“Brandon,” he said, weakly, and I turned to see the poor old guy trying to do what I’d done minutes earlier, attempting to right himself in the now flipped around digging machine. I bent close and helped untangle his shirt from a bolt it had become hung on, and within a few seconds we’d gotten him around and upright into a sitting position.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“I seem to have… em…” He pointed vaguely at his crotch.
“Don’t worry about it. We both have. Doesn’t matter. We’re alive!”
“The air,” he said, weakly. “Where’s it coming from?”
“Out there,” I answered, pointing vaguely.
“Out… where?” he asked. “Where are we?”
“Back on the surface, somewhere,” I said; “where, exactly, I don’t know. It looks like a jungle, or a forest, or something.”
“We turned?”
“Apparently.”
“You said ‘a jungle’? What jungle?”
I shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“How long have I been unconscious?” He checked his watch.
“No idea,” I said. “I’m just glad you’re all right. You gave me quite a scare.”
“Three days.”
“What?” I asked, not believing he could be meaning what I thought he was meaning. “You’ve been unconscious for three days?”
“No. We’ve been in the mole for three days. I have no idea how long we’ve been unconscious.”
“Three days! That’s insane!”
“It does seem unlikely.”
I stared at him, completely lost as to what I should say next.
“Let’s get out of this damn, stinky box.” I said, finally.
He grinned appreciatively, and together we stepped out to stand in silent awe of a landscape both weird and beautiful. Behind us lie the forest I’d seen, and the small lake. Stretching out beyond that was a low, level shore that spread down toward a calm, incredibly clear, blue sea. Apparently we’d narrowly missed coming up in the middle of an ocean, or enormous lake, which I can only imagine would have been very bad. Or good, I guess, if you’re looking for a pleasant way to die.
As far as the eye could see the surface of the water was dotted with tiny islands—hundreds of them—some made of towering, barren, granite, others draped majestically with gorgeous layers of tropical vegetation, dotted unevenly with magnificent blooms of vivid color.
Near us, at the outer edge of the forest sprouted up the same beautiful, colorful blossoms that glorified the islands. Beyond them lie that dark, and forbidding forest of giant ferns, heavy trunked trees, dense foliage, and thick, emerald grasses. Huge creepers hung low, drooping from tree to tree over a closely packed under-brush knotted and tangled around a mass of fallen trees and roots. The thick packed foliage created dense shadows within the jungle, a darkened gloom as inviting as a grave, the shade untouched by the noonday sun pouring unfiltered radiance from a cloudless sky.
“It was night when we came down,” I said, staring up at the sun directly overhead.
“So… in three days…” Milton said, his mind trying to understand it all. “No, it should be late evening.”
“Then how can it be noon?” I asked, turning to him. “Did we change time zones? Where on Earth could we have gotten to?”
For some moments the old man didn’t reply. He stood with his head bowed, buried deep in thought. As he focused on whatever preoccupied him, I took the opportunity to get out of my disgusting clothing. Eventually he looked at me, his expression confused, and twisted with concentration.
“Brandon,” he said, “I’m not so sure we’re on earth.”
“What?” I said, nearly laughing. “Where else could we be, Milton? You think we’re on Mars? Maybe Venus? I know your mole is good, but…”
“No, not another world,” he said, shaking his head, “what I’m thinking is—and I know this sounds ridiculous, Brandon—but what I’m thinking is: we’ve crossed a few parallels and are actually in another hemisphere.”
“Another hemisphere?” I asked. “Like… where? Hawaii?” I gathered my clothes and looked around. “I’m not sure I follow you. You think maybe we angled through the earth’s crust, and an ocean, and came out on some tropical island that’s…?” I looked back at him and stared. “I don’t understand, Milton.”
He just shook his head, and suddenly noticed I was naked.
“Brandon, what are you doing?”
“Milton,” I said, patiently. “Take a sniff. We’re revolting, and need to get clean.”
I headed toward the waters, while he sniffed at his armpits. Wincing as if in pain, Milton followed.
“What if someone comes?” he asked.
“I think they’d prefer we were clean, too.”
I reached the ocean, tossed in my clothes, and dove after them. The waters were clear as glass, warm, and felt good against my bare skin. I broke the surface, grabbed my shirt and pants, and began scrubbing them out.
“Feels like Hawaii,” I told Milton. “Come on in. The water’s great.”
Slowly, and cautiously, he did. After getting up to about his waist, he crouched down until the crystalline surface was up to his neck.
“Certainly smells better this way,” he admitted.
“So… where do you think we are?” I asked him.
“It’s hard to explain, Brandon,” he replied, bobbing about in the sea, and removing his own garments. “It doesn’t seem possible, based on what we know of the planet’s crust. But I have no other answer. I think…” he looked at me, and apparently thought better of what he was going to say, lowering his eyes. “Never mind. I suppose the best thing for now would be to do a bit of exploring up and down the coast. Maybe we can find a native who will enlighten us with something more than my ridiculous speculation.”
“Like a Hawaiian?” I asked.
“That would answer all questions, now wouldn’t it?”
I agreed, and finished beating out my clothes.
“Let me get the stink out of this stuff, first,” I said. “I’m not meeting any native girls with poo on me.”
The upside of our crazy situation was that it had completely distracted me from Jennifer’s dead boyfriend, and I began to feel like my old self. Milton looked at me with mischief in his eyes, and suddenly splashed me like a five year old. I returned the favor, deluging him with a wave that could have drowned a smaller man. He stared at me in horror, and I just smiled.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I said, pointing accusingly. “You started it.”
But his expression didn’t change. Only his mouth moved—open and closed—like a fish through a bowl.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, then realized he wasn’t looking at me, but past me.
“Brandon, RUN!”
I turned to see what he was looking at, horrified to find a smooth, black shape moving rapidly through the crystalline waters, directly at me.
“Holy, SHIT!” I said, and tried to do as Milton asked.
But I was in up to my armpits, and walking was not the best way to move in water that deep. So I dove into the translucent liquid, and swam for all I was worth. Milton was already scrambling back up onto dry sand, with me close behind him. I turned to see if the thing was still coming, and nearly shit myself again when I saw hundreds of white fangs inside an alligator-like head come thrashing up through the roiling sea, snapping only inches away from my bare ass.
In my terror, I stumbled over Milton, and fell onto some patchy grass along the shoreline. The beast behind me lunged and snapped, barely missing both me and my older friend, dragging itself from the surf on flippered proto-limbs. Luckily for us we were just out of reach, and while the monster seemed capable of walking a bit on its awkward appendages, it apparently preferred not to, and scuttled backward into the gentle waves, to slip once more beneath the clear surface.
We watched as the thing thrashed around throug
h our floating clothes, ripping them to shreds, and ingesting parts of them. What little that remained would hardly be worth retrieving—not that we’d be brave enough to enter this ocean again.
Having finished its miniscule meal, the black monster circled once, then twice, and finally drifted off into the depths again in search of—I’m sure—a more fulfilling meal than our filthy pants had been.
Milton and I looked at one another in absolute amazement.
“What the fuck was that?” we both asked as one.
FOR NO PARTICULAR reason other than that it meant getting away from the mole and that thing in the water, we headed off down the shore, both of us now completely naked, except for shoes. Milton had stopped to grab a palm frond for propriety, but I’d decided to just let it all hang out. What was the worst that could happen? I could go to prison for indecency? Hardly a threat. I was already a murderer, after all.
As we walked along the sand Milton gazed intently, and very seriously out across the water. He was evidently wrestling with something, and finally reached a point where he couldn’t contain whatever it was any longer.
“When you have eliminated the impossible,” he said quietly to himself, “whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? Isn’t that right?”
“What are you whispering about,” I asked.
He repeated it, louder, so I could hear.
“I’ve heard that,” I said. “Who said that? Einstein?”
“Sherlock Holmes. Have you noticed anything unusual about the horizon?”
I looked in the same direction he did, and slowly began to understand the strange feeling I’d been having since exiting the mole, a sensation that had haunted me since first kicking my way through the thing’s door—there WAS no horizon! As far as my eyes could see the ocean continued outward and upward, dotted by those tiny islands and shoals, all fading to mere specks in the distance; but beyond them—beyond all—continued the sea, upward, ever upward as though lying against the inside of a bowl. I was looking up into the distance—a distance that faded gradually away in a haze of blue atmosphere that blurred together with the azure of the water. That was all. There was no clear-cut edge marking the dip of the Earth below my line of vision, only the gradual disappearance of the ocean into a mist of sky.
“I feel as though a great light is slowly igniting inside my mind,” Milton continued, again looking at his wristwatch. “I believe I have partially solved this puzzle. It is now eight o’clock Pasadena time. We’ve been here two hours. When we emerged from the mole the sun was directly overhead.” He looked up. “And where is it now?”
I turned my eyes upward and found the immense, burning ball of superheated plasma still motionless in the center of the sky. But… the sun! I hadn’t noticed it before! The thing was at least three times the size of the one I’d lived under my entire life, and apparently so close I could reach up and touch the damn thing.
“Oh, my God, Milton.” I said, completely awed. “Where the hell are we?”
“I think I can say quite positively, Brandon,” he began, cautiously, “that we are—” but he got no further. From behind us, near the mole, came a thunderous, heart-stopping roar. Whatever it was sounded as though it stood ten stories high and ate Cadillacs. As one we turned to witness the source of that terrifying noise burst from the darkness of the forest, and into the brightness of that oversized sun.
If I—after what had nearly eaten me, and after all I’d just become aware of—still held some tenuous belief that we were still on good, old planet earth, what exploded from the forest before us would have crushed that notion completely. Bursting from between the gnarled trees and twisted roots of the jungle was an immense, monstrous creature that looked like a bear gone wrong. It was larger than a goddam elephant and covered in a thick coat of shaggy black hair, its enormous forepaws armed with massive, lethal looking claws as big as my arm.
But more shockingly still, right behind it came charging an actual fucking dinosaur! A living, breathing, running, twelve foot tall T-Rex, or some shit, racing madly after the bear-thing, and both charging hotly in our direction.
Roaring horribly the two monsters stampeded our way, one trying to catch lunch, the other hoping not to be lunch. Unfortunately for both Milton and I, we were ‘wrong place, wrong time’. I turned quickly to the old man to suggest that it might be in our best interest to seek new surroundings—but he was gone, his back to me, a good fifty yards from where I stood, and moving like a gazelle. I would never have guessed he had it in him.
Milton’s palm frond had been tossed aside, and his bare bottom was rippling crazily toward an outcropping of forest that fingered in the direction of the sea along a small spit of sand. One tree in particular looked big enough, and sturdy enough to hold us both and hopefully get us high enough to be out of reach. Feeling the tremors on the ground from the things behind me, and practically sensing their breaths on my back, I kicked it into high gear in an effort to catch up to the lightning legs of Milton Alvarado.
While the massive beasts pursuing us didn’t seem built for speed, the adrenaline rush of both predator and prey was pushing them toward me at a pace that was faster than comfortable. At my hardest sprint I wasn’t sure I’d have enough time to make it to the tree and safety, so—like Milton—I flew.
As I neared the trunk Milton was already monkeying up, I nearly fell over with laughter at his frantic attempts to climb, naked. His horrified glances back over his shoulder, his wide eyes and gaping mouth, coupled with his jerking, squirming attempts to get up that gnarled conifer—all without any clothes—was pretty fucking hilarious. He looked more like he was trying to have sex with the tree than climb it, and terrified its dad was going to come into the room at any second. By the time I reached the trunk myself I was laughing so hard I could barely get a grip to lift myself.
“BRANDON!” Milton shrieked, pointing.
And I turned just in time to see the bear-thing tumbling right at me, the jaws of the dinosaur clamped tightly around the back of its neck. I was about to be crushed by them both.
* * *
THE NAKED CAVE GIRL
* * *
I SPRANG UP TO a low branch just as the two creatures slammed hard into the base of the tree, jolting it and nearly ripping the old evergreen out by its roots. The bear screamed, struggling crazily, dino teeth sunk deep, and already drawing blood. I tried to regain a grip so I could continue my climb, but the thrashing bear again hammered into the tree’s base, sending violent shudders all the way to the top.
Milton nearly fell on top of me as my fingers clawed desperately to grip a branch, and I almost dropped, my legs dangling too damn close to the heavy, thrashing bodies, flashing claws, and grinding teeth below. The old man’s horrified face was now very close to mine, as his terror-stricken shrieks awakened other monsters in the grim forest that howled and rumbled all around us.
I was no longer laughing.
Getting a solid enough grip that I could finally pull myself up, I swung a leg over the branch Milton clung to, and lifted my body beside his. Holding tight to secure us both, I then helped him to his feet. Together we clutched the tree's trunk desperately as the struggling beasts continually rocked and shook it, claws now and again ripping splinters from our fragile perch. Fearing we were still too close I hoisted the flailing, old man to the next branch, getting both hands under his bony, little butt and shoving for all I was worth. He managed to roll atop the next limb, arms and legs wrapping around it with all the strength his skinny muscles could manage, and once settled, he—bless his heart—reached down to help me up.
But in that instant the monsters below collided violently against our little shelter and sent me flying. I landed hard, right atop their squirming bodies; the dinosaur snapping angrily in my direction, and fortunately for me I was falling away from him, and so narrowly missed losing an arm. The bear—not realizing its attacker’s attentions had been distracted—bit the dinosaur on the chest, and the two turned back
again on one another, which gave me a much-needed opportunity to sprint away.
“Brandon!” Milton called, and I looked up to see the poor, old man’s anguished face staring at me with fear and concern.
“I’m fine!” I called back. “Go higher, and jump to the next tree! I’ll distract them!”
“Don’t be insane! Get yourself to safety!”
“Once I know you’re out of danger!”
“BRANDON!”
Once I’d sprinted a good forty or so yards away I grabbed a rock, and turned on the flailing monsters, hurling the stone with everything I had. I hit the dinosaur in the eye, and it turned on me, furiously. It was about then that I realized—if I’d just left the thing alone, it probably would have killed the bear and ignored Milton and I completely while it ate.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Because now the thing was leaving its weakened prey where it lie, and charging at me, picking up speed rapidly with every thrust of its powerful legs.
And I had nowhere to go.
The tree Milton hid in was behind it, I was exposed on the open shore of the beach, and the nearest secondary line of trees was about thirty yards away. Not sure what else to do, I bent to pick up another, larger rock and waited, trying to figure out if I might be able to duck aside, out of range of teeth and claws, and smash it in the head.
I sighed. The instant I considered the plan, it already seemed hopeless.
Ten yards, five yards—I raised my rock, my arm now shaking—two yards… I was just about to make a sideways dive when the neck of the thing was pierced clean through by a spear that took it down, knocked it on its side, and caused it to slide to a sandy stop at my feet. It flailed and squirmed, blood gushing from its mouth and throat, but something important must have been severed by the stone-tipped javelin, because it didn’t thrash long, and eventually spit a last gasp of steaming breath and lie very still, its twitching eyes the only thing to betray any sign that it had ever been alive.
Astounded, and grateful to whoever had thrown my salvation I looked in the direction from which it had come, and was even more astounded.
The Hollow World: (Pangea, Book 1) Page 5