by Rick Jones
00:12
00:11
The doors appeared to be at an impossible distance.
The clock ran down.
00:10
Jayne started to cry, the charred bones of the dead lying about with their skulls grinning in malicious amusement.
00:09
“Move your asses!” they heard Ben call to them.
And then Jayne broke, crying, Ben apparently knowing what they did, that they were too far behind and wouldn’t make it.
Jayne tried to release Neil’s hand, but Neil wouldn’t allow it.
“You have to leave me, Neil!”
“We can do this!”
“No . . . we can’t. We’re too far behind and I’m holding you back.”
00:08
00:07
“Jayne, please, don’t give up.”
The metal doors started to open at the end of the channel.
00:06
00:05
They could see Ben and others pitching the backpacks through the opening.
“We’re almost there,” Neil managed to say. But they were slowing, their lungs burning, their breaths becoming ragged and difficult to come by.
The peripheral vision of Jayne’s sight was growing purple along the edges, then black, the darkness closing in, the light fading.
00:04
Then she took to her knees, surrendering her fate.
And Neil refused to let go of her hand. He pleaded with her. He begged her. But Jayne had given until there was nothing left for her to give.
So she sat there sucking air with great effort, her lungs wheezing.
00:03
00:02
Ben was standing at the doorway with a hand reaching imploringly out to them, the hand too far, the gesture one of futility.
And the doors were almost closed, the gap barely wide enough for anyone to get through.
But Ben managed.
And then he was gone.
The doors closing with a terrible clang, the sound a single toll that death was imminent.
Neil helped Jayne to her feet, looked her squarely in the eyes, and then pulled her close, their embrace tight and comforting.
And they stayed that way when the points of the fire cannons along the top of the walls directed their aim at the lovers, and streamed geysers of flame, their bodies consumed with fire, then screaming, the two drawing apart and waving their arms madly about. Their skin blistered, eyes boiled and popped, the enamel of their teeth cracked and exploded, and then they fell to the ground with their bodies carbonizing to char and their skin to ashes.
Two columns of black smoke coiled upward, smudging a sky that was a perfect blue.
The smell of baked meat filled the air.
And the crowd cheered wildly.
The Valley had claimed its first two victims.
#
Not only was Peter Haynes fascinated with the burnings, he had planned it. In order to take new ground from point A to Z in eighteen seconds, people had to be in top shape. And Haynes always chose those he knew would fail, the burnings and subsequent deaths serving as the preface to an exciting show, and to more exciting sequences ahead.
From his station, he watched it all on the monitor the way the mounted cameras picked up the action. The cameras clearly picked up the horror behind the looks, the realization that death was racing toward them at the speed of light, taking two lives while giving reprieve to ten. But it would always stalk them and linger close behind.
Haynes nodded in approval.
Romeo and Juliet had gone down—star-crossed lovers meeting a quick and horrible fate.
And Haynes played on this, going on the stadium’s screen with a feigned look of sadness with pouty lips and saddened eyes.
When the cheering died down, he spoke. “A moment of sorrow,” he began with a hint of misery. “Two young people deeply in love, one refusing to relinquish his hold, while the other begged him to do so and save his own life, are now together in eternity.” He lowered his head in a woe-is-me look—the horror of it all, two lives lost at such an early age. What a shame. An absolute shame.
The audience sighed as a collective, feeling Peter Haynes’ grief, suddenly discovering the tragedy behind the fiery deaths.
Then Haynes lifted his head, all smiles, more vibrant, eyes wide and cheery. “But hey!” he said, jubilated. “They’re in a better place, are they not?”
The crowd began to cheer wildly, going crazy, the sudden change in attitude infectious.
Haynes continued to be upbeat. “Now the real fun begins,” he said over the screen. “Two down and ten to go . . . All running for their lives, where?”
“The Valley!!!”
“WHERE?”
“THE VALLEEEEEY!!!”
“That’s right, folks. The . . . Valleeeeeeeeeey!”
After several more seconds of inciting the masses, Peter Haynes signed off so that the cameras could follow the survivors every move.
“People are so easy to manage,” he told his producer. “You laugh, they laugh. You cry, they cry. If I told them to jump off a bridge, they probably would. God, I love my job.”
“The day’s still young,” said the producer. “What do you say about having the helicopter follow them, a new angle for the audience? If we’re lucky, we might even get an overhead shot of something closing in on them. Something big . . . Something hungry.”
Haynes snapped his finger and pointed it at his producer. “I like it,” he told him. “See that it happens.”
“Yes, sir.”
As the producer lowered his lip mic and began to issue orders to have a chopper airborne immediately, Haynes toggled a joystick to his own personal channel, the small screen on his desk centering in on the ten remaining survivors. “You poor bastards,” he said to himself. “If only you knew what was waiting for you out there.”
He grabbed a bottle of cinnamon whisky, poured himself a few fingers, raised the glass to the screen, and offered a toast. “Salud,” he said.
And then he downed the whisky with a single tilt of the glass to his lips.
Chapter Eleven
The screams were loud and excruciating to listen too. Then after a good chunk of a minute, died off.
In the background, Ben could hear the girl’s crying.
The group was just beyond the gates, the landscape absolutely thick with jungle foliage and the atmosphere thick and soupy with humidity, which they found odd since the air was dry and comfortable on the other side of the door less than five feet from where Ben was standing.
“What is this place?” asked one of the Ferguson sisters.
Michelle, Ben thought. Or maybe it was Daniella. He couldn’t tell who was who since they looked so much alike. “Terra forming?” he proposed to her.
A steady stream of tears rolled down her cheeks. “I don’t belong here,” she stated in near panic.
“None of us do,” said Ben.
“Not true,” said Yakamoto. “Unlike you people, at least I can admit to my crimes.”
“So you’re saying that you killed five people?” Michelle asked him. Or maybe it was Daniella.
“The five they know about.”
“So you’re saying that you killed more?”
Yakamoto didn’t respond. He lay his backpack down, opened the zipper, and began to rummage through it.
“And what about you?” she asked Albright. “I noticed that you had your chest all puffed out with pride. You were enjoying the moment when they listed your crimes. Did you really kill all those people?”
“And then some.”
Bryon Sommers stepped forward. A backpack was slung over his shoulder. “You’re the Boogeyman, aren’t you? The one who hid under the beds or closets of his victims, then came out when they went to bed, then killed them.”
“At your service.” When he acknowledged this, he did so with a hint of arrogance in the measure of his tone.
Sommers stepped away from him, then began to g
o through his backpack hoping that it held a weapon of some sort.
“What in the hell makes a man like you tick?” Pam Scholl asked him. “Do you get some kind of perverse pleasure out of it? Killing all those people.” When Ben tried to steer her away to defuse the situation, she slapped his hand away. “I want to know,” she told him.
Albright showed no emotion when he answered her. “What? You thinking that something in my past made me the way I am?”
Pam waited for an answer.
“Well, let me tell you something, Missy—”
“My name’s Pam.”
He ignored her. “When I was growing up I wasn’t abused, bullied, or molested as a kid. I did what I did because I liked it. There are no underlying factors that bent me psychologically, if that’s what you’re hinting at. The truth is, I like to kill . . . It’s something I’m good at.”
Silence followed, his statement unnerving everyone.
For the next several minutes everyone went through their backpacks, finding items to help them across the valley. In Dale Amici’s backpack was the map, which indicated their current position, and the location of the Gates of Freedom. Though a straight line on the map, there were many obstacles such as rivers and deep ravines, causes that would reroute them to take more of a serpentine path. So thirty miles in a straight line would actually end up being closer to sixty, with all the winding and wending.
Bryon Sommers found chocolate, salt tablets, cheese, power bars, and multiple bags of beef jerky.
The same with the sisters: food.
Pam Scholl and Cheryl Dalton had bottles of water in theirs.
Jerald Hughes had first aid items: gauze, tape, stitching line and needles, alcohol—things necessary to provide minimal care to minimal wounds.
In Yakamoto’s bag was fishing gear. Lines, hooks, a net, weights, lures.
And as bad luck had it, Darius Albright’s bag held two Smith and Wesson’s, .40 calibers with hollow points. They were broken down and in their cases, along with magazines and ammo.
When Ben went through his, he came away with two machetes. The edges were wickedly keen and sharp looking. The bad thing was, Albright had the firearms and was in no way going to surrender them. A man holding two machetes pitted against a man with a dual set of pistols, would lose hands down. Right now it was Darius Albright who held the scepters of rule with a Smith and Wesson in each hand.
After the firearms were skillfully assembled, and as the food and water were spread evenly, everyone was ready to press forward.
Just then a helicopter came into view and hovered close, the wash of the rotor blades whipping the leaves of the surrounding bushes. In the chopper’s open bay, a Special Forces officer clad entirely in black was manning a .50 caliber machine gun, and directed his aim at them.
“You have thirty seconds to move on!” the officer commanded over the loud speakers.
Amici had folded the map into quarters, outlining the path of least resistance, with the quarter panel marked with a squirrely line to the east, and then west in what appeared to be a fifteen-mile journey, according to the legend.
“You really expect us to travel fifteen miles through this thicket?” Ben asked him, gripping his machete tight. “In this heat?”
“Fifteen seconds!”
“It thins out after three miles,” he told him. “Then it’s clear for about six. Either way,” he pointed at the chopper. “I think our little friend up there is getting a little impatient with us.”
Ben nodded. “I agree,” he said. “We better start moving.”
“Ten seconds!”
Pam Scholl flipped the chopper the bird.
“You’re going to cause us more grief than necessary,” Ben commented.
But Pam ignored him as she grabbed her backpack, and followed the others east with Ben Peyton taking the lead and chopping a path through the jungle.
The chopper banked west and took an overhead position. Then the cameras attached to the chopper's underbelly caught something underneath, something concealed beneath the heavy canopy of brush. A creature was ripping its way forward with small trees bending and falling in its trail, and rapidly closing the gap between it and the cast members.
In the stadium, the crowd began to roar.
Chapter Twelve
It was the sound of the chopper that caught the raptor’s attention. Craning then cocking its head to the side in wonderment, the raptor followed the chopper’s flight, the creature, though six-feet tall and 250 pounds, was capable of maneuvering through heavy brush at great speeds.
It ran in zig-zag routes, leaping with ease when confronted to clear fallen logs or patches of thorny brambles, honking through its nasal chambers to call others to its location. And then its olfactory senses picked up a life force the same way a shark can detect a single drop of blood in water from one mile away.
It continued to honk in language, calling its kind to the prey that was to the west.
As the chopper banked to the east, the raptor altered its course, moving west, tearing its way through small brush and trees to get at its bounty.
Since the chopper was no longer an interest to the raptor, it hovered above, capturing everything on camera, filming every frame as the raptor closed quickly on the group.
#
Two raptors standing north of the first raptor’s position picked up the resonance of its call, the measure and tone its nasal cries informed them that it was closing in on prey.
The larger of the two lifted the point of its snout skyward and barked through its nasal chambers in response, three quick sound bursts, then took flight through the jungle to join the one already in pursuit.
#
“The chopper’s still there,” Hughes commented. “Pretty high up, though.”
No one responded as Ben hacked his way through the landscape. His shirt was saturated with sweat.
“Wait,” said Daniella Fergusson, holding up a hand. “Does anybody hear something?”
“Yeah,” said Ben, hacking away. “It’s me cutting—”
“No,” she said, “It’s coming from over there.” She pointed east of their position.
He stopped cutting, listened.
They all listened.
Nothing.
“I don’t—”
“Shhh!”
A light breeze softly fanned the wide leaves around them. But nobody heard a thing.
“There’s nothing out there,” said Yakamoto.
“You’re wrong,” she returned. “Listen.”
“Just leaves blowing with the breeze,” he said.
She shook her head. “No . . . Something’s out there and it’s coming this way.”
Everyone positioned themselves so that they were standing in a straight line, a skirmish line, waiting and listening, with Ben grabbing his machetes and Albright his pistols.
To their east, they could see the tops of brush whip madly from left to right as something tore through them, the heads of small trees falling to the wayside from whatever it was that was bearing down on them at a fast rate of speed.
Everyone took a step back.
Then whatever it was, it suddenly stopped. This sudden silence just as terrifying as its quick and speedy advancement.
“What happened?” Amici whispered. “Did it go away?”
“No,” said Ben, bending his knees and grinding his feet against the soft soil for better positioning. “It’s out there . . . And it’s watching us.”
“Why?” asked Daniella.
The answer came when the brush to their north and south began to move. Whatever was in front of them was no longer alone.
“Son of bitch,” said Albright, raising his firearms. “Whatever they are, they surrounded us.”
“Don’t just fire off those weapons,” Ben told him heatedly, “Wait until you see what you’re shooting at. We don’t need to be wasting ammo now.”
“Shut up,” Albright returned.
To their east, something hon
ked similar to that of a goose, but much deeper, three bursts, which was returned from locations in front and behind them, also three bursts.
“They’re working as a pack,” Yakamoto said softly.
Ben handed Bryon Sommers a machete without looking at him. Sommers had graduated to a soldier, the machete an extension of his right arm.
“Get ready, people,” whispered Ben.
As soon as the last word was spoken, the mystery of what was to their east was a mystery no more. A raptor leapt from its position, taking a perfect arc through the air with a fore talon as long and curved as the blade of an Arab scimitar and just as sharp, and with jaws spread to show even rows of needle-like teeth, the raptor, having been hardwired to perfect the hunt over tens of millions of years of evolution, came down on Michelle Fergusson, its talon raking a gash across her abdomen and chest, the serrated edge of its claw digging deep and eviscerating her instantly.
Coils and garlands of intestine spilled out as she fell to her knees, her mouth working in mute protest as the raptor closed its jaws over her head, then twisted, the quick jerk of its motion snapping her neck, which had the same resistance as a stick of chalk.
Her sister screamed, feeling the warm mist of blood coat her hands and face, a thick and glossy sheathing of red.
The second and third raptors took flight like a volley of missiles arcing, with one taking Daniella down as quickly as the first had taken Michelle.
Ben swung the machete, hard, the blade cutting deep into the first raptor, the edge biting into its shoulder and through the scapula, a severely damaging blow.
The raptor raised its head skyward, cried out, with the third raptor landing and coming to its aid, and set Ben within the crosshairs of its sight.
Ben pulled the machete free and came across for a second blow, the blade slicing cleanly across its throat in a perfect horizontal blow, paring the skin of its throat into a second horrible mouth, the lips of its wound bleeding profusely.
The third raptor circled Ben, looking for an opening.
The raptor who had taken down Daniella lifted its bloody snout, snorted, and took inventory of its surrounding, noting that some had run off whereas others closed in.
