The Blake Equation- Discovery

by David Savieri

  ‘Are they plants?’ Hayden hoped as he couldn’t help but try to count their number.

  ‘We must leave,’ Feebru stated sternly, his voice shaking. Then without explanation he turned his airpad around one hundred and eighty degrees only for his headlight to shine on the repulsive, hideous head of the largest of the Cro-Ag herd silently making its way inward. Its bulbous black eyes fixated on them all as it crept.

  ‘Oh, no! ’ Kel mumbled as she looked groggily at the beast. Hayden spun his airpad around, too, so that he was again alongside Feebru. Kel flattened her hair over her laceration with a sweaty palm and looked at Hayden in fright as he looked around the cavern frantically.

  ‘There’s nowhere to go!’

  ‘We’ll have to fight, ’ Kel ceded as she added more pressure to her head wound, blood seeping out over her fingers making her feel faint. The Cro-Ag shuffled rapidly toward them. Half of its bulk now in the cavern, it lowered its head and the front of its body in preparation to lunge. Feebru rode in front of Hayden and Kel as the monster barked loudly, momentarily deafening them.

  Then, it did nothing. The creature stood there totally still, frozen in its crouched position with an even odder than usual look on its face. Feebru glanced at Hayden, then Kel looked at Feebru then at Hayden, then back at the Cro-Ag with bemusement.

  Suddenly there was a loud squelching sound and a sickening crack and the beast jolted back to life, barked desperately then stood momentarily still again before slumping hard onto the earthen ground, stone dead just metres from them. A tremendously thick pool of dark blood quickly enveloped the cavern floor around the beast’s lifeless, inert torso and oozed toward their hovering airpads.

  Hayden, Kel and Feebru looked at each other again. Their faces etched with confusion as their lights moved over its corpse.

  All three dismounted to look at it but before any of them could appreciate its size or its power or how fortunate they were to avoid being killed by it, to their terror, they saw what had brought it to a violent end.

  Looming ominously from the darkness and over the hulk of its slaughter - was the Fylax.

  Having survived the battle in the storm, and having dispatched its latest victim, it wanted more blood. Roaring victoriously and so thunderously that it shook the walls and dust floated down across the headlight beams, it unceremoniously pulled the Cro-Ag’s body backward with its mighty jaws as if it were nothing much at all.

  Hayden’s mouth felt as arid as the Nullarbor Plain. His saliva had completely disappeared and he knew that his companions felt the same. He was petrified. They were petrified and frozen to the spot.

  The Fylax, took two heavy steps forward, the cavern reverberating under its weight. Hayden held onto the weakening Kel and he and Feebru kept their eyes trained on the two, foot-long black slit pupils within the red iridescent discs that approached unwaveringly toward them. The immense creature took two further steps then suddenly it stopped, its eyes flitted away from Hayden and Kel and emitted a low growl that they could all feel in their guts. Hayden warily shifted his eyes toward the Kuhlian and trying desperately not to make any sudden movements, managed to turn his neck slightly, he was able to see that his friend was holding aloft one of the strange gelatinous objects. The Fylax’s deep growl stopped and Hayden instantly realised what Feebru held.

  ‘It will not touch us if it thinks we will harm its offspring,’ Feebru called, his voice giving away that he was not entirely confident that that was true. The monster’s breathing suspended, it’s mouth almost closed, it watched. Hayden moved a toe-length closer to one of the eggs and the Fylax’s pupils dilated, not quite sure if it had registered his movement, then flicked back onto Feebru and then importantly to what he held hostage.

  ‘How big are the babies?’ Hayden whispered nervously, tight lipped and trying his best ventriloquism.

  ‘Big,’ Feebru answered simply, the weight of the egg not seeming to bother him ‘Why?’

  ‘Praecocial are they?’

  ‘Pray - wha -?’ Kel asked deliriously, her dirty hair now firmly stuck to her forehead with her dried blood.

  ‘Do... ’ Hayden paused to watch he wasn’t about to be attacked ‘....the young feed themselves as soon as they hatch?’

  Feebru nodded, the weight of the egg now causing some strain.

  Hayden took another look at the egg nearest him, a very fine fault line widening on its surface confirming his fear. The Fylax’s eyes flicking toward the soft tearing sound and then to him.

  ‘I think -we’re - in even more trouble than we thought,’ he said, voice trembling. Kel, noticed the same happening to the egg nearest her. She bit her lip, wanting to scream.

  ‘Time,’ Feebru said, as he balanced the very heavy hostage as he strained to mount his airpad, ‘is of the essence ,children.’

  The Fylax took another heavy step closer.

  Hayden and Kel raised their shoulders in unison as a pointless defensive move. They heard the jelly-like sound of the footpads on the Kuhlian’s airpad engaging then they heard a loud ripping.

  The egg that Feebru now held with one arm and at chest height, started to hatch and that fact was not lost on its creator.

  The Fylax’s nostrils flared and it snorted and began to snap its jaws quickly in anger as through the top of the egg, a dark, slimy snout poked through and Feebru held his breath.

  The beast started to sway against the tunnel walls in anxiousness all the while its eyes remained unflinchingly focused on Feebru and its egg. Feebru waited for his opportunity and when it came, he took it desperately. Blasting forward with both hands, cradling the large hatching egg between his stomach and the handlebars, he had found a gap and timed it to perfection.

  ‘Find the right path. I’ll lead her away!’

  The Fylax just missed the Kuhlian as he slipped past with lightning slickness, captive of her treasure. She backed out awkwardly through the just wide enough tunnel and gave chase. Enraged, her wide powerful tail sent chunks of wood splinters and dust flying in clouds as it smashed into the walls causing Hayden’s airpad to lodge between two wooden stalagmite-like structures, its headlight stuck shining on the chamber entrance. Hayden protected Kel and himself from the shower of debris by diving to the ground behind a thick waist height stump of wood. The thundering of its lope and the depth of its roar echoed throughout the trees’ interior getting farther away each second. Kel urged Hayden to move. ‘Wait for the dust to settle, I don’t want to run straight into that thing.’

  They waited for what seemed an eternity that in reality was only moments. ‘Let’s get out of here now,’ Hayden suggested feverishly when he thought it safe and they both stood from behind the stump only to be confronted with at least twenty pairs of red, hungry eyes.

  Hayden stepped from behind the wood blockade. The newborns hissed and stamped, vulgarly mimicking their mother.

  Kel grabbed onto Hayden’s waist tightly.

  ‘You can fight?’ Hayden sniffed at Kel, looking at the hungry hatchlings spread before them, each one at least two metres long already and vicious.

  ‘I can fight.’ she answered hazily. ‘Can you?’

  Hayden couldn’t answer. The Fylax offspring moved quickly forward as if they were one organism, eyes not swaying from their deadly intention. Hayden and Kel edged backward, reaching a steep wall behind them just as a great bellowing roar came from somewhere outside the egg chamber. Kel caught Hayden looking at the airpad. ‘Do not even think it. They will bring you down before you reach it.’

  The hatchlings suddenly began to chirp loudly and turned away to face the cave exit. Their mother had returned.

  Hayden and Kel’s hearts sank.

  ‘Feebru!’ Kel and Hayden both mournfully cried as the behemoth entered, its mouth slightly agape and dripping red-stained saliva. The hatchlings moved aside as their mother entered further and further until her head was an easy striking distance from them.

  Hayden didn’t want this. To die on a strange planet, eaten by a gia
nt lizard and its progeny. Who would have?

  The Fylax’s red eyes were again unwavering, hypnotizing and Hayden felt weak as did Kel. The mother Fylax opened its mouth slightly and hissed, the putrid smell of its breath almost unbearable.

  Hayden took Kel’s hand and squeezed it tightly. They heard scuttling sounds from somewhere as the hatchlings and parent stared unremorsefully at their prey but they took no notice.

  As the Fylax’s mouth widened, again exposing its blood-stained razor teeth, Hayden turned Kel’s head away gently for, if Feebru had been taken by it, he didn’t want her to see the evidence.

  Holding Kel tightly to his chest he took as deep a breath as he could in the humidity and the dust and he felt her do the same.

  The Fylax’s mouth widened to the point where Hayden could see the deadly tongue flapping inside almost as if it were excited, the hardened sticky end, readying for the double death blow to come. He drew Kel even closer, his left arm cradling her head as he felt her tense and he closed his eyes.

  This was going to be the end of their short lives.

  Then it happened...

  The rear of the chamber collapsed in a calamity of dust and debris and Hayden felt himself heaved backward violently, the sensation of cool air rushing over his face. He was moving and moving fast.

  Coughing dryly, he attempted to open his eyes but the dust stung him. He tried to speak but his throat was far too dry. He found that he couldn’t move, something had him and was applying great, slow pulsating pressure to ensure that he didn’t. With much effort, he managed to open one eye very slowly and through its dirty, glassy sweat-soaked veil, back through the murk and the settling dust cloud, he saw the blurry image of the Fylax laying still on the ground, its mouth wide open and filled with a wall-full of debris.

  Was it dead?

  He didn’t care.

  He was alive. Snatched somehow from almost certain death.

  KEL?! The thought of his dear friend rang out alarmingly but when his vision refocused, he saw that the pressure on his chest was not a creature’s hold but Kel. She was pressed firmly against him and passed out, her hair whipping his face as they sped through the gloom. It was her breathing he’d felt and he sighed with relief.

  It was with that final exhalation that he slipped into limp unconsciousness.

  END OF BOOK ONE