by Hugo Navikov
I could have been the first person ever to see either of the creatures up close, never mind both of them. But that probably wasn’t true, now that I thought about it while looking into the python’s eyes, then looking behind me at the croc’s, then back at the goddamned basilisk in front of me. Men may have seen these animals before, perhaps looking for food or wood in this part of the jungle, and were consumed immediately and entirely by one of these giant specimens. Hell, if a regular-sized Nile crocodile could corner you, he could swallow you in two bites. A normal rock python could coil around you so quickly your heart would be stopped before you even had a chance to cry for help. A normal rock python could also swallow a human whole.
And these were not normal-sized anythings. I couldn’t call out for fear of prompting them to strike, and even if I did, no one would hear me through this dense jungle and across the river. And if even if they did, no one could come to my aid in time. So I didn’t call out.
What I did do is stand very slowly, not only to try to look bigger but also to get some blood into my legs so I could be ready to make a theoretical run for it.
I couldn’t outrun the crocodile on a wet, more-or-less smooth surface; and besides, that would be running right into the open maw of the Megapython. Similarly, there was no way in hell I could outrun even a regular python, let alone this beast; and again, that would put me right into the crocodile’s waiting jaws.
Rock, meet hard place.
I sweated.
They licked their chops.
I was now officially out of time—the croc let out its angry roar now, the kind these animals always snarled right before they attacked, and I could see the gigantic python tensing to strike. I couldn’t go forward, and I couldn’t go back.
So I went sideways.
In two bounds, which each felt like they took half an hour, I leapt off the mud trail and into the trees and brush and God knows what on the right side of the muddy path. I couldn’t run very far once I was in there because there were roots half my height blocking the way, but I had managed to barely slip between two trees right on the “tunnel,” the largest gap I could have found in one hundred feet either way.
If I ever saw a church again, I would be stopping by to say thanks.
But it wasn’t over. The crocodile, infuriated that this meal was trying to escape its deserving stomach, moved as fast as I had ever seen one go and swept right up the mud after me, slamming the very front of its snout between the two trees I had just squeezed through. It raged and roared and tired to push its way in, but it couldn’t—and remember, these were a gap that just let a grown man with a rucksack on his back get through. The space was that large, and the steroid-rage giant crocodile could only get six inches of his snout through.
That is a goddamned giant-ass reptile.
But not as giant as the supersized rock python.
The snake’s coiling to grab me, which I escaped by what I would estimate as exactly one second, wasn’t intended to let it sweep to the side and gobble me as I tried to run away. If I had seen the gap and jumped even three seconds earlier, the python would have had time to haul me in or at least puncture me with a fang to hold me down while it squeezed me to death. And of course if I had jumped one second later, its spring would have forced me fatally down its throat before it even closed its mouth.
Like the Supercroc, the Megapython didn’t quit either. It backed up its overshot and tensed in order to let it spring its massive bulk to the side this time, to where I had only just slipped between the trees and was a mere ten feet beyond the snout of the croc. It wasn’t bluffing with that tensing, either, because it almost immediately swept to the side, slamming its huge scaly head against my two guardian trees so hard it made birds fly out a hundred feet above it.
It rammed its head against the trees and then quickly shut its jaw, driving its left fang right through the middle of the crocodile. The giant reptile shrieked and then released a roar that made me duck down even though I managed to crawl over one of the giant roots and get behind it. After that instinctive move, however, I brought my head back up over the root.
What I saw next I never would have believed if anyone claimed that they’d seen it. I completely forgot about the camera in my rucksack as I watched the python drag the croc away from the trees by that single enormous fang, then quickly (for a snake the length of two city buses, anyway) wrapped itself around the thrashing carnivore and squeezed. I could see the muscles tighten as it crushed the crocodile—itself almost as long as a single city bus—into stillness and, as its heart stopped, death.
Then the monster snake uncoiled itself from the mangled Nile crocodile and straightened out its long body. Then, not even needing to unhinge its massive jaw, it pushed forward and scooped the dead predator into its mouth and swallowed.
Its throat engorged, the Megapython coiled itself up again, getting into what I recognized as its resting position. It would take the snake maybe eight hours to fully swallow a meal of that size—I’m extrapolating from what happens when a regular-size Burmese python eats a regular-size alligator—so it would be staying exactly where it was for a while. I didn’t dare come out from my safe spot, since for all I knew the Megapython would still have the energy, and the stomach capacity, to snag itself a second tasty morsel: me.
It was past three now. The sun was at an angle now where it made the jungle even darker. And this was the brightest it would be for the next 21 hours. The giant snake’s eyes never closed, of course, and its gaze was fixed directly on me, where I believed it would remain until the crocodile was entirely digested. In a week or so.
I took my eyes off my jailer for the first extended time and looked all about me in the darkling jungle. The muddy path was the only reference I had to where I was in the jungle. I wanted to go further into the rainforest to get away from the Megapython, but I knew if I lost track of that opening onto the river, I would be as good as dead even without literally unbelievably enormous predators stalking me. There was one way out and one way in for all my intents and purposes: the hole in the jungle.
I would be sleeping against this massive tree tonight, it seemed. I would have to stay right where I was if I were going to live. My compass was small and I had no map or anything to make a map with. I could be within fifty feet of the muddy path and not see it. Unless I had a light on my compass and watched it every second—an impossibility when my eyes and attention were needed for navigating a ground seething with interwoven flora and fauna—I would quickly and inescapably veer off any straight path I was trying to forge and be lost. And that would be that.
I used my idle time to do something productive. I got the camera out of my rucksack and took picture after digital picture of the Megapython. I wished there were something in the frame for scale. I did what I could to establish the monster’s size, taking parallax pictures that might give a sense of the thing in three dimensions. I did the same thing with the video setting, taking in the relative position of the snake against the backdrop of vines and trees and the foreground of the muddy path.
It was as good as pitch black a couple of hours after that, and, feeling enormous insects crawling near me and then on my body the entire time, hearing birds scream at one another along with the chittering of monkeys and the growls of God knew what, I slept as shallowly as I breathed, ready for any breath to be my last.
Chapter 9
A susurration nearby made my eyes snap open. It was dark in the jungle, absolutely Stygian, but I had been in lightless forests and jungles many times. It was always uncomfortable, but I usually had lanterns and flashlights, not to mention companions who I could probably outrun if a bear came after us. Also, there usually wasn’t a historically giant supersnake thirty or so feet away from me.
The rustling continued. Did I dare shine my flashlight? It could mean that whatever what was mucking about in the foliage—and, thank God, it sounded like it was on the other side of the mud path from me. I didn’t know if the python was still th
ere; it was so utterly dark that I literally could not see my hand in front of my face.
But now I actually could see a light behind and between the trees over there. Just the tiniest bit of light, and like looking at a dim star in the sky I could detect it only if I averted my gaze slightly and used only the rods in my peripheral vision. It flickered but stayed, and it was coming right from where the susurration had awakened me. I didn’t know if hearing acuity improved when one couldn’t see, but the light still seemed to be quite a distance away.
The birds had stopped chattering. I couldn’t hear any monkeys jumping around the branches of the trees. Even the owls, thick in this part of Africa, weren’t hooting. Usually these sounds were a constant background soundtrack, but now, for some reason, nothing moved, nothing peeped, nothing breathed.
I could look at the light directly now and see that it was the bobbling of a flashlight. I could hear the bearer—and obviously it was a human, maybe one looking for me—and maybe one companion making their rough way through the undergrowth. But soon the flashlight was pointing down at the wet clay and it became obvious they were treading a path familiar to them, which explained why they were able to move straight along, now obviously heading for the opening in the jungle that would take them to the lake. I hadn’t heard them on their way in because they must have walked carefully and quietly when on the path.
They were about fifty feet away and I slowly stood up and grabbed my flashlight to signal them when an ear-splitting, tree-shaking, ground-rattling ROAR scared every bird and monkey and even insect into moving as fast as possible away from the sound.
It was like a lion’s roar but at jet engine volume, with a spine-chilling shriek at the top of the register over the klaxon of the roar at the low end.
The two men—I assumed they were men from their whispered voices, giddy with fear—ran past with their flashlight. And I mean ran, even though I could see that the man not holding the flashlight was carrying something large and apparently quite heavy. From the bounce of the light’s beam, I could see that the snake was still there but wasn’t looking my way anymore, or even at the men as they raced by. No, even the Megapython, the biggest creature I or any other human had ever seen, looked toward the direction of the roar and coiled itself into a tight defense position, trying, it seemed, to make itself look small.
I was able to shake myself out of staring in that direction as well, turning to see the two men make it out of the foliage and almost immediately jump onto a waiting motorboat, which sped away out of my ken. It was again as dark as the abyss.
But there were sounds now, not only another titanic explosion of animal fury—amazingly, even louder and closer-feeling this time—but also thousands of every other kind of wildlife in that square mile of jungle screeching and running for its life.
Despite all of that noise, I could feel a rhythmic shaking of the ground even through my boots. Thoughts of Jurassic Park where the water in a cup in the tram car keeps rippling flashed through my head, but this shaking would have knocked that plastic cup right off the dashboard.
I didn’t dare switch on my flashlight. All that would do—ha! like with that girl in the movie!—is attract not only the attention of whatever the hell was running at us, but also my old friend the Megapython. The snake, I knew, could see into the infrared, so it probably knew I was still there anyway, but in the one second that I saw it in the men’s flashlights I knew its attention had been diverted.
For that second, anyway. I was again completely blind in the utter dark and couldn’t see what my hungry serpent was up to. I crouched down again behind my giant root where I had been sleeping, keeping just my eyes over the prominence in case anything suddenly became visible—
HROAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAORRRRRR!
I literally staggered back and fell on my ass. That came from almost right in front of—
HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
“Jesus!” I barked out loud, then clamped both hands over my mouth like in a pantomime show. That hiss was the Megapython, it had to be. It was as loud as a locomotive’s whistle—but still didn’t even approach the other thing’s raging roar.
I regained my footing and looked out at the unilluminated scene which sounded like it was taking place before me. It was pitch black still, and even the screams of the snake and the crocodile-like snarls (times a thousand decibels) of the other didn’t make them any more visible.
BOOM! The ground shook so hard a tree fell a few meters behind me.
Then there was a wet crunch and the sound of tons of meat being chewed and swallowed. Finally that stopped and after hearing a massive squelching noise, I jumped back as something that felt like the size of a boulder slammed into those two trees that had just barely allowed me entrance into my hollow. Branches and monkeys rained down all around of me, judging by the sound.
But it was not over. This creature, whatever it was, let out another air-rending roar of fury and ran off down the path, sliding right into the Kasai and vanishing.
A few minutes later, maybe less, I could hear human screams from across the river as well as the unholy sound of whatever had gone into the river and come out on the other side, on the mine’s side.
To this day, I don’t believe that I passed out. I think my body and my mind just quit. They could take no more of the impossible and simply shut down, leaving me to fall into a deep slumber against the giant root.
Chapter 10
I awoke in layers of sensation. First was a symphony of animal sounds, a nice and normal jungle cacophony. Then a million spots of light sparkled against my eyelids as the daylight streamed through the treetops. I could next feel my sweaty and completely filthy and bug-bitten body itching like hell and taste jungle rot in my mouth.
But the smell—the stench—was what finally aroused me to consciousness. I opened my eyes and coughed at the foulness. I waved a cloud of gnats away from my face and stood to see what was on the other side of—
“HOLY SHIT!” I yelped, and if my heart had simply exploded at that moment, it wouldn’t have been at all surprising. I caught my breath as I looked into the 15-foot-wide mouth of the Megapython, its dead forked tongue hanging out the side because the snake’s head was at about a 45-degree angle to the ground. Its eyes were flat instead of bulbous. Which is what happens when blood ceases to exert pressure in an animal’s body.
Still recovering my senses after shrieking like a very foul-mouthed little girl, I saw the reason for the python’s lack of blood pressure: it was only the monster’s head that had been hurled at trees, probably when whatever ate everything between that head and the length of tail in the bushes on the other side was shaking it violently in its unimaginably massive jaws. (As in I could not even imagine how massive those jaws would have had to be in order to bite right through a 15-foot-in-diameter serpent that had just eaten the largest crocodile ever seen.)
The monster, which was bigger than this monster, which was in turn bigger than the monster it had eaten, hadn’t gobbled the serpent whole or slurped it down like a noodle, but that was probably because the snake presented its flank sometime during their earthshaking battle royale.
Making 360-degree sweeps of my immediate environment by turning every step or two, I was able to get right next to the overwhelming decay smell of the Megapython, already full of every kind of carrion insect in the jungle and stinking like the devil’s asshole even though it had been dead ten hours at the very most. I was dazed as hell from sleeping—hell, passed out—in the jungle, but I had to see the enormous snake head close up to check that my sanity hadn’t been lost through an exotic insect’s venom. Then, walking very carefully and still making those full circles to spot any supra-apes bigger than King Kong or colossal wasps the size of a WWII bomber, I examined what remained of the python’s tail. Then I looked around again. I could see the opening out onto the Kasai River, so close and yet so very far away. I waited at that spot near the snake’s ta
il, waited and listened and watched for anything that might come to pop me in its mouth like I was a Tic-Tac.
After a few minutes, I felt reasonably confident that there was now just the normal African rainforest jungle of incredible, but normal, danger. If I weren’t smelling the remains of my Megapython, I could almost have believed it was a dream I had after collapsing from the heat and humidity. But it wasn’t. And now it was time to walk out the way I had walked in and see what thoroughly unbelievable horror had occurred in the tent city the night before.
***
“My God,” I murmured under my breath as I reached the edge of the jungle, where I could see flattened tents, mangled bodies, and lots of smoke. It was a little after 8:00 in the morning. As I paddled across the river, I couldn’t see a single person moving in the entire mining site. I saw the Cryptids Alive! tent on its rise. It seemed undamaged, but I didn’t see any of the crew moving around inside or out. I landed the flatboat more or less where I had intended and tied it off.
As I walked up the bank, I wondered: had the mud been smoothed on this side of the river yesterday? Or was it caused by some gigantic creature slithering out of the green river? I wished I had bothered to take notice of this yesterday, but I had honestly thought I was going to check out where a croc had laid its eggs near the opposite waterline or the like. Not that was about to step onto the set of Land of the Lost.
There were, as reported in the dossier given to me by my Boss, pieces of bodies here and there, an arm, a head, a torso without any extremities at all. Tents mashed onto fires were what was burning and throwing the smoke into the air. But only a dozen or so tents looked like they had been stepped on and there were “only” ten or twenty people killed as represented by the body parts strewn around. Where was everybody else?