Subterrestrial (32 page)

Nabahe stretched as far from the wall as he could. Reached for the silhouette.

The canopy again submerged. The splintered trunk burst from the water and swung down at him like a hatchet.

“Look out!” he shouted and dodged to the side.

The trunk slammed into the stone where he’d just been, sending chunks of wood flying in every direction as he swung out over the waves.

The rope lurched and dropped his feet into the water, which rose past his knees as he swung back and crashed into the branches.

His beam flashed through the canopy. He caught a fleeting glimpse of a primate’s face, its mouth opened wide into a scream of sheer terror. He found leverage with his heel and reached for the animal’s slender wrist. The moment it was within range, it grabbed his arm, leaped onto his shoulder, and nearly knocked him from his precarious perch in its hurry to reach the trail. It was a dozen feet up by the time Nabahe looked back. It vanished behind a large male, which stood at the precipice with a strange expression on his face.

Nabahe slipped and nearly lost his grip on the rope. He had to kick off from the tree as it rolled against the wall, and he barely caught a foothold again before falling.

Payton breached the surface with a sputtering gasp. He managed a single cough before the branches dragged him under again.

Nabahe thrust his hand into the water and caught Payton by the arm. He tried to pull him from the canopy, but the tree threatened to take them both down. It was all he could do just to hang on. He felt like he was being ripped in half. His grip started to slip. He held on with the last of his strength as the evergreen tumbled past, leaving Payton hanging from his arm in its wake.

“I can’t hold . . . much . . . longer . . .” Nabahe said through bared teeth.

Payton pulled and Nabahe shouted in pain. He nearly fell into the water, but then the pressure abated and Payton transferred his weight to one of the vines.

Nabahe nearly sobbed in relief. He turned around and was about to test his shoulder to see if he could climb when he saw a dark streak from the corner of his eye. A shadow just beneath the surface, its tail flagellating behind it. A V-shape cutting the waves.

He didn’t see the second creature, closing from the other side.

Mitchell drew the deepest breath he could hold and unplugged his tubing from Calder’s tank.

5:19.

They were burning through it too fast. Not that it mattered now. There was no physical way he was getting through that fissure.

He looked up and saw the terror on Calder’s face. She was staring right at him. No . . .

Past him.

Mitchell whirled and caught the flash of teeth. They passed through his flank before the impact knocked him aside.

He grabbed for his abdomen. Felt fringes of torn Thermoprene. Heat. And then searing pain.

Plumes of blood diffused into the water from a series of deep lacerations. He pressed his palm to the savage wounds in an attempt to stanch the flow, but it burbled out from between his fingers at an alarming rate.

The creature whipped around and propelled itself toward him with a snap of its tail. As fast as it had run on dry land, it swam even faster through the water. It was upon him before he could react. The collision sent him tumbling through the water. He fought to get his arms in front of his face. Its teeth sliced through the meat on his forearms while its claws punctured his thighs. He pushed as hard as he could against its scaled snout and somehow managed to keep it from tearing out his throat.

The water darkened with the cloud of blood seemingly rising from everywhere at once. He cried out in pain as he brought his knees to his chest, planted his feet against its slippery belly, and shoved it off of him.

With a flick of its tail it disappeared into the silt, the disturbed water flipping him head over heels.

Calder caught him around the torso and steadied him. The expression on her face told him everything he needed to know.

He jerked his thumb toward the crevice.

Go that way
.

She shook her head and pointed both index fingers, one behind the other.

No. You lead; I’ll follow
.

The motion of her hands swirled the haze of blood expanding between them. Already his head felt light and an icy chill had settled into his fingers and toes. He wasn’t going to be able to hold his breath much longer, especially if it attacked again.

4:21.

She cradled his face between her hands and drew it close enough that he could see her lips move. Behind her, water funneled through the crevice, the edges of which eroded far too slowly to do him any good.

We go together or not at all
.

Mitchell smiled and gently traced the contours of her mask.

Don’t,
she mouthed.

He lowered his hand from her face and shoved her squarely in the chest.

The whirlpool sucked her backward at an odd angle and slammed her to the stone. She braced her arms against the sides. He caught one final glimpse of her face and then she was gone. Her light vanished into the earth and once more the darkness was complete.

Mitchell turned to meet his fate. He closed his eyes and prayed his death would bring Calder four more minutes.

Hart screamed.

Nabahe looked up at her with an expression of surprise on his face.

The creature burst from the water with a splash that took the form of a great feathered beast. It was like a hybrid of an emu and a crocodile, an evolutionary anomaly that attacked with blinding speed and ferocity.

Nabahe was there one second and gone the next, leaving behind arterial spatters on the limestone and a wash of blood that spread like an oil spill across the water where he thrashed beneath the waves.

Payton jumped straight up the escarpment, grabbed one of the ropes, and lifted his legs as the second creature flashed past beneath his feet. It slammed into the stone and rebounded with a piercing cry.

Skree!

“Go!” Payton shouted.

The creature barely splashed down to the water before erupting once more from the snarl of branches. It scratched at the trail with its claws and managed to raise its full body from the water before breaking the ledge and tumbling back into the waves. With a whip of its tail, it sped beneath the surface, a black blur that vanished into one of the submerged caves.

If it followed the same route as they had, it could be upon them in a matter of seconds.

The primates screamed as they bounded up the wall, leaping from ledges and swinging from ropes. Near the roof of the cavern was a dark recess from which water spewed across the stalactites and poured down the flowstone.

Hart dove to her stomach and reached for Payton.

“Take my hand!”

“We can’t just leave him here!”

“There’s nothing we can do for him now!”

Payton’s toes found the step and he scurried upward. She grabbed his wrist with one hand, his backpack with the other, and pulled him up over the ledge.

The alpha male grabbed him by his wetsuit and helped him to his feet. He struck his fist against his bare chest, screamed, and shoved Payton deeper into the recess.

Hart ran behind him, her light flashing across walls covered with petroglyphs. She could only imagine what stories they told, stories that for all she knew detailed the very origin of humans. The keys to unlocking the secrets of evolution could well be right here before her very eyes, along with the means of potentially communicating with this simian species, and maybe even breaking the barrier between humans and higher-order hominins like the bonobo.

Water raced past her feet and rose over her ankles. Debris struck her from behind and knocked her down. She slid into Payton from behind, taking his legs out from beneath him. He landed squarely on top of her and the two of them were washed into a dead end, where the raging water made it nearly impossible to stand up.

The alpha male bounded over them, hit the wall, and scaled it effortlessly. Her headlamp spotlighted his hairless rump as he bounded into a dark crevice. His screams echoed from within.

Payton laced his fingers together in front of his waist.

“We have to hurry!”

Hart stepped onto his hands, braced herself on his shoulders, and lunged for the lip. He groaned as he lifted her high enough to brace her elbows on the ledge and scurry over.

Payton’s light streaked past her from behind. His face appeared above the ledge and his boots squeaked from the limestone as he propelled himself into the cave behind her.

The passage was narrow and riddled with stalactites that made it so they had to crawl.

Skree!

The sound came from directly behind them, where she could hear it scrabbling at the stone with its claws in an effort to reach them.

Hart pushed herself to her feet the moment the ceiling receded and sprinted away from their pursuer through running water. She barely stopped in time to keep from plummeting from the escarpment.

Water poured past her and rained onto the rising sea. The alpha male was on a ledge to her left, screaming at the top of his lungs. She stepped out onto the narrow protrusion and lost her nerve.

Skree!

“You can do this,” Payton said.

He shined his light behind him and onto a wave that struck them nearly hard enough to wash them over the edge.

She inched out onto the ledge and did her best to ignore the dark shape circling in the water below her.

“You’re doing great, Emily. Just keep going and don’t look down.”

The clatter of nails striking stone echoed from the cave behind them.

Skree!

Hart cringed and barely managed to keep her balance as Payton slid out onto the ledge beside her.

Wha-ah!

The male screamed from above her. An irregular flowstone formation led upward toward where the water fired from the dark orifice.

She took one sidestep, then another. A chunk of the ledge broke beneath her foot and fell toward the waiting water. The creature struck it before it even hit the surface, its teeth snapping mere feet below her. She flattened herself against the limestone and tried to slow her breathing. Her left leg trembled as she stepped over the gap and planted her foot on rock she prayed would support her weight.

“Come on, Emily. Three more steps. You can do it.”

Err-err-err-err-err-err-uhh-uhh-uhh-err
.

She turned toward the sound and watched the monster’s head emerge from inside the cave. It was so close that when it turned to face them, she saw the pupils in its eyes constrict. Its tongue trilled when it opened its mouth and shrieked.

Skree!

Hart whirled. Took two quick steps. Jumped up onto the flowstone. Climbed as fast as she could.

A cracking sound from below her.

The ledge deteriorated beneath Payton’s feet as he ran toward her. He dove at the last possible instant and grabbed the lowest step. His legs swung out over the creature, which leaped toward him, its neck arched to strike.

He raised his knees, braced his toes, and launched himself toward her a split-second before its teeth struck the stone.

The other one curled its long neck around the opening and screamed up at them.

Skree!

Hart didn’t look back. She climbed even faster and fought through the waterfall into the darkness where she’d seen the primates vanish. Crawled on her hands and knees through a tunnel she feared had no end. Travel calls and screeches urged her onward. The water continued to rise so she had to sacrifice speed for traction. It was nearly to her chest by the time she reached the end and crawled out into a flooded cavern that glowed faintly blue high up near the vaulted ceiling. The stalactites were buried beneath massive icicles that connected them to the ground, forming a maze through which the water flowed unimpeded.

“There has to be a way out up there,” she said.

“Even if there is, there’s no way we’re getting through all of that ice without a flamethrower.”

The sound of thunder echoed through the cavern so loud it reverberated in her chest. The columns of ice broke and sent chunks floating downstream toward them. A crack raced up the wall and toward the source of the light. A stream of water fired from it with enough force to drill into the opposite wall. Limestone tumbled from the impact but never hit the ground. A wall of water crashed through the ceiling.

Payton wrapped his arms around her.

She didn’t even have time to take a breath.

The pressure suddenly released and Calder fired backward. Her shoulders first struck solid stone, then her head. A cloud of blood burst from the fissure and washed over her.

“No!”

She raged against the current in a desperate attempt to fight her way through, only to be driven backward against the rock. Her screams degenerated into tears as she pushed off from the wall and swam toward Lord only knew what. Mitchell had given his life for her; she wasn’t about to let his sacrifice be in vain.

3:48.

She swam through the exhaustion, tapping into reserves she had no idea she possessed. The walls blew past, smooth and rounded. She was in a lava tube maybe four feet in diameter with the current at her back. Her light alternately illuminated quick glimpses of the tunnel ahead of her with each stroke of her right arm, while each stroke of her left sent her careening headlong into the darkness.

Tears blurred her vision and streamed down her cheeks. She thought about all of the horrible things she’d said to Mitchell. They were simply too much alike. Maybe under different circumstances her grudging respect could have blossomed into something more. She’d never have the chance to find out now. Not that it mattered anyway. In three and a half minutes she was going to join him.

The tunnel appeared to have no end. Every passing second seemed both fleeting and eternal. Light, then dark. Light, then dark. She couldn’t afford to slow down, even if it meant hurtling to her demise.

She saw the bend too late. Smacked her elbow and ricocheted from her shoulder. Barely had the presence of mind to lean to her left before she cracked her skull.