The Found World

by Hugo Navikov

  “But, seriously, he’s not going to shoot me or Ellie.”

  The Organization man’s eye twitched and he lifted the sight of the rifle to his eye. “And why’s that?”

  “Because you owe me payment. If you kill me, everyone will know you didn’t pay up, and I’m thinking they’ll kill you because then they would know you don’t plan to pay them, either. Obviously, you’re not going to kill the doctor, the man you came so far for.” He pointed a thumb at Ellie. “And if you kill her, they’ll probably just kill you on principle.”

  Lathrop looked around: while no one actually nodded or made any sound of agreement, nobody shook their head or made any sound of disagreement, either. “Fine. Everybody lives. But I will shoot Doctor Merco in the kneecap if he doesn’t get those plans and lead us to safety. He may plan to die in three hours, but he’ll sincerely wish to be dead the instant after I shoot him there, literally the most painful spot on the human body in which to be injured.” He was the one smiling now. “And I’m going to keep him alive for weeks!”

  “You don’t understand,” Merco said, completely calmly as if he hadn’t just been threatened with torture unto death. He also hadn’t moved to collect whatever plans he had for the zero-point device ... or to do anything else, for that matter. “Everyone in this room can die. Every animal known or unknown to man on this island can die. This entire island can disappear. None of it matters in the face of ending climate change and saving the rest of humanity.”

  Lathrop laughed icily. “Oh, come now! You can’t possibly be that Pollyannaish—the politicians are going to do nothing. Or, rather, I envision them using this three-year respite from global warming to ramp up production at every factory that emits CO2 into the air, to take all mileage restrictions off automobiles, and on and on! Your mission is doomed to failure. It’s not worth losing your life over, you old fool.”

  “Like the Organization isn’t going to kill him anyway,” Brett said. Although he knew for an iron-clad fact that Lathrop was right—it just wasn’t human nature to make that kind of commitment to save the world—he stood and walked over to one of the extra weapons bags. Still under gunpoint by a gradually disbelieving Lathrop, he pulled out one of the other AK-47s. He switched off the safety and pointed it back at Lathrop, who looked like he literally thought he was dreaming. “So cut the crap. Let’s all just try to get out of here in one piece while we still can, huh? Doctor Merco, I’m sorry, man—but you have to come with us off the island. They’re paying me only if you get back to Cape Town, and I need to get paid. It’s not money, if that helps.” Why would that help? Brett thought. Whatever. Shut up. You don’t have to enjoy it.

  For the first time, Merco looked distressed. Very distressed. “B-But … w-why aren’t you shooting this malefactor?” he said to Brett while backing up into another computer station, this one with a large red plunger button on it. “You have the weapon! Why don’t you just kill him?”

  Brett knew it was desperation that drove Merco’s words, but he couldn’t help himself at this latest suggestion for him to “just” kill someone. “For one, because then I wouldn’t get paid,” he said, “and for another, because I’m not willing to be a murderer.”

  Merco placed the palm of his hand just above the red button on the desk. “No? Well, to save the world, I am,” he uttered in a suddenly distant voice. “I’m so very sorry, everyone.” Then, before Brett or any of the suddenly panicked and screaming laboratory assistants could stop him, he brought his palm down on the button.

  A klaxon sounded, loud enough to make everyone double in pain with their hands over their ears. Spinning red emergency lights threw the vast cavern’s walls and ceiling into relief, the only space not flickering with their demonic color being the brilliantly white tube of illumination belonging to the zero-point device. But the most alarming, the most horrifying result of Merco mashing whatever that big button could have been was the metal doors to every one of the imprisoned cryptids’ cages.

  The monsters had been loosed.

  “There is a direct tunnel to the marina through that door!” Merco shouted to them at the top of his lungs. “Go! Go now!”

  “You’re coming with us!” Lathrop shouted, still pointing the Kalashnikov at him. “I’ll shoot, goddamnit!”

  “I don’t doubt it!” Merco said with a huge smile—

  —and threw himself into the mouth of a hexena that was running at them. The six-legged jackal-thing didn’t stop running even as he crushed Merco’s torso between its teeth and shook him until his neck was broken and he hung there like a duck in the jaws of a hunting dog.

  “Oh, my God!” Ellie yelled, which were Brett’s sentiments exactly.

  The room had exploded into human screams and animal roars, plus the buzz of the wasp that had taken flight. It zipped all the way to the distant ceiling, then swung like a stunt pilot and dived within five feet of the floor, whereupon it hurled its stinger forward and punched it right through Flattop the commando, exploding his guts out the front of his body and covering Stefan, the camera lens, and Ravi with gore.

  “Tell me you got that,” Ravi said, and Stefan nodded with incredible happiness.

  You two are insane, Brett thought, but had to put a pin in that while he pushed Ellie out of the way of what the hell is that a freaking land shark and unloaded into it with the submachine gun. The 7.62mm rounds tore nicely through its rough hide and fin-feet, not only stopping it in its headlong rush but actually shoving it back as it tore the abominable cryptid into chunks.

  “Thanks,” Ellie said in the voice of shock.

  “Mention it,” Brett said, then yelled to the three lab assistants who were almost to the door out to the marina but were also between Brett and the two ravening velociraptors coming up from behind them, “Nerds! Get down!”

  They followed his instructions and hit the deck; the instant they were out of his line of fire, he unloaded into those fierce-but-come-on-so-clichéd dinosaurs and dropped them like sacks of corn. The lab assistants didn’t have to be told to make a run for it—they were out the door before the ringing faded in Brett’s ears.

  Now for the rest of them. Ravi and Stefan (whose camera lens was now wiped off) stood back to back, which was a good defensive move if you didn’t then completely freeze in place, like the two documentarians now had. A snake so massive it made the green anaconda look like a garden hose opened, a snake that was eight feet in diameter, slithered forward and opened its mouth to sweep them inside.

  But something little and gray flew into its mouth, causing the snake to close it instinctively. Then a very loud but muffled bang and the head burst open, its earthball-sized eyes slamming into computer monitors twenty feet away.

  Brett wiped the snake entrails out of his eyes and looked in the direction the grenade had come from: Ellie stood there, ten feet to his left, and gave him a thumbs-up. “You are bringin’ it!” he yelled to her.

  “Ain’t I, though?” she yelled back.

  Brett grabbed Ravi and Stefan by the collars and shoved them toward the exit. “Get out of here!” When they didn’t immediately run, he shouted, “What the hell are you doing? Go!”

  “But … the footage,” Stefan said.

  Brett thought his head was going to explode, but before he could scream at them, a swamp monster howled and ran for them, dragging slime behind it. The two shrieked like girls and got themselves through the door before anything else could get them. It tried to follow them out, but a line shot through the air and the grappling hook sank into the monster’s body and wrapped around one of its root vines. It was stuck.

  On the other end of the grappling hook was Crane. He tied the line off around a railing and said with a laugh, “I’m a damn good soldier, if I may say so myself,” and a Chupacabra jumped him from behind and ate his head.

  Brett dispatched it with three shots and gave the headless body of Commander Crane a nod of respect: he really was a pretty good soldier.

  It was time to get himself and Ell
ie and Lathrop out of there. And Natasha/Nadia. In fact, where is …

  He scanned the area for the table where she had been sitting. He found it, and at the same time found Nadia the Organization Connection. Her body was now on top of the table. It had been split into two messy halves, no doubt by a disagreement between the two heads of the Maltese lizard-tiger now feeding on her.

  Okay, so himself and Ellie and Lathrop. Ellie was next to him now, and he yelled, “Grab a gun bag and get out of here! I’ll be right behind you!”

  She looked at him a little askance—she knew he damn well couldn’t promise that—but nodded, ran, shot a charging Yeti right in the face, and ran some more until she passed out of sight into the escape tunnel.

  Now there was just Lathrop, who cowered under the big table on top of which the Maltese cryptid was chewing with both mouths on the corpse of Doctor Merco’s daughter. It galled him to do so, but he shot and fought his way over to Lathrop, crouching down to pull him out of there and save his rotten neck so he could pay Brett what he was owed. It wasn’t Brett’s fault that the scientist killed himself; Brett’s job was to head the expedition and, if they found him, make sure Merco was kept alive while they worked their way out of this underground world. Lathrop was going to give him the name of whoever was responsible for the murder of his family.

  “Come on, man, this place is going to blow,” Brett said, putting out his hand to help Lathrop out from under the table.

  “I’m not going anywhere, Mister Russell. I am as good as dead once the Organization learns that I failed. I might as well die less excruciatingly by staying here.”

  “Yeah, no problem. Just tell me how to get the information you have locked away in Cape Town.” A realization hit him, something he had feared all along but had to ignore: “There is no information, is there?”

  “Yes, there is, and it is safe in South Africa. Unfortunately, the secure premises’ operator will open the box only with me present. I do apologize, Mister Russell, but I’m afraid—” WHOCK! Brett popped him in the face with the butt of his AK-47, knocking him unconscious. He dragged Lathrop out and lifted him onto his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. All that was between himself and the exit to the boat now was a needle-toothed crawling merman, a dinosaur-cryptid that looked like a cross between a Stegosaurus and a Velociraptor, a cobra-like six-foot Tsuchinoko, a Zululand native walking poisonous tree called the Umdhlebi, a Wampus cat, a hippogriff with blood smeared all over its beak, and ten-foot walking bugs, twelve-foot flying bugs, and a bug so tall that its bloated body was lost in the shadows near the ceiling. How it had fit out of one of the cage doors to get into the large space was too weird to think about.

  He wished he had one of the hollowed-out wasp carcasses to conceal and protect himself as he made a run for the exit, but all he had was the guns to fend them off. But he and Lathrop were the only fresh meat still in the room, and the various creatures seemed to realize this one by one.

  He shot three different creatures, which made most every one of the others jerk a little with surprise, but it didn’t keep them back. And the third bullet didn’t startle them as much as the second, which didn’t as much as the first. He didn’t have enough bullets for them all.

  They were about to close it, and Brett wouldn’t be able to keep them away if he had unlimited bullets once they got close enough. And he couldn’t set off either kind of grenade, concussion or shrapnel, because it would go off too close to himself if the things wouldn’t let him slip by.

  Animals, cryptids, dinosaurs, and bugs, and carrying an asshole on my shoulders. This is how I’m going out. It was his usual ironic patter to himself, but he heard bug as if someone else were saying it in his ear. Bug, bug, bug … spray? There were four big canisters of the bug repellent in the weapons bags … and there were multi-purpose cigarette lighters. He hadn’t done this since he was in middle school, but he’d maybe pulling the ultimate MacGyver trick would do what bullets and grenades no longer could in this situation. You’re not afraid of bullets, he thought, but I bet you’re afraid of fire.

  Balancing the dead weight of the Organization man, he slowly went to his knees to get at the nearest equipment duffle. A couple of seconds felt like an eternity, but it took him just a couple of seconds to grab the thick can of insect repellent, grab a lighter, stand, press the spray trigger, and flick the Bic. A thick tongue of flame leapt forth, and every monster without exception leapt back in terror.

  He kept the bug spray flowing out of the can and kept the lighter flame right in front of it and he walked—quickly, but there was no way to run with a man over his shoulders while he kept the makeshift flamethrower going—right through the retreating cryptid horror show and out the tunnel. He dropped the spray can and the lighter, then, despite the load on his shoulders, ran like hell.

  ~~~

  One year later, Brett Russell sat with his wife, Ellie, in a car at Christchurch Airport on the South Island of New Zealand. They were headed to New York City for their first time back in the United States since the Great Cooling started. The global weather effect began with the supervolcanic explosion of Tristan da Cunha less than three hours after Captain Bantu got them off and away from the doomed island. Since then, The Mysterious Investigators relocated to New Zealand, which invited them after TMI broadcast some very tourism-board-friendly discoveries regarding hobbits and other Tolkien cryptids alleged to exist in the country’s mountains. That show was seen by millions, as were most episodes since TMI shared the footage from Tristan da Cunha.

  Brett stayed in New Zealand because Ellie was going to be there. It was always possible that the Organization might have spotted him there and sent a hitman or whatever they did to silence anyone they didn’t want alive, but it never happened. They might have assumed he died in the massive event, if they ever even knew that Lathrop had hired Brett, Ellie, and the rest. The Organization was sure to have seen the footage from Vulcania and known that the crew was there, but they never made the connection. Part of that might have been that Stefan meticulously edited the video so that Brett was never seen or heard or referred to at any time. Nice work, that.

  Or maybe they figured that when, six months after Tristan da Cunha, an overeager contract killer blew Lathrop’s brains out before he could be questioned (resulting in a second contract killer killing the first one), they were forced to assume Brett Russell really was dead and would never bother them again.

  If so, they figured wrong. He was alive, and he was very much going to bother them.

  “So, this is it,” Ellie said. “New York. Where … what’s his name again? I keep shutting it out of my brain.”

  He said the name.

  “God, that’s an awful name.”

  “Awful guy.”

  She nodded, a tear just forming in the corner of one eye. “Just … God, be careful. If you can be careful doing this.”

  “I’m not afraid of the Organization anymore.”

  “I know that,” she said. “But if the police catch you before you can get back home … you’ll never get back home.”

  “They won’t. I’ve got this. It’s time for that old life to be settled so our new one can start.”

  She nodded again, and they held each other for a minute before a taxi honked behind them and reminded them this was not a designated stopping zone. They kissed, then he got his bag and got out, waving to her as she pulled away.

  Then, like a blessing over the holy duty, he was traveling to perform, the news crawl over the entrance to the airport read:

  ALL NATIONS SIGN ON TO ‘ONE TIME ONLY OPPORTUNITY’ CLIMATE CHANGE DEAL

  He’d never been so glad to be wrong in his life. He took it in with a smile for a moment, then continued into the airport.

  The End

  Read on for a free sample of Jurassic Island

  CHAPTER ONE

  When he heard the high-pitched trill of the phone, Joseph Thornton sat up in bed like a vampire awakening for a night of feasting. He took a moment
to look around his bedroom, as if making sure this was really happening and that he was not dreaming. The cell phone rang again, an unfamiliar sound because this particular cell phone only rang on special occasions. Shaking his head as if to clear the sleep from it, Joseph jumped out of bed and ran to the other side of the bedroom.

  There were three cellphones sitting on his desk: one for personal use, one for business and one that he had specifically set aside for his special interests. It was this last one that was ringing now. He recognized the number on the display screen and his heart felt as if it might burst with excitement.

  With hands still partially numb from sleep, he grabbed the phone and answered the call.

  "Yeah?"

  "Mr. Thornton, I'm sorry to call at such a late hour," the man on the other line said. "But I have news that is going to make you very happy."

  "What is it?"

  "I've just sent you an e-mail to your secure account. Check it while you're on the phone with me, would you?"

  Slightly irritated that his contact would not just tell him what the news was, Joseph brought the laptop on his desk to life and logged into an e-mail account that only a handful of people knew about. He'd gone to great lengths and paid a handsome sum to ensure its security. When his inbox came up, he saw only one new mail, sent two minutes ago. The subject line read: SATELLITE IMAGE_01446. The body of the mail was empty, but there was an attachment.

  Now very much awake, Joseph opened the attachment. He couldn't make sense of what he was seeing at first, but once his eyes adjusted to the colors, his heart once again felt like it might burst.

  "What am I looking at?" Joseph asked, although he knew deep down exactly what it was; it was something he had been waiting for over the course of the last twenty years of his life.

  "Your Holy Grail," the man on the other end said. "And if I were you, I'd act quickly, Mr. Thornton. That photograph was taken less than three hours ago and was sent directly to me when my man on the inside saw it. It would likely take some time, but this will be accessible to any motivated competitors within a few hours."