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.

Jack and Celeste dashed deep into the jungle where the tyrannosaur’s pursuit was slowed by the massive trees. Even so, their head start soon dwindled to a few yards, then a few feet, and all the while the dinosaur’s booming footfalls shook the ground under their feet.

With no warning, the forest floor dropped away into a wide, vine-choked canyon. Jack skidded to a halt and thrust out his arm to keep Celeste, arms pinwheeling in search of balance, from plummeting down the thirty foot drop.

“It’s too far to jump,” she gasped. “What do we do?”

“Hold on,” Jack said, pulling her close with one hand while scooping up a thick vine with the other. He launched the two of them backwards over the ledge and watched as the tyrannosaur’s maw rushing down at them. They disappeared below the lip of the cliff just as the terrible jaws slammed closed onto the open air just above their heads.

Feet braced against the canyon wall, Jack strained to grip the vine while repelling downward. The beast dipped its head over the cliff edge and chomped at them twice. Finally, it roared down at them, but for all its noise and power it had no means to climb such a steep slope.

“We’re alive!” Celeste squealed when they reached the bottom of the ravine. She threw her arms around Jack’s neck to show her appreciation.

“Let’s not get unprofessional, here,” he said, pushing her away gently. “We’ve still got a job to do, and that means staying alive.”

With his compass still malfunctioning, Jack made his best guess as to which direction would bring them back to the drilling machine. The two set off along the stream that trickled through the canyon floor.

“Where are we, anyway?” Celeste said as they pushed through a dense cluster of foliage. “I mean, this whole region is positively crackers. I’ve never seen animals like that, not even in nature films. I’ve never seen people like that either.”

Jack broke off a branch to clear their way through the thicket. The truth was, he didn’t know where they were, either—he had travelled to the four corners of the globe, but this land and its inhabitants were like no place he had ever seen. On the other hand, it ran against his upbringing to admit that he was lost, especially to a woman.

Before Jack could figure out what to tell the actress, a clanking of a rifle bolt stopped them in their tracks. Twenty feet up the canyon trail, the two surviving Nazi soldiers stepped out from behind a curve in the cliff wall and called for surrender. These soldiers were a little worse for wear, but they had their rifles, which was more than Jack could say for himself.

“What now?” Celeste whispered.

“Put your hands in the air, Princess,” Jack held his own above his head. “Looks like we’re about to become prisoners of the Reich.”

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’re new to Hollow Earth Expedition, I suggest starting at the beginning.

The rifle bucked into Jack’s shoulder and his field of vision was momentarily obscured by a cloud of white smoke. The charging dinosaur tipped forward as it hurtled towards him, its mouth opening as it approached the ground. With a thrill of victory, Jack thought he had hit the mark.

Then he saw the tyrannosaurs black eyes fixed on him and he realized that the huge mouth wasn’t heading for the ground because the creature was dead—it was heading for the ground because that’s where Jack stood, and Jack was about to become the next meal.

Not for the first time that day, Jack scolded himself for being a fool. One little bullet finding the beast’s brain inside the vault of rock-hard bone? Laughable. And now the rugged explorer would be inside the monster’s gullet before he could chamber another round.

It was Celeste who shoved Jack out of the way. The massive jaws slammed closed with enough force to pop his ears from the change in air pressure, but the actress had narrowly rescued Jack from his fate. He stumbled backwards and watched as the tyrannosaur stooped down for another try. He also saw the Nazi soldier seize Celeste by the wrist and attempt to haul her back towards the broken cages.

When Celeste screamed, it was a true ear-splitter. Jack wasn’t sure he had ever heard such a noise, but then the tyrannosaur abandoned its pursuit of Jack, wheeled towards the actress, and let out a roar that seemed to shake the jungle to its roots. Jack clapped his hands to his ears and saw that Celeste and the Nazi were doing the same, but it hardly mattered. They were caught in a flood of sound. It pounded into their ears, it rattled their bones, it liquefied their stomachs. A gust of carrion-scented breath pursued the roar, whipping Jack’s hair away from his forehead and forcing him to step backwards.

The tyrannosaur refilled its mighty lungs and then lunged for its prey. Now it was Jack’s turn to save Celeste’s life. He slammed himself bodily against her, lifting her off her feet to get her clear of the monster’s teeth. The Nazi was not so lucky: the tyrannosaur slammed its mouth around him and lifted its head up to swallow. Where the soldier had stood a moment before, now only a pair of bloody boots remained—one on its side, the other gently rocking in place.

Jack grabbed Celeste by the hand and pulled her into a run.

“No screaming!” Jack yelled to her. “I think that thing hates your screaming!”

The two dashed away into the underbrush, where Jack had hoped they might escape the notice of the tyrannosaur.

No such luck.

As they passed under a break in the canopy, a beam of sunlight struck Celeste’s red, sparkly dress and the monster’s head came around as surely as if they had been waving their arms to get its attention. Once again, the chase was on.

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’re new to Hollow Earth Expedition, I suggest starting at the beginning.

Jack Steele peered down the barrel of his rifle at the three Nazi soldiers, each of whom peered down their own barrels back at him. The prisoners in the cages and even the giant who had been pulling the train of carts looked on in tense silence. All things considered, Jack was ready to admit that this hadn’t been one of his best plans.

A series of crashes and booms echoed out from the jungle. Jack might have assumed that it was a stream of boulders crashing down a rocky slope, but the noise was too rhythmic. Footsteps, Jack thought. Gigantic, running footsteps. And whatever was making the noise was almost on top of them.

Without lowering his rifle, Jack glanced up just as Celeste dashed out of the underbrush right towards him. Her face was flushed, her red dress was torn, and she was kicking up her heels as if the devil himself were on her tail.

“Celeste!” Jack shouted. Still keeping his finger on the trigger with onehand, he grabbed her arm with his other to stop her flight. “Celeste! What’s going on?”

She seemed too panicked to recognize him. “Big!” she cried frantically. “Big! Teeth! Big!”

It was only an instant before Jack got a look at what she meant. The ravenous king of the prehistoric jungle, the Tyrannosaurus rex, ripped through the foliage with the force of a run-away train. As it barreled down on them, its massive head glanced off a palm tree. The tree cracked and sagged over as if bowing before its king, but the tyrannosaur was not to be slowed.

The Nazi soldiers fired their rifles at the charging beast, but the shots resulted in nothing more than insignificant red specks on the wide landscape of its leathery skin. The tyrannosaur ignored the pitiful firearms but charged in to deliver it a violent kick to the train of wheeled cages, no doubt mistaking it for an animal. The cages and their screaming occupants flew thirty feet and crashed in a jumbled of broken wooden bars and scattered people.

The shaggy-bearded giant who had been pulling the wagons was pinned upside down, kicking his feet uselessly in the air while still anchored to his yoke by heavy chains. The prisoners who had not been too badly injured in the crash bolted from their captivity like frightened rabbits. Suddenly, the jungle floor teemed with running, wailing people, and the commotion set the tyrannosaur into a feeding frenzy.

“Let’s get out of here!” Celeste shouted as she pulled at Jack’s sleeve.

Jack didn’t budge. While everyone around him screamed and fled from the rampaging tyrannosaur, Jack stood his ground and took aim. He was no big game hunter, but he knew that the best way to stop a charging elephant was to aim right between its eyes, so he fixed his sights on the midpoint of the creature’s bumpy brow. He willed his breath to slow down and his hands to stay steady. Only then did he squeeze the trigger.

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’re new to Hollow Earth Expedition, I suggest starting at the beginning.

Once, Celeste had told her mother that she would go out the way she came in: screaming at the top of her lungs. That prophesy seemed about to come true as the massive cave bear loomed over her. She filled her lungs with air and then gave the best blood-curdling scream of her career.

The sound caused birds to explode out of the surrounding trees. The velociraptors below cringed and slinked backwards. Even the cave bear paused, its paw still high over her head. If she had been able to scream like that in her audition for Embrace of the Zombie, she would have snagged the leading role right out from under Lillian van Doren. Here, it only bought her a brief stay of execution.

Her scream echoed away through the forest as her lungs emptied. To her surprise, the sound was answered by a distant roar. Far away though it was, this new sound rumbled past them with the clarity of thunder.

The bear scanned the jungle in the direction of the roar, but after a moment it turned its angry yellow eyes back to Celeste.

Again, Celeste screamed. Again, the answering roar sounded throughout the jungle, but this time it was much closer. And now the actress could feel a tremor in the ground that soon resolved itself into a rapid series of powerful footsteps.  The footsteps grew nearer and nearer, until they were momentarily covered by the deafening, ripping noise of a tree falling and the leaves of the jungle canopy rustled like a chorus of frightened voices heralding the approach of something truly gigantic.

The bear galloped back into the darkness of its cave, but the velociraptors had no safe haven. They bolted, but not until the tyrant king of all dinosaurs burst through the tree line.

Its snout, its eyes, its jaw—all these added up to the size of an automobile, and that was just the head. The creature’s teeth were as big as broadswords, with ropes of saliva and the red pieces of a recent meal trailing from them. Its forearms were stunted and almost comical in their dangling uselessness, but its supremely powerful hind legs more than made up for the lack. Those legs carried the beast through the forest with such irresistible power that the creature seemed less a thing of flesh and blood and more a force of nature. This dinosaur was more than a predator—it was a tsunami, a tornado, an earthquake, and all who failed to flee would be swept down its vast maw.

This was Tyrannosaurus rex, the mightiest carnivore ever to walk the planet.

The velociraptors bounded away, but the tyrannosaur caught up to them in three booming steps. Its gigantic teeth closed upon the nearest tail and it flipped the smaller dinosaur into the air like a cat playing with a mouse. The raptor’s squeal was cut short as it fell into the awaiting, after which came the horrid sound of splintering bones, followed by the deep slurping as the tyrannosaur bobbed its head in the air to swallow its meal.

In a daze of terror, Celeste rose to her feet and backed away on wobbly legs. Instantly, the vertical black pupil of the monster’s eye fixed on her. When she ran, the tyrannosaur cleared the edge of the small cliff in a single bound to pursue its new prey.

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