13
After another kilometer of arduous hiking, Cole finally found a hole big enough to crawl inside. He felt utterly convinced a family of these lizards would make their home in a nice, cool cave like this. If not, he wasn’t sure he could wander much further into the daylight. He’d been marching for dozens of kilometers, certainly further than Drenard children could be expected to go.
He had explored a few holes with his lance along the way, scraping nothing but rock. If he couldn’t find anything in the cave, he’d start heading back, searching the ground he’d already covered.
Crawling inside, he felt immediately refreshed in the cooler air. The sweat chilled his skin, giving him a renewed vitality; he berated himself for having just considered giving up. He paused in the entrance and enjoyed the echo of the canyon’s moans as they filtered through the rock around him.
The air felt less dry in there as well, like moisture was somehow stored up in the stone.
Looking deeper into the hole, Cole wished he had some way of making a fire or shining a light; he didn’t want to step on these little critters if he could avoid it. At this point, he would take the easy way out happily, bringing back a Wadi Thooo egg rather than a juvenile or an adult.
Once he felt somewhat rested, Cole pushed his lance ahead of him and began crawling into the darkness. After a few meters, he looked back, comforted by the circle of light behind him. He was accustomed to the blackness of space, but the absence of illumination ahead was different. It pressed in on him from all sides, and with the weight of solid stone behind it, rather than the vacuum of the cosmos.
Cole froze, imagining the rock giving way and collapsing on his back. He would be trapped there, unable to breathe. He could feel his stomach crawl up his neck in panic; he took a deep breath and hurried the wild thought out of his mind.
He concentrated instead on his environment. The details. Under his hand, he could feel the walls weren’t perfectly smooth—they had even indentions running along their length. It didn’t feel like erosion or anything geological. A deep part of his brain worked on this problem as he scrambled deeper inside.
A noise.
Cole whipped the hood off to free his ears. What was that sound?
Something poked him right between the shoulder blades, making him spin to his back in fear. He tried to get his lance out from underneath him, and he could feel a draft of air descending from the ceiling.
Another tap on the chest. The sound of his metallic suit crinkling as something struck. Cole reached down with one hand and felt something wet.
He brought his hand up to his face. It didn’t smell. He touched his finger to his tongue, but couldn’t taste anything. Another drop hit him.
Cole reached up into the darkness, searching the ceiling for the source, but his hand kept going up, further than the tunnel was wide. He tried to sit up—and banged his head on the rock, falling back down.
“Damn!”
He rubbed his forehead and another drop impacted his suit.
Reaching up again, Cole found the large hole his hand had entered. He could feel a ledge encircling the lip and a thin stream of fluid gathered on it. He probed just over his head and noted the hole didn’t extend quite that far, could feel where he had bumped it.
He tested the fluid again and felt certain it must be water. Fresh water. Just a trickle, as if condensation collecting from somewhere. Perhaps the difference in temperature between the cave and the canyon? Could moisture gather on the cool rock and run together through these strange holes?
Cole reached for his map and soaked up as much of the fluid as he could. He squeezed the cloth over his tongue, letting some of the juice run into his mouth.
It felt great.
Refreshing.
He wiped the cloth over the rim, looking for some more moisture; he gathered it up, unappreciative of how natural and universal that tendency would be in other living things . . .
????
When Molly saw the two eyes, further apart and larger than she thought they’d be, she jerked her head back in fear.
The eyes launched out after her.
She tried to bring her lance around, but the boot tied to one end made the weapon unwieldy. The creature was on her head before she could even react.
She dropped the lance and brought both hands up, clawing back at the thing clawing her. It was in her hair, then back around her head and inside her hood, and everywhere at once. She could feel slices of agony across her face as claws opened her flesh to the dry, dusty air. As soon as she got one hand on it, she felt a sharp pain as teeth sank down to bone, gnawing on her wrist. She screamed and pushed away from the wall, falling to the ground in a heap. The vicious thing thrust off her, scampered up the wall, and wiggled into its hole.
Molly looked at her hand—it was dripping blood and burning as if on fire. She touched her face and felt the scratches, the pads of her fingers coming away slick with more blood. The sight of so much of it made her feel faint. Reaching behind her neck, she groped for her map, a perfect bandage—but it wasn’t there. She rolled over on all fours, looking around on the shady path.
The handkerchief was gone.
That damn thing had stolen her map.
No, she realized, it stole my sweat!
These things go after wetness. And they’re much bigger than she thought they’d be. Meaner, too.
Molly peered up the wall at the dozens of holes gaping back at her. She glanced left and right and saw hundreds, thousands more of them ranging up and down the canyon. Looking over her shoulder, across the river of sunlight and at the other wall, she realized she was surrounded.
The holes weren’t a geological feature—they’d been chewed out of solid rock!
And they got bigger the further in the canyons they went.
The rite of passage, the way Drenards might use this as the basis of a hierarchical society, it all made perfect sense. For all Molly knew, she’d stumbled into the realm of upper-middle management, or higher. And they’d sent her there with no instructions, completely ignorant. They probably didn’t expect any of them to return. She thought of Edison again and wondered what had happened to her big Glemot friend.
Meanwhile, the eyes came back to the edge of the hole, looking for more water.
Molly picked up her lance and ran, one foot bare, past hundreds of holes—and into the wind.
????
Cole held the moisture in his mouth and just let his body absorb it. He lay on his back, his head pointing into the unknown. Beyond his feet, he could see the small disk of sunlight that marked his way in.
He reached up to gather some more water when a shape moved across the circle of light.
Or was that his foot? No. There it was again.
It was either really big or really close. Or both.
But that didn’t make any sense. He had come in that way without passing anything.
Cole held his breath, one hand still up in the lip of the hole above him, when he realized what had happened: there was no telling how many shafts he’d passed before he stumbled on that one.
He shoved his map into the neck of his suit and reached for the lance. He held it out in front of him, pulling his feet in to scoot backwards, deeper into the hole.
The thing moved across the entrance of the tunnel once more; he could see its outline. These were not the little lizards that Dani had described. Cole wasn’t sure if he should crawl toward it with his lance and attack—or retreat into the darkness. He decided to move back and see if it would scamper up the dripping shaft; maybe it’d stop for a drink and become an easy kill.
Shuffling backward, Cole felt empty space below his hand and nearly fell down the hole cut out of the floor behind him.
“Damnit!” he uttered. One hand went into the shaft, his other arm collapsed with the unexpected shift in weight. Cole fell back on his shoulder blade, his arm wrenched at an odd angle.
He lost his grip on the lance, and it became pinned beneath him.
The silhouette froze.
That noise just came from its favorite drinking spot.
The large Wadi Thooo rushed forward to defend its territory—its precious resources.
????
Molly ran, leaning into the wind, until she came to the first bridge of shade. She had a full-blown fear reaction raging through her body—every hole seemed poised to spit out a legion of attackers. She could feel hundreds of invisible beasts stalking her heels, ready to run up her back and claw her to death at any time.
The sight of the bridge crushed this imaginary fright with an immediate one. She came to a panting halt, fell to her knees, fought to regain her breath. Facing the wind, she allowed it to push air deep into her lungs, but it was dry and chalky, offering little relief. She glanced over at the holes in the wall beside her, then back to the narrow path of cool rock.
She needed to get a hold of herself.
She needed to get her boot back on.
Fumbling with the knots, she tried to work the thing free from the lance. She constantly shifted her eyes up to the holes, not comforted in the least by the many kilometers of them she’d walked by without incident. They were all a threat after that last encounter.
By the time she worked the laces free and forced her foot back into the boot, her heart had calmed down somewhat, her adrenaline subsiding. She inspected her wounded hand, touched the gashes in her face—she needed to concentrate.
It’s just an alien landscape and some pesky critters, she told herself. I came out here to get one of them, and that’s what I plan on doing.
She nodded, sealing the resolution as she peeled the protective suit down to her waist, working her arms free. The outfit was designed to retain moisture, to protect her from direct sunlight, but she didn’t plan on falling out of the shade. She worked the suit all the way down over her boots, leaving her in just the white jumpsuit liner underneath.
Using the sharp end of the lance, she cut the material at her waist, ripping it all the way around herself before pulling the fabric over her head. She still had her legs and hips protected and her boots on, but was otherwise naked. The wind on her sweaty body felt good, cooling her off a little, even though it was mostly a hot, dry breeze.
She cut one of the sleeves off and dabbed her face with it. The material stuck to her flesh, jerking on her clotting wound as she pulled it back. She winced as a jolt of pain shot down her spine, making her dizzy. The sleeve came away spotted with blood. She decided to leave her face alone and tied the fabric around the wound in her hand instead. Dried tracks of red already ran in jagged trails from wrist to elbow, but the bandage would prevent any more from leaking out.
Just that little bit of first aid made her feel better. Stronger. More in control.
Holding up the metallic fabric, Molly looked at a distorted reflection of her gashed face. The blood streaked back to her ear on one side, but didn’t seem to be flowing anymore. She thought about the thing that had done this to her. All for a few drops of salted water. She wondered if it had meant to harm her this much, or if it had meant to harm her more. Was the violence indiscriminate? The thoughtless scampering of a thirsty creature?
She wanted to catch one and find out.
Molly used the torn top of the jumpsuit to soak up the sweat running in rivulets down her bare chest. She approached one of the holes cautiously. It was roughly the same size as the last one she’d messed with, perhaps a little smaller. She placed most of the moist material on the lip of the hole and kept a grip on the sleeve. With the metallic suit wrapped around her other hand, like a gauntlet, she propped her lance against the cliff within easy reach. Just in case it came to that.
The trap was set. She didn’t know how long it would take, so she concentrated on the most minor of sensations: the sweat evaporating from her body in the wind, the constantly shifting dying sounds that groaned through the canyons, the stinging of the wounds on her face.
She fell into a trance of patience and control—of hypervigilance.
And waited.
????
The silhouette reached Cole as he tried to free himself from the hole behind him. It came up his legs with the heft of a small gator, not like a lizard at all. Cole wrenched his hand from the hole and reached up with both arms to fend the thing off.
Loud, snapping jaws fought through his hands. He clutched at the thing’s neck and tried to keep the gnashing, clacking teeth away from his face. Sharp claws raked his chest, ripping the fabric of his suit open and stinging his skin underneath.
The beast clambered forward, its legs scraping the sides of the tight tunnel, forcing Cole back toward the hole. Not knowing how far down it went, he strained back against the creature, pushing himself closer to the dangerous maw and furious, lashing arms.
The thing’s hind legs tore into Cole’s thighs, finding better purchase in suit and flesh than they did with hard rock. Cole couldn’t believe the thing’s strength; it was half his size but felt twice as powerful. His arms vibrated with the effort of holding back the attack. When he felt like they were about to give out, he let them. Using the last bit of energy they possessed, he directed the monster up toward the ceiling and allowed his head to fall back in the hole behind him. He felt the momentum of the animal’s anger propel it over his head.
The beast landed with a shriek on the other side of the shaft; he could hear it scratch madly to right itself—to rejoin the battle. Cole felt for the hole above him, stood up inside of it, then stepped onto the wet lip, balancing the weight of his body on the edge of his boots. He tried to shake some feeling back into his tired arms as a shape moved along below him, back in the direction he needed to go.
He took some deep breaths, leaning into the damp wall. He tried reaching up, but the shaft went beyond his hands. He needed to go down for his lance, anyway.
The question was, did he go after the Wadi? Or take his chances going deeper into the cave? Would the tunnel taper to an end, or would it open out into the neighboring canyon? The only way he could fight one of those things was outside these blasted tubes of rock. They had the advantage of leverage here, and his only weapon was useless if he couldn’t swing it around.
Cole didn’t want to wait for the thing to figure out he’d ascended the shaft. He wasn’t sure how long he would last without tending to his wounds, anyway, so he lowered himself back down as quietly as he could. Glancing to the exit, he saw the dark shape slinking back and forth across the distant light. Looking the other way, he couldn’t make out an end to the tunnel. He decided he would explore a little, let the thing hunt for him in the wrong direction while his strength returned.
Grabbing his lance off the tunnel floor, Cole stretched across the hole he had nearly fallen through and moved silently into the blackness.
Behind him, he left a trail of moisture.
Thick, and slowly clotting.
????
It seemed as if an hour passed before Molly’s shirt twitched.
She jumped in front of the hole and lunged in with her protected hand, but there was nothing there. It must have been the wind.
She rubbed fresh sweat off her body and put the lure back in position.
More time went by. She felt completely alone and removed from the rest of the universe. Even the agonized moans that called out around her did nothing to provide any sense of company. Her only companions were the twin stars and the fixed shadows they cast, their unmoving nature turning every second into a trapped eternity.
Focusing on the shirt, Molly tried to make it the sole entity in her awareness, but the sight of her own valuable fluids dripping down the rock wall distracted her. Tormented her. The precious trickle evaporated long before it reached the ground, a miniature waterfall that led nowhere—just faded out of existence.
Her shirt moved again. The twitch coincided with a slight gust of wind, so she assumed it was another false alarm, but then the entire lure disappeared into the hole as if sucked inside a vacuum.
The sleeve made a loud, ripping noise.
“No!” she muttered, lunging for the hole. She pulled gently with the sleeve as her other arm dove in after the disappearing shirt.
As soon as she touched the creature tugging on the lure, she felt it focus its energy on her. It felt smaller than the last one she’d fought, wrapping itself around her hand and trying to tear through the fabric. Molly pulled it out of the hole and the thing shrieked at her. It was as long as her forearm and twice as thick. She fell to the ground, pinning it on its back, its teeth fighting through the layers of her makeshift glove.
Molly gripped the sleeve of the wet lure and flung it in circles around her other hand, protecting it. She used it to hold the creature’s jaw, trying to figure out if there was a safe place to hold a Wadi where it couldn’t bite her.
She briefly considered putting a knee on its belly and forcing the life out of the thing, but it was smaller than the last one, and this wasn’t the same monster that had gashed her face and hand. In fact, both of them were just looking for water, a craving Molly could easily understand.
She castigated herself for being weak, but a silly urge overcame her: she had to get this creature back to the shelter, alive, and only then release it back into the shade. The challenge fixed itself in her mind as a way to beat this inhospitable land. A way to prevent it from beating her.
Using some of the suit material hanging off her right hand, she started wrapping the Wadi’s mouth, sealing it tight. The poor thing began panting out of its long nose, its soft, white belly rising and falling with quick breaths. But at least it stopped fighting as madly; its legs just pawed at the air, looking for something to push against.
Molly clenched her left fist and squeezed some of her sweat out, allowing it to run into the Wadi’s mouth as it strained against the binding. This made it twitch a little more at first, clawing for the fabric with its front paws, before it finally settled back down.
She took her first good look at the specimen, the iridescent scales along its back and arms glowing, even in the shade. Two bones protruded from the back of the thing’s shoulders, stumps with no discernible purpose, like vestigial limbs. She worked quickly, trying to not get distracted by the beauty of the thing; she wrapped her flapping suit around the creature’s entire body, tight enough to hold it still, but hopefully not so tight it couldn’t breathe. She pressed the bundle to her bare chest.
The Wadi kicked a few more times, struggling against the metallic material, but Molly had it under control now. She could cradle it with one arm and pin it to her body as she soaked up more sweat. She dripped the fluids into the small crack along its mouth and felt the creature go limp with every drink.
Molly had no idea how long the thing—or herself—would survive without proper water. Salt-free water. She double-checked the bundle to make sure the Wadi was secure before giving her lance a long look. She couldn’t carry both, which meant risking her life in an attempt to preserve the strange animal’s.
Turning around, she surveyed the first of many shady bridges that awaited, strong gusts tearing across it and down the blistering canyon. Molly crouched low and set off across the narrow path.
She left behind her only means of defense, propped up against the pockmarked stone. Both her arms tended to the prize against her chest as a harsh, hot wind ripped across her bare back.
????
Cole worked his way across the next hole he discovered in the tunnel’s floor. Looking over his shoulder, he could no longer see the light from the entrance. It had been lost around a bend, or perhaps something blotted it out. His hand slipped in a puddle of water and another series of drips pelted his back. He didn’t linger to refresh himself.
He crawled forward, the tunnel not getting any bigger or smaller. Cole hoped that meant it bored clear through to the next canyon. He stopped scrambling along and patted for his map, reassuring himself he still had it. As soon as he did so, he heard it: something moving behind him.
He took off as fast as he could crawl, the stupid lance slowing him down and forcing him to move with his knuckles on bare rock. When something bumped into the bottom of his boot, he kicked back at it, making solid contact and setting the tunnel on fire with screeches of animalistic rage.
Cole concentrated on moving away from the sounds, groping ahead for more holes in the floor, hoping the ceiling wouldn’t start constricting down around him. Once again, he felt the amount of solid stone on all sides, the fact that dozens of these things could be coming—homing in on the racket he was making.
His vision spotted with fear.
No. He wasn’t seeing stars. That was light!
Two spots, both perfect circles, as if the tunnel forked ahead. Cole hugged the right side and ignored the pain in his knees and shins, scrambling along as fast as he could. Behind, the angry, high-pitched sounds grew into peals of fury. There was no way he would get to the exit before it clawed up his back.
Cole dropped to his belly and spun over, bringing his knees up to his chin.
When he saw the blackness shift in front of him, he shot himself straight, kicking into the center of the rock tube.
It was poorly timed. Instead of landing a full blow, the thing slammed into the bottom of his extended feet. The creature made a vicious noise; Cole tried stabbing his lance toward the sound. It made a hit, but unfortunately it was the dull, hooked end. He had brought the spear into the tunnel expecting to defend ahead of himself—and the length of the weapon made it impossible to spin it around.
The impact must have stunned the thing, as the noise stopped and nothing clawed at him. Cole lurched back toward the dual lights, his body on fire from the constant impact of rock on bone.
Weary arms propelled him forward as the light ahead gradually grew brighter and bigger. Then, more scraping sounds came from behind—approaching fast.
The last ten meters were as psychologically painful as they were physically demanding. Cole began to lunge, rather than crawl, throwing the spear ahead of him and launching himself with his legs. On the third push, his arms failed to support him and his chin scraped the floor of the tunnel. He could hear the large animal clawing up behind.
Leaving his useless spear where it lay, he pushed himself toward the light.
The very bright light.
When Cole saw the thin wedge of sunlight shining into the lip of his exit, he realized what a huge mistake he’d made. He’d assumed the tunnel would come out on a shaded path, but it didn’t. It faced the eternal day.
There is no solace out that hole, he realized. And the lizard was almost on him.
He didn’t have his spear anymore. Cole tried to kick the thing again, but it had learned: he heard it scampering along the ceiling above him. He moved forward, closer to the steam wafting into the hole, and rolled onto his back just as the creature dropped down. It landed on his thighs and came straight for his throat.
Cole pushed on the squirming beast, which just forced him closer to the deadly light. He could feel the heat from the twin suns where they baked a thin slice of the tunnel’s interior. The giant lizard strained for his neck, pawing at the sides of the tunnel to push forward.
It drove Cole’s head into the sun.
It felt like his hair was set on fire. His hood was still bunched around his neck, leaving his ears open for danger, but his scalp exposed. Cole tried to retract his head down into his shoulders, but this just let the lizard’s snapping jaws get closer to their prize.
He had to save his scalp, no matter the cost. He stopped pushing on the lizard and threw his forearm across his neck, just as he pulled his head out of the light. The lizard bit down on it immediately, locking its jaw above his wrist—teeth grinding against bone.
Cole let out a feeble scream. He grabbed one of the beast’s arms, and with both hands, he lifted it over his head and out of the hole. The pain on his exposed flesh was intense, like some sort of toxin coursing through his arm, but the lizard had it worse. The thing hissed as it cooked, the white underbelly frying in the direct light. It tried to twist its back toward the rays, but Cole had its arm gripped tight; he moved the tender spot around even more.
The jaw finally loosened, its teeth sucking noisily out of Cole’s arm. He attempted to pull the wounded animal in by its leg, but the weight was too much, his own arm at too unusual an angle.
His prize slipped out of his grasp and fell down—into the direct sunlight.