Islands in the Sky Page 8

  "What the hell was that?" Mica whispered.

  Something that looked like a translucent tentacle made of seaweed swashed across the surface of the water just centimeters from Alexander's feet. He stepped back as far as he could with his back against a sheer wall of the attached building; its summit looming far above his reach.

  "Do you have anything you can throw?" I called out to him.

  Alex shot a desperate glance towards the two of us as we stood safely between the pillars a meter above the water level. Alex clarified that anything he had was within the pockets of his thermal coat which he had to discard when he fell into the lake to keep from sinking.

  "Mica, what do you have?" I asked her in response to Alexander's dilemma, "anything small that you don't need."

  I had a pistol and Tom's knife, but there was no way I was going to sacrifice the only weapons we had. We had our water bottles and a few food rations; and Mica turned defensive when I suggested we toss one of the specimen sample tubes to try to distract the creature away from our trapped team member.

  "No way, these are irreplaceable!" Mica snapped back as she held her specimen bag protectively.

  "You might want to argue that with Alex over there, just how irreplaceable he might be; just to see who loses that debate," I snapped back as I motioned towards our friend who was shivering in ankle deep water. Another tentacle appeared above the surface and slowly washed its way towards him while Alex jumped in fright to escape its reach.

  "Okay, how about the camera then?" I suggested, only to have her respond with a look of horror in her eyes.

  "We can't..." was all she stammered, but she glanced back towards Alex who was in fear for his life, and realized the ethical dilemma she had walked into, "okay, okay! Here, just try to save this one and this one, and maybe this one..." she spouted, trying to cherry pick her favored specimen jars as I opened the bag and started lobbing them as far as I could to the opposite side of the lake away from Alex.

  "Alex, stand still and don't move. We're going to try and distract it," I called to him. He turned and nodded to me that he understood; while the vials I tossed began splashing in the distance, skipping across the water.

  The creature slowly submerged once again, and the movement of the surface water seemed to show that it was pursuing the source of the new disturbance.

  "Quickly, get over here!" Mica shouted over to Alexander while trying to snatch her precious vials out my grasp and holding them to her chest like a sheltered child.

  "And try not to break the water tension by splashing around!" I advised as an afterthought while Alex noted the aquatic beast had left his proximity. He edged his way into the water with care from the submerged ledge of the building and began stroking his way towards us in a self-restrained frenzy. Without warning, his head bobbed underneath the surface and he disappeared.

  "Holy hell!" I blurted, "Did it grab him?"

  Realizing that I may have made a fatal mistake by getting Alex to trust me on my tactics; but I had forgotten that I had seen several of the ghostly shadows darting about underneath the calm waters. Alexander was gone, and we poised there for several anxious moments. Moments later, a few bubble escaped to the surface, and we feared he had been dragged under by one of the other creatures hidden within its depths.

  Mica gasped in horror, shocked by the sudden remorse when she realized that Alex had drowned. Half a moment later a loud yelp escaped her lips as she jumped in surprise when something broke the surface of the water directly beneath us. It was Alex; his eyes were wide with fear as he choked for air.

  "Help me up!" he sputtered to keep the water out of his mouth.

  I lowered down my canteen strap for him to grasp, and we pulled him up onto the sill that supported the pillars just as the creature began to make its way back towards our location.

  "What happened to you, are you alright?" Mica inquired.

  "Why yes, just a wee soaked and a might of a chill, but I'm uninjured," he spouted back.

  "We thought one of those things had grabbed you and dragged you under," I stated with a tone of surprise.

  "I don't know what you mean," Alex replied in utter dismay to my question, "you were quite direct when you instructed me not to splash around; thus I elected to dip below and covered the distance between us swimming underwater so as not to disturb the surface."

  We climbed our way back to the upper platform and tried to locate Logan via our wave radio; but there was far too much static on the line. He was no where in sight at the moment, and we didn't want to make to much noise shouting for him; as such a disturbance could likely bring several metric tons of ice down upon our heads as we had experienced before.

  Alex was notably cold as his teeth began to chatter, having lost his thermal outer gear; but we had nothing to spare save a thin emergency blanket from the first aid kit. From his own observation of the aquatic creatures which had attacked him, Alex could only conclude that they were a species of large jellyfish, which explained their strange appearance. He considered himself lucky for having not come into contact with their tentacles which likely would have severely injured or paralyzed him with their reputed neurotoxin. There was a large building near the back of the ruins which stood above the others which was a good place to spot the professor if he was lost among the catwalks.

  We navigated our way to the central temple only to find our way cut short by a wide moat between us and the structure. Somewhere down below the waterline was a pathway through the protecting wall that surrounded the building before us. Skirting the edges proved to be a useless endeavor, which led us to a dead end on either side. The other catwalks that connected the massive sunken city led around the central shrine; and Logan could have gotten lost along any one of them.

  "We have to get higher if we are going to have any chance of spotting him," Mica acknowledged as we stared into the depths below us.

  There were clear ways of entry into the central building, but there was no other means except by making a swim for it. None of us were fond of that idea.

  "We have to climb down closer to the waterline and swim across," I suggested, "diving in at any distance will likely bring those monstrous jellyfish."

  "We can wrap up our coats and try to ferry them across to keep them dry," Mica added as a precaution, noting that Alex had nearly drowned when his thermal coat became soaked; which is why he had to ditch it into the lake.

  Mica and I removed our outer coats and carefully wrapped them around our gear to protect them from getting soaked, and shimmied our way down a broken section along the wall. Unable to spot any of the creatures lurking in the clear waters, Alex made his way down first and we lowered our bundles down to him. We eased ourselves into the cool lake, trying to tread our way across the open space between the outer wall and massive stone temple at its center; cautiously pausing whenever we saw movement in the waters around us.

  Peering beneath, there was still a good 30 meters of water depth to the ground floor of the temple. We paddled our way in through one of the open windows in the architecture. Alexander was the first one to find a ledge were we could get to dry ground, and he helped us to safety. The three of us sat there for a while; cold and tired from the crossing.

  Alex accepted the offer to take my coat for the moment; since after putting my thermal overalls we noticed the temperature was fairly warmer within this great structure; unlike the chilled climate of the caverns where we had ventured before. Finding a series of stairwells, we began our ascent to the upper levels. During the climb, it slowly dawned upon us that the pillars which supported this massive structure had been carved to represent giant men-like beings; each draped in various forms of ceremonial apparel.

  "How long do you think it will be before the water fully drains from this place?" I inquired towards the two scientists as I peered over the edge and into the dark blue depths of the temple tower.

  "From the intact ice sheet above this cavern, I would say this melt-off has been draining for the pa
st century or more, give or take a few decades," Mica answered as she eyed the dry sections of the ruins.

  "That roughly correlates with the peak of the industrial revolution, when C02 emissions and pollutants began circulating into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate," Alex added in response.

  "So, you're saying global climate had a hand in the recent exposure of this place?" I asked with curiosity.

  "Not caused by it directly per se, but more like it could have triggered a secondary response by the geomagnetic shift which Logan has been proposing," Mica answered as she tied up her hair before adorning her coat.

  "I don't understand," I admitted, dumbfounded.

  "Think of it more like a chemical reaction, where there is a response of imbalance from the composition of the stratosphere and solar winds," Alex explained, "both of which affect the climate of our planet on such an enormous scale that it goes unnoticed."

  "But that unbalance has been tipping ever more rapidly the closer it gets past the cusp, and may have somehow affected the magnetic flux of the Earth itself," Mica responded.

  "But I thought Logan said that these polar shifts, or whatever he called it, happened on a regular basis in earth's past," I began to argue.

  "This could very well be true, but that natural cycle could have been hastened by man's tinkering with the composition of the planet's atmosphere," Alexander countered.

  "So, you're saying that climate change is real...?" I queried with a hint of doubt.

  "Actually, the political argument about it is entirely invalid," Alex snapped, "because fundamentally, it really doesn't matter if human engineered climate change is real or not; because mankind should be acting more responsibly, regardless!"

  Mica nodded in agreement, and I couldn't help but admit the little man had a point. A majority of our modern civilization across the globe were burning up resources at an astronomical rate without a care as to the mess we were leaving the generations that follow. Forest lands were being razed into deserts while the oceans were being clogged with unfathomable levels of pollution as the human race progressively produced mountains of garbage and waste year after year with no where to put it. Humanity was poisoning the land and the sea and the air, while pretending that everything was fine while we choked on it.

  If earth's natural cycle of change was every dozen millennia or so; then it was very likely that our careless disregard for the health of the planet was acting as a catalyst to quicken the pace of what might become an extinction level event. Unfortunately, our nations had become so reliant on such fragile technology and infrastructure as supports to our economy, that mankind would implode upon itself if it failed. I used to think of how hard life had been centuries ago; and how most people living in our pampered societies lack any valuable survival skills if you ripped away their modern toys. It was a real enigma when the very technology we had created to extend our lives would likely be the very source of causing our untimely end.

  It was Mica who pointed out that the oversized steps and general architecture of the buildings here appeared to have been designed for people who were much taller than our current scale. Perhaps three to four meters tall or would have been a modest guess. The steps and handholds were of a much greater proportion, so much so that we felt like children walking in a world designed for adults. Checking to make sure her camera still worked, Mica took a few snapshots of our surroundings from the upper level.

  "Look, down there!" Alex pointed below while he adjusted his glasses he had managed to save. Along an outer bridge we saw the professor's headlamp swinging wildly about.

  "Quick; grab your flashlight and signal to him, but don't do any shouting!" I ordered towards Alex in a hushed tone.

  Alexander noted my concern as he took a glance up at the layer of creaking ice capping the cavern above us. He hurried towards the edge of the balcony and waved his flashlight for a few minutes towards our lost teammate, which we finally got a response from Logan far below who was using his own light.

  We had to find a way to get down to the Professor's level on this side of the complex, but found ourselves running into a series of dead ends. The deeper we went into the interior of the temple, the darker it became. I took out one of my emergency flares from my vest pocket and aimed it into the darkened void of the sunken sanctuary.

  "Step back," I warned as I aimed the aerial device. Alex and Mica stood back as I pulled the trigger and the bright red flare shot out into the darkness beyond the reach of our weak headlamps. The crimson glow illuminated several tall columns of carved bodies as it slowly arched and made its way down into the levels below. We were trying to find another access to a lower section and spotted several open archways a few floors below us. The hot ball of light from the flare bounced off the far wall and plummeted downward; eventually landing on a solitary ledge. In its flicker, the light played tricks on my eyes, as I thought I had seen something strange stir just within the sphere of its glow.

  "Mica, come over here," I asked, "can you see anything moving down?"

  Alex came up behind Mica and the three of us stood there peering into the darkness at the glowing amber light as it began to fade. There within the edge of its illumination, a shadow moved, then another. Soon those small handfuls of shaded flecks quickly became dozens as the walls surrounding the dying flare began to flutter as a strange sound filled the air.

  The red flare sputtered out, shrouding whatever we might have seen; leaving us standing there with our flashlights grasping at the enveloping darkness. Like winter ghosts, cruel fanged faces began to appear out of the gloom; their tight snouts and curved teeth curved up to exposed enormous ears. Their skin was a pale as death, pulled taught over their muscular frame; attached to wide featherless wings. Most horrible of all were their pink glazed eyes; devoid of any iris.

  We tried to scatter, though there was nowhere to run. Jumping for an outer window, we lodged ourselves against the inner wall as hundreds of the flying creatures soared past us; screaming like banshees. We had disturbed a colony of albino bats, and like everything else in this accursed place, they were giant in dimension. Most had bodies the size of a deer, though there were several that were far larger; and the breadth of their wingspan was frightening. They screeched like ivory demons as they cut through the air and swarmed into the open expanse above city ruins.

  "What the hell are those?" Alex mumbled in terror.

  "Ice bats or something, I don't know. Keep your voice down!" I hissed in return.

  The creatures appeared to be blind, but if they were true to their species; then they more than made up for it with their sensitivity to sound.

  "Holy hell; Logan is down there!" Mica spouted, as I realized that I had just released a horde of giant bats upon the unwitting professor.

  Giants in the Earth

  The cloud of giant bats began to disperse throughout the cavern as they tested the heights of the ceiling and began to make their way around the edges of the cavern walls. At one point in history this city surrounded by its protective cliff walls had once been exposed to the open sky. Over the countless millennia it had become buried under the encroaching ice; but how the water that had flooded the ruins stayed above freezing was still a mystery. The mammoth jellyfish were not as a shocking a find as were these giant flying mammals; for it was speculated that the inner content of the Antarctica was entirely devoid of life.

  A dozen thoughts ran through Mica's mind as she wondered how these bats could have survived here through antiquity. There were no records of insect or plant life they could have survived on all these years; so the only conclusion she could come up with was that they were carnivores who had either fed off of the aquatic life or the weak members of their colony. Seeing how they had been woken from their dormancy, there was also the possibility this species had the ability to hibernate for extended periods. As fascinating as that theory was, saving the Professor was a far more pressing matter at the moment.

  On the positive side, the lower stairwell w
as now clear of the enormous creatures; so we hustled our way down through the labyrinth of stairs and side corridors until we reached an exposed antechamber that opened to a broad balcony. Upon the high rail were the remnant growths of dying plants which appeared to be the same pinkish seaweed type plants we had found growing in the bottom of the fresh water river. Now exposed to the air, their strands had grown taught and lifeless. Testing their strength, I was impressed by their resilience.

  "Logan, up here!" Mica yelled over to the Professor who had scurried towards the end of the surrounding wall. Logan became alarmed when the swarm of giant bats had poured into the grotto above his head which were now spreading throughout the sunken cavern.

  Mica had shouted a bit louder than I would have liked, and the creaking of the ice roof above us argued to that fact. Cracks appeared above as her voice echoed; though the salvation of it came that the reverb was absorbed by the water below us. I begged her not to tempt fate twice.

  "Keep it down or you'll send the roof on our heads!" I pressed in a hushed tone. She caught herself in her blunder and shrugged in apology.

  Logan had seen our headlamps and made his way towards us, but came just short of diving into the water just meters below were he stood. I motioned for him to grab onto the lengths of dead vegetation; but he flashed a look of despair as large elongated bodies of the jellyfish could be seen coursing below the waters surface. The giant albino bats were soaring close overhead, bearing down on his position; so he took a leap of faith. Gauging himself, Logan hesitated for but a moment before he plunged into the water just as one of the winged mammals honed in on where he had stood.

  A few seconds after he hit the water, the professor could be seen dog paddling towards the hanging vegetation along the wall. Mica called out to Logan in alarm as one of the bats dove for him as he splashed around the water. Just as it flared its wings to slow its descent to snap at him, but a pair of transparent tentacles lashed out from beneath the creature where its beating wings were disturbing the waters surface. The beast screeched in mixed fear and anger as it was dragged under the cool water.