by Hugo Navikov
All of that being said, however, there were two reasons why Brett still believed that, should he make it out of this found world alive and having retrieved this Doctor Merco, he would indeed be receiving accurate information about the murder of his family: First, surely even someone as full of himself as Lathrop knew that, since Brett knew his identity (even if the name was fake), Lathrop would definitely die by his hand should he give Brett a false lead. Brett would find him again and kill him tortuously slowly. But the second factor was even more prevalent in Brett’s mind, and that was that the soulless executives of the Organization would sell one of their own out in a nanosecond if it meant that they would profit from the betrayal. It wasn’t hard to imagine the Organization exec who ordered Brett’s wife and child to be killed in order to keep Brett focused on his work getting sold out by a different exec who wanted to score points with the higher-ups by bringing this renegade scientist and his superweapon back home. What did that second evil S.O.B. care if Brett would almost certainly kill the first evil S.O.B.? The answer was not at all. The very nature of the Organization was power over all. If that meant one member of the C-Suite was fatally exposed by another seeking greater power, then that was practically fulfilling the mission statement.
Brett shook his head. He’d be scared to see what the Organization’s “mission statement” even looked like. Did they have one? Was there also a mission statement in hell?
He had to shake himself out of his metaphysical reverie. Before he got the dead wasp on his shoulders again, he said to the group, “We’re going to just plow forward as fast as we can move. I don’t know how the jackal-things will react, but I’m pretty sure we don’t want to stay around while more scavengers come for the big meal we just laid out for them. Those of you with weapons”—he hefted Leavitt’s AK-47—“shoot anything that gets too near. Let’s go!”
With that, Brett threw himself into the wasp shell, got it balanced, and started marching forward as fast as his legs would take him as he bore the weight of his bug-canoe alone. They all had to just keep walking and not look behind them, from where the squelching and sucking sounds of scores of sharp-toothed scavengers tore open the pterodactyl and started feeding. What was harder than not looking back was not trying to run to get away from the horrors. This was tempered, however, by the sight of the hungry jackal-things getting excited as they watched their prey coming to them. Every one of the cryptids hunkered down now, ready to jump onto them even though they could see nothing but four giant wasps walking toward them. Did they smell all that different? Was it smell that made the jackal-things back off in the first place? If so, then maybe they could keep them at enough of a distance and walk past and away from them quickly enough that the creatures wouldn’t have a chance to get used to the smell.
Brett realized that he really didn’t know much of anything. He had the tracking and adventuring capabilities for this mission, of course, but he lacked any advance knowledge about the cryptids they were encountering—other than the wendigo, which was in his more familiar “cultural myth” category of monster he often hunted. The rest, though … six-legged canines? Acid-plants? Giant bugs? Thank God there was a good old pterodactyl! Dinosaurs were at least a monster he knew; in fact, he wished they had dinosaurs in front of them instead of these monsters literally salivating at the sight of them.
As he reached the edge of the wooded area and was just ten feet from the biggest jackal-thing, a gigantic shape darkened the sky: twenty feet high, thirty feet long, with jaws supporting three-foot-long pointed teeth and a small crest at the top of its head and walking on two massive reptilian legs: Allosaurus.
Why can’t I keep my big mouth shut? Brett wondered as he fell to the side to avoid running right into the Allosaurus’s path, which was from the side, going straight toward the jackal-things—
“Jesus!”
—and gobbling up and crushing the biggest one in its mouth.
Brett slammed on the brakes, and the shell behind him ran into him and knocked him into the dirt. Then the one behind that crashed into it, and the fourth into the third. All of them were on the ground now, looking up at the spectacle: the magnificent allosaur used its massive jaws to toss the broken jackal-thing into the air. It arced back down right into the dinosaur’s mouth and was swallowed whole.
Another allosaur appeared, and between them, they ate four of the six-legged cryptids and shook the rest until their spines broke and left their dead bodies on the ground.
Great, they hunt for fun. Brett didn’t see any way around them, and now the two allosaurs—what was it with lost worlds and frickin’ dinosaurs, anyway?—milled about in front of their egress point from the acid-woods, just kind of walking back and forth. Every now and then one of them would look toward the humans and their wasp shells, but then just looked away again. After a while, everyone stood up and took off their protective wasp bodies to wait out the giant lizards.
“I’ve seen enough Jurassic Park to know that they can’t see us if we’re not moving,” Crane said. “All we need to do is figure out a way to get past them without moving.”
Everyone stared at him.
“I, uh … I guess that would be kinda hard,” he added, and then shut up.
Brett cleared his throat and said to everyone, “All right, here’s the situation: we have two very hungry dinosaurs waiting for us at the only exit we’ve seen to get out of this thicket of woods. Every minute we’re here, the wendigos take Ellie—and Natasha—that much farther away. We may be clear of the jackal-things for the moment, but God knows what else is out there even if we can get past these two monsters. Any suggestions?”
“There must be another path out of here,” Lathrop said. “We can just walk through the plants a bit more—as you said, we do have clothing on to protect us the little ways we have to walk to get out. All of you, even the television people, have boots on, while I have only my Salvatore Ferragamos, and those have been entirely ruined. If I am the one suggested we find another way out, certainly that must mean something given the personal and property risk that doing so involves.”
Everyone stared at Lathrop now.
“You may take your expressions of scorn and put them up your backsides. Mister Russell, I demand a vote. Ayes support finding a different way out; nays insist on staying here and waiting until the dinosaurs get tired or some such. May we vote?”
“Why, sure,” Brett said. “Who wants to rustle around in the acid garden here and let the various monsters eating the pterodactyl come after us when they’re done? Or, on the other side, who wants to stay here and let the various monsters eating the pterodactyl come after us when they’re done?”
“That seems like a bit of biased phrasing, but yes.”
“Fine. All those who—”
“Wait,” Popcorn interrupted, “isn’t there a third option? Such as just going for it and running past them inside our protective wasp remains?”
Ravi spoke up: “Did you see what they did to those monster dingoes or whatever they are? They moved like lightning. We wouldn’t stand a chance.”
Brett cast an eye at the things digging into the dead pterodactyl; the flying dinosaur didn’t have a lot of meat on it compared to other prehistoric beasts, and the scavengers would be done soon. The allosaurs killed just to kill, and there was no guarantee even these full monsters wouldn’t rip every one of the humans apart before the commandos could get their guns raised.
Stefan took the camera from his eye for a moment. “Maybe the wasp shells will turn off the dinosaurs like they did the dingoes.”
Brett wanted to say, They’re jackal-things, not dingo-things. I already named them, thank you very much. But instead he said, “Look, I’m glad we can have some open dialogue about this, but we need to decide what exactly we’re going to do. So, we can try to find another way out, even though that means giving those bastards over there a chance to kill us; or we can just try to wait out the dinosaurs, with the same effect; or we can try to run past them w
earing our wasps and hoping it repels the allosaurs.”
“Yeah, but the shells could slow us down too much,” Flattop said. “I say we just run for it without the shells. All we gotta do is stay really near their feet—that way their maneuverability is gonna be all compromised.”
These commandos were idiotic until it came to battle strategy, Brett noticed again. The Spinosaurus he had fought was four-legged but alone. These dinosaurs were bipedal, which would make it a little bit safer because they would need to pivot in place and thus not sweep their legs in an effort to turn like a quadruped would. This meant that none of them would be likely to get kicked to death, but the upright beasts might be able to attack the other’s foot area to get the tasty morsels hiding within. “That’s excellent, soldier,” Brett said. “We need to run as fast as we can carrying the supply bags right under the allosaurs and then keep running while they’re confused.”
“Why don’t we just shoot them?” Ravi asked.
Popcorn answered, “We’ve already seen how noise attracts other unsavory predators. I think fighting one killer species at a time is difficult enough without inviting others to the party.”
“Ah, yeah, right. Good point.”
“So, we are to flee back out into the wild without any protection whatsoever?” Lathrop said as snottily as ever.
Brett said, “Unless you have a better idea.” He nodded at the scavengers which, as he had expected, starting to cast glances their way as they finished up their meal. “And you’d better have it fast.”
“All right, Mister Russell, have it your way. ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,’ eh? Let us go and face our doom boldly.”
“You’re less Henry the Fifth and more Ass-clown the First.”
“Witty, very witty, Mister Russell. Now … shall we?”
Brett smirked and had everyone collect whatever they had in preparation for making the run. “I don’t have any plan for what happens once we get past these things—if we get past them. But I want everyone to run as close to the allosaurs’ legs as possible. Step on a giant foot if you need to, just stick close where they can’t bend down and pick you off. Ready? One … two …” As he turned away from them to lead them out, he saw something that chilled his blood: the scavenger monsters were abandoning the pterodactyl corpse and running straight toward them. “Oh my God—follow me!”
Some of the group looked around to see what had panicked their leader and saw the things coming after them. They shouted or screamed, depending on if it was Popcorn or not, and ran right behind Brett, who was heading for the feet of the dinosaur on their right. There wasn’t any real reason he chose that one, but he had to choose one of them and that was it. He realized halfway between the edge of the woods and the feet of the Allosaurus that he should have sent some to the right and some to the left, since if they all went under only one, the other could go in and chomp them. Too late now, he thought, and reached the underside of the beast and kept on running. He could hear pounding feet behind him and knew at least some of them had made it through. He wasn’t going to look back until he felt fairly sure that the dinosaurs weren’t coming after them. If they were coming after him and his compatriots, Brett didn’t see how they would escape—there was absolutely nothing ahead except low-lying plants as far as he could see. No protective copses or packs of things that would predate on one another, thus providing cover for their would-be meals to get the hell out of there.
When he felt like he had put a safe distance between himself and the dinosaurs, he allowed himself to turn his head as he ran to see if all of them made it. All of them had, with the exception of the struggling, overweight Popcorn—huffing and puffing at the end of the line, he just didn’t move fast enough now that the allosaurs were alerted to the humans’ presence. The one that had been on Brett’s left just bent down like the pump above an oil well and closed his jaws around the screaming nerd. Then it straightened up and swallowed down the plumpest morsel that had tried to run by him.
Not Popcorn! Brett’s mind yelled, but of course it was Popcorn. Now that it had happened, he realized, it had been in the cards from the beginning. And what made it more ironic was that he ended up being of no use to the mission at all once all the electronic equipment was lost in the sinking. He hoped that there wouldn’t be too much technology to deal with once they got to the scientist, because Popcorn was their go-to guy on that. Brett didn’t think there was much the good doctor could have made out of the materials around those parts, but if the Professor on Gilligan’s Island could make a working radio out of coconuts and jungle vines, who knew what this guy could do.
All of that flew through his mind in the second before he turned his head back around to the front and kept running as fast as his powerful muscles could carry him. The others weren’t far behind, but Ravi was definitely an indoor kid, and Stefan couldn’t run very fast with the goddamn camera up to his face; but that was their problem for the moment. For Ellie, yes, he would have slowed down and tried to pull her along faster—but if Ellie was with them, she would probably be the one pulling him.
Ellie. After losing her for so long, he couldn’t lose her again. Especially not like this. She was only there because of him, because Lathrop recruited her and brought her there as leverage or bait. Now, it seemed, she was both, since there was no way in hell he would be going south toward nothing instead of north toward—
“Whoa! Stop! STOP!” Brett shouted so loudly it hurt his throat. “There’s a cliff! THERE IS A CLIFF!”
And there was a cliff. Without any warning whatsoever, the land dropped off at a 90-degree angle, to a perfect vertical. If Brett had been looking behind himself for five more seconds, he would have run right over the side. But his depth perception caught that part of what was in front of him was at least two hundred feet farther away. It was the far cliff wall. Beyond it was more of the exact type of landscape they had just been running through, rendering the chasm invisible until one was right up on it.
Everyone in the group was able to stop before they got to the edge. Brett was thankful that they had stayed in a single-file line instead of a horizontal Chorus Line rush, because some of them would definitely have fallen to their deaths. Or maybe just been horribly injured; he couldn’t see how deep the chasm was until he carefully walked to the side, which he did now, peering down. Anybody falling off that cliff would definitely be dead … but that wasn’t the worst thing about the definitely human-excavated cavity they almost had thrown themselves into.
“Holy …” Commander Crane muttered as he, too, got to the edge of the drop-off. “What the heck? The wendingos live here?”
Brett was too stunned to respond, whether to Crane or to any of the others who looked down into the chasm and saw the two forty-foot-tall Wind Walkers just standing inside the dug-out area that was still ten feet deeper than they were tall. The chasm itself was at least a football field across and stretched as far as they could see from their low vantage point. The very precision and smoothness of the cut boggled Brett’s mind—how in the hell was that even possible? It didn’t matter how it was possible, however; it was there and so were they and the wendigos as well. The two giant creatures passively stared up at the humans, looking no more demonic than a couple of orangutans blown up to incredible size in an Atomic Age horror movie.
There were the rudiments of giant proto-furniture at the bottom, humps that were flat at the top so they could be used as chairs or tables, he was sure of it. They hadn’t found Doctor Merco yet, but this had to be his work. They had been forced to go the wrong way by the wendigos carrying Ellie and Natasha … but it had been the right way. There was evidence of the scientist’s influence right in the front of them.
RARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
And right behind them, the two overexcited allosaurs. Brett had almost forgotten them in the ten seconds he had been staring down at the lair of the wendigos. He wasn’t a scientist or anthropologist or even a cryptozoologist like his wife—still yo
ur ex-wife, pal, he had to remind himself—but the idea of cryptids possessing some human traits fascinated him. It made it more like they really were outside of science, but of course nothing was outside of science. Cryptids ceased to be cryptids once they were discovered and classified.
POW! POW! POW! POW! The commandos let loose against the two rushing dinosaurs, blasting them in a spray of high-caliber ballistics. Any worry that the prehistoric beasts wouldn’t be affected by bullets disappeared immediately once the allosaurs started shrieking.
And Brett had thought their roar was loud! This was almost literally ear-splitting, forcing everyone to drop anything they were holding and slap their hands over their ears. The wendigos in the chasm covered their heads at the sound, too.
Although it seemed like forever, five seconds later the reptiles stopped shrieking and ran off to the east, hobbled a bit but otherwise seeming not too worse off for wear. Brett hated to see innocent creatures die, and the allosaurs and all of the deadly cryptids were just that: innocent. Humans had, once again, entered a pristine wilderness and started hacking away at any living thing that tried to defend its territory or even eat. He was glad to see the dinosaurs escape, but he wondered how long it would be until armies of humans started coming down the tunnels and overtaking this found world.
He looked down again at the wendigos placidly observing them from their place inside the pit. This must have been where they lived, since there was ample evidence of bones of all shapes and sizes down there with them. Were they fed by whoever built this pit? Or did they hunt? Or did animals just run right over the well-hidden cliff and literally fall into the giant monsters’ hands? Probably a combination of all three.
“How do we get across?” Ravi asked, and the looks on the rest of the faces echoed his question. “I don’t think we can go around. I can’t even see where this ends.”
Brett looked for any sign of a way across: something to climb down, even though that would mean they were in the skeleton-strewn pit with the Ithaqua. There were no trees he could see near the edge of the chasm, so using the grappling hooks wouldn’t work. Maybe if they—