Jurassic Sea (Jurassic Adventures Book 2) Read online

  Jurassic Sea

  Viktor Zarkov

  Copyright 2016 by Severed Press

  ONE

  Colt McKinnon had come out of the most terrifying few days of his life and seemingly landed in the lap of fame just a few weeks later. The day or so he had spent on what the media was now calling Jurassic Island (but what had been called Spectre Island by those in the know long before that) seemed like a distant nightmare now. At first, he had actually suffered nightmares where monstrous prehistoric beasts had devoured him…but those days were long gone. His terror had inexplicably morphed into the realization of just about every dream he’d had since the age of thirteen or so.

  He’d been on countless new programs and talk shows. He’d been the featured speaker at countless seminars and he had even graced the cover of several magazines. He was getting calls from every network possible, some offering him obscene amounts of money to do nothing more than participating in lame reality shows. He’d also gotten a few offers from the larger networks, offering even more money to host shows about the supernatural, the unexplained and everything in between.

  The day he was able to turn down a seventy-million-dollar contract for eight months of work, Colt knew without a doubt that his life had drastically changed.

  But even rejecting that lucrative contract was nothing more than a distant memory now. Currently, Colt found himself standing at a small coffee kiosk in the offices of National Geographic. He’d just been interviewed for a special that would air next week. It was a two-hour interview that had been more draining than he had expected. But he thought it was going to be the interview to do more than just put him on the map (not that he wasn’t already there). This was going to be the interview that solidified his place in history—the one that would finally get him the respect that he had been looking for ever since he stepped in front of a camera for the very first time and hunted for Bigfoot in the forests of Oregon.

  He’d gotten congratulatory pats on the back after the interview. It had ended twenty minutes ago; all the lights had been dimmed, and the audio and video crews had gone their separate ways. There was a vibe in the air, the sort of buzz that came with a job well done. He had knocked the interview out of the park. He knew it, the network knew it, and even the very space within the building knew it. This was the first moment he’d had to be by himself, chugging down a cup of lukewarm coffee in the break room of a building he had coveted for a very long time.

  As he drank it, he felt a slight vibration in his pocket. He almost ignored it; his phone had been blowing up ever since he’d gotten back to the States following the events on Spectre Island. But instinct was a hard thing to kill, so he pulled the phone out anyway. Secretly, he was still waiting on a call from someone in Hollywood to offer him a cameo in a horror movie.

  So far, that had not happened.

  When he saw the name on the display, he was glad he had decided to answer it anyway.

  “Hey,” he said, doing his best not to sound as tired as he felt.

  “Are you done?” came a now-familiar female voice.

  “Yes. We wrapped up about twenty minutes ago. How are you? This is an unexpected surprise.”

  “I know,” the woman on the other end said. “We wrapped things up much earlier than expected. When I got back home, I found an interesting e-mail. And we can talk about what it entails when I see you again.”

  “And when might that be?”

  The woman laughed seductively. “I’ve already a sent a car for you. It’s probably already in front of the building. I figure it will take you fifteen minutes to get to my apartment. So…eighteen minutes, I guess.”

  “I’ll see you then,” Colt said.

  He pocketed the phone and finished his coffee before hurrying out of the break room and down the hall towards the elevator.

  The woman on the other end of the phone had been Nyoko Hisakawa. She was technically his employer and had been ever since the day her crew had rescued him off of Spectre Island. She had been the longtime nemesis of Joseph Thornton, the maniacal and rather self-obsessed man that had originally gotten him involved in the Spectre Island debacle (God rest his soul). Over a couple of weeks, the professional relationship between Colt and Nyoko had become something a little more and then had erupted into what Colt guessed could be considered a relationship of some sort.

  Well, relationship might be a stretch. So far, there had been nothing more than a lot of sex and in-depth discussions about future treks that Nyoko would like for them to pursue. There were times when Colt wondered if Nyoko was only using the sex to keep him under her thumb. He was popular now and, whether she would admit it or not, was damn good at what he did. Honestly, if that was Nyoko’s plan, Colt didn’t mind. She had a ridiculously perfect body and never asked him for anything more than ample time in bed and discussions about subjects that Colt was passionate about. The woman was a genius in terms of technology, had a passion for the unexplained that rivalled his own, and seemed to be insatiable between the sheets.

  All in all, it wasn’t a bad situation to be in.

  As Nyoko had said, there was indeed a car waiting for him outside of the National Geographic building. He got in and the car pulled off right away. To pass the time during the drive, Colt used his phone to flip through his e-mails and had one of those moments where he found it impossible to believe that this was the life he was living now.

  In his inbox, he saw emails that read like a who’s-who of pop culture and news. An interview request from someone at the SyFy Channel. An editor from Rolling Stone that was offering him the cover if he’d consider a ten-page interview space. A publishing house sending a fourth attempt to lure him into writing an account of what had happened on Spectre Island (their offer was now for fifteen million dollars with a two-million-dollar signing bonus).

  And low and behold, finally…a casting agent wanting to know if he’d be interested in a cameo role in an upcoming horror movie.

  Colt did a little fist pump in the back of the car. It was almost too much. He’d considered the book idea and was pretty sure he’d end up doing it. But not just yet. He’d have to wait until he was acclimated to this new lifestyle.

  The car delivered him to the front of Nyoko’s building less than twenty minutes later. When he stepped out of the car, he pocketed his phone and his thoughts turned instantly to Nyoko. When he thought of her in this way, there was nothing romantic about it. In fact, it made him feel like a lustful eighteen-year-old again. What they had was fun and a little dangerous, given that they worked together. And it was a very nice distraction from the whirlwind his life had become.

  He took the elevator up to her large, four-bedroom apartment—the largest one in the building by far—and tried to do the math to his life. Had it really taken nearly getting devoured by prehistoric creatures to reach this amazing pinnacle? Something about that seemed deeply flawed, but he wasn’t going to start complaining now.

  He used his key to get into the apartment (Nyoko had given him one three weeks ago) and when he closed the door behind him, he started to get excited right away. He made his way through the living room, calling for her.

  “Where are you?”

  “Where do you think?” she asked, her voice both bossy and sexy at the same time.

  He walked into the master bedroom and saw her lying on the bed in a sheer black thing that left very little to the imagination. Her flawless pale skin and black hair, let down over her delicate shoulders, seemed to call to him. It was every young boy’s wet dream, like something straight out of a magazine.

  “Um, I thought you said there was an e-mail,” he said.

  “There is,” she
said, propping her head up on her hand.

  “What about?” he asked, toying with her.

  “The Bermuda Triangle.”

  “A legit case?”

  “I think so, yes. But…you really want to talk about that now?”

  Sadly, a part of him did. But at the same time, the mostly naked lady on the bed was also equally important. But, like any man that had given in to the sight of a beautiful woman at least once before, it was a simple choice. The Bermuda Triangle had been there forever, and it wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

  But Nyoko’s perfect naked body was here right now, three feet away from him, and it was his for the taking.

  The Bermuda Triangle could wait. For now, there were other things to explore.

  TWO

  When they were done, they were both sweating and panting. Nyoko preferred long marathon sessions most of the time and Colt did everything he could to oblige. She was in perfect shape and usually recovered after a few minutes. Colt, on the other hand, was about twenty pounds overweight and only hit the gym once or twice a week and when he did, it was fleeting. He was still catching his breath when Nyoko walked into the adjoining bathroom and took a shower.

  As he finally collected his breath, Nyoko called out to him over the sound of the shower water. “My personal e-mail is open on the laptop,” she said. “There’s an e-mail that’s already opened for you. I think you might recognize the name of the sender.”

  Colt pulled his boxers back on and couldn’t help but sneak a peek at her through the shower’s glass door. Was this really his life? What did Nyoko see in him? Surely his assumption about her using sex just to keep him close was dead on. It’s the only thing that made any real sense to him.

  After all, she had been successful and incredibly wealthy before Spectre Island. She had inherited a tremendous fortune from her grandfather and was a powerhouse in the business world. Nyoko owned two Japanese television networks as well as one of Japan’s largest telecom companies. Most of that had come from her grandfather, and she had built steadily upon it. The things she had gotten into and become successful at on her own included under the radar, cutting-edge scientific instrumentation. Her small yet ridiculously profitable tech company had millions tied up in the Large Hadron Collider project as well as a space tourism venture that the public didn’t even know about.

  And then, of course, she had her obsession with all things unexplained on the side. And that’s why she had hired Colt after her team had rescued him from Spectre Island. They had discussed potential jobs since then, and he wondered if the e-mail he was about to read might be linked to it.

  He pulled up the mail and his eyes grew wide when he saw the name in the sender field.

  “Heath Francis?” he asked, a bit excited.

  “Yeah, I know. Sorry I didn’t tell you before now, but I wanted to make sure I had everything squared away.”

  “What are you squaring away?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer, so he read the mail. All it said was “Your plans sound good to me and I’m good to go. You know how to reach me if things change.”

  “What’s this about?” Colt asked.

  The shower shut off and the door opened, revealing her naked form. Before Colt could sneak another peek, Nyoko had a towel wrapped around her.

  “I’ve been getting some reports that there has been a spike in activity in the area known as the Bermuda Triangle over the past two weeks.”

  “Reports from where?”

  “I have a few small floatation devices out in the area—updated versions of devices that my grandfather put out there years ago. And they’ve been feeding us some pretty interesting findings.”

  “Any disappearances yet?”

  “No,” Nyoko said. “All I’ve been able to come across are a few planes experiencing turbulence and temporary electrical failures. A single boat also reported rough waters that came out of nowhere, with no storm in sight.”

  “You’ll have to excuse the ignorance of your non-science obsessed employee,” Colt said with a smile, “but just what sort of use could readings from inside the Bermuda Triangle at a peak time do for you?”

  “Tons,” she said and got a sparkle in her eye that Colt had gotten used to. Nyoko loved to talk about work, especially when it came to the ins and outs of science. “I have a theory that magnetic shifts within that area will, on occasion, open dimensional rifts. This is based off of speculation that my grandfather wrote about. I believe that if I can catch the phenomenon in action, there’s a chance that I could learn enough about it to apply it to scientific research towards space travel.”

  “That is sort of awesome,” Colt said. Sometimes he felt like such a fanboy novice around her, and it made him feel very inferior.

  “Yes it is,” she said.

  “And you kept all of this a secret from me?” he asked. “Weird stuff like this is sort of my thing, you know. The Heath Francis case is sort of legendary.”

  “I know. And that’s why I didn’t want to breathe a word of it to you until I knew for sure that it all checked out. That included getting Heath Francis in on it. I assume you know who he is?”

  “Yes. He went missing in the Triangle for eight days in 2007. He was flying a small plane with five passengers, headed to Bermuda. Half an hour into the flight, all of his instrumentation went dead, and they flew into what Heath described as a bright white light. When they came out, they had somehow gotten turned around and were headed back to Florida. They had travelled about ninety miles in what they perceived to be less than ten minutes. When they landed, one of his passengers was in a coma. It was then, at the airport, that Heath and his passengers discovered that they had been missing for eight days.”

  “All correct,” Nyoko said. “What you left out—and what never made it to the news, even to the seedier parts of the internet—was that one of his passengers committed suicide by hanging himself with a belt two weeks later.”

  “And how did you come to get in touch with Heath Francis?” Colt asked.

  “He reached out to me about six months ago,” she said. “Apparently, he went deep into the paranormal community and studied up on my grandfather. Heath said he keeps having dreams that seem prophetic. He says that if I ever wanted to understand the Triangle, he was pretty sure he knew the route to take me…well, somewhere else. He just thinks the time needs to be right.”

  “And you think that time is now?” Colt asked.

  “I think the instrumentation we have out in those waters indicates that it’s time for something, yes.”

  Colt thought about this and felt a stirring and familiar excitement within him. He’d been fascinated with the Bermuda Triangle for as long as he could remember. This was huge in terms of life ambition.

  “His mail says he’s good to go,” Colt said. “What does that mean?”

  She smiled at him and placed her hand high up on his thigh, caressing him playfully. “It means we only have about an hour and a half before we have to meet him at the airport.” She then leaned into him and whispered, “Any idea what we can do to fill the time?”

  As they fell to the bed, he was ecstatic inside. Sex twice in a three-hour span with a beautiful woman and a trek into the Bermuda Triangle with a man that had been there and back.

  Could life get any better?

  THREE

  Night had fallen by the time they reached the airport. They would be flying out of LaGuardia shortly before ten and arrive in Miami, after a brief layover in Atlanta, just after five o’ clock in the morning. Colt typically hated to fly, but he planned on sleeping during the flights so he wouldn’t be exhausted when they touched down in Miami.

  To pass the two hours before their flight, Colt and Nyoko met Heath Francis in the airport bar. Colt found that he liked Heath right away. With several years of listening to people recount their paranormal experiences, Colt had a great bullshit detector built up. But it became quite clear to Colt that something strange had indeed happened to Heath…o
r at least he was convinced something had happened to him. The man’s personality was also magnetic. He was in his early fifties, his hair going grey, and his face starting to show the first real signs of age. The man also told a story in a way that made Colt think that he night make a great grandfather someday, telling exaggerated bedtime stories to his grandkids.

  Over mozzarella sticks, boneless wings, and several beers, Colt and Nyoko listened to Heath tell his story. Although they had both heard it before (Colt himself had read about it at least a dozen times and had seen Heath’s brief appearances on several paranormal shows), they obliged him.

  When he was done, Heath knocked out his third beer and looked longingly at the bar. He then averted his gaze to the table, as if he wasn’t able to look at Colt or Nyoko for the last part of the story.

  “There’s something else,” Heath said. “I’ve told Nyoko the briefest little bit about it, but not in great detail.”

  “What is it?” Colt asked.

  “I remember absolutely nothing about those eight days we went missing. And I’ve called some of the passengers from the flight recently to see if they’ve maybe had some breakthroughs, but there’s nothing. Still…I’ve been having these nightmares that honestly feel like premonitions. I know that sounds nuts, but it’s the truth.”

  “What do you see in these dreams?” Colt asked. He noticed right away that Nyoko was sitting back in her chair, giving him an impressed grin. He knew that she enjoyed listening to him talk about the paranormal in the same way he enjoyed listening to her talk about science.

  “It’s just a bunch of images, really,” Heath said. “Apocalyptic, horrifying images. I see a little plane flying through this white mist and there are these huge hulking shapes all around.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No. That’s it. And when I wake up, I’m fully aware that it was a dream, but at the same time, I also get the feeling that…”