Much sooner than Queen expected, the river brought them once more into territory claimed by the Ancients. The unique topography of the cavern and the wild vegetation hid the structure from view until they were practically on top of it, or more precisely, right under it.
The Ancients had built another enormous wall, but unlike the first, this one intersected the river, spanning its breadth with an arch of carefully fitted rocks. As the raft slid beneath the bridge, Queen saw that the wall was the beginning of something far more impressive than anything they had previously encountered.
The landscape inside the walls was not much different than what lay outside. The dense vegetation had not been stopped by the barrier; if anything, it actually seemed more prolific, possibly because the wall kept out the large grazing dinosaurs. But even the tallest ‘trees’ were dwarfed by what the Ancients had built.
Three-story and four-story structures sprouted up on both sides of the river bank, and behind them were even taller buildings — towers that seemed intent on reaching the very ceiling of the cavern. More bridges spanned the river, along with piled stone piers, where vessels much larger than the little raft could have been moored. As they moved deeper, with no end in sight, Queen realized that this place was not simply another outpost on the Ancients’ trade route.
“This is their city,” she said, breathless. “We found it.”
“If Joe could have seen this…” Rook didn’t finish the thought. The discovery made the Congolese president’s death seem all the more tragic.
“Let’s make sure the world knows about it. About everything.”
She steered the raft toward a nearby pier and hopped off, splashing in the shallows. Rook pulled the little craft further along the pier and toward shore, and then joined her. Together, they clambered up onto the stone dock and made their way into the Ancients’ city.
The ground was thick with the strange plants, and little blue fires burned at random intervals throughout, but the Ancients had laid out their city in a methodical fashion similar to a modern urban grid. Instead of wandering into the city depths, they backtracked, skirting the river until they reached the wall, where they ascended a ramp to walk atop it. Higher up, level with the tops of many of the stone structures, the view was even more impressive. What they could not see however, was a way out.
“This couldn’t have been the end of the road,” Rook said. “They wouldn’t have built this city here, in the middle of nowhere. There’s got to be a way to the surface.”
Queen thought it sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as her. There could have been any number of reasons to found the city in such a remote location. Most likely some unique natural resource, like gold or diamonds. She decided not to share those ideas with Rook. Unfounded optimism might not help their situation, but at least it kept the mood light. “We’ll walk the wall. If the road continues, there’s got to be another gate. If not, we’ll get back on the river.”
“Better remember where we parked,” Rook said.
The wall curved around the city like the rim of an enormous wheel, most of it hidden by the towering structures in the middle. They soon lost sight of the river, but their attention was drawn to a large hump that sat beside the wall. As they got closer, it became apparent that the hump was a fortress guarding the main entrance to the city. The city gate was broader than the one they had encountered earlier, but with a similar design — a massive rolling stone barrier that could allow or block access. One thing however was very different.
“Uh, oh,” said Rook. “Looks like someone left the door open.”
“They must have abandoned the city when the lake cut off access to the other end of the highway. No sense in closing the gate if you don’t ever plan to come back.”
“Guess not.” He scanned the area outside the walls. “If there’s a road, it’s been completely covered over.”
Queen peered further out, magnifying the distant landscape in her glasses, which she’d taken back from Rook. She saw what he could not. “There’s a wall. Maybe a couple klicks out, but it’s there. I think we’re close to the cavern’s end. I just hope that when we get there, we’ll find the route they took back to the surface.”
“We’ll find it,” he replied, confidently. “We’re good at finding stuff.”
She laughed, but then wrinkled her nose. “God, what’s that smell?”
In the hours that they had spent traversing the subterranean world, they had gotten accustomed to the unfamiliar and unusual smells that filled the hot, humid environment. This odor was very different, and not at all unfamiliar. Rook bobbed his head back and forth, sniffing experimentally, then his face twisted in disgust. “Gross. Smells like a mixture of rotting meat and chicken shit.”
“I guess you would know, farm boy.” Rook had grown up on a farm in rural New England, so Queen didn’t doubt that his olfactory senses were more discriminating than hers. “But I doubt there’s a chicken coop down here.”
She shook her head. “Whatever that is, it’s fresh… well, you know what I mean.”
The smell got worse as they approached the fortress, and when they reached the ramp leading down to the gate, they saw its source. The broad courtyard just inside the city entrance was strewn with decaying carcasses. The remains clearly belonged to very large animals, perhaps even as large as the Paralititan, but the bodies had been torn apart like Thanksgiving turkeys, so that nothing recognizable remained. There were dozens of them, some just bones nearly picked clean, but several looked like recent roadkill, torn open to reveal red meat and pink entrails. There was no vegetation, just an unsightly mass of bone fragments and a gray-white substance that, based on Rook’s identification of the odor, was almost certainly manure.
“Uh, I don’t think I want to meet the guy that lives here now,” Rook whispered.
“Blue, did T. Rex live in Africa?”
“No.” Before Queen could breathe a sigh of relief, Deep Blue continued. “Africa’s version of the Tyrannosaur was Carcharodontosaurus.”
“Car-car… what?”
“It means ‘shark tooth lizard.’ Slightly bigger than T. Rex. If that’s what we’re dealing with, you’d better give it a very wide berth.”
“Nice.”
“What did he say?” Rook said.
“That we’re probably in deep dino shit.” She sighed. “But it looks like shark-tooth is out for the moment, so let’s move while we can.”
They snuck down the wall, Rook gripping the stone spear head, which would have seemed a comical thing to do if it hadn’t been their only means of self-defense. They skirted the base of the wall, but their route could not completely avoid the killing ground. There was still no sign of the beast that called the place home. The only things moving were the carcasses themselves, which squirmed with insect larvae. The stench was overpowering. Queen’s empty stomach roiled with nausea. She fought back a fit of dry heaves with each breath.
They paused beside the gateway, searching for signs of activity. Queen looked to Rook with an inquiring glance, and got a shrug in return. Then, still brandishing his spear head, he moved out. Queen stayed right behind him.
They had gone only a few steps when an oddly familiar sound reached Queen’s ears. It was a deep pop, not much different or louder than the noise made by a book hitting a table top. Isolated as they were, deep underground, any noise was cause for alarm, but this sounded suspiciously like…
“Did you hear that?” Rook whispered, glancing back. He recognized it, too.
Before Queen could answer, the ground seemed to rise up right in front of them. Almost faster than she could comprehend, the creature, which had blended in perfectly with the surrounding vegetation, rose to its full height, towering over them. The creature might not have been a Tyrannosaur, but it looked to Queen exactly like every representation of a T. Rex she’d ever seen in pictures, movies and plastic figurines — thick torso, massive muscular hind legs and tiny forearms that looked almost useless. As it stood, its body tilted forward until its back was almost parallel with the ground, its long tail sticking out straight behind it for balance. Its head, which was larger than Rook was tall, swung in their direction, orienting on the sound of Rook’s voice.