by David Boyle
Camp was strangely deserted. No Wheajo, and no one in either Mark or Ron’s tents. It was cool and damp, a bit like he was—Musta rained some—and a nice morning for a walk. He strolled to the end of the clearing, the rapid rumbling in the distance. Gotta be pretty this morning. I might even join ya later, Prentler. He lowered the drip bag, his feathered shadow watching as the bundle edged toward the ground. “You guys can’t climb, can you?” Holding the dinosaur at bay with his elbow, Charlie fished out a fistful of smoke-cured meat, then pocketed their breakfast before hoisting the knapsack back into the tree.
The dinosaur followed him to the fire pit. Birds were chirping; patches of flowers were in bloom in the forest; the still hidden sun shooting misty beams across the sky. The cool air was scented with a piney fragrance, and Charlie was hoping to take advantage before it got warm.
Mike nudged him in the thigh.
“I know you’re there. Just give me a minute, would ja?” A quick test that the thing wouldn’t collapse, Charlie settled on the chair someone had built, and, ignoring the hiss, got his knife and cut one of the strips in half. “This what you’re lookin’ for?” he asked, keeping half and holding out the other. The dinosaur stretched and plucked the strip from his fingers, and with two quick jerks, swallowed. “Hungry, ain’t cha?”
Charlie gazed about the clearing, then expanded his search to the forest. “Prentler should have been back by now,” he pondered aloud, tapping his foot. He went to Ron’s tent and grabbed the gunbelt. “Come on, goofy,” he said, buckling up. “Let’s you an’ me take a walk.”
*****
“Ease off through here,” Ron said, scanning the shoreline. “If Mark was able, this is a good place for him to have gotten off the river.”
Hayden rested his paddle across the gunnel and stared glumly downstream. “I don’t think so,” he said, considering the driftwood-infested shoreline. “He wouldn’t have ditched the canoe, and I can’t imagine he’d pull it up one of those banks. But I guess we can drift for a while. I need a drink anyway. You?”
“Sure. Which did you bring? The beer or the brandy?”
“Neither,” Hayden said, taking a swallow before tossing him the canteen.
Ron took a long pull. “Yuk,” he said, cringing at the iodine aftertaste. “I’d almost rather ring out my sock.”
A noise ahead. “That sound like rapids to you?”
Ron capped off and slipped the canteen under his seat. “Nothing to get excited about, that’s for sure.” A huge deadfall came into view as they rounded the bend, the river burbling through the branches and accumulated debris. “So much for a rapid.”
The deadfall blocked the better part of the river, their primary concern to make sure they had a clear shot around it. “Kiss the reeds and we’ll be good. And just for the hell of it, let’s check the eddy on the other side. All that garbage could have given Mark an out.” The current wasn’t bad, but with all the debris hung up in the branches, it was the kind of place canoeists learned early on to avoid. Which was no sweat so long as you could maneuver. But in a swamped canoe?
They studied the stuff snagged in the branches. If the boat was in there, they needed to know now. They guided the Discovery around the outer branches. No sign of a hull, there was one clump of foam that looked….
“Huh.” Ron got the boat turning. “Is that even possible?” he thought aloud, peering through the branches, stroking. “Fuck, maybe it is…. Stick the nose in here, Prentler.” He ditched his paddle, waiting while Hayden maneuvered the boat, then hauled it into the strainer by way of the branches. He swiped at the foam, and a second later a soggy cowboy hat flopped into the boat.
Hayden sat with his paddle, staring.
“You want to get me the fuck out of here?”
“Sorry.” Hayden backed the canoe out, his focus broken momentarily by splashing in the nearby reeds.
The lee of the big deadfall was littered with flotsam; logs, branches, anything that floated, the shore below the trunk a ten foot drop to the water, the lip crushed a good foot and a half by the weight of the deadfall. A climb out would have been difficult, though they could see a spot downstream that had recently given way. There were footprints there, though not the kind they were hoping for. A dinosaur had mangled the bank getting out. A big one, too, based on the gouges.
Ron went back to paddling when Hayden got the boat moving again. The sky was pink above the bank, a broken line of crescent shaped silhouettes heading west high overhead when, not long after, Ron spotted movement in the trees. “Check it out… You see that?”
Hayden got a lock on where he was looking. “Hold the boat.”
Ron feathered his paddle. “Got it.”
Hayden got up—“Mark! Mark… over here!”—and plopped back down when a scaly head poked through the ferns. The dinosaur bleated. Two more heads appeared. “For a minute there….”
“Yeah, I did too.”
The long skinny necks were topped with heads like those of an ostrich or an emu, with big eyes and wide, almost triangular mouths. The dinosaurs watched indifferently, leaves fluttering at the side of one’s face as Ron and Hayden slipped quickly past.
They’d been at it for better than an hour, searching the shorelines and growing ever more disenchanted as the miles slipped by. The banks had been dropping, and with better visibility they were able to spot dinosaurs farther into the woods on both sides of the river, some watching as they passed, the majority paying the canoe and its occupants little if any interest.
Another turn and another long curvy stretch of river, this one distinguished by the presence of a herd of hadrosaurs browsing on all fours in the forest near the bank, a few of its members splashing in the shallows.
Ron recognized them by the colorful flap of skin stretching from the bony extension at the back of their heads. “Guess who.”
Hayden took a stroke. “Those are the loud ones, aren’t they?”
A dinosaur teetered upright as if to answer—Harroom!—the call bellowing along the river, its sail-headed companions soon chorusing in. A dozen or more of the animals were spread about the forest, and all were staring suspiciously. Two bent low to the water, and, side by side, bellowed a warning.
“Keep it tight,” Ron said, twisting back to exchange his paddle for the rifle.
Hayden was already edging toward shore. “They’re really big, McClure.” The river seemed suddenly very narrow. “They won’t charge us, will they?”
“Just don’t make eye contact,” Ron instructed, his finger poised on the safety. “If we’re lucky, they’ll stay right where they are.”
Two bulls and twice as many cows marched from the woods and down the gravel wash, the dinosaurs shifting from two legs to fours, honks blaring. A dinosaur brushed a tree along the bank, scraping an orange ribbon as the canoe slipped past along the far shore.
*****
It had to rank as one of his worst nights ever, what with the rain and the ropes cutting into his back. And now this feathered insomniac screaming in his ear. Mark winced and grabbed his arm. Where was that handgun when you needed it? He was about to turn and yell at the thing when it suddenly screeched flapping away.
Leaves whispered when he shifted his weight. “Holy shit,” he winched, rubbing his side. “Ow, ow… oh shit. Mother…” He reached around and tried to massage his back, but the ropes kept sliding around. Everything hurt, the tiniest of movements sufficient to set off alarms. Working out the kinks was going to take time. “This is the pits.” Damp and achy, he turned a drowsy eye on the lake, marveling at its beauty.
He laid back and closed his eyes, enjoying the sun’s sleepy warmth. Then a sound, like air rushing through a pipe. Barely detectable above the calls carrying from around the lake, the whooshes sounded… close somehow. He scanned the tree’s upper branches. Not a leaf stirring. He listened more carefully…. There it was again. In, then out. And the more he listened, the more it resembled breathing. A knot tightened in his belly, and he told himse
lf to relax. No reason to panic; he was, after all, thirty feet up in a tree. Okay, so don’t panic, a voice inside said. Just thought I’d remind you how you got here. What, you the only motherfucker who knows how to climb? Mark hated listening to that part of his brain, the small part, but the bastard had a point. Maybe it was time to panic!
The subtle whoosh came again. And now he could smell it! Bouncing, struggling on the slippery ropes, Mark twisted himself over. A shape caught his eye, and his hand slipped and he fell on his face. And there, just feet beyond his nose was the oblong head of a dinosaur! “Shit!”
Pushing, shoving, and growing more desperate when he kept missing the rope, he chanced a look at its eyes. Bright and a little dopey, they certainly didn’t look vicious. He stopped struggling long enough to get a better look, and even without his glasses had no trouble seeing the immensely stocky body and very long tail. The animal he was staring at was easily sixty feet long!
And lucky him, it was just being curious.
Mark fumbled in his pocket and unrolled the handkerchief from around his glasses, the mountainous animal busy nipping leaves by the time he had them situated. The head came back in a slow motion arch, doe eyes blinking. Mark breathed a sigh of relief, and suddenly felt a bit foolish. “Hello there, big fella. And how are you on this beautiful day?”
The slowly churning jaws never stopped.
Mark watched for a second, then crawled carefully across the ropes to the crook of the limb. Able finally to enjoy his lofty vantage, he marveled at the animal standing at the base of his tree. “I know nobody’s ever told you this, but you’re a real beauty.” Four more of the sandy brown animals were browsing nearby. “And I see you’ve brought the rest of the family.”
He untied his safety line and glanced at the lake. “Where’d you guys come from anyway?” A herd of hadrosaurs browsed what looked to be a swamp off to the south, a slew of others dotting the shorelines into the distance. “You guys sure got a lot of neighbors.” The sun was well above the horizon, a fact that surprised him considering he’d barely slept, and with a long journey ahead, he set to work untying his bed. Sunlight glinted off the lake, the adjacent forest sprinkled with flowers and bordered by great flowing cycads, and now these strange and exotic beasts! A wonder by any measure, Mark was certain he’d never again experience a moment like this.
Finally untied and untangled, he stuffed the painters back in his shirt. The big sauropod was moving off, and he hadn’t had the chance to really examine it. He searched nearby for something to feed it. Too high to risk crawling further out on the limb, he spotted an accessible morsel a few yards up the trunk. He buckled on the fanny pack, and after scooching along the limb to the trunk, climbed up and twisted a branch free.
“Here you go,” he said when again safely situated, wincing when he reached down and jiggled the limb. The dinosaur plodded over, and to Mark’s utter astonishment reared slowly onto its hind legs. He banged his head, watching the animal rise higher and higher. Propped with a foreleg against the trunk, the animal snaked its head through the tree’s mostly naked branches and plucked the offering from his fist. “Whoa! I didn’t know you could do that!” The dinosaur settled again on all fours, leaves shimmering about its face and quickly disappearing.
“And here I thought it was cool watching Charlie feed that little guy!” The animal gazed into the tree, waiting, then lost interest and lumbered slowly away.
No depiction Mark had ever seen, including the skeletons in museums, had truly captured the shear enormity of the beasts. The sauropods were mountains on legs, with each animal carrying the weight of a small herd of elephants. The feet were damn near a yard wide, and maybe it was the padding, but the ground bore few discernible footprints, a marvel in itself considering how massive the animals were. Then too, he’d heard nothing of their approach.
A not-so-distant companion stood and nipped off a branch. “Looks like you’re gonna be sharing your breakfast.”
The sauropod approaching was the largest in the group. Lighter in color, its hide cracked and wrinkled, there were sets of claw marks scarring its left flank. Its slow motion gait and half closed eyes gave the impression of a tired, ancient beast. Old Sleepy rose slowly to crop the thin outer branches, its likewise enormous companions browsing the ridge not far to the south.
Mark was already hungry, and watching the gentle sauropods only served to remind him how much. He got his second to last brorange from his fanny pack, and cursing himself for letting Hayden hold onto his pocketknife, hacked the thing apart with the corner of his compass. With half in his lap and half to munch on, Mark sat licking his fingers while taking in the view.
The lake shimmered in the morning stillness, the sun and distant hills reflecting along its surface, a sandy beach sweeping south to the mouth of a vast wetland bounded by forest. For as big as the lake was, dinosaurs seemed to be everywhere. Brightly colored, and almost always with headgear, the hadrosaurs outnumbered every other type by a wide margin, the ‘bills’ most often seen feeding in groups of up to dozens of individuals. There were a goodly number of bipeds he didn’t recognize, two armored ankylosaurs, and a herd of ceratopsians grazing the outskirts of the swamp.
A band of horsetails hugged the shoreline in both directions, the sometimes thick mats disappearing where the water changed from sandy tan to a deep translucent green. He shielded his eyes, scanning, again noting the set of islands reaching into the lake, the center one with trees that looked truly colossal. The shoreline rose sharply a few hundred yards to the north, and he was trying to get a glimpse of the far end of the lake when a big head plucked the mostly mutilated piece of brorange from his lap.
Mark gasped…. “Hey, that’s my breakfast!” An amazing creature to watch so long as it ate stuff he couldn’t, the big sauropod was no longer welcome. He glared past his feet to Charlie’s compound and quiverful of arrows hanging from the blade of his hunting knife. “You are one lucky son-of-a-bitch,” he said angrily, incensed at having lost a major portion of his breakfast. He shook his fist. “Don’t even think about trying that again!”
A honk carried from the forest below, and became a chorus, Mark listening with more than passing interest when the calls took on the same agitated edge as he’d heard that first day by the rapids. “Parasaurs,” he mused, picturing the giraffe-like patterns… and the animal’s all too ornery dispositions. Great, like I don’t have enough problems already. Do me a favor, would ya? Find somewhere else to be before I frickin’ get there….
The long-necked dinosaur rose to standing.
“You must not have heard me. Get back down where you belong!” The dinosaur slumped to all fours, the sleepy eyes staring. “And quit with the look. You want a snack with breakfast? Go find your own…!”
The hadrosaurs feeding not far to the south started honking, the herd already scattering when Mark spotted a far smaller, darkly patterned dinosaur rushing from the forest. Honks rippled from the herd, the predator quick to cut a straggler from the safety of its fleeing companions.
The predator caught the duckbill's tail, then quickly let go when its would-be meal spun around, snapping, blood spurting as the hadrosaur back-stepped toward the trees. At most half the size of its prey, the hunter loped forward, arms extended, and went for the duckbill’s throat. The duckbill turned; teeth and claws pierced its flanks; a trumpet-like yowl spiriting across the lake when the predator ripped loose, a flick of the hadrosaur’s tail knocking the carnosaur off its feet.
Bleeding, terrified, and desperate to escape, the duckbill padded along shore and, glancing back, veered into the lake, the predator closing as its prey splashed through the shallows. The carnosaur slowed as the water deepened, red curling in the hadrosaur's wake as powerful hind legs drove the animal ever farther from shore.
The hunter turned to a bloody patch on the sand, sniffed, and, with a lingering look to the duckbill, turned and limped toward the forest.
Faster and more nimble than the big apatosaurs, th
e predator apparently knew better than to attack them. “Got to draw the line somewhere,” Mark noted wryly, turning to the old thief and its even older companion. Mobile versions of the Kings in which Mark had taken refuge, the sauropods too were masters of their domain, not a one of the animals showing evidence they were even aware of the hunter’s presence.
Mark had to start back soon, but the lake and its surroundings held him captive. Besides, he still had a brorange to finish. An excuse sure, but where better to enjoy it?
Dinosaurs came and went, some darting for a drink, others lingering at the water’s edge. Birds swarmed overhead, pterosaurs swooping to snatch meals from the lake—another ability the books never bothered to mention.
Thoughts of his journey home led eventually to Charlie and his probable state of mind. Until the day he died he’d carry the image of Sabrefang on the rocks and Charlie in the background. What the hell could you possibly have been thinking?
Mark scraped the rind clean and dropped it, and with no excuses remaining, got to his feet and stretched. His clothes, he was pleased to find, were only slightly damp. Except for the pain in his side, things were looking up. Walking would help, or should, though he’d crawl if that’s what it took to get home. Another round of honks filtered up from the river, the brassy tones calling from a different direction. The parasaurs could be trouble, especially if they were anywhere near the canoe.
And if they were?
You’re not gonna be throwing rocks at ‘em. So what… you gonna wait ‘em out? His mind went blank for a second. Guess we’ll see when we get there.
The compound went down, Mark following with utmost deliberation as he walked and hand-over-handed his way along the paired ropes to the ground. Thankful for dry hands—No blisters even—Mark coiled the painters into his fanny pack, at the same time keeping tabs on the dinosaurs. Immense as they were, the sauropods were also apathetic, and after bidding them farewell, Mark trotted off through the cycads, an arrow nocked and ready.
