Threshold (46 page)

Hoping Fiona had been left behind, or had escaped, King pocketed the ruined pump and headed for the tunnel at the opposite side of the chamber. The hallway sloped downward. The walls held murals and carvings, but none captured his attention. He kept his light and weapon aimed forward and moved as quickly as he could without making noise.

As he reached the bottom of the tunnel where it opened up into a larger space, a second cry sounded. This one was very close and decidedly not human. King tensed and covered his flashlight with his fingers to dim the beam. He peeked around the corner.

It took all his strength to not react.

A body lay on the floor, bloody and torn apart.

Standing around it were several large sandfish. Their tails snapped back and forth as they fought for position around the body. Intent on their meal, none of them noticed him. He rolled back into the tunnel. Ridley had gone, but he’d left behind some pets.

And a snack for them.

Needing to know if the body was Fiona’s, King rolled out again and peered toward the scene, trying his best to make out features in the low light. He got his answer when one of the large sandfish nipped at the smallest. It leaped away, revealing the victim’s head.

It was another sandfish.

With no other food around, they were cannibalizing each other.

But King’s relief was quickly replaced by dread. When the small lizard jumped away, it gave the sandfish on the other side a clear view of King. It stared at him indifferently, chewing on a chunk of flesh. Then, without any show of emotion, it charged.

As it tore over its brothers and sisters, the sandfish took their attention away from their meal. They turned and saw King as well. Seeing a fresh source of food, the pack discarded their slain brother and joined the charge. Nine eight-foot-long sandfish, each with razor-sharp teeth, the ability to taste the air and swim through sand, were now hunting King. Only the smallest of the group remained behind, enjoying an unusually easy meal.

As the wall of running lizards approached, King’s mind rifled through his choices. With three grenades on hand, he could drop a few and run. But without knowing how well supported these ruins were he risked bringing them all down on his head. He could try shooting each of the monsters in the head—he had enough rounds—but had no idea if a bullet to the brain could stop them. In the end, his instincts formed a simple three-word plan for him.

Run, run, run!

The upward sloping tunnel made King’s acceleration much slower than he would have preferred. If the sandfish pack hadn’t snapped and fought for position as they gave chase, King wouldn’t have made it ten feet.

They entered the tunnel behind him like a wave of flesh, roiling up onto the wall before settling back to the tunnel floor. As they ran, their clawed feet arched wide, occasionally slashing their neighbor’s side or limbs. But the pain and smell of blood in the air only added to their frenzy.

King glanced back and again considered using a grenade. He might be buried alive with them. As they gained, he decided that being crushed to death was preferable to being devoured. Once he was out of the tight confines of the tunnel, he would toss one of his three grenades. That is, if he made it out of the tunnel.

With the nearest sandfish nearly upon him, King took aim with his pistol and fired four shots. Three out of four struck the beast. It collapsed in a heap, stumbling those behind it and allowing King to gain some much needed distance. As he neared the tunnel exit, King pulled the pin on his grenade and dropped it, letting it roll down the tunnel floor.

King exited the tunnel, stepped to the side, and covered his ears. The explosion blasted from the mouth of the tunnel like a cannon. Grenade, stone, and flesh confetti shot out.

As the dust settled, King turned his light down the tunnel and saw that the ceiling had caved in, filling the void with sand. Before he turned away, King saw the sand move. It shook from within. A small avalanche rolled down the side. And then, as though squeezed out of a pore, one of the sandfish slid out of the wall of sand and continued its pursuit undeterred. Three more quickly followed.

King overturned tables as he ran toward the next set of steps, hoping they would slow the monsters. He eyed the circle of statues, expecting them to reach out for him as well. But they remained immobile. As he started up the stairs he heard the tables shatter beneath the weight of his pursuers.

With his light and eyes forward, King couldn’t see the sandfish behind him, but he could hear their claws clacking against the stone steps.

The stairwell opened up to the atrium and he realized he had no plan of escape, only a one-way chase. As he entered the atrium, movement to his right caught his attention. He dove forward and crouched into a roll.

A moment later the nearest sandfish leaped from the tunnel, its jaws open, ready to engulf King’s head. But the beast never made it. What looked like a long serrated spear stabbed the lizard through its head and pinned it to the floor. The sandfish twitched madly for a moment and then lay still.

What the fuck?
King thought. He followed the spear up expecting to see someone standing above him, but the weapon’s source blended into the stone wall. A second lizard, fueled by bloodlust exited the tunnel. With a quickness King didn’t think possible, a second spear shot through the sandfish’s skull. Again, the spear appeared to have come from a living wall. For a moment King thought he might be witnessing some kind of golem.

Then it moved and he saw the awful truth. The creature was speckled brown, perfectly camouflaged for the brown stone found throughout the region. Standing still, it had been all but invisible against the wall.

This was the presence he had detected before: a ten-foot-long, nearly eight-foot-tall praying mantis—a desert mantis to be exact.

It turned its triangle head toward him. The tilt of the head looked freakish, rotating almost a full three hundred degrees. Its two oval eyes, impossible to escape, honed in on him. He could feel the thing analyzing him. Its head twitched to alternating angles. Then its gaze rolled back toward the tunnel. The remaining two sandfish had arrived, and they were still hungry.

As the mantis flung one of the impaled sandfish away, a second oversized lizard clamped down on its leg. But the giant insect showed no reaction. It simply shook off the impaled lizard, took aim, and pierced the skull of the newcomer while it was still clamped down on its foreleg.

The fourth sandfish had eyes only for King. It charged beneath the praying mantis, intent on capturing its prize even while the massive insect turned its brethren into shish kabob. But it wasn’t the only one with eyes on King. It was swatted to the side by a second mantis. The sandfish toppled and rolled, smashing into a far wall. The impact seemed to knock some sense into the lizard. It righted itself and took off running down one of the side tunnels.

The mantis swiveled its head toward King. He could see the tension in its dangerous forelimbs building for a strike. The strike of a mantis was one of the quickest, most violent acts in the natural world. Quicker than the human eye could perceive, the limbs could snap out and ensnare pray between its femur and tibia, both of which were lined with needle-sharp spikes. To a human, those small spikes are normally an insignificant threat. Right now, the smallest were three-inch-long blades. The longest matched King’s seven-inch KA-BAR knife. If just one of those arms caught him, he’d be pierced upward of twenty times, perhaps even lopped in two. He had no intention of letting that happen.

Not wanting to miss, King took aim at the creature’s chest and fired a single round. It made no sound, but took a step back. Its limbs twitched for a moment. Its head spun around, back and forth, as though looking for the source of its pain. Not finding anything and having fully regained its composure, it turned its head back to King.

But he was already up and running.

Its head snapped up and quickly caught sight of him.

He jumped into the central pool and ran across to the other side. He snuck a glance over his shoulder and saw the mantis giving a kind of slow-motion pursuit. The giant insect rocked back and forth with each step, as though tentative. He also noticed the second mantis had left the dead lizards and had joined in the dancelike pursuit.

King wondered if this was really the fastest an oversized mantis could move. Then decided against it. What they were doing couldn’t even be considered pursuit. They knew something he didn’t. He found out exactly what that was when he turned around. Standing above him on the staircase was a third mantis, its forelimbs hunched up high as though in prayer.

King made a preemptive dive to the side. Had he waited for the mantis to attack, he wouldn’t have even registered its strike until his body had been turned into a pincushion. Even with his fast action he didn’t fully escape the attack. The strike hit the rubber of his boot and nearly snapped his leg from the impact. It threw off his jump as well. He landed in a heap on the stairs, striking an elbow and knee hard.

But he didn’t let the pain slow him. The mantis was already retracting its forelimbs for a second strike. King took aim, this time for the head, and fired off three rounds. Each found its mark, entering the insect’s bulbous right eye and passing through the head. But the first two missed the tiny brain. Even with one eye destroyed and two holes in its head, all its vital functions remained intact. If not for the third round, which pierced the small brain, the creature would have continued happily. With its control center destroyed, the mantis twitched madly, falling down the stairs.

Once the danger of being struck by one of the shaking limbs passed, King wasted no time launching himself back up the stairs. This time, the two remaining mantises gave chase in earnest. He could hear the rapid-fire clicking of their limbs on the stone floor, and a barely perceivable squeaking, like mice.

Are they communicating?
King wondered, but pushed the thought from his mind and focused on escape. The only spot he knew was close to the surface was where he fell in. But climbing back into the sand and out of the ruins would be impossible.

Unless I open it up
. As his plan began to come together, he looked down and saw two snapping sets of beaklike mandibles rising up behind him. Both mantises had quickly closed the distance and were poised to strike. He jumped up, narrowly avoiding a dual amputation. The loud crack of mantis forelimbs on stone stairs sounded like gunshots. When he came down he wasted no time and jumped again, this time out and away from the insects.

King entered the long tunnel and broke into a sprint, keeping his eyes on the ceiling, looking for the crack that sucked him in and deposited him in this hellhole.

He saw it ahead.

After holstering his weapon, he took out a second grenade and prepared to pull the pin. His timing would have to be precise, and his luck monumental.

Twenty feet from the fissure, he pulled the pin.

As he passed beneath the crack, he leaped up as high as he could, shoved his fist into a sandy hole in the rock filled gap and deposited the grenade inside. After landing he ran for another thirty feet and then stopped.

He turned around and raised his light. The tunnel behind him was alive with movement. The mantises were still giving chase, though more slowly as they had to actually duck to fit into this tunnel. If the two mantises passed the fissure before the grenade detonated …

But they didn’t.

The grenade exploded with a deafening boom. King fell to one knee, dropping his flashlight and clasping his hands to his ears. He opened his eyes to see a cloud of dust and sand swirling in the tunnel. But it was the brightness that held his attention. It was like looking through a blizzard, but he could see a portion of the far ceiling had fallen in at an angle, spilling its sand into the tunnel. It formed a convenient exit ramp.

Then sand began to fall from his side of the tunnel. The ceiling shifted. The roof over his head was coming down as well and if it didn’t crush him outright, it would trap him on this side of the tunnel.

He ran for the exit.

The tunnel ceiling tilted under the weight of the earth it held, dumping a curtain of sand that blocked out the sun. King dove through the wall of falling sand and landed in sunlight.

The tunnel ceiling collapsed behind him, dropping down at an angle and spilling its sand around his legs. After kicking free from the sand, King crawled up the rise and caught his breath at the top. Sitting atop the hill he could see the base across the river. There were no running troops. No action at all. His battle beneath the sands had gone undetected.

Then the sand within the newly form pit shifted. A mound rose up and shifted toward him. A second followed.