The klaxon blared throughout Castle Wewelsburg as the guards tore through the filing room in search of the spies. They pointed their flashlights and their machineguns under the desks and behind the filing cabinets, and then stormed through the stately glass doors to make sure no one was hiding on the balcony or the ledges surrounding the room. Their search was swift and efficient, but the castle was a large place with many other rooms to search, and the Nazis departed the room as suddenly as they had entered it.

As soon as they slammed the heavy oak door behind them, Dr. Mortimer Scott clicked on his pen light and began reading the files surrounding him. The three of them had tucked themselves away inside filing shelf cubby-holes and pulled boxes of files in after them. Reggie had grumbled about the tight squeeze, but the slender Dr. Scott found it almost comforting to be confined to such a small space with such important reading material. As luck would have it, he had stumbled across some very important information.

Clem was the first one out of hiding and he pressed his ear to the oak door to hear what was happening in the hallway.

“They’re a-crawlin’ all over this here castle,” he said. “Ain’t no way we’re getting past them.”

Reggie pushed and shoved and wriggled his way out from his shelf, making noises that made Dr. Scott think of a grizzly bear giving birth to overweight cubs. Dr. Scott, still clutching the fat file folder, was out on his feet before Reggie finished extracting himself. It gave Dr. Scott another moment to skim through the papers he held. His German was a bit rusty, but he felt a thrill as he read on.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “You won’t believe what I’ve found. It’s got to do with—”

Reggie shouldered past him to the balcony door where he threw back the heavy curtains and aimed his flashlight out into the darkness, covering and uncovering the light with his palm at regular intervals.

“What in the sam-hell are you doin’?” Clem whispered sharply. “They see that light in this room and they’ll know right where to come get us.”

“Relax,” Reggie said. “I’m signaling the pilot.”

“And what’s the pilot supposed to do? Last I talked to her, she ain’t got a ‘get out of jail free’ card that works at Nazi prison camps.”

“Gentlemen!” Dr. Scott raised his voice just over a whisper. “You need to see what I’ve found. This file contains the Thule Society’s information on portals into the Hollow Earth. Including  their suspected location.”

“And what good is that?” Clem said. “I ain’t packed any bags for a Hollow Earth expedition, you know.”

“Don’t underestimate the importance of this information,” Dr. Scott waved the thick file folder in the air. “This may be the key to finding the greatest scientific discovery of the twentieth century. More importantly, it may be the key to keeping that discovery out of the hands of the Nazis.”

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.

Inside the barn, Dr. Scott dangled a slab of bloody meat through the thick bars of a livestock pen. Within the cage were several creatures that resembled chickens in the way a shark resembles a guppy. These so-called chickens were four feet tall with heavy-set beaks that had elongated into spike-toothed maws. Their legs were muscular and built for running, and their tails stretched back to counterbalance their heavy fore-bodies. Their skin was layered with yellow-brown scales except for the few irregular patches of brown feathers that dotted their backs, tails, and vestigial wings.

Reggie Sparks took one look at them and rushed back to the plane to assemble his camera equipment, leaving Kate and Clem to speak with the doctor.

Dr. Scott dangled a strip of steak through the bars. The monsters inside slammed against the cage and slashed at each other savagely to get at the meat.

“These can’t be chickens,” Kate said. “What did you do to them?”

“An animal’s entire evolutionary history is contained within every cell of its body,” Dr. Scott said. “All I did was prompt them to display different traits of their ancestors.”

“I wouldn’t have thought that chickens had such monstrous ancestors.”

“You might be surprised,” the doctor tossed in another hunk of meat and watched his creations tear into it. “It is very probably that the chicken is the closest living relative of the tyrannosaurus rex. It’s a little sad, when you think about it.”

“Pardon me,” said Clem. “But why on earth would you want to create a race of monster chicken?”

“Why?” he exclaimed as though simultaneously offended by the question and delighted at the opportunity to answer. “The reason is simple: a larger chicken means more meat. I’m going to feed the world. The future is bright! You’ll see—the twentieth century will bring great prosperity and lasting peace for all humankind.”

“I guess you don’t listen to the radio much,” Kate said.

Dr. Scott dumped the last of the meat through the bars and peeled off his gloves. “I don’t get radio reception out here. I’m afraid my communication with the outside world is limited to my telegraph line.”

Clem’s eyes widened just slightly at the mention of the telegraph. If he had been playing poker, he would have given himself away, but neither the pilot nor the scientist seemed to have noticed.

“Sir. Ma’am,” Clem said. “’Scuze me, if you don’t mind. I need to go freshen up.”

He left the two of them and passed Reggie, who was hustling his cinema equipment into the barn. That left Clem alone to enter the mansion, find the study, and locate the brass telegraph set on a side table. He dialed through to London, and began tapping out his message with the hand marked by the eye-and-triangle tattoo.

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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. 

New episodes of this story will be added every Tuesday and Friday (and maybe more often if the mood takes me). Don’t miss any of the pulse pounding action! Get all the episodes delivered to your inbox each month by subscribing to my free ezine.

Reggie Sparks threw open the door of the outhouse and had to hold onto his fedora to keep it from blowing off in the sandstorm kicked up by the drilling machine’s departure. As he watched, the gargantuan machine chewed its way into the ground, its steel hull slowly rotating in place as it disappeared into the mound of rubble kicked up in its wake.

“Hey, you crumbs!” he held his pants up with one fist while he shook the other at the titanic molehill where once the drilling machine had been. “Come back! You forgot me! Oh—my camera!”

Reggie hurriedly buckled his belt and then rushed to the side of his fallen Mitchell Model NC 35mm cinema camera where it lay in the scrub brush, its tripod toppled by the vibrations of the drilling machine’s passing.

A man in a black hat and a checkered shirt stepped out of the dust cloud near the launch struts. Reggie recognized the man as Clem, one of the assistant engineers.

“I didn’t know you were still here,” Clem drawled slowly.

“I was in an executive meeting,” Reggie jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the outhouse. “Would you look at this? Lens is broken. These things cost a fortune. Not only that, but I’m out the chance to get a shot of the drilling gizmo doing its thing. Stock footage sales would have kept me in butter and eggs for a month of Tuesdays, you know. This whole gig was nothing but a trip for biscuits.”

As the rumbling of the drilling machine receded, the buzz of airplane engines passed by overhead, but otherwise the desert was silent. Reggie frisked his pockets until he found a small set of screwdrivers, which he then used to unscrew the brass ring that secured the camera’s main lens.

Clem circled around to stand behind him, casting a long shadow over the director. Slowly and silently he drew a long black Colt .45 from the holster at his hip.

Reggie rubbed the stubble on his chin appraisingly as he held up the cracked lens to peer through it at the empty desert in front of him. “The Professor owes me a new lens,” he grumbled. “That, and I can’t believe they went and left me behind.”

“They went,” Clem said, extending his pistol to the back of Reggie’s head. “And they left no witnesses behind.”

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.  

Before Celeste could say anything, the man in the gray suit drew a pistol. She may not have known much about guns, but her time on the set of “A Spy Among Us” had taught her to recognize it as one of those sleek German numbers with a thin barrel and a slanting handle.

“You haff made an unfortunate discovery, Fraulein,” said the man, his accented voice low and menacing.

The sound of a shot ripped through the desert air and she clutched her hands to her chest, certain that the bullet had pierced her heart. When she dared to open her eyes for a look, she found no blood on her fingers. As she watched, the man in the gray suit slumped to the ground, the gun slipping from his limp grasp.

“You alright, ma’am?”

She looked over to see a man with a smoking revolver. He was one of the engineers, and he wore blue jeans, a checkered shirt, and a black cowboy hat.

“Name’s Clem,” he said, tipping his hat towards her. “Looks like you got yourself a Nazi problem.”

“Thank you, Thank you!” she gushed, throwing her arms around him. “I owe you my life.”

“I don’t reckon you do,” he said, gently pushing her away. As he did, Celeste saw that he had a small tattoo on his right hand, in the fleshy spot between his thumb and his fingers. It depicted an eye inside a triangle.

“You see, ma’am,” he said as he nudged the body of the fallen man with the toe of his leather boot. “This here Nazi was out to put a stop to the drilling machine because his organization doesn’t want the competition. My organization, on the other hand, wants to make sure it gets to where it’s going.”

“You’re a hero,” she said.

“No, ma’am, I don’t think you understand me yet. I want this drilling machine gone early, before the press arrives to discover it’s anything other than a hoax. And when I say it goes, I mean it goes with everyone. Including you.”

Celeste realized that his revolver was now trained on her.

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