Dave Freedman - Natural Selection

Darryl sneered down. “That thing’s here somewhere; I can smell it.” He spotted a plateau the size of a soccer field and descended toward it.

Caves , Jason thought anew. Caves had no light at all and were the closest thing on land to the depths. As they touched down, he decided Darryl had to be right. The predator was here.

“NO DAMN flares in this thing?” Stomping around in the back of the chopper, Darryl was frustrated. Their mission here was pointless if they couldn’t see. He needed flares. He ripped open another compartment. Nothing.

Outside on the sunny black rock, Jason and Lisa searched the chopper’s outer compartments, opening and closing one little door after another.

Lisa moved with particular speed. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. “Oh, here we go.”

Near the rear propeller, the compartment was the size of a car’s trunk, holding half a dozen boxes of flares. Opening one, Lisa saw they were gold sticks the size of large hot dogs.

“Perfect.” Darryl grabbed one from behind her. “These are long-burning ones, too.” The standard safety flare burned bright red and lasted half an hour, but these burned gold and lasted for ninety minutes. Darryl grabbed a few boxes. He’d started to close the door when he noticed something else. Another box labeled NITROGLYCERIN-BASED DYNAMITE. He opened it. Inside were a dozen brick-size objects encased in black plastic. Darryl turned one over, and slid open a small compartment, revealing six tiny red switches, like a mini–fuse box.

“What do you have there?” Jason walked over.

“Explosives. Used the same type in the army. I think the loggers around here must use ‘em to loosen up jams on the rivers.” The explosives’ active ingredient was ammonia gelatin dynamite, often used for blasts in quarries and mines. Ammonia gelatin has many beneficial features, like excellent water resistance and high blasting efficiency; also, unlike most nitroglycerin-based explosives, it can be detonated by remote control. But where were the remotes? Darryl quickly found them, two little silver things, each with a single red button that read USE ONLY WITH EXTREME CAUTION.

Jason shook his head. “Bad idea, Darryl.”

“Why?”

“You said these caves are unstable.”

“Exactly why these could be very useful.” He eyed the surrounding bluffs, dotted with holes everywhere. “This mountain’s one big piece of Swiss cheese, Jason. There could be tunnels everywhere in there.”

“So?”

“So tunnels mean escape routes. That thing could go anywhere.” He raised a black brick. “But with these, we can cut off every avenue. So it won’t have a goddamn place to hide.”

Jason turned to Lisa. This logic was hard to fight.

Darryl started grabbing things. “We gotta move before that thing finds its way out of there….”

They quickly grabbed explosives, remotes, flares, and weapons. They’d started to walk when Darryl paused and looked around. “One way or another, this thing’s gonna end here.”

From a pocket, Lisa removed the once-beeping transmitter, now silent. “Which way do you want to start?”

Darryl gave the device a dirty look. Then he turned north. “The biggest caves were this way.”

AT THE end of the plateau, they reached a towering sheer rock face that offered only one way to continue: through an extremely narrow crevice, barely the width of a human body. They squeezed in, leaving the hot sun, and became enshrouded in crisp, cool shadows. They began climbing an incline steeper than a San Francisco street. After several hundred feet, the terrain abruptly leveled, and they emerged into an open stretch of black rock, brightly lit by the sun, as long as a highway and dotted with caves.

They walked to the first cave, about three stories high and as wide as a one-car garage.

Darryl peered in suspiciously. “What do you think?”

Jason eyed the perimeter. “I think it couldn’t fit.”

“Maybe it’s stuck, then.”

“Let’s see….” Lisa raised the transmitter.

She waited for a moment.

The tiny device was silent.

Darryl ignored the little contraption and stared into the darkness. “I don’t think it’s here.”

They continued. A dozen more caves in twenty minutes. All were too small or produced nothing from the transmitter.

As they walked to the next one, Jason again marveled at the redwood forest beyond the cornfield. What a view.

Then he felt the dank chill on his back. He turned. “Now, this is big enough.” Jason couldn’t believe the size of it. The hole was monstrous, eight or ten stories high and wider than a three-lane tunnel.

Lisa didn’t know why, but the space made her nervous.

They walked toward it when the mountains above blocked out the sun, swallowing them in deep dark shadows.

Darryl just studied the space, saying nothing.

Lisa raised the transmitter.

The device was silent, no sound at all over the light wind. She shrugged at Jason. “Go to the next one?”

Jason nodded, and the two of them continued.

Darryl didn’t budge. “It’s here.”

Lisa and Jason returned. She raised the transmitter again and again, it didn’t make a sound. But then she took a single step forward, and it beeped. One time. Then went silent again.

Darryl turned to it curiously. “How do ya like that.”

Jason eyed the darkened space nervously. How do you like that indeed.

“I’LL GO.”

Jason shook his head at Darryl. “No, we all go.”

“We can’t all go.”

“Why not?”

“It’s putting all our eggs in one basket. You see how many tunnels there are here, so there could be fifty ways out of this rock. If all of us go in here and it comes out somewhere else…” Darryl shook his head. “And even if this is the only way out, if it gets past whoever goes in… Someone’s gotta stay out here to guard against that. I nominate you two. Unless you want to go in instead of me.”

Jason and Lisa suddenly looked pale.

“Didn’t think so.”

Jason cleared his throat. “Darryl, if you go in by yourself, and it really does get past you, we’re supposed to stop it with this ?” He raised his rifle.

“No.” Darryl raised a black brick. “With this.”

Jason eyed him skeptically. “What do you mean?”

“If these caves are as unstable as they say…” Darryl studied the ceiling and walls. “A few of these will take this tunnel right down. Here, I’ll set ‘em up….” Darryl put his bow on the rock and trotted right in, removing five black bricks. He flipped a series of switches, then carefully placed them in strategic locations: on jagged shelves in the walls and two in the middle of the rock floor. Then he trotted back out and handed the remote to Lisa. “Just press the red button.”

Jason shook his head. “Some plan.”

“It’s a backup, and we won’t have to use it. On Monique and Craig’s lives, that thing’s not coming outta here.” Darryl eyed the remote in Lisa’s hand. “And if you press that button, neither will I.”

Lisa swallowed, then flipped a cover over the button and carefully pocketed the remote.

Darryl started to walk in. “OK, I’ll see ya—” He stopped, noticing the walkie-talkie in Jason’s hand. “Let me borrow that. I’ll call you when it’s done.”

Jason handed it to him, and Lisa raised the transmitter. “Want this, too?”

Darryl gave the device a dirty look. He rarely discussed it, but he was superstitious. The transmitter had beeped a moment before and he was worried it was a sign. “All right, give it to me.” He grabbed it angrily, felt for the arrows in the rear pouch of his hunting vest, then slowly entered the dark space. “See ya soon.”

Watching him go, neither said it, but Jason and Lisa both wondered if they’d ever see Darryl Hollis again.