“What do we do?” Emma stood with her legs braced. “Find shelter?”
“No, I think we’re outta time.” Ben gritted his teeth. “Benjamin was here, right here, over a hundred years ago, and something important happened. Let’s look around; there might be some clue as to what he did next, or where he went.”
Ben squinted as the wind became like a living thing, picking up debris and hurling it at the pair. There was a howling all around them, which masked the noise they made, but also hid the sound of the jungle behind them.
Emma headed to the plateau edge, and Ben walked closer to the jungle. He was looking for anything that might indicate a cave opening, a passage, some carved notes, or any sign or signal from his ancestor.
A big arrow carved into a rock would be good, Benjamin old boy. He snorted at the thought, but kept sweeping the ground with his gaze. There were many rocky outcrops here, and the vine-covered ground hid multiple lumps, bumps, and depressions in the tepui’s skin, but so far, nothing that dropped below a few feet.
Emma got to the plateau’s edge, and stood with her legs braced staring down for a moment. He watched her as she crouched down and started to pull on something on the cliff edge. Then she got right down on her belly and edged forward, looking over the precipice.
“What’re you doing?” he yelled over the top of the wind. She didn’t hear, so he cupped his mouth. “Hey, what’re you doing?”
She half rolled. “I thin… cave dow… there.”
Many of her words were lost to the wind but he got the gist. He grinned and gave her a thumbs up. “How far down?”
She smiled back. “I’m a climber… for me… not far… all… but y…” She shrugged and turned back over.
The wind screamed around them, and the temperature began to drop. He had to throw an arm up as a vicious spray of sand and gravel whipped his face. When Ben lowered it, for some reason the hair on his neck began to prickle.
He slowly turned.
The massive Titanoboa snake flowed towards the plateau edge. Small animals screamed away from its path, recognizing one of the alpha predators of the land, probably hoping that they weren’t in its sights as a meal that day.
The reptile slowed as it came to the jungle edge, just before the open ground. Its tongue flickered as it spotted the two small creatures it had been pursuing. Their body heat made them flare red and it tasted the air, catching their scent.
It edged forward some more, this time right up to a line of heavy fern fronds that created a border between the dense jungle and open ground. It rose up, its massive diamond-shaped head now over a dozen feet from the jungle floor. The snake was a muddy brown with a slight green tiger stripe and when it remained motionless, its camouflage rendered it almost invisible.
Two glass-like lidless eyes focused on the pair, and an arm-thick forked tongue flickered out — the taste of blood came from the one closer to the edge — it chose that one first.
The Titanoboa’s massively muscled body coiled, readying itself for the ambush attack.
The swirling air, the flying grit and debris, and the roar of the wind, all of them seemed to fall into a void as Ben straightened.
He’d had the sensation before in the deserts of Syria; he’d led a mission in to get in behind enemy lines and find and destroy an ammunition store. On that night, there was no moon, and they had their quad night-vision goggles in place, the eerie four lenses and their armor making the Special Forces operatives look robotic and inhuman.
The advantage of night vision technology was it used any available light by amplifying it but turning everything a ghoulish green. That night, the desert had been flat and still, and Ben had that same feeling then as he did now.
Back then, he’d waved everyone down, and switched to thermal — and then he saw them — the spider holes, all around them, and in the slit of each of the trapdoors the tiny flare of body heat.
And they had walked right in amongst them.
Of the eight mission team members he walked in with, only four of them walked out. Instincts and overwhelming firepower had saved their lives that night.
But now Ben had the same gut feeling as that fateful night. And this time, all he had was a knife and a 100-year old Colt revolver.
Ben turned slowly, carefully scanning the jungle edge. Even though the wind howled around him, he felt like he was in a vacuum as he stared hard into the jungle. He was trained to pick out even the most inconspicuous discrepancies, furtive movements, and even myriad forms of camouflage. But they were all built around the human form.
It was the tiny flickering of the tongue he saw first — not coming from something near the ground, but over a dozen feet in the air. He traced the movement back to its source, and only when he concentrated could he pick out the enormous snake. Its camouflage was so perfect that even if it were only a few feet from them he still would have missed it.
Horrifyingly, he saw that it wasn’t watching him, but its unblinking gaze was riveted, arrow-like, on Emma who was forty feet from him and still crouching at the plateau’s edge.
“Emma.” Ben gripped the blade so hard his knuckles popped. He gritted his teeth, wanting to keep his movements to a minimum and also keep watch on the snake, but he knew she’d never hear him.
Fuck it, he thought, and yelled: “Emma!”
“What…?” She half turned, holding a thick vine in her hand. “Hey… think… found… something.” Her words were still being blown away as she rose to her feet, dragging some of the vine with her. “… goes all the way… edge… like rope.” She straightened hanging on to it. “… I bet… used it to climb down… cave…”
Like liquid, the monster snake glided forward a few feet. Ben could see that it had singled Emma out and its focus was intense. This close, its size scared the shit out of him — it seemed made of solid muscle, inevitable and unstoppable. The thing was more a force of nature than an adversary.
How fast could it move? he wondered. Snakes were fast, but not as fast as a running person. But that was a normal-sized snake; this thing could potentially outpace them in seconds.
Ben looked from one side to the other, seeking options. From the corner of his eye, he saw Emma finally turn to him, and her expression fell away as she must have seen his intense stare and then followed his gaze. She dropped the vine and froze.
“Oh Jesus, no.” Her shoulders hiked and her hands came up in front of her as if pushing it away. “B… B… Ben?”
He quickly looked towards her. She had the cliff edge behind her, and the snake in front of her. He bet if she ran left or right, the monster would run her down in a blink.
Emma started to back up.
You sonofabitch, he thought. I’m bigger; why aren’t you focusing on me?
“Hey!” he yelled at it. “Hey-hey!” He waved his arms.
The snake’s head swung towards him.
“Stop that!” Emma screamed.
Her yell brought the thing’s head back to her. This time, it began to shoot towards her, far too fast for something of its size. Even from where Ben stood, he saw Emma’s eyes go wide.
“Ru-uuun!” she screamed to him as she turned to the cliff edge, got down on her belly, and started to back herself over the lip. The monstrous snake flowed towards her.
Ben could feel the grind of gravel beneath his feet as the thousands of pounds of reptile bore down on Emma.