“Shit,” Corstine cursed to himself.
“Much bigger problems on hand, Dad,” Jeremiah replied as he repositioned himself just beneath the door.
“What are you doing?” Corstine demanded, but it was too late as Jeremiah pushed the door up and open, leaving just enough room for him to peak his head out.
Now with a full view, Jeremiah could see the battle that was being waged in his father’s office, an office that had served as the breeding ground to the very idea of the boardwalk itself, an office which was near and dear to his father’s heart. Tables and bookshelves had been upended, splintered, and battered into broken pieces, along with three large filing cabinets and all their contents. Everything spilled out onto the floor and was being trampled like there was no tomorrow.
The physical damage to the office paled in comparison to what else Jeremiah’s eyes were processing. The entire scene represented one of both cannibalism and all out savagery. Everything was eating everything in what seemed like an effort to end each other with little thought or reason behind it, except that of relentless carnage. Jeremiah saw quite vividly several little gatherings or clusters where the very young were rolling around on the ground, while the others around them would repeatedly dive bomb their fallen family members, ripping off pieces of flesh, limbs, tails, and even gouging eyes out with their oversized talons.
Quickly Jeremiah searched the ground floor with his eyes. Then he saw it. The massive adult was resting on all fours in full glory. The creature though did not see the small puny human peering at him from just beneath ground level as it sent its prehensile tail plunging into the side of one of the office walls. The crushing impact vibrated the office, and Jeremiah looked back down at his father while still holding the door slightly ajar.
“We need to get out of here, and quickly. They’re tearing everything to pieces as well as each other,” Jeremiah said, turning his full attention back to the slaughter on the office floor.
The adult again bashed its tail into the wall almost in an act of defiance, sending another vibrating wave that rippled through the building. Jeremiah’s eyes frantically searched the ground floor for a possible solution to their dilemma. Noise, tearing, gouging, screaming, and clawing all soaked up his senses before movement out of the corner of his eye finally came into clearer focus, materializing into the image of a body that was moving fast. Not even giving a second thought, Jeremiah snatched the opportunity by the back two legs, the little predator making slashing attempts at any part of open skin.
Jeremiah flung the creature with all his might. He opened the door fully upright now, waiting for his intended outcome, as the creature slammed into the far office wall and fell straight down to the floor. The entire room immediately took notice of the newly dropped piece of meat.
“Come on,” Jeremiah shouted down to his father, offering him a hand in the process.
With some grunting and struggle, he managed to pull his father up and onto the surface. Father and son wasted little time as they made a beeline towards the hallway from which they had entered. The wall to which Jeremiah had flung the small creature now reflected a ball of carnage as several youngsters rolled end-over-end in their pursuit to overtake and overwhelm the small individual. The fierce onslaught of aggression had grabbed the attention of the adult, as it let out a loud piercing roar and bounded towards the action.
Corstine and Jeremiah had managed to make their way back out to the hallway and were just about to officially exit the building, but not before Corstine paused momentarily to pull a red lever directly adjacent to the door. With that they opened the door that led back out to the boardwalk.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
Thirty-six year old Gajaraja Conly sat in his small yet surprisingly well-organized air conditioned office in a high rise building in Jakarta, Indonesia, more specifically the Jabodetabek region of the city, considered to be the official metropolitan area. Gajaraja’s office was located at the end of the hallway on the 43rd floor of the building. The door simply read JC VENTURES, which stood for none other than John Corstine Ventures.
No one had ever questioned him or questioned the very existence of JC Ventures in the first place. Gajaraja had read about how fake companies existed merely as an office door and nothing more.
He wouldn’t have gone so far as to call what he was operating for Corstine as a fake company. Essentially he was a call center for Corstine, but from time to time he felt it to be a scam. He didn’t question it though, wouldn’t dare question the hand that fed him. Gajaraja was being paid nearly $40,000 American dollars per year, enough to make him quite well off by his own standards.
Gajaraja was just about to sip some strongly brewed coffee when an alert started to go off back at his computer. Quietly he made his way to his desk and sat down.
That’s odd, he thought to himself, as he toggled a few buttons on the keyboard, opening up several different browser windows on the screen.
In the two years that he had been on the job, he had been running a call center that fielded zero calls day in and day out. Gajaraja had had interactions with John Corstine himself via email, Skype, and the occasional phone call, but now it was something different. An alert was going off on his computer. He reached over and put on his glasses as he scooted his chair in to have a better look at the screen.
The alert was at the bottom of the screen. Gajaraja clicked on the alert and up came the message. It read:
EMERGENCY LEVER HAS BEEN ACTIVATED IN QUADRANT ONE OF THE BOARDWALK. EMERGENCY RESPONSE NEEDED IMMEDIATELY. PLEASE SUMMON A FULLY LOADED HELICOPTER AND BEGIN CIRCLING ALL QUADRANTS AT ONCE. REPEAT. EMERGENCY LEVER HAS BEEN ACTIVATED IN QUADRANT ONE. PLEASE SUMMON A HELICOPTER AND BEGIN CIRCLING ALL QUADRANTS IMMEDIATELY.
Gajaraja felt his pulse quicken, and the hairs on the back of his neck began to stand on end. He suddenly felt warm and clammy all over, the overwhelming rush of excitement taking him by storm like a cold that had come out of nowhere.
“Breathe,” he muttered to himself. “You must breathe, Gajaraja.”
He took a deep breath and let the air fill his lungs, then paused for a moment while closing his eyes. He opened them slowly, readjusted his glasses, and moved his chair back a few inches from the desk.
Now let’s focus.
He quickly reread the warning prompt message once more, scanning to see if he missed anything. He began straining his mind for the next step. At first he drew a big fat blank, but then he remembered that the answer to the warning message lay within his emails. Now that he thought about it, that email was two years old, essentially the length of time he had been on the job.
Rather than go through each page of his email account one by one at a painstakingly slow pace, he quickly typed in the name John Corstine into the filter box of his Gmail account. He hit the button and the search produced ninety seven emails from Corstine himself. Gajaraja quickly began paging back to the very first emails he ever received from Corstine.
It wasn’t in the first email from Corstine, but in the third. It held the desired information that he was after. He clicked on it and quickly began scanning the contents of the email. Knowing that he had successfully found the correct email, he allowed himself to breathe a slight sigh of relief, but a slight one at that, knowing full well that he still needed to execute Corstine’s orders.
The email read:
GAJARAJA, WELCOME ABOARD AND GLAD TO HAVE YOU AS MY FIRST IN COMMAND FOR THIS CERTAIN PROJECT IN THIS TANGENT OF THE WORLD. BEING THAT THIS IS WHAT I CONSIDER TO BE MY MY FIRST REAL TRANSMISSION TO YOU, I ASK THAT YOU PLEASE ABIDE BY THE FOLLOWING REQUEST. IN THE ADVENT OF AN EMERGENCY DURING THE CONSTRUCTION PHASE OF THE PROJECT OR DURING ANY HOURS BOTH NOW AND AFTER, PLEASE SUMMON THE APPROPRIATE HELP SHOULD THE WARNING BEACON GO OFF.
YOUR IMMEDIATE CONTACT PERSON IN CASE OF AN EMERGENCY IS COPPER LEVINGSTON. I HAVE SENT YOU ANOTHER EMAIL SIMPLY WITH THE EMERGENCY NUMBER TO COPPER. IF YOU CALL IT YOU WILL NOT RECEIVE AN ANSWER. THE NUMBER IS NEVER TO BE USED EX
CEPT IN THE EVENT OF AN EMERGENCY. COPPER HAS BEEN BRIEFED AS WELL ON THIS VERY DETAIL. HE IS EMPLOYED BY ME AND PAID TO BE ON CALL 24/7. ONCE AGAIN, PLEASE FIND HIS CONTACT INFORMATION IN THE NEXT EMAIL. GOOD TO HAVE YOU ON BOARD, AND WE SHALL SPEAK VIA SKYPE VERY SOON.
CORDIALLY,
JOHN CORSTINE
Without hesitation Gajaraja opened up Corstine’s next email and immediately began dialing the number that Corstine had provided. The phone immediately went to an automated voice and spoke to him.
THANK YOU FOR CALLING. YOUR REQUEST HAS BEEN PROCESSED AND THE NECESSARY MEASURES HAVE BEEN PUT INTO PLACE. GOODBYE.
Gajaraja took a moment to catch his breath before finally ending the call. He let out a sigh of relief, staring up at the ceiling and praying that he had executed and placed the appropriate courses of action into play.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
William Jamison came to a complete stop, shook his head, and then began to start running again. He decided to stop once more after only a few feet. It had been the third time in just a few short minutes that he had forced himself to come to a halt, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched, couldn’t get rid of the overwhelming impulse that he was being eyed from an unseen location. Jamison looked around, feeling as though he had a good vantage point of the surrounding area to field any oncoming attacks, but his senses were now firing on all synapses, screaming at him as his finger gently strummed the string of the bow.
He wiped at a layer of sweat that had been building and building for quite some time atop his forehead. His throat was dry and parched, and he reached behind to unzip his Klean Kanteen from its holding place inside his backpack.
He knew the water would not be cold, but he was already anticipating the feeling of it trickling down the back of his throat as he threw his head back and prepared to drink. The sound of breaking branches caught him completely off guard, sending the Klean Kanteen dropping to the ground.
Jamison saw a blurred movement perform several acrobatic moves through the treetops. Then he saw what the blur was, in all its glory fully using its prehensile tale to swing itself from limb to limb, performing moves that seemed not possible for a creature of its size. Jamison followed the creature, his eyes going wide with horror as it swung itself off of the last huge branch, propelling its body up and into the air like a gymnast, before crashing down on all fours onto the boardwalk.
Jamison stood a mere forty feet from the beast as it breathed heavily and stared down at him, its teeth reddened with blood. Its mouth reeked of rotting and decaying meat.
Jamison stood as still as a statue for a moment with his arms at his side, the two locked in a deep and intense staring contest. He knew full well that the creature before him was thinking and reasoning things out as it tilted its head ever so slightly to the side, a movement one might expect to see from a modern day bird.
Without giving too much away and as silently as he could, Jamison slowly began to bring his hand around towards the sheath that housed his kukri knife, placing his right hand down around where he knew the tip of the handle would be. The entire time he continued to maintain eye contact with the creature, never letting his eyes waver for a second. He thought by now he would have had the knife unsheathed and firmly in his grip. Somewhat confused by the fact that his hand wasn’t making contact with the top of the weapon yet, he let go of eye contact with the creature for just a moment and looked down and towards where he had been aimlessly patting. His eyes widened in disbelief. The kukri knife was gone.
With his head spinning in confusion, Jamison flung himself around wildly, doing a quick and sloppy sweep of the area, scanning every place he could muster with his eyes for the weapon. When the effort turned up empty, the creature lurched forward and attacked with talons poised and ready to inflict fatal results with its mouth wide open as it screamed.
The thing let out a cry as if it were flying up and out of the very bowels of hell itself. Jamison had little time to react against the rushing onslaught, and he did the only thing of which he believed he was capable. He charged the creature with his own roaring battle cry while raising his right fist high into the air.
The act of bravery by the formidable yet significantly smaller human must have shocked the creature somewhat, as it flinched but still managed to keep its forward momentum going. The two combatants locked on a crash collision with one another. The creature roared as it propelled itself up and into the air, but just at the last minute Jamison changed his direction and lifted himself up and into the air as well, but not as high up as he had originally intended. It was too late for the creature, with its forward and potential energy set in one place. It could not react and change its intended direction.
Close to one thousand pounds of muscle and mass flew slightly above Jamison as he launched his attack from just below the creature, delivering several swift punches to the massive stomach region, the impact rattling his hands to the core as they connected with a seemingly impenetrable wall of muscle.
At the last second Jamison managed to divert his body further to the right as the creature’s tail took a lashing swipe at him. As Jamison’s feet touched down on the boardwalk, he quickly turned to watch as the creature clumsily landed and then fell. Its legs collapsed beneath sheer weight, and it slid a bit before finally coming to a stop. Jamison looked on at the creature, expecting it to rise to its feet, but, surprisingly, it remained motionless.
Jamison knew better than to believe the thing was hurt. Was it merely toying with him? The thought struck him as odd and fascinating all in one. He was well aware that his options were dwindling and Jamison knew from his punches and the stinging pain that was still radiating from his hand that his arrows would have a difficult time puncturing and inflicting any damage at all on such a massively well put together beast. He cursed to himself momentarily, now realizing the full scope of his actions. It had indeed not been the wisest of decisions to abandon weaponry and firearms in the act to take these creatures down by bow and arrow. Yet now here he stood with such primitive weaponry.
Jamison watched as the creature unfurled a long and lathery forked tongue from its mouth, seeming to be over a foot in length, and began licking a wound that had formed on its rear hind leg. The creature licked itself for a few more moments as the great William Jamison stood still as a statue with his arms dangling at his side. Something was trickling ever so gently down his neck and onto his shirt, and as he reached up he discovered he was bleeding from the neck.
Jamison realized the terrifying reality that he had taken both his eyes and attention off the creature, even if it had just been for a split second. It was a split second too long in his book. Jamison looked up and got an eyeful of the back of the creature’s throat as it charged, this time like it wanted to swallow him whole, a feat that seemed entirely possible given the size and dimensions of its jaw.
But Jamison had already learned something about the creature, something that he was about to use to his advantage as the thing continued charging straight for him. Jamison held on until he felt he couldn’t hold on any longer, and then at the last minute he catapulted himself out of the way as the huge creature lunged for him.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
The rhythmic sound of tribal drums beat loudly in Downs’ head as he stood there and fought hard to straighten himself upright. He tucked the blinding pain away that shot out from his chest as he listened to those drums. They were the drums his father used to play to him when he was a young child, the beating sound helping him to concentrate and fight the attention deficit disorder that he struggled with all through adolescence and even into adulthood. He appreciated those drums for their relenting sound, their relenting ability to never let up or quit, and that was something that Downs had carried with him his entire life. And now as he stood there, the sound of those tribal drums inside his head beat louder than ever. He had managed to do it though, despite the excruciating pain, as if his standing there fully upright was a small victory in its o
wn right, announcing to all that his weary yet existing presence had been fully resurrected.
In his right hand he clutched Jamison’s kukri knife for all it was worth. The weapon was his only form of protection against a canopy ecosystem brimming with a voracious species of treetop predator. Downs wondered to himself for a split second what had stopped or what would stop such a species from taking over and simply out-competing all other forms of life? The thought was a short lived one as the usual audible sounds of the rainforest brought him back, a reality that with each passing second was becoming more and more serious.
Get moving Bick, a voice said from somewhere deep within. You need to get moving immediately.
It was essential that he get back to the boardwalk, where at least he ran the remote chance of being rescued. Downs had completely lost all sense of time, where the days seemed to mold into the nights and vice versa in a chaotic non linear pattern. Some time ago Nat had told him that the “rendezvous point” was not the end, and that the helicopter would be doing one last final sweep of the entire boardwalk, hovering as low as the treetop canopy would allow while making sure everyone and everything had been accounted for.
Downs paused again, still standing there, kukri knife and all, wondering why Corstine would have scheduled one final sweep of the entire boardwalk in the first place? Did he think the entire group wouldn’t make it, that individuals would be scattered and displaced when it came time for pickup? Or did he know of the existence of the creatures all along? Downs shook his head in anger, wanting nothing more than to ring Corstine’s neck, believing full well that the real estate tycoon knew all along what they would encounter and potentially be up against at the very top of the rainforest.
Prehistoric: (A Prehistoric Thriller) (Bick Downs Book 1) Page 21
