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

by Michael Esola

  Jeremiah took a moment to respond. “I believe in the geologic timeline, more importantly the concept called “geologic connectivity.” I believe we are all tied to the geologic timeline of life on Earth, meaning I am no greater or lesser than a primitive organism that lived hundreds, even billions of years ago. We are both on and part of the geologic timeline. There’s no getting off that train. That’s a fact that cannot be disputed.”

  Corstine wanted to combat his son immediately but instead decided to let him finish his thought pattern, for once in his life.

  “We are all currently traveling this geologic timeline of life on Earth, and no one can leave it. We are on it, plain and simple. Whereas a man or a woman can denounce their faith, political opinions, sexual orientation, or a host of other topics, no one can denounce the geologic timeline. We are all connected to it and vice versa. There’s no way off this rollercoaster.”

  Corstine himself was a bit taken aback by his son’s wise and yet still ambitious argument. For one of the few times in his life he was speechless, absolutely speechless with no grand argument to counter. Silence would have prevailed had it not been for the situation above them.

  The sound of the adult creature breathing heavily above stymied all other activity, as Corstine and Jeremiah continued to sit mired in silence. Corstine’s eyes gravitated towards a slight opening. Actually it was a crack in the boards that made up the trap door. A thin almost barely visible ray of light beamed in, and Corstine was surprised he hadn’t seen it before. As his eyes continued to gaze upward, they started to take in something, something that was clear, gooey, and see-through.

  What the hell is that? Corstine thought in silence, as he watched the substance mold and shape its way through the crack, adapting to what its surroundings were giving it. It hung or at least must have been hanging atop on the ground floor of the office before gravity finally began pulling it through the opening and towards where Corstine and Jeremiah remained hidden in silence.

  “Saliva, dear God, it’s saliva,” Corstine breathed.

  Both of them scooted aside as far as their tight quarters would allow for and gave way to the falling substance, watching as the liquid continued to fall before finally touching down on the floor, no more than a foot or so from Corstine’s right shoe. It appeared to be ridiculously well put together, and finally at long last it had broken apart. Corstine once again looked back up towards the cracked opening and the minuscule amount of light that was allowed to filter through. This was the only reassurance that there, in fact, was an outside world beyond their dark and forbidden hiding hole.

  Corstine squinted his eyes back towards the light, as more saliva poured through the opening at a slow but steady rate. He let out a deep breath, no words needed between the two of them as the saliva continued to pour down towards them while more big lumbering breaths were taken above them. Corstine could only hope, if the worst suddenly struck them and there was no way out, that death would come quickly and without much time to process it all. The thought of rotting and starving in the pitch black, he did not fancy that one bit.

  A loud ear splitting roar once again cut through both of their bodies. All they could do was sit and hope, but more importantly pray.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  Downs’ eyes flickered several times as filtered light from the rainforest slowly began flooding his pupils, the light coming in bits and pieces like images being projected onto an old movie screen that were finally taking shape and materializing into a complete shot. Groggily he sat up, shocked that he even had to sit up in the first place, shocked that he had been lying down. Based on the amount of still available light, Downs estimated he had only been unconscious for a few mere seconds, but every second now was precious.

  A carcass, an already ripe and rotting corpse, was within an arms length from him as he breathed in another huge lungful of death-encrusted air. The stench had already started to fester and the memory of William Jamison grabbing the small predator mid air and snapping the life out of it came flooding back to him.

  An onslaught of pain came rushing forward from multiple locations. Downs winced and bit down on his lip, knowing full well that his ribs had been severely bruised and injured. He dabbed gingerly at his jaw, wondering if it was possibly broken. However, that was the least of his worries as his thoughts gravitated back to the pain in his ribs, but more importantly toward William Jamison.

  Downs moved his feet, testing them, making damn sure that he still had two functioning legs to accompany the wiggling feet. All good to go there. With that he moved on up to the next area of concern, the arms. The little test quickly proved that both of them were fine as well. Downs began formulating thoughts and doing his best to push aside the pain from his ribs and jaw.

  A high pitched cry, like that of a dolphin under water, rang out from the forest canopy. Downs ceased the full body examination, forcing his ears to listen. Again the high pitched cry pierced the air, the oppressive heat still bearing down on him.

  Downs moved several feet away from the deceased little predator, as a third high pitched cry rang out again. His body stiffened and tightened up, but there was nothing he could do. He was in the nest of the creatures, a worse and more vulnerable place than he could have ever or would have ever wanted to imagine. This was far worse than wading into one of the many crocodile infested rivers and canals of the world and swimming with great white sharks just off the coast of South Africa-both of which he had done and conquered.

  But this was different, this was vastly different, and his senses knew it. High atop the forest floor lay an Indonesian ecosystem virtually unknown to science, with an ancient species of predator that had somehow managed to go undiscovered. His mind tried to take that all in for a second in one great swath. How could it be? How could it be that no one had managed to document this new species, managed to get a sneak peak at it and post it to the likes of Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube for the entire world to see? It perplexed him and was almost as beyond comprehension as the idea of the species existing in the first place.

  A fourth high pitched cry rang out, signaling the end of Downs’ scientific questioning regarding the mysteries of the universe, and once again bringing shooting pain back to his ribs. He looked down at the now festering carcass, as a host of unruly flies had taken notice and were seemingly going to town on it, buzzing in and out every which way. As Downs continued to stare at the small predator, knowing what it was in its former life, he knew damn well what it would turn into in its much, much larger adult version. It was the process of evolution, nothing more, nothing less, evolution at its wildest and craziest. Downs wondered if these things had persisted since the time of the dinosaurs? Could they have even in some small way accounted for the extinction and ultimate demise of the dinosaurs?

  Downs shook his head; he didn’t know. In fact as far as he was concerned, it was impossible to draw upon and make sense of such conclusions. The fossil record for dinosaurs and other ancient organisms was minimal, at best, and relatively unknown in this part of the world, more specifically Indonesia to be exact. Recently he had gotten wind of a fish eating dinosaur discovered in Malayasia, but after that it was a big fat blank. He knew from his childhood fascination with dinosaurs and other ancient organisms that the continents of the world used to be connected. Downs wondered if the species they were dealing with had migrated and proliferated to the other parts of the world as well, or had it always been confined geographically to this part of the world. Had it simply persisted or was it due to climatic and environmental changes that it was able to survive this long in Indonesia, if it was in fact as old as he hypothesized it to be.

  The cloud of flies seemed to be growing and growing around the carcass, turning itself into an almost unstoppable moving and buzzing black mass. It was there in that moment that geology, paleontology, cryptozoology, and the field of science were screaming full bore at him, as if trying desperately to send one last message to his still functioning brain. In that mome
nt Downs heard it, heard it loudly and clearly above the drone of the flies. The message was this in its most simple and outright form: figure a way out of this jungle, or face the fate of being eaten, digested, and put right back into the cycle of the rainforest.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  William Jamison’s legs had been pumping and working hard for quite some time as he continued to make his way along the boardwalk and towards where the guided tour’s intended route should have gone in the first place. His legs, as well as his body, had been trained, honed, and cultivated over the course of his life, taking him up and down the hardwood of the NBA floors season after season. Now they were doing something similar to that in a far flung remote corner of the world.

  Jamison brought himself to a halt, hardly even breathing while feeling as though he had already recovered in the few seconds he had been standing idle.

  I could still play ball if I had to, he thought to himself with a smile, knowing full well that the statement was mostly false but still held some nuggets of truth to it.

  At fifty years of age, he was in far superior shape than people half his age. Hell-if it was any consolation to what he had seen in his nephew’s eighth grade physical education class, where a class of thirty students were forced to run a mile, and the best time was fourteen minutes and five seconds, he was in far better shape than nearly every human being on the planet. He smiled again with that thought in mind.

  Jamison reached into his backpack, pulling out the copy of the aerial photo of the boardwalk that had been given to him. He quickly scanned the image, running his finger across all that seemed to be pertinent. To Jamison it looked like they had been placed smack dab in the middle of nowhere, with green comprising nearly the entire image, and only a tiny sliver of a figure snaking its way through that dense and lush vegetation, representing Corstine’s boardwalk.

  Corstine. Jamison thought to himself, wondering if the old fool was even still alive. He laughed. Cut down the whole forest for all I care.

  Jamison brought his attention back to the aerial photo and continued tracing his finger along what he believed to be his intended route, the route that would allow him to escape and get back to the states. More importantly, this escape route would bring him back to his multi-millionaire lifestyle that he had been enjoying for what seemed like an eternity. He thought back quickly to his sophomore year of college, struggling merely to string together a few extra dollars at the end of the week to go see a movie or even to go and grab a drink at the local tavern.

  By the time Jamison had officially completed his first three years at Ohio State, the lure of the NBA and all that money was too much to resist. He decided to forego his senior year of collegiate play and made the jump into the pros, making him instantly a millionaire and cementing what would be a lifetime of money-making opportunities.

  Early on and for the first few years of his career, Jamison focused entirely on basketball. His off seasons were spent doing rigorous training, working out in the gym, and running in the hills behind his home, but most importantly getting physically as well as mentally prepared for the next season. Jamison learned early on that despite the massive sums of money that professional athletes were paid, the day-to-day grind still took its physical toll on the human body. Whether one was flying on private jets or commercial airliners, flying was still flying, and it took its toll. Each season he made sure he was in tip-top shape and ready for that physical toll.

  Jamison’s body was still in supreme shape, seeming to defy gravity and age in the same light, with not one inch of him showing signs of sagging in the least bit. For the third and final time, Jamison scanned his finger along the thin sliver of an image on the aerial photo. By his calculations, actually it was more like eyeing it and relying on sheer raw gut instinct. He figured he had approximately three miles to what the others earlier had simply referred to as the “rendezvous point.”

  Jamison looked out and into the surrounding vegetation, noticing for the first time since coming to a stop just how thin and spread out the foliage was at this part of the boardwalk. He was liking what he was seeing. He moved forward a few feet and quickly stowed the aerial photo away into his backpack, continuing to look out and into the foliage. Since the vegetation was so spread out and interspersed, it meant that the threat of attack was that much less, at least that was what Jamison had convinced himself.

  As he moved around and completed a three hundred sixty degree turn, it seemed highly unlikely that something, certainly something huge, could sneak up on him from the hidden shadows that only the dense rainforest could provide. That thought, along with what his eyes were telling him, made him feel more at ease, but Jamison knew better than to let his guard down, touching the string of the bow that was still slung over his right shoulder. “Only if needed,” he muttered to himself. His feelings had changed, and he pondered hard for a moment about the urge to take one of the creatures down. It wasn’t that the urge had dissipated and left him. It was just that he valued his multi-millionaire lifestyle more than taking the risk at being killed himself. He wanted off Corstine’s floating nightmare in the sky, and he would do whatever it took to achieve just that.

  Johnny Depp’s famous line from “Pirates of the Carribbean” rang out in his head. “All that matters now is what a man can do and what a man can’t do.”

  Jamison re-emphasized the phrase to himself once more as he zipped up his backpack, tightened his shoelaces, and glanced down at his watch. By his own estimate, he had about twenty two minutes, and as the second hand moved again he now had twenty one minutes. Three six minute miles should do the trick just nicely.

  He took a few more precious seconds to stretch out the back of his hamstrings, and then he quickly popped back up to set his watch. Jamison took one last look around him and then hit the start button on the watch. With that he took off at a blistering pace towards, hopefully, his safe evacuation at the “rendezvous point.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  The rainforest cycle, Downs thought to himself, his mind processing images of insects, earthworms, and other forest floor dwellers munching on the remains of him as his body lay there reduced to nothing more than animal feces. He then pictured a bird managing somehow to get part of his newly formed shape, flying high up into the rainforest canopy, pooping and redistributing him to another part of this dense and steamy ecosystem.

  The realism of being redistributed back into the rainforest cycle gave him the chills as he thought about the possibility of being consumed and traveling through the digestive track of one of the creatures, only to come out the other end. A sharp and intense pain from his ribs cut in over his thoughts, bringing him once again to his knees, and reminding him not only of the injuries he had sustained, but more importantly of William Jamison.

  The very thought of Jamison brought Downs back up to his feet, and he forced himself to overcome the pain in an all out mind-over-matter battle. As he fully raised himself as best he could, he felt a new and growing sense of purpose coursing through his body, purpose to not only overcome, but, more importantly, to survive. The thought of Josiah and Max popped into his head. Were they okay? He hoped like hell that they had already been rescued or found safety at the very least, until he could make his way back up to them. The alternative to them finding safety was simply inconceivable. What had happened to Nat was again beyond comprehension.

  He nodded to himself and mouthed the word “Yep.”

  “Yep,” he said aloud, placing great emphasis on the word. “Today is not the day that I die. Today is not that day.”

  Downs knew he wasn’t going to go out like this. This could not be the end of him. He had to get back and find his way to the others, if they were in fact still amongst the living. The urge was strong but the pain down in his ribcage was still resonating even stronger.

  He inhaled a big breath of air and tried to push the pain aside to the deepest and furthest regions of his brain. He turned around quickly, as something suddenly and
without warning stirred from behind.

  Nothing but the entrance to the nest itself, the area in which he had fallen down, greeted him. Was he hearing things as he staggered forward?

  This time though noise came from behind him, and quickly he shot around. Something was glistening back at him in the last bit of available sunlight the jungle had to offer up, as if someone were reflecting the sun off a mirror and shining it his way.

  Downs squinted, yet he managed to still stumble forward as the image started to take shape. A smile crept across his face as he moved closer and closer towards it, and within a few more steps an even bigger smile spanned the width of his face. He knew instantly what it was.

  “Jamison’s kukri knife,” he muttered, half not believing it was there lying before him.

  He bent down and picked it up, his brain as downright stunned as his hands were to be feeling the deadly weapon. Jamison must have dropped it in his maniacal pursuit to escape the nest and leave him here to die.

  Leaving me here to die. The thought hit Downs hard as he tightened his grip on the weapon.

  Jamison had done his best to disassemble Downs and leave him to fend for himself, to find out if he really deserved to survive, or as he already so eloquently phrased it, to have the right to pass on his genes to his offspring. Downs gripped the weapon even tighter as he could feel a fury coming over him, anger to both survive and prosper.

  He looked down at the tip of the kukri knife. Blood still coated the edges of it. Downs took a quick look around and was just about to stow the knife at his side, when he quickly realized it was pointless. There would be no point in stowing the weapon at his side. It was plain and simple. He had to use it. He had to kill.

  Kill or end up back in the rainforest cycle.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  John Corstine and Jeremiah listened and waited with baited breath, all while watching the last of the saliva drip and drop to the floor. A few seconds of uncomfortable silence passed before all out carnage and chaos picked back up. Corstine listened in silence as he knew his office was being torn to shreds and uprooted like vegetables in a garden. Loud clattering and clunks abounded above. A heavy and fully loaded file cabinet must have toppled to the ground, spilling everything inside and, thereby, exposing a boatload of confidential files that Corstine had accumulated since work began on the boardwalk years ago. Corstine had been meticulous in his record keeping, so much that one could have construed it as hoarding.