Jon looked deep into her eyes, and leaned forward until their foreheads were touching. She was right, he considered. They started out as a team of twelve, all able-bodied, all convicts of the ADOC having a singular goal: to live. Some died the moment they stepped inside the valley. Others perished during the night as nocturnal creatures dragged them into the darkness with their screams growing distant, and then gone, the cries dying abruptly. Others simply disappeared.
He sighed. “So close,” he said softly. “So . . . close.”
Whatever was in the brush to their left and to their right, was steadily closing in.
Suddenly Emily barked a cry as white-hot pain pierced her side, the point of the machete driving deep. When Jon pulled the blade free, the look on her face nearly crushed him. The look was one of questioning sadness, one that asked why he betrayed her.
“Because when they come,” he said remorsefully, “they’ll come after you. They’ll take the weak and wounded first.” Then: “I’m so sorry, Em. But you’re giving me a chance to live.” He then reached down and grabbed her gun away, which was loosely gripped in her hand, leaned forward, and kissed her gingerly on the forehead. “Thank you.”
After shoving her back, he began his final leg of the 100-yard journey.
#
Emily lay there watching the blood spill from the wound. Then from her position she cried out after Jon. “You son of a bitch!” Then she winced, the effort of crying out causing an electric charge of pain to shoot through her body.
The brush to her immediate right began to move, the distance just beyond an arm’s reach. It was that close. The same on her left, the predators within striking range.
Then the moving stopped.
And there was a silence that was terrifying.
Emily rocked her head from side to side, looking for the faces of her predators, wanting to see the ugliness behind the mask of Death.
Silence.
Then a face poked out from between the large fans of leaves. A head that was canine-sized but crocodilian in shape, with a long snout and reptilian teeth. Its eyes were golden-yellow with black vertical slits for pupils. And a waddle of loose flesh hung at the base of its neck.
When it came out of the brush and into the small clearing, it began to circle Emily in study by cocking its head from one side to the next, the other joined its side. They were short and blunt with strong-looking limbs, the reptiles standing no taller than three feet in height. When they communicated, it sounded like the soft cooing of a bird.
Emily began to crawl backward and deeper into the bush; the reptiles matched her actions and kept pace, their heads turning as if to figure out this life force, to determine if it was predator or prey.
When Emily could go no further, when her back was up against a felled log, she waited.
The lizards looked at her, then at each other, the sound coming from the backs of their throats, a series of soft clicks and cooing, and ended when the larger of the two opened its jaws wide and issued a high-piercing scream. The loose flesh around its throat rose into a frill around its head, the fan of its skin then shaking and rattling in rage, the head looking as if it was haloed by an Elizabethan collar.
The other followed, the flesh around its throat expanding outward in a collar, shaking, then rattling. And then it spat a viscous, tarry substance from its mouth, the mud-like matter striking her eyes, blinding her, the saliva of the matter highly toxic. Her eyes began to burn, then the corneas, the irises and pupils burned with an indescribable intensity, which ultimately drove a scream deep from her.
Birds suddenly took flight as if her cry was like a gunshot.
And then it suddenly stopped.
Leaving only a deep . . . and horrible . . . silence.
#
Jon felt his scrotum crawl the moment he heard Emily cry out in pain that was surely absolute.
He kept the gun in one hand, the machete in the other.
He was fifty yards away and closing.
He read the script above the door.
YOUR FREEDOM IS BUT A FEW STEPS AWAY.
When he was thirty yards away, the massive metal doors began to swing wide. He was so close that he could see the rivets that held the thick panels in place.
If freedom could be detected by one of the five senses, Jon was sure that he could taste it.
Then the doors began to close, quickly.
“No!” he shouted. “You can’t do this! I earned this!”
He began to pick up his pace, running like the wind.
And that was when he felt the earth tremor beneath his feet.
When the doors slammed shut with a horrible shudder, he knew it was to keep something from getting out, something awful and deadly.
Another tremor—from a footfall of something large.
Jon stood his ground ten feet from the Gates of Freedom.
. . . Boom . . . Boom . . . Boom . . . Boom . . .
It was getting close.
Then the earth fell stable
Nothing moved.
Jon stood as still as a Grecian statue listening to nothing but his own heartbeat.
And then all Hell broke loose.
Thirty-foot tall trees divided and pared back, creating an avenue of approach for a Spinosaurus, a massive creature 55-feet in length from head to tail, nearly 25-feet tall, with the enlarged neural spines of the dorsal vertebrae supporting a skin sail quite similar to the dorsal fin of a sailfish. Its head was long and massive with spike-like teeth. Its arms, unlike the T-rex, whose limbs are blunted and puny in comparison, were rather large and muscular, and sported claws that were as long and sharp as industrial meat hooks.
When it craned its head and roared, the air shook, the reverberations of its cry causing the surroundings to vibrate. Then it stepped forward, tail swinging to maintain balance, its head and bowling-ball sized eyes focusing on Jon, its nostrils flaring, taking in the man’s scent so that its olfactory senses could determine if Jon was something of a threat.
Another roar.
And Jon fell to his knees, lifted his firearm, and pulled the trigger in quick succession, the bullets pelting its thick hide but doing little to slow it down. Sobbing, he released the gun, the weapon now useless. The Spinosaurus leaned forward so that its head drew a shadow over Jon, and stretched its jaws wide, showing gossamer strands of saliva that connected the upper line of teeth to the lower.
Jon, feeling absolutely defeated, read the inscription over the door one last time.
YOUR FREEDOM IS BUT A FEW STEPS AWAY.
“It’s not fair,” he whispered. “It’s not.”
Hot, fetid breath pressed down on him, the stench of rancid and decayed meat.
Its teeth now loomed large, its jaw widening.
And then it closed in, the snap of its action so quick that Jon didn’t have time to register that he was already dead.
The Valley had won again.
The Valley is available from Amazon here
Lost World Of Patagonia Page 21