Elizabeth went to the bins and riffled through them, but found only the emergency raft and a pack of flares.
“They seem to be big on secret passages.” Adam pressed his hands against the walls. He could jolt them like he had in the lab, but he didn’t want to take the chance it would activate some unwanted failsafe.
“There are instructions.” Elizabeth held up a booklet. “Apparently, when one is at a loss, one should read the directions.”
Diagrams within the pages made him think that he’d much rather jump off the side of the cliff. He was right, there was another secret passage, but it was beneath him. A freshwater river that connected the various safehouses with the main facility. The door could only be accessed from inside the safehouse.
But he didn’t like it. Of course, there wasn’t much about any of this he did like. Just Elizabeth, really. “You don’t think they’ve found their way into the river yet?”
Elizabeth looked from the raft to him, and back to the raft. He knew what she was going to say.
“Listen, if we go overland, we’ll be out in the open, but that also means there are more places to run. If we take—” he motioned with disgust “—that thing, we’ll be singularly vulnerable. There won’t be anywhere to run, we’ll be underground. We also don’t know what kind of life has developed in this river. This installation has been here in one incarnation or another for a long time. Do you think this is the first incident to happen here?”
“The river would empty into sea. Surely…”
“No, look at the diagram. It’s self-contained. Fed by various creeks and underground pools. There are falls here.” He pointed on the diagram. “The water goes into a pool that eventually wraps around to feed the mouth of the river again.”
Her eyes brightened. “Now you know I have to go down there. This was not the way to change my mind. When I read about the independent ecosystem in the Movile Cave, a place where animals have no eyes, and they live off carbon dioxide, not oxygen, I almost wanted to become a microbiologist so I could go in the cave.”
“There are probably leeches the size of my arm.”
“I guess we’ll just have to take care not to fall in.” She grinned. “Come on, let’s go.”
He helped her unfold the raft and, when they’d gathered everything they needed, he pulled the tab to activate the self-inflating mechanism.
The floor dropped out from beneath them and they careened into a sulfuric darkness. The raft didn’t hit the water though. They’d been caught by some sort of lever mechanism that lowered them into the water gently and didn’t disturb the flow. Yeah, leeches. “It stinks like someone’s asshole in here,” he muttered.
Elizabeth held up the lantern, the soft sallow light illuminating their surroundings. The walls were stone and moist, algae growing up over them just until the cavern ceiling. Something about it the algae couldn’t tolerate and he was grateful for it. There was something about the red-tinged growth that told him it was no regular algae.
Something dark darted through the small rapids. Several somethings. It was too much to hope for that they were dolphins. As if to display itself, one leapt up and crashed back down into the water on top of another, its tubular mouth of teeth, just like the zombies’, closed over its prey. Others latched on to the one that was bleeding and took it down, thrashing.
One of them didn’t join the others. No, instead, it turned its eyeless face toward them. It sensed them, even if it couldn’t see them.
Shit, the blood on her hands. Shit, shit.
“Elizabeth, I need you to stay very still.”
“If I wanted you to catch one of those—”
“Not a chance.” He was torn between relief that she wasn’t afraid and fear because she wanted to catch one and study it. “It can smell the blood on your hands.”
She peered over the edge of the raft with the lantern.
It was promptly smacked from her hand and they were plunged into darkness. Electricity crackled around his fingers and he upped his voltage. He wondered how much it would take to fry the entire river—charge it all with electric current.
“Stop that,” a strange, silky voice said.
He’d never known a voice could sound…slimy. It reminded him of the algae somehow. Moist. Slippery.
Wrong.
“Hello?” Elizabeth said. “I’m a doctor from Bureau 7 and I’m trying to get back to the main facility.”
“I know who you are, silly girl. And you didn’t follow the directions, did you? It said to bathe before you came down here. To bind all open wounds with the laser and rinse all blood from your body. It’s not nice to taunt my children.”
Elizabeth leaned further over the boat, obviously trying to get a better look at the creature talking.
“And you better not try to catch one, or I’ll tear you apart.”