Subterrestrial (30 page)

The feeling returned to his dead arm with the assault of pins and needles, but at least he was able to wrap it around the stalactite and steady his head above the waves.

“Over here!”

He barely heard Calder’s voice over the roar of the floodwaters. He turned and saw the faintest hint of light beneath the surface, maybe fifteen feet away. She clung to another stalactite, her chin raised at an awkward angle to keep her mouth out of the water.

Mitchell gauged the direction of the current, took a deep breath, and pushed off. He reached Calder even more quickly than he’d expected and barely grabbed onto her in time. He wrapped his arms around the stalactite and spoke directly into her ear.

“Are you all right?”

A wave washed over her face.

“I think so.”

“We’re going to have to swim for it.”

She looked as though she was about to argue, but reluctantly nodded. She leaned her head all the way back. Mitchell did the same. There couldn’t have been more than six inches of air trapped against the ceiling and it diminished by the second.

“Hold onto me and don’t let go or we’ll never find each other again.”

Mitchell slid his hand down her lower back to where her face mask was clipped to her hip. He unfastened it and raised it to her face. She lowered her chin and looked him directly in the eyes through the plastic shield as he affixed it to her head.

“Don’t you dare let go,” she said.

The water rose over his mouth and nose before he could respond. He hoped his eyes communicated his thoughts as he reached for her other hip and cranked on the air.

Calder’s initial relief at the influx of air metamorphosed quickly into an expression of apprehension.

Mitchell totally understood.

He donned his own mask and dialed up the air.

The countdown had officially begun.

Payton whirled and sprinted blindly through the jungle. He realized with a start that the warmth on his face, in his eyes, was Thyssen’s blood and wiped it away.

He was only peripherally aware of Hart shoving through the bushes to his right. The sound of tearing flesh was replaced by high-pitched simian cries, above which he couldn’t even hear himself crashing through the forest. He blew past posts upon which hideous skulls had been staked. They were filled with teeth exactly like those he’d just watched slice through Thyssen’s throat. The mental image spurred him to run even faster.

The racket in the canopy ceased.

Skree!

Payton imaged it was the same sound a field mouse heard before the talons of a hawk sunk into its flesh and lifted it into the sky. He hurdled buttress roots and ducked beneath vines. Shielded his face with his forearms and barreled through branches riddled with thorns. His foot snagged on something, and he hit the ground hard. Pushed himself back up and stumbled ahead.

Nabahe blew past in his peripheral vision. Or at least he hoped it was Nabahe.

Crashing sounds from behind him.

He risked a glance back. Branches swayed violently in the wake of something cutting a clear swath through the underbrush.

It was right behind him and closing fast.

Payton turned and barely had time to shield his face. The impact with the bough sliced open his skin. He burst from the thicket, stumbled into a clearing, and lost his balance. A rock formation reminiscent of the prow of a cutter appeared as if from nowhere. He struck it squarely with his shoulder and his feet went out from under him. The saplings growing from the crevices dropped withered leaves onto him.

He rolled over and the detritus clung to his wounds. It took every ounce of his remaining strength not to bellow in pain. If his collarbone wasn’t broken, then he didn’t want to imagine how badly it would hurt if it were.

The trees marking his passage shivered back into place. There was no sign of movement behind them.

Payton kicked his heels into the soil to propel himself backward.

The ground shivered. Broken stalactites streaked from above. Droplets of water pattered the dead leaves, a prelude to the rivulets that poured from the earthen roof.

He rolled onto his good side in an effort to stand, but froze when he saw the shrubs swaying. Something was back there. He could vaguely make out an ill-defined shadow, near the ground, inching closer. Had the creature attempted to flank him or had one chased him into the waiting jaws of a second?

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

The sound came from the opposite side of the clearing.

Behind him.

He didn’t dare take his eyes off of the movement in front of him. He could hear the other one back there, moving stealthily through the trees with barely the rustling of leaves to betray its location.

Payton scooted backward and into a shallow recess in the rock.

If neither of them had been the one that attacked Thyssen, then it could still be back along the route he’d taken or even now it could be circling around to the far side of the clearing.

He was trapped.

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

This time from the source of the motion.

A fleeting glimpse of a pointed head and a long neck passing through the primitive fern trees.

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

The other one answered from behind him. They were communicating, coordinating their attack. Or were they trying to flush him from his hiding spot?

A curtain of water drained from the stone ledge. The spattering sound nearly concealed the subtle sounds of his hunters moving through the forest. The ground trembled as though a freight train were bearing down on him.

Payton held perfectly still and waited. Maybe they didn’t know he was there.

A dark shape drew form from the shadows and stepped slowly out into the clearing. The branches slid silently from its flanks. It lifted each leg deliberately. Its long toes hung limply before extending when it planted them on the wet loam.

Violet droplets rained from above and glowed faintly where they landed.

The creature’s head bobbed when it moved. The comb on top of its head rose, rippled through the feathers along its neck, and settled into its back. They looked more like quills than feathers and hung heavily from its body like fur. Its tail was easily half of its overall length. It was flattened and widened at the distal end, like a paddle, from which long feathers radiated.

Payton held perfectly still and prayed his breathing didn’t give him away. He resisted the urge to cover his mouth and nose for fear the motion would attract its attention.

Its movements were undeniably avian. The knees bent backward like all bipedal birds, increasing the length of its stride, while its front appendages remained tightly against its sides. They were more like arms than wings, thin twigs from which three clawed digits hung. The majority of their bulk was composed of broad protofeathers that hung nearly all the way to the ground when it lowered its head, extended its neck, and released a shrill cry.

Skree!

Payton cringed deeper into the shadows.

Its mouth had opened wide enough to swallow a bowling ball. And its teeth . . . Jesus. Not only were they sharp, there were multiple rows protruding from its gums like a shark’s.

A thumping sound overhead. Pebbles clattered down the rock and splashed into the rising water in front of him.

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

The sound came from right on top of him, mere feet above his head.

The creature in front of him arched its neck, which shivered when it replied in kind.

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

The heavy feathers shook like the branches of a weeping willow in a windstorm.

It cut the distance between them in half with one effortless stride and lowered its chin nearly to the ground. Both eyes faced forward, an evolutionary adaptation that allowed birds to utilize binocular vision while their reptile forebears could only see to the sides. Its vertical pupils had dilated to such an extent that its irises were mere parentheses around them.

The rivulets draining from the ceiling widened to streams.

Payton cautiously brought his knees underneath him. He couldn’t afford to let them get any closer. As little as he liked his odds in a footrace, he stood a better chance of surviving a confrontation in the open than pinned beneath the rock.

Despite what he had just witnessed, he couldn’t help but appreciate the creature’s majesty. Here was an organism in an active state of evolution, one simultaneously arrested and fulfilled by its environment. Had it completed its migration and emerged from the tunnels into the world above, it likely would have continued its physical progression into a species of bird, but down here in the darkness, it was perfectly designed to remain perched upon the top of the food chain.

The perfect apex predator.

Whatever shifting of tectonic plates or volcanic activity was responsible for sealing these tunnels had not just preserved, but also altered the evolutionary future of every species trapped down there. How many had initially gone extinct? How had those that survived adapted? What had they looked like before? He could happily spend the rest of his life studying every organism from the amazing flora to the miraculous fauna, assuming the remainder of his life wasn’t measured in minutes.

A roaring sound filled the cavern. The ground positively shook.

The creature’s nostrils flared and it huffed onto the detritus. Its forked tongue shot out from between its scaled lips and quickly retracted.

It wasn’t hunting him by sight alone.

Payton tensed in preparation. Planted one palm on the ground and the other on the light switch on his helmet. Braced his heels against the stone.

It turned toward him and flicked its tongue again. The pupils on both eyes constricted, then expanded.

Payton looked squarely into its reptilian eyes and clicked on his headlamp.

Skree!

He lunged out from beneath the rock. Scrambled to his feet. Ran for the jungle and prayed there wasn’t a third one waiting for him.

The creature from on top of the rock flashed across his peripheral vision as it leaped to the ground, striking the other one, which screeched and snapped at it.

Ten feet.

Five.

What then, though? They were better equipped for speed through the dense brush.

Skree!

They were right behind him.

He aimed for a wall of shrubs between two massive trees. He was nearly upon them when he saw primates darting almost invisibly through the canopy.

Payton knew what he needed to do.

He veered right and aimed straight for the nearest tree. Jumped when he was within range. Hit with his right foot and launched himself upward. Wrapped his arm around a thick bough and pulled up his legs.

The creature struck where he’d just been. The impact with the trunk nearly knocked him off.

The roaring became deafening. His ears popped. The entire world positively shook.

The creatures turned in unison toward the source of the noise, and then they were gone.

Boulders tore through the forest, hurled ahead of a wall of water that shredded everything in its path, uprooting shrubs and pulverizing trees. Entire sections of the roof broke loose and flattened the trees below them.

Whaah!

Payton pulled himself up onto the branch and braced himself against the trunk. Muddy water raced past beneath him, rising by the second. He caught a glimpse of a primate maybe ten feet above him through the maze of branches before it propelled itself into the shadows.

Payton looked down one last time, took a deep breath, and climbed higher into the canopy.

They were at the mercy of the ferocious current. It swirled and shifted and sent them careening through the caverns and tunnels, which blew past in unrecognizable blurs. Debris pounded them and raced past them on its way to clogging the narrow fissures through which they would soon enough be unable to pass.

Calder had given up trying to navigate and simply did her best to hang on to Mitchell while keeping her bent legs downstream ahead of her to absorb the impact. Time accelerated, faster even than the water returning to the Bering Sea. She felt its passage as a tightening sensation in her chest. She’d been diving for longer than she could remember and had never once come close to drowning, yet she feared even her considerable skills wouldn’t be enough to save her.

The loss of control terrified her. Not only were time and the current conspiring against them, if the tunnels were now completely submerged, they would have to contend with the fact that they were nearly four hundred vertical feet beneath the surface with no known passage through which to ascend. Most frightening of all was that she couldn’t see a blasted thing.

She squeezed the flashlight in her palm as tightly as she could and buried her face into Mitchell’s shoulder. The way they clung to each other made their combined mass spin like a bullet through a barrel. The dizzying speed brought with it a vertiginous sensation, forcing her to close her eyes and pray she didn’t vomit inside her mask.

Her feet struck solid ground. Her knees buckled. She crumpled against the unforgiving limestone. Mitchell slammed her from the side. Knocked the wind out of her.

She gasped and squirmed out from beneath him. The current pushed against her so hard that she couldn’t fill her lungs, let alone raise her head.

Beside her, a crevice barely two feet wide. All kinds of debris streaking through it. Boulders shattered and disappeared through the fissure, the edges of which crumbled before her very eyes. Tree trunks split and disintegrated as though they were no more substantial than bubbles.

Calder desperately looked for another passage, but the sediment assailing them like buckshot made it impossible to see more than a few feet in any direction. They were going to have to go through the fissure. If they waited any longer, they risked the opening clogging with rubble.

Mitchell knew it every bit as well as she did. She felt his heels against her side. Glanced over and saw him brace his back and extend his legs . . .