Cryptozoica

by Mark Ellis

  Belleau’s lips tightened but he said nothing more.

  Kavanaugh joined Crowe forward and they studied both banks of the river. “We can assume if Jimmy Cao hijacked the Keying,” Kavanaugh commented, “that he has considerable firepower.”

  Crowe nodded. “The Ghost Shadows probably took considerable casualties, too.”

  “And,” Mouzi put in cheerfully, coming to stand between them, “they don’t know that we know they’re on their way. So we have the edge with the element of surprise.”

  Crowe’s lips quirked in a smile beneath his mustache. “That’s always the best kind of edge to have.”

  “We still ought to have something resembling a plan,” said Kavanaugh.

  “I’m working on it,” replied Crowe. “I’m a little out of practice.”

  On the right-hand bank, a copse of pagke trees rose on high roots like towers elevated by stilts. The last time Crowe had piloted past them, the river had been at flood stage and the roots were submerged. He examined the trees carefully, then pointed. “That one looks good.”

  He spun the wheel and held the cruiser’s stern straight for an opening between a pair of roots arched like a cathedral doorway. He reversed the props, backing water into bubbling foam. Expertly, he eased the boat between the roots, the hull scraping the wood.

  He keyed off the engine and as the boat bobbed in the shallow water, Mouzi and Honoré cut broad leaves from overhanging branches, using them to camouflage the brightly colored hull. Other than the sounds of cutting and snapping, the jungle was quiet. The late afternoon mist veiled the river and the marsh reeds on the far shore.

  At a sudden startled cry from McQuay, Kavanaugh turned to see gray, translucent lumps of jelly pulsating on the right side of his bandaged head. Another leech had set its sucker into the base of his blood-crusted neck.

  Belleau and Oakshott leaned away from the cameraman. “The ruttin’ things dropped down from the tree!” blurted the big Englishman.

  “They’re attracted to the blood,” Kavanaugh said calmly, picking up Mouzi’s butterfly knife.

  “Get ‘em off, get ‘em off!”, shrilled McQuay, clawing at his head.

  “Settle down,” Kavanaugh said, using the edge of the knife to carefully scrape the leeches away and fling them overboard.

  “How the hell do they smell blood?” demanded McQuay. “The fucking things don’t even have noses!”

  Kavanaugh didn’t tell him that denizens of jungles the world over shared a supernatural awareness of the presence of blood. Leeches were no exception. Nor were crocodiles, prehistoric or otherwise.

  Honoré examined McQuay’s bandage and said, “You started yourself bleeding again. The dressing should be changed.”

  McQuay said, “I’m all right for the time being.”

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  When he shook his head, she turned toward Belleau and Oakshott. “What about you two? Do you want something to eat?”

  Belleau said stiffly, “No thank you.”

  Oakshott said, “I wouldn’t mind some of that jerked beef.”

  “I’ll feed him,” Mouzi volunteered, taking her butterfly knife from Kavanaugh. “But if you get fresh with me, Jumbo, I’ll fix it so you can’t eat anything ever again.”

  Oakshott said, “There is no reason to be afraid of me.”

  “Yes, there is,” Mouzi shot back. “I’ve seen you fight, in Bangkok. You play dirty.”

  Kavanaugh dropped into a seat, adjusting the Bren Ten in his waistband. “Now we wait.”

  Honoré sat down opposite him and reached for the metal case containing the journal. She opened the lid and removed the book, flipping to the page containing the drawing of the creature Belleau called an anthroposaur. “Why did you say this entity was a female?”

  Kavanaugh opened his mouth to answer and then shrugged. “I don’t know. Whatever I tell you won’t sound very scientific.”

  “That’s for sure,” said Crowe, leaning against the console. “We always figured you were just out of your head from blood loss and shock.”

  “Or just out of your head, period,” Mouzi put in with an insouciant grin.

  Honoré thumbed through the pages. She paused at one, eyes flitting back and forth across the lines of handwriting. “According to this entry, Charles Darwin himself saw something very much like the bipedal anthroposaur creature, standing on the beach in the company of a theropod.”

  Belleau said, “Darwin claimed that a crewman was attacked by a Deinonychus and would have been killed except a bird’s song seemed to distract it, drive it away.”

  Kavanaugh swiveled his chair to stare at the little man. “Bird song?”

  Belleau smiled at him mockingly. “Does that sound familiar?”

  Instead of answering the question, Kavanaugh glanced toward Mouzi who tentatively held out a chunk of beef jerky to Oakshott’s lips. “Careful, honey. Don’t let him bite you.”

  Belleau snickered. “If he did, I would imagine poor Oakshott would have to undergo a regimen of antibiotic shots.”

  Whirling on him, Mouzi put the tip of her knife against the hinge of his jaw. “What’s that supposed to mean, Gollum?”

  Oakshott started to push himself to his feet but Crowe said loudly, “Settle down, girls.”

  “Apologize to the young lady,” Kavanaugh suggested.

  Belleau didn’t speak or even move. Only when Mouzi withdrew the knife from his throat did he say quietly, “I’m sorry, Miss. My remark was not only uncalled for but inappropriate and disrespectful. I hope you will forgive me. I used to be a decent fellow.”

  Mouzi nodded curtly and returned her attention to Oakshott. She shoved a piece of dried meat the size of a matchbook cover into his mouth. “Let your saliva soften it before you swallow it,” she instructed, “or you’ll choke. I’ll be damned if I’ll perform the Heimlich maneuver on you.”

  Honoré flipped back to the illustration of the anthroposaur. “You were saying, Jack?”

  Kavanaugh dry-scrubbed his hair, sighed, and said, “Cranston, Jessup and Shah Nikwan wanted dinosaur trophies, but they didn’t want to risk their lives to get them. So they chose snufflegalumpus—the Hadrosaurs, which if any dinosaur can be compared to cattle, those are in it. So one afternoon, I took them up in the chopper and we landed about eighteen miles thataway.”

  He jerked a thumb over his right shoulder. “Near the tributary of this river, not much more than a stream.”

  “You said in your deposition that you didn’t know they had guns aboard.”

  Flatly, he said, “I knew they did, even though I didn’t see them until we landed and they all pulled out their custom .600 Nitro Express rifles. Elephant guns. I always carried a Winchester 30.30 whenever I went in-country. My old man’s rifle.”

  Kavanaugh paused, his eyes growing vacant as if a veil passed before them. “It was about half an hour before sunset. The herd came out to drink at the stream. While I led the men over, I kept feeling like we were being watched, sized up, but not like by an animal. I don’t know how to explain it but—I sensed intelligence.”

  Honoré’s eyes widened. “A human intelligence?”

  “Human level. I don’t know about human.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t imagine it?”

  Kavanaugh smiled bleakly. “I’m not a very imaginative man, so I don’t usually imagine much of anything. I used to be a fighter pilot in the Air Force and you don’t get to be one of those if your mind has a tendency to play tricks.”

  She nodded in understanding. “Go on.”

  “By the time we got to where the snufflegalumpus—the Hadrosaurs—had gathered, it was just about sunset. I had the feeling that if we just turned around and left without firing a shot, everything would be fine. When I told Jessup, Cranston and Shah Nikwan that the deal was off, that we were going back, they looked at me like I was a lunatic. They threatened to ruin me, to ruin Gus and Mouzi if I interfered with them. So, because they’d paid me thirty grand, I went alo
ng with them, following the curve of the stream.

  “Jessup was the youngest of the three idiots—about fifty—and the most impatient. He drew a bead on a Hadrosaur with a calf and fired. The animal went down. Then he killed the calf. The other animals got spooked and went running crazy, bawling and stampeding all over hell and gone. Nikwan and Cranston just opened up on them like they were in a carnival midway shooting gallery.”

  Kavanaugh paused, took a breath, held it then said, “Not to put too fine a spin on it, but they just shot the shit out the herd—adults, males, females, calves, wounding them, crippling them, maiming them. It was a slaughter. Those big bullets tore holes the size of my fist right through them…the way they screamed—

  Kavanaugh broke off, squeezing his eyes shut, lifting his hands as if to cover his ears. Belleau, with a surprising degree of civility said, “Not exactly sportsmen, I take it.”

  Opening his eyes, Kavanaugh shook his head. “Not unless you count the old-time buffalo hunters shooting from the backs of moving trains as sportsmen. Anyway, I can’t begin to describe what happened next because even after all this time, it’s still not clear. It was like being attacked by jumping shadows made of daggers or spears. They came out of the sunset, out of the underbrush, out of everywhere, all claws and fangs and shrieks.”

  “They?” inquired Honoré. “The Deinonychus pack?”

  He nodded. “I’d only seen them from a distance before. Now they were all over the place, leaping, running, tearing. They moved faster than anything I’d ever seen, as vicious and as ruthless as monsters out of a horror movie. I managed to get off a couple of shots with my Winchester, then I was knocked down and ripped open. I had a knife and I fought back as best as I could. I killed one of them.”

  “What about the three men?” Belleau asked.

  Kavanaugh didn’t answer for a long moment, dredging up fragmented memories of Shah Nikwan, Jessup and Cranston firing their weapons in a frenzy. Nikwan ran pell-mell toward the distant helicopter, fleeing like a panic-stricken deer.

  A Deinonychus caught up with the running man in one spring-steel legged leap. Its jaws closed over Shah Nikwan’s head and the creature clutched the man in its arms as if it were embracing him. The Deinonychus chewed through his vertebrae, then let the man's head fall from its blood-flecked mouth. Nikwan’s head tumbled across the muddy ground like an awkward ball. Hugging the decapitated corpse to its chest, the creature gathered itself and bounded from sight into the high reeds bordering the stream.

  Kavanaugh wiped at the clammy film of cold sweat, which had gathered at his hairline. He retained an exceptionally vivid recollection of the man's head rolling toward him, dead eyes wide with disbelief.

  “Jack?’ Honoré inquired.

  Stolidly, he said, “All three of them died….ripped to pieces. Arms and legs torn off, disemboweled, even decapitated.”

  Reflexively, he fingered the scar on the side of his face. “I wasn’t much better off. I could barely move, lying in a pool of my own blood, going into shock. Then I heard a bird singing…but it wasn’t just a song. It was a voice. Or it was a song I understood, I don’t know which. I never believed in telepathy or anything like that. But in my mind’s eye, I saw her.”

  “Her?” echoed Honoré.

  “Her. She had skin like a snake’s hide and it shimmered with every step she took.” Kavanaugh broke off, swallowed hard and said in a rush, “I don’t know if I actually saw her or not, or if she transmitted an image of herself. But I knew she had sent the Deinonychus pack to drive us away. I was spared because she sensed I objected to the slaughter of the Hadrosaurs. I also knew she was not just a female, but the last of her kind, and females of her breed had been worshipped as goddesses by humans, thousands of years ago. She told me to get up and run…to never to come back…and that if I did come back, I would die.”

  Honoré arched skeptical eyebrows but did not speak.

  “I don’t know how I got there,” Kavanaugh continued, “but the next thing I knew I was climbing into the chopper. I had enough presence of mind to bring one of the raptor’s bodies with me, as evidence. Even though I was in shock, I managed to fly back to Little Tamtung. The rest you know.”

  Crowe said quietly, “When I opened the chopper hatch, I couldn’t tell where the blood ended and Jack began. I still can’t understand how he lived or stayed conscious long enough to take off, fly and land.”

  Belleau drawled, “Well, now you’ve come back to Big Tamtung, Kavanaugh. What do you figure she’ll do to you?”

  Kavanaugh met the little man’s eyes. “I couldn’t say…but I know this much—if Bai Suzhen is hurt, I’ll arrange it so that whatever happens to me will happen to you.”

  Oakshott glared at him, chewing slowly, with Mouzi still standing over him, knife at the ready.

  Apparently oblivious to the upsurge in hostile energy, Honoré flipped through the pages of the journal, then stopped. She squinted. “These pages are written in French.”

  “Yes, by my great-great-grandfather,” Belleau said.

  Honoré turned to the next page and asked, “Did you ever see anything like this, Jack?”

  He leaned close to her, their shoulders touching. An illustration of four square, squat stone columns dominated the page. Even though the image was rendered in charcoal and ink, Kavanaugh could tell that inestimable centuries of weather had pitted and scarred their surfaces so that the glyphs inscribed in them were barely visible. In the background he could discern a suggestion of ruined buildings. In the center of the cluster of structures was a pool or pond.

  “According to what Jacque Belleau wrote,” Honoré stated, “He came across ruins and a dark green pool. Apparently, he was following a map.”

  “A map?” repeated Crowe in surprise. “Where did he get a map of Big Tamtung’s interior in the 19th century?”

  Honoré cast Belleau a challenging glance. “You know, don’t you, Aubrey?”

  “Of course I do,” Belleau said pridefully. “I memorized my great-great-grandfather’s notes on his visit to this place.” The little man cleared his throat and quoted, “ ‘I would like to say that the columns and the buildings were built of sun-dried brick, but I am not sure of their composition. I judged they were many thousands of years old. However, there was none of the grace of say, classical Greek architecture. They seemed closer to Egyptian, perhaps even Sumerian or even a blend of all those styles.’ ”

  “Is that what it really says?” Kavanaugh asked Honoré.

  Tracing the lines with a forefinger, her lips moving as she read along with Belleau’s recitation, she nodded. “Substantially, although the elder Belleau preferred to express himself in a vernacular form of French that has long since gone out of style.”

  “What was so special about the pool?” Crowe asked.

  Belleau quoted, “ ‘Charles so often cited warm little ponds as being the source of all life on our world—if only he had been able to plunge his hands into the pool of primeval matter and let the very sperm of the earth run through his fingers. Ah, it was an experience like no other. Just holding the Prima Materia in my hands made me feel like a god!

  “The cryptogram decoded by Brother Dee and Edward Kelley has led me to the greatest discovery in Mankind’s history. It has come to pass that the School will safeguard the means of humanity’s next evolutionary step, if only Charles agrees to remain silent.’ ”

  “What the hell is all that gibberish about, Aubrey?” Kavanaugh demanded.

  “I’d like to know about that myself,” said Honoré. “What cryptogram was your great-great-grandfather referring to? Who is Brother Dee?”

  Belleau hitched around in his seat, inclining his head toward the illustration on the journal page. “Do you see those inscriptions on the pillars?”

  Honoré eyed them critically. “Yes.”

  “What do you make of them?”

  “They’re not hieroglyphics or cuneiform. They almost look Greek.”

  Belleau chuckled. “They
are letters in what is known as the Enochian alphabet. Most scholars and historians believe it was a coded language created by Dr. John Dee and his seer Edward Kelley during Elizabethan times.”

  “I read something about that,” Crowe said. “Dee was a secret agent for Queen Elizabeth, right?”

  Belleau smiled appreciatively. “You surprise me, sir. Yes, John Dee acted as something of a spy for the queen and was well known for concealing secret messages in fiendishly complicated cryptograms. However, he did not create the language known as Enochian. Withal, he did spend most of his adult life trying to decode and translate it.”

  Honoré stared at the glyphs on the journal page, turning it this way and that. “What language is it, then?”

  “Dee often referred to the alphabet as ‘Adamical’, because he theorized it was spoken by Adam and the early Biblical patriarchs. In reality, it is a language that predates humanity’s first written records. It’s a pre-Adamical alphabet.”

  “Talk sense, Aubrey,” snapped Honoré.

  “I am attempting to do that very thing, darlin’.” Belleau’s smile broadened. “The alphabet is called Enochian because the patriarch Enoch was reportedly the last man to have ever spoken it. You do know who Enoch was?”

  “A Biblical prophet, I think.”

  Belleau nodded. “Enoch is mentioned in Genesis as the son of Cain and the father of Methuselah, and he is believed to be one of the antediluvian patriarchs who, along with Noah, personally ‘walked with God’. Books written by anonymous scribes were credited to Enoch and were given great credence by early Jewish scholars. They influenced the writers of the Old Testament. Parts of the books of Enoch were found among the scraps of parchment in the caves of Qumran in 1947, having been placed there nearly 2,000 years before by the Jewish sect known as the Essenes.”

  “The Dead Sea Scrolls?” inquired Crowe.

  “Yes…and although most of the books credited to Enoch were written in Aramaic, there were many scrolls rendered in the so-called Enochian alphabet. It was not code, but the actual language of a race of non-human creatures that once shared our planet with us—what some scientists have classified as the anthroposaur.”