It was then Corstine remembered the documents that he had been holding. They weren’t under his arm anymore as he was still clutching the pitching wedge. A moment of confusion followed, and then he remembered he had stuffed them into his back pocket just before he acquired the golf club. He touched the papers with his right hand, realizing that it didn’t matter what they said or from what official organization they were. Here was the living proof right before him, ripping his couch cushions to shreds.
The creature stopped tearing and lifted its head out of the fabric of the cushion, its body going rigid as it straightened itself upright. It was then that Corstine could see the extensive damage that had been done to his window. The whole thing looked like it had been blown out. Surely the little thing before him could not have been solely responsible for that.
Something came through the window, something that downright chilled Corstine to the core. It appeared wet and lathery and was a spectacular light blue in coloration, like that of a tropical fish. Corstine moved himself a few inches to the right to gain a better vantage point.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Time seemed to be moving in an absolute blur, nothing making sense, only sounds, shapes, and color reigning supreme. Something dripped on top of Downs, and instinctively his head shot upwards. He had been hit in the face, and as he reached his hand to his face…
It was blood, human blood that had dripped down on him from above.
Josiah’s voice rang out high above all the chaos though.
“Run,” Josiah shouted. “Back to the boardwalk.”
Downs turned to follow, but just as he did so he cocked his head back up to the branches and witnessed Nat’s body as it flopped backwards, her legs appearing to be wedged in between a jumbled mess of tightly configured vines and branches. Something had shoved and stashed her there momentarily. Her outstretched arms and hands dangled down towards him as blood dripped from the ends of her fingers.
A powerful hand collided with Downs’ shoulder, and he turned, eyes wide with terror.
“Come on, she’s a goner.”
It was Josiah, and he wasn’t waiting for a reply. As they started to scamper their way back to the boardwalk, Downs managed to sneak one more peek up towards where Nat was. He witnessed in disturbing fashion Nat’s limp and lifeless arms be pulled and disappear further into the vegetation and out of view.
He shook his head, still in shock of it all, but following Josiah as he moved quickly. Max was up ahead.
None of them stopped. They just kept plowing through, past the point from which they might have thought the menacing swarm of ants would have begun invading the tree limbs. Quickly Downs watched as Josiah made his way past Max, showing them the escape route, climbing powerfully up the siding to the boardwalk, making his way up and past the maintenance level, and finally reaching the top of it.
Max was next, although he looked back at Downs with a bit of apprehension.
“Take it one foot at a time,” Downs said, trying his best to calm the zoologist, although his own head was spinning. “Now go.”
Max turned and diligently began to climb his way up, just as Josiah had done. He moved at a surprising speed that he maintained continuously until he finally climbed up and over the railing and the bottoms of his feet disappeared. Quickly Downs took one rushed look behind him. All was clear, and as he turned and began to focus his attention on climbing quickly, he had the overwhelming feeling that something would rip him from his perch.
With that thought in mind, he ascended until he finally made his way up and over the railing. Like a newborn lamb, he flopped helplessly onto the deck for a brief second.
Downs, who lost all ability to walk, pulled himself forward several feet towards Max and Josiah, who were both hunched over like two fellas that had just witnessed a gruesome crime scene and needed to yack their guts out. It seemed like a mini lifetime in its own right before Downs was finally able to pull himself up and stagger to his feet.
“I can’t believe that just happened!” Max gasped, and after that it was too late, as fluid spewed forth from his mouth. He had vomited, and Downs could only hope that it provided him some immediate relief from the awful feeling that his stomach must have been experiencing. As he continued to speak, it became evident that he was suffering from far more than just an upset stomach.
“She’s gone,” Max cried. “She’s gone. Gone. Gone. Gone.” And with that the zoologist dropped to his knees and began to sob uncontrollably, tears streaming forward.
Downs too felt the sting of the pain and a tear welled up in the corner of his eye. Despite this, he picked Max up, and spoke directly into the zoologist’s eyes. “We have no time. You’ve got to get it together. We need you.”
The boardwalk rumbled under the immense weight as the creature slammed down onto the boards, having propelled itself from the surrounding vegetation. Six human eyeballs turned to see the grizzly thing just standing there, looking down from about a height of nine feet, its dirty mouth a mixture of blood and raw meat.
“Oh God,” Max whimpered.
The creature lunged towards them, mouth open and screaming mad.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
The sound of something being pierced and crashing to the floor caught Ridley Bells’ attention as he pushed through the double doors that led out of the kitchen and into the restaurant. Jamison had shot one of the juvenile creatures, and the animal now wiggled violently on the floor as it bled out just in front of the rectangular bar setting.
Jamison rushed forward and instead of wasting another one of his precious arrows, he took his size sixteen’s and sent his huge foot crashing down through the creature’s skull, caving the head in and putting the thing out of its misery. The sound of shot glasses falling and shattering to the floor could be heard as another one of the juveniles had jumped up onto the bar counter, mouth wide open, flaring its small sharp teeth. With a loud piercing cry, it lunged off the bar and towards Jamison.
Jamison got down on one knee and steadied himself as the creature came at him. He exhaled and released the arrow. It grazed the top of the creature’s bristled Mohawk-style hair atop its back, but the juvenile continued to bound hungrily towards him.
Not being one to panic and always fully believing in both himself as well as his God-given talents, Jamison calmly reached behind him and pulled another arrow. Quickly setting it into place, he once again exhaled a breath and let go of the arrow. The arrow glanced off the right front limb of the youngster as the hearty little thing charged on, its eyes fierce and red with menace.
Jamison, still on one knee, reached into the quill of arrows on his back, and in a split-second decision decided to switch it up. He lay the bow down on the ground, resurrecting to his feet like an NFL running back who had just recovered the football and headed full sprint towards the creature.
Meanwhile, Ridley continued to watch, half stunned at what he was seeing.
The little creature propelled up and into the air, and to Ridley’s surprised eyes, Jamison did the same. Ridley watched as the 6’9” 265 pound Jamison leaped up and into the air, easily capable of still dunking a basketball, and in a moment of blur and sheer speed, managed to pull the kukri knife from his side while changing his course of attack in the air.
As the creature was now full stride in the air, Jamison came at it from the side and plunged the kukri knife deep into its back, tearing through sinew and muscle before he finally retracted the weapon and landed firmly back down on the ground.
With the bloody knife still in his hand, Jamison pivoted, his full attention focusing solely on the creature that he had just stabbed, but he had delivered the death blow. The young creature staggered a few steps and collapsed under its own weight.
Jamison reached for a towel that had fallen to the ground in the skirmish, choosing to remove as much of the blood as he could, figuring he didn’t want to be walking around with the equivalent of a bag of chum in a hungry ocean full of sharks. He didn’t even
know that Ridley was in the room until the man let out a loud shriek.
Instinctively, Jamison’s gaze fired back to the door that led to the kitchen, but that did not produce Ridley Bells. Several more seconds followed before he finally spotted the television entrepreneur. Ridley was being pursued by two of the creatures, but these creatures were bigger, about as large as a one hundred pound dog, but amped up several more times on the vicious scale.
Jamison reached back to pull an arrow, but suddenly he realized that the bow was still on the ground some fifteen feet from where he stood, past the two dead young creatures. His eyes darted back towards Ridley. The television entrepreneur was in serious trouble.
Jamison remained stymied about what to do, but when noise came dashing out of the kitchen and bounding his way, he knew he had his own pressing issues. He was under attack as well as two small creatures came scurrying out from the kitchen double doors. He also acknowledged that he would let the television mogul fend for himself, and whatever horrible fate awaited him, he most certainly deserved what was coming to him. Jamison had been fully aware of Ridley’s past shady business practices.
Jamison gripped the knife tightly in his right hand as he braced for the attack. Choosing to stay grounded this time instead of going air-born, he slashed violently as the first creature came bounding for his calves, most likely wanting to strip muscle from bone in an attempt to take down the much larger prey.
Jamison inflicted a serious gouge in the first of the attackers as it scampered on by him, wounded, but not down and out for the count. The second one leaped up and into the air, as Jamison wasted no time slashing at the thing, trying literally to decapitate the youngster with one powerful blow. Suddenly, as Jamison flung himself and the knife at the thing, it found another level and ascended higher and up and over his head, kicking and scratching at his forehead with the talons attached to its back foot.
Simultaneously, as the creature landed on the ground, Jamison realized he had been torn open a bit by the creature’s back talons, as a steady stream of blood trickled down from his forehead and over his face. He wiped at the wound with his forearm, smearing both his face and the side of his arm in blood as liquid continued to pulse from the gash. There was no time for bandaging though.
The second creature collided with the first and the two viciously snapped at one another, seemingly trying to end the other’s life. Ridley’s cries for help then rang out loud and clear, as if the proverbial dinner bell had been rung. The two creatures took one last look at Jamison, still in the crouched and ready position to take them on, and that was all it took as they bounded off after the television entrepreneur.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
John Corstine stood both awed and dumbstruck at what was standing just outside his living room window. A creature more massive and awe inspiring than he could have ever imagined stood absolutely still and motionless as it quickly retracted its long and lathery forked tongue back into its mouth and away from the youngster. Corstine stood frozen, absolutely frozen in time, his muscles incapable of moving while his brain was working at lightning-fast speed trying to figure out what in the hell it was at which he was looking.
His mind quickly raced back to the death of one of his workers, the Indonesian man. Surely the death and disappearance of the man had come at the hands of the beast that now stood before him.
He had never seen a head like it, and the way it stared at him reminded him of the emotionless stare of a snake or a crocodile. Its forked tongue rested just inside its mouth while its huge bulbous eyes stared at him. Corstine noticed that the juvenile, a miniature version of the giant just outside the window, was now staring directly at him as well. The real estate tycoon now had both creatures’ full attention.
The huge creature once again let a little portion of its forked tongue come out of its mouth, wiggling it back and forth like a snake would, possibly smelling at the air. Perhaps it was smelling Corstine? Perhaps it could smell the sixty year old man’s fear. Perhaps that fear itself was exuding from the very pores of his skin.
Whatever the case, while Corstine continued to hold the golf club as if it were a baseball bat, he slowly started taking baby steps backward. His head was tilted ever so slightly downward so he could see the Turkish rug beneath him while still maintaining a view of the two creatures.
Corstine continued to move backwards, ever so gently, following the design patterns in the rug to know his location in relation to the couch, the coffee table, and the end tables that furnished his living room. When his shoes finally hit the laminate floor, he knew he was no more than fifteen feet from his front door.
If he exited quickly, would the creatures give up chase through the house or would they possibly run around it? Would they make their way over the roof, or would they just continue to stand there like great prehistoric statues, relics of an ancient time in a modern world? These questions swirled and churned in Corstine’s head as he was now five feet from the door knob, still staring down at the ground in as non-threatening a manner as he could muster while maintaining a slight visual of both of them.
Corstine knew that he was aligned properly with the door as his eyes made out a small dent in his floor, the result of one of his dinner guests a year ago dropping a drink glass on the floor, and delivering a knick in his practically spotless floor.
Idiot drunk, Corstine thought to himself.
The party and get together had been an event that he hosted at the small yet surprisingly well-decorated home for the early investors in the boardwalk, the people who were the ones to hear the business pitch by Corstine himself. It felt like a lifetime ago, as Corstine was now staring directly at what had possibly scared off those early investors. Wild, irrational, almost delusional claims that there were predators that called the forest canopy home, and now Corstine was in the presence of two of them. Two things that defied all that comprised and defined logic.
How many could there be? Corstine wondered, his hand making contact with the front door, missing the doorknob probably by a foot or so.
There Corstine stood, poised and still, with his palm now firmly on the door itself, but still not yet at the doorknob. He watched as the adult retracted its tongue, and it was then that Corstine noticed the array of teeth that gave the inside of its mouth a shark-like appearance. Yet the rest of the face along with the tongue seemed to resemble a reptilian lineage, like the thing had crawled straight out of the primordial swamps of eons ago.
Corstine saw the warning sign, the telltale sign that a creature was going to strike, as a snake would behave just moments before the attack. The adult tensed up a bit and lurched ever so slightly backwards, seemingly setting itself up like a driver might set himself up for a tight turn. And then it struck.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Downs saw a mouth open impossibly wide, exposing teeth the likes of which he had only seen before in documentaries on television. The creature possessed a nightmarish mouth full of serrated weaponry.
Downs stumbled backwards at the sight of the charging open mouth that was pounding towards him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw two blurry human shapes moving out and away from him followed by indecipherable shouting, the likes of which could not audibly be made out. What Downs saw next he almost didn’t quite believe. It was too late though, his body half expecting to bounce off of the railing, the railing that was supposed to be there. As Downs had gotten jammed near where the railing should have been, it was too late, his intended course of direction had already been locked and set into place. Part of the railing somehow had broken off.
Downs knew he was going over the edge backwards, yet it all seemed so distant and otherworldly in his final attempt to right himself. However, he continued on, falling backwards and away from the boardwalk as a huge limb with outstretched talons took a fleeting swipe at him from above, followed by a terrifying roar that rang through the jungle.
The boardwalk and the terra firma that he knew began to fade away like a dista
nt drifting memory, and then, everything went black.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Ridley Bells collapsed on all fours now that he was outside on the boardwalk and began crawling, trying helplessly to keep himself moving forward. The television mogul was injured badly and bleeding profusely from multiple places. He had lacerations along his neck, forearms, and face, and each wound seemed to be serious enough to end his life.
However, the most serious problem was his stomach. He had been ripped wide open several excruciating inches along the lower abdomen. He looked down in horror and could partially see into his stomach, a sight that he had never thought in a million years he would be looking at. It had all happened so quickly and at a blurryingly fast speed as one of the youngsters had gotten hold of him, ripping his stomach wide open, razor sharp talons doing exactly what nature and evolution had evolved them to do, to dismember prey and kill.
As Ridley continued to crawl on all fours along the boardwalk, his life began flashing before him in disjointed bits and pieces. He saw his college years mixed with the struggles, trials, and tribulations that he had endured before getting his first television network up and running. Most of these were business related with a few social interactions mixed in here and there. It wasn’t necessarily with the first television network that he began openly exploiting people. It was with the creation of the second network that he began doing so, and with routine regularity.
The second television network, for all intents and purposes, had been much easier to get up and running. It was during the development of the second network that the majority of the budget and capital had been allocated towards creating content for the channel. The funneling of a significant percentage of the capital towards content meant that the marketing and advertising budget went down the tube. Hiring the correct number of personnel was also abandoned. The lack of an advertising campaign meant that Ridley had to be creative once again and think like a scrappy startup entrepreneur instead of an established one who had already successfully launched an earlier channel.
Prehistoric: (A Prehistoric Thriller) (Bick Downs Book 1) Page 16
