John T. Cullen has authored over 20 books, including The Generals of October (Simon & Schuster, 2004)—pulse-pounding political-military suspense fiction set in a near-future U.S. Constitutional crisis.
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John T. Cullen also writes screenplays, including one for Nebula Express (adapted from his SF novel) and the violent, darkly glistening, utterly strange tale of a serial killer in Scorpion.
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If you like what you read here, please send at least two other avid readers here so a growing readership can enjoy these books. That would be a great, painless, easy way to provide a huge assist. If you'd like to do more...click.
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Robinson Crusoe 1,000,000 A.D.
a novel
by John T. Cullen
Part Two: Daylight
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13.
The cave mouth was open, and for the first time he could see the world outside the birth caves.
Alex rounded a corner and stumbled through a wider gallery of caves, then into a blinding blue luminosity. Rubbing his hurting eyes, he glimpsed puffs of laundry-clean white cumulus clouds over the red cliffs opposite. He glimpsed birds, and things that looked like huge yellow and red butterflies.
He had never seen blue sky, sunshine, white clouds, but remembered things like that from Alex Kirk’s memories. This must mean some of his memories were valid. If some were valid, then maybe all of them were.
In that same instant, he also reacted with visceral terror to the sight of three animals feasting on the half-man’s body.
The animals, rippers, were a cross between wild boar and bear, with curling yellowish tusks and vicious little eyes. They had powerful furry dark bodies, with ruffles of hair hanging from the back of each of their four bear-like legs made for climbing and running. Their small oval ears perked up as he came around the corner.
The half-man had dragged itself onto the sand in the middle of a wide gallery, and these rippers were now feasting on its dying body. What had made him so eager to crawl toward the light? Probably the same great urge that was causing Alex to venture here, he figured as he crouched behind a crop of boulders.
Alex glimpsed what the caves were about. The string-like attachments on the walls were the farthest tips of a vast root system extending from a tree-derived life form that had evolved around the cave entrance. More than anything, the life form resembled a huge root system, coiled like a mass of anaconda snakes on the floor, under the ceiling, around the entrance. Situated on leathery brown muscles attached to the inside of the cave itself, as tendons attach to human bone, a large chitinous door plate had slid open to allow animals from outside to come in. There could only be one reason for this, Alex saw even in that single sweeping glimpse: the cave lured animal life into itself, like a giant Venus fly-trap. Perhaps it used the Alexes growing in their tanks as part of the lure. Or perhaps it used the waters lingering in pools just inside the cave entrance to trap animals, drown them, slowly digest them, and let the stench of their rotting carcasses draw in more animals to become the next victims in an endless chain. The half-man had crawled partway through the maze of deep pools (each pool just wider than a man could straddle), when the beasts from outside pounced on it.
Two of the rippers were about the size of grown lions, while the third was smaller—most likely their cub. He saw also dozens of scattered bones and skulls on the ground outside, some whose eye sockets were half buried in loam since years ago.
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If you like what you're reading, please send at least two other avid readers to this website.
—Thank you! …Your grateful author, John T. Cullen.
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Other gripping books by the author:
Copyright © 2005 by John T. Cullen. All Rights Reserved.
John T. Cullen has been a pioneer in digital publishing since 1996. He is listed by digital publishing historian Karen Wiesner as the sixth digital publisher in history, and the second person to publish serialized chapters on line (starting 1996). His web magazine Deep Outside SFFH was the first to be listed along with the professional pulps in Writer's Market (1999) and was at one time the oldest professional SFFH magazine in the world. John T. Cullen continues to explore new ways to adapt the primordial power of storytelling to emerging new digital opportunities as the Third Millennium springs to light.
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A Walk in Ancient Rome John T. Cullen (Simon&Schuster May 2005) innovative, acclaimed walking & teaching tour—explore every corner of the Imperial capital at its zenith almost 2000 years ago; learn its history—smell and taste the very air of Classical Rome.
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= Summer 2008 =
A Walk in Ancient Rome, Second Edition John T. Cullen (Clocktower Books 2008)—New! Many new maps; images from the unique scale model of AndréCaron of Quebec. Read this innovative book, with its acclaimed walking & teaching tour. Explore every corner of the Imperial capital at its zenith almost 2000 years ago; learn its history. Smell and taste the very air of Classical Rome. The new edition is bigger, like an atlas. Some people have carried the 1st edition with them to Rome, and found it greatly enhanced their experience.
Dead Move: Kate Morgan and the Haunting Mystery of Coronado, 2nd Ed. John T. Cullen (Clocktower Books, San Diego, Summer 2008). John T. Cullen has tackled the mystery of the ghost at the Hotel del Coronado. He has assembled a dramatic new theory about how and why she violently died on the back steps of the hotel in 1892. A first-class ghost story and whodunit wrapped in one.
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