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.

Maia stood up on the back of the lumbering triceratops to get a better view of the city and saw that somebody had cleared the outer wall of all nearby foliage. It was not the work of animals: this was clearly the result of human labor because the jungle had been hacked back in an even line out to thirty or forty feet, and the cutting was recent. It meant no easy access to trees or logs that could give her a boost over the top, and the bricks that comprised the tall wall fit together seamlessly, which meant no footholds. No doubt there would be gates and perhaps open chinks elsewhere along the wall, but those areas would surely be closely watched by the inhabitants.

As she pondered the best way to get into the city, a herd of four leaf-green dinosaurs roamed out of the thick jungle in search of the fresh sprouts growing next to the wall. These new creatures lacked most of the bulk of the triceratopses, but they stood half again as tall, thanks to the impressive, diamond-shaped bone plates that protruded along their backs. It made them look dangerous, but the real danger protruded from the tips of their tails in the form of thick bony spikes. From her time working with natural history museums around the United States, Maia knew these animals to be stegosaurs, long believed to be as extinct as the triceratops upon which she now rode.

Herbivorous animals were rarely as territorial as predators, but animals of this size evidently felt the need to fight for their patches of grass. The three triceratops bulls did their trumpeting and pawing routine while the family of four stegosaurs turned sideways and thrashed their spiked tails, all the while hissing and howling like angry cats. Showing off their broad flanks like that, the stegosaurs reminded Maia of pirate ships readying a broadside cannonade. This threat was not lost on the triceratopses, who seemed hesitant to charge in; perhaps, Maia thought, they had experienced those deadly tails before.

The triceratopses, who had not cared about that section of the jungle until they saw the stegosaurs in it, moved forward with slow determination, keeping their head shields aimed at the swinging tails. The first triceratops was lucky enough to catch the tail on the backswing. There was a clatter of bone-on-bone as it drove the tail to the ground and pinned it with his three horns against the dirt. The stegosaur, still mindlessly chewing its cud, watched in dull awareness while its tail, moving as though it had a mind of its own, jerked and lashed in a vain attempt to free itself.

The other two triceratopses were not quite so fortunate, because as they pressed in the spiked tails came whooshing out, and horns met spikes with the resounding clack of a baseball knocked out of the park. Mia felt the tremor of the impact through the thick muscles and skin of her triceratops’s back, but the beast upon which she rode seemed unfazed. The fourth stegosaur just watched from where it stood, swinging the tail, its thin head occasionally dipping down for another bite of grass.

The clash between the titanic beasts was impressive, but it would surely draw the attention of anyone inside the city. While her triceratops bellowed and pulled back for another lunge, Maia slid down its thick reptilian tail, rolled away from its stamping feet, and darted over to the head of the nearest stegosaur. While the triceratops dueled with its tail, the surprisingly small head of the stegosaur turned to regarded her with dull eyes. She patted it on its snout, pitying it for its incredible stupidity, then hopped onto its neck and ran up the hillock of its back between its bone plates. She found that the plates were pointed at the top but not sharp along the edges, so she grabbed on and hoisted herself up and over.

She hung by her fingers on the far side of the wall and then dropped herself the remaining few feet. It was a hard landing, but she rolled with it and came up behind the ruins of what might have once been a grain storage or a family home but was now little more than a pile of rubble.

On the other side of the wall, the dinosaurs continue to crash and trumpet. The city’s new occupants heard it, too, because it was only another moment before Maia could hear the stomp of approaching boots and orders shouted in German.

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 trouble with riding triceratopses is that it gets dull. Maia Parker had discovered that even when the gargantuan beasts charged at full speed, they didn’t buck like horses or sway like elephants. You got the wind in your face and the rush of acceleration, but you might as well have been riding a broad, flat barn roof. Worse, after their stampede had ended, the big gray dinosaurs became content to wander from one grassy patch to the next, not even bothering to notice the small human being clinging to their broad backs. If she had a hammock, she might have stretched it out between two of them, but she hadn’t travel through five hundred miles of solid rock to take a nap. She wanted action.

The herd of horned reptiles stumped along, their search for greener pastures taking them into an open area of the forest where the thick trees gave way to a riot of green vines and shrubs closer to the ground. Just before Maia decided to hop off and head back to the drilling machine, she spotted an ancient stone wall about a hundred yards away. It was perhaps a bit more than ten feet tall, and it curved away into the dark jungle to form the perimeter of what must have been an ancient city. Beyond this wall, she could see terraced pyramids, fat rectangular buildings, and, at what was likely to be the city’s center, a towering obelisk carved with strange symbols. Above this obelisk hovered an ominous black zeppelin displaying the unmistakable swastika symbol.

Maia adjusted her fedora to shield her eyes from the bright sun as she watched the zeppelin. Against the cloudy white backdrop, it looked like some kind of bloated black tick—a fitting comparison, Maia thought, because if the Nazis were here it could only mean they wanted to suck the lifeblood out of the land. They were just like the people who had taken everything from her ancestors. They were just like the teachers at the boarding school who had taken Maia from her family.

Forget returning to the drilling machine, Maia decided. Whatever these men were here to get, she would get it first. She was owed that much.

All she had to do was figure out a way over that wall without being seen.

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.

Maia Parker slipped her fedora over her black hair and slung her shotgun onto her shoulder. “Well, I’m not staying inside this tin-can just because some chauvinist thinks I can’t take care of myself,” she announced as she scampered up the ladder and out into the bright sunlight.

Out on the steel deck of the drilling machine, she surveyed the thick rainforest that stretched in every direction and the clearing which surrounded them. Throughout the clearing, enormous, three horned animals casually grazed on the grass or scratched at the dirt in search of roots and tubers.

“Triceratops,” Professor Scrumtumbler said as he joined Maia in observing the animals. “Soon they will be known as Tri-Horned Scrumtumble-saurs. Much more catchy name, I’m sure you’ll agree.”

One of the enormous beasts looked up at them and snorted. The blast of air from its nostrils smelled like garden compost.

“They look friendly enough,” Maia said. “Bet you a sawbuck I can ride one.”

Scrumtumbler shook his head and mumbled something about being trampled to death, but Maia figured it was just because he knew he would lose the bet. If he wouldn’t go for it, maybe she could sucker one of the other crewmembers into the wager. And if none of them took her up on it, she would just have to find some other excuse to ride one.

The others soon emerged from the hatch, even Celeste, the blonde-haired actress who had been an unintentional stow-away. In the bright noon-day sunlight, Celeste’s red, sequined dress sparkled so brightly that Maia had to put her hand to her brow to block the reflected brilliance.

“Something seems to be spooking the beasts,” Professor Limefellow observed, pointing down to the nearest triceratops. It was shaking its enormous gray head-plate and bucking its horns threateningly into the air. Two more of the massive beasts joined in with the threatening display, their bellows mixing the sounds of elephant trumpets and lion roars. Behind them, the other members of the herd responded to the commotion by forming a tight, defensive circle around their young.

“They seemed so nice before,” Celeste said. “What’s gettin’ them all riled up like that?”

Maia studied the three bulls squaring off against the drilling machine. In the bright sunlight, their head plates seemed dappled with red pinpoints of light. As they stabbed at the air with their horns, they squinted and blinked against the flashing glare of something in the direction of the drilling machine.

“Your dress,” Maia said to Celeste, pointing to the actress’s red, sequined outfit. “You’re like a walking red cape at a bull fight.”

Before Maia could shove Celeste down the hatch, the three triceratopses roared once more and charged in. They ran together, flank to flank, rushing forward like a thirty ton tsunami of prehistoric muscle and bone.

The ground shook with the thunder of dinosaur feet. Celeste gasped. Scrumtumbler and Limefellow both tried to get down the hatch and into the drilling machine, but they collided with each other and neither of them made it inside.

Maia crouched down and timed her jump for the instant before the beasts slammed into the steel hull.

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.

Jack Steele raised his hand to shield his eyes from the sunlight pouring through the porthole. After twenty-four hours tunneling through bedrock, daylight was a shocking wake-up call to the crew.

In the seat next to Jack, Professor Scrumtumbler lowered his goggles over his eyes so that he could look out into the blindingly bright landscape. “We’re here!” the wild-haired scientist declared. “We’ve made it into the Hollow Earth!”

“Nonsense,” said Professor Limefellow from the next seat. “If we were in a subterranean cave, there would be no sunlight, of course.”

“Not according to my theory,” Scrumtumbler said huffily.

Jack put an end to the professors’ bickering by working the bolt of his Remington .30-06. “You eggheads and dames stay here,” he said. “I’ll go find out where we are.”

Popping the hatch, Jack lifted himself onto the steel deck of the drilling machine and saw that they had emerged at the foot of a mountain surrounded by a vast rainforest. Loud birdcalls rang through the trees, warm air carried the scents of springtime growth, and a herd of enormous animals grazed in the clearing not far from the drilling machine. The whole region must have rested at a very low elevation, because the horizon curved upwards in all directions until it faded into the white, misty clouds that evenly coated the sky. Strangely, this cloud cover did nothing to dampen the light from the bright sun that hung directly overhead, as if it were hung on the near side of a swirling white backdrop.

Professor Scrumtumbler had said that his underground caverns might contain an ecosystem and even its own phosphorescent lighting source, but this place was obviously no dank cave filled with bats and bugs. Jack decided that the machine must have drilled through the crust at an oblique angle to emerge somewhere else on the Earth’s surface. Based on the looks of the verdant rainforest around him, he guessed they were in the Amazon jungle somewhere. Judging from the size of the animals grazing nearby, he revised his guess to somewhere in Africa. Then he got a better look at those animals and decided he had no idea where he was.

The herd consisted of about a dozen squat, gray creatures that he might have mistaken for rhinoceroses, except that they were closer in size to elephants. And the rhino-horn on their nose was accompanied by two longer, thicker horns that drove straight forward from a broad, bony head-plate. They seemed harmless enough as they uprooted the grass and ground it in their parrot-beak mouths, but it still made Jack nervous to see that their grazing was taking the heard closer to the machine. One of them even meandered right up to the side of the drilling machine, looked at Jack with a yellow eye that had a black, vertical slit of a pupil.

Once, Jack had seen an Australian platypus and decided it was the most unlikely hodge-podge of spare parts that existed outside a fairly tale. Now, he was forced to revise his opinion, because these three-horned monstrosities looked like it belonged to a different world. Whatever it was, the professors could quibble about its classification later: for now, Jack had a job to do.

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