Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 404(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 404(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
A hint of bright electric lightning flared in Leo’s eyes, turning them an unnatural silver white. He pronounced words with crisp exactness. “Not a scratch, sir.”
“Hmm.”
He had to get to Elmwood. The sooner, the better.
The cave passage gaped in front of me, a narrow tunnel painted with bioluminescent swirls of strange vegetation. It split about twenty yards ahead, with one end of it curving to the right and the other cutting straight into the gloom.
I had a light on my hard hat but decided against using it. It didn’t illuminate much, while making me easy to target, and I had no idea how long the battery would last. It was better to save it for emergencies. The pale green and pink radiance of the foreign fungi and lichens offered some light, but it made the darkness seem even deeper.
It was like I’d turned five years old again, lying in my bed in the middle of the night, too afraid to move, until the need to pee won out and forced me to make a mad dash to the bathroom. Except that back then, if I got really scared, I could flick the lights on. As long as you had electric light, it gave you an illusion of safety and control. Without it, I felt naked. It was just me, Bear, and the tunnels filled with underground dusk.
There would be no dashing here. We would go carefully, quietly, and slowly.
A cold draft flowed from the tunnel, bringing with it an odd acrid stench.
Bear whined softly by my side.
Whining seemed entirely appropriate. I didn’t want to go into that gloom either.
“We don’t have a choice,” I told the dog.
Something rustled in the darkness, a strange whispering sound.
Bear hid behind me.
“Some attack dog you are.”
That’s probably why she survived. If she were braver, she’d be dead.
“The exit is to our left. This is the closest tunnel to it. The other two branch off to the right, which will take us further from the gate.”
Before the assault team left to find the anchor, they had surveyed the mining site and the immediate area around it. Their maps showed three tunnels in the north end of the cavern leading into a tangle of passageways and chambers. Of the three, this tunnel, the furthest to the left, was most likely to connect to the main route.
Likely but not guaranteed. The maps only showed about half a mile of the tunnels. For all I knew, we would hike for hours only to run into a dead end. If that happened, I would turn around and retrace my steps. Walking was better than waiting and I had to get on with it while I had my strength and food to keep me going.
I started forward, picking my way through the glowing growth. It looked almost like a coral reef, except there was no water.
We took the left branch and kept moving. The tunnel was about thirty feet high and probably the same width. An almost round hole in the rock, as if some massive worm had burrowed through the mountain. Hopefully not.
Back by the entrance, we’d passed by some stalker bodies, and Elena mentioned that the assault team didn’t wipe them all out. Taking on a single stalker would be difficult. There had been eight corpses, and the stalkers typically traveled in groups. If a pack of them attacked us, the best strategy would be to run and hope the tunnel narrowed ahead so they could only come at me one at a time. If I saw a crevasse, I would have to make a note of it in case I needed to double back…
For some reason, I could actually see both sides of the tunnel with a lot of clarity. My eyes should have adjusted to the darkness, that was to be expected, but I could pick out small details now, like the cracks in the stone. The walls weren’t glowing, and the shining growth in this area was kind of sparse. Hmm.
The passage veered slightly left, then angled right. Normally, cave passages like this varied in size and shape. This one was too uniform. Whatever dug it out had to be huge.
We rounded another gentle turn, and I stopped. Ahead ridges of growth sheathed the floor and walls of the tunnel, like someone had raked solid stone into shallow curving rows. Between them bright red plants thrust out, shaped a little like branching cacti or Sinularia corals, almost like alien hands with long twisted fingers decorated with narrow frills. The tallest of them was about two feet high, but most were around eight inches or so. There were hundreds of them in the tunnel. The red patch stretched into the distance. Forty yards? Fifty?
Something about the red plants gave me pause. I crouched by a patch. The frilly protrusions weren’t leaves. They were thorns, flat and razor sharp.