His words dulled the high I still had from a night of marital sex, and it was like I could hear a ticking clock in my head counting down to the end of the world.
“Then let’s get going,” I said, and we headed for the entrance of the dome.
I heard footsteps on the other side as I pushed the door open, and I saw the three CERN workers head down the curved ramp.
They all had coats on, and it looked like they were planning to head out somewhere. I knew they weren’t dino fighting experts, so my nerves heightened a bit as I wondered where they could possibly have to go.
Had the Hadron Collider broken horribly and caused some kind of leak, or danger, in the building?
From what I could tell, they weren’t rushing, so I reassured myself that they would be moving with much more urgency if there was a serious problem. Maybe they just wanted fresh air before the massive herd closed in again.
Arnie gave me a cheery wave as I stood inside the entrance, and I smiled back at the older man. He had clearly managed to find some less blood-stained clothes, and it didn’t seem that his injury was causing him too much pain.
Those skin patches really were incredible, and I hoped we would be able to keep some after the war ended. I figured humans would be due some compensation for all the dino bullshit, and upgrading our medical supplies all over the world would be a good place to start.
Mateo, the engineer, looked as tired as he had when we met him, and he gave me a weak smile as he pressed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose. The guy just generally looked like he needed a strong coffee, or a strong drink. Maybe both.
Hilda had her lips pursed as she looked me up and down, and I didn’t hold out any hopes to win her over. It didn’t make much difference if she liked us or not, though, just as long as she didn’t do anything to sabotage our mission.
“Hey,” I said as the group approached. “Is everything okay? Is the Hadron Collider working?”
“Yes.” Arnie nodded, and my whole body felt like it unclenched with relief. “We checked the computers not long ago to track the system’s progress.”
“Brilliant,” Kat said excitedly. “How do we get to the machine?”
“There is a slight issue,” Mateo said as they reached us, and my stomach dropped.
“What is it?” Hae-won asked. “You said it was working.”
“It is,” Arnie said reassuringly. “But it might stop working soon if it overheats.”
“Something is warming up one of the pipes,” Mateo said.
“What?” I furrowed my brow. “What do you mean? How is that possible?”
“There must be something big over one of the primary vents,” the engineer explained. “These vents help cool the computers needed to keep the experiment functioning.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Becka blurted out.
“No, and it’s stopping the reset from fully finishing,” Arnie admitted. “So, we need to go and move whatever it is.”
“Probably a dead dino,” I sighed.
“You think they’ve gone back to killing each other?” Kat asked as she folded her arms. “I thought they were all pals now.”
“Maybe one of them got desperate for food,” I said. “I doubt they’re too moral to go back to their old ways if needed.”
I was frustrated that something else had stepped in the way of our mission, but I just had to keep calm and move whatever dinosaur corpse was slowing us down.
“Apparently, it’s worth risking our lives for,” Hilda sniffed. “These two insisted we come to show you where the problem is.”
“We told you, you didn’t have to come,” Mateo said wearily. “You can stay here.”
“I don’t want to be the only one in the building,” Hilda retorted. “What if one of those things tries to get inside?”
Mateo rolled his eyes as he adjusted his glasses, and I looked at the three unarmed scientists with a sigh.
“Okay,” I muttered. “You all stay in the middle of the group. Do you know exactly where the problem is?”
“We do.” Arnie nodded. “It isn’t far. Perhaps a ten minute walk?”
“You can meet a shit-load of dinos in ten minutes,” Becka said.
“But we can be more subtle on foot,” I pointed out. “You sure it’s only a ten minute walk?”
Arnie nodded again and zipped up his coat higher.
Hilda’s eyes were wide, and she nervously shifted her weight from side to side. The last thing I needed was someone who was likely to scream at the first distant glance of a dinosaur, but we didn’t have time to argue with her about coming with us.
“Listen,” I said quickly. “We will do everything we can to protect you. One thing that is really fucking important is that you don’t make a sound.”
“They’ve got hearing like fucking bats,” Kat added. “And if one of them notices us, then that will turn into ten of them real fast.”
“The whole herd of ommati will come.” Adhara nodded. “Of all different kinds.”
“They can talk to each other,” Hae-won said. “They team up, even the herbivores and carnivores. All they care about is killing us all.”
There was a heavy silence as the three scientists stared at us, and I stifled a smirk at the fear the girls had clearly instilled, but it was good to make the others slightly on edge.
Nothing could kill a person faster than misplaced confidence.
“Alright,” I said. “Stay close, and don’t make noise. Got it?”
The CERN staff nodded, and I gestured for them to follow us back outside.
We stepped out into the early morning air, and I swung my sharp gun to my front.
“Which way?” I asked, and Arnie silently pointed to the left of the dome.
We arranged ourselves so the scientists were in the middle of the group, and I led the way toward whatever the hell had died on top of the Hadron Collider. I didn’t know exactly how far underground the experiment was, but it would have to be something big to cause problems from all the way on the surface.
The route to the left took us past a few clumps of trees, which I was grateful for as I spotted dinos right away. The grassy landscape was covered in dark, moving shapes, and I snapped my neck upward as I heard the sound of heavy wings.
I furiously gestured for everyone to move under the cover of the nearby trees, and we raced under the branches to press ourselves up against the trunks. I kept my sharp gun aimed at the sky as three flying dinosaurs came into view.
They soared over the science base and called out to each other in deep, haunting screams, and they were much smaller than the other flying dinos we had fought. Their wingspan was about five feet, and their bodies were maybe three feet. Their scaly flesh was a deep-orange color, and they had long tails that swung from side to side as they flew.
It didn’t look like they had spotted us, and I considered shooting them down anyway just to have three less prehistoric assholes around. They weren’t quite close enough to use the sharp guns, and I didn’t want to risk drawing attention with the blaster, so I just watched as they soared over us.
I glanced at the scientists and wasn’t surprised to see they had all pressed their backs against the trees as much as possible, and their faces had turned several shades paler. Sometimes I forgot that not everyone was confident slaying dinos, and I was grateful for the team of badass girls and aliens I had along with me.
Once the flying dinosaurs had moved on, we started to run again along the grassy landscape.
The trees ran along our right-hand side, which helped hide us from view. To our left, there was a small hill with several other small buildings on the other side, so we had a little pathway that was mostly hidden from dinosaurs. The air smelled like dino shit, and I tried not to think about what we would do if that was what was causing the problem. Evaporating stuff made it smell ten times worse, and I gagged just thinking about it.
Then a seriously threatening roar rose up from the herds on the right, and Hilda let
out a small whimper.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw Kat scowl at the scientist.
Arnie waved to grab my attention, and then he pointed to the little hill on our left. He gestured that we needed to go around to the other side of it, and we started to run around the bottom of the hill.
Leaving the cover of the trees was nerve wracking, but I couldn’t hear any footsteps ahead of us. I led the group around the curve of the hill, and when I was able to see the other side, I stopped dead in my tracks.
It was clear what had been causing the Hadron Collider to heat up, and it was somehow worse than a dead dino or a pile of crap.
At the base of the hill, a squat brick structure stood no higher than about three feet off the ground. It must have been about five feet long, and it appeared to be what housed the cooling vents. There were two large nests clumped together around it, as if they wanted to absorb the residual heat of the vents, but then another two were wedged together on top of it. Each of the nests had about five blue eggs inside, and the eggs were about two feet tall with black-speckled shells. I could see a couple of them already had small cracks down the middle, but there was no sign of the parents.
There was no doubt in my mind that they would be close by. We had run into protective dino parents before, and they never strayed too far from the nests.
“Shit,” Becka whispered. “Jason, what do we do?”
“We need to move them,” I said quietly. “If we use the blasters, the light will attract attention and damage the vents. If we use sharp guns to disintegrate them, their parents could smell scrambled eggs before we have time to finish, and we’re still out in the middle of fucking nowhere.”
“Not to mention, dino death-goo dripping down into the vent,” Kat muttered.
“We have to touch those?” Hilda hissed, and I nodded.
“It’s the quietest way,” I said as we hurried forward. “If we do it carefully, then the parents might not even notice.”
“So, how do we do this?” Hae-won asked as we stood beside the piles of sticks and dirt. “Won’t the nests fall apart if we try and move them?”
“Yeah, move the eggs first, then we’ll tear the nests away,” I said as I examined the nests. “The eggs will be where the majority of the heat is being condensed but the bedding isn’t helping. We need them off the top of the structure.”
“And away from the sides,” Arnie pointed out. “It will deter the dinosaurs from renesting if we remove all of the eggs, and prevent the bricks from retaining excess heat.”
“We pick up ommati egg?” Leo asked with a raised eyebrow. “You are sure?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s not my most planned-out strategy, but dammit, we don’t have much time. Just roll the little baby bastards if you have to.”
I grabbed the nearest egg from on top of the vent with both hands and was shocked at how heavy it was to lift. With a grunt, I hauled it out of the nest, and it felt like I was lifting the weight of a grown man. I shuffled forward with the egg and then placed it on the ground before I pushed it with all of my strength.
The egg rolled a few feet away and then lulled to a halt.
“Will that be far enough?” I asked Arnie, and he nodded.
“Perhaps space them out,” he said as he glanced up at the sky. “Just so they aren’t all sitting on the same spot.”
I nodded and went in for a second egg as the rest of the group joined in.
The girls shared the weight of the eggs together, except for Kat, who probably refused help out of principle.
Even Arnie and Mateo struggled together to roll just one of the blue shells from the lower nests, and they managed to roll it a considerable distance with a joint push.
“My family used to do this at Easter,” Kat grunted. “But the eggs weren’t the size of a child and filled with something that wanted to eat me.”
“It is somehow taking the magic out of egg rolling,” Becka snorted. “If my kid wants to do this at Easter, it’s going to be a big fat no.”
“Human offspring want to roll egg?” Adhara asked quietly. “Why?”
“For Easter,” Becka explained. “You know, when the bunny brings you chocolate? I’ll tell you about it later.”
The gorgeous alien knitted her eyebrows together, but she didn’t ask any more questions.
Then I heard a distant sound of footsteps, and I spun around as my third egg rolled away. I grabbed my sharp gun, and I had a feeling in my gut that the noise had been made by one of the parent dinosaurs.
It was pretty much our luck these days for shit like that to be the case.
“Jason?” Becka asked. “Did you hear something?”
“I hear noise, too,” Adhara said as she looked over her shoulder. “Something is on its way to nests.”
“Fuck,” I spat as I looked at the half-emptied nests. It wasn’t enough to leave it at that, there were still enough eggs on the top of the vents to prevent the experiment from cooling properly.
The footsteps became louder, and it sounded like two dinos were on their way. My heart rate quickened, and I looked around frantically for somewhere to hide the CERN workers.
“Take them back to the trees,” I barked at Leo. “Stay with them there. Shout if you get spotted, and we’ll come over.”
The stoic alien nodded and wasted no time in ushering the pale-faced scientists back toward the cover of the trees.
“It sounds like there’s two of them,” I warned the girls. “If we can get them down fast enough, we might have time to move the last of the eggs before more arrive.”
“There,” Hae-won gasped. “I can see them.”
I followed the Korean beauty’s gaze and saw two large dinosaurs on their hind legs running from a distant little area of woodland.
“Kat and Hae-won,” I said. “You guys take the one on the left, it’s slightly smaller. Adhara and Becka, help me with the other.”
“Blasters?” Becka asked, and I shook my head.
“There’s a whole herd just beyond those trees,” I said as I gestured to the right. “If we light those fuckers up in an explosion, that won’t go unnoticed. Sharp guns should get it done without painting a target on our backs.”
The girls arranged themselves into their groups, and we stood ready with our alien guns.
It didn’t take long for the dinosaurs to get closer, and I could see that they were about thirty feet tall as they raced along on thick hind legs. They were a light-brown color, with a hint of blue tone to their stomachs, and their jaws seemed unnaturally long for their faces.
“I know what they are,” Hae-won muttered. “I remember those ones from the book of that dino-obsessed kid back at Ravenscar. They’re called qianzhousaurus.”
“How the fuck do you remember that?” Becka hissed as she aimed her sharp gun.
“I thought their faces were creepy.” Hae-won shrugged. “Their snouts look like they’re going to make them topple over.”
“Get those bullets right into the heads before they roar,” I said as the dinosaurs’ footsteps got close enough to shake the ground. “Try not to hit any of the eggs, or the other parents will smell that a mile off.”
It only took a few moments for the qianzhousauruses to get close enough to see the red tint of their eyes, and they opened their mouths to reveal needle-like rows of teeth. Their nostrils flared as they pelted toward us, and there were red stains that glinted around their jaws.
“Steady,” I said as I aimed at the bigger one on the right. “Almost. Okay, now!”
I fired my sharp gun right at the fucker’s head, and my bullet soared directly between the dino’s red eyes. Adhara’s bullet shot into the creature’s open mouth, and Becka’s hit just under the left eye.
The flurry of bullets to the head created a mini explosion of blood, and there was a faint gushing sound as dark red erupted from both of the dino’s ears. The back of the beast’s head had brains and skull flying out, and the dinosaur fell with a sickening crunch onto its lo
ng snout. Its face crumpled on impact, and the jaw was crushed back into its skull like a blood-soaked accordion.
Kat and Hae-won had fired their shots at the same time, and their dinosaur had blood spurting from its mouth and neck as it wobbled from side to side.
It was about to die for sure, but I saw it open its mouth to make one final roar, and I reacted in a split second to silence the fucker.
I swung my sharp gun up again and sent a bullet flying right into the dinosaur’s eardrum.
The bullet whooshed out the other side of the skull and brought a train of red goop behind it, and the qianzhousaurus was dead before the roar could escape its throat. It tumbled to the ground beside its herd mate, and I would have normally taken a few moments to celebrate a successful kill, but that countdown clock in the back of my head continued to tick toward the end of the world.
“Good work,” I hissed as I glanced around to check we hadn’t attracted any more dinos. “Quickly, move as many more of these fucking eggs as you can.”
We hauled the remaining eggs from their nests and scattered them around the corpses of the big dinosaurs. It only took a few more minutes for us to finish, and I felt like I was dripping with sweat as I shoved the final egg away. Then we frantically tore the nesting away from the top of the vent, and we chucked it all over the surrounding grass to clear the vents entirely.
I was just wiping my forehead on my jacket sleeve when a distant, low rumble echoed through the morning air, and I grabbed my gun as I swung around to spot the oncoming dinosaur.
I scanned the line of trees and over the hillside, but I couldn’t see anything nearby. The sky was still a clear blue above us, and the noise didn’t seem to be getting any louder like approaching footsteps.
“Where is it?” Becka asked as she swung around in a circle. “It might be over the hill.”
“No,” I said slowly as the low hum continued to ring out. “It’s not over the hill, it’s underneath it. I think that’s the Hadron collider.”
The girls stared at me with wide eyes, and a grin spread over my face.
It was time to go and make some black holes.
Chapter 8
Dinosaur World 8 Page 13
