vietnam, only red.

A striking young woman, with graceful movements and muscular features stood on the third terrace below my window. In front of her was a Guard of the lower terraces. “You ain’t royal, stop talking like one.” He said, “I know the scent of royals.”

She was about to turn away. The Guard took out his baton and held it to her neck in a swift motion. He grabbed her by the hair and whispered to her ear, showing his small mouth and sharpened grey teeth. “What would a royal do in these parts of the ‘Cano?”

He took her and turned southward, underneath my window.

That’s where the opening is. They were going outside the wall. There was a storm out there.

I felt the vibration of the walls as they struggled in the tunnel beneath me. Her screams became more desperate by the second.

Then it was quiet.

I went over to the pressure window which faces the ocean. It consisted of five screens spanning two meters in depth all together. Each screen was made from adamantine glass, a thin and robust diamond mined in the volcano. The pressure window is designed to block out ferocious storms that come from deep in the ocean. I opened the outermost screen with the lever and immediately felt the bitter cold. The air pressure in my room changed instantly. The storm was vastly more intense than I thought. Storms beyond the volcano walls can create violent gusts of over two-hundred kilometer per hour winds if not more, and hundred-meter-high waves that pummel the ragged shoreline.

I didn’t understand why the soldier took that woman outside, there was no military procedure in which a lower guard should drag someone violently beyond the southern wall, and I’ve been here for a while, I know these guards. The only people who go outside are scientists guided by special forces. How did he even know where the entrance was? He was putting them both in terrible danger.

After a minute I found them standing just before the knuckle of a giant ragged claw of rock that reached out and below, into the ocean’s deep floor. It was a sight to behold. The clouds swirled with the violent storm against the dark blue sky as the waves pummeled the shoreline.

The lining of the five-meter-long pressure window was made of thick, flesh-like, muscular tissue that separated inside from out, warmth from bitter cold, silence from cacophonous noise.

I could see but not hear them. I looked on with dread as the soldier punched the woman in the stomach and then in the face. She fell back to the ground and rolled away in a strong gust of wind. But she was not out yet. She quickly crawled, trying to get away from him at the chance. He was heavier and maneuvered more skillfully in the wind. I’ve never seen a simple guard maneuver like that in a storm.

His face was full of malice, despite what his duty might have been regarding this woman, he passionately hated her. A breathing cylinder covered his skinless mouth and nose. There was something else about him… He felt unnatural, uncanny, as if he was not completely real.

For a second it seemed like he lost her, the mist was getting heavy. A thunderous rumble shook the ground. In the distance a giant wave built up. It sucked the water from the surface, revealing the full skeleton of the claws that were rooted in the face of the volcano and came out, over, and down hundreds of meters into the ocean’s belly. The acidic liquid dripped heavily from them as the wave pulled the water from underneath.

I felt dreadful. Why did I not help the poor woman when they struggled inside the wall? I am a coward, I thought, an indolent, worthless coward. But who knew they would venture outside the wall?

The wave built up higher and higher so it was well over a hundred meters. The woman scrambled for the opening against the terrible wind. The guard finished strapping his cylinder and ran towards her. There was no chance they were going to make it above the zero mark before the wave crashed into the island. It already started to break, foaming at its now two-hundred-meter-high lip.

Was there any way I could have helped them? Helped her? Why had he dragged her into that mess? I had to close the pressure window or else I would drown in my room, dying instantly by the pressure of the acidic water. At the last second, before I closed the final screen, I saw the woman’s face right outside my window. Her eyes bulged in her terrified face. She had a look that revealed a lifetime and the hopelessness of an animal running from certain death.

I held my hand on the lever. I couldn’t move. She looked straight at me but I knew she could not see me, the screens of the pressure window are tinted from the outside. Choking up, I closed the last screen. What could I have done? One… two… three… you had to wait twenty seconds for a wave to break and roll back down the mountain. We lived above the twenty-second mark. The wealthier you were the higher up you lived, and the less you needed to wait. The affluent are all above the zero line, sipping whiskey in glass-encased patios, watching the waves break kilometers beneath.

On the nineteenth second, I opened the screens one after another to see what happened to the woman, but I did not see her. The water was just coming down. Some crept through the window. It must have been quite a wave, I thought. In the distance, I saw the top of the culprit’s head. I gasped. What a fiend! What a hideous face! With one current he could swoop right into my room!

I started to close the window just as another current of water headed towards me. I heard a scream. “Wah! Wah!” I opened the window slightly and the woman crashed right into me with the strong current. I scurried up to close the window when I saw the guard up close for the first time. He held on to the edges of the window, where it meets the volcano’s outer face. His eyes were as dark as the night sky, his forehead was sleek and grey, without a spot or a wrinkle.” I used all my strength to close the inner layers. I swiftly closed the first screen, then the second, and barely had I time to catch my breath when the guard jumped violently into it. His eyes were wide open. He was terrifying. I froze. He banged at the screen with his head, it sounded like a boulder hitting the glass. Not a head…

Time froze. My heart pounded like a drum. That moment felt like a hundred. The only thing I could feel, the only thing I could hear, was my raging heartbeat, and I was hypnotized by it so that only I and it were left in the world. I felt everything go dark and quiet when suddenly blood splattered all over the second screen as the third came down and sliced right through the guard’s neck. It yanked me right out of my fainting state. I looked down, frozen with fear, towards my right hand on the lever.

There was an image, in my mind. His face. There was something on his face. A tattoo just between his eyes. It wasn’t military.

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