Watching it, Jason slowly glanced up and realized it was dark again, the sun gone.
Suddenly he understood. The animal was having problems with its vision. Its eyes hadn’t readjusted to the seawater and it was using the sun to see.
The light returned. As if flipped by a switch, the creature swam straight for him.
He kicked hard, swimming back and down, getting out of its path. The creature made no attempt to follow him. Like a slow-moving children’s ride, it continued straight ahead. And suddenly Jason saw what the Demonray was doing. It wasn’t just using the sun to see, it was following it. It somehow knew the sun’s position in the sky and was following it to get back to the land.
Jason drifted lower, raising the harpoon again. The creature was about to swim directly above him….
It slowly did, wings pumping, engulfing him in shadows. He aimed at its heart, his finger easing down on the trigger…. Whoosh! The harpoon hurtled through the water and plunged right into the white underbelly.
There was no reaction. Literally none. The predator continued as if nothing had happened.
Jason watched in amazement as it faded into the watery distance and disappeared.
Very soon it would reach the land. Not if he could help it. He swam up rapidly. They had to get there first.
CHAPTER 89
“IT’S FOLLOWING the sun.” Jason slammed the door closed. “It’s following the sun to get back to the land.”
Lisa raised a transmitter the size of a deck of cards, beeping slowly and steadily. “So I gather.”
“Jason.” Darryl pointed his finger at the sun. “If you’re right, look what it’s heading to.” On a line, he lowered his finger… to the southern tip of the looming black mountains.
“So we just follow it?” Lisa asked, looking down at the rolling sea.
Jason eyed her beeping transmitter. “Follow it and listen.”
THE CHOPPER inched forward at a snail’s pace. Half an hour later, the beeping still slow and steady, the machine was just fifty feet away from the mountains, suddenly draped in their shadows. “It’s gotta start coming up.” Darryl turned back to Jason urgently. “Get ready.”
Like magic, the beeping became faster.
Jason grabbed his rifle, opened the door, and looked down at the dark sea, trying to spot the creature.
The beeping grew faster still.
He aimed at the waves, trying to see it.
The beeping quickened again.
He swept his rifle across the waves, waiting.
The beeping quickened once more. Then stopped.
Jason paused, staring at the dark water. “Where is it? What happened?”
Lisa eyed the transmitter. “Is this thing still working?”
Darryl shook his head. “Let me see it.” She handed it to him, and he carefully looked it over. “It’s fine.” He turned back to the ocean. What the hell had happened? He scanned the waves with eagle eyes. There was no sign of the predator anywhere.
“It was rising toward us, wasn’t it?” Lisa eyed the mountains directly ahead. “That’s solid rock, right?”
Darryl hesitated. “Wait a second. There might be caves in there.” He’d forgotten, but Phil had mentioned it while going through the park’s papers on prescribed burns. A vast network of caves had existed in the area for as long as the redwoods. Apparently they’d been made unstable during the California Gold Rush in the late 1840s and never become a tourist attraction for safety reasons. Then something else occurred to Darryl. “A cave. That could be the conduit it used to get to the land in the first place.”
Jason suddenly felt sick. “And now it’s trying to do it again. Darryl, we better get to the land side of these right now.”
“Jesus, you’re right….” The big helicopter rose straight up, shot out of the shadows, and whipped over the mountains on the other side. They prayed they weren’t too late.
CHAPTER 90
“I DON’T see it anywhere.” The helicopter sped over the mountain range, peaks and valleys of black rock without any vegetation at all. Next to Darryl in the passenger seat, Lisa had binoculars to her face. “No sign of it at all. There sure are a lot of caves, though.”
Darryl glanced down. “It’s gotta be inside one. We’re gonna have to go in after it.”
Lisa swallowed nervously.
In the back and ignoring this conversation, Jason saw they were rapidly approaching a familiar cornfield.
“Look at how much bigger the caves are getting, Jason,” Lisa advised from the front.
Jason peered out the other side. The caves were getting big indeed, some the size of one-car garages, others much larger. Regardless of size, the mountain was dotted with them.
Darryl sneered down. “That thing’s here somewhere; I can smell it.” He spotted a plateau the size of a soccer field and descended toward it.
Caves, Jason thought anew. Caves had no light at all and were the closest thing on land to the depths. As they touched down, he decided Darryl had to be right. The predator was here.
“NO DAMN flares in this thing?” Stomping around in the back of the chopper, Darryl was frustrated. Their mission here was pointless if they couldn’t see. He needed flares. He ripped open another compartment. Nothing.
Outside on the sunny black rock, Jason and Lisa searched the chopper’s outer compartments, opening and closing one little door after another.
Lisa moved with particular speed. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. “Oh, here we go.”
Near the rear propeller, the compartment was the size of a car’s trunk, holding half a dozen boxes of flares. Opening one, Lisa saw they were gold sticks the size of large hot dogs.
“Perfect.” Darryl grabbed one from behind her. “These are long-burning ones, too.” The standard safety flare burned bright red and lasted half an hour, but these burned gold and lasted for ninety minutes. Darryl grabbed a few boxes. He’d started to close the door when he noticed something else. Another box labeled NITROGLYCERIN-BASED DYNAMITE. He opened it. Inside were a dozen brick-size objects encased in black plastic. Darryl turned one over, and slid open a small compartment, revealing six tiny red switches, like a mini–fuse box.
“What do you have there?” Jason walked over.
“Explosives. Used the same type in the army. I think the loggers around here must use ‘em to loosen up jams on the rivers.” The explosives’ active ingredient was ammonia gelatin dynamite, often used for blasts in quarries and mines. Ammonia gelatin has many beneficial features, like excellent water resistance and high blasting efficiency; also, unlike most nitroglycerin-based explosives, it can be detonated by remote control. But where were the remotes? Darryl quickly found them, two little silver things, each with a single red button that read USE ONLY WITH EXTREME CAUTION.
Jason shook his head. “Bad idea, Darryl.”
“Why?”
“You said these caves are unstable.”
“Exactly why these could be very useful.” He eyed the surrounding bluffs, dotted with holes everywhere. “This mountain’s one big piece of Swiss cheese, Jason. There could be tunnels everywhere in there.”
“So?”
“So tunnels mean escape routes. That thing could go anywhere.” He raised a black brick. “But with these, we can cut off every avenue. So it won’t have a goddamn place to hide.”
Jason turned to Lisa. This logic was hard to fight.
Darryl started grabbing things. “We gotta move before that thing finds its way out of there….”