“How did you avoid getting covered?” She put it down on the bank, and flipped it over, eliciting another round of furious hissing as the thing bicycled its legs in the air.
“Oh, hell.”
The answer became clear — because it hadn’t lived long enough — yet. The creature was a juvenile. The pond water surged slightly up on the bank in front of her. Cate’s head whipped up, alert now. The small island was even closer, only a dozen feet from the bank… and from her.
She flipped the baby tortoise back into the water, and rose slowly to her feet.
“Sorry mama, no harm no foul.” She started to back away from the water. Alex Hunter’s words run again in her ears: Everything down here wants to eat you, eat you, eat you…
Cate reached down for her spear. “Okay, we’re a-aaall good here. Saying goodbye now.”
She held the spear out in front of her as she backed away. One foot after another, easing back until her next footfall came down on something soft that wriggled furiously under her foot. She shrieked and leapt to the side, landing hard on her ass and elbow.
CHAPTER 33
Cate’s sudden movement was like a trigger — the thing that looked like a small island burst from the water, moving at a colossal speed for something so large. The Carbonemys turtle was about eighteen feet across, and its broad bony head was easily three feet wide, with a sharp curving beak, angled down like a single large dagger tooth. That horned mouth was open and its angry hiss was like a truck coming into a hard breaking stop.
Cate’s eyes were wide, and she felt an electric jolt of pure terror run through her to flood her system with adrenalin, making everything seem to happen in slow motion. In a blink, she knew her puny stick was kindling compared to the armor-plated behemoth that bore down on her. Its neck extended, a column of leathery muscle reaching for her, with its head angling down for her legs, and she knew it would crush them like twigs before she was dragged into the water.
Her mind, now supercharged with fear, collected strange data and images from around her — the buzzing of some sort of gnat at her ear, a drop of water splattered onto her nose, the polypy fronds that closed by themselves when she grazed them, and then the huge turtle, now up on the bank before her, revealing that it had a stump where one of its front legs should be.
Who took that? she wondered, as a familiar voice — her mother’s? — whispered softly: shut your eyes, darling.
As her lids began to close, there was a blur from the corner of her eye, and something like a black cannon ball struck the tortoise’s extended neck. The behemoth’s mouth snapped shut with an audible clack, and incredibly the huge beast was spun sideways. Before she could even draw another breath, the blur was back, scooping her up and carrying her like she weighed nothing.
Cate blinked, not able to speak as fern fronds closed over her, leaving the lake and its mistress long behind. She was let go then, and she lay on the marshy ground for several seconds, her mouth working. Adrenalin still coursed through her system, making her limbs feel like they had singing wires within them. She sucked in a few deep breaths, aware her heartbeat was a racing staccato. Nausea suddenly gripped her and she doubled over, throwing up onto the squelchy ground.
Cate wiped her mouth and turned. “You… you…”
“Take it easy, you’re in shock.”
Alex crouched down beside her. She spat, wiped her mouth and got to her feet.
Her head spun with dizziness, but she felt more anger than relief. She waited for the, I told you so.
Alex came up beside her. “You okay?”
“Listen, before you say anything…” Cate began.
“It’s my fault,” Alex said.
“Huh?” Cate’s eyebrows shot up. “What?”
“No one can ever be ready for this place. It’s not our world. We are nothing down here.” He half smiled. “Nothing but warm meals.” He looked back in the direction of the pond for a second or two, before fixing her with his unblinking gaze. “We were lucky this time.”
“Lucky?” Cate wiped her hands on her legs.
“There are far worse things down here. You have no idea.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”
She exhaled, pushing the hair back from her face. It was covered with grit and slime. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.”
“Good. We need to get out of this swamp.”
Cate looked back in the direction of the lake. Suddenly it didn’t seem like paradise anymore. “I agree. We need to find drier ground.”
Alex turned. “That’s the plan, and the signal’s coming from that way.” He smiled and motioned for her to follow.
Aimee followed in close behind Soong and Casey, feeling her nerves becoming wire-tight as she strained to hear anything unusual. Though she and Casey were fairly tall women, both standing about five foot ten, Casey was twice as broad and more muscular and it gave her a stocky appearance. They were both dwarfed by the male HAWCs. Except for Blake, each man was over six foot. But it was Aimee who seemed to be the one walking like she was made of lead — scuffing a toe, crunching a piece of rock, or grazing a cave wall. She felt she was the loudest among all of them. The training these men and women undertook for stealth movement was showing now, as the huge ghosts edged through the ever-tightening cave.
The walls were becoming slick, the moisture undeniable, and tiny amounts of algae and flat lichens were patterning the stone. As a petro-biologist, Aimee knew that they’d be the basis of a food chain. And she knew exactly how far the links of that chain grew.
Aimee edged past a narrow fissure, and heard the sound of something liquid deep inside. She briefly turned to shine her light into its depths, and momentarily caught her breath as it looked as if there was movement within the crack. But when she moved her light around, there were just the slick walls in a fissure that narrowed to no more than eight inches wide. She placed her face into the crack and inhaled deeply. No telltale ammonia scent, and besides, not even she could have fit in there.
She continued on a few paces, and then heard a grunt behind her. Must be Parcellis. She smiled — at least she wasn’t the only one to walk into something, she thought, and turned. But there was nothing there, not even the twin dots of the night vision equipment the HAWCs wore.
The grunt came again, further back, this time with cursing, and then shouts.
“What the fuck?” Casey climbed over Soong, and barged into Aimee but couldn’t get past, so she pushed Aimee back along the narrow tunnel until they came to an alcove that she was roughly jammed into. Casey bullocked on, Aimee now following close behind. Lights came on and goggles were pushed up, as peak illumination was the priority.
Another ten feet back, Aimee saw Earl Parcellis leaning hard up against the wall — no, she thought, not leaning at all. The soldier was wedged into the small crack she had just passed over. His face was wracked with pain, and his arms were out to the sides as he braced himself. It wasn’t clear what he was doing until there was a sharp tug on his body, and then came the sound of something ripping, followed by the revolting sound of bones cracking.
Jennifer Hartigan came up fast, crawling, burrowing, and edging past the HAWCs to grab at one of his arms. “He’s suffering some sort of seizure. Help me to hold him.”
Parcellis roared a curse that ended as a howl of pain. He seemed to be yanked another few inches and his body started to fold into the crack.