Monsters In The Clouds

by Russell James

  “They’ll keep hunting us?” Hobart said.

  “They weren’t hunting,” Janaina said. “If they were hunting us, they would have outnumbered us by more, made the odds of success overwhelming. That’s what animals do.”

  “Then why did they attack us?” Hobart said.

  “They didn’t,” Grant said. “They attacked Janaina. And they jumped Ms. Katsoros to get her to stop and make Janaina a better target.”

  “Me?” Janaina said.

  “They wanted that backpack. As soon as they had it, mission over. And the only thing they saw you put in it was the radio.”

  “So they attacked to reclaim the radio?” McCabe said. “Birds don’t know how radios work.”

  “Again, they aren’t birds.”

  “But they are close relatives,” Janaina said. “They wanted it for some reason. And crows demonstrate similar cooperation and sense of community.”

  “Those pterosaurs have three times the brain of a crow,” Grant added.

  “So they have what they want,” Hobart said, “and won’t attack us again on the way back to camp?”

  “I’d guess they won’t,” Grant said.

  He didn’t want to worry Hobart more by adding that there was likely some other creature ready to assume the pterosaur’s place as a predator.

  .

  Chapter Eleven

  Grant sighed with relief when they finally broke out of the jungle and into the clearing where they’d set up camp. A break in the clouds delivered bright sunlight and a light breeze swept down from the western highlands. It felt like being reborn.

  Griggs had been hard at work with the Bobcat. He’d lengthened the clearing and it had started to resemble a landing strip. Downed tree trunks lined the sides like a giant had emptied a box of enormous toothpicks. But it wasn’t anywhere near as long as the runway they’d taken off from in São Paulo. Grant wondered how long it would have to be.

  Riffaud stood atop the shipping container. He waved the group in and shouted across the clearing to Griggs on the Bobcat. Griggs stopped pushing over a tree and drove back over to the container.

  As the group approached the container, Dixit wandered around from behind it.

  “Did you find the plane?” he asked.

  “Yes, and pterosaurs,” Katsoros said.

  Dixit’s eyes widened with surprise.

  “But the radio didn’t make it back with us,” Katsoros said.

  Dixit’s face fell. Katsoros raised the messenger bag up with her good arm and smiled. “But I did find this.”

  Dixit looked immensely relieved. “That is certainly a good thing.”

  “Absolutely,” Grant deadpanned. “Having all our paperwork in order makes all the difference in the world.”

  Dixit turned and Katsoros followed him back to his makeshift lab area.

  “And Hobart’s okay,” Grant called after them. He turned to Hobart. “Dixit looked pretty worried about you, didn’t he?”

  “Dr. Dixit has a lot of responsibility.” Hobart headed off to follow Dixit.

  Griggs stepped up beside McCabe. Riffaud hopped down from the container and joined them. He pointed to Katsoros. “What happened to her?”

  “We got ambushed,” McCabe said. “Same birds that brought down the plane.”

  “Pterosaurs, actually,” Grant offered.

  McCabe shot him a dirty look. “Half-bat, half-lizard, all deadly. Griggs, I need you to redirect your work to making a defensive berm around this location. If they come at us on the ground, I want high points where I can mow them down with clean fields of fire. Riffaud, the bastards fly, so keep your eyes on the sky. The sons of bitches can probably punch through the steel container with their bills.”

  Grant doubted they could, but an hour ago he didn’t even know they were alive, so he wasn’t going to offer an opinion likely to turn out being wrong.

  “We’ll need to refill the water containers,” Riffaud said.

  “There’s a stream at the north edge of the airstrip,” McCabe said. “Dino Doc, think you can handle that?”

  “Finally,” Grant said. “My dream of becoming a pack mule is fulfilled.”

  “Two sterilization tablets in every container, smart ass. Unless another of your dreams is spending hours squatting over a dirt hole.”

  “It’s like you’ve been reading my bucket list.”

  McCabe was about to retort and stopped short. Instead he pointed to the water cans. “Get to it before it gets dark.”

  Grant grabbed an empty five-gallon jerry can in each hand and headed to the north end of the “airstrip.” Griggs might have been an amazing soldier, but he left a lot to be desired as a heavy equipment operator. The ground was still uneven and plenty of low stumps jutted from the field. He hoped Griggs knew what clearance the aircraft needed.

  At the clearing’s edge, a stream ran into the jungle. The water ran fast and crystal clear, about three feet deep. He unscrewed the tops, dropped two tablets into each can, and waded into the water. It felt refreshing. He submerged both cans in the stream. Water filled both in an instant. He tried to pull them out of the stream.

  They didn’t move.

  He grabbed one with both hands and yanked. It felt like it weighed fifty pounds. He did the math and realized that was damn near what it did weigh. On all his paleontology field excursions, he’d always had interns who did this kind of heavy lifting. He pulled the first container up and out of the stream, then the second. He screwed the tops back on and took a deep breath to prepare for the trip back to camp.

  Something along the clearing’s edge caught his eye. The ground had been dug up, but not in a pattern the Bobcat would have created. Something almost glowed in the dirt at the bottom of the hole.

  Grant stepped over to the two-meter divot. The ground had indeed been excavated about a half meter down, then the pit was lined with small sticks and leaves. Under an impression of Bobcat treads lay smashed eggshells, the contents dried and splattered. He picked up a piece. The eggs had been large. He put it in his pocket.

  Grant checked the jungle by the nest. There were some small bushes at the edges, and the trees had deep gashes across the trunks about waist high. The grass had been pounded flat. Uprooted trees lay scattered around the edge. Something had cleared the area before digging that nest.

  This did not look good. A large animal had made that nest, and Griggs had turned it into scrambled eggs. In an ecosystem this isolated, a loss like that might be species-catastrophic.

  He stomped back to the jerry cans and without thinking tried to yank them off the ground. Pain raced up through both shoulders and met at his neck. He dropped the cans.

  He picked them back up slowly, and began the trek back to camp.

  Multiple stops later, he trudged back into camp. McCabe met him, smiling.

  “Those are a little heavier full, aren’t they?”

  “I hardly noticed.”

  McCabe walked off still grinning. Janaina approached Grant.

  “Hauling fresh water home,” she said. “Welcome to the Amazonia lifestyle.”

  “A month after we get back,” Grant said, “there will be three Starbucks here. But I did find something other than fresh water.”

  He pulled an eggshell from his pocket and handed it to her.

  “Hatched eggs?” she said.

  “Crushed eggs. Griggs ran over some kind of nest with the Bobcat.”

  “A pterosaur nest?”

  “Based on the size of those adult pterosaurs? No. This nest was for something much bigger, not the kind of mother I want us to have pissed off.”

  “Something dangerous?”

  “We just killed its brood. That automatically makes it dangerous.”

  ***

  As daylight disappeared, Griggs stopped work to let the Bobcat recharge while the solar panels still hummed. A five-foot berm encircled the camp and most of it had a tangle of trees along the top.

  Grant sat in the dirt, back against the warm side o
f the shipping container they all called home. The setting sun had switched the air temperature from “broil” to simply “uncomfortable,” but the temperature differential had spawned a breeze that made it seem more bearable.

  Janaina stepped around the corner of the container with two pouches of dehydrated meals in her hands. “Ready for dinner?”

  “As long I don’t have to dress. I left my tuxedo back in the plane.”

  “You are okay. Dress code is jungle-crash-casual.” She handed him a meal and sat beside him.

  “Don’t be too loud,” Grant said. “Riffaud is sleeping in the container so he can cover night shift.”

  “In this heat?”

  “Yeah. Those three guys are tough.”

  “Are you worried about a pterosaur night attack?”

  “Not really. The pterosaurs are diurnal, day fliers, poor night vision, cold blooded. They’ll sleep all night, then rise when the sun is up to help keep them warm.”

  “You’re just saying that to make me feel safer.”

  “No, I’m saying it make me feel safer.”

  “Is it working?”

  “One hundred percent.”

  Janaina knit her brows. “That is your sarcasm voice, yes?”

  “Yes, it is. How do you like it?”

  “It takes some getting used to.”

  “My ex-wife would agree.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Grant and the others slept through the night without interruption. He awakened half-thrilled and half-surprised that his prediction of the pterosaurs’ sleep pattern was correct. He was the last one to rise. Sunlight streamed through the container’s open door.

  “I can sleep, sitting up, in daylight, in suffocating humidity,” he said to himself. “I can sleep anywhere.”

  He pulled his glasses from his pocket, unstrapped himself, and headed outside. The temperature was cooler and the humidity had abated. Janaina smiled and approached him.

  “Nice of you to finally get up.”

  “I left a wakeup call, but the front desk clerk is useless. I’d hate to oversleep and miss the fifteen livable minutes we have outside.”

  “This is much better than at the plateau’s base down by the river. I thought you were used to doing dinosaur digs all summer?”

  “In the desert.”

  “You will adapt. Eventually.”

  “Or sweat to death trying. Where’s the Transworld contingent?”

  “Katsoros and Dixit were already playing with his toys when I woke up. And they don’t want me anywhere near the equipment.”

  “Dixit gets friendlier every day. When we get back he and I are going for an English pub crawl.”

  “And then you can go to a soccer match.” Janaina smiled. “See, I am catching your sarcasm voice.”

  “And where’s Hobart?”

  “Over there cleaning up.”

  Near the far side of the encircling berm, Hobart stood shirtless by one of the five gallon cans Grant had dragged back from the stream. Soap suds enveloped his head and hands.

  “He’s making the next water run,” Grant said.

  McCabe and Riffaud stood beside a waist-high pile of boxes. The satellite phone sat on top. McCabe poked at it with a tiny screwdriver, cursed, and slammed the screwdriver down.

  Something rustled in the brush on the other side of the berm. Janaina spun in that direction.

  “Did you hear that?”

  She and Grant climbed halfway up the berm and peered over the top.

  A furry creature the size of a medium dog burst out of the woods and charged toward them. The body looked like a guinea pig, but with longer legs. However, the face was decidedly narrower and far more rat-like. It sprinted fast as a greyhound.

  “Hell, no,” Grant said. He and Janaina scrambled down the berm. “McCabe!”

  Hobart was walking from the wash area drying the inside of his ears with a towel. Grant’s cry for McCabe drew Dixit and Katsoros. They stepped around to the front of the container with looks of confusion.

  McCabe and Riffaud snapped to alert, weapons at their shoulders, aimed over Grant’s head at the top of the berm.

  The animal crested the berm at a sprint, teeth bared.

  Both men fired almost at once. One bullet kicked up a spray of dirt at the animal’s feet, but the second round caught it in the shoulder. The creature squealed as the impact knocked it to the ground.

  The top of the berm exploded. A swarm of the animals crested it like a brown, furry wave. Not in a directed attack on the Transworld team, but in a chaotic, frenzied rush to the west.

  Grant and Janaina made a beeline for the stack of supplies. Grant scaled the pile, then pulled Janaina up after him. The creatures washed past them like a surging sea. Grant choked on their ripe, musky stench.

  Katsoros and Dixit jumped into the container and shut the door. McCabe scrambled to the container’s roof and Riffaud took a position at the door.

  Hobart hesitated, stepped to join Grant and Janaina on the pallet, hesitated, and then turned to run to the container.

  The pause was his undoing.

  The herd bowled him over. With a scream, he disappeared under a cloud of dust and an undulating sea of fur.

  The two soldiers opened fire. Three-round bursts peppered the horde and sent up sprays of blood and entrails. But the surge didn’t slacken. Whatever the creatures were running from was far scarier than the introduction of gunpowder and flying lead. They rushed past the container. Dixit’s equipment toppled to the ground.

  Then from the jungle sounded a branch-snapping crash too large for the swarm to have made. A chorus of squeals followed. Then another crash.

  The last of the swarm passed over the western berm. The herd thundered toward Griggs in the Bobcat. He jerked the machine to a stop and gawked as they churned up an ashy dust cloud all around him. The creatures disappeared into the jungle on the west side.

  “Are you okay?” Grant asked Janaina.

  “A little twist to my ankle, but nothing permanent.” She climbed down from the containers.

  Grant hopped down. They both went over to Hobart. He sat up in a daze, hair askew. The creatures had ripped a gash in his left leg. Grant reached down and helped him up.

  “W-what were those things?” Hobart said.

  “As near as I can make out, something close to a phoberomys,” Grant said. “An extinct species of giant, well, guinea pigs. Their fossils were discovered about thirty years ago. But these have developed a much leaner face.”

  “And sharp teeth,” Hobart said. He winced as shifted the weight off his bleeding leg.

  “Let’s get that cleaned and covered,” Janaina said. She draped his arm across her shoulder and helped him hop over to one of the boxes marked with a red cross.

  Katsoros stuck her head out of the container. Then Dixit burst past her and went straight for his equipment. He cursed, dropped to his knees, and began to right the toppled computers and scanners. Grant stepped over to give him a hand. He lifted an open laptop from the ground. Dixit’s eyes widened.

  “Please do not assist me,” Dixit said. “I can take care of this. It is very specialized.”

  Grant bristled at being treated like a flailing child around fine china. “I’ve spent a lot of time in the field and in labs working with equipment like this.”

  “I am certain not equipment like this,” Dixit said. He pulled the laptop from Grant’s hand. “I would greatly appreciate you keeping a distance.”

  Grant raised his hands in surrender. “Fine, fine. I’ll let you play with all your own toys.”

  McCabe hopped down from the top of the container. “Whatever those things were, they’re deep into the jungle on the other side now.”

  “They weren’t attacking us,” Grant said. “They’re herbivorous.”

  “Not worried about them,” McCabe said. “Worried about what was chasing them.”

  He shouted to Griggs to get back to clearing the field. Griggs acknowledged with a wave and res
tarted the Bobcat.

  McCabe pointed at Riffaud. “Take a position on the container. I want a warning if anything else comes charging out of the jungle.” He poked Grant in the chest with his index finger. “You’re coming with me to find that ‘anything else’.”

  That “anything else” had sounded pretty damn big to Grant.

  “I’m more an extinct animal kind of guy,” Grant said. “Dixit’s your man for this.”

  McCabe slapped him on the shoulder. “You write monster fiction. It’s time you lived it.”

  If only McCabe knew that Grant had lived plenty of it in the Montana caverns.

  Hobart limped past them to Dixit. The lower half of one pant leg was cut away and exposed a wrap of blood-stippled bandages where he’d been injured. He carried a dead phoberomys in his blue-gloved hands. A bullet had turned its head to hamburger. Hobart stood before Dixit looking like a dog awaiting reinforcement for fetching a ball.

  “Please do not bring the carcass here,” Dixit said. He laid two wrapped syringes on top of the dead animal and then gave Hobart a shooing motion with his hands. “Samples. Bring me samples.”

  Cowardly Dixit wasn’t going to volunteer for McCabe’s monster search, so either Hobart or Grant would need to go. Grant wasn’t keen about it, but he wasn’t about to try pushing the responsibility off on limping Hobart.

  McCabe nudged Grant toward the berm. Less than a threat, but more than a request. McCabe’s tight smile promised it could easily become more of the former. Grant started a slow climb up the berm. He paused at the top and checked the area between the berm and the jungle. Open and quiet. The mini-horde had churned up a trail across the clearing.

  McCabe drew his machete from his belt and offered it to Grant. “Here, a little self-defense.”

  “Very little.”

  “All you’ll need when I’m your first line.”

  McCabe hopped down off the berm and began to backtrack the phoberomys horde’s trail. Grant looked at the machete in his hand and felt uncomfortably like a kid playing pirate. He followed McCabe in.

  It didn’t take long to find where the other creature had attacked the phoberomys pack. A swath of ground level jungle had been trampled flat. Uprooted plants lay along the perimeter like felled soldiers after battle. Blood splatted some of the leaves. Two phoberomys heads lay on the ground.