THE ZACHARY EXPEDITION BASE CAMP, BLACK WATER TRIBUTARY

“Have you seen the professor?” Robby shouted.

Kennedy looked past Robby and saw that two of his men were missing. The animal’s assault had caught them in the middle of changing positions inside the mazelike tunnels and shafts.

“No, the last time I saw her she was …she was injured—that’s all I know, kid. I just hope my two men are with her,” he said loudly above the din of rushing water. He moved his flashlight from Robby to the shaft they had dove into at the last moment before the creature had brought the tunnel’s ceiling down upon the survivors. A split second afterward he had heard automatic weapon fire coming from the other side of the rock fall.

Robby, Kelly, and three others had come from somewhere down the opposite direction where another small group had run to.

“Kid, is there a way out back there?” Kennedy asked, his flashlight revealing the scratches and filth that covered Robby’s face.

“Yeah, but it leads right back into another tunnel, and you know what’s waiting for us out there, right?” He looked at the man for a moment, noticing for the first time the deep gouges that crisscrossed his black wetsuit. A few were ringed with Kennedy’s blood. “Hey, you know what’s there, right?” he repeated. “You guys did something to piss it off, didn’t you? Just who in the hell are you guys? Because of you, we’re dead!” the boy screamed.

“Not unless it can be in two places at once,” Kennedy answered. “It’s not in the lagoon, because I’m pretty sure that big bastard is in here with us somewhere.”

Robby was about to say something to the effect that he suspected there was more than one of the beasts, when they heard the primal roar of the animal. The sound was seeping through the rock slide the beast had created in its attempt to kill Kennedy and his people. The hoarse cry was bone chilling.

“Let’s get the hell out of here, it could be anywhere. It must know this shaft as well as it knows that damned lagoon.” Robby turned and waved the two women and one man forward. “Come on, guys, we’ll go with Dr. Kennedy, he has a plan,” he lied. Then as he counted heads he saw he was one short. “Where’s Kelly?” he shouted.

“Who’s Kelly?” one of the girls asked as she whimpered in pain from a possible broken arm.

“I mean Leanne, Leanne Cox!” Robby remembered her alias.

“We lost her somewhere back there,” the girl answered. “She was angry because she wanted to go back and find Helen. She went back, I think.” The frightened girl kept looking from Rob to her rear, terrified something was back in the darkness waiting to spring.

“Oh God, no,” he said as he turned and fixed the man in the wetsuit with a withering glare. “Look, Kennedy, get us out of here any way you can; I have to find that girl!”

Kennedy didn’t like having any extra baggage, but what could he do? Shoot them? No, they needed one another if they were to escape this valley. As Robby pushed angrily by, Kennedy saw that the other surviving girl was breaking out in a rash. He could tell she was feverish as she brushed against him. God, he thought, another one? The girl wore a faraway look as she reached out for Robby. Her once blue eyes were half covered in semitransparent pus. Kennedy closed his eyes to shut out the sight. This girl, Casey, he thought her name was, would mark the seventh member of the expedition to come down with the poisoning. For all he knew, they all had it. He knew he did; it had started this morning with vomiting, just as the others’ had. As the three survivors from the lagoon pressed ahead of him, Kennedy pulled back the charging handle on his MP-5 machine gun and followed, stepping ahead and taking the lead.

Half the expedition, including three of his men, had been caught on the shore at the base camp. He had assigned the men to watch the sick kids that had started coming down with what looked like a bad rash. It was soon followed by fever and the shakes. Diarrhea and severe vomiting was a stage that most of the sick had stabilized at when the professor announced it was time to leave. He realized his responsibility for the people in his party after they had fielded ridicule from not only himself, but Robby also. He was reminded that they were up against not only the animals of this godforsaken valley, but also an invisible disease that struck anyone who had ventured to the lower levels of the ancient mine.

The camp was hit before they could get off a call to the mine teams inside the endless catacombs of shafts where they were gathering the last of the specimens Helen had arranged to take back with them. Then, not ten minutes after the slaughter onshore, the animal, or animals, had struck them in the mine. It had attacked the party as a whole and then hunted each splintered group down one at a time. Upon separation of the larger group, they were taken down piecemeal. Now, as far as Kennedy was concerned, this was the last group. It was a terrible assumption, but one that had to be made. He was on his own and he had collateral baggage he knew couldn’t make it out of here alive. He had to move, and move as fast as possible, because he had the distinct feeling that the creatures who watched over this place weren’t just killing them for being there. They were being tracked and hunted for breaching some kind of ancient rule. And he figured the hunters would be merciless in their pursuit to make sure no one left the valley.

It was close to two hours later that they saw daylight ahead. All four of them froze, almost afraid to hope that it was real. None of them had expected to ever see sunlight again.

“Okay, we can’t go running out of here attracting attention to ourselves. Kid, what about the barge and ship—did either one run aground?”

“No, the ship went down like a rock. The barge stayed afloat for about an hour, but it eventually went down, too,” Robby whispered. “A few things came to the surface and we gathered what we could and beached them near the base camp on shore, but then …then the creature hit us. Most didn’t stand a chance. The sick were caught right in their beds and killed quickly. Some ran to the water where something else attacked them, a larger animal, long necked. I don’t know what happened to them after the screaming started. I tried to radio the professor and you, but there was no answer.”

Kennedy watched the kid. He had been impressed with Robby since the expedition had started; it was a shame he couldn’t allow him to live.

“We didn’t know what to do since you went into the mine two days ago, so we traveled north along the lagoon until we saw that.” Robby pointed at the opening. They could see the small waterfall that covered the prehistoric cave’s mouth and hid it to nature’s perfection. A thousand times smaller than the large falls that disguised the main entrance to the mine, this fall was easy to miss.

“Listen, you saw what was in the mine, right? I don’t have to spell it out for you?”

“I saw enough to make sure you and whoever you work for will stay behind bars for a long fucking time.” Robby spat out the words as if they tasted sour. Then he realized he had shot his mouth off to the wrong sort of man.

Kennedy reached into his wetsuit and pulled out his old dog tags. On the chain was a strange-looking key. It was thick, then thin, then thick again. It was about six inches long and one inch wide, and almost round as it corkscrewed to a bulbous end. He held it up to examine it and made sure it wasn’t damaged.

“Listen, one of our containers had a yellow rubber casing around it. It was about three feet long and two feet wide. Was that one of the crates you and your people salvaged from the ship? It was sitting on deck and should have come free once the boat went under.”

Robby thought a moment, his eyes never leaving the strange key. “Yeah, I think that was one that we pulled ashore—what is that?” he asked. The key made him forget his sudden anger at Kennedy.

“Look, vacation’s over; it’s time to cut our losses and try and head out of here following that old trail your professor found a few days ago.”

The girl behind Robby stepped forward. Her voice cracked and she looked around nervously. “That container you were asking about?”

Kennedy eyed the scared girl. “Yeah?”

“I don’t know how, but I swear it was in the main chamber, by the falls. I only noticed when—”

Kennedy grabbed the girl by her thin arms and lightly shook her.

“The box is in the mine? Are you sure?”

Robby reached down and pried Kennedy’s hands off the girl’s arms. He then stepped between her and the man who now had a crazed expression on his face.

“That’s enough, what the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Get them out the best you can, kid. I have to get to that container.”

“What about everyone else?” Robby asked, trying to keep his voice low so the others couldn’t hear. His thoughts kept returning to Kelly and how helpless he felt, trapped in here.

“Look, kid, there is no one else. I saw that animal close up and I don’t think it had a merciful bone in its huge-ass body. Maybe the smaller one, but not that big-ass motherfucker.”

“How in the hell could it outthink us like that?” Robby moaned.

“I saw its eyes. They were like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” Kennedy said as he pulled the half-empty magazine from his automatic weapon and inserted another. “It’s smarter than us, kid; this is its turf and we’re the visiting team. According to Zachary, its kind has been knocking around this world for one hell of a long time, a lot longer than us, at least seventy million years longer.” He gripped the key in his right hand, wrapping its chain painfully tight around and around his wrist.

“It didn’t strike us until you went into the mine; even then it still allowed gold to be taken out for examination. What happened to change things?”

Kennedy knew exactly what happened but wasn’t going to be the one to volunteer the information. What remained of Zachary’s team had not been in the main chamber, so what was there would remain a secret. They should never have brought out samples. He alone was responsible for that. He had basically killed all of those kids who became ill—and his own men, as well, in the usual attacks that followed; not only that, he had jeopardized his mission and his employers were not very understanding of failure.

Casey, the young girl with the sickness, suddenly screamed. Robby and Kennedy jumped. She was pointing at a shadow that had passed in front of the sunlit falls outside. The two men looked but saw nothing. Kennedy kept his weapon pointed in that direction nonetheless. He was about to lower it when a sudden, piercing scream almost made him pull the trigger. Robby reacted and pushed the barrel of the machine gun downward as one of the small animals ran down the damp shaft from the lagoon outside.

“No, its one of the Grunions,” he said and he caught the small creature as it leaped into his arms. The professor had jokingly named them for the small fish that come onto Southern California beaches at times, using their small legs.

“Goddamned thing, why do they have to scream like that?” Kennedy asked, shaking his head.

Robby rubbed the scaly little animal between the eyes and calmed it. “I don’t know, haven’t exactly figured that out yet,” he said, as a sad look crossed his features. Kelly had fallen in love with these strange creatures and had many theories as to their evolution. God, he prayed she had somehow escaped this massacre.

Suddenly the mine wall behind Casey split and crashed in. The roar of the large creature numbed their minds as it struck Casey and then the man and the girl with the broken arm. The man that was dressed the same as Kennedy, in a black wetsuit, was slammed hard into the rock wall as the small creature sprang from Robby’s arms. Kennedy fired at the beast but his rounds only struck wall as he was thrown backward by the impact of the falling rock. He tried to move his legs but they were under at least a ton of rock. He lifted the MP-5 and fired again, knowing the dust obscured his target to the point that he couldn’t be sure if he hit anything. The screams of the second woman were cut short suddenly, as if her volume control had been shut down.

“Get the hell out of here, kid,” Kennedy yelled to Robby, who had jumped free of the rocks into the safety of the mine shaft. “Go find another way out!”

Robby turned and didn’t hesitate as he sprinted down the small river of water that covered the shaft floor. As he sped into the dark he felt the small creature close on his heels, the small claws splashing through the water. He rounded a bend and the light was suddenly cut off as he entered the shaft that never saw outside illumination. He would have reached for one of the ancient torches that lined the old tunnel but he was terrified it would draw the other, vicious animal his way if he lit one.

The tunnel was suddenly lit up by a long burst of automatic gunfire. That was quickly followed by screams. It was Dr. Kennedy. He yelled and then screamed again as the sound of rocks being pushed aside came to Robby’s ears. Then Kennedy fell silent and Robby didn’t wait to hear any more. He turned and ran, the small creature now leading the way. Then he started crying and felt he would never stop.

As he rounded a bend that put him into the far reaches of the mine the Spaniards had called El Dorado, he heard the triumphal roar of the wild animal as the protector of the valley once again proclaimed his superiority against the intruder.

The second expedition to the hidden valley of the lagoon had come to the same end as the first.

The creature roared once again as the darkness engulfed Robby, wrapping around him like a blanket, and sent him on a headlong flight away from the God of the River.

Calm filled the beautiful valley as birds sang their songs and the small hairless creatures waited for their God to grow still once again.