Ginny clicked the lock button on the keys. A jeep Cherokee sitting on the road to the fenced compound beeped back.
“At least it’s out of the fence,” Dirby muttered.
Maggie nodded her agreement and kneeled beside Lindsay across from Dirby. Taking her gently underneath the armpits, Maggie nodded to Dirby. He copied her.
“One, two, three.”
They lifted Lindsay by the armpits.
She groaned her displeasure, and went limp Gritting her teeth, Maggie said, “You have to help us, dear. Put some weight on your knee.”
Lindsay listened. Maggie sighed as she drew her knees underneath her body. Being careful not to hit her stump, Dirby and Maggie set her down on her knees.
Ginny drove up in the jeep.
“Least it drives.”
Ginny hopped out, and the three of them lifted Lindsay into the back of the jeep. Maggie hopped into the driver’s seat.
“Where are we going?” Dirby asked.
“Cabela’s. Guns, ammo, bows, arrows. Sleeping bags, hiking boots,” Maggie shot a smile that didn’t meet her eyes. “Everything you need to survive a fucked-up apocalypse with dinosaurs.”
They drove away, Maggie’s heart sinking at the woman they left behind.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Officer Bennett Kura
“It’s almost dark,” Bennett whispered to Padma. “Are we getting close? This will not go well for us in the dark.”
“Yeah,” she said. “My lab is across this clearing in the Engineering building.”
They were crouched behind an overturned couch, the four of them, staring at the night sky through a broken window. Blood spattered the wall behind them, but they ignored it, instead focusing on the task ahead.
Bennett kept them distracted from the surrounding chaos. It was quiet. Too quiet. And Bennett knew what that meant.
It meant people were dead.
But they needed to get a message out. They needed to get help. The city needed help. If there was anyone outside the city that could help them, they needed to send a message. Or just send a message to the people of the city. Tell them to meet at the University. To band together.
Hell, it was a plan. It was a task. It was better than just sitting in the dark gymnasium, waiting for something from another world to eat them.
At least they were doing something. And something, anything, was important.
They stared out of the smashed window, breathing heavily. What they were waiting for, they didn’t know. Just something, anything, to move in the clearing.
“Maybe we should-”
“Shut up,” Bennett whispered to Cleo. He pointed to a dark corner of the small square in between the University buildings. A few leafy trees shadowed the square against the impending night. The crisp air blew against their faces. It would be a beautiful night, if there weren’t dinosaurs roaming about.
A low to the ground, Dino grunted and hobbled its way into the middle of the clearing, feasting on the grass.
Padma and Shoji gasped. The Ankylosaurus lumbered along, huge armoured ball on its tail swishing back and forth. Bennett thought it looked… happy. Like a puppy wagging its tail.
Can a dinosaur be happy? The small beak and armour on the ten-foot-long and three-foot-high tank of an animal almost looked… cute?
Bennett shook his head, trying to focus. That wasn’t what he had seen in the opposite corner. Straining his eyes, he tried to look past the dinosaur to the dark corner by the Engineering building.
The attack came from above and from the sides. Two raptors snarled and lunged. They weren’t like in movies. They ran on back legs, were six feet tall, but had long winged like front appendages. One dropped from the roof of the building they were in, the other lunged from the dark corner. The Ankylosaurus roared and swished its tail, trying desperately to defend itself.
“Go!” Bennett yelled. He jumped over the couch and through the large window, then sprinted across the open square. Surprised by the pink fleshy thing’s sudden appearance, the Ankylosaurus reared up onto its back legs, leaving its stomach exposed. The Utahraptors saw an opening and lunged, working together to push the poor Ankylosaurus onto its back.
Bennett didn’t see the rest of the fight. He got to the engineering building and wrenched the door open, diving inside. A heavy weight landed on his back. Followed by two others in rapid fire before Bennett could catch his breath.
“Good,” he said, gasping, extricating himself from the mess of limbs. “We all made it.”
Cleo stood and hit him in the chest, anger all over her face. “What the hell was that?” She all but screamed. “No warning. No plan. Go! GO! That’s all you fucking said. GO! While there is a fucking dinosaur battle going on right outside the window. GO!”
She stopped yelling to catch her breath, face highlighted by the moonlight shining from the window in the door.
“What? No answer?”
Bennett grabbed her and pulled her forward behind him, unholstering his gun.
An Utahraptor’s head exploded through the window, teeth snapping where Cleo’s head had just been.
Someone screamed. Bennett didn’t know who.
He aimed and fired three shots. The Utahraptor screeched and fell away.
“GO!” Bennett yelled. Shoji already had his cell phone out and lit the way. They ran through the building to a stairwell. Something banged behind them, but Bennett didn’t turn to look. He followed the kids through the stairwell door, and they headed down into the depths of the Engineering building.
Bennett couldn’t hear anything behind them, but they didn’t dare stop.
There was a bang as the raptor hit the stairwell door.
Cleo looked behind her. Before Bennett could catch her, she tripped on her feet. With a look of shock highlighted by the bouncing light in front of them, Cleo fell down the stairs, taking Padma and Shoji with her.
Leaving Bennett alone on the stairs in darkness.
Chapter Thirty-Five
John
The fire crackled merrily in front of them. They’d taken refuge in a parking garage a couple of stories up. Jimmy had made a good point, saying they could see anything coming up the ramp or down the ramp, and those “big fucking birdies,” couldn’t get them from above.
John couldn’t argue. Jimmy had lived on the streets probably longer than he’d been alive. If Jimmy told him there was a good place to camp out, John was going to listen.
“So,” Jimmy said, leaning back against a parked car, “Why the University? You said your wife wouldn’t be there at all.”
“My kids might go to her office,” John replied. “I’m going to check there before I head to their schools.”
“Why not the school first? Won’t they be there with their teachers?”
John snorted and stoked the fire, “Not if my son has anything to say about it. I’d be surprised if he was at school at all today.” John brandished his phone, “Missed a text from him saying that my girl Kennedy had a rough day at school today.” He read it again, sadly. “Didn’t get around to checking my phone until after this shit started. By then it was too late to answer.”
Jimmy spat behind him, dip in his lower lip that he’d “borrowed” from an abandoned convenience store. John hadn’t minded the pilfering of tobacco. There were more things to think about.
Like looking up for death from above.
“Sounds like your kid there is a smart one,” Jimmy said, holding out the tin of chewing tobacco to John. John almost denied him, an engrained response from before. Jimmy’s eyes twinkled as John shrugged and took some tobacco out of the tin. “Roll in your hands a bit, then bottom lip.”
John did as he was told and put the “dip” of tobacco between his lower front teeth and his lip. The minty taste hit him first, followed shortly by a massive head rush.
Jimmy laughed, “First dip will get you,” he said. “Don’t gut it, make sure to spit.”
Ignoring the gut instinct to swallow the
growing tobacco flavored liquid, John spat between his feet. The dip almost went with it, but John kept it in. The head rush subsided into an enjoyable nicotine high, and John relaxed a bit, ignoring the pieces of tobacco between his teeth.
“Not too bad, eh?” Jimmy asked. John smiled at him. “Plus, then you get your nicotine in you without attracting the biguns.”
“How do you know that cigarettes attract the dinosaurs?” John said, spitting again. He could get used to this.
“Hunting trick,” Jimmy said, smiling. “Long time ago I used to hunt with my sons. Don’t light no cigarettes in the bush. Scares the deer away. Everything in there knows your location before you even get there.”
John hadn’t really thought about Jimmy having sons. It never crossed his mind that this guy might have had a life before the streets.
“Tell me about your life,” John said. “You from here?”
“S’toon? Nah. This place is dirty, man. I ain’t from no dirty place. Actually, I was born way north in Manitoba. North of The Pas. Worked the trap lines for a while. Then I did the uranium mine thing up North, Saskatchewan.” Jimmy looked into the small fire, frowning. “Came to Saskatoon for some days off with my buddies. Got word the old lady and the boys…” Jimmy’s eyes welled up and he wiped it away, “A storm hit them on their canoes. Drowned. All of ‘em. My buddies went back to work, I stayed here.”
John didn’t know what to say. So he said nothing. The answers he was taught to say in nursing school: “I’m sorry”, “That must have been hard”, “I’m here to talk if you need to”… They sounded so hollow, so false. In a way that John had never encountered in his career. He’d seen grief before, too many times to count. But in the Emergency department, when a trauma code was a normal occurrence, it was too much to feel for each of the mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, children, friends of those who died. It got to be numb, and there was always a sick person to attend to. Always something to draw the attention away from the dull ache in the chest.
But out here by the fire, the only distraction between John and the horrible story, a crackle of a fire as the sun set on a doomed Saskatoon, the ache built until there was no avoidance.
John placed his face in his hands and wept.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Mason
“I can’t make it,” Kennedy gasped behind him.
Mason turned and grabbed her hand, dragging her down the street. The shotgun blast had scared the Albertosaurus away, but hadn’t killed it.
These things were tough, taking a shell to the face and running away scared. Hell, Mason figured the sound of the gun had scared the dinosaur more than the actual pain of taking a slug to the head.
The sun was setting, and they needed to get to Ellis’ house. They’d wasted too much time cowering in fear on the garage roof, waiting to see if that dinosaur came back.
Two houses to go. Mason could see Ellis’ Honda Civic in the front driveway.
One house to go. The shrieking call of one of the flying fuckers from above them.
Finally, they were at the driveway. Mason pulled Kennedy up the concrete and to the open garage. One of Ellis’ quads was gone. He had two, one for him and his father, and one was gone. A sinking feeling hit Mason, driven back by the sharp call of a dinosaur down the street.
They needed to get inside. And fast.
Grabbing a pail of nails from the shelf by the door leading into the house, Mason jiggled it until the small house key appeared in the metal. He grabbed it, ignoring the nails as they scraped his hand, and instantly remembered Ellis’ reply when he’d questioned the placement of the spare key.
“No one sane would reach blindly into a pail of rusty nails.”
“Yeah, but what if you forget your key?” Mason had fired back.
Ellis had shrugged, “Don’t.”
Thinking quickly, Mason grabbed the quad keys hanging above the shelf and, before they knew it, he was dragging Kennedy through the door into the house.
The smell hit him first, and he gagged, covering his mouth with his hand.
“What is that?” Kennedy sobbed.
Death.
Mason knew it, but he didn’t want to scare Kennedy more than she already was. Tears built behind his eyes, and the hope he’d felt when he saw the missing quad washed away in despair and grief.
Ellis was dead. The smell in the house was the proof.
The house was all in order, clean dishes of Ellis’ solo lunch in the sink. It didn’t look like anything had happened here. But the smell… it permeated everything, the air thick with it.
Flies whipped around Mason’s head and he swatted them away with one hand.
“Come on,” he said to Kennedy, pulling her away from the upstairs stairwell to the basement stairs. The smell dissipated slightly, and Mason took that as his friend was lying dead upstairs. Probably in his room.
A flash of the imagined scenario hit Mason. Ellis’ gentle giant back to the door, gathering his things from his room, attacked with his back turned by something.
Shaking his head, trying to remove the image and the imagined screams, he opened the door of the basement.
Nothing attacked them, and Mason grabbed the flashlight they kept by the stairs.
The LED light flicked on and he started downstairs into the clear air.
“I don’t want to,” Kennedy sobbed from behind him.
Mason cursed himself. He hadn’t comforted Kennedy at all. And she knew there was death in this house as much as he did.
“It’s okay, squirt,” he said, reaching out for her hand. “There’s no smell down here.”
“What if one of those things comes?” Kennedy said. “And we’re stuck in a basement with nowhere to run.”
Valid point.
“I doubt even one of those things could pick up our scent over the smell in here,” he said, “And there’s a small window to the basement we could squeeze out.” Well, Kennedy could. Mason wouldn’t stand a chance, but she didn’t need to know that. “We will be good, I promise.”
“I’m hungry,” Kennedy said. “And thirsty.”
He didn’t blame her. The sandwiches had been hours ago. They’d wasted too much time, huddled together on the roof of the garage… time he could have spent here. Maybe he would have been here to save Ellis.
“Okay, hold tight,” he said.
The house was growing darker by the second. Sun set fast in the apocalypse.
Mason hurried to the cupboard and sighed in relief. A couple cans of Chunky Soup were stocked, along with a bag of beef jerky. Grabbing those and a couple spoons (the cans were the easy open kind. No need for a can opener), he opened the fridge and grabbed a two litre of Pepsi.
Satisfied, he hustled back to his sister, who was pressed against the downstairs door.
How young she looked hit him, and Mason’s heart melted.
“Supper,” he said, forcing a smile and holding up the Pepsi. “Your favorite soup.”
“Chicken noodle?” Her voice quivered.
“You bet,” he said. He grabbed her hand. “Together, kid. I will not leave you.” He took a step into the darkness of the basement.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
He hoped he wasn’t lying. They walked into the dark basement, guided by a flashlight. Mason made sure the door closed behind Kennedy.
Tomorrow, they needed to look for their parents. And that meant going to his mom’s office. As he guided Kennedy into the basement, an unfamiliar emotion rose.
Hope.
His parents were alive. He knew it.
And they’d know what to do.
Chapter 37
“Seems empty,” Dirby said from beside her.
Maggie wanted to punch him in the arm. She nearly did, just out of principle. The man was exhausting. And today, the epitome of exhausting and shitty days, Charles Montgomery Dirby was going to send her through the roof.
“Well, it would be smart of anyone to make it look like
no one was there, considering all the bullshit we’ve encountered today.”
Dirby closed his trap. Thank Christ.
“So, front doors?” Ginny asked, leaning forward. “She’s not gonna last very much longer.”
Lindsay gasped from the back of the jeep, drawing everyone’s eyes.
“Sorry,” she mumbled through gritted teeth, “Trying not to be overdramatic.”
Maggie started to argue, but Lindsay flashed a small smile. “Just kidding.”
“She needs medicine,” Ginny said.
“Guns, ammo, bows, arrows, survival gear. Then we will hit the Shoppers Drug Mart across the street for the medicine. Then get the hell out of here.”
They were parked in the Cabela’s parking lot. The Jeep was turned off to conserve fuel, but the growing darkness was going to swallow the store in front of them. They had their cell phone flashlights. And their phones were all holding at around thirty percent battery remaining. Cabela’s would have flashlights… if they hadn’t been picked clean already.
Deciding, Maggie turned to the car, “Dirby and I will go get as much as we can carry then come out. Ginny, keep the keys and fire the jeep up when you see us go in. Give it five, then pull to the front doors. If you don’t see us in ten drive like hell.”
“No,” Dirby snapped, “I’m not going in there. I want to stay out here with Lindsay-”
“And leave it to me to carry everything out?” Maggie snapped, “Grow a set, will you Dirby?”
He gulped and nodded.
“Five to the door,” Ginny repeated, “Then five more and we bail.”
“We won’t need five,” Maggie said. “And anything big comes… you hear that thumping in the ground, you drive away and don’t look back.”
Prehistoric Survival | Book 1 | Doomed City Page 13
