by Greig Beck
Walt knew the ideal would be one animal the size of a turkey, or two the size of fat chickens – either would be a good meal for the five of them.
“You’re pretty friendly with Cartwright now, huh?” Bellakov asked, breaking the silence.
Walt half turned. “He’s an okay kinda guy. I guess he knows what he’s doing.”
“Don’t trust him,” Bellakov responded. “Don’t forget whose side you’re on.”
Walt snorted. “There are no sides anymore, dumbass. Barlow is dead. Staying alive is the priority now, and by my reckoning, working with Ben Cartwright will give us a better chance of doing that.”
“Yeah, staying alive is the priority,” Bellakov whispered. “Survival of the fittest.”
Walt noticed Bellakov was now close in behind him and went to turn. The blade entered one side of his neck at the carotid artery level, appearing out the other side in a spray of blood.
Immediately, he felt cold, unable to move, and found himself on the ground. Bellakov ripped the knife free and swung it at the ground a few times, flicking off the thick coating of arterial blood.
“Guess you chose the wrong side, dumbass.” Bellakov reached down to wipe his blade on Walt’s shirt. He straightened, looked around, resheathed his knife, and then vanished into the jungle.
Need to warn Ben, Walt Koenig thought as the cold and the pain went away. He then began to get sleepy. Think I’ll just rest awhile first. He closed his eyes.
*****
Janus Bellakov sprinted from the jungle, head up and waving madly. Ben swung around and then went to one knee lifting his rifle and pointing just past him, waiting for the expected rush of a pursuer.
He half turned, but kept his eyes dead ahead. “Emma, Jenny, get in behind the plane.”
He waited as Bellakov crossed the few hundred yards of clear land towards them and the cliff edge. The man rounded the Corsair and skidded to a stop, slamming his back up against the fuselage.
“Fucking monster.” He sucked in and blew out more air before turning to Ben. “Just came out of the jungle. Took Walt.” He sucked in a huge gulp of air. “Nothing I could do.”
“Ah shit.” Ben felt his heart sink. He both liked and needed the man. “Was it chasing you?’
“Yes, no, I don’t know.” Bellakov gulped more air, his eyes round with fear. “I just freaking got the hell out of there.”
Ben checked his gun. “We go after him, he could still be alive.”
“No.” Bellakov reached out and grabbed Ben’s shirt in his fist. “He’s dead.” His mouth set in a grim line for a moment. “No one could have survived what I saw – bit nearly in half.”
Ben lowered his head.
“He was my friend too.” Bellakov squeezed Ben’s arm. “But we have to stay here, stick to the plan. First light, we get out of here.” Bellakov looked at each of them. “Right?”
Emma just stared back from under lowered brows.
“What was it?” Jenny asked.
“What was what?” Bellakov frowned.
“What sort of thing attacked you? Biped, quadruped, snake…something else entirely?” she asked.
“I, I don’t know. It came out of the darkness so fast; didn’t see it clearly.” He put his hands to his face and rubbed hard.
“Well, was it following you? Was there only one?” Jenny’s frown deepened.
“I don’t fucking know!” he shot back at her. “So lay off.”
Ben watched the man closely. He was agitated but seemed evasive. He didn’t doubt something had happened, but he didn’t think Bellakov was the sort of guy to panic and run.
“Okay everyone, this is how it is,” Ben said softly. “We stay here, stay quiet, and stay on guard. It’s going to be a long night, but first thing in the morning, we take off.”
They all agreed; what else could they do? They continued to watch the jungle for another hour, but above the constant background noise of a million insects, the scuttling and rustling, and nightly eat or be eaten sounds, nothing burst from it to charge down at them.
Finally, Ben sat down with his back to the Corsair. The dry metal skin of its fuselage cool compared to the thick night air. The fire they’d started had now been put out, as there was now nothing to cook. So they sat in silence, each lost in their own thoughts, hungry and miserable. But still alive, Ben thought.
Emma was next to him, and she pulled out her canteen, shook it, and then sipped from it. She nudged him and held it out.
He looked from it to her. “Any backwash?”
She snorted. “Plenty.”
He took it from her. “As long as it’s yours.” He put it to his lips, but only allowed it to wet them, as he knew she’d need her precious fluid a lot more than he would. There was plenty of water in the jungle, but no way was anyone going in to collect it now.
He felt Emma shift a little closer to him. “What do you think our chances are, you know, of making it home?”
One in a hundred, one in a thousand maybe, he thought. He smiled and turned to her and lied. “Good, very good, as long as our luck holds.”
“Okay.” She sighed. “You know, even at school you were always a crap liar.”
He chuckled. “Oh, you wanted the truth; why didn’t you say that?”
She nudged him in the ribs. “Lay it on me.”
He lowered his voice and leaned closer to her. “No doubt, it’s gonna be tough. If the plane even holds together after we tip over the edge, it has to glide. Which is a big ask for an antique that was never designed for that. Then we have to hope that the nose stays up and we’re not coming in so fast that we fly into the ground, or a tree or rock – remember, we have little maneuverability. And, I’m worried about visibility.”
Emma exhaled. “Yeah, I hope that cloud lifts; I’ve never seen the weather act like this.”
“Neither have I; it’s not natural.” Ben frowned. “And it’s getting worse; I keep thinking back to Benjamin’s notebook, and also the carving in the cave – he said this place is can only be seen for a short period, and then…it can’t be. I don’t get it, but he seemed to think he needed to be gone before whatever happened, happened or he’d be stuck here.”
“And then there’s the comet. We seem to have a jigsaw in a million pieces,” Emma agreed. “The interference ruining our communications and GPS, as well as the thick cloud cover. Does that mean it’s invisible now, or it’s harder to find later?” She snorted. “Does it move, sink, become invisible?”
She sighed and sat quietly for a few moments before nudging him again. “Tell me you’ll get me off here.”
He nudged her back. “We can do it.”
Even in the dark, he saw her smile and nod. “That’s the spirit,” he said.
“I was always an optimist.” She leaned on him. “I always knew you’d come back one day; how’s that for optimism? That turned out to be true.”
“Get some rest,” he said.
“Oh yeah, right.” She looked up at him. “I have one more question?”
“What is it?” He looked back down at her.
“How many parachutes do we have?” She laughed softly, and her crooked smile and boldness made his heart swell.
“One for the pilot.” He leaned towards her, and she him. He kissed her, feeling soft lips that were flaky dry. Even after all this time, her hair still smelled of hints of apple shampoo.
“When we get home,” he whispered, “I’m going to take you out for the biggest most expensive dinner you have ever seen in your life.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Yeah, sure, promise a girl anything when she’s trapped on a hidden plateau and might be eaten by monsters.”
Ben put his arm around her shoulders. “Don’t worry.” He tilted his head back and looked up into dark boiling clouds that now swirled like dirty froth. Lightning moved within them. “We’ll make it.”
*****
“Let’s load ‘em up.” Ben turned and grinned. “Does everyone have their boar
ding pass?”
“Yep, first class.” Emma grinned and slapped his shoulder.
Ben looked up again and saw that the bilious-looking clouds were now showing a hint of dawn light – it was nearly time. He leaned his head back, thinking through the plan he’d made, but then jerked forward.
“What the hell…?”
It was the vibrations that made him come instantly alert. He carefully extricated himself from Emma and inched up to peer over the Corsair’s tail. It was still dark, but dawn wasn’t far off now.
Bellakov crept up beside him, keeping low and just allowing his eyes to peek over the fuselage. In another few seconds, Jenny and Emma were also aware something was happening.
“I see them,” Bellakov said.
“The size…unbelievable,” Ben whispered.
The animals were around eight feet tall at the shoulder, on four legs that all ended in elephantine stumps with flattened claw-like nails. There were no scales, rather just a pebbled skin with brown and black blotches on their hide. The creature’s heads were bony looking, about two and a half feet in length on long squat necks. All were low to the ground.
“Plant eaters – a herd of them,” Jenny said, breathlessly. “Maybe Unescoceratops or even an Aquilops – see the flat beak-like mouths? Much bigger than I expected.”
“Yeah, I guess everything looks bigger when it has meat on its bones,” Bellakov jibed.
“Well, if they’re happy, then it means there’s nothing that’s worrying them – no predators. So, feel free to stick around, tubby guys,” Emma said
A few of the animals sauntered closer, picking at sparse patches of reed-like grasses as they neared the plateau’s edge. The herd had initially reminded Ben of cattle, but now up close, that impression vanished. Where a cow’s eyes had a mammalian liquid warmth, the small eyes in the large box-like heads of these creatures were like the soulless buttons of a reptile.
They continued to search out the grasses, and Ben noticed that where the team had shifted the Corsair, there was a small stand of the same plant species. And they’d dropped the plane right on top of it.
“If those things get much closer, they might nudge the plane,” he whispered.
“Like hell.” Bellakov lifted his rifle.
“Don’t do that,” Jenny insisted. “They’re basically just giant cattle.”
“Just a little discouragement then – just to the one in front.” Bellakov began to aim.
Ben reached out to lower the man’s muzzle. “Don’t want to bring anything else in for a look-see now, do we?”
“Should we get in the plane?” Emma asked. “Then if it nudges us over, we’ll be ready.”
“Yeah, and what if it nudges the plane and not the rock; we’re liable to be over the edge and hooked up. Dangling like worms on a freaking hook,” Bellakov derided. He pointed with his thumb. “I vote for a single round into the flank. For something that size, it’ll just feel a bee sting.”
Ben turned to Jenny. “Cattle, huh?”
Jenny shrugged. “Sure – big, clumsy, and harmless.”
Ben glanced above them and saw the thick clouds had lightened enough for them to go. “Well then, let’s move these guys out, frontier style.” He got to his feet and took the rifle off his shoulder and handed it to Emma. “When I move these big girls on, we go. Everyone get in the plane and be ready. This should only take me a few minutes.”
“Be careful.” Emma started to rise, but Jenny grabbed at her.
“He knows what he’s doing,” she said and pulled Emma back down.
Ben opened his arms wide and headed towards the nearest colossal beast. “Heeyaa, heyaa!” he waved his arms.
They ignored him and he moved even closer, crossing more of the open ground than he wanted to. More yells, and this time a few of the big heads came up and turned towards him.
The closest beast to him stopped chewing to stare for a few seconds, before going back to working at the tough grass. Obviously deciding he was insignificant, it then moved a few more ponderous steps towards him.
“No, no, not this way, Bertha.” Ben tried again waving even more energetically, and yelled even louder. “Heya-aaaaa!”
He was so close now he could smell them, and they were a mix of methane flatulence, and an odd sweet coffee and wet hair odor. He still had his arms out and was just contemplating his next move, when the closest beast’s head jerked up, and its chewing mouth hung open, grass still protruding. It froze like that. Weirdly, it stared straight ahead, but at nothing.
Ben’s eyebrows drew together and he lowered his arms. The thing had become so motionless it looked like someone had simply flicked its off-switch.
Ben briefly looked over his shoulder to the Corsair; three people were crammed into the cockpit, waiting for him, and he felt their eyes focused on him. He turned back to the herd; strangely, all of them were standing silent and still.
Ben swallowed in a dry mouth and the hair on his neck began to rise – something wasn’t right.
“What’s the matter, girl?” Ben looked from the animal to the dark wall of jungle. He knew that the massive tree trunks, dripping ferns, and strangling vines hid a million eyes. But some were more dangerous than others.
“You can sense something, can’t you?” He started to back up. “Something I can’t.”
One of the largest of the creatures snorted and its head swung to the jungle. Ben could hear the animal taking deep sniffs, and then like a spell had been broken, it squealed and started to run. The herd followed and Ben felt the ground shake beneath his feet.
But what came next made his blood run cold.
The monstrous snake poured out of the jungle like a river of green and brown scales. Ben’s eyes widened as a jolt ran through his body from his toes to his scalp. He was suddenly like all small prey animals in the presence of a large predator – he froze.
*****
Emma tasted bile at the back of her throat as fear made her empty stomach threaten to dry heave on her.
It couldn’t be real, her brain screamed. How could something that huge move so fast, and so silently? The giant snake poured forth, sinuously, all polished scale and muscle; its four-foot-wide diamond-shaped head pointed like an arrow at the panicking beasts.
Ben was frozen to the spot, but the herd’s terror had turned to mad panic and that urged them on to greater speed. They began to split; their goal obviously was to be anywhere that was as far away from the snake as they could get – some stampeded for the jungle, some along the cliff top, and a few toward the plateau edge. Horrifyingly, these were the ones on which the snake turned its unblinking gaze.
Emma felt hypnotized and stared with mouth open as she watched the beasts pick up speed to what they thought might have been safety. They never stopped or even slowed as they neared the cliff. Unfortunately for Ben, that meant they were bearing down on him as well. And the snake followed.
“Ru-uuun!” she screamed, so loud she felt veins pop out on her temples.
Ben finally turned and then sprinted, angling out of the beast’s path. Jenny added her voice, and Janus Bellakov finally hung the barrel of his gun out of the cockpit. He began to fire.
Emma continued to scream and wasn’t sure if Bellakov hit any of the creatures, as it certainly wasn’t making any difference.
The snake continued to pour forth, pausing for a moment as if to select its meal, before shooting forward. The bulky herbivores come to the cliff edge and Emma wasn’t sure if they realised their mistake at the last moment, or just didn’t care, perhaps thinking that going over the edge was preferable to being crushed and then devoured alive.
They didn’t stop or even slow as their huge bulks went over the edge and sailed into space. The snake arrived just seconds too late, and its mouth opened in anticipation, as it must have thought about taking a grab at one of the falling beasts.
“Oh God.” Jenny grabbed at her arm. “This is like what killed Bourke in the cave…a monster.”
Fully out in the open now, Emma could see the colossal size of the reptile – it was about 70 feet in length and as wide around as a small car.
“Ben!” She waved him on.
He continued to sprint toward the plane.
“Stop running,” Jenny whispered.
“Huh?” Emma looked from her to Ben. And then she understood. The diamond-shaped head swung towards him; the snake had lost one meal, and a fleeing creature out in the open immediately presented it with another.
Ben looked over his shoulder, saw it, and then put his head down and accelerated.
“Sto-ooop!”
And then what? she wondered. Dumb idea.
“Ru-uuun!” She knew he had no choice now.
Bellakov continued to fire, and she vaguely only noticed that he wasn’t hitting anything, until she felt the plane lurch.
It hit her hard – the bastard wasn’t firing at the monster, but at the freaking rock. Bellakov was trying to launch without Ben.
“You sonofabitch,” Ben yelled, obviously seeing what the mercenary was trying to do.
Ben looked like he was trying to squeeze every last ounce of speed from his legs, but he began to slow as fatigue must have felt like he was dragging lead weights.
“Stop it,” she yelled at Bellakov and grabbed his collar. She saw that Ben still had too far to go and was never going to make it, and she leaned out to point to the nearest edge of the plateau.
Bellakov ignored her and continued to fire at the rock. Then, to Emma’s horror, she felt the plane begin to slide over the edge.
“Oh, no, no, no.”
Just like Ben had hoped, the plane began to be tugged forward. Bellakov tried to drag forward the ancient canopy over the cockpit but it snagged on something.
Emma felt insane fear and anger and grabbed Bellakov’s collar and shook it, as Jenny screamed in his ear. Emma then began to beat the man with her fists, but all he did was hunker down and grip the controls.