The Found World

by Hugo Navikov

  A rumble and revving arose from about twenty feet away, and everyone turned to see Commander Crane’s big face smiling out the right-side window of an open-backed ute. “Like Mister Rubble said, Let’s go!”

  Mister Rubble? Despite the doom around him, Brett had to smile, thinking, He must be driving Lathrop out of his ever-lovin’ mind.

  Lathrop climbed in next to Crane in the cab, and the rest of them piled into the back, ten of them in all plus some equipment and weapons they’d been able to salvage from the Slangkop II. The truck slowly made its way toward where they would enter this found world, and everyone with a gun kept it trained on the passing terrain lest some storybook monster launch a new attack at the fresh meat.

  Nothing happened on the way, however. As they said in bad movies, everything was quiet—too quiet. No birds chirped or squawked on this lone spit of land in the center of hundreds of thousands of miles of open ocean. Nothing moved. Even the wind one would expect to incessantly batter an island like this was mostly absent. It was eerie, but not as eerie as the tremendous, monolithic volcano cone that grew and grew as they approached, finally blotting out half of the sky by the time they reached what Lathrop called the portal.

  It was an ugly gash in a beautiful mountain. About sixty feet high, it was a seam with a fifty-foot-wide opening in the middle from fifteen feet up and closing after another twenty feet or so. It looked like a scar that refused to heal, Brett thought, but most of all it looked unnatural. If there was some kind of world underneath the island, it was never meant to be opened from this one. If this Doctor Merco is the one who did this so he could hide, then to hell with him; Brett had no problem turning over such a violator into the hateful clutches of the Organization.

  Somehow, though, he felt this was the work of whatever knuckle-dragging Organization mercs were first sent in after the scientist. After all, Merco wanted to be sealed off, so he probably did so literally. He probably also was aware that allowing some kind of rabid monsters to escape and prey upon the outside world was a less than optimal action, but the commandos probably didn’t even know how to close the mountain back up, regardless of whether they cared if the cryptids escaped or not.

  He shrugged inwardly. It didn’t matter now. This seam and apparently one opening into the ocean were open, allowing things to get out. What his group had to do now was watch its step very carefully, since the only weapons they had were light ones and the only ammo they had for them was what they carried with them, and hope they weren’t set upon before they were able to get inside and then under the volcano.

  “What did all this?” Ellie pondered out loud.

  Popcorn, who walked while holding in front of him the backpack containing the solar-charging laptop he was able to grab from this ship, “I think the question is where are the things that did all this?”

  Brett nodded. It was the question he and probably everyone else on the expedition had been asking themselves since they saw the bloody scenes along every street in the Settlement: as Popcorn said, where were the things?

  A cry rang out behind and to Brett’s left. He along with everyone else turned to see that one of the commandos—Falco, who sported a flattop haircut like a 1950s drill sergeant—had been staring at the imposing vista of the Tristan da Cunha volcano and fell into a depression in the earth about two feet deep. Perkins stood sheepishly and brushed himself off, then looked at what he had fallen into and said, “Holy cow. Commander, everybody—you want to take a look at this.”

  They sure did. Brett and Crane hurried over, the rest of the group letting the leaders do the leading. When they got there, Crane let out an impressed whistle and Brett felt his eyebrows go up in surprise.

  Perkins was standing in the middle of a footprint. Not a pawprint—this was made by a foot. It didn’t look human, since it was elongated with four short toes at the front and one out the side like a gorilla’s foot. But Brett had seen plenty of gorilla footprints, and this looked like something in between a human’s and a gorilla’s.

  That was interesting, but what floored Brett—and, he would guess by their silence, every other member of the party—was the size. The foot that made this print had to be six feet long: Crane was about 6’ 5” and Brett guessed he could just about lie down inside the depression. That meant, if this thing was proportioned like a human or an ape, it would be …

  “Thirty feet tall?” Popcorn said, his mathematical mind kicking in. “I think something with this size of a footprint, if it’s bipedal and walks upright as an analog of humans or great apes, would have to be about thirty feet tall.”

  “That’s impossible,” Ravi the Mysterious Investigator replied, “and I don’t say that about much.”

  “It might be possible, just barely. It would come in just at the very limit of what can exist on Earth given the cube-square law.” He thought for a moment. “Depending on how deep this subterranean world goes, the giant might have evolved closer to the planet’s core, where gravity isn’t as strong. I’m hypothesizing and extrapolating here, of course.”

  “Of course,” Ravi said, obviously blown away by the mental power of this African-American walking computer.

  “Wouldn’t we see something this huge walking around?” Ellie said.

  Brett smiled. “That’s what I thought, but there’s a lot of this island we can’t see blocked by the volcano. It also might have gone back down. But whatever it is, I don’t think it’s what tore all those people apart back there. That was the work of multiple animals, smaller than our King Kong here but probably bigger than panthers or other predators we know from the surface world.”

  “Whatever it is,” Stefan said, never putting his camera down for fear of losing whatever amazing/horrifying thing might happen next for broadcast on TMI, “I think it might have scared everything else back down into the hole. I don’t see anything moving here, not a single bird, much less any carnivorous monsters.”

  “Chased them back down? Like, into the hole we’re about to go into?” Ravi said with a visible bobbing of his Adam’s apple as he gulped.

  “That’s the plan,” Brett answered, and motioned for them to get moving again. “There’s a rise leading right into the portal there, and we’re going to climb it and enter this found world. Get in, come out, avoid trouble in between.”

  ~~~

  The entrance to the passage under the island was tapered, narrowest at the start and then opening up as they went down the steep grade. There was nothing to see except the cross section of rock sheared off to make the passageway, and that was only until the light from the gash in the side of the mountain faded away. Brett didn’t waste time thinking about who first created this access tunnel to the underground world or how they knew the place was underneath the volcano; he could ponder that later. But for right now, he was trying to lead the group he was starting to think of as “the castaways” through pitch blackness lit only by the flashlights of their phones, any useful things like flashlights or echolocators somewhere beneath the waves of the South Atlantic.

  Something that gave Brett confidence that they would actually reach something at the end of this, however, was that the air was cooler than if this were a mine or just a very deep shaft. That meant fresh air, breathable air, lay in front of them. He knew a little geology along with his zoology and paleontology, and what he was experiencing flew in the face of all of it. Another lovely set of theories ruined by ugly facts.

  “I see it!” Ellie gasped. “There is something down here!”

  Brett enjoyed the feeling of the woman clutching onto his big arm. He had missed Ellie, but he wanted her to be safe … and life with him in the Amazon could never be safe. And the current situation definitely wasn’t safe—but the difference was that he didn’t bring her here. The Organization may have brought her on board because of Brett’s involvement, but she had made the decision to go on this mission without knowing he would be there. Maybe she wouldn’t have come if she had known. But the feeling of his ex-wife’s skin on hi
s did wonders for his disposition anyway.

  What Ellie saw, and now Brett and the rest could see, was a glow that gradually strengthened as they continued down the slope of the widening tunnel. Wherever they were headed, it was well illuminated.

  “That is eerie,” Stefan said plainly, never moving the eyepiece of the camera away from its position in front of his right eye. “How can there be light? There’s no sun down here.”

  Popcorn chimed in, “Bioluminescence. It’s light produced by chemical interaction which releases a photon, or many photons, actually. I’d bet a dollar that it’s bioluminescence down there.”

  “Ooh, a dollar.” That was from the lantern-jawed commando, Leavitt, who said little, but when he did speak, it was usually something sarcastic or otherwise derisive.

  “Do you smell that?” Ravi took a long inhale. “That humidity? I definitely smell plant life.”

  “That’s not possible,” Popcorn said. “The wavelengths of light produced by bioluminescence have been found insufficient to … um, fuel photo … um … photosynthesis …” His words trailed off as the exit to the long tunnel appeared, the steep grade flattening out to give them a straight-ahead view of the world they were about to enter.

  It was a riot of foliage.

  And yet another beautiful theory sent packing by inconvenient fact, Brett thought, and smiled. If nothing else, this would be an eye-opening adventure.

  “Of course, there may be data suggesting otherwise,” Popcorn finished weakly.

  However, no one was listening to Popcorn now as they approached the dank-smelling jungle. The leafy plants and snaking vines looked like those above but weren’t exact matches. Everything looked slightly translated down here, but one difference was dramatic and, as they all saw as they reached the threshold, completely pervasive.

  The plants were blue.

  They were a pale blue, almost blue-green, but not quite. It gave an impression of unreality, like they were in a Vegas casino that had created an alien planet as an attraction for tourists. Also, Brett could hear weird calls of what he assumed were birds, although the sound could have been any kind of animal, he supposed; but whatever they were, they didn’t exist up top. And, for the moment, they were hidden from view, and that put Brett on full alert. If they could see you but you couldn’t see them, then they had a distinct advantage.

  They stepped past the threshold and for the first time saw the “sky” above, which glowed with blue light, giving it the appearance of its terrestrial analog but without a distinct “sun.”

  “It don’t look real,” the burly commando called Junior said, reaching out and feeling the flat leaf of a squat subterranean plant.

  “Don’t touch anything!” Brett snapped—but it was too late.

  The leaf quivered for a second at the contact, then like lightning wrapped around Junior’s hand and forearm. Junior screamed with shock, then laughed. “Sorry, that was girly! But it does got a good grip on me. Gimme a hand, guys? Heh, a hand, get it?”

  Junior’s levity relaxed the situation, which was good because Commander Crane and all three of the other mercs had spun to train their assault weapons on the weird blue flora. Stefan had turned the camera toward Junior and Brett had his machete out and raised so fast that no one had time to realize they hadn’t noticed Brett even had such a weapon on his person.

  “Stay still,” Brett said to Junior, motioning for the commandos to stand down as he approached with the huge blade.

  “It’s just a stupid plant. I bet I can …” he wriggled, trying to free his hand, but to no avail. “It’s got me pretty good, guys.”

  “I said say still.” Brett was almost there, moving very carefully. “Some plants up top grab meat and dissolve it with acid. We don’t know what this thing can do.”

  “This ain’t a Venus Flytrap, Hoss,” Junior said. “And I ain’t no fly, okay?” He pulled again against the tight grip the plant had on him.

  Brett reached him and grabbed his arm to keep him from yanking back anymore. He said sternly but quietly to the big lummox, “Goddamn, listen to me: stay still. I’m going to chop it at the—”

  The smile slid off Junior’s face. “It’s getting warm all of a sudden. Kinda hot, actually.” By the time Brett had raised the machete, the commando was already shrieking in pain and panic. “Get it off me! God, get it off me! GOD!”

  The machete came down swiftly and lopped the leaf off right where it grew off the branch. Junior fell backward onto his ass, the leaf still wrapped tightly around his paw despite his using his hands and then booted feet to strip it off.

  No one noticed that, however, since the branch where Brett chopped off the leaf sputtered and leaked onto the ground, sizzling into the soil.

  “It has acid for blood?” Crane said, as dumbstruck as the rest of the contingent, including the smooth Lathrop and his female agent who had hung far back and let the hired help do the exploring and possibly dying.

  “Plants don’t have blood,” Popcorn said in his casually pedantic manner. “They rely upon ‘chains’ of phloem to bring sugars and other metabolic—”

  “Quiet,” Brett barked, and the black nerd stopped like he’d been shot in the head.

  Once everyone had processed the Alien-level biological surprise, they noticed that Junior the commando was still screaming, now writhing around on the ground and struggling desperately to slough off the death-grip wrap of the leaf on his hand. “Help me! Holy god, it BURNS!”

  Brett stepped over and knelt down, then motioned to the man’s fellow mercenaries. “Hold him down and keep him still,” he ordered, and none of them protested that he wasn’t the boss of them, one advantage of dealing with toy soldiers instead of actual military, Brett thought.

  What Brett really didn’t want to see—aside from a freaking acid plant as soon as they stepped through the door—was Junior stop struggling and lie still, a million beads of sweat lying on his clammy skin. The commando was going into shock.

  What the hell IS this place? Brett’s mind shouted at him, but he focused his attention on the job in front of him. There would be plenty of time for WTF? later.

  He hoped.

  He shook that off and leaned down to take a close look at the leaf around Junior’s hand. The wrap was turning black now, and it smelled sickeningly like a pig roast. There wasn’t going to be anything left of the man’s right hand and half his forearm. Even if they could somehow get the thing off him—and when Brett tried to lift a corner to peel it away, it was like touching a frying pan full of sizzling and popping oil—it would be worse than useless, but a massive target for infection, and Brett had the feeling all the antibiotics and other first aid items had gone down with the ship.

  So, before anyone could protest, he lifted the machete again and brought it down half an inch away from where the plant was wrapped on his arm. Junior howled and then passed out, blood starting to pump from his arm. Everyone else shouted or screamed as well, but Brett ignored them, stripped off the long-sleeve shirt he wore loose over his tee, and made a tight tourniquet that stopped the bleeding immediately.

  “Congratulations, Nurse Russell,” Lathrop mocked, stepping forward now that the danger seemed to have passed. “We now have an invalid. He will surely be grateful when he awakes in riotous pain for which we have no relief and finds himself alone in an alien world.”

  “Alone?” Crane said in confusion. “His legs aren’t hurt, sir. When he wakes up, we’ll just—”

  “Just what? Bring a dazed, useless man along with us to slow everything down? I think not.” And with that, Lathrop drew a Luger from a shoulder holster beneath his expensive but ruined suit and shot the unconscious man literally right between the eyes.

  Everyone jumped at the crack of the gun, including Brett three inches from the line of fire. But it wasn’t just the humans: the unmistakable flapping of wings large and small accompanied the shrieks of strange birds and other creatures as they leapt into the air in surprise and possibly fright.


  Brett leapt to his feet and stepped up to Lathrop with murder in his own eyes. “You dumb son of a bitch! You just alerted every goddamn monster in this place to our presence! And you killed a man who did not need to die!”

  Lathrop raised the Luger so it pointed at Brett’s ripped stomach. “He wouldn’t have been of much use to us even as a decoy, Mister Russell. And don’t think I will hesitate to shoot you dead or worse. Now I suggest, as you people say, that you step off. Killing you would be counterproductive to our mission … but I am willing to do it and put Commander Crane in your place.”

  Brett seethed but stood down. He untied the tourniquet—he’d need any protection possible in this hyper-hostile environment, and poor Junior didn’t need it anymore. The commando was dead and there was no point in throwing the baby out with the bathwater over him. But damn, he hated Lathrop the Organization weasel. “All right, we’ll play this out. But we need to move from this location, and right now. Too many things know we’re—”

  “No. Oh, hell, no,” Flattop the commando said, stepping backward away from whatever he was looking at on the ground.

  Brett spun around and saw what was freaking out an actual trained mercenary killer, and it made him involuntarily back up as well. It took less than five seconds for everyone in the troupe to see it for themselves, and to a person they immediately and totally instinctively put another five to ten feet between them and it.

  Junior had been dead for less than two minutes, but that was apparently enough for the fresh meat to be detected. But not by insects or animals—by other plants.

  Vines had crept out and now encircled the dead man, squeezing him right and raising smoke wherever they were in contact with flesh. They were acidic as well. Then, like muscles contracting, the vines stiffened and, impossibly, slowly dragged Junior into the thick foliage until no one could see it anymore.