Primordia_In Search of the Lost World Read online

“We’re talking now.” Barlow continued to smile. “And if you want to shoot him, then go ahead. But then we’ll need to shoot one of your people, or maybe two.”

  Barlow spoke without turning. “Mr. Koenig, choose one of the women.”

  The big guy to Barlow’s left pointed a gun at Emma’s head. She screwed her eyes shut, but there remained a defiant set to her jaw.

  Shit, Ben thought. He knew that he was quick enough, and certainly a good enough shot, to whip the gun around and take out Barlow or Koenig. But that left two others who may start shooting, and with so many civilians, the odds of someone getting killed were off the scale.

  “What do you want?” Ben glared at Barlow.

  “To talk. That’s all.” He held up a hand flat. “I promise.”

  “I’m betting I’ve met a few of your boys before, at the hotel in Windlesham Manor. That your idea of talking?” Ben’s jaws clenched.

  “Stupid, I know.” Barlow sighed. “But if I said to you I wanted to see what you had, or even tag along, your answer might not have been what I wanted. I was wrong to attempt to steal your notebook, and I apologize, profusely.”

  “Who was it?” Ben growled.

  Barlow grinned. “Why, your friend right there of course.” He winked at Bellakov.

  “Good.” Ben jerked Bellakov back to club him over the head with the butt of the gun. The big man went down. “That’s for the kick in the guts, you sonofabitch.” He lowered his gun, but continued to hold it loosely at his side. “Lower your guns and we’ll talk then.”

  Barlow turned left and right, nodding. His men lowered their guns and stood at ease. At his feet, Bellakov groaned and then got to his feet. He came up with the blazing, blood in his eye look of someone who wanted to charge in. Ben lowered his head, looking at the man from under his brows.

  “Anytime, big fella.”

  “Enough.” Barlow’s voice was sharp in the enclosed space, and Bellakov begrudgingly backed away, still rubbing the back of his neck.

  Barlow smiled. “I knew you’d find it, this place. That’s why we tagged along.”

  Emma came and stood beside Ben. “You were in front of us.”

  “Only for a while,” Barlow said. “Then we looped around and waited for you. We already knew you were on your way, and we had come to the end of your map and had no idea which way to go from there. And then the GPS, compass, and comms all went to hell, and with only a few thousand square miles of uncharted Amazon jungle to bumble around in, I mean, what could possibly have gone wrong?” He chortled for a moment or two before pulling a handkerchief and wiping his brow and then lips.

  “No, so much better to follow the guy with the notebook.” He glowered at Bellakov. “That we failed to retrieve in England.”

  “Thanks, but we don’t need any more people on our expedition.” Steve got to his feet and went to pick up his gun, but one of Barlow’s men pointed the gun again.

  Ben returned the favor, and Barlow raised his hand. “Not just yet, young man.” He said, smiling benignly at Steve. “Soon, perhaps.” He turned to Emma. “You can’t overpower us, or hide from us, and you’re way too nice to do anything violent or…final.” He lifted one eyebrow. “Really, what choice do you have? We’ll simply follow you. Best if we join forces, I’d say. After all, I don’t think it’s going to be a picnic up top, do you?

  “So…” Barlow found a suitable piece of tumbled stone. “Everyone, please sit down.” He lowered himself to the stone and then placed two meaty forearms on his thighs and took a few moments to look at each of them.

  “Friends, from when I was a child, I’d heard rumors that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fantastical Lost World adventure was based on fact. Then in school, I read about them finding more and more of these tepuis structures, some absolutely enormous, and being so high that they really did support some life forms on top of them – whole colonies of creatures that remained in perfect isolation and indifference to the life on the ground for many, many millions of years.”

  He sighed. “But these things, these isolated remnants, were only insects, ground shrews, and a few nematodes. But it made me think that if there was a large enough land mass, then it goes to reason that the creatures could, must, also be exponentially larger.” He raised his chin. “And then with some good financial fortune, my search was able to begin.”

  “How did you find us?” Dan asked.

  “Daniel Murakami, Dan, really, you ask that? A specialist in information technology and communications, asking how we could find someone or anything these days? I simply set the trap, and you sprung it yourself when you began your search for the notebook. I already had a plan in place, I just needed something to focus it on…and you delivered.”

  Dan groaned, already suspecting that he had sent up the flare that Barlow had spotted.

  “What do you want from this…from us?” Jenny asked.

  “Nothing more than to know, to see, to experience what may be up there. The secret will remain with us, but I do reserve the right to come back here with small parties for further…study.”

  “Hunting parties more like,” Jenny said, bristling.

  “Study, hunting…” Barlow shrugged and smirked.

  “Won’t make any difference,” Ben said. “Apparently, this place can only be found every 10 years. Come back next week, and there’ll be nothing.”

  Barlow sniggered. “Oh really, like what happens, the entire tabletop mountain vanishes?”

  Ben now knew that Barlow obviously hadn’t heard that part of the legend.

  “Well?” Barlow looked at their faces. There was silence for a moment or two, and then he held a hand up. “You have my word on it. And given my men are experienced hunters, trackers, and bushmen, we will be of value to you.”

  Ben looked from Barlow to Bellakov, and then to the stony-faced Koenig and Bourke. Both looked about as mean and hard-bitten as you could get. Bottom line, Ben didn’t trust the four men for a New York second. They held the guns, and had already shown him they were prepared to use violence. If he said no, what was to stop them killing all his friends, right here, right now? Time to play along, he thought, for now.

  “Agreed,” Ben said quickly.

  “What?” Emma’s face screwed in anger.

  “Hey, Ben, that’s not your call.” Dan and Steve also looked surprised.

  “We need them,” Ben said matter-of-factly. “If what’s at the top of the tunnel is anything like what my great ancestor put in his notebook, then the more security we have the better.”

  “Good man,” Barlow said and slapped his thighs. He then looked at his wristwatch. “3am – in a few hours the sun will be coming up. Might be worthwhile arriving as early in the day as we can manage. What say you, Mr. Cartwright?”

  “Sure, and no hard feelings.” Ben held out a hand to Bellakov who ignored it. He laughed and then turned to Barlow. “We’ll pack up, grab a quick bite, and then start up.” He turned to the shaft.

  “Steve, Emma, for our new guests, remind us again of what you saw in there?”

  Steve’s eyes still burned with anger, and he mumbled through a swelling jaw. Emma put a hand on his arm and spoke up. “A shaft, not quite vertical, but steep. Root-bound and possibly a few choke points, but I’m betting it’s passable – for someone of normal body weight.” Her lip curled slightly as she glanced at Barlow.

  The man grinned in return. “Then I better remember to suck it in, hmm, darling?”

  Emma continued. “I estimate the climb to be easily over a thousand feet, maybe more, much more. And I doubt there’s going to be too many places to rest. We need to decide if everyone goes or not.” She let her eyes slide to Andrea, whose brows immediately snapped together.

  “Hey.” She scowled. “You really think I just sailed, rode, and then trekked through the Amazon to wait down here and mind your coats?” She gave Emma a tight smile. “Not fucking likely.”

  “That height is not bad at all,” Jenny cut in. “Some of these tepuis can climb
to 3,000 feet.”

  “That’s good. Steve, you okay?” Ben asked.

  The young man worked his jaw for a moment and then nodded. “Nothing a little payback couldn’t fix.” He glared at Koenig who just smirked in return. “I’ll save it for now.”

  “Nino, how about you?” Ben saw that the young guide had finally gotten to his feet, but still shifted from foot to foot.

  He shook his head. “I think I go back home now.”

  “No, I don’t think you will,” Barlow said. “You can stay here at the foot of the plateau, and one of my men can stay with you. But no one is leaving to broadcast our find until we say so, well, until I say so. Is that clear?” Barlow tilted his head, his smile benign.

  Ben shrugged. “Can you climb?”

  Nino bobbed his head.

  “Nino, I’ll give you a big bonus for your troubles, promise,” Dan said and flashed him a salesman’s smile.

  “I can climb.” He scowled at Barlow. “And I can be trusted.”

  “Okay, we buddy up,” Ben said. “Emma, Nino, and myself will lead us up. Steve and Andrea, Dan and Jenny, and Mr. Barlow, you three can make your own arrangements. Also, we climb light; anything unnecessary we leave down here.”

  “Agreed,” he said. “Except for one change; Mr. Bellakov and myself will climb directly behind you and your first team, Mr. Cartwright. And then Mister’s Koenig and Bourke will bring up the rear. All good?”

  Barlow raised his eyebrows, but Ben knew it wasn’t really a question.

  “Fine,” Ben said.

  The final rations were then eaten in silence and then done more for taking in fuel, as everyone became lost in their own thoughts. Ben turned to see Barlow’s man, Bourke, fiddling with something and Ben groaned when he recognized the shape.

  “What the hell do you think you’re going to do with that?”

  Bourke ignored him and kept at his work. Ben got to his feet and so did Bellakov.

  Ben pointed. “Am I going mad, or am I seeing some asshole counting out fragmentation grenades?”

  Bourke looked up and grinned as he took them out of plastic and laid the squat green canisters on the ground in a row. “F1 anti-personnel fragmentation device, five-second internal fuse and lethal detonation spread of 30 feet.” He winked. “These bad boys will do some real damage.”

  “Damn right they will; to us if not handled correctly,” Ben said, seething.

  Barlow sighed. “Calm down Mr. Cartwright. We don’t know exactly what deterrents we’re going to need yet. And if we need them, and in a hurry, I’d prefer the good Mr. Bourke here doesn’t need to spend valuable seconds fumbling in his preparations.”

  Ben fumed. He objected to seeing the military-grade explosives because he didn’t have any. Plus, he had no idea whether Bourke had handled them before.

  “You only use them when I say.” He glared.

  Bourke looked up and chuckled. “Yeah, sure.”

  Ben went and sat back down, finishing his final meal. He started to think this bad idea was looking worse by the second.

  It was still dark outside when they attached their headlamps to foreheads and lined up at the bottom of the shaft.

  CHAPTER 20

  Full Comet Apparition

  Comet P/2018-YG874, designate name Primordia, was now at its perihelion or maximum observable focus as it had now reached its closest point to Earth.

  The magnetic distortion had also reached its peak, but now the field generated a form of stability. The hurricane-like winds that had been roaring above them on the top of the plateau ceased, and the boiling clouds dropped to become a mist that moved through a primordial forest.

  Warm rain fell on a lost world. The wettest season was here.

  CHAPTER 21

  Warm air rushed past them as Emma stood on a small ledge and looked up into the natural cave tunnel. Her trained eye picked out tiny ledges, toeholds, and crevices for toe and fingertips.

  The upside was it was so narrow they could go up chute-style where they braced a leg against each side of the tunnel and basically hopped their way upwards.She led the way and used her hunting knife to cut and hack away at many of the roots barring their way – so far, she found no real impediment. Added to that, the rushing wind told her that the chimney went all the way to the top. Or she hoped. There was always the chance that the chimney was going to take a turn and exit out on the cliff-face.

  She looked back at Ben – he wasn’t an expert climber, but he was fit and sturdy, keeping pace with her. His strong jaw and stubbled chin held a smile.

  “Hey, if my dear old great, great grandfather could do it…”

  She laughed. “Yeah, but he was younger than you back then.” She had a small flashlight attached to her wrist, and she reached up, adjusted her forehead lamp, and began to scale again.

  Way behind her, she heard Nino breathing hard, a man’s voice curse, and someone else complaining. But she was in her element. This was what she trained for and what she excelled at, the hand over hand, toe hold to the next, always scaling upwards while trying not to outpace those behind.

  Emma paused again to scan around a slight bend in the shaft. The rocks were good, old, but dense and looked like they were ancient igneous rock, more than likely granite, which was hard as iron, and less likely to drop stones back down on lower climbers.

  She looked back down; Nino already struggled, and she saw that Ben had let him slip past so he could push up on the man’s foot, basically lifting him as he climbed. She grinned as she watched him; she couldn’t help it. She liked him. She’d liked him at school, and she now liked what he’d grown into even more.

  Truth be told, she wasn’t just here to find some lost plateau; she was here for Ben. He was her ideal man – tall, handsome, rugged, and from a good family. Any one of those attributes would have put him close to the top, but all of them together…well, let’s just say, she’d already decided that big guy wasn’t going to get away so easily this time.

  She chuckled in the darkness.

  “All right up there?” she heard him call to her.

  “All good, so far.” She directed the powerful beam of the mag-light lashed to her wrist up into the chimney – there was no end in sight, and by her estimates, they had come about 400 hundred feet, but had maybe three times that distance to go.

  She called down: “How’s everyone doing back down there? Everyone still with us?”

  Ben stopped, getting her drift. “Sound off, people,” he called.

  One after the other, with the voices getting fainter, the group let them know they were all safe. Even the loathsome Barlow and his band of apes joined in. She didn’t trust any of them for a second, and she still couldn’t work out why Ben had agreed to let them come. No choice, she guessed.

  She turned back to the chute, quickly rubbed her hands on her pants, and then continued up. For her, the climb was easy, and there were no areas that required ropes or pitons, and just as well, as she only had about 100 feet of rope in her kit and no other climbing aides. She had originally assumed she would have to scale the sheer wall of the plateau by herself, but the pipe was an unexpected gift.

  About 800 feet up, she paused to suck in some air. A slight breeze still rushed past her, bringing with it all the sounds of the lower climbers – the grunts, groans, and heavy breathing.

  Emma took off her forehead light and used an arm to wipe her brow – even though the cave was cooler than outside, the humidity was stifling, and she wedged herself in the chute for a moment to tug out her canteen and take a sip.

  The air stopped moving.

  Emma sipped again, waiting. But the air remained stagnant. She frowned, looking up, and saw it was impenetrable darkness above her. She remembered she’d removed her forehead light and quickly slipped it on, looking up again. She’d felt this sort of event type before – it occurred when something blocked a chute, and it usually meant bad news – a rock fall or something was laid over their access path.

  Ben caugh
t up to her and tapped her shoe, making her yip with fright.

  “Jesus, Ben.” She looked down at his dust-streaked face.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “I think…” She looked back up just as the air suddenly began to rush past her again – whatever the blockage was, it was now gone. She licked flaking lips. “Nothing.” She continued to stare upwards.

  Ben squeezed her foot. “Let’s go, beautiful.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” She smiled and nodded. “Just…just tell that fat-ass Barlow to stop blocking the pipe.” That had to be it, she thought.

  She continued on, still feeling good, light, strong, and then what she thought was dust began to grow thicker. Emma held a hand up in front of her face and let her light beam play over it – she expected to see floating dust motes, but instead, there was nothing except a distinctive cloudiness.

  “Ha. Mist,” she said and felt an odd tingling in her belly.

  Oddly, it seemed to defy the breeze blowing past them to remain suspended in the chute.

  She shone her flashlight upwards. The chimney continued on until it exhausted the strength of her beam, but now there was a definite haze. She laid a hand against the stone – cool. She knew that mist and fog could form when cool air passed over warmer water or land. But the stone was cooler here.

  Ben caught up again.

  “Look. We’ve entered a mist layer.”

  He added his light to hers. “Humidity’s pretty high. Cave wall’s still dry though; that’s a good thing.”

  “Yep,” she said. She placed a hand on her belly. “You feel okay? Any tingling?”

  He scoffed quietly. “Yeah, a little. Just thought it was fatigue or vertigo, or something.”

  “No, not that.” She wiped her nose. “Weird; maybe that magnetic effect Dan mentioned.”

  “Maybe,” Ben said half-heartedly.

  “Are we there yet?” Nino had caught up and gasped up at them with a red, sweat-slicked face.

  She smiled back. “No, but nearly.”

  She started up again. Higher and higher, even her trained muscles were starting to feel the ache and strain of dragging your own bodyweight upwards. Her fingertips were abraded and nails ground down, and it was only after another hour that she thought her eyes were playing tricks as it seemed that the fog was thickening. There was also a change in air density that she recognized.