by Greig Beck
Wenton smiled. “We now have fresh meat.”
*****
“Has anyone ever eaten alligator?” Andy said between mouthfuls. “Tastes a bit like this.”
“I have,” Maggie replied. “But this is a hellova lot tougher.” She spat out a chunk she had been working in her mouth for a few minutes and it bounced away into the foliage like a rubber ball.
They had made a small fire and cut slabs from the neck of the massive worm. Michael had expected it to be sort of mushy inside, like the small ones in your garden. But this sucker was a column of solid muscle. With effort, he swallowed the last piece he had. He knew he needed the calories.
“You know, maybe there’s better cuts on the thing, and we just ate the wrong bit.” He tucked another morsel into the corner of his mouth and chewed it like a wad of tobacco.
“I’m sure it would have said the same thing about Angela,” Andy guffawed.
Angela gave him the finger, and then looked back at the huge pipe of meat hanging out of its hole. “There’s probably another 1,000 pounds of meat in there. What a waste.”
“How’s the leg?” Jane asked.
Angela reached forward to squeeze the bandages that were only slightly discolored. “Damn sore, but luckily it didn’t lacerate me too badly.”
“For now, we’ll keep the iodine up and change the bandages daily until it stops weeping,” Jane announced.
They broke camp and once again headed toward the interior. For a while, the trees started to open up, and the ground became marshy. There were low ferns and also huge living poles, a hundred feet tall and covered in bark that was like fur and with just a few stalks of green on their very tips. They soon became the dominant plant.
“The going is a little easier, but I don’t like there being so little cover for us from these damned plants,” Wenton grumbled.
“Not plants, I think. More like a type of primitive fungus,” Jane observed. She pulled the frond she had on her head down a little more. “And I would suggest you guys get some more sunshades out of anything you can find. That’s radiation you can feel on your skin, and not solar radiation.”
“Oh freaking great,” Maggie scoffed. “You sure know how to show a freckled girl a good time, Harry.”
Wenton grinned. “I do my best.”
Michel held up his hand and the group paused. He slowly tilted his head for a moment.
“What is it?” Andy whispered.
Michael continued to concentrate. He could feel it right up his legs—a shaking, not like an earth tremor, but slow and rhythmic. He began to hear it then; a thunderous sound that shook the earth and made the puddles at his feet shimmer with impact ripples.
He turned. “Take cover.”
The group scrambled to find some sort of shelter or concealment. They hunkered down, waiting.
Michael placed a hand against the nub of a rock sticking up from the marshy landscape. As he crouched there, he saw what looked like tadpoles flicking about in the small pools.
Good to see a few more of you made it, he thought. It comforted him seeing something else recognizable so far from home.
Jane came and joined him under the fronds of a low palm and the pair then lay belly down in the muddy water.
They all heard it then: the thunder-like pounding, followed by the splintering of wood and then from their east, trees started to fall and thump to the ground.
From out of the jungle, came a mountainous creature.
“Oh my dear God,” Jane whispered.
The thing was easily 100 feet tall, and twice that in length. The neck was long and covered in over-locking plates that also ran down over its shoulders and flanks. The nubs of false wings were tightly folded on its back, and its six legs were each as thick around as redwood trees.
The colossal creature paused to lower its head, and the group could see compound eyes that were an iridescent green and the size of wagon wheels. There were tiny feeder arms on each side of its mouth, and they plucked at a tree and sucked in every bit of green into mouthparts that worked like machines, churning, cutting, and grinding up the tough fronds.
The neck lifted again, and the plates made a sliding scraping sound over each other.
“Herbivore, thank God,” Jane said softly.
The creature lifted its head high and then made a deep trumpeting sound. Perhaps it was the all-clear as from behind it more titanic beasts pushed out of the jungle.
“Just like the massive sauropod dinosaurs,” she said. “In fact, these are probably their arthropod equivalents.”
The herd beasts, once fully revealed, showed huge blotches of muddy brown and some of the darkest purple. On the end of their feet instead of the stump-like feet of elephantine columns, they had claws that looked capable of grasping things if need be.
On their backs, tiny flying creatures landed and they squabbled over some sort of vermin they caught there. The massive insectoids probably never even noticed the flying creatures were there. Or perhaps they did and approved of them ridding their bodies of annoying parasites they could never hope to reach.
“Thunder lizards, they used to call the most massive dinosaurs,” Michael said as the ground shook as the massive creatures began to pass by them.
“Thunder bugs?” Jane replied.
Michael went to stand to get a better look, but Jane grabbed his arm. “Stay down. They’ve got young, and sometimes carnivores follow big herds—like lions follow elephants.”
Sure enough, once the first creature had begun to enter into the far tree line, from behind them came the first of the predators.
They looked tiny compared to the huge beasts, but they were easily 20 feet tall and up on their back four legs. These things were striped like tigers, and Michael remembered Jane talking about concurrent evolution, and it was obvious these hunters were built for speed and for jungle camouflage.
They had long faces, snouts that were filled with teeth of a bony material and not embedded in jaws, but rather set into their external exoskeleton like cutting shears. Michael had no doubt they could cut through the toughest of arthropod armor plating, so humans would be like soft candy to them.
He held his breath as the pack came out of the tree line and a few stopped to lift their heads and test the air. Eyes on long tendrils moved independently, and he bet their vision might have extended to infrared and thermal. He just hoped the ambient warmth was enough to mask the human’s body heat profiles in their concealment.
There came the deep trumpeting of the herd leader of the titans that was answered by the softer sounds of the smaller creatures, the young probably, and the predators took that as a cue, put their heads down, and ran, blindingly fast into the jungle in pursuit.
“Like Angela said, we’re the bugs here,” Jane whispered.
Michael blew air between his lips. They stayed hunkered down for another 10 minutes, but nothing else came out of the jungle. Michael waved his arm in the air, and they crouch-ran to the forest line, quickly vanishing into the humid shade of the massive pad-like fronds.
Michael felt a sinking feeling in his stomach when he noticed Angela had begun to limp. Plus, her wound was leaking—not blood, but something repellently yellow.
Infection, his mind lamented. And he knew they didn’t have the medicine to treat it.
To her credit, Angela marched on, and it was still another hot and exhausting hour before they finally broke free of the jungle. Before them lay two very different paths forward—one a huge expanse of water and the other, closer, a plane, devoid of life and strangely shimmering in the red heat. And beyond that, rising like a geological colossus, was their goal.
“The column mountain. Just like you promised,” Wenton said. “So that’s what your Russian friend meant.”
Just visible, rising up in the far distance, was a huge geological formation that literally touched the boiling red sky. It was many miles around at its base and the cone-shaped mega-mountain kept steepening until it formed a huge column of r
ock that touched the ceiling.
“Somewhere around that, on that, or in that thing, might be the pathway we seek, and perhaps our best hope for getting home,” Michael said. “All we need to do is get to it.”
“Easy choice. The shortest path is across that plane. It only looks to be a little over a mile, and then just a few more miles of jungle beyond that.” Wenton turned his head slowly as he studied the open space. “Looks the least dangerous, and we can cross that open area at a jog in a few hours, even with our injuries.” He glanced briefly at Angela.
“No, it’s not as straightforward as it seems. There was something Katya mentioned about that plane.” Michael quickly retrieved Katya’s notebook and flipped through pages.
He stopped and ran a finger down the scribbled notes for a few moments before looking up. “Razdavit’ zemlyu—crush land.” He lifted his chin higher, squinting up at the red ceiling miles above them. “And that might be it. Look.”
Overhead was a black dot on the red ceiling. It looked to be only the size of a pea, but Michael was sure that up close it’d be hundreds of feet across, and it was hanging directly over the empty, lifeless plane.
He read some more. “Katya said the plane can be crossed, but only once a month it is safe. At all other times, it is deadly.”
“I have no idea what that even begins to mean,” Jamison said.
“Neither do I, but I can hazard a guess,” Jane said and placed a hand over her eyes to look up at the speck on the red ceiling. “The Earth’s pressure here, everywhere, should be deadly. But it’s somehow mitigated by the gravity wells, and also I think by the volcanic glass shield overhead. That dot we see might be an area where there is a solid ball of matter, probably a super-dense iron-based composition that is allowing the gravity to be focused, like a lens, in the places directly underneath it.”
The group looked back out over the plane; the air shimmered and seemed heavy.
She waved an arm out over the flattened geography. “Notice the way there is nothing above ground level—no tree, rock, or even blade of grass? Everything there is super compressed and pounded down. I assume if you tried to cross it, you’d end up the same.”
“But Katya said it can be crossed, but only once a month it becomes safe,” Andy replied. “How? When?”
“What’s the one thing that happens once a month that affects our gravity and even pulls hard enough to affect our oceans?” Michael asked.
“The moon,” Maggie answered.
Michael nodded. “My money is on the gravitational pull of the moon, somehow dragging those iron-based focal points back just enough to reduce the gravity concentration.”
“By how much?” Jamison asked.
“Does it matter?” Jane shrugged. “If it’s ten-times normal gravity, or a thousand times? Look at the plane—everything out there is pounded to nothingness.”
Andy bent to pick up a fist-sized rock, cocked his arm, and threw it with all his might. The rock sailed toward the plane, and when it arrived at the edge, it simply vanished.
“Where’d it go?” he asked. “Did anyone see it?”
“Atomised,” Jane said. “Pounded down so hard and fast, it was crushed to dust.”
“Ouch,” Andy acknowledged.
“So, when is the next full moon?” Wenton asked.
“By my calculations, there’s no full moon due for weeks. We can’t risk it.” Michael turned away. “So, what else have we got?”
“Then we have two options.” Wenton held up two fingers and curled one of them. “Option one, we go around the outside of the lake and spend maybe a week doing it. Plus expend a lot of energy unnecessarily.” He curled his other finger. “Option two, we sail across in a direct line, as the crow flies. Save ourselves days.”
Andy laughed but with little humor. “Listen, buddy. I was nearly made fish food by some armor-plated monster from the deep that looked like a bear trap with fins. And that was when I was still on the shore. I can’t imagine what’s lurking out in the center of some giant lake in this hellhole.”
“But that was the ocean, right?” Wenton raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, it was, but he’s right, Harry,” Michael replied. “And for that matter, we got attacked just recently when we were on a raft by something that punctured the wood. Something pretty big. And that body of water wasn’t very large.” He pointed. “Look at the size of this so-called lake. I can’t even see the other side. It’s more an inland sea.” He dropped his arm. “Big lakes, mean big lake occupants.”
“Risk verse return,” Wenton replied. “Look at us. We’re dressed in rags now. Angela there has a festering wound on her leg that no one wants to talk about.”
“I’m fine,” she protested.
“Of course you are.” Wenton half-bowed. “I’ll pretend not to see you hobbling along as well. And when your leg starts to smell and attracts the carnivores, I’ll simply look the other way.”
“You’re a real asshole, Wenton,” Andy spat.
“Perhaps, but an asshole who tells the truth.” Wenton folded his arms. “Will you at least hear me out?”
“Piss off.” Andy jabbed a finger toward Harry Wenton’s face.
Michael grabbed Andy’s arm and pulled him back a step. “All plans and suggestions are listened to. Go ahead.”
“Thank you.” He briefly smirked at Andy. “Let’s examine your previous effort.” He held up his first finger. “Your raft was vulnerable because it was small. So, we make a bigger, sturdier raft. You were vulnerable because you were slow, so we make something faster. And finally, you were vulnerable because you didn’t have proper weapons. We now have a gun.”
“We have a handgun that looks like it’s probably a 9mm. It’ll be a pea-shooter against a real monster. You did see that thing that made the ground shake a while back, didn’t you?” Andy shook his head. “Suicide.”
Wenton reached into his pack and pulled out the sticks of dynamite. “Oh yes, I forgot, we also have a few things that’ll blow the head off even one of those big bastards.” He briefly glanced down at Angela’s leg. “Every day, every hour counts now.”
Michael looked at Jane. She looked back at him and gave an almost imperceptible lift of an eyebrow.
“One condition.” Michael held out his hand. “I take the dynamite.”
“One other condition.” Wenton smiled. “Joint expedition naming.”
Michael began to laugh. “You never give up, do you?”
“No, and I never will.” He held up the dynamite—there were two sticks of dynamite plus several quarter sticks. “And we share them equally. Do we have a deal?”
“Deal.” Michael took half the dynamite and stuck it in his pack.
“Ah, shit,” Andy cursed and stomped away.
“Andy.” Michael followed him, and when he got close, the young caver spun back.
“I don’t trust that asshole.”
“Neither do I,” Michael said. “But you know as well as I do that Angela’s leg is infected. We spend another week pushing through a humid jungle, and she’ll have gangrene. It’ll stink, and then…”
Andy put a hand over his face, but Michael could see his mouth was turned down. After another moment, he nodded.
“Good man. We’ll get through this. All of us.” Michael grabbed his shoulder. “Now come on, we need strong backs as we’ve got a boat to build.”
CHAPTER 19
Bruno was a master. Turned out the Russian ex-soldier came from a boat-building family, and he had the group all squatting in a circle as he drew in the sand and explained what he wanted to create, and who would be doing what tasks.
Michael was impressed, and the Russian was delighted to have another Russian speaker in the group. He could explain the intricacies of the build and also tell his jokes that were only funny in Russian and never translated well into English. Michael noticed Wenton wasn’t too impressed by the budding relationship.
Michael thought the work would take an entire day. But that conce
pt made little sense in a world that didn’t have nights or days. But after 10 hours, the group had a rough outline of a boat with narrowing bow and stern, and a flat bottom.
It reminded Michael a little of a Viking ship in design, and there were even seats. Bruno also emulated Viking craftsmanship by drilling holes in the beams and using wooden pegs and plant resin to lock it all together. Plus, the upside of having port and starboard side gunwales was it simply felt a lot safer than a flat raft.
In addition, following him telling Bruno about the thing that punctured their boat, the Russian reinforced the bottom with an extra layer of wood.
With the boat nearly finished, they took a break, to stretch backs, bathe blistered hands, and also splash water onto their faces. Michael, Jane, and Harry Wenton stood on the shoreline and looked out over the vast expanse of water.
“Maybe this world is another planet’s hell,” Wenton said softly as the pair turned to him. He smiled. “An author by the name of Aldous Huxley said that nearly a hundred years ago. Maybe he was onto something.”
“Well, there definitely is an underworld. And right now, we’re in it,” Jane replied.
“Populated by monsters and devils, no less.” Wenton continued to watch them. “Dante with Virgil’s help ascended from Hell. They climbed all the way up from the center of the Earth.”
“After passing through the nine levels of Hell.” Jane snorted and turned back to the lake. “How many levels have we been through already?”
“I think we have a few more challenges just yet,” Wenton said.
“What’s that?” Michael put a hand over his eyes. “On the horizon?”
“I don’t know. It’s dark, touches the sky…could it be another land mass?” Jane asked.
“Could it finally be some sort of nightfall approaching?” Wenton turned. “It’s coming fast, whatever it is.”
Bruno joined them, with the others now standing just behind to watch the approaching wall of purple and grey. He made a guttural noise in his throat.
“Is storm. Big one. Might be waves with it.”
“Holy crap. I knew this place was big enough to have its own weather systems.” Andy folded his arms and watched.
