Chapter 1: Survey
In
this Instalment:
49. The Devils in the Dark
50. Despondency
51. Perimeter Alarm
49
THE
DEVILS IN THE DARK
P.J. woke from his light slumber, instantly alert. He didn't know
why he had awakened, but he knew it was best to trust his instincts, assume
there was a problem and be proven wrong rather than ignoring them and possibly
ending up dead. While he'd freely admit to never having faced situations as
dangerous as these, he'd had his share of close encounters in Africa and South
America, and eventually one learned to develop a sort of sixth sense about
danger.
P.J. rolled onto his back, scanning the
darkness of the room for anything amiss. He listened intently to the dull
sounds in the room – he even sniffed the air, looking for any unidentifiable
odours. He didn't detect anything at first, but just as he was about to rise
from his horizontal position on floor, he heard what sounded like a light
jangling. Focusing on the sound, he realized that it was the door handle.
Glancing to his left, he saw that Ellis'
bunk was empty. He shook his head, fully intent on dressing her down for having
left the rest of the group, and without saying a thing about it to boot. He was
halfway raised from his makeshift bed behind a desk when he heard the door
being pulled open, accompanied by a low grunt.
Unless Ellis had spontaneously developed
the worst throat cold in human history, there was no way she could have made
that noise. He heard the door swing open again, this time accompanied by a
snort. Like the grunt before it, it had an unmistakably bestial quality about
it.
P.J. took a quick glance around and
spotted Soles sleeping a row to his right. Being careful not to make any noise,
he crawled on his elbows over to her sleeping form. As he did so, he listened
for any new sounds from the door. He wasn't disappointed.
Whatever it was walked into the room and
began sniffing the air. As it walked, he could hear an intermittent clicking
sound, like stone striking metal. Or bone striking floor. Hidden behind the
desks, P.J. couldn't get a good look at what it was without risking showing his
head.
He reached Soles and quickly put one hand
behind her head and another over her mouth. She let out a muffled gasp, which,
despite being stifled by P.J.'s hand, still sounded like a thunderclap in the
enclosed room. P.J. leaned over Soles, finding her eyes with his, and peered
into them intently, trying to convey his message through facial gestures alone.
Soles must have caught on to what he was saying, because she nodded her head.
P.J. removed his hands from her mouth and
turned back onto his side to get a good view of the room. After Soles' aborted
gasp, he hadn't heard anything, and it worried him.
Suddenly, a sliver of a darker form
presented itself above them, peering over the desk. P.J. could barely see any
of it, but it was definitely a snout. It moved in a left to right arc, sniffing
the air, searching for any traces of the sound it had heard. P.J. silently drew
his pistol out of his holster, knowing it was only a matter of time before it
detected the presence of the two humans below.
Whether from a draft or because it has
been slipping all along, the door to the room slid shut the entire way,
clicking loudly as the tumblers fell back into place. Whatever it was above
them disappeared, undoubtedly turning away to face this new sound.
But the sound of the closing door had
another effect: it stirred Carlson from his slumber.
"Wha… what was that?" his voice rang
through the room.
Again P.J. heard that bony clicking sound,
this time in rapid succession, and got the impression of a running animal.
"Carlson, look out!" P.J. screamed as he
launched himself above the desk, pistol blazing, hoping that the technician was
still lying on the floor. The muzzle flashed brightly in the darkness, briefly
illuminating the dead room, as the bullets sough out their goal. Carlson,
having become aware of a shadow rushing at him in the darkness, began to
scream.
One of the bullets must have found it's
mark in the darkness because the creature let out a high-pitched squeal as it
seemed to slam into one of the desks, causing it to tip over and the computer
monitor to crash to the floor.
"Move," P.J. said, pushing Soles towards
the door. "Come on, Carlson!"
The creature was struggling on the floor,
trying to regain its footing, hissing and biting at the air. Carlson rose
awkwardly, trying to get around another one of the desks. Whatever it was
thrashing on the floor, it was blocking his path to the door.
Soles leapfrogged over a desk, landing in
the same row as the beast. Moving quickly, she ran into the door, barrelling it
open with her body and spilling out into the corridor beyond.
"This way!" P.J. cried out, motioning for
the technician to join him in the desks to the left. Carlson gave the form on
the floor one last look, and then moved along the back of the room to reach
another row. As he was reaching the hunter's height, the dinosaur stood again.
It seemed to side-step, moving closer towards the door as if it somehow
understood that they would be trying to escape and wanted to block them.
The creature looked at them for a few
seconds, and they looked back. P.J. could see that it was bipedal, holding its
arms folded below its chest. It looked sleek, aerodynamic. Its head was
elongated and reptilian, and P.J. did not doubt for a second that this was a
predator and thus probably sported an impressive array of teeth.
The dinosaur raised its head to the
ceiling and started making a series of short, bark-like noises. They echoed
dreadfully in the room and the corridor outside.
"What's it doing?" Carlson asked
anxiously.
P.J. didn't know, but he didn't have to
reply. Carlson's question seemed to draw the beast back to the present, alone
in a room with two trapped humans. P.J. spotted it cocking its head and
shifting its weight to one side, and raised his pistol towards it. The creature
didn't recognize the threat, and leapt towards them anyway.
P.J. fired several times as the dark form
of the dinosaur rushed towards them. He heard the bullets strike flesh, and the
creature let out a painful wail as its jump became a fall. Still, its momentum
was considerable, and it kept coming towards the two team members.
"Duck!" P.J. said, pushing down on
Carlson's shoulder. The dinosaur crashed into the desk they were hiding behind,
sliding across it, knocking the computer monitor onto them. This was shortly
followed by the body of the beast itself. P.J. felt something sharp cut across
his check, welling blood. The creature slammed into the desk behind them,
causing it to tip over. The moment it finished it's sprawl onto the desk, P.J.
pushed Carlson up and away. He couldn't tell whether it was dead, or alive and
simply injured, but there was no need to take a chance.
They both ran out of the room and into the
corridor, where Soles had been waiting off to the side, ready to sprint away at
a moment's notice. Two bobbing lights appeared around the bend in the corridor,
and Richley and Ellis came running up, worried and out of breath.
"What the hell is happening? What was that
noise?" Richley enquired.
"We're going back to the jeep, that's
what's happening," P.J. answered.
Suddenly they heard the same bark-like
sounds echoing down the corridor. Although they couldn't tell for sure, there
seemed to be several pairs of them.
"Let's get out of here," Richley nodded.
At once, the five expedition members began
running down the corridor, heading towards the rotunda, the platform and the
jeep beyond. Only Ellis and Richley had their flashlights, which they took from
their packs before their midnight stroll. Other than those, and P.J.'s handgun,
all the equipment they had brought with them had been left behind with their
backpacks in the makeshift bunkroom.
The sounds of the hunting dinosaurs were
their constant companions, chasing them as they ran. As they reached the large,
round room, the sounds stopped being echoes and began to sound as if they were
right behind them. Sparing a glance backwards, they could see nothing yet but
knew that their pursuit couldn't be all that far away.
"Hurry up, Carlson!"
The panting technician climbed the stairs
as fast as he could, but was starting to lag behind. As he left the rotunda for
the grillage leading to the platform, he glanced over his shoulder and saw
another one of those creatures skidding to a halt amongst the computer
terminals.
The grillage rang with the sound of their
feet pounding on the metal. The dark flanks of the mountain seem to tip and
skew as they ran, their angle, determined by the positioning of their feet,
changing constantly. It looked almost as if it was going to collapse on them,
as if the cliff was some kind of beastly maw about to snap it's jaws shut on
them.
"The platform! Jump!" P.J., in the lead,
cried out. He didn't think there would be enough time to climb down with any
semblance of control. As he saw it coming up on him, he prepared himself to
jump, then leaped into the air over the platform's railing. Those running
behind him saw the person in front jump, and did the same.
Though lasting mere seconds, the fall
downwards from the raised platform seemed to take forever as they slid through
empty air. They saw the mountainside rise up to meet them. Then came the
jarring shock of touching ground again, a slamming sensation that sent
vibrations to all parts of their body. Not a single one managed to stay
standing or crouching – the distance, speed and angle of the fall had been too
great – and they rolled as they hit the ground, unable to control their descent
down the mountainside. Rock and stone bit into their clothes, slashed their
skin.
After sliding they would finally managed
to slow their descend, or grab onto a rock, and stand up again to continue
their flight down the mountainside, battered and bruised, bleeding from minute
cuts.
Carlson was the last to leap, and the arc
of his fall fell shorter than all the others. He struck the ground on his left
side, and began sliding along the mountainside; head downwards, stirring loose
stone and pebbles as he went. His slide ended at an outcropping, a piece of
rock jutting wickedly from the side of the slope. He hit his head on it,
glanced off, and then turned a hundred and eighty degrees as he finally slid to
a halt, facing upwards towards the platform. A thin film of blood covered his
right eye, above which a nasty gash could be seen.
The remaining team members paused in their
flight and began turning around to help their fallen comrade when the hooting
call of one of the dinosaurs rang out once again among the cliffs. In the pale
moonlight, they could see one of the creatures perched atop the platform
looking down.
Carlson let out a sound that was half
moan, half scream, and tried to scramble backwards on his hands, dizzy from his
wounds. The dinosaur suddenly leaped into the air above the platform railing,
falling with dreadful accuracy onto the soft body of the technician. There was
a wordless cry of pain and fear, suddenly cut off.
"Carlson!" Richley cried out, starting
towards his fallen team member. P.J. placed a restraining hand on his shoulder,
and pointed upwards.
"No. There's nothing we can do. We have to
go; more are coming."
Indeed an additional pair of dinosaur had
appeared upon the platform, looking reading to jump down themselves. The four humans
turned around and started racing back towards the jeep at the bottom of
mountainside, navigating the slope with an innate skill born of desperation.
Behind them, as their partner snacked on
what used to be their friend, the two dinosaurs jumped over the railing and off
the platform. One landed crookedly and fell, getting caught in a small landside
of rocks and pebbles. The other was more sure-footed, and quickly regained its
balance. It started down the cliff after its fleeing prey.
The slope slowed them down, but it also
delayed the dinosaur. When they finally reached the flatter part at the base of
the foothills, and the jeep was mere meters away, Ellis glanced over her
shoulder and saw that the dinosaur would soon be upon them.
They leaped into the jeep, Richley taking
the driver's seat and P.J. taking shotgun – appropriately enough, since he had
the only weapon. As soon as he was in the jeep, P.J. began firing shots off at
the onrushing creature, but in the darkness missed every time, merely glancing
pieces of stone off the mountainside.
Richley gunned the engine hard. It sank
momentarily, along with the heart of all those in the jeep, but suddenly roared
back to life with a squeal. They were facing the foothills, and the jeep lurched
towards the rocky slope. The dinosaur was almost ready to pounce when Richley
seized the wheel and turned it sharply to the left, causing the entire jeep to
turn in a semi-circle. The eager dinosaur was hit by the swinging side of the
vehicle, and thrown back onto the rocks.
The back wheels of the jeep screeched
against the stone as Richley pumped the gas pedal as much as he dared. Soon
they had left the foothills behind them, and were driving through the
scrublands between the mountain and the forest, going fast enough so that any
of those creatures that had a thought of pursuing them would be left in the
dust.
50
DESPONDENCY
At this latitude, close to the equator,
the length of days didn't shift much with the seasons – or whatever passed as
seasons in a place where the annual shift in temperatures was no more than a
few degrees centigrade. Come rain or shine, dawn peeks on the horizon at about
the same time every day.
The members of the survey team, those left
behind by Richley and his group, awakened early after a poor night of sleep to
a morose grey covering of clouds, tinted yellow here and there by the hidden
sun. They rose without enthusiasm, despite the fact that this was the day when,
as promised, the helicopters would come and deliver them from their nightmare.
It seemed like a far away prospect to them, the hours between now and then
impossibly long and laden with dread.
There was nothing to do that would help,
which only aggravated the situation. A lot of people were starting to go stir
crazy, just sitting in their crudely fashioned camp, waiting for the cavalry to
airlift them out of the jungle, or for some unexpected guests to drop in for
lunch – whichever came first. And there wasn't a damn thing any one of them
could do to help the situation.
That was the worst of all. For people who
had joined up with survey teams like these, exploration – in essence, the
combination of movement and discovery – was not a career, but an imperative. To
be grounded in such a fashion was getting on everybody nerves, and tempers were
running high. Barely an hour after they had awoken, two of the workhorses,
Peter and Calvin, had gotten into a fight over some trivial matter that, after
they had been broken up, neither of them could remember.
Alice sat despondently against a tree, not concerning herself
with the fact that it was still wet from yesterday's rainfall and that the
dampness was seeping through her sweater. At this point, most of her clothes
were wet anyway. The sheer oppressive humidity that had accompanied the
previous day's rainfall had not dissipated in the least – indeed, Alice
expected it to start raining again at any moment. The trailers, while weather
resistant, were not atmosphere-controlled, and everything they had packed for
this trip had acquired a faint lustre of dew and that pervasive feeling of
dampness.
The music in her ears suddenly turned into
an indiscriminate snarl and then stopped altogether. With a look of disgust on
her face, Alice removed the Walkman from her ears and cast it aside. The
batteries were dead, and she didn't want to use any of the spares in case they
were needed later on.
She rose from the tree, not bothering to
pick up the now-useless Walkman, and cast a look around at the camp. A lazy sort
of languish had fallen over their group, as if giving into their forced
inactivity, and soldier and surveyor alike were lounging against crates, tents
or trailers. Despite their apparently relaxed pose, none of them looked
especially comfortable – not in this climate, and certainly not under the
present circumstances. Folker seemed to be the only one with any real energy
left to him, still examining those orange-like fruits they had found.
Alice glanced around their motley crew for
Benny, but couldn't spot the biologist. She doubted that anybody would be
wandering away from the camp despite his or her restlessness – they were all
aware of the dangers that surrounded them, even if they preferred not to dwell
on it. Alice checked the trailers, and sure enough, there he was, sitting in
front of a computer monitor.
"Damn thing!" Benny exclaimed, sitting the
side of the monitor with his palm.
"What's wrong?"
Benny turned around to look at Alice, then
pointed back towards the computer.
"It's the humidity. Somehow, it got inside
the casing, and now the screen keeps jumping. See?"
Indeed, the images on the screen seem to
distort for a moment, replaced by a garble of oddly coloured shapes. When it
returned to normal, she saw that it was an entry in their computerized
encyclopaedia. Benny was apparently still reading up on the dinosaurs,
familiarizing himself with the various species. The current entry showed a
limber looking biped.
"Velociraptor," she read off the screen
caption.
"Yeah," Benny said, "A real nasty bugger.
The guys who research these things think that this one was pretty intelligent –
for a dinosaur."
"Well, we have nothing to worry about."
Alice pointed to the screen. "Says here that they lived in Mongolia."
"Oh, and all the species that we've seen
here are native to this island, I suppose?" Benny said sharply.
"Jeez, I don't know," Alice said, backing
off. "There's no need to be snappy about it."
Benny sighed. "You're right; I'm sorry.
This place is really starting to get to me." He turned back towards the
computer screen. "What I meant was: from the species that we've seen up to now,
the isn't any clear geographical distribution. Most seem to be North American,
but there's also some from Europe. Besides, the further back in time you go,
the less the continents will resemble the formations we have today. Continental
drift, you know? At many points, they were linked together, allowing species to
migrate to all parts of the world. Some species have been found in North
America and also South Africa, so…"
Benny shook his head. "It's just another
indication that something artificial – something human – was at work in
populating this island full of dinosaurs."
They remained this way, staring at the
computer screen in silence, Benny scanning the database and Alice reading over
his shoulder, until they heard activity coming from outside the trailer.
Glancing out the window, they could see people running. Exchanging worried
glances, Benny and Alice made for the door.
51
PERIMETER
ALARM
Folker studied the moist computer printout,
absentmindedly rolling a piece of fruit down on length of arm, flipping it over
to his other arm once it reached the crux of his elbow and starting over – an
old habit he'd picked up from playing tennis. He'd read this particular piece
before – several times, actually, since there was little else to do. The data
on the paper hadn't changed, of course, but it was better than sitting idly by.
He was sitting crossed-legged in the dirt,
unmindful of the still fresh mud. Stains on his pants were really the least of
his worries at this point. There was a rumble of thunder overhead, and Folker
glanced up at the sky. The cloud cover stretched from horizon to horizon, it's
dark shapes swollen with the promise of even more rain. Folker hoped that it
would wait at least until the end of the day before coming down: hopefully, by
that time, the helicopters would have come and gone. One of their trailers had
sunk into the mud almost up to it's hind wheels, and, since they weren't going
anywhere, the survey crew hadn't bothered to dig it back out. Folker doubted a
helicopter would have similar problems, but he figured that clement weather was
always a bonus in search and rescue.
That was what this job had turned into, in
effect, and they were the ones needing rescue. Folker hoped that Richley and
his team had managed to get that message out to the plane, because otherwise…
As if to punctuate his unspoken thought,
Folker heard a jangling sound coming from somewhere behind him, on the opposite
side of the encampment. He'd heard this sound before: it was their hastily set
up perimeter of instruments and cooking supply striking each other as the ropes
responded to some outside movement.
Folker instantly brought himself to his
feet, glancing around him quickly. The last time he heard that sound, he'd
nearly been crushed by a falling trailer, and didn't really care for a repeat
performance. Having assured himself there was no immediate danger, Folker
joined his teammates in jogging towards the source of the sound. Consciously,
he knew that none of them should be heading towards a potential
perimeter breach, but the pervasive ennui that had fallen over their
makeshift camp made any distraction the automatic centre of attention.
A small throng
of people had already gathered by the time that Folker got there. At first,
there didn't seem to be anything remarkable happening – just a bunch of people
standing mutely in the semi-circle. Then Folker spotted Corporal Meiller and
his two remaining soldiers, their weapons drawn, making slow surveys of the
area with the tips of their rifles.
Folker spotted
Benny arriving with Alice in tow out of the corner of his eye. The biologist
craned his neck above the others, trying to see what all the commotion was
about. Folker had spent enough time with Benjamin Dougal to know that the eager
look on his face meant that he was dying to ask something. But Benny refrained
himself, not daring to break the baited silence that had fallen over the group
as they waited, as if trying not to breathe too loudly lest the sound disrupt
the soldiers' concentration.
Finally,
Meiller scowled and brought down his weapon, his soldiers following suit. There
was a whoosh of air as the team collectively released their breath. The tense
atmosphere had been broken, and Benny now felt free to enquire:
"Did you get a
good look at it? What did it look like?"
Meiller glanced
up and shook his head. "I didn't see anything. Whatever tripped over the
perimeter, it was gone before we got here."
Benny nodded
sagely. "The sound made by the perimeter probably surprised it and scared it
off. Most animals don't like surprises of this sort. Anything new is
potentially dangerous."
"Yeah, well,"
Alice said, rubbing her shoulders, "It works both ways. I think I've had enough
surprises to last me a lifetime."
As if that was
their cue, the gathered surveyors started dispersing, alone or in small groups,
heading back towards the center of the trailers and the overhanging tarp. Even
Meiller, uttering a meaningless grunt, walked off, although Folker noted that
the army man was walking not towards the camp but along the side of the string
fence.
Finally, Folker
was left standing alone by the perimeter. He figured that he might as well
return to the camp and get back to doing – well, nothing, really… but it would
still be better than simply hanging out around here.
As he turned to
leave, something caught his eye. Folker did a double take, senses on alert,
staring back into the jungle. But there was nothing. The botanist shook his
head and began walking back to the camp. The stress of their dangerous position
was starting to get to him. For a moment, he thought he'd seen a pair of eyes, at
human height but set too much apart, staring back at him from the recesses of
the jungle.
