Instinct: A Chess Team Adventure - By Jeremy Robinson Page 0,61

his hands and knees, careful not to hit his swollen ankle, and crawled after him.

Bishop gave Somi a lopsided grin. “You next.”

She glanced at the wrapped wound on her chest, then at the tunnel. Crawling would not be easy. “Great.” Using her good arm, Somi limp-crawled into the tunnel behind Knight.

Bishop took one last look at the chamber of bones. They glowed brightly in the flashlight’s beam. He brought the light back to the center of the chamber. A shadow shifted, leaping back out of the light, then up.

Bishop’s eyes went wide. Something was in there. It had been right behind them. And they hadn’t heard a thing. He brought the flashlight up and directed it down the opposite tunnel, the one through which they’d entered the chamber. Deep in the recesses of the tunnel, two eyes reflected the yellow light back at him. Then they blinked, and were gone.

The eyes opened again a moment later. Larger. More menacing.

Closer.

Bishop fired two shots at the opposite tunnel, knowing most of the pellets would hit the wall, but hoped enough would enter the tunnel and strike the creature to make it think twice.

The shadowed creature howled. Hit. But now it was charging.

“What the hell’s going on back there?” Rook’s voice echoed from the tunnel.

Bishop dove into the tunnel, the sound of scattering bones clacking behind him as the creature crossed the chamber. “Rook, move! As fast as you can! They’re right behind me.”

Bishop rolled onto his back and leaned up, pointing the shotgun toward the tunnel’s exit, right between his legs. He nearly dropped the flashlight from his mouth when the ruddy brown creature leaped up and surged toward the tunnel. He caught only a glimpse of it before he pulled the trigger. The shotgun blasted loudly in the enclosed space. Bishop bit down on the flashlight, his shout of pain mixing with the creature’s. He’d hit it, but it still lived. He found it with the flashlight again. The bloodied beast was still advancing.

Ignoring the pain and ringing in his ears, Bishop took aim again. For a moment he wondered if the blasts would ruin his hearing. Then he remembered his ears would heal in seconds. And his mind would drift farther toward madness. But there was little choice. He pulled the trigger.

The shot echoed off the tightly enclosed space, the sound waves striking Bishop’s ears again and again, faster than he could perceive. What his senses could confirm was that his aim had been true. The creature, now faceless, slumped to the cave floor.

Bishop dropped the shotgun, its four shells spent. He glanced back at the opposite tunnel as he began moving. What he saw made him slip back over and crawl like a manic mole.

Glowing eyes, more sets than he cared to count, watched him from the opposite tunnel. As Bishop fled, a loud whooping, more terrifying than his contained shotgun blasts, filled the tunnels.

TWENTY-EIGHT

WHEN IT CAME time for Julie to head out to college and make the family proud, she didn’t do exactly what everyone expected—medical school. She did the exact opposite. She enrolled in the air force. Turned out his sister wanted to be a pilot. Not just any pilot. A fighter pilot. Two years later she had earned her wings.

“Hang on, Siggy!” she shouted back to Jack, who was in the backseat of the F-14 Tomcat, a dual-engine supersonic fighter jet. She had the wings folded back and they were hauling ass across a clear sky, twenty thousand feet above a deep blue ocean.

The plane slowed suddenly and Jack felt himself tighten against the seatbelt. He saw the wings opening up on either side. He knew what that meant and clung to the leather seat beneath him with both hands. Then they were upside down, twisting and turning through the sky.

He felt his stomach lurch.

Julie was cheering. “Don’t lose your lunch on me, Sig! You know how hard it is to get the smell of puke out of these things?”

The twisting stopped, but a new sensation took over. His stomach was no longer lurching, it was still a thousand feet above him. Jack peered around Julie’s helmet and saw a sparkling swath of blue. A vertical dive.

He opened his mouth to shout, but nothing came out. He pounded on her seat. In his mind he begged her to pull up. Pull up!

The endless sparkling blue resolved into cresting waves, rising and falling. A loud hiss filled the cockpit. All around him the sound grew louder, dominant.