The creature was rising out of the underground lake.
Ellie had seen it before. It was the image that Ravi had drawn and shared with the group.
The creature had no face, no eyes and no mouth that could be seen. It was shaped like a long tube. The slake creature’s body appeared to be made of stone. Rough textured. Coarse. Diamond like pockmark imprints stamped into its skin. And it was huge, nearly thirty feet long and ten feet tall. It was like a slug that could be found after an afternoon rain, a very gigantic one. The slake creature’s outer skin was full of diamond imprints. They were textured and looked coarse and tough, almost as if they slake was part rock and soil.
Ellie stumbled back and the silverflies that were on her body went flying off in different directions.
Several long, anxious breaths passed. Sweat brewed on their palms and their foreheads.
Theo stumbled back, too. He placed his hand against the cool of the cavern. Ellie was beside him. Both were pressed against the cavern wall by the passageway opening.
The slake was right behind them. They could both feel its breath, bursts of warm air. Yet it didn’t appear to have a mouth or a nose or nostrils or anything recognizable as a face. The source of the breath was a mystery.
They were now looking at it up close and personal and it was larger than either had imagined. It didn’t have a head that was recognizable.
Very briefly Theo thought: no eyes. Perhaps the slake creature can’t see us. But Theo’s assessment was wrong.
The slake swung the back half of its body up and down. It was as if the slake was saying, this is my home! You don’t belong here!
Each swing hit the cavern ceiling, dislodging soil and rocks in a small avalanche.
They dodged the falling pieces of mountain.
And then the front of the slake opened up. Inside this opening, it had something quite resembling a pink tongue that was forked. The pink tongue flew out at least ten feet and came within a foot of wrapping around Ellie’s legs.
“Run!”
And that’s what they did with all of their energy and all of their focus.
They ran for the passageway. The parachute pack was strapped to Theo’s back. The silverflies were trapped inside and he used every ounce of his strength in order to escape the slake. It was hard work pulling them through the tunnels. The flying creatures flapped their four wings and sought a way out of their captured resting place.
Ahead, there was the opening to the cliffs.
Ellie was in the lead. Next came Theo and last was the slake creature thing. Its whole cylindrical body entered behind them with a burst of energy. There was no way the slake could fit in the crawl space passageway and so Theo and Ellie rushed toward it.
“We can outrun that thing,” Theo yelled.
“We have to!”
The slake swung its back side – the part that was most like a tail – up and down like it was pounding a hammer. Soil and rocks became dislodged from the cavern ceiling and walls.
The slake was one long, slithering slimy mess. It was faceless, eyeless and legless.
Inside the cavern there was a frantic and chaotic mix of sounds as the slake gave chase. Maybe it wasn’t as dumb as it looked.
Over his shoulder, Theo quickly made sure he still had the parachute full of silverflies. The swarm was strong and pulled and ballooned the parachute out in odd shapes, causing the parachute to scrape along the cavern wall. Silver throbbed and pulsed through the gauzy fabric. It bulged into a half moon shape surrounded by the gray shadows of this underground cave.
They could now see the opening to the cave. Ellie was the first to reach it. She tumbled onto her knees and crawled for momentary safety in the narrow passageway. Theo was just behind him and the slake was right behind him. Fortunately, it couldn’t fit completely.
It’s a trap, Theo thought. The slake is smarter than it looks.
Survive or die rules all life.
“It can’t fit through,” Ellie yelled as they saw sunlight and the end of the cavern passageway. Theo yanked the parachute full of silverflies behind him.
“But it’s trying,” Theo yelled. “Don’t you hear it?”
“Yes!”
They could hear rock grinding against rock. They were on their knees in the passageway. When they reached the end of the passageway, outside it was high noon and the GidX7 sky was as warm and inviting as a golden brown blanket.
The rope dangled against the canyon wall in a stiff breathe.
For a breath, they felt they had lost the slake in this underground maze of caverns. Perhaps they really were safe from its pink tongue and its large, pounding body.
Ellie hooked in to the climbing apparatus and scampered up the climbing rope and pulled herself up on to the plateau. She stood and unclasp from the rope.
Theo was already climbing up the rope without being clasped in to the safety line. There was no time to be careful and safe. He was going free.
There was no sight of the slake. It had not followed, at least not through the crawl space passageway.
When Theo was near the top, the soil around the cavern hole began to collapse in a landslide. The slake was causing it.
The slake pounded right through the canyon wall. It was a gigantic earthworm, just a cylinder of a kind of organic material that was strong enough and hard enough to burrow through stone and soil.
Theo dangled from side to side as the slake nudged him left and right. The parachute of silverflies stayed strapped to Theo’s shoulders. They swayed from side to side.
From the front of its body, the cylindrical pink tongue sprung out and slapped against the side of the sandstone cliff just a few inches from Theo’s heels. Like the body of the slake, the pink tongue was a cylinder, though it had a fork in the middle.
Then, the pink tongue of the slake slapped hard against Theo’s leg. He was still trying to climb up the rappelling rope. He could feel the tongue. It was warm and coarse and strong.
And then the pink tongue wrapped several times around both of Theo’s legs.
Theo felt the pink tongue squeezing and tugging. He felt like the slake was going to rip his leg right out of his hip socket.
“Ahh!”
Above him, Theo saw Ellie standing on solid ground and holding her gun and steadying her aim.
“Shoot!” Theo yelled. “NOW!”
Ellie fingered the butt of the gun. She was ready to shoot.
But Ellie didn’t pull the trigger just yet. Frankly, she had no idea where to shoot. And she knew there was just one shot left, just one chance to save her friend.
“DO IT!”
Finally, Ellie shot and the electric charged soared by Theo’s ear. His hairs sprung to attention with the static.
The electric charge knifed into the slake’s midsection. The slake didn’t make any sound, rather its pink tongue briefly retracted.
Theo’s leg was free from its grasp and he quickly climbed up the rope, pulling himself up to freedom. This was only a temporary situation.
The slake was stunned, perhaps slightly impaired by the wound but it was still alive, still moving with force, still following them up the side of the outer canyon wall as if it was super-glued to the soil.
Theo climbed up to the flat of the plateau where Ellie was still huffing and puffing.
On the canyon plateau, Theo and Ellie jumped to their feet and ran for the ATV.
The slake kept slithering along the plateau soil, following them.
Ellie slung her goggles around her eyes, mid-stride and Theo did the same. There was dust swirling. Coming into the focus they saw the Escape Pod and the pack of camelbacks surrounding it.
Theo jumped up on the three-wheel ATV and took hold of the handlebars of the ATV. Ellie jumped on behind him, trying to avoid the bulging canvas white parachute full of silverflies.
“Go! Go! Go!”
This world had become more than the Positives could have ever imagined. It had become a confusing, out of control game
– all too real, all too dangerous but a game nonetheless. The game was life, and life – they both knew – was a game of survival.
Theo and Ellie now knew this saying all too well, because unfortunately the slake slithered right for them.
CHAPTER 25
TRAPPED
Around the Pod, fifty or so camelbacks continued to play tag with the vehicle. The humped creatures were jumping on it, landing on it, jumping over it and running around it. Clearly, this was their world and they had found a new toy to play with and possibly destroy.
Theo and Ellie rode the 3-wheel ATV vehicle away from the plateau above the cave. They were nearly half a mile away from the Pod where the playful, though potentially dangerous chaos beat on.
Behind them, the slake was on the plateau just twenty feet away. It was giving chase at a speed that was nearly as fast as the ATV. There was nowhere to hide out on the dusty plains.
Without warning, there was a radical change in the camelback herd’s behavior. They scattered into a dozen groupings and started to hop away from the Pod.
Nearing the lip of the nearest crater, the slake did a curious and unexpected thing. Rather than give chase for Theo and Ellie on the ATV, the slake diverged toward one of the groups of camelbacks scattering away from Pod.
Another unexpected thing happened. Out of the soil, half a dozen different slakes rose up to join the original slake from the cave.
“Crazy,” Ellie yelled, “look at them all.”
“It’s like we kicked a hornet’s nest,” Theo said.
“Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of,” Ellie said. “How many can there be?”
“I count seven,” Theo said.
“Where there’s seven, there’s going to be more.”
The two types of creatures – camelbacks and slakes – were now on a collision course with each other.
Trying to avoid the leading slake, several of the other camelbacks jumped into the air, but the slake still smacked into the line of camelbacks and sent the humped creatures into the air like toys being dislodged from a sandbox. Through their telescopic goggles, Theo and Ellie saw the slake slap another five camelbacks aside with one swing of its body.
One of the smallest of the camelbacks strayed from its small group. It was directly in the path of the large slake and its posse of six. When the large slake came upon the stray camelback, its body opened up and consumed it in one gulp.
“Whoa! That’s nasty stuff,” Ellie said.
“We have to warn the Pod,” Theo said.
In the Pod, coming from the console speakers, Ravi heard Theo yelling.
“Do you copy?!” “Ravi? Do you copy?”
“Roger that,” Ravi answered. “What’s your status?”
“Confirmed existence of the slakes,” Theo yelled into his Communication device. “And they’re on a collision course with the Pod! Seven of them! So, please, get the Pod moving! Do you copy?”
“Yes. We’re rolling!”
While getting the Pod moving as fast as he could, Ravi noticed one of his specimen jars vibrating. It was on the lab table and heading to the edge. As it was about to fall off, he grabbed it. Volcanic eruption? Something else?
Ravi held onto his chair. His first thought was: it’s an earthquake. But it wasn’t long before he knew the trouble was of a more uncommon form.
Outside, through the window, Ravi saw that it was something alive, something huge, something blackish brown. The thing crashed up out of the sand and surrounded the Pod. There were seven long golden brown slakes. Only two were as long as twenty feet. The others, while shorter, were still part reptilian lizard, part snake, part crystallized creature.
“Remain calm,” Ravi said. “All storms will pass.”
Ravi sat down at the console and got the Pod rolling as fast as she could, but it was already too late. While she did, the seven slakes slapped against the outer shell of the Pod. The force felt like a tornado gust.
Again, one of the slake tail smacked into the Pod and the vehicle hiccupped up and down in the sand like it was just a plaything in the slake’s sandbox.
The slake paused. Its whole body shook up and down and then it dove into soil. When it came up out of the soil, the slake attached itself to the Pod like a giant squid sucking a lollipop made of metal.
The force generated by the slake creature again lifted the Pod off the ground.
Again, the Pod was knocked from side to side. The whole Pod shook.
The slake and its entire pink and brown body wrapped around the entire Pod.
Inside it, Ravi had to try to wait out the inevitable. Either the slakes would tire and leave or they wouldn’t.
Ravi tried to drive the Pod but his view out the window was mostly blocked by the golden and brown diamond skin of the slakes.
In the Pod, above Ravi’s heads, the largest slake pounded its body into the skylight area of the roof where the heat shield used to serve as protection. Now, the slake had found a weakness and kept pounding and pounding the glass and a small crack began to grow in width and depth.
CHAPTER 26
RING OF FIRE
Theo’s mind raced with how to help Ravi in the Pod. He slowed the ATV at the edge of the attack zone around the Pod and quickly took the parachute off and tied it to the handlebars. The silverflies had not escaped, though they forced the parachute to sway like a hot air balloon tethered to the ground that was ready to fly away.
Ellie jumped off the back of the vehicle to help him.
“I’ve got a plan,” Theo said.
“Free jazz,” Ellie said.
“We burn the suckers off,” Theo said, “and then blow them to kingdom come.”
“How?” she asked.
“Molotov cocktails,” Theo said.
“Did you know that Alfred Nobel got his start this way?” Ellie asked.
“I don’t care about peace!” Theo snapped back. “Now cover me.”
While Theo untied a liquid container hanging from the ATV, he kept an eye on the slakes and saw that they were still preoccupied with the Pod. By his side, Ellie held the gun.
Theo took two of the liquid containers hanging from the ATV vehicle. They were intended to store soil samples or water or anything else found of interest.
Theo sprinkled the liquid from the methane-ammonia oasis into a circle that roughly matched the circumference of the Escape Pod. They were only about twenty feet from the slakes, which were all still firmly attached to various areas of the Pod. In fact, very little of the Pod’s outer white shell was visible.
One of the slakes worked on the moon roof area, slamming its tail end against the glass. It was beginning to crack.
“Ravi? Are you okay? Over?” Theo spoke into his communication device.
“I copy. Over,” Ravi announced.
“Listen up,” Theo requested. “I want you to drive through the ring of fire. Repeat, drive through it and we’ll take care of them!”
“Fire?”
“Do it. Drive through the fire!” Theo turned to Ellie, “Now back up ‘cause I don’t know how well this is going to work.”
Theo shot his taser into the ground.
The circle of liquid methane-ammonia rose into a ring of fire that was teen feet in height. It burned orange and black smoke billowed into the desert sky.
“Go! Go! Go!” Theo yelled into his Communication device.
“I’ve got this thing rolling,” Ravi responded.
Slowly, the Pod traveled into the ring of fire.
There was a smaller, nearly half-sized slake covering the Pod viewing window. It was the first of the creatures to catch fire and fall off the Pod. The outer skin of the slake crackled like bark burning on a campfire.
As Ravi drove the Pod around the ring of fire, four of the other slakes all scattered of the outer shell and shook and twisted their cylindrical bodies and then dove down into the golden brown soil and did not instantly re-appear.
The largest of the slakes split in half. Rather t
han go back to the Pod, it turned its attention toward Theo and Ellie. The wind was blowing. Golden brown dust kicked up into a swirl.
“They’re not leaving,” Ellie observed.
“Plan B.”
“Which is?”
“Blow them to kingdom come. Rip up your shirt into four strips,” Theo said.
Quickly, Ellie took off her outer shirt and tore ripped into strips while Theo grabbed the first of the four plastic containers. It was filled with a mixture of the planet’s methane-ammonia chemical mixed with soil.
Ellie twisted one of the strips into a long wick. She handed it to Theo who stuffed the wick down into the liquid oasis fuel. Theo placed the cap back on the container, so that half of the wick hung outside the container and the other half remained dip into the liquid oasis fuel.
Theo lit the wick with a makeshift match and then tossed the flaming bottle toward the slake. It caught fire.
Quickly, Theo tossed the jug full of methane toward the slake with a strong heave. This improvised weapon landed on the slake’s midsection.
Within two seconds, there was a huge KA-BOOM!
Pounds and pounds of sand, dust and slake skin exploded in a dozen different angles. The force from the explosion knocked them both to the ground.
Plumes of black billowed. The fire was raging a mercy of orange flames. It was a desert storm. Twenty-feet high.
The Pod was still positioned firmly in the soil, even though mounds of mud and debris from the explosion pelted it.
The slake kept moving through the flames.
“Oh my bloody crap. Theo! Theo! It’s not dead.”
The skin crackled like birch bark thrown onto a forest fire and burning black smoke continued to bead off the creature’s body like heat rising from black asphalt on an August afternoon in the Vegas summer.
Part of the slake could be seen. It was breaking free from the smoke and flames. It was alive and moving. Squirming to be resurrected. Only half of the largest slake was on fire and the other half had split apart from the injured part.
There was only one slake slithering along the soil. It was the half destroyed one.
Odyssey Rising Page 16