by Greig Beck
Michael answered. “Yeah, first, catch your rabbit.”
“Step one; we need a dam,” Jane said.
The group set about pushing sand across the stream to create a small blockage. The flow wasn’t too great, but soon the end of the stream filled to create a pond, and the fish congregated in the deepening water.
Angela stood at the stream’s beginning to keep watch, just in case anything weird showed up while Michael, Andy, and David formed a line to walk down the waterway herding the sprats toward Angela who had laid out one of her spare T-shirts that was a lightweight, synthetic mesh design.
Finger-length fish began to hop and jump as they crowded together. Angela held the makeshift net down.
“3, 2, 1… now!” She jerked her net up.
She hoisted it out of the water, netting about 50 of the small sprats. She closed the end in her fist, placing her other hand underneath the bag of live fish.
“Sushi is served.” She grinned.
In a few minutes, the group sat with their backs to the cliff face, each with a handful of live fish, eating them like popcorn.
“Needs some soy and perhaps a little wasabi,” Andy commented.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” David replied. “Hey, we’ve been here little more than an hour and already we’re eating the locals.” He scoffed. “Look out, innocent new world, the top of the food chain has just arrived.”
“You saw that thing that tried to eat me, right?” Andy chuckled, tossed the last fish into his mouth, chewed, swallowed, and then wiped his hands. “Hey, should we grab some more fish, you know, for after?”
Michael shook his head. “No, if we need to, we can come back, but I’m betting there’s more game in the forest valley.”
“We should release the dam, and at least try and leave everything as we found it,” Jane said.
“Fine with me,” Michael said.
Andy and Jane set to opening the dam and letting the water flow again. She noticed the fish swam hard to push against the increased flow and she guessed to stay in the safety of the tiny river and not be washed out into the ocean.
I’d be the same little fish, she thought. Stay safe in here and avoid us big two-legged apes as well.
“Hurry it up there,” Michael said impatiently.
“Done.” Jane slapped her hands together, wiping away excess sand.
They set off again, walking in a tight bunch. But as Michael and David led them out, Angela was tasked with keeping an eye on the ocean, and Jane on the huge cliff face to their left, while Andy’s job was to make sure nothing crept up from behind them.
It took them another hour to cautiously close in on the huge valley-like tear in the cliff wall. Spilling out were monstrously huge plants, all the way down to the dark sand.
They kept close to the rock face and slowed as the sounds of life emanated all the way down the beach.
“Sounds like a jungle,” David said.
“Looks like a jungle,” Angela added.
“Everything is so big,” Jane observed. “Remember the placoderm? It’s like everything here is on a different scale.”
Michael shielded his eyes and looked upward for a moment. “Maybe it’s the perpetual light. There’s no nighttime, so the plants continue to benefit from the light and heat. Maybe the animals are the same.”
Something about that statement triggered a small feeling of unease within Jane and try as she might to understand why, her brain refused to provide any more answers. It’ll come to me later, she thought.
“Should we go in?” Angela asked.
“Show of hands?” Michael grinned.
“Yep,” Andy responded.
“Will it be safe?” Angela asked.
“Probably not,” David replied.
“Still yes.” Andy kept his hand up.
“Reminds me a little of Sumatra. I was there a few years ago doing some medical charity work. Very primitive.” David’s lips pressed flat for a moment. “There’s tigers in Sumatra. Just a thought, but except for bolt guns, we’re unarmed.”
“It’s not tigers I’m worried about,” Jane said.
Angela frowned. “Then what?”
“She doesn’t know—how could she?” Michael scowled. “Stop scaring everyone, Jane.”
Jane scoffed. “No, you’re right, I don’t know. But Katya does. What did she have to say? Read her diary notes, Michael.”
The sound was faint, but it traveled along the beach in a rolling wave.
“What was that? Was that a voice?” Angela said. “Where did it come from?”
“Behind us,” Andy said, squinting into the distance.
“Sounded like a yell, from a man.” David looked up at the towering cliffs and then back along the beach. “Could there be people down here?”
“Interesting question,” Michael said and turned to Jane.
“Maybe, but what would they be like?” Jane replied.
The group stared back along the beach for another few minutes but the sounds weren’t repeated.
“Could have been a hundred things, or nothing. We don’t know what the normal sounds of this place are yet,” Michael said and turned away. “We’re wasting time. We go into the jungle, find food and shelter, and when we’re rested, I’ll read the diary this evening.” He chuckled. “Well, there’s no evening, but I’ll read it in a few hours’ time. Deal?”
Jane took one last glance back down the beach but then nodded slowly. After all, she knew that if Michael wanted to, he could just make something up while pretending to read it. How would they know, as none of them read Russian? She looked at him for a moment. Nah, he wouldn’t do that, she thought.
“Fine,” she said.
“Good. Same formation as before, we stay low and quiet. David gets the honors to lead us in.” Michael turned back. “Soft voices and careful steps. Let’s do this.”
He led them closer until they came to the opening in the cliff wall. The group stopped, crouched behind an outcrop of broken rock, and just stared.
“Wow,” Michael whispered, his eyes glassy.
Jane also felt a swell of excitement in her chest as she stared. The crack in the cliff wall was only a half-mile or so wide, but deeper inside, the valley opened out, and the jungle continued on for as far as the eye could see.
Jane leaned forward on the stone and placed a hand at her brow. She saw there was a low mist clinging to the tops of the towering trees and also curling in among the lower boughs. Near ground level were huge palm fronds, some as large as sedans, and they all combined with the boiling ceiling to give a reddish-tinged twilight onto the forest floor.
“I don’t even know what those are,” Jane breathed out.
Tall plants rose on straight trunks, looking like stalks of asparagus with spiked heads and rising a hundred feet in the air. There were also primitive-looking trees with spreading limbs like monstrous banyans and were a hundred feet around at the trunk. Things like orange bead curtains were strung across some of the lower branches that could have been fruits or seeds.
Jane lifted her gaze. Above her, in their massive canopies, things rustled leaves or flitted from branch to branch, some on wings and some leaping madly about.
“Holy shit, it’s all massive. Like a giant’s kingdom,” Andy said.
“Yes, it is.” Michael smiled and nodded. “And it’s all ours.”
“Ours?” David grinned.
“Yeah, why not? Under UN conventions, nations can claim everything within 12 miles of their coastline as territorial waters. But none of them can with this place as it’s 6,000 miles from anywhere. It’s here for the taking.”
David laughed. “Looks like someone has given this some thought.”
Michael shrugged. “Like I said, why not?” He put his finger to his lips. “Quiet now. Let’s push in a little way and just watch for a while.”
They crept in and immediately were assailed with the smells as the humid air was an intoxicating bouquet of fragrances of plant re
sins, hidden blooms, and rich soil that were filled with rotting plant material, and something else that smelled of sweet almonds that was just out of sight.
The air was also crowded with the thrum of insects and though things leaped among the branches overhead, there was no bird song. However, there were rattles, clicks, and squeaks hidden within the thick foliage.
They found a tumble of boulders with vines hanging in a fringe over its front, and Michael pulled them back, staring inside for a moment before waving the group in.
They huddled there, peering out and watching the strange new world with a mixture of awe and excitement. Jane looked at their faces and remembered David’s comment about them being top of the food chain; in reality, they were little more than a tiny band of hairless primates, a long way from home.
CHAPTER 15
Harry Wenton was first to land and rolled for a while before coming up on his hands and knees. He was disorientated, giddy, and also in disbelief of what they had achieved.
The rest of his group crashed down around him; Maggie first, then Jamison, and finally Bruno, the heaviest, coming in on his belly, striking hard and bouncing twice. He grunted each time in pain.
Haven’t you ever heard of tuck and roll? Wenton thought and got slowly to his feet. He turned. “Hey, there’s light.”
Maggie groaned and rose behind him, and Jamison still sat rubbing his face. They had been traveling non-stop for over 30 hours, and frankly, they were flying blind. It was a leap of faith, as he had no way of knowing where they would end up.
For all he knew, they were drifting straight to some lower chamber in the bowels of the Earth or perhaps even the Earth’s molten core itself. He snorted; at least it would have been a quick death.
Smaller rocks and other debris followed them, with some crashing into the wall, and either floating or dropping to the ground. Someone must have dislodged it when they departed, he thought and cast a glance at Bruno’s large boots.
He approached the columns barring the end of the cave and climbed up on one’s base to hang from its side and stare out.
“Holy shit. That bastard Monroe must have known about this all along. No wonder he was so secretive.” He clapped his hands once and began to laugh. “It’s a whole new goddamn world out there.” Without waiting, he climbed through and jogged a few paces down along the black sand.
“There are tracks.” He followed them for a while.
“Why is everything red?” Maggie called from the cave.
Wenton placed a hand over his eyes to shield them and looked up. “It’s some sort of fusion light up there—yes, red, and damned hot.”
Maggie climbed out to join him. She walked open-mouthed down the dark sand. “It’s an ocean. At the center of the Earth.” She turned about. “Am I still lying in some cave, unconscious?”
“Then I am too.” Wenton smiled.
“It’s enormous. It’s not just a cave—it’s a world.” She reached down to grab a handful of sand, seeming to only want to hold it to prove it had physical substance and was real. She squeezed it, eliciting a squeak of dry sand crystals.
“Then we’re all in the same dream.” Jamison put his hands on his hips and gazed out at the red-tinged water. “You know, many people actually thought this might be real. And we’ve just proved it is.”
“But we’re not the first.” Wenton pointed at the tracks leading along the sand. “Monroe and his team went that way, and I don’t think they’re too far ahead.”
“So they got here first,” Maggie noted. “There go your naming rights.”
Wenton shrugged and his mouth momentarily turned down. “We arrived around the same time. I’m sure when we meet them, it’ll be agreed it is a joint discovery. After all, Michael Monroe is a reasonable man. As am I.” He grinned as he arched an eyebrow. “Well, truth be known, he’s far more reasonable than I am anyway.”
Wenton then clapped his hands. “Let’s double time. I want to catch up with the old boy. First, let’s check to make sure we haven’t left anything behind.” He turned and marched back up the sand, stopping at the stalagmite barrier.
He peered in and then frowned.
Jamison looked from Wenton’s face to the interior of the cave they’d just arrived in. “What is it?”
Wenton pointed into the air about halfway up near the cave wall. “He-eeey, is that…?”
Hovering near the rock face was the boom box.
“Must have fallen in.” Jamison snorted. “Guess it wanted to come with us. Good, might come in handy.”
Out of the darkness, the huge rock came soaring toward the rock wall. In a split second, Wenton knew exactly what was about to happen.
Bruno was still gathering himself in the cave, and Wenton screamed at the man.
“Get out, get out!”
The Russian simply got to his feet and sprinted for the opening. The rest scrambled as the rock smashed into the cliff face, sandwiching the boom box between it and the stone. The dynamite did exactly what dynamite was supposed to do—it blew up…all of it.
CHAPTER 16
A light rain had begun to fall, and Jane held out a hand to catch some of the drops. After a moment, she let it trickle into her mouth—it was clean and tasteless.
“Big enough to have its own weather, but is it big enough to have its own separate continents, islands, and tides?” she asked.
A deep boom rolled across the landscape, and the group spun in its direction. No one talked for a moment as they stood listening.
“Speaking of weather, was that thunder?” Andy asked.
“Could have been. But we don’t know enough about this place to know what’s normal and what’s not yet,” David said.
Michael looked back the way they’d just come. “Thunder, rock slide, animal noise…” After a moment, he shrugged and turned away, “…who knows?”
They continued to push through the dense foliage until Jane threw her arms out.
“Shush.” Jane put a finger to her lips, and then she used it to point to a place between two palm fronds a hundred feet out to their left.
As they watched, an animal that looked a little like a stocky, three-foot-long armadillo pushed through the foliage to stop and burrow a little into the soft earth and leaf detritus.
It continued on and began to move parallel to them. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Jane whispered.
Michael spoke over his shoulder. “If you mean all those extra legs, then yeah. Is it an armadillo or not?”
“Doubtful,” she said. “I’m thinking now it’s more like some sort of big millipede.”
“A freaking insect?” Andy’s mouth dropped open. “But it looks like an animal, and it’s enormous.”
Angela wrinkled her nose. “Gross.”
As it neared them, they could see the pointed ends of the legs like spikes. What they thought originally was armadillo plating, based on hardened keratin, was actually sheets of something like overlapping shell. The underlying brown armor shone with iridescent highlights and made for excellent camouflage in among the dead wood and foliage.
“Do you think we can eat it?” David asked.
“Sure you can.” Jane grinned. “But I think I’ll wait and see if there is something a little more palatable.” She bobbed her head. “You know, this is a totally new species. Maybe we should examine it to at least document what we’re seeing down here.”
“It’s the first land creature we’ve seen, but I’m betting there’ll be a lot more. Let’s not waste time on this big guy,” Michael said. He looked around. “And after that fish attack on Andy, I’d like us to have some weapons. We should at least make some spears.”
The thing ambled a little closer, now being only a few dozen feet from them.
“Looks like a big mouse in a shell. Kinda cute.” Angela grinned.
“I say we capture it. We may not get an opportunity to catch something so easily.” David kept his eyes on the thing.
“Still thinking of your stomach
, huh?” Andy grinned.
“Jane, want me to grab it for you?” David whispered.
“Not with your bare hands…and not netting it with your underwear either.” She laughed softly. “What else have you got?”
David took off his pack. “I’ve got a spare T-shirt to wrap it in.” He drew forth the shirt. “Michael, okay?”
Michael sighed. “Okay, fine. Andy, go with him.”
David held the T-shirt in front of himself and he and Andy crept out from underneath the foliage. Around them, the jungle had gone quiet, and Jane frowned, looking about.
“I think the jungle knows we’re here,” Michael whispered.
Jane looked around slowly. “I don’t know if it’s us.” She shook her head. “Something’s wrong.”
Andy and David continued to inch forward and were now only about eight feet from the snuffling creature.
Jane’s mouth dropped open but no words would come. All she could do was point as the foliage close to the men moved—a creature, green, and standing about eight feet tall, lunged forward, impaling the millipede-mouse thing with two long, spiked arms.
The smaller creature squealed and thrashed as dark blood welled up. Even now revealed, the predator’s camouflage was so good its shape was still hard to fully discern. But of what they could see, it was an upright-standing thing on four large legs at the rear and two held out in front.
The head swiveled to the two men, and both Andy and David froze. For one second, Jane thought it might have been contemplating discarding the bug for one of the humans, but perhaps it was also just as surprised by the strange new creatures as they were of it.
It turned back to the thrashing millipede and lifted it to its mouth. Long jaws opened and glass-clear, backward-curving teeth were revealed. It crunched down on the smaller creature’s head, instantly shutting off its squeals.
It stopped its meal to take one last look at David and Andy and then vanished into the foliage.
The pair of men scurried back to the group, and when he arrived, Andy bent over, hands on knees and gulping air.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” he said.
