THE RIVER UNDER THE RIVER

The River under the River Colonel Vargas McClellan had gotten the text at 11:00 that Saturday night, three weeks after the New Madrid Fault had caused an earthquake that wiped out everything from Chicago to the border of Missouri and Arkansas.

The earthquake was so severe that it caused a huge five mile hole to form where St. Louis Missouri used to be. The hole opened right at the spot where the gateway Arch rested over the banks of the Mississippi, flooding the entire metro east side all the way to Belleville, Illinois.

The hole that formed in the middle of the Mississippi River caused all of St. Louis city to flood all the way to the city county line on Skinker, which was the highest point in the city west of the Mississippi River bank located in the downtown area of the city.

As a result of the earthquake, parts of the southern section of Lake Michigan all the way north in Chicago flooded thru a 3 mile wide chasm that spread south from Chicago past St. Louis and all the way down to the Ozarks. If not for tributaries and lakes in the Arkansas and Louisiana regions funneling the water from Lake Michigan all the way to the Gulf Coast, the entire mid southern regions of the United States would have been flooded.

As of right now, recent developments from data gathered by drones sent down into the hole had propelled the implementation of a special super black ops team. McClellan was one of the top five harrier pilots in the U.S. air force. Some said he was the best, period. He was to pick a 36 man team that would man seven harries. The mission was simple: go down that fucking hole in the middle of the Mississippi River.

The mission flight had to be conducted at two in the morning, with the intent of getting seven harriers taking off and going down a five mile wide hole in the middle of what was once the Mississippi River. This had to be done without alerting the media.

Flab Muldoon, the pilot of the third harrier jet had already tweeted his fucking girlfriend, who had a security clearance above Muldoon and the rest of the team, but was still dumb enough to retweet the fucking thing. Mission Control was ready to pull the third harrier and lock Muldoon’s half Scottish black ass up. Colonel McClellan quickly put the kibosh to that, but video and pictures were already flooding the blogosphere.

McClellan knew the mission had to be a go. And it had to go now.

By the time the seven harriers had gotten to the midpoint of the hole in the Mississippi River, the whole thing was being streamed live on social networks. McClellan knew that no matter what, the sound of seven harriers would wake an entire fucking five block neighborhood, as well as rattle the glasses in the windows of the houses and apartments. But what the hell, McClellan thought, he would get a kick looking the shit up online and sending the shit out to his Facebook friends.

The seven harriers began a synchronized descent into the hole, with the water from the Mississippi cascading down into the hole from all sides. The noise of the water alone almost drowned out the noise of the harriers, as they descended in formation into the hole.

McClellan started getting direct data feeds form the six drones that has already been down that hole for almost two weeks. What the video feeds showed the Pentagon was what prompted his mission to a go so quickly.

The drones had spotted another river, at the bottom of the hole which stretched down almost three miles under the Mississippi. The light that came thru the five mile hole in the Mississippi lit up the underground river for miles in both directions.

But the main concern of the Pentagon was this: the hole was five miles wide and long, and symmetrically correct. That was an impossibility if caused by natural forces. Somebody, or something, made that hole. It was up to McClellan’s team to find out who or what it was.

McClellan began the mission as the seven harriers hovered 70 feet above the surface of the huge river that was being fed by the five mile cascade of water from the Mississippi. The drill was for three jets to go south along the river, while another three reconnaissance north.

McClellan had his jet would and along the banks of the river at that spot, and act as central command for the mission.

The harrier jets went off in separate directions. McClellan and his three man crew landed on the west bank of the river. The vegetation was like a forest, and the ground was muddy, not like the interior of a cave in of a hole should have been.

After atmospheric and oxygen tests were conducted and verified to support life, McClellan debarked the jets. He activated the five foot drone that he carried off the jet. It flooded the already well lit area around the jet with even more light. It activated all the sensors onboard the drone: light, noise infrared, radiation, live video feed, and the works.

So it was very ironic that after 15 minutes walking a little distance from the jet that McClellan was the one to make the discovery.

Half of a footprint extended form the shoreline of the river bank to the edge of the forest that lined the bank of the underground river. But what made McClellan almost shit his jet blues was the size of the footprint.it had to have been sixty feet. And it wasn’t human.

By the time McClellan had ran back into the jet and buckled in, the other three pilots had done the same with the same look on their faces. They had found more tracks. And somewhere bigger than the one McClellan had seen.

Just as McClellan reached 70 feet from the beach, the river erupted. A huge, McClellan could not believe his eyes, a huge clawed hand came out of the water. It was a human shaped hand, claws yellow and forty feet, dripping yellow shit that McClellan had absolutely no idea what the yellow slimy shit was. But the hand that came out of the water was reaching directly for his jet.

One of the crew managed to get off a heat seeker, which impacted with the reaching hand.

The huge hand recoiled in pain, and descended just as rapidly back into the underground river.

At that point, the other jets were screaming toward McClellan’s position, the voices of the crews of all the jets creaming over the radio. The screams said pretty much the same thing: they were leaving.

Just as the seven harriers reached the top of the hole in the Mississippi a huge bellow of smoke and flame erupted out of the hole in all directions. The fire and smoke almost enveloped all seven of the harriers, but not before they all took off in vertical flight and away from the melee of the erupting hole in the middle of the river.

After that there were no more missions over the hole. But for weeks after the events with the jets, the smell of brimstone and sulfur lingered in the flooded areas.

Until the day when the gigantic red and yellow clawed hand appeared out of the hole. And it was climbing.

THE END