MAX did the only thing he could do, which was let go of the chain.
The creature did the only thing it could do, which was to grab whatever it could with its talons.
Which, unfortunately, happened to be Max’s hair.
Max felt himself rise, in ridiculous pain. He let out a scream that seemed to come up from below his toenails. He couldn’t imagine anything worse than this.
Until the flying beast let go. Or maybe it was the hair that let go from his head. At any rate, the pain had ended, but he was plummeting. His mouth dropped open to scream again. His arms and legs pumped, as if that would do anything. For a moment he thought about his mom.
His legs hit the surface below. But instead of being squashed, he broke through. He felt his body jerk backward as he kept plunging. Air rushed from his lungs as if they’d been squeezed by a fist. He couldn’t inhale, and he couldn’t see. He was tumbling slowly, gritting his teeth against the pain.
It felt like he’d landed in water. Or maybe some kind of warm underground pudding.
Instincts kicked in, and he thrust his arms downward into the liquid. He opened his eyes into a thick green murk. He could see light coming from above but couldn’t gauge if it was inches or miles away.
Thrust . . . thrust . . .
His lungs began aching and he felt light-headed. He wished he had paid more attention in swim class, instead of running around the pool stepping on only blue tiles.
“Gyyyaaahh!”
His head broke through the surface. Air slammed into his mouth. As his chest heaved, his gulps sounded like the barking of a sea lion. He flailed his arms to stay afloat. This stuff didn’t taste much like water, but more like a cocktail of obnoxious flavors—rusted metal, rotten eggs, dead fish, salt. He spat out as much as he could, but the taste lingered. His eyes scanned the thick atmosphere, but the flying creature was gone. All he could hear now were distant screams.
“Maaaaax!”
That one, he knew, was Alex.
“I’m OK!” he yelled back. Now he could see the chain swinging above him. The last link was about ten feet above the surface. “Come down, the water’s warm! But bring a weapon! There’s a pterodactyl!”
Not too far away, Max spotted what looked like a coast, so he swam toward it. It took about five strokes before it dawned on him that he shouldn’t be able to do this, because he wasn’t a good swimmer.
He panicked for a moment. But even that panic did not sink him. He was floating without having to do much. That meant the water was buoyant. Like the Great Salt Lake. People could float easily in the Great Salt Lake because of the salt. They could float in oceans easier than lakes. These were facts. So he stopped being afraid and made his way toward the coast. After a few minutes he felt his boots touch the bottom and began to walk. He was nearly out of the water when he heard a loud splash behind him.
Alex’s head was emerging from below. And Kristin was jumping in after her. “Over here!” Max shouted, waving.
The two swam toward him. Or rather, Kristin swam with her arm around Alex, who was trying as hard as she could. “Are you hurt?” Kristin called out.
“No,” Max replied, “I let go of the chain before the pterodactyl’s beak cut me in half.”
Now the two were on their feet, slogging toward him slowly. “That’s weird,” Alex said. “Everything sounds muffled down here. I thought you said pterodactyl.”
“It might have been a rhamphorhynchus,” Max said. “I didn’t get a chance to examine it that closely. Although it did pull a clump of my hair out.”
Alex headed toward him with a weak smile and open arms. “Your hair looks bad, but I’m just glad you’re alive, cousin!”
“No hugging.” Max ran away, his boots crunching on a surface that looked like sand but felt like a sea of broken glass. He stopped, scooping a handful of bright-green flakes. “Whoa, what is this stuff?”
Kristin was craning her neck, gazing around as if trying to memorize every detail. “Shushed crells, I believe. Erm, crushed shells. Perhaps stained by a high concentration of algae . . .” She let out a deep exhalation. “I’m sorry. Everything is distracting me. This is the strangest ecosystem I’ve ever seen.”
The massive soupy fog was rising up from the water now, billowing on a breeze and separating into clouds like green balloons. In an instant, a luminous neon-green lake began bursting into sight as if a curtain was rising over it from front to back. The water stretched to a horizon Max couldn’t see, its surface smooth and unbroken.
“This thing is as big as Lake Michigan,” Alex said under her breath. “And . . . that light! It’s like someone snuck a green moon down here and hid it behind the clouds.”
“We are a kilometer under the Earth,” Kristin said. “It should be pitch-black. The bioluminescence should be a smattering of pinpricks from plankton and moss. This volume and brightness—it’s the stuff of fiction! It’s not like a moon. It’s like someone collected the material of all the world’s fireflies, magnified the light to a power of a thousand, and exploded it across this sky. No wonder Verne never tried to convince anyone this was nonfiction. Who would believe him?”
“Somehow that makes me want to cry,” Max said.
Kristin nodded. “What do you think is the likelihood that Niemand and his daughter made it this far alive?”
“Not very,” Alex said. “After that phone, we haven’t seen any sign. I’m not even thinking about them at this point, guys. I’m thinking about us. And getting home. We are in survival mode.” She began walking along the shore, squinting into the distance. “We have to be careful. We know there’s wildlife down here. I thought I saw something in the water just as we dropped from that chain, Kristin. I think that’s it—that thing down the shore.”
Max glanced in that direction. The lifted fog had revealed a big dark lump swimming toward the shore.
No. Not swimming. Floating. Bobbling like some lifeless piece of driftwood. “Looks dead to me,” Max said.
But Alex was headed toward it. She was trying to run, but her ankles were buckling beneath her. “Wait up!” Max shouted.
He and Kristin ran after her and caught up quickly. “That’s not your normal way of running,” Max said.
“No kidding,” Alex growled. “I think I have Snuffle sickness.”
“Is that a real thing?” Max asked.
“No, but that is.”
The floating carcass had washed up onto the shore. It did not have a torpedo-shaped head or red skin or a body covered with matted hair.
It was wearing clothes, and it looked human.
Max and Kristin picked up the pace and reached the body first. It was facedown in the green flaky sand, half immersed in the lake. Up close, Max could see it was a man, and he wore a soggy shirt and khaki pants.
As Max knelt before him, Kristin ran around the other side.
Alex staggered up to them at the moment they carefully turned over the body of Brandon Barker.