The Atlantis World (The Origin Mystery, Book 3) (15 page)

The exadons were smarter than he imagined—and more brutal.

David crawled backward on his belly, Sonja by his side.

When they couldn’t see the bloody scene at the river anymore, they stood and began jogging back to the camp.

The first shot grazed David’s shoulder. The second hit a skinny tree three feet away, shattering it, spraying David with splinters and throwing him to the ground. He was vaguely aware of Sonja returning fire, her hand on him, pulling him to cover.

Dorian watched David fall, but he kept firing. He wouldn’t take any chances.

The woman was returning fire, but she was only one; they were five.

He could easily cut the woman and David off, even lure them out. The camp had to be just down the path they had cut into the forest.

Dorian wanted to fire the final shots himself. He wanted to finish it.

He instructed two of his men to stay at the outcropping. “Keep firing on Vale and the woman. Pin them down. I’ll take the camp and then their position.”

Dorian led the other two men across the plain. The woman took a few shots at them, but they missed widely—she was shooting blind.

At the top of a ridge, Dorian got his first glimpse of the carnage at the river. Winged monsters coated in dirt and gore were ripping large animals to shreds in a convulsion of mud and blood that horrified even Dorian. What is this place?

He pumped his legs harder. He was almost to the opening. When he fired on the camp, David and the woman would have no choice but to attack, to come to him.

C
HAPTER
20

The rapid blasts of gun fire woke Kate. She listened. Two sources. Back and forth. Shooting at each other.

She leapt out of the bed, grabbed her pack, and found Milo, Paul, and Mary outside their tents.

“Pack up,” Kate called to them. She ran from tent to tent, quickly entering the collapse command on the control panels.

The night was complete now, pitch black; the only sounds were gun fire, the rustling of the thick leaves and branches in the forest, and the wail of beasts in the distance. It made Kate’s skin crawl.

She tried to focus. The four of them scrambled to gather their things as the tents folded in on themselves.

“What now?” Paul asked Kate.

There was only one thing they could do. “Hide,” Kate said.

David was starting to get his breath back. Some of the splinters had penetrated the Atlantean suit, but it had kept a remarkable number out.

The group of rocks at their back took another barrage of bullets, showering them in pebbles and dust.

David searched his pack. What could he use?

Yes.

He pulled together some pieces of dead, dry underbrush, struck a match, and started a fire.

“Don’t let this go out,” he said. He took a grenade from the pack. “And cover me.”

He stayed low, running as fast as he could for the exadons at the river.

Dorian and the two soldiers were almost to the opening in the tree line when the man on his right lifted off the ground and screamed in pain. Blood spilled out of the soldier, and his feet kicked Dorian to the ground. For a few seconds, he floated there, just off the ground, then began thrashing back and forth, his blood coating…

One of the creatures.

Dorian opened fire, tearing into the monster and his own man, then swung the gun from side to side.

Two of the abominations fell to the green prairie. They flickered and popped, their scales like little mirrors. Were they machines or beasts? They bled. They were alive. And they could become invisible.

The field seemed to erupt at once.

A grenade blast at the edge of the plain. A wave of mud rose, the outlines of a half-dozen more winged creatures formed, and the massive animals that had been wallowing in the mud stormed out, catching the wrath of the mud-coated gargoyles.

Across the field, one of the men who had been firing on David from a rock outcropping cried out and flew into the air. The other turned and ran for the forest behind them, but he too was also taken, lifted, and shredded. His wails fading seconds after the beast caught him.

Dorian spun around, searching…

Where David and the woman had been, fire sprang up at the edge of the field, growing each second.

The monsters hunt via body heat. David’s trying to blind them,
Dorian thought.

Behind him, he saw his salvation. Dorian pointed. “The cave. Hurry,” he said to his last soldier.

David grabbed another log, lit it in the fire, and hurled it into the field. The knee-high grass was green, but he hoped there was enough dead grass near the ground to burn. At the very least, maybe the underbrush at the tree line would ignite. All they needed was a line.

Kate could sense the jungle around her changing. It seemed to move: every leaf, branch, and tree crawled with creatures, as if they were fleeing some unseen enemy. Then Kate heard the explosion and smelled the smoke. What had happened? A new danger occurred to her. Here in this closed environment, they could suffocate. There was only one thing she wanted to do: run back toward the fire and find David. He would be furious with her if she did. She knew that, and she knew what she had to do.

She looked back at Paul, Mary, and Milo. “We need to hurry. If we don’t make it to the exit…”

Paul stepped forward and took the machete from Kate’s hand. “I’ll take the first turn. Rest.”

Dorian crept slowly up the rocky terrain. The smoke filled the air now, and the beam of his laser cut into it like a red line from a lighthouse crisscrossing the night. Any break in the line and he would fire instantly. It was his only chance to hit one of the beasts if it was coming for him.

But none did. They reached the mouth of the cave, which was about four feet in diameter. He poked his head inside and clicked his flashlight on quickly. Clear. And it was deep enough.

“Gather rocks,” he said to the soldier. “I’ll cover. We need to block the entrance so they can’t see our body heat.”

A few minutes later, a pile of stones lay just inside the cave. He and the man climbed in and arranged the rocks at the mouth, completely blocking it. They were safe, if they didn’t suffocate.

Dorian leaned against the wall, opposite the soldier. He thought he heard the man gurgle. A snore? Dorian couldn’t remember if the man had thrown up on the flight. Hopefully he was down to his best soldier. He would need one against David and his she-warrior.

Dorian’s mind drifted to the cave, an unfocused thought occurring to him: what kind of beast would live here?

The man gurgled again.

“Hey, no mouth breathing.”

The gurgle morphed into a wheeze.

Dorian kicked the man’s leg. The muscle was hard. Too hard. Dorian felt it with his boot. Too slender as well. The leg felt no more than eight inches around. The soldier was far bigger. The skin was smooth, almost slippery.

Dorian realized the truth a second before another thick cord closed around his neck, slithered between him and the wall, and coursed all around him, pinning his arms tightly to his body and pulling him to the ground. The enormous snake squeezed him, and Dorian felt his breath go out of him.

C
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21

David and Sonja marched back to back through the jungle, taking turns raking the red beam of the sight on the sniper rifle in oval circles, watching for any sign of the exadons. The smoke was closing in and so was fatigue, yet they pushed on, one foot after another.