Ryan had watched impassively as the sack of dead guts flipped past his combat boots.
“Wonder how the bastard thing got behind us?” he mused. “I’ve had more than enough surprises come slinking up from the rear.”
“Perhaps he followed us from outside the cave door,” Jorge said. “Back from another part of the forest of El Yunque.”
“Knew we should of locked the damn door behind us,” J.B. noted.
“Well, I don’t know how it snuck up on us, lover, but I can tell you something else,” Krysty said in a worried tone as she rested a hand on one of Ryan’s broad shoulders. “The way my head’s been ringing since we set foot in this redoubt, the one you just chilled isn’t traveling alone. This place is as cold spiritually as they come. Went through a graveyard after dark on a dare once back in Harmony when I was a little girl. Picked a night with no moon. Half- way in the boneyard the whole world seemed to go quiet. This place gives off the same kind of feeling.”
“In other words, we should get out of this redoubt,” Soto said.
“Ready,” Jak said succinctly. “Go back lock door.”
“Scared?” Dean challenged.
“Hell, no!” Jak retorted as he turned his ruby eyes on Dean. “You?”
Dean cocked his head over at Ryan. “Not with Dad here.”
“Appreciate the confidence, but there’s nothing wrong with a little caution, Dean,” Ryan replied. “A man who isn’t a bit scared of the unknown might find his nerves are too dead to be much good to him or his allies. Besides, we can’t leave. Not yet. Not until we’ve found the nest and made sure there aren’t going to be any more of these things.”
“This one must’ve been coming down the stairs for a reason. I don’t think he was intentionally following us, otherwise why attack now instead of waiting for a better opportunity? We were just in the way. His home must be down farther in the redoubt,” Krysty pointed out.
“Okay, we find this home. And then…?” Jorge asked, a sheen of perspiration plainly visible on his neatly trimmed mustache.
“And then, once J.B.’s dismantled any of the remaining safety sec systems in this redoubt so we don’t get foamed or blasted by fire-retardant gas, we blast this entire redoubt…with whatever sick kind of genetics lab they have precisely at ground zero.”
“Senor Cawdor, what I said earlier back in the camp? I take it back. I am beginning to like the way your mind works,” Jorge beamed.
“NoiSE,” Jak said, tapping Ryan on the shoulder. “Hear it?”
Ryan held his breath and listened hard, but heard nothing more than the heartbeat in his inner ears. He looked down at his friend and shook his head. His hearing was good, but Jak’s was even better.
“I don’t hear anything,” Dean said.
“Well, I do,” Krysty replied, confirming the albino’s detections. Like Jak, the woman possessed uncanny abilities of sight and sound, and drew upon them now. “Can’t identify what the sound is, though.”
Jak didn’t say anything else, choosing instead to kneel on the metal floor of the redoubt, placing his hands flat on the ground, turning his head sideways, his fine white hair extending outward from the crown of his skull as he leaned his ear against the cool alloy for a closer listen.
There were no other sounds but the rhythmic in and out of their own individual breathing patterns. Far off, around a corner, Ryan could just catch the mechanical whir of the redoubt’s vent system as it cycled air through the complex. Jak stayed in place, prone on the ground and listening hard, his eyes shut. All eyes were on him, as he strained to listen.
“What is it?” Ryan finally asked in a whisper.
Jak opened an eye and peered up at Ryan. “Vibrations,” the albino said. “Hard tell. Floor solid, metal on rock.”
“You don’t really hear them, you just feel them,” J.B. added, shifting the M-4000 scattergun from the crook of his left arm to his right.
“Uh-huh,” Jak agreed, standing.
“Must be something big, or lots of somethings big to cause enough of a vibration to be felt on flooring as solid as this,” Jorge said.