Sigler, Scott - Sun Symbol 01 - Earthcore by Sigler Scott

Author:Sigler, Scott [Sigler, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-three

10:32 a.m.

14,100 feet below the surface

They moved steadily downward through switchbacks and crisscrossing tunnels, sometimes crawling hundreds of feet down ancient rock slides, using the massive boulders like misshapen ladders. Twice they had to break out their two sets of climbing gear to get past particularly dangerous declines. When the tunnels were wide open and the footing sure on some ancient streambed, it felt like they moved quickly; but they wanted to move downward, not horizontally.

The massive expanse of unforgiving stone tunnels and brownish tan caverns soaring high overhead seemed to humble everyone, even Connell. In the midst of such grandeur, speech seemed somehow childish and ineffective. In three and a half hours, they'd moved more than three thousand vertical feet below the Picture Cavern.

O'Doyle halted the party and stopped to examine a puzzling feature on the ground. He called back to Connell, who came forward and stared at what looked like tiny indentations in the powdery cave silt.

"What is that, tracks of some kind?"

O'Doyle nodded. “I saw some a ways back, but I didn't much worry about it. That was stupid of me. I didn't think of Mack's little silver critters until I saw this set. Now that I look around, these tracks are everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Look at any patch of dirt you see in here and you'll see these little two-prong indents."

O'Doyle pointed to one of the marks. Connell's headlamp lit it up like a spotlight illuminating a pitch-black stage. The marks looked like someone had pressed a two-prong fork into the dirt. The

“prongs” were less than a quarter-inch apart. Like eyes focusing in on ants after seeing the anthill from high above, hundreds of marks suddenly clicked sharply into view. They were everywhere. Thousands of them in just the small area surrounding him and O'Doyle.

"Holy shit,” Connell said softly.

"Yeah,” O'Doyle said. “I should have seen it sooner."

Connell marveled at the big man's perceptiveness. The tiny prong marks were damn-near invisible even with the light shining directly on them—that O'Doyle spotted it while on the move seemed incomprehensible. Some of the tracks seemed to end at the rough cave wall. Connell's face furrowed in confusion. “Do the damn things go through the wall?"

"No sir, Mr. Kirkland,” O'Doyle said patiently, the voice of an underling explaining the obvious to a superior. “Not through, up. I think these things can crawl right up the rock. It makes sense, based on Mack's description."

The term spider jumped uninvited into Connell's head. And just when he thought things couldn't get any worse. Now not only was he stuck miles deep inside a mountain, soon to be completely in the dark, but there were spiders, too. Big spiders, from what Mack had said, more than a two feet long. Mack had taken to calling them “silverbugs.” The thought of being in the utter darkness with those crawling ...

things ... made Connell shiver.

"But we haven't seen anything else,” Connell said. “We haven't seen one living thing down here. So, if they're spiders, what do they eat?"

Neither man answered.

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