Jurassic Portal
By
Robert A. J. Turnbull Jr.
Text and cover copyright © 2015
Robert A. J. Turnbull Jr.
All rights reserved.
“Cover 3-D Tyrannosaurus Rex created by
‘Paleo Artist’ Robert Fabiani Jr.
http://robertfabiani.wix.com/robertfabiani”
All T-rex graphic rights belong to Mister Fabrini.
Any similarities between characters in this novel and/or anyone living or deceased
is strictly coincidental and unintentional.
Novels by this author.
Some books are free at the author’s web site www.hawkslegend.com
Other novels are for sale on Amazon/Kindle.
The “Worlds Collection.”
(Collection of short stories & Novellas)
Worlds of Survival.
Worlds Near Infinity.
Worlds Apart.
Worlds Apart, Vol. 2.
Worlds in Time.
Other novels by this author:
Hawk’s Legend.
Hawk’s Legend II - Déjà vu.
Hawk’s Legend III - The West Coast Journals.
Hawk’s Legend - Apocalypse. (Prequel to the free Hawk’s legend Trilogy)
Satan’s Tear.
Satan’s Mist.
Valley of Lost Time.
The Deadcountry Chronicles.
The Deadcountry Chronicles II.
The Deadcountry Chronicles III.
Empires of the Dinosaurs.
Empires of the Dinosaurs -Phase Two.
Last Train to Pangea “Death by Dinosaur”
The Zombie Slayer.
Jurassic Portal.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1.
Chapter 2.
Chapter 3.
Chapter 4.
Chapter 5.
Chapter 6.
Chapter 7.
Chapter 8.
Chapter 9.
Chapter 10.
Chapter 11.
Chapter 12.
Chapter 13.
Chapter 14.
Chapter 15.
Chapter 16.
Chapter 17.
Chapter 18.
Chapter 19.
Chapter 20.
Chapter 21.
Chapter 22.
Chapter 23.
Chapter 24.
Chapter 25.
Chapter 26.
Chapter 27.
Chapter 28.
Epilog:
Chapter 1.
The blood-curdling scream pierced the night air as Jack Porter ran as fast as he dared through the mist filled jungle of South America’s Amazon. He racked another round into his .308 magnum rifle and flipped the caps up his night vision scope.
A second longer scream told him that whatever got his bearer and dragged him off into the blackness of the night-filled jungle, had finished him off. Off to his left there was another loud scream and Jack spun to raise his rifle, but all he saw in the dim moonlight were moving trees and hip high brush.
“There’s at least two of them!” he warned his men. As Jack slowed one of his porters ran past him with an automatic M-14 as he screamed. Whether in fear or false bravado, it served him not as he never heard Jack shouting for him to stop as he plowed through the heavy brush.
“STOP!”
But it was too late as the porter realized that he had run straight off the eleven hundred foot mesa they had climbed on earlier that day. As he fell he tried vainly to grasp the tangled vines that covered the escarpment…and failed as he vanished into the night.
Jack stopped at the edge and raised his night scope, but his man had already disappeared into the dark, swirling mists below, nor could his screams be heard. Jack was about to remind his men that caution was their main concern, and that they had already lost too many men this night, but as he opened his mouth to speak…
Another scream and this time something none of them had heard before, a bone chilling roar! As Jack’s men caught up to him, he waved them around toward the camp the advanced party had called home for nearly a week.
“To the camp!” he shouted as a second roar pierced the cool night air “They’re in camp!”
As the seven remaining men hurried back toward the trees that glowed with the red and orange glow from the many campfires three more joined them.
“Jack!” Larry Moore gasped as he struggled “Whatever they are, they are picking us off one by one. Whatever it…they, are…I’ve lost…” he panted from what seemed like hours of running “too many…tonight.”
“Easy my friend.” Jack calmly resounded loud enough for all of the men to hear “No different from a battle zone, keep calm, move covering each other, detect the enemy…”
“Senor?” one of the Brazilian bearers asked “what is the enemy?” Jack had no answer. All any of them knew was that it…they, were fast, strong, and deadly.
Larry had been with Jack for nearly a decade and for the first time, Larry saw doubt in Jack’s eyes as he scanned the moonlit area to see what they had stumbled into to now that they had arrived.
“Christ, I can barely make out the camp from here,” Jack panted “Why did the bearers leave?”
That question was answered as they slowly proceeded toward the faint glow of the camp. Larry stumbled over two bodies and the men came to a screeching halt.
“Never mind.” the bloodied Larry muttered as he rose from the mutilated bodies “Jesus, Jack look at them…they’ve been torn to pieces…and…they’re not all here.”
More roars and screams came from the direction of the camp and the men dashed once again toward the glow of the campfires. The camp had been set up by an advanced group of men that Jack had hired. They had scaled the eleven hundred foot plateau a week prior to Jack’s party, to set up a base camp.
Upon entering the fairly large campsite and among the glow of the campfires, Jack froze in place.
“Watch the trees.” he commanded as he stepped forward toward the main fire.
“DOC! …PROFESSOR! He froze and listened, and then shouted again.
“SHHHHhhhh…”
Jack looked up to see his worst fears had been founded. There high in the trees and lying on large tree limbs laid the gray haired man they called Doc and the leader of the expedition, Professor Edward Browne. Doc held his little black medical bag that he insisted upon taking everywhere.
“Is it safe? Can we come down?” Doc asked in a trembling voice.
Jack just held his finger to his lips and the two gray haired gentlemen nodded quietly and froze. With the precision of the ex-military leader that he was, Jack motioned and his men moved to form a perimeter around the huge vine wrapped tree the men had climbed.
Before them the camp lay in shambles, tents shredded, their stores overturned and scattered…and the bodies of the porters they had hired a month ago. In the flickering firelight the camp looked like a scene from hell. Bodies torn asunder, some eaten, some contorted in horrible shapes, shredded tents, and then there was a horrible stench in the air that Jack had never smelled. He kicked one overturned pot and cursed…
“Shit! We’ve plowed through most of the freakin’ Amazon jungle, scaled an eleven hundred foot escarpment, and I never lost a man…now look at the bodies!
Noticing movement Jack dropped to his knees to grasp a hand and watched one of the porters spit blood and try to speak, but the light in his eyes faded and his body went limp.
“I’m sorry Manuel…I failed…”
There was something running at them from within the jungle. A sound that was between a scream and a roar echoed throughout the camp and in a burst of jungle flora something dark rushed at them. It ran
in a stooped position, but even then it was the size of a man, but much quicker.
Eight rifles and two pistols answered its charge.
The shadowy shape jerked and twitched but kept charging at full speed. Jack threw down his .308 and ripped a gun from the leather carrying case and raised it only to his hip before firing. The creature jerked up and back, but its momentum kept it moving directly at the as it slid on the ground and stopped inches from Jack’s dusty leather boots.
From the jungle an answer to the creature’s death cry was answered and once again the jungle was filled with the sounds of something charging through it.
“Ok men, we know what it is this time, so hold your fire and wait for it to get into the clearing.”
A scream that only a human could make sounded throughout the camp and eyes turned to the south end, in time to see one of the porters that had come out of the bushes, be snapped up by another creature like the one that lay at Jack’s feet.
As the porter’s head came off and his limp body fell to the earth gushing blood, Jack raised his rifle and fired and the beast’s head exploded.
One more loud crash and Jack spun to fire at the beast that had been distracting them. As the men fired, Jack aimed and decided that the fast moving head was not a good target. Lowered his rifle and fired…its chest blew open as it fell backward at the impact of Jack’s modified .380 Lapua rifle.
He looked over to the trembling Larry and the rest of his men and decided that he had to say something to break the dangerous tension in his group.
“If these things are what I suspect they are…I think we need bigger guns.”
There were a few onerous smiles and as trained, several of his men took guard positions as the rest began to gather around the dead creature at Jack’s feet.
Sam, the cook and an ex-SEAL rubbed the back of his neck.
“Holy shit boss, it…that a…”
“Dromaeosaurs…all of them are.” The professor exclaimed excitedly.
“Huh?” Larry muttered.
“Theropod dinosaurs…” he could see a lot of puzzled looks “Like the velociraptors.”
Larry grinned “Ok Prof, why didn’t ya say so before, like in the movie, right?”
Prof. Browne rolled his eyes and snorted “Yes my good man, like in the movies.”
Jack walked around the body of the reptile and faced the professor. He pointed at the still oozing corpse and sighed as the adrenaline levels began to lower.
“So Prof, you said we were looking for proof of those books you said were written back before the turn of the nineteenth century. If I recall, you said something to the fact that you believed that author wrote from some memoirs of some guy that…”
The professor had stooped to examine the dinosaur with the rather large hole in its chest, now stood.
“Yes…yes. I always felt that there was a bit too much detail in his books to be totally fiction. Not a lot about any dinosaur was known when those books were written you know.”
Doc nodded and chuckled “Other than the fact that they did exist, some bones had been found...skeletons…”
“Doc’s right you know,” the professor added “back then, things were vague and people thought to think of such things was blasphemy, but Sir Arthur and a few others wrote about them anyway.”
“Look guy’s I know you two have been friends for decades, but I do seem to remember that you said we were looking for bones, not living dinosaurs.”
A broad grin appeared on the professor’s face “YES! Isn’t it wonderful?”
“Professor…” Larry sputtered “men have died here tonight.”
“Yes, yes…forgive me…that was sounding a tad uncaring.” He looked around with eyes no one could mistake for anything other than sorrow.
“My deepest apologies, my friends, but I also fear that if there are three running around eating people, then might I suggest that perhaps there could be others.” he paused, frowned, and then took a deep breath. “And if I might add one more thing…”
From much deeper in the lush jungle that adorned the top of the mesa came a bone shattering roar that caused the steady Jack to jump.
“Uh…ok guys…grab what shit you can salvage in two minutes and head back to the escarpment. Judging from the sounds these raptors made, that thing had to be ten times bigger, maybe twenty.”
Larry grasped his duffel bag in one hand and a large backpack of supplies and joined the rest as they hurried back toward the edge that the porter had fallen over, near where they had scaled the sheer cliffs to get to the summit.
“Don’t like this idea boss, that part of the mesa sure looks like a good place to trap prey.”
Jack grinned as they pushed their way through the hip high grasses of the mesa.
“Don’t you remember this place Larry?”
“Aw crap boss, this is where we climbed up at.”
“Yup, it was…and about one hundred feet below and set back into the face of the escarpment…was what?”
Larry beamed a huge grin “A wide ledge that is more than ample to hold us all, now our numbers are reduced that is. Hell, it held our scouting party and that was five men more than what…” he sighed “is left of us now.”
The professor had invested everything he and Doc both owned on this expedition and the worry was on his face.
“Jack,” he looked over the edge into the dark maw that was below “I told you that how far we proceeded was your call, it still is. If you think it’s too dangerous…” Edward needn’t say more, he understood.
Jack smiled in the moonlight as he glanced back at the men that brought up the rear.
“What say we climb down to that ledge? In the morning Larry and I will climb back up with a couple of my men and have a look around. Let’s see what we find.”
Sam signaled that he’d found the long rope ladder that they had left anchored into the solid rock that led down to the ledge. The two older gentlemen that had formed the expedition had serious problems with single ropes and had to be hoisted most of the way. So on Jack’s suggestion the advanced party had anchored this rope and aluminum ladder for easy access above, now it became their savior as they hurried down.
An hour and a half later, the party now cut down to a dozen men, settled in for what was left of the night. There was an earth shattering roar from above.
Jack was standing next to several arm sized vines that hung down from the top and leaned out into the darkness to glance upward. Between the night and the light mist, all he could see was a dark shape and it was huge. Rather than worry his men anymore this night, Jack simply smiled…
“Sounds like something has found out where its prey has vanished to and sounds really pissed.”
“Think it’ll be around in the morning, boss?” Sam asked.
Jack smiled at the group and settled onto his sleeping bag.
“I think…what we all need is to get some sleep.” he winked a nearly invisible wink and crawled onto his sleeping bag. He rolled over and stared out into the blackness beyond the cliff and muttered quietly.
“I have a hunch that this could be the last real sleep we could get for a long time.”
Chapter 2.
Morning came and once again a heavy fog covered the mesa and Jack decided that the ones that went up and wait on the mesa’s edge for a bit. If whatever made that horrible sound the night before wandered their way, they each had a rope to repel back down to the ledge, and they all were excellent climbers, so they waited and the hours dragged by before the mists lifted. Jack knew the mists were really low clouds that floated across the plateau, but as the jungle heated up and the mid-morning heat increased the clouds vanished, and no creatures could be seen or heard. Relieved slightly, the small group of men began their dangerous trek.
Once near the old campsite the horrible stench was the first thing to assault their senses, the second was the blood that had washed their camp. All over were signs of the bloody carnage. Blood soaked tents, bloody remains,
even blood splattered foliage, blood everywhere including the spot where Jack had ended the raptor’s life…however…
“Hey boss? Wasn’t one of those things lying right here last night?” the huge Sam asked as he pawed the bloody ground with his boot’s steel toe.
Jack looked over to Sam who was standing next to a large puddle of congealing blood. He walked but a few yards toward his longtime friend and stopped.
“It was…” he pointed to the shape of the bloody pool that had been formed into three giant toes and a huge heel indent, reptilian, and unbelievably large “and by the looks of it, I’d say that was what took it, and the rest of those raptors that were running around here last night.”
Sam nearly fell over as he took a few seconds to really look…it was indeed a huge three toed foot print that longer than he was tall, and Sam was over six feet tall. He and doubted that he could lie in it, stretch out both arms and reach either side; it was huge!
“Holy Mother of God…” his mouth gaped as he slowly backed away from the footprint and back toward Jack and the others.
“Listen up guys, same orders as before, slow and quiet. We stop every minute or so and listen for anything unusual, just like before.” and with a wave of his arm the men headed back in the direction of where the sounds had come from the night before.
The path wasn’t hard to follow as trees had been broken or pushed to one side or the other forming a scarily wide path. The size of whatever made this path through the jungle made Jack rethink his ‘it is huge theory’, this thing wasn’t huge; it was ginormous!
The Amazon was filled with giant trees and this plateau was no different as the wide path wove its way around the giant trees in a pattern that to Jack indicated it was hunting or lost.
Whatever it was that had taken the smaller raptors, had returned the way it had come and before long they found a fork in the path.
Larry stooped and felt a broken fern “Its dry boss.”
Jack stooped on the left path and did the same “This one’s wet, broken a few hours ago…careful guys.” The men headed along the newer path, two to each side of the trampled and broken brush.
This path turned and twisted until they came to several uprooted trees…or at least where they should have been. Now there were but a half dozen holes in the ground where the beast that pushed them over, had also pushed them over the edge of the huge mesa.
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