Every damn dinosaur on this planet knew that you didn’t fuck around anywhere close to spinosaurs, yet here I was trying to ninja around them.
“Alright,” I wheezed as we reached a quarter of the way around. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.” It felt like a heating blanket was wrapped around my shoulders, and I really wanted to take off my shirt and wring it out.
The spinos still hadn’t looked up from their meal though, and I started to think that we might be okay.
Then a flock of flying dinosaurs screeched from overhead, and my heart leapt into my chest.
I looked up as the group of a half dozen flyers glided over us. It was hard to tell their exact size because of the distance above me, but I guessed their wings were about four to six feet across. Unlike Bruce the pteranodon, these flying dinos had long quail-like tails, teeth on their maws, and tufts of hair on their legs and arms. They looked like flying possums with scales at their joints instead of the hair they had on the rest of their limbs. It kinda seemed like evolution had made a mistake with these and had poured all their daily allotment of ugly into the batch.
I blinked open my Eye-Q and saw that the flying dinos were named Sordes. The group circled above our heads twice, let out angry screeches, and then flew across the valley toward the pair of spinos.
I glanced down at the giant predators a quarter of a mile away and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that they hadn’t turned in our direction. As I thought, the spinos were too committed to eating, and they didn’t care about anything else going on. They probably hadn’t even heard the screeches of the ugly flying dinosaurs.
I continued to walk the stegos against the wall, but I kept another eye on the fliers as they reached the spinos. For half a moment, I thought the ugly sordes were just gonna fly past, but then they dove and started circling one of the massive predator’s heads. The spino they were harassing shook his head with obvious annoyance, but the sordes didn’t relent. If anything, they started screeching louder, and two of the fliers landed on the dead bronto.
The spinosaurus let out a roar that caused every bone in my body to vibrate from a quarter of a mile away.
“Oh shit,” I gasped as I fought against the icy terror in my stomach. These sordes dinos weren’t even half the size of one of the spinos’ teeth, but they seemed to be going out of their way to piss off the deadly predator. The second spino tried to snap at the two insignificant flyers on the corpse of the bronto, but the sordes were too fast, and they jumped out of the way and took to the air with a chorus of indignant screeches.
“Let’s pick up the pace a bit,” I said to the three stegos as I glanced back and forth between the spinos and their harassers. I doubted that the group of ugly possum-lizard flyers would be able to force the spinos away from their meal. Hell, I didn’t think anything short of a nuclear warhead could get a spino away from its food, but the flyers were definitely distracting the pair of apex predators.
And that was either going to be good for me, since the spinos wouldn’t notice us tiptoeing by, or it was going to be bad, because now neither of the apartment-building-sized predators were looking at their meal.
We reached the farthest south spot in the bowl-shaped valley, but the remaining half of the valley suddenly seemed way too far away. Both of the spinos were bellowing like thunder gods, and I could feel Mike D trembling with every step.
“We can’t go back now,” I said as I patted the stego’s spiny shields. “Just keep going guys. We are almost there. We are going to get out of this alive. Keep moving.”
I didn’t know if my words actually helped, since the stegos couldn’t really resist my orders, but I felt a bit better.
Then I saw another swarm of the ugly sordes crest over the side of the cliff and dive toward the spinos.
“Ugh, you idiots,” I hissed. “Just leave them alone until I get out of here.”
The flying dinos were darting around the spinos’ heads like a swarm of gnats, and the giant predators kept twisting their heads around to try to bite them. One of the spinos got lucky, and his jaws closed around two of the sordes as they tried to flap away from him, but there were a good forty others now, and they took turns eating from the bronto corpse or pecking at the back of each of the spinos. I doubted that they were really doing any damage to the back-finned predators, but they were definitely annoying the spinos, and I couldn’t guess at what was going to happen next.
“Little faster boys,” I urged the stegos, and they moved from a fast walk into a bumpy trot. The pace was pretty uncomfortable, and I had to hang onto one of the kite-plates with both hands to keep from getting thrown off.
Bruce let out a honk of annoyance as he started to slide off the back of Mike D, but I shifted my hips into his back as I clung to the plate and leaned against him to keep him steady. Bruce was as big as a horse, and he was kind of cramming himself in between the dual rows of shields on Mike D’s back, but the pteranodon probably only weighed about what I did, so I was able to kind of force him into place without much effort.
“Just a little more,” I said as soon as we reached the last quarter of the valley. The spinos had gotten lucky a few more times and managed to bite some of their harassers out of the air, but there looked to be hundreds of the sordes now, and the pair of spinos were beginning to step away from the bronto corpse.
It looked like they might actually flee the scene, and if they did, they would come our way.
“Fuck,” I cursed as the trio of stegos moved up to a canter. This gait was a little smoother than when they trotted, and the wind began to blow in my ears, but it wasn’t even half as fast as a trikes run, and I doubted that we would be able to escape the spinos if they turned around.
And then the spinos turned around and saw us just as we reached the beach by the river. We’d successfully circumnavigated them, but the two hill-sized predators let out roars that caused my nuts to vibrate, and then they took a large step toward us.
“Okay, now it’s time to freak the fuck out!” I shouted down to Mike D, MCA, and Ad-Rock. “Go! Go! Go!”
The stegos sensed my urgency, or maybe they were terrified of the spinosaurus roars, or maybe both. It didn’t really matter, all that mattered was that the stegos kicked it into high gear, and what I thought was a fast-for-them canter turned into a bucking bronco of a roller coaster ride when the trio started sprinting.
It took all of my strength to hold on to the spines, but my feet slipped out from under me, and I was left hanging off one of the shields while Mike D ran. Bruce let out an annoyed honk and flapped his wings a few times before launching to the sky. I didn’t blame him, and when I looked back toward where the corpse of the bronto was, I realized that we had turned around another bend of the river.
I couldn’t see if the spinos were actually chasing us or not.
“Shit,” I hissed as I twisted my neck around so that I could look at where the stegos were running. On one hand, seeing the pair of spinos chasing us down would have been all sorts of terrifying, but on the other hand, I really wanted to know if they were chasing us.
“Bruce!” I called up to the pteranodon as he hovered above me. “Fly up and let me know if the spinos are chasing us. One honk if they aren’t. Two long honks if they are!”
Bruce let out a short honk, gave a hard pump of his wings, and then banked away from me. We were on another isolated beach that hugged the wall of a canyon, but the edge twisted away up ahead, and I saw another grassy valley with sporadic croppings of boulders and palm trees.
And then I saw six carnotauruses, and my heart leapt into my throat.
It looked like they were just finishing up crossing the river to our side. They were a good four or five hundred yards away, but it was a wide open beach between them and my stegos. The six predators were probably about a quarter of the size of the spinosaurs, but there were six of them, and they let out a hungry bellow when they saw us come around the edge of the cliff.
“Shit,” I hissed as my mi
nd spun with various options.
Then Bruce sang two upset sounding honks as he flew by my head.
“Double shit,” I growled. Then my plan came into focus, and I narrowed my eyes at the six carnos. “Time to drop the bass on some assholes. Old school style.”
Chapter 2
I pushed the stegos into a charge toward the carnos. MCA and Ad-Rock took a front position in front of Mike D, so that I had less chance of getting snatched from the stego’s back. We ran on the beach as close to the shore of the river as we could get, and I sensed Grumpy drift behind us from deep under the flow of the water.
The carnos didn’t know the purussaurus was there, so my plan was to engage them as close to the water as I could, force their backs against the flowing water, and then have the massive dinosaur-croc grab them from behind. The carnos were giant raptor-like predators that stood a good fifteen-feet high, but Grumpy was probably fifty feet long, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he weighed as much as all six of the carnos put together. I knew that a spinosaurus would easily eat my new crocodile buddy for breakfast, but he’d have no problem taking out some carnos by surprise.
He just had to be quick enough so that I could get through these assholes before the spinos caught up with us.
The carnos seemed surprised that my trios of stegos were racing toward them, but it only lasted a few seconds. They quickly let out roars that had once terrified me, but now sounded like kittens when compared to the spinos, and then they charged.
“Hold it!” I shouted into the wind at MCA and Ad-Rock as I sensed them start to freak out. “You got this! We are going to work together! Just follow my orders!”
Mike D let out a low note that sounded a lot like “listen to the boss, boys,” and the other two let out two pitches in their echo format. Then we were a good hundred yards apart from our opponents, and I ordered MCA and Ad-Rock to swing around to the left a bit so that they could come at the carnos from the southeast side.
I also reached out with my Tame ability, but it was either the heat of battle on my nerves or that the carnos were still too big, but my ability didn’t seem to have any effect on them.
Then we were ten or so yards away, and I held my breath as I gave the stegos my surprise order.
MCA and Ad-Rock locked their right legs up and then swung their tails around as they continued to slide across the sand. Our timing was perfect, and they each smacked their spikes into the chests of the two lead carnos just as they were about to snap forward. The two carnos screamed with surprise and they were knocked toward the river as a spray of blood filled the air.
The remaining four carnos tried to stop, but they skidded across the sand as they lost control of their upper bodies. Two of them crashed into MCA’s side, one of them crashed into Ad-Rock, and the last one slid past them toward Mike D and me.
I grasped onto the kite-shaped plate as Mike D whipped his tail around and my teeth shook when the spikes slammed into the carno. My vision actually went blurry for half a second, and my hands went numb, but I guessed it was nothing compared to the pain that the carno was experiencing. Mike D had hit him right in the skull with his spiky tail, and the carno was twitching on the beach with a skull that now looked like a colander. Blood poured out of dozens of holes, but I didn’t have time to study the fucker’s last few moments, Ad-Rock and MCA needed me.
The two carnos that’d collided with MCA had almost tipped the stego over, but my buddy was sidestepping to keep his balance, while he tried to buck the carnos loose. They both had their tiny arms hooked around his top plates, but they couldn’t fit their maws down into the gap between his spines, and the stego’s movement away from them meant that they couldn’t bring the talons on their legs into play to scratch him; they were too busy trying to hop along with the stego’s movement so that they wouldn’t get knocked free.
The carno who had slammed into Ad-Rock hadn’t been able to catch hold of his spines, so the predator was moving around to try to get at the stego’s unprotected head. I decided to let the carno have his way, and I turned Ad-Rock around so that he was facing the river. The carno took the bait, sprang over to the edge of the river and then shot forward to chomp into the face of my new friend.
But he didn’t know that Grumpy was waiting for him.
The purussaurus really was the thing of nightmares. He wasn’t scarier than the spinos or T-rexes, but he erupted out of the river like a grim reaper jack-in-the-box and chomped down on the back of the carno as if it was a dog’s chew toy. The carno even let out a surprised gasp which sounded a lot like a squeak, but then Grumpy barrel rolled his massive body, and the carno tore in fucking half. Blood sprayed through the air like rain, but I was already commanding Ad-Rock and Mike D to rush over to MCA’s defense. One of the carnos had actually gotten his feet hooked around a palm tree in the middle of the beach, and MCA was having problems shaking himself free or continuing his side step routine. The other carno was starting to pull up more on the plates, and I knew we only had a few seconds to get him off before he was able to rip huge cuts into MCA’s side with his talons.
Mike D got there first, and I braced myself for another tail swing by pushing against opposing kite-shaped shields with my arm. My stego’s back arched sideways, and then my body went numb when his tail cracked out and slammed into the side of the carno that was trying to climb up on MCA. The predator let out a scream of agony and let go of MCA, but then the other one leaned to his left and tried to take a bite off of the stego’s neck right below where the plates started.
Then Bruce saved the day by dive bombing that fucker.
The horse-size pteranodon slammed his long beak right into the carno’s right eye. The predator let out a screech of surprise, but it only lasted for a few seconds, then he started to lean back away from MCA as Bruce tried to pull his beak free of the carno’s skull.
The pteranodon and carno tumbled to the sand together, and I felt half a second of panic before I saw that the carno began to twitch its death spasms. Then I directed Ad-Rock to sprint past Bruce and smack the carno that Mike D had just hit with his tail. The bleeding carno was probably going to die from all the puncture wounds anyway, but Ad-Rock’s hit tore the predator’s left leg out of its hip joint like an axe cutting a tree branch free, and the carno gave out a gurgle of agony as it twisted over on its remaining leg and collapsed onto the sand.
Bruce pulled his beak free of the carno he had killed, and I could have sworn that he flexed his arms up over his head like some sort of cage fighter that had just KO’d his opponent. Then the pteranodon flapped his wings hard and took to the air with a loud honk.
I looked back at the two carnos that MCA and Ad-Rock had first hit during our charge. One of them was staggering back to his feet with a set of bloody holes in his chest and eyes that burned fiery hatred, but the other was still rolling on the ground, and I doubted that he was going to be doing anything besides dying in the next few minutes.
“Grumpy?” I called out, and the giant crocodile lunged out of the river water like a bullet, twisted his head sideways, and then chomped down on the right leg of the remaining carnotaurus.
Grumpy’s prey let out a surprised squawk, but it was too late, and his face slammed against the sand of the river bank as Grumpy pulled back with his four massive legs. The carno surprised me by twisting around, bending over double, and biting at Grumpy’s face, but my dino-croc didn’t seem to give a fuck about the carno’s teeth. Grumpy just kept pulling the carno toward the water, and as soon as they made it halfway in, my tamed monster-croc began his patented death roll. The carno quickly disappeared beneath the waves, and I turned back toward the east side of the river.
I was just in time to see the twin spinos round the cliff corner and hear Bruce let out two honks.
“Yeah, I see them!” I shouted at Bruce as I commanded Grumpy to continue his trip downstream while the stegos ran west.
The spinos saw us too, and they let out bellows that seemed to make the sun hide beh
ind the clouds above us. These things were terror-gods on two legs, and I knew there was no way that I could hope to win against them with my three stegos. Yeah, their tail whips hit super hard, but the jaws of the spinos looked like they could wrap around the entire circumference of Mike D’s back, spines and all. They probably crapped shit bigger than the carnos that we had just fought. Okay, maybe not, but my heart was skipping beats as the stegos ran away from them, and I prayed to whatever gods were watching over me in Dinosaurland that these two monsters decided not to give chase.
Then, as if the gods of Dinosaurland were really watching over me, the spinos trotted over to the first carno that we had killed. They each bit into it as I watched, and they each devoured their half in one massive gulp.
Then they let out another loud roar and trotted over to the next carno corpse.
“Let’s hope that fills their belly,” I said as I did some mental mathematics and tried to figure out how much of the bronto they had both eaten before chasing after. I was very close to positive that the spinos would be full after they ate the carnos, but I still wanted to put a few thousand miles between them and us as soon as possible.
We followed the river west out of the valley where the spinos feasted and continued through six more valleys. The last one had a herd of parasaurs drinking at the side of the river, but they fled south away from the water and dashed up a grassy slope as soon as they saw us round the cliff corner. I figured an hour had passed since the spinos started feasting on the carnos, and I was starting to think that we were safe.
We exited the valley with the parasaurs and came to what seemed to be the end of the cliffs on each side of the river. They gave way to tall oak trees punched with the occasional impossibly tall redwood, and I wondered if I was getting closer to the location of my camp. Then I reviewed the brief impression I had of Dinosaurland in my head and knew that I was much closer to Quwaru’s camp than I was mine. Or at least, I thought I was. The trip the ugly winged bastard had taken me on had felt like really far north and a bit east, but I really couldn’t be sure until I saw the ocean.
Tamer- King of Dinosaurs 5 Page 2
