by Greig Beck
“Don’t know if anyone else noticed, but it seems that soft-bodied creatures are very popular down here.” Wenton half-smiled. “But levity aside, going in the right direction is one thing. But it’s not very advantageous if that means going the hard path. We need to get our bearings.” He looked up, and up.
Michael followed his gaze, and then nodded. “Yeah, I get it. Someone needs to climb to the top of one of these trees and let us know what…” he turned to Andy “…he sees.”
“Oh yeah, make the young, dumb but handsome guy do it.” Andy grinned. “Nah, I would have volunteered anyway.” He looked up into the high canopy. “Might even be a cool breeze and fresh air up there.”
Andy searched around until he found a fallen stump leaning up against a huge tree. He lightly walked up it, hands out, until he got to the bottom branches.
The branch was enormous and he stood with hands on hips as he looked along its length.
“We could camp up here. Out of the swamp and up from danger.” He stared upward again. “Okay, this is gonna take me a while.” He began to climb.
*****
The trunk and limbs of the tree were so huge Andy used more of his rock-climbing expertise than his tree-climbing skills.
He leaped and levered himself ever upward, and after 20 minutes was already 150 feet above the ground. He looked down and saw that the team had done what he suggested and moved to one of the broad, lower limbs for rest and security.
He craned upward again. He still had at least 200 feet to go. He knew redwoods could get up to 370 feet, but they were tall and straight, and this guy he climbed was around that height easily, but broad like some sort of massive banyan or ficus fig tree.
He went to reach out for another branch and something hissed at him, and he pulled his hand back. On the branch were crash helmet-sized beetles with glossy black bodies and red stripes. They were mostly round with smaller heads, and they reminded him of overgrown ladybeetles.
“You know, where I came from, you guys are small, friendly, and everyone loves you.”
The beetle closest to him hissed again and this time reared up, exposing wickedly sharp nippers.
“Oh, piss off.” Andy batted it away, and it fell backward off the branch and plummeted for a few dozen feet before taking flight and zooming away into the tree canopy.
He continued on, stopping several more times to ease his muscle strain and sip from his now brackish, warm canteen water. He started again and finally made it near to the top.
Andy then edged out along one of the branches as far as it would allow his weight to travel. He moved sideways, a foot at a time and held onto an overhead branch. He only stopped when the limb was creaking and bending downward.
He reached forward to open the branches and gaze out at their hidden world at the center of the Earth.
“Wow,” he whispered.
The red world stretched on until it vanished in the distance. Huge treetops with the dots of flying creatures moving in and out of the impenetrable foliage made it impossible to even see the ground in some areas.
There were pools of open water, gleaming like some sort of molten-red metal under the brilliant and bloody-colored sky. In the distance were the cones of smoking volcanoes, and also the massive column mountain that rose up above all others. It narrowed but instead of forming a cone, it continued on up and into the red ceiling.
“Bingo,” he said.
Andy tried to edge out a few more feet and dragged the branch in front of him aside a little more. He saw that the miasmic swamp they had entered ran for several miles, and there was no sign of the river that Katya and her team had taken. He wondered whether it had dried up, or as Jane suggested, over the half-century since the Russian woman had been here it had stagnated and become the swamp.
Thankfully, the densest parts of the jungle swamp didn’t seem all that big and running through them he could make out large areas where the smaller trees and grasses had been stamped down, like massive animal tracks.
He exhaled. “Not easy.” There didn’t seem any other way of crossing it other than trekking right through the heart of the miasma. It would be dangerous, energy-sapping, and inevitable if they were to get to the column mountain.
Leaves rained down on his head and he hunkered down, momentarily expecting attack. He looked up.
The tree shook and more leaves rained down on him and all around him.
“What the hell?”
Andy gripped the branch and was about to clamber back toward the central trunk, when the trees in the distance shook. Then the next one shook, and he began to get an idea of what was happening.
He waited a few more moments and then he saw it—the huge backs of a couple of the titanic insect-like sauropods moving through the jungle forest. He stared down on the things as they went to pass by within only a few hundred feet of him.
Once again on their backs were the bird-like arthropods hitching a ride—all up high and out of trouble from the swamp below.
“So you big guys are the ones making those giant animal tracks, huh?”
He watched for a few more moments as an idea began to form.
“Maybe, just maybe.”
He carefully weaved his way back to the trunk to begin the long climb down.
*****
“It can be done,” Andy announced.
“Ride on the back of the equivalent of a sauropod insect?” Wenton snorted. “Yes, sounds perfectly sane to me.”
“Go on,” Michael said.
“I noticed on their backs that the flying insects just sat there and weren’t disturbed by the giant creatures. It might not even know they’re there. Or even care.” He shrugged. “If they can do it, why can’t we?”
“Because they can fly there, and if the crap hits the fan, then they just fly away,” Maggie said. “That thing is a moving mountain.” She folded her arms. “How do we climb them, and while they’re moving? I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, but those things are enormous. We’d get crushed just trying to get close to them.”
“I’ve thought of that…we don’t climb them, we drop down on them from above. Just like the flyers.” Andy smiled. “We wait in the trees and when they go past, we drop down and join the parade.”
Michael stared out at the swampy jungle and rubbed his chin for a moment before turning back.
“Was there any sign of the river that Katya mentioned?”
“I saw there was water that might have been a river, but it was miles to the northwest. I don’t think it was the same one,” Andy replied.
Michael nodded. “So we can either slog through the swamp, or we can try and catch a ride on one of the behemoths that’s going our way.”
“Which is the greater risk?” Maggie asked.
“Both carry different risks. But the biggest separator is that if we trek through the bog, it’ll take us days. And we have no idea what’s living in those fetid pools,” Michael replied.
“Or what diseases are brewing in there,” Jane added. “I vote we ride.”
Michael turned to Wenton. “Harry, what are your thoughts?”
Wenton inhaled deeply and then let it out slowly. “If we trek through the swamp, we could die a slow and miserable death from corruption and disease, or maybe even be eaten alive. Or we ride a monster and could die from falling off the back of a beast from the Earth’s core.” He smiled. “But at least that’d be damn exciting. So, I say we ride.”
Andy rubbed his hands together. “We ride.”
Maggie tilted her head. “How do we know which tree they’ll pass underneath?”
“I saw there were huge paths cut through the forest. I think these things have been moving back and forth for years, centuries maybe. We just need to scale a tree over the trail and wait. Use the ropes to rappel down,” Andy explained.
Michael nodded. “It’ll be nice for someone or something else to do the walking for a while. Andy, find us the best tree, and then I guess we just wait.”
The group scaled to a position mid-canopy and waited for six long hours. The branches were so wide they were able to sit or lay down. Many times, they watched below as herds of creatures passed beneath them.
“My kingdom for a camera,” Jane said as she rested her chin on her hands and looked down toward the ground.
Creatures moved along the trail that defied logic, or maybe only so because they were so alien to anything they knew on the surface—long-necked things like giraffes with six legs and diamond-shaped heads. Once, a snake-like creature slithered below, black bands along all 50 feet of its length, and its large armor plates sliding smoothly over each other to make it near soundless. A small herd of spiked balls marched so tightly together at first they thought the things might be a single creature, until they broke apart to swarm around the stalk of a large palm frond.
Death was ever-present as well. A barrel-shaped creature wandered along the path, and then paused, looked like it sniffed the ground for a moment, and then backed itself into the thick foliage.
Jane could just make out its head in among the ferns and mosses as it waited. In a few more minutes, another creature sauntered along, this almost as large as the first, longer and with a whip-like tail with a wicked dagger point on the end.
When it got close to the hiding barrel-on-legs, the hiding creature shot out something like a mesh that covered the scorpion thing completely. It screamed, hissed, and struggled frantically in its confines.
In the next few seconds, Jane heard the first crackle of shell, and as the net was pulled tighter, the captured creature screamed as more of its carapace crumpled.
Inexorably, the web structure was hauled back in toward the ambush hunter, and as the net got tighter and smaller, the captured animal was crushed down to a long pipe of meat and shell fragments.
It was then fed into the maw and bite-by-bite was completely ingested. Jane shuddered, not able to stop her memory taking her back to David’s fate. She turned away.
More time passed, and it was when they began to move into their seventh hour that they first felt the tree begin to shudder.
“Heads up,” Andy said. “I think our ride is on its way.”
They moved along the branch over the trail and tied their ropes in a release knot on the limb. If everything went to plan, they’d slide down the rope, drop onto the massive animal’s back, and then tug and release their ropes so they could gather them back in.
Maggie kept her eyes on the path but spoke out of the side of her mouth. “Hey, what happens if those bird things object to us sharing their ride?”
Michael turned. “If they leave us in peace, we’ll do the same for them. If not, we kick them off.”
“Here we go.” Andy shuffled along a few more feet. “Going to pass a dozen feet out to our left. Move along, everyone.”
They did as asked, just as the trees behind them parted and the long neck carried the head through first.
“Good Lord,” Jane breathed out.
The head was easily the size of a bus and would pass within just a few feet of them. The massive eyes were made up of thousands of compound lenses that shifted in color from gold to red to emerald green.
Though it had a long snout, the mouth didn’t open with jaws, but at the end, it was a mix of cutting and grasping appendages that were constantly moving like a grasshopper. The plates on its neck looked capable of deflecting cannon fire and it was hard to imagine anything being able to worry them in this world.
“Get ready,” Michael said with his toes now right on the branch edge.
The body finally emerged from the foliage and was as wide across as half a football field. Massive plates on the broad back were actually covered in some growths that might have been shrubs or something else that had been captured as seeds and taken root on the gargantuan body. Perhaps, a little like a mollusk that hung from the undersides of the great whales.
And then it was directly below them.
“Go.” Michael jumped and began to slide down his rope.
They only had to drop a few dozen feet until they landed. Immediately, the insectoid birds squealed and squabbled for a moment, but then they simply shuffled backward toward the rear of the animal and made space for them.
One after the other, the team came down, until they were all secure and winding back in their ropes. Andy looked exhilarated and Michael gave him the thumbs up.
“Good plan.”
He grinned. “I’m not just here for my looks, you know.”
Michael turned about. “This’ll do.” Their living platform was stable, and given the slow and ponderous gait, didn’t create a threat that they could be shaken off.
Jane walked about for a moment, then stopped and tilted her head. “He-eeey, listen.”
The group quietened and watched her, perhaps expecting some approaching menace.
Jane smiled. “Hear it? That’s breathing.”
“So?” Maggie shrugged. “Of course they’re breathing.”
“No, not with lungs like this.” Jane got down on all fours and placed her ear to the thing’s back. “Bugs got big during primordial Earth’s carboniferous period because there were higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere.” She straightened to her knees. “They needed it because they don’t have lungs. Instead, they took in air via a series of openings on their bodies called spiracles, which connect directly to the tissues that need oxygen. But as soon as the oxygen levels of the planet dropped, the giant insects vanished.”
“But these guys have grown lungs?” Andy asked. “Or is the oxygen level high down here?”
“Oxygen level seems normal. Otherwise, we’d have blacked out long ago.” Jane got to her feet and dusted off her hands. “They must have evolved better breathing mechanisms. It’s the only way they could have got so big.”
“What else could they have evolved?” Wenton asked.
Jane turned. “Other than gigantism? Maybe longer life spans, intelligence, perhaps things we can’t even comprehend.”
“And now we’re the tiny parasites hitching a ride on the back of them, the giants,” Wenton snorted.
“Nice thought. I think I want to go home now.” Maggie walked closer to the edge of the joined thorax and abdomen. They were at least 100 feet up from the ground. “Speaking of that, just how do we get down?” she asked.
“Yeah, and when do we get down?” Andy added.
Michael chuckled. “We get down when big boy here decides to go in a direction we don’t want to go. And as for how we get down, I’m thinking it might be the same way we got on—we lasso a branch and swing off and into a tree.”
Maggie looked around. “Amazing. If this thing wasn’t moving, I’d think we were on the ground.”
Michael knew what she meant—there were shrubs, some patches of grass, and even some small pools of water.
“Dust, debris, and leaves fell onto its back and became trapped. Then they broke down to make soil,” Jane said. “Add in a few wind-blown seeds, and voila, you have a mini ecology springing up.” She smiled. “And a mobile one.”
“Well…” Michael sat with his back against a lump of armored shell, “…we’ve got miles to go, so let’s rest while we can.”
Wenton did the same and placed a rag over his eyes. He sighed and clasped fingers over his stomach. “This is more like it.” In another moment, he was snoring.
CHAPTER 22
Earthquake, he thought, and came immediately awake. Michael sat up, arms out to each side of him, and felt disorientated for a moment. It took him a few seconds to work out where he was.
Then he saw the huge trees moving past and remembered—still on the back of the land leviathan.
Jane, Maggie, and Andy were also awake now, and only Wenton continued to sleep soundly.
“What’s going on?” Andy asked and got to his feet. He carefully walked to the edge of the creature’s back, arms held like a tightrope walker and knees bent to keep his balance.
“Be careful. This thing has sped up f
or some reason.” Michael also got to his feet.
“Hey, where’d our flying buddies go?” Andy pointed to the now vacant rear of the thing, where the flock of giant bird-like insects had once congregated.
Now, they were alone; while they were sleeping, the avians had taken to the air or the branches close by.
“What do they know that we don’t?” Jane asked.
Michael moved as far to the front of the massive insectoid beast as he could, that was just before the trunk of the neck, which was now leaning forward as it gathered speed.
He could see nothing out front and he turned. “Andy, anything behind us?”
Andy jogged to the rear of the beast, and in a few seconds, he was back. “Yeah, danger. A pack of animals that look like a cross between a praying mantis and a Tyrannosaurus rex are chasing our ride.”
“Can they get up here?” Maggie asked.
“They’re big, but not that big. I think we’re okay for now,” Andy replied.
The creature they were riding smashed into a tree and they were thrown down. It was only through luck that none of them had been close to a side or they’d be thrown off.
“This thing is panicking,” Michael said. “Somebody wake Wenton. We need to be ready for anything.”
Previously, the huge beast had been moving at around four miles per hour, or walking speed. But now it careened at 20 easily, and though this seemed still insignificant, when you coupled that sort of speed with something that must have weighed a hundred tons, it was terrifying.
“It can’t keep this speed up—it must tire soon,” Jane said. “Plus, we seem to be moving uphill.”
“Then what?” Andy asked. “There was about a dozen of those predator things. I don’t think they could bring this big guy down or leap up here, but no one is sure they won’t try and take a leap.”
“Maybe that’s what the flying things were afraid of,” Maggie said softly.
The forest started to thin out and Michael could begin to see what was coming up ahead of them. Behind him, Wenton staggered forward.
“Dynamite them,” Wenton said groggily.
