No choice now, he guessed. They were going to have to go in. Ajax sniffed, his eyebrows coming together. Just floating over the top of the flares pyrotechnic stink, he thought he could detect other scents. Something more acrid. Was it here when they came down? he wondered. Musta been.
He sniffed deeper this time. It was a bit like cat’s piss, musky, old meat, and maybe something that smelled like old gym socks.
Ajax clicked his fingers and Fergus turned to him. But his comrade in arms froze as he stared — but not at him — at something just past him.
Ajax felt the hairs on his neck rise, and he spun around.
“Contact!” Fergus yelled as Ajax threw himself to the side.
Stopped on the steps leading down to them was a vision straight from Hell. The triangular head of the snake was as wide as a small car and filled the entire tunnel. Its unblinking eyes reflected the dying glow of the flare, making them dance like twin infernos.
Both he and Fergus opened fire and piled dozens of rounds into it. Camilla screamed and just went to her knees. She grabbed the crucifix from around her throat and held it up as some sort of talisman. Helen fumbled with her handgun, finally getting off some shots that struck the walls and ceiling.
The snake came down the steps like molten death. Its massive, muscular body seemed to be something from mythology and not of some flesh-borne world.
Ajax ejected his magazine and jammed in another. His last. In the blink of time it took for the task, the snake was right in front of him.
CHAPTER 33
Emma watched the stream for many minutes, losing herself in the clear water as it burbled over stones and surged around fallen logs. Along each edge of the waterway were fronds, palms, vines hanging like bead curtains, and huge trunks reaching thick roots into the dark, compost-rich soil.
The light was nearly gone now, but the edge of a huge moon was just starting to show through the tree canopy. It lit up the stream like a ribbon of silver. She knew if she followed the watercourse, it would take her to the plateau edge. She also knew that tracking along the streambed or its bank would mean she was under less cover, and it was exactly what she had warned the group to avoid.
She wondered how they were getting on. Fine, she bet. They had Drake with them, plus a truckload of weaponry. She was the dumbass who headed off by herself.
She sighed and looked up to the sky, spotting the huge lunar disc as it became visible — a hunter’s moon, Ben had called it once. She knew why. There were always nocturnal hunters, but a huge moon meant that the daytime hunters could double their chances of a kill by hunting on through a moonlit night.
Speed or safety? That was her choice.
She squinted as she continued to look upward. To the west, there was a tiny streak of silver—Primordia—the comet was starting to veer away from the Earth. Time was running out.
Dammit, she thought; it had to be speed then. She was up against a wall and needed to find Ben or pick up his trail in the next few hours, and then leave more time to get back to that temple. She prayed that the team would be able to clear out the horrors that lived in there. And she doubled down on praying that it was a chute that took them all the way to the ground.
She pulled the night scope from her pack and slid it over her head — it was as heavy as she remembered. She flicked it on and then turned her head slowly. She panned back and forth, and then craned her neck to look upward at the overhead branches. Thankfully, everywhere was all empty and all quiet.
She checked her watch; 10 hours remaining—still doable, she hoped.
Here goes nothing, she thought, and eased down the bank, her feet skidding in the mud. She sucked in a deep draft of humid air, and then set off.
CHAPTER 34
“Keep up,” Drake said over his shoulder before turning back to the tell-tale signs of passage on the ground — tiny flattened stems, indentations in the soil, and almost imperceptible grazes on rocks. It had to be Emma; no other thing living on this plateau would be this clumsy, unless it weighed several tons and didn’t give a shit.
He looked briefly back at Andy again — the young scientist grinned in the near darkness. He wore his night vision goggles that made him look slightly robotic and geeky, and more than a little like a kid at a birthday party.
“I hoped I’d get a chance to use these; I love them,” he whispered.
“Fine,” Drake said. “They’re yours. Now stay close so you get home in one piece to enjoy them.”
They had to clamber over some fallen tree trunks; the massive boughs were about five feet around, but sagging in the middle as they weren’t like real wood, but more like some sort of soft fibrous material, a little like that of the trunk of a tree fern.
Drake slid down over one stump with Andy dropping softly beside him. The soldier held up a hand to halt, and then took off his glove. He crouched and placed his hand on the ground, and then half-turned his head and concentrated — he could feel it under his fingers then; the tremors.
“Something big on the move.”
“Coming this way?” Andy flipped the goggles up and stared into the darkness for a moment and then flipped them back down.
Drake concentrated a little more and felt the tremors again, each a second or two apart; they were growing stronger, as if from the gait of an enormous beast.
“Yeah.” He looked around. “We need to get under cover.”
“Do you know what type it is?” Andy leaned closer.
Drake snorted. “Listen, kid, my expertise in dinosaurs extends to watching Jurassic Park.” He grabbed Andy’s shoulder. “But that’s why you’re here, remember, Brains?”
“Oh yeah.” Andy grinned and thumbed over his shoulder. “Those tree trunks; I think one was hollow.”
Drake took one last look around. “Then that’s where we’re going. Lead on.”
He followed as Andy turned and crouch-ran back the way they’d just come. They found the massive tree that had fallen and over time broken into pieces. A 15-foot section lay at a slight angle to the rest, and at one end, Drake could see what Andy had previously spotted — the trunk seemed to have a four-foot hollow section within its six-foot girth.
As he quickly shone his light inside, he now felt the tremors beneath his feet. Whatever was coming was now pretty damned close.
“In we go.” Drake folded himself in, with Andy sliding in next to him.
“Tight squeeze,” Andy said, lying up against Drake.
“Doesn’t mean we’re engaged,” Drake said.
Andy chuckled.
Drake elbowed him. “Quiet.”
The footfalls were big enough and close enough now to be felt right through the tree trunk and their asses. Dust and debris rained down on top of them, and Drake also pulled his night scope, slipped it over his head, and flicked it on.
Inside their hiding place, the trunk lit up in the usual phosphorescent green of the night vision. He saw there were a few weird-looking toadstools, mounds of leaf debris, and what could have been flat rocks like hubcaps, embedded inside the hollow trunk with them. Drake and Andy remained still and silent, as whatever moved around just outside came right up to where they were hiding.
They heard deep sniffing as something huge inhaled droughts of air; it was either tracking them, or hopefully following the scent of something else entirely.
Drake looked along the trunk and out into the darkness that was now lit green, just as a foot, like that of an ostrich except hundreds of times bigger, came down on a tree trunk segment right next to them. The soft and fibrous trunk compressed down almost flat, and Drake prayed the next foot didn’t come down on them.