“Stop moving!” I yelled at the dino, but I was too far away from his head for him to hear, and the sounds of the roaring were getting closer.
The trike’s left side was close to our wall, and he kept thrashing his body there. His right side and ass were angled toward the pouring mob of stampeding dinos, and there was no way we could squeeze through there.
“He can’t hear me!” I shouted at the two women as I gestured back to the wall. “Boost me up!” Sheela and Liahpa turned to me with confused looks on their faces, and I realized they couldn’t hear me either. Between the rumble of the stampede and the roars of the approaching predators, I could barely hear myself think. I realized my voice might not even be the thing that caused these dinos to follow my orders. It might have just been some sort of mental connection that was being interrupted by the terror the trike was feeling.
“Up!” I yelled at them again as I pointed at the top of the wall where Trel was frantically waving. My gestured seemed to make sense to them then, and Sheela jumped back to the wall, cupped her hands, and leaned over so that I could place my foot in her grip.
I ran at Sheela, placed my right foot where she wanted, and jumped in time with her snatching motion. The wall was fifteen feet high, but Sheela was strong enough to raise her hands completely over her head when she boosted me, and then Trel leaned down to grab onto my outstretched arm. Her claws pinched the skin of my wrist a bit when she snagged me, but they didn’t pierce my flesh, and I scurried over to the top of the spiked logs with a hope that I’d be able to communicate with the trike better from a different angle.
Then I saw the predators that were causing the stampede break through the tree cover.
They were five massive raptors who stood maybe two yards taller than I remembered the carnotaurus standing. They had longer arms than the carnos, longer tails, and bigger bulk everywhere. One of the beasts opened up a maw that could have swallowed Sheela, Liahpa, Trel, and me with a single gulp, and it let out a roar that made my vision vibrate.
“Shit!” I screamed, but I couldn’t even hear my own words, and I didn’t think Sheela and Liahpa could even see the large predators over the height of the other dinos trying to run.
I focused on the task at hand and bent down toward the stuck trike. I did my best to clear my mind of the terror I felt and tried to force a command to him without speaking. For a few seconds, it seemed like my attempt wasn’t working, but then he stopped thrashing, and I motioned for Sheela and Liahpa to move toward him. The two women followed my instructions and moved to grab onto his stuck horn, but then I caught a glance of one of the massive predators moving toward our walls. The stampede was almost finished and it was clear that we only had a few moments to get this trike freed before the bulky predator made it to us.
“Go! Go! Go!” I urged the two women, but they were having a problem anchoring their feet against the fort wall because of the angle the trike had impaled himself on.
And the massive predator was getting closer. He was maybe a hundred yards away, and my Eye-Q was able to identify him.
Allosaurus Saurophaganax Maximus.
I had heard of an allosaurus before, and I recalled them being the apex predators until they kind of died out before the T-Rex came along, but that was pretty much all I knew about them.
The “Maximus” part probably wasn’t good for us, and I forced myself to turn away from the charging dino so I could focus on the stuck trike.
I willed him to back up slowly, but my own mind was screaming, and it was hard to send mental commands to a trike that I didn’t even have tamed.
But the trike responded, and he backed up as Sheela and Liahpa pushed against the horn. Then it popped free and the two women smiled at each other for half a moment before they saw the allosaurus charging at them.
“Hurry!” I yelled as I reached down the side of the wall and commanded the trike to fucking run.
The lead allosaurus was only twenty yards away, and I could almost smell the decaying meat hanging from its teeth.
Sheela pulled her hands down for Liahpa to step in, and the silver-woman looked as if she was about to argue. Then one of the raptors in the clearing let out another roar, and she just let Sheela throw her up.
Liahpa’s terrified red eyes met mine as I reached my hand down, and she seemed to hesitate to take my offered arm, but then she stretched up and our fingers wrapped around each other’s. Trel was reaching down a moment later, and we both pulled her up to the top of the wall.
Sheela was climbing the wall with her claws, and the trike had joined the tail end of the stampede, but the allosaurus was right behind the stampede and I could see the other predators in the pack flanking from the opposite side of the cave. As soon as Sheela made it to the top, we all turned to watch the allosaurus pounce on the back of the trike we had just freed while another allosaurus chomped it from the right.
The trike let out a shriek and tried to twist away, but then the allosaurus on its back bit down and brought its claws against the trike’s flesh. Blood sprayed through the sky like a hundred sprinklers had just gone off, and the trike stumbled before it collapsed on the grass.
“Get to the gate!” I shouted at the women as I hung off the side of the wall and dropped inside of our fort. The archway where Tom, Katie, and Nicole were standing was south of our position, and our three guardian trikes were standing at the ready. The four of us ran toward them, and I saw the top crest of an allosaurus’ head over the lip of the wall move toward the opening.
“That gate should hold them!” Trel yelled as she ran with a combination of spider leg and human leg skips that carried her there much quicker than everyone else.
“Those predators are huge!” I argued, but I didn’t really need to make my point, since one of the allosaurus made it to the archway of the gate and began to push on the doors we had set into the ground.
The wooden gates creaked as it pushed on them, and I heard a loud gunshot cracking sound when one of the horizontal beams snapped.
I mentally commanded the trike to back up a bit, and I arranged them in a “V” shape with Nicole and Katie up front while Tom brought up the rear. The allosaurus was big enough to see over the gate, and it let out an angry roar when the trikes moved away from him.
The horrible dinosaur pushed on the gate with its knee, and the wood groaned again before it made another snapping sound. The doors had been almost an afterthought to our design and were mainly in place to keep out the smaller green feathered raptors that had been harassing us for the last month. They weren’t going to be able to hold up to the abuse from this fucker that probably weighed twenty times as much.
The allosaurus let out another shriek, fixed its yellow eyes on me, and then paused. We stared at each other for half a moment, but then it shook its head and pushed against the gate again.
This time the doors shattered, and the monster ducked its head down so that it could step inside our complex.
Nicole, Katie, and Tom were ready though. I made Katie dart forward first, and she plunged her spikes into the allosaurus’ left flank as it stepped through. The predator hissed with pain and turned to bite at her, but she’d already backpedaled, and his jaws snapped a few feet from the tips of her horns.
Nicole then took her turn, and she slammed her horns into the allosaurus’ right flank when he turned to snap at Katie. The red scaled trike’s horns sank into the allosaurus’ side even deeper than Katie’s, and the predator twisted around to try to bite her. Just like with Katie, I’d already mentally commanded her to backpedal, so the allosaurus’ teeth snapped over the empty air again.
Katie darted forward and her top two horns slammed into the allosaurus’ side close to where she had first penetrated. The predator twisted around to bite her, but she was already backing away so Nicole could take another turn. This time the red-scaled trike slammed her horns into her opponent almost half their length, and the allosaurus let out a scream that almost made me want to put my hands over my ears
.
The massive predator took a step away from the three trikes and then let out a defensive snarl to try to keep them at bay. My three trikes inched forward a bit, and the allosaurus stepped back again. Then it clipped the back of its head on the top arch of our entryway, and I commanded Tom to charge forward.
The allosaurus hadn’t been injured when he bumped his head into the wood, but he recoiled forward a bit off balance. He wasn’t ready for Tom’s attack, and the biggest of my triceratops’ slammed all three of his horns into the predator’s stomach. The meat eating monster let out another bellow and tried to bend down to snap at Tom, but then Nicole and Katie dove in, and the fucker suddenly had six more horns stabbing him.
The allosaurus thrashed against them, dug his clawed feet into the dirt, and then yanked his body out of the nine horns. Blood was pouring down his torso from too many wounds, and he staggered away from our gate and into the clearing. I commanded my trikes to hold their position at the doorway and then looked to Trel as I gestured to the wall. The obsidian-haired woman knew what I wanted, and she made a few leaps toward the logs before she gracefully climbed up to the top.
“He’s moving back to the group!” she shouted down at us. “Two of them are eating the trike, and another two are eating one of the dinosaurs that look like a parasaur. They aren’t even looking this way.”
“Okay,” I said as I tried to figure out what we would do next. I was confident that we’d be able to hold the gate against four of the allosaurus, since only one could enter at a time, but I preferred to just kick the massive predators out of our clearing.
“He’s falling down,” Trel said as she gestured over the wall.
“I’ll go look,” I said as I walked around the trikes and poked my head out of the entryway.
The critically injured allosaurus had made it almost back to his pack, but he was gushing blood everywhere, and he stumbled down before he made it back to them. The other four apex predators turned to look at him, and they seemed to be confused about why he wasn’t moving. Then the largest one of the pack moved over from where he munched on a parasaur and he nuzzled the injured one’s twitching body with his nose.
The allosaurus that my trikes had shish kabobed let out a loud whine, made a final shudder, and then lay still. The largest one of the pack pushed his nose against the corpse again and then let out an angry huff, glanced around the clearing, and stomped his massive feet.
Then his gaze fell on the entrance to our camp base, and I froze. I hoped that he wouldn’t see me, but the creature let out a thunderous growl, and the other three allosaurus stood at alert before they turned to him.
Then they all started to move toward the entrance of our camp.
“Ohhhhhhhh, shiiiitttt,” I groaned as I ran back behind the trikes. “Trel, get down.”
“Yep,” she said as she skittered down the wall.
“I want you all to get back inside the inner fort,” I said as I mentally commanded Sonny, Cher, and Bob to run over to me. “Keep Hope with you. If they break through, I’ll send Bob back and we are going to make a run for it.”
“I will stay here with you,” Sheela said, and Trel nodded.
“No,” I replied as I glanced back to the wall built around the inner fort. Galmine, Kacerie, and Emerald were still standing by the cooking venison, and the three looked like they didn’t know exactly what they should be doing. “Everyone is going to need your protection, and you can’t help me with these big dinos. I have to control the trikes. Get going!”
As I shouted the order, the largest allosaurus poked his face under the archway, and he let out a growl that shook the ground just as the stampede had.
Sheela, Trel, and Liahpa were already running away, and I ordered my three trikes to hold their “V” position, even though I could feel their fear like some sort of emotional radar. Sonny, Cher, and Bob ran up behind me, and I took a few steps away from the trikes so that they could have more maneuvering space.
The large pack leader turned his massive eyes toward me as I slowly walked backward, and there was a hungry intelligence I saw there. He hadn’t stepped under the arch yet, but as soon as I thought about the wood beam that sat on top of our gate entryway, he turned his eyes up so he could see it.
Then the beast turned back to me, looked at the three trikes and three parasaurs, and let out another growl that I felt in my knees. The other three predators stopped about fifty feet away from our entrance, and they also let out low growls.
Then they waited and stared at us for what felt like ten minutes, but was probably only fifteen seconds.
I couldn’t figure out what they were doing. They didn’t seem to be communicating with each other, nor did they growl or really pace. They just eyeballed my group of dinosaurs and me as if they were sizing us up. Then I realized that the three in the back were waiting for their leader to give the order to attack, but he hadn’t done it yet, so he must have started to realize that he couldn’t win if he tried to force his way through the door.
“Hey!” I shouted, and their leader turned his yellow reptilian eyes toward me. “You know I’ll hurt you if you try to come in, so fuck off!” I felt a little ridiculous telling a ten-thousand-pound apex predator to go away, but I didn’t want to sit here all day. They either needed to attack so I could start to whittle their numbers down, or I wanted them to get out of our clearing so we could repair the damage to the gate.
Or I wanted to kill them.
The leader seemed to sense the murderer in me, and he let out a huff of frustration. On cue, the other three massive predators turned around and began to trot back to their meal. The biggest one gave me another growl, and then he sulked away from the door and slowly pivoted.
I commanded Tom to charge as soon as the allosaurus turned.
My biggest trike was ready for my order, and he sprinted forward like one of those roller coasters that went from zero-to-sixty in a second. The allosaurus had fully pivoted away from us, but he heard Tom rushing toward him after the trike had taken a few running steps. The predator pivoted with his head first, and then tried to get his body around, but Tom had already closed the distance, and he rammed his full bulk into the alpha-allosaurus.
It was visually hard to tell which dinosaur weighed more between the two of them, since the allosaurus stood taller and was built with a much longer body, but Tom’s ram made the weight discrepancy absolutely clear: my three-horned pal was way heavier than the predator, and the trike punched his horns through the other dino’s sides and knocked him over like a dump truck plowing through a porta-potty at full speed. For a half a moment, it was hard to tell exactly what happened, but then Tom kept running through and over the allosaurus, and his entire crest and face were covered with gallons of blood and gore.
I commanded the male trike to circle back around while I forced my eyes to the leader of the predators. The big toothy dino was spasming on the ground, and most of his torso was spread across the grass like an abstract expressionism painting. The beast let out a roar of agony that quickly choked off into a bird-like sounding squawk, and the other three allosauruses turned around to see what had happened to him.
The alpha’s crew immediately started screeching, and I almost had to cover my ears. They took a hesitant step toward their dying leader, glanced at the trike sprinting a loop back to the entrance of our fort, and then screeched again before chasing after Tom.
I commanded him to run faster, and then I made Katie and Nicole back up a bit more so that he had a clear path into the gateway. The allosauruses were fast, but Tom was already moving, and he threaded back through the archway a good five seconds before the trio of predators made it to our gate. The female trikes had already moved back to the door, and the lead carnivore ended up taking a horn to the face when she tried to slide into the archway after Tom.
I guessed this female was one of the alpha’s mates, and she shrieked when Nicole’s horn tore into her face. She was moving a bit too fast, and even though she tried
to stop, she couldn’t quite do it quick enough, and Katie ended up spearing her in the left chest with all three of her horns. The allosaurus grunted with surprised agony again, flopped back into the other two that were trying to get through the door behind her, and then they all tumbled backward and into the grassy field beside their dying leader.
The female might not have been critically wounded, but gallons of blood gushed down her chest and face. She thrashed around on the ground like a spasming snake, and then she finally popped back up to her feet. I saw that Nicole had actually ripped out the female allosaurus’ right eye, and the predator turned back around the let out a snarl in our direction.
Then the trio turned away from us and ran into the redwood forest.
“Holy shit,” I gasped as I lowered myself to my knees. The accumulated fear of the last few minutes slammed into my stomach like a punch from Mike Tyson, and I felt the air leave my lungs with a gasp of agony.
For a few seconds, I couldn’t think of anything besides how close I’d just come to losing everything. The allosaurus group almost made it into the compound, and we had almost been trampled by a few hundred stampeding dinos. My mind spun as I tried to think of ways we could have avoided this whole mess, and I remembered that Trel and I had talked about digging a trench around the outside perimeter of the wall and leaving a raised land bridge at the gate.
The idea was suddenly much more appealing. It might not have stopped the trikes from accidentally running into the wall, but a steep trench before the logs would have caused them to either veer away earlier, or they would have tumbled down into the ditch and lost a lot of momentum. It wouldn’t take long to dig with the three large parasaurs working on it, but I wanted to speak to Trel about it so that we could review the idea and plan how wide and deep I needed to command Bob, Sonny, and Cher to dig it.
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