by David Boyle
“Take this already, would you?” Ron said, giving the dump bag a shove. “Fucking thing’s more trouble than it’s worth.”
Mark reached under the branches. “You wouldn’t say that if the binoculars got trashed.” He hooked the buckle. “And pass me the rifle while you’re at it.”
Ron worked the rifle across his chest and, after handing off to Mark, reached with both hands—crack—and cleared away a limb. “Now that’s more like it,” he said, rolling his shoulders. “How’d you get under this shit anyway?”
“Simple. I don’t eat as much as you.”
“Yeah right,” Ron said, crabbing on his elbows, the rain dripping along his neck. “And go on down when you get there. Find out where the boat is and do a recon on our buddies. I’ll drop you the rifle when I’m out.”
“Gotcha.” Mark threw a leg over the edge. “And watch it here. This shit is really slick.”
Mark had rinsed off well enough not to gum up the rifle, emptied the canoe and run it back alongshore, and was busy securing the rifle when Ron finally stepped clear of the bank.
“What a pain in the ass,” he said, slapping crap from his sleeves.
“Just be glad the rain didn’t start any earlier,” Mark said, securing a bungee cord around the rifle. “Bank’s pretty much a one way slope about now.” He snagged the stern thwart, then thumbed the elastic, checking that the rifle couldn’t slide around.
Ron stepped into the shallows. “So what are they up to?” he asked, splashing his arms, scrubbing.
“Just browsing,” Mark said, peering upstream through the rain. “I can only see pieces, but it looks like there’s three or four leading, ninety yards the other side of the rapid, maybe less. Two groups after that, with the rest backed up who knows how far.” Mark got Ron’s paddle and wedged it alongside the Styrofoam block in the stern.
“And what am I supposed to use?”
“Enjoy the scenery. You pick the target: I’ll handle the boat. Besides, I’d rather not have a paddle sliding around when it comes time for you to shoot.”
Ron listened for a moment—to the rustling, the rapid, and the rain hitting the river—and knew that the plastic on plastic rattle would cut all of it like a knife.
Mark got himself settled. “Where to?”
“Someplace steady,” Ron said, thunder rumbling as he scanned the foot of the rapid. “Looks like a decent eddy over there. See that slanted outcrop a little past mid river?”
There were lots of slanted rocks. “The one making the side curler?”
“Not that one… the one next to it.”
Mark squinted along Ron’s arm. The slab broke the surface by only a few inches, the river pouring around it in twin cascades. “A little tight maybe, but doable.” Ron took that as a go and slid the Tripper into the water. “And in case you end up changing your mind, don’t be subtle. The hat helps and all, but this rain and my glasses aren’t what you’d call a terrific mix.”
Ron scraped his shoes. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, sloshing them in the river, then swiveling his feet aboard. Mark shoved the nose out, then ran the boat through the shallows and hopped in. “That ever mess you up hunting? You know, not being able to see?”
“Not very often,” Mark said, taking a stroke. “Blood trails and rain aren’t a terrific mix. In weather like this… I’m normally in camp.”
Mark would have preferred a current that required more of his attention, but with the river so low he didn’t have to actually think about paddling, which left him with nothing else to do but worry about being spotted. The dinosaurs were still bottled up in the forest, the cover they were approaching a mix of bushes, ferns, scattered palms, and whatever kind of trees they were that had survived the endless pruning. The leaders would spot the canoe as soon as they cleared the trees, the question thereafter being whether they’d spook. Deer, most people, and hopefully dinosaurs connected movement with things that were alive. Hunters relied on the opposite, and that non-moving things weren’t, which for Mark dictated that he paddle hard, stick to the dark water outside the bubbles, and be settled in an eddy well before the forward lookouts marched clear of the thickets.
The skies were in his favor. The wind, too, now that he thought about it. Risky for them, good for him, the wind at the dinosaur’s backs provided them no means to catch either his or Ron’s scent. Add the trees and the racket they were making and the dinosaurs had plenty to keep them occupied as opposed to eyeballing the river.
Mark cruised the outskirts of the froth, checking the approach for his run to the rocks. He could see, too, that there were way more body parts showing than just moments ago. Strange considering that the dinosaurs had a good thirty yards before the thick stuff ran out. So why in the hell would…?
He finished his stroke, ruddering, and let the boat coast. A gap opened in the trees, and the hairs went up on his neck. “Oh fuck….”
An adult corythosaur tilted upright, a leafy sprig bobbing in its jaws as it slowly panned the upcoming break in the trees. The head tilted. The jaws stopped working…
Mark turned the big red Tripper ever so carefully into the current. The canoe rocked in the swells; Ron, up front, carefully matching the sway.
…then started up again, chewing. Its companion sauntered alongside and tore loose a drippy bundle of leaves. They hooted softly, and each nuzzled the other’s throat before both settled on all fours and, like vacuum cleaners, swept the ground, nibbling, and waddled forward.
The dinosaurs were stacked in groups back and along the wind buffeted trees as far as either of them could see; the crested heads and long faces; the shiny backs and round bellies; the long arms and occasional tails. A stunning heads-on parade of beautifully patterned animals shifting from two legs to four like pistons without a crankshaft.
Mark leaned against the thwart. “Is that what I think it is?”
“If you’re talking the trail, I’d say yes,” Ron said. “An extension maybe. Or a branch. Some of the best trails I ever found were in some of the thickest forests. Probably the same here.”
Mark remembered the dinosaurs on that first morning, and realized they likely had followed this very same route. “Like the buffalo trails the homesteaders used when they headed west across the Smokies.” Mark snorted. “Come to think, some of them are still in use—or will be—except now they’re called super-highways.” Mark ran his paddle in a tight series of figure eights, holding the canoe in position. “Okay, so we’re bone-heads. Now what?”
“Like we got a choice. Just keep going and we’ll see how close we can get.”
The sentries in the clearing had the look of the bouncers at Jimmy’s Bar & Grill, wondering how best to handle the riff-raff. “With those guys staring at us?”
“Yeah. Go slow if it’ll make you feel better. Only keep moving.”
Mark studied his intended route while executing a series of pries, shoving the stern sideways, countering the drift, and when the current caught the bow driving the Tripper forward. The canoe slapped across the swirls, spray burping along the hull. Dinosaurs teetered upright, alarm calls rippling along the thickly forested corridor, the lookouts lumbering forward, heads low to the ground, snorting. Then their two nearest companions, heads bobbing…
“Bennett!”
…and quickly the remaining three.
“You said move, and that’s what I’m doing.”
“I didn’t mean fast.” The dinosaurs crashed in a ragged line through the underbrush, circling wide, bellowing. “If you fuck this up—”
“And if we’d have done this my way,” Mark said, pinning his paddle against the gunnel, “we’d be in camp by now. So just shut the hell up and get ready.” The air was ripe with the musky scent of hadrosaurs; big, crested adults, and half-grown juveniles bolting from the trees even as the leaders closed ranks for a deafening assault on the shoreline. The river hissed over the ledge, froth swirling past as the Tripper splashed across the chute, Mark stroking on automatic, his fo
cus on the too-near shoreline and the stunning blur of massed feet.
“Not this one!” Ron shouted. “The next one over!”
Mark blinked when he spotted the eddy Ron wanted…
“Today, Bennett!”
…then powered the boat forward, white-knuckled fists making last second adjustments—honks blared, Ron braced for impact—as he drove the Tripper onto the rocks.
The confusion was apparent even before the Tripper grounded; the necks twisting, the hesitation in their eyes, the rain-sodden sand shooting sideways as the hadrosaurs slowed from an on-their-toes to a flat-footed gait. However the hell they viewed the boat, seeing it take refuge in the rapids made the animals wary. Wobbling in the swirls, dark red on a bed of white foam, the Tripper likely resembled a predator in wait. Which it was, of course… sort of. A smile curled the corner of his mouth. The dinosaurs with the bony half-moons on their heads were right to be cautious.
Ron peered through the rain to the trees where duckbilled dinosaurs were spilling into the clearing. Not one of the little shits had shown—Yet, he frowned—and unless he ended this bullshit with the leaders, the whole herd could escape. He turned on the dinosaurs nosing across the clearing. And if you assholes think I’m going home empty handed, he clicked back the hammer, think again.
The former lookouts waddled through the last clumps of vegetation, bobbing their crested heads, honking. A few nervously stomping their feet. The whole group dragged along by the sheer determination of the two biggest females. Break them, Ron was sure, put a dent in their confidence, and the whole line would crumble.
Flickers lit the gray horizon, the duckbills towering above the background of trees, their stubby paws twitching like school kids at the podium wondering what to do with their hands.
Wondering, maybe. Hesitant? Yeah, that too… and still coming. Damn.
A tense voice whispered, “McClure…?”
The biggest of the females stepped cautiously from the bank, sniffing. Then her equally enormous flat-billed companion. Ron’s grip tightened on the handgun as one jittery snout after another probed beyond the shoreline, the revolver feeling suddenly so very small. He remembered standing beside his desk in the den and staring at an entire box of 220 grain soft points in 30-06… then closing the damn drawer! Why did you fucking do that?
A splayed foot smacked the river’s edge.
Mark gasped when Ron fairly jumped to his feet. “Okay, that’s far the hell enough!” he yelled, then sighting on the throat of the nearest female as she and the rest teetered upright, flailing their arms and squalling as if the canoe itself had suddenly reared up out of the river.
Mark’s gaze slid along the foot stomping wall. “Do you really think—”
“Yeah… you too, dumbass,” Ron said, swinging on the next dinosaur over. The look on their faces was almost worth the trip: eyes bulging in their sockets; bill-like jaws hanging open. A no shit Kodak moment.
The dinosaurs had stopped, and that was the main thing. A victory so long as Mark didn’t blow it. Ron could feel the Tripper quivering, and he let down the hammer before taking his seat. “Relax already. They just want us to go away.”
Mark’s paddle rattled against the gunnel. “Feeling’s mutual.”
The corythosaurs jostled nervously at the river’s edge, stamping their feet, splashing, quivers rippling their beautifully patterned flanks. Eyes flitted about the two-headed thing wobbling against the rocks. Excited honks gave way to grunts as thick counter weight tails went up and necks stretched out over the water. Drippy snouts drew long curious breaths, sniffing.
There was nothing to do but wait while the duckbills got accustomed to the thing in the rapids, a slew of two-story animals staring down into the boat. The rain was falling harder than ever, the water burping over the gunnels only adding to the puddle sloshing along the bilge. He could shuffle his feet to get the circulation going, but no way was he going to give the dinosaurs something else to stare at. Least it wasn’t snow.
The three smallest females had taken their leave minutes ago, and now the two with the yellow-fringed crests were turning away, brothers by the looks of them, waddling off and apparently back to their normal brains-off condition, the two even managing to grab a few bites on their way to rejoining the herd. The skies were darker too. They still had time, but not much, and Mark could see Ron was getting anxious. The big female poked her nose in the river, muscular waves rippling along her throat as she drank. The paws pushed off, and she and her companion turned and simply drifted away.
Mark arched his back. “I thought they’d never leave,” he groaned quietly when at last the animals were out of earshot. There were just over a dozen animals in the clearing, most just poking along, browsing, a few waddling past without so much as a glance at the river as they hurried into the thickening forest beyond.
Sighting down the barrel, Ron picked a spot behind the big female’s forearm. A spreading flicker danced across the clouds, and when the rumble started, he squeezed… click. Single action revolvers allowed for everything short of the bang. Ron squeezed again… click. “And don’t come back,” he said, letting down and checking on the trees. “You seen any little ones?”
“Not yet,” Mark said, flexing his fingers. “But they can’t be far now.” Ron hoped so too. “Big herd. Makes you wonder if this is the start of a migration.”
The dinosaurs were strung out in clusters, humping through the deepening gloom and into the outskirts of the forest proper. Big adults mostly, though if memory served… Ron stretched to stare past the rapids. “You mean like geese?”
“No. Like wildebeests. As in Africa?”
“And how would anybody know whether—” A pulsating flash fractured the sky, the air throbbing an instant later to the beat of the ensuing thunder. Honks erupted amid the crashing of trees. Duckbills rose all across the clearing, long arms dangling, heads swiveling. And all at once, they bolted; into the forest, some back the way they came, a solid half dozen panicking toward the river. “Son-of-a-fucking-bitch!”
Trees shuddered as animals charged into the forest; some in the opposite direction, two leaping from the bank only yards past the bow; a big female following a fraction later, her enormous body filling the sky as she lumbered past, and three strides later stumbled on a log, the terrified animal squalling as she crashed into the river. Mark snagged the rocks with his paddle, his thoughts spiraling in a million directions when he noticed the blurred shadow trailing a young male. God no! Not now…!
Even in the fading light, there was no mistaking the saw-tooth outline.
40
Ron was still fuming about the lightning when he caught Sabrefang rushing from the trees, head low, arms reaching, duckbills fleeing in every direction when she caught one by the tail and wrenched the thing off its feet. The dinosaur went down, snapping, anguished calls issuing from the forest when a monstrous foot pinned it to the ground, talons penetrating deep into the hadrosaur's flesh. The jaws let loose, and the predator watched as a pair of terrified corythosaurs splashed across the rapids and into the forest.
Scraping his paddle, frantic, Mark realized the skid plate was caught on the rocks. “Lean back, McClure!” he whispered urgently. “You need to get your weight off the bow!”
Sabrefang nosed down, sniffing the duckbill as if she wanted her prey to know it had but seconds to live. The jaws clamped on a foreleg, a high pitched squeal escaping the hadrosaur’s lips as she twisted her head, pulling, and ever so slowly ripped the hadrosaur’s arm from its body.
“You whore!” Ron screamed, the Ruger up a fraction later. Pow!
“Are you out’a your mind!?” The revolver barked again, the hadrosaur’s arm spiraling into the gloom when Sabrefang whipped around, snarling. Mark rocked the boat, desperate to free it. Ron tumbled across his seat.
“The fuck are you doing?”
The canoe floated free, and a twisting backstroke got the bow started across the current, spray shearing along the hull as th
e Tripper did an abrupt about face. Ron was cursing. Snarls pummeled their backs. Mark kept on pumping, his one and only goal to put as much distance as possible between them and an infuriated Sabrefang.
“Stop, damn it!” Ron shouted, staring back through the rain. “This is our chance to—”
“To what? Get us all killed?”
There wasn't much in the way of a current, but he was running with the wind and making fast work of the island when a sloppy sounding snarl spilled across the water. Disgusting is what it was, the blood oozing between her teeth not at all hard to envision. He held his paddle clear of the water, listening. The bitch was settling down, finally… the still terrified honks fading in the distance.
The shoreline slipped past, gray and miserable, the rain falling in a steady downpour. Mark couldn’t stop shaking, his thoughts on whether Ron’s shots had connected. And if they had…. Holy shit! Holy fucking shit…!
Three duckbills splashed along the bank on his left, searching for a way out of the river. There was a dip in the shoreline just ahead, and once they reached it they’d all be gone.
Lucky them. They had somewhere to go.
*****
Tony was draped out over the bank, Hayden assuring him they were all right. But after the outbursts from the duckbills, then gunshots and snarls, Tony had to see for himself. He spotted the canoe, “Finally,” then pulled against the tree and, despite the rain, tapped out a cigarette. But his hands were shaky and he couldn’t get the lighter to settle. Hayden reached over and steadied his hand. Tony took a long drag. “Thanks,” he sighed, blowing smoke.
