by Greig Beck
She raged and tore at his hair, pulling clumps out and then dug nails into his face. Emma pulled her handgun free just as Bellakov jerked an elbow back that struck her cheekbone, making her see stars for a moment. When her senses returned, the gun was gone.
She heard Ben’s voice again and saw that he’d finally run out of plateau and was right on the absolute rim. He turned to look at her, once, and only for a moment, before vanishing over the edge.
“No-ooo!” Emma stood up in the cockpit.
“He jumped.” Jenny’s mouth hung open, before she turned, and her expression turned to wide-eyed terror. “Ack.”
Emma spun to look at the woman and then her head snapped around to where she stared.
“Oh God.” The snake’s attention had been dragged to the only thing left moving on the plateau edge – them.
“Come on, you fucker,” she heard Bellakov grunt and start to jerk in his seat as though trying to force the Corsair to move faster.
“Get out.” Emma felt terrible fear run through her as the monstrous snake bore down on them. “Out,” she hissed again, grabbed Jenny’s arm and tugged. But Bellakov whipped out an arm across her chest, holding her in place.
“Sit fucking down!” he screamed.
Jenny looked up at her, her eyes wet. Go, she mouthed.
Time was up; the snake was only a hundred feet away and would cross the distance to them in seconds. The plane began to tilt.
Jenny fought with Bellakov, the plane was going over, and the snake was there. Emma looked to where Ben had jumped. She made up her mind and leapt from the tipping plane.
*****
Ben had seen the narrow ledge only five feet down – it may take his weight and it may not. He had no choice; he jumped down. It held.
After a few moments, he began to hear the screams of the two women. Please, not them, was all he thought, as he looked up over the edge.
The snake closed in on the sliding Corsair and he saw a figure leap free on the opposite side, roll on the ground and then scramble away on her belly – it was Emma!
Ben raised his hand to wave as the plane reached the plateau rim. Emma belly-crawled toward him, and he helped her over the ledge, as the snake’s massive head shot out on its coiled neck and caught the rear of the plane.
“Jenny.” Emma sunk down. “Oh God.”
Jenny’s scream was like a siren, and the sound of gunfire was continuous. Even though the snake was basically a 70-foot pipe of solid muscle, it still couldn’t hang onto the entire weight of the Corsair, and its body began to slide. Self-preservation kicked in, and it opened its mouth, releasing its prey.
Ben couldn’t tear his eyes away. The Corsair had been hanging straight down. The rock slingshot had detached, but the intervention of the snake had meant they didn’t get any upward-forward lift.
The plane had no hope of getting into any sort of glide formation and would drop like a rock. As he watched, he saw a single figure clamber out from the cockpit canopy, and make a leap for the cliff wall. But the falling plane meant whoever it was never stood a chance. The Corsair and the body fell into oblivion.
“Jenny!” Emma screamed, and Ben put a hand over her mouth.
The monstrous snake watched the objects fall for a moment more, then an arm-thick forked tongue slid out to taste the air. It then began to coil back on itself, still tasting the air, as though searching for more interesting scents. Its huge head began to swing around. Ben eased both of them down.
He remembered what Walt had told him: big snakes could see your body heat. And even the top of a head peeking over a cliff edge might warrant an investigation from a hungry alpha predator.
Emma covered her face with her hands and began to sob. “You’re alive,” he whispered, and then put an arm around her and drew her in close. He then tried to force them both hard up against the cliff wall. With the other arm, he held his pitiful hunting knife pointed up at the cliff edge and stared towards the lip, watching, and waiting.
Minutes passed.
Then more minutes.
Ben wasn’t sure exactly how long he waited, but curiosity was now gnawing at him. He tried to reach out with his senses, listening, smelling, or even feeling for vibrations in the stone. But he couldn’t detect anything, and the wind around them was picking up, and with it came a continuous howl as it rushed up over the rim.
At last, he couldn’t take it anymore, and he started to rise up. Emma grabbed at him and stared with wide eyes.
“Don’t.”
“Can’t stay here forever.” He lifted her hand free and squeezed it for a moment, before continuing to rise up.
When Ben got to the lip, he turned his head sideways, allowing just one eye to ease over the edge fractions of an inch at a time. At last, he was able to see.
He lifted a little more, letting his eyes dart left and right – there was no sign of the snake – nothing.
The bare rocky ground in front of the jungle was empty. Ben stared hard into that veil of green, trying to see in past the first lines of massive tree trunks, tree ferns, and huge tongue-like fronds. His neck prickled as his mind told him nothing was there, his eyes confirmed it, but his animal senses screamed a warning.
“Is it there?” Emma whispered.
“Can’t see it.” He reached down to grab her. “Come up and add your eyes. See if you can spot anything in the jungle I’m missing.”
She exhaled and then rose up beside him, basically climbing his body. She peeked over the edge.
“Jenny,” she squeaked.
“Didn’t make it,” Ben replied. He remembered seeing only one person get out, but then the body fall away into the misty void.
“It’s just us now,” she said softly.
“I know,” he added.
“We’re stuck here.” Emma slumped back down and drew her legs up to her chest.
“If there’s a way down, we’ll find it.” Ben turned down to her. “We can’t stay here.”
“Why not? I feel safe here.” She looked up at him, her eyes wet. “Where will we go anyway?”
Ben sighed and stared out at the now swirling mist. The sun was rising, and hopefully it would lift the fog-like veils that were still hanging over them. He also expected that the ever-present cloud would rise and then the jungle floor over 1,000 feet below them would be laid out like a green carpet. He knew that Emma wouldn’t find being on the cliff ledge so pleasant then when vertigo kicked in.
But she did pose the killer question – where exactly would they go? And if they couldn’t get down, what then? Benjamin said they’d be trapped, so do they plan a life of living native up here? How long did he think they’d survive, weeks, days, hours?
But he remembered his military training; giving up was the mind killer. And that was something he’d never allow to happen. He crouched down beside her.
“We go back to where we came up. After all, we never fully explored the area; there might be another way into the tube we climbed up in, or another tube altogether.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “We don’t exactly have anything else to do.”
His stomach grumbled, and he realised he hadn’t eaten in so long, he’d forgotten what food tasted like. They could last days without food, but far less without water. But they needed both for energy and morale. Besides, if they did need to move quickly, the last thing they needed was to be fatigued.
“Come on; we forage as we go.”
“Jenny said things could be poisonous,” she muttered.
“We gotta take risks now, and be prepared to eat things…raw.” He grinned, hoping to lift her spirits. “Live things.”
She was having none of it. “We’re in hell.”
“At least we’re in hell together.” He half smiled.
She made a small sound in her throat. “Yeah, I guess.” She looked up. “Hey, were you always an optimist?’
He looked at her, thinking about the question for a moment.
“You know what? I did two tours in Afghanistan, one in Western Sy
ria and a few skirmishes in some Iraqi provinces. I’ve fought hand-to-hand, with a gun, knife, and fist and boot. And I’ve been in some damn dirty hellholes.” He half smiled. “In every one of those times, I knew I could die, but I always expected I wouldn’t. Call it will to live, expectations of a higher purpose, luck or optimism, I just never surrendered then, and I won’t now…and I won’t let you now either.”
Ben held out his hand. “Sometimes you gotta fight to win.”
She smiled as she took his hand. “Yeah, yeah, I can do that.”
Together, they peeked back over the rim again. It was now 10 in the morning and dust devils spun on the cliff edge. But there was nothing else.
“Is it safe?” Emma asked. “I can’t see anything moving.”
“I’d prefer if there was,” Ben said. “Just one little beastie eating grass, without a care in the world.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” She exhaled.
“Well.” He pulled in a cheek. “Here’s a dumb question; when I asked you to take care of my gun, did it go in the Corsair?”
She groaned. “Yes.”
“Okay, thought so.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter; we still have a couple of pistols; they should at least dissuade any pursuers.”
“Ah, about that.” She grimaced.
He slowly turned to her, his eyebrows up.
“I dropped it. When the snake was coming for you, I pulled it out, but it all got crazy real quick, and it got knocked out of my hand.” She gave him a gritted smile.
“In the plane as well, huh?” He grinned.
She nodded. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was small.
“What? Don’t be. You made it out, and to me that’s all that matters.” He lifted her hand, looking deep into her eyes. “I give you my word I will never rest until I’ve got you home, okay?”
“And I’ll never rest until we’re both back at Ricky’s Ribs having a cold beer.” Emma sucked in a huge shuddering breath and then nodded. “We got this.”
“You bet we have.” Ben looked back over the edge towards his right-hand side of the clearing in the direction where they first came in. “You see that pile of rocks over there?”
She followed his gaze. “Yeah.”
“That’s where we’re headed – we go fast and low. Ready?” He looked into her eyes, seeing fear and fatigue, but also determination.
“When you are.” She placed her hands on the cliff lip.
“Let’s do it.” Ben went up and over the lip. His gun was held loosely in his hand and his shoulders were down. He turned but Emma didn’t need his help, leaping up with ease and jogging beside him.
Ben tried to keep himself between her and the jungle, as they ran fast to the rocky outcrop. He couldn’t help but turn to the dense green wall as his imagination conjured huge diamond-shaped heads and jewel-like eyes in amongst the fern fronds, coiled around massive moss-covered tree trunks or hanging from the overhead canopy.
In another few seconds, they were at the rocks with their backs pressed hard to them. Ben breathed in hard, the humid air thick in their throats, and he had to spit grit that was being flung around by the now swirling wind.
Emma leaned back on the rocks and rubbed at her eyes. She squinted. “Shit, sorry, bit light-headed.”
“Don’t worry, me too. We’ve used up our energy stores; we need food and water – food soon, and water now.” He looked over the boulders, and then along the plateau edge to the next place of cover. “We left a lot of stuff behind after the explosion – maybe damaged, but we’ll take what we can get. Might even be some weapons.”
She snorted. “Let’s dream big; we’re also going to find another way down, right?” She grinned. “So let’s hurry.”
He kissed her, grabbed her hand, sighted on his next coverage target, and ran. And then ran to the next, and the next after that. The trip took over an hour, and only a few times the jungle reached the edge of the plateau, or the rocks looked unstable and they were forced to detour inland.
On the way, they passed various creatures, mostly bovine-like herbivores, with serpentine necks and vacuous eyes, or a few smaller carnivores that stared with a fox’s cunning and followed them for a while. Only once did Ben have to throw a few rocks at their pursuers.
Finally, they crouched behind a tree trunk that measured twenty feet around, and its towering branches disappeared up into the roiling clouds. Just past some fallen trees was the scattered debris from the grenade explosion.
“Did that only happen two days ago?” Emma whispered.
“Yeah, I know, seems a lifetime.” Ben could see the place where he had stood, by himself, as the first person out of the cave. He’d remembered being in a state of awe and wonder at the massive jungle.
“We underestimated it, didn’t we?” Emma looked up at him.
“Yeah, yeah we did.” He let his eyes travel over the strewn debris. “In my military training, it’s drilled into us to never underestimate an enemy. I did it big time.”
“No.” She grabbed his arm and tugged on it. “This place isn’t our enemy; it’s just that we don’t belong here.”
“You’re so right,” Ben said. “And if Benjamin somehow made it down in 1908, then that’s the riddle that we need to solve. But first, we need supplies…any supplies – there.” He motioned with his head and crept forward.
In amongst the strewn debris of rocks from the cave, they could see Bourke’s backpack, burned up and torn open. The man’s pack once held a few rations, but these were gone and not even the foil wraps of his protein bars remained.
The bloody remains of the man had also vanished, and it even looked as if the rags of flesh and the blood splatters had been licked clean from the rocks.
They wandered through the debris and Emma found an unopened water bottle, and together they shared a few sips.
“Looks like we weren’t the only ones seeking out the supplies,” Emma said, tucking the bottle into a thigh pocket.
“Yeah, damn.” Ben sighed. “Nothing much salvageable.” He dropped the remains of the backpack. “C’mon, let’s look for another entrance.”
Together, they walked along the front of the collapsed cave mouth. There were a few deeper holes, but they either ended after a few feet, or were far too narrow to allow even Emma’s slim body to slide into.
Emma crouched staring in longingly. “Could we maybe widen it somehow?”
Ben crouched beside her. “We’d need equipment, or at least heavy tools…and a few weeks. The rock here is too dense and all we’ve got is a few hunting knives and our bare hands.”
“So no.” Emma found a rock and sat down, her hands on her knees. “Getting late.”
Thunder cracked and made her cringe. Ben’s head swung around, but he couldn’t see where the storm front was. In fact, it seemed like it had come from all around them. The wind was a constant now, and Emma had to hold the hair back from one side of her face.
“What the hell was that?” Her teeth were gritted.
“Dry storm maybe. Like you said, we’re gonna need shelter soon.” Ben reached up to wipe a sleeve across his damp brow. The constant perspiring was another way they were being drained, and meant they needed to take more water in than was going out.
“Just remember, Benjamin got down, somehow. And he didn’t climb back into the temple.”
“These tabletop mountains are riddled with caves,” she replied. “From the top, bottom, and sides. He must have found another one that took him down.” Emma rubbed both hands up through her hair, the sweat making it stay slicked back for a moment even in the wind.
Ben sat down beside her, and she turned to him.
“I don’t get it. These things up here; all these monsters. Why aren’t they down there, in the jungle? I mean, if Benjamin was able to climb up and down, and the ancient Pemon Indians, why don’t these things get down? Why isn’t the jungle overrun with them – not exactly too many predators to challenge them?”
“Maybe they have.” B
en turned to her. “In Benjamin’s notebook, he talks about coming across the body of a large animal at the foot of the plateau, dead, but there was something alive inside it that the natives killed. He thought it might have fallen…now, I think he was right.” He picked up a small stick and then started to doodle in the sand at their feet.
“But when I was doing research before we came down here, I read about an ancient Amazon legend. Every country has them.” He half smiled. “Remember, we’ve got Bigfoot, Scotland’s got Nessie, and in the Congo, they even have their own local dinosaur legend called a Mokele Mbembe.”
But in this place, there is something called a Yacumama; means mother of the river. It’s supposed to be a monstrous snake that eats people whole.”
“Don’t remind me.” Emma shuddered, and then looked up. “You think they’re down there already?”
“Maybe. I don’t know anymore.” He sighed. “I wish Jenny was here; she’d know more. But if you remember, she told us about that fossil they found in a coal mine in Colombia, it was a giant snake called a Titanoboa. Colombia is real close, so this thing lived right here, so it makes sense.”
She shook her head. “I just think that if these things are here 365 days a year, then there should be more evidence. Nature has a weird way of getting out, up, off and down, from any confine.”
“Hmm.” Ben had wondered about that himself. He looked down and saw that he had drawn a long coiling body in the sand. He quickly wiped it away. Jenny had told him that the monstrous snake was alive at the time of the dinosaurs, but outlived them by another 10 million years. How?
Jenny had thought the massive snakes were alpha-alpha predators and fed on dinosaurs. They were the ultimate survivor and with a body that was so heavily muscled, they gave off a lot of heat and so could live through periods of cooling – there was no reason for them to go extinct. Emma was right; why weren’t there more of them down on the jungle floor?
Emma picked up a handful of small stones and began to flick them from her palm. “I can’t see the jungle anymore.” She scoffed. “Is it even still down there?”
Ben sat back. The cloud hadn’t lifted as he expected, and the weird thick clouds swirled like they were in the centre of a bath and the water was draining down the plughole. Except it all seemed to be being drawn towards them, and then upwards into the sky. Ben looked up; there was nothing but a boiling ceiling of clouds there too.