Clickers III Read Online Free

herself, but because it was the first scientific find in a long time that actually excited her. When the word first broke that remnants of an ancient primitive people had been discovered on the South Pacific island of Naranu, Jennifer hadn’t paid attention to the story. Paleontologists found the artifacts at the bottom of a cliff located deep within the island’s jungle—faces similar to the famous figures on Easter Island—carved out of stone, with eyes, nose, mouth and teeth all detailed. But mixed in with them were other carvings. Some bore a striking resemblance to the Dark Ones. Another depicted a hideous, hulking creature with the body of a man and the face of a squid. Carbon dating placed the artifacts at forty to eighty thousand years old. Further study of the island had unveiled over three dozen marine and tropical species that had previously been thought extinct—everything from frogs to worms to fish. As a journalist for National Geographic had referred to it, Naranu was like “the Garden of Eden.”
    The scientific community had converged on the island. In addition to Jennifer’s team from the National Aquarium, scholars, scientists and researchers from universities and research centers across the globe had joined the rush. Jennifer had made friends with several of them—Dr. Edward Steinhardt, director of Paleovertebrates at UCLA, and doctors Susan Ehart and Wade Collins, leading researchers in human prehistory from the University of Michigan.
    Finished brushing the sand from her body, Jennifer stood up. As she did so, she heard a strange noise. It sounded like the chattering bark of a dolphin, but it was louder than the surf. Indeed, it was louder than the screeching gulls still circling overhead. She turned slowly, glanced down at the beach, and gasped.
    The beach was alive with a variety of sea life. Dolphins, fish, crabs, and other aquatic life forms flopped and scrabbled in the sand, struggling farther inland. She glanced out at the ocean and saw more creatures beaching themselves in a desperate effort to flee the water. Despite all of her years in the field, Jennifer had never witnessed a beaching as it occurred. She’d always arrived on the scene in the aftermath. And she had certainly never seen an event like this on such a massive scale. Before now, the largest stranding Jennifer had ever witnessed was on Manila Bay in the Philippines when a pod of thirty-seven dolphins had beached themselves. The scene had been horrific and heart-breaking, but even that paled in comparison to what she was now witnessing. Each time the surf crashed into the shore, the waves delivered more marine life. She heard a great braying honk and a large black hump rose out of the water—a whale. The creature heaved its great bulk forward and then lay still as the waves receded around it.
    “My God…”
    Jennifer supposed that the dolphins and the whale could be reacting to some underwater disturbance—a severe change in temperature or an earthquake, perhaps. Since both were mammals, she knew that their ears were sensitive to large changes in underwater pressure. If something happened to damage their eardrums, it could disorient them, causing them to float up to the surface and beach themselves. But that didn’t explain the hundreds of other sea creatures that were doing the same thing.
    Jennifer glanced to her left and right, and saw that the scene was being played out all along the shore. As far as she could see in each direction, the ocean’s population was suddenly heading for land en masse. The wind shifted and she could smell them. Worse was the noise—the cries of the dolphins and whales, the screech of the birds, the patter of crabs running past her (the crustaceans’ numbers now ran in the hundreds), and the strange sounds the fish made as they flopped on the wet sand and struggled to breathe the suffocating oxygen.
    Gaping, Jennifer put her hands in her hair and pulled. She barely felt the pain. She stared