That was her magic number, as the comet, Primordia, was on its elliptical orbit in a periodic recurrence of every 10 years, and it arrived every decade in a year ending in 8. Even though it only lasted a few days, to the locals, this had always been known as the wettest season.
During the last one, Emma was in the Amazon, and she had personally seen the coma streak in the sky looking like a silver eyebrow. But then, when it was at the closest point to Earth, in what was called its perihelion or maximum observable focus, this particular comet did something unprecedented, something unbelievable; it distorted the time and space directly over a vast tabletop mountain in Venezuela. No one would believe her, but she knew it was true. She’d seen it herself.
It was then that strange distortions occurred on the mountaintop — time and space became rearranged, reordered; pathways were created and doorways opened. It was only observable for a few days, but in that time, a gateway to a little piece of Hell opened upon the Earth.
Emma sat as if in a trance as her mind took her back to the tepui and their expedition of December 2018. She and her friends had been transported back 100 million years, or perhaps that primordial timeline had been transported here.
In the past, she had tried to obtain answers from physicists, theorists, and even science-fiction authors; and trying to get her head around quantum realities, spatial time distortions, and past-life theories, had only left her more confused than ever. But whichever it was, that hellish place had killed all her friends in little over a day, and she’d been the only one to escape.
She’d given up trying to convince people that she was telling the truth, or that she wasn’t mad. Only Ben’s mother, Cynthia had stuck by her, but Emma soon realized it was up to her and her alone to rescue Ben who gave up his freedom so she could have hers. When the doorway closed, Ben had been trapped behind it with all those primordial horrors, and she prayed daily that he somehow survived.
She shook her head to clear it and looked at the results that had been returned from her historical search of news events. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was looking for, but she now had over 200 entries, going back to the late 1700s. She organized them by story headline and began to sort through them, discarding anything mundane about trade, armed conflicts, or politics, and after 30 minutes had narrowed it down to several dozen that spoke of strange weather, disappearances, or sightings of inexplicable things in the jungle.
She even found an article about the naming of a new comet in the late 1700s. Primordia. She whispered the name, now even hating the sound if it.
She opened an article from the NY Times from 1908, titled: ‘President Roosevelt Offers Reward for Giant Snake.’
She read on: Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States, and also an explorer, soldier, and naturalist. He’d heard tales of a monstrous snake in the Amazon, and offered a $1,000 reward to anyone who could catch it. Amazingly, the reward was only withdrawn in 2002 and had stood at $50,000 when it ended.
She remembered she and Ben had talked about the possibility of one of the prehistoric animals from the plateau somehow escaping into today’s jungle. It would be an oddity, but also it would become a thing of legend — and all jungles had them.
Next, there was a 1928 column about an expedition to find missing explorer, Percy Fawcett, who vanished in the Amazon. It caught her attention as Fawcett claimed to have shot a giant anaconda over 60 feet in length. He also claimed to have found giant footprints that he believed came from a creature from the dawn of time.
The dawn of time. Emma felt a tingle of excitement. She believed him, but she bet no one else did.
Her mouth quirked up at one corner at the next story from 1948—Airman John Carter from the USS Bennington went missing in a Corsair Fighter. She sighed, remembering. You’re not missing to me; I know where you are, she thought as she smiled sadly. Thank you for the loan of your plane, Airman Carter. We tried.
Emma leaned her head back on her neck, shutting her eyes. She reached up to rub at them. “What am I looking for?” she said to the ceiling.
Something, anything, she knew, that indicated a way up or down the tepui, or that where she had been transported to could be accessed sooner than the decade-long wait. Or even some sort of concrete proof anywhere, anytime.
But there was nothing.
She guessed something that was there for a little over a single day once every 10 years was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it event; especially when that event took place in one of the most remote, inaccessible, and inhospitable places on Earth.
She opened another window on her computer and searched for South America, 100 million years ago. One of the results was an app that ran a tectonic plate movement simulation. She ran it.
It showed the formation of the last great supercontinent called Pangaea. It started to break apart about 175 million years ago, and 100 million years ago, South America was still the basic shape it was today, except it was ringed by a shallow coastal sea, and interestingly, was only separated from the west coast of Africa by a few hundred miles.
She leaned in closer to look at the 100-million-year-ago tropical green mass of a primordial jungle that was still the impenetrable Amazon of today. That’s where you are, Ben, in there somewhere, she thought.
She was a rock climber, and those skills are what gave her the edge getting on and off the plateau. But she needed a way in and out for a team that didn’t necessarily require those skills this time. She steepled her fingers at her chin, thinking.
“We can’t risk climbing again.” She rubbed her chin and stared into space, letting her mind work. And no one will fly over it, or even could, as instruments don’t work. There’s got to be another way, she mused.
Emma drummed her fingers on the tabletop for a few moments, and then quickly grabbed her things, pushed her chair back, and headed for the doorway. She suddenly had a whole bunch of new things to investigate and now only a few months to get it all together. Time mattered; and the comet was already on its way again.
CHAPTER 07
Ben slowly lifted his head from the mud and opened one eye. Predators homed in on identifiable shapes, and two eyes, especially ones with white sclera, were like neon lights in the dark.
To survive, he used all his Special Forces training of concealment and stealth, but he knew that the adversaries he faced here had senses hundreds or even thousands of times greater than any human foe he had ever faced.
He opened his other eye and scanned the ground, then looked back along the tree trunks and bracken stems, then once more overhead, looking up into a strange tangled canopy in this area that was heavy with giant cycad branches, palm fronds, and massive ferns like cascading waterfalls of green.
Finally, he allowed his eyes to drop back down to three turkey-sized creatures that picked at fallen berries. They were beaked, like a bird, but squat and pebble-skinned, and their four stubby legs ended in blunt, three-toed clawed feet. Their dull eyes constantly swiveled, like some sort of chameleon, always moving and keeping a lookout for predators.
Ben ran through his plan: get a little closer, spear one of them, then snatch it up, and get back to his shelter, pronto. His stomach grumbled; he needed food, and though he’d found some berries and tubers he could digest, he needed protein for energy and also to preserve his muscle mass. In this place, it was only the strong that survived.
He began to squirm forward—slide, stop, slide, stop—until he was as close as he could get. He drew his spear forward, and then began to ease to one knee. He brought one foot forward to plant it in the mud, the ooze squelching up between his toes. He braced the muscles in his arm, his gaze unwavering as he exhaled, then…