"Connell, get back here!” Veronica screamed, “get back here now!"
All his body needed was an excuse. He turned away from the funnel mouth and ran like a madman, afraid to look over his shoulder, afraid to find out if the rocktopi would drop their shields and give chase. He reached the others in an instant near the cliff's edge, and almost tripped over his own feet in sudden shock.
There, hanging down from a rope just in front of the cave's end, perched a smiling Angus Kool, swinging slightly from side to side like a spider caught in a light breeze.
Chapter Thirty-one
Connell stared in slack-jawed awe. Angus hung from some unseen point above the cave mouth, dressed in full rappelling gear atop a dirty KoolSuit. Two other ropes hung down, one on either side of him, harnesses attached. Veronica and Sanji scrambled into the rigs, Lybrand and Mack helping the hurried effort.
"Hey boss,” Angus said. “Glad to see me?"
"Where the hell did you come from?"
"Who cares?” said O'Doyle, peering worriedly down the tunnel at the rocktopi's slow, methodical advance. “He's here and we've got a way out."
"You didn't think I was going to let someone else see all this splendor first, did you?” Angus asked.
"You're Kilroy,” Connell said. Angus only smiled as Veronica expertly scrambled up the rope. Sanji followed, moving with impressive speed for someone of his girth. Within seconds, both moved past the opening's top edge and disappeared from sight.
"We've got company,” O'Doyle said.
Connell turned to once again face the enemy. The first of the shield bearers worked its way through the funnel mouth, less than twenty yards away. The shields scraped against rock, making a sound like a church bell dragged over gravel.
The bell tolls for me, Connell thought crazily. Hemingway would have loved this macho crap.
Like lethal turtles, the rocktopi moved slowly forward, a few inches at a time, their small, excited screeches drowning out the rustling-leaf sound and incessant silverbug noise.
"Angus said Mr. Wright's position is only twenty feet above us,” O'Doyle said. “We've got to hold the rocktopi for a few minutes, so the professors can get up and send the ropes back down. We'll send Mack and Lybrand up next."
Connell nodded, a grim acceptance of the situation still fixed in his mind. He moved toward the closing rocktopi phalanx. O'Doyle followed. The second shield bearer was already through and lining up next to the first. The third member quickly oozed through the funnel and worked the shield into position. Behind the phalanx, waiting to pour through the funnel, Connell heard the rocktopi pack screeching with excitement, perhaps even anticipation.
His hands seemed suddenly steady and sure. He saw the onyx eyespots peeking out between the shields. Connell raised his H&K and fired. A deafening, shuddering screech rewarded his aim. The center shield fell forward with a monstrous clang and a billowing puff of cave dust. The creature dropped to the floor, writhing in sickening pain.
O'Doyle seized the opportunity, rapidly firing three times through the unexpected phalanx opening. Connell saw two rocktopi squirm and thrash in the funnel mouth, like food half in and half out of a whirring garbage disposal. Screeching filled the cavern, high pitched and painful, tearing at his ears far worse than did the weapons’ loud report. The front rocktopi rank foundered in confusion, their whirling tentacles flinging gooey purple blood from their fresh wounds. O'Doyle fired his last round into the mass, then tossed the H&K away and drew his Beretta.
Behind them, they heard Angus calling them back. “Two more, let's go, let's go!"
"Fall back to the cliff!” O'Doyle yelled, backing up quickly. The rocktopi pushed their wounded and dying comrades out of the way and poured through the funnel, trying to stay behind the two standing shields. Connell turned and ran to the cliff's edge. Lybrand started up the rope. O'Doyle fastened Mack into the harness. Lybrand had almost cleared the top of the cave when she suddenly stopped climbing.
"Patrick, watch out!"
Like a frog's tongue nailing a passing fly, a thick tentacle holding a glistening platinum knife shot out of a wall crack. O'Doyle dove to the ground. The knife's tip sliced his cheek, sending a thin streamer of blood onto the sand. He rolled away from the rocktopi and away from the cliff as the monster poured through the crack.
Moving with blinding, boneless speed, it sprang toward Mack. He tried to dive away, but the harness held him motionless, like a worm on a hook. Mack screamed once as angry glowing-orange tentacles wrapped around him like an octopus snagging an unwary fish. Mack smashed his fists into the flashing, nightmarish monstrosity, each of his weak punches hitting with the sound of a fist slapping raw hamburger. His face contorted with a powerful scream as a platinum knife flashed once, came up again trailing an arcing gout of blood, then flashed a second time.
O'Doyle jumped to his feet and pressed the muzzle of his Beretta against the rocktopi's body. He pulled the trigger three times, emptying the last of his ammunition. The creature screamed with a pitiful wail and released Mack, tentacles swinging wildly, teetering on the cliff's edge. The smell of rotting meat, thick and almost overpowering, filled the air.
The smell somehow snapped Connell out of his horrified daze. With a roar of frustration and rage, he sprinted at the rocktopi and put a full-speed shoulder into the soft body. The impact felt satisfyingly solid. The rocktopi sailed out over the cliff and plummeted with a fading screech.
Lybrand screamed a second warning. “Here they come!"
Connell turned just in time to see a massive rocktopi diving toward him like a hellish cross between a lion and a whip-limbed starfish, a pair of crescent-shaped platinum knives arcing forward point first. Three bullets from Lybrand's H&K rent the air as the creature fell on Connell, knocking him to the ground with a linebacker-hard collision.
Its reeking skin felt pliant and raspy, like rubbery sandpaper, yet the creature was solid and heavy. Connell lashed out against the rocktopi, but it was like punching a half-deflated waterbed. He viciously squirmed out from under the motionless body. Lybrand still hung from her rope, her Beretta drawn, her H&K cast away. Angus was gone and Mack hung limply from his harness like meat on a hook, his blood cascading down in audible rivulets, his intestines dangling wet and pinkish-white into the fine sand.
Connell snatched up his H&K, turned and fired his last three shots, catching two of the rushing rocktopi. Both dropped to the rock-strewn ground like half-full sacks of grain — one fell motionless, while the other jittered and convulsed with a sickening resemblance to a large, glowing Jell-O mold. The shots seemed to slow the rocktopi advance. The remaining creatures, perhaps twenty of them, held back, only ten feet away, arms waving like whips, skin flashing like multicolored police lights, screeches ripping the air.
O'Doyle cut the rope connected to Mack's harness. The limp Aussie fell motionless to the ground at Connell's feet, side by side with the dead rocktopi.
Another harness, apparently Angus's, dropped with a jingling of buckles between Connell and O'Doyle. Connell stepped over the dead bodies and stumbled into the still-swinging harness.
"They're rushing us!” Lybrand screamed. Still swinging lightly at the rope's end, she ripped off three rounds from the Beretta. She pulled the trigger a fourth time — it clicked on empty.
The last bullet was gone.
The three of them scrambled to climb up and away from the cliff's edge. O'Doyle started pulling his body up what had been Mack's rope. Connell wrapped his arms in the harness and felt himself being yanked upwards while Lybrand expertly slithered up the climbing rig.