by Perrin Briar
“Guys?” Bryan said. “A little help?”
The cavern’s ceiling was caving in, rocks the size of large dogs raining down, splashing into the water and tossing up white wash. A few smacked the pod’s roof, breaking and running down the side.
The monster had jammed itself under the newly widened door, and roared, screeching as it dug in its flanks and forced itself against the overhang. The metal pack on its back cried out as the creature pushed itself further inside. The rocks smacked its snout, making it angry. It thrashed harder.
“There!” Aaron said.
He leaned forward and pressed a button on the terminal. The little machine rumbled into life, a cat’s meow compared to the lion’s roar behind them. But the monster was working itself free, the cavern disintegrating around it.
“Go, go, go, go, go!” Zoe said, slapping the back of Bryan’s chair with her palm.
“I’m trying!” Bryan said. “But the controls are screwy!”
He pushed and pulled at the joystick. It made no logical sense to him. Finally the little pod jolted forward. They were going to collide with the wall ahead.
“Down, down, down!” Zoe said.
“Quit backseat driving!” Bryan said.
He pushed forward on the joystick, and the pod began to lower. Slowly.
Looking back, Zoe saw the gaping mouth of the monster as it widened to bite into the little pod. Zoe turned away, not wanting to look, as if that might prevent it from happening.
The little pod entered the darkness of the water and they sank further.
They were away!
CRUNCH!
The monster’s jaws crushed the back of the pod, squeezing it, crushing it like it was nothing but an empty can of pop. But the little pod kept going, pulling against the might of the great beast.
Bryan yelled and turned the handles, full lock, in either direction. The monster’s jaws followed, the tendons in its jaws and neck tightening, but a creature’s jaws can only go so far before it must stop. They were going to snap if the monster didn’t let go soon. Finally, the monster did, though not of its own free will.
The pod bolted forward, as if given a shot of adrenaline having escaped the clutches of the demonic monster.
The creature buried its head back in the pool, but the pod was nowhere to be seen. It tossed its head and emitted a tremendous roar of rank disgust.
Those in the pod didn’t hear it, as they moved at a gentle, but serene pace through the water.
“No sweat,” Bryan said.
“No sweat for you, maybe,” Zoe said. “Plenty for us.”
“Do you think one of these days we might go somewhere we don’t need to fight for our lives every second?” Cassie said.
“Where would the fun be in that?” Bryan said.
15.
THE WATER flowed gently and smoothly like a family ride at a theme park.
“This isn’t so bad,” Bryan said.
“Maybe not for you,” Zoe said. “We’re cramped in the back.”
“I’m quite comfortable,” Bryan said, rubbing it in.
“I don’t want to alarm anyone, but-” Aaron said.
“When you say it like that, how can we not be alarmed?” Cassie said.
“I’m wet,” Aaron said. “Water is leaking in somewhere.”
“We’re underwater,” Bryan said. “It’s to be expected.”
“We’re in a waterproof underwater pod,” Zoe said. “It is certainly not to be expected.”
“It won’t matter for long anyway,” Bryan said.
“Why’s that?” Cassie said.
“Because the waterfall is just up ahead,” Bryan said. “Hold on!”
The calmness of the water was disrupted, churned up like white rapids over sharp rocks. It was incredible how fast the water’s temperament changed. The water roared around them, infused with raging bubbles.
“Is it a long drop?” Cassie said.
“Does it make a difference?” Zoe said.
“Not really, I suppose,” Cassie said.
Bryan braced himself on the terminal. The others held onto Bryan’s chair and the handholds around them. It was the best they had. This was going to be painful.
The water evolved into a raging tempest, turning white. The little pod was thrust up onto the surface. They floated there for a moment, getting a good look at the cavern roof about them, and then perched on the edge of the waterfall. It was a long way down.
“It didn’t seem this high from the ground!” Zoe said, pulling back at the sight.
“Nothing we can do about it now!” Bryan said.
The pod floated over the edge like flotsam. Lights on the terminal flashed and a noise wept. It didn’t sound happy. The pod lost all sense of gravity, like a rollercoaster, but without the health and safety standards. The fall didn’t last long, a few seconds at most.
The family took the impact well as there was little space for them to get thrown around. Bryan suffered the worst, his head flying forward and smashing on the joystick. It was covered with rubber, so the impact wouldn’t cause too much damage. He hoped.
The small lake was surprisingly deep. The little pod never made contact with its floor. It hissed as it rose to the surface, the water spilling over it, impossible to make out clear distinctive shapes. The monster could have been standing there waiting, wagging its tail for all they knew.
Bryan pushed the pod door open. It rose up on bent hinges. There was no monster. For now.
Bryan drove the little pod toward the water’s edge and climbed out. He helped the others out too.
“What do we do with the pod?” Zoe said.
“We leave it here,” Bryan said. “Someone will find some use for it someday.”
“As an expensive fountain,” Aaron said.
“I don’t like to litter,” Zoe said.
Bryan chuckled.
“I think the authorities will be lenient on us, considering what we’ve been through,” he said.
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Zoe said.
“How do we get out of here?” Bryan said.
“This tunnel,” Zoe said, walking toward it. “Other than that, I don’t remember the way out.”
“It’s better than where we were,” Bryan said. “A lot closer to home.”
The family entered the tunnel and were filled with dread, visited by the same emotions they’d experienced when they were last there.
“What do you think it was?” Cassie said. “It looked like a dinosaur to me.”
“It breathed fire,” Aaron said. “It couldn’t have been a dinosaur.”
“Of course it wasn’t a dragon,” Bryan said. “Dragon’s don’t exist.”
“We thought dinosaurs were extinct before we came down here,” Zoe said.
“Dinosaurs are extinct from the surface,” Bryan said. “The ones we saw were anomalies, that’s all.”
“And dragons couldn’t have gone extinct on the surface too, and only reside down here?” Zoe said. “The Chinese have believed in dragons for thousands of years. It’s possible they might have known about a real-life monster like this.”
“Dragons breathe fire,” Bryan said. “This monster didn’t.”
“Yes it did,” Cassie said. “Look.”
She turned, grabbed a handful of her hair and showed it to Bryan and Aaron. It was black and singed at the end.
“You think I stopped off at a salon on the way here?” she said.
“I assumed it was escaping gas or something,” Bryan said.
“No,” Zoe said. “It was the dragon. I heard it inhale and breathe out when it blew the flames at us. There is no question it came from the beast. And, if you got a closeup look at its lips, you can see where the flames come out. The monster is not flame retardant. Its lips were melted and scarred from the fires it breathed. God knows how painful it must be.”
“Yes,” Bryan said drily. “Poor thing. I feel sorry for it already.”
“But that sounds to me li
ke a mark against it being a dragon,” Aaron said. “If it was born to breathe fire, shouldn’t it be able to withstand a little heat?”
They came to a fork in the road.
“Should we split up?” Aaron said.
“Not on your life,” Bryan said. “We stick together, no matter what.”
“Wait,” Cassie said. “What’s this?”
She was looking at something on the wall. She put her fingers to it.
“It’s an arrow,” Zoe said. “Do you think it points to the way out?”
“Or to a trap,” Bryan said.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Zoe said. “Besides, I want to get out of here as quickly as I can. This place gives me the creeps.”
“You and me both,” Bryan said.
“Let’s follow it,” Aaron said. “We haven’t got anything to lose. We’re hungry and thirsty and we need to get out of here if we’re to feed ourselves.”
They entered the tunnel the arrow pointed at. It wound around a slight bend before coming to another fork. They searched, and after a little time, discovered the arrow on the opposite wall to where they had found the first one. Clearly they shouldn’t expect the notations to be in the same location at all times.
At each fork in the road, they had to search. Sometimes the signs were covered in overgrown moss, or washed away by rain, or too high or low for them to see clearly. Wherever they were heading, they were getting closer to it.
“What confuses me the most are the machines we found,” Bryan said. “The pods. It’s too much of a coincidence they have nothing to do with the other one we saw in the pirate world, don’t you think?”
The air suddenly smelled fresh and clean. They didn’t realize the tunnels and caves brought a certain mildew scent with them, damp, thick and earthy. They’d been in them for so long they’d grown accustomed to it. It wasn’t altogether unpleasant, but it wasn’t exactly Chanel either. They didn’t need to follow the arrows any longer. They could just follow their noses. The view that welcomed them took their breath away.
The sun was warm on their faces and illuminated rolling green hills with blooming wild flowers. The world was bright and yellow and shiny. In the middle distance to their left was a dense forest. Before them, a huge shimmering lake that fed into the caves to their right. And there was a town, only the church steeple visible over the woodland.
The family filled their lungs. They couldn’t have been happier to be out of the dingy caves.
“Where shall we head?” Cassie said.
“Toward the town I think,” Bryan said. “We can find food and shelter. And they might know a way out of this place.”
“Or we might end up being on the menu,” Zoe said. “We should be careful.”
“If they’ve got churches they should at least have some semblance of technology and development,” Bryan said.
“If we head out now we might get there by nightfall,” Zoe said.
“Then what are we waiting for?” Bryan said.
They stepped into the thigh-high grass and began to traipse through it. Aaron lowered his hands to brush against the soft clumps of seeds at the top of each blade.
GRRRRRRR
The sound was low and barely audible, but it sent a shiver up each family member’s spine, bringing a chill that reached from the bottom of their feet all the way to the top of their heads. They turned in unison to identify the cause of the sound.
A small flock of birds pulled up out of a nosedive and rose high into the sky, flapping to climb at a steeper angle. They seemed to notice something odd about the cave entrance they had been rushing toward.
Standing almost out of sight, with the majority of its body hidden inside a cave, the great beast that had pursued them was now perched, waiting for them to emerge. It had given away its position, perhaps by accident in its preemptive excitement, or on purpose, savoring the chase yet to come. But it hadn’t run for them, not yet.
And then its body tensed, its legs coiled, and its head bent down, in line with the creature’s long spine.
“Not again!” Aaron said.
He turned and ran before the others reacted. But they were all off the starting block before the great beast was. There was no more time to take in the view, no more time to breathe in the fresh air. They needed to hurry toward the town and hope someone there would take pity on them.
Judging by their latest brushes with world locals, there wasn’t much chance of that.
16.
THE FAMILY had unknowingly experienced a series of small lucky breaks. The first was they had already made it around the curve of the lake, and the beast would need to traverse this area too if it was to catch them. It gave the family a small, but not insignificant, head start.
The second impact of emerging on the opposite side of the cave system was the monster hadn’t been able to spot them until they were already halfway to the forest.
The final lucky break was the monster being unable to stifle its growl. It would have undoubtedly been in a much stronger position had it not, but there was no way to take it back. It had shown its hand, and now it had to make up for it.
It was certainly making the best attempt it could at doing so. Its legs were long and muscular, and it stretched them to their full length to catch up to the family.
The family tore across the vast expanse, pumping their already exhausted and aching limbs, toward the thick copse of woodland that bordered the town. The monster’s crashing footsteps thundered and grew louder, until the earth was shaking and the trees cracked and snapped under its weight as it plowed through them.
“This way!” Bryan shouted.
He turned, taking them at a right angle, out of the range of falling trees that fell like ancient Roman pillars, crashing at their feet. The smashing continued, the pounding of heavy footsteps never ceased, but now it was behind them, sinking away.
The family never stopped, never ceased moving, but Bryan was always aware of the scene they were leaving behind them. Once the crashing stopped, Bryan skidded to a halt.
“Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop!” he said.
“Why are we stopping?” Cassie said through heaving breaths.
“The monster,” Bryan said. “It’s stopped.”
“So?” Zoe said. “Isn’t that a good thing?”
“Not if it’s looking for us, knowing we changed direction,” Bryan said. “If it can hear us, know which direction we’ve come, it might cut us off from the town.”
Zoe peered through the foliage. She could make out a tall wall made of tree trunks. Between the woodland and the wall was a wide clearing. She thought she could spot a moat too, but she wasn’t certain.
“Are you sure?” Zoe said. “It doesn’t look far.”
“It doesn’t need to be far for the monster to get us,” Bryan said.
“Did you see what was on its back?” Aaron said.
“I was too busy running away from its razor sharp jaws, funnily enough,” Cassie said.
“Looked like some kind of metal box,” Aaron said. “It’s weird, don’t you think?”
“So what do we do?” Zoe said.
“We creep through the woodland,” Bryan said. “He might double back to check on where we’ve gone.”
“So we should keep going,” Zoe said.
“Unless he decides to try and cut us off,” Bryan said. “He has a fifty percent chance of choosing the right direction if he does.”
“Then we should continue in this direction,” Cassie said. “Creeping, like Dad said. That way, even if the monster tries to cut us off, he can’t, because he’ll think we couldn’t have come this far. He’ll think he made a mistake and try to go back and check the other direction.”
“He’s not a man,” Aaron said. “We don’t know his intelligence level. He might not think anything at all.”
“We can assume it’s relatively high,” Bryan said. “You can tell by the way he hunts, by the way he’s always ready to surprise us in whatever
we decide to do. I think Cassie’s right. That seems like the best course of action to me.”
The family crouched down and crept through the woodland on their forearms. They made a little noise, of snapping foliage and skittering of rodents in the undergrowth, but the monster was far enough away that it wouldn’t have heard them.
But the monster was on the move too.
Its footsteps were softer, quieter, but it was at a disadvantage: its sheer size made it impossible for it to creep, hindered by the woodland as it was.
Birds cawed and broke into the sky, flapping. It gave some indication of where the huge monster was. The family kept going, heading through the undergrowth, and though their legs ached—they were now in a squat position for forty or fifty minutes—they never stopped. The town was visible to their left, always there, tantalizing and close, but yet so far.
They were slow, but silent. They were moving, and that was enough for now. The woodland began to grow thin, and the family were losing their protection.
“We’re going to have to make a break for it,” Bryan said. “For the town. The gates aren’t all that far away. We can get to them before the monster can get to us. Plus, it’s probably still looking for us in the wrong part of the wood.”
“What if the town doesn’t open their gate to us?” Zoe said.
“What if they do?” Bryan said.
He let the opportunity hang before them, tantalizing like golden fruit.
“Our only other choice is breaking out and hoping the monster isn’t looking in our direction while we head toward that other woodland over there,” Bryan said. “If he does, then we’ll be in exactly the same situation there as we are here. But if we’re successful, and he doesn’t see us, then we can camp out there, survive till he leaves, and then make a break for it.”
“But he might camp out here too,” Zoe said. “We’d have no way of knowing. And then we’d have to run even farther to get to the town. I say we go for it now, while he’s still confused and looking for us.”
“Me too,” Cassie said. “I’d rather get it over with.”
“Aaron?” Bryan said.
“Let’s do it,” Aaron said. “I’ll die of exhaustion, but let’s do it.”