The Valley

by Rick Jones

  Haynes got to his feet just as the massive head struck forward as quickly as a serpent’s strike, its teeth grabbing onto the backrest of the chair Haynes surrendered less than a second before, and mangled it, the chair coming apart as loosely as if it had been pieced together with dried kindle.

  Casting the chair aside, the beast rose onto the desk, dwarfing it, the creature showing ten of its twenty-five feet. Its muscles were thick, strong. Its tongue continued to lash about, getting its focus, its sight poor, but its other senses were so sharp that it was able to pinpoint prey down to a dime-spot of where it stood.

  It climbed over the desk, the beast impossibly large, like a python whose body continues to slither endlessly over terrain until the tapered point of its tail is finally seen.

  “Stay away from its mouth!” cried the co-producer.

  Haynes looked at him with a dumbfounded look. No shit!

  “Its saliva is like venom and is highly toxic. One drop of its saliva will paralyze and make you sick. Anything above that will probably kill you.”

  That! Haynes didn’t know.

  The creature slithered over the desk and knocked aside large pieces of equipment, as if they were weightless. It moved its head from one side to the next, sensing more than one.

  Yakamoto flanked it, as did Ben, with their machetes ready.

  Ben called out to Albright. “Take it,” he said.

  Albright raised his firearm, took aim, and hesitated.

  “What they hell are you waiting for?” yelled Cheryl.

  The creature seemed to be growing anxious.

  “Albright!”

  He pulled the trigger in quick succession, the muzzle flashes lighting up the room. The bullets punched into its skull and dulled its movements for a moment, the creature stunned from its wounds as it tried to come back against the assault. And then Yakamoto moved in, hacking and swinging with perfected skill from all those years of training with a katana. Ben joined him from the other side, driving the blade deep, over and over and over.

  Until the creature was finally stilled.

  Deep gashes lined its hide, the tears showing muscle and organs underneath as its tongue lolled against the floor, the sensory organ now useless.

  Albright took a quick mental calculation. He had used five bullets since entering, leaving him with nine shots. He tucked the gun behind the waistband at the small of his back.

  “All right,” said Ben, taking in gasps of air. “We leave the way we came in. We go north. Haynes.” Their eyes connected. “I wish you luck,” he told him. “You want to stay with this.” He pointed to the Prisca. “Enjoy.”

  “Are you kidding?” he returned sharply. “I’m not staying here. You guys must be out of your mind if you think I’m not tagging along.”

  Ben shot off a quizzical look. “What?”

  “I changed my mind,” he said. “In fact, I’ll lead the charge.” Haynes then took off for the entrance leading to the main door that led to the motor pool.

  “Haynes, slow down!”

  But the man was driven by panic. As he opened the door and stepped into the hallway, he walked into something quite large.

  And something very much alive.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Stan Tremblay was a big man standing six-five and weighing in at two-sixty. Not muscle, but not fat, either. He maneuvered through the thin corridors, those hardly taken by staff, toward the studio.

  The lights in the hallways were getting dimmer, the power of the generators fading much faster than they should have been. The equipment was of poor quality, the studio execs banking on the facilities durability the same way the execs believed that the Titanic was unsinkable. They placed all of their money in production costs, and hardly anything at all into the base construction. And Stan shook his head, telling himself that things would never change as long as those in position continued to see things in terms of instant power and profit, rather than the staying power of longevity.

  He walked up concrete inclines, through skinny hallways almost shoulder to shoulder to the walls, and reached the studio door. Just as he was about to grab the knob, the door whipped opened, and something was on the other side waiting for him.

  #

  Stan held his hands up in surrender as he saw Ben Peyton and Yakamoto quickly approach with machetes in their hands in defense of Peter Haynes, who stood before him with a stupidly stunned and dumbfounded look on his face.

  “Whoa-whoa-whoa,” he said, stepping through the door.

  Yakamoto and Ben lowered their weapons.

  “Name’s Stan Tremblay. Chief Biological Engineer,” he said, lowering his arms. “I hope you boys are headed toward the motor pool,” he said. “That’s our only way out.”

  “We don’t know if there’s anything left in the motor pool,” Cheryl returned. She took a few steps forward, as did the co-producer and the female gofer, keeping the group tight. “Those things were doing damage to them.”

  “All we need is one,” he said. “Though with this crowd, two would be better. Faster and more maneuverability.”

  “You sure?” asked Ben.

  Stan nodded. “They’re electric and fully charged. I make sure of that since it’s my job to travel the field a lot.”

  “Did you just say a lot?”

  Stan nodded. “I stay to the open spaces. Never close to the jungle line. These vehicles are fast and can outrun anything on two or four legs. They have a distance capacity of two hundred fifty miles on a single charge with a constant maximum speed of eighty miles an hour. The wheel base is wide to keep it from flipping on rough terrain, and the tires are heavily threaded to keep with the lifts and rolls of the landscape. If a Rex or Spino sees us, it’ll most likely give chase out of territorial obligation. But once it sees that we’re drawing distance and can’t catch up, it’ll just give up and fall back. The key is to stay away from any jungle line or copses of trees. Stay in the open as much as possible, this is optimum.”

  “So then, you know where the Gates of Freedom are?” asked Ben.

  “I can get there with my eyes closed.”

  “Then you’re our man.”

  Stan nodded. “The gates are twenty miles north of our position,” he said. “But with all the jungles and tree lines, the course is not a direct one. We need to steer clear of them and wind our way through, always staying in the clear. So the twenty-mile course actually becomes more like twenty-seven. Even doing fifty-five, we can be at the gates within thirty minutes.” He looked over the crew. “But—” He cut himself short.

  “But what?”

  “There’s eight of us,” he answered. “Though a Jeep can carry eight, its listed max load is five. The added weight will only slow us down. In other words, the max speed of eighty may be reduced to sixty-five, maybe less. And this could be dangerous if we wander too deeply into Rex or Spino territory.”

  “We have to chance it,” said Yakamoto. “No matter how you look at it, it’s better than being on foot.”

  “Agreed,” said Cheryl.

  “Questions?” asked Stan.

  There were none.

  “Then follow me.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  By the time they reached topside, the Giganotosaurus was gone. The two Spinosauruses, however, remained—their carcasses lying inside the compound’s interior. One creature laid on its side, its hide blackened by the electrical charges. The other was on its belly with its neck having somewhat of a corkscrew appearance to it, the neck obviously broken.

  Tremblay took lead on this mission, knowing these creatures well.

  The Spinosauruses were huge, their immense size dwarfing the others as they made their way to the motor pool, bypassing them.

  Most of the Jeeps had been damaged beyond use, the bodies smashed and twisted, some even crushed by these creatures’ footfalls. Which was testament to their power.

  At the far end, though it had been repositioned and pushed from its designated parking spot, but still
on four wheels and possessing few dents and marginal body damage, was a Jeep that had a wide wheel base like a Humvee. It was pinned against the wall by another Jeep that was on its side, one that appeared clean with no dents or viewable damage.

  Stan walked to the Jeep on its side and ran a palm along the bumper. “We may be lucky,” he said.

  “How so?” asked Ben.

  “This Jeep looks fine. So we may have two here to work with. We just need to get her back on her wheels.”

  With group effort, they rocked the vehicle until it fell on all four wheels.

  Stan got behind the wheel, flipped a few toggles, and then pushed the ‘start’ button. The engine turned but didn’t catch, at least not in the beginning. A moment later, however, it did. The engine sounded smooth and clean. “Try the other one,” he said, pointing to the Jeep against the concrete wall.

  Haynes didn’t hesitate. He got behind the wheel, hit the toggles, and hit the ‘start’ button. The engine caught and turned over without any problem. Haynes shot him a thumbs up.

  They were good to go.

  Stan helmed the first Jeep with Ben riding shotgun, and Cheryl sitting in the back with Yakamoto. Haynes drove the second Jeep with the co-producer in the passenger seat, and the female gofer and Albright in the rear.

  Neither of the Jeeps had their canvassed roofs on, they were open.

  Stan pulled up to the second Jeep. “Follow close behind me,” he told Haynes. “Stay away from the jungle lines,” he told him. “You want to stay as close to the middle of the open spaces as possible. And be doubly cautious when we enter the Valley of Miguana.”

  Haynes nodded.

  Stan shifted, then stepped on the pedal. Haynes circled around and pulled right behind him, a small caravan, as Stan gave the downed creatures a wide berth and maneuvered around their bodies. Haynes did the same by tracing Stan’s exact route.

  And then they began to pick up speed, the Jeeps going from a speed of ten to forty miles within seconds.

  The day was clear and beautiful with a few scudding clouds. The air was not as muggy, not as soupy or thick. And the course of the breeze felt good against their skin.

  When Ben turned around, he saw Cheryl smile as the wind caused her hair to flag behind her like the whipping mane of a horse. He smiled back. Then he looked at the compound, at the creatures and the sails on their backs, everything either dead or in ruins.

  He turned back to Stan. “You warned Haynes about a valley,” he said.

  Stan nodded. “That’s right,” he returned, then pointed to an imaginary point too far for them to see. “Up ahead is a valley we need to cross in order to get to the Gates of Freedom,” he added. “It also happens to be the territory of a T-Rex, one of many in that area. He’s very smart, very big, and extremely dangerous. We named him Miguana, a mix of two words tied together: mega and iguana, Miguana.”

  “There’s no way around it?”

  “Not unless you want to travel another thirty or forty miles out of the way.” Stan pointed directly ahead of him. “You see that mountain wall directly ahead?”

  Ben did. The ring of mountains always seemed so far away during their journey across the valley, the distance impossible to cross. But this wall looked large as it loomed closer, the sped of the vehicle drawing it wonderfully close.

  “Straight ahead is the Gates to Freedom,” said Stan. “Beyond that, anywhere you want to go. You’ll be a free man, Ben. You’ll all be free. The law’s jurisdiction ends on the other side of that gate. From there you can head east to Rio and get reestablished.”

  Ben remained quiet.

  But Stan wanted to drum up conversation. “Can I ask you something?”

  Ben nodded.

  “Why are you here? What did you do?”

  Ben sighed. “I tried to help a friend,” he answered.

  “Helping a friend isn’t a crime.”

  “It is if you live in one of the Burroughs,” he returned. “I was charged with Providing Welfare in the First Degree. Apparently the law views any measure of humanity as a crime, sees it as a contributing factor to the downfall of society.”

  “What exactly was it that you did?”

  “A friend of mine lost his wife not too long ago, leaving him with two children to raise on his own. He struggled to keep them well fed, whereas before he and his wife could meet the demands to do so. So I took my commissary pay and gave him most of my food. The authorities eventually found out and took umbrage, so they charged me. They said that my friend needed to work harder and not depend on welfare because welfare breeds idleness, and idleness breeds the eventual collapse of society.”

  “Sometimes the law isn’t always just.”

  “You’re telling me?”

  “What about the two behind us?”

  “Cheryl was wrongfully accused. She doesn’t belong here.”

  “And the other guy?’

  “He’s yakuza. An assassin.”

  “So he does belong here.”

  “No one deserves to be here,” said Ben. “This abomination of a reality show illustrates just how inhumane we’ve become over the years, how far we’ve fallen. There are good people fighting for their lives out here for the sake of entertainment. And those like Peter Haynes are a classic example of people who are at their worst, the inhuman condition of man.”

  “That’s a low opinion.”

  “People like him aren’t driven by compassion, but by power and profit. He’ll be back.”

  “Yes and no,” Stan replied. “He’ll be back, but not at this venue.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The creatures in the valley are dying. There’s a deadly virus that’s spreading, one with a mortality rate of one hundred percent. Within six months, these creatures will be gone. I’d like to think of it as nature’s way of saying that they had their time, and that nature itself is rebalancing the books. And she’s doing it by another—but smaller—extinction event using a microbe that’s a billionth of their size.”

  “Nature is perfect, isn’t she?’

  Stan smiled. “That she is.”

  They continued on, taking the rises and dips in the valley easily, and steering clear of the jungle lines. They meandered a little to the west, then redirected to the east, taking what the valley offered them. They passed herbivores, who gave little indication that they were interested in the Jeeps. And distant carnivores looked on as well, but with fleeting curiosity before they turned their attentions elsewhere.

  As the lead Jeep crested the final ridge, Stan stopped.

  There were two stretches of jungles about three miles ahead. One to the east, the other to the west, with a single lane of openness running between them like a four-lane highway.

  Approximately three miles beyond that, the Gates of Freedom.

  Stan appraised the area carefully, looking for anything to give something away in the brush, like the telltale sign of a moving palm fan, the rustle of treetops, or the sudden flight of birds from the boughs of trees.

  He saw nothing.

  But that didn’t quell his suspicions any less.

  This was the Valley of Miguana.

  The lane that divided the jungle territories was thin, about sixty yards wide for two miles between the jungles on the left and right.

  Unlike most creatures who tracked down their prey with speed, Miguana was different. Certain cats and canines adopted a form of the hunt by driving its prey into an awaiting group of hunters. And despite the fallacy that dinosaurs were solitary creatures, they were not. They lived so successfully because they lived in community herds and nurtured their young. And driving quarry forward to the awaiting jaws of kin was nothing new, but a form of the hunt that had been wired into these creatures hundreds of millions of years ago.

  Miguana, in fact, excelled at this maneuver, the creature hiding in the brush, and waiting.

  Stan could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rise the same way that a dog senses great danger.

&n
bsp; “Something wrong?” asked Yakamoto.

  “Just being cautious,” Stan returned.

  Then from the Jeep behind them. “What the Hell are you waiting for?” It was Haynes.

  Stan called out to him over his shoulder. “You follow me, you hear? You stay as close to the center of the divide as possible—far from the tree lines.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Whatever.”

  “You see something, don’t you?” Cheryl asked him.

  “Actually, I don’t. And that’s what scares me. It’s a little too quiet.”

  Some birds in the distance did take flight, but more in leisure than in panic.

  Stan shifted into gear, pressed the pedal, the Jeep picking up speed as it went from twenty to forty, from forty to sixty, sixty to seventy, the pedal to the floor as the jungles on both sides of them approached at a blur.

  “Hang on!” cried Stan.

  They reached the small opening of the lane that divided the jungles.

  Jungle thicket and trees blurred on both sides of them, nothing but green.

  Up ahead, the lane pinched thin like the chokepoint of an hourglass before spreading back into a wider lane, a danger spot Miguana would surely exploit as a superior hunter.

  Stan maintained his sped, the vehicle moving at maximum velocity.

  Just before he reached the chokepoint, birds took flight from several neighboring trees as something large emerged from the jungle line. The T-Rex was massive, its head, jaws and well- defined body of muscle making it the king of kings in its day.

  It drew a bead on the first Jeep, roared, then bellow a cry to the others in its herd, telling them that the hunt was on.

  Others merged from the heavy thicket, those not as large, but still intimidating.

  Stan maneuvered his vehicle to the right and away from Miguana, the creature dipping its massive head low to the ground and giving chase, snapping its jaws.

  It closed in on them from the side, the creature having the angle, and then it swung its head, the point of its heavy snout clipping and lifting the rear of the vehicle a moment before it settled back down, the tires then gripping the terrain, the Jeep racing, and then another strike, one that drove a cry from Cheryl’s throat as the vehicle once again lifted and settled, the Jeep pulling ahead of the T-Rex and creating distance.