Kraken Orbital Page 8

  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 doing, 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 snap 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 together 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 wh
ere 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.