by Rick Jones
Then the largest of the lizards attacked, its teeth grabbing Hughes’ calf from behind and pulling him down, the toxins from its gum-line secreting into the wounds, first burning him, and then numbing him until the venom coursed through his veins to cripple his ability to move.
Hughes laid there unmoving, finding it impossible to move the digit of a single finger. Yet he was able to allow tears to fall from his eyes as they watched the Megalania Priscas move in to feed, their tongues lashing, jaws widening, and then they began to tear him apart, first going for the thighs, ripping and gnashing the meat, his flesh stretching and pulling away from Hughes’ body like rubber bands before snapping free.
The Megalania Priscas raised their snouts heavenward so that the meat made a smooth line to its gullet, and swallowed.
Hughes thanked God for not allowing him to feel this pain, and wished to be taken away immediately.
His vision began to pinch shut, the dark edges closing in. He could sense his breathing slow as the toxins began to shut him down, and then his vision was gone, sparing him the horror of literally being torn apart as the Megalania Priscas fought over the morsels of a man that used to be Jerald Hughes.
When there was nothing left, the lights systematically shut off one right after the other, leaving nothing but a fading fire that burned down to cold, gray ashes.
#
Those laying along the riverside banks heard Hughes’ cries and the agony behind them.
Everyone got to their feet, looked up, and saw a halo of light spill over the edge, but couldn’t see Hughes from their point of disadvantage.
His cries were of obvious terror, then that of awful pain.
And then there was silence, complete and absolute.
Moments later the lights upon the landing went off one by one by one, until a small ember-like glow from a fading fire remained, and then disappeared.
No one moved, at least not for a while, perhaps everyone hoping the best for Hughes, expecting him to lean over the edge and wave, telling them that everything was fine.
He never did.
In time, they began to return to their bedrolls and kept one eye open.
Now they were down to six, losing half the team in a single day.
In the darkness, someone sighed.
Chapter Eighteen
Everything had played out spectacularly on the landing by the ravine. On camera the shots were clear and vivid, and Haynes would no doubt add it to the taped version when The Valley went on TV the next day, a taped preface that would lead into the live broadcast come morning.
The problem was that group members were dropping faster than the lifespan of a fly. The normal showing of The Valley was four, maybe five days. If The Valley lasted two or three days, they’d lose half their revenue from commercials and sponsorships, since the opportune time to show them would be halved.
But this was The Valley, Prime Time’s number-one show with a viewership running into the tens of millions and picking up steam every day, adding millions more.
“Then I will raise the rates,” he said to no one in particular. “To seven million dollars of commercial promotion for thirty seconds time.”
And he knew he would get it, too.
Haynes, at the moment, was feeling good, if not invincible.
Chapter Nineteen
On the following morning, Ben Peyton was standing alongside the riverbank with his hands on his hips, watching the flow of the river.
“Morning.” It was Cheryl.
Ben turned to her. Her face was clean and fresh, after bathing from a hard trek the day before. “How are you?”
“Tired. I didn’t sleep too well.”
Which was understandable after hearing Hughes cry out with such horrific screams, it was easy to draw conclusions as to what happened to him. Ben didn’t think anyone slept well, including himself.
Cheryl looked over the river and the opposite bank. It was more than a hundred yards away. And with the strong current, perhaps difficult to cross. “You’re thinking about building a raft, aren’t you?”
He nodded. Then pointing to the left of their position to an area close to where they pulled Pam Scholl's body from the tree, he said, “I noticed that small trees over there have been taken down, I'm assuming from the previous group."
“And once we get on the other side, then we have to climb two hundred feet. That’ll take hours, if not until dusk after building the raft. It’s easier to climb down than it is to climb up. At least climbing down you have gravity working for you, not against you when you climb.”
“It’s definitely going to be an all-day affair.”
Sommers joined them after overhearing their conversation. “And once we get on the other side, then what? We have to assume that whatever took Hughes last night on this side of the ravine may also be on that side as well. It’ll be close to dark by the time we scale that cliff.”
“Maybe. But if not, then we hike five, ten miles. That’s five or ten miles closer to the Gates of Freedom.”
Sommers raised his machete. “Then we better start cutting,” he said.
While Peyton and Sommers chose the straightest trunks no thicker than a human forearm, others, including Albright, gathered vines to lash the poles together, and created a sizeable raft in less than three hours, which was less time than expected.
The lashings were strong, the tree limbs sturdy, and with thick logs underneath to raise the craft above the waterline, they were ready to go.
Everyone wore their backpacks. And to balance the raft, one member would sit close to the edge of each corner, leaving Ben and Yakamoto on opposite sides using makeshift oars that were manufactured from sticks, leaves and lashings.
The current began to push at them, taking them off course, but they were making progress, the river not too deep.
“The current will take us off course about a mile or two down river before we get to the other side. But we’ll get there. Sailing’s good.”
They continued to drive the raft across the river. When they were almost two-thirds of the way across, something bumped the raft from underneath, hard.
Everybody grabbed the raft with clenching fingers and hung tight, wondering if they hit a boulder secreted away beneath the river’s surface.
“Did you feel that—”
Sommers was cut off by another hard bump, one that redirected the raft. And then two more, the second actually lifting one corner of the raft into the air, nearly sending Cheryl into the water.
“There’s something underneath us!” Amici hollered, then quickly stowed the map into a side pocket of his backpack.
Ben and Yakamoto hastened their pace, driving the oars deep then pushing off. When they were about twenty yards away from the shoreline, something underneath rocketed upward and hit the raft squarely in the center, the impact lifting the craft entirely off the water, the poles that were held together by lashings parted, the raft breaking into a semblance of sticks as bodies went airborne.
Something massive erupted from the river, going up in the air the same way that a whale breaks the ocean’s surface and slams down against the water in play. But this creature was not acting out of amusement, but one of malicious intent. The upper portion of its body was at least twenty feet from snout to mid-belly, with more than half its length still concealed beneath the river, estimating the creature’s entire length closer to forty or fifty feet.
When it splashed down, the waves generated by its plunge lifted everyone and propelled them in different directions.
Everyone started to swim toward shore, striving and kicking, as the creature below swam with porpoise-like ease and circled its prey.
They could feel the current of the creature sweeping beneath them like a rip tide, pulling them with the course of its direction. Then, about fifty feet away, the beast crested the surface in all its glory and revealed itself as it drove skyward. Its head was massive with a snout that was tapered like a crocodile’s, at least twelve feet in leng
th. Its teeth were as large as traffic cones, with tips pointed with a keen and wicked sharpness. Its body was heavy and strongly built, with flipper-like fins similar to modern-day sea turtles. And its tail was lengthy and thick, a perfect rudder for the seas.
“Swim!” yelled Ben.
But everyone was swimming with Albright and Yakamoto already reaching the shoreline. Sommers was waist deep in the water and running for the river bank rather than swimming for it. And Cheryl was not too far behind him.
Ben was close, about fifteen yards out. But Amici was about thirty yards away, the man treading water.
He’s got the map! Ben thought.
Amici called out. “Ben!”
Ben started after him, swimming, and Amici toward him, the swimmers closing the gap.
The Kronosaurus made another sweep beneath them, letting them know it was still there.
And then it rose, again, its huge body climbing skyward and creating a long shadow over the two men, then came down, hard, in the middle of the gap between them. Huge waves erupted from the river’s surface, one carrying Amici to the center of the river, the other catapulting Ben toward shore.
The creature dove beneath the frothy wake, disappeared, and swam under the cover of the river’s surface. It circled, it played, and it moved skillfully with quick maneuvers much like a sea lion, fast and darting.
Amici tried to swim to the shoreline, but it was apparent that he was losing strength, his strokes looking choppy and uncoordinated.
Ben was sitting in knee-deep water, watching, the man never feeling so impotent in his entire life, never so useless.
And the beast shot up again from underneath, this time taking Amici in its jaws. Amici screamed, a swan song, as the creature continued its vertical flight to an impossible height, and with gravity finally slowing its trajectory, banked its body for the downward plunge.
When it hit, the waves broke in every direction, and the surface didn’t settle for some time.
Dale Amici was never seen again.
Bryon Sommers and Cheryl Dalton aided Ben back to the shoreline. Everyone was exhausted with their hands on their knees and sucking air.
“He had the map,” Ben said, pointing out to the area where Amici was last seen. “He had the map.”
“So what do you want to do?” asked Albright. “Swim out after it? Be my guest.”
Peyton sat there, staring at the white crests of the waves break.
Amici was gone.
And so was the map.
Now they were completely lost.
#
No one below had noted the helicopter hovering about four-hundred feet above the cast members position, the cameras attached to its undercarriage catching everything up to its climatic moment. After it had taken its prize, the Kronosaurus began its upriver journey with its enormous body easing its way against the current beneath the surface, a moving shadow that dwarfed anything along the shore, including the cast members, who were significantly smaller by comparison.
The telecaster in the helicopter was highly energetic and spoke in a manner to drum up audience enthusiasm. Across the globe those sitting before their television sets were going crazy with excitement.
The pictures taken were crisp and clean, right up until the Kronosaurus surfaced for the last time with Amici in its jaws. Stills were blown and cleaned up, enough to catch the terror on Amici’s face. And the entire action was instantly replayed over and over again, the audience never tiring.
It was humanity at its absolute worst.
Chapter Twenty
Inside The Valley Studio
“I think that was the most beautiful thing I ever saw,” Haynes remarked, talking about Amici’s demise. “And you know what else?” he asked his producer, who punched in one hour before. “He was the map reader, their navigator. And now they’re all running blind.”
The producer looked at him. “Don’t you ever sleep, Pete?”
“No,” he returned.
“You seem overly giddy.”
“I’m just a guy who really loves his job,” he answered. “That’s all I am. A guy who loves his job.”
The producer went back to the screen and watched the televised coverage of the shape of the Kronosaurus swimming beneath the surface of the river, then called for a commercial break, the monitor going from The Valley, to an ad about a ‘great’ continental beer loved by millions.
Peter Haynes moved to the opposite side of the room where an electronic board was keeping a current tabulation of TV viewers. Right now it stood at twenty-six million plus. And it wasn’t even peak time yet.
Then something more pressing came over the speaker, a call for Peter Haynes regarding an asset, a large one.
Haynes grabbed the wireless phone. “This is Peter.”
“Yeah, Pete.” It was Stan Tremblay, the show’s veterinarian. “I’m at the west quadrant,” he said. “At W-sixteen, E-seven.”
“OK.”
“I just wanted to let you know that we have another Rex down. That’s two this week.”
“Any injuries?”
“None,” he answered. “But sooner or later something’s going to come and scavenge on it. And if it’s the virus, which I think it is—I’m taking a culture as we speak—it’ll transfer and spread to the consuming host. Whatever it is, Pete, it’s a pathogen that spreads easily.”
This was hardly good news, his happy mood suddenly crashing hard to abject moroseness on the Bipolar Express. Whatever this pathogen was, it was slimming the herds. If it continued to go unchecked, then the dinosaurs would diminish and die off, another extinction that would lead to the end of The Valley.
“You’re at W-sixteen, E-seven?” Haynes asked.
“That’s right.”
“Wait for me,” he said.
#
W-sixteen, E-seven were grid coordinates so that crew members working the fields could be found quickly and easily. When Haynes pulled up in a Jeep, Stan Tremblay was standing next to a downed Tyrannosaurus Rex, whose eyes were at half-mast and its breathing severely labored. He cut the engine and walked up to the great lizard and patted its side, the muscle mass beneath its scales as hard as a rock.
“Hey, Stan.”
“Pete.”
Haynes surveyed the area, seeing the vast jungle foliage and a ring of distant mountains.
“It’s all right,” Stan said. “The nearest carnivore’s six miles away. I have a team tracking it. So we’re good.”
Haynes looked highly relieved, but he still had the look of weighted concern on his face. Though the T-Rex was not the star of the parade, it had a key role in the show. Everybody knew what a T-Rex was, what it could do. It was quick and fleeting and deadly, but was second string to the Spinosaurus, a much larger creature. This T-Rex, however, was much smaller than a full-sized adult, a juvenile.
“I assume this is on a high-end sedative?” Haynes asked.
Tremblay nodded. “No. She’s down because she’s dying. No power left. She’ll be gone in an hour or two. She may even pass while you’re standing here.”
When Haynes was running his hand along her snout, he noted the heavy bacterial slime sitting along the gum line and at the corners of her lips. It even started to ooze from the wells of her eyes. “We have to do something,” Haynes said. “We need to clear whatever this is up, and we need to do it as soon as possible.”
“We’re trying,” said Stan. “Got the best virologists that money can buy on the job. But this isn’t going to be a quick and easy fix, Pete. In fact, I’m requesting that future productions be postponed and the animals be quarantined until we get a handle on this.”
“No way,” he returned immediately. “No frigging way.”
“If we don’t and this continues to spread at such a rapid rate as it is, you could wind up with nothing left alive by the end of the month.”
“All I need is two, maybe three days,” he said, getting back into his Jeep. “These clowns I got running around out there r
ight now won’t last more the day or two. Can we hold out that long? A day or two?” He started the engine.
“Yeah, I think so,” he said. “We’ll keep an eye on those who’ll come to feed on her. But so that you’ll understand, those who do will have to be put down in order to contain the spread of the disease. You good with that?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Even if it’s a Spinosaurus that comes a calling?”
Haynes gave him a hard stare. “Earn your money, Doc. I want this cleaned up. How many Rexes do we have?”
“Plenty. No worries there.”
“And Spinos?”
“Six. But they’re on the other side of the valley. Let’s hope that the smell of her carcass draws the Carnotauruses. Those herds need to be thinned out anyway.”
“I’ll have the choppers herd them to this location,” Haynes told him. “They’ll clean this mess up in a couple of hours.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“And find a serum for that virus, Stan. And I mean like yesterday.”
“Like I said—”
“I know, I know. You already have the best virologists on the job, the best money can buy.”
“You got it.”
Haynes shook his head, set the Jeep in gear, and headed to the station’s bunker which sat right in the heart of the valley, and less than a mile away.
Chapter Twenty-One
Now what do we do? It was a question on everyone’s mind.
Now that the map was gone.
What . . . do we . . . do?
“We keep going,” Ben said, as if he could read the thoughts of others, assuring them that this was by no means an end. “We keep going.”
Spirits were deflated, and hopes were fading. Ben could clearly hear it in the measure of their voices when they spoke.
“Go where?” asked Albright. “You know as well as I do it’s easy to get lost once you get inside a jungle thicket. You and Sommers could be cutting a circular path and we wouldn’t even know it without the map.”
