The slope bottomed out and opened into a vast chamber, at least as large as Gorham’s Cave. It was hard to be sure in the dim light, yet Gallo realized that there was more illumination in the cavern than could be explained by Kenner’s single flashlight. The chamber walls glowed red-orange, like coals in a barbecue.
The air was blast-furnace hot, sucking both moisture and energy from her body. Gallo wondered how long she could survive here. How long before organ and brain damage occurred? Probably less than an hour. Maybe a lot less. And Fiona had already been showing signs of serious dehydration related to her diabetes.
Gallo forced herself to move even faster. She had to reach Kenner, had to get Fiona away from him before the damage was irreversible.
“Liam! Stop!” She tried to shout, but the sound that came out seemed to evaporate into nothingness along with everything else.
Kenner couldn’t have heard her, yet after just a few more steps, he stopped. The beam of his light hung in the air, sweeping back and forth, but moving no further into the cavern. Gallo could just distinguish the pair—Kenner and Fiona—silhouetted against a flame-red glow. With each step forward, more detail was revealed, as was the real reason Kenner had stopped. When she was still twenty feet away from them, Gallo saw a precipice. Kenner and Fiona stood at the edge of a wide fissure that bisected the entire chamber.
“End of the road,” she called out.
Kenner whirled around, surprise on his face. “Augustina?” His voice was strained with the fatigue of enduring the oppressive heat, but the conditions had done nothing to dampen his enthusiasm. “I didn’t think anyone would come after us.”
Beside him, Fiona barely moved at all. Gallo wasn’t sure how she was still standing, but doubted that she would be able to walk out under her own power. “I’m not leaving without Fiona, Liam. If you want to stay, fine, but let her go.”
“Oh, I can’t very well do that. She is, quite literally, the key to getting out of here.”
“She’s dying. You can see that. And if she dies, then we’ll be trapped in here.” Gallo pressed the point home. “We can all leave together. There’s nothing here.”
Any progress she might have been making vanished at that moment.
“Nothing?” Kenner sounded offended. He pointed to whatever it was that lay beyond the edge of the precipice. “You call that nothing?”
Despite herself, Gallo took a step closer and looked for herself. What she saw defied belief, but one thing was certain.
Kenner was right.
It was far more than ‘nothing.’
54
The knife came down, but not with the expected fury of a deathblow. Instead, Rohn’s entire body seemed to deflate, as if the impact of his mortal wounds had finally hit home. He did not collapse but tottered unsteadily for a moment, and then he turned slowly around.
Pierce could see that something had changed in him. Although he was still standing, still very much alive, his eyes were dead, without any trace of emotion. On the ground behind him, Carter appeared to be in the grip of a seizure. Though there was no outward sign of injury, her muscles were rigid, her body shaking violently.
The trio of gunmen fanned out, their weapons ready to finish what Rohn had started, but they were clearly confounded by the man’s strange behavior.
Rohn lurched into motion, walking toward them with the shuffling steps of an unhinged derelict. The nearest man called out to him, but Rohn seemed not to hear. He just continued stalking forward on a collision course with the man who had spoken. The man stepped to the side to get out of Rohn’s way, but Rohn adjusted course. Then, as soon as he was within reach, he slashed his blade across the man’s throat.
The other two gaped in disbelief as the stricken man went down, blood spraying from the wound, but as Rohn turned toward them, his face ashen from blood loss yet otherwise utterly blank, they turned their guns on him.
Rohn’s chest exploded as twin bursts of rifle fire ripped into him, staggering him back. But he kept coming, walking headlong into the barrage.
Pierce wrestled his own gun around and without bothering to aim, emptied the magazine into the men. Both went down.
Rohn stopped in his tracks. He stood there, an automaton waiting for a command that never came, as the last of his life leaked away. Then he simply crumpled to the ground, dead.
Fifty feet away, Lazarus and Tyndareus were locked in a struggle that was not as one-sided as it should have been, but Pierce barely took note. The mystery of what had just happened to Rohn was screaming for his attention. The change had come over the man as suddenly as if someone had thrown a switch and turned his brain off.