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Tarkel Jungle

Danlin River, Caressee

March 5, 1984 RE

I had to admit this is one of the largest river going ships I had ever been on and yet it was the most crowded ship I had ever been on. On an expedition it is usually my own equipment that takes up most of the storage space. This time my government had spared no expense getting all the equipment they could possibly think of and then there was the military equipment as well. And everything had to be carefully stored to prevent damage or accidental explosions. Still, things weren't that bad.

It was obvious the soldiers chosen for this expedition had been picked for their intelligence as well as their skill. After conversations with a couple of them I had wanted to hire them as my assistants. That level of intelligence also helped to throw off most of the more arrogant members of my team. I was pleased to see that they kept their condescending remarks to a minimum and a few of them looked like they were actually making friends.

The scenery was pretty nice too. All in all, it was turning out to be a pretty peaceful trip. Considering the fact that the fate of civilization was on the line I thought things should feel much more ominous. The sporadic growth of various things just seems like it is a distant threat. That thought makes me think I might be trying to block out my experience with the battle dragon. But, the fact that there might be people trying to kill me in the thick jungle foliage feels like the more urgent threat at the moment.

Fate must have been offended by my thoughts. When I was settling down to sleep for the night I heard a sudden commotion. I peaked out of my room to see a bunch of soldiers rushing around. Being the curious type, I followed a couple of them on deck to find searchlights scanning the water. A few of them had weapons out and pointed at the water. I was amazed at how silent they could be as they flashed little hand and tail signs at each other. It was so dark I could barely see what those signs were, but even the human soldiers seemed to be able to understand what was going on. I did not like being clueless about what was going on, so I leaned over the ships railing and peered into the water to see if I could see anything.

It took a while, but eventually I was able to make out a dark shape moving stealthily through the murky water. At first I thought it was just a school of fish. Then it made a quick movement that made me think it was one big creature. As I finished that thought the shape erupted out of the water in my direction. The suddenness of the action left my stunned as I saw the gapping maw of an incredibly large crocodile, two or three times as large as it should be, hurtling straight at me. A pair of strong hands grabbed me around the waist and pulled me away from the railing just as the crocodile's jaws snapped shut where I had just been with a sound like a shotgun blast.

I turn around to thank my savior and nearly jump away while throwing a punch as I am greeted with a crocodilian face. That punch hurt my fist more than the anthro alligator soldier I just hit in the chest. He just grinned slightly at me before I heard a weapon being fired followed by an ear ringing explosion. Water and a few small chunks of flesh rained down onto the deck of the boat. I looked back to see a few soldiers on the ship closest to us congratulating one of their fellows. Though I cannot hear what they are saying it is clear that they must be congratulating him on killing the crocodile that had nearly killed me.

Before I have a chance to apologize and thank the alligator that had just saved my life I noticed Col. Miller stalking toward me. "What the hell do you think you're doing doctor?" he asked in a low voice with a slight trace of a growl to it.

"Well I heard a commotion going on and I wanted to see what was happening..." I said before being interrupted.

"So, knowing that there are various people and creatures that may try to kill you lurking about, you decided to head toward danger instead of away from it. That does not seem very smart to me," he continued talking to me in low voice and I was feeling thoroughly embarrassed. When he put it that way it made me sound incredibly stupid. I was happy he was not shouting these things for the world to hear.

"You're right colonel. I apologize for my lack of judgment and I'll avoid placing myself in the line of danger again," I tried to say apologetically. That had been careless of me. Of course I could have lost my life, but it was the job of these soldiers to make sure I stayed alive. By placing my life in danger like that for no good reason was extremely disrespectful to them and could very well end up getting someone else killed trying to protect me. Col. Miller stared at me briefly, and then nodded his head as a sign that he acknowledged my apology before walking off and issuing some orders to his soldiers.

"Don't worry about him, he was just making sure that you learned your lesson," a female voice said from behind me. I turned around and was confronted by a female tiger fur. She was considerably taller than me, but not that tall as far as anthros go. I would say she was about six and half feet tall, maybe taller with light orange fur and a pair of binoculars hanging around her neck. That probably indicated she was a lookout of some sort.

"Thanks for the support, um, I don't believe we've met yet."

"I'm Private Tracy Stone sir. And you're welcome." Private Stone was a fairly young looking soldier. She was probably in her mid twenties like me. It also looked like she was smiling slightly as if she found something amusing.

"I hope I'm not getting in your way private."

"Oh no, not at all doctor. I was just getting off duty when I spotted that monster. Now that the situation is over I can finally get some sleep. Oh, and you don't have to call me private, just call me Tracy."

"So you were the one that spotted that monster."

"And you were the one that was nearly eaten by it. I'm glad Private Hunter was there to save you. It just wouldn't look good if we lost one of you guys on the first day of the trip," Tracy joked. At least I knew the name of my savior now. He has disappeared at the moment. I'm going to have to remember to thank him later. "Well, I'll talk to you later doc, but I really should be getting to bed. Good night."

"Good night," I responded. As she walked away the shock finally set in. My legs felt like rubber and I started to feel dizzy. I had nearly been killed for the second time within a relatively short period of time. And this was just the first day of the expedition. If things continued on like this I was not sure if I would actually live through this expedition. Hell, I would be lucky if I actually lived to make it all the way to our ultimate destination.

I walked back to my room after a few minutes. It took about half an hour of staring at the ceiling before I was able to fall asleep.

Tarkel Jungle

Danlin River, Caressee

March 7, 1984 RE

Day two had gone much better, and by better I mean boring. Nothing of note happened and I could not have been happier because of it. Now I was told that we were only about an hour away from our destination. That destination was a small port that had been recently constructed. Apparently, when pictures taken of that gigantic tree taken by those explorers had been made public the government of Caressee had believed them to be a part of a hoax. It was not until much later that they realized their mistake and it had been too late to hush things up. The next thing anyone knew, people were referring the tree as Yggdrasil. I found out that was a reference to some ancient human religion. They were treating this tree like a religious event too. There were a lot of people that thought there was some sort of mystical quality to the tree that had made it grow like that. It was always rare people thought something like this was due to scientific causes.

Still, things were a little more convenient for us because of those people. They had been mounting little tourist expeditions of their own to get to the Yggdrasil and they had set up little ports and outposts along the trail to the tree. That would make things a little easier for us, but not by much. The area was virtually undeveloped and there was no way we were going to get vehicles deep into the jungle. If Caressee did not have to worry about constant invasion along its more accessible borders then it might have been able to develop the region more. It did not make much sense for Caressee to spend much money on a jungle over 3000 miles long at its shortest point even if that region was technically contested with its neighbors. This jungle had been seized from the Southern Alliance during their most recent war with Caressee and Caressee had only done that as a test to see if the Alliance would contest the claim by continuing the war. When it hadn't that had said a great deal about what the Southern Alliance thought of Caressee's military. All the Alliance had done was chose not to acknowledge Caressee's claim on the region, but what natives there were in the region tended to obey Caressee's laws rather than Alliance rules.

I was on deck and noticed Tracy on lookout duty. For a second I thought that I might go over and talk to her, but I did not want to distract her from her duties. She noticed me staring at her, though, and she signaled that it she wanted me to come over to her. Since she did not feel like I would be a big distraction I decided to talk with her after all. "Hi there doc, it's nice to see you again," she said without actually looking at me. I could see she was still concentrating on her duty even though she wanted to talk with me. "Why don't you grab a pair of binoculars and join me?"

"Sure, but I've never been on lookout duty before and I don't think I'll be much help to you." I picked up one of the two extra binoculars hanging in the lookout post.

"That's alright. The Colonel wants us to train others to handle some of our duties anyways. You know, just in case something happens to any of us on the way to that facility of yours. We may be prepared to handle a lot of things, but there is stuff that hand held weapons just aren't going to be able to handle." Tracy did not sound like she was trying to scare me. Deep down I understood that she was just offering an honest analysis of the situation. But, I had seen some of the weapons that had been brought along on this expedition and I did not want to think about what type of situations the soldiers on this mission would not be able to handle.

Tracy did teach me a few things over the next few minutes. It was surprising how she could talk to me and spot the things she did. By the time she had finished giving her basic pointers I was able to see things hidden in the foliage along the rivers bank that I would have never even guessed were there. If all the lookouts were like her then I knew we would have adequate warning of any attack. Tracy's lesson was interrupted when we saw something floating in the water. It looked like a section of a wall from a wooden building of some sort. The only buildings close to us were at the outpost and back at Port Ridgetan. It could have just been my imagination, but I felt that the piece of debris had come from the outpost. Tracy alerted the necessary people about the piece of debris and by the time we were within visible range of the outpost the tension in the air was palpable.

The first sight of the outpost was not very reassuring either. That was mainly because the outpost was no longer there. It was plain to see where the buildings used to be, but everything had been smashed. A while later we were able to make out bits and pieces of bodies. There was not much left of anyone since things left for dead in the jungle tended to get consumed awfully fast. The fact that there was anything left meant that whatever had killed those people had done so recently or had scared the local wildlife so badly that nothing was willing to come near the area.

The ships docked near what was left of the docks. I was told to remain on board while the soldiers scouted out the area for any threats. Given the situation, I thought that was a good idea. The scouts did not have to go far. When I saw the ears of all of the scouts swivel in the same direction I looked where they were looking. It took me a while longer to hear what some of the scouts were hearing, but I could definitely make out screaming. The soldiers already on the shore and the ones still on the ship readied their weapons. Then they appeared. About five people burst into the opening the outpost used to be in and a giant rat burst out of the jungle soon after them. That thing had to be big enough to swallow a couple people at once.

Before anyone could do anything to help those people the rat picked up and swallowed an unfortunate rabbit fur. The soldiers were trying to get the people to run in a direction that would get them out of their line of fire. They seemed intent on running straight at the soldiers though. A human tripped and not even the rat had enough time to slow its momentum before crushing the woman underfoot. That saved the others tourists as the rat stopped to eat the flattened woman. Even at the size that rat was its body could not stand up to high powered military grade weaponry. That was why only a few soldiers took a couple of well placed shots at the creatures head to take it down. I was surprised at how they were able to know who was supposed to shoot and pleased to see that they were not going to waste ammunition on every giant animal we came across.

The tourists did not stop running once they reached the soldiers either. They had to be restrained in order to get them to stop. Once that was done they were brought on board my ship to see if they were alright and to undergo a brief interrogation. The soldiers started to set up a perimeter around the shore while the interrogation was going on. They wanted to find out it that rat really was the thing that had destroyed the outpost before we set out.

It took about half an hour to get the tourists calmed down enough to get them to make sense. I had wandered into the interrogation area to see if I could hear what had happened. When I saw the pair of soldiers guarding the interrogation room I nearly turned around and went right back to my room. Both of them were nine foot tall anthros that I had not talked to yet. One was a dragon, an actual dragon. You could tell the difference between a dragon and the less intelligent, far more violent, battle dragons by their eyes. A battle dragon had eyes more like a crocodiles while dragons had much more human like eyes even though they came in a wider variety of colors than a human's. For example, this dragon had purple eyes. The other guard is who really scared me though. It was the lion that had put me in the hospital a few years ago. I was wondering what he was doing here when they both saluted me as I approached. Then I opened my mouth to ask the lion what he was doing here when he interrupted me. "I was just vacationing in Virania sir," he said in a dead pan voice but his eyes seemed more like they were asking me not to mention the incident to anyone. I nodded to the two guards and then proceeded into the interrogation room.

The interrogation was nothing like what I had expected. When I hear that someone is going to be interrogated I expect something much different from what I saw. And what I saw mostly consisted of some of the friendlier looking soldiers trying to calm the tourists down enough so that everybody else could understand them. They were more than willing to talk, but they all wanted to talk at the same time and they were ready to start rambling at the drop of a hat. It took about an hour, but their story eventually started to become clear.

It was not a pretty story. That rat had ended up growing early in the morning. Only a few people had been awake at the time and those people had all been in the dining hall, along with the rat. One of the people in the group the soldiers had just rescued was in that dining hall. She was able to give a pretty vivid description of what had happened. Most people thought they were hallucinating at first, but the screams of the first person that was crushed under the rat as it grew was enough to get the remaining people to act. Everyone, including the rat, was confused by what was going on. All of the people running around caused the rat to panic and it killed most of the people in the dining hall in its attempt to escape.

When the survivors from the dining hall tried to explain what had happened everyone else thought that they were on drugs. The rat had run off into the jungle so there was really no other evidence to prove what they were saying. It was not until an hour later that the rat had returned. Wild rats can be pretty vicious creatures when they want to be. A giant wild rat was a true terror, especially since it had decided that the tourists were a good food supply. The initial attack had resulted from at least five people being eaten and another two being crushed underfoot if the story we were being told was to be believed. After that attack the tourists had scattered into the jungle. The rat had just come upon this group an hour or two before we arrived. I was surprised they were able to get away from that thing for that long.

When questioned about the possibility of there being other giants in the area they panicked. It took a few minutes to sort out that they were just scared at the suggestion of there being more giants in the area. They actually did not know of any more giants themselves. Colonel Miller decided to leave the tourists with the ships since they would be sailing back up river to bring some construction crews forward. It was not like we could afford to bring any tourists along with us. The ships were also going to stay a little while longer than they had planned to give any other civilians hiding in the area some time to get to the ships. They could not delay long though. Caressee had some pretty ambitious plans for the development of the Tarkel jungle that could not be delayed. Even Virania was going to offering some assistance with the effort. If we were to get in trouble while out in the jungle help would be gradually working its way toward us.

It was time for the rest of us to disembark. The soldiers were still maintaining a defensive perimeter, however, since there was no telling when they would have to deal with some sort of giant creature or a regular animal for that matter. There were still a few types of big cats in the jungle that I could think of that would find something like me a tasty meal. And speaking of big cats, I noticed something odd about Tracy on my way off the ship. I could not figure out what it was until she was standing right next to me. My eyes widened with sudden realization and she must have noticed. "It was just two inches, but hey, my uniform actually fits better now." Then she continued about her business and I stared after the formally six foot six inch tall tigress that was now six feet eight inches tall.

This was the first time someone I knew had been affected by all this. I kind of wished she had been affected more like the battle dragon had. It might be nice to have a real life giant on my side instead of trying to kill me. This was one of many incidents that made me start to think though. I remembered the presentation back at the institute. Humans and normal plant and animal life were growing at about the same numbers as each other. Anthros and dragons were a different story though. Even if you put all the plants, animals, and humans that had grown together the anthros still outnumbered them by about a four to one margin. Something about what had brought about the creation of the dragons and the anthros has left them more sensitive to the failure in the ancient's technology than other creatures were. There was really no telling how big or small they would get either. The dragons had not existed before everything had been shrunk and the anthros were totally different creatures. They could actually end up getting much larger than a human would or the size of that battle dragon could be where they max out. Then again, after the one mile mark it didn't really matter how big something got. The devastation caused by something of that size would be unimaginable.

I need to stop worrying myself. Nothing has even come close to its original size yet, except Yggdrasil and it was still only a fraction of the size it could be. That probably meant the technology had not failed completely as of yet and we still had time to fix the problem. If I was concentrating on what could happen for the entire trip then I would end up making mistakes and getting myself or someone else killed. I needed to look at things more like Tracy. There had to be some benefits to this whole growth thing, even if it was just uniforms that fit better.