by Todd Downing
Razi turned and pointed ahead into the mist, which was beginning to thin and dissipate. “Up there. Rocks and high ground.”
Caruso squinted into the dark, shining her flashlight in the direction Razi was pointing. “How do you know there is high ground?”
“See,” he said, nodding at the valley floor. The wetlands they’d been trudging through from the wreck gradually gave way to rockier, sandier soil. Still moist from the dampness in the air, but easier to traverse on foot. “I think we will have rocks and high ground within a kilometer.”
Muir agreed. “It would follow what we know of African topography.”
Caruso looked back and squinted into the distance at the wreck. No sign of the allosaurs. She ran the toe of her boot through the drier soil and nodded. “Alright. Let’s keep going. We’ll be away from the trees soon. Out in the open.”
As if on cue, the jungle suddenly erupted in an explosion of tree branches and sundry vegetation. The allosaurs had rediscovered their scent, and had closed the gap. Huge, sinewy coils of muscle powered piston-like legs, propelling the monsters forward. The group turned away collectively and shot into a dead run, following Razi toward the promise of high ground.
Caruso reached for her pistol and winced in pain as she realized she had yet to tend to the open wound on her arm. The ground thundered beneath them as the loping reptiles grew closer. Making sure Muir and Taggart were out of her way, she fired three shots over her shoulder toward the predators, but didn’t stop to check her work. She continued at her labored sprint, canvas satchel pounding against her bruised hip.
The two flashlights pierced the lifting fog ahead of them, and the ground became gradually rockier and more solid.
Two hundred meters.
Somewhere in the distance, lightning flashed. The group ran on, the thunder of the sprinting allosaurs mingling with the thunder in the evening sky. Razi was well out in front of the group. Caruso couldn’t blame him. She remembered her childhood helping her uncle saddle train dressage horses on his Tuscan farm, and she wished she had one now.
Three hundred meters.
The air hung thick and heavy in their lungs, tinged with a hint of sulfur. They kept running.
Caruso scanned the night behind them, flashlight in her left hand. Muir huffed under the weight of his years and several added kilos in the survival bags he carried. Taggart wasn’t next to him.
Four hundred meters.
Caruso adjusted to make sure she wouldn’t trip and fall, casting a quick glance over her shoulder toward the rear of her party. Muir kept at his clip and passed her. Taggart shone visible in the beam of Caruso’s flashlight as she straggled along. Then she disappeared as a giant pair of jaws snapped down over her head and torso. Without so much as a scream, Leigh Taggart was gone―the only sound was the horrible rending of flesh and the growls of the dinosaurs as they fought over her carcass.
Dr. Caruso turned and bolted away, her heart pounding in terror. As terrible as the loss was, she was adamant that it would not be in vain if it bought the others a few extra moments to escape. She passed Muir, who had turned back to see where Taggart had gone. His flashlight beam was met by the bloody faces of the marauding pair of allosaurs, and he instantly turned and followed Caruso at top speed. Razi had disappeared into the misty darkness ahead. The terrified scientists sprinted as best they could, packs of supplies jostling and bouncing as they ran.
Five hundred meters.
Caruso could feel the hot breath of the predators behind her. Then Razi shouted something from the dark ahead of them, and she was aware of looking down. The ground became rockier and more solid, despite the spitting rain. Her boots finally found purchase. The heavy satchel pounded and smacked against her leg, bruising it more and more with each contact.
Then a stone ridge loomed up out of the dark and suddenly someone was pulling her behind an outcropping of boulders and up a steep incline. It was Razi, wiry muscles straining from the rolled-up sleeves of his khaki safari shirt. “This way, Maua!” As he hauled her up to the crest of the rock, she could see one of the allosaurs impact the first of the scattered boulders, momentarily dazed as the other slowed and stalked away from her flashlight’s beam.
Muir came bounding up the incline with seemingly renewed vigor, but he lost his footing at the top and fell down the opposite side, catching his boot in a crevice. His leg snapped at a 45-degree angle with a horrible crack!, and he cried out in agony.
The allosaurs growled and gnashed their teeth and continued to stalk the perimeter of large boulders, frustrated at their inability to reach as high as the outcropping.
Caruso ran the flashlight beam down the other incline and into what she could make out as the mouth of a cavern of some kind. Muir writhed at the bottom of the opening, his left leg caught in a hole and bent grotesquely.
“Dr. Muir!” Caruso hailed. “We’re coming!”
Razi un-shouldered his rifle and Caruso used it as a hand-hold on her way down the incline, the young Congolese bracing her from his place at the top. When at last she could stretch no further, she let go the rifle and half-skipped, half-ran to the floor of the cave mouth. Razi was close on her tail.
“I seem to have taken a bad step,” Muir quipped, attempting something between stoicism and nonchalance. Then a wave a pain hit him and he went pale. “Mein Gott,” he shivered.
Caruso set her satchel down and knelt by his side. “Primary wound shock,” she muttered. “Razi, find one of the blankets from that big survival bag.”
Razi produced a wool army blanket from the large duffel and wrapped it around Muir. Together they extracted the German scientist’s leg from the hole in the rock and, each taking a corner of the blanket, pulled him into the cavern, just as violent lightning filled the sky and the rain came down in torrents.
The cavern floor was packed sand and gravel, stretching seventy meters through a basalt lava tube into a wider chamber. Caruso noted crudely-chiseled petroglyphs covering the walls of the entry, from floor to ceiling. Vaguely human stick figures locked in deadly combat with giant, toothy dragons―joka, as Razi had called the allosaurs. This meant the valley had been―or still was―inhabited by humans... or humanoid beings. And they’d been in contact with saurian predators which had escaped mass extinction tens of millions of years ago. From what they’d experienced already, Dr. Maria Caruso was willing to lay money on who’d won, and why this place was off limits to natives of the region.
Her flashlight beam criss crossed with Razi’s, illuminating the vast cavern interior. The entire chamber was perhaps a hundred meters deep and half as wide. Stalactites clung to the cavern ceiling fifteen or twenty meters above the floor. A small hole at the top let a steady flow of rainwater into the cave, cascading delicately down a single stalagmite that protruded from a shallow lagoon at the center. The floor around the small lake was a soft layer of white sand over solid rock, and to their initial observations, it looked long undisturbed.
They staked out a resting spot to the side of the entry passage along the west wall of the main cavern, and Razi set to work unloading the necessary gear to set Muir’s broken leg. Caruso tore along the seam in his trouser leg and examined the break―his calf and shin were swollen in shades of dark yellow and purple, and she could see where the tibia had snapped. Fortunately, the bone hadn’t penetrated flesh. She felt a bit more optimistic that they wouldn’t lose a third member of the expedition. Not from this, anyway.
Razi prepared a splint and bandages, while Caruso took firm hold of Muir’s left foot. Razi put the canvas strap of one of the duffel bags in Muir’s teeth and the German scientist bit down. Caruso nodded to Razi, who gripped Muir under his arms. Muir nodded back, teeth clenched on the canvas strap.
It was over quickly. She pulled his foot toward her, and felt the bone snap into its proper place―more or less. Muir grunted and growled against the strap, and finally passed out.
Razi gently wrapped Muir’s upper body in the blanket, then scurried over to
employ the splint. Caruso leaned back against the cave wall and closed her eyes. She let herself exchange a few deep breaths for the first time since they’d arrived. Then she felt a twinge of pain and remembered her own arm.
Her shirt was caked in partially dried blood and sand from the cavern floor. She deftly ripped the torn sleeve at the shoulder, revealing a deep but fairly clean puncture wound about three inches long, traveling north-south along her triceps. She swabbed some tincture of iodine over the area and dressed it in a combination of adhesive bandages and cotton gauze.
By the time she’d finished tending herself, Caruso noted Razi had completed the splint on Muir’s leg, while the German scientist slept, cocooned in the army blanket. “Well done, Razi,” she complimented, sliding down the cavern wall to lay propped on her elbows.
“Thank you, Maua,” the young man smiled at her, then picked up Muir’s flashlight. “I will take a quick look around.”
She watched him roam to the far end of the cave, flashlight playing over the ancient volcanic rock. Then she unrolled her own blanket and reclined on it, using her satchel as a pillow. As she settled in, she kept catching glimpses of Razi’s wandering flashlight beam, and wondering how long it had been since another human being had occupied this natural shelter. She wondered how the saurian predators could have survived the mass extinction of their kind millions of years in the past. She wondered how they’d ever be able to get out of here. She took a deep breath, and fell instantly asleep.
# # #
The warm, golden light of morning crept down the entry to the cave. Caruso woke with a start and had to take a moment to remember where she was. She squinted as her tired eyes roamed the cave interior. All was quiet, save Muir’s rhythmic breathing as he continued to sleep.
There was no sign of Razi, and the rifle was missing.
She found the young guide standing lookout atop the stone ridge outside the lava tube entry. He was scanning the valley through a pair of field glasses, rifle slung on his shoulder. Caruso noticed he’d rigged up a climbing aid with a length of knotted rope secured to a steel piton at the top. Her safari boots gripped the incline and she hauled herself up on the rope.
The storm from the night before had blown itself out; only the low cloud layer remained, trapping the heat in the valley like a thermal blanket. Caruso erupted immediately in beads of sweat. She gazed out over her small corner of the valley. Plutonic ridges rose from the veldt of the valley floor, encrusted with quartz formations like salt on a pretzel.
“No sign of the joka,” Razi reported, “or Taggart.” He handed the field glasses to Caruso, who peered out toward the jungle where they’d crashed.
“We’ll find her. Or her remains. Eventually.” She turned her gaze south, searching for signs of the allosaurs. But she caught a plume of dust several kilometers distant, and nudged Razi. “Look there,” she said, handing him the binoculars. “Is that from an engine?”
Razi took the glasses and stared at the dust cloud for a few moments before letting a quiet gasp escape his lips. The blurry silhouette of a motorcycle and sidecar was visible through the haze and distance. Someone else was in the valley.
“Motor scouts,” Razi offered.
Caruso frowned. “Then they are already here.”
Razi nodded. “The Silver Star? Yes, it would appear so.”
Caruso scuffed her boot on the rough stone as Razi continued staring through the binoculars.
“They are heading north, across the plain,” Razi observed, swiveling in a 90-degree turn. “There is another ridge a kilometer to the west of us. If we hurry, we can be there when they arrive.”
While Razi threw together a small field survival bag, Caruso woke Muir to tell him of their plan. He had plenty of fresh water and a week’s worth of dry rations, if he was careful. He had his Luger pistol for protection, and the rest of the camp gear for comfort. Caruso and Razi would head to the next ridge to make contact with the unknown party and―depending on their identities―get help, or try to eliminate them and take their motorcycle. If they didn’t return by nightfall, it was a good bet Muir would be stuck in relative safety but with a broken leg and a limited food supply. If need be, he could keep a bullet in reserve for a more dignified end than starving to death.
With time at a premium, Caruso and Razi said a quick farewell and clambered out of the cave and down into the flatlands. To the north, a craggy range of granite mountains ran east-west, with what appeared to be a large river snaking its way toward the ridge formation to the west―the very hills they were headed for.
They set off at a decent clip, Caruso struggling to keep up with the athletic Razi. They jogged across a savanna of dry grasses and scrub brush punctuated by the occasional thorny acacia tree or giant clump of pampas. They hugged the rocks as best they could, and Caruso found herself checking over her shoulder every now and again, just to be sure the allosaurs weren’t stalking them from the east.
The target ridge was much like the one in which they’d camped; a collection of boulders and basalt tubes and crags, creating a perfectly defensible hiding place. Razi scampered atop the highest rock shelf and was immediately assaulted by an irate puff adder whose sunning spot he’d disturbed. Without much but a secondhand regard, Razi angled his boot to catch the serpent’s bite, then stepped down hard, trapping its neck. In one fluid motion, he unslung his rifle, popped the butt on the ground, severing the adder’s head from its body, and slung the rifle back onto his shoulder.
“Impressive,” Caruso complimented.
Razi shrugged, his attention on the approaching dust cloud. “You grow up in the Congo, you learn to deal with snakes.” He put the field glasses to his eyes and peered through them. “Two riders,” he reported, “Maxim gun on the sidecar.”
He passed the binoculars to Caruso, who noted gray poplin safari shirts with matching pocket trousers, black field boots and gray patrol caps with a four-pointed star pinned to the front. “Those uniforms are Silver Star.” She nervously shifted her weight back and forth, passing the field glasses to Razi, who stashed them in the field bag. “We’re going to have to do this carefully,” she warned.
The motorcycle pulled to a dusty stop a dozen meters away from Caruso’s vantage point. Razi was positioned at the other end of the ridge, creating a crossfire zone. The driver raised his goggles to rest on the bill of his cap, dismounting the 1923 British-built Douglas RA cycle and squinting along the ridge. Suddenly he dropped his gaze to the ground under the basalt lava tubes, and that’s when Caruso noticed what had seized his attention: strewn along the base of the ridge were thousands of glimmering quartz-like stones, just like those she’d seen all over her own ridge camp. She stifled a gasp.
The valley was lousy with raw diamonds. They were just lying there, on the ground.
The driver stooped to pick one up and held it aloft for his partner to see. “Crowley should be quite happy with this discovery,” he offered in an East London accent. “These formations along the central plateau are ripe for the picking.”
Just then, Caruso’s foot scraped the rock on which she lay, causing a small avalanche of sandy pebbles to slide down the back. She pressed her body tight against the warm stone, making as low a profile as she could. After a couple seconds, she ventured to raise her head to look.
The gunner in the sidecar saw her, and opened fire with the Maxim machine gun.
She ducked back down just as the rock in front of her was pulverized by a volley of incoming .303 bullets that popped and whizzed by her head.
She saw Razi pop up from his position, aim his Beretta OVP, and fire a short burst into the occupant of the sidecar. She heard the driver swear and answer Razi’s fire with his own MP-18 trench sweeper, but she couldn’t see where he was. The scout and her own guide traded shots a few times, then Caruso popped up from her own vantage point and fired two shots into her target’s center of mass.
The driver fell, still clutching his MP-18 in one hand, the raw diamond in the other.
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After several deep breaths, Caruso slid anxiously down the rock to examine the scene with Razi. The bodies were already beginning to sizzle and smolder. AEGIS field agents had been reporting this phenomenon since the spring of 1925―the siphoning of a dead or captured Silver Star agent’s life force, presumably to the benefit of supreme leader Aleister Crowley or one of his select lieutenants. Most importantly, it left no one to interrogate.
Within a minute, the two soldiers were empty uniforms and a few random bone fragments. The lingering odor was like cured ham with a tinge of sulfur.
Razi stood agape. “Have you ever...?”
“Never,” she answered. Maria Caruso had been in ancient temples, had encountered ley line nexus points and dimensional portals, had held mystical artifacts from the dawn of human existence in her hands, but she’d never watched a person dissolve before her eyes, drained of all living essence.
She suddenly remembered why they were there. “I don’t know how to drive this,” she confessed.
But Razi had already loaded the guns and was shrugging into the scout’s uniform shirt. “I learned on a Douglas,” he smiled. “Can you work the Maxim gun?”
She returned his toothy grin. “That I can do.” Then she tucked her bobbed hair into a Silver Star field cap and prepared to swap out her khaki shirt for the remaining scout’s uniform. “Don’t peek.”
Within minutes, they were speeding across the arid grassland of the valley, heading south, from whence the scouts had come. Caruso looked over the cramped sidecar and discovered four stick grenades secured to the right exterior panel, adding them to her mental inventory. They noted the active volcanoes that dotted the perimeter, contributing to the cloud layer above. They saw herds of grazing stegosaurs and giant sauropods, and flocks of primitive pterosaurs―possibly Rhamphorhynchus―circling overhead.
At the opposite edge of the valley rose another mountain ridge. They turned east and followed the rocks and hills along their dusty border. The greenhouse of trapped heat was oppressive. Finally they hit a small greenbelt and turned again, heading north. Caruso unfolded the map and saw where the Portuguese explorer had made note of the landmarks.
