by Eddie Patin
"Hey!" Jason cried. "Come back! I thought you wanted this!"
Maybe he should have used his Glock. Then, he’d be down one bullet but he’d have a body to try and eat, and the other one would have run away...
"Damn it, you little shit!" Jason roared after the bobbing tufts of feathers—all he could see of the raptors tails now. "I’m fuckin hungry!"
He stood and watched until the raptors totally disappeared. His breaths were heavy. His heart pounded, and the pain all came rushing in.
It started to rain.
"Damn it."
Jason’s knee started throbbing miserably as the rainfall cooled his skin. The slices in his shoulder stung and itched like crazy.
Walking grumpily back to the shelter, Jason started the fire up again and the boiling of more water. The rain sucked. But hey—maybe it would fill up the second turtle shell, which was empty after his escape from the crocodile.
"What a crazy damned world," Jason muttered, sitting down in the dirt under his canopy. Now at least he had some water. With those turtle shells, he’d be able to hang onto a good bit of it for a while, too; maybe even collect more from the afternoon downpour if it was a regular thing. This was the second time the rain had started up in the afternoon, just like back home in Colorado.
The dinosaur hide canopy did the trick and kept Jason and his fire dry.
He’d need more than just his cane though. If the man had a longer reach—like maybe a spear—he could have probably killed one of those shithead raptors, and right now he’d be cooking one of them on the fire ... if he could figure out how to harvest them.
"Probably tastes like turkey," he muttered, looking through his supply of wood.
Jason pulled out a long, straight branch that was a little more than six feet and set to whittling it into a smooth shaft with a point at one end, which he then hardened in the fire.
The man set the spear aside against one side of the crook.
Then, before the sun went down, he pulled all of the gravel and junk out of his left pocket—the stuff that might have been gold from the creek bed. Clawing at the inside of his pocket for every piece of grit he could pull out, Jason ended up with a large handful of sand, tiny shells, pieces of gravel the size of peas and smaller, and at least a dozen chunks like molten globs of a metallic substance that looked a hell of a lot like gold. He cast it all on the ground in a corner and separated the gold bits from everything else, cleaning them all off in the water of a turtle shell.
Gold, he thought with a grin.
It had to be gold. They were little golden nuggets. Jason had never held golden nuggets before, but this had to be gold.
"Well," he said, "if I ever make it back home, I can find out..."
Jason returned the gold nuggets to his pocket then approached his shelter, examining the joints and lashings. Rain splashed at him around the corners as he manhandled the structure, then he stopped.
"Definitely looser," he said.
All of his paracord was being pulled apart. What the hell was going on here?!
Pulling out his flashlight to look more closely in the dim light of the rainy afternoon under the rawhide tarp, Jason illuminated the beams and posts and gaped at the hundreds of tiny vine tendrils anchored into the wood. The hundreds of teeny-tiny vines pulled toward the dirt walls of the crook around him; some to one side, some to the other.
The man leaned in closer and examined the dark, thin vines in front of his face, shining the light at them. The vines were hardly thicker than human hair, but they were—as sure as he was standing there—pulling the structure apart! They were growing out of the dirt like fine, dark tentacles of vegetation like Jason had never seen before...
"What are you guys doing?!" he asked quietly. "Why are you trying to pull apart my shelter? Trying to get me killed again?"
Pulling out his pocketknife, Jason carefully and meticulously severed all of the vines he could find from their connections in the dirt and hillside. Then he cut what remained off of the wooden posts. After the sun went down, Jason checked and pruned the vines again. Over the course of the evening, he kept the fire going—hoping it would keep the dinosaurs at bay—and boiled cup after cup of water until his backpack bladder was full. Sure enough, the vines were back by bedtime, sprouting from the dirt and reaching for his structure as if alive.
That couldn’t be part of the Cretaceous Period. What the hell is that?! he wondered.
Before going to sleep, Jason trimmed the vines back one last time and tightened down all of his paracord lashings. He knew that the vines would be back, but maybe they wouldn’t be able to pull the structure down until after the morning.
"If they do," the man said to himself, "I know the way to the tree..."
With that, Jason made sure that all of his gear was squared away on his body—except for his cane and his spear—and he stoked the fire one last time before lying down in the dirt to get some sleep.
He didn't see the black, glittering eyes that stared at him from the darkness on the other side of the flames...
Chapter 20
Jason slept with dreams of teeth and claws tearing at his skin. Through the silky murk of exhausted slumber, he saw leering faces of savage cannibals looking at him with alien curiosity. Their reptilian eyes glinted with nightmares from the unknown. Jason dreamed of their stone clubs and axes—crude bludgeoning rocks or chipped edges barely resembling some sort of Mayan swords crafted over long, hot days. He saw the cannibals squatting in the wood-smoke and dust of a cave deep in the dark wood, carefully wrapping the tools and weapons with rawhide strips made from dinosaur leather with their strange, clawed fingers. He saw those stone clubs and axes crushing his bones and rudely splitting his flesh with persistent, raw force as the man stared dead and glassy-eyed at a sky decorated with circling pterosaurs and ancient birds. The cannibals hacked at his body again and again, making excited hoots and cries and clipped hisses, flirting with the rudimentary idea of a common language. His body thrashed up and down, his skull bouncing on a stone jutting from the humid earth...
Jason suddenly felt a starburst of pain, and felt his head smack another rock.
The savages tugged at his hair and clawed up his back—up and up, like thousands of nails or being dragged over a hill covered with sharp rocks...
His head hit another stone.
Opening his eyes to the clash of pain on the back of his head, Jason felt white fear course through his body as he saw the darkness tumbling past him. The ground scratched at his back but he could hardly feel it. He was thoroughly numb with shock—or maybe terror. No—it was something else. His whole body buzzed, from his cheeks to his chest and thighs and arms and leg, down to his toes.
Jason's head hit another rock—or a root, perhaps—sticking up out of the ground.
Oh God, he thought, flush with horror.
He was being dragged!
The night fumbled past him: tree branches reaching out over him passing from his feet to his head; bushes and ferns parting around him. He could feel the texture of thick grasses slick under his body with the evening’s rain and then, alternately, the rough scrubbing of dirt and gravel and bits of granite sticking out of the hillside.
"Shit!" he tried to say, but only mumbled a Shh sound.
His lips were numb. His face was numb. Good God, he thought. I'm paralyzed!
Despite being dimly aware of the world passing under him—the underbrush and foliage of the dark primordial world tearing at his form and pulling at his clothes and skin—Jason could hardly feel a thing, as if his entire body was still asleep.
When he tried to look at his feet—to somehow crunch up enough to lift his head and see what he had to assume was a big predator dragging him away to devour him somewhere—Jason felt a crashing sense of fear and disappointment when he found that he could not move...
But then, even though he couldn’t sense his body responding, the man found that his deadened muscles had obeyed his brain to a small degree, and Ja
son caught a quick glimpse of his booted feet being pulled by some sort of rope—perhaps some long tendrils—leading away out of sight in the darkness toward the unknown; no doubt a monstrosity that made his mind reel in terror.
What happened?! he thought, screaming in his head and letting the black waves of fear roll over him again and again—
Another rock suddenly struck his skull and Jason saw ghostly stars sparkle in his vision over the black shadows of trees and the vast expanse of an empty night sky full of an infinity of stars.
The cannibals! Jason thought with an inner stab of horror. The cannibals got me!
They were dragging him back to their camp to be fileted and fed to the group. He'd be a special treat: soft man meat from a future world no longer full of dreaded beasts waiting to catch you at every turn...
Jason could hear everything around him and his ears were overwhelmed with the sounds of dirt and stones and grass and underbrush flying past his head, around and below. He heard the trills and calls of the many raptors that hunted in the night. No mini-predators came after him and his captors.
Just as he realized that he wasn’t hearing the sprinting feet that always accompanied the roaming savages, or the hooting and hollering that came with them, Jason was thrust into pitch darkness again as his body was dragged through a dry, black area full of dirt and rocks. He could feel just enough in his buzzing skin to know that his body was parting a long, scattered pile of bones. Then he saw the pale bits appear on his left and right as he was pulled further into a cave...
Coursing with fear and completely numb, Jason tried to sit up. The first time, he pitched to the side, still being dragged, hitting a rocky wall with his face. The numbness muted the pain, and he was able to catch the briefest glimpse of a man-sized form pulling him by a rope through a long, narrow tunnel. The form of his abductor was silhouetted by a strange blue glow barely visible up ahead...
Jason realized that his arms could move, too. They’d been just dangling along, stretched over his head up until now; only ... he couldn’t feel them. The man was aware that he had arms and could see them, but there was no feeling in the limbs at all—just that odd buzzing that's associated with being unconscious.
More bones parted around Jason’s body. The entire tunnel was full of small creatures’ remains, picked clean over time.
If Jason didn’t do something, he knew, his bones would be added to this collection.
Realizing that his sense of touch was shot to hell, he hoped to God that his Glock was still in its holster. He could see his backpack straps on his shoulders, so it was possible that he still had all of his gear. Jason reached down to his belt with his unfeeling right hand. He saw the arm move, and the hand obeyed as if it was a completely different creature. He visualized finding the grip of the gun at his four o’clock position, the weapon held tight against his skin on the inside of his belt. He tried to see—in his mind's eye—him folding his hand around the grip to draw like he’d done a thousand times at the range and in dry-fire practice at home.
Jason closed his eyes, willing his hand and arm to do something that his muscle memory had been taught through consistent practice to do. He couldn’t feel anything, but he saw it in his mind. He saw him grabbing the pistol perfectly, drawing it with his finger off of the trigger, bringing it to bear, putting his front sight on target, finding and squeezing the trigger slowly...
When Jason opened his eyes, he found that the creature had dragged him into a small cavern lit up by very odd luminescent mushrooms growing out of one wall. The bizarre growths gave off a blue and pale yellow glow that lit up the cave like track-lighting. Through the colorful haze, Jason saw the glistening lines of thick, white spider webs stretching out everywhere and reinforced with thick cobwebs that spread through the cavern like pulled-apart cotton.
He saw that the rope binding his feet and the tow-line that had pulled him up the hill and into the cave glistened just like the spider webs did...
The dark form that had been pulling him suddenly turned, releasing the line. Jason’s eyes widened and his breath caught in horror.
The monster was man-sized and some sort of arachnid-human hybrid. Really, the only thing human about it was its bipedal form. It had two long, skinny arms, two spindly legs with knobby knees, and a small head with nightmarish features over a flabby, dark torso shaped a lot like a hunched old man’s. The creature looked more like a spider than a human, with greyish-brown skin covered in bristly hairs. Its broad hands ended in long, clawed fingers and several big, black eyes glittered in a face full of arachnid pedipalps and fangs. The spider monster looked back at Jason with alien eyes and cocked its head. Its fangs twitched...
Then, two large spiders—one looking very much like the giant arachnid that had attacked Jason behind his home—scuttling in to stand on either side of the taller creature like dogs welcoming their master home. They chittered and clicked their fangs together, considering Jason with their weird spider eyes.
The larger of the two spiders approached Jason on nimble claws that clicked and scraped on the cave floor, kicking over small bones on the way. When the dog-sized arachnid drew in close to Jason's face—its fangs slipping in and out of fleshy sheathes covered in wiry hair and its eyes glittering like black marbles—a wild, panicky fear flooded through the man's senses with a whoosh that tossed around like ocean waves...
Jason pissed himself.
The bristles of the spider's pedipalps brushed up against his face—Jason heard chittering sounds coming from the arachnid's mouth-area—then the manlike monster approached quickly with stomping feet and kicked the big spider in the side. As the large arachnid skittered away deeper into the cavern, the bipedal nightmare-creature stood tall over Jason's vulnerable form—fangs twitching as it moved with an inhuman jerkiness—then it crouched down and started doing something near his ankles...
Stretching his numb neck and trying to raise his head that felt heavy like a bag of sand, Jason tried to see. He had a dark feeling that the creature was binding him up further with more webbing. This all felt like a bad dream. Jason felt drugged and woozy, and the rush of it pounded in his ears with the beating of his terrified heart...
The monster was indeed webbing him up. Jason could imagine the end of his life spent in a cocoon, staying barely conscious for days in a painful haze as these monsters fed on him. They'd make soup out of his insides and drink him through their fangs like straws pushed through his flesh, again and again...
Working with quick, jerky motions, the monster pulled webbing out of its ass and applied it to Jason. It made chittering sounds as if softly talking to itself. A cobweb-like line ran out from between the creature's legs—glistening in the light of the glowing fungi—to its long fingers and claws, which weaved and danced and wrapped the webs around the man's ankles.
Jason tried to breath, but his chest was hitched up in fear. He tried to think, but his brain was pulsing in shock as he watched the monster's fingers dart back and forth, spinning its web...
He had to calm down.
Calm down...
Jason suddenly realized that his right arm had obeyed his earlier visualizations perfectly, and he was aiming his Glock 26 at the fearsome creature. The glowing, tritium dot of the front sight hovered over the darkness of the creature's center mass.
Without another thought, as the monster worked at his ankles, Jason shot the thing twice in the chest.
The muzzle flash made two dazzling fireballs in the dim, luminescent glow of the cavern. The sound of the shots inside the cave was deafening. Jason didn’t feel himself pulling the trigger. He didn’t feel the pistol bucking in his hand. He just willed his body to perform the actions he trained for and it complied.
As the two hollow-point nine millimeter rounds punctured the creature’s bristly, naked chest, Jason saw the two tiny holes appear. The monster immediately stood like a shot, surprised, then collapsed backwards, one web-coated hand held up over its face as it fell with a hiss.
The big spiders dashed in. Jason immediately put his front sight on the larger of the two—the fucker that had gotten in his face. He shot it twice in its cluster of eyes as it spread its fangs, coiling to strike. The creature fell forward—tripping up on its legs as if its brain had been switched off—then rolled to a stop against Jason’s numb legs.
With the man-spider and the larger arachnid down, the smaller one turned and fled into the darkness of the cave, scuttling across the dirt floor and up a stone wall. It tried to hide in the farthest corner. As it escaped, Jason saw the walls move, and two dozen spiders the size of his hand rippled out from around the dog-sized arachnid, fleeing to find secure spots of their own. Several spiders like tarantulas sped across the cave floor, some running over Jason’s buzzing body—his legs, belly, his left hand—and the man was suddenly thankful that he couldn’t feel their small, hairy legs brushing across his skin.
He found his sensationless hand moving to aim his pistol at the smaller one—now a shadow in a dark crevice—then paused.
Four shots, Jason thought. Shit.
"Oh ... oh jeez..." he stammered, finding some feeling coming back to his lips.
The shots seemed to bring some feeling back to his shooting hand, and his fingers and forearm were suddenly alive with tingles and nerve-fire, like the appendage was emerging from being asleep. Jason groaned and struggled, feeling life seeping back into his buzzing limbs. He found himself able to turn over, wracked with the weird and terrible uncomfortable sensations of his nerves coming back online.
"Poison..." he muttered through dumb lips.
That thing had poisoned him; in his sleep, no doubt. But the poison was wearing off. Jason knew that he had to get out of the cave before the other spiders swarmed over him. The bipedal spider creature lay sprawled backwards on the cavern floor. It suddenly made a drawn-out chittering sound and rolled on the ground near him, twisting its spindly limbs around in agony.
Jason found some feeling in his legs and remembered that his ankles were tied together. The web-rope held fast—the man didn't have the strength to break it, much less move around.
