by Jake Bible
“And look!” Raff said, pointing like a six year old seeing fireworks for the first time. “They have air support! Did you see that? A jet just flew by!”
“This is a mirage, yes?” Pytor asked. “An illusion.”
“We can’t all be seeing the same mirage, pal,” Raff said with a snort. “That’s crazy talk.”
“Mass hallucinations have been recorded,” Dr. Xipan said.
“We’re not hallucinating,” Barbara said. “That’s a time bubble. And that is Topside.”
“How?” Cash asked. “And why does it look so…?”
“Military?” Raff finished for him. “Very good questions. I’m thinking, and I’m only riffing here, that maybe, the answers to those question are down in that valley and on the other side of that bubble. What say we all go for one last hike and see what happens? Who’s with me?”
No one replied. They only stared at the bubble and the activity happening inside.
“Uh, those weren’t rhetorical questions, folks,” Raff said and shrugged. He started walking down the steep decline. “Follow if you want, but I’m gonna check it the fuck out right the fuck now.”
“Raff!” Cash shouted. “Stop right there.”
Raff stopped and turned to look up at Cash.
“What?” he asked.
“That’s a shitty route,” Cash said and pointed off to the left. “There’s a much easier one right over there. I do not want to have to carry you because you broke a fucking ankle just when we may have found a way out of this shit.”
Raff looked where Cash was pointing and nodded. “Yeah. That’s a much easier route.”
It took two hours to descend to the valley floor. They lost sight of the bubble as they entered a thick forest of giant ferns and pines mixed with palms.
Without rifles, they had to carefully navigate the forest, always on the alert for predators or, as they had come to find out, carnivorous plants. One wrong step and they would have their leg clamped by a hungry plant that looked like a Venus flytrap and a steel bear trap had had an ugly baby.
It was very slow going through the forest.
By the time they reached the other side, and caught glimpses of the time bubbles shimmer once more, it was evening and quickly turning into night.
“Something is tracking us back there,” Pytor said when they stopped at the last few trees of the forest and stared out at the shimmering bubble. “I hear it following about five meters back.”
The group turned but couldn’t see anything back in the darkness of the forest.
“Then let’s get the fuck out of here,” Raff said quietly. “You’re seeing what I’m seeing, right? Those look like Topside Industries uniforms. Those are our people in there.”
“Hold on,” Cash said. “Notice something, Raff?”
“That we’re about to experience indoor plumbing again?”
“No, asshole, those vehicles and operators are massing by this bubble like they’re bracing for an attack,” Cash said. “We go rushing toward that and we may get our heads blown off. Let’s stay put for a minute and see what…happens…”
Over twenty operators appeared out of nowhere. They stepped out from behind trees, popped up from the tall grass that stretched from the forest to the edge of the bubble, and stood up from their hides dug into the bank of the river several meters off.
“Drop your weapons and state your names!” someone yelled. “Comply now or you will be shot!”
“Trevon Cash!” Cash shouted as he slowly set his empty rifle on the ground. “We are unarmed! We ran out of ammunition days ago!”
“Weeks,” Barbara said as she tossed her pistol on the ground and raised her hands in the air.
“Weeks? Huh,” Cash said.
“Raphael Bellows!”
“Dr. Xipan!”
“Does she have a first name?” Raff whispered to Cash.
“Shut the fuck up,” Cash snarled.
“Pytor Kasinov!”
“We’ve got a fucking Russian! There’s a fucking Russian with them!”
The operators rushed Cash and the rest of them and they were all thrown roughly face down into the dirt.
“You a Russian too?” a voice growled close to Cash’s ear. “You kill the real Trevon Cash and now think you can sneak—”
“That’s enough, Purfoy,” a voice said from a few meters away. The voice did not shout, but the command in the tone changed the atmosphere quickly. “Let them up.”
“Even the Russian fuck?”
“Even the Russian fuck,” the voice said.
Cash blinked a few times and slowly turned his head to stare at Barbara. He mouthed, “Liv?”
“I said get them up,” the voice ordered and Cash and everyone were yanked up onto their feet.
Cash blinked at the person that walked up to him with a wide grin on her face. She also had a wide scar across her left cheek. But other than that, Cash recognized her instantly. Although…
“Liv? That’s a new fucking look,” Raff said.
“Raff,” Olivia said, turning her smile to Raff. “It’s good to see you.”
“Major?” one of the operators asked. “What are your orders?”
“Get your guns off our friends,” Olivia said. “Head back in and let everyone know this is what we’ve been waiting for. Training time begins and Brain’s plans can now move forward.”
The operators hesitated then lowered their weapons, some looking disappointed they didn’t get to shoot anyone, then all turned and walked back toward the bubble.
“No, seriously,” Raff said, waving at the tactical gear that Olivia was dressed in. “This really is a new look for you.”
“Liv…” Cash started, but didn’t finish as she raised a finger then pointed it at Pytor.
“What’s the Russian’s story?” Olivia asked.
“He’s a friend,” Cash said.
“We don’t have Russian friends Topside, Tre,” Olivia said. “Explain.”
So Cash explained. Olivia didn’t move from her spot until he finished speaking.
“You trust him with your life then?” she asked.
“Yes,” Cash replied without hesitation.
“Then he lives,” Olivia said. “But he will be watched.”
“Sure,” Cash said. “Expected considering what the Russians have done.”
“Oh, Tre, you know nothing about what the Russians have done,” Olivia said. “Or what’s going on.”
The sounds of roars could be heard from inside the bubbles.
“Teeth!” Raff yelled and looked about. His eyes stopped on the pistol on Olivia’s hip. “Can I have that? I’d really like to have that so I can shoot some teeth.”
“These teeth we do not shoot,” Olivia said and stepped aside so they all could get a better view.
Inside the bubble, a pack of what looked like armored tyrannosaurs marched by. With people walking alongside as if it was no big deal.
“Teeth hate to be ridden, but the herbivores are pretty compliant,” Olivia said. “I learned a few things living in the wild for six years.” She sighed. “And, if Brain isn’t wrong, in a year I’ll be able to go back and see my babies.”
Cash blinked a few times. Everyone else stood there, their jaws wide open.
Once Cash was able to find the words, he asked, “Liv? What the fuck is going on?”
Olivia laughed and laughed hard. She clutched at her belly until she could catch her breath.
“You were right,” Olivia said. “Fuck, Tre, you were right that this would feel good to say.”
She took a deep breath, turned to face the bubble, then looked back over her shoulder at Cash.
“Ask me again,” she said.
“Ask you what?”
“What’s going on.”
Cash hesitated then asked, “What’s going on?”
“Oh, you’ll see,” she said and started laughing again as she walked off. “Come on. You have an entire future and past to catch up on.”
The End
Read on for a free sample of The Found World
Author Bio:
Jake Bible, Bram Stoker Award nominated-novelist, short story writer, independent screenwriter, podcaster, and inventor of the Drabble Novel, has entertained thousands with his horror, sci/fi, thriller, and adventure tales. He reaches audiences of all ages with his uncanny ability to write a wide range of characters and genres.
Jake is the author of the bestselling Z-Burbia series set in Asheville, NC, the bestselling Salvage Merc One, the Apex Trilogy (DEAD MECH, The Americans, Metal and Ash) and the Roak: Galactic Bounty Hunter series for Severed Press. He is also the author of the YA zombie novel, Little Dead Man, the Bram Stoker Award nominated Teen horror novel, Intentional Haunting, the ScareScapes series, and the Reign of Four series for Permuted Press, as well as Stone Cold Bastards and the Black Box, Inc. series for Bell Bridge Books.
Find Jake at jakebible.com. Join him on Twitter @jakebible and find him on Facebook.
THE FOUND WORLD
The man sitting alone at the center of the middle bench seat of the Sikorsky S-76 helicopter barely looked out either window at the jungle foliage as they landed a few hundred feet from the clearing made for the carnival. Six heavily muscled commandos in tactical gear sat three across on the bench in front of him and the one behind. Up front sat the pilot and the also-heavily muscled commander of the paramilitary troop. The man’s name was not Lathrop, but that is what he went by when on assignment. The mercenaries were under his nominal command, but they were not under his employ. The people he worked for had contracted these “soldiers,” much to his dislike. The fact that they were paid by the same entity didn’t mean he had to sit next to the beasts, however.
If Lathrop had been given his druthers, it would have been himself and the pilot in a much less ostentatious mode of travel. His tasseled attaché, which matched the tassels on his pair of Bolviant Verrocchios, was his weapon of choice. It was loaded with ammunition—contracts and legal papers that served as modern letters of marque, enough to take down entire governments if his employer wished. But not just ammunition: within the galuchat attaché case were untraceable bearer bonds each worth millions of dollars and pre-signed deeds to properties in Dubai and Tokyo worth even more. It contained carrots as well as sticks.
Lathrop had once been asked by a contracted assassin why he didn’t simply take a few for himself and disappear. Lathrop laughed and told him that owning every single piece of property in Hong Kong wouldn’t be worth losing his life, which would be lost horribly, once his employer found him again. And—make no mistake, he told the assassin, who was erased from existence once his mission was completed just for asking the question—his employer would find him again in short order.
Just like they had found Brett Russell, the man he had come to see. This man used to work for Lathrop’s own employer before he uncovered a shocking truth, but then went underground, promising to exact retribution one day. This didn’t bother the Organization; one man, or an army of them, or even a nation full of oath-sworn revengers couldn’t do any real damage to those pulling the world’s strings.
What did bother them was losing a man of Brett Russell’s talents. He once liberated an entire mining village while simultaneously fighting what the Organization believed was an actual living Spinosaurus in the depths of the Congo rainforest. He was the perfect candidate to help them secure an asset so valuable that made the entire contents of Lathrop’s galuchet case look like bag of glass marbles. The Organization would have him hand over the attaché in a second if Brett Russell would accept it for the job.
But they knew he wouldn’t. All the wealth in the world meant nothing to a man wanting only revenge. So, the man not really named Lathrop would offer him revenge.
He allowed the commandos to exit one side and come around to slide open the door on the other side for the others to get out. He stood on the soft dirt, the heels of his astronomically expensive buffalo-hide shoes sinking half an inch or so. They would need to be discarded after this adventure, he thought, but others would be waiting for him when he stopped in New York on his way back to Geneva. It would amuse him to have his man drop the old pair of $2,000 shows into a box at the Goodwill. Maybe he’d see a hobo wearing them next time he was in the city and chuckle to himself that the bum could have bought himself a car to live in.
A small beetle almost immediately alit upon the right lapel of his bespoke Ermenegildo Zegna suit, which made Lathrop very nearly smile; the bug had good taste. He swept it off and looked at the spectacle drawing cheers and excited gasps from the loose crowd of farmers and their lead-poisoned children. He believed he was near the “city” of Ipixuna in Brazil, a settlement of about 17,000 and one of the most difficult to reach anywhere in the Amazon rainforest, which was saying something.
To the Organization, however, nothing was terribly difficult to reach. To get Lathrop and the troops to the spot outside Ipixuna, the 12-seat S-76 was dropped out of an enormous Antonov An-225 Mriya cargo plane, having first been loaded onto an automated Chase XCG-20 glider, which descended to and leveled off at 5,000 feet, at which time it was slowed to stalling speed. At that moment, a radio signal was sent to set off the bay door’s explosive bolts, which blew off the hatch and allowed the Sikorsky to slide out, its rotors already in motion. The glider crashed somewhere nearby and the helicopter flew the thirty miles or so to the target location, this godforsaken bit of swampland where the idiot carnival was set up to entrance the dullards hired to destroy their own habitat. The Organization had no hand in that, but Lathrop thought it sounded like something they would do if it suited them.
Some 200 feet ahead was a dome made from chain-link fencing, the onlookers gathering around its perimeter. The two dozen spectators turned and glanced briefly at the sight of a massive helicopter unloading black-clad soldiers carrying assault weapons and a polished white man wearing intentionally incongruous city clothing, but then turned back. Whatever was inside the 200-foot diameter of that fenced dome must have been compelling, indeed. Lathrop knew what was inside the dome: Brett Russell. God knew what he was doing, but it was enough to make sustenance farmers walk away from their crops in the middle of a spring day perfect for planting.
The dome itself had been erected in such a way that some jungle trees were almost entirely within it, full of weird rainforest creatures that Lathrop, frankly, could do without ever encountering. He spent his days in Geneva, one of the most civilized places in the entire world. His friend the beetle had been a novelty; one just didn’t encounter insects where he conducted Organization business. That said, a poisonous monkey or spitting lizard would be more than a novelty and would constitute something entirely unwelcome on or near his person. He might have to ask one of the commandos to remove it for destruction, and he preferred not to ask anything of the thugs if it could be avoided.
When Lathrop finally made it to the fence, the farmers parting more in suspicion than awe at his appearance at the dome, he saw what they were all gaping at: inside was the man whom he knew to be Brett Russell. There weren’t going to be a lot of Caucasians this deep into the jungle, making it easier to identify the man he was looking for—this was fortunate for Lathrop, because the man inside the caged area was almost unrecognizable as the man in the photograph he had been given by the Organization. The Russell in the picture had been a man in the field locating and, when necessary, fighting cryptids that usually turned out to be “only” giant bears, undiscovered killer condor-like birds, and that dinosaur in Congo: lots of muscle and hard as hell. But what Brett Russell was now made the old Russell look like an agoraphobic accountant. Lathrop had never met the actor they called “The Rock,” but he imagined Russell looked like what The Rock was 5’ 11” instead of his ridiculous 6’ 5” and had earned his muscles by fighting man-eating monsters instead of lifting free weights with personal trainers.
Russell’s muscles, as impressive as they looked, weren’t for show—they couldn’t be. This was b
ecause inside the dome, standing in the waist-deep brown water of the inlet dug to drain from the main river a hundred feet, the man was wrestling with—Lathrop literally had to blink a few times to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing—a black caiman crocodile. It wasn’t the 16-foot monster that full-grown adults were, but the adolescent was at least 10 feet long, bigger than most man-eaters in the world already. It was huge and Russell could barely keep his gigantic arm around its neck as it thrashed and tried to take him apart.
Lathrop’s mouth actually dropped open, and he looked at the farmers on either side of him for confirmation that he was seeing what he was seeing. But they didn’t look away from Russell being thrown around as the caiman tried to fling him off and escape through a submerged gate in the fence that led back to the river. (There was a man, probably the fight organizer, squatting just outside the fence with his hand on a handle for the gate; he must have been the one who would let the monster back into the river once the fight was over, one way or another. This told Lathrop that Russell didn’t intend to kill the animal, which agreed with the dossier he had read on his target.)
The black caiman may have been trying instead to fling him off and then kill him, which it could do easily if it could get Russell got in front of his giant maw. Alligators and crocodiles, Lathrop knew, worked to tire out their prey by spinning and thrashing; if Russell got too tired to hold on, it would be the end of him.
It seemed impossible that this wasn’t the first time the man had fought for a few Brazilian reals … but it also seemed highly unlikely it was the first time, since it looked like he was the one who was getting his enemy too tired to fight and not the other way around.
As Lathrop looked closer, he could see that Russell had anchored himself onto the caiman’s back with a strap, so it wasn’t quite as impossible as it looked. It still looked completely impossible to him, but maybe not so ridiculous as to be entirely unbelievable. Russell had his arm under the strap and this helped him get his flesh raked open by the spines on the giant animal’s hide. He also had black sleeves, really long black gloves, almost all the way up his arms that, Lathrop was sure, kept him from being sliced open by the rough skin of his enemy.
