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Page 26.

The cave door closed and the rippers were shut out.

The caverns resumed their timeless quiet. Water dripped into birthing tanks. It was too dark to see in which tanks another Maryan or other woman might be growing, and in which some monstrosity, and yet which other tanks were past the point of ever giving birth again.

Maryan grew very sick, and Alex nursed her hour after hour, bathing her in the healing water, cradling her in his arms which she breathed in labored gasps and her body was racked with fever. He kissed her cheek, touched her face and her arms with his hands, tried to keep his tears from spilling over her. He should be grateful to have had her for a few days, he thought. At least he had for the first and only time in his life felt the nearness of another human being. Slowly, she improved, and they lived in the eerie tranquility of faint green light. They ate wall mushrooms and sat talking together. They embraced each other and explored what it meant to love another person, both in the body and in the soul. They reminisced about the ice cream truck and other memories of growing up in Beacham University. Each had some extra memories to contribute that the other had lost, and so Alex learned that Alex Kirk had been a Special Forces commando during one of the Middle Eastern wars.

As he remembered the healing atmosphere and healing waters of his own cave, the brilliance of this place fill him with a solar clarity. He understood: Eons ago, there had been the university, and this cloning center. For some reason, humankind had vanished. The earth had shifted, tearing the male and female wings apart a quarter mile. The river had pushed through, clearing out a valley. The cloning facility was so powerfully intoxicated with the life principle that it had evolved, become an organic thing. After all, here was a breeding ground of human stem cells, a loom that wove constant tapestries of DNA.

Time passed, and he slumbered by her side as she lay in her birthing tank. At some point, he awoke, filled with a sense of urgency. He looked down into the tank, where she floated like a shimmering mosaic image at the bottom.

The very next moment, she sat up in a fan of flying water and gasped for air. She gripped the sides of the tank with her fists and looked straightaway with wild, wide eyes.

He thought his heart skipped a beat, and he took a step backward.

“Ah!” she cried, and started breathing in loud gasps. Water, blood, and mucus flew from her nostrils. Her breathing gurgled as if through a tube.

She grasped her neck and writhed in the tank splashing water everywhere. She was choking on something.

He grasped her from behind, linked his fists, and pulled them sharply upward into her solar plexus.

She started coughing violently, crawling about, but whatever she’d been choking on was loose and gone now.

At last she rose, calming down, exhausted from her ordeal.

The mass of tissue on her belly was smaller and pinker. The bite marks were gone—the necrotic tissue had dissolved. She was healing! And the tank had kept her alive through the deepest coma, when he’d thought she was dead.

They whooped and laughed and held each other, for quite a while. And they spoke. Did they ever speak! they chattered like two kids.

They had become so accustomed to their unchanging existence that they nearly did not notice the creaking sound that signaled that the door was about to open.

Alex gathered his weapons and had Maryan hide as far back in the caves as possible, right in the piled soil he’d slid down from on his entry.

He strode through the galleries to meet his fate.

He even bent to take a few good drinks of the healing water of life.

Then he strode to the entrance. He felt the roaring before he heard it, a deep exploratory growl. He armed himself and made his way forward into the daylight that now bathed the forward chamber.

As he entered the first gallery, fitted his best arrow to the bowstring. The door had partially opened, just two or three feet—a twitch, perhaps? No reason—nothing about to issue forth.

And there stood two of the devils, breathing hard. He could see steam coming from their mouths. Their mouths hung open in what looked like a fiendish smile. Their eyes interlocked, and they could read each other’s minds.

He drew back with all his strength and let fly, right into the torso of the closer.

Without waiting, he reached for the next arrow, chambered it, pulled apart with all his might, and let fly.

In seconds, both rippers were thrashing on the ground, making their wounds infinitely worse. Their screams and snarls were so deafening that he reeled back holding his ears.

He should have had another arrow ready, for one of them rose in a flash, turned toward him, and leaped.

He saw it coming at him, and barely managed to move out of the way.

But it fell short, with a loud thump, and lay dying at his feet.

He put an arrow through its neck.

Then he stepped over it and put another arrow through the other one’s neck.

He drew his knife and attacked the sinew of the door.

He thought he heard a thin, distant scream come from the living cave as he tore out its fingernail, one might say. He carved and carved until blood ran down the walls and the door slowly rumbled shut with a helpless bounce. He found heavy rocks and piled them against the edge so that the door could not slid open again. Then, using another large rocks, he smashed the skulls of the two animals he had just killed.

He would wear their pelts as a sign of triumph.

But first—the most important matter of all. He must bring Maryan to her new home so that they could make a life together.