“Tell them not to wander off just yet,” said Phineas. “I want to radio the Council and tell them what’s been happening.”
Kate nodded and conferred with Visigoth, who passed along the instructions to the others. As Phineas reported back to the Council, Kate watched their reptilian companions form a rough. circle around their position. She had seen the Warriors in fighting situations; they were scary to watch. The clamor of battle and the scent of spilled blood drove them into a frenzy which could only be stilled by death. They were good types to have on your side, no doubt about that.
Phineas flipped off his LS helmet radio, walked over to her side. He gestured upward at the hazy sky, through which the illuminating rod at the zero-G central axis could barely be seen. “Our timing was a little off,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s going to be dark soon.”
“We’re only about an hour from the gate,” she said. “We should make it.”
Phineas sighed. “Maybe, But it would be cutting it close.”
“What’s our alternative—could they send out the ornithopter to pick us up?”
Phineas shook his head. “It’s not airworthy yet. And the OTV’s not big enough to carry all of us.”
“What’re you saying, that maybe we should hole up in the cave till morning?” Kate shook her head. “I don’t know, Phineas, I don’t know if I could take it.”
“You might have to. It might be a hell of a lot safer than getting caught in the forest after dark.”
“If we hurry, we can make it,” she said. “Please ...” She hated herself for using the “helpless female” voice, but she knew it still worked on a lot of men. Besides, the thought of being stuck in that cave all night with five Saurian Warriors made her shiver.
She and Phineas alone—that would be a different story!
He exhaled slowly, checked his chronometer. “Let’s see what old ’Goth has to say about our chances.”
“You’re going to take his word for it?”
Phineas grinned. “Why not? He lives here, doesn’t he?”
“He also has an allosaurus hide stretched across his helmet. He’s probably itching for a fight.”
Phineas looked at her, still grinning. “Well, Kate dear, if that’s the case, you don’t have to worry about him voting to stay out in the cave all night, do you?”
He was right, and she felt foolish again. God, she was sounding like a silly, flighty ass! Maybe she should just shut up and let the others decide ...
* * *
Just as Phineas had figured, Visigoth saw no problem in trekking back to the Barrier Gate by nightfall. She felt good to be heading back to the security of the Enclave, and whatever dangers might await them in the forest did not seem very threatening when tempered with the knowledge that they were going “home.”
Forming a single-file column with Visigoth and his charges in the lead, the group moved across the grazing plain. Kate followed the Saurians and Phineas followed her, looking back every so often to protect their rear. To cover their ass, as he had so aptly phrased it.
It was easygoing while they remained out in the open terrain of the plateau, but as the land dipped down and merged with the edges of a dense prehistoric forest, Kate sensed a change in the air, like a gathering storm. As if foreshadowing the coming twilight, the green shadows of the forest enveloped them, making distant objects dimmer and less distinct. Colors of blossoms and buds seemed more saturated, more dream-like. The sounds of their footsteps became muffled and were swallowed up by the dense foliage. The first cries of the night predators ripped through the thickets of conifers and protofirs off to their right.
Clouds of insects buzzed above their heads, and countless small, scurrying things thrashed their way through the underbrush. Unseen creatures hustled by her feet, seeking safety from another night of feeding and death. Kate tried to keep her mind off such things by concentrating on the passing scenery. She told herself that she was experiencing the Earth just as it had been more than 120 million years ago. It was like going on a time machine, like living out your craziest dreams.
It was not a dream, but she knew it could easily become a nightmare.
A high-pitched scream exploded from the dense flora to their left. The poor creature sounded close enough to be in her hip pocket and she couldn’t stop herself from jumping back. Phineas moved up to steady her shoulder. The Saurians had become more agitated in their movements, turning back and forth as they pushed through the forest, looking as though they were performing some kind of ritual dance.
Something was happening out there. Something was coming near them, she could feel it.
“Take it easy,” he said, holding his heavy assault rifle ready.
“What was it?”
“You’re asking me? How should I know?” Phineas shrugged and indicated that she keep up with the Saurians. “But I’ve got to tell you that it’s just about feeding time at the zoo, so you’d better start expecting things like that.”
“I know that, Phineas. It’s just that knowing about something and then really experiencing it are two different things.”
He chuckled. “You’re telling me!”
They trudged forward in silence, and again the forest seemed to be swallowing up their every sound. The humidity and tropic heat sapped her energy, weighted her down. Visigoth paused several times to sniff the air, to bark out brief orders to the others. The Warriors were clearly expecting trouble.
Another scream, this time impossibly close to their column, strangled off in midcry, gurgling into silence.
“Christ-on-a-crutch that was close!” said Phineas.
Visigoth had halted the column and signaled one of his Warriors to take the point of the column. Kate watched the red-shirted Saurian disappear beyond the fronds of giant primordial palms. The grizzly General motioned them to move forward, and just as the column began moving, the vanguard Saurian broke free of the dense foliage, hissing and barking excitedly. His voice was loud enough to activate Kate’s translator, and the device picked up something about a “nest.”
She mentioned this to Phineas, and he reacted instantly.
“Goddammit, wait!” he cried as he pushed past her toward Visigoth and the other Warriors. The Saurians had gathered together and were pushing forward into the underbrush.
For a moment, Kate felt totally alone, as though they were all deserting her. Seeing Phineas’s back to her made her fed suddenly vulnerable. She ran forward to join them.
“Phineas, wait! What’s the matter?”
She followed him as he pushed through a barrier of sapling cycads. Ahead she could see that the Saurians and Phineas had crashed their way into a small clearing. There was a semicircle of man-sized boulders surrounding a clawed-out pit, and the surrounding plant life looked as if it had been recently savaged by an indifferent terra-forming machine.
The Saurians bounded toward the pit as Phineas cried out, trying to halt them. Kate moved forward, looking over Phineas’s shoulder to see what was in the pit.
“Goth, stop!” Phineas was screaming. ”Wait! No!”
The Saurian leader paused at the rim of the pit, his weapon raised over the still-glistening bodies of the four newly hatched creatures. Visigoth appeared surprised that he should not dispatch them.
“Oh my God, Phineas, what are they?”
Kate regarded the hatchlings quickly. They were bipedal carnosaurs—no doubt about that. Balanced expertly on their hind legs, the creatures eyed their audience warily. Their large heads appeared to be almost half their body mass, and their young, snapping jaws were already filled with rows of sharp teeth. With round, flat eyes glaring, they stood defiantly amid the cracked, leathery wreckage of their eggs. Although their tan-and-yellow-striped hides were still shining from the mucus of their eggs, the hatchlings were already as tall as a five-year-ol
d child.
Visigoth grunted, still keeping his crossbow aimed at one of the babies, still staring at Kemp.
“Phineas—” she began again.
“l don’t know for sure what they are, but I think they’re little T. rexes ...”
“Oh God ...”
“Visigoth,” Phineas was saying, “leave it alone ... the mother’s got to be somewhere close!”
Before the Saurian General responded, one of the other Warriors fired his crossbow, sending a squave into the panting belly of the closest hatchling. The squave’s jaws started churning on impact, burrowing into the baby rex with incredible speed. The baby screeched out a piercing death-cry so intense it hurt Kate’s ears.
The next instant, chaos took charge. The other Warriors unleashed their bows, and all four hatchlings were struck down. What had been a warm nest was now a slaughtering pit. The babies fought against the squaves which chewed through their soft parts and the nest was a thrashing tangle of blood-smeared bodies. The sounds of the abattoir rose up and mingled with the strong coppery scent of death.
Kate stood transfixed by the execution-style killings, unable to move. It was all so graphic, so horrible, her mind refused to process what she was seeing, refused to react. Suddenly Phineas was grabbing her upper arm, yanking her roughly away from the edge of the pit.
“C’mon, we’ve got to get out of here now!”
The Saurians were jumping up and down, shrieking and hissing in the Joy of their kill. Kate looked away from them and saw the terror in Phineas’s eyes.
“C’mon, Kate ... now!”
His voice was consumed by the sound of thunder. It was a roaring so terrible that Kate felt paralyzed by its low-frequency vibrations. And she could feel the pain and the outrage in the cry of the beast. It was the tortured cry of a mother who senses the worst has happened ... who knows she has lost her babies.
Behind them, the forest seemed to explode.
The hot, heavy air had been shattered like a sheet of glass by the cry of the female tyrannosaurus, and now, the stand of ginkgos and palms beyond the nest also blew apart in a fury of advancing flesh. Looking up, Kate saw the mother slash through the trees like a berserk construction crane. Thrashing its giant, turret-like head from side to side, the, female strode forward, straddling the nest between its impossibly thick legs.
Visigoth and the other Warriors had broken ranks at first sight of the female, and, still half-shocked, Kate felt herself being pulled along by Phineas. Heedlessly they crashed through the underbrush, but, looking back, Kate caught a photographic glimpse of the mother, bending her immense bulk low over the nest, using her snout to nudge the now-limp bodies of her young. In that instant of recognition, Kate swore she could see true suffering and pain in the eyes of the beast.
It was a terrible image she would always remember.
And suddenly the rex was pulling herself up to her full height of almost ten meters, her broad chest heaving as her lung bellowed out a cry of frustration and revenge. Her jaws snapped open and shut, as torrents of saliva ran like rain from her mouth. Then she paused to pick up the scent of the killers.
Blind panic flashed like lunatic neon right behind Kate’s eyes. Her thoughts were fragmented, her movements, automatic and unplanned. We’re going to die, she thought. It was the single cogent notion in her head. Phineas continued pulling her along as they crashed and thudded madly through the forest. She could not sustain the breakneck pace. Her legs were like rubber, and there was a fiery pain in her right side.
Behind them, the forest was being ripped apart, the sound of its destruction chasing them down.
“It’s a hell of a fix they’ve put us in now,” said Phineas. “Goddamned Iizards!”
“Where are they?” she asked.
“Who the hell knows!”
The tyrannosaur bellowed again, and Kate looked back over her shoulder. The shadowed bulk of the great beast loomed over them like a tall building—a building that moved and with incredible agility. It seemed that it could cover the distance separating them in several more long, bounding strides.
Up ahead, another clearing revealed itself, and as they entered it, Kate saw what had become of the Saurian Warriors. Two of them had climbed into the spreading limbs of cycad trees while Visigoth and the two others had fanned out on the opposite side of the clearing. All of them had their crossbows aimed at the region behind and above Kate and Phineas.
“Hurry up!” he said. “If I can get past the clearing in time, I can get set up for a couple of shots.”
She ran as hard as she could. While her body was crying out that it could take no more punishment, her mind kicked in the override controls and pushed things a little further. A blowtorch burned through the right side of her waist and her lungs heaved without rhythm. Her eyes blurred and burned from the salty sweat which leaked into their corners, but she kept her legs moving. Phineas had never let go his grip, and the vise-like pinch of his hand was a comforting, inspiring kind of pain.
She was going to make it, dammit ... !
The undergrowth of the forest beyond the clearing became a haven, a goal to reach and be finally safe. She kept in sight, and tried not to think of the eating machine at her heels.
But she looked back instinctively in time to see the carnosaur emerge from the trees. The creature paused for an instant, tilting her great head and studying the field as a gamester might survey a playing board.
That pause was all Phineas needed. He tugged her along and together they flung themselves headfirst into the brush. The Saurian Warriors also used that freeze-frame instant to launch their feeble attack. Screaming out in unison, all five launched their bows. Three of the squaves struck the thick, crusty hide of the rex’s hind legs. The impact was not enough to penetrate the calloused flesh and the squaves fell harmlessly to the loamy soil. But the remaining two entered the softer, more vulnerable flesh of the rex’s underbelly, instantly chewing and gnawing and rending their way into the body cavity.
The rex was quick to react, screaming in pain and renewed anger. With a quick dip of her head, her heavy, shovel-like jaws plucked away one of the squaves with amazing delicacy. And then, with a move like a karate kick-fighter, the beast leaped into the air and used her left hind leg to scrape across her belly, dislodging and killing the remaining squave.
If Kate had not seen the dance-like maneuver, she wouldn’t have believed it possible. The female tyrannosaur was quick beyond all imagining.
While the Saurian Warriors were still reloading their bows, the rex dropped her head and charged them. Phineas took aim with the heavy assault rifle, unleashing a clip of explosive bullets in a blur. But the beast was too quick for his first salvo, having already moved inside the range of his aim. In an eye-flash, her great jaws descended and snapped up the nearest Warrior. There was a glimpse of his legs, a jerk of her head, and the saurian was a small lump working its way down her throat. Ignoring her quick meal, the rex crashed forward into the nearest cycad tree. The concussion of her great body shook loose the two Saurian bowmen, and they dropped from the branches like pieces of ripe fruit.
In an instant she lashed out with one of her massive hind claws and raked the nearest felled Warrior into a smear of red pulp, It happened so fast Kate wasn’t sure what she had seen until the image burned in her mind like the retinal print of strobe. The second Warrior leaped up and raced headlong between the rex’s legs, jamming his pike upward into the soft, genital region. It appeared to be a practiced maneuver, and the carnosaur bellowed in pain.
Visigoth and the other remaining Saurian launched new squaves into the rex’s underbelly, then charged out of the bush with pikes raised. She reacted by back-stepping with a nimble half-jump and a dip of her head. The Saurian between her legs, suddenly exposed, looked up in time to see her heavy jaws envelop him and close with the finality of a bank vault’s door.
Phi
neas had aimed his rifle at the beast but had not yet fired a shot.
“What’re you waiting for!” Kate screamed, hanging on his shoulder.
“They’re in the way! Damned lizards!”
But this proved to be only a temporary problem. After seeing the third of his small platoon wiped out, Visigoth barked out the order to retreat. Miraculously he and his single Warrior were able to dodge the next vicious swipe of the rex and duck into the edge of the forest, running as fast as they could.
Phineas seized the moment and opened up with the Heckler & Koch. Its ratcheting report was a counterpoint to the constant bellow of the rex. The first volley of explosive slugs ripped into her nearest hind leg, shredding it into a bright pink mist right down to the giant gleaming bone. The beast shrieked in agony and she spun toward the fury of her newest attacker. Her eyes were wide and yellow, glazed with madness and exquisite pain. Tilting her head to the side, she bent down to examine her slayers.
As Phineas slammed home another clip into the chamber, Kate could feel the wash of the beast’s breath, a dank wind smelling of blood and decay. The nightmare head dropped lower still as the rex staggered forward, crippled by the first magazine of ammo, but still driven to its instinctive task of killing and eating.
“Get back!” Phineas was crying as he unleashed the second clip.
The slugs stitched a solid line up the rex’s neck, into her open maw, and into the granite-hard skull. The C-4 explosive bullets opened up the beast like a coroner’s blade; they shattered the bones in the skull and jellied the brain.
Abruptly the rex straightened up, became rigid, then convulsed violently as its nervous system short-circuited. Kate felt Phineas tugging on her arm, but she was transfixed by the sight of the monstrous killer as it began a brief, obscene dance of death. Throwing back her head, the beast’s jaws sagged open as blood and spume frothed up her throat. She turned in one great circle, thrashing her tail and pistoning her hind legs in one final paroxysm, before pitching forward as though in slow motion.
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