there!” Richard cried out.
“And those flying creatures will get us if we stay put.” Meat said, “Stop being a coward.”
Jack watched as more and more of the flying fire-monsters swooped down from the clouds and knew that certain death awaited them if they stayed put.
“I say we run!” Meat said.
Jack’s fatherly instincts kicked in before anyone could argue another word about staying put or running. He embraced Timmy tightly and ran towards the cadaver and it didn’t take long for the others to follow him as he climbed onto the cadaver towards the fissure in the fire-wall along with hundreds of other people. He didn’t look back, but knew that he lost the others in the stampede of fleeing people and that he and Timmy were on their own from here on out.
“I gotcha!” Jack said as Timmy cried.
Once on the other side, Jack paused for a moment to study the lands beyond the fire-wall. He saw about sixty or seventy worm-like creatures gulping up humans before burrowing into the earth again in a never-ending repeat motion that made the earth seem to move like waves on the ocean.
He was the only one to stop once on the outside and analyse the situation – everyone simply ran wildly to their doom as they got picked off one by one by the worm monsters. He saw that some of the luckier people were able to dodge the worms and make haste towards a gorge between two mounts in the distance that seemed to be the only way out of the baron valley.
He turned away from the worms picking off humans and glanced back over his shoulder at the fire-monsters picking off humans back inside the concentration camp and he knew it was now or never, so he took a deep breath and prepared to make a run for it. He hoped that God could hear his prayers from wherever in the universe they were.
He clutched onto Timmy as tightly as he could and started running towards the gorge six miles away; guided by the trail of fleeing humans.
A worm shot up out of the ground right at his feet and Jack stumbled left as he tried to avoid the worm that devoured people behind him before piercing the soil and disappearing again. Another worm burrowed up a few feet to his left and darted straight for them. Jack jumped out of the way and the worm ingested a fat man too slow to give way. Jack could actually feel the heat coming off the illuminated worm as it grazed him on its way down into the ground again.
He held onto Timmy as tightly as he could and ran as fast as his aging legs would allow him as more and more worms narrowly missed them.
“Jack!” he heard someone yell.
Jack didn’t look back – instead he kept running and kept his sights on the gorge in the distance. He could see in his peripheral vision how fire-monsters took to the sky with humans in their clutches while more swooped down to eat.
“Jack!” Agent Smith gasped as he finally reached Jack, “You’re alive!”
“Agent Smith!” Jack said as they ran.
“I’m glad to see you.” Agent Smith panted, “Turns out your theory was right after all.”
“Yeah. I hate being right all the time.”
“I was – ” A worm swallowed Agent Smith and disappeared back into the soil before he could even scream for help.
Jack kept running though his legs felt like they would give way any moment. He just had to keep pushing himself until they were clear of danger.
A worm shot up out of the ground right in front of Jack and he halted in terror – the worm was different from the rest in that a native human-like creature rode on its back. It pulled back on the reins and the worm halted like a horse.
“Return to your camp.” Petrav ordered.
“You can speak English?” Jack asked himself.
“Do not make me tell you twice.” Petrav said.
Jack glanced at the gorge in the distance and wished they made it there safely and turned to the native with rage building up inside of him. It was because of them that his boy was terrified. It was because of them that he couldn’t find his wife… it was because of them that they were stuck on a planet who-knows-where in the universe.
“There’s one thing you should know about humans.” Jack said as he reached into his front pocket, “We don’t like being told what to do.”
Jack pulled out the scale and it sliced through the skin of the worm like a warm knife through the butter. The creature screeched in pain as light pierced through the wound and engulfed Jack and Timmy. The brilliance of the light blinded him, but was over in less than two seconds.
When his eyes adjusted to his surroundings again, Jack saw that they were standing in the middle of a mountain chasm as hundreds of fleeing people ran past them towards a turquoise ocean ahead. He turned around and saw the worms picking off people about six or seven miles away in the distance behind them, and though he didn’t quite grasped what had happened, he suspected that they had somehow travelled through a crack in the time-space continuum caused by the light inside the worm creature.
Still a bit jolted, Jack walked towards the ocean while everyone else ran like crazy. It called to him. For some inexplicable reason he was drawn to the ocean like a moth to a flame and he noticed that the running people around him slowed down as they approached the ocean in a dazed state.
From his tangential vision Jack saw that the beach was lined with massive carnivorous plants; tightly packed and covering most of the mountain slopes behind the dazzling white beach.
It was during the quietness that befell them that he noticed a hypnotizing hymn created by the ocean’s breaking waters that lured them closer and he tried his hardest to break free from its malevolent trance, but it was easier said than done. He started humming Paradise by the Dashboard light – a song by Meat Loaf that got stuck in his head ever since they met back in the concentration camp. The humming turned into singing and he could no longer hear the hymn of the ocean; he could feel its grasp on him weaken.
“What are you doing?” A nearby man asked.
“Singing.” Jack said melodic, “The ocean is drawing us in with a hypnotic song.”
It took the man a moment to realize that Jack was right – the only reason he too wasn’t a zombie was because he was close enough for Jack’s singing to break the trance.
“You got to do what you can and let Mother Nature do the rest.” Jack sang over and over as he kept his sights on the ominously calm ocean before them.
“It never felt so good, it never felt so right.” The man joined in singing, but not realizing the irony of the lyrics he was singing, “We were glowing like the metal on the edge of a knife. It never felt so good, it never felt so right. It never felt so good, it never felt so right. It never felt so good, it never felt so right.”
Some of the hypnotized people stepped into the breaking waves until they were ankle-deep and then the hymn stopped.
“It never felt so good, it never felt so right…” The man sang slower and slower as he and Jack both observed the tranquil ocean.
Jack stopped singing – the ocean was no longer singing its hymn, but the people still seemed as if they were under some kind of spell. He didn’t like the portentous feeling created by the sheer silence around them and stepped back a few feet – all the while keeping his sights on the ocean.
Fifty gargantuan tentacles shot out of the ocean’s breaking waves and reached up towards the heavens before darting down and picking up humans. The spell was broken and everyone started screaming and running as more and more tentacles shot out of the water along the ocean’s edge and picked off humans. The tentacles grabbed their prey and dragged them off towards a watery grave from which there was no escape.
“Run!” Jack yelled.
Timmy clung tightly to Jack’s embrace as he ran along the pearly white beach; keeping as far away from the water’s edge as he possible could. Some of the people running to his left ventured too close to the carnivorous plants and were devoured with brutally no man should ever have to endure.
Jack and the rest of the hundreds of people lucky enough to escape the clutches of the wriggling tentacles and teeth of
the plants ran towards a tunnel created by an arching rock. He could see people run through the tunnel towards the green field beyond, but couldn’t see beyond that and this worried Jack. On an alien planet you should know what you’re running from and what you’re running towards as it could mean the difference between life and death.
When they were about ten feet away, Jack realized that the green field beyond the arching rock was actually a mirage and that people were tumbling over the unseen edge they were running towards. He tried to stop, but the stream of panicking people took him and Timmy over the edge. They tumbled down a gorge that seemed to go on forever and as they fell, Jack glanced up at the waterfall created by the turquoise ocean – a waterfall that never seemed to drain.
They fell through clouds as they tumbled down to an unseen fate along with hundreds of screaming humans. Timmy cried and all Jack could do was to hold onto him as tightly as he could. He wished he could reassure Timmy that they’d be alright, but as they fell for what felt like forever, Jack had a hard time convincing himself that they’d be alright.
He tried to see what was below them, but all he could see were scattered clouds in the blue of the sky and the rocky side of the abyss they were tumbling into – oddly enough the abyss they fell into seemed to only have one side.
“I’ve got ya.” Jack whimpered.
He embraced Timmy with all his might and tried not to cry, but the uncontrollable
Age of Men Page 24