twitching motions as the bullets pounded its scaled breast.
Even over the deafening reports, she heard it scream.
The rifle's carbine whirred long after the clip ran dry.
Hissing.
Claws scrabbling against stone.
Finally, silence.
Merritt slapped another clip into the SCAR.
Sam extricated her feet from the tangle of body parts and started to cry.
'Are you all right?' Merritt asked. His voice positively trembled.
She couldn't find her voice, and nodded even though he couldn't see her. His hand found hers in the pitch black.
'Keep moving!' Sorenson shouted from the darkness. There was a thumping sound as he stumbled into the crumpled carcass on the ground. 'They're right behind us!'
Another shriek echoed from the direction of the outside world.
Sorenson turned toward the sound and fired.
Merritt tugged on her hand, urging her deeper into the mountain.
Light blossomed ahead, blinding after the absolute darkness.
The tunnel framed silhouettes much farther ahead than she had expected. The floor sloped downward and became uneven. She couldn't bring herself to look to either side as they descended. The skulls of the ancient dead leered at her from the walls, but worse still would be meeting the reptilian stare of another one of those creatures.
How long had the one Merritt killed been hiding in that recess? Had it watched the others pass while waiting for the stragglers, or had it somehow slipped past them in the shadows?
The corridor ended and they stepped out into the cavern where the others had already gathered. Blazing light flumed from another incendiary grenade where it rested against the far wall. Colton and Leo wore hard hats with the spotlights turned on, while Galen paced nervously in the middle of the room.
Colton took up post at the mouth of the tunnel at the back of the cavern. The light barely penetrated the dark channel.
A distant
The acoustics of the cavern made it impossible to pinpoint the direction from which it originated.
'I can't hold them off forever!' Sorenson yelled. He backed into the room, firing in indiscriminate bursts.
Sam looked past him into the tunnel. What little light reached into the orifice swirled with cordite smoke. The darkness beyond churned as though a living entity.
They were out there, at the limit of the fading flare's reach.
Waiting.
Nails clacked on bare stone.
The shuffling sound of bodies jostling each other in the close confines.
Muffled grunts.
The incendiary grenade fizzled and hissed. The corona of light beat a hasty retreat.
Sorenson shot again into the tunnel and something shrieked.
Merritt removed his hand from hers to steady his rifle, and pointed it past Sorenson toward where flashes of iridescent green tested the limit of the glare.
The glow dimmed, and, with a sizzle, the light extinguished.
A predatory
The shadows advanced with the clamor of talons.
Chapter Twelve
I
Merritt unsnapped the canister from where he had clipped it to his belt, pulled the pin, and tossed it to his left. Gunfire echoed from directly to his right, where Sorenson shot blindly into the tunnel. Shrieks and high-pitched cries erupted from the darkness.
'I can't see a damn thing!' Sorenson shouted.
Chemical fire spouted from the incendiary grenade. The sudden influx of light stained Merritt's vision red. He raised his rifle and fired into the dark mouth of the channel. When his sight finally cleared, he unconsciously retreated a step. He was completely unprepared for what he saw.
Blood poured down the stone floor from the tunnel. Feathers filled the air. Hisses and squeals rose over the tumult of gunfire as bodies fought for position amid the carcasses of their brethren. One creature hopped up on the flank of a twitching mass of scales and feathers, lowered its head toward the ground, and released a savage
They were going to be massacred inside this mountain.
'Fall back!' Colton shouted from behind him. Sam tugged at his jacket.
He stumbled away from the tunnel, firing every step of the way.
The creature hopped down from the corpse and crouched even closer to the ground. A bullet ricocheted in front of it, and in a blur of motion, feathered shapes exploded from the opening.
Sorenson bellowed and shot into their ranks, but they were already upon him. The man's battle cry turned to screams of pain. A hand grabbed Merritt by the collar and jerked him in reverse. He whirled to see Sam already running toward the smaller tunnel at the rear of the chamber, where Colton stood beside the entrance, firing back into the room while the others ducked past him into the darkness.
Merritt sprinted after them and raced into the thin crevice. The lamp affixed to Leo's helmet bounced and jittered ahead, highlighting random sections of the bare rock wall. Merritt glanced back and saw Colton spray a stream of bullets into the chamber, then duck into the corridor behind him.
Sorenson's screams were drowned out by avian cries.
'Go!' Colton shouted, shoving him deeper into the mountain. Colton's headlamp cast strange, elongated shadows from behind Merritt that made the shrinking tunnel appear to bend, twist, and turn.
Leo's weak beam grew larger and larger on the stone wall ahead of them. Merritt's heart nearly stopped at the realization that they were racing into a dead end, but then the light lowered to the floor and faded to a candle's glow.
At the end of the passage, Sam crawled through a tiny hole rimed by Leo's light. The passage couldn't have been larger than a sewer pipe. Her feet disappeared as she wriggled out of sight.
He stopped and stared at the diminutive orifice. Colton's lamp made his massive shadow dance on the wall.
'Get in there, for Christ's sake!' Colton yelled. He spun and shot into the tunnel behind him.
There were more hawk-like shrieks and the rapid clatter of talons on granite.
Merritt slid the rifle into the hole and dove in after it. He pushed it in front of him and squirmed as fast as he could through the claustrophobic tube toward the pale yellow aura ahead.
Behind him, the report of gunfire ceased, and was replaced by the scraping sound of Colton scrabbling into the tunnel.
There was no longer anyone guarding their rear.
