by Greig Beck
“The guns are coming. And if you decide to come, and I hope you do, then you’ll be glad they’re there.” Emma smiled flatly. “In or out?”
Andy didn’t even wait. “In.”
“I know I’ll regret this.” Helen sighed. “…probably, in.”
Emma nodded. “In one week’s time, we meet for introductions and our first expedition briefing. I’ll send through the details.” She stuck out her hand. “Welcome aboard.”
CHAPTER 09
Ben had found a new home. He hated to have to leave his old one behind, and he thought it had been well hidden and fortified. But, he found that the longer you stayed in one place, the greater the odds that he’d eventually be found.
And he’d been right. He was lucky that he had an escape hatch, or he would have been dug out like a grub from a rotting log. One to two years, and then he was usually on the move again.
His new cave descended into the ground as opposed to into the side of a rock face. All around it was thick growth—good for concealment, but unfortunately, the twin fact of that was that it meant it gave good concealment for any approaching hunters. Every time he went out or came back, his neck prickled at the thought of something waiting patiently to ambush him.
He always prayed that if it did happen, it would be quick. Ben still remembered after all these years, watching in horror as their guide, Nino, was torn limb from limb and then eaten while still alive. He shuddered at the red-raw memories.
Close to the mouth of his cave, there was also a massive tree trunk, rising easily 80 feet into the air. It had fur-like bark, and its massive canopy was more like long ribbons of grass or reeds than leaves. Over the months, Ben had used his knife to chop out wedges into the bark, creating a type of ladder, and every so often, or just when the mood took him, he climbed to the top of it. Then, hiding in amongst the grassy canopy, he looked out over his primordial land.
Ben sucked in a deep breath of the humid air, catching the familiar fishy scent of animal dung that he now knew to be dinosaurian. There was also the sweet smell of rotting vegetation, the sharp tang of plant saps, and also strange-scented flowers. Huge insects zoomed by, and higher up, he could see leathery-winged pterodons riding on thermals. Some of them were no bigger than ravens and flitted from treetop to treetop. But others were enormous, like airplanes.
In the distance, huge heads on long necks rose and fell as the land leviathans fed on grasses, trees, and pretty much any plant matter they could get into their gargantuan mouths. They trumpeted a little like elephants, and the mournful cries traveled along the valley floors for miles to be answered by another of their kind lost in the hazy distance.
Ben sat forward; he had learned to keep moving, and the land he was currently in stretched to a wet, green valley with raw, towering cliffs. Even the geology of this primitive place was huge, as continental drift was still pulling, pushing, and uplifting the earth, and then eroding it back down.
He had created a small perch within his branch nest, and momentarily, he looked down toward the ground. He knew that hunters were probably down there somewhere. But up here, he felt safe. Beside him was a woven sack of fist-sized rocks—he’d collected them and carried a few aloft every time he scaled up to his nest, and if anything got too interested in his trail, he’d rain the rocks down. Nothing liked having a baseball-sized rock hit their heads, no matter how thick those boxy, tooth-laden skulls were.
Ben grinned mercilessly; he had other safeguards as well. This was his patch, and any intruders would soon find he was not going to make for an easy meal.
He sighed and leaned back, placing his arms behind his head. Hazy sunlight shone down on him, and he turned to stare toward the plateau—his plateau—right now; it wasn’t like it would be in the future. The iron-hard granite walls were sloping on some sides and only rose a few hundred feet where the cliffs fell away, unlike the thousands of feet the sheer walls would rise in his home time. Today, his tepui was young and still growing up.
But just looking at it filled him with hope and horror. He knew he’d need to make his way back up there one day. He hoped that his theory that the wettest season would once again grab that junior tabletop mountain and allow anything and anyone on there to be thrown forward into the future. When it did happen, he’d damn well make sure he was there.
Ben almost wept with joy, impatience, and frustration, and he couldn’t help thinking back over his long time spent here. It was like a jail sentence where all the other inmates wanted to tear you limb from limb, literally.
In his travels, he’d seen vast volcanic plains that looked like the surface of alien planets. He’d crossed jungle valleys that contained monstrosities no one had ever seen or recorded. There were stinking swamps with soft-bodied things with hook-like teeth that drained blood or had segmented bodies and dozens of sharp-tipped legs and pincers.
His eyes slid back to the juvenile flat-topped mountain and felt his stomach knot. Everywhere in this damn place was dangerous, but up there on that huge risen landmass like an island in the sky, lived an alpha-apex predator that was worse than anything that hunted in these lowlands, and it was the reason he had been made to flee all those years ago.
He sucked in a deep breath and continued to stare, like he did most days. The gargantuan snake, the Titanoboa, wasn’t just another monster. This thing was like a force of nature. He couldn’t help replaying that last handful of minutes where he had led the monstrous snake away from Emma.
Then the chaos of swirling wind and boiling clouds had vanished and he found himself alone. Alone, except for something that was from his worst nightmare pursuing him. It had pushed him to the cliff edge, and when he stood on the precipice, he didn’t see the Venezuelan Amazon he recognized anymore; instead, it was this place.
It was then he knew why no one could find the place unless it was during the wettest season, once every 10 years. Because it just wasn’t there anymore. The doorway had closed, and he had been trapped on the wrong damn side.
Ben had no choice but to leap then into the vast unknown of this brutal, primordial world. He began to chuckle sourly.
“And I’m the only guy here, and will be for the next 100 million years. Just me and the monsters.”
Ben looked back to the plateau. There was something that bothered him; in his travels, he found few incidences of the Titanoboa in the jungles. The massive snakes seemed to prefer it up on the plateau. Or something kept them up there.
Ben knew he’d have to move on soon. He’d already stayed here longer than he should have. It was like a sixth sense that told him he wasn’t safe anymore.
He wished he could go back to the ocean. Sure, it had its own vast menagerie of wonders and horrors, but he’d liked it there…until he was evicted. His mouth pulled up on one side as he remembered: the endless blue water, the fresh fish, and his only friend, Ralph.
“Still miss you, buddy.” He sighed and prepared to scale down, but paused, listening.
*****
The hunters tracked the scent of the strange animal for miles. Its warm blood smell, its salty tang of sweat, and its exhalations were irresistible to them.
The lead theropod, a seven-foot-tall biped with toes that ended in scythe-like claws, paused, turning its head bird-like to listen to the sounds of the jungle. The thing they hunted was close, they could smell it strongly now, but strangely, it was still out of sight.
The hunter crept forward, about to edge between two large tree trunks, when its three-toed foot snagged on some twine strung between them. Immediately, a horizontal branch whipped out, and along its length were sharpened spikes that came at it faster than the creature could react.
The theropod was frozen to the spot as the three-foot-long sharpened spikes were embedded deep into its gut, holding it in place.
High above it came a sound. It was the first time the hunters had ever heard it, and never would again—it was the sound of a human laughing.
CHAPTER 10
The Cartwri
ght Estate, Greenberry, Ohio
Cynthia Cartwright had let Emma use the family home to bring everyone together. It was the largest house in Greenberry, and the most discreet place she knew.
Emma saw the old woman talking softly and earnestly with the huge and formidable Drake Masterson. The big man held her tiny hand in one of his large paws and patted it, nodding as he listened. She could imagine her extracting promises from him to bring her son home. And Emma could also envisage him in return saying, and honestly, that he’d die trying.
Emma trusted and liked the big guy, and she was thankful he had agreed to lead them in. He gave her…confidence.
She guessed that now that the four ex-Special Forces guys knew there was even the slightest chance of Ben being alive, they probably would have gone in to get him for free, such was the bond within their fighting unit. But she knew that risking their lives needed compensation—she just hoped they all lived to enjoy it.
The soldiers were like a different species to the others in the room. All were huge, wide, and loud. The redheaded Fergus O’Reilly joked with his buddy Brocke Anderson, whose blinding white grin lit up the room. She wondered how he lost his earlobe—was it shot off or bitten off? Time would tell.
Brocke noticed her looking at him, lurched forward to pick up the coffee pot, and theatrically held it out to her; she smiled and shook her head. As he went to put it down, Fergus nudged him and held out his own cup.
Emma let her eyes slide to the biggest and youngest of their group—the still-sullen looking Ajax Benson. She made a mental note to speak to him, try and understand him. There was something he was keeping bottled up, and given where they were going, she didn’t want any underlying issues bubbling to the surface. As Ben told her once, small imps of the mind can grow to become monstrous demons once in a field of combat.
Combat? She snorted softly at the thought. It was ridiculous of her to think like that, but after surviving the plateau once, she had a right to feel a little battle hardened.
Andy and his sister Helen, Emma’s paleontological firepower, stood together by the fireplace and the pair chatted as Helen looked over the photograph collection on the hearth—she paid extra attention to the smiling face of Ben, as though trying to memorize his features.
Emma had a moment of doubt about her selection—the pair of scientists seemed too young and naive. She was about to throw them into a grinder they had no way of fully appreciating.
Over the years, Emma had grown armor plating, as well as a little single-minded ruthlessness in pursuit of her objective—rescuing Ben—nothing else mattered. The Special Forces guys looked like they ate barbed wire for breakfast, but these two…they looked more like they’d prefer to be eating smashed avocado on wheat toast and sipping soy latte at their favorite Bohemian café.
She girded herself; they were picked because they could help her bring Ben home—end of story. She’d lay out the risks and then they could choose to go or stay. She still had time to replace them.
She swallowed; it was time to bring things to order. Emma cleared her throat. “Morning, everyone.” She smiled and looked at their faces as the group turned toward her.
She first crossed to Cynthia and took her by the arm, leaning closer. “I’m going to talk to the team now. You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”
The small woman suddenly seemed to steel herself. “You’re going to talk about rescuing my Ben, our Ben. I want to hear.” She looked behind her and pointed to her favorite chair. Fergus sat in it. “I’ll just sit quietly and listen.”
Emma raised an eyebrow at the redheaded man and he immediately stood, made a show of wiping the chair seat down, and then turned to bow. Emma led Cynthia to it and helped her sit, poured her another tea, and put a small slice of her favorite orange sponge cake on a tiny blue and white plate.
Emma then moved to one of the large walls beside the fireplace and took down a few of the pictures, leaving it blank. On the table, she turned on the projector sitting there and plugged it into a laptop computer. Behind her, the wall lit up.
The first image appeared, and she stood with handheld remote and folded her arms. It was a picture of South America showing a red dot on the edge of the Canaima National Park.
“Where I, we, began our expedition.” She breathed deeply. “Almost ten years ago to the day.”
“Begging your pardon, Emma.” Drake Masterson turned in his chair. “But how did you know to start there?”
She expected the question. “We had maps, a notebook, and a legend to follow. And I know what you’re going to ask next; no, we don’t have all of those resources anymore. They were all lost.”
“But I guess the legend remains,” Andy added.
“Yeah, that’s a good start,” Fergus said. “And given the Amazon is over three million square miles in size, it shouldn’t take us any time at all to find what we’re looking for.” He winked at Brocke.
Ajax snorted and shifted his huge bulk. “Who cares? We bumble around in the jungle for a week; maybe some schmuck gets sick, or injured, maybe even killed. Then we all come home with money in the bank.” He looked at her. “By the way, if the schmuck that happens to get killed is you, I want to make sure we’ll still get paid.”
Drake Masterson glared at him, but Emma stared the young man down. “You’ll be paid. And you all have something else that we didn’t have the first time.” She looked at each of their faces.
“You have someone who was there, who survived, and who can tell you what to look for, and even better, what to look out for.” She eyeballed Ajax. “Happy?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He grinned and saluted with two fingers.
“Good. And over the years, I’ve drawn maps and made notes from my memory…several maps.” She progressed the images to another view of the jungle that was taken from a lower level, this one starting on the Rio Caroní River.
Everyone sat forward as they followed the dotted line, branching off the main river, with notations, such as: Covered River, Shallows, Sunken Idol, River Of Paradise, Swamp, And Forest Of Tree Ferns.
Drake nodded slowly. “Not bad.”
Fergus grunted. “Scale is probably up the shit; but yeah, it’s a good start. We can work with that.”
“We’ve worked with worse,” Brocke added.
Emma moved them on to some hand-drawn images collected together; there was the tepui from a distance, the massive edifice like a giant wave of rock rising from the jungle. The next was a temple with gargoylish sentinels on each side of the massive doorway.
Andy squinted and then stood, coming closer to the illuminated wall. He pointed and then turned to Helen. “The Snake God—the Yacumama.”
“Mother of the river,” Emma replied. “That’s what Jenny…” Emma grimaced. “…called it.”
“How high is that tabletop?” Ajax asked.
“Probably about 1500 feet, give or take a hundred. Not the highest in the jungle, but it was sheer on all sides.” She walked closer, her arms folded. “There was a hidden passage in the temple, a chimney that we could climb all the way to the top. Took us several hours.”
“Okay, good,” Ajax said.
“No, not good, as it’s not there anymore. It…collapsed.”
“So we do it the hard way,” Drake responded. “Going to take a lot more time to scale. I know you have climbing experience, so does my team.” He turned to Andy and Helen. “Anyone else?”
“Well…” Andy bobbed his head, his eyes looking up and to the left into his head, as though rummaging for the necessary experience.
“No,” Helen said firmly. “Neither of us.”
Andy looked to her and then sighed. “Nah, not really. Some gym stuff on the climbing wall, but nothing…outdoors.”
Ajax guffawed, momentarily showing his silver tooth. “Don’t sweat it; it’s exactly the same.” His grin widened. “Except you’re not gonna have some sap holding your line on the ground, and there won’t be little colored bits of plaster to hang
onto, plus no cushioned mat to land on if you fall. Oh, and then there’s the bit about being higher than the tip of the Empire State Building. Otherwise, yeah, exactly the same.”
Emma couldn’t help smiling at the shade of pale Andy went. “There are other caves, or rather one other I know of. It was the one I came down in. But it was no easy climb and took two days. I don’t want us to waste the time and take the risk.”
“Take a chopper. I know some guys down there who’ll loan us a Hewie—armor-plated, and we can refit the gun, .50 cal. We’re in and out fast, and we got decisive firepower.” Drake opened his arms wide. “You’re welcome.”
“Own the sky, own the war.” Brocke clapped his hands together once.
“Too easy.” Fergus leaned across and bumped knuckles with the man.
“Won’t work,” Emma said. “In fact, nothing electronic will work. Whatever magnetic distortion the comet, Primordia, makes, it renders all electronic devices useless. The locals think it’s just some weird weather effects, maybe ball lightning, but they avoid the place for a week.”
Ajax lifted his chin. “Then we go early and wait. You said the effect of this distortion thing only occurred for a little over a day. So we get there the day before, and wait for it. When it’s over, and the effect’s gone, we fly out.”
“I thought of that,” Emma said. “And I’ve spent ten years researching the phenomena. In 1978, they dropped some survey beacons on the tabletop mountain we’re interested in. Afterward, when they went to recover them, they found they had vanished. Not just destroyed, but gone-gone, like they’d been canceled out of existence.”
Emma folded her arms. “My theory is that if you happen to be there when this effect begins, the distortion is so powerful as the doorway is opening that anything underneath is obliterated.”
“Well, that’s fucked up.” Ajax sat back.
Emma waggled a finger in the air. “I believe there’s another, faster, and safer way.”