Species

by Yvonne Navarro

  “Oh yeah,” Laura said, her expression stiff, “she’s definitely pregnant.”

  “What’s that noise?” Dan asked suddenly. “Hear it?”

  Not too far down the sewer pipe, hissing and scraping sounds rose above the constant gush of running water. The three remaining team members rushed toward the commotion, balancing precariously along the slippery, moss-covered catwalk. A few more feet and the Afterburners’ glow reached far enough for them to see a new opening in the concrete wall of the main pipe on their side, this one slightly smaller than the one in the electrical closet in the Biltmore’s boiler room. Soil and rocks were still being pumped from the opening as Sil clawed her way into the earth. It took only a few more seconds for Press to dash to the gap, thrust the nozzle of the flamethrower inside, and squeeze the trigger. A wall of flame engulfed the shaft and Press yanked the flamethrower out of the crevice and threw himself to the side to avoid the backwash. Then—

  Silence.

  Finally, Dan spoke. “I think you got her, Press.”

  Press peered into the hole, trying to wave aside the stink of the burning napalm. “We’ve got to make sure.”

  “You mean we’ve got to go in there?” Laura looked doubtfully at the burrow, bright patches of its sides still blazing.

  “Most of it’ll burn out in another thirty seconds,” Press said. He began digging at the loose dirt on the upper sides of the depression, shoving handfuls of it down the sides in an effort to smother the rest of the flames. He threw Laura and Dan a glance over his shoulder. “Just try not to get any on your hands, because it clings. Laura, you watch your hair.”

  When he decided it was safe enough, Press went in face-first, the Afterburner light leading the way. The other two followed, lights bobbing and fingers searching for purchase in the rubble. “God,” Laura muttered, more to herself than the others. “Isn’t this ever going to be over?”

  “Almost,” Press called back, making her jerk. “We—aw, damn it.”

  “What’s the matter?” Dan asked from a few feet behind Laura’s shoes. “Are you okay? Press?”

  “There’s a definite draft flowing through here.” His voice was filled with frustration. “I think we’re out of luck again—she’s escaped.”

  “Where does it go?” She was trapped between Dan and Press and all Laura’s light would let her see in the inky tunnel was Press’s rear end and the wet bottoms of his shoes.

  “I’m not sur—oh, man.” His voice faded for a moment, then came back. “Wait’ll you see this.”

  As they fought their way free of Sil’s latest passageway, the surface on which Laura and Dan crawled unexpectedly ended. They tumbled forward, then slid about a yard before coming to a sprawling stop. “Where are we?” Laura demanded. She found her balance and stood, then her jaw dropped. “Jesus Christ! Where did this come from?”

  The three of them were standing in a huge, subterranean cavern.

  41

  The small rocky outcrop on the far side of the cave was a good place to birth her offspring. She knew the group still hunted her and Sil felt lucky to have found the hidden spot so quickly; her child would draw its first breath and be on its feet long before their puny efforts let them make the first guess at her whereabouts. The stalactites and stalagmites everywhere in the cavern did a fabulous job of distorting and magnifying sound, making their clumsy movements around the rocks and strange pools of oily tar dotting the ground indistinguishable from her own. Her ledge was high up the wall nearest their left, almost completely in the shadows and invisible from the ground. While she had put a little distance between herself and the burrow entrance, the fools chasing her would think she had fled across the span of the cave to its farthest depths and wouldn’t bother to look so close to the tunnel she had made. Adding to the airy noises filling the enormous space were the rats and the blind albino lizards scuttling among the boulders.

  Her face twisted in agony and her breathing doubled, then tripled as the child within her swelled in size. Arching backward until she was bent almost in two, her mouth opened in a voiceless wail as the skin between her breasts lightened and stretched as far as it could, then split. The bones of her rib cage gleamed and then her sternum shifted, the bone matter melting to form interlocking pieces that began to push apart, one by one, to expose the pulsing birth canal beneath.

  With a low, tortured grunt, the muscles of the birth channel contracted, then expelled the boychild from her body with a rush of translucent pink fluid. Chest heaving, she felt the infant roll down the side of her body and pull itself away from her. Her lightless surroundings did nothing to hinder her, and she could see him clearly—covered with birthing blood and fluid, he was perfectly formed, an exquisite example of a human child but possessed with her superior abilities at concealment and survival. Right now he would be afraid of her and want to hide, and that was good; he would also be a hungry, instinctive killer and dangerous to her in her weakened state. He was a born predator and Sil knew she could leave the boy without worry, knowing he could fend for himself while she healed in safety for a short while.

  Without looking back, Sil scurried off into the darkness.

  “Incredible,” Laura breathed. “I never thought I’d see someplace like this in person. Look over there.” She pointed at the closest of half a dozen inky ponds across the rock-strewn ground stretching before them. “It could be oil, or it could tar—like the La Brea Tar Pits. Who knows what’s in these pools.”

  “Then we’d better be careful not to get stuck in them,” Dan said with unaccustomed cynicism. He looked anything but happy to be in the midst of the immense cave. “Or we’ll end up like those saber-toothed tiger fossils you see in the museums.”

  “What was that?” Press brought his flashlight beam around and aimed it toward a noise somewhere to his right. The light caught a flash of eyes reflecting in its glare; a rat chittered angrily and ran behind a huge stalagmite banded in multicolored red and cream.

  “Just a rat,” Laura said. “I wish we could count on that being all that’s down here.” She aimed her Afterburner into the distance and watched its strong beam dissipate into nothing. Nevertheless, when Press moved off to start searching, she and Dan followed.

  “This is a lost cause,” Press said with a scowl after only a few minutes. They had made a vaguely elliptical search, stopping at its three-quarter mark. “This place goes on forever—probably under the whole fucking city.”

  Dan timidly shone his light behind a particularly large boulder, revealing nothing but more rubble and a few fleeing lizards. “She could be anywhere in here,” he agreed. “Or nowhere. Maybe there’s a way to the surface that we haven’t found.”

  “You two stay here,” Press said. “I’m going to go back and check the burrow opening to make sure she didn’t return to the sewer behind our backs.”

  “How would you know if she did?” Laura asked incredulously.

  “By the soil pattern,” he explained. “Her body will leave tracks in the dirt just like a tire. I’ll be back in two minutes. Stay put, you understand? I don’t want anybody getting lost in here, and as long as your lights are together, they’ll be strong enough so that I’ll be able to find my way back to you.” Light bobbing, Press strode off in the direction from which they’d come; it seemed only seconds before his footfalls faded to faint whispers.

  “Great,” Laura said. “Our hero makes tracks for the horizon and leaves his two sidekicks to wait it out.” She bounced the base of her Afterburner nervously against her thigh.

  Dan’s gaze skittered along the darkness outside their small circle of light, then stopped. He could sense the feelings of something out there, up the sliding wall of soil to his left. Whatever it was, it definitely wasn’t Sil. Instead, Dan caught flashes of softness, unfocused intelligence, hunger . . . and fear of the unknown. After a moment’s hesitation he began to scale the loosely packed slope.

  “Dan, what are you doing?” Laura’s voice rose a notch; he caught a spark o
f fear in the rising volume. “Come back here!”

  “It’s okay,” he called back. “I’m not scared—just wait there. I’ll be right back.”

  “Yea, well,” he heard her mutter, “I think that’s what Press said, too. Jesus, I can’t believe you guys are leaving me standing here by myself. What a crock.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Dan repeated. Almost to the top, he hesitated when he heard something squeal, followed by a nearly inaudible crunching sound. When nothing else happened, he grasped the jutting outcrop of a stone ledge and pulled himself upright. He could see Laura’s light swinging back and forth far below, like a night-light in an abyss. Balancing carefully on his toes, Dan could just see over another ledge, this one barely at eye level. This was where the feelings were coming from, deep and forceful in his head and heart, impossible to ignore. When he stretched to his full height and peered over, he let out a cry.

  Naked and cringing, a little boy—a baby—crawled backward on the ledge and stared at him in terror.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Dan said soothingly. “I won’t hurt you.” He wanted to pull himself up, but there was no way—nothing within reach offered a place for him to put his feet or hands.

  “Dan?” Laura called. She sounded very far away. “Dan, what are you doing? Where are you?”

  From farther in the distance, Press’s worried, echoing voice joined hers. “Laura, are you guys okay?”

  “Laura, I’m fine,” Dan yelled down. “There’s a baby boy up here!” He turned his face back toward the trembling child. The infant watched him with wide, frightened eyes, the skin of his face and body mottled with pinkish stains that looked like diluted rust. “I’ll be right back,” he said calmly to the child. “Don’t go anywhere, and we’ll get you out of here.” Leaving his flamethrower on the ledge on which he was standing so he could have both hands free, Dan began to move cautiously to the side, searching for another way up the rest of the incline.

  “There’s a what?” Something in Laura’s voice had changed, but Dan couldn’t think about that right now; he had to concentrate on finding a way to get to the boy. “I’m going to climb up a different way,” he shouted. “I can’t get to him from here!”

  “Dan, don’t do anything!” The light far down the slope flickered and went out, then Dan heard a slapping sound. “You don’t know what—damn it all to hell! My light’s dead!”

  “Just stay there, Laura. I’ll be back for you in a minute, I promise.” Crawling carefully along the incline, Dan finally found a set of indentations in the rocky dirt, deep enough to use as a sort of staircase. Pulling himself onto the higher ledge, he crawled back toward the baby, letting his Afterburner’s beam cut a swathe of light along the ground in front of him. He could still feel the child, the emotions of hunger stronger now, and tempered by intense curiosity. Whose child was this, and how had he come to be in this godforsaken underground cave?

  Almost there. He could hear the baby cooing at something, then he caught another of those odd, crunching sounds. When he found the final handhold and levered himself over, the child was bent over something, its back to him. The air in this place was cool and damp, much too extreme for an infant, and Dan pulled off his jacket. He would wrap it around the baby so it could build up some warmth, then figure out a way to get it dow—

  The boy turned and Dan froze. A few minutes ago he had barely been older than a newborn, hardly able to crawl, but the child who swiveled to face him now stood upright with no trouble. He cocked his head quizzically in Dan’s direction, as if trying to make the connection that Dan and the man who had appeared on the other side of the ledge were one and the same. Paralyzed in the act of offering his jacket, Dan saw everything that the strain of peeking over the ledge before hadn’t allowed: the reddish color streaking the boy’s skin wasn’t rust but washes of blood—birthing blood—and the heavier scarlet stain around his mouth had come from the headless rat still clutched in his tiny fingers.

  “N-nice little b-boy,” Dan said shakily as the child dropped the rat and began to toddle toward him. “N-no—you s-stay there, n-now, okay?” Dan backed up as far as he could and felt the edge of the rock outcropping at his heels, the cooler wash of the updraft from the cavern floor many yards below. He dropped to his knees, never taking his eyes from the boy’s, and felt desperately for a handhold among the rubble so he could lower himself. His light swayed wildly across the narrow span of the ledge, flicking over the toddler’s face and making the chubby-cheeked face pull into a strange and unexplainable shape. Just a few more feet—

  The child was still more than two feet away when it lunged.

  Dan cried out as a horribly barbed tongue the color of dirty amber shot out of the boy’s mouth and swiped at him. He felt the fabric of his shirt tear at shoulder level and a hot spot of pain spread across his arm and neck, making him lose whatever precarious grip he’d maintained on the rocks. He had one breathless moment of weightlessness, then he hit the slope headfirst, hard enough to make him see a flash of bright white that he thought for a millisecond was just his flashlight. Then he heard pebbles rolling somewhere else in the darkness and realized he’d lost the Afterburner in the fall, disjointedly remembered reading somewhere that the light you saw in a bad fall was your brain slamming against the inside of your skull.

  The boy . . . Dan could hear him coming down the slope with a surefootedness that belonged more to a mountain goat than a toddler . . . toddler? The heavy noises coming from the blackness above him indicated more a boy of seven or eight, or—what did Dan know of children and their ages?—maybe eleven or twelve. He blinked and tried to clear his head, then began to move slowly along the incline, searching for his light. As the last of the sparkles cleared from his vision, he caught a faint glow a few feet farther down—the Afterburner, lodged in a crevice on the rocky bank.

  The sounds above began to get louder as the child neared its prey. Fighting for balance, Dan clawed a path sideways toward the light. If he could get to it before the creature got to him, he might—might—be able to find the flamethrower. He’d set it at the edge of a spot on the upper edge; he should be able to stand and feel his way along the rock until he got to it. If he couldn’t find it . . . well, he wouldn’t think about that.

  Far below, he realized that Laura was screaming for Press.

  “What’s wrong?” Press yelled. He was running in a darkness broken only by the glow of his light, a dangerous thing to do. As if to prove it, he tripped on something—a large rock—and fell, felt his left hand shoot forward to leave a good chunk of skin along the gritty floor of the cavern so that his right could juggle the light. He was back on his feet and sprinting for Laura and Dan without feeling the pain. “Laura?” he yelled. “Damn it, answer me! Where are you—where’s your light?”

  Her voice floated back to him, echoing and directionless. “Press, something’s happened to Dan up on the slope. I’m going up.”

  “No! Stay where you are—where the hell is your light?” Moisture gleamed blackly in the beam of his Afterburner as he swept the ground with it—one of the tar pools. Press skirted its edge, forced to go slower by the treacherous furrows hidden in the sliding soil.

  “He needs help, Press! I can’t just stand here an—”

  Laura’s words ended in a squawk and a mucky-sounding splash, then she started cussing. Farther above, he could hear Dan scrambling frantically along the rocks. “Oh God, Press—I’m stuck in one of these damned tar pools! Jesus, what is this stuff?”

  “I’m okay!” Dan called hastily. “I found my light—sweet Jesus!”

  “What’s the matter?” Press and Laura shouted nearly in unison. Press’s gaze searched the upper regions of the cavern, finally pinpointed the other man’s whereabouts by the glow of the faraway flashlight beam.

  “It’s another one,” Dan cried. “A new one—her baby!” Then his voice rose in pitch. “Hey, no—stay back! Oh God, where is that flamethrower?”

  Off to his right, Press finally
spotted Laura mired a few feet inside the edge of the largest tar pit. He started in her direction but she waved him anxiously away, the nozzle of her flamethrower perilously close to the flammable pond. “Never mind me, Press—I’m not going anywhere. Get up there and help Dan.”

  Press didn’t need to be told twice. He whirled and headed up the mound of earth toward his friend. A useless effort, though—without taking the time to search for careful footing, he lost two steps for every three he tried to take. Balling his fists in frustration, he kept at it, each unseen scrabbling making him think Dan was dying or already dead. But midway up, he heard Dan’s triumphant howl.

  “I found it!”

  A jet of flame filled the air above Press, rolling from the nozzle of Dan’s flamethrower like a sideways mushroom cloud thrown by an explosion. The startling red-and-orange eruption blinded Press momentarily, but not before he saw Dan’s target. Already nearly as tall as a teenager, it could have been the Sil creature herself except for its smaller size. Poised to attack with ropy coils of hair spread in a Medusa-like fan above a head that might have come from a mutated praying mantis, the blast of napalm caught it full in the face and knocked it off its feet. It staggered back and fell, and Press tracked its frenzied path downhill by the rolling ball of light. A high, head-throbbing shrieking filled the air as Press let himself slide back to level terrain and saw Dan chase the life-form at an angle across the hilly area, the creature batting crazily at the burning blotches on its head with long, yellowish tentacles the entire time.

  Enraged, Sil’s blazing offspring spun to face its attacker. It lunged, huge mouth snapping open to expose triple rings of teeth the pale color of new ivory. Legs firmly planted, Dan two-fisted the handgrip and nozzle of the flamethrower and coated the creature with a full, two-second spray of pure heat.

  Yowling in agony and engulfed in flames, it went sprawling. It got up and Dan grimaced and aimed the flamethrower again, but the life-form whirled and tried to run across the oily surface of the tar pit, succeeding only in trapping itself in the gooey black pool. Looking on, Dan lowered the nozzle of the flamethrower as the liquid floating on the surface of the pool ignited and began to burn around the creature. Catching a natural path as Sil’s only child gave a final death screech, the flames hungrily enveloped it—