Subterrestrial (25 page)

There wasn’t time to choose. She swam toward the closest one and followed the beam inside. The current increased as the tunnel narrowed, propelling her faster. The walls were smooth and rounded, whether by eons of flowing water or ancient volcanic activity she couldn’t be sure. All she knew was that she was running out of air and every passing second brought her closer to utilizing the diving mask on her hip.

Her beam constricted ahead of her against a stone wall as she raced toward it. Panic set in. If this were a dead end . . .

Another tunnel opened overhead. She contorted her body and squirmed up into a larger body of running water.

The surface seemed impossibly far away. Her arms and legs grew heavier with every kick and stroke. She was already gasping for air when she breached the surface, inhaling saltwater directly into her lungs. She coughed and sputtered and barely moved out of the way before Mitchell burst from beneath the water.

He waved his arm madly toward where a rocky ledge overhung the bank. He managed to get three words out through the throng of coughing.

“Right . . . behind . . . me . . .”

Calder swam for everything she was worth. The edge was maybe twenty feet away and she reached it in seconds. The fragile limestone gave way with her first attempt, but she managed to boost herself onto dry land with her second.

Mitchell climbed up behind her and reached his feet at the same time. Behind him, she saw an almost serpentine shape speeding in their direction beneath the water, its tail whipping from side to side like a crocodile’s.

Mitchell pushed her from behind to get her moving.

“Run!”

She sprinted deeper into the cavern. The ceiling and ground were composed primarily of schist. They were sharp with crests and ripples and reminded her of the landscape of the moon. Irregular columns connected them where the limestone leeched through the denser rock, forming a veritable forest of calcite trunks. They cast shadows that swung wildly as she slalomed between them. She jumped over holes eroded into the ground and rocky crests that glimmered with frost. It was only marginally warmer and the condensation from her breath burned on her cheeks.

Clack-clack-clack-clack
.

The sound was still some distance behind them, but the acoustics made it impossible to tell how far and she wasn’t about to turn around to find out.

The rear wall materialized at the edge of her beam. She swept her light from side to side. The columns had grown directly against the wall and cast shadows that looked like passageways until her beam caught them at the right angle and they vanished.

Her heart leaped into her throat.

There was no way out.

Clack-clack-clack-clack
.

She veered right. Thirty feet from the wall and closing. There had to be a way through.

Her lungs hurt and her legs were jelly. The cuts on her shins ignited with fire and she felt blood spreading beneath the Thermoprene. Whatever reserves she’d tapped to get her this far were nearly gone.

Clack-clack-clack-clack
.

Her beam passed across an irregularity in the stone, momentarily giving it the impression of depth. The oblong opening was maybe teen feet wide and right up near the ceiling, easily five feet from the ground. Stalactites nearly concealed the opening and cast shadows like a closing mouth.

Calder didn’t even slow down. She jumped as she hit the wall and braced her elbows on the lip.

Mitchell got both hands under her butt and shoved her inside.

Clack-clack-clack-clack
.

She turned around and pulled him deeper into the cave the moment he cleared the ledge.

The entire ceiling was spiked with stalactites, which made it impossible to stand. She could only crawl and even then the stalactites prodded her back.

“Turn off the light,” he whispered.

She did so immediately and welcomed the darkness.

Their harsh breathing echoed in the confines. It was going to give them away. She tried to hold her breath, but only managed to do so for several seconds, compounding the problem when she started breathing again.

Clack
.

Clack
.

The noise was right outside the cave. There was no mistaking it. She covered her mouth and nose with her hands in a futile attempt to muffle the sound.

A huffing noise. Then scratching on stone.

Beside her, Mitchell opened his backpack with the
tic-tic-tic
of a zipper slowly being drawn down its track. She cringed at the sound.

Frantic scratching from mere feet away as it struggled to claw its way up to the ledge.

Calder prayed it couldn’t reach them, that they’d be able to wait it out—

Clack
.

She nearly sobbed in terror.

A huffing sound echoed.

She smelled rotten meat and an odor that reminded her of a swamp.

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

It was inside the cave with them.

It felt like they were ripping her limb from limb. Hart’s screams degenerated into sobs of anguish and agony.

The male shrieked and the others scurried back up to their perch on the ledge, where they shuffled nervously. The male grunted from mere inches in front of her face.

Hart raised her head, but couldn’t even see him right in front of her. His breath smelled of rotten fruit and decay. His musk was even stronger than before.

He grunted and tapped her injured shoulder.

She flinched.

He hopped away from her and shrieked.

Shuffling and grunting sounds from above her.

The male slapped his palms on the ground and the others fell silent. Hart heard his heavy breathing and the scraping sounds of his cautious approach.

She scooted slowly away from him as quietly as she could. There was nowhere to go. She could only hope that since she couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see her.

He grabbed her wrist, but she jerked it out of his grasp and scooted faster. He grabbed it again and wrenched it upward.

They both screamed at once.

He released her arm and hooted as he scampered backward.

Comprehension dawned with a gasp of surprise.

Her arm. She carefully raised her elbow. Brought it forward and back. Rolled her shoulder in the socket.

These creatures she had thought of as animals had rationalized the situation, determined that she was injured, and had communicated as much to one another. They’d evaluated her threat level and made a conscious decision to help her, even knowing that by doing so they potentially increased the risk to themselves.

Hart sat quietly in the absolute darkness, listening to them crawl over the rocks, feeling them watching her through means she could only speculate. She came to a decision she knew on a primal level would shape her destiny.

She slowly rose to her knees, raised her arms out to each side, and bowed her head.

“Whaah.”

It emerged as little more than a whisper and the intonation was all wrong, but she repeated it until it almost sounded right.

Minutes passed in silence. She couldn’t even hear the subtle sounds of their breathing or movement from the ledge above her. She feared she’d frightened them and they’d silently dispersed into the darkness. Still, she persevered.

“Whaah.”

She heard a shuffling sound, far closer to her than she expected. The first one, the male . . . he’d been standing mere feet away the entire time. She could sense his indecision, the electrical sensation of fear crackling from him like a live wire. And then she felt his hand on her head, felt it tremble as he stroked her hair.

Whaah!

Several seconds passed before a chorus of others answered his call. They bounded down from the rocks and swarmed over her. They all placed their hands on her. Rubbed the contours of her wetsuit. Tugged her hair and pulled on her fingers and toes. Pinched and prodded and crawled onto her back. All while she let her head hang and cried tears of pure joy.

She prayed the moment would never end.

The male screamed and started shoving the others off of her. They grunted and squealed and bounded up the rocks.

He grabbed Hart’s hair, raised her face to meet his, and screamed directly into it. Spittle struck her forehead and eyes and she braced for the attack she thought she’d averted.

A full minute passed, during which she calculated her odds of surviving a fall from this height.

She felt his finger on her face, felt it trace the contours of her cheekbone from the corner of her eye to her chin. He removed his finger and made a slurping sound when he tasted her tears.

Whah-ah!

The others screeched, hopped up and down, and slapped their hands on the stone.

Before Hart could make sense of what was transpiring, she was being ushered uphill. Pushed and pulled over boulders and through crevices. She couldn’t see a blasted thing. Her hands shook as they slid across the smooth rock, seeking the surest grip, and still she continually slipped and skidded back down, but every time they caught her before she tumbled out of reach. She focused on keeping solid ground underneath her and prayed they weren’t leading her to her death.

By the time she reached the top, her hands were trembling so badly they were all but useless to her. Blood flowed from cuts on her fingertips and knuckles. The Thermoprene on her knees was tattered and damp from the lacerations on her knees. She could hear them scurrying all around her, yet still she couldn’t bring herself to even attempt to stand. Without the use of her sense of sight, she was completely and utterly helpless. And that was the most terrifying thing of all.

There was screeching and grunting everywhere. The intonation was almost playful. She even heard the occasional laugh, which made her giggle every time.

Hart tried to gather her bearings. While she had no idea what lay ahead, she knew exactly what was behind her and understood that distancing herself from it was the safest course of action. She kept the ledge directly behind her and crawled as straight away from it as she could. The way their calls echoed behind her was different from the sound ahead of her, which suggested she was crawling from a larger space into a much smaller one.

She heard fluid spattering against stone and felt warmth on her bare knee. She had to remind herself that despite their surprising level of intelligence, they were still wild animals and she couldn’t afford to let down her guard. Although bonobos demonstrated great affection for the humans living in their midst, she’d seen one fly into a blind rage and attack researchers for attempting to remove the dead body of one of the group’s elders. They’d been forced to tranquilize her, and even then she’d fought right up until the second she lost consciousness. And those were people who’d been living beside her for decades, not a species of hominin they’d never seen before, one that simply appeared from nowhere.

She struck the top of her head on something in her way and cursed herself for leaving her helmet behind.

There were hands on her almost immediately.

“I’m okay.”

The simian shrieked and bounded away.

She reached up and felt for whatever blocked her way. The flowstone was cold and damp and maybe the width of her shoulders. She identified it as a column and used it to pull herself to her feet. She traced the imperfections in the stone, which seemed to guide her fingertips. It wasn’t until she felt the contours of a face that she recognized it as one of the sculptures they’d first seen upon entering the maze of caverns, only now she visualized it for what it truly was: one of these magnificent creatures. If this species was capable of artistic expression, then what other feats of intellect . . .

Her fingertips grazed the bared teeth of the sculpture. She positively felt the ferocity radiating from it. This wasn’t a piece in a museum gallery; it was a warning meant to frighten something, although she couldn’t think of a single species that could see in darkness like this, at least not with its eyes.

A hand closed over hers and gently removed it from the savage face. The fingers were disproportionately short compared to the length of the palm and the skin was thick and leathery. There was something almost human about the gesture, a tenderness she could only ascribe to a higher order of sentience. It guided her around the column and deeper into a cavern that grew noticeably warmer with each step. She waved her hand in front of her as she navigated a veritable colonnade of similarly sculpted pillars. She was reminded of the Terracotta Warriors in the buried vaults of Xi’an, the Tula warrior pillars of the Toltec, and the gauntlet of warriors that guarded the Mayan Plaza of the Thousand Columns, all of which were designed to protect something of great value.

Hart was so lost in thought that she didn’t notice the smell. Not at first, anyway. Once she did, though, it overwhelmed her.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered.

The animal screamed and jerked on her hand.

That smell. She’d know it anywhere and in any of its incarnations. It brought back memories of Borneo and the Congo. It was the smell of soil and humidity, of blooming flowers and blossoming plants, of fruit ripening in the trees and moldering on the detritus.

It was the smell of the jungle. There was no mistaking it.

A faint violet glow materialized from the darkness, so faint that at first she attributed it to her mind playing tricks on her. The light grew incrementally brighter in the distance and framed an oval orifice from which intricate chandelier speleothems hung. The shapes of the creatures around her gradually appeared in silhouette, like ghosts taking form from the ether. There were maybe seven of them, all walking on two legs. They swayed as they wended between the columns, upon which the purple aura limned the features of the warriors. The faces were so lifelike she could almost hear the screams of those with their mouths wide open and hear the grunts of those with their jaws thrust forward.

The chittering and shrieking ceased as they approached the orifice and their procession closed rank. The male took the lead and hopped up onto a jagged rock. The others stopped and the one holding her hand gave a sharp tug.