Primordia_In Search of the Lost World Read online

  Ben ducked under a looping right cross, jabbing up with a flat hand into his attacker’s diaphragm, and heard the breath whoosh out of him.

  Got ya, he thought, and came up on his toes, expecting to bring a hammer blow down on the guy’s neck. Unfortunately, the second intruder was now back up and a boot came down against the back of Ben’s knee, forcing the leg to bend forward, and Ben with it…and straight into a short sharp left. Ben saw stars and went down.

  Then the chair came down across his neck and shoulders. The thing about being hit with furniture was it’s never like you see in Hollywood – they don’t splinter over your head into matchwood; instead, they usually put a fucking big dent in your skull.

  His training took over, and he acted on pure instinct and adrenaline now. He rolled away, still expecting the serious work of a beating to be administered to him, but when he came up, the pair was out the door. He staggered a few steps after them, rubbing the back of his head, but thankfully they were gone.

  Ben stood in the doorway, breathing hard, and wiping his face. Shit-damn. He grimaced and flexed his knee a few times – a foot race was out of the question. People started to appear in the hallway – Steve, Dan, then Andrea and finally Emma, who folded her arms, looking at him from under her brows as though he had been having a party.

  “They stole…” He briefly turned back to his room. Thankfully, the notebook and novel was still there. But all the maps he had been creating were gone, and with them the copious notes he had been making on landmarks.

  His groan turned into a long sigh. “They took all the maps.”

  “Ah, shit…those freaking assholes.” Steve quickly pulled on a jacket and went to head down the steps.

  “No.” Ben held up a hand. “Don’t.”

  Ben knew that Steve was a big and fit guy, but the two people who had been in his room were professional hitters. If they had taken him down so easily, Steve could get seriously hurt.

  “But…” Steve turned, brows knitted.

  Mrs. Davenport appeared at the top of the steps, tying a cord on her thick, powder-blue dressing gown.

  “What’s happening here?” Her face was creased with worry, and the frown deepened when she spotted the blood around Ben’s nose. “Is everyone okay?” She looked from one of the group to the other. “It’s a bit late for all that noise.”

  Steve chuckled, and Ben waved a hand to her. “It’s okay, Mrs. Davenport, the party’s over. Good night.”

  She clicked her tongue and headed back down the steps. Ben bet that her preconceptions about rambunctious Americans were all coming true. He headed back into his room and was followed by the group.

  “Holy shit.” Steve surveyed the damage to the small room. “Jesus, man, who were those guys?”

  Ben shook his head and bent to lift a chair back into place. “I’m wondering the same thing.” He leant on it. “I woke up to find them in here.”

  “That would have freaked me out,” Dan said.

  “Yeah, wasn’t fun.” Ben dabbed at his nose again.

  Emma knelt and started to collect up papers. She lifted the notebook. “I wonder if they came for this?” She then picked up the antique novel. “Or this?”

  “Well, if they did, they failed. The big guy scared them off,” Dan observed. “Good.”

  “Unlikely,” Ben said, wearily.

  “If that’s what they came for, how did they even know about them?” Andrea said. “We’re not locals, and I doubt Mrs. Davenport has been chatting to anyone.”

  “Oh God, of course.” Steve’s eyes widened comically. “She’s a spy.”

  Andrea grinned and jabbed him in the ribs.

  “I think they got something more important – the maps I had been making and all the notes,” Ben said.

  Everyone’s head turned to the floor, stepping back, searching. After a few fruitless moments, Ben exhaled long and loud. “I guess now we know what they came for.” He put his hands on his hips. “Perhaps they did come for everything, but I disturbed them before they could clean me out.”

  Dan’s brow furrowed and he pursed his lips for a moment. “Hey, you know what? This is the best news I’ve heard in…hours.”

  “What?” Emma scowled. “Ben could have been hurt, and he just lost all his maps. How is that in any way good?”

  Dan turned and grinned. “Because, they came for the map, or map and notebook. Someone actually took the time, effort, and risk to do this.” He kept grinning. “It proves how important it is…and not just to us.”

  “Jesus.” Steve put a hand to his forehead. “But you know what else? We just got confirmation this is all real.”

  The room was in silence for a few seconds, before Dan’s whooping broke it. “Yes!”

  Ben nodded. He hated to admit, but he was right.

  “But the map’s gone,” Andrea said. “Can we get it back?”

  “We don’t need it; Ben made it and the notes. We have something far more valuable; that wonderful brain of his.” Dan threw an arm around Ben’s wide shoulders and turned to the group. “Plus, we still have the notebook, which is more important as far as the landmarks are concerned. Right, Bennie?”

  “Maybe.” Ben’s mind had already turned to the who and how. “Your search, Dan.” He turned to his friend.

  “What?” Dan’s eyebrows went up. “My search?”

  “Yeah, when you searched for the notebook online, I think someone saw it. Maybe someone has been bird-dogging us ever since,” Ben said.

  “Poss-iiiibly.” Dan’s lips turned down. “I mean, you can set alerts, traps, nets, and even alarms on the Internet.” His vision seemed to turn inward. “My searches might have been picked up on a sweep. Unfortunately, there’s no way to avoid that.”

  “What do we do now?” Emma asked. “Ben could have been really hurt. These guys were thugs.”

  “What do we do?” Dan asked. “I’ll tell you what we do; we still go, but move faster. It seems someone is looking for the same thing we are. This is not just a search, but a race now…and we need to get on the front foot; right, everyone?”

  “I hate to admit it, but he might be right, Ben. If you want to find out what really happened to your ancestor, then you need to do it before someone else shuts it all down.” Steve shrugged. “Or else beats you to the punch.”

  “We’re not ready,” Ben said.

  “We’re as ready as we’ll ever be,” Steve replied. He raised a hand. “I vote we leave in the morning.”

  “Aye.” Dan immediately raised his hand.

  Ben saw Emma raise hers, followed by Andrea. He turned to Jenny, who also gave him a half smile coupled with a nod. “Just say the word, and I’ll have guides waiting for us,” she said.

  Dan folded his arms. “And I can get us on a connecting flight to South America by midday,” he said. “Go hard or go home, people.”

  Ben looked from their faces to the mess of his room. What happened to his great, great grandfather had been a family mystery for a hundred years, and he was dying to get to the bottom of it. But there was something else; now he also wanted to find out who attacked him, and who else knew about that mystery.

  He knew he couldn’t do that from here or from home. He decided.

  “Let’s do this.”

  CHAPTER 15

  24 Hours to full Apparition

  Comet P/2018-YG874, designate name Primordia, was on its approach to the third planet from the sun. The magnetic bow wave that preceded it caused collisions between electrically charged particles in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, creating an Aurora Borealis effect over the jungles of South America.

  In one of the most inaccessible parts of the eastern Venezuelan jungle, clouds began to darken, and in another minute or two, they started to swirl and boil like in a devil’s cauldron, throwing down a torrent of warm rain.

  Beneath the clouds, a gigantic tabletop mountain became cloaked in the dense fog, and brutal winds began to smash at its sides and surface. Thunder roared and lightning
seemed to come from the sky, air, and even up from the ground.

  The first of the bestial roars that began to ring out even drowned out the crash of thunder, and before long, the hissing, roars, and screams rose to be like those from the pits of hell.

  It had been ten years since the primordial sounds had been heard in this part of the Amazon, and even the creatures on the jungle floor over a thousand feet below the plateau scurried away in fear.

  It was the wettest season and Primordia was returning.

  CHAPTER 16

  2018 – South Eastern Venezuela – The Wettest Season

  The plane ride from London across the Atlantic to Venezuela took nearly 10 hours. Caracas was Venezuela’s capital and largest city, located in a mountain valley on the northeastern side of the country.

  Ben rolled the stiffness from his shoulders and looked down. The city had two million inhabitants and was a modern metropolis nestled in amongst mountains and lush green forests. They were close to the Caribbean Sea, but still separated from the coast by a 7,200-foot range of mountains.

  He’d been on longer flights before, and even though Dan had booked them all business-class seats with extra legroom, constant snacks, and movies, it still felt like it was never going to end. Perhaps it was the anticipation, impatience, or maybe even the feeling they were now in a race and speed mattered.

  True to her word, Jenny had organised people to meet them at the airport. Following a brief delay at immigration control, they were quickly shepherded to a small and cramped Cessna airplane – destination Canaima.

  It meant another three hours flying time, but the only other option was 14 hours by bus, which would have been murder on the narrowing tracks through the thickening jungle.

  Canaima was an area that encompassed three million hectares on the border of Brazil and Guyana. It was jungle, thick jungle, and remarkable for its numerous tepuis, massive flat-topped mountains, that rise from the jungle floor and are usually covered in mist.

  Once again, Ben looked down as they soared above the canopy that was now so dense there wasn’t a trace of the ground visible below them. From time to time, a reflected shine from a ribbon of snaking river glinted back at him, and flocks of birds soared across the green rooftop that could have been ten feet or a hundred up from the ground. This was the Amazon jungle he remembered – dense, unforgiving, and sometimes damn deadly.

  In the seat in front, Emma dozed and made a small squeaking noise that Ben found cute and a little child-like. Everyone else was also pretty wiped out by the amount of travelling they’d just gone through in the past 24 hours. They’d soon land in Canaima airport, and then it’d be a short hop to their accommodation.

  Dan had organised an overnight stay at a hotel, and the following morning, they were to meet the contacts Jenny had organised. According to the plan, which he had reviewed, they would travel overland, first by truck, then by riverboat, and finally via canoes where they’d enter areas of the jungle that just fell off the map.

  Ben sighed and let his eyes slide to Andrea. She had earphones over her head and read a glossy magazine. He wondered what would happen if she decided she wanted to go home – would they be able to send her back if they were hundreds of miles from nowhere? Would she be safe even attempting that, even if they split the guides?

  He doubted it. Once they decided to travel to the Amazonian interior, like it or not, they were all committed. He’d need to impress this on her, and everyone else, before they left – last chance to pull out and all that.

  The plane started to drop, and Ben leant forward to peer through the porthole window. He smiled as he beheld the sight of the Angel Falls – the cliff-top river looked like it fell off the Earth. It was the world’s highest uninterrupted waterfall and dropped 3,200 feet from the top of the Auyántepui Mountain. In the air, the powerful watercourse spread and finally turned to a shimmering spray before it made it to the river below.

  He narrowed his eyes as he looked back at the massive tepui – this is what he expected they were looking for. The Canaima jungles were in thousands of square miles of national park, but beyond that were largely unexplored wilderness. In addition, the park was renowned for the strange and prehistoric-looking tabletop mountains. These geological wonders weren’t just millions, but billions of years old, with vertical walls rising thousands of feet to almost perfectly flat tops. Most, if not all, had been found, mapped, and climbed. But out in the deep jungle, there could be others. And that’s what they were banking on.

  Ben reached forward to grab Emma’s shoulder and squeezed. “Hey, wake up, sleeping beauty, or you’ll miss the show.”

  “Huh.” She looked around groggily, turning first to him. Ben pointed to the window.

  “Angel Falls.”

  She sprang forward to the window, and her mouth dropped into an open grin. “Oh, wow.”

  Jenny leant forward onto their seat backs, also looking out. “Those tepuis are amazing.”

  “I did some research on them,” Ben said. “They date back to when South America and Africa were part of a super-continent. Some are nearly 3 billion years old.”

  Jenny grinned as she looked from the window. “Well done…and they told me you were just the muscle.”

  He shrugged and smiled back at her, but then put on a mock frown. “Hey, who’s they?”

  She nudged his head. “Something else. The Pemon have an intimate relationship with the tepuis, and believe they are the home of gods and monsters. And also demons.”

  “My ancestor, Ben the 1st, made mention of them, and also the Pemon. Same people?” Ben asked.

  “Sure, they’ve been here for thousands of years. They have no formal writing, but they have a fantastic inherited knowledge system via stories and songs. If there’s any hidden tepuis out there, they’ll probably know about them.”

  “The trick will be getting them to show us.” Emma turned around in her seat and rested her chin on the back of it. “We’re outsiders.”

  Jenny nodded. “Yep, true. We’re going to need to win their trust. I’ve worked with them before, so hopefully that’s going to help.” She headed back to her seat.

  Emma turned to look at him…and kept looking.

  “What?” he asked with a grin.

  “I can’t believe I’m here.” Her grin widened. “I’ve never been to a real jungle before. I’ve been to forests, deserts, seashores, and mountains, but never a real, real jungle. But you have.”

  He nodded. “And this is about as real a jungle as you can get.” He smiled back. “Emm, they’re no picnic. Quick mud, spiders the size of your hand, bugs that drink blood, or try and lay eggs under your skin. Big cats, caiman alligators, and even the plants can sting you. You really have to respect it, and then maybe it’ll let you walk out in one piece.”

  She nodded for a moment. “Thank you for bringing me.”

  He laughed out loud. “That’s it?”

  She inhaled and let it out through her smile. “I feel so…alive; so yeah. Besides, your experience and expertise will make a difference.”

  “Hopefully.” Ben gave her a lopsided grin. “The most important thing we can bring with us is common sense. You’d be surprised how many novices strike their camps on soldier ant nests, or on the banks of rivers where a big caiman lives, or even under trees that a band of monkeys live in.” He grinned. “A few hours of having dung rained down on you clears the sinuses.”

  She chuckled. “Well, I’m still glad I’m here…we’re both here.”

  He bobbed his head. “I’m glad you’re here, but seriously, I’d prefer you weren’t.”

  “Big brother syndrome? Or…” She blushed a little. “Just be free with the advice, okay? I’ll be paying attention.”

  “Will do.” He meant it; Ben planned to keep them all safe, but especially Emma.

  The plane bumped down on the short runway, veered hard to the right, to the left, and then straightened. The small craft slowed quickly and turned before switching off its engine
s. There were a few golf-cart-style cars waiting to take them to Waku Lodge – somehow, Dan had managed to find the only five-star accommodation at the edge of an Amazonian rainforest.

  Ben would have preferred them all to begin to acclimatize to the new geography, hours, and climate, but he knew that they were all tired, and there was no harm in a last night of luxury before a few weeks of doing it tough.

  The plane door was swung open and they clambered out. The first thing that hit them was the wet-heat that immediately made their shirts and underwear cling to their bodies. The second thing was the smells; though they were in a domesticated area of the jungle, there were the suspended odors of plant sap, fragrant blooms, and a hint of rich, composting earth.

  Ben caught a whiff of something else – his body odor – a damn shower would be his first priority. He didn’t know what it was about plane travel, but it managed to squeeze a lot of weird scents from the body. He jammed his hat on his head and headed for the vehicles.

  In the first buggy, Dan was up front, he and Emma were in the back; Steve, Andrea, and Jenny were in the other. Dan turned in his seat.

  “Got someone coming over this evening.” He looked both self-satisfied and conspiratorial as he leaned even closer. “Arranged for some stock for us.” He winked and then made a gun from his hand, jacking the thumb up and down.

  Normally, Ben would have called him an idiot and told him to cancel it immediately. But he knew the dangers within a rainforest, and there was also the unknown danger factor of those assholes that attacked him and could well be moving in parallel to them right now. He knew they were armed.

  And then the notebook had told them there might, just might, be something at their destination that gave him a strong desire to have more than a sharp knife for protection.

  “Good.” He nodded. “Jenny comes too. Her local knowledge will be useful.”