Cryptid Quest: A Supernatural Thriller (The John Decker Supernatural Thriller Series Book 8) Read online

  Cryptid Quest

  Anthony M. Strong

  West Street Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to events or places, or real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by Anthony M. Strong

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover art and interior design by Bad Dog Media, LLC.

  For Sonya and the doggies. Next year we’ll go to New England.

  Contents

  Opening Monologue

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Ready for another John Decker Adventure?

  Also by Anthony M. Strong

  Opening monologue for the reality TV show Cryptid Quest:

  Hi, I’m Darren Yates. Adventurer, explorer, archaeologist. I’ve traveled the globe from the Nazca desert in southern Peru to the Siberian tundra looking for the mysterious, the unexplained, and the downright weird. And boy, have I found it. Now I want to bring you along on a special expedition into the heart of the Amazon to locate the jungle fortress of a lost civilization, and the unknown beasts that guard it. So, what are you waiting for? Pack your adventure gear, put on your explorer’s hat, and join my team and I as we push deeper into the unknown, on our very own… Cryptid Quest.

  Prologue

  Christmas Eve.

  Somewhere in the Amazon rainforest.

  They huddled in the darkness as the rain lashed down, protected only by the dense undergrowth at the water’s edge. In front of them, in a clearing carved out on each side of the riverbank, stood a mighty stone building that straddled the raging waters, which flowed through a tunnel and emerged unhindered on the other side. Almost completely overgrown with vegetation, the ancient structure would be all but invisible from the air. Which was bad. Because even if someone came looking for them, it would be impossible to pinpoint their exact location. Hell, even if a would-be rescuer could find them, there was nowhere to land a helicopter, and any search party hoofing it in on foot would take two days to reach them. Minimum. They wouldn’t last anywhere near that long. They probably wouldn’t even make it until dawn.

  This thought made Darren Yates’ gut tighten with dread. He’d traveled all over the world and faced all sorts of danger, from whitewater rapids to a hungry Bengal tiger, but nothing compared to the horrors lurking in this jungle.

  Next to him, Dan Weatherby was mumbling something that sounded like a prayer. Yates jabbed an elbow into the other man’s ribs and whispered a terse command. “Stop it. That’s not helping.”

  “It’s helping me,” Weatherby said. His voice was barely audible over a rumble of thunder that vibrated through the forest.

  “Then do it quietly or they’ll find us.”

  “At least I’m doing something.” Weatherby whispered. He glanced toward his companion, rainwater streaming down his face, and nodded toward a bulky satellite phone in the other man’s hand. “For the love of God, would you either make a call on that thing and get help, or give it to me.”

  “Too dangerous. The phone is too loud. A lot of static. Whatever is out there will hear us.”

  “Then we should make a run for it back to the cliff. If we can climb up, we’ll be safe. Then you can call.”

  “We’d never make it,” Yates said, “you saw what happened to Evan.”

  “Saw it? I don’t think I’ll ever get that image out of my head.” Weatherby shuddered, and not just because his clothes were sodden. “I still think we should try.”

  “You want to make a run for it, be my guest. I’m staying here and riding it out until daylight.”

  “And what good is that going to do?”

  “I don’t know. At least we’ll be able to see where we’re going.”

  “Yeah, and whatever’s out there will see us, too.” Weatherby gripped his machete—one of a pair they’d been using to hack their way through the jungle—and looked around. “I don’t want to die.”

  “Neither do I,” Yates said.

  The sky exploded brilliant white as lightning streaked overhead. Seconds later, another clap of thunder barreled across the landscape. The torrential rain drummed on the tree canopy above them.

  The two men strained their ears, listening for any aberrant sound above the storm’s cacophony that would indicate the creatures had found their hiding place. What they heard instead turned their blood to ice.

  A scream.

  It rose from somewhere off to their right, close to the ancient building they had discovered only hours earlier. Then, just as it reached a terrifying crescendo, the scream was abruptly cut short. Another one of their group was gone.

  “That sounded like Carlos.” Weatherby shifted position and lifted his head, risking an exploratory glance toward the ancient building. “You think it came from inside the pyramid?”

  “How would I know?” Yates said.

  “If it did, maybe the creatures aren’t out here anymore. Maybe the rain drove them off.”

  “You want to take that chance?”

  “I don’t want to sit here waiting to die.”

  “And you think I do?” Yates reached out and placed a hand on his companion’s arm. “Just take it easy. Whatever is out there hasn’t found us yet. If we stay hidden, we stand a chance. If we move, they might hear us.”

  “This is insane.” Weatherby’s eyes were wild with fright. “How could creatures like that even exist?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you see the claws on that thing when it took Granger? And the teeth…”

  “For Pete’s sake, would you pipe down? T
his isn’t helping.” Yates rubbed rain from his eyes. “Man, I wish we still had the camera.”

  “You’re unbelievable.”

  “What?” Yates shrugged. “If we ever get back to civilization, I want those creatures on film. Think of the ratings.”

  “Yeah. Your friends getting torn apart by monsters is great TV. Maybe they’ll give you an Emmy.”

  “Really?” Yates whispered, then saw the look on the other man’s face. “Oh. You were being sarcastic.”

  Weatherby stared at him in disbelief but didn’t respond.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Yates said. “When I’m scared, I don’t think straight. Right now, I’m terrified.”

  “Me too. But I don’t deal with it by fantasizing about our TV ratings.”

  “It’s that or dwell on what just happened to Carlos.”

  “You think there’s anyone else left?”

  “Beats me. We know they got Granger, and we just heard Carlos. There was at least one other scream, but with the thunder, there might have been more. It’s hard to tell.”

  “This is so messed up,” Weatherby said. “We should never have come here. The old man warned us.”

  “What, that drunkard in Manaus?” Yates snorted, referring to the small city that sat near the spot where the Rio Negro and Solimões rivers combined at a place the locals called the meeting of the waters to form the mighty Amazon River. The town was also a staging point for expeditions entering the rainforest, including theirs. “If we listened to every lush with a tall tale who told us not to go somewhere because it’ll make the spirits angry, we wouldn’t have a show.”

  “Well, maybe we should have listened to this one.”

  “Great advice. I’ll just hop in my time machine and go back to warn us. You got any other messages for our past selves?”

  Weatherby glared at Yates. He was about to reply, but before he could speak, a sound echoed through the forest. A guttural, throaty roar. And it was close. Too close.

  “That’s it, I’ve had enough. I’m out of here. Give me the phone.”

  “No.” Yates clutched the satellite phone tight to his rain-soaked body. “You want to leave, go ahead. But I’m keeping the phone.”

  “Suit yourself.” Weatherby pushed at the foliage.

  “What are you doing?” There was panic in Yates’ voice. “Get back here.”

  “Not a chance. I’m not hanging around waiting for one of those creatures to find me. I’m going back to the cliff. When I make it to base camp, I’ll send help.”

  Weatherby pulled the branches aside and stepped out onto the riverbank. He glanced all around, then started off, following the river upstream back toward the waterfall they had seen on their way in. He’d barely gotten ten feet when something large came crashing through the understory. A bipedal creature that stepped out onto the bank in front of him, blocking his path. It towered above the petrified man—a good four feet taller than its prey—and watched him with a single enormous eye set into its wide forehead.

  From his hiding place among the foliage, Darren Yates turned his head away and closed his eyes. Because he didn’t want to see what was about to happen. But he still heard it...

  1

  Six hours earlier.

  One day’s hike from base camp.

  The jungle pressed thick and humid all around them. The small group of adventurers, along with their producer and film crew, seven of them in all, had spent the previous day hacking through vines and thick vegetation that choked the forest floor. They moved slowly, alert for snakes, spiders, and larger predators such as the jaguar. Even the smallest of insects was formidable in this tropical cauldron of runaway evolution. Get bitten by a bullet ant and you could look forward to hours of unyielding agony akin to being shot, hence the name.

  Which was why they hadn’t tried to make it all the way to the fortress in a single day. Instead, they moved slowly, careful of step, and when the sun began to slide below the treetops, they found a suitable area and made camp instead of risking a dangerous and possibly deadly night hike.

  As dawn tinged the eastern horizon, the group rose early and ate a quick breakfast, then set off again. The going was tough, the terrain getting more impassable with each hour. Now, after another full day of walking, they were approaching their destination, a large and possibly manmade structure discovered by a lidar equipped helicopter the production company hired to run sweeps high above the rainforest. Lidar, or light detection and ranging, was an advanced technology that allowed them to see through the trees and produce a topographical map of the jungle floor, revealing what was hidden there. Like a foliage covered building invisible to the naked eye.

  “You really think there will be anything worth filming at the end of this nightmare trek?” Grumbled Dan Weatherby, the stocky audio technician who was trudging along weighed down by fifty pounds of equipment, plus his tent and personal items, in a knapsack on his back. At forty-three, he was one of the older members of the team, but could keep up with the best of them, thanks to his vigorous fitness regime and adversity to junk food.

  “We always do,” said Evan Granger, the show’s producer, from further along the line.

  “No, we don’t,” Weatherby shot back. “Tell me one genuine discovery we’ve made in six seasons?”

  “There’s the yeti footage. That was classic,” tech manager Carlos Pardo said. “And what about the Orang Pendek hair we brought back from Indonesia?”

  “The yeti footage was probably just a Sherpa higher up the mountain. And as for the Orang Pendek, not being able to identify that hair didn’t prove it belonged to an unknown dwarf primate. You’ll be telling me we actually found mermaids off the shores of Fiji next.”

  “There was something swimming around in those waters.”

  “Yeah. Sharks,” Weatherby said. “Look, I get it. We shoot vaguely tantalizing out-of-focus footage in the middle of the night and then pretend we captured the Beast of Bray Road or Nessie on camera. It’s a bit of harmless fun to entertain the masses. But do we really need to go trekking for days on end through a dangerous mosquito infested jungle just to spend a few hours poking around what will probably turn out to be some weird rock formation?”

  “It’s not a rock formation,” said Darren Yates, the show’s archaeologist host and one of its three co-presenters, along with Cassie Locke and Elijah Silverman, both of whom were currently bringing up the rear. “You heard the stories from that old guy we interviewed in the bar back in Manaus. There’s an ancient city out here, just waiting to be discovered. A citadel built by the earliest inhabitants of this rainforest and protected by prehistoric creatures that survived the mass extinction.”

  “Yeah, I’m calling bull on that one,” Weatherby said. “The old guy was so drunk he could hardly stand up during the on-camera interview, which means we’re going to have a hell of a time using the footage, and we couldn’t find anyone else who ever even heard about any of this.”

  “The old guy went there when he was young. He saw it for himself. Barely got out alive after the creatures guarding the site attacked him.”

  “So he says.” Weatherby chuckled. “Come on, guys, he was playing us. He just wanted another bottle of tequila.”

  “He had the scars to back his story up.” Team biologist Cassie Locke flicked an errant strand of hair away from her face. Still in her early thirties, with thick brown hair and hazel eyes, she possessed a rugged girl-next-door beauty that played well with the Cryptid Quest viewers. And she knew it, even though she hated working on Darren Yates’ schlocky show. It was a means to an end. Nothing more. A precursor to her own more serious adventure series, which was already in the works. A few more weeks and the contracts would be signed. Then she could tell Darren Yates goodbye forever. But first she had a part to play. “The guy was covered in them. Looked nasty too. Painful.”

  “He had scars. I’ll give you that. But I wouldn’t exactly call it convincing evidence.” Weatherby leaned against a tree, but only after checki
ng for snakes. “He could have gotten them anywhere. And what’s with the sudden conviction. I happen to know you don’t believe any of this crap, and the cameras aren’t even rolling.”

  “Not true. I’ve been filming the entire exchange,” cameraman Michael Vance said, with the smaller of their two digital cameras on his shoulder. “We’ve got to turn this jungle jaunt into a six-part series, so we need all the footage we can get.”

  “Especially since we’re not going to find anything, as usual,” Weatherby said. “Which reminds me, it’s Christmas Day tomorrow. I was hoping to be back in the States in time to watch my kids unwrap their presents. That clearly isn’t going to happen. Can we at least get home for New Year’s Eve?”

  “All right, we’re going to settle this right now. I heard the grumblings around the campfire last night.” Evan Granger brought the group to a halt and turned to face them. “I’m sorry we had to work over Christmas. Filming took longer than expected, but you all knew it was a possibility when you signed your contracts. Having said that, I’ll do my best to have everyone back in time for New Year’s. We’ll spend a day filming at the site, two more days hoofing it out, and then we’ll have the helicopter pick us up from base camp and go straight to the airport. Eight hours later we’ll be landing at JFK with our expedition in the bag and Auld Lang Syne on our lips. How’s that?”