3. CAVEMEN VALLEY

Chapter 1

STRANGE DANGERS

Aztec Calder stumbles and falls repeatedly along the narrow forest path. His long, gray beard hangs dirty and stringy, halfway down his emaciated chest. His clothes are in rags, and his arms and legs are thin and bony.

Gasping, he stops. The world spins around him. Weary, he closes his bloodshot eyes. He pulls the rifle, to which he clings like a treasure, closer to his body.

Aztec Calder is tired, deathly tired. Behind him are two years of utter terror. Two years in which death was his companion every second. For him, Alex Kromhout, Mimi Loloberg, Peter Couzyn, and Elize Angeli...

In those two years, the horror from prehistoric times overtook him and four other members of their group. Cruel, as only prehistoric times can be cruel, which in this strange valley in Tropical Africa has become a reality.

But Aztec Calder finally managed to escape. Escape? In his fevered brain, doubt grows. Escape to where? He wanted to seek help in civilization, but he has been stumbling aimlessly for days, without encountering a single human being.

Day by day, he felt his strength gradually waning, until he was eventually driven forward by sheer willpower alone.

Weakly, he wipes his sweaty forehead. His eyes burn like two coals of fire. In his chest, the fever already scorches and makes his legs weak.

And then he notices the male lion staring at him with devilish pools of light in its eyes. He tries in vain to lift the rifle, his eyes fixed on the king of the jungle. The lion’s tail twitches, as if it cannot quite comprehend the strange creature before it.

Aztec Calder’s breath rasps through his throat. Finally, the rifle trembles on his shoulder. His eyes drop to the sight. The bead sways before him. His legs buckle slightly beneath him.

The lion lets out a menacing growl, then lowers itself onto its belly and creeps a few steps closer. Aztec Calder’s finger curls around the trigger. The bead is on the lion, above him, then below him. The shot cracks loudly, and the bullet plows a furrow through a tree branch.

Then the lion leaps. Calder stumbles backward, falls, and blocks with a weak arm. He screams hoarsely and weakly.

And then his eyes widen. His thoughts gather at a point, but just as they begin to make logical conclusions, they scatter like water. He sees again the giant creature with its long neck in the valley, its awkward forelimbs, its tail dragging behind it like an oar, and its teeth gleaming in rows in its large mouth...

In his lucid moments, he sees the lion before him, spinning around and rearing up on its hind legs. He hears it roar, sees the gaping maw and the long claws in its forepaws... Then he sees the sunburned body of a white man on the beast’s back, his gleaming knife blade, and his blonde hair disheveled in all directions...

Later, he is aware of a swaying rhythm, of arms under his legs and around his back, of wonderful cool water dripping into his thirsty mouth, and of soft leaves under his feverish body. Then he raves again, sees the animals of that strange valley, the prehistoric men with their long, matted hair, muscular bodies, clubs, and pelts...

Again and again, he relives his death struggle with the creature with many teeth and the long tail. The massive beast that towered over him like a mountain, over him and over Alex, Peter, Mimi, and Elize... and also over Zato. He relives the gruesome moment when the beast grabbed Zato in its short forelimbs and tore him apart before the bullets hit its brain and sent it tumbling to the ground.

And beside him watches the strange white man, whom he vaguely remembers through his fevered brain as having fought the lion. In his lucid moments, he realizes that this stranger must have dealt with the lion.

Aztec Calder often raves. It is in moments like these that he shouts against that strange valley, against the cruel fate that landed them there.

And it is then that the white giant bends over him and listens...