It suddenly refocused. They all did.
There was a light padding noise. Footsteps. Something was walking out of the cave.
The creatures descended deeper into the dark water, instantly becoming invisible.
Then an animal appeared, a shimmering vision beneath a bleak sky: a small figure covered with thick brown fur, a large, almost triangular head, and ambling forward on four legs. It was a bear cub, not more than a hundred pounds.
The creatures watched it coldly.
The cub wandered out of the enormous space and, for no apparent reason, rolled over and pawed at the air. Then it righted itself and hoofed to the very edge of the rocky lip. Apparently overheated, it playfully dipped a paw into the lightly breaking waves. It seemed fascinated by the moving water.
The leader moved toward it—very slowly.
The others didn’t budge. They focused on the cub.
The bear didn’t notice the dark shape appear directly below it. Then it saw something huge and black rising incredibly fast. It didn’t have time to react.
With a powerful thrust, the ray thundered out with lightning quickness. The great mouth snapped open, then slammed closed, catching the bear. As the giant body landed on the rock, smacking loudly, the bear screamed briefly then went silent. There was a sickly crunching sound, then the mouth opened and the lifeless little form spilled out. The creature quickly ate some of the meat and fur, then, with a violent head twist, flung what remained into the water, so the others could get a taste.
But they weren’t there now. They were already hundreds of feet beneath the surface, on their way to more than twenty thousand. Their wings pumped quickly, propelling them downward. Their heartbeats had been beating faster for days, but now they were slowing. The darkness was returning. They were going home.
The predator remained on the rock plateau. It would not follow them. Instinctively, it felt it wasn’t meant to follow at all but to do something else entirely.
Flat on the rock, its massive form rose and fell unevenly. It was experiencing breathing problems, its lung not yet fully adapted to the air. The baseball-size eyes shifted, studying the surroundings: seagulls gliding overhead, a dozen crabs bathing in little puddles on the lip, the desolate mountains.
Like a beached big-bellied airplane, it simply laid still and breathed. It wasn’t ready.
CHAPTER 46
“Jason, are you all right?!”
In full scuba gear, their leader had just flung himself from the water, gasping for air.
Jason was too winded to answer her, but Monique saw from the boat that he was OK. He just needed to catch his breath. She eyed the dark water nervously. But where were Darryl and Craig? Armed with harpoon guns, they’d joined Jason to check the waters near Redwood Inlet for any sign of the rays.
Lisa sprinted up from below deck, her eyes wide. “My God, is he OK?”
“He just needs to catch his breath; he’s fine.”
Phil trotted out, visibly confused. “What the hell happened?”
Monique shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Darryl and Craig popped up, ripped off their masks, and swam toward Jason. Before they could even ask, he said through gasps that he was fine.
Craig gently put a hand on his shoulder. “What happened?”
He finally caught his breath. “I don’t know. You saw me; I was a hundred and eighty feet down, and somehow I had an empty tank.”
Craig looked up at the boat, eyeing Monique, Lisa, and Phil. “I checked that tank myself.”
Jason shook his head. “I’m fine; forget it. You guys see anything down there?”
Neither said anything. They wanted to be sure he was really all right.
“Guys, I’m fine. Did you see any sign of the rays?”
They shook their heads.
“I wonder where they went.”
Craig looked around. “Maybe inland. Maybe further north. Who knows?”
Jason certainly didn’t. The blinking black dot had only appeared on the interactive map for seconds and disappeared. “What do you think, Darryl?”
Darryl slowly turned to the inlet then stared at it. “I think this inlet’s a perfect conduit, we just got a reading here, and we shouldn’t overcomplicate this.”
“Meaning…” Jason eyed the flat water mass himself. “You want to check it out?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s do it, then.”
Minutes later, the Expedition motored into Redwood Inlet.
As Lisa looked up at the looming trees, she couldn’t believe it. They were actually looking for the new species inland. She turned when Darryl came up from below deck—carrying something she hadn’t seen in some time. A rifle. Lisa’s stomach turned. She didn’t think Darryl had taken the weapon out to shoot at skeet.
REDWOOD INLET went on and on. After forty minutes, they still couldn’t see the end of it.
For reasons they couldn’t articulate, everyone was amazed by their new surroundings. It was just so quiet here, just table-flat water, towering redwoods, and silence. No one spoke. Even Phil wasn’t typing. They all just studied the strange landscape.
Looking up, Darryl Hollis couldn’t get over the trees. Darryl had spent a great deal of his life in the woods and he’d never seen anything like them. Where Darryl was from, most trees were fifty, maybe eighty feet tall. Redwoods were absolutely massive by comparison, the height of thirty-five-story office buildings and as wide around as small water towers. He eyed a huge specimen growing right on the side of the bank. Moving his eyes up along the great shaft, he saw it was a perfectly clean piece of timber, literally not a single branch until twenty-five stories, where the crown began to grow.
Sequoia sempervirens. That was the official term for coastal redwoods. Darryl had read it in a book once and for some reason the name had stayed with him. But books didn’t begin to do these natural skyscrapers justice. Many were more than two thousand years old, he knew, literally old enough to have seen Jesus. Alive now, yet alive when Jesus had been.
Call your congressman, Darryl thought morosely, keep the damn logging companies away from these things. Only two hundred years ago, more than two million acres of the great old-growth trees had grown in this part of the country. Now 95 percent of them were gone. What had literally taken two thousand years to grow, an electric chain saw had cut down in twenty minutes.
“Look at that.” Craig pointed as an elk calf trotted from the forest’s shadows and began drinking from the creek. They all just watched it. With dark hair on its front half, lighter hair in back, the calf was three feet tall and thirty-five pounds.
Monique smiled cutely. “Isn’t he adorable, Darryl?”
Darryl rolled his eyes. He was a trained hunter and had never seen any animal as “adorable.” But Monique loved little furry things. They seemed to go well with babies.
Jason eyed the drinking calf with surprising dispassion. Nature was a dangerous place, and he tried to picture what one of the rays would see looking up at the animal from the water. There was only one possibility. Food.
In a sparkling new white undershirt, Craig read his mind. “You think one of those rays would try to eat it?”
Jason started to answer when he noticed Lisa, standing by herself at the front of the boat. He joined her. “Hey.”
“Hi.” Hair in a ponytail, she looked unsettled, even nervous.
“You OK?”
She didn’t answer.
He put a hand on her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
She eyed the calf, almost angrily. “What’s wrong is I saw Darryl take out his rifle before. What’s wrong is this is getting frightening.”