by Russ Watts
“No, it hasn’t. It’s gone back underground, but I got the impression it has no intention of just disappearing.”
“So, just what is it?” asked Maria as she approached them. “Are you going to tell me what the hell that thing is?”
The ground shivered, and they heard the sound of glass breaking as the windows of the bus outside gave way.
“It would appear that we have a giant man-eating dinosaur right outside our door.”
Everyone turned to look at Chris. He was propped up on his elbows, nursing a bandaged leg, and looking pale.
“You should be resting,” said Maria.
Chris nodded in agreement, but carried on anyway. “Quite what it wants and where it came from is hard to say. I could really only speculate. It is here though, and it seems to be here to stay.”
“A dinosaur? Chris, how many of those pills did you take?” Maria put her hands on her hips. “Forget your leg, I think I need to take a look at your head.”
“Look, it’s not Bigfoot, it’s not an alien, and it’s sure as hell not some rabid coyote. Maybe this dinosaur thing makes sense.” Mackenzie could hardly believe he was saying it out loud, and yet it did make sense. It looked like a dinosaur, though nothing specific, at least nothing he could think of. It was like a strange version of a dinosaur.
“I would say it’s linked to the dinosaurs,” said Chris, “but it’s not any particular one. If it was, then over time it has certainly changed. It has adapted, learned to survive. I would say the reason we’ve never come across it before is simply that it remained underground. For some reason, it’s never had any impulse or reason to come up.”
“Until now.” Myles slowly stroked Alyce’s hair, who in turn was stroking Beers. “There was nothing in the brochure about dinosaurs living in the Mojave.”
Akecheta smiled, but said nothing.
“Look, hold on, this is freaking ridiculous.” James emerged from the shadows carrying a bottle of beer. Vic was behind him looking sheepish, half a bottle of beer in his hand at his side.
“We’ll pay you back,” Vic muttered as he cast a glance at Maria and noticed her disapproving stare.
“Dinosaurs don’t exist. They just don’t,” said James with confidence. “I think you must’ve had a bang on the head, Chris. Last time I read a book, the dinosaurs were annihilated, wiped out hundreds of millions of years ago, right?”
Chris nodded. All eyes in the room were on him. They wanted answers, but he wasn’t sure he had them all yet. “Look, we can’t really predict what it will do as we don’t really know what kind of creature it is. It’s obviously nothing like anything we’ve seen before. Is it naturally nocturnal, does it burrow, or does it lay in wait for its prey? Does it use sight or smell to find its kill? There’s a lot more of it I need to study before I can make a one hundred per cent accurate assessment of what we’re dealing with. My best guess is—”
“Sorry, boss, but I’m not putting my life in the hands of someone who is guessing at what we’re dealing with.” James took a swig of the warm beer and grimaced. “It’s probably escaped from a fucking zoo. Some rich yank probably has a whole farm of these things somewhere and makes a quick buck by turning them into burgers. It probably started out life as a cow and got so pumped full of drugs, it mutated into that monster we all saw earlier.”
“Mutated? Hmm.” Chris seemed to ignore the pointed sarcasm in James’ voice and frowned. He was trying to join the dots, to figure out what was going on, but the thought kept escaping him before he could grab it.
“I don’t buy it,” said Mr. Stepper. He had been listening intently. He still wanted to get up on the roof and find a signal. These people were in his care now, and ultimately he wanted to get each and every one of them back home safe and sound, including the two obnoxious Brits. Quite how he was going to do that he didn’t know, but getting a call out to the emergency services seemed like a good place to start. What was he going to tell them, that a dinosaur was chasing them? “I mean, it can’t be real. It just can’t be. I need to believe in something else.”
“I don’t like it either,” said Myles, “but we all saw it. Hell, it took a chunk out of Chris’ leg. If that thing’s not a dinosaur, I don’t know what it is.”
“What a bunch of crap.” James finished the beer and threw the empty bottle to the side. “I’ve heard about the genetic tampering that goes on in secret in American army bases. It’s just a rogue escapee from a laboratory or something. Dinosaurs? Pull the other one, mate.”
Trying to ignore how rude James was being, and putting it down to stress and alcohol, Mackenzie tried to coax more information out of Chris. “Are you a professor or something?” he asked. “Chris? Can you tell us anything else? It might help if we knew what we were facing.”
Chris looked at Mackenzie with concern. “Lecturer at UCLA. I came out here for work. Figured I could combine my research with a little vacation.”
“Our very own Richard Owen,” muttered Mr. Stepper.
“So you come across anything else in your research?” asked Laurel. “Any other dinosaurs out there we should know about?”
“None that are still alive. I thought when we first saw it that it had a remarkable resemblance to Coelophysis. But it’s not right. There was a discovery in the Gobi Desert; the Saichania I think it’s called. There’s not a whole lot of information widely available about it, it’s still being studied, but I wonder if we’re dealing with some sort of long-lost cousin. Maybe a slightly different version of it.”
“But dinosaurs don’t live underground. I’m no expert, but I don’t remember seeing or reading anything about that,” said Mackenzie. “They roamed the Earth, remember? They didn’t burrow underground and live in caves.”
“Well the Troodon was a nocturnal creature, and we are finding more evidence that some of these beasts could survive underground. If our friend is an ancestor of one of those things, then it has had millions of years to learn to adapt. If it had food and water, then feasibly it could survive underneath the planet.”
“This must be a joke,” said James moodily. “First the phones crap out, now we have to listen to this rubbish? Maria, you got a TV back here? Maybe we can find out what’s really going on instead of theorizing?”
Maria shook her head. “I ain’t got need for a TV. I live with my sister in Baker. There’s no time for watching it around here.”
James turned to Vic. “Okay, so where are the cameras? Am I on MTV? Come on Vic, spill it. This is a big joke, right?”
“All right, James, just quieten down for a moment, and we’ll see what we can figure out.” Akecheta approached the center of the room. “It would be a very good idea to find out if others are aware of our situation. We have no phone coverage here, no internet, and no transport with that thing outside. We can’t just wait and hope it goes away. Maybe we’re not alone in this. Maybe somebody out there saw or heard something. For all we know, someone is on their way. Then again, they might not be. So what can we do?”
“You know, the radio might still work.” Maria stared at the ceiling as if the answer to all their questions was written there. “Where did I put it? It’s worth a try. I’ll see if I can find it. I rarely use it, except when I’m back here doing a stock-take. I’m sure I left it on one of the shelves. Now that everything’s a mess, it might take me a while.”
“I’ll help,” said Laurel.
“Me too.” Michele joined the two women as they began searching for the radio through the scattered contents of the storeroom.
“I need to keep occupied. I’m going to help look for the radio, and anything else that might help us,” said Mr. Stepper.
Mackenzie noticed the driver looked tired. He looked scared too. He might have lived a long life, but nothing had prepared him to face something like this.
“Chris, why is it still here?” asked Akecheta. “If it is still out there, underground, then it can’t see us right? So why hasn’t it left?”
Chris pushed
himself up off the ground, wincing as pain shot through his leg. He propped himself up on a box, leaning on it for support. “Well, essentially it is an animal, whether it’s a dinosaur or not.”
James snorted. “Vic, let’s go see if we can’t find another beer back there. Leave these poor dumb folk to their fantasies.”
As James and Vic snuck off to a dark corner of the storeroom, Chris went on, pleased they had left. James was distracting him from the real issue. He needed to figure out what they were dealing with. “Something that large is probably quite used to getting its own way. It will have little else on its mind other than eating and sleeping. I gather it’s not tired right now, given its attack. We can also safely assume it’s a carnivore, given its nature and those large prominent incisors. Basically, we have all the hallmarks of an apex predator. It has its prey trapped, cornered, and if it can’t reach us, it’ll wait us out. I’ve seen it countless times.”
Mackenzie knew what Chris was talking about. He had watched enough National Geographic documentaries to know when something was being hunted. “She knows we’re here. I don’t think it’s going anywhere,” he said with nervousness. “We’re dinner.”
“But it can’t see us?” Akecheta sat down on a box next to Chris and rubbed his lips. He kept pushing thoughts of his family to the back of his mind. He was responsible for these people now, although he also assumed his family were far from danger. There was no reason to think anything else, and he had to focus on finding a way out of their perilous situation.
“I guess not,” said Chris.
“So what’s stopping us from running out there now, getting to the bus, and making a run for it?”
“Well, that would be a major risk.” Chris exhaled and shook his head. “Some animals use vibration and scent to track their prey. They don’t all rely on sight. If this thing out there is used to living underground, it may be possible that it actually has very poor eyesight. If it’s used to hunting underground then it begs two questions. One, why is it now above ground? What has forced it to come up?”
“Lack of food,” suggested Mackenzie. “Something that size must need to eat a lot.”
Chris nodded. “Anything that disturbs its natural habitat will make an animal move. It could be forced to move for a number of reasons. Maybe we’re just the unlucky ones who were in its path.”
“And the second question?” asked Akecheta.
“How does it hunt?” Chris winced again as pain shot through his injured leg. He knew he was going to need more meds, more than Maria had. He hoped they wouldn’t be stuck in the store too long as the danger of infection was all too real.
“I would’ve thought you got a good look at that, Chris,” said Myles as he left Alyce to join the discussion. He looked back at his little girl who was gently stroking Beers. “How it hunts is pretty obvious, isn’t it? Big teeth, sharp claws, and a thousand tons of weight behind it; I’d hardly call it subtle, but definitely effective.”
“All very true, I can testify to that.” Chris felt a sweat break out on his forehead. It felt like the temperature was dropping by the minute, yet he knew it had to be getting hotter. The day was still young, and the sun was still warming the store.
“I think what Chris is getting at is how exactly does it find its prey? Does it sniff them out, watch them, or listen for audible clues as to where we are?” Mackenzie tried to remember when it had attacked Beers and Myles how it had happened. Had it seen them? Had it heard Beers barking? Beers had been going at it for a long time before Myles had saved the puppy, so why hadn’t it taken the dog long before they got there? It had all happened so fast, he hadn’t really had time to process it. They had been lucky to get away, he knew that. “Does it really matter?”
“Oh, yes. If we have to get ourselves out of here, it could mean the difference between making it out or not.” Chris didn’t mean to sound so dramatic, but the words were out of his mouth before he knew it. He saw Myles glance across to his daughter. They all had their reasons for wanting to get out, to get home, and Alyce was the most vulnerable of them all. “Look, if we can figure out how that thing thinks, then we can work out how to get around it. The more I think about it, the more I believe it could be as simple as movement. It would be unheard of in a dinosaur, but I don’t think we’re dealing with your old fashioned T-rex here. This thing has adapted. Living underground will mean its senses are better attuned to hunting in the ground. Above the surface, it’s weaker. It would have little use for good vision down there in the darkness, and that might just be its Achilles heel. Vibrations, sounds that travel through the ground, pressure waves: all those things will tell it where we are.”
“Okay, well we could try to minimise our movements, maybe it’ll find something else for dinner,” said Mackenzie. “You think it can hear us talking?”
“I doubt it. From where we are, our voices wouldn’t carry far through the ground. Walking around, running, sudden movements—they’re the triggers.”
Mackenzie thought back to when Myles had rescued Beers outside. Had the monster attacked before Myles had started running, or after? Was it Beers’ barking that set it off, or Myles going after the dog?
Akecheta stood up. “Mr. Stepper wanted to get up to the roof to try to get a signal. Maybe we can figure out a way to—”
The room vibrated strongly, and then stopped almost as soon as it had started. Then they heard the shouting.
“Who’s that?” asked Myles. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the faint shouting coming from outside. “Mr. Stepper didn’t go out there on his own, did he?”
“No, I’m still here,” replied Mr. Stepper as he emerged from a gloomy corner with a torch in his hands. He looked anxiously at Akecheta. “I’m sure that whoever is out there, they are not part of our tour group.”
Akecheta raised his index fingers to his lips. “Listen.” The noise was distant, as if underwater, and it sounded like two voices, not just one. There was no doubt that the shouting was coming from outside. Yet the words were muffled, and it was impossible to understand what was being said.
“Shit,” said Mackenzie, “this is bad. Whoever is shouting is going to get the attention of that thing pretty quickly. We need to warn them away. We need to get them to be quiet.”
“Nobody is safe out there.” Alyce looked up at Mackenzie with sad eyes. She had Beers by her side and had snuck up on them quietly, keen to listen in. “Nobody.”
“Don’t look so down. The situation’s not that grim,” said Mackenzie to her. He didn’t know how much of the conversation she had heard, but all of it was unsuitable for a child. “We’re not finished yet.”
“Alyce, get back with your mother,” said Myles. He shooed his daughter back towards Michele.
The ground shook again, but this shake was longer than the first one. More items fell from the shelves, and Mackenzie grabbed a shelf. He watched Laurel stagger over to him, using the shelf to keep herself upright, and then she grabbed hold of his arm. They looked at each other in silence. The whole room was silent, everyone lost in their own thoughts. Mackenzie kept his eyes locked on his wife’s. He tried to convey to her that he wouldn’t let anything hurt her, that he would do whatever it took to get through this. Did she understand? Could she? When he tried to read her mind, to understand what her blue eyes were saying, he found himself lost in them. He loved her more with each year, and those deep blue eyes of hers gave nothing away. All he knew was that he needed to get her away from here, to Amy. Maybe that was what she was thinking. Maybe he could read her better than he thought.
Laurel waited for the shaking to subside before speaking. “We found the radio. Michele’s working on it now, trying to pick up a station. Mac, what’s going on?”
The shaking abruptly stopped, and then from outside they heard a grunting sound, a sort of snorting as if a bull were about to charge. The noise stopped, and the shouting voices stopped too. Then a lone voice broke the silence.
“It’s coming,” said C
hris.
The shouting voices outside were louder now, more urgent, insistent, demanding attention.
“We have to do something,” said Maria. “You two, come help me.”
James and Vic looked at each other, puzzled.
“Yes, you two, hurry it up,” said Maria angrily.
“But…”
Maria ignored James’ attempt to avoid doing anything and ordered him to follow her. She marched over to a box, ripped it open, and pulled out a child’s plastic baseball bat. Maria thrust the bat into his hands, and then held another out to Vic.
“Why us? What can we do?” James looked at the toy in his hands. Quite what he could achieve with it against a giant monster he didn’t know. Nor did he want to. It clearly was far safer inside than out there. He had no responsibility to anyone but himself and had no intention of going outside swinging a toy around under the shade of that thing.
“James and Vic are coming with me. I suggest everyone else stays here with Chris. Myles, you’ve got Michele and Alyce to take care of. Mac, you and Laurel can help Michele get the radio working and find out what the hell is going on.”
James felt anger rising within him. This woman was insane. Who did she think she was ordering him around? “I am not going out there. Vic and I are going to stay right here, so you can take this piece of crap and shove it.” James dropped the bat on the floor.
Maria looked at James with disdain and picked up the bat. She pushed it against James. “We have a man with an injured leg, a woman with multiple lacerations and bruises, and a family with a small child and dog. What have you got, other than a bad attitude?”
“Come on, James,” said Vic. “We can’t just do nothing.”
James glared at Vic, and took the bat from Maria.
“What do we do?” asked Vic ignoring James. The beer had given him a little courage. It might not be enough to fight off a dinosaur, but it was enough to stand up to James. He didn’t feel much like being pushed around anymore. Things with James had been good to start with, but it hadn’t taken long before James had shown his true color. Once they got back to England, it was goodbye James. Vic had let himself be pushed around for too long.
