Into the oily water near the base of the ladder, not far from the walkway that hugged the right-hand wall of the cavern.
By chance she had landed in both a croc-free and a fire-free space.
This book just keeps getting better and better. Whilst it would have been fine to have her land in the fire or the crocodile's lair and be injured or in some kind of realistic peril, this book has cranked up the madness for so long that I'm legitimately curious to see where this goes, or at least I would be if I hadn't already read this book years ago and knew the chaos which was about to unfold.
But not for long.
Take a shot.
The crocs weren't far away, and no sooner had her splash subsided than a large one saw her and charged straight for her.
Good thing it was a large crocodile, otherwise I'd be thinking that she'd be able to escape a smaller crocodile and thus there would be no tension here.
Big Ears was dangling over the edge of Level 1 directly above her, helpless. "I can't get to her!"
I gathered as much when he stated that Big Ears was helpless. Below is an artist's rendition of a helpless Big Ears:
 |
| Does this look like the face of mercy? |
"I can," another voice called.
West.
He never missed a step.
Colour me sixty shades of shocked. You may also take some shots.
Running full tilt, he just leapt off the edge of Level 1 and sailed in a high-curving arc through the air toward the croc-lake below.
I'll admit, that's a pretty cool image to picture, in all of its ridiculousness. I can also safely say that "croc lake" is a perfect description of this book so far.
The big bull-croc that was charging at Lily never saw him coming. West landed square on its back, a mere foot away from Lily, and the two of them -man and croc- went under the black water's surface with a great splash.
They surfaced a second later, with the frenzied croc bucking like a bronco and West on its back, gripping it in a fierce headlock. The croc growled and roared before -crrrack- West brutally twisted its neck, breaking it. The croc went limp. West jumped clear, whisking Lily out of the water and onto the walkway flanking the lake not a moment before six crocs attacked the carcass of the dead one.
"Th... thanks," Lily gasped, wiping oil from her face and still shaking.
"Anytime, kiddo. Anytime."
I left that entire segment free of commentary so that you may truly appreciate what just happened. This will happen a lot in future editions of this novel.
Jack West Junior leapt into a lake of crocodiles, pulled one under the water (a "bull croc", no less, which sounds like a terrifying Fursona of Matthew Reilly's devillish creation) and wrestled with it for all of two seconds before snapping its neck with his robot arm.
That may be the most Australian thing ever conceived and put down on paper.
I'm willing to ignore the "kiddo" line, and the shots one must take if there is still anybody who remembers the drinking game rules for this novel without looking them up on my previous posts, just to reread that segment again.
This entire prologue has been worth it just for that.
It is all going to hurtle downhill from here.
Ground Level
The rest of the team joined them on the walkway.
Now Fuzzy and Big Ears were injured. But they were still mobile, helped along by Zoe and Wizard, while West and Lily were covered by Stretch.
They all hopscotched over the stepping-stone and its wall-hole - inside which the trapped croc still writhed behind Fuzzy's X-bar, and dashed for their manhole, just as the German engineers brought the final piece of their temporary bridge into place.
Forty armed German troops waited for the bridge to be completed. Some fired wayward crossbow bolts at the Seven, while others jammed newly found rubber-bullets into their MP7 sub-machine guns and started firing.
West and Lily came to the manhole. In they went. The others followed, while Stretch covered them. Big Ears went in... then Fuzzy... Wizard... Zoe and...
... the final piece of the bridge fell into place...
... as Stretch jumped into the manhole and the Germans charged over the bridge and the chase through the slipway system began.
That was quite a handful there, there were more "ands" than in a child's wishlist as they sit on Santa's lap. Once again I must praise the German engineering here, as well as the Pagan Germanic Gods which allowed them to conjure rubber bullets from the rubber dimension. Let's see how this "slipway chase" develops, for this is the end of the current section. If memory serves, there's a chase sequence, some hovercraft above ground, a new villain introduced, and then this segment is over and I may start reviewing this book properly, not sentence by sentence, which shall save us all a lot of time.
One final note:
This is what came up for "bull croc" in Google.
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