Kraken Orbital (12 page)

Foresight?
In that I am clearly
lacking. We have made our choices, found ourselves deep in the
heart of a jungle infested by snarling beasts that were supposed to
be, in my mind at least, extinct, and there is no turning
back.

The jungle
eventually opens into a welcome clearing
and I take a deep, long overdue breath and exhale out with
a gentle rumble in my throat. I’m relieved to be able to see a few
feet ahead of me at long last. Kolt casts me a disapproving glare
and holds a raised finger against his closed lips to shut me
up.

The clearing
reaches as f
ar as the first gently
sloping grassy hill that we need to climb as we inch closer to the
mountain ahead. He crouches down to hide under the shadow of the
gentle hill. He can’t see over it and I certainly can’t. Maybe he
can sense something atop and over the other side. I take his same
position and rest my tired hands against my raised knee.

He starts
creeping, stalking, up the slippery, dewy moist grass and step by
step, shuffles closer to the crest of the hill. I join him at the
top and see nothing. But the deep, rumbling, belting and terror
inducing roar that shatters the very sky confirms we have stumbled
into something we might not be
able to
run away from!

Chapter 8

Stampede

The sound
comes from our right and a powerful, enormous, muscular and ripped
monster shatters the tree line to shreds. It bursts out from the
jungle cover, sending logs and branches flying as though they were
mere twigs, and makes a b-line right for us!

Each stomp rattles through the very ground
and vibrates up my spine. I suddenly feel weak, inch tall, and
helpless in the face of such brutish power. My heart skips and my
legs don’t know what to do.

I gasp. My body starts to lurch in the
opposite direction before my head follows it. I’m entranced by the
gargantuan scale of the scaly dinosaur that stampedes towards to
us. It opens it drooling jaws one more time, brandishing it’s man
sized and shark like teeth and belts out another ferocious roar.
The sound rasps out of it’s vocal chords and lasts longer than I
can stand to listen to it.

I finally turn and start sprinting in the
opposite direction. My legs carry me over the crest of the hill
with Kolt in tow. We break the top of the bank and catch a glimpse
of the grazing beasts in the valley below. The hills roll all over
the land and there is no flat space other than the river that
gently slithers its way through the scene.

There are a
few dozen, grey and clay
colored, but
large animals lapping up the fresh water. They seem meek and fickle
until they hear the predatory monster lurch over the muddy banks
with two members of an unknown species bouncing away from
it.

They
immediately break from whatever it is they are d
oing, whether it be drinking or grazing, and start racing
in the opposite direction. I didn’t know I could run this fast.
Perhaps I’d never found the right motivation to run this fast
though. My legs pound against the soft dirt and I even mage to keep
pace with the much more powerful figure that is Kolt to my
right.

My head feels like it is about to burst as
blood rushes all over my body. We race down another hill and into
the midst of the grazing hoard. They are startled and are all
starting to run as one uncontrollable mass in the opposite
direction. They start to bark and shriek as they each catch and
lock eyes with the marauding beast behind us. I know we can’t
outrun these things. The size of them is impressive. They each
stand twice the height of myself and their legs are well toned and
sleek enough to race up to speeds I doubt I could reach on a
motorbike back home.

I cast a desperate look over to Kolt. He is
still pounding through the mud, racing up and over the foothills,
and remains focused on the space only directly ahead of him. I have
an idea but have no idea how we can pull it off. We don’t need to
outrun the megalith behind us, just at least one of the weaker
beasts among us.

‘Kolt!’ I yell to him, turning my head to him
but only briefly, just to get his attention. I spy a fallen tree
directly ahead of us and a younger animal that seems to have fallen
behind the pack. The tree sits high enough to ensnare it but not
us. The wooden trunk has fallen, ripping the roots from right under
the dirt, probably in a recent rainstorm or during this river’s
flood season. It still bears leaves and flourishes, growing new
stalks from its rotten mast, and once more reaches up to the
sky.

He catches my eye but says nothing. It must
be getting hard for him to breathe through his ventilator,
especially given the current over exertion.

‘We need to trap that one!’ I scream at the
top of my lungs, battling the sounds of both the waves of the
nearby river, the stamping of the weaker beasts, and the ear
splitting roar of the monster behind us.

I point quickly to the struggling herbivore
in front of us. It is young, and it hits me for just a second how
sad it will be to sentence it to death, then serve it up on a plate
to the carnivore quickly gaining on us. I draw my arm back quickly
as I feel my pace slow due to my loss of balance. I return it to my
side where it dutifully waves back and forth in time with my
sprinting legs.

I can just about see Kolt nod from the corner
of my eye and we break off in opposite directions to try to get
along side of the struggling young buck. It is howling, almost like
it is pleading, through his tired beak and I can’t help but feel
sorry for it. That thought is quickly forced to the back of my
mind. No way do I want to die by dinosaur meal when it can
instead.

I pound my
feet harder and race further to its side. Kolt has, through the
same kind of considerable effort, managed to get along it’s other
side. A classic flanking
maneuver. Not
that anything about flanking a failing young dinosaur can be
described as “classical”.

I hear it
howl one last time before it goes crashing into the rotting tree’s
fallen trunk. I hear its neck bone s
nap
hard with a splintering crunch and see it’s head fall limp on it’s
short neck. It stumbles and falls immediately at the base of the
tree. The trunk splinters in half and both Kolt and I have to dive,
in near perfect synchronization, forward some distance in order to
not get trapped.

We each turn in the pit of mud in which we
have landed just in time to see the formidable beast stamp on the
shoulder of it’s prey to trap it and finally kill it. The beast
wastes no time in lowering it’s beak and ripping into the flesh of
the young buck. I know that we are safe now the monster has been
appeased with a meal, I have no energy to move, but I don’t really
want to see the thing feed.

I try to pull myself out of the mud but my
tired arms keep slipping as my open palms fail to find any traction
on the slippery brown soil.

I hear an
unmistakable tearing noise and listen to the springy sounds of
ligaments snapping and muscle
fiber
tearing as the monster feeds on the fresh, raw meat. The blood of
the fallen creature starts to pour liberally out of it’s countless
teeth wounds and soaks the surrounding area in a sickening rich red
color. I can feel the warm liquid trickle up my trouser legs and
soak my boots through. That motivates me to claw my way to my feet
and stand. Kolt has just about made it up too.

This time, to my surprise, he takes my hand
to get his balance. The scene unfolding under the shelter of the
tree is like a horrific crash. I can’t look away. My inner blood
lust stops me from just walking away.

‘Opportunistic…’ he begins and tries to get his words out
between hesitant and difficult breaths. ‘predators will quickly…’
he pauses again for another deep, lung filling inhale. ‘gather to
try to feed also.’ He finally reaches the end of his sentence. As
much as that sprint has taken out of me I know he is right and we
definitely need to start making our way out of the area. There will
be more of them coming soon.

He points
over the river, to where the next tree line encroaches ominously
into view, and starts to walk before I find the power to follow
him.
I gasp one more time, hand on hips
to settle my breathing, and eventually follow. My legs are
screaming at me for the pain they just endured but I ignore them
and make for the tree line. I leap forward a few over exaggerated
paces in order to catch up with Kolt who has found some way to
quickly compose himself.

He again stands tall, ready and waiting for
the next obstacle to throw itself at us, chest puffed out with
steady, easing and soothing breaths through his mask.

‘That was really something buddy.’ I bravely
reach up and slap him on the back. My open palm makes for a wet
noise as it impacts his leather finished apron. I smile.

‘Indeed.’ He
glances at me and then pushes past the first branch that leads us
once more into the dense jungle.

‘
More
challenges await in the caves beyond my friend.’ I have to admit to
myself that it feels good to be called his friend. I admire him a
lot and that is the first time either of us has put our
relationship into words. The intense and unforgiving surroundings
we find ourselves in cement t
ogether a
tight bond between us. I can’t believe I was ever afraid of him, or
even suspicious of him, and I’m ashamed of myself when I remember
that I was at one time or another thinking both of those
things.

I reach past my own head and bat away a lone
mosquito like bug when I hear it buzzing around my ear. Night has
settled in well and truly now and the dark shadows have me jumping
at every turn as we pick our way slowly through the dense and deep
jungle vegetation.

Kolt seems to
know where he is leading us and I have a new found faith in him to
not even question his
judgment. Even if
his poor memory is a little hazy at best. I still have no idea how
we plan to get out of this. My friend seems to think we can call
the long gone Russian Federation.

I allow my thoughts to wander. I would rather
think about Kolt and what he said than pay any attention to the
penetrating silence that envelopes me. The darkness wraps it’s arms
and legs around us like a demented whore. It throws a dense sheet
over us and wraps it around us like a hunting python, constricting
the life out of us with every terrified breath that I take.

Kolt believes
in what he said. I sensed, now that I force myself to remember his
words, conviction and determination in his voice.
But how can he be remembering
something that has been gone for so long?
I try to stop my thought patterns but they run wild, they
chill me to the bone and I can’t help but to develop a persistent,
and over-reaching, bad feeling about all of this.

Kolt stops suddenly. I nearly walk right into
him as my eyes grow weary with tiredness. He can see something but
I can’t. He reaches around and grabs me by the wrist. He pulls me
forward to stand by his side and points through the shroud of
darkness to an even darker pit up ahead.

It faces me like the open jaws of a whale
carved into the side of a rock face. No light escapes it’s jagged
form and all life seems to be swallowed by the void it represents.
Kolt pulls me close and whispers in my ear. His voice sounds
muffled and distant. It feels like he is shouting from inside his
own mask, but no sound carries to my delicate ears. His rasping
tones send more shivers down my spine but I don’t let it show.

‘
That is the
entrance to the cave system. We need to follow that, it will lead
us up into blank snowfields, where we must climb a great height in
order to find my crashed ship.’ My heart sinks at the prospect of
more hardship to come, especially when I see no end to our ordeal,
since Kolt is daydreaming or mentally ill when it comes to his
plan.
At this point, the though suddenly
hits me, I’m just winging it with my blind faith placed squarely on
his shoulders.

I try to peer through the darkness as we
stand completely still, listening out for anything in the lack of
noise around us.

‘We’ll never
make it without a light.’ I state categorically. I’m just making
excuses. I’m lying to myself that there is any reason for us not to
go in. I just don’t want to. Kolt walks away and I don’t bother to
follow him. I know he will have some kind of method or some kind of
plan, just like he always does, to get us through this.

Sure enough
he returns only moments later with a split piece of wood that looks
like bamboo. The wood is hollow and forms a pipe shape. He has
stuffed some dried mud down half way to block it off, rested dead
wood and torn pieces of the bamboo flesh apart to form kindling,
which he has stuffed in the top. He reaches under his apron and
brandishes his large hunting knife. He also takes out a
silver
colored block of flint.

I had no idea he had it with him. He starts
to strike the flint with the sharp edge of the blade to make it
spark. After a few attempts the fire bursts into life and the
makeshift torch erupts with dazzling orange light. The flames lick
up into the blanket of darkness and smoke immediately starts
pouring out, billowing up into the tree cover above. It is
refreshing though. To finally be able to see something more than a
palm distance away from my face.

The light
extends to the start of the cave but no further.
I form up behind him and let him take the lead again. He
knows where he is going and he has the light. Or so I tell myself.
Another excuse. But that’s total bull. This place has me spooked
and I’m just hiding behind him like a frightened child.