The light from their lantern and the glow from the fungi allowed them to see much more of the underground waters than they wanted to. Dark shapes moved in the waves, crashing through the rollers, pale and unnatural. Misshapen bodies that did not look like fish rolled to show mottled gray-white bellies. Fins as tall as the sails of fishing boats sliced along and once they saw a huge mouth rise up and swallow a foundering creature that was as large as a circus elephant. Then a moment later a tentacle thicker than a maple tree rose dripping from the water, wrapped around the monstrous shark, and dragged it thrashing down into the depths. Blood as black as oil bubbled up.
“This must be what Hell looks like,” gasped Grey, recoiling from the chunks of half-eaten meat that washed up onto the sand.
“I’ve heard Hell is much pleasanter,” quipped Looks Away, though there was no humor in his expression.
Their words sounded too loud, even with the thunder of the surf, and they fell into a desperate hush as they hurried along.
The beach stretched on and on, and the slimy trail ran along it, smearing the sand to a glistening paste. It occurred to Grey that anything massive and powerful enough to have gnawed a tunnel from this cavern all the way into the cellars of Chesterfield’s house would be far beyond their skill to defeat. Maybe even beyond the soul-destroying power of the Kingdom rifle. Following the creature was one thing, encountering it would be something to avoid at all costs.
A cry made them stop and look up and there, circling at the very edge of the upsweep of light was a pterosaur. Another joined it. Then another.
“They’re getting over their fear,” said Grey, laying his hand on the butt of his pistol.
“I’m bloody well not,” Looks Away assured him.
The pteranodons continued to circle but did not, at least for the moment, draw closer. Grey wanted to take that as a hopeful sign, but he found that nothing down here reassured him.
The trail abruptly swerved away from the midnight sea and they followed it through an archway of smoky quartz spears, some of which were as massive as redwoods. The spears were interlaced like the steepled fingers of some sleeping giant and they crept beneath them. Grey nudged Looks Away to direct his attention to the deep cracks and fissures in some of the overhead shafts, and from the look of sick fear on his friend’s face, he wished he hadn’t. They quickened their pace.
Then they came to a break in the ground. A chasm a dozen feet across that dropped down into inky blackness far beyond the reach of their lantern. The cleft seemed to run on for miles in either direction, and yet the slimy trail continued on the other side as if the thing they pursued was so massive that it could thrust itself across the divide without tumbling into it.
“That’s done it then,” said Looks Away. “We should have brought a coil of rope.”
“We should have brought an army and some dynamite, too,” said Grey. “But we didn’t. We either solve it or go back.”
The cry of a hungry pteranodon behind them seemed to cancel out the latter suggestion.
The alternative was daunting. There was a broken crystal shaft above them that leaned out over the chasm. The jagged point reached almost to the other side, but fell short by six feet. It was not a tremendous jump in regular circumstances, but to manage it here they would have to climb onto the shaft and run along it to get up enough momentum to carry them over.
When Grey explained this to Looks Away, the Sioux stared at him with frank astonishment. “You have clearly gone ’round the bend, haven’t? You’re barking mad.”
“It’s not the ideal plan…,” Grey admitted.
“It’s suicide.”
“Then we go back and deal with those birds.”
“Pteranodons are not birds.”
“Who cares? Pick a card here.”
The choice, however, was made for them.
A scraping sound made them spin and look back the way they’d come, and there, filling the mouth of the tunnel of quartz spears, was a gigantic cat. It had massive shoulders and huge paws from which claws like baling hooks dug into the ground. Massive oversized fangs dropped like daggers from its upper jaw, and embedded in its chest was a large black stone laced with white. And everywhere were signs of advanced decay. Rotting flesh, open sores, bloated pustules, and masses of wriggling maggots. It reeked of its own decay.
The saber-toothed cat wrinkled its face in a silent snarl of pure animal hate, and yet its eyes held a darker and more complex expression than should be evident in a simple beast. A cruel, calculating intelligence glimmered in those eyes.
They were trapped with a bottomless pit behind them and a monster before them.
Looks Away whipped the Kingdom rifle around, staring with wild eyes that were filled with the dangerous lights of panic. He uttered a cry of sick fear and began raising it to his shoulder, but Grey leaped at him and pushed it down.
“Stop, you damn fool!” he snapped. “You’ll bring the whole ceiling down on us.”
Above and around them the crystal spears — clear or blue or smoky gray — were shot through with cracks.
The wild look in Looks Away’s eyes turned to panic. “We have to do something.”
“Yes we damn well do,” Grey said, “but I don’t want to die trying. Give me your shotgun.”
The undead saber-toothed cat took another step forward. Its eyes narrowed as it read the scene. It crept forward, one deliberate step at a time.
“Give me the damn shotgun,” said Grey in a fierce whisper.
Looks Away clutched the Kingdom rifle and sought to raise it against the downward force of Grey’s restraining hand. “Let me go, damn your eyes, I can kill it—.”
“Sure, and kill us both at the same time,” said Grey. “Snap out of it, man. We need a bang — just not the voice of goddamn thunder.”
With a dubious nod, Looks Away drew the weapon and extended it stock-first to Grey. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Me, too,” said Grey quietly.
The big cat kept coming. It was now only forty feet away, but as it approached one section of the tunnel, it paused. There were two crystal spikes laid like crossed swords above the narrow walkway. Grey and Looks Away had needed to crouch to pass beneath them, but the cat was so massive that it would have to crawl on its belly to pass beneath. The narrow bottleneck was the only reason it hadn’t charged them, and Grey knew it even if his companion was too frightened to grasp it.
Even with the shotgun Grey doubted he could drop so monstrous a creature with a couple of shots. And driving it mad with the pain of buckshot did not seem like the smartest of plans in so tight a spot.
“Looks,” snapped Grey, “see that arch? You’re the rock expert, tell me the best place to hit it.”
Looks Away began to argue, but then he abruptly seemed to come back to himself. He studied the fragile crystalline structure and nodded.
The living-dead cat flattened out and began crawling through the arch. Grey could swear there was a dark humor interwoven with the hunger and hatred on its face. It knew it was going to win. The very fact of its obvious confidence made Grey tremble.
“Talk to me,” he said in a quiet voice that was at odds with every screaming nerve in his body and mind.
“There,” said Looks Away, pointing, only to immediately change his mind and point to a different spot. “No—there!”
“Make up your damn mind…”
“That spot. See that dark smudge inside? It’s a fracture point…”