by Eddie Patin
Jason was going to die of thirst if he didn’t have something to drink, and there was no way he could boil this water, so he wished for the best and drank the standing water in the shell—filling his mouth with relief and shuddering with a sense of life seeping back into his body—until he couldn’t drink anymore.
"Oh my God!" he exclaimed, splashing a small amount over his eyes. "But for lack of water! Holy shit!"
So much better, he thought.
With that, Jason took the shell back to where his urchins were waiting and started the careful, exploratory work of eating them.
The urchins' spines were fairly short but sharp, and they constantly wriggled back and forth. Lifting the first urchin, Jason turned it around, inspecting it all over. On the bottom, it had tiny rods ending it what seemed to be suckers and a radial, beak-like mouth—just like that of an octopus—in its center of its base.
They were all still alive, squirming around on the rock.
Jason didn’t know how to kill them before trying to eat them, and wasn’t sure of what to expect, so he used his pocket knife and a long, slender rock to break open the spikey shell from the top, waiting to see what would happen. The first urchin he tried to open ended up with a shattered mess on top. On the subsequent ones, Jason methodically broke around the top as if he was carving a lid in a pumpkin for Halloween. The inside of the urchins were surprisingly mostly empty and full of sea water! Near the bottom of the shell, on the inside, Jason saw what most resembled meat: long, orange-tan spongy flanges of muscle-like material that looked a lot like the sushi he remembered. The orange-tan meat was attached to the shell in a way that looked like the five arms of a starfish.
"Muscles that move the suction cups?" Jason asked no one.
Then he reached inside to rip it all out.
The orange-tan meat came out mixed with some sort of black viscera like thick veins, but it was easy to separate the black from the orange. Jason realized that he would need to wash the meat before eating it (that black stuff looked really gross), so emptied out all of the urchins onto his big, flat rock before taking them back to the shore to wash them in the saltwater. He didn’t want to waste his rainwater on rinsing urchins.
It was easy to tell if he’d gotten all of the meat or not before discarding the urchin shells—the meat was very distinctive against the black interior shells. When he was left with nothing but a big pile of meat and black gunk, Jason put the whole squishy pile into his fleece hat then went down to the water, where he stood in the waves up to his waist, pulling out chunk after chunk to wash and eat right there.
The urchin taste surprised him. It was creamy—some occasional pieces a little bitter—and reminded Jason a lot of the subtle taste of crabmeat. The urchin meat all sat well in his stomach and when he was finished, he washed out his hat and stuffed it back into a cargo pocket.
After eating and feeling good and full, Jason drank the rest of the water from the shell then walked the beach for a while, looking for more turtle shells, seashells—anything that could collect rainwater and still hopefully had some.
The man drank what he found, making sure that it wasn’t saltwater first, and brought a few turtle shells back with him to the outside of the cave.
He could really smell the salt now. Jason had dried saltwater all over his hair and clothes; it was like being on a tropical beach.
A small part of him worried about getting sick. Jason's detail-oriented mind wouldn’t let him forget the possibility of incompatible bacteria and other nasties living inside the water that he was drinking. There could be strange microbes from a strange world...
But it didn’t matter.
Maybe it'll rain tonight, he thought.
As Jason set up the shells around the outside of his cave, pushing and swirling them down into the sand until they were nice and stable, he knew that tomorrow would be everything. A plan was starting to form in his mind while he was eating and looking for water, and Jason knew that soon he would either be home ... or he would be dead.
Jason decided.
Tomorrow he would kill the wyvern or die trying...
Chapter 36
It did rain overnight.
Jason dreamed of battle. As he slept curled up on his side in the middle of the sandy cavern, images of fighting against raptors in the dark flashed through his mind. When the predators fell, he faced off against an Ettercap—its face vaguely resembled a spiderized version of his assistant manager at the movie theater—and Jason cleaved its chitinous skull with a heavy stone axe. Other visions slipped through the man's head like oil in the smoky realm of sleep. The three mini-rexes were arguing over who would get to eat him with deep, growly voices...
When Jason woke, the morning was clear and bright. Everything was wet outside and tiny pockets of water stood here and there around his cave and on the granite and sandstone sections of the descending ridge. The sand just inside the cave's entrance was wet.
"It rained," he said to himself, mouth dry and smiling.
Jason felt like there were butterflies in his stomach. He'd always thought that ‘butterflies in the stomach’ thing was such a lame statement, but that was only because he never really felt it before in his old daily life. He was definitely feeling that strange sense of nervousness now.
Gathering everything he had, Jason carefully and painfully climbed down the short cliff down to the sand and bushes below, stiff and hurting all over. He wandered down to the lake's shore, eying a handful of Monoclonius on the beach a hundred yards away. The herbivores' bright, white horns gleamed in the morning light. He waded into the lake to rinse himself in saltwater and check his nasty raptor wound...
Pressing at his compression bandage made of paracord and his jacket-sleeves, Jason could sure feel the pain alright, but it wasn’t as raw and fiery-at-the-edges as it was the night before. After washing off the grimy fluid and sand from the night, he noticed no red clouds of fresh blood as he squeezed his thigh gently around the wrap. Maybe he wouldn’t need stitches after all! In fact, even though it still hurt pretty good, Jason thought that he had perhaps misjudged the depth of the cut. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as he'd thought—more superficial than it seemed.
The man dunked his head, felt the saltwater sting his eyes and cool his face, then ran his fingers through his filthy, matted hair underwater, popping up out of the lake again with a gasp.
Felt good.
Looking back to the shore, Jason noticed that his turtle shells were all full of rainwater.
For the first time since the damned wyvern killed the T-Rex and everything went to shit, Jason felt a small zing of hope from deep inside the murky depths of dread and despair and anger that filled his body.
Jason drank as much water as he could, then he washed his face. He had so much surplus water—for the moment—that he even took off his shirt to clean all of the cuts and scratches crisscrossing his torso, shoulders, and arms. He couldn’t see the hooked skin on his shoulders from the raptors’ claws—he’d been clawed in the shoulders at least twice now as the bastards had tried to pull him in for a killing strike—but he could feel the pain; the stinging. He liberally poured clean water over his hidden wounds.
Before leaving his new cave and the shore of Lake Granby, Jason did one more thing: using his stone axe, he cut three more long, slender and straight trunks of thin trees, then whittled their tips to make more spears. Finally, he upgraded the stoutest of the new spears with the locked-open blade of his pocketknife, splitting open the wood at one end, pushing the handle of his knife into the void, then very tightly binding all around the split spear end and the knife with paracord. He tried to secure his blade three times before he was satisfied.
The resulting spear would be his main weapon—a heavy, eight-foot-long pole with his Benchmade knife sticking out of one end as a bladed spearhead, secured as tightly as could be.
That spear would deliver the killing blow to the wyvern.
Either that, or, Jason would be dead.
/> The thought chilled the man briefly, but he cared a lot less about that now than he did before. As tough as battling the wyvern on foot was bound to be, Jason figured that he likely had a better chance of killing it outright than just waiting around and surviving until the wicked bastard died of old age...
"How long do wyverns even live?" he asked suddenly, looking toward the valley. Jason really had no idea—not in the worlds of DnD and fantasy fiction or otherwise.
In time, Jason cinched down his CamelBak with the axe and all of his belongings inside. He drank a little more water, slipped his cane into his pack as if it was a sword on his back, then started the trek to the valley, hiking with the bladed spear in one hand and the bundle of three others balanced on his left shoulder.
His wounded leg burned and stung with every step, and most of Jason's body was stiff and sore from doing far more than just playing video games for over a week now, but the man grimaced and walked on.
When he crossed the northern edge of the valley, he continued west all the way to the tree line on its other side then turned south, staying close to the woods and hoping that the mini-rexes would be far away in the valley south of the wyvern’s cave...
It was misty, which would help a lot. On a clear, sunny day, the morning sun would be shining from the east, lighting Jason up like a beacon walking along the dark trees and underbrush. He was a meal on wheels, just like when the mini-rexes had spotted him the first time coming out of the same woods farther south.
By the time Jason was halfway to the site of his coming final showdown, it started to rain again.
Within a few seconds, his clothes was soaked to his skin, and everything became heavier. The water started coming down in thick, flat sheets. Jason paused, leaning up against his bladed spear to wipe his face with one hand. The torrential rainfall was making it hard to see, splattering in his face and pelting his eyes with cool water.
"Still," he muttered with a grin, hardly able to hear his own voice over the sudden roar of the storm. "It’s a good thing! No fire!" It was hard to speak without rain invading his mouth.
No matter, Jason thought. No one to talk to anyway...
The man continued on, carrying his spears along the tree line, one foot in front of the other, ignoring the burning pain in his injured leg and trying not to notice the growing sense of dread rising up in his guts, then chest, then throat...
The morning fog was thick and the rain made it even more difficult to see very far in front of him. But eventually, Jason paused when he saw a huge, dark form emerge from the grey mist up ahead in the valley. It didn’t move, and it didn’t take Jason long to realize that it was the partially-eaten body of the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
His poor Dreadwraith...
That meant that he was close.
Jason looked around, trying to listen but only hearing the heavy drone of the tropical storm. He tried to see, but the area around the sacrificial stone was shrouded by mist and slanting rain. He peered intensely through the gloom, but couldn’t tell any sign of the either wyvern or the cannibals.
Everyone must be inside right now, he thought, then figured that he was probably the only human on the planet.
"Everything," he muttered to himself.
The cannibals were savage, but maybe even they wouldn’t be out in a rain like this...
Creeping forward, hardly worried about the sound of his boots on the muddy, flooded ground, Jason moved carefully until he saw the slope leading up to the cave then snuck up toward the dark cave mouth, praying that the storm would mask him. He could barely see through the downpour...
There was nothing going on—just a heavy storm. Jason figured that it was probable that the wyvern was inside and that it would likely emerge to go hunting whenever the rain stopped. Then, everything would continue as usual: the cannibals would start running around like madmen stacking sticks around the slab, herds of plant-eaters would wander out to graze in the valley to the south, then predators would emerge to scope out the weak and unwary.
Jason carefully put the three wooden spears down outside the cave a good distance from the entrance, taking care not to make them clatter. Over the morning, his plan had solidified, and he started working on his preparations in the heavy rain as efficiently as he could. It was a good time to be out here—he had time to lay his traps before the monster would come outside.
All he could hear was the roar of the rain and the constant splattering sound of the bazillion heavy drops pounding into the mud, rocks, and gravel around him. The plants with big, flat leaves made loud, pelting sounds under the assault of the storm, like marbles raining down onto taut sheets of plastic.
Jason ducked into the bushes on the northern side of the cave mouth and pulled out his paracord. He cut the entire length of it in half with his spearhead which had recently been only a knife. It was a good thing that Jason carried around so much damned paracord. Before, he’d loosely estimated that he had about a hundred and fifty feet or so in his backpack. Even though he’d used some here and there to make things—his first shelter, his bladed spear, his thigh bandage—he still had plenty enough to make the two snares he had in mind.
Thinking back to his many sailing trips with his dad back in his teenage years, Jason sang the bowline knot song in his head, creating a loop on one end as he went:
Make the rabbit hole...
Out comes the rabbit...
It runs around the tree...
And hops back into its hole!
Jason smiled. He still knew the knot. He then frowned, realizing that he should have probably prepared the snares somewhere else other than outside the wyvern’s cave. After testing the strength of the first knot, he quickly made a second bowline in the other line, then he started feeding the ropes into their respective loops, creating two huge lassos with self-tightening nooses.
Once the snares were ready, Jason stepped out into the wild rain again, feeling it beat on his face. He looked around and saw no cannibals in the misty trees and valley below. The man avoided stepping directly in front of the dark cave mouth, but looked into the black hole as far as he dared—heartbeat quickening and cold fear building up inside him as he did—seeing nothing through the sheets of rain...
Some time ago, Jason had learned that 550 Paracord was supposed to be able to hold 550 pounds of pressure before snapping. That's why it was named that way. Jason had plans to draw the wyvern out through these loops and tie the creature off while he tried to kill it. He hoped that two lines would do the trick. The math seemed a little hopeful in his head, but chances were pretty good, Jason figured, that the wyvern wouldn’t be held back by the snare very much. The man would still have to be quick and deadly if he hoped to get the upper hand on the monster. If Jason could catch the wyvern in both loops—tied down in opposite directions to provide more consistent resistance—the snares would give him anywhere between 550 and 1100 pounds of line strength to slow the bastard down ... for a while. Jason knew that the wyvern could distort those numbers by moving more in one direction than the other, and there were all sorts of ways that this could go wrong...
But it was something.
Jason had to kill the monster to get to the portal. He knew it.
Even the dread was fading. Jason was certain of what he had to do, and was ready to do it. He was ready to try, and try hard. For once in his life, he was ready to take action. This was going to happen, to one end or the other...
Being extra-careful in the heavy rain, Jason climbed the outside of the cave’s mouth, scrambling over slick gravel and mud until he was crouched over the hole. Loosening the loops to be big enough to hang over the entrance without touching the ground—he only wanted to catch the wyvern’s head and neck, after all—Jason draped the lassos over the cave mouth like long, looping vines. Two circles of rope would wait for the wyvern to come out, get caught, then he'd pull the nooses closed over its spiky neck. He positioned the tops of the lassos onto the rocky perch over the cave's entrance, making sure that t
he tops of the loops wouldn’t get caught up there when the wyvern finally pulled at the trap.
With one of the loops, Jason took the free end and tied it securely around a huge boulder set in the ground above the cave. That one would hold the wyvern from the rear and above.
Taking the second free end, Jason climbed back down to the northern side of the cave’s mouth where he’d squatted to prepare the knots and laid the end of the rope on the ground in a place where it would be easy for him to find it when the craziness started; somewhere where he’d see it when his heart was pounding and he was almost panicked. This line would be tied to a tree off to the side, securing to wyvern to a point in a different direction, making it harder for the beast to move from wherever it ended up when the lines tightened down. Jason chose a big, thick tree and walked to it. With a grunt that was drowned out by the sound of the heavy rain, Jason broke off a chest-high branch, leaving enough of a stub to act as a good hitch to tie the rope off to...
The man looked around in the storm, peering through the mist and still saw no cannibals. He looked back at the mouth of the cave, noting that the thin loops of paracord were practically invisible, hanging in the exact way he had imagined.
With a sigh and a face full of rain, Jason smiled, feeling his heartbeat start to quicken again.
He felt good about the trap.
Moving his bladed spear to stay with him, and the three wooden spears down to the ground next to the hitch-tree, Jason crept over to where the line for the sideways loop waited for him on the ground. Hoping that the wyvern would merely come out at some point soon, he crouched in a bush there, holding the end of the line.
Jason waited in the thick rainfall.
Movement caught Jason’s eye down in the valley and he searched the mist, seeing the shadowy and lean forms of several cannibals running around in the rain. Hopefully those wretched creatures wouldn't interfere with his battle.
