“Look, don’t jump…”
“He might be right,” Nori said. “Somewhere there’s something transmitting. I can’t locate it from here. It’s impossible to triangulate a position. When we hit orbit we can use the starjet’s computers to pinpoint a location. It’s possible a government agency sent a probe through the star portal to gain intelligence on the Jurassic project. That could have happened, but I don’t have any records of any mission like that. Either I’m wrong or it’s not manmade.”
“Not manmade? Like… alien?” Becca ventured cautiously.
“Steady,” Commander Blake urged, motioning with his hands for the pair to simmer down. “People are trying to sleep here. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s dial this back. We’ve had enough crazy for one day.”
“Obviously it could be naturally occurring,” Nori continued, speaking quietly and waking the computer monitor. The screen hummed and revealed an array of constantly shifting graphs and equalizers. “It could be an electromagnetic anomaly, activity from the sun maybe. I’m fairly confident the repeating nature of the signal makes that unlikely. It’s bursting at fourteen hundred and twenty megahertz. If we take the ‘it’s aliens route,’ a broadcast from an intelligent civilization on say Mars, there would be many transmissions, TV broadcasts and the like, but there isn’t. The skies are silent but for this one signal.”
“There you go,” Commander Blake said. “It’s something one of the governments of Earth sent through the star portal. That’s all. We don’t need this distraction. We’re listening to a fried probe winding down in some swamp somewhere.”
“You’re probably right,” Nori replied. “Still, I’d like to run the signal through the starjet’s computers, see if I can unpack it with more up to date equipment.”
“If you’re going to the jet, I’ll come too,” Commander Blake said. “When this lot hit deep sleep and the snoring really kicks off, I’ll never get any rest.”
“Wait, there’s a cephalopod outside,” Becca said. “You can’t....”
“It’s fine,” Commander Blake replied, heaving himself up. “If anything’s out there the warhorses’ll know about it long before we do. Can I speak with you freely, Rebecca?”
“Uh… yeah, okay.”
“I’m not one for sentimental things, but you have a good man in…”
“I know, I…”
“No you don’t. Please, listen. When we found Reece, he was destroying himself in a hotel room in Las Vegas. He was in a bad way, real bad. The way he was going he wouldn’t have lasted much longer. He’s done us all proud since, fought his way back with flying colors, but he still has that look though, lots of service people have it, a sadness behind the eyes. It’s deep and for most will never go away, but when I see him with you, it’s gone. You need to know how important you are to him. He needs you the same way people need air or food.”
“I need him too.”
“I know, but not in the same way. You’re stronger, not that he’s weak, far from it. I have a good imagining of the ordeal you’ve been through, of the things you’ve had to overcome to survive. It would have broken most people. Few people impress me, Rebecca. Just… take care of him. He’ll pretend he’s taking care of you, and it will always seem that way, but in reality it will always be you taking care of him, you understand?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Now help us with that door. Close it behind us. I need some goddamn shut-eye.”
Becca span the valve handle until it locked behind Nori and Commander Blake. She picked her way between the sleeping bodies and lay behind Reece, who was on his side, facing the wall. She wrapped an arm over him and shuffled close until she could smell the sweet musk of his skin. Then closed her eyes and rested her forehead on his back, feeling his ribs gently rise and fall.
“I need you too,” she whispered. “I can’t wait for the future.”
Deliverance
P ain spreading from behind his ear wrenched Reece from his slumber. His mouth felt strangely numb, his tongue dry and swollen, and he couldn’t understand why he was staring at a concrete wall. As the sharpness of the pain took a backseat and memories tumbled in, mostly of Becca, his initial instinct was that she’d rolled over in her sleep and accidentally whacked him with a hand, but that didn’t explain the liquid trickling from his temple and gathering by his eye socket, warm and wet at the bridge of his nose. He tried to lift his head, but his muscles rejected the call to action. He strained to move his arms and legs, but they too were rigid, stuck in place. It was the strangest sensation. He could feel the impulses leaving his brain, or so he thought, but there seemed to be nothing at the end to register the commands.
He tried to call out to Becca, who he could feel pressed up behind him, but no sound emerged. Nothing he could fathom explained what was happening. Was he asleep, was he experiencing a night terror, was he dying? Becca stirred and snuggled closer. She mumbled something unintelligible. He tried to yell, which only made his throat and larynx tense and spasm painfully. Becca rolled away and he heard her sit up, allowing a breeze to buffet his back, bringing with it the sound of rain, torrential rain, unmuted by the concrete walls of the bunker. Horrified, Reece realized the door to the starcom facility was open. Someone or something was inside. Whatever it was had paralysed him, perhaps broken his neck for all he knew.
“Huh, what?” Becca said, squinting. “Close the door. You crazy?”
Becca’s sleep blurred eyes gradually focussed on a person standing in the doorway, embalmed in sheets which were pulled over the person’s head, like a hood. The figure looked like a monk or a holy man, pulled straight from the canvas of a Renaissance painting, bare footed, rainwater collecting around their feet. Lightning flashed, stabbing a blade of light through the doorway that carved the profile of Aleksi Ponomarenko, staring out into the rain.
“Aleksi? What are you doing? Come back inside!” Becca hissed.
“I see now,” the man replied, looking up and inhaling deeply, twisting his head and allowing the water to streak across his face. “It’s all so clear. Freedom is so close, don’t you feel it?”
“Aleksi, this isn’t funny. Close the… you don’t even have a survival suit on. You’re gonna get killed. Come back, seriously, I’m not kidding.”
“They chose us,” Aleksi said, pushing back his hood and stroking a hand across his lumpy scalp, slicking back his few remaining hairs by his ear. “They spoke to us. Don’t you see? We’ve been chosen.”
“Reece, wake up,” Becca said shaking him. “Something’s happening.”
Reece wanted to scream at her to stay away from the maniac. He understood exactly what was happening. He was paralysed because Aleksi had shot him with a javelin pistol or rifle. The psychopath probably thought he was dead. He couldn’t have known the weapons were set to a non-lethal firing mode. Reece summoned all of his will and rage, but only the tip of his ring finger twitched. He begged for a power from somewhere to come to his aid, to help him fight through the paralysing barbiturate toxins, but no salvation came no matter how hard he pleaded.
“Aleksi, come back in. You don’t wanna go out there,” Becca said, standing up and padding towards the door.
“Soon we will be free,” he said, shrugging off his robe, standing in his underwear and allowing the rain to beat his skeletal chest. Lightning pulsed, highlighting the maggots crawling under the waxy artificial skin across his scalp. He opened his mouth as though in a state of perverse ecstasy. “Yes, YES, I hear you, I know, I KNOW!”
“Reece, wake up. I don’t like this. There’s something seriously bad happening.”
Becca turned and saw Schweighofer and Molotov in the corner, frantically shifting eyeballs wild and white, blood seeping from wounds on their foreheads. Hadley and Fang too, were staring up, petrified and unmoving. It was like everyone was in on some sick joke, but it wasn’t funny, there was nothing funny about it. How could they be awake, but not moving?
“Reece, wake up!” S
he said, the fear in her voice amplifying her own terror.
“Relax, the devils have been slain,” Aleksi said. “I cast them back to the underworld they boasted of escaping. You heard them talking about the lava world. I heard them telling you. We both know what they were. I know we wanted to believe otherwise. They told us the truth with their own velvet tongues, so full of sin and pride. Do not mourn devils. This is a good thing. The truth may be bright and stinging and painful, but you mustn’t look away, for in it lies path to salvation.”
“What are you talking about, salvation? There aren’t any devils, Aleksi. There aren’t truths, definitely not the one you’re talking about.”
Aleksi wiped a hand clasping a pistol across his brow, then slurped at the falling raindrops, his tongue flapping.
“The water is fresh, but not yet pure. It may be hard for you to see our path right away. I get that, but it will be easier now the tricksters are gone. Little imps, all crushed by the hammer of righteous virtue. I understand your fear, I was scared too. Greatness is always a scary journey, the path always unstable, full of loose cobbles underfoot. I feel it, the trepidation. This is normal human emotion. It is okay to feel this way.”
“Aleksi, listen to m…”
“Shushhh, my snow from the mountain. I’m sorry you can’t see it yet, which is crazy with all the truth around you. You have seen and heard them proclaim where they came from, but I know why your mind revolts. Even though you are still blind, I will see for both of us. I do this because I care. You don’t need to thank me. Come on, it is time now.”
“It’s not… not time, Aleksi. Time for what? It’s not time for anything. You need to put the gun down and…”
“Why do you not respect truth?” Aleksi screeched, pointing the gun at her. “I have shown you the truth, you see it here, there, all over, there too, another dead devil. You could at least say thank you, thank you Aleksi, thank you for saving my soul? I’m not crazy like I know you think. Okay, okay, I don’t want to get angry,” he said, drawing a calming breath. “I know this seems very huge right now, all scary, but when you see…” he said shaking the gun and grinning, “when you see it!”
Becca turned to Reece. As she was rolling him over, just before Aleksi caught up with her and pressed the gun to her head, Reece closed his eyes and held his breath so his chest was still. In his mind, the only hope of saving Becca was if Aleksi thought he was dead. If the man thought he was dead, he might have enough time to fight through the chemicals in his bloodstream.
“Reece!” Becca said, sobbing, looking down on his bloodied face. “Reece, please, please wake up. No… someone wake up! Schweighofer, Hadley, someone please help. Scarlet, help me!”
“They cannot help you,” Aleksi said, tapping the muzzle of the javelin pistol on the side of her head. “Get in front of me and walk. It is time. We must repay the debt. You know this inside, all deep. I know you have met our Gods. In bed sometimes, I hear you asking them ‘for what is my test, what do you want from me?’ You call and cry and continuously ask, but shrink from the answer when it comes, just because you don’t like it. You have your answer. If I must be the shepherd that delivers you to truth, then so be it.”
“This isn’t the answer, you’re not the answer. Please, someone help me.”
“Relax,” he said, pressing the gun to her head and ushering her towards the door. “Do not do silly, or I will be forced to shoot you. You won’t be the first I have… let us say, set free.”
“We’re not wearing survival suits. This is… like… this is… we won’t last five minutes out there.”
“Shhhhh,” he said, lowering the weapon from her head to the small of her back. “Do not trouble yourself, little goat. Now move your hoofs and trot along. We are the divine, walking the righteous path. Nothing will stop us. Trust me. You are protected in my light.”
Outside, the rain drenched Becca to the skin after a few paces. Aleksi commanded her to follow streams on the floor, which he said were leading them to some miracle cathedral his crazed mind had conjured. Harshly gusting wind howled through shaking sequoias, snapping off unseen branches that crashed to the ground as sheets of brilliant lightning robbed the world of color. The volcano at the center of the island illuminated the underside of thick, bulging storm clouds in a nightmarish shade of blood-orange red, which lit the forest with ominous light that seemed to have weight to its presence. It almost seemed there was a third person with them, a sinister observer, something malevolent, thirsting for death.
“Keep going,” Aleksi urged loudly over the rain, remaining a few paces behind. “Keep following the water. I’m getting excited, aren’t you? You must feel it now? Wait, wait, you don’t need to answer. I know you feel it, the breath from a being with no lungs, words from a face with no lips, the touch of a loved one with no fingers. It’s everywhere. We are on the path to greatness, you feel it now, come on, right?”
Becca was done talking with the lunatic. He’d completely lost his mind. She kept her head low as they trudged, desperately hunting for a way to escape. Reece and the squad in the Starcom facility weren’t dead, they were only incapacitated somehow. She’d seen Reece close his eyes as she’d rolled him over, and the gun Aleksi was holding didn’t look like anything she’d seen before. They were paralysed, not dead, probably by a powerful chemical. It had to be temporary. Nori would never design something that paralysed permanently. She needed to get back to the starjet and alert Nori and Commander Blake, who would be able to administer the antidote. She thought of speedily bending down and grabbing a stick, which she could use to stab Aleksi, but knew she wouldn’t get down and up before he pulled the trigger. If she became paralysed out here without a survival suit, she’d become food for the next passing predator. Lightning flashed, momentarily blinding her, and simultaneously illuminating a possible solution.
A juravenator, its charcoal and white striped hide gleaming in the rain, hopped out of the red dark and glared at the pair, sniffing nostrils flaring, eyes reflecting the burning sky. Becca backed up. The predator was only knee high, but had razor sharp teeth and claws capable of inflicting major damage she wouldn’t walk away from. A couple more juravenators stalked out of a patch of ferns, hunkering low, hissing, claws splayed, toothy jaws gaping. The dinosaurs were readying to bring down their dinner. Lightning flashed, providing Becca the opportunity she’d been waiting for. She leaned forward and sprinted for the nearest tree, which in her mind would break the line of fire with her and Aleksi.
Insanely, she found her path meant charging towards the carnivorous juravenators, who shrieked in fright and scattered. As she ran, and her returning night vision was beginning to pick out details in the foliage ahead she felt a force impact her from behind, sending her slamming to the ground, pine needles sticking her face as she slid, one deflecting off her tooth and stabbing into her gum.
“I see you have some fight in you, little goat,” Aleksi said, laughing wickedly and pinning her down. “This was stupid thing to do, but I am patient man. I don’t want to hurt you,” he continued leaning forwards, gripping her index finger and snapping it abruptly. “Shhhh, shhhh,” he breathed in her ear as she screamed. “Listen to my voice. It’s okay, I’m here, you’re alright. There you go, that’s it, relax. It’s not so bad right? Just little warning shot. Are you ready to stand up?”
“Y… yes,” Becca said, snatching breaths through the pain. “Get off me you sick bastard.”
“No bad language!” He said, clouting her on the head with the pistol. “Don’t speak like that on a day like this. Are you ready to be good? I won’t be patient for ever. I will hurt you.”
“Where d’you want us to go, where are we going? There’s nothing out here.”
“Whatever, whatever,” Aleksi said, frustration and annoyance entering his voice. “We go until we get to where we need to be. This is pilgrimage. That is point of the path, scary and unknown, sometimes oceans ahead lies the promised land.”
He rolled off her and
hauled her up. Without thinking about the pain that would follow, Becca gripped her finger and popped the bone back into place. She collapsed to one knee, shaking, flashing with pain as brilliant as the striking lightning.
“Get up, stop being so dramatic,” Aleksi threatened through the wind. “It’s just a finger, stop acting like babies. Go, walk.”
Becca kept her head low as the swelling gale drove stinging rain and pine needles against her face. She trudged until the ground sloped more steeply downwards. She could see something forming ahead, through the sheeting rain and beneath the violently swaying trees. It looked like a cave entrance leading below ground.
“I knew it, I knew it,” Aleksi cheered triumphantly. “We’re here. This is it. Oh, wow, I knew I was right.” He slurped at the rain again. “Yes, oh, yes this tastes right.”
“Aleksi,” Becca said, turning and holding up her hands, “if we go in there we won’t come out. There will be something in there that’ll be the last thing we see, things stronger than bears or lions.”
“Well, yes,” Aleksi said, laughing like he was talking to someone who hadn’t read the memo. “That’s kind of the point, duh. I am offering sacrifice to the island for all we have destroyed. You, little goat, are my offering, my sacrifice. It’s simple transaction. No offence, obviously. It’s not personal.”
“Aleksi,” she said, electrified with fear and panic. “Neither of us will come out if we go in there. How about we go back and prepare the… uh, yes, prepare the bodies of the dead, a uh…” she said, grasping for something to change his mind, “a uh… okay, right, an offering is only divine if it’s done with care and love. We must wash and wrap the bodies, prepare them for the afterlife. You know I’m right in your heart?”
“What are you, some Egyptian foo-foo?” Aleksi said, roaring laughter. “This is not game of pharaohs. No God cares for earthly trinkets, silly girl. The Gods only want your soul.” He grinned devilishly, the red sky lighting his malevolent features, which appeared as a window to Hell. “They only collect souls, little goat. Now hurry up and move. You are delaying my exit.”
Jurassic Earth Trilogy Box Set Page 38
