by Rick Chesler
Not the scratching of claws or any sound produced by animals. This was wholly artificial, blessedly human-made. Ethan stepped off the rocks he’d been preparing to climb and walked out to the edge of the cliff. Don’t look down at Skylar. Don’t think about her.
The sound was muffled and coming from far off. He scanned the waters for a ship, but saw only the monotonous blue of uninterrupted ocean. Then it hit him with a start: aircraft! He craned his neck to look up to the sky, but the haze spewed by the volcano reduced visibility considerably, and he could see nothing.
Gradually, the sound became more distinct, and Ethan was pretty sure it came from a helicopter. It sounded like it had at first been behind him, on the other side of the volcano, and was now coming around the island to his left. Then it hit him all at once—the significance of an aircraft. He flashed on Skylar’s sat-phone call— I know it sounds crazy, but I am the only surviving member of the expedition—and then her recommending they drop a bomb.
The aircraft is here!
A jolt of adrenaline coursed through his body. The presence of air support was at the same time extremely positive and negative. On the one hand, it meant the opportunity for rescue. The only practical opportunity, really, since the last remaining satellite phone had plummeted with Skylar to her death and was no doubt shattered into pieces. He mentally kicked himself for not taking it from her when he had the chance, in the cave. On the other, darker hand—that aircraft—per Skylar’s instructions which they thought represented the team as a whole, was here to drop a bomb to destroy this island and send it back into the depths of the sea. If he was on it when that happened…
He had to find a way to get the attention of the—
The thrum of motors grew suddenly louder as the aircraft rounded the island. Ethan spotted it—a large, unmarked military-style chopper, definitely not the same commercial Bell that had brought them here—as it skirted the island a few hundred feet above the summit. He watched as the ‘copter passed by him above, continuing around the island. They were making a scout pass, he knew, checking it out upon arrival, probably looking for Skylar and any other survivors. He had to get their attention somehow before they proceeded with dropping the bomb.
Ethan threw open his pack and considered his options. In a couple of minutes, the helicopter would be back around to his side of the island, and he wanted to be ready to try something to make contact with them. He tossed items around in his pack, looking for anything that might offer some utility in this situation. No sat-phone, but he had a walkie talkie. He grabbed that and turned it on. Aircraft didn’t usually monitor walkie talkie channels, but maybe in this case they were? They should be, but then again they were probably expecting to be in contact via sat-phone.
He flipped through the channels, looking for a broadcast, but as expected, there was no noise, not even static, on any of them. Maybe they weren’t transmitting, but listening? So he started with channel 9, the one designated for emergencies in most parts of the world.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday… Ethan Jones here, from United Nations Expedition Gaia. Do you read, over?” He repeated this a couple of times and then, after receiving no reply, scrolled through the channels. He broadcast the same message one time on each frequency, then scanned through the channels again.
At the end of the second time around, he still had heard nothing. Ethan dropped the radio in frustration, mentally beating himself up. Stupid walkie talkie idea. Aviators didn’t use those. He’d wasted his precious time. By now, the helo had passed him by and was making another pass around the island. Quickly, he rummaged through his pack again, tossing items out, searching for anything that—there!
He saw his own reflection for a moment and recognized his old signal mirror. Sort of a Boy Scout item that reminded him more of his childhood nature walks than something he would ever actually need to depend on, Ethan realized now that this was exactly what he needed.
The din of the helo motor became louder as the craft circled around to Ethan’s side of the island again. He readied the mirror, practicing angling it to catch the sunlight and reflect it back up to where he though the chopper would be. But when the aircraft flew into his line of sight, it was much lower than it had been on the previous passes and he had to adjust his aim with the mirror. By the time he got it right, a dense patch of volcanic smog had belched from the volcano and drifted between Ethan and the helicopter, obscuring the flash from his mirror.
The rescue vehicle continued again around the island, and Ethan hung his head in defeat. They had not seen him. What was he going to do? He looked up at the summit, where if anything, the smoke that discharged from the vent became even thicker. Pretty soon, they might not be able to see the island at all. He considered whether he should try to make his way back to the top of the summit for a better chance at being seen. But as it was, he couldn’t even see the summit anymore, so choked was it in belched fog. Not only that, but as he looked up the slope, he could see a pack of the small chicken dinosaurs lurking on the steep slope. They were probably being forced down due to poor air quality as well. Maybe he should go down slope instead?
He was studying the portions of the slope below him when he heard the helicopter come around once again. It was even lower this time, making the engines very loud even though the craft itself was obscured in a smoky haze. And then he heard it—a male voice issued through a megaphone.
“ATTENTION: Skylar Hanson. We are trying to make contact with you. Respond to sat-phone call or else contact us via UHF radio channel 22…” The message repeated as the helo flew slowly around the volcano.
Ethan ran to his pack and scrambled to pull out the radio again. I tried the radio already. Now you’re ready, okay… Now where’d I put that thing…
While Ethan shuffled the items around inside his pack looking for the radio, he heard a commotion behind him. He ignored it, concentrating instead on finding that walkie-talkie. That single item was his ticket out of here. He got a glimpse of black plastic and gripped it. There!
But just as he yanked the radio from the bag, he felt an impact on the back of his neck, sharp claws digging into his skin and a beak or a tooth or something sharp pecking at the top of his head. He screamed as chunks of his hair and scalp were ripped from his head. Hectic warbling sounds came from the dinosaurs as they clucked and cooed while attacking.
Ethan brought his right fist up to knock off the individual on his head, but in his haste forgot that he was still holding the radio with that hand. The small dinosaur retaliated by gripping two of Ethan’s fingers in its short beak and whipping its head back and forth in a tearing motion. Ethan flailed his arm to knock it away, and the creature sailed over the cliff…
Along with the radio.
Now there were two broken radios at the bottom of that cliff—his and Skylar’s. Ethan tried to recall where the packs of his dead expedition members were around the island; unlike the sat-phones, every team member had carried a walkie talkie. Maybe he could get to one of them in time? But then his finger started throbbing, the pain intense. He looked at it and saw white bone sticking through the flesh.
Suddenly, more dinosaur bodies fell on him, scratching and pecking. He didn’t know how many, but it was clear the pack he’d seen up on the cliff had reached him. Through the fog of his panicky self-defense, throwing dinosaurs off his peck-riddled body, he heard the thrum of rotors approaching yet again. How many chances do you think you’re going to have, Ethan? Any time around now could be their last before they decide, enough already, drop the bomb…
Ethan yelled as he whirled around, attempting to generate sufficient centrifugal force to throw his attackers off. A couple of them did go flying, but a few stubbornly remained, scratching and tearing at his flesh with feral abandon.
Then came the megaphone voice again: “Dr. Hanson: we have orders to destroy this entire island with bombs. We will search the island for survivors for the next fifteen minutes. After that, we’ll be low on fuel and will be forced to
drop the bombs and return to base. Repeat…”
Ethan stared out at the helo as it flew out of sight again around the island. Fifteen minutes! Even if he couldn’t contact them, he had to get off the island—swim out into the ocean if nothing else. To stay on this land was suicidal.
He peered over the cliff to see if he could reach the ocean that way. No way could he free-climb it, and much of his climbing gear had been left behind on the other walls they’d scaled and had to leave in a hurry. He thought he might be able to rig something out of what he had if he had considerably more time, like a half an hour, but fifteen minutes? No way. That wasn’t sufficient time to both set the gear up and then make the descent, leaving enough minutes left over to swim away from the exploding isle…
It wasn’t possible to jump far enough out to do a cliff-dive style entry into the ocean, either. He’d hit the rocky tide pool area where Skylar had impacted.
Meanwhile, the dinosaur problem was getting worse here. A large sail-fin lizard poked its head over the rocks to his right, and a squadron of four pterodactyls appeared in the sky off to his left, heading his way. Even if he could rig a climbing system in time, those flying predators would pick him right off the wall.
Ethan turned and looked back into the cave where he’d confronted Skylar. He remembered the huge boulder rolling out of it. It had come from somewhere. It was time to see where. He had nowhere else to go.
The photographer shouldered his pack and ran back inside the cave.
Chapter 33
Ethan flipped on his flashlight once he entered the outer cave. He ran past the area where he made Skylar drop her backpack, saw the little pile of scattered diamonds there that she’d left behind in a hurry, and kept going toward the rear of the cave. He hadn’t gone this far back earlier, as he had only sought a hiding place from the crazy Skylar after she’d tried to shoot him. Now it was time to see if it led anywhere.
He saw fresh gouges of rock like a track where the rolling stone had passed. He reached what looked like the end of the cave, but was surprised to see an empty space in the floor. Leaning over and shining his light beam down into it, he could see a vertical drop of perhaps ten feet, then a passage continuing down at a walkable slope. The walls in front of him bore heavy chinks where the big boulder had sat. He supposed the earthquake and its aftershocks had dislodged it, causing it to roll down slope and out of the cave.
Ethan hung by his hands from the edge of the opening and let himself drop the rest of the way. He landed on bended knees, the ground solid lava rock as was the main cave. He was grateful for that, as one of his biggest fears about this island was that he could jump onto what looked like solid rock only to find out the hard way that it was molten lava covered with a layer of black soot.
The walls here glittered with thick diamond veins snaking their way in and out of the passage walls. Ethan adjusted his rucksack straps and began following this new passage down into the bowels of the glittering jewelcano.
He wished he still had his headlamp so that he could have both hands free instead of having to use one to hold a flashlight, but it had been torn off during the cliff struggle with the boulder. So when he tripped and fell headlong, hands splayed out in front of him as he hit the ground, it was with great dismay when he heard a cracking sound followed by his light blinking out.
“Damn!” he called out to no one. He felt around for the broken light, found it, tried the switch just in case it still worked but no luck. He was pretty sure he had a backup light somewhere in his pack, but he wasn’t sure exactly where and now he’d have to dig through everything looking for it in the pitch black darkness. He took off his pack and started to do just that—although he was all too aware of the time limit imposed by the bomb drop, he had no desire to trip and fall headlong into a pool of bubbling lava—when he heard a soft rasping sound somewhere ahead in the void.
Something was there. Ethan rummaged through his pack faster, wishing he’d taken time to organize things a little better. Then his fingers passed over a zipper compartment and he opened it up. Please tell me I put an extra light in here… He felt around inside the pouch—a Swiss Army knife, extra batteries, a pen…aha! A small flashlight. He pressed the button and was relieved to see his pack flood with white light.
But when he took the light out of the pack shined it ahead of him to illuminate the source of the noise, he was not relieved to see a giant snake coiled in the passageway not ten feet away from him.
Ethan had seen plenty of snakes in the wild, from huge boa constrictors in the Amazon rain forest to twenty-foot long pythons in the Florida Everglades, but he’d never seen anything like this. This snake had to have a girth of at least three feet, with the head a weighty, triangular structure that looked as if it would have no trouble swallowing a human whole. The only thing Ethan saw to his advantage was that so far, at least, it moved slowly. Right now, in fact, it wasn’t making forward progress at all, the sudden presence of light perhaps causing it to stop in its tracks. It lay there in a tight coil, head raised above its body, the black tongue flicking rapidly in and out, no doubt tracking his chemical scent.
Ethan quietly removed a hunting knife from his pack before putting his things back inside and putting it back on. During this activity, the snake stretched its head out closer to him but did not actually move its body. Ethan wielded the blade in his right hand with the light in his left. He slowly rose to his feet, eyeing the path ahead. He hoped he would be able to squeak by to one side of the monstrous animal, but its skin touched both sides of the cave walls. Not that he looked forward to battling the creature, but most of all, he really didn’t have time for this. He and the snake would both be blown to bits in about…he consulted his watch…twelve minutes if he couldn’t get past this thing and find a way out of here.
Ethan was not the pessimistic type, but even he had to admit to himself that his situation did not look good. He didn’t know what kind of bomb they had, but that helicopter was huge, and this island was unstable enough as it was. He had to get past this snake, without engaging it, and now. He considered making a dash for it on the left side, high-jumping over the coils and running away. But he knew that sudden movement would spur the reptile into fight mode, and that snakes were very fast strikers.
Think, Ethan, think! He played his light beam around the walls and noticed they were pocked with holes—a result of bubbles in the lava as it rapidly cooled and solidified. They made such good hand- and foot-holds that the walls here were almost like the artificial rock climbing walls he’d occasionally trained on at home. No ropes needed. He sure wished he had that headlamp, though, but he’d just have to hold the flashlight between his teeth.
He stepped up to the left-side wall and began to climb. He first gave himself the necessary vertical clearance to pass over the snake, then began traversing the wall off to his right, over the serpentine threat. He looked down on its tight coils as he passed. What was it even doing here? Were snakes around during dinosaur times? He supposed so. These thoughts served to distract him as he moved, keeping him calm and less prone to panic. Before he knew it, he was ten feet past the snake. He began descending while continuing to move laterally, and when he hit the ground again, he was twenty feet from the serpent, which had still not moved.
Ethan breathed a sigh of relief while he shone his beam ahead. The passageway continued, but at a steeper downward slope. He moved out at a jog, his mind now sounding a new alarm: What if this path doesn’t lead anywhere, what if it dead-ends up ahead? You don’t have enough time to go all the way back, past the snake again and up to the cliff…
He silenced the inner voice and kept moving down the passage. The ceiling became lower after a while, forcing him to stoop, slowing his progress a little. He glanced at his watch again: only six minutes left. Where did this path lead? He kept going, dodging low-hanging stalactites here and there. The tunnel became even more laden with diamonds, so much so that the reflections of his light actually blinded him, further slo
wing his pace.
Just as Ethan began to worry that the passageway might not dead end, but instead would continue on unending until his time ran out, the blinding light of the diamonds stopped. An opening lay ahead. He ran as fast as he possibly could toward it while crouching. He stumbled out onto a platform set into the volcano’s inner cliff. It offered a spectacular view of the lake from about twenty-five feet up.
Three problems, though, Ethan thought, glancing yet again at his timepiece. One: With only three minutes left, he was almost certain to be inside the volcano when the bomb detonated. Two: he didn’t have time to do a slow climb down, even without ropes. Three: this ledge was crawling with large snakes. There had to be at least fifty like the one he had just passed. It made him nauseous merely to look at the hideous den of them. Even as he stood there, a cyst cracked open to his left, releasing another gigantic mega-python to wriggle out onto the platform. The bomb was the only thing that took his mind off of it.
The bomb! He’d wasted another minute watching the snakes and evaluating his situation. He didn’t know what he was going to do. But as he looked down on the lake, he saw the circle of sunlight in the middle, and it triggered an idea that, as feeble as it was, represented all he had.
If he were in the water under the volcano’s opening, there wouldn’t be as much rock to collapse on him. That was it. That was all he could come up with. But with 120 seconds remaining until detonation, he had to act right now.
Ethan cinched tight the straps on his pack and eyeballed the few patches of open ground through the snakes to the edge.
Then he ran, knowing he only had to streak past about a hundred snakes for all of three seconds before he reached the edge. His legs pumped as hard as they ever had in his life, his blood rushing through his veins, his heart pounding. All around him his peripheral vision registered serpentine movement, his ears the hissing of dozens of snakes.