I hold my breath when the head slides forward, emerging from the shadows. A long neck follows, then two short arms. I call them short, despite each being longer than my arms, but in comparison to its body, which is massive, the arms are disproportionate. I see two crouched hind legs in the darkness and hear its tail swishing back and forth like an agitated cat’s.
Aim for the eyes, I think as it stops only a few feet from my face. It sniffs, taking in my scent with deep breaths. It leans closer, nudging my shoulder as it smells...my hair?
The thing, which is without doubt a living dinosaur, snaps its head back like it’s been slapped in the face. The dinosaur turns its head up and opens its mouth, revealing two rows of needle-sharp teeth, and calls out two quick barks.
Two distant barks reply.
Then four more even further away.
There are more of these things! Many more!
As it brings its head back down, I have no doubt the dinosaur will pounce, so I make the first move. I swing out with an open palm thinking wax on, but not recalling the reference. The tips of my climbing claws dig into the beast’s forehead, cutting the flesh until striking the thick bone of its eyebrow and glancing away.
It’s a paltry distraction, but it’s enough.
With a roar, it lifts its head for a moment.
When it lowers again, I am off and running.
Like the young dinosaur, I can’t hear anything as my rushing blood courses past my ears. I suspect it runs as silently as I do, too, because despite the thing’s size (I’d guess twenty feet from snout to the tip of its tail) I still can’t feel any vibrations beneath my feet. I’m breathing too hard to smell anything. And like my mother says, I don’t have eyes in the back of my head.
My mother?
The distraction nearly costs me my life.
The river saves it.
I hit the water and fall down as the dinosaur’s jaws snap shut above me. The water sweeps me away. As the water pushes me downstream and pummels me into stones, I get a look back. The dinosaur has not given up the chase. It pounds through the water behind me.
I see three small tunnels rush by. Each would have provided refuge from the ancient predator. The tunnel ends up ahead and I see the crevice that leads to the waterfall hideaway. I swim for shore, but the current is too strong, and the river bottom is too polished to get my footing.
I pass my salvation in a blur before being sucked underwater. The river tunnel ends in a whirlpool before descending deeper. I’m pulled into it, spinning madly. I can’t see. I can’t breathe. And the pain of my head striking something hard registers for only a moment. As consciousness fades, I think, did I remember my mother? The question is answered by darkness.
22
I regain consciousness underwater. My lungs burn. My head throbs. And all around me, the water rushes. But I don’t panic. I have come closer to drowning and do not fear it. Again, thanks to Ninnis.
Just as I decide to swim with the current, turning my body forward, the river falls out from under me. As I flip, head over heels, I see snapshots of the river, now an endless waterfall, turning into a broad, fine mist next to me. I see water far below, frothing with white where the waterfall meets it. This water stretches out and away further than I can see, but there is a shoreline to the left and something else. Something large.
I focus on the approaching water. I vaguely remember hearing about someone jumping off a bridge into water to kill himself. I’ll reach terminal velocity—one hundred twenty miles per hour—in about fifteen seconds. At that speed the water will feel like solid stone. I’ve been falling for six seconds.
Ten seconds into the fall, there is no more time to calculate. I strike the water, feet first (this saves my life) and plunge deep under water. The impact doesn’t kill me or break any bones, but it does fog my mind nearly to the point of unconsciousness. I must have forgotten to breathe while falling because my lungs scream for air. I know the surface must be near, but in the weightless dark I don’t know which way is up and with my lungs empty, I lack the buoyancy to float.
I’ll float just fine once my dead body fills with gas, I think.
I swim. I have no choice. But I choose the wrong direction. When my head strikes the hard bottom, I know this for sure. Spots dance in my vision, possibly from lack of oxygen, possibly from the impact. Either way, I’m disoriented.
My body fails me, going limp. My mouth is close to opening. My vision fades. I slide to the bottom, which now feels like a soft cushion and use the last of my energy to clutch my mouth shut. I feel water rushing over me, pulling my hair over my face. And then, once again, darkness claims me.
* * *
I open my eyes and see a rock cut so perfectly at a ninety degree angle that I know it’s manmade. This thought keeps me from closing my eyes again, despite how badly I want to. I’m battered from head to toe. My lungs hurt. Muscles I didn’t know I had cry out in pain. But the carved stone is a mystery my mind cannot ignore.
After squeezing my eyes shut a few times, I can focus beyond what lies right in front of me. I twist my head, turning it down an incline of several more angled cuts. A massive staircase. Each step is four feet deep and just as tall. The stone steps descend into what I can only describe as a lake. It reaches out to the dark horizon which sweeps up and over me, concealing the cavern ceiling that must be a half mile high. Maybe more.
I roll over, sit up and freeze. A pair of black eyes stares at me from the water. Unlike most of the monsters living underground, I recognize this one. It’s a Weddell seal with an unmistakable patchwork of dark brown and beige skin. Exactly how I can identify this creature, I can’t recall, but the only thing that makes me doubt its identity is that we’re far underground.
“How did you get here?” I ask it.
It responds by sliding back into the dark water.
Something about seeing it move triggers a faded memory. Not from my past. This one is recent. The soft bottom of the lake, where I should have drowned. The water rushing past. This out-of-place seal saved my life.
“Don’t go,” I say. As it slips away, I stand and hop down the steps and into the water. But it’s gone before I can reach it. It surfaces again, thirty feet out, rolling on the surface to catch a breath before diving back down. A smile creeps onto my face as eight more humps rise and fall. A family. It’s nice to know not everything in this subterranean world wants to eat me.
Before turning away, I see my dim reflection in the water. I haven’t seen my face in so long, I feel like I’m looking at a stranger. My skin is paper white. The blue around my pupils, which are open wide, has been reduced to a thin line of color. And my hair is streaked dark red. There appears to be as much blond hair as red, but...hasn’t it always been that way?
I tire of looking at my face and haul myself out of the water and onto the lowest step. I then set myself to the task of climbing the steep staircase. Eight steps in all. Thirty-two vertical feet. At the top, I need to stop and catch my breath. I bend over, hands on knees, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Did Ninnis teach me that?
When I stand upright I’m looking at something I would have never thought possible. The staircase is just the beginning of something huge. Something ancient. It can best be described as a temple complex. There are several small step pyramids surrounding a larger, spiraling tower, like a Sumerian ziggurat. Its top is concealed by darkness. Obelisks and statues line the streets, though many are broken. In fact, the place looks like it has been through a war. A few wars, really. The buildings are scarred with gouges and impact craters. A wall that once surrounded much of the site is now a crumbled pile of stones.
As I approach the ancient metropolis I am dwarfed by its scale. Like the four-foot steps, this place was made for, or by, giants. The only standing city gate must be sixty feet tall. The ruined walls, which looked small from a distance are still piled twenty feet high. How tall were they when they still stood? I now know how a mouse feels when it looks at a house.
I could disappear inside this place. Hide like a rodent in the nooks and crannies.
I enter the temple court, walking through the massive gates feeling smaller than ever. And more exposed. I pause to get my bearings. I hold my breath and listen. A faint breeze is rolling over the temple from the lake. The air smells clean, like it does after a rainstorm. I see no hints of movement. I am alone, I think, which is good. Without my pack and climbing claws I am defenseless. In fact, I’d better find a weapon of some kind in this place. I will soon need to make a kill and eat.
As I round a black obelisk covered in circular symbols that look vaguely familiar, I come upon the most massive statue I can recall seeing. It’s like the Colossus of Rhodes, I think. But this giant isn’t standing guard over a harbor, or even looking out at the water. He sits atop a fallen obelisk, back rigid, head looking straight. I cannot see the face, only its back.
As I walk slowly closer, details resolve and something starts nagging at my subconscious. The statue has been painted in dull colors. Brown armor. Gray skin. Red hair covered by a Viking-esque helmet covered in what appear to be rows of upturned teeth that remind me of the dinosaur’s open jaws.
Red hair.
When my subconscious finally breaks through, it’s screaming.
Who builds a statue on a fallen obelisk!
I stop.
This is no statue.
The red hair is not painted.
This giant...is alive.
I take a nervous step back. My footing is firm. My step silent. I pause before stepping again, sensing a shift in the breeze. It’s now at my back. At his back, too. The movement is so subtle I almost miss it. The giant’s head cocked to the side.
For a moment I think my presence has gone unnoticed, but then see a twitch in the mammoth man’s calf muscle. He is shifting his weight to stand. Once on his feet, the giant would stand nearly twenty-five feet tall and could cover the distance between us in four strides.
Though I feel a tinge of shame for running once again, I see no alternative, and put my feet to the stone. Silence pursues me, but I suspect the thing is simply playing with me, giving me a head start. A moment later, my suspicion proves correct as the first thundering footfall gives chase.
I don’t look back as I pass back beneath the gate. My eyes are on what’s in front of me. A small section of cave wall to my right is essentially a dead end. To my left are the four foot steps. Even if I manage to make it to the steps and vault down them without twisting an ankle, what would I do then? Swim like the world’s slowest minnow. The giant would pluck me from the water.
I head for the wall, hoping for a crack in its surface. The ground beneath me shakes. Unlike the large dinosaur, this giant is heavy and far from light-footed. As he gets closer, the vibrations nearly knock me forward.
As I near the wall, its details leap out. I see two large cracks, but both are five feet from the cave floor. Getting inside would take time. And I don’t have any time to spare. In fact, I think the giant is right behind me.
Then why hasn’t he squashed me or picked me up? I wonder.
Not caring about the answer, I focus on the wall again and find my escape route. At the bottom of the wall is a horizontal crevice about a foot high and six feet wide. I can fit. And quickly.
A few feet from the wall, I dive forward and slide across the gritting stone floor. I ignore the pain as several wounds tear open on my chest and hands and pull myself into the wall. Just as my feet slide in behind me, a thunderous boom shakes the tunnel. I glance back to see the giant’s large, six-toed bare foot just behind me.
Was he trying to crush me? Or taunt me?
I pull myself deeper, caring more about escape than answers, but get my answer when the giant begins laughing. His voice is deep and rumbles through me. I can feel the pulsing laugh in my chest. It chases me into the darkness, stripping away my confidence and filling me with a fear that goes far beyond physical pain or death.
That thing...that man...was evil.
And I hope I’ll never see him again.
23
“You’re dead now,” I say to the small, arm-sized centipede. The thing had put up quite a fight, thrashing and trying to bite, but the rock in my hand proved too much for it in the end. I know now why the small dinosaur picked it for a meal—centipedes are stupid. It didn’t take too much effort to sneak up on the thing. If not for its hard shell, my first strike would have killed it. But its carapace was like a turtle shell and breaking through took four solid whacks.
Now the thing is leaking its white, cream cheese-like innards all over a boulder. The sight and smell of the thing makes me pause, but I haven’t eaten in days. I scoop some of the fleshy sludge up with my fingers. For a moment I wonder if it is poisonous.
No, I think, the dinosaur ate it.
Holding my breath, I put my hand in my mouth and scrape the stuff off with my teeth. I swallow quickly and repeat the process. The centipede tastes as bad as I thought it would, but it’s settling nicely in my stomach. When I’m done I rinse the taste out of my mouth at a small spring I found. The caves are covered in small springs and finding water is rarely a problem anymore. Food is a different problem, because food here either runs away or tries to eat me.
But I won’t need to eat again for at least another day, so I take some time to explore. Keeping track of where I’ve been is simple. My perfect memory, at least back to when I first came here, has assembled a three dimensional map of every place I’ve been. Today I’m determined to fill in a gap. Then I’ll have a three cubic mile territory memorized.
What bothers me about this gap is that I’m not sure what’s there. I haven’t seen the dinosaurs again, so maybe they nest there. The giant, too. Anything could be there. I tell myself I’m likely to find nothing. There are many large and small tunnels leading out of my territory and creatures as big as those would need territories vastly larger. But still, I’m nervous about what I’ll find.
I squeeze through a tight space and for a moment think I’ve got myself stuck again, but then I’m through and sporting a new scrape on my chest. I ignore the sting and dripping blood as I arrive in a wider, inclined tunnel. It’s tall enough to stand in, maybe eight feet tall and four wide. My mind fills in the holes in my mental map. If the tunnel carries on in either direction as straight as it appears to, then one side would reach the large river tunnel and the other would reach the surface.
But I can’t just assume this. I need to make sure. So I take the tunnel left, looking for branches along the way. I find none, but thirty minutes later I reach the river. After a quick drink, I backtrack up the tunnel. An hour later, I reach the surface. The entrance to the tunnel is blocked from view by a stone jutting out from the mountain. I step out of the tunnel and find the outside as dark as the inside. It’s night. And it’s snowing. I crouch in the snow half way up the mountain. It’s peaceful out here. I sense that nothing will try to eat me here, and the snow—I eat some—tickles my tongue as it melts. I listen to the tick, tick of snowflakes landing and wonder where I’ve heard the sound before. I have no memory of it, but ticking doesn’t strike me as something new, just something I enjoy.
My stomach isn’t rumbling yet, but I know it will be soon. So I head back into the tunnel, destination: river. I hope to find something more significant to eat than a centipede, but I also have no weapon, so something that couldn’t make a meal of me would also be spectacular.
As I walk down the tunnel, taking note of the tiny fragments of glimmering stone that help me see, I try to create stone weapons in my mind. How would cave men do it? I’ll need a stick. Some rope. And a sharp stone. A stick on its own might do the job, I think. Well, not against a—
A white square—its whiteness and perfect edges completely foreign in the underground—catches my attention. It’s in the middle of the tunnel floor.
How did I not see this before? I wonder.
I don’t know, but here it is.
I crouch down to the flat thing
. What is it?
Before picking it up, I smell it. There are traces of something I can’t place, but have smelled before. I taste it. The same. I place my finger against it and yank it away.
I laugh at my ridiculousness. I’m acting like an ape who discovered fire. I know this is from the outside world, and I know in my core that it is harmless, but something about it has me on edge. As I reach for it I think I would rather be facing down a dinosaur. My cowardice before a piece of paper makes me angry. I snatch it up and turn it around.
It’s an image. Two faces have been captured. A photograph, I think. A Polaroid. I can remember facts about the process of taking photos, of film and development, but nothing beyond that. No real memories. Just information. And the two people in the image are strangers to me.
There is a girl. Dark skin. Light hair. Her head is leaning on a boy’s shoulder, his hair as light as hers, though much straighter. And his skin is as white as hers is brown. Both are smiling. Happy. But the bared teeth make me feel like the pair want to eat me. Like they want to tear me apart.
I don’t like this image.
I turn it back over, unable to look at it again. I want to destroy it, but find myself unable to do so. I can fling it outside, I think. Let the wind take it away. I step toward the cave exit again and stop. It feels wrong for some reason. Despite my loathing of the image, my gut says it could be important later on.
So I save it.
Not on my person. That would be unbearable.
I find a thin crack and insert the picture. When it’s almost all the way in, I tap it with my finger and it disappears into the space. I peer in after it. I’ll need a stick or something thin to pry it out later on.
The Last Hunter - Descent (Book 1 of the Antarktos Saga) Page 12