The Anomaly(82)

The creature roared again, but wasn’t advancing as quickly as I would have expected—as if wary of the foul gunk we were half drowning in, unsure how to deal with it. It was wading toward us, though—you could feel movement in the liquid. There was only one of them in here, I was sure of that even in the darkness.

Ken had led the other away, giving us half a chance.

I still tried to fight Pierre and Molly but I was winded and confused as to which direction to go. Maybe I even knew in my heart of hearts that I had to leave it.

“You asshole,” I shouted, and tried one last time to get them to let me go, but my voice was thick with tears and I don’t think they could even hear what I said.



None of us knew we were at the far end until our flailing arms smacked into the rough wall. Molly got out of the liquid first and up into the opening, and she hauled me after her as Pierre pushed my legs from underneath, somehow fit enough to still be treading water.

Then we were crowded together in the mouth of the fissure, coughing; too out of breath to do anything except suck huge lungfuls of air—lungfuls that were acrid with the thick, noxious smell.

“I’m going back,” I croaked.

“No, you’re not,” Pierre said. “You even try, and I’ll knock you out.”

“Fuck you,” I shouted. “Ken is my—”

Then we heard it.

We all heard it, cutting through the roars of the creature at the other end. A shout, or scream. It was high-pitched, awful, human. It came from outside the room we’d just crossed, from back in the main room. He’d gotten that far, at least.

Then it stopped. Cut off suddenly.

The creature that had pursued us went silent, and then after a moment we heard it moving quickly away, back toward the corridor, leaving the room to take its share in the spoils.

“Come on, Nolan,” Molly said gently.

Pierre found his backpack and picked it up and they pulled me into the fissure with them and we left.





From the files of Nolan Moore:





ENGRAVING FROM THE LONDON MAGAZINE, MAY 1766





Chapter

48



We squeezed our way along the crevice. Pierre went first. I went in the middle, using my phone to give us some light. Molly was at the back, and though I heard her doing her breathing thing a couple of times, it seemed recent events had blown her disquiet at claustrophobic darkness out of the water. I guess that’ll happen when you’ve been reminded that there are far worse things. Eventually we emerged into the gallery. We stood a moment, catching our breath.

“That doesn’t look good,” Molly said.

She was talking about my chest. There were deep gashes across it, an inch apart, from the claws of the thing that’d nearly taken me down. They were bleeding heavily. I looked at the mess with indifference. It didn’t matter and there was nothing I could do about it.

“Ken gave us no choice,” she said quietly.

“I know. And when I see him in heaven, I’m going to punch him in the face for it.”

Molly’s chin was trembling. She pursed her lips defiantly. “Actually, I hope it’s hell. It’d be much more his kind of thing. And you’d adapt fast enough.”

I was surprised into something like a laugh. I started to speak but couldn’t work out what I could possibly say.

Pierre meanwhile looked upon the paintings for the first time. You can read people’s thoughts sometimes. That’s not a magical or supernatural ability. You merely have to know them. I saw him thinking that he had to capture these things, get them on disk—as well lit and photographed as he could—so others could see them. So that the world would know. Then I saw him remember he didn’t have the camera, and who’d last been holding it, and firmly drop the entire line of thought.

He walked along the wall, however, holding his phone up high and looking at each in turn. “Mosquito,” he said. “Bug. Coyote or wolf. A horse with a horn. The squid-thing that nearly got me. And that…That’s what Gemma had inside her.”

It was the picture I’d noticed the first time, something like a bird, but with an odd, bony head. “I guess.”

“But there’s millions of species on Earth,” Molly said. “A hundred buttons isn’t enough.”

“Maybe you can combine them,” I said. “String together sequences or something. Or this is the starting set, and then evolution takes over. Don’t know.”

The light passed across a picture I hadn’t seen before, right at the end, past the hands. It was stylized, hard to discern, especially in the feeble light of a phone screen. It wasn’t something that had been found in the fossil record, that’s for sure—unless the archeologists involved had elected not to mention it on the grounds that it would be likely to freak people out.

It was exactly like the figure I’d pointed out to Gemma on the picture of Newspaper Rock. Short horns. Built like a bear, bulky and powerful across the back. Its shoulders were bunched, gripping hands directed downward.

Short horns. Like the pictogram I’d spotted in the first pool room, and then as the only available option on the wall outside the much bigger one half an hour ago.

“Let’s get to the end and see what there is to see,” I said. I unthinkingly left a beat, used as I was to leaving space for someone else to speak, either to back up what I’d said or else suggest a—usually better—alternative course of action. Or swear. Or talk about cheeseburgers.