Hole in the World, page 10
“No.” Scott raised his voice. “Listen … we can’t go running around the jungle like chickens with our heads cut off. We need to start thinking ahead. Sooner or later, the sun is going to set, and when it does, I suspect we’re going to need a shelter to hide us from … well, you guys saw what it was, same as me. We need to be smart about this, and we need to stay together.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” H countered. “Paul’s our friend.”
“I understand that,” Scott replied, “but getting yourself lost or killed out there isn’t going to help him. Stay here, and if you’re feeling up to it, focus on getting the shelter built. After we get the others and bring them back here, then we’ll handle finding Paul and the rest of the group. Okay?”
One by one, they nodded.
“Great.” Scott turned to Mark. “Geoff and I will follow you.”
Mark led them off into the jungle. Leigh, H, and Tod watched the three men go.
“What did he mean?” Leigh asked. “That bit about headless chickens? Is that some sort of American thing?”
“You don’t have chickens in Australia?” Tod asked.
Leigh rolled his eyes, and Tod laughed.
“Chickens,” H explained, “can live with their heads cut off.”
“You grew up on a farm?” Leigh asked.
“No,” H answered. “I was a biology teacher. When you slaughter a chicken for food, you cut the head off, right? But if you aim too high, the chicken can survive a beheading. There was a famous case of a chicken named Mike that lived for eighteen months without a head.”
“You’re kidding,” Tod said. “I’ve heard of chickens running around the barnyard without a head, but living for eighteen months?”
“Just Google Mike the Headless Chicken if you don’t believe me.”
“I don’t think we have Google here,” Tod countered.
“Point,” H admitted. “But yeah, the way a chicken’s skeletal anatomy is designed, their brain is shoved upwards into their skull at a forty-five-degree angle. If you cut their head off above the eyes, you only remove their forebrain. The cerebellum and brain stem are still intact, as are their basic motor functions and ability to breathe. Provided you miss the jugular vein, the chicken will live. Sever the jugular, and it will still live for a few minutes, running around and spraying blood all over everything. That’s what Scott was referring to.”
Leigh shivered. His complexion paled.
“You okay?” Tod asked.
Leigh nodded. “I’m just thinking about that guy back at the bus. Benn, I think his name was? I could … I heard his bones, when the dinosaur bit down on him …”
H and Tod stood silently, staring at the ground. Their expressions were haunted.
“What do we do,” Leigh asked, “if that thing comes back?”
“Come on,” Tod said, turning to the ravine. “We should get to work.”
Jesse, Colinda, and Paula followed a narrow, winding game trail that was strewn with rocks and overgrown with vegetation at points. Paula took the lead, followed by Jesse, with Colinda bringing up the rear. They stayed close together, and all three glanced around nervously as they hiked. The jungle was full of sounds—birds, insects, and things unknown. Luckily, the one sound they didn’t hear was that of the dinosaur. Sporadically, the male voice they’d heard previously echoed from somewhere ahead, shouting for help.
Jesse’s attention shifted to the sky. He paused in the middle of the trail, head craned upward.
“What’s wrong?” Colinda asked. “Do you see something?”
“The sun …” Jesse pointed through the foliage. “How long would you two say we’ve been here?”
Paula shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve been scared shitless most of the time.”
“Maybe two hours?” Colinda suggested. “Maybe three?”
Jesse nodded. “Yeah, I’m thinking two and a half or three hours. That feels right. But I don’t think the sun has moved during that entire time. I’ve seen clouds move in front of it, but I haven’t seen the sun move.”
“I’m sure it has,” Paula replied. “Maybe you were just preoccupied with … well, with everything else that’s happened.”
Jesse turned to face her. “Maybe. But I don’t think so.”
They continued on their way. Occasionally, Jesse massaged his side, wincing with pain.
“Your ribs?” Colinda asked.
Jesse nodded. “Yeah, from the fight with Legerski. I don’t think they’re broken, though.”
“They aren’t,” Paula assured him.
“How do you know?”
“Because if they were, you wouldn’t be walking or breathing as easily as you are.”
The man in the jungle called out again. His cries were closer now. The three of them hurried ahead, and after a few more twists and turns, they emerged at the top of a small hill. The game trail continued downward. At the bottom stood two men from the shuttle bus. One of them was middle-aged, with a short haircut that bespoke a military career. The other was taller, probably in his early sixties but still sporting thick hair, slowly going silver. The middle-aged man leaned against the tall one, his head nodding deliriously. Long lines of glistening drool dangled from his puffy lips. The skin on his face and arms seemed swollen. The tall man helped him along the trail, but was limping and clearly struggling.
“Hey,” Paula called out.
The tall man looked up and spotted them, and shouted for help again.
Paula, Jesse, and Colinda hurried down the hill to them. Jesse eased the injured man away from the tall man, and supported his weight. As he did, they all saw an ugly red welt on the back of the man’s neck. It was the size of an acorn, and its center had turned an ugly shade of blackish-purple. Pink lines ran out from it, spreading across the man’s neck and shoulders like spider webs.
“What happened?” Paula asked.
The injured man tried to answer, but his words were slurred and his eyes unfocused.
“He got stung,” the tall man answered. “I don’t know by what. Some kind of insect. He was fine for a bit, but then …”
“Are you allergic to bees?” Colinda asked the wounded man.
Again, his answer was unintelligible.
Jessie nodded his head at the tall man. “How about you, Mr. …?”
“My name’s Jamie. And no, I’m okay. I twisted my ankle, but I’ll be fine. I wasn’t stung. Just Dave. He twisted his ankle, too, but it’s not as bad as mine. It’s the sting I’m worried about.”
“Dave,” Jesse said, staring into the injured man’s eyes. “We’re going to get you some help, okay? Just hang in there.”
“What do we do?” Colinda asked. “Is it safe to move him?”
“Let’s get him back to the others,” Jesse said. “Figure out what to do as a group. I’ll support him. Maybe you and Paula can help Jamie walk?”
“Listen,” Jamie warned. “We need to be careful. We can’t just go traipsing around the jungle. One of the men from the shuttle bus … we think he’s gone crazy.”
“Legerski,” Paula said. “We know already.”
Jamie’s eyes widened. “You do?”
Paula nodded. “He’s taken care of. We captured him—knocked him out.”
“Well,” Jesse interrupted, “technically it was Paula who knocked him out.”
Paula shrugged. “The point is, he won’t be hurting anybody again.”
Chris could tell that he made Bob nervous. Possibly the little girl—Erin—was nervous as well, although it was more likely her apprehension stemmed more from being left alone with two strange adults than it did from Chris’s handicap. She sat apart from the two men, her back against a tree trunk, eyeing both men, as well as the bound and unconscious Legerski, with suspicion. Bob crouched, hunkered down on his haunches, looking at everything and nothing, not allowing himself to stare directly at Chris.
It wasn’t the first time he had experienced this. Over the years, Chris had been in many situations where his condition initially made people uncomfortable. He’d learned over time that this reaction was based on their own fears and preconceived notions, rather than anything he was projecting or doing. In the vast majority of these cases, the best course of action was to just give them time to discover for themselves that he was still a human being, with an intellect and a sense of humor and all the same foibles as any other member of the human race—he just wasn’t as mobile.
“Man,” Bob complained, a bit too loudly, “my nose still hurts.”
“Broken?” Chris asked. When Bob didn’t hear him, he tried again. “Is it broken?”
“No. But it hurts like a bitch.” He glanced at Erin and his ears turned red. “Sorry. I said a bad word.”
“It’s okay,” she said quietly. “I’ve heard worse.”
Chris and Bob both smiled at this.
“Have you now?” Bob asked. “Well, even so, I’ll try to do a better job of not cussing around you.”
He turned back to Chris, and then looked away, focusing on a red bird flitting about in the foliage. Then he turned his attention to Legerski, verifying the man was still unconscious. Bob picked up the machete, studied it for a moment, and then impaled the end of the blade in the dirt. He glanced around the clearing again. Chris was bemused by the fact that the younger man didn’t let his gaze settle on the wheelchair. It was almost as if it was invisible to Bob. He looked at everything except Chris.
“Bob …”
Chris was about to try reassuring him, when Legerski began to twitch and groan again.
“He’s having another seizure!” Bob sprang to his feet and hurried over to the bound prisoner. Legerski rolled back and forth, stuttering and frothing at the mouth. His eyelids flickered, and his shoulder convulsed. Bob knelt beside him, his expression panicked. And then Legerski bolted upright into a sitting position. His seizures stopped, replaced with a maniacal, leering grin. With slowly dawning horror, Chris realized that the man had somehow slipped his bonds. He could tell from Bob’s expression that the younger man realized it, too.
Legerski laughed. “Surprise!”
He lunged forward, knocking Bob onto his back and then straddling him. Legerski wrapped one hand around Bob’s throat and balled his other into a fist. He struck the younger man three times. Chris winced at the sound of the blows. Bob shrieked, thrashing beneath the madman. Legerski delivered two more punches and Bob lay still.
Slowly, Legerski stumbled to his feet. Still grinning, he winked at Chris.
“I’ll bet his nose really hurts now. Wouldn’t you agree, gimp?”
Chris tried to respond, but he could barely breathe. He heard a rustling sound to his left, as Erin scampered into the jungle.
“You go ahead, little bunny,” Legerski called after her. “Go ahead and run away. I’ll save you for last.”
On the ground, Bob groaned—a low, mournful sound. His legs twitched, but he did not rise.
“Shit …” Legerski wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and his grin became a grimace. “I really fucked him up, I guess.”
“What … what are you …” Chris couldn’t finish.
“Relax, Gimpy.” Legerski bent at the waist and pulled the machete from the dirt. “I’ll get to you soon enough.”
He stalked over to Bob. The young man was struggling to sit up. His shirt was covered in blood. More blood streamed from his nose, which had swollen to the size of a grapefruit. Indeed, it didn’t even resemble a nose anymore. Chris thought it looked more like a pile of mashed potatoes. Bob’s eyes widened as he saw Legerski approaching. He scrambled to his feet, and tried to flee, but the killer reached out with his free hand, snatched a fistful of Bob’s long hair, and yanked him backward.
“I heard you say you were a magician,” Legerski said. “Want to see a magic trick, motherfucker?”
Bob screamed for help, but with his nose in ruin, the words were unintelligible squawks. He glanced at Chris, eyes wide with panic. Chris wept, sick from fear and hopelessness, and for the first time in a very long time, feeling ashamed that he could not act—embarrassed by his helplessness.
Legerski spun Bob around and plunged the machete into his abdomen, sliding it in all the way to the hilt, smiling as Bob’s breath whooshed from his lungs, licking his lips as the younger man’s blood spilled out over his fingers, and laughing as he twisted the blade to the right and then savagely thrust it upward. He yanked it free, and Bob’s guts came out with it, splashing onto the ground.
“Ta-da!”
Legerski let go of Bob and turned to face Chris. Bob remained upright for a moment, swaying back and forth as more of his guts slipped from his abdomen like wriggling snakes. Then he toppled over, sloshing in his own gore and still-steaming entrails.
“Your turn,” Legerski said, stalking towards Chris. His voice dripped with excitement. “Let’s put you out of your misery. How long could you have really lasted in this place, anyway?”
Chris closed his eyes—the only act of defiance he could muster. He didn’t want the killer to see his fear, to see him crying—or to see how those words rung true. Because that was the worst part of all this. Legerski had just voiced something that Chris himself had been fretting over since the dinosaur attack. Just how long could he survive here?
“And now for my next trick.”
Legerski’s voice was nearer. The man drew close enough that Chris could smell his cologne and his sweat, and Bob’s blood, as well. Still, he refused to open his eyes.
“Look at me,” Legerski growled.
“No.” Chris squeezed his eyes shut tighter.
“LOOK AT M—”
From somewhere in the forest, Erin screamed for her mother. A second later, Paula shouted a response. More voices joined the fray. Curiously, they seemed to be converging on the site from multiple locations. Legerski cursed. Then Chris heard footfalls and rustling sounds. When he opened his eyes, his tormentor was gone. Paula, Jesse, and Colinda burst into the clearing, along with Erin and two other men from the shuttle. They stood gaping, mouths open, glancing from Bob to Chris and back again.
“Where is he?” Paula asked.
The undergrowth rustled and all of them screamed. Then Scott, Geoff, and Mark stepped into view. The three men stared at the scene in shock.
“Holy shit,” Mark gasped. “What the hell happened here?”
Then all of them began talking at once, each one pressing Chris for answers. He tried to respond, tried to speak, but all he could do was moan.
6
The Planning Committee
Geoff nudged Scott’s shoulder and asked, “So what’s the plan, boss?”
Scott glanced around, unsure at first who Geoff was talking to. When he realized that it was him being addressed, he grinned sheepishly. Sighing, he surveyed the group, all of whom—with the exception of the still missing Legerski and Paul Goblirsch, and the three deceased passengers and bus driver—were now gathered at the edges of the ravine, rather than scattered throughout the jungle. Tod, Mark, H, Paula, Colinda, and Leigh were finishing construction of the shelter. Jamie and Dave rested in the shade beneath the trees, being attended to by the still-recuperating Jesse. Chris was parked next to them in his wheelchair. Erin sat nearby, watching the adults and braiding strands of grass together into a bracelet.
“Well,” Scott pointed at the shelter, “they’ve got the roof finished, and they’re shoring up the openings. All we’ve got to do yet is camouflage it.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Geoff said. “What comes after?”
“After?”
“If somebody were coming to rescue us, they’d have done so by now. You and I both know it’s not going to happen, Scott. Wherever we are—wherever this is—chances are good that we’re not getting rescued any time soon. So, what’s the plan?”
“It’s a good question,” Jamie called out. “We need to start making plans. It’s going to get dark, sooner or later.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Jesse replied. “I don’t think the sun has moved since we got here.”
The others stared at him for a moment, and then looked up at the sky. Scott shielded his eyes with his hand, focusing on the sun for the first time since their arrival. He ignored the throbbing this caused behind his eyes, ignored the migraine that was building, and focused on the sun. He couldn’t tell if it had moved or not, but it did seem to him that the orb was smaller than the sun he knew.
When Scott turned his attention back to the ground, he saw that the rest of the group had now stopped working and were slowly gathering around him.
How the hell did I end up in charge? he thought.
“Okay.” He paused, worried that he sounded timid and unsure. Everyone stared at him, waiting. Scott cleared his throat and then tried again. “So … again, my name is Scott Berke. And, uh … I don’t remember taking a vote, so I’m not sure why everyone is looking at me.”
A few people laughed at this. The others just smiled politely.
“I think we can all agree that we are … someplace else. Now, we can discuss what that means and what our ideas might be about it later on.”
“It’s time travel,” Mark said, ignoring the suggestion. “I mean, it has to be, right? We fell through a wormhole or something, just like in the movies.”
“That’s impossible,” Colinda argued.
“Not so impossible,” Jamie countered. “Most of us experienced weird phenomena right before the crash. Problems with our cell phones. Timepieces operating incorrectly. And we all saw that bright flash of light. Time travel is a theoretical possibility. Scientists and physicists have done the math—they just can’t figure out a way to apply the math. But nature—the natural world, or perhaps the supernatural, if you like—isn’t bound by the limits of human invention. We know dinosaurs existed in Earth’s past. We’ve all seen a dinosaur today. Therefore, we need to at least consider the possibility that Mark is right—that we have, in fact, traveled to Earth’s past.”
“Or maybe not,” H said. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but the flora and fauna don’t seem right to me. There are species of plants coexisting side by side here that never did that during any era in Earth’s past. And Jamie, that razor grass you mentioned. What you described? I don’t think that’s ever existed on Earth.”
