Some vines contained the acidic poison that had eaten through the Centurion. One agent got sprayed by the acid, another got tangled in the vines and the damn things had started dragging him away before they’d freed him.
Nik swiped his arm across his forehead. The humidity was horrible. At this rate, they’d reach the caves in days, not minutes. Avril was looking frazzled and frustrated.
Suddenly, he realized that Nera, who’d been beside him a minute ago, was missing.
He stopped swinging his machete and glanced around. “Nera?”
“Up here.”
He looked up and spotted her standing on a high branch of a nearby tree. “What’re you doing?”
“Trying to find a better way to reach these caves.”
“Aren’t the trees covered in that oily, radioactive substance?”
“Not these trees, no.” She waved a hand around. “I think some sort of tree-dwelling animals live up here in the canopy. They travel along the branches.”
He frowned. “I don’t think we can all swing on the vines like monkeys.”
“No, but it looks like the animals have trained the branches. Up here, there’s a clear path of horizontal branches reaching between trees.”
“What’s going on?” Avril asked, looking up. “Darc, I see you aren’t getting hot and sweaty swinging a machete.”
Nera leaned against the tree trunk. “Nor are you.”
Nik bit back a grin. “Nera thinks we can travel along the branches in the canopy. It’d be faster. We could avoid the undergrowth.”
Avril looked skeptical. “I don’t know…”
Galen strode over, his face covered in a sheen of perspiration. “This isn’t working.”
The astro-archeologist rubbed her forehead. “Darc thinks we can travel through the canopy. Along the branches.”
Galen looked up. “I’ll give anything a shot right now. I have two injured agents, and we haven’t gone ten meters.”
“Fine.” Avril looked up at Darc. “How did you get up there?”
“I climbed,” came the dry response.
Nik slid his machete into the sheath on his belt. Then he eyed the handholds Nera had cut into the trunk. He set his boot in one and gripped another. Slowly, he started his way up.
Soon, he reached her, and pulled himself onto a branch twice as thick as he was. There was a flutter of wings, and he spotted a brief flash of color through the black foliage. “Pretty incredible.” He walked along the thick branch to Nera. “These do look like they get a lot of use.” A wear pattern was worn into the wood.
“I didn’t mention it to the others, but whatever lives and travels up here…it’s big and possibly nasty.”
Nik sighed. “Of course it is. How do you know?”
She motioned him around the massive trunk. He carefully stepped onto another branch and looked where she pointed. Slash marks were carved into the tree trunk. They had to have come from very large, very sharp claws.
They were fresh.
“Well, let’s hope they don’t like the sound of Avril’s voice.”
Nera snorted. “Whatever it is, it can’t be much worse than acidic plant-life and zombies.”
“Right.” But even he heard the doubt in his voice. “Don’t jinx us.”
Soon the team were all standing on the branches, finding their balance.
