Emma was right behind him, right behind him, and she hung onto his shirt so close he felt her body continually bumping into his. He edged forward, keeping his arms and shoulders high, trying to see everywhere at once.
Ben felt his nerves tightening, and he kept waiting for the monstrous diamond-shaped head to rise up from below — Mother of the Water, Mother of the Water — he wished his mind would shut the hell up.
He placed his boot on something that wriggled out from under his foot, and a jolt of fear and revulsion shot through him. Thankfully, it squirmed away and didn’t come back to take a piece out of his leg.
In another few moments, he put his foot on a rock, and then another, and then the stream was shallowing out as they reached the other side.
“Jesus.” He felt a surge of relief but didn’t slow. He reached back to grab Emma and kept tugging her with him as he entered the jungle. But it was only for a short distance, as he knew they needed to follow the stream back to find the plateau edge again.
Ben held Emma’s hand now, and she gripped his hard. He wanted to live and wanted her to live more than anything he had ever wanted in his life.
We can make it, he told himself. They had to.
The massive snake, a female Titanoboa, was 70 feet long and four foot wide at its girth. It wasn’t a dinosaur, but one of the largest true land reptiles that ever lived on the planet, and ever would.
It slid along the jungle floor, pouring around tree trunks and over the top of ferns. Its hunt had been unsuccessful, and its hunger now gnawed away at it.
It would return to its clutch to check on the eggs, but then take another scout of its territory. There was always game, and if need be, it could hunt the creatures in the rivers and pools as well.
The reptile returned to the riverbank, and its tongue continued to flick in and out tasting the air. It froze — there was something different — something that it had never sensed before.
Its muscles coiled, expecting a challenge or threat. Even the biggest hunters knew to avoid something of its size, but they may have come looking for its eggs.
It tasted the air again, only just picking up the faint odors of the creature’s exhalations, and there was something else.
It poured forward, coming to a rock at the stream edge and lowering its head. There were traces of blood. Its tongue shot out faster and faster, and actually dipped into the scraping. Its mind gathered the information and formed an image, and then a direction.
The things had dared to invade its territory. But the scent also excited its digestion and once again its hunger flared.
The huge diamond-shaped head swung around. And then like a molten river of scales and muscle, it forged forward, flowing across the river in seconds.
CHAPTER 33
Comet P/2018-YG874, designate name Primordia, was now arcing away from the third planet to the sun to continue on its eternal elliptical voyage around our solar system.
Its magnetic presence that had dragged at the planet’s surface and even distorted the very air was lessening in intensity by the seconds and in just a few more hours would vanish completely.
The clock was ticking down, and soon there would be another 10 years of calm over the jungle mountaintops of the Venezuelan Amazon jungle.
CHAPTER 34
Thirty minutes later, Ben and Emma emerged back out onto the plateau’s edge, this time on the opposite side of the pond and stream. They wasted no time making their way along its edge, heading east.
The wind seemed to come from everywhere at once, oddly drawing from the plateau edge and up into the sky. Ben looked out over the rim and saw that the jungle below was beginning to become visible, but was indistinct — not just from the usual cloud haze, but this time it seemed a little oily and distorted, as if he was looking at it through a dirty or warped window. He ignored it for now, putting it down to fatigue. Besides, he thought, they had enough to worry about.
He looked over his shoulder. “How you doin’?”
Emma nodded. “Good.” She smiled back, squinting from the grit in the maelstrom. Ben saw she had dirt smudged on her forehead and cheek, her eyes were rimmed and watered, her shirt was torn, and there was dried blood on one of her hands. In the other, she held her hunting knife, backwards, dagger style. She looked tiny, tired, but still full of bravado. Ben knew he loved her then. And would fight and die to keep her alive.
They came to a broad patch of vacant ground where the jungle seemed to have been pulled back but was matted with some type of creeper that had thick rope-like tendrils running across it.
In amongst them, Ben noticed bulbous fruit-like things and used his blade to cut one free. Emma wandered a little closer to the cliff edge.
Ben lifted the fruit to his ear and shook it — something rattled inside like dry seeds. He lifted his knife and sliced the fruit in half, trying to be careful not to get too much sap or juice on his hands. He knew that it might be toxic, but his mouth watered, and at this point, he was prepared to take a risk.
His blade struggled to cut the fibrous bulb to begin with, but then it cracked through and the thing broke in half.
“Gak!” He flung it away and stood shaking his hands — the thing hadn’t been fruit at all, but some sort of insect egg. Hundreds of spindly, multi-legged monstrosities burst free running in all directions, and the ones that escaped now sought hiding places, under the vines, under the bulbs, and up on his legs. He started to dance and back away.
“How’s dinner looking?” Emma chuckled wearily.
Ben shook his hands and stomped his feet to shake off the bugs. “Well…” He shook his arms again. “Fruit’s off the menu.”
“Hey, look.” Emma crouched, cleared away some soil and gravel, and lifted an old revolver. She shook it and then blew dust from it. “Looks old; heavy.” She held it up, sighting along it, and then crossed to him.
Ben could see that the long-barreled gun was brown with age with rotating cartridge cylinders and wooden inserts on the grip. She held it out and he took it from her.
“Wow.” He immediately saw the imprint. “It’s a Colt; gotta be over a hundred years old if it’s a day.” He looked into the cartridge chambers and saw they were empty. He tried to break it open, but it was fused closed.
Ben knew immediately it was the sort of weapon someone would have possessed back in 1908. He slowly looked up at her.
She met his eyes. “Benjamin?”
He nodded and turned to the cliff edge. “He was here.” He flinched as a wave of grit was hurled into his face. He spat some out. “And the gun being empty tells me that he wasn’t at the start of his expedition.”
“This might be where he ended up.” Emma turned back to the plateau edge. “And if this is where he ended up; then this is where he was… before he got down.”
Emma held a hand up to her eyes, squinting. The wind was getting stronger, whipping the hair madly across her face. She had to plant her legs wide to keep her balance. Thunder exploded around them, but it remained dry.
“What the hell is going on? Is this a storm brewing?” She looked up.
Ben followed her gaze; the clouds above them looked ominous, but were now swirling and somehow pulling up at the center.
“That’s all we goddamn need.” He tucked the old gun into his belt.