“Come on,” Onyx ordered. “They’re more afraid of you than you are of them.”
“Fuck that,” Tony said. “I ain’t—”
“Quiet,” Amethyst muttered. “Listen.”
In the darkness, a tree crashed to the ground some-where nearby.
CLICK-CLICK! CLICK-CLICK! CLICK-CLICK! CLICK-CLICK!
“Come on,” Onyx urged again. “They’re catching up to us.”
The group stood at the edge of a small clearing, their weapons at the ready. Clark scanned the area and saw what had startled Tony. A long black snake was retreating into a knothole in a tree.
“It’s just a rat snake,” Ruby said. “It’s perfectly harmless. Naranu does not have venomous snakes, or any large constrictors.”
“No, but they have that.” Clark motioned toward a stand of trees ahead of them. Tony, and the agents directed their gaze toward the clearing. The male agents said nothing, but Clark heard Ruby draw in a breath.
“Holy fucking shit, look at that thing!” Tony’s voice was a mix of awe and fear.
Sitting in a web that spanned the length of the trees— about eighteen feet—was a spider the size of a small dog. If Tony hadn’t seen the snake and suddenly stopped, they would have run right into its web.
“Spiders aren’t supposed to get that big,” Clark said.
“You mean, spiders shouldn’t be that big,” Tony said.
“That too.”
“We’re getting closer,” Ruby said. “This particular specimen, genus Nephila, only grows to the size of a dinner plate. This one has mutated due to its close proximity to R’lyeh.”
Tony blinked. “The fuck did you just say?”
“What’s Rala whatever?” Clark asked.
Ruby sidestepped the question. “The closer we get to Mount Rigiri—ancient R’lyeh—the stronger the power of the portal is. Think of it this way—the portal between dimensions is powered by an enormous energy source. We call that source the Labyrinth.”
Tony frowned. “You mean that movie with David Bowie?”
Ruby ignored him. “This portal is damaged. Some of that energy has been leaking out. It is a corrupting power. It distorts things, makes electrical impulses go haywire, affects molecular structures and growth rates. It has no doubt also affected the native wildlife.”
“Is it radioactive or something?” Clark asked.
“Not at all. This is a different kind of energy.”
“Then why didn’t the snake mutate, too?”
Ruby shrugged. “Perhaps it was originally from a different part of the island. Maybe it’s fleeing the Clickers.”
“I hope we don’t run across any giant worms while we’re in here,” Tony said.
“Regardless of how this thing got so big, bullets should still take it down.” Clark raised his M16 and took aim. Tony did the same. Clark met his gaze and nodded. “On three.”
“One, two, three!” Twin blasts of automatic gunfire took the giant spider down in a spray of goo that splattered everywhere. Clark caught a brief glimpse of giant, long spider legs fly apart and disappear in the spray of gunk. The giant web was torn to pieces, leaving ragged strips behind. A recent meal thumped against the trunk of a tree, wrapped in thick silk. It looked like it might have been the remains of a small primate. Tony was right. Spiders shouldn’t get that big.
They forged ahead, Onyx and Ruby taking the lead once more, cautiously stepping past the area where the mutant spider had built its web.
“I hope that fucking thing didn’t have any friends,” Tony quipped.
“Not likely,” Ruby said.
“But,” Amethyst said, “now the two of you have let everything else in the jungle know our position.”
“Don’t thank us,” Clark muttered, growing tired of the man’s attitude. “What would you have suggested instead?”
“We had other ways of dealing with it. Ways that wouldn’t have caused as much…commotion.”
Clark thought back to Diamond’s earlier confrontation with the small Dark One, and decided that maybe Amethyst was right.
“Sorry.”
Amethyst waved his hand. “Don’t apologize. Just keep going.”
Once past the clearing they hit their steady pace again, moving stealthily and quickly through the jungle. Clark kept his eyes peeled for anything else that might trip them up—giant spiders, millipedes, rats, snakes, anything that crawled or slithered along jungle floors. A mosquito the size of a carrier pigeon zoomed past them. Tony swiveled around, yelled “What the fuck!” and vaporized it with a single shot.