Terrors of Pangaea (Lost on the Last Continent Book 1) by John C. Wright

Author:John C. Wright [Wright, John C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Theogony Books
Published: 2020-01-07T22:00:00+00:00

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Chapter 19 Land of Lamentation

He kicked and dove and got an arm around the other man, and kicked again, trying to get away from the Iron Mole as soon as possible. One hand working and both boots kicking, Preston, heavily burdened, tried to escape from the waters near the groaning, trembling, dangerously balanced machine.

The other man was too heavy. His elephant gun was too heavy. But Preston never once harbored the idea of throwing either into the deep to save his own life. He merely redoubled his efforts, clawing and battering at the cold water with limbs that grew cold and heavy.

Then Preston’s hand struck something. Of all things, it was a chain leading to a bucket. He wrapped his free arm around it once and twice, and threw a loop of the chain also around Fyodor.

It was scarcely in time. With a sound made strange by being underwater, with a cacophony of groaning, with sharp reports louder than pistol shots as rocks snapped, with the rushing roar of mad floods, the Iron Mole’s prow quivered, shook, and sank rapidly backward into the hole from which it came. Its great treads were spinning freely and did not grip the walls of the downward slanting tunnel. It vanished from sight, traveling as rapidly as a luge on an ice slope.

The edges of the great round puncture in the rock wall crumbled inward, and clouds of mud rose up like squid ink. Then this cloud imploded, as a vast volume of water was yanked into the empty tunnel after the receding mole machine.

Like a bathtub drain grown absurd with size, the tunnel mouth was now a maelstrom many yards is diameter. All the waters around were caught. They swirled and fell with a mighty suction into the endless miles the Iron Mole had bored up from the depth.

The floods tugged at Preston hungrily. He clung to the chain, and to Fyodor, with all his ebbing strength. Should a link break, or his grip slip, both men would be dragged by the violence of the waters into the endless darkness.

The waters turned white all about him, blinding him. Then, suddenly, he found himself in midair, dripping, swaying on the end of the chain, one foot in the bucket. The coughing and moaning form of Fyodor was still bound to Preston by a loop of chain, but the splint and sling for his broken arm had been torn away, and the broken bone jarred once again out of place. Below their feet, a great turning whirlpool of white foam was crawling slowly into the breach in the cave wall, roaring as it did, and strange echoes pounded from the deeper places far below, sounding like drumbeats.

Preston looked up. A hole that seemed very small and very far away was at the top of the chains he clutched. He pulled on one chain, groaning. His battered and overtaxed muscles ached. Throbs of pain went through his body. The bucket inched upward, but not by very far.

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