Dinosaur: 65 million

by catt dahman

  Marcus laughed.

  Traci yawned at Susan, “Thanks, Mom.”

  “You’ll be glad she reminded you when you aren’t the one sick and dehydrated,” Jack said, “I elect Susan medic.”

  “I second that,” Ruby said.

  The rest, except Traci, agreed.

  Jumping at every sound, Jack and Marcus led them down into the trees. If they didn’t get a feel for this fast, the stress would get to them before anything else did. Close by, a few lizards skittered under the foliage. Because the creatures were colored in unusual ways: brown fuzziness with sported bright colors: yellow, orange, purple, and green on their chests and around their eyes as part of their skin. Everyone paused to look at them; the lizards were a few inches tall, able to hide, and dart to safety, but they walked on their hind legs and chittered quietly.

  The fur was, in fact, very tiny, short fluffy feathers that were soft and frizzled into the look of fur, not the usual-type feathers. Tiny and cute, they looked like no other animal the competitors had ever seen.

  It was the first look the competitors had of dinosaurs, and small or not, they were fascinating to watch as they searched for insects, using their fore legs as nimble little hands, pulling at rotten logs for bugs, and stripping berries from bushes.

  They were friendly and intelligent.

  Brent kicked at one who came too close to him.

  “Hey,” Ruby said, “leave them alone.”

  “Just a lizard,” Brent said.

  “Keep in mind, the big ones are just like that, but huge,” Ruby said.

  “Amazing. We’re the first to see them. Well, the audience is seeing them, too, but while they can hear the way they chatter and the way dragonflies buzz, they can’t smell the loam. It’s worth this if I die right now,” Marshall said.

  Ruby laughed, patting his arm, “Let’s all stay alive and win, okay?”

  Brent kicked at another little lizard that was colored yellow-green on his chest and around his little button-black eyes.

  “Hey, leave him alone,” Ruby reached out to the bruised lizard as he lay on his side, chittering. She offered him a berry. At first, he sniffed at it and licked with his long tongue and finally took it with his fore-claws and munched happily. Several more crept from the brush, begging for berries, and some people hand-fed them, amazed at the experience. Ruby snapped, “You’re a jerk, Brent.”

  “What? You have a pet now?” Brent asked.

  “Maybe I do. He’s bruised. You didn’t have to kick at him, you ass,” Ruby put the lizard in her pocket where he peeked out and looked around. As they walked, a half dozen ran around following. While the lizards allowed themselves to be picked up and petted while they ate a few berries, another half dozen followed faithfully in their shadows.

  Fallen trees crumbled to dust on the rain forest floor and were much larger than trees everyone was accustomed to. Susan located a fig tree, and they ate a few, loading more bags with the fruit, “Between berries and figs and if we can find nuts, we could survive without any of the food we brought.”

  They let the lizards eat, and Ruby fed the one she carried. She called him John and stroked his feathers.

  “That’s really stupid. He may cause a big one to find us,” Traci said. “I can’t believe you named him.”

  John was chartreuse along his chest and belly and was a soft mousy brown on his back. He was lizard-like but also bird-like with his odd feathers. His eyes were big, and he was smart and curious. He allowed himself to be petted and cuddled, and he licked Ruby’s skin for the salt. Content, he stayed in her pocket, looking around and eating berries.

  Ruby talked to him like she would a pet and glared at Brent and Traci occasionally. Marcus, Marshall, and Jack chuckled at her. Jack said, “Hey, if Ruby makes friends this easily, maybe she’ll make friends with the big dinos, and then we’ll have an easy adventure out here. The dinos will cheer us across the finish line.”

  “I wish,” Ruby said.

  “I’m glad we have you on our team, Susan. I doubt the other teams have an expert,” Marcus said.

  Pushing her hair off her face, Susan blushed and said, “I’m glad to help.” She didn’t add that in her entire life, this was the first time she had ever been appreciated for her knowledge of plants and herbs. Usually it was useless information she carried around, and she kept flushing as people asked her questions, “And we’ll find willow bark for pain relief and maybe other fruits and nuts. Pine needles contain Vitamin C, but we may or may not find them. I don’t know how long they’ve been around, but the SSDD didn’t clear out all the natural plants, so we’ll find them. I can make washes for injuries and all kinds of things for pain or anxiety, whatever we need if I find the plants.”

  “Find some mint, and let’s have some mint tea,” Marcus said.

  “Mmmm, If I find lemon balm, we’ll have lemon tea as well,” Susan said.

  Marcus led them around a copse of thick trees and into a clearing. To the right was a tall, stony outcropping of an eroding, grey limestone cliff that offered no sanctuary if they suddenly were forced to run. Some of the rocks were shale, which was a little humorous in that scientists used to often split shale to find fossils of dinosaurs and marine life.

  Marcus kept a running documentary of these things he noticed. He wanted to be prepared. To the left were more exposed fields that were once a forest but had been cut and planted with strange grasses and tough, hardy ferns that plant eaters would like, and then there was another forest of both known trees and peculiar palm trees, but they were far enough away to make running to them a dangerous route.

  Marcus, trying to stay positive and upbeat, secretly was nervous and dreaded being chased. He was afraid it would be like a nightmare, trying to run but finding his feet stuck or running as if underwater. He tried to recall why he had signed up for this and didn’t think there was any smart reason, after all.

  “Ruby, you know…ummm…John isn’t a lizard, right? He’s an extinct, remade dinosaur,” Marcus said. He reached down and scooped up a red chest one that wiggled and shook his furry feathers as he let Marcus stroke him.

  “Yeah, it’s really amazing. Like a dream,” Ruby nodded. She covered a giggle as another creature, this one with a pretty purple chest and belly, begged to be picked up and to be fed.

  “I hate them following us. It’s creepy,” Brent said.

  Marcus ground his jaw, “Some are a lot creepier than they are.”

  Ruby and Lawryn giggled quietly.

  In a while, Marcus lagged behind, hardly walking as he stared at the lizards and the terrain. Looking at the rock cliffs and letting the tiny creatures play at his feet, he was still fascinated to see the animals and to be in this secret area of land that was almost legendary.

  “Hey?” Lawryn took his hand and got him walking again. He had fallen behind and lost his lead on the team. She looked him over with a puzzled face and offered a small smile, “You okay?”

  “Yeah, thanks. I was just a little lost in the bigness of this place.”

  “I can identify. Stay focused, and we’ll be fine. Look at that, Marcus,” said Lawryn as she pointed ahead. When they caught up with the other team members, Marcus and Lawryn paused to drink from their own canteens and munch a few berries. They both fed the little dinosaurs that followed them.

  “Triceratops. They were always my favorites,” Marshall said as they came up on a rise.

  They didn’t look exactly as everyone thought. They were like tanks, had four legs, ate vegetation, and had three horns, but that’s where the comparison ended. Each triceratops was over thirty feet long, and if it had been on all fours, it would have stood about fifteen feet at its shoulders, but it didn’t stand on its four legs. It had massive back legs thick with muscles and grace that it stood on, balanced and able to walk around in that position, only lowering its neck to eat low plants or to drink water.

  The entire back end of the animal was thick and roped with muscles, not fat and clunky as often pictur
ed. The head, fully a third as long as was the body, had an enormous frill seven feet wide. The frill was a bluish grey in the youngest, smaller triceratops and deeper blue for the older ones. Their skin ranged from a pale yellowy green to a pale emerald green, and it seemed to glisten or have a shimmering effect.

  “Look at their mouths. Just like parrots,” Marshall noted. The creatures had beaks with giant mouths full of big teeth set into rows. Parents watched over the juvenile animals, staying on their back legs and constantly moving their heads to look around. With eyes set on the sides of their skulls, they were perfectly designed to watch for enemies while the rest ate soft water plants and bathed in the shallows of the pool.

  “This is the most amazing thing I have ever seen;” Ruby said, “they’re beautiful.”

  “They’re big cows,” said Brent as he scooped up a stone to throw, but Marcus caught his arm, “What the hell?”

  “Don’t.”

  “You like cows?” Brent made kissing sounds.

  Jack stepped between the men. He knew Marcus could take Brent easily, but they didn’t need one of their team injured or any animosity started between anyone. Jack explained, “He knows that if we stir them up, they could run this way and trample us, or the noise could bring the meat-eaters around. So why don’t we not throw rocks, ‘kay?”

  Brent shrugged, “Sure. Whatever. All of you want to make them pets. I wish I had a different team.”

  Lawryn made a funny sound, “Yeah, we do, too.”

  A whistle made them turn to the right toward where the bluffs stood. They recognized Wendy waving at them.

  “Red team. They took the high road,” Jack laughed. He pointed to the triceratops and Wendy, and the rest waved as they saw them. It would be a shame for anyone to miss seeing the herd.

  They passed between the herd, pond, and the woods to the left so they didn’t get their backs up against the bluffs. When they were back into the woods again, they stopped to assess their supplies: to see what each had and to get Jack and Marcus to shoulder more of the weight than the women. Marshall offered to carry extra as well, but Brent didn’t raise his eyes.

  They all had canteens, water packets, and sleeping bags, several containers of food, glow sticks, matches, candles, flashlights, compasses, and foil blankets.

  “Here, I have ten personal kits of toothpaste, brushes, and soap. I’ll dump all but the soap, and all of you can have a kit if you don’t have one,” Lawryn laughed as she handed the kits out.

  They looked at knives they had taken and dumped anything unneeded.

  Ruby had extra knives she shared and handed everyone three bracelets each.

  “What? We’re BFFs now? Friendship bracelets?” Brent asked.

  Ruby frowned at Brent, “No. They’re paracords made into bracelets and are about twelve feet long each. Does anyone have rope? No? So the paracord will work perfectly. They are a terrific find. One of the best, really. Be happy I am sharing.”

  “Thanks, Ruby. Here are some sunglasses. Sorry, I don’t have more than three pairs.” Marshall handed Lawryn the other pair. Lip balm and sunscreen were exciting to find in Marcus’s pack.

  Jack tossed Marcus an extra tent. He took Ruby’s sleeping bag, and Marcus took Lawryn’s as Marshall used a carabineer to clip Susan’s bag onto his pack; that gave each woman three or four pounds less to carry. They all looked at Brent, but he shook his head, “I can’t carry that much.”

  Traci glared, “I can carry my own.” She made a show of sharing her toilet paper and duct tape with everyone but Brent, “Use your hands, rich boy.”

  Everyone but Brent laughed. Jack organized the medical kits and kept the heaviest ones for himself and Marcus. They shared wool socks and the few pairs of gloves they had.

  “Oh,” Ruby breathed aloud, “guess what?”

  “Something good?”

  She was digging at the bottom of her pack where she had tossed the first item she found, unsure what it was at the time. In her hands was a slender book. In the back were short descriptions of various dinosaurs they might encounter and some of the plant life, but in the front was a foldout map of the SSDD ocean-bordered island.

  “What does it say?” Everyone crowded Ruby, and she pulled away.

  “Give me a second. I can’t breathe with all of you breathing down my neck. Let’s see. Micro compsognothus. That’s what John is. Triceratops, pterosaurs, and argentinosaurus. That’s this first area.”

  “What do argentinasaurs eat?” Susan asked.

  “Ummm. Plants. Oh, they are like brontosauruses with the long necks and long tails, and get this, they are over a hundred and twenty feet long and weigh about a hundred tons which is twenty times that of the triceratops. I hope we see them. There should be water straight ahead and maybe a herd there if we’re lucky.”

  “And the others are pterosaurs?”

  “Right. They fly. It looks as if they could fly by and grab us, but as long as we stay close to the trees, we should be fine.”

  “Ruby, what’s after that?” Jack asked.

  “Ummm. Oh. Not good. We can expect Tyrannosaurus Rex next.”

  “So soon?” Lawryn shivered.

  “Why areas? Are their gates? I don’t get it,” Susan said.

  “No, they have hunting areas, I guess, and certain ones prefer vegetation planted for them. So, if plant eaters who like ferns are in Area Two and if ferns are all over Area Two and if meat eaters like those veggie-eaters, then they have an area, so to speak. They can mingle,” Ruby said.

  “Mingle?” Lawryn laughed again.

  Jack laughed, too, “Mingling dinos. Love that. But that does make sense.”

  Ruby flapped the booklet, “It’s the best I can tell anyway. Anyone is welcome to read and figure it out better than I have.”

  After a little discussion, they decided to camp before they crossed to that area so they would be fresh and could face the T-Rex in the morning. Then, hopefully they’ll get by that area as well as the trodden area before the next night. It would take a steady pace and pushing themselves hard to double their mileage.

  As they came out of the woods to cross another open area, they heard thunder. Perplexed, they all looked up to the sky, but it was clear. Marshall said maybe the clouds were behind the line of the woods and couldn’t be seen, but the rest disagreed. In a second, dust covered the horizon as a herd of triceratops raced towards the contestants: big males with bright blue frills shimmering with streaks of green and gold, females that were smaller but heavier for their size, juveniles that were growing in their frills and horns, and pudgy babies that were almost trampled by their parents.

  “Go. Move,” Jack shoved the team into the woods. They stomped through vines and bushes to get into the trees, crushing needles and leaves underfoot as they tried to get to safety and away from the pounding, crazed herd bearing down on them.

  “Go farther in,” Marcus said as he took Susan’s arm and pulled her along, “we want to be away from them as much as we can. They’ll crush us flat if they get any closer.”

  After the herd swept by, they saw that the place where they had been standing moments before was flattened; the weeds and bushes were mushy green paste, the small trees were splintered and tossed to the side, and the dirt was marked by deep foot prints and was covered by stinky, large piles of dinosaur feces. The creatures had left waste even while running, perhaps in their fear.

  The dust lazily settled back to the ground.

  “Is everyone okay?” Marcus asked. He waved a hand in front of his nose as the stench from the big dinosaurs wafted over them.

  “Yes, for being almost mashed flat,” Lawryn said. “Wonder what spooked them? Do you think it was a meat eater?”

  “No, look,” Brent said as he pointed, “it’s the flying-a-saurs.”

  “Pterasaurs,” Marshall answered, “I count five…six of them.”

  The micro compsognothus drew close to the contestants.

  The team chose to stay close to the woods as lon
g as the flying creatures were around since they had long claws and needle-like teeth. It was not clear if they attacked anything except fish. Some of them soared down on air currents, a mere fifteen feet from the ground, so it was best to stay away from them. If the tiny micro compsognathus were in the open, the team members could easily be grabbed for a meal.

  “I bet they spook herds, the little fellows run everywhere, and those things scoop them up and eat them,” Jack suggested.

  Ruby petted John, “Yuk. This time they hid with us. Good.”

  “I’m glad John and his…ummm…friends are okay, but do you see that by our being here, we have interfered with natural selection, and we don’t know the long term effects. For all we know, the flying things’ babies will starve, and maybe they will die out, simply because we were here.”

  Everyone stared at Lawryn.

  “I’m from Oklahoma. That doesn’t mean I didn’t get an education,” Lawryn said. “Anyway, do you see what I mean?”

  “That us being here and something that small could cause extinction? I don’t see it. I think it takes major events such as how the scientists think a meteor got them,” Jack said.

  “Have you seen the town I live in, Jack? Nope. No meteor crashed in my town. A few tornadoes, but nothing that would destroy a species. But look at the population, and you’ll find it has dropped. Fewer people are everywhere. I think sometimes, it isn’t anything huge but simply that someone interfered somewhere which resulted in an avalanche of events, and everything was affected.”

  “Butterfly effect. That’s what it’s called. A butterfly flaps its wings in Africa, and everyone in California is killed by an earthquake, resulting in an election of a president who bombs China, and there it is,” Marshall said.

  “You’re scaring me, and I’d rather not hear this. Can we just do what we’re supposed to do?” Traci demanded.

  “And that is?” Ruby asked.

  “Get to the finish line first and win money. Damn, are you stupid?”

  Ruby chuckled in her throat, “Probably, since I’m here with you. I think surviving at all is the entire point. Do you think we will? Are you stupid?”