As the day waned, a clearing appeared in the forest ahead, so they stopped and ate a meal of space rations. They were out of dino-jerky, and there were no fruit trees around except the ones with the large bulbous stuff that made them sick.
Hawk estimated their huge guide-tree was forty or fifty miles away, and they were bound to be knocked off course by the deep forest. The solution to that dilemma was Hawk, the expert tree climber.
Four days passed as the party fought their way through the jungle, stopping several times for Hawk to climb. Each time, they’d changed course because the forest impediments had forced them off their path. They saw no large predators, but were constantly tested by the smaller breeds, who peeked from within the trees, watching and examining everything they did.
What they heard was another story. Beasts great and small screeched, bellowed and screamed as they fought with each other in their daily struggle of survival. It had been truly lucky that their capsule had landed in a heavily forested area, because if it hadn’t been for the thick cover of trees, they’d be dead.
As the party approached their tree marker, Hawk counseled caution, so they slowed their pace and crept silently through the ferns and scrub palmetto. Ants dominated the ground, and more than once they’d seen swarms devouring carcasses that were no longer recognizable, and were careful to give them a wide berth.
The forest thinned out as they approached the huge tree, and the thick trunk came into view. It was so black one might walk into it during the deep primordial night. Max said he didn’t know what type of tree it was, for its size was beyond any tree he’d ever seen, including the great redwoods of California. Its leaves were the color of blood, and thin yellow veins ran through them. Thick branches reached out at odd angles all along the trunk, and on many of them horrific creatures rested.
“Those are pterosaurs of some kind. I’m sure of it. But what species I couldn’t tell you,” Max said.
Svet’s eyes bulged from her head, and Hawk’s stomach went cold.
The tree was filled with the beasts, their leathery wings folded, teeth sticking out from powerful black beaks. A fowl puddle of yellow brackish water was at the tree’s base, and several baby dragons tossed about in the nasty water. Above, the males stood still as stone, their yellow bulbous eyes scanning the area while the smaller females tended and kept track of the young.
“Be very quiet,” Max said. “There are hundreds of them. Looks like the tree serves as a rookery.”
From their position within the ferns they observed what had never been seen by human eyes. There was a carcass the size of a dog next to the puddle, and the females tore pieces of meat from the fallen animal and tossed them into the beaks of their young, who whined the second they’d consumed the treat. Hawk was reminded of the bird house in his backyard at home. Every year a bird would lay eggs in it and for a month all that could be heard from his deck was the screeching cry for food, and the momma bird’s answering wails of impatience. His chest grew hot. When he thought of his family a deep, all-encompassing sadness overtook him, and his mind returned to the unavoidable fact that he would never see them again. Hawk didn’t think that feeling would ever go away, and he wasn’t sure he wanted it to. He thought of Michel, and that crazy laugh he had. How it sucked you in and made you smile, its echoes filling the station.
“I’d like to get a closer look,” Max said.
“Nyet,” said Svet, but Max ignored her.
Before Hawk could protest, Max inched into the underbrush. He moved through the groundcover and ferns, advancing cautiously, his focus never leaving the tree of flying killers.
Hawk held his breath, and sweat dripped down his forehead into his eyes.
Max was halfway to the edge of the clearing the tree towered over when he stepped on a stick and a loud snap reverberated over the jungle. Every pair of pterosaur eyes turned their way. Max dropped to the ground out of sight, and Hawk pulled his head back within the cover of the fern, but it was too late. The males leapt from the tree, their sail-like wings snapping and fluttering as they charged. The flock squawked and chirped as it came, filling the air like a cloud of gnats, coming straight for them.
11
Hawk stood frozen for an instant, the fog of pterosaurs filling the air like raindrops. “Run!” he screamed, but Svet was way ahead of him. When Hawk turned tail, the Russian was in front of him, weaving in and out of trees like a running back cutting through a secondary. His heart pounded in his chest as he trailed after. The shrill cries of the beasts sounded like dying seagulls, and they blocked all other sound as they came on in their fury.
It was then that Hawk remembered Max. He looked over his shoulder, but couldn’t find his mate.
Smack.
Hawk ran headlong into a tree, bounced off the trunk, and landed on the forest floor in a heap. Blood ran from a gash in his forehead, dripping into his eyes and momentarily blinding him. He wiped the blood away with the back of his hand and saw Max. He hid beneath the cover of a fern fifty yards away, but the flying menaces weren’t fooled. The leader of the pack landed atop the fern and bit at the physicist. Max rolled side to side, avoiding the snapping jaws filled with a double row of small sharp teeth.
Remembering his gun, Hawk drew the Viking and fired. The bullet struck the pterosaur in its gangly midsection, and the force of the bullet knocked the flying reptile off his friend as if a great gust of wind had torn it away.
The shot must have reminded Svet that she too had a gun, because the Ash 12 rattled to life and pterosaurs fell from the sky, their death cries terrible. Hawk ran, searching for cover, but there was nothing thick enough. The flying carpets didn’t slow, cutting in and out of trees like missiles, their sail-like wings folding and spreading with such precision Hawk was impressed by their agility.
Hawk came upon Svet, hiding behind two large trees that formed an alcove where a person could hide. She laid cover for him as he ran past her, and he holstered the Viking. Blood ran into his eyes again, and pain rocked his back as his arms and legs pumped as hard as he could move them.
“Watch out,” Svet yelled.
Hawk was struck from behind and two claws grasped at his shoulders. He threw himself into a roll, pulling free and twisting round to face his attacker. The beast crash landed and
stood before him, its beak open, eyes gleaming. It snapped its beak and hissed as it came forward.
Hawk pulled the Viking, and as the creature jerked its head preparing to strike, he put a bullet between its eyes. The pterosaur’s head exploded with a spray of blood and bone, and the animal fell over, its bony legs coming to rest on top of him.
The beasts filled the sky and Hawk rolled, avoiding another attack as he vaulted to his feet and dove under a large bush with tiny prickers. The flying reptiles settled on the bush like a cloud of smoke and ripped the vegetation apart attempting to get at him. Hawk emptied the Viking, hitting several of the animals, but the gunshots didn’t scare the dragons and they came on with the furious determination of hunters desperate to get at their prey.
The pterosaurs stopped screeching as one, like a light switch had been flipped and all their energy had been drained. The ground shook, and the dragons scattered.
The ground trembled again, and a great cry split the day. Bile crept up Hawk’s throat as he contemplated flight or fight. He chuckled to himself amidst the chaos. Fight. That was funny shit.
He burst from his hiding place and headed back toward Max and Svet. The cosmonaut still hid within the trees, but as Hawk ran past she fell in behind him. The pterosaurs fled in every direction, their cries filling Hawk’s head as he ran through the underbrush, leaves whipping at his arms and face, blood once again dripping into his eyes.
Max still hid beneath the fern, and it took a little coaxing to get him to come out. The ground trembled harder, as whatever great beast had come to investigate the turmoil got closer.
“Come on. We gots to go. And fast,” Hawk yelled.
“Ja,” Max sa
id, and emerged from his cover.
They were surrounded by a glade of trees, and it was difficult to see beyond their immediate surroundings. Pterosaurs filled the air like a tangle of seagulls, circling out of reach, waiting for the show to start.
“Which way?” Max asked.
Hawk closed his eyes and listened hard, blocking out the screeching reptiles, the push of the wind, and the constant chirp and buzz of insects. The rumble was getting closer, and sounded like it was approaching from the north. They needed a better hiding place, but Hawk saw nothing that would serve. The trees and underbrush provided little cover. Max trained his Ash 12 on the flying reptiles, but the guns were useless against the bigger dinosaurs, and seemed only to irritate the beasts. Svet’s gun was empty, and she was reaching into her bag for more shells when a colossal roar froze them in place.
Hawk had come to fear the moments of complete silence in the jungle. The anti-alarm only lasted a few seconds, but when it came one heeded it or died. There was no other motivator more effective in bringing together life, both human and animal.
A great head like that of a bird with no feathers burst through the trees to their right, and Hawk pulled the Viking, only to remember it was empty.
“Don’t move,” Max said. The three companions stood still as stone as the great beast’s head rotated on a thin neck, its eyes the size of basketballs shifting side to side. “It looks to be some genus of stegosaurus. Perhaps a dravidosaurus or dacentrurus.”
“Ssssh,” Svet hissed.
The dinosaur turned, revealing its short dull teeth, and blue eyes. Bony plates and spikes guarded the creature’s back, neck, and tail. The beast reared up on its hind legs, and whined, but it didn’t sound very threatening to Hawk. Its blue eyes looked almost kind, and the creature’s gray and black leathery hide looked smooth and wet.
“No worries,” Max said. The phrase sounded comical coming with his German lilt.
“No worry, nyet?” Svet said.
“These guys are plant eaters, though I don’t doubt it would stomp us to death if it felt threatened. More likely it will run.”
“Let’s see,” Hawk said. He raised his hands and yelled, stepping toward the beast.
The stegosaurus whined again, but this time it stepped forward and stomped its front paws.
“That no work. We…”
Svet was cut off as the beast charged them and Hawk and his mates turned tail and bolted into the jungle. Daggers of sunlight sliced across their path, which was barely an animal trail. The shrill echoes of the insects accompanied the pounding of his heart, and Hawk gasped, sucking for air as he threw himself forward, using trees and underbrush as cover. He zigzagged right and left, making it difficult for the large animal to maneuver through the trees.
The forest thickened, and the sounds of pursuit lessened as they ran, but Hawk was in a frenzy, and he wouldn’t stop until the thing was a mile behind. The bag of supplies tied to his belt smacked his leg as it hit tree trunks and got caught on ferns and underbrush. His forearms were filled with gashes from pushing aside the sharp palm fronds of the saw palmetto and dwarf palms. His thigh muscles were tight as rope.
The ground gave way beneath Hawk’s feet, and he cartwheeled, arms spinning in circles as he tried to stay upright. He went down hard, landing face down with a splat.
In their haste, Svet and Max fell on top of him, and the trio sank beneath a black-dirt substance that sucked them into the earth. Hawk recalled hearing that pits of quicksand and tar dotted the prehistoric landscape, and as he sank deeper into the shifting mud he felt the urge to let go. To slip beneath the surface and let everything come to a merciful end like Michel had done. He thought of the pill in his pocket, asked himself again why he hadn’t taken it.
He held his breath, and he was under the Caribbean Sea, blue and yellow fish all around him, his wife Andrea and the kids swimming beside him. Dappled sunrays cut through the water and green plants danced and swayed with the roll of the sea. Andrea looked at him and smiled. She beckoned to him to come see something she pointed at below her, a great void of blackness with a monstrous dinosaur head sticking from it.
Svet and Max struggled on top of Hawk, pushing him further into the muck, jarring him from his reverie. He sucked in sludge as he sank within the shifting sands, his arms and legs finding no purchase as he struggled to right himself and get his head above the mud.
Svet rolled to one side and Max the other, and the pressure driving him downward eased. He jerked his head free, treading in place and keeping his head above the muck, but the shifting sludge sucked him under.
His shipmates beside him were also inexorably being drawn down into the pit. They all struggled to stay above the sand flow, but it was Svet who kept her wits about her and was attempting to work her way toward the side. Several creepers hung from trees, and if she could get hold of one they might pull themselves out.
Max’s head slipped under the surface, and with a great effort Hawk freed his arm and grabbed the German’s collar. The fabric tore, but he held on, though he was sinking faster with the additional weight. His pumped his legs, but in the thick sand he was tiring quickly.
Svet had almost reached the edge, and with one last massive lunge she pushed herself forward, coming up just short of a creeper that trailed to the edge of the quicksand pit. She rolled and heaved like a dying fish, disappearing beneath the sand and reappearing as she butterfly-stroked through the muck.
Hawk’s chin dipped below the surface, and he was losing his grip on Max. Could it really end this way? He’d been to war, and sat on the end of a missile that carried him to space. He’d survived every danger that had ever come his way, and now he was going to die like a crab beneath the sand.
Hawk closed his eyes as his head went under.
A hand gripped his shoulder, and his head was jerked free of the muck. He tugged on Max, and found that he had leverage. Max came up sputtering and coughing, and he and Hawk clung to each other like newborns to their mother.
Svet held Hawk with one hand and clutched a creeper in the other. The thin green vine twisted and strained as it held the weight of all three of them. Using Svet’s body, Hawk pulled himself over the Russian and managed to get a hand on the creeper. Max yelled and sank like a rock, but grabbed Svet’s legs before they disappeared in the sand.
“Swim god damn it. Swim!” Hawk yelled.
Svet breached, flailing wildly, her hand finding the end of the creeper. Hand over hand, Svet and Hawk pulled themselves to the edge of the pit and crawled out, the sand sucking at them the entire time. Before he got up, Hawk tossed the creeper end to Max, but the physicist was nowhere to be seen.
Large bubbles popped on the surface, but the German was gone.
12
Glops of wet brown sludge burst from the pit as Max pushed to the surface with one last effort to stay above the shifting sands. Hawk tossed the end of a creeper to him, but he couldn’t grab hold of it. After three tries Max managed to get a hand on the vine, then two, and Hawk and Svet pulled the exhausted physicist from the quicksand.
The three companions lay spent at the pit’s edge, sucking air and rubbing at cuts, bumps, and bruises. Hawk felt like he’d run through a thicket of torn bushes: trickles of blood ran down his face and hands, and his jumpsuit was ripped in many places. The jungle buzzed, and Hawk rolled on his side and threw up.
Getting cleaned up would have to wait. The day was waning and they needed to find shelter for the night. Hawk’s stomach kicked him, asking for food, but nausea threw a counter punch, and his muscles were stones. “I say we build something in the bows of that conifer there,” he said, pointing across the glade. “The animals probably stay away from this area.”
“Might be water around. We’re in a depression,” Max said.
“We have two full bottles,” Svet said. “Little food.”
That settled it. They rested and then built a crude platform ten feet off the ground in the branches of the conifer. They found
a nasty puddle, stripped down, and rinsed off. They also washed off their clothes. Hawk slept like a baby, falling off as he stared up at the stars through the gaps in the trees. Falling asleep in the jungle was like trying to nod-off while laying on a sidewalk in mid-town Manhattan on Wednesday afternoon, and it amazed him how used to the terrible night sounds he’d become.
Braying, grunting, tittering, and shrill wails were background to the lead track of crashing trees, cracking bones, and the sloppy-wet sound of meat being torn and devoured. The land itself trembled, vibrating the trees and everything that touched them. It was a chorus of pops, chirps, screeches, and snarls, all of which blended into a loud buzz that made Hawk’s ears ring.
Despite this, Hawk woke refreshed, and climbed his home tree to get their bearing.
Their marker, the huge pterosaur rookery, was to the northwest, and the lake he’d seen was to the southwest. A great savannah dotted with patches of jungle stretched to the base of the mountains in-between. Large dots moved around on the open plain and great clouds of dust rose into the blue sky as herds ran and scattered and the larger beasts fought for supremacy.
When he’d climbed back down to the sleep platform, Max and Svet were awake.
“Anything new up there?” Max asked.
“No.” Hawk drank some water and sat, stretching his back and legs. He was sore all over, several of his cuts had swelled with infection, and his feet cramped every time he moved them.
“Nyet?” Svet said. Her blue eyes blazed, and red blotches covered her face and neck where insects had taken a bite.
Hawk sighed. “I don’t think we can cross the plain, it looks like The Road Warrior out there.”
Svet laughed.
“No roads?” Max said.
“He not that Max,” Svet said.
It was Hawk’s turn to laugh. “Famous Australian film. They never mentioned it on Friends or Star Trek.”
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