“Get the hell out of there!” Kowalski bellowed.
As Stella and Jason splashed for shore, Gray followed, still facing the river. A trio of large shapes humped out of the water, undulating toward them.
Luminous globes rose from the waters, lifted on dark stalks.
He remembered those same gelatinous orbs searing through the wings of the aerial predator, burning with acid fire.
Volitox ignis.
Jason reached the shore, twisting his weapon up and firing. Water cannoned out of the wide barrel, along with a sound that shot past Gray’s shoulder. The passage left his head ringing like a bell struck with a sledgehammer.
Still, the deafening blast did nothing to deter the forms barreling toward Gray.
“Sonics don’t work against that species!” Harrington yelled. “Run!”
With clothes waterlogged and heavy, Gray sloshed toward shore, but he knew one certainty.
I’ll never make it.
Ahead of him, fiery orbs lowered, skimming the water, as if drawn by his flailing efforts.
Then a new series of blasts erupted behind him—coming not from a sonic weapon this time, but from the heavy chugging of a machine gun.
Kowalski fired from shore, but his aim was too high.
The rounds flew over the luminous globes and the hunters below—and struck a dark shape circling several meters above the river. It was the Hastax that Jason had stunned earlier. Bullets shredded its dazed form and sent it tumbling in a spray of black blood down into the waters, crashing amid the hunters.
The Volitox swarmed upon it, possibly first in a defensive reflex at the seeming attack, then in an escalating bloodlust.
Gray reached shore and joined the others.
“That should keep them busy . . . along with other scavengers,” Harrington said. “But we should take advantage of the situation and get as far from here as possible.”
“Go,” Gray said, breathing hard and clapping Kowalski on the shoulder in silent thanks.
The big man lifted his machine gun and rested its bulk against his shoulder. “Like I said before, give me real bullets any day of the week.”
As a group, they crossed along the bank, cautious of its slippery coating of algae and moss, keeping well clear of the water’s edge.
Gray led with his weapon at his shoulder, flanked by Stella and Jason. Harrington followed, with Kowalski keeping up a rear guard. The professor eyed his daughter’s limp. The woman’s right leg remained shrouded by the severed coil of leafy vine. Her bottom pants leg was bloody.
“Do we need to take care of that?” Gray asked.
Harrington glanced behind them. The group had cleared a spur of rock, putting them out of direct view of the feeding frenzy. “We should,” the professor said, drawing them farther out of the way. “Over here.”
A slab of broken rock served as a seat for Stella. Her father gently unwrapped the vine, drawing bloody thorns, each an inch long, from her skin. Once removed, the muscular coil continued to squirm in the professor’s grip, but Harrington kept hold.
Following the older man’s instruction, Gray cut a seam along his daughter’s pants, then administered first aid using antiseptic and a bandage from a small emergency med-kit taken from the gondola.
“Do we need to worry about poison?” he asked as he worked.
“No.” Harrington lifted the length of vine. “Sugox sanguine is no worse than kelp. Only a little more aggressive.”
“No kidding,” Kowalski commented.
Vine in hand, the professor moved toward Jason.
The kid took a step back.
“Hold still,” the professor said. “Let me see your face.”
Jason turned his cheek, revealing a black gash.
Harrington lifted the writhing plant. Bright red blood dribbled from the cut end. Gray eyed those thorns anew, horror growing.
Had that muscular vine been sucking Stella’s blood?
The professor tilted Jason’s head farther back and hovered a fat crimson droplet over the wound.
What is he—?
From the gash, a fat white larva squirmed out, stretching toward that fresh blood. The professor speared it with one of the vine’s thorns, pulled out the rest of its body, then threw the vine and the impaled parasite into the river.
Jason fingered his wound, his face sickened.
“Do you know about botflies?” Harrington asked.
Jason shook his head and looked like he didn’t want to know.
Harrington elaborated anyway. “Cuniculux spinae are similar, a type of flesh-burrowing parasite. They burn their way deep into tissues and sprout oviparous spines.”
“Oviparous?” Jason asked, looking more pale.
“Egg-laying. The eggs hatch into carnivorous larvae that spread far and wide. After that, they mature into—”
“I think that’s enough of a biology lesson,” Gray said, saving Jason from more details, while helping Stella back to her feet. “Let’s keep going.”
2:32 P.M.
Jason slogged beside Gray. They had been trekking for nearly forty-five minutes, but by his estimate, they had crossed no more than half a mile.
If even that.
“Not much farther,” Harrington said behind them, but Jason wasn’t sure if that was the truth or if the professor was merely trying to convince himself.
During their hike, the tunnel had been steadily descending, falling in a broken series of steps, each no more than a meter high. Waterfalls cascaded from level to level, echoing up and down the tunnel. They were able to follow the banks along the western wall, but a few times, it required winding past stagnant ponds or fording streams by hopping from rock to rock.
Yet, it wasn’t the terrain that slowed them the most.
Life down here continually pressed against their small party, like a steady headwind. The sonic rifles deterred a majority of the larger creatures. But with every step, something squirmed, crawled, or flapped around them. All the while, biting flies continued to plague them, oblivious of their sonic discharges, an ever-present nuisance.
By now, it seemed every breath burned worse than the last.
Every yard harder to cross.
Sweat soaked through his clothes. His eyes felt swollen and on fire under his goggles.
The only bright side was Stella had drifted closer to him, marching at his shoulder, each taking turns keeping his or her rifle up. Initially, she or her father would try to educate them about what they encountered, classifying various species, but eventually it boiled down to a simple question for each new life-form.
Kowalski asked it now. “Should we shoot them?”
Jason stared ahead. Their path was blocked by what could only be construed as flocks of featherless emus, their numbers easily topping two hundred. Each birdlike creature stood on tall thin legs, likely evolved for wading among the series of ponds that dotted the immediate area. A cluster of nests held speckled eggs the size of grapefruits.