“Just double check,” Gunnar said. “Shit! I gotta go, guys. Darren is calling and needs help with something.”
The com went silent.
Shane hefted his futuristic-styled rifle. “This had better fry the thing. I mean it. If I get eaten by a freaking titanoboa because the tech doesn’t work, I swear to God I’ll become a ghost and haunt Carlos for eternity.”
“Right there with ya, dude,” Max said as he held his rifle close to his chest. “Ready?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
The brothers shook their heads, looked at the river one last time, shrugged, then jumped in.
WITHOUT THE SPECIALIZED goggles, visibility in the river would have been close to nothing. With the specialized goggles, visibility was slightly better than nothing. Only slightly better.
“Think I got something here.” Max swam through the murky water towards a deep depression in the submerged part of the riverbank. “Yeah. Hole. Big hole, dude.”
“How big?” Shane asked.
“Three, maybe four, meters across,” Max said.
“Big snake needs a big hole.”
“Dude—”
“I’m on your six,” Shane replied. “I’ll follow you in.”
“Thanks, bro,” Max said and kicked his legs hard and fast.
With his rifle at the ready, Max dove through the pitch-black entrance to the hole and kept diving as the hole became a tunnel. If he didn’t have the specialized goggles, he wouldn’t have been able to see more than a few inches in front of his face, if that.
Max swiveled his head from left to right, increasing his field of view as wide as possible, but all he saw were the walls of the tunnel. No signs of any type of animal life, especially not a giant snake.
“Main coms are out,” Shane said. “We’re going too deep for a signal. Only peer to peer, bro.”
“Roger that,” Max said.
“You seeing anything?” Shane asked.
“Nothing but nasty water,” Max replied. “You?”
“Your ass.”
“Nice.”
“It is. Way to keep up on your Pilates regimen.”
“Boy’s gotta stay fit.”
“I hear th—”
“Hold up,” Max snapped and stopped swimming. His rifle gripped to his shoulder with one hand, he reached out and steadied himself by grabbing onto a stray tree root that poked from the tunnel wall. “Movement.”
Streaks of red filled Max’s vision, the goggles’ tech extrapolating images from the data they were receiving.
“Snakes!” Max shouted as the images solidified. Four very large serpents were headed straight for them.
Max opened fire, shredding the first snake with laser fire. His eyes went wide at the devastation the experimental rifle brought to the creature. Half the thing’s head was sliced off, followed by several feet of the snake’s body as its undulations brought its coils into the rifle’s line of fire.
Hunks and chunks of snake filled the space between Max and the three others coming straight for him and his brother.
“Move!” Shane shouted. He shoved his brother out of the way as a snake struck.
Instead of grabbing Max by the head, its massive mouth closed on the barrel of Shane’s rifle. Bright light illuminated the serpent from the inside and a meter-long gash appeared in the creature’s back. Its mouth let go of the rifle as the body went limp and drifted to the bottom of the tunnel.
Max recovered from his brother’s manhandling and fired over and over, taking the next snake apart bit by bit.
The fourth snake went straight for Shane but missed on its first strike and ended up decapitated as Shane kicked to the side and fired against the creature’s neck.
The Reynolds brothers swept their weapons back and forth, staying put for a good five minutes before Max called, “Clear.”
They surveyed the bloody carnage, then glanced at each other.
“You see what I see?” Max asked.
“Huge snakes but not native huge snakes?” Shane asked.
“Yeah. That.”
“I see it. They were too big to be anacondas.”
“Wrong markings, too.”
“You know what anaconda markings look like?”
“Yes?”
“Way to sound sure of yourself.”
“I leave my options open.”
“Then what are we looking at?”
“Yeah, well… babies?”
“Ginormous hell snake babies?”
“That’s my guess.”
“Shit.”
“Yep. Shit.” Shane pointed his rifle forward. “After you, bro.”
“Thanks,” Max replied. “Time to kill mama.”
THE FIRST THING Shane noticed when they reached the end of the tunnel and found themselves in a wide pool of muddy river water was that it sure was light underground. The second thing he noticed was that despite what his eyes were seeing, he had a hard time believing a ginormous hell snake had mastered the art of fire.
The Reynolds brothers slowly broke the surface of the subterranean pool and Shane was somewhat relieved to see that the snake had indeed not mastered the art of fire. However, the thirty or so partially naked tribespeople that waited at the shore of the pool, arrows slung and spears at the ready, killed Shane’s relief quickly.
“Feel like testing the compression suits against those arrows?” Max asked very quietly.
“Not particularly,” Shane replied.
“Then we probably shouldn’t test them against the big spears those guys are holding,” Max said.
“Sexist. Some of the spear peeps are chicks,” Shane said.
“My bad.”
“No worries. It’s dark and you were focused on the spears.”
“That I was, bro. That I was.”
The brothers held their positions, as did the tribespeople.
“What’s the call?” Max asked.
“Rifles are too specialized,” Shane said. "We’ll take down three or four, but they’ll get a lot of shots off before that.”
“Thinking the same thing,” Max replied.
“What are they doing here?” Shane asked. “I thought everyone had these people occupied up top. No point in splitting the team to take out hyper-adrenalized cannibals up there if there are a bunch of the bastards down here, too.”
“We knew they worshipped the damn snake,” Max said. “We just didn’t know it was all smoking torches in a snake cave level worship.”
One of the tribespeople stepped away from the main group and pointed angrily at the brothers. He shouted in a tongue neither of them understood. Then he ran his finger across his throat. The brothers understood that.
The bowstrings tightened and Shane and Max prepped for the incoming projectiles. Then the leader of the tribespeople held up his hands and began to yell a phrase over and over. The phrase was picked up by the others and turned into a monotonous chant. Bows and spears were lowered then dropped as the tribespeople fell to their knees, supplicating themselves on the shore of the pool.
Shane glanced down at the water around him and noticed the ripples were a lot larger than they should have been if it was only the brothers displacing the surface of the pool.
“Max?” Shane said very quietly.
“Yep,” Max replied.
The brothers slowly turned and saw the ginormous hell snake making its way down the surface of a wall behind them, just above the entrance of the tunnel. Then it launched itself at the pool and the brothers.
Last thing Shane saw was a ginormous hell snake mouth coming straight for him.
MAX MANAGED TO get one shot off before the body of the snake slammed into him, knocking his rifle from his hands and sending him flying across the pool to collide with the cave wall. All breath left his lungs. He gasped as he fell back into the pool and sank beneath the surface. Had it not been for the rebreather, Max would have swallowed half the pool.