That was too close. He needed to finish this. Unarmed against a knife was never good odds. As Larsen swept the dagger back again, trying to gut him like a fish, Aston grabbed the man’s thick wrist and whipped his other elbow into the side of Larsen’s head. Larsen grunted in pain, staggered, but somehow kept his feet. The guy was one tough son of a bitch, Aston realized, and his own strength was failing. Then something else moved in the periphery of his vision and Aston instinctively ducked aside.
Slater brought a large chunk of rock swinging overhead like she was pitching a baseball, and cracked it into the top of Larsen’s skull. The man staggered and went down.
“I told you to run!” Aston said.
“Yeah, well it’s just as well I didn’t. Looks like you needed the help.”
Larsen groaned on the rocky floor of the cavern, a rivulet of blood running from his head down over one cheek and ear. Then a grin spread across his face. He pulled open his jacket to reveal a thick belt of explosives strapped around his middle.
“If I can’t have this place,” he said, his voice slurred by Slater’s blow to the head. “Then no one will.”
“Oh shit,” Aston said, and he and Slater both turned and ran.
They pounded across the cavern. He saw Jen Galicia waiting wide-eyed in the mouth of the tunnel leading out, then everything vanished in a cacophony of noise and light and he felt his feet leave the ground before everything went dark.
48
Aston came around to the sounds of someone making a lot of effort, grunting and swearing. A sharp pain shot through his shoulder. He groaned and looked up, saw Jen Galicia dragging him and Slater along, holding one arm of each and jerking them back in fits and starts. Tears rolled down Jen’s cheeks, but judging by her expression they were tears of frustration more than anything else. The woman’s strength and determination was awe-inspiring.
She saw him look up and relief washed over her. “Quickly! Help me!”
A deep, sonorous crack split the air and then a booming of rocks tumbling reverberated through the cavern.
“Hurry!” Jen shouted. “The whole place is coming down!”
Aston staggered to his feet and took Slater’s other arm. Between them, one arm each, they dragged her along as rocks pounded into the passageway right behind them. Dust and speckles of glittering green swirled in the air and then the only light was Jen’s weak headlamp striping the walls as she moved. Aston stopped, gathered Slater up in a proper carry, and they hurried along again. As they passed through the cavern where they had first seen the vines, the whole cave still lit by their spooky green glow, more deep cracks and creaks sounded through the rock. One dark line snaked alarmingly across the ceiling right above them, dust and stones raining down.
“Hurry,” Jen said again, but it was advice Aston didn’t need.
“One more cavern after this one,” he said. “Then we’ll be through that original door and back into the cave with the elevator, right?”
“I think so.”
Jen yelled out in surprise and danced aside as a huge stalactite detached from the ceiling and shattered right where she had been heading. More groans and cracks echoed as they zigzagged to avoid the deluge of falling pointed rock, the shower of smaller stones and dust. The cavern floor heaved slightly beneath their feet, a crack racing open along their left-hand side. Head down, arms burning with the weight of Slater, Aston powered on, Jen beside him. He held Slater tight against him, relieved to feel her chest rising and falling. She might be hurt, but she wasn’t dead.
As they stumbled along the last tunnel, she stirred and moaned. “Aston?”
“Nearly there,” he told her.
“Put me down, I can run.”
He didn’t need telling twice, his arms jelly, his legs like lead. As she landed on her feet, Slater staggered a little, pressing one hand to the side of her head, and Aston and Jen reached out to steady her.
“I’m okay,” she said, and the three of them pushed on, the staggering, foot-dragging run of the exhausted but determined.
“Nearly there,” Aston kept repeating like a mantra, to drive them all on. “Nearly there.”
The wall of the tunnel cracked like a gunshot and a spider web of dark lines spread across it. More rocks and debris rained down. Then they saw light ahead, and the perfectly rectangular outline of the doorway. Growling in determination, they drove themselves on as it suddenly tilted and tipped in on itself. Yelling a refusal to be caught now, they dove through and into the bright, artificial light of the placed halogens. The ground shook, the caverns moaned.
Thankfully the elevator car was at the bottom, waiting for them. They piled in and pounded on the button to go up. The car jerked and rattled and began to rise. A wide split arced up through the rock above the sharp edges of the door in the opposite wall and the neat stones of its construction tipped and fell into the bright cavern. The wall above it slumped, the rock crashing and booming as it splintered and fell. Aston hoped the engineering of the elevator and its shaft would hold as dust clouds billowed up from below and enveloped them, made them cough and cover their faces. The whole shaft trembled, all three of them crying out in fear, but the elevator kept moving.
It seemed to take an age, but the vibration through the rocks continued, growing ever more distant, and the air chilled as they reached the surface. The three of them turned to stare out, squinting against the incredible white brightness of the Antarctic day. Aston had never been more happy to see the sun, low on the horizon. They hurried from the elevator shaft and rumblings and groans echoed up from it. The caging and shed surrounding the mechanism shifted, then, with a screeching tearing of metal, the whole thing folded up on itself and disappeared into the ground as though it had been swallowed. The ground under them tipped as if to follow it and they ran, slipping and sliding on the ice, putting as much distance between them and the sinkhole as they could. Then everything fell still.
Aston collapsed to his knees, pressed his hands into the snow and brought some up to rub onto his face. He ate a handful, grateful for its icy freshness. Slater and Jen knelt next to him and the three of them fell into a group hug, laughing at the absurdity of it all, elated with the adrenaline of survival. Eventually, they rose and trudged across the snow, heavy-footed with tiredness, heading for the base. The front doors were open, a low drift of snow gathered inside the first corridor.
“Is it abandoned?” Slater asked.
Aston had a feeling it was rather more sinister than abandonment. “Something happened here. Something to do with Larsen and those mercenaries, I’m guessing.”
As they moved cautiously deeper into the base, Slater said, “Do you think Larsen was working with someone else to scoop SynGreene's discovery?”
“Seems most likely,” Aston said. “The insane greed of people messing everything up once again. People suck.”
“And you think those same people came here?” Slater asked. “Cleared everyone out?”
“Maybe. If we run into more armed goons after all this, I think I’ll lose my mind.”
Slater paused, and Aston stopped with her. She looked meaningfully at him.
“What?” He felt uncomfortable under the intensity of her gaze.
“Well, you said about losing your mind. How… how are you?”
Aston smiled despite his discomfort. “After eating the fish? You wondering if I’m going to go Digby O’Donnell mad on you?”