Subterrestrial (34 page)

Her lungs were full of water. It spurted from her mouth with each thrust. There was just too much of it in there. He went at it harder and faster until the intonation changed from sloshing to thumping and water positively poured down her face, into her nostrils, and over her closed eyes.

“Come on, Emily!”

She sputtered and coughed. Gagged. Payton rolled her onto her side and she threw up what looked like gallons of water onto the rock.

Whealp! Wheese!

The others joined in the chorus, one screaming voice on top of the other.

The large male lumbered closer and traced Hart’s cheek with the back of his hand. She squeezed it and closed her eyes.

Payton stared at the primate’s odd skin. Up close, he could see that it was thin and wrinkled beneath the wiry fur. It reminded him of another species he couldn’t immediately place, at least not until he saw the gashes on its chest, from which blood dribbled over its abdomen and into the fur on its groin. The wounds were so deep that the flesh puckered and revealed the striated pectoral muscles. The animal appeared completely oblivious to the wounds.

They were like naked mole rats. Payton had written his undergraduate thesis on them. They were evolutionary anomalies completely different from every other mammal on the planet. They were thermoconforming mammals able to adapt to the temperature of their surroundings, unable to regulate their own constant internal body temperature. Their skin lacked a neurotransmitter called substance P, which made them insensitive to painful stimuli, even the acids that accumulated in their tissues due to the high concentrations of carbon dioxide in their poorly ventilated warrens. Even their lungs had adapted to the essentially uninhabitable conditions, allowing them to lower both their respiratory and metabolic rates and contributing to their almost absurd longevity.

If these primates had similarly evolved, then he was potentially looking at not just another higher-order primate, but an actual extant homologous branch of the human lineage well on its way to becoming something entirely different.

Whay-ahh!

Payton turned toward the source of the sound. It looked like a wave washed over the animal, until it resolved into the outline of a long slender neck and ferocious jaws that latched onto the shrieking primate and cleaved it into the air. The feathered beast shook it from side to side, then slammed it to the ground. A flick of the talon in its elevated third digit and the screaming ceased. Its bowels bloomed from its abdomen as the creature vanished back into the depths with the carcass.

Another one leaped from the rising water while he was still pulling Hart to her feet. He took her by the hand and ran in the opposite direction. His headlamp constricted into a diminishing circle of light on the limestone escarpment. From behind him, a sound that chilled him to the bone.

Clack
.

Clack-clack
.

Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack
.

Darkness.

The pain summoned Calder back to consciousness. She tried to scream, but no sound formed. She couldn’t seem to fill her lungs, couldn’t take more than the shallowest of breaths. Her entire body shook as she cried.

Cold stone pressed against her shoulders, forcing her head and neck all the way forward. Something dug into her forehead. It took her a moment to realize that it was her own knee. With that understanding came a crippling wave of terror.

She tried to fight her way free, but her limbs were unresponsive. Her best efforts resulted in a twitch of her right index finger against her left shoulder. Her arms were crossed over her chest and pinned against her by her thighs. There was pressure against her abdomen. The faintest sensation of movement outside of her control.

She attempted to calm herself, to focus on rationalizing her situation.

The blood thumped in her temples and her head throbbed so badly she could barely think. Her neck felt like it was snapping in slow motion.

The light.

She remembered the light. Swimming toward it. Reaching for it as her last breath expired and—

Calder gasped and desperately tried to take a deep inhalation. There was air, but not much of it. And it was warm, recycled. Laden with carbon dioxide.

She contorted her torso until she toppled to her side. Her left cheek pressed against something softer than stone, something parchment-like and sticky yet surprisingly resilient.

Calder knew exactly where she was.

Again she succumbed to the panic and thrashed in an effort to move any part of her body. Not twenty-four hours ago, she had stood in that stone corridor with the holes carved on each side, fingering the crust around the edges while she studied the teeth marks carved into the cortex of the skeletal primate’s bones.

She moved just enough to create room for her chest to rise, if only by a few millimeters. She took several breaths and screamed them out. The sound emerged as little more than a frightened gasp. It took her several tries before it came out with the desired effect. Even to her own ears it sounded like the cry had come from the bottom of a well.

She heard a muffled shout, if that was even what it was. The noise was so soft she couldn’t be certain she’d heard anything at all.

The numbness in her arms and legs gave way to pins and needles. She screamed again and this time managed to slip her left arm out from against her chest, which allowed her to get her knees out of her face.

“Someone . . .” The pain made it nearly impossible to speak. She tried again and the words erupted with a scream. “Help me!”

She pushed her head against the nesting material and it bulged outward. She used the extra space to shift her hips and wedged her feet against the back wall. It took several moments to catch her breath from even that minimal exertion. She was burning through what little air was trapped in there with her at a staggering pace.

Again, a muffled shout. It sounded like it came from miles away.

With the flow of blood returning to her legs came pain beyond anything she’d ever imagined. Her left leg . . . it felt like a bear trap had snapped on it. The blood spread down her calf inside her suit. Her foot squelched when she pushed off from the wall. The nesting material stretched and made a crackling sound but rebounded into place when her trembling legs gave out.

If she didn’t fight through the pain and exhaustion, she was going to die in here.

Calder screamed and drove her legs as hard as she could. More crackling sounds, but this time her goal hadn’t been to break the seal.

She freed her right hand and struggled to straighten her wrist. It had been pinned in an almost palsied position. She extracted the flashlight from her sleeve and sobbed when she clicked the switch and it actually worked.

The beam revealed only bare stone beyond her thighs. The ceiling was rounded and higher than she’d initially thought. She used the additional room to raise her knees and arch her back to alleviate the pressure on her abdomen.

Something twitched against her stomach.

She froze and waited for it to happen again. The movement became almost frenetic. She screamed and grabbed the egg sac. Flung it away, but there was nowhere for it to go. It bounced from the wall and squirmed against her side.

What little of it she could see was crisp and burned. A viscous fluid oozed from the cracks in the desiccated mermaid’s purse.

That was why the creature hadn’t immediately followed them, why it had thrown itself into the flames. It had managed to save at least this one egg. An egg she couldn’t afford to let hatch while she was still in there with it.

She pushed off from the back wall so hard that her legs positively shook. The material forced her chin to her chest. She whimpered at the pain in her neck.

More crackling sounds.

She twisted her face as best she could and looked for a weak point in the seal. There was a slight gap, right at the top edge, where it pulled away from the rock.

Her feet slipped and she slumped to her back.

Again, shouting from far away. Someone else was in here with her.

She was breathing so hard that she was on the verge of hyperventilating. It took several seconds to draw enough air to push again. She watched the gap split downward. Dropped the light. Wriggled her fingers into the hole. Pulled down with everything she had. The crackling sound grew louder and the material bowed even farther outward.

Her strength abandoned her. She collapsed to her back, panting. She’d heard the sound of running water from just behind her head. The shouting was louder, too. It was a man’s voice, although she couldn’t decipher his words.

Had Mitchell somehow survived, too?

Calder pushed her feet against the wall and wriggled both hands through the seam. She pulled them apart and the material ripped straight down the middle so quickly that she spurted from the enclave and was immersed in cold water before she could take a breath.

She splashed to the surface and coughed out the brine. There was another taste, like someone had extinguished a giant match in it, a tinge of sulfur that was as much a smell as a taste.

The water was waist deep and there was no discernible current. She grabbed her flashlight and shined it from one end of the narrow corridor to the other. It extended beyond the reach of her beam. There were more sealed holes, only the material was torn and bulged outward from the water contained within. The worst of the flooding must have already passed and trapped the air down here. The same kind of thing happened in shipwrecks, allowing sailors to survive for days in the sunken carcass until they were rescued.

A panicked shout. She heard it clearly this time.

Calder shined her light at the recess opposite hers. Something pressed against it from the inside.

“Is someone in there?”

A muffled cry in response. Whoever was in there pushed against the sheath, over and over.

“Mitchell?”

She attacked the fibrous membrane with her fingernails, scratching and clawing and screaming. She exploited the first tiny seam and ripped it first one way, then the other. Braced her foot against the wall. Gripped one side with both hands. Pushed off—

The material ripped and she stumbled backward. Her legs betrayed her and deposited her into the water with a splash. Her light dimmed underwater and for a moment the passage was dark. The silhouette of the man rolled over the edge and fell into the water. She slogged over to where he floated and cradled his head to her breast.

“Mitchell!”

She shined her light onto his face and felt something break inside of her.

It wasn’t Mitchell.

Nabahe’s entire body convulsed. He sputtered gouts of rich arterial blood that rolled down his cheeks. His eyes filled with terror.

“Where are you hurt? Maybe I can—”

Every muscle in his body constricted at once. The tendons in his neck stood out like tent posts. The vessels in his eyes burst and flooded the sclera with crimson. A rush of warmth spread through the water around them. The fear left his eyes. Blood poured from his mouth, down his neck, and toward his—

Calder screamed and threw herself backward.

The creature scurried up over Nabahe’s chin and onto his face as his body sank beneath the surface. It looked like a hybrid of a lizard and a chicken. Its downy feathers were slick with blood and clumped with macerated viscera. It shrieked and struck at her.

Calder scooted away from it until her back met the wall, which she used as leverage to gain her feet.

The creature launched itself at her. Talons like fishhooks punctured her wetsuit as it climbed up her abdomen and chest.

She grabbed it by its long neck and pried it from it from her flesh. It slashed at her wrists and snapped at anything into which it could sink its teeth. She turned and prepared to throw it against the stone—

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

The sound came from directly behind her.

Calder lowered the squawking creature and held it away from her body. A wave of sheer exhaustion washed over her. She closed her eyes, mustered every last ounce of her strength, and turned to face her demise.

Below Speranza Station

Bering Sea

Ten Miles Northwest of Wales, Alaska

65°47′ N, 169°01′ W

Calder held the hatchling at arm’s length in hopes of shifting the creature’s attention from her to its offspring, which continued to slash at her forearm with its wicked talons.

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

She tightened her grip on the beast’s neck until its screeching ceased. It was all she could do to hold onto it as it tried to wriggle free.

Skree!

The creature retreated several steps and vanished into the darkness beyond the edge of the aura of light.

Calder couldn’t afford to let it out of her sight.

She took several quick steps forward and hit it with her beam.

Skree!

It lowered its snout to just above the water in an attempt to keep the flashlight from shining directly into its eyes. The scales on its face were burned black. Blisters swelled from between them. The pupil in its left eye remained wide and unfocused beneath a milky haze. The feathers on its crown were singed to the bare vanes, which stood in spikes from its crest. It turned its head to watch her through its good eye.

It was the same creature she and Mitchell had encountered in the nesting chamber, the same one that had hurled itself into the flames to try to save the eggs. There were entire sections on its body where the scales had been replaced by suppurating, full-thickness burns. The pain must have been excruciating.

The edges of Calder’s vision pulsated with her accelerating heartbeat. She could barely see the recess where her life was meant to end from the corner of her eye. She thought about the egg sac with which she’d been entombed. The burned edges, specifically. The creature must have salvaged it from the blaze, and then hunted her down to incubate it.

The hatchling’s scratching slowed until its legs merely twitched. She loosened her grip just enough to feel the pulse in its neck.