Moving quickly, to get farther away from Morton, she rescued the briefcase from the floor and headed away from the sound of his approaching voice. Feeling like some exotic bioluminescent lifeform, evolved to exist far below the Earth's surface or at the bottom of the sea, she turned her silver light upon the escape route ahead of her.
Two separate pathways-one wide, one narrow-diverged before her. Iiz hesitated, uncertain which natural aperture to take. Morton might have trouble squeezing his bulk through the skinny crevice, but what if that aisle kept on thinning until it ceased to exist? She shuddered at the thought of getting wedged into a dead end, unable to turn around and go back the way she came without running straight into Morton; all the killer would have to do is wait right where she was standing now for thirst or starvation to drive her back into his clutches. Okay, she decided, the wide door it is.
"There you are!" Before she could even act on her choice, Morton suddenly rounded a curve, less than twenty yards behind her, his flashlight beam sweeping across both Liz and the juncture ahead. Liz looked back in surprise, squinting into the glare of the flash, and spotted Mortons intimidating bulk charging toward her, only seconds away. "Give me that case!" he yelled. "Give it back, you alien freak!"Changing her plan at the last minute, Liz raced through the narrower opening. Swinging behind her at the end of her arm, the briefcase caught in the doorway, holding her back, and she had to stop and turn the case sideways before making it completely through the gate. The delay cost her precious seconds, so that Morton was almost upon her by the time she got the briefcase loose. His body slammed into the limestone walls of the skinny archway, but, just as Liz had prayed, he was too large to pass through the gap in his entirety. An arm and one shoulder squeezed into the shallow corridor, groping wildly for the escaping teenager. "Come back here! Come back or I'll shoot!"He drew back from the slender opening, aiming both his flashlight and his gun at the murky passage into which Liz had fled. Hearing his threats, and knowing from experience that Morton had no qualms about gunning down those who crossed him, Liz quickened her pace, looking frantically for a turn in the corridor. Straight lines were her enemy right now; only a more crooked path would keep her out of Morton's line of fire.
No! Not again! she thought, unable to hold back painful recollections of the first and only time a bullet tore through her body. The jarring impact, the searing agony, rose like restless phantoms from the memories lodged in her flesh and bones. The handprint upon her stomach, where the mortal wound should have been, flared all the brighter for her terror. Please, no! Not again! At the last minute, the confining wall fell away to her left, and Liz ducked into the much-needed detour, only an instant before the blast of a gunshot disturbed the sepulchral quiet of the caverns. Jagged chips and flakes exploded from the end of the improvised shooting gallery she had just abandoned, followed by the dancing beam of Morton's flashlight as he feverishly sought to see if Liz had been hit or not. A volcanic curse erupted from the enraged killer when he discovered that no humanoid body, alive or otherwise, lay in the path of the searching beam.
(Liz had to wonder just how Morton had expected to retrieve his precious attache case from the far end of the skinny corridor, in the event that his angry shot had killed her instantly. Then she realized that the bad-tempered gunman was beyond reason at this point; as his behavior at the Crashdown had proven years ago, he was more than capable of shooting first and dealing with the consequences later.) "Where the hell are you?" he roared in frustration. His hate-crazed voice echoed through the winding catacombs. "Don't think you're getting away from me for good, space girl. I'm not leaving this godforsaken hellhole until I've got that briefcase-and your alien hide!"The side-tunnel she had so luckily discovered was no wider than the narrow passage she had just escaped, and it continued to constrict inch by inch, until Liz had to turn sideways just to squeeze her way forward. Increasingly afraid that she had trapped herself with no way out, except past Morton, she was forced to slide with excruciating slowness between the unyielding cavern walls, which, she recalled from her science courses, consisted mostly of the petrified remains of prehistoric mollusks and coral. Would her lifeless bones, she wondered, also become part of this vast prehistoric mortuary, buried for eons away from the light of day? She felt horribly sorry for her parents, who might never find out what had befallen her. Would Max or Maria explain to them about Morton and his deadly schemes, or would that risk exposing Max's and the others' alien roots? She hoped that, somehow, her mom and dad could receive some sort of comfort or closure. Surely, Max would make sure of that, in her memory.
Max. She couldn't believe she might never see him again. There was so much that she still wanted to share with him, so much of their future yet to be written. At least Romeo and Juliet died together, she thought mournfully, not separated by hundreds ofjeet of solid rock.
It occurred to her that, in a sense, she had been living on borrowed time ever since that fateful shooting at the Crash-down. Perhaps death, once again in the form of Joe Morton and his ready pistol, had finally caught up with her.
Claustrophobia added to other fears plaguing her mind, but just when she was half-convinced that the dwindling corridor was destined to become her eternal tomb, the aisle opened up and, expelling an enormous sigh of relief, she stepped into what appeared to be a spacious underground grotto, perhaps the size of a high school classroom. Gnarled stalagmites sprouted from the stony floor while towering columns reared up toward a ceiling whose full altitude and dimensions were hidden by the all-encompassing blackness shrouding the roomy vault.
Liz listened anxiously for the sound of Morton's heavy footsteps, not at all certain how many separate routes or entrances might lead to this particular grotto. She didn't hear anyone approaching, but something else caught her ear: an unusual rustling coming from high above her, accompanied by occasional high- pitched squeaking and chittering.
Bats, she realized with a shiver. The grotto sounded as though it were home to a great many bats, all roosting overhead. The air smelled like a zoo, she swiftly noted, while the floor of the chamber was slick with accumulated bat guano, causing Liz to wrinkle her nose in disgust. Glancing at the lighted face of her watch, she saw that sunset was still three or four hours away; the bats would not be flying forth in search of their evening meal for quite some time.
Liz emitted a frustrated sigh. In theory, the bats' nightly departure might have pointed her toward a way out of the confusing maze of caverns. Was it possible she could stay put here until dusk, she speculated, or would Morton catch up with her before then? Tired of carrying the awkward briefcase around with her everywhere, and remembering how it had almost slowed her down fatally back at the juncture between the two corridors, she looked around for something she could use to break open the lock. A slender stalagmite, about the size of a model rocket, attracted her eye, and she grabbed onto the tip of the tapering calcite formation with both hands, trying to break off the top. Might make a decent weapon, too, she thought, admiring its jagged point.
As before, actually doing something, taking positive action, helped to keep her post-traumatic fears at bay. Her desperate struggle to survive was proving excellent therapy, if nothing else. Go figure, she mused, wondering what Alex would make of that.