Free Seven Wonders Book 1: The Colossus Rises by Peter Lerangis

sitting on—a stump.
    “Guys?” I said. “Does that look weird to you? A flat stump in the middle of the jungle? I mean, trees don’t shear themselves flat. Someone had to have done this.”
    Marco took a flashlight from his pack and shone it on the stump:

    “Dude, somebody carved this,” Marco said.
    Cass wandered over and leaned in. As he ran a finger over the grooves, a strangled scream rang out from the woods.
    Aly .
    We turned and ran. She was about twenty feet ahead of us, standing rigid, her hands to her mouth. “I did not see that—I am feeling sick—my eyes are playing a trick—I did not see that,” she was muttering.
    “See what?” asked Cass.
    Aly swallowed. “Nothing. Probably a possum, or a woodchuck, or an armadillo or a hyena or whatever the heck they have in a jungle. It just—in the dark, it looked like a panther or something, only with a hog’s face. And teeth.”
    I froze. “A hog’s face?”
    Marco put his arm around her. “Hey, it’s okay. Lot of stress here tonight. We’re almost there, right, brother Cass?”
    “Should be about twenty minutes,” Cass said.
    Aly nodded, and she and Marco fell in behind Cass once again.
    I stayed close, trying to keep my peripheral vision open. But all I could think about was my recurring dream. Of the chase and the explosion and the earthquake. And the beast I had seen so often in my imagination, the hose-beaked vromaski.
    The creature with a body like a beast of prey, a snout like a hog, and teeth.
    We trudged on until I felt I had no unbitten skin left. It seemed as if we’d been gone a whole night. The moon was still high but dulled by clouds that had moved in suddenly. Before long the cool sea breeze stiffened up. It tickled my lungs and I began to cough. The ground beneath us was growing sandier. I could hear the crashing of waves now. Cass stopped, his head cocked to the left.
    “Akerue,” he said. “We made it.”
    I could see a dull licking of whitish-gold ahead of us through the branches. It was the dim, defiant reflection of the now nearly obscured moon against a body of water. A wave thundered onto the shore, and one lonely seagull cawed. As its silhouette rose into the faint circle of the moon’s remaining light, we all began to run toward the sound.
    Marco hit the sandy beach and flew into a cartwheel. Aly started dancing but dissolved into a fit of laughter and coughing. There was a faint rotten stench, which I figured to be some washed-up dead fish, but even that seemed sweet.
    It was the smell of freedom.
    As I stumbled forward, my foot caught a root and I fell. I didn’t care. I rolled to my feet, a laugh tearing itself upward from my throat. In the distance I could see a small wooden dock, with the shadow of a boat risingand falling on the water. The soft creak of its mooring ropes against the hull was the only sound.
    Until Cass’s shriek pierced the night. Directly to my right.
    “ Get this thing off me! ” he shouted.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
E SCAPE FROM KI
    M ARCO RACED BY me in a blur.
    By the edge of the woods, Cass flailed against an enormous assailant. In the moon’s dull light, all I could see were shadows, a changing mass of flesh and limbs.
    I ran as fast as I could. But as I got closer I realized what Cass was battling. It wasn’t an animal or a human.
    It was a monster. And it was dead.
    The thing was rolling with him, its bones all akimbo in the moonlight. Marco was pulling Cass away, but Cass’s arm was in the rubbery grip of a dripping band of sinew.
    I was too panicked to gag. Before I could reach them, the sinew recoiled with a thwap . Marco hurtled backward, tumbling head over heels with Cass down the sloping beach.
    At the bottom, Cass rolled to his feet. “Never again!” he shrieked. “I will never, ever let you talk me into something like this again!”
    With that he bolted toward the jungle.
    “Where are you going?” Aly called out from the beach.
    “I’m covered with guts!” Cass shouted.