by catt dahman
“I…I thought about how back home, I’m not very useful. Here, I feel as if I have skills I can show all of you to make life better. I feel needed here. Wanted.”
“You are. Both,” Jeremy said softly. He was tough, strong, and fearless and ready to fight dinosaurs at any time, but with Susan, it was as if he had left all that behind; he treated her tenderly. He allowed her space the last few nights but missed her company and warmth of sleeping next to him.
Susan swallowed hard. She had given him her virginity, something that mattered to her, and he claimed that was an honor and treasure between them. “I am going to stay. I belong here,” she said as she slipped her hand over to Jeremy’s waiting hand.
“Yay. I thought Analisa and I were going to be the only females staying,” Ruby said. She carefully trimmed the fat away from a hunk of meat and tossed it into a pile to be rendered, carved steaks that she seasoned, and set them on the grate to cook for dinner.
“Do you think you could use a medic around here? I know Susan is good with medicine, but you might need another….” Sandra mentioned very quietly.
“Hot damn! Sandra, we’d be thrilled to have you stay with us,” Alex said, and he was echoed. Sandra was very capable as a soldier with a weapon or a medic with a bandage. Alex figured that of all of his team, she was one of the best.
“I say the red team has this game won and rightly so,” Mali stated. “I ain’t got nothing to go back to….”
“Good deal,” Trevor said.
Ruby hugged her, and with her sudden movement, she startled John who was running through the room with three friends and grabbing bits of food. All four ran to Mali, sure she had a special treat or something for them since everyone was looking at her happily and smiling in her direction. Mali gave each lizard a pat on the head and shook her head, “Well, this must mean I can stay, huh? Lizard approved.”
“Aren’t you worried about staying? I mean look how many we lost since we started. Blue and yellow team lost ninety percent of the people. Don’t you worry that it’ll keep going that way?” Serinda asked.
“That’s what I am wondering. I get that all of you don’t want to go back and for good reasons, but you could die out here. And Trevor, what about your kids? How can you leave them this way?” Wendy demanded.
Trevor thought before he spoke, “Wendy, I can’t do any more than what I’ve done. I tried. I went against the norm, and I thought I could make it, but out there, we’re starving to death. Without me there, I figure they’ll finally get up, go to work, and will no longer depend on me, or what I might scrape together. Maybe they’ll do a better job than just hoping I find a half-wage day job or leftovers in a dumpster.”
“Won’t they miss you?”
“No. They’ll have more room in the house, and my wife will have my side of the bed warm by now anyway. She was never the type to wait for news of my death. Can’t say the kids will miss me much either. Hey, I’m not gonna gloss over things and make this some bittersweet tale. It’s just this way.”
“Well, this is it then. I hope all of you do fine out here, and I’m just going to climb down and not look back, okay? I don’t want to cry,” Serinda gave all of them a little wave, sniffed, and kept walking.
Adrian began handshakes and hugs but stopped midway and with wet eyes, followed Serinda. He wasn’t thinking of his own trek ahead but was feeling as if those left behind were facing a terrible injustice.
Wendy cried openly until the little micro compsognathus took up a loud chittering and humming that made everyone laugh.
Brian and Mike waved and followed the rest, sparing salutes for Alex and Sandra.
Ruby held John and played with his forelimb, making it seem to wave. “Bye, Good luck,” she called. Her heart felt heavy, and a lump settled in her throat, but Jack slipped his arm around her shoulders.
Chapter Fourteen: Red Team Running
Wendy and Serinda memorized the order in which they might expect to run into different dinosaurs and were relieved when they were out of the carntotaurus hunting grounds, but they hadn’t been back around since the tyrannosaurs came looking for the contestants.
Since they had a late start, it was the evening of the sixth day when they found a spot in some rocks that seemed safe and was set back far enough that large predators couldn’t reach them. They made a fire to keep the smaller ones away from their camp, took turns on guard duty, and tried to sleep, but it was easy to miss the comfort of the cave and the companionship of their friends.
Brian cut his hand on a knife as he cut the jerky; it bled a little, and he taped it up and continued.
“I feel homesick,” Adrian complained.
“I know. I miss everyone already,” Wendy said.
Mike chuckled, “I can’t believe it, but I miss them, too.”
All through the night, they were startled by strange noises and slept little. In the morning, they froze on the trail, almost panicking as they heard sounds: shrieks, grunts, roars, whines, rumbles, and screams. Brian and Mike motioned for them to climb and get a view of the terrain ahead and maybe walk over the rocks, even if that would take longer and be more strenuous.
Mike held his hand up for them to get quiet and still. He looked shocked, “Stay very quiet…look.”
“Ruby told us about them. The small ones are velociraptors, and the bigger ones are dino-knee-saurs.”
Serinda snickered, “Deinonychus.”
The velociraptors were only two and a half feet tall, fairly small, but like troodons, they hunted in a deadly pack. Small, serrated teeth lined their jaws, and they had the bite force of a lion; their forelimbs were long and nimble, and they had wicked claws on their back feet. Each claw was several inches long, raised upwards, and was razor-like.
Feathers covered their heads, backs, and chest in shades of gold, yellow, orange, and reddish blaze shade. Their skin was fawn-colored, and if their feathers weren’t so tattered and soiled, they would be attractive animals. They tended to bite and claw at the same time; their jaws clamped on to prey as they used the sickle-shaped claw to render flesh from the bone.
Wendy sighed with dismay, fearful of the sharp claws and the little teeth, widely spaced like an alligator’s. “I hate those things.”
The velociraptors were in a fight over prey or territory, and their enemy was a pack of deinonychus, which were bigger animals at a little over three feet tall. They had a large five-inch claw on their back feet and sharp little teeth, but they had a stronger bite force, more like a hyena and able to clamp down tightly. Each was colored a reddish brown; the young ones were lighter, and each had white at the tips of their feathers. Along their head, back, and forelimbs, they were covered with feathers, more like a bird than anything else.
The males had big crests on their heads that went from the reddish brown to bright red, and some had brilliant white feathers in the crest, making them identifiable.
“Look…Big White is in trouble,” Serinda said. She meant the one with a crest almost fully white and shaped like a Mohawk-cut.
The velociraptors outnumbered the deinonychus, and they fought brutally, biting and clawing, rolling around like cats hissing and spitting; blood covered the ground. Luckily, they made so much noise that the group was able to climb around the rocks without being noticed.
“That’s it. We can’t get over that peak; it’s too steep without climbing gear. We can’t walk into that fight, or they’ll rip us apart,” Brian said.
“Then what do we do?” Serinda stalked about the ledge, trying to find a way around the over-hanging peak of limestone, “If the rest were here, we could climb the cliff. Why didn’t they think about how our backing out to stay in this dump would affect us, too? We need them.”
“I guess that wasn’t a central objective. I think they are doing what they want,” Mike said.
“That’s selfish though,” Serinda was beginning to settle into a foul mood.
“It’s a cave,” Wendy pointed, “are bears there?”
The two military men took their flashlights and ran them along the walls and walked into the cave, skirting some rocks. The cave was shallow, but from the small room, they could see a passage through to the other side, and they carefully made their way through the cave and onto the plateau beyond.
“Now, this is better, huh? Look at this…all those rocks are piled in. it looks like an avalanche,” Serinda noted as she kicked at a rock. They sat down to drink water and have jerky and fruit for energy, and Serinda tossed pebbles, still grumbling.
“That was wrong,” Mike said.
“Huh?”
“That sound,” Mike walked over and peered down, using his flashlight and taking Brian’s to shine below, “you wouldn’t believe me anyway.”
At the far end of the plateau was a shallow pool. Wendy repeated Trevor’s story of how Harper had been swimming and then was gobbled up in a geyser of blood, “I hope you don’t think I am going in that water. Hell, no,” Wendy said. “What did you see down there anyway?”
Mike shook his head, “Nothing.”
They walked back the way they came. On one end a trickle of water burst from the rocks, making a small waterfall and a pool far beneath. Another hole beckoned to them as they retraced their footsteps close to the cave or walkthrough since it was open all the through.
Brian, going inside, found it opened up into a small room as the floor sloped downward. He called softly to the rest to join him. Although they wanted to go and make time on the trail, as long as the dinosaurs were battling, it was better to find a cave in case they needed it.
“We’re not going to make the finish line in time,” Serinda complained.
Adrian scowled, “Do you want to go out there and join in that fight?”
“No, but we need to find a way around them.”
“Shut up, please,” Mike said.
He squeezed through a small crack and into a larger space. As their lights scanned the room, they went totally quiet, unsure what to think. To one side was a body, bones now, but largely intact and lying in a ragged, torn sleeping bag. Beside her was a burned out light, ripped bags, a frame of an old-style back pack, and items tossed about after the rats were finished. Parts were dried and mummified; those hadn’t been touched; in fact, there was not a single tooth mark anywhere on the dried, firmly shrunken skin.
A little ways from her body lay a notebook of some type, the writing faded and stained. The side was eaten away, but Adrian picked it up, intending on seeing if anything were legible.
“What happened? Who are they?”
Mike ignored Wendy, and Adrian bent down to look at the bones, “It was a woman, I guess. She had long hair.”
Mike shone the light on the other figure. It might have been a man, but it was also dried out in places, and its face was stretched in a rictus of horror. Old bones and skin dried on the hand so that it still clasped a knife, and to get at it, a person would have to break away the fingers.
“Something scared him.”
“No kidding, Mike, there are dinosaurs.”
“Wendy, think. How old are these bodies?”
“I don’t know. How could I know that? Jeez. Ummm. Old. Mummified and boney…ten years?”
“Look at the equipment. It’s old. Those packs? Ancient style. The flashlights are simple battery-powered. When have you seen a canteen like that? In a museum? I am saying they’re fifty years old.”
“Impossible. Why would…well…when SSDD cleaned everything out, they missed this. The bodies are of a couple camping back in the old days; something happened, and they died. No big deal,” Serinda said. She didn’t have to mention that she had a very eerie feeling and the hairs on her arms stood at attention.
“The look on his face, it’s like something literally scared him to death,” Adrian said.
“My, God,” Mike whispered.
He stepped backwards, running into Serinda who cursed under her breath. Brian’s jaw was hanging slack as he stared and knelt down, his hands shaking violently as he did so.
Wendy leaned over Brian to see, and without a word, she plonked down on her rump, biting her tongue slightly as she almost passed out. It was several minutes before her head felt right again, and before she knew it, all her blood had rushed from her head in shock.
In the corner lay another skeleton, partially mummified as well, but it was possibly the reason the dead man had such a look of terror contorting his features; maybe he saw this and died of a heart attack. The skull was human-shaped in the back and sides, but it jutted slightly into a bulging snout to accommodate the razor sharp teeth, pointed, glittering, and deadly. The nose was slightly reptilian.
The upper torso was human-like and normal except for being a bit more heavy and wide. Its legs were thick boned and much heavier than human bones at the thighs. If it were alive, this creature would have massively muscular, thick legs. Brian almost vomited as he adjusted the bones and then wiped his hands as if they were greasy or contaminated by the creature. Right at the tailbone, where on a human there would be nothing at all, was a stub of a tail.
Where there was skin, some resembled human-like skin and some was a little pebbled. Other bones lay close.
“What kind of dinosaur was this?” Wendy asked dully from her place on the ground.
“Who did this? Why? Why would they do this? Mike, why would they make this?” Serinda cried, wiping her nose absently.
“They did that; what is it? Gene splicing, DNA, Mix genetics, play God, fool with nature, fuck up everything. That’s what it is. Who? Some sick son of a bitch.”
“It’s impossible, isn’t it?” Brian asked Mike.
Adrian poured over the notebook, finding most was illegible. At the end, however, he found the woman had written and rewritten words, grinding them into the pages with fury and fear.
He read:
“---ead. She hates us. She hates Herse---
She hates
She has blue eyes.”
Chapter Fifteen: All Creatures Great and Small
Brian didn’t speak much as they made a fire. Since they couldn’t skirt the battlegrounds, they might as well use the safe place for the night. They barely had made a few miles, and Brian estimated that they were less than halfway through the zone.
At midnight, the sounds of the skirmish still went on as one side forged ahead and was attacked and taken back, and then the next side tried for an advantage. Evenly matched, they did serious damage to one another, but the deinonychus and velociraptors were intent on winning. Winner take all.
In the midst of that, Brain, asleep after his guard duty, moaned and tossed his sleeping bag away as he flailed. Awake and embarrassed, he said he had a nightmare about the dead dino-man as they called him, but he didn’t relay how hard his heart raced and how terrified he was in the dream, “I dreamed the bastard bit me.”
He held up his hand. It was the one he had cut the evening before while working on jerky and dinner. Unwrapping it, he had Mike turn up the light, almost blinding everyone in the cave. Brian’s hand was severely infected, was dripping with thick yellow pus, and was swollen to twice the hamhock size he was used to as a big, powerful man. When he tried to make a fist, his wound gaped, oozing more pus.
“Brian, that’s gotta hurt,” Serinda said.
“Yeah,” he said absently. He kept making fists until the swelling was down, and then he rubbed the wound to drain it fully. Once clean, he rubbed it with alcohol and dug into the flesh. What was a small cut now had had opened into a large gash. “I was using it on jerky. The knife. I guess I got Dino DNA on it and in me now.”
“You do not,” Mike snapped, “clean it out, and take something for the fever. Drink that tea Susan said was good for infections and high fevers.”
In the morning, Brian’s fever was higher, and he ranted and spoke to people who were no
t there. While Mike was out scouting, Brian went outside the cave, and Serinda was forced to go look for him, finding him close to the cave. Wendy was of no real help as she sat and stared at the dino-man, not moving or speaking unless spoken to.
“When Mike gets back, we’re outta here. I don’t care about the old bones or who did what and where any DNA landed or that silly shit. If you wanna be a dinosaur, then you be one on your own time when we cross that finish line and are back to normal, you hear?” Serinda worked to get him on his feet, but he doubled over with cramps and voided his bowels, causing her to step away. His vomit splattered the rocks.
“What’s going on?”
“He’s sick, but I don’t know. He went out, so I went and found him ‘cause you weren’t here, and then he starts going at both ends,” Serinda waved her hand, fanning away the stench.
Mike thought and looked at Brian, “Did you drink the water?”
“It was so cold. I want more,” he said as he promptly vomited again.
“We have to go,” Serinda said.
“Go then. I am not leaving him.”
Adrian refused to meet her eyes.
“What was out there? What did you go look at? Something in that hole?”
Mike nodded, “Yeah. Something in that hole. It was a cave, and something busted right through the thin top and fell into the hole, and then an avalanche buried that thing. Took me a while to puzzle it out”
“What was it?”
Mike laughed without humor, “See, about a hundred years ago or a little more, an airplane crashed here. Yep, an airplane…funny, huh? And I don’t know what happened to the people, but another fifty years passed, and I found a cam and a tattered, dirty rope hanging from up here. That told me someone went down there.”
“So?”
“So we have someone going done there, and we have two people dead up here from about the same time, and we have Mr. Dino-man. Now, if you add up all that, what do you get?”
“I don’t get nothing,” Serinda said. “You’re trying to put together a puzzle with more than half the pieces missing. And no matter what you think the pieces work out to mean, none of it is about us right now and right here. I wanna get to the finish line.”
