The Time of The Cat 35

EGGS!

The next room in the cave was much smaller. We could easily see across it and it appeared to be only about the size of an average living room. It was filled with formations, though, and that made for quite a number of pockets and hiding spaces that we couldn’t immediately verify were empty.

We moved slowly to the approximate center of the room. It was difficult since the floor here was not as sandy as in the larger room. It was wet and floored with limestone deposits that were slippery and covered with some kind of slime.

As we stood there, I thought I heard something. It wasn’t more of the moaning that our late antagonist made, but sounded like someone talking at a distance. I briefly turned off the laser and, as our eyes adapted to the darkness, we turned around slowly.

The combination of the silence and the heavy, velvet darkness was frightening. Humans are visual beings and an environment with no discernible light is unsettling. Add silence to the darkness and it immediately becomes far worse. We could hear drips of water coming down from the ceiling in the distance, but the faint patter made the sense of unease greater.

Despite our disorientation, the tactic actually worked well. At a certain point in our rotation, we were able to see a very dim glow that came from behind a thin curtain of limestone. I switched our light back on and we started to move in that direction. The glow was so faint that we’d never have been able to sense it with the light on.

We were unable to take a direct path and had to detour around some rough areas that would have proven harder to climb over than circumnavigate. As we clambered over the slippery stone and around the stalagmites, we came to a sand-filled depression in the floor that housed what appeared to be a nest of eggs. They were brown and about the size and shape of a football. I looked at Liz and she had her knuckles held to her mouth in horror.

“It looks like that thing that attacked us was a mother,” I observed. “It must have come in here to lay these eggs.”

“It’s not that,” she gasped. “It’s what might hatch out of them that is freaking me out!”

I turned back and looked closer. The shells were not brittle and hard like bird eggs but more leathery, like reptile eggs. I tentatively poked one with the toe of my boot and saw the creature inside move slightly in response.

Liz gasped again, “We’ve got to smash these. We can’t have more of those monsters hatching out in here.”

I reached to the back of my belt and removed the knife that I carry there. It’s handy for fighting and I keep it razor-sharp. Carefully, I sliced at the egg and the casing cut with some difficulty. As it opened, we could see movement, and then a pair of insect-like arms came out, followed in short order by the rest of the creature. It was weak and unable to move easily, which was fortunate.

Liz said, “Why, it’s one of the spider things! They must be the immature form of the bear-sized things. These are going to grow huge and – ” She paused for a moment in shock, then exclaimed, “Oh crap! Think of all of the spiders we’ve seen!”

“Crap is right!” I answered. “We’re going to be up to our eyeballs in those things before long. Judging from what we’ve seen of them, the bear-sized creatures might be the Pugs’ answer to how to get rid of all humans. They’re really difficult to kill and one of them would make hash out of any number of conventionally armed men.”

“The Pugs might be waiting for a huge crop of the big creatures to develop and then they’ll release them on the populace as shock troops.” Liz was speculating, but it was probably a pretty good speculation. I really hoped that she wasn’t correct.

“We can’t do anything about that right now, but we can squish these little bastards!” I said as I gritted my teeth and smashed the spider with a handy stone. It was starting to exhibit more strength and didn’t look like it was going to hang around forever waiting while we discussed its life cycle.

Some of the rest of the eggs were moving slightly and suddenly a pair of legs erupted from one. It looked like they were going to hatch right at that moment. I thought about shooting them with the splinters but realized that we should preserve our ammunition, so we both searched frantically for loose rocks. There were several broken limestone formations around the hole; perhaps a result of the mother creature’s movements. We rapidly picked up stones and bashed the life out of the eggs.

As we crushed the brown eggs, some of them released a nasty odor. It grew worse the more we smashed. Quite a few of them were obviously rotten and had no hope of hatching, but several of the leathery things burst open and the immature spiders started staggering towards us, clicking their mandibles. Working as fast as we could, we crushed them all.

We verified that all of the eggs were broken and then started working our way toward the formation where we’d seen the glow. As we moved across the floor, we were horrified to see three more eggs that had rolled around an intervening formation. Two of them had obviously hatched and the spiders were not in view. The other was making determined motions as if it were on the verge of breaking out.

Having no convenient rock, I simply stomped on the unhatched egg. It broke and the creature inside was crushed. I didn’t want to think about what I might have on the bottom of my foot, so I scuffed it back and forth against the dry sand.

Liz grabbed my arm and said, “Look, there’s no time for that. Those other eggs hatched long enough ago for the spiders to be able to move away. They’re probably strong enough to fight now and we know they can move rapidly. We can’t stay here, one of them might be stalking us as we speak.”

“You’re right! Let’s get going,” I agreed.

We rounded the limestone curtain formation and saw that it covered an opening. I ducked down and there were a couple of ropes secured to the limestone with steel pitons. The ropes led downward into a hole and, on closer inspection, turned out to be a rope ladder.

“Someone’s been up here and this is the way out,” I told Liz.

We slid into the hole, arranged ourselves on the ladder, and started down Liz leading. After we had descended a few yards, the passage opened up and we could see that we were dropping down into a huge cavern.

This was the more frequented part of the cave because we could see fixed lights off in the distance and a group of tourists moving down a path towards our position. We climbed down as fast as was safe, reaching the bottom of the ladder long before the tourist group got near. They’d stopped to listen to the guide discuss the cave’s features.

“Liz, let’s not make a fuss with these people. It won’t help and the ranger would probably want to detain us. Let’s just stay out of sight and then follow them from a distance,” I said.

We moved behind another curtain formation and waited. It didn’t take too long before they stopped right in front of us. We listened as the guide said, “We’re below the most recent discovery in the cave. We’re in the Big Room right now. In 1985, balloons were used to attach a rope to a formation above, and the rooms that compose what is called The Spirit-World were discovered. Most recently, in 2013, an explorer found a large room in that hidden section that he dubbed “Halloween Hall,” since it was found in October. It’s about a hundred feet in diameter.” He paused and then said, “Now please follow me.”

We trailed along for a bit until we could see the Underground Lunch Room at the head of the Left Hand Tunnel that connected to the Big Room. There were elevators there and we waited in the shadows until the tour group had moved on. There were other people about and additional tour groups, so we watched for the largest break we could see and then dashed over to the elevators.

I really didn’t want to have to discuss our weapons with any nosy park rangers, so we tried our best to keep them shielded from view. There were a few other self-guided groups about and we figured that we weren’t too out of place, at least until someone got a really close look at us.

In short order, we were up in the above-ground Visitor Center and happy to be there. We slipped outside in a crush of visitors. The only persons who questioned us were two small girls who saw the eraser gun on Liz’s shoulder.

The girls looked remarkably similar and I figured they were sisters, but they seemed to have two different sets of parents. The situation resolved itself when the father of one of the girls asked the other girl’s mother, “Hey, Sis, where are we supposed to meet the guide?”

Lagging behind their parents, the two girls goggled at Liz and the long gun. The younger of the two asked Liz, “Is that some kind of gun, Lady?”

Liz smiled and said, “Yes, but it’s to stun bats for easy capture. We’re scientists and we are studying the bat population of the cave.”

This explanation seemed to be perfect because the girl’s father grabbed her arm and admonished both of them, “Now Hazel, you and Rowan better not bother the scientists. They’re really busy with scientific stuff.”

They walked off and it was just in time since Liz had to use the restroom. She looped around and went into the facility. In a little longer than I thought it should take, she came out with a grin.

“There’s a transporter head in there!” she exclaimed. She’d found it inside a large, janitor's closet at the back of the main restroom. “There are two here according to the map, but we’d have to keep searching to find the second one. It looks like it might be some distance away, see here!”

She used the map and pointed out the location in the bathroom. The transporter had one connection to someplace in the Yucatan, but the other one went to Loveland. When we inspected the second Carlsbad transporter location on the map, I observed that both of the connecting lines led to locations that didn’t seem useful. One went to India and the other to Spain. I didn’t try to puzzle out where exactly. We didn’t really need to know.

“Come on, let’s go. I think that the restroom might be empty now,” she said.

“Well, I’ll just have to act like a woman,” I grinned.

“No chance of that! You wouldn’t fool anyone,” she assured me. “But, don’t worry, I’ve thought of everything. I’ll chase all of the women out and we’ll put the ‘Closed for Cleaning’ sign that I found in the closet at the entrance door.”

I took her hand and said, “You continue to amaze me. I’m ...” A sudden realization hit my mind. I hadn’t really understood it before, being, like many men, somewhat out-of-touch with my feelings. I paused, gulped, and said, “I... Look, I’m not used to saying things like this, but I think I – ”

She stepped closer and pressed her freshly washed finger against my lips, “I know. I love you too. Now let’s go. We can talk this over when we get somewhere safe.”

I was shocked; so that’s what I was feeling! I loved her! It had just sort of sneaked up on me. I’d known that she was very dear to me and that I was ready to do anything to protect her, but I hadn’t actually put a word to it. The worst part was I also didn’t know when we’d have time to talk about it since it looked like the whole world wasn’t safe.

We turned towards the restroom just as a group of women entered. I sighed, resigning myself to wait.