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Andy McBean and the Lost World: The Amazing Adventures of Andy McBean, #3
Andy McBean and the Lost World: The Amazing Adventures of Andy McBean, #3
Andy McBean and the Lost World: The Amazing Adventures of Andy McBean, #3
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Andy McBean and the Lost World: The Amazing Adventures of Andy McBean, #3

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Andy McBean has fought aliens and traveled the Arctic in the Nautilus. Now all he wants to do is go home. But first he must survive the mysterious island the Nautilus’ crew calls home. With his friends Hector and Charlie, Andy meets the brilliant Professor Challenger. As they travel across the island to reach a radio and call for help, they learn a terrible secret about this land that time forgot. 

LanguageEnglish
PublisherDale Kutzera
Release dateNov 21, 2017
ISBN9781386111009
Andy McBean and the Lost World: The Amazing Adventures of Andy McBean, #3

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    Andy McBean and the Lost World - Dale Kutzera

    Andy World Title PageB.jpg

    Published by Salmon Bay Books

    Copyright © 2015 by Dale Kutzera

    All rights reserved.

    Cover and Interior Design by Dale Kutzera

    Illustrations by Joemel Requeza

    Glyphs adapted from the drawings of Joseph Clement Coll

    This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. This book is available in print from most online retailers.

    In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the author constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the author at info@DaleKutzera.com.

    Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

    www.AndyMcBean.com

    To Arthur Conan Doyle,

    who brought lost worlds to life.

    Contents

    Escape

    Adrift

    Inuits

    Vulcania

    A Way In

    A Dark Portal

    Trapped

    The Lake

    Tigers

    Safe at Last

    A Cry in the Night

    Into the Wild

    Strange Beasts

    The Ravine

    Frozen

    The Tunnel

    Separated

    Stalked

    Base Camp

    Missing

    The Tribe

    Challenger’s Secret

    War

    Change of Plans

    The Greatest Tool

    Rapids

    To the Island

    The Prize

    Changing

    Alone

    The Forest Primevil

    Skull Cave

    The Pit

    The Volcano God

    The Light of Day

    Home

    About the Author

    Vulcannia2.jpg

    The natives called the island the Dragon’s Den.

    Challenger had given it a different name.

    Prologue

    Escape

    I s everyone ready? Nemorov whispered. We’ll only get one shot at this.

    One shot is all we’ll need, Challenger replied.

    The men had assembled on the lower deck of the old submarine, their rugged faces half-lit by naked bulbs strung in a row down the center corridor. They made an ugly group of conspirators—ragged, unshaven, and gaunt-eyed. The vapor of their breath created a cloud about their heads. Even in the depths of the old sub, it was freezing cold. There was no escaping the cold and no getting used to it.

    There were twenty of them in all, twenty-and-a-half if you consider that Professor George Edward Challenger was well over six feet tall and almost as wide.

    He had spent the last two years as a prisoner on this forgotten corner of the Siberian coast and could hardly remember a day when he hadn’t been cold. But then he was the biggest of the group and had the most body to keep warm. Every scrap of tattered clothing he owned was draped over a frame that had deflated from husky to lanky over the passing months. At the Gulag, the slop they called food was enough to keep the prisoners alive, but little more.

    As a bio-geneticist, Professor Challenger knew that none of the prisoners would survive. They were all scientists and ill-equipped for such harsh conditions and backbreaking labor. They had spent their lives in libraries and laboratories, living a life of the mind, of research and exploration. They were trained to ask questions and find answers.

    And that was the problem.

    Each had, in one way or another, asked the wrong questions and done so in a nation where the wrong answers were severely punished.

    You all know what to do, Nemorov said. His jet black hair and ragged beard framed dark piercing eyes. Wait for my signal.

    They nodded and headed off in different directions. One group ambled to the back of the sub, another to the front. Nemorov nodded to Challenger and a third man, Oleg Kandinsky. Together they clanked their way up the metal stairs. Challenger was relieved Oleg was coming with them. He was a mechanical engineer, but more importantly, the best fighter of the group. His shaved head and devilish grin, glinting with gold fillings, were enough to scare off most men.

    This is it, Challenger thought. What was it an American had said long ago? Give me liberty or give me death!

    Challenger couldn’t remember the American’s name, but wondered if the man had also been a prisoner. Liberty or death—that’s what much of life came down to: the basic desire to live free and follow the winding path of a curious mind...or die trying. Challenger’s path had led him from the University of Edinburgh to laboratories in Oxford and Moscow. There he had unlocked the genetic secrets of life—secrets his Russian employers would rather keep secret. They condemned him to a Siberian prison and forced labor at a decommissioned Soviet naval base. His path may have ended here, if not for the new inmate Aleksandr Nemorov.

    What had Nemorov’s path been? What had he done to merit such banishment? No one knew. He was a nautical engineer and had worked for the largest oil companies in the world, designing new machines to drill oil out of the ocean. He must have made someone very powerful very angry. But that was something they had all done in one way or another. To silence them, their powerful enemies sent them to a place where even sound seemed frozen. Instead of advancing human knowledge, they were tasked with dismantling the rusting war machines of the old Soviet Union.

    That had been their captors’ mistake. Never give tools to prisoners trained to solve problems, even a problem as impossible as escaping from a Siberian Gulag. 

    Two guards stood at the top of the stairs. Challenger knew their names were Vladimir and Boris. They were camp guards, not the soldiers stationed at the old naval base. They suffered through the same cold and grinding routine, their lives almost as bleak as the prisoners they had come to know and even respect. But today their familiar smiles worked to the prisoners’ advantage. Challenger returned their grins with a casual wave—then punched Boris in the nose as Oleg drove his fist into Vladimir’s gut.

    Three blows more and several grunts later, the guards lay crumpled on the metal deck plates. Oleg dragged one into a nearby storage room. Nemorov grabbed their rifles as someone shouted from the deck above.

    C’mon, Nemorov said, tossing a rifle to Challenger. We must secure the bridge!

    They headed up the stairs, passing an open hatch that led to the sub’s outer deck. A guard ran across the ship’s rusting hull to the gangway. He shouted and gestured to the soldiers standing on the pier, but they had no intention of leaving the fire they had built in an old metal barrel.

    What about them? Challenger said, pointing to the guards. There goes our element of surprise.

    Nemorov slammed the hatch shut and latched it tight. Never mind them. Let them surround us. It will do them no good.

    Behind them, Oleg hurried up the stairs with news that the guards were securely locked away. The trio then ascended the final flight of stairs to the bridge. There another guard stood at the ladder leading to the top hatch. It was Gregor, one of the nastiest guards in the Gulag. The prisoners had nicknamed him The Bullet given his pointy-head, long face...and habit of shooting people.

    What do you see? Gregor shouted to someone outside the hatch.

    Someone is running up the gangway to the pier, came the reply. It’s Pavel. He’s shouting something.

    He’s shouting about us, Nemorov said.

    Gregor turned and faced them, eyes wide at the sight of the rifles they carried. His hand reflexively reached for the pistol holstered to his belt.

    Challenger aimed his weapon at Gregor’s chest. Go ahead, Gregor. Give me a reason.

    Gregor raised his hands in surrender. What is this? he sneered. You think you can escape? Where will you go? There’s a thousand miles of nothing in every direction. Worse than nothing. Frozen nothing. You’ll die out there. You won’t make it a hundred miles. 

    We will make it much farther than that, Nemorov replied. He stepped to the old intercom and activated the microphone. The speaker squealed. Nemorov to engine room, we have the bridge.

    Engine room, secure, came the reply.

    You’re mad, Gregor laughed. So you’ve taken over this rusting hulk. You’ll just be surrounded and then what? You think having me as a hostage will make any difference? That you can bargain for your freedom? Do you think anyone cares about your, or me for that matter?

    We don’t bargain, Nemorov shouted. And this submarine isn’t a rusting hulk. Not anymore. You see, instead of scrapping it, we fixed it! Now get off our ship!

    Challenger shoved Gregor to the ladder and jabbed him with the rifle-barrel. Once the guard had climbed through the opening, Challenger followed, Nemorov close behind. They found themselves on the conning tower of the sub, surrounded by metal parapet walls. The bitter wind blew across a scene of industrial carnage. Ships in various states of deconstruction lined the piers. The dark water of the harbor was spotted white with ice.

    Go, Challenger said to Gregor.

    You’ll never get away with this, the guard replied as he descended the tower ladder. They will hunt you down.

    Let them try, Challenger replied. Now run...or drown. It doesn’t matter to me.

    Quarter speed ahead, Nemorov said into the intercom.

    Quarter speed ahead, Captain, crackled the reply.

    Challenger smiled and clapped Nemorov on the back. He called you Captain. Aye, it fits, old friend.

    The submarine began to throb and hum. Deck plates vibrated as the hulking ship eased forward. Gregor ran to the gangway, but only made it halfway across before it was wrenched from the pier. Everything plunged into freezing water. Gregor screamed. Men shouted. Repair scaffolding crumbled. Rope lines snapped or were pulled from the rotting pier. Shots plinked off the steel hull of the submarine as it churned into the dark waters of the harbor.

    Challenger and Nemorov descended back into the bridge and sealed the hatch behind them. Oleg had taken position at the pilot station, both hands on the steering column.

    Moment of truth, Nemorov said. Take her down, Oleg.

    This better work, Challenger smiled. I can’t swim.

    Don’t worry, Nemorov replied. If the hull doesn’t hold, the cold water will kill us all in a matter of minutes.

    Comforting thought, Oleg replied.

    He eased the steering column forward. The deck tilted. Challenger took hold of a handrail. Nemorov fastened himself into the tattered captain’s chair. Clattering bangs and metallic crunches echoed across the hull.

    Don’t worry, Nemorov said. Just the ice in the harbor. We’ll clear it soon.

    He was right. The slamming noises ebbed, replaced by the gentle rumble and vibration of the ship’s engines. Oleg pulled back on the steering column, leveling the ship. Challenger let the breathe he had been holding escape in one long sigh.

    Liberty it is.

    We did it, Oleg smiled. We’re free.

    No quite yet, Nemorov said. Not until we reach the island. You can get us to the island, right Professor?

    I’ll get us there, Challenger replied.

    Without charts or maps? Oleg asked.

    Challenger pointed to his head. It’s all right here.

    And it was. He knew the island as well as he knew the streets of Edinburgh or Glasgow. He had spent his life studying it. The natives along the Arctic Circle called the island the Dragon’s Den due to the steady plumes of smoke and steam it spewed into the air. Challenger had given it a different name.

    Vulcania. 

    Chapter One

    Adrift

    Andy McBean walked through the forest just beyond the Pine Crest Estates. It was morning and his trombone was heavy. His friends, Charlie and Hector, were just ahead of him, absorbed by something on their phones. They were heading to school though Andy couldn’t recall what day it was. Was it Monday? He usually took his trombone to school on Monday and left it in the band room all week, bringing it home again on Friday. It must be Monday, he guessed.

    Or was he dreaming?

    He was wearing his familiar red jacket, but it was made of fine animal fur, probably seal or otter given the smooth soft hair. The collar was too tight and the sleeves stopped well short of his wrists. It was either Monday or he was dreaming.

    He considered calling out to Hector and Charlie and asking them if this was Monday or a dream, but they had disappeared around a bend in the trail. Andy wanted to quicken his pace to catch up, but his trombone weighed him down. Each step was a struggled. Was the bulky instrument case filled with rocks?

    He paused by a tree to catch his breath. Something rustled in the bushes nearby. Startled, Andy faced the shaking plants that rose like a wall before him. He wondered if Been’Tok was following him. The alien he had befriended had done that before. Had the aliens returned with their water-vaporizing machine and tall marching tripods?

    Or perhaps it was a bear. That had also happened before. The last time Andy had faced a wall of shaking branches, a black bear burst out, angry and bellowing. Andy had run from the bear and that was a mistake. It chased after him and attacked, wounding his dad’s ankle with one swipe of a giant paw. Andy was suddenly consumed with a fierce desire to go home and see how his dad was doing.

    Home.

    Andy wanted to go home. Going home seemed much more important than school, his trombone, or whatever was lurking in the bushes. He set the instrument down and ran back up the trail toward the Pine Crest Estates. Every stride was a chore. His coat was heavy, like something an Eskimo would wear, and his jeans were tight around his legs. The trail narrowed ahead. Trees and bushes encroached from either side. Soon there was hardly any trail left.

    A root caught his leg and he tumbled over—

    —and awoke with a jolt.

    He lay upon the floor of the mini-sub, his head resting across his mom’s lap. She leaned against the curved hull, still bundled in a parka. Everyone was bundled up. The chilly mini-sub was packed with the crew of the Nautilus. Over thirty people occupied every seat and every square inch of the floor. It wasn’t Monday after all. It had all been a dream—none of it real, except for the burning need to go home.

    Andy stared at the ceiling, much as he had done over the past three days, and tried to divert his attention by counting the number of metal plates. There were eleven rows and five plates in each row for a total of fifty-five plates. Each plate was held in place by eight screws, save for the six plates with recessed lights, which had eleven screws. He struggled to determine the total number of screws, picturing the math problem in his head: fifty-five plates minus the six with lights resulted in forty-nine plates times eight screws, then add the total of the six plates with eleven screws...

    Andy shook his head and closed his eyes. Why was he doing math? He hated math. Art was the only class he really liked.  He wished there were a pencil and paper to draw with. He would sketch the Nautilus submarine while it was still fresh in his mind. The vessel had rammed the Argo, the giant oil-rig designed to drill on the

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