A James Conrad Story (complete)

Chapter 13: Oh Dear Lord

Conrad POV

The gate opens before us as we begin our journey. Everyone starts cheering at our accomplishment and I glance to see Nieves still hugging his suitcase for his dear life.

I regard back to the wild forest hoping to see if I can spot Grace. The forest was too thick to see past the exterior. I can see a few birds flying away from the trees and I can tell that the skull crawler was there.

Mason stands beside me placing her hand on my shoulder as she looks at the view with me.

That's when I hear it.

It's mighty roar deafening those around it, the ground shakes causing ripples in the water. I see a spark of red from deep within the depths of the forest, a flare gun. Once again, I hear another, more painful, roar. It all went quiet until we heard a loud explosion, deafening our ears and I look away.

Surely from that impact, something must have died. Hopefully, Grace being the one surviving. If she did survive, how could she possibly make it to the north side of the mountain at the same time as us? Clearly, this was not planned through. I hug my gun tighter against my chest and look around.

"Do you think she made it?" I hear Mason whisper towards Nieves

"I mean probably not. She's crazy to even think she stood a chance against the beast" Nieves responds insincerely. Half of me wishes Nieves was wrong and half of me knows he was most likely correct. I glare at Nieves and he looks up at me before shutting up and continuing to sit in silence.

I look at Mason giving her a half smile.

"You know her as well as I do. Of course, she's ok" I try to say reassuring, but my voice deceives me as it comes out more of a quiver than confident.

"You're probably right," she says looking away. I turn to see San and Houston are in their own little world, conversing with one another. They seem happy with what they have and I can tell just by looking at Houston that he is falling for San, but his fears do take away the best of him.

"I got a wife, have a wife, had a wife? Guess I don't know anymore?" Marlow says as he looks at a picture of his wife in sorrow. He continues to tell the story about how his wife telegrammed him saying he has a baby boy right before he crashed. His child is now in his twenties and has never seen or heard about his dad.

" She probably thinks you dead, man," Slivko says. I hit the roof where he was sitting.

"hey!" I exclaimed

"I'm just saying"

"you don't know that. You would be surprised on how long people will wait." I say sincerely, looking at him

A few moments later we start hearing voices coming through the communicator and we hear Slivko excitedly pick it up.

"WE HAVE A SIGNAL!" He screams excitedly as everyone starts doing victory cheers.

"Yes hello, it's Fox Five, we can hear you guys. We're on a boat. Can you hear us? Over" he says. After a moment of silence, we were able to hear the faint voice of the other team.

They were still alive. Thank god.

"Yeah we met an old Santa Claus, time traveller guy, you'll get to meet him. We're on a plane boat. We're on a ploat. " Slivko responds

I can hear the other side cheering faintly as well and before I knew it a flare signal shot up to the sky. They were close.

Marlow starts redirecting the boat towards the flare.

All of a sudden I hear a deafening screech from above and with great terror I see a pterodactyl-like bird swoop down and pick up Nieves like he was weightless. Nieves' cries for help echoing through the mountains