Angus's canteen held a tiny bit of water, which O'Doyle poured into Lybrand's dry mouth. She swallowed weakly. She didn't look any better, but O'Doyle could already feel her temperature drop to normal levels. His heart surged with hope.
"Please,” Angus said. “Please let me go.” He was still sitting cross-legged and facing the tunnel wall. Acrid sweat covered his naked body. The smell of his fear filled the cavern.
"Shut up,” O'Doyle said over his shoulder. He looked down warmly at Lybrand. “How do you feel?” She blinked a few times and looked up at him, her eyes clear for the first time since they'd entered the river.
Her voice was a thin whisper. “Like crap — but better."
O'Doyle lifted her up and again threw her over his shoulder. He glared doleful at Angus.
"Turn around,” O'Doyle said. Naked, Angus turned slowly, looking terrified, as if he expected to be stabbed at any moment. “You wait here, count to three hundred, and then come up the tunnel. I don't want you getting in my way. If I see you again, I'll kill you, do you understand?"
Angus nodded softly, eyes already weak with heat exhaustion.
click-click, click
O'Doyle turned and looked back down the tunnel. A single silverbug crouched motionless on the wall. Only one, but more weren't far behind. Without another word he turned and moved quickly up the Linus Highway, struggling with Lybrand's weight and his own tortured body.
Angus sat on his ass, transfixed by the silverbug, a look of horror frozen on his face. Caught between two evils, he slowly started counting. He made it as far as 263 before he stood and sprinted, screaming with madness, into a side tunnel.
Ignoring the pain, or at least pretending to, Connell ripped away Kayla's equipment and weapons and tossed them in a pile. He clutched her machine gun tightly. It surprised him how good the weapon felt in his hands. He pulled three full magazines from her web gear, stuffing two in his belt and popping the third into the gun.
He knew he had only a few seconds to act.
Keeping one eye on Kayla's prone body, he hobbled to the hallway's edge and looked down the line of silverbugs.
The rocktopi splashed down the narrow riverbank on both sides, flashing brilliantly in the cavern's misty light, waving knives and tentacles, screeching their bloodlust — they'd reach him in only a few minutes. Connell tried testing his weight on the ravaged leg; pain blasted through him. He couldn't walk on it at all. He'd never outrun them.
He looked back to Kayla. She rolled slightly to her left, slowly regaining consciousness. Connell grabbed her knife and handgun. He threw the weapons to the river's edge, just a few feet shy of the water. The silverbug line continued to jerk and click with sickening repetition.
"Kayla, wake up!” He watched her hands instinctively flash first to her shoulder holster, then to the sheath at her waist. Finding both empty, Kayla grabbed the first rock that presented itself and tried to sit up.
"Don't move!"
She looked up, eyes glazed over with pure hatred. “You'd better shoot me now.” One hand clutched the rock, the other jammed against the gushing knife wound in her leg. “If you don't, I'm gonna cut your balls off and stuff them down your throat."
Connell wanted to flash a glance down the riverbank, check the rocktopi's progress, but he didn't dare take his eyes off her. She could probably throw that rock like Nolan Ryan.
"I've left your handgun and knife at the river's edge behind me. The monsters are coming. If you come out of there before I'm out of sight, I'll kill you."
Connell left the hallway behind and hopped into the water. The river would take him away. He was on the Linus Highway side, so he didn't have to fight the full current — it wouldn't take much strength to get to the shore.
It was crazy to not only leave Kayla alive, but leave her with a weapon. He knew this, but she was his only chance.
Rocktopi swarmed out of the river, over the wall and onto the orb platform. They moved tentatively and stayed close together, looking around in awe and fear at every inch of the ship. They were filled with reverent wonder at this place they'd heard of only in legend. One of the horrible, murderous yellow-skinned monsters was there, already cut to properly sized pieces, its red blood smeared and steaming on the stone floor.
A few rocktopi wandered to the control panel, a few skirted the edges of the room and a few more peered down the shaft. The orb dropped steadily downward. As it descended, ancient lights surged to life, or at least tried to. Most of them flickered uselessly or simply didn't turn on at all, long since claimed by the persistent fingers of time. A few managed to sputter fully awake. They cast dim reflections on the orb's polished surface.
A silverbug crawled from the river and perched on the stone breakwater. With water still beading on its shell, it began jerking convulsively. One of the rocktopi screeched loudly and pulsed a dim green before leaping over the wall and back into the river. The other rocktopi quickly followed, leaving behind the shaft and the distant, shiny object falling into its depths.
They never knew its purpose.
Chapter Fifty-one
She'd waited long enough.
Kayla struggled to rise to her feet. Her head throbbed with sunbursts of pain. She hadn't been hit that hard in a long time. Connell proved to be much more of a man than she'd given him credit for. She wanted to kick herself — she'd known enough not to underestimate his mind, but hadn't thought his lanky frame capable of such lightning speed.
She kept her fist jammed into the knife wound as she struggled to rise. Why Connell let her live, she had no idea, but it would be his last mistake. She no longer gave a shit about the others, about the NSA, about anything. All she cared about was gutting Connell Kirkland. She limped down the hall, toward the river and her weapons. The silverbug line clicked and bobbed, scattering away from her and re-forming as she passed.
Her instincts loudly sounded an alarm. Screeches, just like the ones she'd heard during the camp attack, filled her ears along with the river's insistent pounding. The monsters had to be close, she had to move despite the pain. Why would Connell leave her a weapon? It didn't make any sense. She struggled to reach the riverbank and the safety of her Steyr GB-80, which sat a few feet shy of the water's edge.
She moved out of the hall and looked downstream. A wall of glowing monsters poured down the riverbank toward her, the mist magnifying their flashing red and orange bursts like stoplights illuminating the morning fog. Recoiling in horror, she grabbed her weapon and started firing.
She suddenly realized Connell's intent as the Steyr's deafening thunder briefly drowned out the hunting screeches.
She was a diversion. Something to slow the rocktopi while he got away. Even wounded, her expert aim blasted into the oncoming wave, dropping them like big, wet blankets. But there were too many.
Her subconscious counted off nineteen shots — she scrambled for another magazine, but the lead rocktopi dove for her, its wicked crescent knife flashing in the misty air. Snarling, she ducked and snatched her own knife from the ground.
The swirling mass of colors and tentacles closed in around her.
Connell crawled to shore at the ship's edge just as he heard Kayla's weapon cap off a dozen quick shots. He wondered if she'd have time to reload as he hobbled toward the Linus Highway entrance, dragging his flopping, useless leg behind him.
A woman's agonizing scream echoed high off the cavern walls and ceiling. Yet another of his employees had met death at the hands of the rocktopi; only this time he didn't mind at all.