Bellakov knew more of them would be dead before morning. And it damn well wasn’t going to be him… or his ten-million-buck meal ticket.
CHAPTER 26
Ben checked his watch — 4pm. Time was moving way too fast on them. He had the same coiled feeling in his gut like he had on some of the missions he undertook in Afghanistan, where he was always on edge, always ready, always strung piano-wire tight.
I left all that for a quieter life. Then I choose to do this — what kind of idiot am I? he wondered.
The streambed they moved along was shallow and clear. From time to time, small fish darted past his feet, but nothing hid in amongst the rounded rocks, and at the riverbanks, the rushes were too sparse for concealment.
A while back, he had spotted the impressions of boot marks. The tiny scrape of moss, the toe mark in sand, and the occasional squashed aquatic critter — the others had come this way, and they weren’t that far in front.
Emma walked beside him, her handgun dangling at her side. “I know what you’re thinking,” she whispered.
He glanced at her and let one eyebrow rise. “Oh yeah. Lay it on me.”
“You’re wondering how the hell you got here?” She gave him a lopsided grin.
He bobbed his head. “How’d you guess?”
Her smile was fragile. “Because I’m thinking the same thing. We were like all the bored, spoilt, overfed, and pampered people of the modern world. We were just looking for a little adventure. Guess we found it.”
He frowned down at her. “That’s not true. For a start, we’re not overfed.”
She brightened a little at his attempt at humor.
“You know what the real problem was?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Did any of us really think this place existed? I mean really think it existed? We underestimated, everything.”
She nodded. “I sort of expected something, but, no, not like this. I thought maybe we’d spend a few days in the Amazon, take a few pictures, rack up a few mosquito bites, and then all head home with suntans and some cool stories to tell over beers.”
“Me too.” Ben stopped. “Uh oh.”
“What?” Emma went with him. Behind them, Jenny and Koenig bunched up, but the hunter, Koenig, remained standing and keeping watch.
“Blood.” He pointed at the tip of a rock just sticking from the water with a red streak. He looked upstream. “No way to tell if it’s human or not.”
Koenig spoke without turning. “There’s no disruption on either bank; they never left the water.”
“Good.” Ben stood. He looked upwards and could just make out the cloud cover through the jungle canopy. The clouds were still low, angry, and unnatural, and seemed to be swirling almost like they were in the eye of a cyclone. He ignored it; he had enough to worry about.
“Let’s pick up the pace.”
They continued heading along the watercourse, trading a little silence now for speed, hoping to catch up with their friends.
CHAPTER 27
Comet P/2018-YG874, designate name Primordia, had passed over its perihelion, and though still bright in even the daylight sky, it had already achieved its closest point to Earth.
If Ben Cartwright could have seen through the cloud cover, he might have made out that the tiny streak in the sky was now moving into the left hemisphere, as Primordia’s once a decade visit was coming to an end.
Soon it would vanish once again as it headed away from Earth, back out on its never-ending elliptical voyage through the solar system.
CHAPTER 28
The light was fading, and the ever-present cloud cover combined with the dropping sun to give them an early twilight. The light was weird, near purple, colored by the strange low clouds. And the heat and humidity never let up for a second.
They’d found the carcass a few miles back. They heard the sound of squabbling carnivores coming from a bend in the stream, and Ben left everyone behind a stand of thick pulpy-looking fronds as he crept forward.
The dozens of creatures reminded him of large turkeys, ripping at something he couldn’t quite make out. He prayed it wasn’t a person and edged even closer. It was only when one of the creatures had ripped the head of the victim free, that he saw it was some sort of armor-plated thing no bigger than a kitchen table.
The smaller animals should not have troubled the armored beast. Ben guessed that it had probably been killed by something else, and these things were undoubtedly scavenging on the remains.
Ben eased back and waved Jenny forward. The zoologist came and crouched beside him, and together they leaned out.
“Amazing,” she breathed out.
“Yeah, but are they a threat?” Ben said over his shoulder.
The smaller biped creatures were frantic in their movements, jerking and squawking like a flock of birds, and their heads and necks were now streaked red with blood.
“Dromaeosaurus, Saurornithoides, or could be a dozen other types of smaller carnivore species,” Jenny said. “They’re scavengers, but in larger numbers, they may just decide to attack.”
Jenny craned forward just as one pulled back with a chunk of meat in its mouth and gulped it down. “Their teeth are sharp and close together, creating a serrated scissor effect — they’d do damage to us soft human beings.”
“Then we go around them.” Ben pulled her back to the group.
“Roadblock,” Ben said. “We’ll need to detour.”
The group needed to spend a considerable amount of time looping around the feeding frenzy, and then finding their way back to the stream. Detouring into the jungle meant it was slower going, and once they needed to hunker down as something large blundered past them back the way they’d come — Ben felt vindicated in his choice as he expected the smell of blood would draw larger more formidable beasts.
It was almost sundown when they finally reached the source of the stream. The group emerged from the green cave they had been travelling along and stopped to gape in awe.
“So big,” Emma said. “It’s not possible.”
With the fading light, the huge body of water was already inky black. But even though there was no wind the surface wasn’t still — ripples, bubbles, and V-shaped patterns were made by things moving beneath the surface.
Ben waved everyone down. “Why don’t we just watch for a while; see who’s home?”
Leathery-winged creatures with 12-foot wingspans glided on warm thermals to skim the lake’s surface, now and then dipping three-foot-long toothed beaks down to snatch up wriggling fish before sharply pulling up and away.
As they watched, one spent a little too much time near the surface, and a huge massive black torpedo shape launched itself from below, grabbing the screaming animal and dragging it down in a thrash of bloody foam.
“Jesus; everything about this damn place is hell,” Koenig said.
“No, this place is simply a snapshot of what our world was like about 100 million years ago,” Jenny said. “Maybe to us soft little mammals, it’s a nightmare, but to them, it’s just, life.” She looked up at the hunter. “Maybe to them, our world would be a nightmare.”
“Yeah right, lady,” Koenig scoffed.
“Over there.” Ben pointed. “That cliff face; down on the waterline?”
Emma, Jenny, and Koenig followed his direction — at the far side of the lake on the waterline was a row of dark holes in the cliff, and all looked big enough to accommodate them.
“Looks like our digs for the night,” Emma said.