The Flipside

by Jake Bible

  “There’s puke all over…” Zach started to say. “Well, it’s everywhere, really, so never mind.”

  Barbara appeared in the window. She was still coated in vomit, but also had blood all down her face and neck. She waved off Cash when his eyes went wide.

  “Just a nick that wouldn’t stop bleeding,” Barbara said, pushing her hair up so he could see the very small gash at the edge of her scalp. “It’s fine.”

  “Shit,” Olivia said from below.

  “What?” Ivy asked.

  “I think we missed one,” Olivia said.

  “Missed one what?” Cash called down.

  “T-rex,” Ivy said.

  Cash glanced over his shoulder to see Ivy studying the scanner while Olivia looked up at him. She nodded.

  “Get down here,” Ivy snapped. “We’ll need you. The bastard is headed right this way.”

  There was a roar that was way too close for comfort and Cash pretty much let go of the crawler and dropped to the ground. His exo-braces took the brunt of the drop, but Cash still winced as his knees inside the braces protested at the rough treatment. Olivia was waiting and handed him his rifle.

  “You two might want to stay up there for a second,” Cash said as he and Ivy took up defensive positions a few yards away.

  They were both on a knee, rifles seated against their shoulders, eyes sighting through the scopes.

  “It’s coming around that building,” Olivia announced. “Ten o’clock.”

  Both rifles swiveled to the direction Olivia indicated. In less than two seconds, a raging pissed T-rex came running around the building, its mouth wide open to show everyone what big teeth it had. Ivy and Cash opened fire.

  But they both missed as the T-rex leaped high into the air, its massive rear legs launching it from the building to their location in one bound.

  “Back!” Cash shouted and scrambled to his feet as he yanked on the collar of Ivy’s shirt, basically dragging her with him.

  They got maybe a yard clear before the T-rex landed, shaking the ground hard enough that Olivia stumbled where she stood. The T-rex let loose with an ear-splitting roar and warm, fetid breath filled the entire area.

  Neither Cash nor Ivy had time to get their rifles up. They barely had time to get out of the way as the T-rex’s mouth clamped shut right where they’d been only a second before. The dino roared again at the lack of food in its mouth and took a step toward the scrambling operators.

  An angry trumpeting filled the air, competing with the T-rex’s roar. The huge carnivore whirled around at the sound and faced the galloping form of Elvis. Cash wrapped his arms around Ivy as the T-rex’s tail whipped straight at both of them, but then it swooped above as the T-rex changed the angle of its body to take on the incoming Ankylosaurus.

  Elvis didn’t slow. He didn’t pause in his attack and rammed the T-rex head-on, his armored head cracking several of the T-rex’s huge teeth into tiny shards. The giant carnivore roared in pain instead of anger and reared up. Cash and Ivy barely had time to get out of the way again as the creature’s tail slapped the ground right by them.

  Elvis spun around, his spiked mace of a tail whacking the T-rex in the left leg. The dino roared and staggered backward as Elvis reversed directions and whipped his tail around at the T-rex’s other leg. There was a snap and the beast fell over onto its right side as its leg collapsed under it. The monster tried to twist itself upright, but its head met ground as Elvis once again reversed direction and nailed the T-rex straight in the jaw with that spiked mace of a tail.

  Before anyone could stop her, Olivia picked up Ivy’s dropped rifle and marched over to the T-rex. The thing caught sight of her and began to turn its head, but Olivia was just a little faster. She placed the rifle’s barrel to the back of the T-rex’s skull and fired. The thing’s body went slack and it let out a long whoosh of air. It did not try to replace the breath it lost as its chest deflated.

  Olivia fired again and the huge corpse shuddered then went fully still.

  “Just in case,” Olivia said, rotating her shoulder, a grimace of pain on her face. “Told you I can shoot.”

  “Can we come down now?” Zach called from the crawler’s cockpit.

  Thirteen

  Mike was busy staring at a scanner screen of his own as Cash and company came limping into the armory.

  “This place won’t be secure enough,” Mike said without taking his eyes off the scanner. “Not without working doors.”

  “The cellar?” Cash asked as he set his gear down and dropped onto a crate, his legs almost giving out under him as exhaustion started to kick in. “Ivy said that’s the only other place that’s secure.”

  “Is that what she said?” Tressa asked. “Because we have one more place and it’s a lot bigger.”

  “No,” Ivy said. “We talked about this.”

  “We talked about this when there was just us,” Tressa said. “Now we’re double the numbers. Or we were…”

  “What’s this other place?” Cash asked.

  “The morgue,” Dr. Raskov said. “Or that’s what we’ve named it. It was the northwest central bunker, the one under—”

  “The one under the tourist barracks,” Cash said.

  “Guest quarters,” Tressa corrected then shook her head. “Sorry. Force of habit.”

  “It’s where we have all the bodies stored,” Dr. Raskov said. “We found burning them brought attention because of the smoke and the smell. Burying them didn’t work either. The smaller dinos simply dug them up and started eating.”

  “Scavengers scavenge,” Olivia said.

  “What’s that smell?” Mike asked, finally looking up from the scanner. He caught sight of Barbara and Zach. “Oh…”

  “Where can we clean up?” Barbara asked.

  “Nowhere, right now,” Ivy replied. “We’ve got bigger problems than your odor.”

  “I have her puke in my nose,” Zach said.

  “Sucks to be you, dude,” Mike said and spun the scanner around. “But Ivy is one hundred percent correct in saying we have bigger problems. Take a look.”

  “Describe it,” Cash said. “I’m not getting up unless I have to.”

  “We have thirty combots coming our way,” Mike said.

  “Thirty?” half the room exclaimed.

  “I thought it was only twenty,” Tressa said.

  “That’s how many I counted,” Olivia said as eyes fell on her.

  “We counted twenty also when we looked,” Ivy said.

  “Not that twenty is really a better number. But, there are ten new combots bringing up the rear,” Mike said. “A separate group, but still connected, if I’m reading their formations correctly.”

  “Thirty. Shit…” Cash sighed and hung his head. “This day, or night, or whatever, is never going to end.”

  “The main problem is,” Mike said and rolled his eyes as everyone snapped at him about there being more than one main problem. “The main problem is that they are spreading out. That’s what I was going to show you. Still can, if anyone wants to take a look.”

  “Got my own,” Olivia said and held up her scanner. “They are spreading out.”

  “They’re going to surround us then launch the attack,” Cash said. “Pretty textbook. Thirty of them equals one every what?”

  “Thirty is one every hundred meters or so, if they plan on surrounding the entire base,” Mike replied.

  “Good. Gives us room to maneuver,” Cash said. “I say we each take up positions on opposite sides of the base then rotate counterclockwise, killing combots as we go. If they’re spread out like that, then they can’t gang up on us. One on one, we have a chance.”

  “Until they discover our strategy, change their own, and do gang up on us,” Ivy said. “Then the person being ganged up on is dead. You think of that, Trevon?”

  “I did,” Cash replied. “I thought of that and also thought of the lack of choice we have.”

  “We could clean out the morgue and lock ourselves
down there,” Dr. Raskov said. “There’s room and there’s running water. We moved all the food out for obvious sanitation reason, but we can bring some crates of MREs.”

  “And do what?” Tressa asked. “Live down there until help arrives?”

  “Yes,” Dr. Raskov said.

  “We were the help,” Cash said. “Remember, Doc? None of you know to send more help until it goes very wrong Topside. We’re in a failure loop here.”

  “Yes, well…” Dr. Raskov left it at that.

  “Half of us go clear out the morgue,” Mike said. “The other half buy us time by fighting as many combots as possible. If the combots are winning, then the morgue is our rally point. We go in and lock the doors then figure out how we become our own rescue party.”

  “The variables in that plan aren’t making me feel warm and fuzzy here,” Haskins said, still guarding the doors. “We only have three trained operators now. One of which is missing an arm.” He waved his stump. “Not that I’d think of fighting hand to hand with a combot, but still… Too many variables and too much ground to cover.”

  “We have charges set,” Olivia said. “Lure the combots into that one area and blow them to shit.”

  Tressa, Mike, Ivy, and Haskins all gave her a look.

  “Which we tried once and they avoided the entire plan because they can sense explosives,” Olivia said. “Right. Forgot about that day. Been so many shitty ones between then and now that they all meld together in my head.”

  “RPGs are an option,” Cash said. “But only for the first attack. They’ll adjust their defensive strategy once we fire the first round of rockets.”

  “They adjust every defensive strategy,” Mike said. “That’s what we’ve been up against while waiting for you all to show up. They whittled us down to what you see here over months. For every one we killed, they killed way more of us. And that was when we were dealing with maybe six at a time, tops. Thirty? Personally, it may be smarter if we find a working vehicle and leave.”

  “Elvis,” Thompson moaned.

  Cash finally glanced over at his father. He frowned in confusion. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Besides losing a good amount of blood from a neck wound?” Dr. Raskov asked.

  “Doc…” Cash replied.

  “He didn’t get his final round of inoculations,” Tressa said. “He probably has an infection and we can’t help him unless we dig out the injectors from the ruins of the infirmary.”

  “Great,” Cash said and raised his voice. “Glad you came along, father! Good thinking!”

  “I’m wounded and sick,” Thompson replied quietly. “Not deaf, moron.”

  “True, but you are now a bigger liability than you were before,” Cash said.

  “Back off, Tre,” Tressa said. “You’re looking at several liabilities that ended up here. Pointing fingers and placing blame gets us exactly nowhere. Capisce?”

  “Did you just capisce me?” Cash asked.

  “I did,” Tressa replied.

  Cash smiled and shook his head.

  “Well, since my sister has capisced me, I now understand things better,” Cash replied and rolled his eyes. “Fine. No blame. Time to get back to work. Half of us clear the morgue and move supplies there and the other half start setting up some basic defenses. We concede the perimeter and tighten up closer to the morgue. If we do have to retreat, then I don’t want to have to sprint all the way across the base.”

  “Not with wingers out there in the numbers they are,” Olivia said. “The bastards are getting bolder. They know we’re weak. All this new blood has them riled up.”

  “New blood?” Cash said and stood up. “Old blood. We can use the old blood from the bodies.”

  Cash pointed at Mike.

  “What, dude?” Mike asked, looking up from the scanner when he realized all attention was on him.

  “What species of dinos are around here that are scavengers?” Cash asked.

  Mike looked over his shoulder at no one behind him. “Are you really asking me, dude? I’m tech, not biology or zoology or paleontology or any of the ologies that deal with dinos. I type at my keyboard and make sure the lights work and—”

  “All carnivores,” Olivia interrupted. When eyes turned to her, she frowned. “I was a teacher. The whole point of my nightmare trip here a year ago was to study the flora and fauna so I could then teach my kids. All the carnivores are scavengers due to competition. Their intestinal flora has proven that their digestive systems were capable of handling rotten meat without any issues.”

  “She’s right,” Thompson whispered.

  “The larger dinos like T-rex and Albertosaurus, as we have learned, hunt in packs so only the single rogues driven from the herd tend to rely on scavenged meat, but that won’t stop any of them from snagging a free meal if it is available.”

  “But what do we have around us?” Cash asked.

  “Ornithomimus,” Tressa said.

  “Ugh. Bird bastards,” Ivy said. “Those punks are like ostriches on steroids.”

  “Our invasion of their environment has driven many of the species away,” Tressa said.

  “That was hard to admit, wasn’t it?” Cash said with a smirk. “Doesn’t exactly fall in with the company line of perfect environmental synchronicity.”

  “Why are you asking?” Olivia asked before the siblings could get back to bickering.

  “We can fight the combots or we can let nature take its course,” Cash said. “We use the corpses in the morgue and body bomb the combots. Coat them in congealed blood and rotting meat. That’ll bring the scavengers. They attack the combots thinking the machines are food.”

  “The combots move, dead bodies don’t,” Mike said. “Dinos aren’t stupid, dude. They’ll figure out shit ain’t right fast.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Cash said. “You got a better idea?”

  “No,” Mike said.

  “Didn’t think so,” Cash said. “Which means we need someone to carve up the corpses and put the gunk in buckets. I’ll devise a way to get the guts onto the combots. I think I have an idea.”

  “You know the downside of that plan, right?” Ivy asked. “We end up bringing way more trouble to us than we can handle.”

  “Dino trouble I’ll take,” Cash said. “We stay in the bunker for a while and they’ll leave. Combots? They’ll never leave. Hopefully, between us and the dinos, we can take down the combots.”

  “Then what?” Tressa asked.

  “One step at a time,” Cash said. “Let’s split into teams.”

  “Operators should handle setting up defenses,” Mike said. “The rest of us will work on the morgue.”

  “I need more than Ivy,” Cash said. “No offense, Haskins.”

  “None taken,” Haskins replied. “I’m pretty much good for overwatch only. I’ll get high with one of the scanners, a rifle, and a radio.”

  “That works,” Cash said.

  “Your father still needs injectors,” Dr. Raskov said. “Send me to the infirmary with someone and we’ll try to dig them out.”

  “No time for that,” Cash said.

  “Jesus, dude,” Mike muttered.

  “Tre!” Tressa snapped.

  “He’s right,” Thompson said.

  No one tried to argue with the old man.

  “I can dismember the corpses then,” Dr. Raskov said. “Set me up at a station and I’ll gut them and scrape the blood out into buckets.”

  “Did you just say scrape the blood out?” Zach asked. He turned and threw up on the floor.

  “We’ll take the squeamish one with us. And Olivia,” Cash said. “That leaves Mike, Tressa, and Barbara to haul out the bodies for Doc to carve.”

  “Stop saying that shit,” Zach said and vomited again.

  “Stop throwing up!” Olivia shouted. “Christ…”

  “What about Elvis?” Thompson asked.

  “He comes down in the morgue with us,” Cash said. “It’ll be interesting, but he can fit through the d
ouble doors, so no way we leave him above to get picked off by the scavengers we’re about to bring to base.”

  Thompson nodded.

  “Everyone know what they’re doing right now?” Cash asked. Everyone nodded. “Good. Let’s get to it.”

  ***

  Olivia held a scanner as she walked next to Cash. She studied it for a moment then looked up at the demolished base and the darkness that surrounded everything outside the field of lights. There was a flicker and a couple more lights went dark.

  “We don’t have the supplies to fix everything,” Olivia said. “Even if we survive the combots and wait for the scavengers to leave, we don’t have the supplies to repair this base so we can live here indefinitely.”

  “Indefinitely? What are you talking about?” Cash asked.

  “I’m talking about the fact we have a small window to get to your friends,” Olivia said. “Raff and Lakshmi. The way you were talking back there sounded like you expected us to be underground for a while. We don’t have a while, Cash.”

  “We also don’t have a way to travel a thousand miles to the coast and find them,” Cash said. “Talk about variables. Say we repair a crawler, which is the only vehicle big enough to carry all of us, plus munitions and supplies, not to mention that can pull a trailer behind since we have Elvis. Say we figure all of that out. Okay?”

  “Okay…” Olivia replied.

  “A crawler, even at full speed, wouldn’t get us to the coast in time,” Cash said. “It’s called a crawler for a reason.”

  “What about a couple of speed rollers?” Olivia asked. “We strip them down to make more space for people and supplies.”

  “How many of those do we have?” Cash asked. “Only a handful came with us from Topside. The rest went with Raff and Lakshmi or they’ve been destroyed. But say we can find a couple that are fixable. How long will that take? How long will it take to fix a crawler, for that matter? A day? Two days? No way to know until we start working. I’d have to assume it would be at least two days. Then what? We make the journey in four days?”

  “I get it,” Olivia said.

  “I don’t think you do,” Cash said.

  “Screw you, Cash,” Olivia said as they paused by a large pile of rubble.