“You have to let go, numb nuts,” said Nick.
“My apologies. I was afraid to look,” said Ajay.
Nick swung him back across a second time, Elise grabbed him, and Ajay let go, clinging to Elise just a second or two longer than necessary.
Will loped back down the passage, accelerated a few steps, and easily jumped over the trap to join them. Nick coiled up his whip and walked forward along the wall above them, scouting ahead.
“Turn that last corner and we’re in,” he said.
The three of them turned left around the final corner, Ajay’s eyes focused hawkishly ahead for signs of danger. The three of them stepped onto the next paver together and they felt it give, with a loud thunk, and it dropped, but no more than half an inch.
“I did not see that coming,” said Ajay.
“That can’t be good,” said Elise.
“Don’t move,” said Will.
Nothing else happened for a moment. But then they heard from nearby an ominous grinding sound, stone on stone.
“Crap on a cracker,” said Nick.
“What?” asked Elise.
“Ahead of you,” he said.
Four pavers ahead of them, the wall had started to move, a foot-thick block of stone sliding directly toward them, slowly at first but picking up speed. They heard another sound behind them; the trapdoor just around the corner had sprung open again.
“Good golly Miss Molly,” said Ajay.
“Nick, you’ll have to pull us up,” said Will.
“Way ahead of you,” said Nick as the end of the whip dropped down to them again. “Ajay!”
Ajay grabbed the end of the whip again. Nick quickly spooled him up to the top of the wall and Ajay scrambled onto his hands and knees. With the moving block of stone now less than two pavers away, Nick dropped the whip down again and Elise grabbed on. He reeled Elise up top as Will backed away onto the last paver before the wall, with the open trapdoor just to his left.
“It’s okay; I’ll just jump back over it,” he said.
But as he turned to make the leap, just on the other side of the trap, another tall stone wall slid quickly across, blocking his way. The moving stone block was less than one paver from him and bearing down.
“Stay there,” shouted Nick.
Will looked up and saw Nick in midair, falling down toward him, spread-eagled like a skydiver. He landed with his feet against the wall at Will’s back, and he extended his arms out just as the sliding block moved within reach. The full weight of the block hit Nick and he braced himself against it, slowing its advance to a crawl, every muscle straining, a human wedge.
“Climb up onto me, dude,” said Nick through clenched teeth.
Will jumped up and grabbed on to Nick’s rigid middle, which felt like banded steel, pulling himself up and over his torso.
“Hurry up,” grunted Nick.
Will got to his feet on Nick’s back, using him as a plank, and stepped off him onto the top of the moving block. From there he jumped over onto the wall where Ajay and Elise were waiting.
“Get out of there, Nick,” said Elise.
Nick needed to bend his knees now to stay wedged in between the walls, but he was also no longer trying to hold them apart. He slowly contracted his stance and waited until the walls moved within a yard of each other. Then he pushed off with his feet as he let go with his hands and jumped onto the moving block. From there he scampered onto the top of the inside wall, opposite the others, shaking the tension out of his arms and legs.
“Now I know what a panini feels like,” he said. “I shoulda just jumped down the hole.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” said Will. “And we’d better keep moving.”
He led the others along the top of the left wall, while Nick kept pace with them atop the right. They reached the arch above the entrance to the central building together. Larger and much grander than the one they’d encountered earlier, more elaborate versions of the same eroded carved faces and figures they’d seen before spanned the length of this arch as well. Ajay leaned in to take a closer look at them.
“I think some of these are snakes,” he said.
“Stop trying to reassure us all the time, will you?” said Elise.
Will knelt down to look at the room below the arch and immediately inside the entrance. A plain, moderately sized chamber, lined with the same stone pavers. A few vines had snaked their way inside but there were no other adornments or features. He saw three staircases, one left and right heading down, and a grander set of stairs straight ahead that led up to a landing and a huge set of double wooden doors, studded with bars and metal rings.
“We need to head down those stairs,” said Will, pointing to the set on the right.
“How do we get down from here without spraining all eight of our ankles?” asked Ajay, looking down at the ten-foot drop to the floor.
Before anyone could answer, Nick unfurled his rope, tied one end around the arch, and dropped the coiled end to the floor below. Elise grabbed the rope and shimmied down; then Will and Ajay followed. Nick untied the rope, coiled it back up, and stuck it in his pack; he then swan-dived off the wall, tucked, somersaulted once, hit the ground and tumbled forward, and rolled up into a perfect landing on his feet.
“Show-off,” muttered Ajay.
“Like you’re not?” asked Elise.
“Not physically.”
“Which way, Will?” asked Nick, looking at the side staircases. “Right or left?”
Will waited and let the answer come to him. “Doesn’t matter. Coin flip. They both lead to the same place.”
He immediately started toward the right stairs.
“Actually, science has determined that a flipped coin is not strictly a fifty-fifty proposition,” said Ajay. “Surprisingly, the coin will return to whichever side you’re holding faceup in your hand before it is flipped, exactly fifty-one percent of the time.”
“Fascinating,” said Nick, and then he stifled a big yawn.
Will led the way down. The stairs were broad and steep, fashioned from the same smooth stone blocks that had been used to build the rest of the structure. They reached a landing twenty steps down; then more stairs doubled back down the other way. They all reached for their flashlights before they descended the second set; Ajay also fixed a device with a strap around his forehead, like a miner’s helmet, and switched it on. Peering ahead, Ajay led the way and they slowed their pace as the darkness grew around them.
“Does any of this seem familiar, Will?” asked Elise.
“Not yet.”
“But you’re positive Coach is down here, right?” asked Nick.
“More than fifty-one percent,” said Will. “Less than a hundred.”
They reached another landing. The stairs grew more slippery here, moisture seeping in around the stones, leaving a thin layer of scum or moss on the walls.
“We’re descending into the swamp itself,” said Ajay, moving his twin beams around to examine everything closely. “There’s repulsive muck all over the walls, but a section of the stairs is fairly clean right down the middle, which would indicate they’re used fairly frequently.”
“Yeah, who wouldn’t want to climb down under a swamp?” said Nick. “Fun for the whole family.”
“You think the Makers built this?” asked Elise.
“This all suggests a relatively robust and developed social organization or, daresay, civilization,” said Ajay. “Well beyond the Neolithic, perhaps shading toward bronze or even Iron Age development. Most likely employing a monarchal system, probably tribal, involving familial lines of succession.”
“What are you yapping about?”
“That is to say, I don’t believe the Makers created this. But I would venture to say they most likely created the creatures who created it.”
As they turned the corner of the landing, Will shined his light down at the third set of stairs stretching before them. Tendrils of slimy moss hung down from the ceiling, some of
them clumping together to form thick webs. The air felt oppressively hot and humid here. Multiple sources of dripping water echoed throughout the chamber. Even here, tendrils of the same creeper vines that nearly wallpapered the outside of the structure had insinuated themselves into the nooks and hollows of the walls and stairs.
Looking more closely, Will noticed that a broad middle section of this entire staircase was missing the layer of scum as well.
“Must be a lot of people using these stairs,” he said, taking the first few steps down. “Look how clean they are here, same pattern, straight down the middle.”
“Strange,” said Ajay. “One would think you’d see footprints, or at least some gaps, but it’s like they’ve been swept halfway clean.”
“Maybe they got a janitor,” said Nick. “Who does a half-assed job.”
“Yeah, that’s probably it,” said Elise.
“What was that?” said Will.
He stopped. The rest of them stopped. Everyone listened. Nothing but dripping water.
“Now I don’t hear it,” said Will.
“What was it?” asked Elise.
“I don’t know, something faint, kind of in the background. Let’s keep moving.”
They started down a few more steps, nearing the halfway point of the staircase.
“There it is again,” said Will.
They stopped again, all at once. This time they all heard it.
Something brushing or swishing along the stone.
Then it stopped abruptly.
“Where’s it coming from?” asked Elise.
“I can’t tell,” said Will. “Could be above or below us.”
“It’s both,” said Ajay.
Will turned to Elise: Let’s check it out.
You take high, I’ll take low, she answered.
He blinked on his Grid and turned toward the landing above, and he heard Elise send out waves of her echolocation patterns toward the stairs below.
Large heat signatures, half a dozen of them, showed up on Will’s Grid, faint through the stone but moving toward them, maybe two staircases above.
It’s bad, she said. Half a dozen of them.
Same here. But half a dozen of what?
Not sure. But I know why the stairs are so clean. They’re not walking. They’re slithering.
WILL’S RULES FOR LIVING #9:
TAKE CARE OF THE MINUTES, AND THE HOURS WILL TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES.
“Ajay, stand between us,” said Will quietly.
Nick put himself between Ajay and the stairs leading up, while Will and Elise took a step down, leaving Ajay in the middle. The sinister sounds—and figures on the Grid—drew closer to them.
“Move down to the next landing,” said Will, now whispering. “In the corner, where we can see both sets of stairs.”
They edged down the last few steps to the landing and took up position in the corner, looking both ways.
“Am I going to need my hatchet?” whispered Ajay.
“Unless you’ve got something more effective,” said Will, his mind racing to calculate their next move. It came to him quickly.
I’m going to make a run down there and try to draw the ones on that level away from us, he sent to Elise.
Check.
Can you make the ones above us think we’re somewhere else? Anything to buy some time?
I’ll try. What do you think they are?
I’ll let you know. And I’ll try to get a line on where they’ve stashed Jericho. I think he’s close.
Got it.
“Ajay, Nick, stay with Elise,” Will whispered. “I’ll be right back.”
Will shined his light down at the next staircase; it turned out to be the last set of stairs, and it emptied out into what looked like an open, flat plaza with the same stone floors. The heat signatures appeared to be on that level, somewhere out in the darkness beyond, still more than fifty yards away. Nick put a hand on Will’s arm and clamped down.
“Dude, you sure?” asked Nick.
“Yes.”
Will nodded to Elise and turned off his flashlight. As he blinked the Grid back on and took the first step down the stairs, he heard Elise throw a vocalization up and around the corner: a perfect impression of some big cat’s echoing, menacing roar. Will looked back in that direction and noticed that the heat signatures above them had stopped.
“Good Lord, that even scared me,” whispered Ajay.
“Yeah, like that’s hard,” said Nick; then he craned his head around to Elise. “Wait, that was you?”
“Duh,” said Elise.
Will took a deep breath and flew down the stairs. He stayed to the center, where he knew the footing was good, and once he hit the flat of the plaza, he realized that the stones were clean here, too. Firm traction. Good.
And ahead of him, lots of slithering.
He stopped dead, opened his senses to soak up impressions from all around him, and immediately sized up what he was facing:
The plaza, as deep as it was broad, appeared square, and as near as he could tell, it ran the full length and width of the stone complex above. He saw four ways out: the stairs they’d just used, two arched tunnels leading down on the wall to his left, and another staircase corresponding to and identical to the one they’d come down straight ahead on the far side of the plaza.
Some kind of structure occupied the dead center of the room: round, maybe ten feet across, with a wall about three feet high around some kind of opening.
Maybe a pit.
Bright spots of lights—torches, he realized—burned in brackets all around the wall. To the right of the circular wall stood a strange structure, like a slightly angled funnel, that ran from the ceiling and emptied into an opening in the plaza floor.
Maybe the end of the tunnel below the trapdoor they’d encountered above.
Farther to the right stood the only opening along the right-hand wall, a massive archway that led away into an ominous, inky darkness.
Will’s eyes picked up movement and more light.
Six heat signatures were sliding past the pit, separating, three moving to either side. One in each group carried a torch. He flicked off the Grid and got his first look at them.
His first thought was snakes, but no, they looked too broad and muscular and they had arms holding the torches. They were also all holding weapons, spears and swords and axes, so the word that came to his mind next was snake-men.
They were tall, well over six feet, gliding along on thick, powerful trunks that undulated back and forth with a sinuous, nauseating grace.
The hard, gray stalks of their scaled torsos flared up into thick, hooded necks—a cobra look—that thrust their flat, vile heads and sharp faces forward. When they opened their mouths, Will saw fangs and forked tongues. Hybrids indeed, but the question was, with what? Something human was definitely in their features, and it informed their gleaming black intelligent eyes, but Will didn’t have time to give it much thought.
He ran straight at them, pushing himself to top speed in a few strides, and the move threw them. They hesitated, some kind of communication passing between them, harsh and guttural barks. Will veered left as he neared them and saw the trio to the left of the wall brace and steady themselves, raising and readying their weapons…
…and then Will shifted to another gear and blew right by them, guttering the flames of the torches as he passed. The blows they brought down at him hit empty space he’d barely occupied. Will passed by the wall—confirming that it did indeed surround a pit, but he had no time to glance down into it—and didn’t slow until he reached the opposite end of the plaza; there, he turned in a wide arc and stopped near the far staircase.
He waited there. The creatures, jabbering at each other, momentarily confused, regrouped into a pack and came after him. They didn’t even spread out to try and contain him. No strategy, no sense of shared tactics, just an all-out assault, their eyes glimmering with hate, fueled by a primitive brain-stem rage.
More good news, Will figured: Either they weren’t as smart as they looked, or they were used to much more stupid prey.
Will jogged to his left, watching the pack adjust that way; then he feinted more convincingly to his right, and they bit on that move, too. When he’d drawn them far enough toward him, he raced back in a wide arc to his left around them and headed back to the middle of the plaza. This time he slowed just long enough to look down into the pit.
There were bars laid over the opening, a latticework of thick black iron, set deep into the stone wall a foot below the rim. It was pitch-black in the pit, but Will did see torch light glinting off silvery water about twenty feet down, and when he blinked on the Grid he caught a single heat signature moving around.
“Coach, you down there?!”
“Why, were you expecting someone else?”
Jericho’s voice echoed up through the stone cylindrical chamber, which Will realized looked like a well. He heard splashing, and when he blinked off the Grid, he thought he saw an arm waving up at him.
“You all right?”
“I’m not hurt, but I’m pretty damn inconvenienced.”
A spear zipped right by Will’s head—he heard it slice the air—and clattered onto the stones behind him, its iron blade throwing up sparks. Then he heard a lot more slithering. He looked back; the pack was closing on him fast.
“Hang in there, Coach,” said Will. “We’re coming back for you.”
“Well, I don’t exactly have anywhere else to go,” said Jericho.
Will ran again, back toward the original set of stairs; then he jogged left toward the nearest exit on the left-hand wall, an arch that led somewhere down below. The snake-men tracked his every move and he stayed just enough ahead of them to keep them coming. Twice more they hurled weapons at him—an ax and what looked like a hammer or mace whooshing toward him end over end—and for the second one he had to project out a thought-shield to prevent it from making a serious dent in his head.
I found Jericho, he sent to Elise. He’s down here, like I figured: pit, bars, water.
That’s great, she answered. Uh, we’re a little busy right now.
He could feel the mental strain she was under coming through.