Burial Ground (45 page)

And it was his guilt that would ultimately
be responsible for all of their deaths now.

Muzzle flare strobed the darkness, bringing
every shadow to life as the jungle closed in on them from the
sides.

The crooked ceiba separated from the night
ahead, beyond which the cold, dark maw of the tunnel loomed. Colton
couldn't possibly be leading them in there, could he? Not after
what they'd seen. Two men from Hunter's group had already been
slain inside, and there was that tunnel that led right into the
lair of the predators. It was suicide.

"We can't go in there!" he shouted over the
rain.

Colton fired a fusillade of bullets past the
tree and into the corridor, where they ricocheted from the stone
floor and walls with a display of sparks.

"Colton! We can't---!"

"There's no other choice!" Colton snapped,
rounding on him. His eyes were wide, his skin pale. Ribbons of
water drained down his haggard face. "If we stay out here, we'll
all be slaughtered. At least in there we have a fighting
chance."

"It's completely dark in there. They'll be
all over us the moment we step inside."

"Do you want to live through this or
not?"

Leo could only nod as they reached the tree
and pulled up short of the mouth of the tunnel.

"Then let me do my job," Colton said. He
faced the opening and fired into the pitch black until his clip ran
dry, then snapped another into place. "And who said anything about
not having light?"

Leo glanced back to make sure that they were
all together and advanced into the mountain behind Colton, who
fired a burst every few steps. The barrel flashed and bullets
pinged. He bumped into Colton from behind and was about to ask why
they had stopped so suddenly when he heard a snap. A blinding light
flared into being. A canister stood on the ground, firing a flume
of concentrated light into the air above it. Molten liquid poured
down the sides and puddled around the base. An incendiary
grenade.

"We have to move quickly. This won't last
very long," Colton said. He kicked the canister and sent it rolling
down the tunnel ahead of them. It spat flames at the wall and
trailed a path of magma. "It's burning at roughly four thousand
degrees, so don't let even a single drop of that stuff touch
you."

The distant light created shadows in the
recesses to either side where the bodies were interred. One of the
skeletal corpses had fallen from its perch and lay in a heap on the
ground. They stepped around it and headed deeper into the earth.
The glare was already starting to wane.

This was a very bad idea. They would never
leave this ossuary alive.

Skree!

The sound echoed all around them, yet there
was no denying its origin.

It had come from inside the mountain.

Directly ahead of them.

10:26 p.m.

Merritt balked at the entrance to the
underground warren. A piercing glow radiated from inside, turning
Galen and Sam to silhouettes as they ducked out of the rain and
into the stone passage. Sorenson backed into him from behind with
the clamor of suppressive fire.

"Get in there!" Sorenson yelled.

Merritt could only stare at the fissure in
the hillside. His legs had locked up and the remainder of his body
was unresponsive. Even his voice failed him at first.

"I...I can't."

"We don't have time for this."

Sorenson jabbed him in the back with the
butt of his rifle and he stumbled forward, barely able to maintain
his balance. The screams of the dying filled his ears, while the
scent of burned flesh lingered in his sinuses. His vision grew hazy
from the smoke. Even the rain no longer touched him as in his mind
he was a thousand miles away in a sun-baked landscape of sand.

He knew on a fundamental level that none of
this was truly happening, but that understanding made it no less
real. Fear had him in its grip, and there was absolutely nothing he
could do to break free.

Sorenson prodded him with the rifle again,
harder this time, driving him to his knees.

"Get in there or so help me, I'll leave you
right here!"

Merritt peeled his dry tongue from the roof
of his mouth to reply, but no words formed.

Sorenson jerked him back to his feet by his
collar and shoved him forward into the mountain. Rather than
speeding up, his heartbeat slowed and a sensation of warmth spread
through his body like an anesthetic, numbing his hands and feet. He
was shutting down, going into shock.

"Merritt," Sam said. He felt her cold, wet
hands on his cheeks before he realized that she was standing
directly in front of him. "We need to keep moving. Do you
understand? We can't stay here or whatever those things are will
kill us. You can do this."

Flickering light limned her outline. He
could barely see her features until she brought her face within
inches of his.

"You can do this," she repeated. He drew
confidence from her words, and her touch brought him slowly back to
the here and now. "Just look into my eyes and place one foot in
front of the other."

"They're right behind me," Sorenson said. He
punctuated his statement with a barrage of gunfire back into the
forest. "Either you get him moving or you're both on your own."

"Then go!" Sam shouted. She turned her
attention back to Merritt and softened her tone. "Just listen to my
voice and look into my eyes. There are very bad things out there
and we need to hurry. I want you to focus on moving your legs and
following me. I'm not going to leave you."

He couldn't risk slowing her down. She
needed to get as far away from him as possible. He would never be
able to forgive himself if anything happened to her.

"Go on," he said. "I'll be right behind
you."

"You're a terrible liar."

Sorenson fired out of the egress again at
the sound of a shrill hawk's cry.

Sam lowered her palms from his face and took
him by the hands. She pulled him gently at first, then more
insistently. He stumbled after her, eyes locked on hers, the rifle
he had slung over his neck clattering against his chest. The smoke
remained, but instead of reeking of scorched skin, it smelled of
harsh chemicals. The wails of the wounded faded to the sounds of
breathing and shuffling footsteps. Feeling returned to his
appendages with each step, and the situation resolved from the
fugue. He gave Sam's hands a solid squeeze.

"Thank you," he whispered.

Her reply was drowned out by the report of
gunfire, both from ahead and behind.

She released his right hand and turned so
that she could drag him by his left.

The ruckus of rain metamorphosed into the
drone of flies as they fled the outside world.

Merritt gripped the assault rifle in his
right hand. It scared him how perfectly it still fit.

Another avian cry from behind.

Sorenson unleashed a short spat of bullets,
discarded the spent clip, and snapped another home.

The glow down the tunnel ahead of Sam
wavered and started to fade.

She tripped on something and fell forward.
Her hand slipped out of his.

In the dying light, he saw a jumble of
broken bones on the ground. Sam pinwheeled her arms for balance.
Movement drew his eye to the recessed alcove in the wall to his
right.

A pair of rheumy eyes set into a scaled
forehead turned in his direction. A large, feathered body was
crammed into the small space where the remains had once been. It
unfurled its coiled body in serpentine fashion.

The incendiary grenade fizzled and died.

Blackness flooded the corridor with a
skree
that was so close Merritt could smell the rotting meat
on the creature's breath.

10:28 p.m.

Consciousness hit Tasker like a runaway
train, bringing with it pain beyond anything he had ever
experienced. His entire back side felt as though it had been fried
on a griddle. He drew a sharp intake of breath and inhaled dirty
water through his mouth and nose, which induced a coughing spasm
that only filled his throat with blood and intensified the agony.
Smoke and dust swirled around him. The rain slapped his left cheek.
He tried to open his eyes, but only the left responded. The right
was pressed into the ground and packed with mud. The clearing
shifted in and out of focus through the small gap beneath his
swollen eyelid.

He heard what sounded like an eagle's cry as
it circled above him, only the sound had come from much lower to
the ground, not far to his right. With the revelation of what had
made the sound, the memories assaulted him.

If he didn't get the hell out of there right
now, he was a dead man.

He tried to push himself up, but his arms
and legs were unresponsive. Were it not for the pain, he might have
suspected he'd been separated from them in the blast. He could see
the back of his left hand and forearm. Both were soaked with blood.
His jacket sleeve was in tatters, and wooden and metallic slivers
alike stood from the exposed skin. Shrapnel. He'd been fortunate to
have been wearing his backpack or his thorax would have become a
pincushion. As it was, he must have broken at least one rib and
punctured a lung for there to be so much blood in his mouth.

The shriek of another bird seared the night.
But they weren't birds, were they? He had glimpsed them when they
exploded from the bushes and attacked McMasters. Blurs of feathers
and claws, the living embodiment of the desiccated remains in the
bundle he had ripped open in the cliff-side tomb. They had attacked
with the kind of pure savagery that he'd only witnessed in sharks
during a feeding frenzy.

There would be no surviving another
encounter. He needed to drag his broken body out of there right
this very second.

How long had he been unconscious? Where were
Gearhardt and his party? For all he knew, they could have led the
creatures away from him. He drew comfort from that thought, but
only for a moment.

He heard a soft splash and a slurp of mud. A
shadow fell across him from out of his direct line of sight.

Tasker held his breath and listened.

Another squishing sound from behind him and
to the left.

He released a stale exhalation and breathed
shallowly, silently.

Something nudged his backpack, then the left
side of his ribcage. And still he could only see the shadow.

More sloppy footsteps. One. Then
another.

Every fiber of his being screamed for him to
shove to his feet and sprint for his life, but he knew in his
current weakened state that he didn't have a prayer of outrunning
it.

Something nuzzled his shoulder, lifting him
slightly from the muck, then dropping him back down.

He felt warm breath on his ear a
split-second before a shrill cry nearly pierced his eardrum. A
scream threatened to burst from his chest. He managed to contain it
and remained as still as he could.

Why hadn't it attacked yet?

Pressure behind his left ear, forcing his
face deeper into the mud. He could barely breathe through his left
nostril and the corner of his mouth.

Two more stealthy footsteps. Closer.

A face lowered into view. Too close. Broad
nostrils on an elongated snout. Scaled lips lined with interlocking
rows of sharp teeth. It bumped him in the forehead with its
chin.

Its breath reeked of death and decay, its
scaled skin of rot and fecal matter.

It froze when another
skree
sounded
from the jungle behind him.

In one swift motion, it was running. Scaled
gray legs flashed past, then a long, feathered tail.

Tasker lay still, waiting for it to
return.

More cries echoed through the forest, only
farther away now.

He finally allowed himself to blink.

There was no sound.

No movement.

Why was he still alive?

10:32 p.m.

Sam reached back for Merritt's hand as her
feet tangled in the partially-articulated mess of bones. Over her
shoulder, she saw him grab for her hand too late. Beside him,
movement from the wall. Something large that until that moment had
held perfectly still. It turned toward Merritt with the blunted
snout of a caiman and a crown of feathers that rose to erection
like the spines on an iguana's back.

The light died. Darkness swallowed her as
she fell to the ground and landed squarely on her shoulder.

A loud avian cry filled the tunnel.

She rolled onto her back in time to see the
repeated flash of muzzle flare. In the strobing light, she
witnessed snippets of chaos. A long neck, bristled with feathers,
stretching out of the enclave. Mouth like a crocodile's, opening
wide. Dull eyes that glinted with golden rings. Slender, curled
fingers with sharp claws. It jerked in twitching motions as the
bullets pounded its scaled breast.

Even over the deafening reports, she heard
it scream.

The rifle's carbine whirred long after the
clip ran dry.

Hissing.

Claws scrabbling against stone.

Finally, silence.

Merritt slapped another clip into the
SCAR.

Sam extricated her feet from the tangle of
body parts and started to cry.

"Are you all right?" Merritt asked. His
voice positively trembled.

She couldn't find her voice, and nodded even
though he couldn't see her. His hand found hers in the pitch
black.

"Keep moving!" Sorenson shouted from the
darkness. There was a thumping sound as he stumbled into the
crumpled carcass on the ground. "They're right behind us!"

Another shriek echoed from the direction of
the outside world.

Sorenson turned toward the sound and
fired.

Merritt tugged on her hand, urging her
deeper into the mountain.

Light blossomed ahead, blinding after the
absolute darkness.