Cate snorted and walked closer to the glistening mass. “Blood and bone — we feed it to our roses.”
“Looks like it’s self serve down here.” Alex’s head whipped around. “Hey, hold up.”
“Huh?” Cate turned, and seeing his face, spun to also stare into the dark forest. “What is it?”
“Movement,” Alex said. “Back up.”
Cate eased back, one foot carefully behind the other. Her rear foot sank into a mat of the sphagnum moss, eliciting a hiss, and then something shot from underneath it. It moved like a snake, but with small spindly legs flicking madly. Cate leapt backwards.
“Shit!”
“Quiet!” Alex turned, frowning. “It was just a snake.”
“It had legs. You know, it could have been a dinilysia. That was one of the snake’s earliest ancestors.” She kicked over the moss-mound, revealing a clutch of small eggs. She knelt down and reached into the pile, lifting one and squeezing it slightly. “Soft shell.” She shook her head. “I would kill to bring one of these back.”
Alex grunted. “Good to know we won’t starve.”
Cate looked horrified. “Over my dead body.”
Alex half smiled. “You go a few days without food, you’ll eat ’em, and eat ’em raw.” He motioned to the forest. “Come on… and watch where you step, Professor.”
Cate exhaled, loitering for a moment before getting to her feet. “You know what?” She grinned. “My bucket list is now officially empty.”
Alex half turned. “Mine still has get out alive in it, and about now, it’s close to the top.” He turned away. “Let’s follow the path.”
“Yeah, right, the path,” Cate said, scoffing. “You do know this is a game trail?”
“I know… but I’m kinda hoping it’s an old and unused one right now,” Alex said without turning.
They walked in silence for another fifteen minutes, Cate stopping from time to time to examine something on a trunk, or among the forest floor debris. She wiped her brow.
“It’s so hot down here. Must be geothermal activity.”
“Yeah.”
Cate followed Alex, her head craned to the ceiling again. “The blue glow makes it look like late sunset. The sun has just gone down, but the last blush of light remains — beautiful. It’s some sort of bioluminescence — either floral or faunal.”
“Glow worms.” Alex looked up. “Billons and billions of them.”
Cate snorted. “I should probably just shut up. But you know what? If you shared a bit more, it would save me from having to flap my lips all the time.” She increased her pace to catch up. “And how the hell doesn’t anyone know about this place?”
Alex stopped and turned. “Because if they did, there’d be a thousand of you on the ice, and a hundred of you below it. This is a designated restricted zone — off limits to everyone. It’s no greenhouse, or petting zoo, or nature sanctuary, where you walk behind safety barriers. I lost an entire team down here, and it is the most deadly place on Earth, bar none.”
“Under,” Cate said. “Not on Earth, but under it.”
Alex half smiled, but it held little humor. “You need to take this very seriously, Professor Canning. Just about every second creature down here will either eat you, try to eat you, or at least do a good job of making a damned mess out of you.”
“Oh, we’re back to Professor Canning now, are we?” She waited, hands on hips, but Alex didn’t bite. She exhaled loudly. “Okay, okay.” Then titled her head. “It’s just, I’ve studied this all my life.” She waved a hand around. “But it’s always been echoes of the real thing that vanished millions of years ago. I can’t count the number of times I sat alone, wondering what some of these things would be like if they were alive today — what color would they be? What would they sound like, smell like? And now…” She grinned, arms out.
“I know all I need to know. We stay away from them, we stay alive.” Alex checked his tracker. “Come on.”
They marched on, and soon the land dipped and became spongy beneath their feet. Water squelched up with every step they took, and the plants lifted themselves up even higher on long mangrove-like root legs. The smell of damp and rot was all-pervading.
Cate bent and swished her hand through a puddle. “It’s almost hot.” She sniffed her fingers. “Fresh, but very brackish.”
“Careful,” Alex said. Their pace slowed, as they needed to weave around ponds that held greenish water of unknown depths. In one, an insect the size of a cherry flew lazily over the surface, to suddenly be speared from the oil-still surface and then vanish below its green algal blanket.
Cate watched, transfixed for a second or two, before going and kneeling beside one of the larger ponds. Bubbles popped and the surface swirled with languid movement below. She grabbed the stem of a fern frond to wipe it across the water’s surface, so she could see into its depths.
“Ha.” She dipped the frond in like a giant paddle, dragging it back towards herself. She hauled her prize up onto the soggy bank.
The foot-long black creature flipped and flopped, looking glossy black under the blue light of the bioluminescent glow from the ceiling.
“Pollywog,” she said and grinned up at Alex.
“Is that what I think it is?” he asked.
“Yep, that, is a tadpole… a huge, monstrous tadpole.” She cursed. “Arg, why didn’t I bring a camera? I’m an idiot.” She got to her feet. “When I was a kid, I had a stream down at the far edge of our yard that had frogs, eels, and tortoises living in it. I spent hours just lying on the bank watching them.” She used the frond like a broom to sweep the tadpole back towards the water. “I bet that’s a Beelzebufo ampinga larvae. Called the devil frog — long extinct on the surface, but it had jaws like a bear trap and grew to nearly two feet in length. Could’ve eaten a small dog.”
She dropped the frond. “Hmm, but why can’t we hear them? Frogs are some of the noisiest creatures on the planet. Something that big should be near deafening.”
“That, like most things down here, has learned to be quiet. So should you.” Alex pointed off into the distance where there was a rise to a rocky plateau — it was miles away. “I think there’s a waterfall way back there. That’s where the fresh water is coming from, and I’m betting they all empty into the sea around here. There’ll be a stream we can follow. The signal seems to be coming from the far cliffs.”
Cate continued to look out over the pond. She inhaled deeply, drawing in all the scents of brackish water, decay, damp mosses, and rich earth. I’m in a prehistoric jungle miles below the earth’s surface. She smiled at the insane thought. From when she was a little girl, poking sticks into frog ponds, or turning over stones in tidal pools, this was what drew her to her profession like a magnet. It was what she had dreamed of — no, not this — this was beyond anything she could have dreamed. Her smile widened and she looked over her shoulder at Alex, the man’s dangerously handsome features now twisted in either contemplation or concern. But she wasn’t concerned; down here felt like she had landed right in heaven. She knew she would never, ever get this chance again.
Alex turned to her, catching her looking at him. “At least we get to move out of this coastal jungle.” He raised his eyebrows. “But no more diversions until we get there. We’re not here for a picnic, got it?”
“Nope.” She turned back to the pond. “No more.”