He strolled along the roads looking in amazed as to how far they had come along in just four months. The sun was shining, crops had started to burst forth from the warm soil and he chuckled as he watched Ed walking hand in hand with Jan as Doc sat outside of his hut pouring through scroll after scroll made from dinosaur vellum. Doc was always looking for knowledge, he was happy…Ed? Obviously!
Then Jack looked down to see his shadow and realized that he was the only one that seemed to lamenting his situation as everyone else seemed to be settling in.
He sighed and decided it was time for a siesta, turned a corner and slammed smack dab into something that sent him and the object tumbling to the ground.
“Holy crap fella, one of us needs to look where you were going.” he dusted himself off and turned to face his…
“It is you that needs to look where you are…” a musical voice bemoaned as she turned to face the klutz that had run into her.
As they came face to face, both froze and stared at one another.
Jack fumbled for words and managed to come out with…
“Uh…hi…uh…nice to meet you.” In his head all he could hear was himself screaming “Christ you knock her on her ass and all you can mutter is…hi?”
The beautiful Mayan woman dusted her gray dinosaur buckskin dress off, never taking her eyes off of the handsome, dark haired adventurer.
“I take it that you prefer to meet people by knocking them to the ground?” she smiled and his heart melted.
“I mean that if you would have simply extended your hand and introduced yourself that would have been preferable to rolling in the dust.”
“Holy shit, you speak better English that me…er, I.”
“Apparently.” she replied in a musical voice and a smile that melted Jack’s heart.
Finally Jack got hold of himself, smiled sheepishly, and held out his hand.
“I am sorry for running into you. My name is Jack Porter.” and into his hand came the softest thing he had ever felt in his life.
“Coi…Coi, uh…” she chuckled “just call me Coi, you English have problems with Mayan last names. I am pleased to meet you Jack.”
“Ahem!”
Jack looked to his right to see an equally beautiful woman standing there trying her best not to chuckle rudely. She walked over to Coi and began brushing her off. Coi smiled at Jack.
“This is my best friend Tazen.” she nodded toward the large central structure that was being built in the center of the smaller living structures. “Tazen came here with her husband to live. He’s one of your lead builders.”
“Welcome Tazen, we’re happy to have both you and your husband…” Jack looked at Coi and smiled “and of course Coi.”
“Me?” Coi laughed “I’m not staying here, I just came over to visit my friend and bring her the latest news from our mesa and drop off some scrolls for the doctor. I’m leaving tomorrow.”
Jack was puzzled “But there aren’t any groups going out tomorrow.”
Coi laughed along with her friend “Groups? I need no group, or escort. Jack, I’m a Mayan tracker and hunter, I came here alone. I will return home alone…” she looked around slyly and with a tiny smile added “I am not one of your English women, we, er, I…” she looked confused and looked to her friend.
Tazen smiled “You’ll have to forgive my friend, it seems that she has never had the privilege of speaking with…uh you aren’t English…”
“American,” Jack laughed “but I guess here I’m Mesafourian.” Jack was pleased with his attempt at humor, but both women just stared at him blankly.
“Oh, just call me Jack.”
The Mayans were a beautiful amber in coloring, but Tazen giggled softly and looked at Jack “Coi is smitten by you, see how she blushes?”
“I…am…not!” Coi sputtered “I’m trying…to, uh…be polite.”
Tazen rolled her eyes and grasped Coi’s hand.
“This is the man you wanted to meet.”
“HIM?!” she sputtered it out so loud she nearly shouted.
“Uh, thanks I guess.” Jack decided it was his turn to be coy…mainly because he had absolutely no idea of what either were talking about.
“Why Jack…” Tazen said as she tried not to show how much she was enjoying all of this.
“Coi has come to ask you to go home with her.” Both Jack and Coi looked at each other and then back to Tazen in total shock…
“WHAT!” they both shouted at the same time.
Chapter 11.
A quick chilling glance back to her friend Tazen knew that was all Coi would put up with.
“Jack, Coi heard that you wanted to talk to the elders and look at our history. Coi can translate the old one’s language and she is one of the best…” she sought a word “guides?”
Coi nodded “I am a guide and one of the best. I know all the trails from my mesa to the others. While the men hunt, we women find the berries, and plants we need that we cannot grow on the mesas. Because we carry only knives and small axes, we have to know where we are, and know how to be quiet and blend into the surroundings.” she snorted a half laugh “While the men go stomping through the jungle and make far too much noise, we gatherers know how to exist with that around us…and I am the best of the guides as well as a hunter.”
She straightened proudly “My friends always come home…” and then snorted “which is more than what I can say for some of the men.”
As the two women walked off with but a quick ‘see you in the morning’ from Coi, Jack couldn’t help but notice the bronzed woman’s body. She was petite, but well built. It was obvious to him that she was more than fit for the job. She glanced everywhere as if always on alert, her bare midriff, sleeveless top, and short skirt had told him that she was well toned and it wasn’t from hitting the gym. Coi was a product of this world and he liked what he saw.
Jack smiled as she glanced back at him and she turned back around with an embarrassed look; she had been caught looking back at the ruggedly handsome adventurer and that bothered her.
A couple of times later that evening Jack caught a glimpse of Coi and her best friend Tazen and Tazen’s husband as they strolled along the street the new dwellings were being built along. They celebrated nearly every night now that the structures were being finished on a regular basis. Each dwelling was built with some sort of wall, or spaced posts, in order to put some kind of barricade between it and the next building to form a kind of perimeter.
Divers could land and had been known to land and hop to places that were protected by overhanging trees. With barriers between the structures and well repositioned vines to entangle the flying reptiles that swooped low, their growing settlement was safe as there were no land dinosaurs on any of the mesas in this world…all they had to do was avoid the flying ones.
After a quick and impatient sleep Jack rose early to pack his backpack and headed to the ‘southern access’ as it was known by.
It consisted of a shady area with trees that overhung the cliff face with two large winches. One had a set of pulleys and counterweights that lowered its occupants through the heavy jungle canopy below, the other was a manual winch with multiple pulleys to raise heavier objects.
All around the mesa the trees grew nearly as high as the mesa’s lofty top. Jack playfully mused that if it wasn’t for the occasional giant megalithic tree bursting fourth from the canopy, it looked like a lush green carpet that one could walk over from mesa to mesa.
“It would be much easier than walking on the deadly ground.” he mused aloud.
“What would?”
Jack’s heart nearly stopped as he spun to see the beautiful Coi standing behind him smiling.
“Jesus!” Jack muttered as his heart beat slowed and a sheepish grin broke out on his face “Guess I’m just preparing for our little trek…” he nodded toward the next mesa “out there, you know…” it occurred to Jack that he had no idea what he was rambling on about.
“I underst
and Jack. I too prepare my mind to be alert. You know, just like I have changed into these.” She waved her hands along her body and the tight gray dinosaur buckskins she now wore that covered her from neck to ankle and kicked her mid-calf boot out for Jack to see.
“Just as I change my clothes to go into the jungle, I change my mind to being more alert. I had a chance to speak to some of your friends last night and they told me that you are an experienced warrior…that is good.”
He nodded and grinned “Yep, but you’re in charge, I’ll follow.” he smiled that great smile that Coi had noticed the day before.
“If I was in my world I would lead, but as I’m in yours, lead on.”
Coi looked at Jack with her head cocked and a strange look on her face.
“Warriors do not allow women to lead.”
“If they want to stay alive…they should.” Jack grinned as he replied and motioned for her to step into the counterbalanced basket.
“You are a strange man Jack Porter.”
She slid into the basket that was large enough to hold four adults. Jack followed her in, reached out and hooked up the proper counterbalance, and pulled the basket up a foot. Grasping a second rope that was tied to a large pole he pulled them out over the cliff face.
A quick check of the skies and the canopy about twenty yards below, Jack lowered them and was amazed at how little strength it required. It was really not much more than just an oversized dumbwaiter built of vines and wooden pulleys, but incredibly efficient.
Once they penetrated the canopy, Jack lowered them as Coi carefully checked their surroundings.
At one hundred feet she had him stop so she could listen, and then again at fifty…it was clear! A relieved smile and Coi nodded for Jack to get them to the ground.
With barely a sound the basket reached the hard rubble that littered the areas around the mesa, but in this case had been mostly cleared for the lower pulleys and flat landing area. The landing area was protected by row after row of sharpened spikes and poles protruding out of the rocky ground, no dinosaur would wander around in this area, yet they were still overly cautious. Slipping out of the basket and vanishing into the jungle Coi motioned for Jack to raise the basket back up at least fifty feet to a level where there was coverage by tree limbs.
The basket vanished through the canopy of thick jungle vegetation he couldn’t see the basket…nor Coi as he looked around once the basket was secure. By the time Jack saw it hit the foliage Coi reappeared and Jack was relieved.
“What you call rexes have gone through earlier. By the heat of their butal…uh, dung? I guess maybe two hours. Rexes do not backtrack as a rule, but be alert anyway.”
They were two hours into their trip when they came to a wide river with four to five foot banks. Huge trees lined the muddy banks as the lazily flowing river moved along and beautiful shafts of sunlight broke through the canopy to cast golden rays upon the crystal clear waters. The heat of the nearly midday Jurassic world was nearly unbearable for Jack. He had pulled four tours in the Middle East, and the stifling heat was nowhere close to this.
Coi held up her hand to listen and after several seconds, turned to Jack and smiled.
“We may drink now.” With that, she turned and carefully climbed down onto the clay river bank. As Jack followed suit, she walked out onto the cobbled gravel that vanished into the clear water and knelt.
Jack managed to walk along the slippery clay to the rocky water’s edge and looked at Coi cupping her hands to drink. She was so beautiful that it stunned Jack, she was the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen…and he had to travel across time and space, and perhaps a dimension or two to find her.
The cool spring fed waters refreshed her and as she cupped a handful of water to splash on her face, Jack grasped her from behind. Startled she started to protest, but instead found Jack’s hand across her mouth. As her hands came up to pull his rough hands from her mouth, she felt her petite body being lifted and carried along the cobble toward the water as he turned her…
There on the same river bank they had left minutes before, were two huge tyrannosaurus rexes that stood towering above them…they were under their noses, literally, less than fifteen yards away.
Coi stopped struggling and Jack removed his hand. Slowly they moved toward where Jack pointed. There on the bank was one of those giant trees that had taken root so close to the river that it had grown giant roots into the waters and it was into these roots that Jack pulled Coi.
Slowly making their way into the massive system of roots, Coi never took her eyes off the deadly dinosaurs, while Jack constantly looked for other nasty things that might inhibit their temporary shelter.
“Look, Jack…they smell us.” He looked through the roots that were the size of his body, he could see the rexes sniffing the air and looking around.
“They do not see very well as long as we do not move fast or suddenly.” she grasped a handful of the mud and began to smear it all over herself; Jack followed suit.
“This will help mask our scent.” she added with her muddy face that would have been comical if not for the dire situation. Then there was the fact that she seemed to take a liking to smearing mud on his face as he spread it on his body.
Suddenly one of the rexes stepped down into the river. Another step and it was twenty feet into the water and the water hadn’t covered its ankle. Jack mentally admonished himself because here they were barely yards away from death and all he could think of over and over was… “Jesus Christ that thing is huge.” He needed to think of a way out…something, anything.
The rex moved a step closer and both Coi and Jack stopped breathing as the beast sniffed the river’s bank where they had been moments before.
The smaller rex that appeared, seemed that it might be his mate, stepped off into the river near him and also began sniffing the area near the river’s edge. Now the larger male was a scant few yards from the roots, both humans sunk back into the muddy bank as deeply as it would allow and Coi began to close her eyes. She was as brave as they come, but had also feared being eaten all of her life. Slowly she reached over and grasped Jack’s hand.
Jack looked over to the mud covered woman and gave her a gritty smile as he slipped her grip. His hand slowly reached down and grasped his machete as he rolled his head toward hers. Their eyes met as he whispered…
“Be prepared to run.”
“Wait! What are you…” she whispered back.
“I’m gonna stick that big bastard in the eye and run down the river bank toward that fallen tree.” He pointed to a tree that Coi knew well as a crossing point that they used to go to Jan’s people to trade.
She grasped his arm, but Jack pulled it free.
“You’ll never make it.”
He smiled a muddy grin “We’ll see.” Jack sat upright and slowly moved to a kneeling position as he raised his machete in the direction of the slowly closing creature. He took a slow deep breath as the rex was nearly to the roots and his unblinking eye moved within feet of the tip of his machete.
Jack jumped to his feet and shoved the machete through the roots…but the rex moved his head away and stood upright as Jack’s machete struck where the eye had been…and found nothing but air. He opened his eyes to see the rex and his mate grunting at each other. As the male moved slightly away from them he saw why.
On the other bank stood three velociraptors that had stumbled out of the jungle on the other side of the river. The rexes looked at one another, grunted, and with several steps crossed the moderately wide river.
The raptors darted along the riverbank for several hundred feet and vanished back into the jungle with the two rexes in hot pursuit. As the crashing of trees in the distance began to lessen, both humans once again began to breathe.
Slowly Jack squeezed through the roots as he scanned for more trouble. Finding none he stretched out his hand for Coi, and smiled when he found that she had slid out the other side and was scanning for danger.
; “I should have known that you’d be doing that.”
Coi looked at Jack with sad eyes “But I didn’t hear the rexes, nor hear the raptors, I’m sure they must have been talking in their grunts and squeals. The rexes were not detected by them as the wind was blowing down the river and that was probably what saved us because they couldn’t smell us. My failings might have cost us our lives.” Coi reached out and grasped Jack’s hand and placed it on her mid-chest just below her neck.
“Thank you for saving my life Jack.”
Jack smiled which cracked the quickly drying mud on his face and this caused Coi to smile as well.
“It wasn’t you fault Coi, you were drinking.” Jack removed his hand from her chest knowing this was this world’s Mayan way of showing deep and sincere thanks.
Coi bent down and began to wash off the mud as Jack stooped next to her.
“Oh what the hell…” Jack muttered and quietly slid into the deeper water and began to cleanse the mud from himself.
Coi jumped in after him and Jack chuckled softly, until he felt her hand grasp him around his neck and pull him back to the bank…just as a half dozen very large fish, with very big teeth churned the waters that he had just left.
Jack began crawling backward on all fours as he muttered “Holy shit…are those piranhas? Jesus they’re huge compared to my world.”
She chuckled at Jack’s reluctance to return to the river’s edge.
“It is ok to come where I am Jack, these fish will not come out of the river or shallow water.” She splashed water over her and lowered her head to dip it into a standing pool of clear water to rinse her long raven locks.
“Thank you for saving my life.” he replied weakly as he stared at the huge fish that were swimming around just off the shallow water near the bank.
She smiled as she twisted her hair to wring it out.
“Call us even…” she paused “no we are not even.” Coi looked at Jack “You did not know of the piranhas, however I nearly had us devoured because of my attraction to you Jack.”
Jurassic Portal Page 7
