James Axler Deathlands 038 Mars Arena

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the rope less than two inches from the vinyl air pocket forming the side.
There was no time to brace himself against the sudden lunge the raft took. He
felt Krysty's hands at his back, taking hold of his belt and adding her weight
to his.
"Hold on, lover," she called.
The river took them, shoving them at the bottleneck at an unbelievable rate of
speed.
They missed the bottleneck opening by several feet and slammed into the wall.
The raft
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crashing the left side and a large portion of the bottom against the immovable
rock.
Ryan grabbed one of the tie-downs and threw an arm across Krysty's shoulders,
pulling her close to him. There was nothing else any of them could do. The
river had them at its mercy, and it was a toss-up as to whether the raft would
remain on top of the water or plummet into its black depths.
Chapter Twenty
Twisting suddenly, the raft came around, shifting ends and plunging down the
dark throat of the tunnel. The light of the flare vanished behind them, though
the brushwooders' bullets hammered into the sides of the tunnel for a few
seconds more.
Ryan kept his arm tight around Krysty and took a quick head count before all
light left them. Everyone had made it.
The dark water sucked away all vestiges of light from the flare and left them
in darkness.
Ryan hung on fiercely, riding out the fight the river was giving them so
effortlessly.
Though he tried not to consider it, he knew that it would only take one sharp
rock to rip out the side of the raft.
Abruptly a light flared into life at the front of the raft, splashing against
the cavern roof not more than two feet above their heads. In the forward end
of the raft, Jak swung the flashlight he'd freed from his gear downriver.
Ryan shifted a little, rising but not getting too close to the low ceiling of
rock. They were traveling fast; the way the water-worn limestone passed them
above and on both sides told him that. The stone looked green in the yellow
light of the flash, tracked in horizontal layers that showed years of
formation. The rough edges announced the damage that had been done by the
monster quakes and passage of water over the decades since skydark. It was
possible that some of the cavern had been in existence even before the world
had ended.
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The raft continued to bob and jump, following the irregular path of the
tunnel. Jak held the flashlight, shifting it to illuminate the way.
"How far before we slow down?" Ryan yelled to Hoyle.
"Don't know. I never got on the water when it was like this." Hoyle's gaze
remained transfixed on the dark water before them.
The tunnel took another twist, almost falling back on itself and causing the
raft to ride high enough up on the side to slam into the low ceiling. When Jak
got the flashlight turned in the new direction, there was barely enough time
for any of them to register the sudden drop-off facing them before they were
shooting through it.
Ryan's stomach twisted in protest at the sudden feeling of weightlessness,
then tried to pull through itself when the raft slammed back into the water.
"By the Three Kennedys," Doc exploded, "I should not like to be forced to
endure that inauspicious travail again!"
Ryan silently agreed, but he could tell by the lurch of the raft that they
were already picking up speed. He watched as Jak brought the light around. The
raft swung sideways slowly in current, pulled faster still by the river. For a
moment it looked as if the river channel was widening and deepening.
Then the blank wall rose before them without warning. The water smashed up
against it, cresting six or seven feet to the broken stalactites above it.
Bats fluttered in the beam of
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Jak's flashlight, bits and pieces of shadows startled from their resting
places.
"Oh, shit!" Mildred exclaimed.
Then there was no more time. Ryan buried himself in the raft, drawing Krysty
down with him. The water wasn't filling the chamber, it was being drawn away
completely underground. But he had no way of knowing how far it went. He had
one brief hope that the raft might somehow manage to stay afloat on the river
without being drawn into the undertow. If it did, there was a possibility they
could wait out the time it took to drain most of the floodwaters from the
river.
The raft smashed into the wall hard enough to jar Ryan's teeth and his eyeball
in its socket. He felt the pitch and yaw of the raft beneath him, then it
overturned and started [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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