The Hollow World: (Pangea, Book 1)

by Michael Beckum

  “Why… are you erect?” he asked, glancing down and wincing.

  “Oh. Uh…” I looked down, then over toward the still smiling savage girl.

  Milton looked her way, his eyes widened, and his mouth fell open.

  “Oh,” he said, getting it, instantly. He was old, but he wasn’t dead. “I understand perfectly.”

  He turned back to me and grinned ear-to-ear.

  “I’m so glad you escaped!” he said. “You’ll understand if I don’t hug you, in your condition.”

  “Later,” I said, winking charmingly, which made him laugh.

  “I saw you and some girl…” he turned and looked at the female in question, waving, politely. “Her, I suppose. I saw the two of you fall, and the bear creature run over to you with that pack of wild lycaenops swarming like bees…” He turned back to me and his face softened with an expression of deep emotion and concern. “I feared you were dead.”

  “No, Milton,” I said, comfortingly. “In fact—I’m a little more alive than I want to be.” I joked, nodding toward my still stiffened rod, and we both laughed.

  “Well,” he said, taking in a very appreciative view of the savage girl, “I can hardly blame you.” He tore his eyes away from her beauty, and scanned the crowd, his expression becoming stern. “I wonder what these creatures intend to do with us, Brandon.”

  “That’s got me worried as well. They don’t seem to be really savage, or threatening. But—I don’t know. We’re not exactly guests, either. Maybe I’m expecting too much from these guys, but… what do you think they are? Where the hell are we Milton?”

  “I have no certain idea.”

  “What do you mean, ‘no certain idea’?” I asked, becoming even more concerned, which was—fortunately—making my erection drift downward. I avoided looking at the girl to make sure it continued that way. “You were about to tell me where you thought we’d come out of the ground when all hell broke loose.”

  “Yes, Brandon,” he replied, “I was. Because I think I do know where we are. And if I’m right, we’ve changed the world, my boy! We’ve overturned decades of scientific belief! I believe—in all honesty—that we are at the center of our Earth.”

  “At the center of what, now?”

  “Inside the hollow Earth!” He said, proudly. “We’ve proven that the planet we live on, is hollow—like a ball! And we have passed entirely through its crust to a world within our world.”

  “Milton,” I said, gently. “That’s not possible.”

  “Isn’t it, Brandon? Isn’t it? I estimate we bored down about two hundred and fifty miles in that mole, right through the crust of the outer world. There’s no other explanation.”

  “There has to be. There’s molten lava at the center of the Earth, Milton, everyone knows…”

  “Magma.”

  “What?”

  “Magma. Not lava. Lava derives from magma, but it is technically different.”

  I sighed.

  “Okay, magma. There’s magma at the center of the earth…”

  “No, there isn’t,” he said, giddy with his weird thoughts. “There is a bright, gaseous star.”

  He pointed up.

  “Milton…”

  “Look at the strange fauna and flora which we’ve seen and in some cases nearly been eaten by. What does it take to convince you that we’re not ON Earth anymore, but IN it? Remember the horizon—what other explanation do you need that we are—indeed—right now—standing upon the inner surface of a sphere?”

  “But the sun, Milton!” I urged. “How can a sun just be hanging in the sky—at the center of the world?”

  “How can there be dinosaurs, and cave people, and monkey-men, and a sun that never changes position in the sky no matter how much time elapses?”

  I looked around. There was no doubt that this place defied all explanation. Things had happened so fast I really hadn’t had time to process it all. I looked at the girl, she smiled at me, and I immediately regretted it. My hanging vine popped upright again, and everyone returned to laughing. All except the girl. She looked at it, then up at me, and tilted her head with such a sly, feminine, amused expression of pleasure that I nearly walked over to her and showed her that it would fit, dammit.

  I studied the creatures near her—and me—the still fidgety monkey-people. As Milton had suggested I thought of the T-Rex and the bear and the black crocodile thing in the sea—all the weird creatures we’d seen since exiting the mole. We certainly weren’t anywhere on the known surface of the Earth. Was it so unbelievable that we were actually inside the planet? It certainly explained the upward curve of the horizon.

  “Okay, Milton,” I said. “I have no other explanation for this… for any of this. I really don’t. So let’s just go with your idea and see where that takes us.”

  “It’s really all very simple, Brandon. Edmond Halley proposed it in the 17th century. You see, the earth was once a nebulous mass…”

  “I really don’t care. It doesn’t matter. We’re surrounded by monkey-people, the horizon bends upward, and women don’t shave their pubic hair. Whether we’re at the center of the earth, or in a big bowl somewhere near the south of France, all that matters to me is staying alive.”

  “Excellent point.”

  Milton glanced down at my hardened dong, which bobbed up and down with my overactive heartbeat.

  “You should probably stop looking at her,” Milton whispered to me, quietly.

  “Thank you, Milton,” I said. “Good advice.”

  The monkey people had talked long enough, or perhaps they’d simply given up on the idea that I was going to entertain them by using my hardened, shaved manhood on someone. Whatever the reason, the chief gestured and chirped at some of his men, who immediately walked over and grabbed we three captives.

  “What do you think they plan to do with us?” I asked.

  In answer, the chattering returned, explosively, the monkey people swarmed as one, and we were again seized under our arms, each by a pair of the powerful, tailed people, then lifted effortlessly into the air, and slung along between the treetops. All around us, and trailing in our wake raced a chattering, jibbering, grinning horde of sleek, brown, monkey-creatures.

  A couple times while flinging me around through space they nearly dropped me, but recovered almost instantly and snatched me up before I could become a lifeless pulp on the forest floor. The fact that they’d slipped seemed no bigger a deal to them than the stubbing of my toe might be to me while crossing a city street—they simply laughed riotously and kept right on moving. The upside was that my erection shriveled down to nothing, my balls yanking up to somewhere behind my eyes.

  How long we flew through the treetops I’ll never know because—as I was finally starting to understand—time is not a factor in the lives of the people in this inverted world. Once there is no means for measuring it, the concept of time really ceases to exist. Milton’s watch was gone, and we were trapped under a motionless sun. I was already completely baffled as to how I could even compute the amount of ‘time’ that had elapsed since we’d burst through the crust and into this madhouse. It might be hours… it might be days... it might be no time at all.

  Eventually the forest ended, and we dropped from the trees to land lightly on a level plain. Not far ahead of us rose some low, rocky hills, and our captors shoved Milton, the girl and I forward, up a path that fed into a narrow pass. After a short period of hiking through the constricted, winding crevasse, our way opened up onto a wider trail that led down into a tiny, circular valley.

  The attitude of our captors changed instantly as we entered this natural arena. Their laughter stopped. Their faces set, and their eyes shot about nervously. They moved quietly, as if on tiptoe. The happy-go-lucky personalities had gone, and were replaced by aggressive ferocity—bared fangs, threatening growls, and vicious snarls.

  We were shoved down an incline toward the center of the amphitheater where another captive man and woman had already been herde
d, as afraid as we were. As we descended, the entire tribe of monkey-men and women spread out around us into flowing rings of mounting hostility. No more laughter, no more jokes. I don’t know what had changed, but it was making the group of us anxious and uncomfortable.

  We five ‘performers’ exchanged nervous glances, then stood together at the center of the ring, backs to one another, facing outward defensively, waiting uneasily for whatever might be coming next.

  The floor of the arena was pocked and uneven, as if it had been dug up and refilled many times over many years, and I wondered if the mounds scattered around us covered past captive’s decaying corpses.

  The cave girl and Milton both jumped when the monkey-men suddenly began to pound on drums that had appeared from nowhere, a unified, rhythmic beat that seemed to thrum its way right into our bones. The dirt beneath our feet even vibrated with the rising volume of the drums.

  The monkey crowd parted abruptly at one end of the arena, and several of those earless, sabertooth wolf-cats were prodded into the theater at the opposite end. The things bodies were as large as full-grown Great Danes; dark, spotted, leopard-like hair decorating their backs and sides, chests and bellies a snowy white. They fanned out in pack hunting style, eyes partly focused on us, partly on the vibrating earth beneath their paws. They padded carefully in our direction, powerful legs and foot long fangs making them the obvious odds-on favorite in the ensuing match-up. As they approached, their lips curled back away from strong jaws packed with seemingly endless rows of ivory, razor edged teeth.

  Whatever show we were expected to perform, it was certainly no contest.

  Milton began to pray, dropping to his knees and folding his hands together before him. The other man backed up, and moved closer to us, carefully putting the two girls between him and danger. I scowled at him, then glanced at my cave girl friend. She saw my annoyed reaction to the stranger, rolled her eyes, then turned back to face our predators, grumbling under her breath, probably saying all the things I was thinking.

  I stooped and picked up a small stone, testing its weight in my hand. She saw what I was doing, looked at the rock, then at me, then at the cat-things, and finally back to me with an expression that spoke volumes.

  Yeah, that worked so well against the T-Rex, she seemed to be thinking.

  At my movement two of the things veered off a bit and began circling us slowly. Evidently they had been a target for stones in the past, and were cautious, but hardly intimidated.

  Our captors were now dancing up and down on the theater benches in their chittery, monkey way urging the wolf-cats on with vicious whoops and cries. Perhaps encouraged by this, when I didn't throw, the nearest wolf-cat charged.

  Like any kid growing up in America I’d played my share of baseball. If I’d been any good, I’d have made that a profession instead of becoming a janitor at APL. I wasn’t terrible, and I’d never been chosen last in pick-up games. More importantly, I had no other weapons options, and I’d never been as motivated as I was now.

  I tried to remember everything I’d been taught about throwing with speed and accuracy, then tried to forget it all when I recalled a pitching coach telling me not to get too lost in my own head. Keeping my eye on the nose of the leaping beast I let fly, throwing with all the strength I had—and a little more.

  I startled even myself when I hit the thing hard in the eye. It yelped, jerked its head to one side, and fell beside me, scrabbling and scratching in the dirt, closing both eyes as it flailed away from us, screaming with a furious hiss. Righting itself, it began to rub at its injury madly, as if trying to scrape away the pain, when suddenly the ground erupted beneath its feet, and a monstrous, armored centipede creature exploded up out of the earth to envelope it whole.

  Milton shrieked, leaped to his feet, and my cave girl and the other spun to see what was happening.

  We watched the centipede coil around the now panicking wolf-thing, wrapping it tightly inside an iron ball of legs and chitinous plating. As it twisted and rolled closed around the terrified cat-creature, we caught a glimpse of a central mouth filled with razor teeth of its own. Its captive began to scream horribly from inside the now solid casing.

  All we could do was watch, knowing that once it had finished with the wolf thing, we were next.

  * * *

  CHANGE OF MASTERS

  * * *

  “ARTHROPLEURA,” MILTON WHISPERED. “At least I would think so.”

  “What?” I said, not really wanting an answer, just more surprised at the timing of this particular paleozoology lesson.

  “The largest known land invertebrate,” he answered. “Kind of a Jeopardy question. But it’s supposed to be an herbivore.”

  Blood began to leak from between its interlocking plates and the wolf-cat stopped shrieking.

  “Yeah, not so much,” I said. “Do you know how to kill it?”

  “No,” Milton answered, awed.

  “Fat lot of good you are,” I said, teasing.

  “It shouldn’t even be able to live. It existed at a time in Earth’s past when the air was over oxygenated, and…”

  “The sun never moves, the horizon goes up!” I snapped.

  Milton sighed. “Point taken.”

  Another of the horrible centipedes exploded from beneath the ground near us, antennae at one end twitching in the air, as if searching for us.

  From nowhere, one of the monkey people jumped in and scrabbled in the dirt, searching desperately for God knows what. He threw up his hand with a ‘Eureka!’ yell, and the centipede instantly enveloped him, crushed him, and munched him bloody. His extended hand fell free of his body to the ground near me, and I saw it held a fistful of dirt flecked with small lumps of gold.

  Is that what this was about? Some bizarre, otherworldly mining expedition?

  “Goot na sama,” my pretty savage girl said in awe, then bent to pick up a stone of her own.

  The crunching centipede stopped chewing, turned instantly in her direction, antennae flicking frantically. I grabbed the girl’s arm and held a hand to her mouth. She looked at me with wide, terrified eyes, and got my message. She then turned back to the searching, monstrous, plated insect, and remained silent. Our newest predator continued to face our way, rising up on multiple back legs, segmented body twisting this way and that, antennae scanning furiously. Its central mouth began to chew again, absently, on a last, bloody piece of monkey man while it searched, and presently the creature’s legs moved in unison, carrying the beast slowly toward us.

  The other male captive who had tried to hide behind us made some fearful, guttural sounds, bent to grab a rock of his own, suddenly deciding for some inexplicable reason that it was time to communicate with us. He said no more than three or four words when the centipede-thing honed in on him, and struck.

  We had only enough time to watch in horror as the damned thing sunk a dozen, spiky, segmented legs into his soft, pink flesh and yanked him almost directly into the buzz saw mouth at the center of its abdomen, curling around him as it did. Before its legs and plates had fully closed to trap the man inside, we saw his head and right arm ripped from his body with a single, vicious twist of the segmented, giant insect.

  I wanted to scream, absolutely horror-struck, but managed to bite it down. Unfortunately the cave girl in my arms couldn’t do the same.

  “Dia sima godessi,” she whispered, and the ground beside her exploded upward.

  Another of those goddam centipedes rose up out of the dirt, higher than my six feet, and was already diving toward her. Bravely, she shoved me aside, and I nearly tripped over a panicking wolf-beast. Thinking faster than I thought I was capable, I lifted the leopard skinned predator and tossed it directly into the mouth of the newest centipede just as it was about to envelop the cave girl I was beginning to think of as mine.

  The newest arthropleura gratefully accepted the alternate offering, and clamped viciously down on the poor wolf-cat, spraying blood all over the girl, Milton, and the other woma
n captive.

  On all sides rose a deafening roar of shrieks and howls from our circle of spectators, I assumed because they were pleased with the way the ‘show’ was playing out, or they were seeing gold nuggets that I was too busy to appreciate. But I quickly realized that the monkey-things weren’t reacting to us, and were all breaking in different directions, rushing from the small arena and out toward the surrounding hills as one of the enraged cat-creatures tore through them looking for an avenue of escape. Two more of the armored centipedes burst up near the carnage, and immediately encased two monkey-creatures. I took my cave girl by the arm and pulled her in the opposite direction, then bent and yanked Milton to his feet.

  “God answered your prayers, Milton,” I said. “We’re all still alive. Now, let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Milton opened his eyes, and clearly relieved, jumped up to follow, as did the other woman. Together, the four of us raced for a nearby exit, but my stupid jokes, and our stomping feet must have focused the remaining insectoid attention because two of the chitin plated monsters ripped from the ground before us, right in our path, the first one making an immediate dive for me.

  The cave girl bravely leaped between us and threw her stone dead center of the thing’s mouth, apparently striking some kind of nerve. It immediately recoiled, and curled up nearly closed, like a pill bug. But only for a moment. Recovering quickly, and with a horrifying roar, the thing spread out wider, and rose up higher than any of the monsters had so far, to nearly ten feet tall, and four or more feet wide.

  Its gaping, gash shaped, fang rimmed maw blew wide with its scream, froth and mucus spewing out in glops and streams. Its many legs spread open as if crying to the heavens, and fortunately for us, all the noise it made seemed to distract the second, blind centipede into near immobility.

  We froze, trying to prevent being ‘seen’, as the confused insect raised its antennae slightly, and twisted them as though searching, opening and closing its legs in a rolling, finger-drumming sort of way, its mouth snapping absently open and shut. Not thinking clearly—mostly acting on instinct—I pounced on one of the extended, twitching legs and twisted as I had Jessica’s boyfriend’s arm, and to both our surprise, the leg snapped loose in my hand. As the thing screeched, and flailed—still not having formulated an actual plan—I spun and jammed the spiky appendage with both hands right into the still screaming mouth of the first centipede.