Acheron: A Sci-Fi Thriller

[ELDRITCH OCTAHED]

Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo

Prologue
Somewhere in the American Midwest

Kyle woke from his sleep with a start to the thump-thump of footsteps just outside his bedroom window. The eleven-year old boy laid there, immobile, as a shadow crossed the moonlit spot on his bedroom's carpeted floor and scattered toys. He kept as quiet as possible as the huge black shadow slid along, and eventually vanished.

His breathing was inaudible even in the petrifying silence of his bedroom, and he wondered briefly if it was his mom and dad finally home from the wedding. He glanced at the digital clock on his nightstand, which read 12:39. They'd told him they'd be back in the morning, and it was technically morning.

Kyle rolled out of bed, deftly avoiding the plastic bricks scattered around the bedroom floor, and tip-toed to the closet to fumble for his pants and hoodie. After dressing himself he very slowly opened his bedroom door, which creaked ominously no matter how slowly he moved it. Kyle winced, even though nobody else was home.

It was no time at all before he was pulling on his boots, and then he heard the crash of splintering wood. The panicked squawking of the chickens filled the night. He grabbed a big flashlight and charged out into the night, flicking the light on and swinging it towards the barn.

The several inch thick, eight foot tall wooden sliding door was completely shattered, and chickens were flying out in blind panic. Some were coated in blood.

Kyle had many flaws, but a lack of courage was not one of them. He charged into the barn, the light playing along a fuzzy gray body far above the barn floor.

"Get away from my chickens!"

Whatever he was going to say next died on his lips. He had never seen what loomed above him before, except in his most feverish nightmares. His mouth flapped soundlessly, the light shaking in his hand like a leaf in a hurricane.

The eight-foot beak struck home, and light was everywhere.
______
Iteration 0

Light glared through the airplane window.

Gabriel Vasquez the Third pressed his forehead to the cold glass of the plane, staring down at the blue Pacific far below. Clouds streaked by, blending the cerulean sky into the white-capped waves below.

Twenty-seven or so other people were on the plane- their teacher Mr. Roberts, and the two pilots, and Gabriel's (never, ever Gabe) twenty-four classmates. Mr. Roberts was pushing fifty and the pilots were both thirty or forty, but the students of Excellence Private Academy were all sixteen or seventeen or so. He was one of the younger ones, all things considered, which annoyed him.

His dad had offered him a seat at the front of the plane when he'd been arranging things, but Gabriel had declined. He'd always sat in the first rows of a plane, and this one was all luxury seating all the way to the back, so he'd asked for a change of pace and a seat near the back emergency doors. His father had begrudgingly accepted.

He wouldn't have picked this spot if he'd known that Thomas Jak Hunter would be in the seat directly in front of him. The older boy (by a narrow margin) turned around and peered over the back of the seat at him. Gabriel could feel his black eyes boring into the side of his face like a physical touch. He hated it when people stared at him.

"I never thanked you for the plane trip." Hunter didn't talk to him much, but apparently he'd decided to be chatty now.

Gabriel glanced Hunter's way, focusing vaguely on his nose. "Thank my father. It's his plane."

"I will. It'll be fun to see the mining operation once we get there, I've never been so deep underground as this place. Have you ever been?" Hunter shot him a toothy grin.

Gabriel shrugged. "Once, when I was five. I got really sick though, so the trip was cut short."

Hunter hummed sympathetically. "That's a shame. Do you like copper?"

Gabriel huffed in faint amusement. "Not really, no." He put his face back against the glass.

Hunter didn't take the hint. "Is it true that the Vasquez Incorporated Mining Conglomerate provides the copper for basically all industrial applications?"

Gabriel couldn't help but roll his eyes at the use of the full title. Hunter sounded like he was rattling off an official press release. "It's all public record y'know, you can just google VIMC."

"There's no Internet out here."

"Google it when we land." A darkness caught Gabriel's eye, and he turned his face to look at it.

Storm clouds.

He pulled his book Demons of Hell Creek from the backpack in the seat next to him, and flipped to his saved place. He was sure the pilots could figure it out.

T. rex was certainly the largest predator in its environment when fully grown, but the juveniles would have been forced to compete with the local Dakotaraptor steini population. This raptor is little-known, and some researchers believe it to be a chimaera of other species' bones, but if considered valid then it served as one of the few species who could compete with young tyrannosaur specimens for prey. If it was a pack hunter, a currently unsupported hypothesis, its lethality would certainly be comparable to the great T. rex who prowled Hell Creek- and unlike the formidable tyrannosaur, a Dakotaraptor steini at roughly 500 to 800 pounds would see a human being as a prey item well worth the effort expended in hunting it…

The storm rumbled, and Gabriel glanced out the window to see flickers of lightning. The seatbelt light went on, and the intercom crackled into life to tell them to return to their seats and buckle up.

He was sure the pilots could figure it out…
______

 

[ELDRITCH OCTAHED]

Iteration 1.0

Gabriel Vasquez stared at the billowing smoke of the wrecked plane as if it could explain what happened. Crackling flames devoured the aircraft, turning it into a makeshift pyre for those who'd been killed in the crash. The brutalist concrete air control tower had easily withstood the plane colliding with it, but the flames were still raging strong. He vaguely wondered if the surrounding forests would also catch fire. He thought not, it had rained recently, and the airstrip was puddling in places.

Mr. Roberts was on that plane, and the pilots. Three students had been killed too- Sarah, Dave and Violet. Nobody had retrieved them from the wreckage. Nobody wanted to be the one to haul their broken bodies from the furnace to bury them. Gabriel had seen them. He'd smelled the blood and other things.

Gabriel wondered briefly if he was going to puke again. Probably not, he'd vomited enough after the crash.

Thomas Jak Hunter was distributing water bottles he'd salvaged as they'd abandoned the plane, occasionally shouting for someone to sit the hell down now, nobody goes anywhere until we have a plan.

Jackass, Gabriel thought. Still, he accepted a crinkly plastic bottle when Thomas offered it. He didn't drink from it. Just rolled it between his hands, feeling the hot sun blazing away on his skin. His t-shirt was already getting sweaty, despite the stiff oceanic winds that buffeted the highlands. Some of the others were already complaining about the heat. He slapped a mosquito on his neck.

At least he'd been lucky enough to have his bag with him. He'd set it in the seat next to him on the flight, and instinctively hauled it with him when he made his exit. A couple changes of clothes, snacks, random items like that. Nothing like a flare gun or radio. His phone had been smashed in the crash, but his watch was ticking merrily away on his wrist. The time was 5:54.

Something works, he thought sourly. Gabriel stood up from the log he'd been sitting on and took a look around, water bottle in hand, waving off mosquitos intent on draining him of blood.

Twenty teenagers were in a loose huddle on the airstrip, most sitting on the same log as himself or on a pile of lumber a little ways off. Some were crying. Some had puked, or were in the process of puking. All of them looked shell-shocked, bruised, and completely out of their depth.

The airstrip was surrounded by low conifer trees of some species he wasn't familiar with, and lush grasses that stood at chest level. The airstrip itself was dilapidated, all mud and gravel, with short grasses and ferns that had been disrupted by the broad wound the plane had gouged into the ground as it crashed.

The island was surprisingly huge- they'd landed on the highlands, which ringed the island like a gigantic wall. It looked like a bowl dropped in God's kitchen, now fuzzy with green mold. Behind him was the edge of the island and the open ocean. Giant birds wheeled in the distance, and fog swirled over the landscape, obscuring details of the interior. To his left, he could see a higher part of the rim, like a mountain. He wondered if the island was an extinct volcano that had blown up in the distant past. The mountain-high rim could be the edge of the caldera.

Strange bird calls echoed through the forests. Gabriel shivered.

"Hey!" Gabriel jumped, head snapping round to look at Thomas's shark-like grin. "You haven't touched your water, huh?"

Gabriel shook his head. "I'm saving it for later."

Thomas Hunter nodded at that. "Good thinking. You see anything interesting out there?"

"Nope. Just a big valley."

Thomas glanced out over the misty island. "Big-ass place all right. Island this big, probably has somebody else. Science station or whatever, based on that tower we crashed into. Fishing village. Hell, maybe we'll find a resort, I'm sure you'd be able to get us in."

Gabriel imagined sipping cold grape juice under a beach umbrella like he'd originally planned, pointedly ignoring the jab. "That would be great."

Thomas slapped a hand on his shoulder. "All right, I'll check up on everyone else, then we'll have to make a plan."

The air was thick with heat. The complaints were already beginning by the time Thomas finished his head count.

"Why're you in charge?" Xavier demanded, voice cutting through the murmur as he rose to his full height- the linebacker was impressively tall and broad. "You're not a teacher."

Hunter was more than a head shorter than Xavier, and probably barely half the older boy's weight at best, but he wore his trademark toothy smile. "You're right, I ain't a teacher. But if we're gonna make it out of this alive, someone needs to be in command, and you clearly aren't qualified."

Xavier snorted. "And you are? The bleached-blond, girly prick with an attitude problem a mile wide?"

"You looking for a fight?" Thomas Hunter's voice was dangerously low. The older boy smirked, and drove a punch hurtling towards Hunter's face.

It never connected.

Thomas grabbed the older boy's wrist, and did something Gabriel could barely see, sending him sprawling in the mud. Xavier came up fighting mad, only to find a combat boot between his legs. He went down again, only for Thomas to grab his messy dark hair in one hand and bring a knee flying up and into Xavier's sports-star face. The crunch of cartilage was agonizingly loud. Blood drenched the knee of Thomas's shredded jeans, but he didn't seem to care.

Xavier was writhing in the muddy gravel again, and Thomas gave him a vicious kick to the ribs.

"Anyone else want to fuck with me? Anyone else want to call me girly?"

Nobody moved.

Thomas offered a hand to Xavier, and after a moment's deliberation he reluctantly took it. Thomas hauled him to his feet, and gestured for him to take a seat on the lumber pile with the others.

"I'm not gonna force any of you to follow me. You can stay here, or wander off into the woods in any direction you want. But I'm not gonna hang around here any longer than I have to, and that's looking like daybreak tomorrow, because it's getting late. I'm gonna be looking for other people on this island, either alone or with you guys following me. I don't care. But you all should know that I know what I'm doing, and I definitely know that you rich kids won't last ten hours without help. Take it or leave it. I gotta take a piss."

Thomas sauntered off, and a sullen silence settled over the group.

Damn, Gabriel thought, mentally replaying the fight. He had heard rumors that Thomas could be vicious, but he'd never gone so far before. Of course, he hadn't had a fight without adults nearby to break it up either.

Some of the other guys also had to take a leak, and excused themselves. Nobody went too far though, and most of them just stared at the raging fire. A few people were completely breaking down as the shock of the crash finally wore off.

Gabriel wasn't good at comforting anyone, but he walked over to Xavier, still clutching his bloody nose.

"You okay?" He was met with a noncommittal grunt.

Gabriel really didn't know what the treatment for a broken nose was. All he had was action movies.

"Want me to push it back into place or something?"

"Fuck no," Thomas said as he made his return from the woods. "That's a terrible idea. You're not a doctor."

Xavier gurgled something that might have been a laugh. "Stole the words from my mouth."

Thomas soldiered on. "He'll be fine. Too bad we don't have an ice pack though."

A thought struck Gabriel. "What's the plan for sleeping?"

"Afraid of roughing it under the stars, rich boy?" Gabriel ignored Thomas's provocative remark, and the blond boy rolled his eyes. "We'll just have to use the lumber to get up off the ground, not much else to do. It'll be a little harder than your bed, but you'll live. Unless you want to sleep in the concrete tower there, which is currently an oven in the making."

Xavier grumbled. "I can't wait to be devoured by mosquitoes." Gabriel found himself agreeing with that sentiment. He was already riddled with bug bites.

"Get in the smoke if you want to keep them off," Thomas said.

Gabriel stood. "I'm going to check out the cliff."

Thomas waved him off. "It's a free country."

Gabriel turned about and walked to the cliff, picking his way between the short conifers to the edge of everything. The damp grasses came to an abrupt end, and he cautiously peered over the drop. The blue waters of the ocean crashed like a distant roar, waves breaking themselves on the stony reefs. It looked a thousand feet down, but he had no real reason to believe he was correct- it could easily have been only two hundred feet. It was a long drop, he knew that much. Seagulls circled in white clouds.

A black shape surfaced briefly, huge and long and crocodilian, a spout of steam rising from the front of it. The shape vanished underwater almost as soon as it had emerged.

Whale, Gabriel thought, but he wasn't sure. It gave him a peculiar crawling sensation down his spine, but that could have been the vertigo.

Gabriel beat a quick retreat to the airstrip. The flames were still raging, the stink of burning plastic and fuel and metal and whatever else made up a plane overshadowing the smell of cooked meat. Someone offered Gabriel a granola bar, and he gratefully accepted it. He finally cracked open his water bottle after he was through eating, and chugged it down to wash out the food stuck in his teeth. Octavia was trying to get a signal on her phone, a huddle of four girls around her offering advice. A few others were also trying, but it seemed no results had been achieved. He wasn't surprised.

"Stuck on a gorgeous island in the middle of the ocean." Hunter slid up to Gabriel's side. "And all they can think about is their phones."

"You sound like my grandfather."

Hunter barked a laugh. "Do I? Sounds about right. See anything cool in the water?"

A whale, he thought, but he stayed silent on that. "Just the ocean and the rocks."

"Too bad. I'll check it out tomorrow."

Later that evening, after everyone had taken apart the lumber pile and shaken out the spiders, but before the daylight has completely died, Gabriel found himself sandwiched between Lucian and Thomas Hunter. He only had his backpack for a pillow and a hoodie for a blanket, and the highlands got cold with the whipping ocean breeze. A warm body to either side helped alleviate the chill. And the lumber was drier than the muddy gravel, at least. He could almost pretend he was camping.

He'd never gone camping before.

Gabriel stared up at the starry sky, unpolluted by city lights and clear of clouds. He counted the stars until eventually he drifted into sleep, but he took no real satisfaction in the fact that he was still breathing.

His dreams were full of brawls and bleeding.
_____

 

[ELDRITCH OCTAHED]

Iteration 1.1

Gabriel awoke to a violent shaking.

"Wh-" a hand silenced him, a familiar face grinning his toothy grin at him. It was still dark, but a little gray light was on the horizon. And it was chilly out.

"Shhhhh. Don't wake the babies. I found something hella cool, and I've picked you as the lucky bastard who gets to see it first."

"Thanks," Gabriel said quietly as he shoved Thomas's hand aside. He extricated his arm from Lucian's grasp, and stood wincing at the sudden pain in his neck.

"You good?"

Gabriel moved his head, testing the crick. He'd be feeling that one for a while. "I'm fine. Just a crick. Show me this hella cool thing."

He pulled on his shoes, and followed Thomas into the brush as he pulled out a flashlight. The cone of light guided them, Thomas moving with confidence onto an overgrown and narrow trail that shifted down the highlands. Gabriel kept close behind. His watch read 5:38.

"I know you're scared of spiders, so I tore down all the webs I saw down this path."

Gabriel rolled his eyes. "Thanks. How'd you find this anyways? How long have you been up?"

"Well, I always get up at like, four in the morning for workouts, so I'm guessing I woke up about then. And I was thinking about that old tower." He vaulted easily over a log that had fallen into the path, Gabriel following with rather more difficulty. "I thought, man, there should be a path that goes somewhere from the tower, right? I searched the area until I found this game trail, and then it was easy."

"And what did you find?"

Thomas grinned over his shoulder. "No spoilers."

They walked on for a few minutes, and then they came across it. A broad flattened terrace, where the slope had been cut away, baring a rocky wall to their left about thirty feet high. Only this small cliff had a huge and open door, steel, like a giant bank vault door. It was crusted with rust and heavily dented, but when Thomas pulled the handle the open door swung wide with a terrible scream. Through the door was only darkness.

"Woah."

Thomas looked like a kid in a candy store. "I know, right? A genuine bunker! C'mon in." Gabriel complied, following the bobbing glow of Thomas's flashlight.

A lot of it was bare concrete, long-unused electric lights sunken into the walls. The hallway ran straight for a good distance, before splitting into a T intersection. Doors lined both walls. The whole place smelled musty, acrid, and a little foul.

Gabriel touched Thomas's shoulder. "Who made it?"

"My bet is the military. The navy put a bunch of bases on islands during World War Two, this looks like it could be one."

Thomas tried to peer through the thick glass window set in one door, but he wasn't quite tall enough to see more than the ceiling. "A little help?"

Gabriel rolled his eyes. "Can't you just open the door?"

"There could be a dead guy. I'd rather get a look before charging in blindly."

Gabriel sighed. "Fine, shortass." He wrapped his arms around Thomas's legs and lifted him up.

"Oh damn, this room is sick! Let me down, we're going in." Gabriel dropped him like a sack of potatoes. "Not like that, jerk."

Thomas shook his head, and pulled open the door. It was a room absolutely full of shelves of canned foods, and a huge black safe dominated one corner.

Gabriel pointed. "Is that a gun safe?"

"Yeah, looks like- good on you for actually recognizing it. Too bad it's all locked down, or else I'd be grabbing something."

"You think we need a gun?"

Thomas shrugged. "It pays to be prepared. Hey, see that big lever over there?" He swung the light to illuminate it. "Give it a pull, let's see if we can light up this place."

Gabriel complied, feeling the cold, dusty rubber of the handle. It took a notable amount of effort to switch the lever, and there was a crack and hiss as the room lit up.

Thomas whooped. "Hell yeah! Okay, let's get the others, we've got a lot of canned goods to collect."

Gabriel found himself grinning a little bit. Maybe this would start to work out for them. They had food, at least, and probably water too. God knew what else they could find.

"How's the power still on?"

Thomas scratched his chin. "Probably geothermal. This place is dusty, but I don't think it's been abandoned for more than a few years if I had to guess. Bomb-proof construction… maybe this actually is a military base. We'll take a look once we bring everyone else over."
______
"Okay, here's the plan."

Thomas had gathered everyone up just outside the bunker, backlit by the light streaming through the door. "We're going to pair up in a buddy system, or larger groups if you wanna get closer to your friends- nobody goes off alone, no matter what. We're going to look around for useful things, like flare guns, first aid kits, water, and food- the good shit. All of you guys have a pack now," he'd found a room full of black bags, and quickly gathered them for those who'd lost their luggage in the crash, "so I expect them to be filled. Okay, everyone find a buddy, and let's go exploring."

The pep talk had the desired effect. Everyone paired off, and began rummaging through the various rooms. Thomas and Gabriel had ended up grouped together.

"No longer scared of finding a dead body?" Gabriel snarked.

Thomas shook his head. "Who said I was scared?"

The duo moved down towards the T-intersection by some unspoken agreement, looking for… something. Anything worth getting. Their shoes were loud on the bare concrete.

Gabriel stepped on something that crunched softly beneath his shoe. He lifted his foot, and white chalky material fell off. It was dried and dusty, but still clearly recognizable.

"Looks like bird shit," Thomas helpfully said.

Gabriel scowled. "Must be one big bird." They continued on their way, while Gabriel wiped his foot on the floor.

To the left of the intersection was a row of windows that let the early morning light in. To their right was a thick bank vault-style door, this one clearly locked down, though heavily dented. Thomas led them left, running his right hand along the windowsills. The view was stark. All ocean, for countless miles, stretching into the horizon. Far below, Gabriel could see the rocks he'd spotted yesterday. The black whale failed to make an appearance, but he could feel the dull thunder of the sea in his shoes.

The hallway terminated in a large office, the door left unlocked. Gabriel carelessly opened it, and staggered back as if shot by what he'd seen and smelled inside.

"Hey, what the fuck?" Thomas was there in an instant, grabbing him to keep him from falling, a comforting hand on the back of his neck. "What did you see?"

Gabriel just pointed.

The man inside the office had been dead for a very long time. He was not quite bones, but he was awfully close to it, rather mummified-looking. And the room stank of old corpses.

"Ah shit," Thomas said, as Gabriel got sick all over the floor. He stepped inside, carefully avoiding the puddle of granola bar Gabriel had made, and grabbed something off the floor. Gabriel spat, coughing to clear the bile from his throat and mouth, then covered his nose with his shirt to reduce the smell.

"He left his gun." A click as he slid the magazine out, another as he checked the chamber for bullets. "Stupid bastard!"

Thomas rummaged around in the drawers in a frantic rush as Gabriel stared at the skeletal remains. He'd once seen a dead rat in the basement of one of the family beach houses, a dried up and desiccated thing. This skeleton was pretty close to that.

He'd never seen a corpse before. As Gabriel stared at the empty eye sockets, Thomas cursed.

"He had one bullet, and he used it on himself. Real handy." He threw the gun down, and inspected the office. Aside from the desk and the dead man at it, there were only some big filing cabinets and a wall-mounted map.

"T-this is a crime scene." Thomas shot Gabriel a glance out of the corner of one dark eye. "S-shouldn't we not touch anything?"

Thomas rolled his eyes. "He's been dead for years. The fact that he's still here strongly suggests that this bunker was abandoned for some reason, and nobody else among the living knows about it. So I'm not too worried about it."

Gabriel dragged his gaze away from the dead man to look at the map. "Think this is the island?"

Thomas walked over to take a look, and Gabriel joined him. It was unlabeled, save for the words SITE ACHERON: #3 written in blocky letters across the top of the map, but the basic geography was clear.

The highest ridge of the mountainous rim of the island was just where Gabriel had seen it after the crash, on the northern side, and their crash site was evident- a small line denoted the airstrip at the northwestern edge of the island. The scale at the bottom of the map denoted the size of it- roughly 35 by 28 miles, if Gabriel's eyeballing was correct, longest in the north-south direction. A central vaguely star-shaped lake about three miles long at its longest point was present, and several rivers. One flowed from the lake to the south before veering more easterly towards some steep cliffs, and apparently flowed into a huge harbor or artificial lagoon- a gray line cut off a huge semi-circle of the sea, probably a mile in radius.

"That's our way home," Thomas Hunter said. "We find a boat, we can get the hell off this place. Ah-chair-on or however the hell you say it."

"Ak-eron," Gabriel corrected. Hunter looked at him as if Gabriel had grown a second head. "Acheron was one of the five rivers of the Underworld in Greek mythology, alongside the Styx, Lethe, Cocytus and Phlegethon. It was also known as the River of Misery."

Thomas grinned his toothy smile as he walked to the door. "Look at that, the rich kid has a brain in there after all. Well, we got what we came for, let's go back and make sure the others aren't shooting each other with the flare guns."

Gabriel shot the dead man one last glance as the door closed behind him. What scared him so badly that he killed himself?

He didn't think he wanted to know.
______________

Please, share your thoughts and comments! I love to see it.

 

[ELDRITCH OCTAHED]

Iteration 1.2

The group had taken a brief break to have breakfast before moving on. Thomas hadn't mentioned the gun, the map, or the corpse, but he did say that he was thinking about finding one of the rivers.

"Rivers always flow to the lowest point, so hopefully it'll lead to the coast. And people build near water."

Xavier nodded. "Sounds good."

Kayla chewed thoughtfully on her cold beans. "Wouldn't it make sense to like, stay up high in the open? It's less jungle-y up on the ridge, so the flare guns might be more useful. I dunno, just spitballing."

Thomas scratched his chin. "Not a bad idea. Hell, let's stick to the highlands as we look for a river, and once we find one we'll follow it. Win-win."
___
The open fields of Acheron's highlands were surprisingly tough to navigate. They weren't just nice flat spots like where the plane had crashed. Often they were angled downwards, towards the denser redwood forests on the lower slopes, leading down into the thick greenery of the island's heart. More than once, Gabriel found himself sliding downwards as he walked southwards, and it took a notable effort to climb uphill enough to rejoin the group. Normally he walked near Thomas, but Thomas was faster and moved with ease on the slopes, and Gabriel fell behind.

Octavia bumped her shoulder into his. "So, you and Thomas are all buddy-buddy now?"

Gabriel rolled his eyes. "More like, he dragged me into exploring the bunker." The memory of the dead man's empty-eyed skull was still burnt into his head.

"I wouldn't think that Gabriel Vasquez the Third would be friends with Mr. Patriotic Redneck Gun-Toting Maniac. Or are you the fourth?"

Gabriel gritted his teeth. "I'm the third."

Octavia shrugged. "Thanks again for your dad footing the bill for the plane. Really cool stuff so far."

Gabriel picked up the pace, leaving Octavia behind. Before long he'd worked his way up the loose line to Thomas's side, wading through the belly-high grasses. They were moving south, avoiding the looming highlands of the mountain behind them. Strange calls echoed from the forest below them.

"How are you not sweating?"

Thomas laughed, a short hah escaping his mouth. "My uncles always take me hunting. This is nothing compared to some of the places we go to."

"They're the ones who pay for your tuition right?"

"Yup. All five of them chipped in, plus the scholarship program and some of my aunts."

"I've never had an uncle," Gabriel admitted, dodging a branch from a short sapling of a tree. "It's always been just me, my dad, and Grandfather."

Thomas vaulted a small boulder that jutted from the ground like a rotten tooth. "Your grandfather was that old guy who spoke at the beginning of the school year right?"

"Old?" Gabriel said, scandalized as he walked around the boulder. "He's only in his early fifties."

"That's old."

Gabriel rolled his eyes. "You're hopeless."

The grass in front of them shifted, and something stood up.

Gabriel didn't understand what he was even looking at, at first. The animal-bird thing had a spear-shaped, black-striped beak that swayed six feet off the ground, long and pointed like a gigantic stork. Its fuzzy neck was striped with various shades of brown and beige and tan. Beady blue eyes gleamed hawklike in the bony face. It hissed and between the open beak Gabriel saw a slender serrated tongue, like a malevolent goose.

"Oh my fucking God." Thomas said. Similar exclamations came from the people behind them, who'd just seen the stork-thing.

The animal honked, and wheeled about. The thing rocked back, and then flung itself into the skies. Batlike wings painted with vivid yellow and electric blue spread wide. The animal beat its wings once, twice, and then it was soaring away.

"What the fuck was that?" Xavier shouted.

"Azhdarchid." Gabriel whispered, watching those gorgeous wings beating.

Thomas shot him a glance. "A what?"

Gabriel's knees felt like rubber, and he fell on his ass. "That was an azhdarchid pterosaur. An extinct flying animal. A juvenile, probably."

"That fucker was a baby?" Thomas asked, incredulous.

Gabriel nodded. "The biggest had forty-foot wingspans and stood sixteen feet at the head. Big enough to see a human as food. We were lucky."

Thomas hauled Gabriel to his feet. "I knew you were a dino nerd, but Jesus Christ." Thomas turned to the others. "It's okay! We're going to keep moving now. I don't think it'll come back."

Gabriel still felt wobbly as he walked. "It's not a dinosaur. But… But it is impossible."

"I mean, unless we're suffering from a group hallucination, it isn't."

"No, I mean it's impossible for any pterosaur or dinosaur to survive this long without being seen. There'd be sightings, rumors, it would be described by scientists. They died 66 million years ago or so. Nothing remains except fossils."

Thomas shrugged. "Maybe it's some kinda alien and not a dinosaur."

"Azhdarchids aren't dinosaurs, and this wasn't an alien."

Thomas merely forged on. "When we get back to civilization, you can write all about it. Let's focus on survival for now, okay?"

Gabriel nodded. "Okay."

Thomas spoke up a moment later. "Could it be time travel? Like in that one movie."

Gabriel clicked his tongue and shrugged. "I seriously doubt it. Time travel raises all kinds of bizarre issues."

Twenty minutes later, Thomas bumped his shoulder. "Hey, how much do you know about dinosaurs?"

"Way too much."

Thomas nodded. "Should we be worried about the momma pterodactyl?"

"Azhdarchid," Gabriel corrected. "Probably not. The main theory right now is that they abandoned their young like sea turtles did, and that the hatchlings were born with the skills to hunt on their own."

"Badass. Imagine being like, seconds old and already chowing down on your own kills."

Gabriel nodded in agreement. "It's pretty cool."

"You said the biggest were like, sixteen feet tall?"

"And five hundred to seven hundred pounds. Very lightweight animal."

"Lighter than my mom," Hunter joked. Gabriel tried and ultimately failed to keep a straight face.

They spooked two more azhdarchids over the course of the day. One was even taller than the first one, and flapped off with a poisonous-looking yellow and black lizard in its beak. No adults made an appearance yet.

The group stopped for a quick lunch at 11:30, and Gabriel thought that perhaps the goal they all shared might be the reason nobody had broken down since the plane crash. They had food and water, after all, and they had a plan. Gabriel felt a bit optimistic himself. Once they got back to civilization, they could reveal the existence of surviving prehistoric life. His dad would have to recognize the value in dinosaurs and knowing about them. Maybe things could work out.

And then Kayla got bitten.

She screamed "Fuck!" and kicked at something in the grass when her bite happened. Thomas darted back to see what happened, and Gabriel hung behind.

Thomas looked around. "What happened?"

"Some yellow-black stripy lizard, I didn't see it well. Bit my foot."

"That's what happens when you wear flip-flops on a tropical island."

Kayla scoffed. "My other shoes were on the plane." Thomas raised his hands defensively and walked back to the front of the line.

Five minutes later, Kayla collapsed, bleeding from her eyes and nose as she puked blood and spasmed.

Two minutes of sheer panic and screaming later, and she mercifully died, the skin peeling off her muscles in sheets like paper.

"Oh my God, oh my God," Octavia kept repeating, like a broken record, unable to look away from the bloody mess. Xavier looked pale as ash, mouth hanging open at the sight. Gabriel couldn't bear to look at her.

Thomas stared down inquisitively at her remains.

"Octavia, did you see what bit her?"

"Fuck no. She just called it a lizard."

Thomas nodded. "I think we need to keep moving."

A girl named Maeve spoke up. "We can't just fucking leave her."

Thomas stretched languorously. "Do you want to haul a hundred pounds or so of bloody meat through the jungle? We can't bury her in this soil, without any tools. She's beyond saving now. Let's focus on staying alive." And he started walking off, only to freeze.

Gabriel looked up at the sky.

A shadow, blacker than any passing cloud, swept over them. Then another.

The big-headed silhouettes were unmistakable.

"Hatzegopteryx thambema," he whispered. "We're dead."