Wrath of the Volcano God Part Three

 

 

WRATH OF THE VOLCANO GOD

A Pulp Adventure

Part Three

"Then you two had better get off this boat, and fast!" Lewis told them as he struggled to break free of the ropes.

The pilot snorted.  "Not without you, buddy-boy!  Grab him!"  Ethan grabbed the ropes encircling Lewis' shoulders as Wayne grabbed the prone man's legs.  They ran for the gangplank.  Halfway down it, the dynamite exploded.  The main deck shattered, shot into the air like a volcanic explosion.  The gangplank lifted up under their feet and launched them onto the sandy beach.

Debris from the ship rained down into the water and along the beach.  Jigsaw pieces of deck or walls.  A cabin door.  A twisted length of the ship's railing.  Boxes from the hold, a lantern, a prybar and other tools.  The ship itself sunk lower in the water, no doubt the hold blew itself wide open somewhere below the water line.  The ship finally settled on the ocean floor at an angle, the prow of the ship sat higher than the stern.  A bit the foredeck, the main cabin, and dirty smokestack were all that jutted up from the water.  Just like that, the Josephine's Joy was no more.

Sarah stood from where she lay Bethany, sitting up against a rock.  She looked over the aftermath with despondent eyes, for she saw no sign of their three companions.

The gangplank landed with one end on a boulder that jutted up from the sand near the water's edge, the other dropped into the loose white sand.  One side jerked, then rose like a door on a hinge.  It slid off the boulder, which now held the gangplank propped up on one edge.  The three men emerged from beneath it.

"Thank Heavens you're alive!" she exclaimed as she rushed to them.  "Are you all right?"

Lewis took a quick stock of the situation.  "Yes, I think so.  How about you, Wayne?"

Wayne's ashen face told them that he was shaken.  Nevertheless, he picked himself up and slapped his Stetson onto his head as he said, "Had worse falls gettin' bucked offa broncos!"

"Clap?  You all right?" Lewis asked.

Ethan patted down his jacket, finally pulled out a pack of cigarettes.  "I'm still working on that 'alive' part.  I mean, my whole life flashed before my eyes!" He put a smoke in his mouth, lit it, took a long drag.  "You never paid me back for the Red Robin, by the way."

Lewis laughed.

Then the water beyond the whore began to churn.  It swirled and roiled.  In a few short moments it came to a bubble as though it had come to a rolling boil.  Large objects moved beneath the bubbling water, as though some undercurrent pushed them up toward the beach.  The first one emerged from the sea, it seemed to the shallow dome of a reddish-gray rock.  More clustered up to the edge of the beach, remaining submerged in the oncoming surf, at least for the moment.

Next to one of these rocks, a crab's claw reached up and out of the broiling surf.  It was of a monstrous proportion, easily two feet in length.  The pincers clacked twice, it may have been nothing more than a morning stretch, but it seemed like a signal as the rocks chose that moment to climb out of the water.

They were giant crabs, some as large as four feet across their barnacled shells.  Each one armed with a massive pair of claws that could crack a person's head wide open. 

Sarah screamed, ran back to pull Bethany to her feet.  Shouting exclamations of their own, Ethan and Wayne pulled Lewis to his feet.  Then they each grabbed the coil of rope and pulled it over his head.   Wayne let go of the rope, but some habit made Ethan pull the coiled rope over one arm and onto his shoulder without even realizing it.

The white sands were swarming with the monstrous crabs, one came upon a few boards from the ship's deck that were sticking up out of the sand.  With a single clack of its claw, it snapped the boards in twain.

"Run!" Lewis ordered, and the three men bolted inland.

Bethany, still weakened from the poison, was pulled to her feet by the younger woman.  Sarah wrapped one arm around Bethany's waist, pulled one of Bethany's arms over her shoulders and urged across the sandy beach.

Wayne paused, plucked a twisted piece of railing from the ground and chucked it at the oncoming horde.  It bounced off one crab's shell, rolled off another, but did nothing to slow their advance.  Lewis grabbed what appeared to be a stairway plank and threw it into the throng with similar result. 

The crabs had advanced upon their flank, cut off their path to the ravine-path they had followed to the beach.  They turned, and continued toward the cliff wall.  The humans ran at full speed, and gained a lengthy lead as the crabs scuttled forward at a slow but menacing gait.  As the distance lessened between them and the cliff face, they saw it was riddled with caves.  The lowest one was perhaps fifteen feet above the sand, and out-of-reach from their armored pursuers.

They were nearly out of the field of fallen debris when Lewis pulled a curved metal rod from the sand.  He cocked his arm to catapult it when he suddenly realized that it was a large three-pronged hook. 

The crabs marched on, clicking their pincers in their mad chase.  Sarah cried out as Bethany stumbled and nearly pulled them both to the ground.

"Clap!"  The pilot turned to him and Lewis tossed him the hook.  "Tie this to the rope so we can get up to one of those caves!"  Ethan caught it, nodded.  Lewis ran over and picked up Bethany fro where she fell.  He instructed Sarah to continue of, then followed carrying the crumpled woman in his arms once again.

Moments later they made it to the rocky wall and stood below one of the lower caves.  Lewis propped Bethany against the cliff as Ethan hastily tied the grappling hook to one end of the rope.  Wayne pulled out his six-guns and fired at the oncoming horde as Ethan whirled the hook up toward the cave above.

Wayne's bullets bounced off their heavy shells or cause a small burst of sand as buried itself in the beach at their feet.  Either way, that crab would pause, sometimes take a step back, and cause a minor logjam in their advance. It was only a momentary reprieve, then they would continue with their ominous charge.

The hook crashed into the sand.  Undaunted, or just desperate, Ethan tried again.  The hook clanged against the rock face and hurtled down a second time. 

"Dagnabbit!" Wayne cried, "You can't throw a rope to save your life!"  He slammed his revolvers into their holsters and took the rope away from the pilot.  He swung the hook in a circle, then launched it skyward.  It caught onto the cave mouth and stayed put.

Wayne pulled his guns out and resumed firing, which seemed to slow the onrushing crustacean mob, if only a little.  Lewis slipped his pack from his shoulders and handed it to Ethan.

"Take this, and get up there so you can help Miss Turnbull," Lewis instructed.

"What about her?" Ethan asked, pointing at Bethany Gale.

"I'll get her," Lewis said as he leaned over and pulled a large knife from Bethany's belt.  "Now get up there!"

Without argument, Ethan pulled the spare pack onto his shoulder where the rope had been moments before.  He grabbed the rope in both fists and walked up the rock wall to the cave. 

Lewis cut a few feet of rope from the bottom, then waved Sarah toward the rope.  "You're next!"

"But how..." the girl began.

Wayne fired off another round.  "No time to argue, just get!"

Though plagued by dissatisfaction and worry, Sarah climbed up the rope.  As she neared the cave, Ethan leaned out, grabbed her, helped her climb in.

As Sarah climbed, Lewis used his newly cut length of rope to tie Bethany's wrists together.  He pulled the girl to her feet, turned his back to her, then pulled her tied hands over his head.  Lewis took the rope in his hands and said, "Don't wait too long!"

"I weren't plannin' to," Wayne told him.

With a nod, Lewis hoisted himself up to the cave.  Below him, the crabs closed in on Wayne Johnson.  He leveled his pistol at one oncoming beast and pulled the trigger.  He was rewarded with a disappointing click and remembered the shots he had used on the ship.  He holstered that revolver, grabbed hold of the rope as one crab charged up to him.  He turned his pistol at it, squeezed the trigger.

The revolver barked a thunderclap and shattered the heavy shell between the crab's two eyestalks.  The monster trembled, then it's spidery legs collapsed beneath the dead weight of the body.

Wayne shoved the gun into it's holster, grabbed the rope and was instantly pulled off the white sand of the beach.  His friends pulled him into the cliffside cave and looked down at the monster-sized crabs clacking their claws in anger below.

They rested for a while near the cave mouth, nibbled at their provisions, sipped from their canteens, reloaded their guns, wiped their brows and caught their breath.  The stoic crabs stood stubborn guard below them, clicking and clacking their pincers with a promise of savage pain.

Ethan pulled the stub from his mouth and flicked it at the mob below.  "Looks like they ain't going anywhere anytime soon."

"That's all right.  We all got up here in one piece and we can follow this cavern," Lewis announced.  "If we're lucky, we'll find another way out."

Sarah stared down at the crustacean swarm.  "Do...do you think they got Dr. Carlsbad and his man?" The worry in her voice was genuine.

"I hope so," Bethany spat.  "Serve him right."

"What a horrible thing to say about another human being!" Sarah exclaimed, aghast.

Lewis grabbed the young woman in a firm embrace.  "If I know Everard, he got away from the crabs all right.  And that means he'll still be after the Heart of Tiki-Taki.  We've got to get to the Temple first if we're going to stop him."  He shot a furtive glance as the giant crabs below.  "You should take a couple of pictures of them," he told the girl.  "For posterity's sake.  That's what your father sent us to do, isn't it?"

"Yes it is," she agreed, and readied her camera.

Lewis turned to the rest of his crew.  "Dig out your flashlights, we're heading out!"

Sarah estimated the daylight, determined there was no need for the flash.  She aimed her Kodak, and took the picture.

*  *  *

The cavern was long and twisted.  It climbed, it dipped, it doubled back.  They found off-shoots that turned out to be dead-ends, and others that branched off in different directions.  Lewis led the expedition through the dark and winding caverns, and even Bethany Gale followed under her own power, although she steadied herself with one hand on the rocky wall.  After an hour of wandering through the labyrinthine tunnels, Lewis turned a corner, entering a large cave.  His light flittered across the uneven floor, across the far wall and over the crude images of a primitive mural.

"Hello!" he let loose a jovial cry, "And what's this?"

They stepped into the wider cavern and Sarah gasped with delight.  She rushed to the mural, giddy with glee.  "Some sort of pictographs!"  She smiled as she looked them over, wiped away dust and cobwebs.  "Substantial proof that a primitive civilization once lived here on Tiaganu Island!"

"I thought we already knew that?" Ethan asked as he looked over the weird symbols.

"It was only supposition then!" Sarah exclaimed as she pulled out the camera and the flash.  "Even second-hand stories and journal entries are still just stories, not actual proof!  That's what..."

"What Professor Sunnybrook always said!" Lewis recollected happy memories.  Sarah aimed the camera, held up her flash and released a burst of light with the click of a button.

"Well that's really swell," Bethany grumbled, "But I thought we were here to prove there was a Cult of the Volcano God, maybe even a Temple to Tiki-Taki?  Does this stone-age graffiti give you any clues about that?"

Lewis rubbed his chin and studied the mural as Sarah took more photographs.  Finally, he was forced to shrug in defeat.  "I don't know.  I can't read this stuff."

"What do you mean you can't read it?" Bethany exploded.  "What are we supposed to do now?"

The pilot stepped between them, waving for cooler heads.  "Hey!  This is not a problem!  How hard could it be to decipher?  Here, I'll read it!"

"You?" Bethany snorted in disbelief.

"Sure, why not?  It's just a petrified comic book!  Let's see now..."  He frowned at the symbols on the wall and stroked his chin.  After a moment he snapped his fingers and cried, "Aha!  I got it!  It's easy!"  He stepped up to the wall and pointed at various vignettes as he narrated:  "See...these stick figure guys, they lived in some kind of a spider web until one day they came upon a river of catsup.  They were so pleased by this that while this sheep dog was sleeping on its back, they held a party where this guy apparently did jumping jacks.  They knew the party was done when there was nothing left of the bonfire but a pile of burned sticks, the fire was dead--as signified by the skull--but the sticks were still smoking, see?  So then, they sat down on some giant, rotten bananas and looked at the other islands to see where to hold the next party!  See?  Piece of cake!"

Lewis hid his growing grin behind one hand while Bethany and Wayne stared with faces contorted by confusion.

"That has got to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life!" Bethany shouted.

"Hey, at least I tried!" Ethan barked back.

Sarah snapped another photograph and said, "And I really don't think you were too far off."

"How so?" Wayne asked.

Her eyes flitted across the mural bemusedly.  "Well, I think I can translate it."

"You can?" her fellows chorused, almost in unison.

"Well, I haven't been attending Munsey University for nothing!" she told them.  "Professor Sunnybrook and Dr. Drummond are very knowledgeable about primitive cultures, and even Dr. Carlsbad taught an excellent course...before he was disbarred, of course..."

"What does it say?" Bethany interrupted.

"Oh!  Well..."  Sarah pointed to each set of cave drawings as she explained them, just as the pilot had done.  "It appears that the Kazoolis used to live here, in fact they probably originated here on Tiaganu.  They lived in these caves--not a spiderweb--until they were evicted by some magma that bubbled up from the volcano.  Naturally, they sought to appease Tiki-Taki, the Volcano God.  So they made sacrifices of what appear to be goats and also of people.  They did this before the home or temple of Tiki-Taki; a skull-shaped cave in the smoking volcano.  It does not say whether or not this stopped the volcano from rumbling.  But the Kazooli natives took their canoes to live on other islands, but return annually to offer sacrifices to Tiki-Taki, probably in the hopes of placating him so he won't demolish the whole island chain.  At least..."  She hung her head and shuffled her feet.  "...that's my interpretation."

"Sounds like a good summary to me!" Lewis exclaimed.

Wayne found another cave painting a little further down the cave wall.  "What about this one?"

Bethany was surprised that she recognized it at once.  "That's a map of the island!"

Lewis pulled out the one Bethany had handed him on the plane.  He compared the two and declared, "She's right!"

"But look at this!" she pointed at different features on the cave painting.  "Giant carvings of heads...totems...a ravine...distinctive rock formations...this one's chock full of landmarks!"

"Maybe we should get us a copy like that," Wayne suggested.

"I'll take a photograph!" Sarah volunteered.  She stepped forward and clicked the shutter, the flash released a blinding burst of light.

"That'll be great once we get back to civilization and you can develop the film," Bethany told her.  "But it doesn't do us any good right here, right now."

 "Not a problem," Lewis said as he shrugged off his pack.  He dug through his supplies and came up with a small journal.  He flipped through the pages and a folded document fell out.  He snatched it from the floor, slipped it between two pages deep in the book.  Then he found a blank page and pulled out a pencil.  He consulted the cave painting as he scribbled a copy into his book.  "Ok, got it.  We'd better get moving."

They resumed their venture through the winding caves and before long, were rewarded with daylight.  They emerged from the side of a rocky plateau and found luscious foliage all around them.  The wind blew here, and carried with it the songs of birds and the call of monkeys.  Lewis pulled a compass from his pocket, consulted it, then pointed and said, "It's this way." 

After marching for the better part of an hour, they came upon a glade centered around a stone pillar crudely carved into an ugly, leering visage.  Three smaller stones surrounded it in a triangular formation, each baring mysterious carvings. 

Our heroes gawked at the stone for a moment.  They approached for a closer look at the head and the perimeter markers.  Suddenly, Bethany's sharp eyes turned toward the surrounding jungle, but only Lewis seemed to notice.  Sarah reached for her Kodak, and Lewis withdrew his journal.  He pulled on the folded document so it stuck out from the pages, handed the book to the pilot. 

"Get me rubbings of these marker stones, would ya, Clap?"

"Yeah, sure, Lew," Ethan replied, and took the book.

Lewis stepped beside Bethany as the others investigated the landmark.  "What is it?"

She shook her head in slow uncertainty.  "I got the feeling we're being watched."

Lewis listened, but no birdsong nor monkey chatter.  There was a faint breeze, but not so strong as the sound of rustling leaves just beyond the jungle's edge.  A twig snapped somewhere behind him.  A bush shook, but only for a moment.

It could have been his imagination, he hoped it was.  Another heartbeat passed, and then they knew for sure...

To Be Continued...