He half turned, but kept his eyes dead ahead. “Emma, Jenny, get in behind the plane.”
He waited as Bellakov crossed the few hundred yards of clear land towards them and the cliff edge. The man rounded the Corsair and skidded to a stop, slamming his back up against the fuselage.
“Fucking monster.” He sucked in and blew out more air before turning to Ben. “Just came out of the jungle. Took Walt.” He sucked in a huge gulp of air. “Nothing I could do.”
“Ah shit.” Ben felt his heart sink. He both liked and needed the man. “Was it chasing you?’
“Yes, no, I don’t know.” Bellakov gulped more air, his eyes round with fear. “I just freaking got the hell out of there.”
Ben checked his gun. “We go after him, he could still be alive.”
“No.” Bellakov reached out and grabbed Ben’s shirt in his fist. “He’s dead.” His mouth set in a grim line for a moment. “No one could have survived what I saw — bit nearly in half.”
Ben lowered his head.
“He was my friend too.” Bellakov squeezed Ben’s arm. “But we have to stay here, stick to the plan. First light, we get out of here.” Bellakov looked at each of them. “Right?”
Emma just stared back from under lowered brows.
“What was it?” Jenny asked.
“What was what?” Bellakov frowned.
“What sort of thing attacked you? Biped, quadruped, snake… something else entirely?” she asked.
“I, I don’t know. It came out of the darkness so fast; didn’t see it clearly.” He put his hands to his face and rubbed hard.
“Well, was it following you? Was there only one?” Jenny’s frown deepened.
“I don’t fucking know!” he shot back at her. “So lay off.”
Ben watched the man closely. He was agitated but seemed evasive. He didn’t doubt something had happened, but he didn’t think Bellakov was the sort of guy to panic and run.
“Okay everyone, this is how it is,” Ben said softly. “We stay here, stay quiet, and stay on guard. It’s going to be a long night, but first thing in the morning, we take off.”
They all agreed; what else could they do? They continued to watch the jungle for another hour, but above the constant background noise of a million insects, the scuttling and rustling, and nightly eat or be eaten sounds, nothing burst from it to charge down at them.
Finally, Ben sat down with his back to the Corsair. The dry metal skin of its fuselage cool compared to the thick night air. The fire they’d started had now been put out, as there was now nothing to cook. So they sat in silence, each lost in their own thoughts, hungry and miserable. But still alive, Ben thought.
Emma was next to him, and she pulled out her canteen, shook it, and then sipped from it. She nudged him and held it out.
He looked from it to her. “Any backwash?”
She snorted. “Plenty.”
He took it from her. “As long as it’s yours.” He put it to his lips, but only allowed it to wet them, as he knew she’d need her precious fluid a lot more than he would. There was plenty of water in the jungle, but no way was anyone going in to collect it now.
He felt Emma shift a little closer to him. “What do you think our chances are, you know, of making it home?”
One in a hundred, one in a thousand maybe, he thought. He smiled and turned to her and lied. “Good, very good, as long as our luck holds.”
“Okay.” She sighed. “You know, even at school you were always a crap liar.”
He chuckled. “Oh, you wanted the truth; why didn’t you say that?”
She nudged him in the ribs. “Lay it on me.”
He lowered his voice and leaned closer to her. “No doubt, it’s gonna be tough. If the plane even holds together after we tip over the edge, it has to glide. Which is a big ask for an antique that was never designed for that. Then we have to hope that the nose stays up and we’re not coming in so fast that we fly into the ground, or a tree or rock — remember, we have little maneuverability. And, I’m worried about visibility.”
Emma exhaled. “Yeah, I hope that cloud lifts; I’ve never seen the weather act like this.”
“Neither have I; it’s not natural.” Ben frowned. “And it’s getting worse; I keep thinking back to Benjamin’s notebook, and also the carving in the cave — he said this place is can only be seen for a short period, and then… it can’t be. I don’t get it, but he seemed to think he needed to be gone before whatever happened, happened or he’d be stuck here.”
“And then there’s the comet. We seem to have a jigsaw in a million pieces,” Emma agreed. “The interference ruining our communications and GPS, as well as the thick cloud cover. Does that mean it’s invisible now, or it’s harder to find later?” She snorted. “Does it move, sink, become invisible?”
She sighed and sat quietly for a few moments before nudging him again. “Tell me you’ll get me off here.”
He nudged her back. “We can do it.”
Even in the dark, he saw her smile and nod. “That’s the spirit,” he said.
“I was always an optimist.” She leaned on him. “I always knew you’d come back one day; how’s that for optimism? That turned out to be true.”
“Get some rest,” he said.
“Oh yeah, right.” She looked up at him. “I have one more question?”
“What is it?” He looked back down at her.
“How many parachutes do we have?” She laughed softly, and her crooked smile and boldness made his heart swell.
“One for the pilot.” He leaned towards her, and she him. He kissed her, feeling soft lips that were flaky dry. Even after all this time, her hair still smelled of hints of apple shampoo.
“When we get home,” he whispered, “I’m going to take you out for the biggest most expensive dinner you have ever seen in your life.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Yeah, sure, promise a girl anything when she’s trapped on a hidden plateau and might be eaten by monsters.”
Ben put his arm around her shoulders. “Don’t worry.” He tilted his head back and looked up into dark boiling clouds that now swirled like dirty froth. Lightning moved within them. “We’ll make it.”
“Let’s load ‘em up.” Ben turned and grinned. “Does everyone have their boarding pass?”
“Yep, first class.” Emma grinned and slapped his shoulder.
Ben looked up again and saw that the bilious-looking clouds were now showing a hint of dawn light — it was nearly time. He leaned his head back, thinking through the plan he’d made, but then jerked forward.
“What the hell…?”
It was the vibrations that made him come instantly alert. He carefully extricated himself from Emma and inched up to peer over the Corsair’s tail. It was still dark, but dawn wasn’t far off now.
Bellakov crept up beside him, keeping low and just allowing his eyes to peek over the fuselage. In another few seconds, Jenny and Emma were also aware something was happening.
“I see them,” Bellakov said.
“The size… unbelievable,” Ben whispered.
The animals were around eight feet tall at the shoulder, on four legs that all ended in elephantine stumps with flattened claw-like nails. There were no scales, rather just a pebbled skin with brown and black blotches on their hide. The creature’s heads were bony looking, about two and a half feet in length on long squat necks. All were low to the ground.
“Plant eaters — a herd of them,” Jenny said, breathlessly. “Maybe Unescoceratops or even an Aquilops — see the flat beak-like mouths? Much bigger than I expected.”
“Yeah, I guess everything looks bigger when it has meat on its bones,” Bellakov jibed.