Chapter 16
Late the following day, after they’d crossed a tricky succession of connected chambers, they stumbled onto another of the cave’s entrances and the evidence that something extremely large had been using it.
Justin had begun to behave nervously as they traveled deeper into the cave, but hadn’t said anything to him or the others. Sensitive to what he was feeling through the soles of his booted feet as a few-time survivor of earthquakes; after the gloom and doom warning his seismologist friend had been feeding him for weeks about the big one coming, Henry thought he was extra sensitive to the earth quivering through a series of pre-earthquake tremors. But he felt them, as well. Not wanting to upset the others, he’d kept his mounting fears to himself. And if any of the others had noticed the shakiness beneath them at times, none of them had mentioned it. Could be, like him, they were afraid to. They were so deep into the caves, no matter what happened, they’d have a heck of a time getting out if the big one hit.
But Henry knew he couldn’t remain silent much longer. The tremors were getting worse. If they didn’t stop, they’d have to halt their search and get out or risk being underground when the earthquake came. He’d hate to be trapped underground when and if it did. The cave had been there for thousands of years, but if the quake was massive enough, all that could change in seconds. The cave could become their tomb.
Greer was the first one to see the other opening to the lake. He’d led them into the enormous cavern, which was almost the twin to the entrance they’d come through three days before, and where they’d left the submersible. Once they entered the chamber, there were no other tunnels leading anywhere. Just the water.
“End of the line, kids. By the way the current’s flowing, I’d say down there somewhere,” Greer pointed at the softly lapping water in front of them, “is another entrance to the lake. I suspected there were others.”
The four men stood at the brink and stared down at the dark water.
Eventually Justin walked over to a nearby rock and sat down. His ribs must be bothering him, he seemed to be in pain, but complaining to the others would be the last thing he’d do. He was high on the adventure, so what was a little pain? He’d said that morning, “One day I’ll probably look back at this summer as the highlight of my life. Fossil discovery, monster dinosaur, underwater cave spelunking and all. If I live through it, that is.”
“Let’s inspect the place,” Henry said, “to see if our boy’s been living in here.”
He, Greer and Francis panned their helmet lights into the vast crannies and corners of the chamber. The illumination was inadequate, so they ended up climbing around with handheld flashlights to further dissolve the gloom.
“Here!” Henry yelled, and in moments the others were by his side. “Something big has been in here. Recently.” He was studying where the stalactites had been knocked off to nubs, crushed or shoved to the side, rocks strewn everywhere. There were deep impressions in places where something heavy had tread and broken through the soft rock of the cave floor, leaving clear outlines of an animal’s footprints and different sized puddles of cooling lava.
Henry bent down and lightly outlined one, not touching it, with a gloved hand, cocked an eyebrow up at Justin. They’d seen these before. “We’re in the right place. It’s been here. And by the amount of tracks, often.
“This way.” They trailed him through the haze across the cavern.
“You smell that?” Greer pinched his nose shut with two of his fingers. Like the rest of them, he was drained from the heat they’d been trudging through all day, his eyes red-rimmed, his face bristly with beard and dirt from the volcanic ash that covered everything. They’d been dunked and soaked more times than he could count from wading through watery lakes which had looked shallow but hadn’t been. Earlier, Greer had fallen over an unseen ledge and had scraped himself up. As much as he loved exploring caves, he’d confessed, this cave had about used him up. He said he was relieved they’d come to the end because it meant they’d be turning around and heading back to the submersible. Their underground journey was over.
Henry was also aware of the stench. “Smells like putrid meat. It’s stronger over this way.” He gestured towards the right and they went in that direction. He’d never seen a cave as large as the one they were in, though Francis remarked he had. It went on for what seemed like miles with the lake rippling on its left side like a yawning inky pit and lava bubbling through weak spots of the floor, so they had to jump the boiling liquid like obstacle fences.
They hiked across the unstable surface until Francis stepped on something. He dipped his flashlight, bent over and picked it up.
“A bone.”
Henry looked at what Francis held in his hand. “A human bone.”
They searched the black spaces around them until they found the source of the odor, a monstrous pile of bones, animal and human, with rancid flesh clinging to some of them. It was only one of many piles strewn along the rear of the chamber. The freshest kills were human. Henry felt nauseated.
“Now we know where the missing people ended up,” he spoke softly, “or parts of them, anyway.”
“Apparently the creature drags back a large portion of its prey to eat here. Its home,” Justin said.
Francis cocked his head upwards so the helmet’s light skimmed across the back wall of the chamber. His hand covered his mouth and then his nose. He froze, probably terrified he’d discover body parts of his dead friend among the refuse. He strode quickly away from the pile.
“Look at this!” he exclaimed over his shoulder.
The rest of them tore themselves away from the bones.
Henry, Greer and Justin moved up besides Francis, who was standing beneath something, gawking up at it. A solid wall of embedded dinosaur fossils.
“I’ve never seen such complete, perfect, specimens. Never,” Justin breathed. “Not even up above at the dig.”
Heads, feet, all parts of the ancient monsters stuck out at them like a bizarre relief sculpture. The outlines so clear of the original animals Henry was afraid they’d come to life and jump out of the wall at them.
“Nothosaurs, I think. No, Kronosaurs, no,” Justin stuttered in wonder. “No, neither of them.” His voice turned grave with foreboding. “This is some fantastic creature no human has ever discovered or conceived of. It’s a creature from hell, is what it is. Look at the size of the things! They’re much larger than our creature. Much.”
“For now, anyway,” Henry supplied. “Maybe that’s how big our beast is going to get.”
Greer, staring up at the wall like a man in a nightmare, whistled. “We got to find it and destroy it before it gets this big then.”
“We’re trying, Dylan. We’re trying,” Henry sighed. Things were looking worse every day. Now this.
“Henry, this is most likely where the wall you found up above begins. Down here deep under the lake. Astounding,” Justin mumbled, still in shock. “There must be hundreds of the animals captured in this rock.”
“What happened to them?” Greer couldn’t take his eyes off the fossils.
“Perhaps an earthquake millions of years before the one that blew the top off this volcano and created the caldera. The lava was so hot it melted the rock and embedded the creatures in it for eternity. Subsequent quakes, even the ones we’ve been experiencing lately, might have unearthed it.”
“Wow!” Francis mouthed, inching close enough to touch a protruding white leg bone.
“They moved in herds, you know,” Justin was rattling on, probably to hide his uneasiness. “They could have been migrating to some other place.”
Henry’s flashlight had caught something else and he moved away from the wall. That’s when he saw the eggs, clustered near a pool of bubbling lava.
“Justin,” he whispered, “you better get over here. You won’t believe what’s here.”
Justin hobbled over, his aches and weariness forgotten, and with Henry, bent down to study the huge white
-shelled ovals. The first moments he smiled like an enchanted child, then his face drew tight under the grime. “Oh, my god.”
The others crowded around and stared at the ovals. There were twelve, nestled together in a lop-sided circle and partially covered in ash. They looked as if they’d just been left there. An hour, a week, a month ago. An impossibility.
“Are they still viable?” Greer quizzed Justin.
“I don’t know,” the scientist replied, lifting one up in his hands. It was heavy. Warm. He put it to his ear. “Something’s moving around in there. I think this one’s close to hatching. The lava’s incubating them. Now we know where our monster came from.” He looked up at Henry with dread in his eyes. “They’ve probably been down here somewhere for–who knows how long–thousands, millions of years, locked air-tight in a rock pocket, perhaps, or coated in hardened lava that the recent earthquakes uncovered and melted as the heat grew in the cave. It set them free.” He caressed one of the eggs gently as if he were afraid it’d break.
“These eggs would be worth a fortune in the outside world. A monumental scientific discovery,” Justin announced. “We’d all be filthy rich if we brought them back.”
“You want to take them back? To civilization?”
Justin shook his head after just a slight hesitation. “No.”
“No,” Greer concurred solemnly. “Can you imagine more of those monsters roaming the earth? Eating every living creature in their path? Some men would think they could control them, outwit them…but I don’t think they could.”
“No,” Francis sided with the others, gazing at Justin. “Your colleagues would try to hatch them, raise them as pets to put in zoos. As amazing as that’d be. We can’t allow that to happen. They don’t belong in our world anymore.”
In a fleeting wisp of memory Henry recalled Ann’s face as the monster had hulked over her. He saw the disbelief, the horror, that’d frozen her into a helpless rabbit in its path. George’s death cries joined the memory. The cries of all the other victims. No!
“People wouldn’t understand, wouldn’t believe,” Justin spoke, “how damn smart they are. People are so arrogant. And if there’s money to be made–they’d be like lambs to the slaughter.”
The men looked at each other. The same expression of fear on each face.
“We have to destroy them,” Justin pronounced sentence. “Because if one of them hatched then others could. It’s too dangerous to leave them. Intact.”
The others watched Justin, a look of absolute loathing for what he had to do, pick the eggs up one by one, walk a ways into the chamber and throw them into a lava stream. The ovals quickly sunk, burning, into the fiery quicksand.
After he’d disposed of three the other men helped him finish the job.
This is for you, George, Henry thought as he dropped an egg into the lava. None of these will ever hatch and grow into the thing that killed you.
They uncovered other nests and dealt with them in the same manner.
As a devoted paleontologist, it was the hardest thing Justin had ever had to do. Henry caught tears in his eyes more than once.
Afterwards, exhausted in mind and body, they settled down to rest and plan. Time was running out and they knew it.
“Since this cavern appears to be the creature’s home base, I’m hoping we can lure it back here.” Justin propped his chin in his hands. His face was flushed.
“Whatever we do, we need to do it quick,” Henry decided. “None of us can take much more of this heat.”
The chamber the eggs had been in was like an inferno, a giant incubator. The men had retired to the further corner, as far away from the lava as they could get. It wasn’t far enough. They were all dripping in sweat.
Justin looked as if he was about to pass out. “There must be a large river of active lava somewhere not far beneath us.”
“We can’t leave,” Greer reminded them of something they didn’t want to hear, “until we try summoning the creature. This is its home.”
The others groaned and grumbled, but knew Greer was right. They had to call the beast back to its lair. They’d come all this way for that reason.
“Let’s rest first,” Henry suggested. “Eat something. We’re going to need our strength.”
And they sat and talked among themselves for awhile, comrades now, to fight their growing fears of not ever returning.
“It’s time,” Henry finally announced, “Now or never. Let’s do it.”
Justin took the boom box and set it on the ground. Popped in a CD. Heavy metal. Volume up full blast, loudest it’d go. Francis pulled out the fire crackers and lit the tied together bundles.
Combined, the noise was horrendous.
They found hiding places nearby, staying close together, and doused their lights. Covered their ears. Greer mumbled, “I should have remembered ear plugs, too. Too late now.”
They waited in the eerie reddish glow the live lava gave off, drenched in heat and fear sweat, their hearts beating as loud as the CD. Their launchers at the ready. Their eyes glued to the placid body of water before them. If it came, it’d probably come from the water. From the lake.
They waited. Hours.
The fire crackers were used up. The heat, the tension, and the increasing earth tremors that soon all of them could feel, finally wore their patience and courage down.
“Enough. It’s not coming. We need to regroup and try another location.” Greer had come up behind Henry and yelled in his ear.
A flashlight switched on and Francis rose up, stepped over to where Henry, Greer and Justin were crouched. “I guess it’s not going to show today,” he cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled in their direction.
Another flashlight and a helmet switched on. “I guess not.” Justin stood up. There were rings around his eyes behind the glasses. Blond hair stuck out every which way from under his helmet. His skin coloring was awful. He’d spent too much time in the dark.
Greer winced, putting his hands to his forehead. “Somebody turn that damn music off,” he yelped. “I never told you but I hate heavy metal. Classical’s more my style.”
Justin scooted over and shut the thing off, plunging the cavern into blessed silence.
Henry gave a shuddering sigh of relief. “Now I know why I stopped listening to rock music. My eardrums wouldn’t take it anymore. Give me Vince Gill or Alabama any day.”
Justin made a face, and turned to Greer. “But it sounded like such a good idea, lying in wait and making lots of noise. Should have worked.”
“Nothing’s easy, kiddo,” Greer mouthed. “Don’t take it to heart. It was a good idea. Just didn’t work.”
“Yeah, well, we need to leave the cave and the lake,” Justin urged. “You feel that?” The ground rocked beneath their boots. “This whole cave could come tumbling down on our heads any minute. We can wait here forever, but it won’t guarantee our dinosaur will come, especially if there’s other ways in or out of the cave. But the earthquake is going to happen soon. It’s too risky to remain here.”
“And if we sweat away any more water, we’ll dehydrate,” Greer tossed his prognosis in. “Have heat strokes and then we’d never make it to the sub. It’s a long walk.”
“I say we move out now as well. I’m worried about the Big Rover,” Francis said. “We’ve been away from it for three days. It’ll take three more, at least, to get back. A long time to leave it unattended, unguarded, even with its electrical defenses on. I don’t like leaving it this long.”
He didn’t have to remind them the submersible was their only way out. Unless they wanted to swim, unprotected, across the lake. They knew that well enough.
“Well, we’d better pack up and start hoofing it.” Greer shifted the pack on his back into a more comfortable position. “We have little time and hard traveling ahead. Let’s get going.”
“So, Justin, you believe these tremors we’re having are a prelude to the big one?” Greer asked as they gathered the rest of their equipm
ent, getting ready to go.
“My seismologist friend does. He expects a full blown earthquake any time, now.” Justin’s face in the lantern light was anxiously grim.
“Let’s move faster, boys,” was all Greer said then.
No one had to voice the fear they might not make it back to civilization. It was on their minds as the earth shook violently below them.
“We never should have come down here,” Henry muttered apologetically to Justin. “I knew an earthquake was coming. You warned me.”
Justin flashed him an impatient look. “Don’t be sorry for anything. I could have said no, you gave me lots of chances. Same with the others, too. We wanted to come. Can’t change what’s already been done. And we don’t really know when the earthquake will come. No one really knows. The earth could rumble for days or weeks first.” His eyes scanned the cave, as he strapped on his backpack. The others were ready, waiting for Henry and Justin to start moving.
“Now,” Justin snapped, “let’s get out of this cave before it falls on us.”
“I’m with you. Let’s get above ground and see what’s happened in the park since we’ve been gone. See how many more people our hungry friend has trampled or eaten. Clever bastard. It probably knew we were down here all the time and it’s been playing hide and go seek with us. We come seeking it, and it hides. Laughing at us the whole time.”
The ground shuddered as they departed the cavern, single file, as rapidly as their tired legs and the unsteady ground would allow.
Henry didn’t look forward to three more days of cave climbing, grueling heat, exhaustion and dirt. But they needed to get out of the cave. He was also dreading what might have taken place up above when they’d been away. That dread was a monkey on his back he couldn’t shake.
They hiked in the direction of the submersible, following the phosphorescent bread crumb string of ribbon through the tunnels. It’d worked like a charm. But this time, in their desperate urgency, they rarely stopped and slept little. The cave began to disintegrate around them and Henry grew more fearful with each second they’d be entombed forever.
While Francis was worried that something had happened to the Big Rover.
Less than three days later they were reentering the entrance where they’d left the sub. Four walking half-dead men with dirty faces and nervous eyes. The earth had been calm for the last day but there was a strange feeling in the air, a feeling of destiny and finality. A feeling as thick and tangible as the churning mist that clung to the inside of the cave and kept them, at times, from seeing even the man in front of them.
The earth was still experiencing tremors, some worse than others.
So they were relieved their escape vehicle to dry land was waiting where they’d left it, bobbing in the water, unharmed, a beautiful sight. Getting ready to embark, Francis fussed over the machine as if it were his long lost child.
Slumped in their seats from weariness, groaning, Francis piloted the Rover out of the cavern, happy to be out of the furnace and motoring out of danger. It was the same way Henry felt when he left the dentist’s office.
Out of danger, or so they thought.
The monster was waiting for them outside the mouth of the cave. It let them pass and putter along for quite a stretch then it swam in behind.
Henry was the first one to spot it because he’d been looking for it. He’d had a sickening premonition it’d be out there somewhere…waiting.
His eyes stared out the glass portal at it. He wondered how long it’d been waiting. It swiftly closed the distance between them as if they’d been sitting still.
“We’ve got company,” Henry informed the others in a cold voice. “Behind us. Look out the window.”
Glancing out his portal, Francis gasped. “Heaven help us. The creature, it’s here! My god it’s big!”
“Somehow it knew we were in the cave,” Justin whispered. “And was clever enough to figure we’d have to come out eventually. Where we’re at the disadvantage. We can’t use the launchers from inside the sub, can we?” But Henry knew Justin already knew the answer to that.
“No, we can’t.”
“And it’s pretty much invulnerable in the water, remember?” Justin reminded him. The two men exchanged looks. That night on the lake when they’d first encountered the leviathan was still fresh in their memories.
Henry glared at the monster through the glass. It was circling the sub, examining them with hungry, diamond-black eyes. It was so damn big. Its eyes locked with his and a chill shivered through his body, though he was sweating. And Henry realized in that awful moment that the sub’s defenses would never be a match for the behemoth. Now his hands were shaking.
He looked around and recognized the terror in the other’s eyes. They all remembered what had happened to Lassen and the Deep Rover.
Henry leaned over to instruct Francis, “Get us back to the cave. We haven’t got a chance out here in the water. You said this ship was fast, now prove it.”
Francis didn’t argue. “We’ll make a run for it. Tighten your seat belts, boys. Here we go.”
The pilot turned his attention to the controls and did what he did best.
Henry felt the craft wildly shift direction and accelerate. It became a bullet flying through the water, its destination the yawning mouth of the cavern they’d just exited.
“Don’t look now but our voracious friend’s behind us again,” Justin moaned. “Moving up quick.”
Each man looked out the nearest portals, their hands tightly holding onto any nearby solid surface, preparing for the ride.
If this sub goes any faster, Henry thought, we’re going to hit warp speed.
The entrance to the cave was looming ahead.
“I think it’s through fooling around,” Justin’s voice trembled. “It’s coming in for the kill.”
Henry had to hand it to his team, not one of them cried out as the monster rammed them. Greer cursed under his breath and Justin muttered something feverishly. Sounded like he was praying
The Big Rover bucked in the water and rocketed to the right, the shock of the hit sending it radically off course. Francis was jerked in his seat, but maneuvered the craft back on course. Sweat trickled down his face, leaving dirty tracks through the grime. He tried to outrun the nightmare stalking them.
The beast would not be shaken, nor left behind.
Every time they got close to the cavern’s mouth, the creature slapped the Big Rover away, as if it were a toy, and kept it from entering.
“I’m turning on the electrical juice.” Francis’s fingers flipped a few toggles. “Full force.”
But when the creature hit them again, it reacted as if it hadn’t felt a thing.
“I’m firing the missiles. That’ll get it.” But the beast dodged the weapons and the rockets were lost in the lake’s murkiness. Francis swore out loud.
Justin and Henry looked at each other.
“Oops, that didn’t work.” Justin’s face was a shade of white Henry had never seen before.
Heaven knew where the missiles would end up or what they’d blow up. If they were lucky, it’d be some underwater rock formations or a foundation along one of the islands and not a line of boats anchored at Cleetwood Dock.
“Sorry, the missiles weren’t meant to chase down crafty, agile water dinosaurs,” Francis apologized. “That’s it. The extent of our defensive weaponry.
“I’d like to believe we’re going to get out of this alive,” he then said gently, shaking his head. “But I’m not sure.”
The men didn’t have time to dwell on their plight. The creature, now quite agitated, was relentlessly crowding against the hull of the sub.
“Damn,” Francis snarled. “How can it do that? I’ve got the voltage as high as it’ll go.”
“Because the electricity’s not affecting it, that’s why,” Henry replied. Suddenly he was very tired. Their situation wasn’t looking very good and, on top of it all, he had a splitting headache.
&nb
sp; “Nope, electricity doesn’t seem to faze it,” Justin deadpanned. “Its skin must be too tough or too thick. And it’s not scared of us. We can’t hurt it. We’re as vulnerable as Lassen was in the Deep Rover.”
“Shit,” Greer breathed.
“Yeah, oh, shit,” Henry echoed. “Switch the juice off, Francis, it’s only making the SOB angrier.”
Francis shut off the probes.
Henry had to give the pilot credit because he’d nearly gotten them to the cave.
The next shove was so forceful that the men’s bodies were fiercely jostled inside the cockpit. For a second, Henry thought his neck had snapped. The beast had hit them with all it had. A few more of those friendly slaps and something would jar loose inside his head for sure or the sub would burst open like a watermelon dropped on concrete from ten stories up.
The sub spun in a crazy circle and with a loud screeching sound slammed up against a ledge of underwater rock. A huge tail wrapped tightly around the craft and squeezed. Henry could almost hear the metal crunching. Teeth scratched against the hull and claws raked the metal creating horrendous grating noises. A monster eye was plastered outside the portal’s glass near him. It reflected a malevolent intelligence as it blinked. The creature knew they’d been trying to kill it. It knew.
Henry’s mind reran a similar scene from an old movie. Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. That was the film. But that had been a movie. Fiction. This was the real thing; exactly what had happened to Lassen, except this time it wasn’t happening to someone else, but to them.
“Lord, I don’t want to die like Lassen did,” Francis exclaimed, furiously working the submersible’s levers, trying to get the sub out of the monster’s grasp.
The Big Rover’s engines were grinding in protest as the creature grabbed a hold and violently shook it back and forth. Its occupants slammed around in its belly, jelly beans in a jar, bouncing against the hard surfaces.
A seatbelt snapped and Henry howled in pain on impact.
The mutant pushed their sanctuary downwards, then, unbelievably, released them. But the submersible’s engines had stalled and it was sinking to the bottom.
“Is everyone okay?” Henry asked as soon as his senses returned. In a small metal tomb with the weight of over nineteen hundred feet of water lying on top of them, and a monster lurking outside waiting to have them for supper, Henry was disoriented. Everything had a dreamlike quality to it, even the terror.
Francis had hit his head against the hull and had put his hand up to cover the wound as blood burst from between his fingers. “Oh, I’ve been hurt!” was all he said, face going blank, and then he fainted in his seat, held in by his harness.
Greer had to catch him from behind and pull him out of the restraints or his head would have thudded down on the controls.
Henry reacted as only someone with emergency training would–throwing himself behind the controls, knowing Greer would take care of Francis. He frantically fought to recall what Francis had taught him days before about working the sub. He hesitated, unsure, the control panel blurring before him.
“Drive it, Henry!” Greer shouted. “Get us out of here!”
The monster was closing in. But the Big Rover was dead in the water. Even the lights inside had dimmed to a frightening twilight. If it went pitch dark, Henry thought, he’d scream for sure. The stench of fear and unwashed bodies were cloying in the compacted space.
“I’m trying!” he hissed, and what he so desperately needed to recall came flooding back. He restarted the engines; they sputtered and kicked in. Thank God. For a heartbeat he’d been alarmed they wouldn’t. He didn’t want to die as Lassen had, either. He didn’t want anyone to die.
They sputtered away from the monster, sparks crackling in the water around them. The beast was mesmerized by the fireworks and held back to play with the pretty lights, a delay that probably saved all their lives.
As they left their attacker behind, the submersible motored, crippled but still plugging along, through the cloudy waters.
The men were silent as their eyes observed the creature frolicking through the glass openings.
Henry fervently wished he could escape the sub, breath gulps of real fresh air. Swim away. Wished he could get out because the walls were suddenly closing in.
Justin’s eyes were dilated in fear. “My head’s whirling. My heart feels as if it’s ready to explode.” Groaning in his chair, his eyes were glued to the water world and the creature diminishing in the glass windows. “Why in the world did I agree to come along? I must have been insane,” he grumbled. But Henry knew he was just letting off steam. Relieving his fear.
“Francis has been hurt,” Greer announced. “He’s unconscious. I don’t know how bad, breathing shallowly, but alive. His pulse is strong. I stopped the bleeding.” He’d laid the pilot on the floor between them. “But we’re going to have to drive this thing ourselves from here on in.”
Greer settled into the seat Henry had vacated as the Big Rover wobbled towards the cave and, with Greer’s co-piloting, entered the main cavern before the creature noticed they were gone. Henry brought the submersible to the surface, but was unable to get it completely flush with the rocky shore as Francis had done. He wasn’t that good of a pilot yet.
“Sorry,” he told the others. “We’ll have to swim for it. Looks to be about ten feet.”
“Then let’s do it,” Greer rasped. “Before the bastard sees we’re gone and decides to come after us. We need to get in position to fight it.”
“You mean we can’t just slip into a side tunnel, squeeze into a place the beast can’t get to us?” Justin inquired half-heartedly, as the three hurriedly gathered their stuff, and the weapons, and prepared to depart.
“No, sorry,” Henry told him. “We need to face it now. Destroy it once and for all. No more running. I’m sick of running.”
Greer’s face confirmed the decision. “He’s right. We have to take care of it. Now. We have the weapons and the opportunity. It’ll never let us out of the cave anyway.”
“You’re right about that.” Justin gave in.
“Justin, when we get away from the sub you watch over Francis. Greer and I will take care of the creature.”
What Justin said then made Henry proud. “I’ll get him to a safe place first, but then I’m going to help you two fight that thing. There’s grenades in your arsenal, aren’t there?”
“Yes?”
“I played baseball when I was a kid.” Justin grinned in the dim light of the submersible’s interior, pack strapped to his back, ready to leave. The others were ready, too, heading for the exit. “I was a great pitcher. Got a mean arm. I can hit anything at almost any distance. Don’t leave me out of this. I want to help. Three fighting that monster is better than two. It’s also my survival. Besides, if something happens to you two, and Francis doesn’t come to, I’m stuck in this cave. I can’t operate the Big Rover at all.”
“You got some valid points. All right, you can help us fight. If you get Francis to a safe place first.”
“Deal.”
The three of them escaped from the Big Rover, bringing along an unconscious Francis. Greer and Henry also assisted Justin, who wasn’t a swimmer, get to the cave’s floor. When Francis and Justin were safe on dry land, Greer swam back to retrieve the grenade launchers. He stood on the top of the Big Rover and tossed them, one at a time, to Henry.
Henry had the second RPG-7 in his arms when behind him Justin howled, “Earthquake!” The word reverberated and bounced eerily around the rock cavern, repeating itself over and over.
“Shit,” Henry railed, crouching down to keep from tumbling over with the heavy weapon. “And it’s a bad one!” Of all times!
The initial rattling of the earth, as the water surged, knocked Greer off the sub into the water. He swam through the choppy waves to the others as rocks, some the size of a man’s skull, thundered down around his comrades from the roof of the cavern.
Smaller stones pelte
d Justin and Henry as they huddled, waiting for Greer, cutting the flesh on their faces, slashing their clothes. They tried to protect themselves. Justin, grunting as the falling rocks hit his back, hunched over and covering Francis’s body.
Now there was no way they’d be able to hide deeper in the cave, even if they’d wanted to. It was collapsing, the walls crumbling.
“If we’re going to kill that thing, we’d better do it,” Justin yelped at Henry, as the ground rumbled and the water around the submersible boiled and changed colors as active lava tinted it. “This cave is no place to be right now.”
“Soon as it shows itself. We’ll take care of it.” Henry’s words were barely heard over the rumbling of the earth and the screaming of the dying cavern. His hands fumbled with unpacking the weapons, but his eyes were on the water as a great churning arose near the submersible.
The monster hadn’t yet made an appearance. That was about to change.
Greer burst from the water. He only had time to warn, “It’s behind me. Give me a grenade launcher!” when the monster exploded out of the water like a monstrous jack-in-the-box.
The creature’s first lunge almost gave it Greer. It didn’t seem to care it was raining rocks and the cave was shaking itself to pieces.
It wanted the men.
Greer moved faster than one of those painted wooden men on a toy stick with the string that Henry used to play with as a child and narrowly got away. It was remarkable how fast a man could swim when there was a monster chasing him. He pulled himself up onto the rocks and stumbled towards Henry.
Justin was preoccupied with getting Francis to a safer spot as Henry shoved a launcher, ready to fire, at Greer, and claimed the other for himself.
The ranger fell to his knees, but Greer remained standing, as they raised their weapons. Their faces were shiny with sweat and the flickering of the fires that’d broken out all around them in the cave. The lava was seeping through the earth’s crust, creating burning rivers and turning it into an inferno.
Greer yelled something, but Henry couldn’t make out the words because of the ruckus the earth was making. It didn’t matter.
For the monster was hulking above them, filling the cave with its giant presence and its angry voice. Rocks were slamming against it; a large boulder hit its head, near one eye, and distracted it for a few precious seconds. It shook its bloody head, dazed, then its gaze cleared and malignant eyes zeroed in on the humans.
Nothing would deter it from its desire to get its meal. The world was crumbling around it and yet it wouldn’t give up the hunt.
Was its vendetta personal? Henry wondered. The creature was intuitively cunning. It remembered, and planned. They’d declared war on it, came after it and tried to hurt it. Shocked it with electricity. Shot missiles at it. Did it know they’d destroyed the other eggs, its unborn sisters and brothers, deep in the cave? Did it know it’d be alone now forever?
Henry wouldn’t put that knowledge beyond the beast’s awareness.
And did it sense they were its sworn enemies and if it could vanquish them as it had all the others it would be the supreme victor? The king of the hill? The boss? The one with the most strength, best defenses and ferocity would win. As in prehistoric times, it was survival of the fittest.
The victor would be king of the park.
The monster spooked Henry. It wasn’t some dumb killing machine. It seemed cognizant of what was going on and what it was doing.
Greer was sighting it in with the RPG-7, using the lava’s fire to see by, as the earth rocked beneath his booted feet. He fought to remain standing, the metal barrel of the weapon kissed by dancing beams of crimson reflected from the burning lava.
We. Have. To. Get. Out. Of. Here!” Justin had crawled over to the two men, leaving Francis behind a large boulder. He’d been hesitant to drag the unconscious man into the tunnels because of the quake. “The cave’s unstable.”
“We haven’t anywhere to go. It’s blocking us from the sub,” Henry shouted.
Greer lifted the launcher to his shoulder. “We take a stand and kill it or we don’t leave. Grenades are in my pack, Dr. Maltin.”
The creature emerged from the water.
“Oh, Jesus. We’re all going to die,” Justin muttered, rummaging in the backpack on the ground. He didn’t run. He could have. With the monster coming towards them he had to be as panic-stricken as that night on the lake or on the rim when they’d last crossed paths with it. Instead, trembling, Justin yanked out a couple of hand grenades. Greer had shown him how to use them when they’d first entered the cave.
The monster was practically on top of them.
“Fall back, Ranger!” Greer shrieked. “If I don’t get it, you’ll have your shot.”
Neither one of them had to be reminded one shot each was about all they might have. The beast was too big, too swift, for them to have more.
Justin prepared and threw the first of the grenades. His arm was shaking so badly, though, it went off course and exploded in the water, missing its target completely. He pulled the tab on another one and aimed it for the monster’s looming and now open jaws. At the last moment, the jaws swung to the side, and a claw swiped the tiny bomb away like it was hitting a baseball. The grenade struck the side of the cave. The detonation showered stone and debris over the men.
Justin gave his comrades a sheepish grin but continued tossing grenades.
Greer, in the meantime, had shot off the first of his specially-made phosphorus rockets. The monster hunkered down and the rocket narrowly missed its head, disappearing into the water behind it. Greer wasted no time and reloaded.
As frightened as Henry had been in the submarine, he was dead calm as he loaded in a rocket. His hands didn’t shake. Unlike the shooting incident years ago, he felt in control. He had no other choice but to stand and fight. He was going to end the situation once and for all. Here. Now. Or die trying. No more running. No more fear. Knowing that was a relief.
That creature not only killed his friends, it’d changed his world. He wanted that world, that life back. All of it. The park the way it had been. The happy visitors swarming all over. The peace. Purpose. He wanted the tranquility and contentment back. The sweet life he and Ann had had since they’d arrived in the park.
And he wanted revenge for George, Lassen and all the others.
Henry aimed and shot the RPG-7 and time seemed to stand still as the rocket hit monster flesh somewhere in the abdomen and burst into flame. The moments afterwards seemed to last an eternity; every motion made, even the crashing rocks around them and the cracking earth, existed in another time and place. Henry had to keep shaking his head to avoid spinning off into space. It was such a strange sensation. Here he was firing rockets at a prehistoric monstrosity straight out of a science fiction nightmare. How unreal.
The creature howled and the sound boomed about the walls of the cavern and spiraled through the connecting tunnels, an out-of-control siren. The creature’s screams made the men’s minds numb. Froze them like store mannequins.
What took place then happened so quickly, that later Henry wouldn’t be able to recall it without dizzying confusion and gut-sickening horror.
Greer thawed and sent off another shot, an arc of dazzling light that sped towards the creature as it hunkered down at the men’s level with barred teeth and jaws stretched open to devour. Inches from Greer’s head.
Somehow the rocket found dead center of the beast’s head.
The monster let loose a screech that would have made a banshee envious, worse than before, nearly breaking their ear drums, as it rose up in surprised pain. It went berserk, swinging its arms in the air, stomping the shuddering earth in fury, tail whipping so the men could feel the wind from it. It gnashed its teeth and, throwing up its head, roared.
Dry-mouthed, Henry wanted to drop the RPG-7, cover his ears and run away.
Then it struck. It was burning from the inside but reached down and plucked Greer up as if he’d been a helpless
doll. The weapon clattered to the earth.
“Greer!” Henry wailed in despair. “I’ll save you!”
Henry heard the other man shrieking over the chaos; crying for Henry to fire, not to worry what happened to him. Kill it, Greer screamed.
But it had him! Henry couldn’t fire another rocket while it had Greer in its clutches. The ranger stood there, indecisive, horrified at the awful turn of events.
“I’m a dead man, so kill it…kill–” Greer’s agonized plea dissolved into a gurgling death rattle.
“Do as he says, Henry. Shoot! Kill it now!” Henry heard Justin begging from behind him. “The cave floor is ripping open. We have to get to the Big Rover or we’re all dead.”
Justin stumbled across the quivering ground to collect Francis as Henry glanced at the crack in the cave’s floor. It was a chasm full of bubbling lava and fire yawning deeper and wider, rippling into thousands of smaller fissures, spreading and widening towards them. Tearing the cavern floor apart. Soon there’d be no cave, just molten lava and boiling water.
Henry experienced a terrible loss, as he accepted Greer’s death and perhaps his own. No way were they going to get out of this mess alive. Any of them. But he could kill the beast and rid the world forever of its threat. He could do that.
Henry turned and fired straight into the creature’s mouth.
That’d surely kill it. But he didn’t have time to cheer. Greer was dying.
In the illumination of the collapsing chamber Henry had a last look at his captured friend. Held high and impaled on the monster’s claws, Greer was something bloody and mangled that barely resembled a human being any longer. But the man was beyond pain, his body limp in the monster’s embrace.
Phosphorus from the rockets had lodged deep in the monster’s flesh and glowed in circles of glittering fire. Still it stood, unwilling to die. Unwilling to go away.
Grabbing for him now.
He was out of rockets and fated, too, for the monster’s jaws, as Greer before him. There was nowhere to run. A ravine was gaping open behind him. The monster in front.
He shut his eyes, prepared to die, his last thoughts on Ann and the love he had for her. On his daughter and granddaughter. He opened his eyes when nothing happened.
Before him the monster bellowed in outrage and defeat as the spreading crevasse behind Henry zipped around him, leaving him safe on a small island of earth, and opened up beneath the creature instead. Its bulk toppled into the precipice and into flaming oblivion.
Henry stood there, smoking launcher in hand, staring in shock at the abyss around him, feet away, and at where his enemy had just been and was no more.
“I’ll be damned,” he swore. Nature, in its own way, had taken care of its mutant creation. As if the earth had realized it’d spawned an unnatural creature out of its time and had simply, finally, stepped in to rectify the problem.
“I’ll be damned,” Henry exclaimed again.
Justin was beside him. He’d seen what had happened and was grinning like a happy kid.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he shouted. Francis was in Justin’s arms. He was strong for such a thin person, Henry thought, as he nodded, speech beyond him, and helped carry the wounded man into the water.
Together, Henry and Justin, with a still unconscious Francis between them, made their slow swim to the sub, which was rocking wildly in the water. Justin didn’t sink once. He was swimming. Amazing how necessity forced people to do things they never thought they could or things they were terrified of doing. Justin’s courage rose to the occasion.
They’d left the packs and the grenade launcher behind.
As they crawled into the sub, Henry stole a last look at the cavern they were leaving behind. But it was already gone, as was most of the cave probably. Nothing remained but a quivering pile of smoldering rock sinking into the water and vanishing before his eyes as he shut the hatch. The Big Rover shifted in the water. It was so hot he could barely breathe. Time to go.
Justin maintained later they’d fled the place in the nick of time. Active lava erupting from the disintegrating cave would have fried them alive, or the catapulting rocks would have smashed them, if they wouldn’t have left when they did. Seconds away from death.
Henry was unsteady operating the submersible alone and he was worried about Francis, who’d not yet regained consciousness. He felt awful about Greer, his emotions unable to grasp the circumstances of the man’s death or the knowledge that he could have, should have saved him; not let him die that way. While his mind told him nothing could have saved Greer. He’d done all he could have done, and that gave him some relief. Still he grieved for the man and the new friendship he’d lost, on the heels of losing his best friend, George, so recently as well.
But, at least, he’d returned with three alive and the creature was dead. Gone forever.
The lake was seething and roiling from the earthquake, but Henry got the sub going in the right direction and somehow coaxed the crippled machine into the main part of the lake.
Once within range of the shore, working the radio, he called for backup and aid. So there were people at the dock by the time they arrived to talk him in and to take care of Francis, who was rushed to the hospital. Henry was thankful he was going to live. The pilot had a concussion, but would recover.
The first question Superintendent Sorrelson asked as Henry and Justin pulled Francis’s limp body from the Big Rover was, “There were four of you? Where’s Greer?” Sorrelson was angry no one had cleared the mission through him, but there were too many reporters around snapping pictures and writing down everything said, that he had to put on a happy face no matter how upset he was. As a rising politician, bad publicity was something he had to avoid.
“He didn’t make it.” Then Henry’s grimy face glanced towards a frantic Dr. Harris, who’d been grilling Justin about the safety of his beloved dinosaur and who’d just heard it, too, was no more. “Your precious monster ate him alive, before the earthquake ate it.”
Harris’s expression was horrified…for the dinosaur’s demise.
Henry turned away from the senior paleontologist in disgust as soon as the man began railing about how unacceptable it was that such a wondrous, unique creature had been allowed to expire. Not a word of sympathy for Greer’s death, or spoken relief that the other three men had made it back alive. All Harris cared about was now there was no longer a prehistoric animal to capture and make him famous.
None of Harris’s bitching mattered because the monster was dead. In Henry’s heart, he knew it had to be. And he was ecstatic it’d never harm or kill another human being.
Everyone else, Patterson included, said it had been a miracle they’d come through the terrible earthquake, which had been an eight pointer easy and had centered under the caldera itself, must less escaped the monster. There’d been massive damage done to areas in the park as well as to the nearby towns, Henry’s rangers reported. There was a lot of clean-up to do.
Patterson was the only other one who knew the truth about their mission. He was the only one Henry informed that they’d fired rockets into the beast before the fissure swallowed it. That they’d dealt with the monster before the earthquake had finished it off. Patterson had congratulated Henry, but he grieved for his friend’s death.
Henry told everyone else, Dr. Harris, Sorrelson and the reporters, the earthquake had destroyed the creature, and left it at that. A half-truth. Why get in any more trouble than he already was? He wasn’t a fool. He liked his job too much to put it at risk, if he didn’t have to.
The creature was gone, that was all that mattered.
“Too bad, that the beastie had to die that way, huh? Such a rare animal. Truly a shame,” Patterson had commented to Henry and Justin, with a sarcastic grin, playing along in front of a raving Harris. It’d killed his friend, too. So good riddance to it. It’d gotten what it deserved.
“Yeah, too bad,” Henry had expressed mockingly.
Justin was hear
d to say, “Dr. Harris, all is not lost. There’s still the buried fossils at the dig. You can’t forget how great a discovery they are.”
But Harris wouldn’t be consoled. “I’m demanding a full investigation of this. You’re hiding something,” he’d blustered, jumping about like a mad scientist on acid.
Justin threw up his hands. As Henry, he was exhausted to the bone and hungry. He only desired to get away from the clamoring people and the questions and find some peace with those he loved.
Henry said as little as he could about where they’d been and what they’d been doing in the Big Rover to the reporters, all greedy for information and photos. He’d decided to save the real story for Ann and the Klamath Falls Journal. That story and the video should do it.
“You want a ride into town?” Henry asked Justin, as they walked away from the crowd, after promising Sorrelson he’d have a written account of every move they’d made the last week, doctored of course, in the man’s hands as soon as possible. As bleary-headed and used up as Henry felt, more than anything he wanted to see his wife and his family. It seemed a century since Henry had last seen Ann’s smile and had had her in his arms. He assumed Justin wanted to see Laura and Phoebe in the same desperate way.
“Sure.”
The two men got Patterson to drive them to the lodge, which had become a temporary ranger headquarters until a new one could be built, and Henry called his wife. She was really happy to hear from him. Ecstatic, in fact.
Then, with dragging steps, they found their way to Greer’s old car, climbed in, and fighting the whole way to stay awake, Henry somehow got them to Zeke’s house where two women were very glad to see them.