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.

Celeste scampered up the steep cliff of a plateau, wildly grabbing for vines, roots, ledges—anything she could use to pull herself above the snapping jaws of the velociraptors. As she climbed, sharp stones and jagged layers of sediment cut into her fingers and her bare feet, but she couldn’t let it slow her. The raptors bounded high into the air after her, like tigers leaping up after a treat held just above their snouts. One of them snagged the hem of her dress in its teeth, ripping loose a long strip of red fabric and almost yanking her off the cliff. Yet she hung on, and soon she managed to pull herself over the ledge and beyond their reach.

Panting, she looked back down and saw them pacing and watching at her, the way hunting dogs watched a treed fox. But she was not up a tree—she was on an elevated stretch of ground, identical to the surrounding jungle except that some unknown geological event had long ago thrust it fifteen feet above the area she had just escaped. Better still, to her right the land continued to rise, and the slope contained the squat mouth of a natural cave.

A cave meant safety. It meant she could get out of this crazy, dangerous wilderness for a few minutes to think about how she was going to get back to the drilling machine in one piece. Most importantly, it meant a chance to rest her aching legs after all that running from dinosaurs.

She had to stoop as she progressed deep into the cave, where it became so dark that she had to grope her way along the wall like a blind woman. She couldn’t tell how far back it went, but she didn’t stop moving until she felt the hard rock wall become soft under her fingertips. Soft and fuzzy.

She paused, confused, and prodded the wall to figure out what she was feeling.

It growled at her.

Celeste yelped and scrambled to the exit, her headlong rush through the low cave causing her to spill forward onto the ground. She could hear the thing behind her moving as it turned and came after her, but all she could do was scramble on her hands and knees towards the cave opening.

She burst into the sunlight and whirled to see a massive brown bear lumbering out of the cave behind her, its angry yellow eyes fixed on hers. Celeste had seen bears in the San Diego Zoo, and she had worked with lions on set, but this was bigger than any of those animals. When this bear rose onto its hind feet, it towered fourteen feet into the air and seemed to block out all the light from the sky. With another vexed growl, it raised a hefty paw, ready to deliver the death stroke.

Celeste lunged sideways to escape down the cliff, but stopped short when she saw the velociraptor pack still waiting for her below.

There was nothing left for her to do but scream.

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.

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.

As Celeste silently vowed never to sit in the leaves of the forest floor again, something jabbed her in the shoulder like a needle. She sprang back and looked at her arm to discover a fat, brightly colored insect with bulging black eyes and a translucent thorax that revealed pulsing blue innards. It was almost the size of an apple, and it clung to her with hairy, twitching legs while it jabbed at her skin with a long, curving proboscis.

With a yelp of fright, she slapped at the monstrosity. It fell from her shoulder but took to the air with a set of buzzing wings. She slapped at it again and again, but it hovered around her flailing hands, lunging in at her. Cursing the vile wilderness, she tried to run, but it kept pace with her, buzzing in her ear as she waved her arms around her head.

Celeste knew this thing was a pest, and with eight brothers and sisters Celeste knew the pestering wouldn’t stop until she taught it some manners. She snagged a fallen branch from the ground and spun to face the insect. As it rushed in, a filthy ball of appendages and mandibles, and she swung her stick like a baseball bat. There was a wet smack as the bug sailed away through the air. Its trajectory took it high enough to brush the bottoms of the leaves overhead before landing two dozen yards away, right on top of what Celeste assumed was a pile of logs.

Only it wasn’t a pile of logs. It was a group of sleeping creatures whose brown-yellow reptilian skin served to camouflage them as a logs. One of the creatures awoke with a start and stared at the fat dead bug that had bounced off its haunch. Then the creature turned its sleek, narrow head to study Celeste with yellow eyes. Two other identical heads rose up from the forest floor to look at her. The first one rose to its feet and she could see that it stood bird-like on its hind legs. Short, tan feathers lined its heavily clawed forearms and the tip of its long tail. It opened its snout and licked its pointed teeth as it watched her.

Celeste dropped her stick and ran.

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