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PREHISTORIC
Michael Esola
CRANE CANYON PUBLISHING
Copyright ©2015 by Michael Esola
All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, organizations, or locales is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information contact the author at: [email protected].
ISBN: 0692375856
eBook ISBN:
ISBN 13: 9780692375853
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015931932
Crane Canyon Publishing
Pittsburg Ca.
Cover design copyright ©2015 by Michael Esola
Visit Michael Esola on the world wide web at:
www.MikeEsola.com
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that the book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
To my Aunt Karen (Ganghi) who first introduced me to Jurassic Park all those years ago, and to whom I credit with starting me on this journey into prehistory and all the mysteries of the world. I love you very much, and this book is dedicated to you.
“I do not rise each morning to do the simple, mundane tasks of the common man; rather I rise each morning to follow myself each and every day. Always have and always will.”
--John Corstine, Creator of the Boardwalk
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
CHAPTER SIXTY
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
CHAPTER SEVENTY
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
CHAPTER EIGHTY
CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO
CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE
PROLOGUE
The boardwalk sprung to life as the Indonesian man fled for his life. He flew across the boards as fast as his legs would allow for, sucking in huge breaths of the warm and humid jungle air as he pushed himself onward, past the point of complete exhaustion, past the point of knowing the difference between pain and sheer suffering. Whatever it was that was on his tail could smell him, and was closing the gap on him. An urge dating back eons drove it forward in its relentless pursuit of the man.
Fire. The man’s lungs registered an intense burning sensation as he pushed himself far beyond what he ever had known before. Time seemed to stand still for him in a strange out-of-body experience, as he tripped over his own feet, his body sailing rhythmically through the air before gravity stepped in and gripped him tightly in its clutches. He fell to the boardwalk with a loud and resounding thud, rolling and skidding several feet before finally coming to a complete stop. For a moment he just lay there, completely senseless and dazed by the short but intense fall from grace.
The tingling vibration rippling through the boardwalk sprung him back to his feet as the will to live had not left him. His feet quickly began running down the boardwalk once again, limping somewhat but still carrying him nonetheless. Whatever it was that continued to pursue him, did not slow, rarely ever tired, and just continued to keep up its relenting pace, seeming to stop at nothing before it got what it wanted.
Little by little the man’s tireless pace had taken its toll on his damaged leg, and he slowed somewhat. He could not believe the sight as his eyes struggled to take it all in. For up ahead some fifty yards or so was what appeared to be the end of the boardwalk, and like a train without train tracks to run on, he was about to become derailed.
The end to the incomplete boardwalk high in the rainforest canopy, dropped off some one hundred feet or so to the forest floor below. The man recoiled in horror at what his eyes were showing him.
Slowing himself he came to the edge of the boardwalk, the end resembling a massive sinkhole of sorts in the way it seemingly fell away from all that was familiar. He peered over the edge, and quickly at that, his eyes making their way all the way down to the forest floor below, the very bottom of this dense and steamy Southeast Asian rainforest ecosystem.
Looking over his shoulder frantically, he could hear what was pounding his way. As if a crazed serial killer were on his tail, his options were few and far between. Jump and face certain death, or face whatever it was that was rapidly thundering toward him.
His feet suddenly gave way from beneath him, as he fell backwards in the most sickening of contorted manners. Landing on his back with his legs be
nt underneath his body, he flailed his right arm back and tried to pull himself away from the edge, his bloody stump on the left was nothing more than a little reminder of the limb that used to be, and what had been taken from him in one clean bite only moments ago.
It had all happened so quickly for him. He had been busy doing survey work for John Corstine, the creator of the boardwalk, in what was essentially an area known as quadrant seven, meaning the last five miles of the boardwalk. Corstine himself had broken the thirty-five mile boardwalk project into seven quadrants, primarily for their own convenience as well as being able to accurately send out workers to various areas in order to address problems and difficulties as they arose. The man had been busy testing the structural integrity of quadrant seven when out from behind the foliage peeked something from his worst nightmares. Before he could even comprehend what was happening, that something opened up and chomped down, taking his left arm clean off.
The moments that followed were a dizzying mixture of blood-filled terror as the man ran for his life away from the foliage.
Bringing himself back to the present, inch by bloody inch, he dragged his body back away from the edge with only the power from his right arm. Exhausted from both the blood loss and the exertion necessary to pull himself backwards, he lay flat until he was looking up at the sky.
The white clouds, interspersed with what branches from the canopy extended and grew above the boardwalk, greeted his view. The clouds had formed swirl formations high above him, and for a moment he lost himself completely. His mind drifted towards freedom and the wide open spaces of the world. How he longed to simply let his body float to the safety of those soft and fluffy clouds high above, away from the world, and most importantly John Corstine’s boardwalk.
He cursed to himself the day he ever first encountered both John Corstine and his vision to construct the boardwalk. It was to be a massive structure offering guests a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to walk at the very top of the rainforest canopy on a scale never before seen while still preserving huge swaths of intact rainforest ecosystems. He cursed all of it, as well as the decent sized advance that Corstine had happily offered him for his assistance in the initial phase of the project.
Money, he managed to think to himself as he continued to bleed out. The root of all evil.
A tiny tingling sensation beneath him had now given way to small but noticeable vibrations in the boardwalk. With a steady stream of tears now running down his face, he heroically managed to hoist himself back to his feet, though weakly at that. He now stood inches from the edge staring down at the forest floor below.
Go out on my own terms, he thought. Die by my own sword.
And with that thought he stepped off the boardwalk and out into the open air.
No sooner than he had begun to fall towards the forest floor, something reached out from above and pierced him violently, and began to pull him in. Immediately he was overwhelmed with a hot stinking breath, and his last credible thought before darkness took him was that he was being eaten alive.
CHAPTER ONE
Multimillionaire real estate developer John Corstine stood as still as a statue and poised deep in thought. Corstine was sixty years old, average height and build, with a salt and pepper beard to go along with his gray hair up top. He was wearing dress slacks and a dress shirt. Corstine had been standing in his office at the corner for nearly ten minutes looking out at the magnificent lush view of the pristine green Indonesian rainforest that greeted his eyes. He had hardly moved as much as a muscle before finally deciding to stride to the other side of the large window pane. Corstine’s office was in quadrant one of the boardwalk, high atop it, and made of light-weight materials, the same type of material one would expect to find with a portable classroom or modular unit in a school setting.
Corstine was looking at his baby, his creation, his dream. The boardwalk stood strong and covered nearly thirty-five miles of lush virgin Indonesian rainforest, and was an impressive seventy-five feet in width, give or take a few feet here or there where the architects had chosen to weave the boardwalk in and between what the rainforest trees gave them. The boardwalk stood approximately one hundred feet above the forest floor. It had been created with two goals in mind: the first being to protect a huge track of rainforest that was near and dear to Corstine’s heart, and, second, to offer tourists and guests the chance of a lifetime to walk near the very top of the forest canopy on a wide stable flat platform, while paying top dollar to do so, something that was also very near and dear to Corstine’s heart. Corstine planned to brand the image in the adventurer’s mind of a walking path in the sky, made only for human foot traffic, and vastly different from what most rainforest canopy experiences offered up in terms of an unstable swaying base that shifted and moved as people walked about. Corstine wanted it to be as familiar as walking on solid ground.
Corstine let out a long and drawn out sigh. He was close, oh so very close, to his dream becoming a reality. His mind drifted back, way back, to his first business venture when he was in his early twenties. Corstine even at a very early age, had shown great promise as an entrepreneur as well as a keen interest in television. When he was fresh out of college, he decided he was going to start his own television channel. So he did what all entrepreneurs were supposed to do. He gathered all his notes and constructed a twenty-five page business plan, complete with a mission statement, financials, and five-year growth projections.
He could remember vividly gathering up the only suit and tie he owned, getting in his beat-up old Volkswagen, and driving to Los Angeles from San Francisco. He presented his business plan to a well-known businessman who had successfully launched two television channels. The memories were flooding back as Corstine now strode towards the middle of the room and sat at the head of the conference table. He sat down and rather than stop or fight the flood of memories, he dove right in and let them take him wherever they did.
He remembered standing at the office building of the man from whom he was seeking the initial startup capital investment. His heart beat wildly as he waited patiently and knocked on the open door of the office.
Standing there he slowly brought himself in front of the entrance, the man behind the desk motioning for him to have a seat while he finished his phone call. Corstine could still see himself bouncing his legs nervously as he waited to enter the office. By the time he finally entered, he had many an opportunity to make himself even more nervous.
The two sat down on a pair of plush leather couches, and before Corstine had another opportunity to talk himself into being nervous, he was asked to pitch his idea straight up. And quickly he did just that, blazing through his business plan like it were a homework assignment completed last minute the night before, talking way too fast and even getting tripped up on his own words from time to time. When it was all over, the television executive sat with his back straightened to the couch and promptly asked him a question while folding his arms.
“How old are you?”
Corstine cleared his throat before he replied, somewhat stunned at the harsh tone and abrupt nature of the question. “Twenty-six.”
“Twenty-six,” the T.V. executive repeated to himself, as if pondering the thought. “Twenty-six.”
Corstine could feel a knot forming in his stomach.
The T.V. executive adjusted himself just before he spoke once again. “Look, no one is going to give millions of dollars to a kid to launch an idea. What you have here is simply an idea and not a full-fledged business. Nothing more, nothing less.”
A knock at the door broke John Corstine from his thoughts and brought him back to the present day. He could see that he had failed to close his office door as his assistant Collin Fairbanks stood before him. Collin was in his late twenties, Caucasian, with dark brown slicked back hair, dressed in his usual attire of a suit and tie. Always a suit and tie everyday despite being in the middle of “bleeping nowhere,” as Collin often referred to it as.
“Sir, all i
s squared away,” Collin reported, still standing in the entranceway.
Corstine smiled. “Well done. Well done, indeed.”
And with that Collin left Corstine to return to his thoughts. Corstine reclined in his seat with his hands behind his head and thought if that television executive could only see him now, if he could only see him now.
CHAPTER TWO
Bick Downs stood with his feet firmly planted on the west end of the boardwalk, quadrant one to be exact. He was only one hundred yards from John Corstine’s corner office and where future patrons would hopefully pay top dollar and congregate before their rainforest canopy experience would begin. His hands were still feeling the effects somewhat, having just climbed down the black rope ladder that unfurled from the helicopter, blowing the tops of the trees back and forth in its powerful wake, and then slowly, but steadily, rose off into the blue Indonesian sky.
Downs was somewhat agitated and jittery from the drop, and this surprised him despite his love of all things extreme. He looked down at his large and calloused hands, the same hands that had taken him rock climbing in Yosemite National Park and trekking in the wilds of the Himalayas. Downs could see that his hands were still shaking somewhat. He wondered what was going on.
Maybe I’m getting too old for this, he thought, despite having just been minted as a new thirty year old. And then he shook his head and smiled, as if answering that very question himself.
In fact the way Downs saw it in his mind, he was now at the bottom of the social hierarchy of thirty year olds, the youngest of that batch of people. He felt he had been getting old when he was twenty-nine, at the top of that barrel, and now that he had entered a new age bracket, he was just starting off once again, clean slate and all.
Downs was both Italian and Austrian, and his workout regimen was what allowed him to stay in such amazing shape. Still though, his 6’3” 205 pound body was feeling the lingering effects from his arrival via the ladder down from the chopper. His lower back ached somewhat, followed by a deep and resonating burn in the back of his hamstrings. He reached up and rubbed his buzz cut with his hand, doing his best to sop up the sweat that was now dripping down the sides of his face, fully happy with his decision to buzz his brown hair to half an inch only days prior. He had by his own estimates about a week’s worth of beard growth on his face. He knew that his beard had entered what many often referred to as the “itchy phase,” and the humid conditions were only making things worse, far worse. He would just have to deal with it though.
Prehistoric: (A Prehistoric Thriller) (Bick Downs Book 1) Page 1
