by Eddie Patin
Sitting up as quietly as he could, Jason reached out with trembling fingers—not worrying about the millipede anymore, which was heading away from him through the dark loam—and pried aside a massive green leaf just enough to see the outside of the cave.
Suddenly, he could see it.
The dragon hovered with huge, leathery wings, touching down with two powerful hind legs, toes tipped with wicked talons, then it dusted off again. Spectacularly scary, the beast let out another loud and terrifying sound—more like a grunt and a chirp—then swooped down the hill out of sight.
To the men with the dead bird, Jason thought.
Even though fear tried to paralyze him—coursing through the man's body like cold water and making his fingers and joints buzz with numbness—Jason tried to stand while still hiding. He had to see! Grabbing his cane from its resting place deep in the shadows of the dark earth and thick underbrush, Jason slowly climbed to his feet as far as he could without emerging from the bushes. He grimaced against the stabbing pain in his right knee.
Satisfied that he was still well-hidden within the massive ferns and flat, green leaves, Jason leaned onto his cane and pushed the foliage aside just enough to again see the strange slab-like rock formation down below.
The dragon was down there. It had landed just in front of the slab and the big carcass of the bird offered up by the primitive men. The savages howled and hopped around at the edges of the trees, waving their arms and crude tools, sprinting back and forth in excitement on bare feet, steps noisy in the underbrush.
Jason watched. The beast looked a lot like a dragon—long and serpentine with a dragon-like head rimmed with horns and spines that continued along its long neck and down its back in between the two broad, bat-like wings. Those wings weren’t like the wings of DnD dragons; they were part of the creature’s front arms, and it walked and rested on the wings' first knuckles after their elbows ended in a few short, hooked claws on each. Yeah, more like a bat, Jason thought. The monster’s scaly hide was mottled brown with very subtle lighter shades under its tail, chest, and neck, and a shade of green ran across its back and wings in streaks. The tail was long and it whipped around as the dragon approached the dead bird, ending in—
"Holy shit," Jason said quietly to himself.
It wasn’t a dragon. It was a fucking wyvern!
The beast had the same features as a wyvern in folklore; just like in Dungeons and Dragons. It was just like that freaking wyvern that was chasing after Jason’s character the other night before Tom and Amanda stopped the game! At the end of the creature’s dragon-like tail, emerging from the tip where the spines and spikes gradually grew longer and thicker, was a stinger—a barb a lot like a scorpion’s—colored a deep, glossy brown with a swell of crimson red.
That barb had to inject a poison of some kind. That’s exactly what wyverns did. And if it was like the fictional wyverns that Jason knew, it wouldn’t be intelligent like a dragon—it would be more like an animal, a predator that—
Jason clamped his hands over his mouth again, trying to stifle a sudden laugh of madness rising from the absurdity of the situation. Was he dreaming?! What was a freaking wyvern doing in prehistoric Earth?!
His knee hurt like hell. His wrist hurt. He felt hot from wearing fleece in a warm, humid environment, and he felt the grubby earth all over his palms and forearms where he'd landed under the bush. He felt something tickling his left cheek...
Jason felt a sudden panic overwhelm him and slashed at his face with his fingers, desperate to remove whatever the hell was walking on his cheek. The sensation disappeared, and he looked down at his hand but didn’t see anything. He expected to see a huge mystery bug, which sent a shiver down his back, but whatever it was, it was gone. Glancing quickly at the ground and seeing nothing, Jason looked through the bushes down the slope again and stared at the wyvern.
The serpentine monster advanced on the dead bird, walking in an odd gait on its folded wings. Then it laid into the creature with the viciousness of a wolf tearing at its prey and the speed of a striking snake. A moment after the wyvern started tearing into the feathers and the flesh underneath, there was a strange fwoomp sound, and Jason gasped when he saw a yellow burst of flame appear around the monster’s mouth.
The flames appeared randomly as it ate like burps of gasses igniting without intention, and Jason could suddenly smell the odor of singed hair, burning feathers, and cooking meat.
As the wyvern devoured the dead ostrich-creature, melting away feathers and roasting meat with its haphazard spurts of fire, it also set aflame several pieces of the dried wood that the savages had thrown around the body, and the primitives' wild scrambling around the edges of the scene intensified. Jason realized that the sticks and dried branches all around the carcass—stacked up in little piles around the body—wasn’t done by accident. And when the beast reared back to belch more fire at the corpse—not like dragon’s fire, but more random and drifting—the primitive men running back and forth at the tree-line yipped and hooted and howled in excitement as their stacks of wood caught fire.
The wyvern lunged in at the corpse, tearing off bite after bite of breast meat, pulling off smoking strands of muscle from the large bird’s thighs.
A creeping dread slithered over Jason, starting at his numb feet, up his legs through his knee pain, over his torso, then swallowing up his mind like a carpet of ants.
In a jolt of panic, Jason looked down to make sure that the creepy-crawly feeling wasn’t actually an army of strange insects. Then he paused to look at his hands, turning them over until Jason stared at his palms, dirty and lined with black earth from his fall. His let his cane drop to hang from his elbow and saw the smudges of dirt on its black, plastic-like surface.
Why ... was he here?
Was this even real?
There was a small chirp behind Jason suddenly, and he turned with a start. Several strange, slender chickens hopped around in the underbrush looking at him. They must have been wild chickens; dark brown and sandy colors mixed together in a mottled camouflage. Their legs were long and flesh-colored, and their tail feathers were longer than usual; sleek and quill-like, as long as their bodies and their odd, thin heads. The chickens’ plumage was basic, and their beaks were longer than normal, shaped very strangely—more like snouts than beaks.
The little creatures trilled and chirped, hopping around, always on the move, pausing to look at Jason with cocked heads. One of them turned sideways to consider him with one coppery eye, then let out a sound that was not like a cluck at all, but more like a question. Jason noticed with a chill that its beak—its slender snout—was filled with tiny teeth.
"What...?!"
One of the strange chickens took three quick hops toward him—close enough to nip at his calf—and Jason, suddenly afraid of the thing biting him, stumbled amidst the fronds and leaves. He clumsily swung his cane down at the creature.
"Back!" he hissed. Cold fear bloomed in his belly as he keenly remembered that the wyvern was still brutally eating the big ostrich very nearby...
The little chicken creature darted away from the cane with ease and looked up at him with alien eyes. Jason noticed when the creature fluttered backwards that its short wings were more than just wings. It had tiny claws extending from the second joint—just like the wyvern’s—small and diminutive on this animal. The chicken-thing chirped and hopped back to its friends, who fluttered and dodged around in the underbrush.
There was a sudden reptilian screech from behind Jason and he spun around, adrenaline threatening to engulf him. He saw the wyvern was attacking one of the primitive men. One step away from its meal, the monster had the man pinned down with one taloned foot, and Jason watched just in time to see the beast with its mouth clamped over the man’s head and shoulder. It wrenched the poor savage into two pieces, splashing blood and gore into the tall green grass around them. The other primitives clamored in excitement, and two of them ran up to seize burning branches and sticks from arou
nd the wyvern’s meal. Those who held fire-sticks sprinted off into the eastern woods, leaving the wyvern and the grisly scene behind.
When the torn-apart primitive lay quiet and dead, the great beast turned back to its meal with a flare of its twenty-foot-wide wings. It beat its wings once, hopping up to seize the rest of the ostrich body with both claws, then it flew up toward the cave, carrying its meal dangling in the air.
The wyvern flew toward Jason...
In that moment, Jason stared at the large, dead bird in the wyvern’s clutches, and saw that its long tail feathers weren’t just feathers. The carcass had a long, limp tail that dragged along bloodied and smoking. The broad feathers of the creature's forelimbs were burned away, and Jason could make out biceps, forearms, and hands with long, scaly fingers, tipped with claws...
The carcass was not a bird.
It was a dead dinosaur.
The wyvern's meal was a man-sized bipedal dinosaur that was covered in thick, fluffy feathers—until the wyvern had roasted the soft coat away—coated everywhere except for its hind legs, head, and long neck. That’s why it looked like an ostrich; an ostrich with arms and hands and a long tail!
Too afraid to run, Jason watched in horror as the wyvern carried the body up the slope, skimming the body along the ground. Cold adrenaline surged through him when, for a moment, Jason thought that the beast would see him in the bushes. The man got a good look at the reptilian face of ridges and scales and spikes and horns. Its eyes were black like a monitor lizard’s, and its snout was splashed with red blood.
Jason's number was up. The monster would see him, or smell him, or hear his pounding heart. It would snatch him out of the bushes to become its next torn and burned-up meal.
But much to Jason's surprise and relief, the wyvern passed him by and disappeared from sight, swooping down and scrabbling into the cave's entrance with its food. A wave of barbeque smell hit Jason as the beast passed, and he remembered all of the bodies and bones inside the cavern; the smell of roasted meat mingled with the stench of rot and foul, reptilian odors.
Turning, Jason glanced around, looking for the little chickens darting around in the underbrush behind him. He was relieved to see that they were gone.
Then, he looked back down the slope to watch the primitives gather the fire that the wyvern had given them. They dashed around like animals barely focused on their task, and several of the savages paused at the ghastly, ripped-apart body of their comrade. One of them picked up a dismembered arm, gave it a sniff, then started pulling at the raw edges of meat where it was torn from the rest of the body with its teeth.
Another picked up the head and section of shoulder that hung ragged and sloppy, then started pulling strips of the torn muscles off with its fingers, depositing the strings of meat into its mouth.
Horror welled up inside Jason as he watched. His stomach became a heavy, cold rock.
The other savages squatted with their stone axes and started hacking at the body, which was out of sight in the grass.
Tack, tack, tack...
When he saw two of them lift a skinny, floppy leg, Jason felt his stomach turn over. The edges of his vision became dark and fuzzy...
They were cannibals. The primitives were eating their friend—eating him raw and only seconds dead.
Feeling a dizzy spell clawing at him like shadows trying to pull him to the ground, Jason turned away from the cannibal scene. His wobbly vision landed on a stick bug as big as his forearm slowly crawling across a leaf near his face. He heard the chirps and trills of other little chickens nearby.
Not chickens, Jason thought. Dinosaurs.
He imagined what was going on inside the cavern: the wyvern tearing at the carcass of the big ostrich-dinosaur in the same bone-strewn area where Jason had fallen into this world. He imagined the monster gnawing and gnashing in the darkness, splashing the carcass’s blood around in the dirt, surrounded by gristle-covered remains and the rippling, soft glow of those spooky blue crystals...
The world started spinning.
This can’t be real, Jason thought. Can it?
Jason nearly fainted but realized that if he passed out, those little chicken-dinosaurs would try to eat him.
Pulling himself together, he ran.
Turning into the thick, jungle-like forest, facing away from the wyvern’s cave and the horrors of cannibals and monsters, Jason stuck his cane out in front of him to keep from collapsing and bolted away into the woods.
Chapter 10
The forest was a strange combination of familiar pines as well as strange jungle trees that Jason had never seen before. It was hot. Vines tugged at him with tiny, hooked thorns as he plunged through the woods.
Jason ran. He stumbled.
Plodding with clumsy feet, dizzy with terror, barely staying upright, the man dashed through the trees and bushes and ferns, plowing through heavy underbrush and dodging around tree trunks. Hanging branches drooping with meaty leaves and moisture slapped at Jason's head and pulled at his shoulders, and he tripped over occasional large, gnarly roots that were hidden from sight by heavy green moss blending into the underbrush.
Once, twice, Jason fell, sprawling into ferns and copses of tangled, gigantic weeds and flowers of all sorts. Each time he crashed into the earth, the man felt pain radiate from all over his body, but he jumped back to his feet before the dinosaurs could get to him. He felt like monsters were all around him, waiting to leap out and catch him.
After a while, the ground started to slope downwards, and Jason realized that he was sprinting down a huge, forested hill. Narrowly avoiding smashing into a tree trunk, Jason's rational brain finally caught up to him, and he slowed down to avoid taking a spill that would seriously injure him.
Jason was sure that the forest was alive around him—the trees and bushes fluttered with hostile bird-like dinosaurs—and Jason was damned sure that big things with claws and teeth were watching him from all sides...
When his bad knee became too agonizing to ignore—jolting Jason out of his fearful thoughts with throbbing pain like an icepick turning and gouging above his kneecap—he finally stopped.
Jason slammed up against the trunk of a massive pine tree.
His heart pounded in his head, and his breath was quick and ragged. His mouth was dry and hot from running.
With the mad dash over, Jason started calming down, his body still coursing with numbing fear. He focused on his heartbeat and his panicked breaths, then the throbbing pain of his knee...
Eventually, Jason noticed that the forest was quiet.
Trying to catch his breath, the man closed his mouth and tried to listen, but was continuously interrupted by his lips popping open again, his lungs desperate for oxygen.
He sought out and found the bite-valve to his backpack’s water bladder with shaking fingers and took several long, cool drinks of water.
With that, Jason started breathing more normally again.
The man looked around—up into the trees and everywhere—seeking out monsters and beasts, certain that there would be hungry reptilian and bird-like eyes watching him from all around...
But there was nothing.
The forest was huge and primal, full of ancient trees of all sorts. They reminded Jason of the redwood forests of California where his parents had taken him to visit once when he was a teenager. The pine trees weren’t as big around as those massive things were, but they were still bigger than any pine trees he’d ever seen in Colorado. And the other trees that he didn’t recognize were exotic; some with palm-tree-like bark, some elegant and smooth and mahogany-colored, some like normal elms or cottonwood but with strange, bright leaves like fans or long butterfly tongues bristling with tiny pods. The undergrowth was just as varied and strange. There were thickets of the same broad-leafed bushes that Jason had hidden behind from the wyvern with meaty, spade-like leaves as big as acoustic guitar bodies. There were also plenty of more normal-looking bushes—all thick and soft and green—as well as huge ferns
with fronds as tall as or taller than Jason was himself.
As the man’s heart and lungs calmed down, the buzzing numbness in Jason's body started to subside. The pain in his knee throbbed louder and the forest started to come alive...
Small birds fluttered around from bush to bush and tree to tree too quickly for Jason to make out. Larger birds the size of parrots—but slender and trim like those chicken dinosaurs—darted from tree to tree with long, feathered tails drifting behind them. To Jason’s astonishment, he noticed that some of them—glossy black ones—looked like they had four wings. But then, when he saw them land and move on the ground, it became apparent that the lower wings were actually their legs, which were feathered just like their forearms were.
He saw one of the four-winged blackbirds catch a large insect, and it paused, looking around with its hawk-like head—bug legs and antennae sticking out from its slender snout—before dashing off into the underbrush again.
Jason was reminded of the hunting trips he used to take many years ago back when his dad was still alive. Oftentimes, when he’d find a place in the wild to sit with his rifle and wait for game, the forest would be quiet for a while until he’d been still long enough for the animals to come out again. Then, Jason would start to see birds and squirrels emerge, frolicking and looking for food. Sometimes the forest critters came close to him, wondering what that large, orange-clad creature was, sitting still in their woods...
It was the same here.
As Jason leaned against the pine tree, trying not to focus on the pain in his bad knee, he saw a plethora of birdlike critters and small dinosaurs emerge, no taller than his knees, and the wild forest around him started up again, all creatures exploring and hunting for food.
One of those chicken dinosaurs approached him curiously from a fern. Before it came too close, Jason waved his cane at it and it sent if hopping backwards.
