They quickly grabbed explosives, remotes, flares, and weapons. They’d started to walk when Darryl paused and looked around. “One way or another, this thing’s gonna end here.”
From a pocket, Lisa removed the once-beeping transmitter, now silent. “Which way do you want to start?”
Darryl gave the device a dirty look. Then he turned north. “The biggest caves were this way.”
AT THE end of the plateau, they reached a towering sheer rock face that offered only one way to continue: through an extremely narrow crevice, barely the width of a human body. They squeezed in, leaving the hot sun, and became enshrouded in crisp, cool shadows. They began climbing an incline steeper than a San Francisco street. After several hundred feet, the terrain abruptly leveled, and they emerged into an open stretch of black rock, brightly lit by the sun, as long as a highway and dotted with caves.
They walked to the first cave, about three stories high and as wide as a one-car garage.
Darryl peered in suspiciously. “What do you think?”
Jason eyed the perimeter. “I think it couldn’t fit.”
“Maybe it’s stuck, then.”
“Let’s see….” Lisa raised the transmitter.
She waited for a moment.
The tiny device was silent.
Darryl ignored the little contraption and stared into the darkness. “I don’t think it’s here.”
They continued. A dozen more caves in twenty minutes. All were too small or produced nothing from the transmitter.
As they walked to the next one, Jason again marveled at the redwood forest beyond the cornfield. What a view.
Then he felt the dank chill on his back. He turned. “Now, this is big enough.” Jason couldn’t believe the size of it. The hole was monstrous, eight or ten stories high and wider than a three-lane tunnel.
Lisa didn’t know why, but the space made her nervous.
They walked toward it when the mountains above blocked out the sun, swallowing them in deep dark shadows.
Darryl just studied the space, saying nothing.
Lisa raised the transmitter.
The device was silent, no sound at all over the light wind. She shrugged at Jason. “Go to the next one?”
Jason nodded, and the two of them continued.
Darryl didn’t budge. “It’s here.”
Lisa and Jason returned. She raised the transmitter again and again, it didn’t make a sound. But then she took a single step forward, and it beeped. One time. Then went silent again.
Darryl turned to it curiously. “How do ya like that.”
Jason eyed the darkened space nervously. How do you like that indeed.
“I’LL GO.”
Jason shook his head at Darryl. “No, we all go.”
“We can’t all go.”
“Why not?”
“It’s putting all our eggs in one basket. You see how many tunnels there are here, so there could be fifty ways out of this rock. If all of us go in here and it comes out somewhere else…” Darryl shook his head. “And even if this is the only way out, if it gets past whoever goes in… Someone’s gotta stay out here to guard against that. I nominate you two. Unless you want to go in instead of me.”
Jason and Lisa suddenly looked pale.
“Didn’t think so.”
Jason cleared his throat. “Darryl, if you go in by yourself, and it really does get past you, we’re supposed to stop it with this?” He raised his rifle.
“No.” Darryl raised a black brick. “With this.”
Jason eyed him skeptically. “What do you mean?”
“If these caves are as unstable as they say…” Darryl studied the ceiling and walls. “A few of these will take this tunnel right down. Here, I’ll set ‘em up….” Darryl put his bow on the rock and trotted right in, removing five black bricks. He flipped a series of switches, then carefully placed them in strategic locations: on jagged shelves in the walls and two in the middle of the rock floor. Then he trotted back out and handed the remote to Lisa. “Just press the red button.”
Jason shook his head. “Some plan.”
“It’s a backup, and we won’t have to use it. On Monique and Craig’s lives, that thing’s not coming outta here.” Darryl eyed the remote in Lisa’s hand. “And if you press that button, neither will I.”
Lisa swallowed, then flipped a cover over the button and carefully pocketed the remote.
Darryl started to walk in. “OK, I’ll see ya—” He stopped, noticing the walkie-talkie in Jason’s hand. “Let me borrow that. I’ll call you when it’s done.”
Jason handed it to him, and Lisa raised the transmitter. “Want this, too?”
Darryl gave the device a dirty look. He rarely discussed it, but he was superstitious. The transmitter had beeped a moment before and he was worried it was a sign. “All right, give it to me.” He grabbed it angrily, felt for the arrows in the rear pouch of his hunting vest, then slowly entered the dark space. “See ya soon.”
Watching him go, neither said it, but Jason and Lisa both wondered if they’d ever see Darryl Hollis again.
CHAPTER 91
THE LIGHT disappeared and so did the wind. In less than a minute, Darryl Hollis was enshrouded in a silent, blackened void. Walking forward, he strained his eyes, trying to see something, anything. But the darkness was absolute. He wondered what his own senses would have been like if he had evolved in a place like this. Would he be able to see now? Could anything? Could the creature?
He removed a flare. A brief snapping sound echoed everywhere. And then there was light. The flare shot out a long stream of sparkling yellow, and Darryl held it in front of him, astonished at how long the tunnel was. He couldn’t see the end of it. He glanced up, barely able to see the dirt-brown ceiling, the same ugly rock as the walls. It wasn’t a romantic place to die, was it? He tossed the flare on the rock and saw that it created a small halo. Maybe I’m an angel, Darryl thought cruelly.
He walked forward, snapped another flare, and dropped it. He repeated this every hundred feet. He walked for nearly a quarter mile when the transmitter beeped again. Not a single pulse, but a series of them, slow and steady, separated by three-second gaps.
He paused, looking around. He saw nothing unusual. Without snapping another flare, he walked forward, and the darkness slowly returned. He continued for a hundred feet when the air abruptly cooled and the pulses’ echoes changed. He knew he’d entered a larger space. He snapped the next flare.
“My God.”
The cavern was gargantuan, the size of a football stadium. Darryl squinted in the dim light, wondering if his eyes were fooling him. But no. He whipped a flare straight up. Gold sparks flying, the flare toppled end over end. It rose a hundred feet, not even close to the ceiling, before falling back down. He snapped a dozen more flares and whipped them in every direction.
With more light, he studied the space anew. The cavern was an enormous circle, lined with twenty other tunnel mouths, all apparently identical to the one he’d just entered through. He dropped five flares at his feet, a marker to find the right tunnel on the way out.
His awe of the vast arena evaporated. The beeping continued. The Demonray was close. He walked to the nearest tunnel, to his left left, and peered in. The tunnel was long, dark, and cavernous. He considered smashing the transmitter in his hand. Instead, he raised it to the tunnel and listened. The beeping didn’t change. One pulse, three seconds of silence, a small echo, then the next pulse. He walked to the next tunnel, and again, the beeping continued as before. Five more tunnels responded identically.
But at the tunnel directly across from where he’d first entered, the beeping picked up by a half second. He gazed into the void. “Fee, fi, fo, fum.”