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

Professor Scrumtumbler paced through the tall green grass of the veldt where he thought sure his drilling machine had been. It wasn’t there. Then he paced back to where he thought it might have been, but still didn’t find it. Finally he went to the spot where it couldn’t possibly have been, and it wasn’t there either.

He gazed around in all directions and absentmindedly tugged at his unruly white hair. Where could that twelve-ton steel-plated monstrosity have gone?

After escaping the cannibals, Scrumtumbler had given an earnest prayer for the safety of his teammates, who were thoroughly scattered throughout this startlingly dangerous wilderness. Scrumtumbler had never been a religious man, but in times like these he didn’t see how a prayer could hurt. “My colleagues never sought to steal Your secrets or topple Your laws of nature,” he reasoned. “If any of us should be punished, it should be me.”

Now, it seemed, the Almighty had taken his suggestion by plucking the drilling machine up into the sky. There seemed to be no better explanation.

Scrumtumbler paced the area systematically, forming a spiraling search pattern. He found triceratops footprints and even a red sequin from Celeste’s dress, but no sign of the machine. He was just about to give up when he parted the grass to discover a broad hillock of freshly churned earth, where small birds and flying reptiles pecked away in search of grubs and worms.

This was surely the exit point of the drilling machine. To dispel any doubt, two deep tracks with the distinctive herring-bone pattern of the drilling machine’s treads led away a dozen feet through the grass. And then the tracks abruptly stopped with no further sign of the vehicle.

There was something else at the end of the tracks: another large patch of churned dirt, but this one was flat and even, as if someone had dug a swimming pool and then refilled the hole. Scrumtumbler paced it, counting his steps to discover that this patch of recently-dug earth was exactly long enough and wide enough to contain the drilling machine.

So: the machine hadn’t mystically flown up into the sky, it had been swallowed by the earth. Mystery solved… and replaced by the new mystery. How it had gotten buried? Who would have done this, and why? If it had drilled itself in, it would have kicked back far more dirt and left a gigantic mole-hill behind it. This smooth patch of churned earth couldn’t be from the machine, yet it also couldn’t be natural, because sinkholes simply aren’t rectangular. Man-made? Perhaps, yet it would have taken a chain-gang a day to dig a hole big enough to conveniently stash the drilling machine, and Scrumtumbler was sure he hadn’t been gone that long. Furthermore, there were no signs of laborers—no boot-prints, no discarded tools, not even a scrap of paper or an extinguished cigarette.

Scrumtumbler shook his wild-haired head and decided that he must be overlooking something.

He paced around the outside of the dirt patch once more in search of some sign or clue that he had overlooked. He got exactly three steps when a hole opened beneath his feet.

The hole happened to be exactly one Scrumtumbler in diameter, and he dropped through before he could even yelp.

Where he had stood only an instant before, freshly churned earth pushed up from beneath to seal the hole behind him.

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.

Maia leapt from the deck a split second before the dinosaurs collided into the drilling machine. She cleared the head-plate of the largest of the triceratopses and touched down on its spine, spreading her arms and legs wide to hold on. With a triumphant whoop, she righted herself on the animal’s back and waved her fedora in the air like a cowboy at a rodeo.

Then she saw that the others hadn’t been as lucky. When the triceratopses had smashed into the broad side of the drilling machine, they had rocked it into the air, and Maia’s three companions had spilled over the far side and tumbled to the ground. They managed to struggle back to their feet only in time to face down one of the enraged dinosaurs as it rounded the corner and pawed the ground in preparation for another charge. The two professors pressed themselves against the machine’s wheel wells, but Celeste tore off through the open field and the three bull triceratopses launched themselves after her. The actress pumped her arms like a trained athlete and she drove herself towards the tree line, but her terror-fueled sprint would not be fast enough to escape the massive animals barreling down on her.

As Maia clung to the back of the lead triceratops bull, the wind stung her eyes and whipped her hair across her cheek. She had witnessed a stampede once before, and she understood what it was like to be in the path of violent, threshing hooves. She had been a child then, watching the approaching tide of four dozen head of cattle that a rancher had been illegally driving through the Kiowa reservation. The other children had cowered on the far wall, but Maia hadn’t seen the point—their schoolhouse building was so rickety and dilapidated that the jostling of the passing cows would surely knock it down onto their heads no matter where they stood. She watched through the glassless window as her school teacher, a prune-faced old priest, stepped out the door and fired a pistol into the air. The cattle didn’t slow down, but they veered off towards the sunset and disappeared into their own dust storm. Maia had always remembered that moment, because it was the instant she realized that the old man used fear to control the cattle in the same way he controlled the “little red savages” whom the United States Government had entrusted to him.

As the triceratops’s horn sliced the air mere inches behind the back of the fleeing Celeste, Maia un-slung her shotgun and fired into the air. The boom echoed through the jungle and birds exploded from the trees. The triceratops heaved underneath her as it turned in its charge, bewildered by the noise. It must have triggered some primal instinct meant to protect the dinosaurs from volcanoes and lightning, because the huge beasts wheeled and surged away across the field, Maia’s own mount thundering to catch up to its herd.

She looked over her shoulder to see the actress sprint into the dark forest. With Jack gone on his scouting expedition and the professors huddled up by the drilling machine, it meant the expedition was now completely scattered throughout this strange wilderness. Still, if Maia jumped off during the stampede, she would be broken into pieces by heavy saurian feet. That was okay—there was no point getting off the ride until the fun was over.

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.  

Scrumtumbler pressed the throttle forward and locked the treads into position. The rest of the crew swung back and forth in their Farris-wheel style seats that always kept their feet pointed down regardless of the drilling machine’s orientation.

Celeste pressed her face to the porthole and watched as the line of dirt rose up to block out the sun. “We’re going to die!” she moaned. “I’m not even supposed to be here!”

“Take it easy, doll-face, I’ll take care of this,” said Jack Steele, the crew’s wilderness guide. He was a tall man, his body lean and iron-hard, and somehow his gritted teeth made the cleft in his chin even deeper. He wore khaki from head to foot, adorned only with a leather belt and a shoulder harness for his Colt automatic.

Jack unbuckled his seat’s chest strap and leapt down into the piloting compartment next to Scrumtumbler. “Turn this thing around, Doc,” he demanded. “I got a bone to pick with your engineer back there.”

“It doesn’t turn,” Scrumtumbler said, indicating a spiraling, sinking motion with his index finger. “The best it can do is angle a little as it goes.”

“Then put it into reverse,” Limefellow called from his seat above.

Scrumtumbler scooted his goggles up onto his forehead and looked up into the passenger area. “It doesn’t have a reverse. The hole fills in behind us as we go, and, in case you hadn’t noticed, the drill is only on the front end.”

“Design flaw,” Limefellow announced contentedly as he made a mark in his notebook.

Maia Parker, the crew’s translator, cleared her throat and adjusted a lapis lazuli choker that she wore around her neck. Like Jack, she wore a khaki safari suit, but her dark hair, dark eyes, and high cheekbones spoke of a Native American ancestry. “I don’t see the problem,” she said. “This just means we’re a couple of hours ahead of schedule. I was getting bored waiting around up there, anyway.”

“You broads just stay out of this,” Jack said.

“Don’t call me a broad,” she said silkily, her fingers drumming on the pistol holster at her side.

“We’re all going to die, aren’t we?” Celeste said with quiet resignation.

Scrumtumbler snorted. “There’s no danger here. The only way we could die would be if we steer into a magma flow and boil to death. Or if we surface in a lake and drown. Or if we lose power and become trapped inside the bedrock.”

“Trapped?” Celeste shuddered. “You mean we could end up starving to death inside this bucket of bolts?”

“Nonsense!” Scrumtumbler waved dismissively. “We’d suffocate long before we ran out of food.”

“May I ask,” Limefellow interrupted. “Why on Earth did you enlist a wilderness guide and a translator to explore a cave?”

“I had my reasons,” Scrumtumbler muttered, rubbing the back of his head and further mussing his unruly white hair. “I have a theory…a hunch.”

“…bases his theories on hunches…” Limefellow said to himself as he added another note to his book. Then he leaned forward in his seat and spoke to Maia, who sat below him. “Incidentally, my dear, I am a professor of linguistics, which means we will no longer be needing your translation services”

“As long as I get paid,” Maia said with a roll of her eyes.

“Everyone, everyone!” Jack’s voice boomed through the cabin. “Maybe we’re lacking a few members of the crew and maybe we have a few guests we didn’t expect, but we’re all going to make it back safely. I personally guarantee it.”

There was a moment of contemplative silence.

“Yep,” Celeste finally said. “We’re going to die.”

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.  

“Behold the mechanical triumph which will reshape our understanding of the very planet upon which we stand!” Professor Scrumtumbler spread his arms wide as if he were Atlas holding the weight of the world above his head. Behind him loomed the streamlined drilling machine, held upright by its launch struts like a steel tower that glinted in the desert sun.

Professor Limefellow barely glanced up from his notebook. “Poppycock,” was all he said.

Scrumtumbler’s arms wavered slightly.  He took a moment to collect his thoughts and study his rival. Finally, he decided to push his hands higher into the air and renew his speech with all the melodramatic force he had been practicing for the press corps he expected to begin arriving soon.

“They said it couldn’t be done!” Scrumtumbler boomed. “They called me a fool and a madman! But I will show them, and history will vindicate my theories and enshrine my name for all time. Within this very vehicle, I have assembled the most daring crew of adventurers to assist me as we bore through hundreds of miles of bedrock to pierce into a vast subterranean cave complex—”

“Poppycock,” Limefellow said, closing his notebook and placing it neatly into the breast pocket of his tweed suit.

Scrumtumbler dropped his arms to his side. “You’re just jealous,” he said petulantly.

“Jealous of a fool? I think not,” Limefellow adjusted his bolo hat. “I may be an anthropologist, but even I know that the crushing weight of the earth precludes the possibility of any such cave system as the one you propose.”

Gripping the lapels of his white lab coat, Scrumtumbler rocked up on the balls of his feet and mumbled something about Galileo’s critics. “Why are you here, Limefellow?” Scrumtumbler asked. “Did you want to get one final glimpse at me before the world starts carving statues in my honor?”
“On the contrary,” Limefellow said. “I am here to accompany you.”

“You—you’re what?” Scrumtumbler choked on his own words.

“That’s right. The Royal Society has agreed to dispatch me here to ensure that your scientific methodologies are sound. In other words, my dear sir, I will not allow you to bamboozle the public with your half-baked hoaxes.”

“No,” Scrumtumbler folded his arms. “You’re not coming. I forbid it. I—”

His words were cut short by a thunderous boom which echoed out from behind the drilling machine. Both professors flinched at the noise, and the crew’s wilderness guide stuck his head out of the drilling machine’s hatch to see what had happened. One moment later, the actress Scrumtumbler had hired for the launching ceremony marched out from behind the drilling machine, her hands raised high over her head. Behind her walked Clem, the engineer’s assistant. His black hat cast a shadow across his eyes as he held a colt revolver pointed at the girl’s back.

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