This is an ongoing story about a lost world of hungry dinosaurs, sinister villains, and non-stop action. If you are new to Hollow Earth Expedition, I suggest starting at the beginning of the story.

Scrumtumbler rolled over and yanked helplessly at the ropes binding his legs, but his hunters had already caught up to him, fingering their stone knives and hatchets. They smiled cruelly down at him, revealing teeth that had been ground down into triangular points, a clear sign that their tribe had adopted a diet that consisted only of flesh.

One of them raised his hatchet high in the air and Scrumtumbler shut his eyes, convinced that the finest scientific brain of his generation was about to be spilled onto the jungle floor. But the cannibal paused.

Scrumtumbler opened one eye to see his hunters listening to something in the forest. Then he heard it, too: a screaming and a thrashing coming their way.

Before any of them knew what to do, Celeste crashed out of the underbrush and right past them. She was a blur in her red dress, not stopping to question the cannibals or investigate their decorative scars. Her screams demonstrated a perfect Doppler effect, declining from its peak frequency and volume as she rushed down the game trail.

The cannibal, still holding his hatchet in the air, exchanged confused looks with his peers.

Then the velociraptors burst out of the foliage. They had been chasing Celeste, but they did not hesitate to set their sights on the cannibals, who scattered into the underbrush like frightened rabbits. In a moment of shrieks and confused footfalls, the predators and the prey disappeared, leaving Professor Scrumtumbler alone and blinking in amazement.

“Deus ex machina!” he declared, holding his fists over his head as though he had just won at the dog races. As he worked to free his legs from the entangling ropes, he muttered to himself, “maybe soon I’ll have to invent a Scrumtumbler ex machina. Yes, a Scrumtumbler ex machina would come in handy.”

Don’t miss any of the pulse pounding action! Get all the episodes of this story delivered to your inbox each month by subscribing to my free ezine!

Hollow Earth Expedition was created by Jeff Combos and is property of Exile Game Studio. For more Hollow Earth Expedition action, check out ExileGames.com

This is an ongoing story about a lost world of hungry dinosaurs, sinister villains, and non-stop action. If you are new to Hollow Earth Expedition, I suggest starting at the beginning of the story.

The cannibal whipped his weighted bolas around until it hummed through the air menacingly. The nearest of them, a shorter man with rotting teeth and a ragged pink scar in the shape of a fanged human skull on his chest, stepped closer and pointed to the professor’s machetes and spoke rapid words.

“Given some time,” Limefellow said, dropping his machete and raising his hands. “I might be able to decipher their dialect. Until then, I think it best to retreat like Hector behind the walls of Troy. ”

Scrumtumbler dropped his machete and drew forth his customized rifle. It had once been a Winchester, but now steel pipes adorned its side, gauges and vacuum tubes protruding at odd angles from the stock, and a curving dish encircled its barrel.

“Behold!” Scrumtumbler boomed, holding the weapon over his head. “Worship my name as if I were one of your heathen gods, for I am Scrumtumbler, and I bring the power of lighting from the heavens!”

The cannibals seemed amused rather than frightened by the scientist’s bluster, so Scrumtumbler dropped the rifle to his hip and pulled the trigger. A crackling arc of electricity lanced out of the barrel. For a split second, it formed a twisting blue line between the gun and the lead cannibal’s chest. The cannibal went rigid as all his muscles stiffened and then, with a flashing pop and a puff of smoke, he sailed backwards through the air to land at the feet of his fellows, unconscious but still breathing.

“That ought to scare them off,” Scrumtumbler said proudly, resting the butt of his stun gun on his hip.

The other cannibals looked down at their fallen leader, then back up at the professors. Without a word, they let loose their weapons. Scrumtumbler flinched as bolas whistled over his head and struck a tree just behind him, the weighted ends of the rope spinning tightly around the trunk. A second set of bolas entangled his stun rifle, knocking it out of his hands and breaking one of the vacuum tubes on the side. The blinking lights flickered and died, and the blue glow at the gun’s tip vanished.

“I don’t think I scared them off!” Scrumtumbler shouted. “Run, Limefellow, run!” When he looked over his shoulder, he saw that his colleague was already two dozen paces away, dashing up the road with one hand holding his hat onto his head.

Scrumtumbler turned to follow, but he didn’t get far before another set of bolas tangled around his legs and sent him sprawling, face-first, onto the forest floor.

Don’t miss any of the pulse pounding action! Get all the episodes of this story delivered to your inbox each month by subscribing to my free ezine!

Hollow Earth Expedition was created by Jeff Combos and is property of Exile Game Studio. For more Hollow Earth Expedition action, check out ExileGames.com

This post is part of an ongoing story set in the pulp-era world of Hollow Earth Expedition. If you are new to this series, I suggest starting at the beginning of the story.

“Surely you must admit that we have discovered the Hollow Earth,” Scrumtumbler said as he hacked down a lush fern that obscured the game trail. “How else do you explain the

Tri-Horned Scrumtumbler-saurs?”

“You mean the triceratopses?” Limefellow said as he sawed gingerly at a vine with his machete, pausing half way through to mop his forehead with his pocket kerchief. “You don’t get to name those after yourself. They were discovered back in 1889.”

“Yes, but they were thought to be extinct. Therefore, I discovered them. Also, they prove my Hollow Earth theory.”

“Many creatures are thought to be extinct when in fact their descendants are hiding in some forgotten corner of the globe. It doesn’t prove anything.” As he spoke, Limefellow held one end of his vine at arm’s length and stepped cautiously beneath it.

“The sun, then,” Scrumtumbler pointed up into the canopy where the bright yellow rays trickled through between the leaves. “How do you explain that we have been searching for Celeste for hours, but the sun has stayed at high noon the whole time? The only explanation is that there is a miniature sun hovering at the exact center of Earth’s inner space, like the burning filament inside a light bulb. Wherever we go inside this sphere, it will always high noon. I call it the Scrumtumbler Effect. I discovered that, too.”

The professors entered an open stretch of the game trail, which allowed them to move along more swiftly through the jungle. Above them, a riot of bird squawks seemed to echo their debate.

“Your theories are ridiculous,” Limefellow said, shifting his briefcase to his right hand and his machete to his left. “First, neither your wrist-watch nor my pocket watch are functioning, so we don’t know how long we have been out here. Second, we might have surfaced in Antarctica, where the sun remains high in the sky at certain times of the year.”
“Antarctica?” Scrumtumbler wiped the sweat from his forehead under his glasses. “It’s got to be eighty degrees here. Now who’s got the crazy theories?”

“Thermal vents at the poles could create tropical pockets of—”

Limefellow stopped speaking as six short, dark-skinned natives appeared around a bend in the trail about twenty yards ahead. Both groups froze and studied each other carefully. From where they stood, the professors could see that the bald heads and bare chests of the natives were covered with ritual scars in the shapes of skulls. Their ear-lobes, lips, and nostrils were pierced with bones, and their necks were adorned by strings of what appeared to be human ears. One of them drew forth a short length of rope that was weighted by rocks at the ends.

“These men display all the anthropological indicators of cannibalism,” Limefellow said in a low tone. “I fear they may intend to eat us.”

“Look what I’ve discovered!” Scrumtumbler declared gleefully. “It’s the Scrumtumbler Tribe!”

Don’t miss any of the pulse pounding action! Get all the episodes of this story delivered to your inbox each month by subscribing to my free ezine!

Hollow Earth Expedition was created by Jeff Combos and is property of Exile Game Studio. For more Hollow Earth Expedition action, check out ExileGames.com