Age of Men Read online

a rope tied to it that stretched across the chasm to the other side and was tied to another tree. The gap to the other side was about two hundred feet across. To her surprise, Bruce checked whether the rope was secure by yanking at it.

  “You want us to cross that?” Alicia asked horrified.

  Bruce yanked at the rope once more to show her that it was secure enough to carry an elephant.

  “It’s quite safe. I tied it myself.”

  Alicia was doubtful and didn’t think the rope seemed very secure. If she was expected to cross a gorge of doom, she wanted to cross it in a cable-car or a modern-day bridge made of cast iron and not something that seemed as if it could snap out from underneath her weight.

  “You tied that?” Alicia asked, “How?”

  “With a lot of patience. Let’s go. We’re losing light.”

  “And how do you propose we cross? I’m no circus tightrope walker.”

  “Tyrolean Traverse.” He said confidently, “Or Tyrol for short, but since we don’t have anything to clip ourselves onto the rope, we’ll have to do the monkey crawl.”

  “The what now?”

  “It’s quite simple.” He assured her, “Here, I’ll show you.”

  Bruce grabbed a hold of the rope with both hands, swung his feet up and clasped them together around the rope. He slowly started pulled himself along the rope one hand after the other and stopped about two feet away. Alicia had a bad feeling about the rope – and she had a fear of heights.

  “You don’t have a fear of heights, do you?” Bruce joked.

  “No.” Alicia sighed, “I have a fear of falling to my death.”

  Bruce made it seem so easy as he continued along the rope – looking more like a sloth than a monkey and Alicia’s hands started trembling. She took a deep breath and after a while of inner conflict, she grabbed a hold of the rope. She slowly inched along the rope and made the mistake of looking down - the abyss reached down hundreds of meters before disappearing into darkness and the withering height made her head spin again.

  She tried telling herself that it wasn’t as bad as it seemed, but there was no point in lying to herself. She just had to be brave for her son and then she took the rope with both hands and clasped her feet onto the rope like Bruce showed her. The backpack felt sloppy and uneven and as if it was dragging her down, but she tried to ignore it as she pulled herself along the rope one hand over the other.

  She glanced over at Bruce in front of her and saw a wooden mug fall out of his backpack and tumbled down towards the dark abyss below. The mug disappeared into the darkness and out of sight, but unbeknown to them, the mug continued falling for hundreds of feet and fell onto the head of a black snake that lay sleeping in a shallow pool of water at the bottom of the abyss.

  The mug was barely the size of a grain of rice compared to the magnitude of the snake, but yet the creature woke up when the tiny obstacle landed on its head. It hissed and looked up at the two humans dragging themselves along the rope about half a mile above it and it slowly slithered up against the wall of the abyss towards them.

  23

  Just don’t look down, Alicia kept telling herself as she kept her sights on the rope above her. She placed one shivering hand over the other as she pulled herself along the rope that stretched across the abyss of certain death below and she desperately wished to wake up in her bed with Jack next to her and Timmy safe in his own bed.

  Alicia and Bruce were slowly inching closer to the other side of the abyss when a startling noise in the absence of anything down in the abyss made Alicia look down, but she couldn’t see anything. Despite her eyes telling her that there was nothing, the tingling in her spine told her mind that something bad was coming their way. Call it a sixth sense or a woman’s intuition, but she definitely knew something wicked was coming their way.

  “There is something moving down there.” Alicia called out.

  “What?”

  Alicia stared back up at the rope for a second telling herself that it was just her imagination, but when she glanced down again, she noticed something moving in the darkness... something large.

  “Bruce, there’s something down there.”

  Bruce glanced down just as the colossal snake slithered out of the darkness towards them like a demon from the dark pits of hell. Alicia gasped upon seeing the massive monster and nearly lost her grip on the rope.

  “Hurry up!” Bruce insisted.

  They hurried themselves along the rope to the nearing edge as the snake slithered closer and closer and then finally reared its ugly head over the edge of the abyss behind them. It draped its scaly body around the tree that anchored the rope Alicia screamed at the sight of the giant snake that hissed and tightened its grip on the tree – causing the rope to slowly untwine.

  “We’re going to fall!” Alicia screamed.

  “Hurry up and don’t look back!”

  They dragged themselves along the rope and tried to be as quick as they could without falling to their deaths. Bruce finally reached the other side, crawled out onto the edge and threw his backpack aside as he stumbled to his feet – Alicia was still a few feet out. The rope snapped free from the tree on the other side and dropped; Alicia screamed as the rope swung and slammed her up against the wall of the abyss. The impact knocked the wind out of her and her grip was slipping.

  “I don’t want to die!”

  “You won’t!” Bruce called out, “Grab my hand!”

  Bruce reached out to her and grabbed her by the arm, pulled her over the edge and onto the solid ground. Alicia gasped for air once she was safely on the other side. The tree on the opposite side creaked; making them both looked up and they watched as the it unearthed and tumbled down to the dark abyss below; dragging the snake with it.

  She dusted herself off as they both stood up. It was a close call. She could have died.

  “How will we get back to your cabin?”

  “We don’t.” Bruce finally said with some sadness in his voice.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” He said, “It’s not your fault… and besides, this was probably the nudge I needed to get out of my cabin and look for other people.”

  A loud shriek made them both look up at the sky, but they saw nothing.

  “What the hell was that?” Alicia asked worried.

  “It’s one of those flying monsters. Your screaming led them here. We have to go. Staying put will mean certain death.”

  Alicia spotted a fiery glow in the sky that came soaring down towards them at an alarming rate. Bruce grabbed her by the arm and they started running towards a group of trees in the distance. Alicia looked back over her shoulder and gasped at the horrid flying creature with wings of fire that came closer with each flap of its wings. The threatening sounds it made reverberated through the air, bounced off the canyon and echoed back again as a signal of its descent.

  Alicia and Bruce ran as fast as their legs could go, but it seemed the monster was faster. The trees were just in reach when the monster swooped down towards them as they dived in between the trees. The monster slammed down onto the ground, sending grass and loose soil flying in every direction upon impact. The monster was too big to follow them into the woods, and so it shoved its scaly snout in between the trees; snapping its razor sharp teeth at Alicia’s feet – missing her by mere inches.

  The creature flapped its wings and shrieked as it snapped its jaws in between the trees. The flap of its wings reignited the flames and some of the outer trees caught fire. The creature was determined to get the humans and started unearthing ablaze trees and flung them aside like trash.

  “Don’t look back!” Bruce yelled as he grabbed her by the arm again.

  Alicia and Bruce ran through the thick undergrowth that lined the floor of the forest as the creature’s flapping wings set more trees on fire while it continued unearthing trees vigorously. The creature pushed its way through the burning trees and reached out with its front paw, but it still couldn’t reach the humans
– something that infuriated the creature even more.

  Its furious screeches pierced the air and Alicia let go of Bruce’s hand to cover her ears as they ran. A moment later everything was quiet. Bruce motioned for her to stop running and they both glanced back over their shoulders – there was no sign of the creature except the burning trees.

  Something cold touched Bruce’s neck and when he turned around he was met by a large and muscular bare chested man in a breechclout pointing a spear at him. He tapped Alicia against the upper arm and she gasped when she saw the huge man.

  The man, whose face was behind an illuminated mask with a visor, spoke in a language neither one of them understood and they simply stared at him with blank expressions as another large man in similar attire in on a horse-like creature with six legs.

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying.” Bruce said cautiously.

  “Who are you?” Alicia asked, “What do you want?”

  “The female’s coming with us.” The second man said in a stern and powerful voice.

   

  24

  Hours have passed since they were dumped in the fiery concentration camp and Timmy had fallen asleep in Jack’s secure embrace. The two suns had set about an hour earlier, but the concentration camp was still brightly lit by the fire wall.

  Jack sat in the mud and stared at the millions of distraught people; to his left a father was cradling the head of his deceased son and cried like a baby. To his right he saw another man scrutinizing the wall of fire, but