Savage Lands by Andy Briggs

floor sported matching stalagmites, but most had been cleared to provide a thoroughfare across the cave to another tunnel. The opening to this one was some twenty feet in diameter and circular, crafted in stone to look like the mouth of a giant beast. The fangs were blunt from age, and the features worn to nothing more than a faint trace, but it must have once been a fearsome image. A pair of small lakes sat at either end of the cavern. Their surfaces were motionless, but Tarzan swore he saw something large move below the crystal-clear surface of one.
    What impressed Tarzan most was the slender stone bridge that cut across the middle of the cavern. It was the width of a man, forcing creatures to cross in single file. Tarzan stood on it and gazed down. It spanned a whitewater river that cut through the rock a couple of feet below, appearing from one narrow cave and vanishing through another. The pale luminescence from the walls made the spume glow as it struck jagged rocks. There was no doubt—escape would be impossible for anybody unfortunate enough to fall in. Tarzan could see the lake connected to the river and guessed the water avenues were all connected in a gigantic network.
    Above the noise of the river, he heard a faint scream followed by shouting. The Targarni’s female prisoner was awake. Tarzan sprinted across the bridge and raced through the open maw of the stone beast, deeper into the unknown sanctuary.
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    J ane’s stomach lurched as the helicopter banked sharply left, following the path of the meandering river with reckless speed. The jungle below was an unfamiliar blur. Robbie clung on to a handle mounted just above the door and was grinning like a fool as the chopper suddenly banked right.
    Archie and Clark sat in flight seats opposite and didn’t say anything, although Jane suspected her father was enjoying the ride too. She hated it and was fully aware that Greystoke was taking them far deeper into the jungle, away from their camp. Without any recognizable landmarks, it would prove very difficult to return home in a hurry. Where Greystoke had previously relied on the loggers, the balance of power had now firmly shifted in his favor. Jane wondered if the others had realized that yet. Until they did, she would have to continue quietly sabotaging Greystoke’s plans.
    Greystoke sat in the copilot’s seat and hadn’t said a word to them since they’d taken off. The pilot had tended to his wounds, which proved to be nothing more severe than shallow cuts. Fortunately for Greystoke, Numa had been in a playful mood.
    Jane heard a crackle in the headset she was wearing to minimize the rotor noise. Greystoke’s voice filtered through. “We’re almost there. Get ready for landing.”
    Jane was unsure how to get ready, and the quizzical look of the others showed they were thinking the same thing. The chopper suddenly rose, causing Jane’s stomach to plummet as they climbed up the steep banks of a mountain. The jungle canopy was closer than ever and she couldn’t shake the thought that the pilot was going to crash. But he was skillful, and pivoted the helicopter over the gray shards of stone that poked from the mountaintop and revealed the vista beyond. Jane craned to get a better view through the cockpit canopy between Archie and Clark. What she saw made her heart sink.
    A huge swathe of jungle had been cleared for several miles, exposing the red clay beneath like an ugly scar in the landscape. The ground was laced with dirty brown streams that fed polluted water back into the rivers, and everywhere she looked bulldozers and excavators tracked to and fro, open-pit mining the landscape. Clark peered through the window as they flew over the site, impressed at the scale of the operation. A couple of boats and a floatplane were moored on the river, adjacent to a pair of large metal fuel tanks. It seemed as if Greystoke had everything he needed to stay