Read The Lost Level for Free Online

better about my situation now that I was armed with something more than
a walking stick. Once I’d found food and shelter, and had a chance to rest, I
intended to start looking for a way back home. I considered retracing my steps
and turning to the jungle to find the corpse of the deer, but the thought of
trying to free the dead animal from the razor–grass seemed foolish. I’d have
better luck hunting something I didn’t have to fight another predator
for—especially if that predator was a plant that could slice me to ribbons. A
.45 is a formidable handgun, capable of stopping almost any attacker—from an
armed intruder to a bear in the wild—but it wouldn’t do much against blades of
grass. I’d be better armed with a weed whacker or a lawnmower.
    After tying the plastic bag’s handles around one of my belt
loops, I stuck the .45 in my waistband. The metal felt cool against the small
of my sweaty back. I’d made sure no rounds were chambered and wasn’t too
worried that I’d accidentally shoot myself while climbing down. I clambered out
of the Jeep and out onto the rocks, scaling the cliff face like a spider. I
descended at a different point from my initial climb, and in doing so, I
noticed something I hadn’t seen before. On the other side of the peak lay a
long, shadowed crevice. A narrow, winding trail snaked along the bottom of it,
providing less treacherous footing and more importantly, an escape from the
ever present sun.
    I eased around the cliff face, working my fingers into the
cracks, and lowered myself onto a jumble of boulders just above the crevice. I
glanced at the jungle and forest far below, admiring once again the strange,
crazy–quilt geography of this strange dimension. There was no sign of the smoke
I had spotted earlier. Instead, it had been replaced with a shimmering heat
haze that seemed to blur everything. The trees looked so small from this
height. I was reminded of the tiny replicas that had come with the model train
set my father had set up in the basement for my siblings and me when we were
kids. At that moment, I felt older than I was, and the distance between where I
now was and my family still were seemed like an unimaginable gulf.
    I clambered down from the boulders and, with some relief, stood
on solid ground again. I was about to enter the crevice when I startled a bird
that had been nesting between the rocks. It resembled a chicken, but it was
smaller, and its feathers were light grey. It moved faster than any hen or
rooster I’d ever seen. The bird squawked with fright as it flew away. Startled,
I steadied myself against a boulder while my pulse resumed its normal pace. I
found the nest after a quick search, but there were no eggs in the tangle of
sticks and grass. My stomach rumbled again.
    I pulled the binoculars out of the bag and tried to track the
bird. I scanned from the left to the right, but couldn’t find it in my field of
vision. I was just about to give up when I caught sight of something glinting
in the sun, far, far away at the base of the hills. I focused the binoculars,
zooming in on the location, and what I saw made my breath catch in my throat.
    Five figures marched toward the jungle. Each of them was similar
to a man, having two arms, two legs, and a head, but that was where the
likeness stopped. Instead of being human, they were reptilian in nature. Their
greenish–grey skin was covered with scales, and they had serpent’s heads,
complete with fangs and flickering tongues. They had three fingers and a thumb
on each hand and stood an average of seven feet tall. Their weight and shape
varied, but overall they seemed to be slender and wiry. They carried a variety
of weapons—everything from crude swords and crossbows to rifles of a sort like
I’d never seen. They also wore a strange assortment of armor and gear. One was
dressed in what appeared to be police riot armor, complete with a mirrored–visor
helmet that didn’t quite fit over its snake–like