Email:
Lespion@msn.com
Steiner grabbed Amy’s hand as the hadrosaurs
charged. Katie went with them,
but as she followed close behind she stumbled over a root and fell in front
of the attacking herd. Her miscue
almost proved fatal, but she was able to roll into the buttress roots of
a large tree. The narrow opening
was too small for the giant herbivores to reach
her. Two of them milled about
in front of her for several minutes, before giving up and following the rest
of the herd.
Katie got to her feet. She could
hear the hadrosaurs smashing their way through the forest, but where were
the rest of her companions? In
the confusion she had not kept track of where any of them had gone. Katie
turned in a complete circle. After
the uproar made by the hadrosaurs, the forest seemed eerily
quiet. “Amy, Steiner, Jia
Li!” she called.
There was no answer. She called
again.
“Hello!
Amy!
Steiner! Jia
Li! Anyone
there?” Again there was
no answer.
Katie began to walk in the direction that the hadrosaurs had
taken. It wasn’t hard to
follow their trail through the crushed
vegetation. After about five
minutes of walking, she gave it up.
It was unlikely that any of her friends would have gone this
way. Then she heard a
shot.
She turned in the direction of the sound.
It was coming opposite the direction she had
run. Her companions must be firing
into the air in order that she could find
them. She raised her rifle and
fired back. Then picking up her
pace, she jogged back in the direction of the
shot. As she did so, there were
several more shots, and then silence.
“Can’t be too far away now,” she
muttered. She was now into an
area of heavy undergrowth. No
hadrosaurs had made a convenient road
here. Forcing her way through,
she pushed on in the direction she thought the rifle shot had come
from. And then directly in front
of her, she came upon a frightening looking
creature.
Katie came to a complete halt.
Facing toward her was what seemed to be a miniature version of the
tyrannosaurus she had faced the previous
day. She did not know enough
about dinosaurs to categorize this one, but it looked extremely
dangerous. Slowly she backed
away from the fierce-looking beast.
As she did so, the animal began to move toward
her.
Katie noticed that the predator possessed a mouthful of sharp teeth, but
that was not its most frightening aspect.
Its hind legs were extraordinarily powerful, and armed with razor
sharp claws. Even as she watched
Katie saw the muscles tense as the animal prepared to
leap. In a single motion Katie
raised her rifle and fired. The
bullet caught the predator in mid-leap, and flipped it head over
tail. Incredibly, although Katie
had hit it dead center, the beast got up and dashed off into the
forest. Katie could hear it smashing
through the woods as it dashed away from
her.
“What a brute!” Katie exclaimed
aloud. She wouldn’t want
to come across that in the dark.
She continued her search for the source of the shot, but heard nothing more
to give her a clue.
“Hello! Hello!”
she called, but she was rewarded only with
silence. Finally, she fired her
rifle and then waited. She fired
again.
Nothing. What had happened
to her companions? Why could
no one hear her shots? And who
had fired the shots she had heard?
Was it possible that all of her companions had been
killed? She remembered the
frightening brute that had attacked her and
shuddered. With monsters like
that about anything could have happened to her
friends.
She continued to search for another half-hour before heading back to the
place where they had encountered the
hadrosaurs. Perhaps someone had
come back to the area where they had been forced to
run. It made
sense. When lost, head back to
the last known place.
She was almost back to the exact spot when something made her
stop. She had a distinct feeling
that she was being watched.
Unslinging her rifle she looked warily about
her. She saw
nothing. Cautiously, she resumed
her course.
This part of the forest was particularly dark, overshadowed by huge trees
that completely shaded the forest floor.
It was so gloomy that Katie longed to get back to the spot where she
and the others had encountered the
hadrosaurs. She quickened her
pace.
Without warning she was jerked off her
feet. Powerful arms were drawing
her up into the dense branches of the trees above
her. Within seconds she was
completely off the ground.
Twisting her body, she tried
to bring her rifle to bear on who or whatever had
seized her, but her weapon was snatched from her
hands. She could now see what
she was up against. She was being
held by two apelike creatures, each about the size of a man.
They resembled apes in that their
arms were extremely long, and quite obviously powerful, and their legs were
relatively short. But it was
their heads and faces that were most
striking. Despite the fact that
all of their bodies were covered with hair, their heads almost seemed
human. Instead of the large,
jutting jaw of an ape, the face was relatively flat, much like that of a
man.
The strange apelike beasts moved through the trees with amazing
ease. The fact that they had
to support Katie’s weight in addition to their own did not seem to matter
at all. She was carried along
with great rapidity by the powerful
creatures.
Katie no longer struggled to escape.
She had given that up as soon as the apemen had lifted her high into
the branches of the trees. If
they dropped her the fall would certainly be
fatal. As a result, Katie had
no choice by to go where her captors wanted her to.
The apemen swung along for over half an
hour. Katie’s strange journey
ended when they came to one of the most amazing places she had ever
seen. It was a city in the treetops,
and city was the only way of describing
it. Just below the crown of the
forest giants that supported them were a series of large wooden
platforms. Depending on the height
of the trees that supported them, each platform was at a different
level. A typical platform consisted
of a number of forest logs and branches woven together to form a sturdy structure
that could easily hold the weight of a dozen or more people or
apes. Each platform surrounded
the trunk of a tree for approximately fifteen
feet. Large branches or small
tree trunks rising vertically from each platform supported a roof constructed
of interlocking branches and leaves.
Each tree platform was connected to the one next to it by a wooden
bridge, and there were dozens of
platforms. They went back into
the trees as far as Katie could see,
For all she knew there might be hundreds of
them.
Her two escorts dumped her on the edge of the closest
platform. Katie noticed that
none of the platforms had any rails, but supposed that made sense, since
the apelike creatures seemed quite at ease in the
treetops. For her, however, it
was a different matter. She would
have to be careful or she would fall off the
edge.
Surveying the platform she was on, she noticed that it seemed to be outfitted
with several areas that were clearly for
sleeping. Other than that she
saw few items that might be counted as possessions, and only a few crude
tools that might be used for cutting trees or branches.
The platform was swarming with dozens of the
ape-people. Apparently she was
quite an attraction because as she was place on the platform she immediately
attracted a large crowd. Dozens
of hands reached out to touch and pull at every part of
her. Katie tried to slap the
questing fingers away from her, but there were simply too many of them and
those she pushed against possessed amazing
strength. Within a few minutes
most of her clothes had been torn from her body, right down to her
underwear. Then several of the
creatures tried to remove her hair from her head by yanking on her golden
mane. Katie screamed loudly and
the two apemen who had captured her came to her
aid. Pushing through the crowd
they slapped away those who were intent on tearing Katie’s hair out
by the roots.
Her two rescuers seemed to be respected, as the crowd of ape-people backed
away. Then taking her arms, the
two apemen escorted her from the first platform to another that was deeper
into the ape city. From there
they went still further in, crossing over to a third platform and then a
fourth. She was being led, almost
naked and helpless, deeper and deeper into the heart of the strange city
in the trees. She could not help
but wonder what the apemen wanted her
for. Was she an idle
curiosity? Was she a
plaything? Did they consider
her an enemy? Or did they consider
her food? She shuddered at the
last thought. Whatever the apemen
wanted of her, she was completely at their
mercy. She could only hope that
good fortune would smile upon her and allow her to somehow escape and get
back to her friends.
Katie’s journey finally ended when she was deep within the ape
city. She and her escorts came
to an especially large platform surrounding the trunk of the largest tree
Katie had ever seen. There,
surrounded by dozens of ape people, both male and female was the largest
apeman Katie had yet seen. He
stood at least eight feet tall and was seated on some sort of dais built
of interwoven branches. He turned
his head in Katie’s direction as she was brought
forward. It was then that she
noticed that the ape king (if that what was what he was) was sporting an
immense erection. But it was
not this that shocked and horrified Katie; it was what he clearly intended
to do with his engorged phallus.
Kneeling before him, with her backside presented to him for ease of
entry was a young human woman!
PREVIOUS
CHAPTER WIZARD'S
LAIR MAIN PAGE
L'ESPION'S
STORY PAGE
NEXT
CHAPTER