“If what David just said is true,” Bishop said, “then a lot of people do know about them. Frankly, the Congo seems like the kind of place where a lot of things might go unnoticed for a long time.”
She shook her head. “I just don’t know if I can reconcile the existence of modern dinosaurs with what I know about evolutionary biology. There’s got to be something we’re missing here.”
“Hang on a second,” Knight said, abruptly. “If the people here already knew about the raptors, then what exactly was it that brought him back to the cave? What was this big discovery that was so important?”
Before Felice could translate the question, a shout echoed through the cavern. Bishop swung his gaze around, seeking out the source. There were more voices, issuing from the direction of the cave entrance, and then the sound of gunfire echoed again in the vast chamber.
The hunters had found them.
38
“Follow me,” David urged.
Felice did not have time to translate, but there was little need for it. Knight gathered up the chemlights and jammed them into a pocket, plunging the group into darkness once more.
Felice grabbed Bishop’s hand. He seemed to shy away at her touch, but she squeezed harder, insistent that they not be separated. He relented, drawing her along as they followed the old man deeper into the cavern.
More sporadic shots were fired, though it was impossible to tell whether the rebels were shooting at anything in particular — perhaps fending off another pack of the strange bird-like animals — or simply trying to flush their prey out of hiding. David moved quickly but at a walking pace. In the eternal night, there were greater dangers than being hit by a bullet, especially since they were already so deep into the cavern that they could no longer even see the entrance.
Walking hand in hand with Bishop was awkward at first. He was clearly unaccustomed to any kind of intimate physical contact, but she refused his subtle efforts to pull away, and soon his reluctance melted away, just as his anger had. She remembered his rage and knew how close he had been to giving in to it completely, murderously, but she had also felt that rage shrink away at her touch.
“Is there another way out?” Knight whispered after several minutes.
She passed the question to David, then gave his answer. “He doesn’t know, but there is a place ahead, where we will be safe.”
“Safely bottled up,” Knight growled.
Felice felt Bishop tensing up again, and gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. A few moments later however, she was forced to release her hold, as David led them into a slot passage too narrow for them to continue to walk side-by-side. As the rock walls brushed against her shoulders, Felice felt the beginnings of a claustrophobia-induced panic, which was only partly alleviated when Bishop laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.
Her fear evaporated quickly, however, when she realized that she could see again.
Though faint at first, she could now make out the passage walls, and when she reached out to touch them, she could see her own fingertips limned in a bluish glow. As the group advanced, the light grew brighter.
“Do you—?”
“I do,” Bishop whispered. “Keep going.”
The passage undulated through the rock in a series of turns. The ambient light grew brighter with each one they rounded, until the passage opened up again, revealing the light source.
For a few seconds, Felice wasn’t sure what she was looking at. At first, she saw only a broad expanse of black, dotted with yellow and blue lights, like stars in the night sky. It appeared the passage had led them back outside, and that they were looking at the Milky Way at midnight, but it was daytime outside, and the ‘stars’ were below her.
“Fires,” Bishop observed.
Thousands of small fires were spread out on the cave floor in every direction, as far as she could see. As she stared at them, she gradually began to distinguish the landscape’s shape — rocky outcroppings, stalagmites, rising and falling hills — as dark silhouettes against the glow of the flames.
Some of the silhouettes were moving.
At first, she thought it might be shadows dancing in the flickering firelight, but the longer she looked, the less likely that explanation seemed.
And when a low hum filled the air, joined by another and another and another, growing in intensity until it sounded like jet engines, she knew that her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her.
This place belonged to the dinosaurs.
ANCIENTS
39
Queen fumbled in the darkness. Her thoughts were muddled by too many sensory inputs that didn’t seem to connect…
The last thing she remembered was getting caught in a fast-moving cross-current.
She jolted, as the physical memory of being tumbled by the subterranean river returned, but then she realized that she was no longer in the water. Instead, she was lying on a hard, flat surface. As the pieces quickly came together, Queen’s heart began racing.
“Aleman, still with me?” Her voice was loud, echoing strangely in the total darkness. There was no answer, and after a few seconds, she realized that this was because she was no longer wearing the glasses. Her face mask and rebreather were missing, too. The air on her face was hot and humid. She sat up slowly, reaching out in every direction to explore her new environment. “Rook?”
A faint scuffing sound echoed out of the darkness. She whirled, rolling onto hands and knees, coming up in a defensive crouch, hands raised to meet the unseen threat.
Damn it. I can’t even tell what direction it’s coming from.
“Right here, babe.”
The wave of relief at hearing Rook’s voice left her almost giddy. “I can’t see. I lost the glasses.”
“No you didn’t.” She felt his reassuring hand on hers. “Better close your eyes.”
She did, though there was no perceptible difference. A moment later, there was a blinding flare of red that seemed to burn right through her eyelids. She scrunched her eyes closed even tighter and covered them with a cupped palm. It took several minutes for her eyes to adjust to the painful brilliance enough to lower her hands and even attempt opening her eyes. The light felt like grains of sand on her corneas. She squinted through watery eyes and found Rook’s smiling face.
“Here,” he said, holding something out to her. “Try these.”
Her glasses. “So that’s where they went.” She slipped them on. The photosensitive lenses were clear, but as soon as they covered her eyes, the virtual retinal display went active in night vision mode, automatically adjusting for the intensity of Rook’s dive light.
“Why didn’t you just give me these in the first place?”
“The glasses work by projecting light directly into your eyes. If you’d put them on, it would have felt like sticking a hot poker in your eyes.”
Rook switched off his light, and in the resulting darkness, she discovered that she was finally able to see. Rook squatted calmly on the floor, eyes looking forward but seeing nothing. His mask and rebreather were also gone, discarded somewhere along the way, and his drysuit looked like it had been dragged behind a truck. Hers did, too. She rose to her feet and took a look at her surroundings.
They were in a cavern, not as large as the original cave they had first entered, but still very spacious. The walls were damp, with rivulets of water running down from above and dribbling from mineral formations that she probably could have named, if she’d spent a few minutes thinking about it. Her attention was drawn to a dark pool that occupied the center of the chamber. It was not the pool that she found so interesting, but rather a pile of stones jutting out from its shore like a dock or jetty.