Subterrestrial (29 page)

They had to trust that the explosives had been placed per Butler’s precise specifications so that they merely sealed off the tunnels and didn’t bring the whole submerged mountain range down on their heads. Either way, at least these monsters would never reach the mainland.

He donned his backpack once more and stared at the detonator. It was designed to be their last resort. He couldn’t make the decision on a whim, but he was rapidly reaching the point where the decision would be made for him.

“We need to push on,” Payton said, and pulled Thyssen to his feet.

His blood left a clear trail through the maze of columns that even a blind man could follow. Every drop that struck the limestone cost him a measure of his consciousness. Already the ground tilted and he struggled to focus his eyes on the light ahead of him, which blurred Nabahe’s silhouette in such a way that it almost appeared purple. Never in his life had he experienced this level of pain. It felt like his arms had been partially amputated below the elbows and remained attached by frayed nerve tracts immersed in acid. He reminded himself that the agony was a blessing, for it was the only thing keeping him going.

He hit the ground on his knees before he even knew he was falling.

Payton grunted and strained against his weight in the vain attempt to get them both back to their feet.

“You have to help me,” Payton said.

Thyssen had no desire to remain down, but he could only stare at the backs of his hands, at the blood congealed into the fine fissures and the smeared prints on the stone. He was simply losing too much, too fast.

Nabahe’s light momentarily blinded him. There was pressure under his arm and then he was rising. He saw the screaming face of one of The Watchers, and then he was moving, the violet light expanding in the distance. It grew incrementally brighter with each step until it filled the opening of the tunnel, through which he was certain he saw trees. Actual trees. Growing underground.

“Turn off your lights,” Payton whispered.

Thyssen was almost surprised when they did so and the trees remained silhouetted against the dim purple glow. He kept expecting them to vanish, for his eyes to dispel the hallucinations caused by the blood loss, clear up until the branches scraped against their wetsuits and the saplings swatted their thighs. It wasn’t until he smelled the damp detritus that he experienced a moment of perfect clarity.

This was it. Three generations of searching and they’d finally found it . . .

Agharta.

Here was the proof that his grandfather hadn’t been crazy, that his father’s belief hadn’t been misplaced, that his own life’s work had not been in vain.

Thyssen watched the boughs pass overhead, the leaves illuminated by the phlegmy sludge hanging from the upper canopy and the roof of the cavern.

When he’d first seen the faces Nabahe posted on his website, he’d been skeptical, to say the least. He’d traveled to the Arizona desert to see them with his own eyes, and even then they’d required no small amount of imagination. As had many of the others. Not down there, though. The moment Mitchell led him across the river and showed him the faces carved into the columns, he’d known that he was on the brink of realizing his dreams. Yet even with the physical remains, he hadn’t genuinely believed that it was possible for anything to have survived in these caverns without light and food, not even when he’d flown halfway around the world in an effort to convince Hart and Payton to join him. The only one of them he’d truly believed he might need was Calder, who he figured would help them determine what kind of animal killed the sea lions, assuming he wasn’t right in his initial assessment that it had been the work of polar bears.

Now, though, as he staggered through a biome miraculously preserved from a prehistoric time, he couldn’t help but believe that The Watchers, whose likeness adorned the passages into the Hollow Earth, were still down there in the darkness with them.

Neither Nabahe nor Payton broke the reverential silence. Payton touched every leaf and fern frond and appeared on the verge of making some dramatic proclamation before he was distracted by yet another plant or shrub.

Whaah!

The scream came from the dense thicket directly ahead of them.

They stood still and listened for a recurrence of the sound, yet all they heard was the sound of running water in the distance.

Thyssen readjusted his grip on the detonator. He wouldn’t survive another confrontation, but at least there was a slim chance that the others might.

They started forward slowly. Cautiously. Creeping through the foliage as quietly as possible, letting the branches slide from their wetsuits and placing each tread—

Whaah!

A dark shape tore through the vegetation, low to the ground and moving with startling speed. It burst from the bushes and barreled straight into Payton.

Thyssen toppled sideways into Nabahe and nearly pressed the button. A branch scraped his cheek and pierced the burn wound on his ear. He opened his mouth to cry out and tasted dirt.

The animal screamed and thrashed while Payton could only try to shield his face with his arms.

“Stop it!”

Hart shoved through the thicket and stood silhouetted against the purple glow.

The frenzied screaming and thudding of fists striking flesh ceased and for the first time, Thyssen got a good look at the animal crouching on Payton’s abdomen. Its cranium was elongated and its beard was almost manlike. It was the face from the caves in the Baboquivari Mountains and the Argentinian Andes, The Watchers over the River Styx, the hypothetical link to the first forest ape to walk on two legs.

Hart approached with her palms up and her eyes averted. She lowered herself to her knees and scooted closer.

The primate watched her, its back heaving with each great breath. She rested her hands on the ground at Payton’s side.

Whay-ahh!

Hart flinched, but held her ground. She watched the beast from beneath her bangs.

The animal huffed and looked at Payton. Blood dribbled from one nostril and from what looked like a bite mark on his cheek. It bared its teeth and raised its fists.

“Look at me,” Hart whispered.

The primate grunted and watched her from the corner of its eye. She slowly turned her hand over and brushed aside the leaves and twigs to reveal a patch of bare soil, then drew a triangular shape.

Whaah!

It seemed to deflate when it shrieked. It climbed down from on top of Payton and used the tip of its finger to draw a half circle beside the triangle.

Hart again turned her hands over and waited for the animal to place his palms on hers. It appeared to be on the verge of climbing into her lap when it abruptly stiffened and looked at Thyssen, who scurried backward at the sight of its face.

“It doesn’t have eyes!”

Whay-ahh!

It grabbed his bloody arm, leaned closer, and drew a deep inhalation. Its head snapped back toward the direction from which they’d come.

A crashing sound from the trees behind them.

Thyssen glanced down at the soaked bandages and then at the leaves of the shrubs that glistened with his blood.

Skree!

It exploded from the bushes and was upon him before he could even brace himself for impact.

Searing pain in his neck.

A crunch of cartilage and a whistle of air.

He pressed the button on the detonator as he collapsed into a rapidly expanding pool of his own blood.

The ground lurched underfoot. Chunks of limestone broke from the ceiling and rained down upon them. Impact with his shoulder drove Mitchell to his knees, but he struggled back to his feet. He was in big trouble and he knew it. The rope had helped stem the flow of blood and now that it was gone, there was nothing to hold it back. Despite pressing his palm to the wound, the blood sluiced through the gaps between his fingers at an alarming rate. If it had nicked an artery, he already would have bled out. While that thought comforted him, it certainly didn’t make it hurt any less. It felt like there was a fiery brand working its way deeper into his flesh, right down to the bone, bringing with it a tingling sensation that settled into his foot. Already his head was beginning to feel light and the ground refused to hold still.

A fissure opened in the rock overhead with a resounding
crack
. Water trickled down the walls and reflected the flashlight beam. He didn’t even want to guess where it originated. The fact that it was already welling underfoot told him more than he needed to know.

The clapping sounds of their strides became splashing as the water rose. The light abruptly dimmed when Calder blocked it with her body. The passage narrowed to a sliver through which she had to squeeze sideways.

Mitchell stared at the crevice for several seconds before sliding his leg inside. The pressure on his shoulder and hip was instantaneous. His heart rate accelerated at the prospect of getting stuck.

The shrill screams from the cavern behind them reached a crescendo.

Mitchell closed his eyes and pushed himself deeper. He had to turn his face to the side. The pressure against his ribs made it impossible to take a breath deep enough to stave off the panic. He tried to clear his mind and focus on his training. Every diver knew that panic was his greatest enemy, and if he gave into it—even for a second—all was lost.

He probed for imperfections on the rocks and used them to pull himself forward. Several times it took all of his strength to move a few scant inches, forcing him to contort his body and shove by any means that he could. The water rose past his ankles and to his shins. The current grew stronger with every step.

His chest became lodged. He blew all of the air from his lungs and even then couldn’t seem to move.

“Come on!” Calder shouted.

Mitchell tried to respond, but couldn’t find the breath to speak.

The tunnel terminated a mere three feet away, just out of reach. The sound of running water grew louder by the second.

Calder leaned inside and grabbed his arm. Pulled. Jerked.

He didn’t budge.

The first sparkles of oxygen deprivation danced in his peripheral vision.

“You have to help me!” Calder screamed.

She bit the flashlight between her teeth, gripped his wrist, and set her feet. Pulled as hard as she could. He felt himself slide, if only a fraction of an inch.

Her grasp slipped and she splashed into the rising water.

Skree!

Calder’s eyes widened as she looked past him, toward the source of the sound.

Mitchell couldn’t even turn his head.

“Go,” he whispered with the last of his air.

“We go together or not at all.”

Calder again grabbed his wrist, raised one foot from the water, and planted it against the stone. She tightened her grip, braced her other foot on the opposite side of the crevice, and leaned backward over the water. The strain on Mitchell’s shoulder increased tenfold. He was certain the socket would give long before the stone.

Skree!

Calder screamed and drove with her legs. The light dropped into the water. The pain in his chest became unbearable. He heard as much as felt a rib crack, and then he was falling. He caught a glimpse of Calder’s silhouette before she vanished with a splash.

Mitchell barely managed to take a breath before falling into the water.

Movement and light from the corner of his eye.

Calder stood from the water with the flashlight held high.

The tips of the stalagmites breached the choppy waves. Geysers erupted from the walls and gushed down the flowstone. None of this water was supposed to be here.

Within moments, it was past his knees and still rising.

Skree!

Calder took his hand and dragged him behind her. Water rose around their churning knees as they fought their way across the cavern, without any idea where they were going. All he knew was that if the water could get in here, then surely he and Calder could get out. He just prayed the passage was larger than the last and did his best to force the implications of the rising water from his mind. They needed to distance themselves from the creature before they could worry about the sheer quantity of returning seawater that could easily flood the entire network of tunnels.

A thunderous crashing sound. The ceiling to their right disintegrated before their very eyes.

Mitchell pulled Calder in the opposite direction as the avalanche cascaded around them. A wall of water exploded from the limestone, hurling the rocks ahead of it like steel pellets from a shotgun.

It swept Calder from her feet and wrenched her hand from his. She vanished a heartbeat before his head struck the ground and the water buffeted him against the wall, pinning him to the stone while boulders ricocheted all around him.

The force was so great he couldn’t move. And then the current shifted and flung him deeper into the cavern. He struck speleothems hard enough to shatter them. The sharp edges tore his wetsuit and lacerated his skin. He tried desperately to find Calder, but he couldn’t see a blasted thing through the raging water and the debris churning all around him. He could no longer tell up from down and could barely hold what little breath he had as he was bludgeoned against the ground and the walls.

A rock the size of a bowling ball struck his shoulder and his right arm went numb. He instinctively cried out, but managed to close his mouth before inhaling his death.

It was now or never. Either he surfaced or he drowned.

His back struck the ground and his feet careened over his head. He used the momentum to right himself, then bent his knees and shoved off the moment his feet hit solid stone. He reached upward and felt his hand breach the surface. His inertia carried him backward. His hand once more submerged and his legs swung upward. He struck something solid and held on for everything he was worth. The current attempted to pry him loose as he struggled to invert himself, to get his head out of the water and his legs once more beneath him.

He gasped the moment he felt air on his face and coughed out the brine.