“Just continue moving that way. Keep therm up in case anyone’s hiding in the vegetation. I’ll watch out for all the ones behind the EV. They may not have witnessed our impressive display firsthand.”
“Got it,” John said.
As they moved, the crowd continued to retreat and part. Once passed, the Hynka regrouped and followed slowly behind, Minnie holding her MW at the ready. At any moment one of them might shriek a command and everyone would charge. If they did, Minnie and John wouldn’t have a chance. This was the highest stakes bluff ever.
“Watch your step,” John warned, and Minnie glanced back to see the strewn heaps of dead Hynka—still warm severed limbs, jutting ribcages, ivory blood.
“They’re going to keep following us,” she said, stepping over a leg. “Once we’re in the thick, we’ll have to stop that… somehow.”
“I know.”
John and Minnie continued on through the throngs, back to back, each scanning their own 180 perimeter. 10m from the EV, 30m, 50m. Eventually, the horde thinned and gave way to immense blades of foliage.
As she predicted, the pack followed.
“I have an idea,” Minnie said. “Try your ‘stop’ again. Through your suit’s PA.”
“Okay, and if they keep coming, we shoot one?”
“Exactly. And then you say it again. I have a feeling you won’t have to say it three times.”
John glanced back at her. “Then what?”
“Just say it. Loud.”
John faced the advancing rank, stood tall, and shouted, “Khoh!” then resumed walking away with Minnie.
The front line of Hynka stopped, and then resumed as soon as John and Minnie continued into the foliage.
Minnie fired at the center of the group, striking one of them in the belly, home of their massive breathing organ. It released a wet cough, and they all stopped once more, attention redirected to the injured.
John shouted, “Khoh!” and glowing eyes refocused on him. He whispered, “Keep moving!”
Step after step, back to back, the pair moved deeper into the vegetation. The Hynka no longer followed. When Minnie lost sight of the last of them, she said, “Should we run?”
“I think we go slow a little farther. They might hear us if we run.”
Minnie’s thermal optic could see the group hadn’t advanced any closer, but many had circled around the individual she’d shot. They were crouching over it, poking at the wound.
“How far to the sinkhole?” she asked.
“Less than one-K. If we run, I figure we could make it in less than ten minutes.”
“And how fast could they do it?”
John grunted, “Hell, probably three.”
“I think we should run.”
John glanced at her and nodded. “Let’s do it. But switch on infra and watch the terrain. It’s even darker beneath this canopy and we can’t afford a single mistake.”
John was slow and less than nimble. They had numerous obstacles to traverse or avoid—downed epsequoias, swampy fungal patches, a river. Minnie repeatedly slowed for him to catch up. She switched back to thermal and glanced behind to see if anything had decided to give chase. No one so far, but as she returned her focus forward, a hot spot streaked by in the distance to their left.
“I think we have some stragglers out there,” she said. “Not part of the group.”
John panted and gasped. “How do you know?”
“Therm.”
“I told you to switch to infra!”
“Are you ser—come on! Just shut up and switch to therm! They’re going to hear us coming.”
“I see them. But one of us needs to stay in infra… the terrain—”
“Fine, you save us from the ground. I’ll protect us from the things that want to eat us.”
She heard John grumble.
A minute later, the orange and red blobs beyond the blades perked up as the crackles and crunches of their footfalls reached the Hynkas’ ears. Minnie raised her MW and patted John’s arm to slow down.
“Hang on, hang on… here they come.”
John put his hands on his knees, wheezing beside a thin, fan-shaped plant. “Which way?… Dizzy…”
“Two o’clock!”
Two glowing figures galloped toward them with incredible speed. Minnie worried that the one-ton beasts’ momentum would carry them on well after several shots. Just ahead, the blobs split up, rounded an epsequoia trunk on either side, and then appeared in stark detail 20m away, four eyes shining in the starlight.
The ground quaked beneath Minnie’s feet. She fired two rounds into the first, two in the second, then frantically unloaded on both.
John began firing, too.
The Hynka stumbled but the distance between them continued closing.
John pulled Minnie to the side, tossed her into a patch of undergrowth. When she looked up, the hacking and hissing creatures lay only a few meters away.
John helped her up. “Let’s keep moving. And keep that thermal up, huh?”
“Right.”
They ran the remaining distance, John gasping and struggling as flat forestland inclined into barren hills. A few moments later, his hand grazed her back, apparently pleading for her to slow down. “It’s… coming up… the sinkhole.”
Minnie climbed the last few sloped meters and rested on the flat plateau. As John trudged toward the finish line, she surveyed the nightscape with a slow 360 rotation. The sinkhole sat at the top of a gently sloping foothill overlooking healthy forestland to the east. Beyond the forest below, a monolithic mountain loomed above the entire area. Behind Minnie, just west of the sinkhole, the hill they’d just climbed rose gradually higher before a towering rock sprang from the ground like some prehistoric skyscraper. Despite her very recent brushes with death, the scene was disarmingly peaceful, disrupted only by John’s belabored panting.
“We’ve got eight to ten more to the south,” Minnie pointed. “Maybe two-K away. Some loners here and there. Nothing very close.”
Gradually recuperating, John went to the sinkhole and scanned around. “The entrance is definitely underwater. Let me see how we get out of here when needed.”
Remaining on guard, Minnie kept her focus on the forest. She zoomed, spotting the original group as a large, morphing amoeba. “Looks like the horde is all back at the EV. They really listened to you. I wonder if that would work again.”
John inhaled a wheezing breath. “I wouldn’t count on it. Man… still dizzy. Hard to get air… out of the air.”
Minnie sniffed. She’d noticed a sweetness to Epsy’s air once away from the Hynka, but it hadn’t really clicked. Lower O2, higher nitrogen and argon. They weren’t more than a thousand meters above sea level, but the air here would trigger symptoms like altitude sickness. “You’re definitely out of shape, but that’s mostly just the air mixture. Drop your visor and use the tank for now, but the sooner you deal with it, the faster you’ll get—”
“I’ll get used to it. I know.” He pointed to an outcropping of rock on the other side of the sinkhole. “I think we could hide a rope over there. Tie it to the rocks, then bury it all the way to the hole. Someone’d have to be looking for it.”
Minnie agreed; they set up the rope, tested the weight, and obscured it from view. Back at the hole’s cliff edge, John pointed to one side of the glistening pool ten meters below them.
“It’s deeper on the left than the right, but I wouldn’t dive either way.”
“Feet first it is,” Minnie said, sealed her visor, and leapt in.
The fall lasted longer than she expected, the impact more jarring. The weight of her gear seemed to balance with the air in her helmet and the compressed minitank in her suit, rendering her buoyancy near neutral. She switched her optic to the highest infra and spotted the cavern entrance a couple meters below her feet.