Steadily he allowed his vision to roam, absently noticing the creeping silhouettes of Bobbi Jo, Takakura and Chaney. They were holding a close formation as they advanced in a solid line, searching. But he knew in his soul that something was wrong.
Nothing moves without leaving a sign…
Hunter turned back to the tunnel they had just quit. There was only darkness there, and he had followed the blood trail into the cavern. He walked slowly back toward the corridor, and with each step felt a rising fear — a sharpened instinct that told him to beware. He halted twenty feet distant of the entrance, staring into the circle of blackness. Experience and instinct decided for him, and he went with it.
"It's backtracking on us," he said to the rest, not removing his eyes from the corridor.
Chaney's voice boomed from across the room. "What?"
"I said it's circling!" Hunter shouted, taking a hesitant step as he cast a careful glance at another darkened corridor. "All these passageways interconnect! It's trying to come up behind us!"
Takakura scowled. "I thought you said it came in here!"
"Oh, it came in here, all right," Hunter answered more quietly, moving to the side as he searched another tunnel, rifle leveled. "It couldn't fake that. It just didn't stay long. It went back into the tunnels to come up behind us."
"You're sure about this?" Bobbi Jo asked incredulously. "It was hurt pretty bad, Hunter. I don't think it could have gotten very far. Not bleeding like that."
"It didn't have to." He shook his head, maintaining their location by voice. "It wouldn't have taken it more than thirty seconds to backtrack into the tunnel and let us pass it by. Then it turned around and went back the way we came." He stared. "Yeah, that's what it's done. It's scared now. Knows it's hurt. It's waiting for us to come to it. But it won't fight us again if we're together. It senses that it could lose, so it laid low while we passed it."
"We could flush it out again," Chaney said, disturbed.
"No," Hunter responded with certainty. "It won't do that this time."
"Why?"
"Because it learns from its mistakes, Chaney. It's savage, but it's not stupid. This time it'll keep moving, trying to avoid a trap. We have to cut off its lines of escape."
"Cut off its lines of escape?" Chaney answered. "Hunter, that'll mean splitting up! We can't split up with the thing out there! Hell, even together we might not be able to put it down!"
"It's either that or we lose it!" Hunter turned his head into the words, then calmed. "Listen," he continued, "there's only one way to corner this thing, and that's by cutting off every line of retreat simultaneously. It's like driving a tiger. You beat the bush until you've driven it from hiding and into a kill zone! And remember: this is that thing's home ground! It may have come here on instinct, but by now it knows this cave like the back of its hand! So if we're gonna get another shot at it, we have to force it into the open!"
An uneasy stillness settled over them.
Bobbi Jo was the first to lift her rifle. "I say we go for it. We've come too far to walk away now." The entire front portion of her uniform was blackened with blood.
"We'll split into two teams," Hunter said. "Me and Bobbi Jo will take the passage we just quit." He nodded to Chaney. "You and Takakura take the bigger passage that runs to the right. We'll meet where they converge. Remember that we have to check all the ledges. We can't give that thing the slightest chance to come up behind us."
They nodded together.
"All right," Hunter finished, "let's move. If you can get it on the run, drive it into this room, we can kill it. It won't survive another exchange like that last one."
Bobbi Jo advanced beside Hunter as they neared the passageway. Then they were submerged once more in the enveloping blackness, walking silently. The flares revealed them but they didn't want the sounds of their own footsteps to muffle the stealthy approach of a rear attack. Within minutes they stood at the intersection of the first passage.
Perilously fatigued, Bobbi Jo wiped sweat from her face. Hunter stared as she leaned her back against a wall, recovering breath in the intense humidity and thick air of the cavern. He knew the accelerating blood loss was also draining her strength, but he didn't know what he could do for her at the moment.
"Good God, Hunter," she gasped. "This thing has got to be hurting. 'Cause we're dying."
Grim, Hunter nodded. "It's dying, Bobbi."
She swallowed hard. "How do you know?"
"I just know, darlin'."
"Tell me how," she grimaced," 'cause I could use the encouragement."
Gazing back at her, Hunter smiled. He reached out, touching a stone. He lifted his fingers away, blackened by the diseased blood of the beast.
"That's bright blood, Bobbi Jo," he said. "Somebody hit an artery, and it isn't healing like it was. We're finally wearing it out." He nodded slowly. "Yeah, it's weak. Probably dying. But we still have to finish it. And it ain't going down easy."
She stood away from the wall; the Barrett was beginning at last to wear her down, but she held it firmly. "Then…let's finish it," she gasped. "Before it finishes us."
Hunter smiled. Nodded.
"Whatever made you so tough?" he asked softly.
She laughed tiredly.
"It must be the company I keep."
Chaney paused, hastily wiping sweat from his brow.
It was stifling work, working a slow path up the passageway. His entire uniform was drenched black with sweat and blood from a ragged and profusely bleeding cut on his forehead — the chance result, he had surmised, of the shattered stock arching from his hands when the creature had hit the Weatherby. But, although irritating, the wound was not incapacitating, so he continued.
Takakura, alertly scanning everything, stood on guard as Chaney attempted briefly to adjust his clothing, seeking to find any level of comfort. But the BDUs were so ragged and torn — stretched by perspiration and blood — that it was impossible. Chaney motioned in frustration, straightening.
"Forget it," he breathed. "It's not worth the—"
Slowly the hands extended behind Takakura, emerging with ghostlike silence from the utter darkness of a crevice. It was a terrible image: demonic claws reaching from blackness only inches from the unknowing Japanese.
Chaney raised his rifle instantly at the sight but words froze in his throat because, in the wild moment when he had seen and reacted, he didn't know whether to tell Takakura to leap away or risk a wild shot. Yet the Japanese, a true warrior, somehow realized and in the same breath had moved, diving and rolling forward.
Chaney's blast from the Weatherby illuminated the crevice to reveal the beast, its face distorted by a hideous scream. Then Takakura fired. Light again, then in the next second a creature possessed of a prehistoric rage erupted from the dark, instantly beside them.
Its roar was a physical force, slapping Chaney in the face and chest, and then he was lost in a frantic turning, twisting battle, his rifle erupting again desperately.
Takakura, rifle flung away wildly at the creature's first swiping blow, returned a crippling wound with a flashing slash of his sword, hitting it solidly across the chest to draw a sweeping stream of blood that trailed the katana into darkness. Then it turned fully into the Japanese, who met it force to force.
Chaney shouted as Takakura leaped, hurling the full weight of his body — everything he possessed — in a stabbing lunge that drove the steel blade into the tremendous muscular chest through and through to send a foot of steel out its back.
It was a blow of artistry, of poetic movement made savage only by the definition of its delivery. Then Takakura — not wasting time or motion to appreciate the perfection of his skill — shouted and turned, viciously jerking the blade clear and spinning. And as he came around the sword again caught it, crossing his earlier blow into its chest. And yet again the Japanese hit as Chaney finally reloaded, blasting two deep furrows into its back.