Free The Day of the Nefilim by David L. Major

them now.”
    “They’re not our soldiers. Who are the Nefilim?” Bryce asked.
    “Can we do this later?” Bark had become impatient. “Or am I alone here in having an appreciation of the immediate danger of our present situation?”
    Having satisfied themselves that Thead was nowhere in the chamber, they went back to the breached entrance where they had left Sahrin.
    She was gone. Her footprints led off into the darkness, in the same direction as the scuff marks left by the transport of the two bodies.
    Bark swore softly. “Marvelous, this is just marvelous. We’ll have to go after her…”
    * * *
    Sahrin had gone in search of the source of the noise.
    It was the faintest of sounds, quite distinct from the humming that was coming from somewhere in the chamber. It was muffled by the turns of the winding tunnels and walls of heavy rock, but it had still been loud enough to catch her attention.
    She knew she should have called the others, but something stopped her. Whether or not that something was just stupidity would remain a point of debate for some time. She edged her way along a wall, following its turns through the darkness. Something glowed ahead of her. As the wall veered to the left, the source of the light came into view.
    She was at one end of a long cavern. In row upon row of cubicles, she saw creatures, scores of them, lined up in transparent coffins, like corpses awaiting burial. She edged closer, her surroundings now visible in the pale green glow that came, she saw now, from the containers that housed the bodies.
    Rows of the cubicles receded into the distance. There was movement among the ranks of sepulchered bodies.
    One of the Nefilim was moving along the aisles. It was working methodically through the ranks of its immobile companions, operating controls, repeating the same movements each time. Then she saw another of the creatures, and a few seconds later a third, all engaged in the same activity.
    They were moving away from her as they worked. When she thought it was safe, she moved out of the shadows, and crept towards the nearest of the bodies.
    It looked like a monstrous, premature infant in its incubator. Some kind of tape had been wrapped around the torso and head, making the creature look like a half-completed mummy. The ends of the tape were attached to terminals at the foot of the sarcophagus.
    They did have a certain nobility, and it wasn’t just because of their height, she thought. The creature’s head was larger than a human head, and covered with pale leathery skin stretched taut over high cheekbones and wide temples. Its eyes were shut. She looked closely, noticing the almost imperceptible rise and fall of the creature’s chest. Its breathing was slow and slight, barely happening at all.
    Then she saw that the tape that was wrapped around its body was moving, almost imperceptibly, like a slow flatworm. She leaned closer. It seemed to be alive. It was using some kind of peristaltic motion, gradually inching its way around the alien’s body. Perhaps there was some symbiotic relationship at work here. A parasite/host thing.
    She was standing with her face only a foot or so from the entombed creature’s head when two things happened at once.
    Inside the case, the creature’s eyes snapped open without warning. It breathed out loudly, made a high-pitched squealing sound, and turned its head towards her.
    At the same time, outside the sarcophagus, the Nefilim that had quietly come up behind her, seeing that the motion of its waking companion would scare her and send her running, quickly reached out and placed a heavy hand on one of her shoulders and another over her mouth.
    A shriek died in her throat as she realized instantly that there was no point in alerting the other Nefilim to her presence, if that had not already been done. Besides which, the hand over her mouth was irresistibly strong.
    She knew even before she was turned around that the owner of the powerful grip wasn’t human;