He leaned out further and looked around — he saw he was hanging about six feet up from the ground in some sort of massive banyan tree that must have been 300 feet tall if it was an inch.
The foliage above was too thick for him to get his bearings, and he even had no idea which country he was in. He didn’t think he’d made it as far as the Florida Everglades, but who knew.
Gordon ducked back inside and pulled out the emergency bag tucked under the cockpit seat. It contained rations, water, and a couple of flares. He then twisted his helmet a half turn to remove it and let it drop down to the ground.
It bounced on a solid but plant-littered base, so he threw a leg over and jumped down.
Red Gordon stood with his hands on his hips for a moment, trying to decide if he should wait by the capsule or try and set off. Even if he was in the U.S., he could wander into a swamp and end up gator food. And if he were in the Amazon, well, then getting lost would mean he’d really be screwed.
He looked up again. The tree he had landed in was probably one of the tallest around… maybe he could climb up and see if he could get his bearings further up.
He tried to map a path to the upper branches. The limbs were huge lower down, and there were plenty of handholds — yeah, it was doable. He took a quick sip of water, left his bag with his helmet behind, and started up.
It was easy at first; the branches were broad, and now and then Gordon came across weird lizards that got up on their back legs and hissed at him.
He’d never been to the Amazon before and guessed he was just seeing their typical lifeforms. He’d make a mental note to ask the science geeks when he got back.
At about 120 feet up, he paused to listen as something large moved below him. He heard the sounds of trees being pushed aside and the snuffled grunts from a large throat and mouth. Suddenly, he caught a glimpse of an enormous grey-banded back as it broke for a few seconds before it re-entered the dense growth again.
Did they have elephants here? he wondered. While he continued to stare down, there was a thump of something landing behind him, and turning, he saw another goddamn reptile standing upright, this one about three feet tall. It was a mottled green and had a long, pointed face, like a beak.
“Shoo,” he said as it fixed him with one ruby-red eye. Gordon had the weird feeling it was looking him up and down as though sizing him up… for dinner.
“Go on, get lost.” He waved a hand at it, and the thing screeched and unfolded bat-like wings… goddamn wings!
“Piss off!” he yelled and it flapped away like a wet sheet. Gordon shook his head. “Goddamn weird place.”
He started up again, now getting to about 200 feet up. He didn’t suffer from vertigo and he was extremely fit, so even though the going was tough, he was managing just fine.
He was still within the canopy so as yet he couldn’t see out, but he could just make out that where he was now put him at the forest ceiling, so when he got a little higher, he’d be above it.
In another 10 minutes, Gordon edged out on the thinnest branch he could, holding the one above it for balance. He got as far to its edge as he could manage before it started to bend precariously under his weight.
The test pilot then leaned forward to bend the branch down, opening a hole in the banyan’s foliage.
Red Gordon looked out, and his mouth fell open.
Miles and miles of green.
He was higher than the far jungle, much higher, leading him to believe he was on some sort of flat-topped mountain, and that accounted for his crash landing before he actually made true landfall.
There were no roads, no settlements, and nothing resembling human habitation. In the distance, he saw a line of mountains and before it a lush green valley that was shrouded in mist.
“Where the hell am I?” he whispered.
Staring upward, he could see the sky was marred by a long eyebrow-like streak, and soaring above the heads of the distant trees were what looked like small airplanes.
No, not airplanes, they flapped wings and were some sort of bird — some sort of giant freaking birds.
His branch quivered, and Gordon held on tight. He sniffed, frowning, as he smelled something like piss or sour vinegar and checked his hands for plant sap.
“Phew.”
He tried to change angles to see in another direction, but his branch quivered again, and then to his shock, began to bend, downward… far downward.
“Hey?”
He turned, and then froze. At the base of the limb where it met the tree trunk was a monster, a snake, big around as a Longhorn steer. It was so motionless he might have thought it was a statue, except a tongue thicker than his arm flickered out as it tasted the air, tasted him, and then drew back in.
Its brown, green, and black scales made it almost invisible in among the foliage and dappled light, but its two dead eyes were like giant glass beads, and he had no doubt they were fixed on him.
Its body curled around the trunk and trailed away beyond his vision, but the head slowly lifted and then began to come forward, its gaze never wavering from him.
Gordon couldn’t look away. He’d once seen a big anaconda eat a possum and had a pretty good idea what this thing had in mind.
“Stay back,” he said with a quaver in his voice as he edged another foot away. His branch bent further, and he quickly glanced down, looking for an escape route.
Could I leap to the next branch down? he wondered. The snake glided ever closer, and with the sound of creaking wood, the branch bent even more.
Gordon knew he had no choice. He released the branch above him to wobble on his thin perch for a moment as he tried as best he could to judge the easiest hand holds below him. Then he leapt.
Red Gordon never got five feet. The snake struck out, catching him in mid-air. Its mouth clamped down on his torso, and it rolled him back up in its coils. The snake was so large the light was blotted out around him, and he felt the massive pressure begin.
The mouth released him and he was thankful for the padding of his suit as he had felt the teeth in his flesh, but they hadn’t penetrated too far into his body.
“Oh God.” He lost all feeling below the waist. Then the coils tightened again and he both felt and heard his hip and ribs begin to pop and crunch like kindling.
“No,” he gasped as his head felt like it was going to explode from the pressure on his circulatory system. The last thing test pilot Major Redmond Gordon saw was the coils parting slightly to offer him head first into a toothed maw the size of a doorway.
This time, he knew he would feel the teeth.
CHAPTER 19
Ben, Drake, and Emma were all lost in their own thoughts as they arrived at the warehouse they’d been using as a staging area for the past few weeks. Every time they felt they were ready, they found another dozen things that needed to be done. The logistical things could be managed. But it was time that was their enemy, and unfortunately, not their only one.
The weeks went by and more incremental changes occurred around them. Some things once familiar now vanished, and new things appeared — a large yellow beetle called a ‘cob,’ for obvious reasons, was found to have a taste for rubber. You needed to check your car before driving, as its favorite meal was the wheel tread, and a single beetle could leave a whole tire completely bald. Several of them together, and you were looking at tattered shreds on steel rims.
There was now a domestic pet called a molecat that was taken into family homes — it was the size and shape of a cat, but was without eyes. It found its way around and also everything it needed by using its hearing and sense of smell.