"Hey, can you hear me?" Helen tapped her earpiece, still clutching a knife.
Will continued to limp toward her, his eyes darting at the sporadic movement around the room. She was beckoning him forward, trying to reassure him with her gun while wiping the area with it every few seconds. Neither of them had seen anything but sand – and you couldn't shoot at sand.
"Juuust," came Bigfoot's reply in her ear, amongst a shower of static.
"Get out of there and meet us at the campsite. Leave the rope."
Will's eyes went wide as he listened.
"Are you iin trouble?"
Helen kept her gun high. "Just go!" she yelled, satisfied when the radio clicked off. "He can't help us anyway," said Helen to Will. "Ashley, I want to know if you can see anything from up there."
Ashley, barely awake, lifted her head up and looked down on the scene. Her mother was in the centre of the room with Will cautiously making his way toward her. He was about to start his descent down the steps when Ashley croaked, "Wait – they're all around you."
Will stopped, his foot hovering above the sand. Helen's eyes moved more gradually this time, lingering on every turn of stone.
"I know what you are," she whispered to the room in a silken voice not dissimilar to someone she had once known. Helen was certain that the walls could hear her. "Have you ever used one of these?" She reached behind her and withdrew a charcoal hand gun with an inscription scratched over the butt. Will thought it looked an awful lot like the one usually found resting on the hip of a certain Detective.
"Present from a friend," she explained, holding it up for him to see. "Safety is on," she twisted it around. "As soon as you've got it, I want you to slip this clip and aim it at the wall behind me. Whatever you do, don't shoot me."
"I-" Will didn't get a chance to finish the thought. Helen threw the gun towards him in a steady, underarm action. It cleared the first ten feet between them. Will extended his hands toward it in expectation, cowering as the weapon spun in the air barrel first.
A line of sand ripped up from the ground between them, plucking the gun from midair as if it had hit an invisible wall. It fell to the floor with a shower of sand and a new set of footprints. Will's outstretched hands clutched the air dumbly as he stared down at the fallen weapon.
His hairline broke into sweat. "I really don't like what's going down here."
"Don't panic," Helen replied, "just walk towards the gun very quietly and pick it up."
"You said you knew what these things were," said Will, clambering down off the first step. It was a difficult thing to do carefully as his limp and the stone's uncertain edges hindered his movement.
"Chameleons," she replied, unable to pick any out yet. Helen knew that there were at least three in the room; one behind her, one to Will's right and another skirting around the ceiling.
"The best I've seen," added Ashley, trying to keep her eyes focused. If she could be of help, she would. "At least fifty of them though they were a tad difficult to count properly."
"Not a time for jokes, Ashley."
"I'm not," she coughed, her throat dry and sore. "They've got a community – if you could call it that. Pack, yeah – a pack of them."
Helen's heart revved up a beat, not only was the sand moving but the walls as well. Pillars, stairs, ceiling – every surface was shivering, refusing to settle.
"Pick a spot and stare at it," instructed Helen, as Will reached the gun and saved it from the ground.
He flicked the safety off with trembling fingers and pointed the gun at the wall behind Helen.
"I don't want to alarm you," she began, her voice miraculously steady, "but you've got to wait for a clean shot."
Will wasn't confident that he could get off any kind of shot at all. He'd never been a gun man – he was a flashlight man, a book man – a penknife man even, but not guns. They were too heavy and unpredictable and added to that, he hated the thought of what might happen if he scared and squeezed the trigger or even worse, if he did nothing at all.
Picking a spot on the wall behind her, he asked, "Why?"
"Under these circumstances – small enclosed space with stone walls, bullets bounce."
Ashley nodded in agreement though no-one could see it. Her shoulder pained again and she remembered seeing the sparks of her bullet ricocheting off the pillar and coming back for more. Flashes of limbs, dust and an air you couldn't breathe, it was surreal to see the room so quiet when she knew the same creatures were there, waiting for their chance.
"You got anything left up there?"
"I've got a clip," Ashley replied, though she doubted that she could reach into her waistband to retrieve it.
Helen did the math. "This is going to be tight."
*~*~*
Emerging from the wooden ladder stronger than its looks, Bigfoot's hair-laden hands gripped the stone opening and hauled himself out into the sun. A dry wind kicked over his fur, lacing it with sand.
"Good for the lice," he grinned, as best his face would allow. He'd waited years to use that line and he was damned if he was going to let a lack of audience stop him. Foss didn't count, he was just practice. Bigfoot ran all his best lines through him before using them in public.
Rolling onto his knees, he pulled the equipment up after him and set to work unpacking the satellite communication. He strapped the remainder of the equipment onto his back and held the transceiver aloft for signal which would be undoubtedly better up here above the ground.
A rich carpet of red stretched out in front of him. The dirt of this dust bowl was mixed with iron oxide – literally rust. At the edges of the impressive red sweep was a stark range of mountains, clawing up into the sky with water-stained sandstone which had turned a sinister black. The rendezvous point was at the base of the spire-peak. In the shadow of the cliffs, Bigfoot could see a few fires burning.
"Foss, are you there?"
He walked for a few minutes, re-adjusting his luggage until he settled into a comfortable pace. Something was in the process of going wrong in the tomb, he could feel it. Danger worked its way down his spine in a shiver; a prickle of hair lifting to attention at the slightest whiff of trouble. The big man knew that he was of no use to them on his own. The shafts were too small for him to fit through. If he could bring the camp site back with him fast enough, maybe that would help.
"Arrre you even listening to me? There's trouble about. I'll send you through what we aave as soon as I get to the camp. You better be online by then."
Thousands of miles away, John Druitt set the radio back on the desk. Henry rubbed his fists over his brow, trying to press the correct decision into his head.
*~*~*
This time, Helen caught an outline seething into focus half way up the wall. A torso was twisting as its chest exhaled. The creature's camouflage re-adjusted with the slightest delay giving her a tangible outline with which to track her weapons on.
It knew that she could see it. What bothered Helen most was that it didn't seem to mind.
She followed its motion as it slipped along the wall only pausing when a pair of eyes widened in terror. Her gun had ended up aimed at Will's nose with the creature dead behind.
Will was sure that he could see the bullet, nuzzled inside the barrel ready for its turn in the air. His body shifted to pause – no air, no thought, no movement.
"Helen..." he whispered, not sure of her intention.
"Do you trust me?" she steadied her arm and tilted her stance so that her shoulders and feet were square to him.
Will wanted to swallow but couldn't find the courage. "I hardly know you."
"Probably a good thing," she curled her fingers around the trigger.
This is going to be bad, thought Will, in what was potentially his last thought.
Helen held her line of sight with sheer audacity. She would not miss. Helen Magnus didn't know how to miss.
"Duck!"