by Tim Lebbon
“I… I should be sitting at a desk…” he said. “I’ve got pictures of my family. My own pencil sharpener. Sometimes, I link paperclips together until…” He smiled at the memory, then the smile dropped at more recent ones.
“You all right?” Conrad asked Weaver.
“Yeah,” she said. “That was… I’ve never…”
“Yeah. Nor me. And there’s more. I just had a run-in with a snake. Fifty feet long, maybe more. This island’s like nowhere we’ve ever seen before. The ape, the snake, that means there’s plenty more here, too. Stuff that just wants to kill us or eat us, or both.”
Weaver stared at him wide-eyed.
“Looks like your suspicions have been confirmed,” he said.
“In all the wrong ways.”
“If you’re not there you can’t get the shot, right?”
“The money they paid you,” she said. “I hope it was a lot. And I hope you’re worth it.”
THIRTEEN
Randa had a cut on his finger. He was focusing on it. The wound was not too deep, and to him it looked something like a question mark, curved at one end and long and straight at the other. A question mark or a crook. Perhaps a scythe. The skin was neatly sliced, not ripped. Probably a shard of glass had caused it, and he hadn’t even felt it until he’d noticed blood dripping onto his shoe. It was his only wound from the crash. That was so unlikely that it bore deep consideration. The cut. It was his whole world right now, because to expand his horizons beyond the cut—to see and hear further, to think on what had happened and what was yet to happen—would invite in madness.
I invited it myself, he thought, when I knew what we were—
This was what he had always wanted. His whole life had been working towards this. His childhood years had been filled with disappointment and bullying. As a teenager he’d been troubled, bookish and distant when most of his contemporaries were playing sport or considering their career options. Later, as an adult, he’d constantly searched for something he knew was out there, some place where he could be himself and triumph. And then when the Lawton had been hit…
Here, at last, he had found triumph. But triumph had also brought tragedy.
He shook his head and stared at the cut again. A bubble of blood formed. It was almost perfect, its colour quite beautiful. The stuff of life. His life.
He still had a life. He remembered those choppers going down, crushed by the beast, beaten to pulps, and thought of the blood that would be bubbling and burning and squeezing through wounds in flesh and metal right now across the jungle, this jungle that—
A shadow fell across him, darkening his blood. Heart fluttering, fear chilling him, he looked up.
Packard was standing right before him.
“Are you okay?” the colonel asked.
“It’s a deep cut, but yes, I’m fine.”
“Oh good, that makes me feel much better.” Packard pulled up a crate and sat close in front of Randa. He made himself comfortable. Randa smiled at him, but Packard did not smile back.
The colonel drew his pistol and aimed it directly at Randa’s face.
“You’re going to tell me everything I don’t know, or I’ll blow your head off.”
Randa forgot his cut. Fear burned in his throat, tears welled in his eyes, but he was afraid that if one spilled then Packard would go through with his threat. Weakness wasn’t what he needed to show now, nor was a need for pity. The soldier would respect neither.
“Monsters exist,” Randa began, trying to ignore the gun’s dark barrel.
“No. Shit.”
“Before today nobody believed that,” Randa continued, warming to his subject. “Yesterday I was a crackpot, but today…”
“This was never about geology!” Packard shouted. “You dropped those charges to flush something out.”
Randa only stared at him.
“Who the hell are you?” Packard asked.
“Another man on the front line, just like yourself. My agency is known as Monarch. We specialise in the hunt for Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms.” He tried a smile, but it felt strained.
“You knew that thing was here,” Packard said, sitting back, lowering the pistol, aiming it at Randa’s stomach.
“Not for sure. But… I was hoping. Not for this outcome, of course, but for evidence. Evidence that we could use to determine the threat. Evidence that might help us understand that the world is a much bigger place than we ever imagined. The holes on this island are more than just entryways to a hollow earth. They are portals for creatures beyond imagination.”
“You put my men at risk. Some of my men died because of you.”
“I did, and I’m sorry. This was a reconnaissance mission, and now it’s a battlefront far more important than the one you left behind.” Randa looked at his finger. The wound had stopped bleeding. Still, he applied the bandage. “The world doesn’t belong to us. Ancient species owned our planet long before mankind, and if we keep our heads buried in the sand, they will take it back.”
Packard stood, holstered his pistol, and turned to walk away.
“Get us home, Colonel,” Randa said. “I’ll take care of the rest.”
* * *
Conrad was assessing the people with them, and he was doing his best not to get too pessimistic. But other than Slivko and Weaver, he thought the others were added weight. Brooks, San, and Nieves weren’t like any field operatives he knew. They might be good at digging holes and taking samples, but he was pretty sure that if he asked them to build a fire or hang a hammock, they’d be screwed.
And believing themselves screwed meant that they’d already given in to the Big Guy. That was how he’d started thinking of the giant ape. For all he knew it was a female, but Big Guy still seemed to suit it.
They were readying to move out and head north through the jungle, searching for the river he’d seen. He had to keep his wits about him. As ever, they were looking to him for words of advice before they headed off. He could think of many, but he wasn’t sure any of them would save lives. Not in such a place, with such things threatening them.
“We need to stay tight and move fast,” he said. “Slivko, divvy up those weapons. One per person.”
Slivko dug around in his pack and offered a pistol to Weaver. She shook her head and held up her camera.
“I’m happier with this.”
Slivko shrugged, saying nothing, and handed out rifles to Brooks and San. When Brooks reached for the weapon, Slivko kept hold.
“You led all of us into a trap, man.”
“I didn’t know. Didn’t believe. I’ve never seen anything alive, just million-year-old fossils, but—”
“Randa believed,” San said.
“Believed what?” Weaver asked. She was still quietly snapping pictures. Conrad thought she probably did so almost without knowing.
“The Hollow Earth theory,” Brooks said. “Randa hired me because I wrote a paper substantiating what most people think is a crackpot idea. I postulated that there are massive spaces underground, hollow zones, isolated from the surface world except for certain spots.”
“Passageways to the surface,” San said. “Randa believes this island may be one of them.”
Brooks and San were getting more animated, talking about what they knew, or at least suspected. It sounded ridiculous to Conrad, but then so did a giant gorilla fighting machine-guns and helicopters.
“He believes there’s an emergence point here, somewhere on this island, for everything that lives below. Ancient species… like what we just saw.” He shook his head. “I thought he was out of his mind.”
“He is,” Nieves said. “You are. This is insanity.”
“Well, we’ll all hash that out over beers,” Conrad said. He was keen to start moving. “Right now, we’re stranded in an unknown wilderness with less than three days to reach the northern shore, and who knows what between us and there. We’ll track the river inland. Follow its course.”
“Inland?�
� Nieves said. “Are you nuts? You said it yourself, we have no idea what else is out there. I’m heading back the way we came.” He grabbed a weapon from Slivko and started for the tree line. Conrad could tell by the way he carried the rifle that he probably hadn’t even held one before, let alone fired one. Chances were he’d shoot himself in the foot or kill someone else.
“Might want to take another route, then,” Conrad said. He nodded at Weaver; she was photographing him now, and he felt strangely vulnerable beneath the camera’s impersonal gaze. It was as if it stripped her of personality.
“Why?” Nieves asked.
“That rubbed bark on the tree beside you,” Conrad said, pointing. “About waist high?” He walked past Nieves to the tree, ran his fingers over the scored marks. Then he knelt and examined tracks on the ground. They were confused, churned up, but he saw enough to take a good guess. For what he intended, it didn’t need to be accurate. “Staggered tracks, diagonal walker, clawed, maybe feline, but probably canine. A meter and a half in length, at least. This is likely its feeding run.” He stood and gestured for Nieves to pass him by. “Oh, and when I was out there I saw a snake as long as the Sea Stallion, head as big as mine. Beast like that will swallow you whole, alive. Digest you slowly. But go ahead. Enjoy the stroll.”
Nieves seemed flustered. The others moved over to stand by Conrad, and really there could have been no other outcome. Strength in numbers, Conrad knew, even if some of those number were ineffectual at best.
“I’m next in the chain of command!” Nieves said. “Not you.” He sounded like a petulant child.
“Do you really want to be in command?” Weaver asked, frustrated.
Nieves glared for a moment, then looked down at his feet and shook his head.
“Then we’re moving.” Conrad headed out, not looking back. Time was ticking. He listened, counting the footsteps of those following. It was all of them.
* * *
One of the Landsat guys looked like he was about to piss his pants. Packard thought his name was Steve, but he wasn’t sure. These civilians all looked the same to him. They sat around binding their wounds, some of them shaking their heads, most of them surviving alone in this mess even if they sat next to one another. There was no brotherhood here for them, no sense of being part of a team.
It was Packard’s surviving team members who were taking action. They’d salvaged as many weapons and as much ammunition as they could from the crashed ’copters and were going through the process of checking it for working order. Two of them stood guard while this happened, eyes and ears scoping beyond the rocky slope where they were gathering themselves.
They were trying to shake off the past, but it was too immediate and too horrific to forget.
Packard could smell burning. Smoke still drifted across the jungle from the crash sites, and he knew the warm tang of cooking flesh well enough to recognise it now. He could tell by the looks on his men’s faces that they could smell it, too. That was the stench of their dead friends.
Randa and the Landsat guys were too wrapped up in their own small, disastrous worlds to notice.
“They’re gone…” the guy whose name might have been Steve was saying. He sat on his ankles, rocking slowly back and forth. “They’re all gone…”
“What do we do now, sir?” Mills asked. He stood close to Packard, keen to keep their conversation unheard. There was a network of cuts on his face from smashed glass. He didn’t seem to notice. “How the hell do we get out of here?”
“We don’t,” Packard said. “Not without every last man in this unit. We’ll head south for Chapman’s position at the Sea Stallion, rally up with any others on the way.”
“What about that thing out there, Colonel?” He nodded towards Randa and the moaning guy, Landsat Steve. “What about the civilians?”
“You know what a civilian is?” Packard said, louder so that everyone could hear. Heads turned. Randa stared at him as if afraid of what he might say or do next.
“Sir?” Mills asked.
“A man without a gun.” Packard nodded to one of the soldiers guarding the pile of salvaged weapons. “Hand them out, soldier. But not to him.” He nodded at Randa. “He’s done enough.”
The Landsat guys accepted the weapons offered to them. From their faces, Packard could tell that none of them had ever fired a shot or held a gun before. If he had time he’d have taken the opportunity to give them at least a crash course, but they had none to spare. This was kill or be killed, as much for his men as these civilians. They’d have to learn the hard way.
“Isn’t anyone gonna show me how to…” Steve said, holding up the pistol he’d been handed like it was a hot rock. His voice trailed off when no one acknowledged him. He looked lost, forlorn, and Packard felt a surprising pang of sorrow for him. It was only small.
The colonel climbed up onto a large moss-covered rock and turned to face the assembled men. They were a ragged fighting force by any stretch of imagination, but they were all he had. A soldier’s training had taught him to make the best out of the resources he had available, and Packard was determined to do just that. He had his men, his soldiers, his family, who were the real fighters.
Everyone else was bait.
“Settle down,” he said. “And listen up. That monstrosity took us out from the air and killed our brothers and friends. But from the first sharpened rock, the first spear, all the way to napalm and the cold judgement of a mounted M-60, it’s been us, and our fathers, who have asserted our dominion over this planet and all that inhabit it. Whatever that thing is, it’s still an animal and we’re still men. And with chrome-plated staffs, chemical lightning, and fifty-caliber fury from heaven we will kill everything that comes at us and send any soul it may have straight to hell. You hear me?” He scanned the faces staring up at him and chose to see only agreement and respect. “So pull yourselves together and move out!”
The survivors seemed boosted by his brief speech, and the soldiers mobilised, ready to head out.
Packard grunted in satisfaction. His hate burned deep, smothering fear and giving every sense an edge. He imagined that beast down and dead by his hand.
It felt good to be taking action.
FOURTEEN
Conrad moved gracefully, swinging his machete as he hacked through the jungle, leading their way. Like him, Weaver had been in the field for a long time, constantly on the move. Looking for the next story. Seeking a greater truth through her lens than war, conflict, death, and the inevitable descent from civilisation into chaos. She witnessed it everywhere she looked. There was nothing to be seen that could convince her that humankind was heading in any other direction.
As they moved forward, sweaty and dirty, exhausted, still scared, Slivko continued to monitor the radio. The static sang, fading in and out. There were no voices. It was as if the island was whispering about them in mocking tones.
“Save it for when we get closer to the others,” Conrad said. “If anyone else is even still alive.”
Slivko clicked the radio off and slung it across his back. Weaver took a snap of him, dejected and defeated. She wondered what that momentary image would show if and when she developed it. That was what she loved the most about taking photographs. She witnessed life through the lens, animated and constantly moving, but truth lay in those frozen images she caught. Sometimes reality was too fast or too deep to see with the naked eye.
Just ahead of her, Conrad froze. He turned and pressed his finger against his lips. Then he pointed ahead at a clearing in the jungle. It contained a wide pool of water fed by the river, its surface relatively still and speckled with large lily pads and clumps of rushes. At its centre was a hillock, an island of sorts that was scattered with logs and long, grassy water ferns. Colourful birds flitted back and forth from the island, digging at the ground and fleeing with large winged insects in their beaks.
“What is it?” Weaver whispered. Conrad only shook his head and pointed at the island. She looked closer, but it was
only as she brought the camera up to her eye that she saw the subtle movement.
Ripples were breaking out from the island and travelling across the large pond. Lily pads rode the ripples, and gnarled frogs leapt on and off the pads, adding their splashes. She clicked a photo.
The island began to move.
Weaver lowered the camera as the island began to lift from the water. It was disorientating, as if the ground was dropping beneath her feet. She swayed but remained upright, then gasped as she recognised the shape in the pool.
A huge, majestic water buffalo slowly rose from the water and muck. Weeds and plants trailed from horns that must have been fifteen feet in length. Its head was an island in itself, lifting from the water and turning as it stared at them. It chewed slowly, each grind of its jaw making a wet, dull thud that echoed across the clearing. Water poured from its back. Birds landed on its exposed horns and starting plucking small creatures from the plants drooping from them.
Slivko lifted his M-16, but Conrad placed his hand on the barrel and pushed it back down. Slivko did not resist. Weaver was glad.
She sensed no threat from this beast. It did not seem as fascinated with them as they were with it, dipping its head back down and scooping another mouthful of foul-smelling muck and plant from the pond’s bottom.
“That’s… big,” Weaver whispered. Conrad smiled at her, and she was pleased to see the sense of wonder she felt reflected in his eyes. Maybe it’s not all struggle and fight, she thought. Maybe what I’ve been looking for all this time is wonder.
“We’ll pass on slowly,” he said to all of them. “I don’t think it’s a threat. But we take it slow and cautious, and be ready for anything.”
The water buffalo snorted, and it reminded Weaver of the sound a whale made filling its lungs on the surface of the sea. She could smell it now, a heavy dank odour mixed in with something altogether more spicy and sweet. It watched them as they moved around the edge of the large pool, head turning slowly as it continued to chew. Slivko and Conrad moved ahead, and behind her came Brooks and San, both staring at the amazing creature as they passed. Nieves brought up the rear. He seemed more alert to their surroundings, less engrossed in the creature they had disturbed. That comforted her. While their attention was on it, something else might be focusing its attention on them.