Raptor (The Zone Unknown)

by Paul Zindel

  “What?”

  “Larry Ghost Coyote told me Bones is mounting a search team from a base camp at the Flaming Gorge dam.”

  “Bones must know about the raptors,” Zack said.

  “I’m not sure what he knows,” Spider Grandma said. “I’m closing up to check it out. I borrowed another cell phone from the Kidney Lake diesel station. Only the last four digits are different: 7176. Like the date of the American Revolution, but mix it up a little. All I know is that Bones is buying up every shotgun, crossbow, and bazooka he can get his hands on!”

  7

  APPROACHING…

  Picasso raced toward the center of the huge chamber. He began to sniff at the ground and stalk a scent in ever-widening circles. “We’ve got to hurry and find Honker,” Zack said, “or Bones is going to have every local trapper hunting down here.”

  Uta followed Zack, weaving through a forest of yellow-and-red stalagmites.

  “You know, I’ve been wondering why you don’t like it here in Utah,” Uta said. “Maybe you just weren’t doing anything. What you needed was a raptor hunt where you might be eaten at any minute. That probably makes you feel like you’re back in L.A. You know, drive-by devourings …”

  Zack smiled, but his eyes searched carefully about the vastness of the great cave. He decided to take out one of the flares from his backpack and light it. The flare sparked, then began to glow with a steady light. Here, the cave and the mine blended into a mixture of man-made gizmos and startling nature. The far end of the cave narrowed as if it were a huge, glistening throat, stalactites hanging everywhere like icicles. The sides of the cave were lined with rows of ornate limestone towers. Elevated ore chutes and mine car railways shot every which way through the space like swords thrust into a huge magician’s cabinet.

  Uta checked the map. “There are supposed to be petroglyphs somewhere around here.”

  “There,” Zack said, turning the lights from his helmet onto a tremendous slab of granite looming beside the entrance to a tunnel. The paintings at the center of the slab were hunting scenes, bowmen confronting a quarry of bighorn sheep. Below them were charcoal and pigmented drawings of snakes, and shamans in horned head-dresses with rainbow-colored feathers. Closest to the tunnel entrance itself was a distinct rendering of a flute player with a rope dancing upward.

  “The safe route must be the tunnel,” Uta said.

  Zack didn’t answer. He was busy watching Picasso. The dog had stopped circling. “Why’s he staring up at the ore chutes?” he said.

  Uta turned to look. The lights on her helmet shot out across the expanse and lit up the chutes and mine tracks. She turned back to examine the petroglyph nearest the chutes. There were paintings of immense furry beasts with huge teeth and multiple heads. One monster was shown flying with a bleeding fox in its jaws. “Spider Grandma said that the monster drawings will only lead to death,” Uta said. “We have to follow the flute player and dancing rope.”

  “Listen,” Zack said.

  “What?”

  “Just listen.”

  Finally, Uta heard sounds—as though the highest reaches of the cave were whispering. “It’s probably the wind.”

  “No,” Zack said. “It’s like … growling.”

  “We have to follow the flute—”

  “I’ll check out the chutes.”

  “No—”

  “You wait here,” Zack said.

  “Call Spider Grandma back,” Uta said. “Let’s ask her.” She grabbed the cell phone, pulled up its antenna, and held the receiver up to her ear. “There’s no dial tone.”

  “We’ve moved deeper into the cave.”

  “Then let’s go back.”

  The flare began to sputter and went out. Zack considered a retreat—but he remembered his father. How overworked and depressed he’d become under Bones’s thumb. He knew his father was counting on him, believed he had made a great find—something that would change their lives forever.

  He thought of Honker.

  “I’ve got to check the chutes,” Zack said, grabbing his gear. “Bones’ll be all over this place by nightfall.”

  “Hey!” Uta shouted. “You’re not leaving me here.” She dashed after him as he strode up the main ramp. Picasso scooted ahead of both of them. “Spider Grandma said someone’s going to die a horrible death,” Uta reminded Zack.

  “It was a vision…. A dream.”

  “Yeah, but her visions have a funny way of coming true.”

  Several of the rickety tracks and chutes crossed each other on a large wooden platform that jutted out from the cave wall. Uta checked the map as she walked to the edge of a drop-off that disappeared into a black pit. “The map calls this ‘Devil’s Slide.’”

  “Where does it go?”

  Uta turned her helmet lights so they shot down into the blackness. The rock was covered with a slippery moss, and the drop curved sharply out of sight like a laundry chute. “Not anyplace good,” she said.

  Picasso trotted to the mouth of the longest chute and started to whine.

  “Is Honker this way?” Zack asked Picasso. “Is he, boy?”

  Picasso’s whine became a howl, and he started out onto the ramp. The flooring of the ramp was a badly worn conveyor belt. They followed Picasso. The chute led higher and higher above the floor of the cave. Uta stared over the sides and down the fifty foot drop to the bed of pointed stalagmites. She moaned.

  “We’ve got to move it,” Zack said, picking up the pace.

  They continued down the longest stretch of the chute toward the center of the cave where another ramp fed in to join it. Uta held onto the wooden sides of the chute for balance. The cave was darker, and her hand brushed against something.

  “Zack?”

  “What?”

  “I feel something—something hairy on the inside of this chute.”

  Zack let his hands swing out into the shadows of the railings. He could feel something strange, too. He stopped and knelt down. At first, he thought the sides were lined with a dark rug or blanket. The lights from his helmet made the insulation undulate—move.

  Uta slowly knelt beside Zack and looked closer.

  Closer.

  They both froze, then screamed as the sides of the chute became a flutter of shiny membranes—thousands of little wings. The entire blanket came violently alive as a horde of bats rose about them, flying rodents with wet, hideous mouths and beady eyes. Uta screamed and the chute shook crazily. It seemed it would break loose from its moorings, drop, and shatter onto the limestone daggers below.

  The massive cloud of bats washed over Uta and Zack. Uta thrashed, threw up her hands to protect her face and keep the bats out of her hair. Picasso snapped at the air and barked. The cloud of winged rats lifted, the fluttering mass zooming high toward dark places in the dome.

  After a long while, Uta calmed. She checked her arms and face for scratches and bites. Zack could see she was close to tears. “A fine zoologist I’d make,” she mumbled.

  “At least it wasn’t any kind of large critter,” Zack said. “I mean, it wasn’t wildcats or anything like that.”

  “Yeah, but I like normal wild animals in normal quantities. There’s nothing normal about this place!” She used her hand as a comb, searching through her hair for any stray bats.

  “There’s nothing,” Zack said.

  Picasso whined again and moved forward on the ramp.

  “He’s onto something,” Zack said.

  Uta trailed Zack silently as they continued farther out on the ore chute. She kept looking straight ahead to a point where a second chute branched into the one they were on. She wondered what new horrors were waiting for them. “This ramp … this whole thing is vibrating,” Uta said.

  Zack felt the sway and movement.

  “You’re right.”

  They looked at each other.

  “I don’t feel so good,” Uta said. “Like I’m going to engage in reverse peristalsis.”

  “Puke?”

&nbs
p; “Yes.”

  “Maybe you should sit down a while?”

  “No,” Uta said. “There’s probably guano all over with rabies and nits in it. I just want to get off this thing.”

  She stuck closer to Zack, her head spinning to check all around them. She could hear her lungs sucking air now, as Zack moved ahead step-by-step. She knew the loud thumping she could hear was her own blood pulsing through her temples. She began to worry that something large and hideous was about to come out of the darkness behind her, so she moved quickly in front of Zack.

  Zack stared at something coming around the corner from the connecting ramp. “How cute,” he said. “A Puppy.”

  Uta looked up to see what he was talking about. Picasso had already frozen like a birddog pointing at the tiny intruder. At first the little animal seemed like a young collie or German shepherd. Then three massive stark white animals trotted out onto the ramp next to the pup. The flashlights reflected in their eyes, making them look like demons.

  The animals shook their heads nervously, neurotically. They curled their snouts back. A series of growls slid out from between shining, saliva-drenched teeth.

  Zack and Uta slowly—quietly—started to back up.

  “What are they?” Zack asked.

  Uta said, “Some kind of … WOOOOOOOOLVES!” She spun away from the snarling beasts. She knew they weren’t normal wolves. Normal wolves don’t attack humans. They were larger. Some kind of mutant trogloxenes, or cave visitors—animals that commonly enter caves but do not live in them.

  Zack saw Uta and Picasso running back the way they’d come, and he started sprinting after them. The moment he moved, the wolves broke into a frenzy of howling. With teeth bared, they bolted forward after him.

  Uta felt the chute sway sharply from the weight of the chase. She glanced over her shoulder. In the flickering light, she saw the largest wolf leaping into position as the front-runner. She and Zack shrieked. Picasso yelped.

  Zack caught up to Uta quickly. “Faster!” he shouted. “Go faster!”

  “I can’t!”

  “I’m going to run up your back!”

  Several planks shook loose and dropped down to shatter on the stalagmites.

  “AWWWWWWW, JEEZ,” she heard Zack wailing.

  Uta tripped as her foot tore through a section of the rotting conveyor belt. Zack yanked her upright, shoved her onward, back into a run. The wolves closed in on them, howling and snapping, hungrier now—as though they could taste the kill.

  “Devil’s Slide!” Zack yelled.

  “What?”

  “Jump into Devil’s Slide!”

  “ARE YOU CRAZY?”

  “It’s our only chance!”

  Uta was the first to reach the main platform from which they had started. She scooped up Picasso and backed toward the wet black hole.

  “GO! GO!” Zack shouted.

  “NO!”

  Zack hit the platform with the wolves snapping at his heels. “DO IT!”

  Uta turned, still holding Picasso, and jumped. The lead wolf closed for a kill as Zack leaped after Uta into the dark hole. He felt the slime of half-rotting algae and moss, and heard Uta shrieking anew below him. Zack counted the seconds as he dropped, sliding over rock after rock—one, two, three seconds—finally he was free-falling toward Uta’s screams and Picasso’s frantic barking.

  When he landed, the lights on his helmet lit up Uta flailing, struggling against a dozen open jaws—her arms and legs caught in tremendous slabs of teeth. He saw her hitting, kicking at the beasts, and he felt his own arms slipping into a pair of gaping jaws. He screamed along with Uta, again and again, as he waited for the pain and the blood and death.

  Instead, Picasso ran over to him and started licking his face.

  It took a few moments more before they realized that all of the teeth and jaws were parts of dead animals. Skulls and bones and claws of wolves and bears and raccoons.

  “It’s some kind of … graveyard,” Zack said, gasping for breath. “A boneyard of dead … animals.”

  Uta stopped screaming. Reflexively, she gave the harmless bones and skulls several more kicks, and then burst into tears.

  “I don’t need this much wilderness,” she sobbed. “This cave is crazy. There aren’t any rules. Everything’s a mutation!”

  Picasso scooted to her and started licking one of her ears. Zack straightened his helmet, crawled across the bed of bones to her, and put his arm around her. “Hey, come on, now. Everything’s fine. We’re safe.”

  “And the wolves?”

  He pointed. “Up there—I hope.”

  Zack took a tissue from his jeans and wiped at the tears on her face. “What is this horrible place?” Zack asked.

  She looked around and saw how huge a pile of bones they’d landed on. “I think it’s where something dumps its leftovers.” She noticed half the skulls were cracked and most of the bones were shattered. “Something kills animals, eats their flesh, then dumps the bones here when it’s finished. Terrible housekeeper. And I can imagine who.”

  “Oh, God,” Zack said.

  “What?”

  “I’m hungry and I don’t feel like eating a sandwich or a grub. I wish we were in an L.A. mall,” he said. “We could get a slice of pizza, or share a chocolate chip cookie—or go see a movie …”

  Uta put her finger up to his mouth. “Shhhh.”

  “What?”

  “Honking,” Uta said, staring down into a long, dark tunnel. “I hear honking.”

  Dr. Boneid coughed in the gray dust of the dam’s parking lot as he got out and slammed the Rover’s door. He shook hands with Manny Spencer and Eric Gonzales, the only workers and drinking buddies he trusted on the dig. He had told them what they were really stalking, and they had already organized the lot into something resembling a small army base.

  “You find Professor Norak’s rockslide?” Boneid asked. “Where he had his stupid accident?”

  “Yep,” Eric said. “It’s a mine entrance higher on the north slope.” He pointed to a map. “Right here.”

  “He was as dumb as a box of rocks messing around up there,” Manny said in his South Carolina accent. “We found what was his mule. More guts than you can shake a stick at—something tore its head off.”

  Boneid thought that over a moment. “That’s too bad,” he said. His eyes searched the parking lot. He was glad to see they’d brought his air-conditioned trailer up from the dig. “Did the Kinski brothers get down here with their bear traps?”

  “Yeah,” Manny said. He was a barrel-chested stub of a man, in his mid-forties and the best rifle shot in eastern Utah.

  “They’ve got another trapper on his way from Meeks Cabin Reservoir,” Eric said. “He’s got a tranquilizing gun that’ll put a grizzly to sleep at a hundred yards:’ Eric was younger, taller, and more muscular. He had a shock of dirty-blond hair over intense, crazy eyes.

  “It’d better be able to take down an elephant,” Boneid said, spitting on what was left of the Rover’s corroded hood. “We’re going to need it.”

  Spencer and Gonzales fell in step next to Dr. Boneid as he set off to check the equipment. A dozen or so rusting trucks and vans with mirror ornaments, rifle racks, and crude bumper stickers were parked by the dam’s maintenance shed. Boneid had pulled in every chip he had with the parks commissioner and Flaming Gorge Dam authorities. He’d told everyone that he’d spotted a large lizard and that he wanted to trap it. No big deal.

  Nothing much.

  He didn’t tell anyone except Manny and Eric that he was after a living dinosaur! No one had to know he was euphoric with the possibilities of what capturing one would mean. The celebrity. The money. The merchandising. It was a paleontologist’s ultimate trip. He was sure they’d catch the young raptor, but they’d probably have to blow the head off the big one to get it.

  “You’ve got the blueprints on the mine?” Boneid asked.

  “In your trailer,” Manny said. “The parks commissioner sent them right over
, along with one of his top engineers in the water control offices. He says if you need water, he’ll give you all you want faster than a house afire.”

  Boneid smiled. It always amazed him how far a couple of lunches and gift bottles of champagne went with the local movers and shakers.

  “Dr. Bones!” one of the workers called out from the shade of a tent.

  “Hey there,” Boneid called back, mumbling, pretending he remembered his name. He waved to a handful of Mexican workers setting out carbide lamps, flashlights, and other spelunking equipment. He liked it when anyone called him “Dr. Bones.” He’d created the name for the media. He thought it would be catchy. Folksy. Help propel him to fame and glory. No point in sounding like some two-bit stuffy scholar.

  “You bring up the dumdum shells and dynamite from the dig?” Boneid asked.

  “Yeah,” Manny said. “We got bullet tips that’ll rip the heart out of Godzilla. Plenty of double-loaded ammo for the shotguns, not as strong—but better than a poke in the eye with a burned stick.”

  Boneid halted by a long, air-conditioned horse trailer. Workers lowered a ramp from the back of the trailer like it was part of an overnight circus. There was a rumbling as the Kinski brothers supervised rolling down a six-foot metal cage with glimmering two-inch bars of steel.

  “Nice cage, eh?” Eric said.

  “Yeah,” Boneid agreed. “For the little one.”

  He stopped and looked up to the north slope of the mountain. “Did you clear the slide yet?”

  Eric scratched at the two-day stubble on his chin. “Yeah.”

  “Then let’s get the lead out,” Dr. Boneid said. “A little recon before the main search.” He saw his hands were beginning to shake. “I’ll follow you on up.”

  8

  DARK SANCTUM

  Devil’s Slide was much too slippery for Zack and Uta to climb back up. The only escape from the pit of bones was down, deeper through a cave passage with a mist that was so thick it tasted of death. The passage grew narrower, and a wind began to roar into their faces. Uta tied her hair back from her face and Picasso bit at the air.