Prehistoric: (A Prehistoric Thriller) (Bick Downs Book 1)

by Michael Esola

  Ridley felt the squeeze early on from the investors he had taken on, the pressure mounting on him to get word out about the channel like a pounding migraine headache building and building with intensity as each day passed. For a period of several weeks he was like a walking zombie, working twenty, sometimes twenty-two hours a day, and sleeping two to three hours a day, only to rise daily like a well-oiled machine and do it all over again.

  Ridley knew damn well that they were taking good care of the content part of the channel, but it was the marketing side that he felt was lacking. That was what preoccupied his thoughts almost to an obsession. He became obsessed with the channel’s official launch day, and began establishing relationships with bloggers, owners of websites, and people who had established a proven track record of high traffic to their YouTube pages in an effort to get the word out.

  Ridley began reaching out to these people, making wild promises to them, promising to help them with their own business endeavors if they did all they could to help promote the launch of the channel as well as the television channel’s official website. Ridley even went as far as to reach out to one individual who was posting the link to the television channel’s website in thousands and thousands of strategically located blogs, chatrooms, and websites across the internet. He promised to help this individual with the idea that he had come up with for his own television network. This young entrepreneur was counting on Ridley to help him with his network idea, and Ridley had willingly promised to introduce him to other investors and television personnel, promising to bend over backwards for the kid in order to help him. Ridley did all this knowing that he had no intention of ever helping the young kid, or the others for that matter, and the minute his channel was fully up and running and well-established, he would discard the kid and the fleet of others like an obsolete computer.

  Ridley shuddered in pain once more as he looked down at his exposed stomach, forcing himself to continue on. He didn’t even have to look back. He heard noise on the boardwalk and knew he had company. Not being able to inch himself forward anymore, he collapsed onto his stomach with his full body weight. Ridley wiggled to get his arms out, but he couldn’t manage the task, as they remained bent and contorted beneath his body.

  Something that possessed an enormous bite force clamped down on both sides of his body, puncturing through his skin and lifting him up and off the ground like a forklift. He felt hot panting breath on his neck and the overwhelming smell of raw dead and decaying meat. The massive adult creature shook its head back and forth vigorously, like a crocodile might do to its prey. It continued to shake Ridley’s body back and forth as if he were a ragdoll, before finally dropping the television entrepreneur from its mouth, his body plunking down hard on the boardwalk.

  The huge beast retreated some twenty feet away from its kill and began to pace back and forth, much like a lion might do. Ridley somehow managed to right himself onto his back, looking up and over at the menacing creature, knowing full well the horror that most surely awaited him. He saw the creature’s mouth full of sharklike teeth, and he wondered what in the hell it was. He wondered if the thing had persisted since the time of the dinosaurs? Had it roamed, stalked, and hunted in the primordial jungles millions and millions of years ago? But more importantly, how in the age of media and the internet had such a creature gone undetected and undocumented?

  Ridley watched as the creature suddenly shook itself like a wet dog, and from atop its back jumped down two hungry mouths, mouths that he hadn’t even known were there. The youngsters hopped around on the boardwalk and let out small yet piercing cries, heralding their own arrivals.

  And as any good mother would do, the huge creature pushed forward its young towards the fallen television entrepreneur.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  John Corstine’s hand fumbled for the front doorknob as if he were a nervous teenager on a first date. As the massive creature and its young came charging straight for him, they upended and destroyed everything in his living room in the process. Eventually Corstine’s hands did the trick, and the front door to his two-story bungalow served as the real-estate entrepreneur’s escape route. Now outside, he slammed the door hard and pumped his legs for all they were worth, sprinting as fast as he could muster towards the gas-powered Jeep that still sat in the dirt driveway.

  Slightly winded and definitely out-of-shape, he pushed himself, doing his best to hop up and over the side of the Jeep and into the driver’s seat just as the sound of a massive mound of muscle rocked his small house to the core. Thankfully, the Jeep fired right up.

  The wall to his bungalow had held up, and inside the adult creature and its young still could be heard, scraping and clawing, trying to get out, but Corstine knew it wouldn’t hold forever. With that thought in mind, he backed up hastily, put the Jeep in drive, and floored the pedal to the metal, peeling out of his driveway and leaving a plume of rising dust behind him as he sped off.

  Quickly, Corstine got the vehicle up to speed, reaching thirty-five miles per hour as the jungle habitat passed by on both sides. It was at this time that he had serious regrets about installing a governor in the vehicle in the first place. Forty-miles per hour was the top speed, and he was flooring it as far as the accelerator would allow for. He wasn’t certain how far away he was from his residence when he heard several explosions of windows shattering.

  “Damn,” he cursed, knowing full well that the creatures were most likely now out and about.

  Corstine looked over to his driver’s side mirror and adjusted it ever so slightly to have a better view of the road behind him. Nothing yet as he kept his foot firmly on the pedal, but he was expecting that to change at any given moment.

  Corstine swerved suddenly, nearly toppling the gas-powered Jeep over, as a large branch lay in all its glory partially covering the road.

  That’s odd, Corstine thought. Where in the hell did that come from?

  The branch hadn’t been there on the way over, less than an hour before. As Corstine looked back in the rear view mirror, he could see it just lying there. It was huge, possibly twenty-five feet in length. As soon as the answer came to him, a massive mound of reptilian skin, talons, and ferocity swung down and out of the foliage via a prehensile tail at the car with its jaws wide open. The creature went flying over the top of the Jeep, but not before taking a swipe at both Corstine and his windshield, the prehensile tail whipping by and striking Corstine’s back.

  Corstine howled in pain but managed to stay the course, continuing to fly down the dirt road. Meanwhile, the adult male creature with all its forward momentum was not able to stop, hitting the ground and tumbling further into the jungle, rolling end over end before finally coming to rest at the base of a giant tree. It quickly righted itself, letting out a huge roar as it got back up and onto the road. It immediately took up chase once again, making its way through the clouds of dust that the Jeep had left behind.

  Corstine could now see the creature bounding after him, and then, in horror, he could also see that out of the passenger side mirror several other smaller versions of the creature were giving up chase as well. The creatures were closing the gap on him. Corstine knew there was no way they could get their bodies up to the speed at which he was traveling. Or could they?

  Corstine could see through the rear view mirror that now it wasn’t just the huge adult. It was an all out attack on him and his gas-powered Jeep. The three youngsters ran speedily at the feet of the huge monster, moving like a pack of tyrannosaurs chasing down triceratops on the plains of North America some sixty-five million years ago, with the young tyrannosaurs doing the high speed chasing.

  Suddenly, with both speed and blinding acceleration, the youngsters took off like miniature-sized, high-powered performance vehicles from beneath the huge lumbering adult. They immediately put a considerable amount of distance between themselves and the adult. Corstine could now see the youngsters, some the size of small dogs, while one of them appeared larger, roughly the size
of a leopard or a cheetah. They were fast, possibly reaching big cat speed out in the open.

  The speedy youngsters reached the Jeep and were quickly hovering around the tires of the vehicle like flies on dung. Corstine even saw one of the small ones slip under the vehicle, only to emerge out seconds later on the opposite side. Another of the small creatures slashed repeatedly at the back tire with its talons, but the tires were too thick and the Jeep was moving too quickly.

  Corstine continued on, his mind hell bent on escaping the pack of creatures that the wise subconscious part of his mind knew had existed all along. How could he have been so stupid to have waved off the red flag warning signs? They were there all along, from the talks with local elders about strange beast-like creatures known to inhabit the jungles for years, right up until the mysterious death of the Indonesian worker.

  An unexplained death with only a pair of teeth t to account for, the thought nearly leaping out of Corstine’s brain and into the humid jungle air.

  The Jeep hit a slight depression, and Corstine struggled to regain control, almost veering completely off the road and into the forbidding jungle. At the last second he “righted the ship.” Smash. The Jeep hit what appeared to be another pothole.

  Suddenly Corstine saw it, rather he saw all of them, like parade lights under the banner of a dark night sky. What he had originally thought to be a jungle road filled with potholes and depressions, seemed to be a game trail full of mud footprints of the creatures. Clearly some of them were huge, manhole size to be exact, while a host of them were modest size, no bigger than the common household dog.

  A gametrail, Corstine thought.

  A distinct growl suddenly rang out from the backseat. Corstine turned to see one of the juvenile creatures perched there staring at him, eyes flaring with intensity and talons poised to strike.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Over the span of about seven minutes, the young creatures had been feeding on Ridley Bells. Almost toying with the entrepreneur, they would approach, sometimes with caution, other times brazenly, bite and lock down on some part of his body, and tear away a piece of him. Each terrifying time the television entrepreneur would beg for mercy, but the creatures, knowing nothing more than gut instinct, continued to feed on him, little by little reducing him to nothing more than bits and ragged pieces.

  Ridley lay in several pools of blood on the boardwalk, patches of his skin along with a good percentage of the muscle and tissue in his legs and biceps had been taken. What was left of him lay completely wide open and exposed, but, unfortunately, for him he was still alive, still barely clinging to life, breathing slowly while being conscious just enough to realize he was indeed being eaten alive. For a flash of a moment, he pictured downed WWII pilots floating and bobbing in the cold waters of the Pacific as sharks swam in and around them, biting and taking pieces of them before eventually returning to finish the grizzly task. He had never envisioned the ending to his life, thinking like many successful entrepreneurs that he would find a way to live forever, like the way that he time and time again would save his companies. But this time it was different. This time he was not in control and was at the mercy of things that had no plausible explanation.

  One of the creatures came up unexpectedly, and without giving it any thought sunk its teeth deep into Ridley’s thigh and began to pull as if it were a tug-a-war contest between it and the fallen man. Several others joined in, plunging their teeth deep into Ridley’s leg as well.

  Ridley screamed with every last shred of energy he could muster as his leg eventually gave way and tore off. The adult suddenly swiped at the original attacking juvenile with its prehensile tail, sending the juvenile skidding back across the boardwalk.

  As Ridley barely raised his head, he could see the entire scene. The hulking adult creature bounded toward the frightened and whimpering youngster, and let out a low resonating growl. That was all it took as the pack of the rest of the youngsters turned on the creature in an act of pure cannibalism.

  In no time it was an all out feeding frenzy as the helpless little creature was ripped limb from limb. Nothing went to waste in the frenzy.

  Meanwhile Ridley had been observing the entire scene, his whole body and mind literally numb with pain and shock at what had happened to him. He gasped when his eyes finally took in the damage that had been inflicted upon him. Bits, chunks, and now limbs had been removed. He wished for death, wished for it all to be over; and somewhere in the far corners of his brain, he couldn’t help but think he was getting what he so rightfully deserved. He had treated people like crap for quite some time, making wild claims and false promises to help those that had helped him, often using the phrase “help me and I’ll bend over backwards to help you.” He repeated this time and time again, until he had a small army of workers around the globe helping him promote his companies and television networks, resulting in success after success.

  He coughed and spat blood on the boardwalk. He was beginning to choke on his own blood, and that’s when it hit him: if he just lay back he could probably choke to death, ending his suffering and putting him out of his misery. There was no coming back from the damage that had been done to him, and it had all happened so dizzingly fast.

  The adult creature once again took a renewed interest in the downed entrepreneur and was on him quickly. Ridley had no time to further contemplate his own demise. In one swift move, the jaws of the huge beast opened wide and collapsed over the weeping and blood-strewn head, plunging the man into darkness and officially putting Ridley Bells on the extinct list.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  John Corstine momentarily took his eyes off the road as the Jeep went down on its left side and into another depression. The youngster launched itself from the back seat, screaming as it flew through the air with its talons outstretched and ready to strike. It slashed powerfully and with precision at Corstine’s neck, leaving bleeding gouges and then pushing off of the man’s neck, landing on the passenger side seat with the nimbleness and balance of a house cat.

  Corstine howled in pain, his hand immediately going to his neck, and coming away colored with blood, as the creature hissed at him from the passenger seat. Corstine managed to right the vehicle, bringing it back up and onto the dirt road just as another one of the youngsters made its way up and into the cabin of the Jeep.

  This time Corstine was on it and delivered a swift blow to its stomach region with his elbow, sending the youngster tumbling down from its perch and back onto the jungle road. The creature immediately rose to its feet, shook itself, and once again gave chase.

  Corstine had managed to reach down into the paneling of the driver side door and retrieved his pistol, but it was too late. The creature to the right of him once again jumped on top of his shoulders while tearing off part of his shirt.

  He fired the pistol, grazing the creature’s tale as it jumped off the speeding vehicle and landed down and onto the road. Its small prehensile tail had been hit and was bleeding. To Corstine’s surprise, out of his driver-side rear view mirror, he saw more of the young creatures pouring out from the dense vegetation. They descended on the wounded youngster into a feeding frenzy, a rolling ball of carnage as the Jeep continued to speed on.

  Corstine gripped the wheel with two hands tightly, his eyes wide with fear at what he had just seen. These weren’t just a few random undocumented creatures. This was a small colony of them, and he wondered how many adults there could possibly be to produce such a litter.

  “The adults,” he muttered to himself.

  Where the hell had they gone? He quickly adjusted the rearview mirror to get a better view of the road behind him. He saw one of them still bounding forward, about twenty feet or so behind a small pack of the young who were closing the gap on the vehicle by the second.

  “Like raptors,” Corstine breathed.

  The scene was playing out like any dinosaur enthusiast would have imagined, the young creatures chasing down the gas powered Jeep like velociraptors s
peeding through their Gobi Desert habitat trying to tackle and take down much larger prey. Corstine was now seeing shapes of all sizes, realizing that creatures of varying growth stages surrounded him.

  Corstine set the Jeep up for the turn, swinging the vehicle wide a bit and then pulling it tight, accelerating through the turn. As he did so a few youngsters who were clinging to the back exhaust pipe were thrown off. Corstine saw what appeared to be a teenage version of one of the creatures through the rear view mirror. He watched as the teenager stepped on one of the youngsters that had been thrown from the exhaust, more than likely snapping its neck in the process. As the teenager continued on after the Jeep, everything behind it converged on the crippled creature in another feeding frenzy ball.

  “Jeez,” Corstine said with a shake of the head, setting his eyes back on the road ahead once again.

  Corstine felt a bit dizzy and knew that he needed to get back to safety, and quickly at that. The two feeding frenzies had slowed and distracted most of the predators, and it seemed at least for the moment that the huge adult was nowhere to be seen. But where was the original adult that had invaded his home? Corstine again shook his head. He could clearly see the teenager that had crippled the other youngster, was quickly closing the gap and almost upon the Jeep.

  With powerful long strides it moved as if it were a modern day Cheetah. It must have been a solid two hundred pounds in weight, and would probably grow another eight hundred pounds or so before fully grown, growing in length and height as well.

  Corstine glanced down at the pistol resting in between his left hand and the steering wheel, vibrating and chattering as the Jeep continued to bump its way down the dirt path back towards the entrance to the boardwalk. He hadn’t even had a chance to think about how he would extricate himself from the situation, or exit from the Jeep that had so far delivered him to safety. He had every intention of getting out alive. He had all the world to live for, all the investments, business pursuits, not to the mention the boardwalk itself, but it was the fact that he hadn’t seen his son in a little over a year that kept him going strong.