Valentine guessed that Hornbreed, literally taken with his pants down, had lost whatever change was rattling around in his pants. At least now he could guess in which direction the mysterious tracks went.
The lack of blood gave him some hope.
As he followed the tracks there were other signs - the creature must have been of some size, at least that of a small tractor. It had snapped off cactus stems in several spots over two meters apart.
It also left an odor, vaguely musty and yet ammoniacal. He traced the source of the smell, an object that looked a little like a hollow-reed thorn, in a vaguely green brown polished-turtle-shell color. Some sticky material coated one end, and Valentine hazarded a guess that it was a quill or spine.
Had a giant Arizona porcupine made off with Hornbreed?
The trail led up into the mountains. The mystery of the Jaguar leader's imprecations against hanging about the wreck had been explained. Anything big enough to approach and then make off with a sizable man in silence was a foe to be feared.
The musty-ammonia smell grew stronger, and Valentine realized that the dark of the mountainside had a darker spot. A cave opening, shaped like one of the little lateen sails he'd seen on fishing boats in the Caribbean. Valentine looked around, got his bearings, and listened to the cave mouth. A bat fluttered somewhere above.
A metallic clang sounded from the cave mouth and Valentine went flat, his senses sparking like a downed line. Valentine heard low snorts and growls and watched three Grogs emerge from the cave, heavy sacks across their shoulders. They waited, standing back-to-back, and Valentine felt a fresh chill. A Reaper emerged from the shadows, carrying a long staff that made the robed figure a scarecrow caricature of a desert prophet. It hissed at the Grogs and followed them on a westward-leading path.
The sensible thing to do would be to hotfoot it back to the convoy, leave these mountains crawling with assorted enemies, and let fate have its way with the fatalistic Hornbreed. Duvalier, had she been
with him this trip, would no doubt be resting in some hidey-hole with a good view of the interstate, waiting for the roar of truck engines and the rumble of tires.
But dammit, he needed Hornbreed - and the promised reward, provided Flying Circus would be willing to negotiate, not amount, but kind. He slipped off his backpack, extracting a small, tough flashlight with a clip that allowed him to hang it on a pocket or attach it to the underside of his gun. Something in him had to know. He fixed the light to his carbine, coaxing himself into making the attempt by getting his gear ready. If he squatted here much longer, he'd freeze up and come up with more reasons not to try it...
Valentine stepped into the ammonia smell.
A big metal locker, whose door was the source of the clanging sound, he guessed, stood just inside the cave. Electrical cable ran down the top of the cave and into it. The locker was fixed by a simple bolt. Valentine drew it back and opened the locker, smelling Grog sweat.
Long objects like fishing poles rested there, six of them, thick handles fitted into sockets and a battery case where the reel normally stood. Valentine read the pictograms on the poles, saw the electrical insulation. They were like overlong cattle prods. Valentine lifted one up and blue LED bulbs lit up at the end. They offered just enough light for him to see a few feet into the cave, which sloped down precipitously. Someone had tacked down rubber mats to improve the footing.
Valentine guessed what the big red plastic switch at the "reel" end was. He turned it on and touched the end to a rock. A spark like a photo strobe jumped and Valentine smelled ozone. Capacitors whined faintly as they recharged.
Cattle prod.
Valentine slung his rifle and took two from the green-lit sockets, wondered if the Miskatonic had tested electricity on a live Reaper. Of course, had someone suggested they try it on Blake ...
Movement behind and Valentine whirled.
An arachnophobe's nightmare stood framed by the desert stars,
brighter than ever when contrasted with the cave mouth. Shock turned it into a Picasso sketch of limbs and stingers and spines, and Valentine found himself backpedaling, throwing the steel bulk of the locker between himself and the creature, his illuminated prods waving in front of him like drunken fireflies...
It paid him no more attention than it did the locker next to him and clattered down the hole. It had six spiny legs, three to a side, and two "arms" - though perhaps they were vestigial wings, as they swept up and out, folded, and were tipped with a sharp curved point. Its head - Valentine didn't know what else to call the front end - resembled a big tongue more than anything, and held a limp, white-eyed sheep in thousands of mushroomlike organs coating its underside, a carpet of organic Velcro.
Whatever it was, it didn't have a strong "defend the nest" instinct. Valentine wondered if the result would have been different if it weren't already carrying a sheep. Were these some big version of the sand bugs the Kurians used to kill the trekkers' cattle in Nebraska?
Valentine said the kind of prayer typically uttered in atheist-free foxholes and followed it down. It didn't have much of an abdomen - usually the largest segment in a terrestrial insect - just a rutted organ that reminded him a little of an oversized, rotting cucumber. The motion of its legs fascinated him as it negotiated the slope with ease, using the tiniest of projections from the cave wall as steps.
The tricky down shaft lasted only fifteen meters or so. Valentine found himself on an easier-to-negotiate downslope. He wondered where he would hide in the narrow space if another bug showed up, and smelled the bat feces littered about. Maybe the ammonia smell came from bat droppings accidentally picked up here. The cave ceiling came down low enough that Valentine had to crouch.
Red glinted in the dim light of the LEDs on the cattle prods. What Valentine's brain identified as a big rat turned into a little six-legged creeper, shooting out of a crack toward him, wing limbs telegraphing a code he couldn't begin to understand. Valentine put his prod between himself and the explorer and it scurried off.
The cavern opened up, and there was dim electrical lighting ahead, or perhaps an opening to the moon and stars. Valentine found himself crouching in a much larger cavern, curving off into darkness and other chambers like a cow's stomach, lit here and there by panels that gave off a faint yellow glow from behind thick screens.
He scooted out of the low passage, not wanting to block access for the hunter-gatherers. A small horde of the little ratlike creepy-era wlies were massed under a sheep, holding it in their collected top arms, bringing it to the ceiling of the cavern.
Valentine heard - worse yet, felt - a presence overhead. He saw dozens of sacks hanging there, reminding him of a laundry he'd patronized in New Orleans with its rows of canvas bags hanging from the conveyors. Valentine saw a sheep hoof sticking out of one, an emaciated human hand hanging from another. Some of the bags hung from long stems, others shorter, and the scientific bit of Valentine's mind observed that the shape of the sacks turned into a more regular teardrop the closer they got to the floor. Fat, white wormlike creatures fixed their mouths to the lowest-hanging bags and suckled there.
Something vast, glistening, and dark moved among the bags at the ceiling.
Valentine took three cautious steps, careful of where he placed his feet, and found a shriveled teardrop of a bag. It was next to another empty stem, cut neatly off. A faint, sweet corruptive odor came from the bag, but it wasn't the smell that fascinated him - it was the curious, shiny weave of the bag.