Several loud cracks sounded from outside the hut.
‘... Is that gunshots I hear?’ Henderson asked.
Kruger was on his feet, phone still at his ear while he peered through the hut’s windows. ‘I’ll have to call you back.’
He hung up and stared hard out the window. He couldn’t see much, but could hear gunfire and saw flashes in the distance. ‘What the hell’s going on?’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ Loudon said, joining him at the window. Several local workers were fleeing into the camp, shouting and screaming.
‘What are they saying?’ Kruger asked.
Loudon’s face had stiffened. ‘Wawanar.’
Kruger glared at him, half remembering the word. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Dragons,’ Loudon said.
Kruger dashed to his gun cabinet, pulling out his two remaining pump-action shotguns, tossing one Loudon and shoving several handfuls of shells into his pocket.
‘Follow me.’
They strutted out of the hut into pandemonium. Local workers were milling around in various directions, some bolting straight out of camp into the surrounding forest, others cowering under the machinery. Kruger strained his eyes and stared into the distance. He saw the excavators and dumper trucks, the mounds of loose dirt packed up ready for sluicing, and then ... the ant-like figures of men, gunfire flashing, and some vague grey shapes moving amongst them. Large grey shapes.
Kruger raced to his open-top Land Rover, the one he used to make his hourly inspections at the pit. Turning it over, he crunched it into gear. Seconds later, he and Loudon were bouncing along on the churned up makeshift tracks of the pit, racing towards the carnage.
The creatures were big. He saw two of them close by. One was on its hind legs, some poor soul in its mouth as two local men fired at it with their rifles before racing away, discarding the guns and fleeing to the tree line. The creature bounded after them but its legs failed and it slumped on the dirt, either dead or dying from gunshot wounds.
Another was chasing two locals. One of the men tripped. The beast grabbed hold of him in his jaws, shaking him like a ragdoll. The other sprinted past Kruger in his jeep, screaming, wailing.
Kruger halted before the lizard and got out. He fired at it. The creature baulked on the first shot, rising backwards and hissing. Two more shots and it was down, slumped on top of the dead man it had just mauled.
‘There’s two more!’ Loudon shouted, finger pointing to an excavator in the distance.
‘What are they doing?’ Kruger asked. The creatures seemed to be trying to burrow under the machine, their tails swinging wildly as they nuzzled beneath the seven-ton excavator. It surprised him to see the caterpillar tracks on one side rising up. ‘Christ, they are strong.’
‘I think somebody is trapped underneath,’ Loudon said, his hand over his eyes.
‘Come with me.’ Kruger jumped back into the Land Rover, Loudon following and they bounced up the trail, stopping a good distance from the two voracious animals trying to get beneath the excavator.
Kruger reloaded his shotgun, manually, inserting each shell into the tube and ensuring it contained its maximum. It was a Remington 870 so contained seven rounds in the magazine tube and one in the chamber. He got out and fired four straight into the flank of the nearest lizard. It span round enraged, vicious teeth bared. Two more blasts in the head killed it.
As it slumped to the ground, Kruger reloaded and spotted somebody crawling from beneath the excavator.
Suzanna Howard.
As the other beast sidled around the excavator, hissing and flashing out its tongue, Loudon ran up and half-dragged Suzanna away toward the Land Rover as Kruger stood defiantly in front of the animal.
‘You want some of me, do you?’ he said, pumping the shotgun one-handed. He levelled it, spat, said, ‘Come and get it.’
The beast charged.
Suzanna was barely conscious when Loudon loaded her into the back of the Land Rover, so what happened next occurred like a dream, all hazy, vague, but no less terrifying for it.
Kruger stood like some cowboy in an action film, shotgun at his hip, legs astride, blasting away at the giant Megalania, each shot ejecting spurts of blood from the animal’s hide, but it took seven shells to down the marauding animal.
And it wasn’t alone.
In the undergrowth beside the excavator lurked one of the juveniles. While only half the size of its parent, it was quick, pouncing from the bush like big cat.
Kruger spotted it in is peripheral vision and fired once. The Megalania twitched in the air, but the shot merely grazed it. When it landed, hissing and flicking out its snake-like tongue, Kruger tried to reload, clumsily thrusting shells into the shotgun’s loading tube. He barely got one inside the chamber when the lizard leapt at him.
It caught him in the groin, sending Kruger into screams of pain as the animal tore and ripped at him. Once on the ground, the Megalania transferred its bite to Kruger’s throat, turning the booming screams into a chocked, gurgling cry for help.
Loudon hopped out of the Land rover and levelled his own shotgun. However, the man was no marksman. His three shots missed their target by several feet, and when he pumped the fourth shell into the chamber, he didn’t fire it at all.
Two adult Megalania had appeared from the bush, tongues flicking, giant heads askance as their eyes tried to make sense of what was going on.
For a moment, Loudon froze as the great beasts stared at him as they slowly lumbered from the bush, but he soon dashed for the Land Rover.
The sudden movement activated their primitive vision and both animals charged towards the vehicle as Loudon crunched it into gear.
The Land Rover lurched forward, just as the first giant lizard reached it. Its head crashed into the side, jolting the vehicle onto two wheels. Thankfully, Loudon was a better driver than he was a sharpshooter and he kept his hands on the wheel, trusting the four-wheel drive to carry them away.
The two Megalania didn’t give up easily, their bodies undulating as they chased after the departing vehicle, but even over the rough ground the Land Rover was quick enough to put some distance between the beasts and them.
They continued their pursuit, though, and when moments later, Loudon and Suzanna arrived at the camp to where a handful of workers had rallied, some brandishing rifles others holding burning torches, panic ensued as they spotted the marauding Megalania heading in their direction. Some stalwarts let off random shots or thrust their flaming torches before them in the hope they would fend off the giant dragons, but most discarded their weapons carelessly before hightailing it into the undergrowth.
Loudon dragged the injured Suzanna from the Land Rover to the shed she’d been kept prisoner only a couple of nights earlier.
‘You’ll be safe in here. It is the sturdiest building in camp,’ he said, laying her on the dirt floor. He looked down at her ankle, which was cut and bleeding, but the blood was nothing compared to the amount that saturated her clothes and hair. ‘I’ll come back soon.’
‘Where are you going?’ she asked, as shouts and gunfire sounded outside.
‘To help my people,’ he said, pumping the shotgun and shutting her inside.
It went dark, not just because of the lack of light entering the hut, but with the pain from her ankle, exhaustion and general shock of the last few days, Suzanna passed out.
Chapter 23
Suzanna awoke with a jolt. She smelled smoke. It made her cough. She would have suffocated in her sleep if the dramatic pounding that threatened to smash down the door and shook the entire hut hadn’t startled her to consciousness.
It took a few seconds for her brain to engage and realise what was going on. One of the discarded torches must have set fire to a tent or pile of detritus. That in itself was worrying enough, especially if the fire spread to her hut—her head rested on a box of high explosives—however, as the door threatened to implode following another pounding against it, she realised she had more
pressing worries.
One of the Megalania was outside, battering the door, determined to get in. She figured it could smell the blood that drenched her clothes.
Another huge thump sounded at the door. The tiny latch that held it closed broke. The metal rim of the doorframe held, but the door opened outward, and it swung partially open, revealing the looming, grey, scaly creature outside.
The Megalania charged again, slamming the door shut. She knew it wouldn’t take long for the creature to either smash the door in completely, or realise that when it swung open, it could simply poke its snout inside and get at the tasty morsel lying helpless amongst the tools and boxes of explosives.
She scrabbled as far back as possible, hoping that its huge size would prevent it getting inside. Yet the door was wide, perhaps wider than the shoulders of even the Megalania.
It smashed against the door again, and one of the hinges pinged free, the door partly collapsing.
Worse, smoke now poured in through the gap in the doorway. The hut was on fire. The only way out blocked. The choice seemed simple: burn to death or die in those terrible jaws.
Then she remembered something. She’d been in this position before, trapped in that hut, no exit.
Yet she’d found a way out, hadn’t she?
She turned round and felt the hole she’d dug the night before last and set to work again, clawing at the dirt, each thump at the door causing her to stop and glance behind terrified.
Smoke poured through the hole as she dug, but she ignored it, coughing and gagging. Digging frantically, she’d almost cleared out enough gap for her to slide under, when the Megalania finally battered down the door.
It crashed inwards in a mess of splinters and broken wood and she stared horrified as the creature stood in the doorway, smoke billowing around it, the Megalania hissing and showing its gaping mouth.
Then it stepped forward.
Frantically, she scrabbled at the dirt, desperately trying to squeeze her shoulders through the gap, kicking with her uninjured foot.
And she was through.
Fresh, welcoming air wafted over her face as she pulled herself up through the gap, dragging her legs behind her, just as a crash hit the back wall of the hut, the Megalania clearly angered that its prey had evaded her.
As she pulled herself clear, she saw flames licking the roof of the hut and spreading down one of the walls, the timber now creaking and groaning under the heat. Thick black smoke billowed skywards.
Around her was chaos, several dead Papuans lay in various stages of mutilation—arms missing, torsos ripped open, bowels lying on the floor.
She saw at least one dead Megalania, and could hear shouts and cries and gunshots, suggesting the fight wasn’t over yet. How many more rampaging Megalania survived, she didn’t know, her only interest was the one with its snout buried in the hole she’d dug, its tongue flicking through the gap, trying to taste her as it battered the hut’s wall and clawed at the dirt.
She tried to stand, her wounded ankle not allowing it, so fell to all fours and crawled away, her eyes fixed on the burning hut.
The stubby tail protruded out of the doorway, swinging wildly, but then it disappeared. A moment later, the head of the animal appeared in the doorway. Even in the cramped confines of the hut, it had managed to turn its flexible body and now stood staring at her, rasping, eyes fixed at her desperate attempts to shuffle along the ground.
It hissed and darted out of the hut towards her.
Boom!
The explosion rocked the ground and deafened Suzanna, sending her into shock. It was almost like a slow-motion dream sequence as she stared up at the sky and watched bits of hut and flesh and skin and chunks of dead Megalania rain down on her.
And then it all faded to black.
Chapter 24
Night had fallen when she came too. She didn’t know how long she’d been out, but the hut still smouldered. The surviving miners had lit more fires and huddled around them.
The first face she saw was Loudon’s. He was tending her broken ankle, dressing and applying a splint to it. He spoke as he noticed she had woken, but she couldn’t hear anything other than a constant ringing in her ears.
She didn’t know how many men were left and was more interested in what had happened to the Megalania.
‘Are they all dead?’ she asked, unsure how loud or how quiet her voice was.
Loudon nodded. He said something, which she couldn’t hear, but when he sat her up and spoke again, she managed to understand the gist of it above the tinnitus. ‘Not before they killed nearly a dozen people.’
Suzanna’s thoughts turned to Yates and she felt tears filling her eyes.
Loudon offered her a sympathetic smile. ‘I’ve called the company. Help is on its way.’
He then stared at the tree line surrounding them. ‘Do you think there are more of them out there?’
She shrugged. She didn’t know. Part of her, the selfish part, hoped they had all been wiped out, sent back to extinction, but the zoologist in her didn’t want that to be true. They were in their domain. The animals did what animals do. Hunted. If there were more of the creatures out there, it was clear they and humans should not mix.
‘I think we should burn them,’ she said, pointing to one of the Megalania corpses.
‘Why? Mining here is finished. We’ll not come back here. The pit has been a failure.’
‘If word gets out, others will come. Scientists, researchers, documentary makers. These animals have remained hidden for thousands of years. That is the way it should stay.’
Whether Loudon understood or not, she couldn’t tell, but he did as she asked, ordering the handful of remaining miners to build pyres around the fallen lizards.
Nobody slept. Everybody sat on edge, listening to the jungle, jumping at shadows, expecting any moment for another onslaught by the Megalania.
They didn’t come.
By daybreak, the sound of helicopters drifted over the horizon. The six or seven miners stood, hands pressed together, thanking whatever god they worshipped for their salvation as three small dots on the horizon grew larger until you could read along the sides of the copters the words: Alvaston Mining Corp.
Loudon helped Suzanna up, and she surveyed what was left of the camp, which was not a lot.
Most of the tents had either been pulled out of their moorings or burnt, bodies lay everywhere, the flies taking advantage of the fact nobody had buried them, while the smouldering fires of Megalania and the equipment shed acted as beacons for the chopper pilots who circled overhead like carrion.
The first one landed on the makeshift helicopter pad near Kruger’s hut. The other two settled onto the excavated area of the pit.
As the locals ran towards the helicopter, the rotors winding down, Loudon helped Suzanna shuffle towards it.
They all stood and waited. Eventually, a white-suited man wearing sunglasses got out, his hand clutching a Panama hat on top of his head. He glanced around at the carnage and looked quizzically at the survivors.
‘Where’s Harry Kruger?’ he asked, eyes going from one local miner to another.
‘He’s dead,’ Loudon said, stepping forward.
‘Are you the guy that called us?’ the man asked.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then do you mind telling me what the hell happened here?’
Loudon shifted uncomfortable, staring back at Suzanna, eyebrows rising, unsure what to say.
‘We were caught in the middle of a tribal war,’ Suzanna said.
The man frowned at her. ‘Who are you?’
‘Dr Suzanna Howard. My research team were attacked farther down the valley, I came here for help. May I ask who you are?’
The man clicked his fingers at the helicopter and two armed men got out. ‘Keep an eye out.’
The men nodded and spread out, their assault rifles fixed at the tree line.
‘My name is Peter Henderson,’ the man said, removing his sunglasses and
fanning his chin with his Panama. ‘My company owns this mine—or what’s left of it.’ He surveyed the disarray again. ‘Are you seriously telling me a group of spear chucking natives did this?’
‘Do you have a better explanation?’ she said.
His eyes fixed on one of the burning pyres, the blackened form of one of the Megalania’s still visible. ‘I guess I don’t, no. Looks like we bit off more than we could chew out here.’ He shrugged. ‘What’s a couple hundred million of investment?’
He turned round and circled his finger to the helicopter pilot. The engine whined into life again. ‘I take it you will be needing a lift back to Port Moresby?’
‘We’d appreciate that,’ Suzanna said.
Henderson clicked his fingers to the two-armed men. ‘Help her into the chopper. The rest of them can get in the other birds.’ Henderson pointed to the remaining helicopters.
Minutes later they were in the air, the helicopter circling the site as Henderson stared down at the destruction. ‘Shame, really thought we’d make some money out here.’
Suzanna didn’t answer. Her eyes were fixed on the small line of men emerging from the bush, protruding sheaths on their groin, spears waving at the departing helicopters.
The End
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Megalania Page 13