The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [225]
"I want to see if they've evolved."
"I don't like that." He nodded at the monitor. "That black area just west of the rift. I've watched it creeping across central Africa, erasing what I think was dense rain forest. Something ugly!"
"If it's a challenge, I want to cope with it now."
She had Pepe set us down on the bank of a new river, just a few miles from that narrow, cliff-walled sea.
We rolled dice to be first off the plane. Winning with a six, I opened the air lock and stood a long time there, staring west across the grassy valley floor to a wall of dark forest till Tanya nudged me to make room for her.
Pepe stayed on the plane, but the rest of us climbed down. Tanya picked blades from the grass at our feet and found them the same Kentucky Blue she and Pepe had sowed so long ago. When we looked through binoculars, however, the forest was nothing they had planted.
Massive palm-like trees lifted feathery green plumes and enormous trumpet-shaped purple blooms out of a dense tangle of thick crimson vines.
"A jungle of riddles," Tanya whispered. "The trees could be descended from some cactus species. But the undergrowth?" She stared a long time and whispered again, "A jungle of snakes! Slick red snakes!"
I saw them at last, when she passed the binoculars to me. Heavy red coils, rooted in the ground, they wrapped the black stalks of things that looked like gigantic toadstools. Writhing like actual snakes, they kept striking as if at invisible insects.
"A new evolution!" Tanya took the glasses back. "Maybe from the swimmers we saw on that beach? Maybe red from mutant photosynthetic symbiotes? I want a closer look."
"Don't forget," Arne muttered. "Closer looks have killed you."
We saw nothing else moving till Pepe's radio voice came from the cockpit, high above us. "Look north! Along the edge of the jungle. Things hopping like kangaroos. Or maybe grasshoppers."
We found a creature venturing warily over a ridge, standing tall to look at us, sinking out of sight, hopping on toward us to stand and stare again, rumbling with something like the purr of a gigantic cat. A biped, it had a thick tail that balanced its forequarters and made a third leg when it stood. Others came slowly on behind it, jumping high but pausing as if to graze.
"Our retrojets must have scared everything away," Pepe called again. "But now! Farther up the slope. A couple of monsters that would dwarf the old elephants. Half a dozen smaller, maybe younger."
"A danger to us?" Arne called uneasily.
"Who knows? The big ones have stopped to look. And listen, too. They've spread ears as wide as they are. They do look able to smash us if they like."
"Shouldn't we take off?"
"Not yet."
Arne had reached for the binoculars, but Tanya kept them, sweeping the forest edge and the riverbank and the herd of hopping grazers.
"A wonderland!" She was elated. "And a puzzle box. We must have slept longer than I thought, for all this evolutionary change."
Arne climbed back into the plane and came down with a heavy rifle he mounted on a tripod. He squinted through the telescopic sight, waiting for the monsters.
"Don't shoot," Tanya said, "unless I tell you to."
"Okay, if you tell me in time."
He held the rifle on them till they stopped a few hundred yards from us. Armored with slick purple-black plates that shimmered under the tropic sun, they looked a little like elephants, more like military tanks. The tallest came ahead, spread its wing-like ears again, opened enormous bright-fanged jaws, bellowed like a foghorn.
Arne crouched behind his gun.
"Don't," Tanya warned him. "You couldn't stop them."
"I've got to try. No time to take off."
He kept the gun level. We watched those great jaws yawning wider. A thunderous bellow scattered the hoppers. She caught his shoulder and pulled him away from his weapon. The monster stood there a long time, watching us through huge, black-slitted eyes as if waiting for an answer to its challenge, till finally it turned to lead its family on around us and down to the river. They splashed in and