The ebu gogo that had been addressed hurled her spear overhand at Bethany. Bethany screamed as the spear sped through the air and pierced her heart. Linda and Christa stood in shocked silence as Bethany fell to the ground face down, dead, the spear point sticking out of her back.
Linda shouted, “Fuck,” took her gun out of its holster, pointed it at the ebu gogo that had just killed Bethany, and pulled the trigger. The ebu gogo Linda shot fell down, dead. The rest of the ebu gogo fell to the ground at the sound of the gunshot, kicked their legs into the air, waved their arms in panic, and screamed, “Eeeeeee!!!! Eeeeeee!!!!! Eeeeeee!!!!!”
Linda yelled, “Run,” and Linda and Christa took off running. The spear held by an ebu gogo that lay on her back screaming happened to swing and hit Linda’s hand as she exited the clearing, knocking the gun from her grip. Linda turned to retrieve her gun, but she didn’t see where it had landed. She did see, however, that the ebu gogo were beginning to recover from the shock of the sound of the gun, so she and Christa ran blindly into the jungle.
Meanwhile, in the clearing, a few ebu gogo recovered before the rest. They spoke briefly to one another, tossed their enormous low-hanging breasts over their shoulders to keep them from getting in their way, and ran off in their high-stepped gait after Linda and Christa, crying the war cry of the ebu gogo, “Yeyeyeyeyeyeye!!!!!!”
Linda and Christa ran through the jungle in a blind panic, not stopping for low brush and shoving vines out of their way as they went. Both could hear the war cry of the ebu gogo as it grew closer, and closer. The ebu gogo were gaining on them.
Then, Linda felt a sting in the back of her neck. She reached back and removed a wooden dart. As she looked at it, she suddenly grew dizzy and then everything went black. A dart hit Christa in the back of her neck. She tumbled to the ground and lay there completely still. The ebu gogo gathered around the two passed out women and it took six ebu gogo to lift each woman from the ground.
They began to carry the two women through the jungle, and were having so much trouble that they called out into the jungle in their strange, murmuring language for more ebu gogo to join them. More ebu gogo did, and they all gathered together and carried the passed out blonde and brunette crowd surfing style back to their cave.
Chapter 6
Clare, Lewis, and Dr. Stern sat towards the front of the Dare to Discover, which sat on the runway at the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Airport. Dr. Stern looked back with distaste at three other individuals sitting together close to the back. The first was a tall and skinny young man, the next was a short and overweight young man, and the third was a petite young Asian woman. All three looked like they were in their early twenties. Dr. Stern turned to Lewis and hazarded to ask, “Who are they?”
“Don’t worry about them. They’re just interns I picked up at USC the other day.”
Dr. Stern answered dryly, “I see.”
Jack Holland entered the plane from the back with his usual buoyant gait and sat down in an empty seat. Clare’s blue eyes widened with shock. She rose from her seat, marched up to Jack, and gave him a glare that would have terrified any ordinary man as she shouted, “Jack! What in Hell are you doing here!?!”
Jack looked up at her with a big smile and replied, “Didn’t your father tell you? I am coming with you to Indonesia.”
“Like Hell you are!" Clare turned abruptly and marched back to her father, calling, “Dad! Daddy! Daddy!!!”
When she reached Lewis, he turned, raised an eyebrow, and innocently said, “Yes, Clare?”
“Daddy!!! Why is Jack here!?!”
“Mr. Holland is here because he has proven himself to be a valuable member of my team.”
Clare stomped her foot. “Oh my God dad you don’t understand. You never understand! He’s a fucking furry!”
“Yes, you have told me that before, but what you won’t tell me is what a furry is.”
“That’s because it’s none of your business!”
“Clare, whatever happened between you two is long in the past. You are both grown adults, and I am sure everything will be all right.”
Clare muttered “I’ve got to get off this plane," turned, and made her way to the door of the jet. But as she did, the jet began to travel down the runway. Clare pulled frantically at the handle of the door.
When he realized what she was trying to do, Lewis ran up to his daughter. “Clare, the door won’t open while the plane is moving.”
Clare cried out, “Oh my God I can’t believe this," and yanked at the handle even harder.
Lewis shouted, “Clare, the plane is about to take off!”
Jack approached Clare with a cocky swagger and said, “Clare, my rabbit, what’s wrong? You should be happy to see me.”
Clare turned to Jack and screamed, “I am not a rabbit!”
Jack replied, “Shhh. Rabbits don’t talk.”
Clare screamed. The plane increased in speed and began to rumble. Clare pulled as hard as she could at the handle of the door. Lewis nervously said, “Clare, you really need to sit down.”
Clare ignored her father and continued to pull frantically at the handle as the plane rose from the ground. Before long the Dare to Discover was flying South-East towards Indonesia with its seven passengers, Lewis, Dr. Stern, Clare, Jack, and the three interns.
The blue sky changed to black. Clare had locked herself in the bathroom shortly after takeoff. Lewis knocked on the bathroom door and said, “Clare.” There was no answer so Lewis knocked again and said, “Clare honey, you can’t stay in there the entire trip.” When there still wasn’t any answer Lewis said, “Other people are going to have to use the bathroom.”
Clare shouted back at him from behind the locked door, “I don’t care. Fuck off.”
“Clare, look, I’m sorry. Perhaps it would help if you told me exactly what happened between you and Jack.”
Clare angrily shouted, “What do you think happened between me and Jack?”
“I think you two were really good friends, and then something happened and you weren’t really good friends anymore.”
Clare opened the door, gave her father a pitying look, shook her head, and lovingly said, “Oh my God Dad, you are so naive.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Stern sat reading the bestselling work of cryptozoology, The Mystery of Lake Champlain by Lewis Dare, shaking his head in disbelief.
Having patched things up with his daughter, Lewis, his chest puffed out in pride, walked up to Dr. Stern and said, “So, has my book caused you to revise your opinion about cryptozoology?”
Dr. Stern closed the book, put it down on the tray in front of him, turned to Lewis, furrowed his brow, and said, “No. Who on Earth would take such rubbish seriously? The prose is purple, the first three chapters are nothing but you going on and on in a self-aggrandizing manner about your brilliance as a scientist, you make outrageous statements throughout with no evidence provided to back them up other than what you claim to have witnessed while alone, there is a preposterous murder-mystery subplot that has no place in a scientific work, and most egregious of all, it isn’t even peer reviewed.”
Lewis answered, “Peer review is elitism, plain and simple.”
Dr. Stern snapped back, “Well, scientists are elite! Peer review is our way of keeping junk science like this out.”
“Mainstream scientists are arrogant, but that doesn’t make you elite.”
“You are the one who would pay an unseemly amount of money to bring a ‘mainstream scientist’ along on a vanity project.”
“I had to bring you along, because you academics control the entire scientific culture. You control the universities, the publishing houses, and all the government boards. You have armies of nonprofits to back up every little thing you say. You have convinced the public that yours is the first and the last word on everything scientific, and that if somebody doesn’t belong to your little PhD club then nothing he says is worth a damn unless he slavishly agrees with you. So unfortunately, I needed to bring a scientist with me in order to be listened to and believed.”