Then, feeling for his bow, he entered it.
LIKE THE others, this tunnel was dark, dank, and seemingly endless. Dropping one flare after another, Darryl descended deeper and deeper, the beeping maintaining its slow, steady pace. He wondered if this very passage was where the creature had first entered from the sea. He froze. Or was it that one? He stood at the mouth of yet another tunnel, an offshoot. He raised the transmitter, and the beeping was unchanged, slow and steady. He ignored the offshoot and walked on, faster now, dropping flares every hundred feet. Then he reached a fork, and the tunnel split in two.
He went to the left side, and the beeping increased ever so slightly. He eyed the looming dark void. This was where the predator was hiding.
He walked to the right side and the beeping slowed. Then he heard another sound. The ocean, ever so faintly. This side was an escape route. Not if Darryl could help it. He removed several explosives and carefully positioned them in the walls and floor. He checked and rechecked that they were properly set, then trotted away and removed the remote.
He eyed the little red button for a moment, then pressed it.
The explosion was like an earthquake. The ground literally shook, and suddenly boulders the size of swimming pools were falling everywhere, from the walls, the ceiling… In seconds, there was silence except for the faint trickling of falling pebbles.
Darryl lifted himself off the rock floor. Through thick plumes of dust he saw it, the passageway, completely caved in now, the sounds of the sea gone. He returned to the left fork, and again, the transmitter picked up its pace, the beeps now a second and a half apart. He removed two more explosives and placed them on the center of the floor. Another precaution, just in case. He snapped the next flare and walked forward.
Ten flares later, the beeping increased.
He stopped, studying the tunnel, looking for any sign of the creature.
There was nothing, just a long dank hole.
He continued walking, faster now.
The beeping increased again, markedly so.
He still didn’t see the predator.
He walked even faster.
The beeping increased further.
He looked around, twisting in every direction. He didn’t see the animal anywhere.
He walked faster still.
The beeping increased further, the pulses separated by milliseconds.
He jogged.
Suddenly he froze. It was directly in front of him, something huge and looming.
He couldn’t make it out entirely. He threw a flare at it.
The flare bounced backward.
He loaded an arrow and walked forward, the beeping almost droning.
And then, amid a burst of sparkling gold light, it came into view. A solid rock wall. The end of the tunnel.
He noticed something in front of it. In the far-right corner, just lying there. He stepped toward it and the beeping became a steady drone.
It wasn’t the creature.
It was a bloodied harpoon with a homing beacon inside it. Somehow the animal had pulled it out.
“Son of a bitch!”
Darryl hurled the transmitter to the floor, smashing it to pieces.
In an instant, there was pure silence—almost. The only sound was from the softly hissing flares, illuminating the tunnel behind him like streetlamps on a foggy road.
Then there was a second sound. Off in the distance. Flapping.
It was so far away, Darryl couldn’t even see it yet. But he knew. The predator was coming for him.
He breathed, calmly, evenly. A war was about to start. Darryl Hollis was ready for it.
CHAPTER 92
THE POWER of the roar was extraordinary. It erupted without warning, shattering the silence and echoing everywhere.
Darryl didn’t flinch. He couldn’t see the Demonray yet—it was just a faint outline in the distance—but hearing its roar only made him want to kill it more. He marched forward. “Come on, you ugly mother.”
Surging forward, the animal gradually became visible, gliding higher than Darryl had expected, halfway between the floor and ceiling. He halted and fired. Eight times. In rapid succession, the arrows exploded away at different heights.
The creature veered down sharply. Three arrows missed, but five were direct hits to the face. They had no effect. The predator continued, ten feet high, neither slowing down nor speeding up, simply maintaining its pace.
Darryl paused. He’d hit it, he was sure of it, numerous times, but the animal hadn’t roared, shuddered, slowed down, or sped up. Nothing. It simply hadn’t reacted. He didn’t care. He could almost make out the blacks of its eyes.
He strode forward and fired again. Ten times.
All ten were direct hits, plunging nearly a foot deep into the head and body.
The Demonray continued gliding.
Reaching back for the next arrow, Darryl noticed the flares, moving ever so slightly, apparently tossed by gusts of wind. The predator was no longer gliding. It flapped its wings, suddenly moving faster.
Darryl strode forward and fired six times.
They all missed. The flapping form suddenly climbed to the very top of the hundred-foot ceiling then plunged down, rocketing just above the floor. The increase in speed was fantastic. Moving with tremendous momentum, it hurtled straight for Darryl….
He fired twice more. On a line, two projectiles penetrated the creature’s face.
The Demonray sped closer, three hundred feet away, two hundred…
Darryl reached for something in his breast pocket.
The creature rushed in, one hundred feet, fifty feet…
Darryl didn’t budge. He just removed whatever was in his pocket….
The creature rocketed in, thirty feet, ten feet, the mouth opening, the teeth zooming in….
Suddenly Darryl dove to the rock, simultaneously thrusting a knife up with both hands. As the enormous body hurtled overhead, he dug a ten-foot, gaping slash into the white canopy. A powerful stabbing pain shot through his upper arm. As the body surged over him, he saw his shirt was suddenly soaked through with blood, his left shoulder almost gone.
The predator glided unevenly toward the dead-end wall, a small river of blood gushing from its underside. It suddenly veered away from the wall, then banked and landed with a loud, thwacking thud.
Darryl just looked at it, perfectly still, three dozen arrows blanketing its body like a pincushion. Its eyes were still open, looking right back at him over the sparkling golden light. Then he heard it, wheezing, struggling to breathe.
Darryl had to finish it. He painfully raised his arm to get the next arrow. He walked toward it, halted, then… Voom! He fired a speeding projectile into its face, just below the left eye.
The Demonray didn’t move. Didn’t flinch.
“My God.” Darryl couldn’t believe it. It was like it hadn’t felt it, like the animal literally hadn’t felt the arrow enter its body. Jason had said its brain had a minuscule pain center but this… Darryl reached back for the next arrow. There weren’t any.
He painfully raised his knife. “I’m gonna carve you up good.” Feeling the blade’s heft, he marched toward it, praying it didn’t have anything left.
As he got closer, it didn’t move.
He jogged
It still didn’t move.
He sprinted.
Suddenly the predator lifted its front half into the air and let out a shattering roar.
Darryl froze, just watching it, the taut muscles on the bloody white underside, the huge head, the teeth flickering in the dim light.
Then the mouth snapped shut like a trap, and there was perfect silence. The great body just stood there, slightly more than six feet high.