Her fate was decided. At least as far as Artek and the elders were concerned.
As she closed her eyes and focused on clearing what remained of her mind, a cold fury unexpectedly descended upon Rakela. Her eyes scrunched up and her teeth clenched. She decided she was sick and tired of the hand fate had dealt her. Having seen the last god-beast up close, she began hatching a desperate-born plan.
Lying completely flat against the raft’s bottom, she pressed herself tightly against the musty wood, willing herself to become one with it. Based on its previous behavior, she reasoned that the god would probably bump the raft a few more times, perhaps even bite at it. However, once no edible offerings manifested themselves, the behemoth would weary of the game and swim back into the depths in search of more rewarding prey. At least she hoped it would.
If that occurred, their laws were explicit. The deity would have formally rejected its offering. Her life having been spared, Rakela would be a free woman once more. The tribe would have no choice but to accept her back, in accordance with long-standing tradition. It was a small chance, she knew, but it was the only one she had.
Unfortunately for her, the pliosaur had other ideas.
It had already seen the woman on the raft. It knew she was there. From the scent of her blood and urine in the water, to the heat her body generated, to the pitter-patting of her frantically-beating heart, every aspect of its myriad senses told it so. It merely had to figure out how to bring Rakela into its watery realm so she could be consumed.
Swimming directly under the raft, the god contemplated the thick cable suspended below it. In its predator’s mind, the palm-frond rope was reminiscent of the tentacles of the giant squid it hunted. With a quick lunge, it seized the cable in its titanic jaws and gave it a downward wrench.
The raft was instantly inundated. There was an awful sound reminiscent of a tree toppling as it turned nose-down. A split-second later, it was pulled completely under, and Rakela with it. From their position of relative safety, the crowd on shore uttered a collective gasp as their neighbor’s tiny sanctuary was torn out from under her. For a brief moment, many of the onlookers, sympathizing with her plight and deducing her plan, had clung to the hope that their god-beast might actually spare her.
They knew now that was not to be the case.
Fighting her way free from the sunken raft’s powerful pull, Rakela surfaced, sucking in desperate breaths. She wasted no time and made for the safety of the shore. She swam with adrenalized strength, her weary limbs flailing frantically at the water in a last-ditch attempt to stave off the agonizing death she knew was coming for her.
And it was. Turning gracefully in the direction of the delectable morsel that had, thus far, managed to evade it, the god closed on its slow-moving victim. Just beneath the surface it came, its jaws agape, the distance between them narrowing with frightening speed. One hundred feet shrank to fifty . . . then to nothing . . .
Bone-weary but paddling with every ounce of strength she had, Rakela could feel the water pressure change as the giant jaws surrounded her. She knew now there was no escape. Resigned to her fate, she closed her eyes, waiting for the crushing demise of a hundred spears penetrating her body.
Then the explosion struck.
Chapter 3
Nine miles away from Diablo Caldera, a submerged stratovolcano erupted with astonishing force, sending scalding clouds of seawater and ash over ten miles up into the atmosphere. The marine volcano’s bursting magma reservoirs – linked directly with those of the caldera – exploded into the surrounding sea in a searing mass of lava that killed tens of thousands of fish and marine mammals before cooling.
All but ignored by volcanologists on nearby Cuba, the two neighboring volcanoes had been stable for eons, their systems interconnected by vast, subterranean lava tubes. A thousand centuries earlier, the largest of these formed a wide fault line that collapsed part of the overlying stone that formed Diablo’s exposed slopes. It even managed to fracture the ancient caldera’s heavily eroded, lip-like shell, forming a visible crevice.
Far the larger of the two, magmatic pressure from Diablo’s growing reservoir had escalated until, finally, eruption was inevitable. The main eruption vent occurred not at Diablo, however, but at the submerged volcano, which had been slowly draining away the larger, older one’s magma reservoirs. The effect on the caldera, however, was dramatic. The remaining, crater-like depression, with vertical rock walls that towered five hundred feet above sea level, suffered a sudden loss of structural support as a result of the sudden removal of such tremendous volumes of magma.
In geological terms, the result was simple: With thunderous fury, Diablo Caldera started to collapse in on itself. Then, its already ruptured outer wall – the one closest to the neighboring volcano – split violently apart. In an instant, the ocean rushed in and, with tsunami-like force, inundated the bowl-shaped island’s Cretaceous-era lake.
After sixty-five million years, the sea had reclaimed its own.
***
Artek was running for his life. Despite the deafening shower of rock and stone, he could hear still hear the cries of his people as everything they knew and loved was destroyed by the unseen spirits. The dark forces were cunning and had chosen the funeral ceremony as the time to strike.
The god must have sensed its enemies’ intentions at the last possible moment, as it spun off from its attack on his mother just as it was about to consume her. Instead, the monstrous beast abandoned its meal and plunged powerfully into the depths, to face the tribe’s hereditary nemeses head-on.
Hidden from view, the titans were clashing with phenomenal force.
For Artek and the villagers, it was Judgment Day. The very walls of the caldera began collapsing in on them, burying their homes and anyone inside them under thousands of tons of searing rock. The section bordering the crevice had been the first to go. Before the shaman’s astonished eyes it split apart, forming an immense trough that extended all the way to the sea. The ocean needed no encouragement, and with a thunderous hiss came crashing in, eager to merge the lake’s saltwater with its own.
Artek uttered a pain-filled grunt as he was pitched sideways and ended up on a jagged pile of rocks. He clutched at his side and grimaced, cursing at the realization that the impact had cracked, or perhaps even broken, some ribs. He caught a glimpse of Martika, struggling to pull an exhausted Rakela from what was rapidly becoming a giant, bubbling cauldron. While the remainder of the people had fled to the refuge of their homes, Artek’s promised had dove into the steaming water in a fearless attempt to rescue her adopted mother.
Painfully regaining his feet, Artek realized this attack was by far the worst he’d ever seen. All around them, the water was rising, even as the walls came crumbling down. Next, the ground below everyone’s feet began splitting apart, forming wide chasms that revealed the fiery bowels of the earth, an inferno the likes of which he had never imagined.
As he turned toward what remained of his hut, Artek was distracted by a high-pitched scream. He turned back, just in time to see Martika and his mother holding one another as the section of beach surrounding them fractured into a spider’s web of smoking fissures. The tribal leader’s familial instincts finally resurfaced, and he managed three stumbling steps in their direction before the terrified pair, still clinging desperately to each other, fell shrieking into a burning chasm and were gone.
Dumbfounded, Artek cast desperately about. He knew that this was the end for all of them. What was left of the village was wreathed in flames, the remainder entombed. He turned toward his fiercely burning home and broke into a run, the hot ground beneath him shifting dangerously as he did. Giant chunks of red-hot stone began to cascade all about him and he stumbled repeatedly over the broken bodies of those he had known all his life. His body began to be wracked by uncontrollable coughing, and the shaman realized a blanket of thick, gray smoke was settling over the dying caldera. He was rapidly losing both visibility and the ability to breathe.
Racing to his hut with a speed matched only by his terror, Artek reached for a hand-carved dugout canoe resting against an outside wall, then turned back toward the lake. Suddenly, there was a tremendous roar, a magnitude louder even than the devastation that was already deafening him. His gaze was torn from the raging body of water that was their god’s home, to where the crevice had been. The entire outer wall was gone, collapsed into the surrounding sea, and the ground beneath it had dropped hundreds of feet more. The ocean was filling the caldera right before his eyes. In mere moments, their island home would be no more.
Despite the pain in his side, Artek managed to press the heavy canoe overhead and carried it like a makeshift shield. Moving like a man possessed, he rushed through a heavy downpour of lethal debris, toward the churning waves that continued to spill over the vanishing beaches and clawed their way up the crumbling slopes. The seawater was unrelenting and unstoppable, pouring into molten chasms with tremendous hisses as it flooded its way across the fractured ground.
The choking smoke was everywhere. Despite its obscurity, Artek could still hear the cries of the wounded and the dying. He ran blindly now, ignoring them. He could not stop. He would not. Fear had completely consumed him. Fear and the overpowering desire to live. Still staggering under the canoe’s weight and the unstable footing, he suddenly spotted one of the elders through the obscuring vapors. He was looking for a way out and leading a young boy by the hand.
Without hesitation, Artek moved to the older man’s side and started shouting instructions. The cleric appeared uninjured, but he was clearly dazed by the nightmare that had enfolded them all.
Pushing the frightened child roughly aside, Artek screamed in the elder’s ear, then grabbed him and shook him until he finally came to his senses. Assigning him the rear end of the canoe and with the boy struggling to keep up, the injured shaman led the way through a downfall of red-hot shrapnel, along the ragged slopes. Their only hope lay in reaching the comparative safety of the sea.
Just then, a sudden movement caught Artek’s eye. Looking back, he watched through a veil of smoke as what remained of his ornate hut was leveled like a pile of twigs by a moving mountain of smoldering rock. The superheated avalanche washed over it and kept on going, pushing the shattered structure all the way into the lake until it vanished beneath the swollen waters.
Frantically striving to keep his wits about him, Artek stepped agilely over a rapidly-widening gap in the ground ahead. He took two more steps, then grunted in surprise as he found himself being pulled unexpectedly off-balance and backwards. As he glanced back, he saw the child was gone. Worse, the elder behind him had lost his footing on the crumbly earth and was beginning to teeter toward the chasm Artek had just avoided. Dropping his end of the canoe, the shaman lunged for the old man’s hand.
He was too late. The elder’s equilibrium was gone and he tumbled helplessly over the edge. For a moment, he seemed suspended and clawed hysterically at the air. Then he plunged into the bowels of the earth and was gone. Scarlet and black flames as high as the highest of trees roared straight up from the place where he had fallen, the heat they generated so hot that the surrounding air became stifling. Forced back by the fire, Artek recoiled as the nauseating stench of burning human flesh filled his lungs.
He knew then that he was in hell.
Wiping at rivulets of brownish blood that oozed from his scorched nostrils, the shaman picked up his little boat and staggered painfully on. Smoke from the collapse had all but blinded him, and his breath came in ragged gasps from the harsh grit and dust that was rapidly clogging his lungs. He stumbled like a drunkard, lost his footing on the heaving ground, and finally collapsed atop the canoe. If it wasn’t for the pain in his side, he might have lost consciousness.
Suddenly, a loud splashing sound made it past the piercing whining that filled his ears. Artek crawled forward and began to run his hands up along the canoe's rough flanks, toward its prow. Seconds later, he was rewarded with the undeniable feel of lukewarm water.
Hope and his heart started pounding wildly in his chest. He had reached the lake. Now he had a chance.
With his hands grasping his canoe’s sturdy lip, Artek waded to mid-thigh in the rising water and then leaned forward to launch his craft. A disbelieving smile creased his dust-caked features. The nightmare would soon be over. Martika was gone, but he was going to make it. It was the will of the gods.
Then, Artek’s world turned black and scarlet.
The jagged hunk of rock wasn’t particularly large – perhaps the size of a fist – but its velocity was deadly. Smashing into the young shaman’s lower back with the force of a swung sledgehammer, the stony missile shattered Artek’s spine. His vocal-chord-straining scream became an asphyxiated gurgle as the stone’s impact propelled him forward, pushing him face-first beneath the turbulent waters. His legs went numb and his footing was lost. Slipping forward with the surging current, the wounded shaman found himself helplessly adrift in deep water. Only his death grip on the canoe’s gunnels kept him from sinking.
A moment later, Artek lifting his head up out of the sulfurous lake and sucked in an agonizing breath. He started to move, then clamped his jaw tightly closed to keep from shrieking. The pain in his back was exquisite. It felt as if a red-hot harpoon had been thrust completely though his body, torqued from side to side, and then pulled back out again.
On the verge of hyperventilating, Artek tried to hoist one knee up over the edge of the canoe so he could pull himself aboard. He was rewarded with even more pain, if that was possible, but that was all. His legs would not respond.
The stunned shaman knew then that his back was broken. As he held on for dear life, Artek realized that the tiny canoe was his only possible salvation. He had to get away from the caldera and outside, to open water. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he made a desperate lunge and managed to seize the dugout’s opposite side. He stopped to rest, his head hanging, his breath coming in shuddering sobs.
Panic began to whisper warnings in Artek’s ear. If he couldn’t drag himself out of the water soon he would pass out and drown. It was inevitable. For a moment, he just hung on, his limp body suspended in the water, his forehead resting against the canoe’s cool outer hull. More and more, the hopelessness of his situation grated at him. Through the smoke, he could hear loud hissing splashes as more fiery missiles plunged into the nearby lake.
Suddenly, a cold rage filled Artek’s rapidly-beating heart. His face contorted with undisguised fury and his head snapped up. He sucked in a deep breath, uttered a guttural roar of defiance, and then flung himself forward. Miraculously, he somehow gained additional purchase on the inside of the canoe. Arm muscles bulging, the wounded priest dragged his useless legs over the craft’s rough edges and collapsed inside its comforting interior.
Chest heaving, Artek lay there, wallowing in pain, but happy just to be alive. He sensed the canoe drifting on the water, but he was incapable of caring. The pain of his collective injuries was just too great. Endorphins began to flood his body and he sank into a state of semi-delirium. Time lost all meaning.
Gradually, the howling wind died down and the smoke and sounds of the eruption started to dissipate. As he glanced up at the reddened sky, the wounded shaman realized his canoe was outside the caldera now. He could feel it swaying gently on the waves, like a child nestled in its mother's arms. Barely conscious, he propped himself up on one arm and dizzily surveyed the devastation.
The village was gone, wiped away as if it had never existed. The entire twenty-thousand-year history of his lost tribe had been eradicated in minutes. As he studied the broken bodies that dotted the surface of the water, Artek knew with dreadful certainty that there would be no other survivors. Soon, even the island itself would be gone from sight.
Truly, the evil spirits under the mountain had triumphed. Both the tribe and the last of the gods that warded them were gone.
All of a sudden, Artek’s sixteen-foot canoe began to wob
ble from side to side. Looking fearfully down into the water, he spotted several large, ghostly forms speeding by under his boat. Despite his tremendous suffering he managed a feeble smile. It was a handful of the giant fish and squid that made the lake their home, fleeing into the open sea. At least something had survived.
Then, the familiar sound of a blast of water vapor turned Artek's sad smile into a hoarse cheer of joy. There, breaching the surface a hundred yards away, was the god.
The great beast had survived the final, epic battle, just as the prophecies had foretold. Artek’s vision clouded and tears streamed non-stop down his filth-encrusted cheeks as he watched the magnificent creature make its way toward the welcoming deep. It began to build up speed until he could just make out its broad back: a blue-gray islet, awash amid the swells. A moment later, it submerged completely and was gone.
Lying back, Artek decided to close his eyes and rest. A welcome breeze kicked up, clearing the air and dissipating the heat of the day, and the creaking of the canoe’s hull as it floated along was a veritable lullaby. He adjusted the position of his weary head against the hard wood and, in seconds, drifted off into a deep and dreamless slumber.
The shaman lay there for untold hours, he and his tiny craft floating along, two insignificant specks on the infinite sea. Taking advantage of the respite, his broken body struggled mightily to fight back against his horrific injuries and the strain of his ordeal. It was a losing battle, however, and a high fever soon came over him. Soaked with sweat, he began to hallucinate about fire and stones and screams and water . . .
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