by Greig Beck
Ben spotted some things near the hole and ran for them. He snatched them up—one of the M4 rifles and a bloody ammunition belt that held stubby can-like rounds. He could feel by the weight of the gun that the magazine wasn’t empty. There was also a slime-covered handgun. He took one last look at the dark portal, and then backed up the steps, keeping his eyes on the impenetrable blackness inside every step of the way.
Drake sat Helen down and gave her a sip from his canteen. She immediately lurched forward and vomited onto the ground. Emma rubbed her back and spoke softly to her and she sobbed once, wiped her mouth and nose, and sat back. Her eyes remained tightly closed.
“We can’t stay here,” she said. “We can’t.”
Drake put a hand on her shoulder. “Tell us wh—”
Helen grabbed his arm, her eyes round. “We’ve got to go.”
“We’re here, you’re okay now.” He kept his voice soft.
“You don’t understand.” Helen seemed to deflate and leaned forward onto her knees. “The Titanoboa; much bigger than I ever expected. And fast, so fast.” She started to laugh, but her eyes began to redden again. “Couldn’t kill it.” She turned to Drake, shaking her head. “Nope, wouldn’t die.”
Helen’s eyes took on a faraway look. “It trapped us; ambushed us.” She slumped again.
Emma’s eyes went to Ben momentarily, before she took the woman’s hand. “From the pit?”
“Yes, no…” Helen grimaced. “The snake came, but not from the cave. We all thought it was in there, and Ajax tried to lure it out.” Her eyes went wide. “But it came from behind us, trapped us. The bullets didn’t seem to hurt it at all.”
“Shit,” Drake said under his breath and looked up at Ben.
“I had to hide. I couldn’t do anything but hide.” Helen shook her head. “I’ve been in there ever since. The snake ripped them to shreds, crushed them down to nothing and ate them all.” Her face screwed up in horror. “Then the others came, the smaller ones, and she fed some of the bits to them.”
Helen buried her face in her hands. “Camilla, Fergus, all of them, crushed, eaten.” She took her hands away, her eyes wild. “We need to get out, run, now.”
She went to get to her feet, but Emma grabbed her, and sat her down hard. “No; there isn’t time.” She looked at Ben, and then Drake, her teeth showing. “We stick to the plan.” She shook Helen. “Look!” She pointed at Ben. “You know who this is?”
Helen shook her head, and then realization must have dawned on her. “You’re Ben Cartwright?”
Ben nodded.
Emma’s eyes drilled into Helen, and she still gripped her arm. “He survived here for ten years. We only need to do it for another few hours. But we need to escape. Nothing is going to stop that from happening. Got it?”
“We’ll never make it.” Helen looked panicked. “You didn’t see what happened.” She tried to pull out of Emma’s grip. “Andy and I…” She stopped dead and looked around, as if realizing for the first time her brother wasn’t with them.
“Where’s Andy?” Her voice was small.
Emma finally let her go. “We think…he decided to stay here. No, we know he decided to stay. He left us and vanished when we were just outside.”
“He left a note,” Ben said. “He wanted you to know that he loved you, and not to worry about him.”
“Oh God.” Helen grabbed her head and squeezed her eyes shut. “That little fool. Ever since he was a kid, he’d do things like this.”
“He’s not a kid now. This is what he wanted,” Ben said.
“Andy’s a dreamer. He hasn’t seen what I’ve seen,” Helen quaked out.
“Too late; he’s gone. Nothing we can do now.” Emma sat back on her haunches. “So, now we need to save ourselves.”
“We stick to the plan,” Ben said softly.
“Only one we got. And the clock is ticking,” Drake added. “Weapons check. Whatta we got?”
Ben checked the rifle he found; he wasn’t familiar with the new model but knew he could operate it. He pulled out the magazine, checked it, and then noticed the undercarriage wasn’t holding the grenade launcher. “Magazine is half-full, grenade launcher is gone. So I have a belt with three grenade cartridges and nothing to fire them with. Also a handgun that has five rounds remaining.”
“Good,” Drake said. “I’ve got two knives, M4 handgun with half a magazine, and a spare mag in my belt. I’ve also got two flares remaining.”
Emma checked her handgun, popped out the magazine, and saw there were only two rounds left. From a pouch on her thigh, she drew forth a full magazine and snapped it in, and then snapped the slide forward and back. “Full magazine, plus another full mag in my pocket, and two rounds in another. I’ve got the bush knife and three flares.” Her lips compressed. “Not much, but it’ll do.”
Drake raised an eyebrow. “It’ll have to, and it will do.”
Ben had extracted one of the copper-colored grenade rounds. He held it up—it was like a stubby bullet with a red tip. He’d never seen one like it before. “Are these DOI?”
Drake looked at him and grinned. “M203 cartridges can be DOI—detonate on impact—or air burst, incendiary, and even water detonation. We’ve come a long way in a few years, buddy.”
Ben turned the fat cartridge in his hand. It still had streaks of blood coating it, and it stained his palm red. “What sort of velocity for DOI?”
“Baseball pitch. Impact detonation, on paper, means if you can just throw ‘em hard enough, they’ll detonate. But you’ve got to have a good arm and a hard surface to strike.”
“Got it,” Ben said, resheathing the plug.
Helen turned to him. “Ben Cartwright?”
“Yep.”
“If you survived here by yourself, do you think, um, that maybe there’s a chance that Andy can too?” Her eyebrows were high, and there was real fear in her eyes.
Ben got down on one knee close to her. “Sure he can. He’s a smart guy; smarter than I am.” He smiled crookedly and patted her hand. But he didn’t believe it for a second.
She nodded back, her eyes still wide. “And then I can come back for him, like Emma did for you.” Her eyes were pleading now.
Behind him, he heard Emma exhale. “Anything’s possible.” Ben patted the woman’s hand. “Helen, I need to ask you something. It’s important.”
She looked up. “Of course; what is it?”
“We’re going to have to move quickly, climb, maybe fight; can you do that?” He waited.
“Fight?” Her brows drew together in confusion.
“Yes, fight to live.” Ben kept his eyes on hers.
“I don’t want to go back down there.” She looked away. “But I’ll do what needs to be done.”
“That’s all we can ask. Thank you.” Ben squeezed her hand and then stood. He walked to the doorway and looked out into the jungle. He had to squint now as the wind blew debris in at him. He momentarily recoiled as a long thread of lightning traveled horizontally, branching up and down like a blinding river of light.
“Not much time now.” He sucked in a breath right to the bottom of his lungs. “This is where the shit gets real.” He looked along the jungle wall and saw what he needed just in through a stand of trees. “We need to make use of every advantage we have. And every tool and weapon we have. We’re going to war, and the odds are not in our favor.”
Drake looked back to the room with the steps leading to the portal. “Might be more we can salvage down there.”
“Yeah, you do that,” Ben said over his shoulder. “I’m going to grab a few things. Be back in ten minutes. Em, can I borrow your knife?”
“No.” She scowled. “But you can borrow me and I come with a knife. You’re not going anywhere by yourself right now.”
Ben sighed. “Don’t have time to argue.” He pointed. “See that stand of trees, the larger ones with the collars of thin leaves around their base? That’s where we’re going.”
“No problem; ready w
hen you are,” she said.
Ben turned to nod at Drake. “Ten minutes. Be ready.” He turned, took one last look up and down along the tree line, and then sprinted from the temple doorway. Emma was right beside him.
*****
Emma beat Ben to the tree line, and immediately went down on one knee, gun up in a two-handed hold. She scanned the trees, but there didn’t seem to be anything moving. It was damn hard to tell now, she thought, as the branches whipped about and the low moan of rushing wind dominated everything.
Ben crouched beside her, also scanning the brush. She looked back at the temple; the dark mouth of the doorway was now empty as she assumed Drake and Helen were down in the basement room retrieving anything of use they could salvage from the carnage.
Good on Helen, Emma thought; couldn’t have been easy going back down after what she had seen take place.
She winced as thunder cracked, and looked up to see the boiling clouds rotating like froth in a bath about to go down the plug. They were getting down to the last hours or maybe even hour now—seconds counted.
“What do we need?” she yelled.
Ben held out his hand. “We need to cut some straight branches, some vines, and collect some of that resin.” He pointed.
She handed him the long knife. “I’ll get the vines.” She withdrew her smaller blade.
The pair worked fast. Ben hacked down five-foot trees and stripped them of their branches and leaves. Emma extracted elastic vines from around the tree trunks, and quickly scooped up some of the dark sticky resin onto broad, flat leaves.
Ben then shaped the ends of his rods, cutting a groove a few inches from the top, and then making a small notch in the top like a saddle. Emma brought him her pieces.
“I think I know where you’re going; and I like it.”
He grinned as he worked. “Every bit helps.” He took one of the grenade cartridges and sat it in the saddle at the top, rounded head as the spear tip. Ben then lashed and tied them with the vines, and finally liberally coated them with the sticky and fast-drying resin.
He examined it and handed it to Emma. “One.” He worked quickly; creating two more, and then wiped off his hands and turned to her. “Seems fitting that in this place we’re back to resorting to spears.” Ben got to his feet.
“One more thing.” Emma came up beside him. Her eyes were luminous, and he couldn’t help bending toward her. She smiled and pushed her face back at his, their lips meeting, hard. She broke the kiss.
“For luck.”
“I’ve loved you…” He grinned down at her. “…for 100 million years.”
She laughed and the pair turned, about to leave the jungle edge, but Ben threw an arm out in front of her.
“Don’t move.”
From the other side of the clearing, the monstrous snake slid from the jungle like a waterfall of dark brown and green scales. It was on its belly, but the arm-thick tongue continued to dart out, tasting the air. The tongue’s movements became more frantic and then the snake reared up, raising its head around 20 feet from the ground.
Emma couldn’t help her intake of her breath—to her, the nightmare was back. Out in the open, its size was colossal, and even though she had witnessed a full-grown creature before, her modern mind still had trouble processing it as being real.
They both eased back behind the trees and tried to stay motionless. The red, glass-like eyes of the Titanoboa were impossible to read, but the tongue began flickering again, and the head began to turn as it looked along the line of foliage.
“Drake and Helen will be sitting ducks,” Emma whispered.
“So are we,” Ben responded.
“We can run for it,” she replied.
“To where? And for how long?” Ben answered. He hefted one of the spears. “No, we’ve got to discourage it from entering—we need that temple.”
“Yeah, we do.” Emma swallowed. Suddenly, the spears and her handgun seemed a joke when contemplating a war on this thing. She wanted to run and hide, but Ben was right. Running and hiding might mean life for now, but it would also mean missing their window of opportunity. Did she want to try and live in this place for 10 years? Or condemn Ben for another decade?
“Goddamnit,” she whispered.
“No, this is a good thing.” Ben pulled her along behind the tree line. “We wanted to flush it out. Now we don’t have to.” Ben’s jaw worked for a moment, as he seemed to come to a decision. “Cover me.”
“What?” Emma grabbed at him, but he had already moved further along behind the line of trees, getting closer to the snake.
Even though Ben crept along and tried to stay behind cover, the snake spotted him almost immediately. Its five-foot-wide diamond-shaped head swung around to watch him. The creature’s body was around four feet wide at the neck, but then broadened to be about seven wide at its girth. It was a monstrous animal and emanated power and lethality. Ben would have made a perfect bite-sized snack for the creature.
“Oh no.” Her mouth dropped open as Ben broke cover and sprinted at the monster, yelling and holding up one of his spears. The snake must have been taken by surprise by a prey animal charging it, and stopped its advance, rearing up even higher in a defensive display.
When Ben was just 50 feet away, he whipped his arm forward and propelled the spear like a javelin.
It flew, wobbling, and as a first effort, it wasn’t bad. But it was obvious that Ben needed practice as the swirling wind caught the missile and nudged it just enough to make it land several feet wide.
“Shit!” Ben yelled.
It got worse, as it struck a patch of thicker grass and didn’t even detonate. Emma grimaced, her teeth clamped together so hard they hurt.
Ben fumbled with another of his spears, but it was obvious that the odds had moved even more out of his favor.
“Fuck it.” Emma gripped her gun tight and stepped from the line of trees, knowing they were now on a suicide mission.
But instead of the snake bearing down on them, it swung away as an earth-shaking roar came from the other end of the clearing.
The thundering, predatorial bellow of the carnivore was a challenge, a warning, and designed to freeze its prey to the spot—it worked, as Emma cringed to be rooted to the ground from the noise alone.
She watched in awe as the massive theropod emerged from the jungle. Giganotosaurus, she breathed. The thing had tracked them from when she was in the crevasse. It seemed the monster decided it still had unfinished business with them. One problem: to get to Ben and Emma, it might have to fight for them.
The effect on the snake was instantaneous—Ben was forgotten, and the colossal snake reared up, rising high from the ground. Its head shivered slightly and the tongue flicked out, faster and faster, in clear agitation. Amazingly, its throat flared red with aggression.
Ben backed up, trying to keep watch on both monsters, but he was insignificant and nothing more than food to the victor, and right now, the two formidable beasts, both territorial, undoubtedly knew their meeting could end in only one way.
He joined Emma back in the tree line, and both could only watch with mouths gaping.
Though the snake was colossal in size, the Giganotosaurus lived up to its name—it was the biggest carnivore on this primitive continent, and this one was 40 feet long and stood 18 high at the shoulder. Though the snake was longer, the saurian massively outweighed it by many tons.
The Giganotosaurus roared, and its massive box-like head split open, showing the rows of razor-sharp, backward-curving teeth, each about 10 inches in length. It started to move, keeping its eyes on the snake and trying to circle it.
With small twitchy movements, the snake kept itself facing toward the threat. The dinosaur edged sideways, bellowing and snapping massive and powerful jaws at the Titanoboa. It looked like a monstrous guard dog threatening an intruder.
“No, no, no, not that way,” Emma said.
The dinosaur was moving the snake, and they could see that the Titanoboa was
going to end up between them and the temple. If the snake decided to cut and run, it’d be back inside with Drake and Helen before they could blink. That’d leave them alone with one of the most fearsome creatures of the Late Cretaceous Period, and Emma knew how that would go.
There came a long hiss from the snake, and it tried to rear up even higher, perhaps to make itself seem even bigger. It didn’t work; the dinosaur charged.
The ground shook beneath their feet as the three-toed monster closed the gap between them in seconds. Ben and Emma were transfixed, watching the two land leviathans come together.
The Titanoboa snake was reputed to have fed on dinosaurs, and it was easily big enough. But the Giganotosaurus was a species of theropod that ruled its domain for a good reason and amazingly, for something of such a titanic size, was even faster than the snake probably suspected.
The snake went to strike the beast on its flanks, but the dinosaur lowered its head like a bull. The front of the creature’s skull was a massive plate of many-inches-thick bone, and even though the snake’s teeth caught and dug in, they inflicted little real damage.
In turn, the Giganotosaurus angled its head and opened its massive jaws wide and clamped them down on the snake’s upper body. The machine-like head brought a bite pressure of 1,000 pounds per square inch to bear on the giant pipe of scale and muscle.
The Giganotosaurus clamped down with an audible crunch, and the snake went mad. It became a monstrous worm in a bird’s beak. The body and tail of the snake whipped and thumped down, raising dust and making the ground shake.
“Now’s our cue,” Ben said, snapping Emma out of her trance and grabbing her hand. They sprinted across the clearing and were at the temple doorway in seconds. But just as they reached the steps, they were both thrown backward as a second colossal snake flowed from the doorway.
This snake was even bigger than the one locked in its death roll with the dinosaur. Perhaps it had been called by the first or had heard the commotion via vibrations in the ground, but it ignored the humans and poured forth toward the fighting pair.
Ben and Emma leaped aside but got to their feet quickly when it became clear the snake was going to pass them by. They watched it go and still couldn’t tear their eyes away as the second snake sped into the fighting pair.
