Dinosaur World 3

by Logan Jacobs

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  Chapter 1

  Nearly three weeks after the dinosaurs began to reappear on earth, I was still holed up on the campus of Cambridge University with two stunning ladies, our academic careers cut short by the sudden return of the long-extinct creatures. But that was all about to change, as we had decided to abandon the art gallery that we had turned into our base and head north to find Becka’s “mum.” It was a decision that carried a lot of unknown dangers, but staying on campus had become risky as well.

  We’d celebrated our daring move with wine we’d found in the campus pub, and I’d spent the night with Becka, the supermodel blonde Brit, after the third member of our group, and my lover, Hae-won the goth-chic beauty Korean exchange student, had fallen asleep. The blonde and I had been energetic with our lovemaking, to say the least, and I slept soundly despite the fact that half my body had ended up on the floor rather than the mattress.

  It took me a few moments to register that someone was flicking a finger at my ear, and I nearly jumped off the mattress when I thought that one of the townies had finally broken into our hiding spot. I flashed on an image of a man with a cricket bat as I tried to open my eyes and figure out what was going on. I swatted at a hand and peered at the soft, lovely face that studied me.

  “It’s just me,” Hae-won laughed. “I see you two had fun last night.”

  The Korean girl gazed at me with a look of merriment in her blue eyes, and her waist length black hair brushed against me as she hovered over me.

  “Um, yeah,” I replied as my cheeks flushed red. Even though both girls seemed happy with sharing me, I was still uncertain if they would really want to continue this way.

  “Good,” Hae-won said. “But I thought you wanted to get an early start this morning.”

  “I do,” I agreed.

  “Well, it’s nearly eight,” the Korean said.

  “Shit,” I muttered as I threw off the blanket and then remembered I was naked.

  “Wha’s happenin’?” Becka asked as she rubbed at her eyes.

  “Time for breakfast and a shower, and then we’ll hit the road,” Hae-won replied with a great deal more enthusiasm than I would have expected from someone who had been blasted the night before.

  “Oh, yes!” Becka cried out cheerfully as she sat up. “We’ve got just enough crumpets left for this morning, and a few more sausage rolls to go with them. I’ll get those started. It will only take a few minutes.”

  “I’ve already put the kettle on for coffee and tea,” Hae-won said.

  “So breakfast first,” I said as I spotted my shorts and jeans and scooped them up.

  “It’s going to be a beautiful day,” Hae-won declared as she stepped back into the staff room.

  Becka and I followed after her, and I noticed that Hae-won’s mattress didn’t appear to have been slept on. She must have spent the whole night on the couch, but she didn’t look like someone who had drunk-slept the night away. Becka and I, on the other hand, looked as if we’d gone a few rounds with the Legion of Doom. I slipped my pants back on while I considered that mystery, but both girls smiled at me and then turned to their own quiet conversation as they went about preparing breakfast.

  I decided to spend a few minutes checking the news and reviewing our route again for the thousandth time, but then I gave up when Becka placed a crumpet and a couple of sausage rolls in front of me. A cup of coffee soon followed, thanks to Hae-won, and we ate in relative silence as we pondered the task in front of us. In the time since the dinosaurs had first started to appear, this was by far the riskiest thing we had done. I just hoped that we found a safe haven at the other end, if not dinosaur free then at least somewhere we didn’t have to scavenge to find food and water.

  “To the showers?” Becka finally said after we’d finished breakfast and cleaned the dishes out of habit.

  “Let’s go,” I said. “As quick as we can.”

  The girls nodded, and we gathered up the supplies we’d set aside the night before. Then we returned to the ground floor, donned our armor and weapons, moved the barricade, and stepped outside. The sun was bright this morning and the sky a beautiful shade of blue. Flowers dotted the beds, and even the dino body sprawled across the quad looked almost pleasant in the spring sunshine.

  We scanned for other dinos, then ran across the quad to my old dorm. We climbed to the second floor once again, where the girls ducked into the women’s showers after they each gave me a wink. I wondered if the girls would be all that upset if I joined them, but I reminded myself that we needed to move quickly this morning, especially since it was already well past sunrise, and I ducked into the men’s room with a sigh.

  The girls had apparently taken my instruction to heart because there was little conversation in the other room, and most of it was just Hae-won asking about Becka’s mum. I’d discovered that I could overhear their conversation through the vent the day before, which was part of the reason I’d slept with Becka that night. The two women had spent their last visit to the shower discussing me and their desire to sleep with me, and though I hoped I might hear a discussion about my prowess with Becka, the girls stuck to more mundane topics this morning. So I finished my shower in half the time I had taken the day before, and I was standing in the hall against the wall by the time the girls emerged.

  “You look… satisfied,” Hae-won said as she studied me.

  “I guess I am,” I said as I kept my eyes firmly on the Korean and refused to meet Becka’s smirk. “I feel like we’re really moving forward finally and not just waiting to see what happens next.”

  “Yes, that is a good way to describe it,” Hae-won agreed.

  “I can’t believe I’m going to ride a motorbike,” Becka said as we started down the hall. “Wait until my mum sees that. She won’t believe it, not after I crashed Gary’s.”

  Thankfully, the quad was still empty, so we sprinted back to the gallery without bothering to hug the buildings. We darted inside where we packed up the last of our gear, then we wheeled the motorcycles outside. The bikes, like most of our supplies, had been scavenged from the town. Hae-won, as the only rider with real experience, had the Triumph Bonneville, a red and black number that gave her a fierce air despite her petite size. Becka and I both rode the blue and yellow checked police bikes, which were larger and more cumbersome than the Triumph, but easier for beginners to handle.

  “Let’s wait until we’re on the street to start them,” I suggested. “No need to draw any attention to the fact that we’re leaving.”

  The girls nodded, and we walked the motorcycles to the gate. Hae-won held my bike as I went to move Tim, the armored carrier we’d found near an overrun military position. It had been useful on a couple of our trips, and even more important as our gatekeeper, but we had decided it was too large and too much of a gas guzzler to be useful on our trip north.

  I moved the vehicle forward just enough to allow us to exit the campus one last time and patted the console before I turned off the engine. As I did so, I glanced toward the barricade that some of the townies had erected at the far end of the street. I spotted Tom, the old man who had become something of a leader among the locals after their previous leader had been snatched by a Pterodactyl.

  We’d had an uneasy truce with the townies, though Becka had insisted we couldn’t trust them and the hardscrabble group of men had become one of the main reasons I wanted to leave the gallery. I didn’t believe the truce would hold out
much longer, especially once the locals had realized there were only three of us. Despite the guns we had, I had no doubts that the men were making plans to stage their own raids of the campus in the search for supplies.

  I sighed and then climbed out from the truck. Two other men appeared behind Tom, though I only recognized the Indian man from a previous encounter. I glanced toward the girls, then started to walk toward the group of townies.

  The Indian raised his cricket bat as I approached, and the other man held up a baseball bat. The old man glanced at his companions then stepped up to the edge of the barricade and waited for me to approach. I stopped a few feet away and nodded to the group.

  “What are you three up to this morning?” the old man asked.

  “We’re heading north,” I said. “To find Becka’s mother. Whether or not we find her, I don’t think we’ll be back.”

  “Yeah, well…” the Indian man replied and then stopped, apparently unable to come up with a rejoinder.

  “We decided to travel on the motorcycles,” I said. “So we won’t need Tim anymore.”

  “Tim?” the old man asked as he furrowed his brow.

  “Sorry, the armored carrier,” I said. “The girls named it Tim.”

  “That’s a fuckin’ wimpy name for a big thing like that,” the man with the baseball bat replied.

  “Here,” I said as I held up the keys. “One’s for the truck and one’s for the gallery. There’s a staff room on the second floor, and we left some food in the freezer that we couldn’t bring with us. There’s some extra medical supplies on the counter as well and the keys to the tow truck parked behind the admin building.”

  The younger men looked surprised, but the old man merely nodded and almost smiled. I tossed the keys toward the old man, and he caught both with his outstretched hands.

  “Here, wait,” one of the men called as I started to walk away.

  I turned around for a moment to wave goodbye, then trotted back to the gate. The girls had moved the bikes onto the road, and watched me approach with curious stares.

  “What was that about?” Becka asked.

  “I found a new home for Tim,” I replied as I hopped onto my bike. “Now let’s get this show on the road.”

  The girls both smiled and the block soon filled with the sounds of our engines. I turned toward the road that would lead us out of the city and into the countryside, and felt a sense of freedom I hadn’t felt since the dinosaurs had shown up. We were on our way to Yorkshire, to a small town just north of Scarborough, and all we had to do to get there was avoid an increasingly large number of dinosaurs that kept popping into our world through some sort of strange portals.

  No big deal.

  Except that most of the dinosaurs that appeared were carnivores, and they definitely saw humans as tasty treats. We’d already encountered everything from dog-sized raptors to acid-spitting giants and flying lizards that ruled the skies. In fact, one of the portals had appeared on our doorstep and any number of dinos had found their way onto the campus despite our efforts to keep them out. A Pterodactyl seemed drawn to the dome of the library and the military had bombed and shot everything they could find. Our safe haven had become a shooting gallery at one point, and so hitting the road had started to seem like the safer option.

  “The Huntingdon Road is just ahead,” Becka called out.

  The blonde Brit had been reluctant to ride north on motorcycles, and finally admitted that her one previous attempt to ride a motorbike had nearly ended in a pond. But after a few lessons with Hae-won, Becka had become a convert, and the blonde now urged us onward with enthusiasm.

  We turned onto the Huntingdon road and weaved our way through the network of abandoned cars and tumbled bricks that littered the blacktop. Glass from shop windows sparkled in the sunlight and from somewhere came the stench of a decaying body. I sincerely hoped it was a dino that had been killed by the military, but even that was just an invitation for the dino scavengers to show up and yet another reason for us to clear the area as quickly as possible.

  “Whoo, I’ll be happy when we can breathe clean air again,” Hae-won yelled as she maneuvered her Triumph Bonneville around a tumbled police box.

  “You and me both,” I replied as I slowed down so I could squeeze between a pair of stopped cars.

  “If the reports are right, we shouldn’t see too many dinos once we’re out of the city,” Becka replied as she slowed down to wait for me and the Korean.

  I nodded, and then I picked up speed as we found a relatively straight and empty stretch of road. We left the older sections of the city behind and were in the newer, modern suburbs when we heard our first dinosaur. It was a squeal and a popping sound rolled into one, and the frequency seemed to ring inside my head. It wasn’t a call I had heard before so I tried to scan the streets for unfamiliar dinos as we sped along.

  A moment later, a pair of small lizards on two legs with short tails and bat- like wings scurried across our path and darted down another street. One of them made another one of the weird calls, and I heaved a sigh of relief that we hadn’t encountered anything larger.

  I did wonder what would have sent the duo racing across the road in the first place. A few moments later, I had the answer to that question when a familiar, bone-rattling roar echoed through the canyon of the Huntingdon Road.

  “Shit!” Becka yelled.

  “Difo!” Hae-won yelled at the same time.

  It was the nickname we’d given the acid spitting dinosaur with the unpronounceable name. I tried to accelerate, but we found ourselves in what looked like the middle of rush hour suddenly. The lanes were packed full with cars, and more than a few were sideways across two lanes. Up ahead, I could see the blackened remains of a pile-up that definitely had not been mentioned on any of the road reports, and as I slowed to look for a way through, I risked a glance over my shoulder.

  I spotted the olive green and orange-striped hide of the Difo as it emerged from one of the side streets. It was studying the street where the two smaller dinosaurs had just disappeared, and its massive head swung from side to side as it searched for its prey.

  “We’ll have to go around,” Hae-won called out as she pulled up a few inches away from the debris.

  The sound of the engines had caught the attention of the difo, and it turned toward us with interest while its massive nostrils flared. It roared again in our direction, then started to trot down the Huntingdon Road after us. The massive dino’s trot ate up a lot of ground quickly, and without a clear road ahead, we were forced to turn down one of the other streets.

  Hae-won took the lead on the more agile Triumph and tried to find a clear path for us to follow. We tried to stick to the middle of the road where there was less debris and cars to avoid, but even along this less used stretch of road, there were plenty of abandoned cars that we had to swerve around.

  And even on the clear sections, we kept swerving as we tried to avoid getting hit by gobs of acid spit by the dinosaur. One giant puddle landed just in front of me, and the blacktop began to sizzle immediately. I skidded sideways and almost fell into the bubbling ooze before I could right the bike and drive around. I saw another glob land mere inches from Hae-won, but the Korean barely reacted. She kept going as she raced around cars and even jumped over a yellowed stack of newspapers.

  We passed apartment buildings and local shops, a looted chemist and a grocery store with shopping carts still in the parking lot. I could hear the dino behind us, even over the din of the engines, and the bikes would bounce every time the dino jumped over something. I felt a flash of hot air and risked a quick look over my shoulder again.

  The dino’s head bent low as it charged after us, and I could see the serrated edges of the very large teeth as they closed in. I gunned the engine and shot forward, and found myself fighting to keep the bike upright as I tried to keep up my speed while I swerved around a city bus. The tires squealed and a trail of smoke drifted up from the long black mark I left on the road. I felt
the bike start to tip toward the right, and I quickly shifted my weight back toward the center. Somehow, I pulled the bike back up, and I did a quick check for the girls.

  Becka was on the sidewalk by then, nearly parallel with me, but that wasn’t much better as it was littered with plaster and bricks. I could just see Hae-won’s long black hair flowing behind her as she angled the Bonneville around a sanitation truck, and then she turned into a parking lot.

  “Jason!” Becka cried out as the dino roared and another wave of hot, fetid air nearly knocked us from the bikes.

  “Keep going!” I shouted.

  I moved in close to Becka and pointed toward the parking lot where I’d seen Hae-won disappear. Becka only nodded as she tried to nudge more speed from the bike, though she screamed a moment later when the bus I’d dodged sailed over our heads and smashed into the sanitation truck. The collision was nearly as loud as the bombs the military had been chucking from their helicopters, and chunks of metal and shards of glass flew out from the collision site in a deadly spray.

  I crouched low on the bike behind the windshield, and Becka did the same as debris clattered around us. There was another roar as a piece from the side of the bus sailed by us and apparently hit the dino, and then we were at the turn for the parking lot. I peeled around the corner with Becka and saw that we were in the lot for a department store. Hae-won was waiting for us in front of the smashed doors, and as soon as she saw us, she drove through the doors and into the store.

  “Hell of a time to go shopping!” I remarked.

  Becka giggled in response, though there was a hysterical edge to it that made me worried. The blonde and I plowed through the entrance as we had seen the Korean do, then pulled to a stop when we didn’t spot her right away. I could hear the engine idling nearby, but the raven-haired woman had vanished from sight. I looked back toward the road and saw the Difo had stopped and was sniffing the air, but it didn’t seem to grasp where we had gone. I just hoped its hearing wasn’t that good, and it wouldn’t be able to track the bikes.