by Rick Jones
THE VALLEY
Rick Jones
PROLOGUE
The Valley
Argentina
The Year 2079
With the exception of a few renegade clouds floating above the canopy of trees, the sky was a perfect blue. The air was muggy with a syrupy thickness, the humidity steaming. In tropical brush so dense and with leaves as large as elephant ears, Jon Jacoby hacked his way through the thickets with the blade of a machete, swinging errantly knowing that the distance between two points was a straight line. And to get to the Gates of Freedom, Jon had to cut a swath through the jungle’s core if he was to survive.
Emily Anderson was behind him holding a Glock with a bullet in the chamber and three in the magazine. Their beige jumpsuits, declared to be the property of the Argentina Department of Corrections, with ADOC stenciled on the backs, were torn and badly soiled. Rorschach blots of sweat circled beneath their armpits and backs. The bangs of their hair stuck wetly to their brow. Razor-thin cuts and slashes marred their faces and their hands, the blood having crusted and caked into scabs. And their jumpsuits were beginning to hang on them like drapery, the two having lost so much weight.
It had taken them five days to cross the valley, which was surrounded by 80-foot sheer walls, straight up with no foot- or handholds, and no promise or means of escape.
When they were less than 100 yards away from the Gates of Freedom, Jon and Emily hunkered low in the jungle brush, listening.
The shape of the Gates was an arch, and the top bullet-shaped, with chiseled lettering above the entranceway: YOUR FREEDOM IS BUT A FEW STEPS AWAY.
“The gate’s closed,” Emily whispered. When she started to rise and head forward, Jon lashed out and grabbed her by the forearm, stopping her. “What?” she asked.
He set a forefinger against his lips, shushing her. Listen!
In the brush to their left something moved, causing the elephant-sized leaves to shake and betray its position.
They were not alone.
The thicket and brambles to their right began to sound off, a rustling.
Then Emily’s eyes started to the size of communion wafers and her face began to crack, her eyes welling with tears. They were so close, she thought. So . . . close.
And now they were being flanked.
As she raised her firearm, Jon gripped the machete until he was white-knuckled.
“We have to make a run for it,” he told her. “A hundred yards.”
“We’ll never make it.”
“We can’t just sit here, Em, and let them close in.”
And then a tear slipped from the corner of her eye and tracked slowly along her cheek, then to her chin where it dangled precariously for a moment before dropping. “We were so close, Jon” she whispered. “All this way . . . Forty miles. The last two.”
Jon looked deep into her eyes, and leaned forward until their foreheads were touching. She was right, he considered. They started out as a team of twelve, all able-bodied, all convicts of the ADOC having a singular goal: to live. Some died the moment they stepped inside the valley. Others perished during the night as nocturnal creatures dragged them into the darkness with their screams growing distant, and then gone, the cries dying abruptly. Others simply disappeared.
He sighed. “So close,” he said softly. “So . . . close.”
Whatever was in the brush to their left and to their right, was steadily closing in.
Suddenly Emily barked a cry as white-hot pain pierced her side, the point of the machete driving deep. When Jon pulled the blade free, the look on her face nearly crushed him. The look was one of questioning sadness, one that asked why he betrayed her.
“Because when they come,” he said remorsefully, “they’ll come after you. They’ll take the weak and wounded first.” Then: “I’m so sorry, Em. But you’re giving me a chance to live.” He then reached down and grabbed her gun away, which was loosely gripped in her hand, leaned forward, and kissed her gingerly on the forehead. “Thank you.”
After shoving her back, he began his final leg of the 100-yard journey.
#
Emily lay there watching the blood spill from the wound. Then from her position she cried out after Jon. “You son of a bitch!” Then she winced, the effort of crying out causing an electric charge of pain to shoot through her body.
The brush to her immediate right began to move, the distance just beyond an arm’s reach. It was that close. The same on her left, the predators within striking range.
Then the moving stopped.
And there was a silence that was terrifying.
Emily rocked her head from side to side, looking for the faces of her predators, wanting to see the ugliness behind the mask of Death.
Silence.
Then a face poked out from between the large fans of leaves. A head that was canine-sized but crocodilian in shape, with a long snout and reptilian teeth. Its eyes were golden-yellow with black vertical slits for pupils. And a waddle of loose flesh hung at the base of its neck.
When it came out of the brush and into the small clearing, it began to circle Emily in study by cocking its head from one side to the next, the other joined its side. They were short and blunt with strong-looking limbs, the reptiles standing no taller than three feet in height. When they communicated, it sounded like the soft cooing of a bird.
Emily began to crawl backward and deeper into the bush; the reptiles matched her actions and kept pace, their heads turning as if to figure out this life force, to determine if it was predator or prey.
When Emily could go no further, when her back was up against a felled log, she waited.
The lizards looked at her, then at each other, the sound coming from the backs of their throats, a series of soft clicks and cooing, and ended when the larger of the two opened its jaws wide and issued a high-piercing scream. The loose flesh around its throat rose into a frill around its head, the fan of its skin then shaking and rattling in rage, the head looking as if it was haloed by an Elizabethan collar.
The other followed, the flesh around its throat expanding outward in a collar, shaking, then rattling. And then it spat a viscous, tarry substance from its mouth, the mud-like matter striking her eyes, blinding her, the saliva of the matter highly toxic. Her eyes began to burn, then the corneas, the irises and pupils burned with an indescribable intensity, which ultimately drove a scream deep from her.
Birds suddenly took flight as if her cry was like a gunshot.
And then it suddenly stopped.
Leaving only a deep . . . and horrible . . . silence.
#
Jon felt his scrotum crawl the moment he heard Emily cry out in pain that was surely absolute.
He kept the gun in one hand, the machete in the other.
He was fifty yards away and closing.
He read the script above the door.
YOUR FREEDOM IS BUT A FEW STEPS AWAY.
When he was thirty yards away, the massive metal doors began to swing wide. He was so close that he could see the rivets that held the thick panels in place.
If freedom could be detected by one of the five senses, Jon was sure that he could taste it.
Then the doors began to close, quickly.
“No!” he shouted. “You can’t do this! I earned this!”
He began to pick up his pace, running like the wind.
And that was when he felt the earth tremor beneath his feet.
When the doors slammed shut with a horrible shudder, he knew it was to keep something from getting out, something awful and deadly.
Another tremor—from a footfall of something large.
Jon stood his ground ten feet from the Gates of Freedom.
. . . Boom . . . Boom . . . Boom . . . Boom . . .
It was g
etting close.
Then the earth fell stable
Nothing moved.
Jon stood as still as a Grecian statue listening to nothing but his own heartbeat.
And then all Hell broke loose.
Thirty-foot tall trees divided and pared back, creating an avenue of approach for a Spinosaurus, a massive creature 55-feet in length from head to tail, nearly 25-feet tall, with the enlarged neural spines of the dorsal vertebrae supporting a skin sail quite similar to the dorsal fin of a sailfish. Its head was long and massive with spike-like teeth. Its arms, unlike the T-Rex, whose limbs are blunted and puny in comparison, were rather large and muscular, and sported claws that were as long and sharp as industrial meat hooks.
When it craned its head and roared, the air shook, the reverberations of its cry causing the surroundings to vibrate. Then it stepped forward, tail swinging to maintain balance, its head and bowling-ball sized eyes focusing on Jon, its nostrils flaring, taking in the man’s scent so that its olfactory senses could determine if Jon was something of a threat.
Another roar.
And Jon fell to his knees, lifted his firearm, and pulled the trigger in quick succession, the bullets pelting its thick hide but doing little to slow it down. Sobbing, he released the gun, the weapon now useless. The Spinosaurus leaned forward so that its head drew a shadow over Jon, and stretched its jaws wide, showing gossamer strands of saliva that connected the upper line of teeth to the lower.
Jon, feeling absolutely defeated, read the inscription over the door one last time.
YOUR FREEDOM IS BUT A FEW STEPS AWAY.
“It’s not fair,” he whispered. “It’s not.”
Hot, fetid breath pressed down on him, the stench of rancid and decayed meat.
Its teeth now loomed large, its jaw widening.
And then it closed in, the snap of its action so quick that Jon didn’t have time to register that he was already dead.
The Valley had won again.
Chapter One
Prime Time Command Center
Argentina
“And that’s a wrap, people!”
Cheers went up, along with poppers going off and colorful streamers going ceilingward in celebration. Champagne bottles were uncorked. And people were high-fiving another successful run of The Valley, now in its sixth season.
For the past several years, audiences had been numbed by onscreen violence. The scenes, the brutalities, even the computer-generated images were not enough to satiate appetites that wanted something real—the killings, the tortures, anything that would give the audience a near pornographic pleasure in ultra-violence that was real and unadulterated.
In 2067, Prime Time network principals teamed up with the scientific community and offered them a fully financial reward of TV and film revenues, but only if biological scientists could provide the necessary tools to garner a top-ten show.
A storyline was pitched. The excitement behind the premise was high. And the biologists jumped on board. Within years, they managed to extract dinosaur DNA from female mosquitos who were trapped within amber from the Mesozoic and Cretaceous eras. From Antarctica, after the thaws of receding ice uncovered perfectly preserved specimens, a single drop of blood, which carries about three billion DNA strands, was obtained. Though there were genetic gaps within the strands, they were filled in by substituting the DNA of iguanas, and in some cases birds, in order to complete the code.
Dinosaurs were created, the beginning runs having horrific and deformed results, the creatures summarily destroyed until strains and species could be perfected.
In the meantime, a picture-perfect location for the setting of The Valley was discovered in Argentina, a jungled lair trapped within a circular ring of mountains with sheer walls on all sides, almost 400-square miles of virgin territory lush with tropical growth.
Within a year, certain species of dinosaurs were perfected. But because the finding of DNA specimens were so few, the species limited, they were only able to master thirty-six species, of which eighteen were carnivores and eighteen herbivores, a perfect balance.
Two years later, Prime Time got a green light to air the show, using people convicted of felony crimes to earn their freedom by crossing from one end of the valley to the other, a forty-mile journey, where they would be rewarded at The Gates of Freedom.
After six seasons, no one had survived the journey, though many had come close. Jon Jacoby had come the closest, literally within a few feet of freedom.
The show had earned its share of Emmys. And the judicial system had found an outlet to lower its costs to imprison convicted felons, where costs were rising exponentially.
Party favors went off like it was New Year’s Day. People wore conical-shaped hats with the cheap elastic bands that secured them to the heads of partiers.
On the massive wall screen at the front of the station room, the Spinosaurus was pulling Jon Jacoby’s body apart with his flesh pulling like stretches of rubber bands before snapping, the creature then raising its head so that the morsels could slide easily to the back of its gullet.
Peter Haynes, The Valley’s executive producer, took a fork to his glass, and began to tap the tines against it, the noise of the glass ringing catching everyone’s attention in the room. “If I may,” he said.
When everyone settled, he began to speak praises. “I just want to say that if it wasn’t for all you people, and I mean this sincerely, The Valley wouldn’t be what it is today. A resounding success!”
More cheers.
“And you can be sure that there will be a season seven. A season eight. And on we go into the future.”
Party favors shrilled. Poppers popped.
“Right now we are in negotiations for several more seasons. We’re also negotiating other reality shows, spin offs, using real people in real and dangerous situations, that will be uncut and uncensored.” Haynes raised his glass in cheer. Then: “Salud!”
Everyone raised their glasses. “Salud!”
Everyone cheered. Everyone celebrated. But tomorrow the process of setting the stage for the next season would begin. More state-of-the-art cameras would be fitted inside the valley to offer better vantage points, different angles, and clearer pictures, the pixels in the millions.
A cast would have to be assembled.
And a buzz would have to be created, something similar like the love between Jon and Emily throughout the entire journey, the conversations of future love and hope, even a family, once they earned their freedom. But in the end there was a twist, of Jon’s betrayal to Emily, a love not as strong as self-preservation, a ratings driver.
People simply loved violence.
People wanted violence.
And violence they would get.
Chapter Two
York City
The United States
Ben Peyton stood in the food line to receive his weekly pay, a ration of milk, three loaves of bread, a small block of cheese, a generous portion of beef ribs, and cuts of prime meat nicely marbled with enough fat to give it a decent amount of flavor.
The commissary employee took the stub of Ben’s paycheck, and began to fill a wired basket cart with meats and dairy products. When the basket was filled, the commissary employee returned to the counter. “Nice haul,” he commented, handing the cart over. “Must have put in quite a bit of overtime.”
Ben grabbed the basket, smiled. “That’s all there is to do here,” he told him. “Nothing but work.”
Ben left the provision store wheeling the cart behind him, and walked north along the streets of Brooklyn East in York. The city was filled with ancient reminders from centuries past, such as aged brick buildings that were mainly uninhabited with the exception of sizeable rats and vermin. Overhead rails from train systems fell to disrepair, the tracks badly rusted, the wooden ties so corrupted that the timber would crumble at the touch. Skeletal frames of old cars and buses of time’s past l
ay stripped at the side of the road, the metal taken used to shore up shanty town shacks. The smell of the air was stale, unmoving. But Ben, and many like him, called York his home.
When he reached 46th Street, he went west to a row of brick houses whose casement and first-level windows were either barred or boarded over. The entry doors were actually fire doors, metal panels riveted together. When Ben took the steps to an apartment on the street level, he pounded on the door with the heel of his hand, hard.
After a fish-lens eye scoped Ben with careful examination, a series of locks were disengaged and the door opened. Standing inside was Kane Gilmour, who waved him in. “Come in,” he said.
After Ben wheeled the cart into the apartment, Kane closed and locked the door behind them, a time-consuming affair.
The residence was dark, with gas lanterns burning to shed enough feeble light to breach the darkest recesses. Dust motes floated lazily through the air in slow eddies. The furniture was old and threadbare and stunk of mildew. Leather-bound books with pages that had yellowed to the color of old parchment were piled everywhere—they were on the floor, the tables, in cupboards. And the paint on the walls was peeling back like cowlicks.
“It’s good to see you again, Ben,” said Kane, pointing to a seat by the kitchen table. “Please.”
Ben took the seat. The table was rickety.
Kane took the seat opposite him, and simply stared at his friend. He was beat-looking, with heavy bags under his eyes and premature gray hair that was unkempt and in wild tangles. Deep lines were etched across his forehead, along the sides of his face--lines too deep for a man of forty-two. It was the classic appearance of a man who had given up.
He pointed to the cart. “You must have worked double-time a couple of shifts,” he said.
Ben nodded. Then he looked at Kane for quite a long moment in appraisal before speaking. “So how are you feeling?” he asked him. “How are the kids doing?”
Kane shrugged. “We’re barely managing,” he said. “When Kim was around, we were able to work enough to feed a family. Now that she’s gone,” he let his words trail as he pointed to an urn sitting on a shelf. It was the only place where there wasn’t any books. Kane had cleaned it off and placed the urn there as a place of honor. “I miss her, Ben. The kids miss her.” And then his features began to crack a moment before he buried his face in his hands. “It’s so hard. I’m so tired. No matter how hard I work, no matter how many hours I put in, it’s not enough to feed my kids. At least not the way I want to.” And then he began to sob.
