“And what’s in it for you?”
Emma met her gaze. “Fulfilling a promise I made to someone a long time ago. I left someone behind, and I intend to find them.”
“After ten years? I think you mean what’s left of them.” Helen tilted her head. “So, a waste of time.”
Andy sighed, and then looked up at his sister. “It’s probably a hoax, or all a big mistake. But if there’s even the sliver of a chance… ” He lowered his voice. “Sis, come on, we gotta think about this.”
“And if there is a sliver of a chance its true, it’ll be beyond dangerous.” Helen’s brows were still drawn together.
Emma’s jaw set. “I won’t sweet-talk you; it will be damned dangerous, and deadly. That, hidden place, killed all my friends in a little over a day. But we weren’t ready then.”
“And you are now?” Helen’s eyes were half-lidded. “Who else is going?”
“I’m bringing some firepower this time. Four ex-Special Forces soldiers with jungle experience, all kitted up. Then there’s you two, and me. And that’s it.”
“All kitted up? You can’t be shooting up a foreign country. You’d get everyone locked up,” Andy scoffed.
“The guns are coming. And if you decide to come, and I hope you do, then you’ll be glad they’re there.” Emma smiled flatly. “In or out?”
Andy didn’t even wait. “In.”
“I know I’ll regret this.” Helen sighed. “… probably, in.”
Emma nodded. “In one week’s time, we meet for introductions and our first expedition briefing. I’ll send through the details.” She stuck out her hand. “Welcome aboard.”
CHAPTER 09
Ben had found a new home. He hated to have to leave his old one behind, and he thought it had been well hidden and fortified. But, he found that the longer you stayed in one place, the greater the odds that he’d eventually be found.
And he’d been right. He was lucky that he had an escape hatch, or he would have been dug out like a grub from a rotting log. One to two years, and then he was usually on the move again.
His new cave descended into the ground as opposed to into the side of a rock face. All around it was thick growth — good for concealment, but unfortunately, the twin fact of that was that it meant it gave good concealment for any approaching hunters. Every time he went out or came back, his neck prickled at the thought of something waiting patiently to ambush him.
He always prayed that if it did happen, it would be quick. Ben still remembered after all these years, watching in horror as their guide, Nino, was torn limb from limb and then eaten while still alive. He shuddered at the red-raw memories.
Close to the mouth of his cave, there was also a massive tree trunk, rising easily 80 feet into the air. It had fur-like bark, and its massive canopy was more like long ribbons of grass or reeds than leaves. Over the months, Ben had used his knife to chop out wedges into the bark, creating a type of ladder, and every so often, or just when the mood took him, he climbed to the top of it. Then, hiding in amongst the grassy canopy, he looked out over his primordial land.
Ben sucked in a deep breath of the humid air, catching the familiar fishy scent of animal dung that he now knew to be dinosaurian. There was also the sweet smell of rotting vegetation, the sharp tang of plant saps, and also strange-scented flowers. Huge insects zoomed by, and higher up, he could see leathery-winged pterodons riding on thermals. Some of them were no bigger than ravens and flitted from treetop to treetop. But others were enormous, like airplanes.
In the distance, huge heads on long necks rose and fell as the land leviathans fed on grasses, trees, and pretty much any plant matter they could get into their gargantuan mouths. They trumpeted a little like elephants, and the mournful cries traveled along the valley floors for miles to be answered by another of their kind lost in the hazy distance.
Ben sat forward; he had learned to keep moving, and the land he was currently in stretched to a wet, green valley with raw, towering cliffs. Even the geology of this primitive place was huge, as continental drift was still pulling, pushing, and uplifting the earth, and then eroding it back down.
He had created a small perch within his branch nest, and momentarily, he looked down toward the ground. He knew that hunters were probably down there somewhere. But up here, he felt safe. Beside him was a woven sack of fist-sized rocks — he’d collected them and carried a few aloft every time he scaled up to his nest, and if anything got too interested in his trail, he’d rain the rocks down. Nothing liked having a baseball-sized rock hit their heads, no matter how thick those boxy, tooth-laden skulls were.
Ben grinned mercilessly; he had other safeguards as well. This was his patch, and any intruders would soon find he was not going to make for an easy meal.
He sighed and leaned back, placing his arms behind his head. Hazy sunlight shone down on him, and he turned to stare toward the plateau—his plateau—right now; it wasn’t like it would be in the future. The iron-hard granite walls were sloping on some sides and only rose a few hundred feet where the cliffs fell away, unlike the thousands of feet the sheer walls would rise in his home time. Today, his tepui was young and still growing up.
But just looking at it filled him with hope and horror. He knew he’d need to make his way back up there one day. He hoped that his theory that the wettest season would once again grab that junior tabletop mountain and allow anything and anyone on there to be thrown forward into the future. When it did happen, he’d damn well make sure he was there.
Ben almost wept with joy, impatience, and frustration, and he couldn’t help thinking back over his long time spent here. It was like a jail sentence where all the other inmates wanted to tear you limb from limb, literally.
In his travels, he’d seen vast volcanic plains that looked like the surface of alien planets. He’d crossed jungle valleys that contained monstrosities no one had ever seen or recorded. There were stinking swamps with soft-bodied things with hook-like teeth that drained blood or had segmented bodies and dozens of sharp-tipped legs and pincers.
His eyes slid back to the juvenile flat-topped mountain and felt his stomach knot. Everywhere in this damn place was dangerous, but up there on that huge risen landmass like an island in the sky, lived an alpha-apex predator that was worse than anything that hunted in these lowlands, and it was the reason he had been made to flee all those years ago.
He sucked in a deep breath and continued to stare, like he did most days. The gargantuan snake, the Titanoboa, wasn’t just another monster. This thing was like a force of nature. He couldn’t help replaying that last handful of minutes where he had led the monstrous snake away from Emma.
Then the chaos of swirling wind and boiling clouds had vanished and he found himself alone. Alone, except for something that was from his worst nightmare pursuing him. It had pushed him to the cliff edge, and when he stood on the precipice, he didn’t see the Venezuelan Amazon he recognized anymore; instead, it was this place.
It was then he knew why no one could find the place unless it was during the wettest season, once every 10 years. Because it just wasn’t there anymore. The doorway had closed, and he had been trapped on the wrong damn side.
Ben had no choice but to leap then into the vast unknown of this brutal, primordial world. He began to chuckle sourly.
“And I’m the only guy here, and will be for the next 100 million years. Just me and the monsters.”