by Jake Bible
As Cash approached the tables, he had to give Raff credit, the meat did smell delicious.
Plate heavy with food, Cash found Barbara and nodded at her to join him. She smiled and walked his way as Cash began heading to the main gate.
“Nice speech,” Barbara said. “Bloom has a way with words.”
“He knows how to handle people,” Cash said. “Any good commander should.”
“This private?” Raff asked as he jogged up to them, a rib in each hand.
“Nah,” Barbara said.
“Hey! Wait up!” Mike called. He jogged up, but considerably slower than Raff had.
In seconds, the group consisted of Cash, Barbara, Raff, Mike, Olivia, Ivy, Haskins, and Tressa. They strode to the main gate, laughing and chatting, eating and drinking, just like normal friends at a normal gathering.
Then they reached the gate and stared at it as the sun set on the other side, adding an orange glow to the frame.
“That’s our reality,” Cash said.
“Yep,” Raff agreed, taking a bite from one rib then the other. “Could be worse.”
“How is that?” Mike asked.
“There could be no giant gate protecting our ass,” Raff said and threw a bone over his shoulder. Someone farther in the base yelled at him to pick it up. “Sorry!”
“You going to pick it up?” Ivy asked.
“Nope,” Raff said. “One of the stupid pterosaurs will grab it in the night.”
“Little bastards,” Haskins said.
The group stayed there until it was too dark to see the structure. After a couple of minutes, the klieg lights kicked on, almost blinding everyone. Then they sputtered and went dark.
“That’s my cue,” Mike said, already tapping at his ear as he was being called over the comms.
One by one, everyone filtered off, saying their goodnights until only Cash and Barbara were left.
“My place or yours?” Barbara asked.
“Depends,” Cash replied.
“On?”
“Whether you want an entire bunker of people watching us our not,” Cash said. He pointed at a speed roller a few feet away. “Or you want a little more privacy.”
Barbara took his empty plate and threw hers and his to the ground as she grabbed his hand.
“Hey!” someone yelled.
Barbara laughed and they jogged to the speed roller, pulled open the back doors, and climbed inside.
Cash looked out at the dark base as he reached to close the rear doors. He paused and watched the shadows rushing around to get tasks finished that still needed doing before everyone could bed down for the night. He smiled. His father was right. There were worse ways to go out.
“Cash!” Barbara called.
Cash smiled wider and closed the doors, blocking out Flipside for just a few moments.
The End
Read on for a free sample of Monsters In The Clouds
Author Bio:
Jake Bible, Bram Stoker Award nominated-novelist, short story writer, independent screenwriter, podcaster, and inventor of the Drabble Novel, has entertained thousands with his horror, sci/fi, thriller, and adventure tales. He reaches audiences of all ages with his uncanny ability to write a wide range of characters and genres.
Jake is the author of the bestselling Z-Burbia series set in Asheville, NC, the bestselling Salvage Merc One, the Apex Trilogy (DEAD MECH, The Americans, Metal and Ash) and the Roak: Galactic Bounty Hunter series for Severed Press. He is also the author of the YA zombie novel, Little Dead Man, the Bram Stoker Award nominated Teen horror novel, Intentional Haunting, the ScareScapes series, and the Reign of Four series for Permuted Press, as well as Stone Cold Bastards and the Black Box, Inc. series for Bell Bridge Books.
Find Jake at jakebible.com. Join him on Twitter @jakebible and find him on Facebook.
Chapter One
On the bright side, Grant Coleman had to acknowledge that at least today’s challenges wouldn’t kill him.
The line of customers snaked through the bookstore aisles and all the way to the front door. Every one held a copy of Cavern of the Damned and patiently awaited their turn to get the author’s signature.
Grant had been at it for thirty minutes so far. A cramp plagued his hand, and his plastered-on smile threatened to crack. A book tour seemed like a soaring adventure when the publisher floated the idea. A month in, it had transformed into a grueling slog. He couldn’t wait to get back to his college classroom next month.
He reminded himself it was a walk in the park compared to the real-life hell he’d endured, the events that had inspired the book. The readers loved Cavern of the Damned’s fantasy of giant scorpions and carnivorous bats. Grant doubted they would ever believe it had all had been reality.
A twenty-something guy in a local college T-shirt handed Grant a book from across the table. “Dr. Coleman, this is such an honor. You inspired me.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah. The way you used real science as the basis for your novel? It really fired me up for my paleontology classes. All the creatures in the cave are completely unreal, but it’s like grounded enough in fact that somehow it was like totally believable.”
“Even scientists need to stretch their imaginations now and then,” Grant said. “This book was just me stretching mine.”
It took another hour for the line to wind down. The last customer approached as the publisher’s rep and Grant’s agent stepped away to talk sales numbers with the store manager. A woman Grant’s age in a short red dress and black boots handed him her book. Her blonde hair was gathered in a short ponytail. The dress caught his attention, but her green eyes held it. He straightened his glasses and squared his shoulders, as if that made him seem less paunchy.
“You tell quite a story, Dr. Coleman,” she said.
“It’s fun to spin a little fantasy,” he said. In his head it sounded flirtier than it actually did when he said it.
“But easier to just relate actualities.” She opened her black leather purse and pulled out the tip of a giant cave scorpion’s claw. She set it in front of him.
Grant froze. Memories of the awful days in the cave came rushing back. He’d barely escaped with his life when the cavern flooded. He didn’t think any physical proof had survived. “W-where did you…?”
“We followed some rumors to a place in Montana. Found far more fact than fiction when we sifted through a creek bed there.”
Grant had a bestseller under his belt. It would be a major studio blockbuster next summer. The fame had landed him a tenure-track teaching position. Any claims that he thought what he’d written had been real would brand him a crackpot, destroy all he’d built these last two years. Sweat rolled down his temple.
“Don’t worry, Doctor. I’m not here to tell the world that Cavern of the Damned is an autobiography. I’m here to pitch your follow-up.”
“What do you mean?”
She pulled a tablet from her purse and laid it on the table. With a few taps, an aerial photograph of a rainforest appeared. She pointed to a lush plateau towering over the landscape.
“My name is Thana Katsoros.” She handed him a business card with the Transworld Union logo on it and a Brazilian address. “My organization just discovered this place, deep in a closed indigenous area in the Amazon rainforest. It’s been isolated for who knows how long—the locals say since the world was created. Though the valley floods every year, no one climbs this plateau to escape the rising water. They say monsters rule in the clouds.”
“Myths common in every culture.”
She tapped the screen and magnified a specific spot on the photograph. “Tell me this is common in every culture.”
Grant bent over and stared in shock.
An apatosaurus’s head stuck out from the trees. Grant gasped.
“Dinosaurs, Dr. Coleman, walking the earth in a Brazilian rainforest. It takes a special kind of scientist to face down a species like that for the first time. We think your book says that
scientist is you. Are we wrong?”
Grant couldn’t take his eyes off the sauropod.
“No,” he said. “You aren’t wrong at all.”
Chapter Two
As he sat at his hotel room desk the next morning, Grant began his second round of second thoughts.
His initial rush of excitement had yielded to a long list of concerns. The first was the environment. He’d been a paleontologist and professor for over a decade. Field work was nothing new. But excavating dinosaurs was a very desert-oriented endeavor. Dry, quiet, and safe. Amazonian jungles were wet, loud, and dangerous. His first internet search had brought up a list of a dozen things that could kill him, from a microscopic virus to a two-hundred-pound jaguar. Katsoros and Transworld had offered him a lot of money, but he couldn’t cash the check if he was dead.
Second, an apatosaurus was a little outside of his area of expertise. The average person dumped any animal that preceded Homo sapiens into the “prehistoric” category. That time frame was actually four billion years long and split into at least ten different periods, each with unique flora and fauna. apatosaurus’s Jurassic period was about two hundred million years ahead of the Age of Mammals, his era of choice.
He’d learned one important lesson from his Montana monster hunt. Check out your supposed benefactor. The head of the expedition that ended up delivering Cavern of the Damned had turned out to be a con artist.
He started with an internet search for some background on Transworld Union. Pages of results popped up. This was an actual company, listed on multiple stock exchanges, the usual global conglomerate with interests in shipping, energy, pharmaceuticals, and a dozen other things that appeared unrelated. At least its check wouldn’t bounce.
He searched Thana Katsoros within Transworld. An employee information page appeared. Her picture matched the person he’d met, so that was a good start. She had a business degree from a college in Greece and had been with Transworld for eleven years, currently the head of South American Exigent Product Development. The vague title did match the expedition she’d mentioned.
Her picture reminded him of the exposure Katsoros had threatened about his inspiration for Cavern of the Damned. He only had two semesters under his belt at the university. The dean was fine with Grant publishing fiction in his off hours, but any crazy stories about real giant scorpions would open the college up to ridicule. If Katsoros went public, he might not have a job to return to when the fall semester started next month.
Just as the decision pendulum started to swing right, to the “go for it” position, the idea of dying thrust the weight back hard to the left. Even without being stomped by a dinosaur, there were just too many ways to end up a corpse. Besides, there was no way dinosaurs had survived into the modern era.
Grant’s phone rang. The caller ID read Blood Sucking Leech.
“Damn it.” That would be Howard Berman, his ex-wife’s divorce attorney. Grant could let it go to voice mail, but whenever he did, the bastard called every fifteen minutes until Grant answered. Grant pressed Accept.
“Howard, what a pleasant surprise.”
“If I didn’t know better,” Howard said, “I’d say that was disingenuous.”
“Disingenuous? Certainly not. More like a flat out lie.”
“Mr. Coleman, when you choose to act as your own attorney, you get to interact with other attorneys. That’s one of the perks.”
Grant hadn’t chosen to be his own attorney when he got divorced. Poverty had forced the decision upon him. Times like now he regretted it.
“We need to discuss the alimony,” Howard said.
“I’m paid up, Howie. Since the university hired me, it’s been coming straight out of my paycheck so Her Majesty can make her next yacht payment.”
“Not discussing past payments. Future payments. There’s a cut of author royalties she’s due.”
Only the expense of replacing his phone kept Grant from throwing it against the wall. “And how do you come to that conclusion?”
“The income scaling clause in the agreement, the one you demanded.”
Grant cursed himself. His brilliant contribution to the settlement had been to have his alimony be a percent of income rather than a fixed amount. He wanted to protect himself from being thrown into debt if he ended up between teaching jobs or had to take a pay cut. He never thought he’d make any real money outside of his profession.
“I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is that the two of you have been following my writing career,” Grant said. “You know that book royalties don’t pay much.”
“No, not as much as selling those movie rights did.”
“Son of a bitch,” Grant whispered to himself. Grant had only found out about the rights sale last week. “No way she deserves a cut of this, Howzer. I did all this work after we were divorced.”
“Feel free to fight the modification,” Howard said. “You’ll lose and I’ll tack my legal billing to the alimony, as well as the accrued interest from the delay. Think on that and we’ll get together when you get back from this little tour.”
“Don’t you think sleeping with my ex-wife creates a conflict of interest in handling her divorce?”
“If that slanderous accusation was true, which it isn’t, I’d think it would just make for a more zealous advocate. Talk to you soon.”
Howard hung up. Grant again beat back the impulse to destroy his phone.
This little bit of extortion would be expensive to fight. But he was going to fight it, and with an actual lawyer on his side this time. He might lose, but he’d take a pound of flesh from Howard and the ex-wife doing it. Pyrrhic victories didn’t come cheap though.
Lucky for him, he had a chance to make a little money in the Amazon.
The dino-decision pendulum swung back full right, and he searched his papers for Katsoros’s business card.
Chapter Three
Transworld Union’s Brazilian headquarters rose from São Paulo’s streets and towered over Janaina Silva. Gleaming steel and mirrored glass stretched up so high she had to crane her neck to see the top. Glass elevators surged up and down the outside of the building.
The dark blue business suit she’d borrowed from her roommate complemented her olive skin, but it wasn’t providing the hoped for comfort in this corporate environment. The unfamiliar clothing just made her seem even more out of place, inside strange clothes outside a strange building. If Transworld’s goal was to make her feel intimidated by meeting here, they had scored.
Transworld’s business with her was a mystery. Her supervisor at the Native People’s Foundation said that Transworld had requested a representative to advise them on potential contact with indigenous people in a remote section of the Amazon. They’d specifically asked for Mariel Castro, but the woman had a last-minute emergency with her granddaughter. Since Mariel had turned sixty, she’d become more family-than-work focused. Janaina had been called an hour ago to fill in, and she wasn’t even certain what she’d be filling in for.
She took a deep breath. Whatever Transworld wanted, she was up for it. She’d been defending the rights of the aboriginal people of the jungle for years. Not against a company as formidable as Transworld Union, but experience showed that with right on her side, might had always seemed to follow. She had to have faith it would again. She swept her black hair behind her shoulders and then straightened her jacket. With a swirl of the revolving doors, she entered the air conditioning.
Five minutes and a dizzying elevator ride later, Janaina stood alone in the office of Thana Katsoros. The title on the door read Director of Exigent Product Development, whatever that meant.
Katsoros entered. Janaina was several centimeters taller than Katsoros, but the woman with the short blonde hair and the piercing green eyes didn’t seem like the type who let height intimidate her. She wore dark pants, heels, a white open blouse, and a look of surprise.
“Who are you?” she asked.
Katsoros’s default to English irritated Ja
naina. If the woman was going to work in Brazil with Brazilians, she should speak Portuguese, no matter what language was standard in her more international office. She set the slight aside and extended a hand.
“I am Janaina Silva from the Fundação dos Povos Nativos.” She hoped using her organization’s Portuguese title would remind Katsoros that she was in Brazil. “We have a meeting at one o’clock.”
Katsoros left Janaina’s hand hanging in space and walked around her to the desk. She shuffled through some papers until she found a resume from Mariel. “What happened to Ms. Castro?”
“Family emergency. I am here in her place.”
Katsoros gave her a dismissive look. “I’d asked for someone with more experience.”
Janaina bristled. “I have been with the Foundation for almost ten years. I am experienced.”
Katsoros waved for Janaina to take the seat in front of her desk. Janaina sat down.
“Transworld Union has purchased the rights to several hundred acres in Amazonia,” Katsoros said. “We’ll be scouting the area for two weeks.”
“Scouting for what?”
“Natural resources, undiscovered plants for pharmaceuticals, solar or hydropower locations. We are a diverse company.”
That sounded like a load of crap to Janaina. Multinationals didn’t invest big bucks unless they had a specific, profitable, agenda.
“The government would prefer we had an expert on the indigenous peoples on staff,” Katsoros continued, “in the event we come across any isolated tribes. We will set you up with an office here so you can advise us if needed.”
“I am not understanding this.”
“We have complete satellite phone capability. If we come across any locals, we’ll contact you. There’s no point in you having to endure all the hardships of the jungle when it’s so unlikely we’ll encounter anyone.”
“That is not the right procedure.”