"Don't worry about the extra stuff, I can carry it,” Lybrand said with a small smile. “I meant how does your leg feel?"
"It's bad,” O'Doyle said quietly, looking away from her. She tried to imagine his pain; the platinum knife had sliced into his quadriceps, penetrating so deep the point hit bone. To call the surgery on his leg crude was an understatement. Sanji had made do with needles designed to work with the KoolSuit's’ industrial materials, not human skin. For thread they'd used fibers from one of the ropes. O'Doyle's scars would be horrible.
"Wish I had some morphine, fuck, even some Tylenol,” O'Doyle said in a rare complaint. “It hurts bad. If the shit starts up again with the rocktopi, I don't think the stitches are going to hold."
O'Doyle's face flushed red and he looked toward the ground. “I should be leading the way out,” he said. “Not gimping along, slowing everyone down."
She squeezed his hand, trying to reassure him that everything would be all right, that they would make it. She looked at their clasped fingers; stubby with muscle, skin covered with scars, knuckles big and thick. There was little difference between their hands, save for that his were much larger. She'd often looked at her ugly hands and wondered if anyone would ever want to hold them. O'Doyle wanted to. He didn't care what they looked like.
"We're getting out of here,” she said. “I promise you that. We'll make it out together."
She lay her forehead on his solid shoulder, and he gently stroked her hair.
Connell folded up the monitor and handed it to Randy, who stashed it in his backpack. The party lined up as they'd planned — Angus and Randy far out in front with the jammer, then Lybrand and O'Doyle followed by Sanji and Veronica. Connell brought up the rear, close enough so the professors could help him if he started to grow weak from his wounds.
Connell wanted Lybrand in the rear, protecting their back, but one glimpse of her shouldering O'Doyle's weight told him not to bother asking. Randy and Angus worked well together; best to have them far ahead where the noise from the rest of the party was barely audible. Connell planned on protecting everyone's back as best he could — armed with only a knife.
No more guns. Two knives for the whole party; Lybrand carried the other. Their best weapon? A hotwired radio that jammed the silverbugs. If the rocktopi attacked, the battle wouldn't last long. They still had enough batteries to power the headlamps for at least another twenty-four hours — hopefully they'd be on the surface before that.
Sanji cleared the rocks from the low entrance to the cave, exposing the tunnel on the other side. Angus and Randy led the way out.
Chapter Thirty-four
Nerves screaming at him to get away, Sonny slipped into the bitch's warren, looking for something to mess up her plans. Sure, he had a name, he had some history, but he just couldn't pass up the chance to mess with her. He wouldn't be able to leave until he did something to screw up her plans.
She'd packed a surprising amount of equipment into the small cubbyhole. The military-looking radio thing played a steady stream of quiet static. A backpack full of C-rations, protein bars, and bottled water. A canvas bag full of electronic equipment. A purse.
Sonny scanned the horizon before going through the small leather purse. Still no sign of her. Lipstick. Keys. A stick of Wrigley's gum. Some lint. As he dug, his fingers felt something in the liner. A tug opened up a hidden pocket. Inside were ID badges: Carrie Thomas, private investigator; Melissa Wilson, detective, Salt Lake City Police Department; Harriet McGuire, FBI; Amy Smith, reporter, MiningWorld magazine.
"Came prepared, didn't you, Ms. Meyers?"
Sonny set the purse down and kept snooping. He found a box of fire-blackened metal bits, pieces of electronics she'd scavenged from the lab's wreckage.
He saw the list, the same one she'd carried down into the camp. Some of the names had thick lines through them — others remained clear and legible. Survivors, Sonny thought, staring with amazement. Could they still be alive?
Keys. The word hit him like a slap. Keys. Sonny grabbed her purse and pulled out the key ring. It glinted in the morning sunlight. He used his binoculars to scan the horizon once more. Seeing nothing, he laughed as he stepped out of the warren and walked to her black Land Rover.
"Let's see you run your operation without transportation, bitch,” Sonny said. He opened the driver's door and hopped in. Cho's body had been in here, in the back, wrapped in plastic like so much trash.
Taking one last look around, Sonny started the engine. “Get them out of there, Connell,” Sonny said. “Get them out of there and I'll be waiting."
Sonny gunned the engine and shot down the slope, away from Funeral Mountain.
Veronica's fingers traced the detailed carvings. Such delicate work, such masterful beauty from such a savage race.
"Veronica, we can't look at the carvings anymore,” Connell said, his voice filled with urgency. He pulled gently at her arm. “Come on, we have to go. If Angus gets too far ahead of us we lose the scrambler's effect."
"Just one more moment, Connell,” she said absently. “I'm beginning to piece together their religion.” Despite her disgust, her revulsion at the rocktopi and her shattering disappointment of a career spent missing the obvious, she couldn't completely disassociate from her scientific curiosity. She knew they had to move, and move fast, but the carvings held answers that she'd sought for seven years at Cerro Chaltel. She would only keep them a few seconds.
This far down in the tunnels the carvings covered almost everything, as if they'd been waiting millennia just for her, giving her the key to solve the puzzles discovered at Cerro Chaltel. At first only a few carvings graced the walls, but as they moved closer to the Dense Mass the detailed art grew increasingly concentrated.
Sanji leaned forward, peering at the carvings. “What do you see, Roni?"
"First of all, have you noticed how well preserved these carvings are? The closer we move to the Dense Mass, the less vandalism and graffiti we see. Most of these carvings haven't been drawn over. It almost seems as if the closer we get to the Dense Mass, the more sacred the carvings. It's as if the Dense Mass is their religion's main altar, their Mecca or Jerusalem."
Connell also peered closer. Despite his anxiety over their precarious situation, she could read the curiosity on his face. “Why do you say religion?"
"Look at these carvings,” Veronica said, dropping to one knee, letting her headlamp play against the wall. Her slight head motions danced shadows across the exquisite carvings, making the stone seem almost alive. “Look at this Q-Tip shaped object here."
They'd seen the shape several times, and its frequency increased as they drew closer to the Dense Mass. It was round and smooth at both ends with a bar in-between. It reminded her of a plastic hand-held dumbbell, the five-pound kind used during running or aerobics.
"Everywhere we see this shape, it's at the start of a sequence. When we see the dumbbell, the next panel in the sequence shows hundreds of tiny rocktopi. I'm not sure if the size reflects scale, or they represent children. Perhaps even a larval stage smaller than the young ones we first saw. This might be a story of their origin."