Odyssey Rising (17 page)

By the left most tunnel passageway, there was a very regular, consistent and repetitive pattern in the soil pathway just a few steps ahead of their current position. The imprints were several feet wide. However mysterious the source, they had seen the imprints before, out by the half eaten hills the night the camelback herd appeared.

“I’ve seen these before,” Theo observed.

“Where?”

“That night we fought the herd,” Theo said.

“But it is highly doubtful the silverflies made these, right? And they’re too consistent and too large a pattern to be the wind,” Ellie added.

“Agreed.”

“Then if it’s not the wind and it’s not the silverflies and it’s not caused by natural erosion, then what is it?” Theo did not answer her. She continued, “Then dare I say it? They look like creature tracks of some kind,” Ellie said.

“Perhaps.”

“This is crazy,” Ellie added. “You know this is crazy.”

“Then let’s find these silverflies, get a bunch and get out quickly.”

“Agreed.”

Inside the underground cavern, Theo and Ellie kept walking into the narrow passageway. The imprints repeated deep into the underground cavern.

There was the constant hum of four discernible sounds swirling near them: their own breathing, the trickle of liquid flowing in the cavern walls, wind rustling through the crevices and the last sound was the familiar low hum from the silverflies.

“Do you hear that?”

“Yes,” Theo whispered.

“It’s an echo-echo-echo of the silverflies. Which one is it coming from?”

“Don’t know,” Theo said.

“They might all be connected, but all I know is that they’re close. Very close.”

“We have to go on. We need those silverflies.”

“And of course the silverflies that we need to hunt live in a cavern in the depths of this underground labyrinth.”

Drips of liquid fell on their heads, as if rain was falling. Halfway through this right most passageway, they both paused and dimmed their helmet lights.

Theo pointed to the end of the passageway where a silver fluorescence was glowing from the secondary cavern. It was shaped like a gigantic mushroom.

As they looked up, scanning with the portable light, there were hundreds of silverflies pulsing and glowing on the roof of the secondary cave.

For a few moments, Theo and Ellie observed silently.

It was hard to tell if the silverflies were asleep or just resting. They were all attached to a different portion of the cavern wall. Intermittently, they pulsed on and off with their silver glow.

At the edge of this secondary offshoot cavern with all of the silverflies, there was a large pool of liquid. It was oval, deep, almost like an underground miniature lake. It had both a silver and dark coffee brown tinge to the liquid.

Before proceeding any further, Theo and Ellie unfolded the parachute and formed a sack. Since the parachute could withstand six G’s of force on the way down to the planet’s surface, they were fairly confident it could withstand the fluttering of the silverfly wings. Whether it was strong enough to withstand the attempted punctures of the tendrils of the silverfly remained to be seen.

On the ceiling of the mountain cave, there was a glow of silver throbbing every other second or so.

Ellie tilted the handheld light up toward the source. There were hundreds of the small silver globs with the odd four flap wings. They were like tiny jellyfish, pulsing and clinging to the cave.

Calmly, Theo and Ellie held the canvas white parachute with both and hands and then they stretched it out from end to end. It was like an empty sack just swaying in the breeze. In a quick burst of movements, they snapped the parachute open and twirled it up to the ceiling in one big, fluid half circle.

Several silverflies fell to the ground, while several others fell into the parachute sack and some others went flying chaotically away. From this behavior, it was hard to call them an intelligent life form. They had reactions, perhaps only instincts that were connected to some kind of sensory system.

As Theo and Ellie joined the two edges of the parachute and tied it together with some rope, some of the silverflies chaotically escaped the makeshift sack created by the parachute. It was still filled with an abundance of the silverflies and was now officially filled with their medical salvation, at least that’s what they hoped.

Theo slung the parachute shoulder straps over his arms.

Ellie grimaced. There was a silverfly resting on her shoulder and a second on her hand and a third actually rested on her nose. Ellie wanted to sneeze. She wanted to swat them away. She fought every instinct in her body, not to move a muscle. She stood still like some marble statue in an art museum.

“Let it do its thing,” Theo said. “Come on thing. Sting her.”

These silverflies thing were his only chance of salvation from the internal madness rushing through his body, just a silver mystery medicine that liked to shriek.

The shriek went silent and the silverfly on Ellie’s shoulder shimmered up and down until the silver stinger pierced her skin and stayed in there.

“You’re going to be okay,” Theo said.

“That’s it?”

“Yes.”

As the silverlfy stung Ellie, there was a disturbing sound rising from the pool. It was the sound of rock scraping against rock, loud and abrasive.

Both their eyes turned instinctively in the direction of the sound.

Ellie’s face was frozen, mouth open, eyes as wide as a full moon, because there was a creature. Not just any kind of creature. Large. Getting larger with each breath. Cylindrical. Liquid from the pool dispersed on to the cavern floor.

The creature was rising out of the underground lake.

Ellie had seen it before. It was the image that Ravi had drawn and shared with the group.

The creature had no face, no eyes and no mouth that could be seen. It was shaped like a long tube. The slake creature’s body appeared to be made of stone. Rough textured. Coarse. Diamond like pockmark imprints stamped into its skin. And it was huge, nearly thirty feet long and ten feet tall. It was like a slug that could be found after an afternoon rain, a very gigantic one. The slake creature’s outer skin was full of diamond imprints. They were textured and looked coarse and tough, almost as if they slake was part rock and soil.

Ellie stumbled back and the silverflies that were on her body went flying off in different directions.

Several long, anxious breaths passed. Sweat brewed on their palms and their foreheads.

Theo stumbled back, too. He placed his hand against the cool of the cavern. Ellie was beside him. Both were pressed against the cavern wall by the passageway opening.

The slake was right behind them. They could both feel its breath, bursts of warm air. Yet it didn’t appear to have a mouth or a nose or nostrils or anything recognizable as a face. The source of the breath was a mystery.

They were now looking at it up close and personal and it was larger than either had imagined. It didn’t have a head that was recognizable.

Very briefly Theo thought: no eyes. Perhaps the slake creature can’t see us. But Theo’s assessment was wrong.

The slake swung the back half of its body up and down. It was as if the slake was saying,
this is my home! You don’t belong here!

Each swing hit the cavern ceiling, dislodging soil and rocks in a small avalanche.

They dodged the falling pieces of mountain.

And then the front of the slake opened up. Inside this opening, it had something quite resembling a pink tongue that was forked. The pink tongue flew out at least ten feet and came within a foot of wrapping around Ellie’s legs.

“Run!”

And that’s what they did with all of their energy and all of their focus.

They ran for the passageway. The parachute pack was strapped to Theo’s back. The silverflies were trapped inside and he used every ounce of his strength in order to escape the slake. It was hard work pulling them through the tunnels. The flying creatures flapped their four wings and sought a way out of their captured resting place.

Ahead, there was the opening to the cliffs.

Ellie was in the lead. Next came Theo and last was the slake creature thing. Its whole cylindrical body entered behind them with a burst of energy. There was no way the slake could fit in the crawl space passageway and so Theo and Ellie rushed toward it.

“We can outrun that thing,” Theo yelled.

“We have to!”

The slake swung its back side – the part that was most like a tail – up and down like it was pounding a hammer. Soil and rocks became dislodged from the cavern ceiling and walls.

The slake was one long, slithering slimy mess. It was faceless, eyeless and legless.

Inside the cavern there was a frantic and chaotic mix of sounds as the slake gave chase. Maybe it wasn’t as dumb as it looked.

Over his shoulder, Theo quickly made sure he still had the parachute full of silverflies. The swarm was strong and pulled and ballooned the parachute out in odd shapes, causing the parachute to scrape along the cavern wall. Silver throbbed and pulsed through the gauzy fabric. It bulged into a half moon shape surrounded by the gray shadows of this underground cave.

They could now see the opening to the cave. Ellie was the first to reach it. She tumbled onto her knees and crawled for momentary safety in the narrow passageway. Theo was just behind him and the slake was right behind him. Fortunately, it couldn’t fit completely.

It’s a trap, Theo thought. The slake is smarter than it looks.

Survive or die rules all life.

“It can’t fit through,” Ellie yelled as they saw sunlight and the end of the cavern passageway. Theo yanked the parachute full of silverflies behind him.

“But it’s trying,” Theo yelled. “Don’t you hear it?”

“Yes!”

They could hear rock grinding against rock. They were on their knees in the passageway. When they reached the end of the passageway, outside it was high noon and the GidX7 sky was as warm and inviting as a golden brown blanket.

The rope dangled against the canyon wall in a stiff breathe.

For a breath, they felt they had lost the slake in this underground maze of caverns. Perhaps they really were safe from its pink tongue and its large, pounding body.

Ellie hooked in to the climbing apparatus and scampered up the climbing rope and pulled herself up on to the plateau. She stood and unclasp from the rope.

Theo was already climbing up the rope without being clasped in to the safety line. There was no time to be careful and safe. He was going free.

There was no sight of the slake. It had not followed, at least not through the crawl space passageway.

When Theo was near the top, the soil around the cavern hole began to collapse in a landslide. The slake was causing it.

The slake pounded right through the canyon wall. It was a gigantic earthworm, just a cylinder of a kind of organic material that was strong enough and hard enough to burrow through stone and soil.

Theo dangled from side to side as the slake nudged him left and right. The parachute of silverflies stayed strapped to Theo’s shoulders. They swayed from side to side.

From the front of its body, the cylindrical pink tongue sprung out and slapped against the side of the sandstone cliff just a few inches from Theo’s heels. Like the body of the slake, the pink tongue was a cylinder, though it had a fork in the middle.

Then, the pink tongue of the slake slapped hard against Theo’s leg. He was still trying to climb up the rappelling rope. He could feel the tongue. It was warm and coarse and strong.

And then the pink tongue wrapped several times around both of Theo’s legs.

Theo felt the pink tongue squeezing and tugging. He felt like the slake was going to rip his leg right out of his hip socket.

“Ahh!”

Above him, Theo saw Ellie standing on solid ground and holding her gun and steadying her aim.

“Shoot!” Theo yelled. “NOW!”

Ellie fingered the butt of the gun. She was ready to shoot.

But Ellie didn’t pull the trigger just yet. Frankly, she had no idea where to shoot. And she knew there was just one shot left, just one chance to save her friend.

“DO IT!”

Finally, Ellie shot and the electric charged soared by Theo’s ear. His hairs sprung to attention with the static.

The electric charge knifed into the slake’s midsection. The slake didn’t make any sound, rather its pink tongue briefly retracted.

Theo’s leg was free from its grasp and he quickly climbed up the rope, pulling himself up to freedom. This was only a temporary situation.

The slake was stunned, perhaps slightly impaired by the wound but it was still alive, still moving with force, still following them up the side of the outer canyon wall as if it was super-glued to the soil.

Theo climbed up to the flat of the plateau where Ellie was still huffing and puffing.

On the canyon plateau, Theo and Ellie jumped to their feet and ran for the ATV.

The slake kept slithering along the plateau soil, following them.

Ellie slung her goggles around her eyes, mid-stride and Theo did the same. There was dust swirling. Coming into the focus they saw the Escape Pod and the pack of camelbacks surrounding it.

Theo jumped up on the three-wheel ATV and took hold of the handlebars of the ATV. Ellie jumped on behind him, trying to avoid the bulging canvas white parachute full of silverflies.

“Go! Go! Go!”

This world had become more than the Positives could have ever imagined. It had become a confusing, out of control game – all too real, all too dangerous but a game nonetheless. The game was life, and life – they both knew – was a game of survival.

Theo and Ellie now knew this saying all too well, because unfortunately the slake slithered right for them.