Lindsay Buroker - Torrent

“As in from hot springs?” I scratched my head. Arizona had some hot springs, but I wasn’t aware of any near Prescott. Of course, I hadn’t been aware of any cave dwellings either.

Simon shook his head. “No, hot, like burning . Come feel.”

I knelt beside him and touched the rim of the hole-it was about four feet wide and curved out of sight under the wall. The stone wasn’t hot enough that my hand would burn, but it was unpleasantly warm.

“Weird. Heat from friction?”

“I think they just made this hole,” Simon whispered. “Burned it right into the stone. Like the Horta in that episode of Star Trek where miners were getting killed by that wicked acid.”

“You’re seeing aliens in every corner of the woods this week, aren’t you?”

“I didn’t say it was a Horta, just that they’d done something like the Horta.”

“Uh huh.”

As we knelt there talking, the smoke lessened, making me realize how recently the hole had been created. I wondered how they’d done it. There wasn’t any rubble or other debris. Could they truly have incinerated the stone? Even then, wouldn’t there be ashes or some sort of residue?

I crouched and shone my flashlight into the hole, but the curve a few feet down made it impossible to see far without crawling in.

“Should we…?” Simon waved to the hole.

I envisioned smacking into the two riders while they were on their way out. Somehow I doubted they’d built hiding spots into their little tunnel.

“We could wait for them to come out,” I suggested.

“What if they come out somewhere else? We’d be waiting a long time. Temi would get bored and hungry up there. She’d eat all of your little boxes of cereal, and you’d have to replenish your hiking supplies.”

“I don’t think pro athletes eat Fruity Hoops. The packets of almond butter might be in danger though.”

“There you go: a reason we should follow them.” Simon touched the walls again and must have decided his sandals were unlikely to melt off, for he stepped inside. If he was willing to lead, I supposed I could go after him…

He scooted forward in something between a crouch and a crawl. I stepped in after him, using my hands to keep from plopping onto my butt. The slick chute reminded me of one of those tubular playground slides. I imagined us both slipping, then caroming down the tunnel to dump onto the floor of a subterranean chamber, right at Eleriss’s feet.

A few feet ahead of me, Simon halted and turned off his flashlight. I turned off mine as well, though I kept my thumb on the switch. Stygian blackness surrounded us. I knew we were only a few meters below the surface, but the utter darkness made it feel like we were miles down with millions of tons of rocks overhead waiting to crush us, and that we had no hope of seeing daylight again.

Way to be melodramatic, Del, I told myself. I inhaled deeply, seeking a calm state, or at least a state that wasn’t tinged with claustrophobic panic. The damp mustiness of the caves filled my nostrils, along with whatever they’d used to burn through the rock-the scent reminded me of the chemical smells of the short-lived meth lab that had cropped up down the street from the dorms at school.

Before I could ask what Simon had seen or heard, the sound of voices floated up the passage. They were familiar voices speaking in that unfamiliar language.

“Back,” Simon whispered.

I was already scooting out of the hole. I moved slowly enough that I didn’t trip, but the darkness was as absolute at the top, and it disoriented me so I couldn’t remember the direction of the door. Simon brushed past me. He turned on his flashlight again, this time with a red lens over the bulb. It provided enough light to find the way to the doorway and the cavate entrance beyond, but it didn’t carry far. With luck, the men behind us wouldn’t catch up and see it.

We started to head back upriver, but hadn’t gone past more than two of the cavate openings when the voices grew clear and distinct behind us. Simon pulled me through one of the entrances and extinguished his light again. We patted our way to either side of the door, and I pressed my back against the wall.

The voices continued on, calm and unhurried. I hoped that meant they hadn’t heard us.

I kept waiting for a lamp or flashlight to brighten the air outside of the cave. It didn’t. They couldn’t possibly be navigating the narrow ledge in the dark… could they? No, they must have night-vision goggles. Although didn’t those need some ambient light to work?

Two splashes sounded right outside our cavate. I shouldn’t have peeked my head out-what exactly did I think I would see in the dark? — but some instinctual curiosity as to whether or not they’d fallen in prompted me to do so before my brain thought better of it. I saw one thing before jerking my head back, actually four things. Two violet eyes and two blue eyes. Glowing in the freaking dark. What the hell?

A pancake couldn’t have been pressed flatter to the wall than my back was. My heart pounded against my ribs, the image of those glowing eyes burned into my own retinas. They’d been out in the center of the river, the violet pair turned toward the blue pair as the men continued their conversation. Men. Was that the right word? I didn’t know why, but for some reason, glowing eyes disturbed me more than the idea of a monster.

The voices faded until only the sound of running water remained.

“So Simon,” I said, the pitch of my voice uneven, “what episode of Star Trek has aliens with eyes that glow in the dark?”

At that point, I wasn’t sure if I was joking or not. I’d never once entertained the idea of aliens or extraterrestrial influence for the weirdness of the monster-like I’d said, scientists were doing all sorts of funky things with gene manipulation these days-but this was different. Nobody was supposed to be making mutant people . Even if somewhere, some unscrupulous Dr. Frankenstein was, those guys appeared to be in their twenties. I sincerely doubted the technology had been that advanced more than two decades earlier. I tried to remember when the first sheep had been cloned. Back in the 90s sometime. But those riders weren’t clones. They were… what? I didn’t know. Genetically enhanced human beings? If they had see-in-the-dark eyes, who knew what else they might have?

“Gary Mitchell’s eyes glowed silver in Where No Man Has Gone Before ,” Simon said.

“What?” My mind had been zipping from thought to thought so quickly that I’d forgotten what I’d asked and it took me a moment to remember.

“It was the second Star Trek pilot. Remember the one where the cast hadn’t yet been solidified? And they were down on that planet with the two officers who developed psionic powers? Their eyes glowed silver. I don’t remember if they were shown glowing in the dark ever, but uhm… why do you ask?”

“No particular reason.” My short laugh had a hysterical edge to it. I clasped my hand over my mouth to muffle the noise, afraid it would travel. Those two might not have noticed me sticking my head out, but they’d spot our duct tape rope when they got to the hole. I stiffened. Temi would still be up there, and they might not look kindly upon her after the fire extinguisher incident. “We better follow them.”

The duct tape rope was gone.

“Not good,” Simon whispered.

Daylight still entered through the hole in the ceiling, but less of it than before. The sun must be dropping behind the trees up there. Even though I had no idea what those two… people had done down here, besides burning a hole into the rock, I was more than ready to get out of the forest. That would, however, prove difficult if we couldn’t escape the passage.