Besides, even if she had told them what to expect, she bet they would have come anyway. Andy had also told her that some of the questions Camilla had been asking them bordered on being intrusive, and some were even directed more at whether they were worried about Emma, more than where they were going.
Because I’m the monster, remember? She laughed softly, and then turned away to look over the side.
Emma looked down and noticed the treetop canopy had opened out a little. There, finally, a landmark — a clear stream like a sparkling ribbon threaded its way through the green. Colored birds looking more like exotic, tropical fish darted in and out of the branches. It had to be the river of paradise she remembered from their last expedition. And maybe, if it truly was, they were making very good time.
She continued to stare, her mind taking her back to that last time — their sense of joy at finding a place that was Eden-like in such a dangerous jungle. There were green meadows, clear streams full of plump fish, birds, flowers, and clear air, before they then headed into the miasma of a stinking bog. It was like the Promised Land that also came with a warning—Go no further.
But they did anyway.
Her mind then took her to the plateau, and those last few moments all those years ago when she went over the lip of the cliff edge and left Ben behind. They had no choice; the thing that pursued them was going to kill her, and the last glimpse of Ben had shown her his face creased with fear and worry… not for himself, but for her.
She screwed her eyes shut. Please be there, Ben, she silently prayed. She opened her eyes and dispelled the memories, but none of the guilt. Emma breathed in the warm-scented wind of the jungle. Focus, she demanded.
More hours passed, and it was only when the sunshine dimmed did Emma become conscious of the change in the atmosphere. There was also a slight breeze now that ruffled their hair.
The broad scents of fragrant jungle blooms, rotting vegetation, animals, and brackish water were replaced with hints of ozone, as if lightning had just made jagged forks through a night sky. She noticed that the hair on her arms stood on end.
“Look.”
Drake’s voice jolted her out of her reverie. He held up a compass, and she saw that the arrow floated inside and never stayed on true north.
“GPS is gone to shit as well,” Ajax yelled.
“Like you said,” Drake observed. “The magnetic effects have distorted all our electronics.”
“It’s beginning,” she breathed, feeling her own heartbeat quicken. “Now, we get to use what we were born with — eyes, ears, any other senses we can call on to help.” Emma straightened. “But I think it’s pretty clear which direction we need to head.”
In the distance, the cloud was changing, growing, and now looked like a chaotic explosion as a column of cloud swirled like a tornado and now reached high into the atmosphere. Within that dark column, lightning crackled non-stop and forked downward, sideways, and even up into the sky.
“What the hell is that?” Fergus said, his mouth continuing to hang open.
“The finger of God,” Juan said. “Reaching down to the earth.”
“Or maybe, the devil, reaching up from Hell,” Camilla added.
Juan turned and raised an eyebrow. But Camilla just clung to the small crucifix around her neck and gave him a half-smile. “Don’t mind me.” She turned away.
The swirling cloud began to spread out, not into the upper atmosphere, but lower like a fog that crept over the land, and at its center, the huge purple column over just one area of the jungle.
“Well, whether it’s the finger of God or the Devil, it’s pointing the way,” Andy observed.
“Yup.” Drake lifted binoculars to his eyes. “Don’t like the lightning inside it; not good if we get a strike. But it has a low ceiling, and that’s what we want.” He lowered the glasses. “Provided the wind doesn’t get too high, we’ll need to rise above it soon.”
“The column won’t last, but the cloud will.” Emma turned. “The wettest season is here. We better get everyone ready.”
CHAPTER 23
Once again, Ben had covered himself head to toe in greasy mud. He belly-crawled forward and kept his eyes as slits as he lifted his head over the plateau’s edge.
At this time in history, the future flat-topped mountain was only just beginning to have the surrounding jungle weathered down around it. Over the millions and millions of years to come, the jungle would sink, while the harder granite would erode more slowly, making it seem to rise like an island into the sky. But now, it was just a slightly raised area in a vast primordial jungle.
Ben knew there was something different about this raised area. Just like the surrounding jungle, it was home to all manner of creatures, hunters and the hunted. But it was also home to something that was vastly more deadly than any two-legged, razor-toothed theropod.
He glanced up through the trees and saw the thick cloud swirling above him. It’s started, he thought, as a thrill of excitement and impatience ran through him.
The cloud was also starting to drop, creating a misted atmosphere on the plateau, and though slightly cooler, it was still dripping with humidity. He also knew that at its center, the cloudbank would break and rise. But right now, as the comet, Primordia, approached, everything was thrown into chaos — the atmosphere, the weather, the magnetic orientation of the Earth, and even time and space, as a portal or doorway to another reality was opened.
For Ben, that doorway would be to the future, his home. And in that future, the reality was a pathway to right here and now. The plateau itself was only a few square miles. The surface of that tiny landmass was thrown forward or the future backward, but only for a little over 24 hours. And at the end of that period, when the comet pulled away and the time distortion ended, the two realities went back to being ordered once again. And anything left behind on the plateau would find itself back here, just like he did.
He moved his head slowly, no fast movements, scanning the undergrowth before him. He let his eyes move over the dense jungle, the broad and fleshy leaves and bulbous hanging fruits. There were the tangling vines, some with hooked barbs that tore at the flesh, cycads, and tongue-like ferns. There were massive trees that climbed into the clouds, some recognizable as being primitive pines, ginkgos, and redwoods. Many had fungi, like flatbread growing out from their trunks, and their lower branches had what looked like strings of green pearls hanging from them.
There were also trees he was now familiar with but had no idea what names to call them. The ones with bark-like course hair, or plated scales, or even a surface that looked like popped rice.
He was horribly familiar with all of them, but he was still as much an alien in this world, as if he had crashed here in a spacecraft from another planet. Tiny, soft little human beings didn’t belong here, and when their time came to rule, it would only be because the land giants had all departed into a fossilized history.
Ben licked dry lips. He knew time was his enemy now. If Emma was coming, he needed to find her quickly. But where would she be? She was a climber, so the odds were she would be coming up over the cliff edge, somewhere. And from there, he’d have to make some educated guesses, and try and get in her head and think like her.
Perhaps she might decide that a good place to start was somewhere they both knew — the site of their first entry. It was a familiar place and somewhere they could rendezvous. If there was a chance she was there, then that’s where I’ll be too, he thought.