by Robert Bevan
“No, sir. I’m afraid not.”
“Dinosaurs?” asked Julian.
“I’m sorry, sir. The jungle canopy was too thick for me to make out any wildlife.”
“Don’t apologize, Ravenus,” said Julian. “You done good.”
“You might even find shelter at the mouth of the inlet,” said Ravenus.
Julian raised his eyebrows. “Is there a cave?”
“No, it’s more of a humanoid-built structure.”
“Wait a minute,” said Tim. “Are you saying there are other people on this island?”
“Cannibals,” said Cooper.
“The Others,” said Julian.
“What’s it like?” asked Tim.
“It’s very nice,” said Ravenus. “It’s made of wood. It has a lovely view of the beach, and an attractive vegetable garden in the front yard. It’s not dissimilar to what you might find along the north end of the Bluerun River.”
Tim stood up to give Ravenus a stern look. “Why wasn’t that the first fucking thing you mentioned?”
“What’s up?” asked Dave. Neither he nor Gilda appeared to shine with the afterglow of hot, sweaty dwarf sex. Pity. His armor, however, while still scarred with various dents and hoofprints, was shinier than it had ever been, scrubbed clean with sand and salt water.
Tim pointed down at his Pac Man map. “We’re here. Ravenus says there’s some kind of wooden, man-made structure here.” He pointed at the top of Pac Man’s head. “The magic portal leading back to Cardinia should be somewhere around here. I say we check out the house first. Maybe whoever lives there can lead us to the portal. You’re the wise one, Dave. What do you think?”
Dave nodded slowly before speaking. “I think this is very good news.”
“How’s that?”
“That pteranodon was probably a one-off random encounter. Think about it. How long would you expect some rickety wooden shack to last if this place was crawling with dinosaurs?”
“That sounds reasonable,” said Julian. “But we’re in the game, and game logic doesn’t always reflect real-world logic. What if that house is only there because Mordred drew it on a map without considering –” He froze.
“Without considering what?” asked Dave.
“Shut up for a second.”
Dave folded his arms. “No, I won’t shut up. If you’re so keen to poke holes in my logic, at least –”
“Dude, shut the fuck up!” Julian’s voice was a panicked whisper. “Did you feel that?”
Tim, Dave, Cooper, and Gilda looked at each other and shook their heads.
“There it is again!” said Julian. “Look at Cooper’s piss!”
“Hey, come on, man,” said Cooper. “You know I can’t always hold it in. It’s not my fault.”
Julian waved for Cooper to stop talking as the group stared down at the puddle of urine around his left foot. “Just wait. Cooper, stand as still as you can.”
A few seconds passed.
“This is making me very uncomfortable,” said Cooper.
Just before the last of Cooper’s pee disappeared into the sand, the surface of the puddle rippled.
Julian looked at Tim. “You don’t think that means…”
Tim sighed. “Of course it fucking does.”
“Holy balls,” said Dave.
Tim followed the gaze of Dave’s suddenly very wide eyes. About half a mile up the beach, a tyrannosaurus was waving its Volkswagen-sized head back and forth.
Tim, Julian, Dave, and Cooper froze like statues, as if they’d all been preparing for this moment since 1993.
“Let’s go!” whispered Gilda, stepping toward the jungle.
“Stop!” said Dave.
“Why?” Gilda frowned at Tim. “You guys aren’t thinking about trying to ride it, are you, like you did with the pteranodon?”
“Well I wasn’t before,” said Cooper.
“No!” said Tim. “The T-Rex can only see you if you move.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“Just trust me, okay? Stand very, very still.”
Gilda looked doubtful, but she nodded.
The tyrannosaurus sniffed the air, swung its massive head toward them, and roared like a stadium full of angry whales. If it was an ordinary breeze that blew their hair back in time with the roar, it was a hell of a coincidence.
The ground shook as one giant foot crashed into the sand in their direction. Then the other. Then more quickly.
“Okay,” said Tim. “Fuck this. Let’s go.”
Not one of the others needed any further prodding.
“What happened to standing still?” asked Gilda as she ran alongside Tim.
“My source may not have been as reliable as I thought.”
“These trees aren’t dense enough to slow it down,” said Julian. “We can’t outrun it!”
“We don’t have to,” said Cooper. “We just have to outrun Dave!”
“Hey fuck you!” said Dave, waddling behind the rest of them.
The ground trembled in half-second intervals as Tim barreled over giant ferns.
“Keep running, sir,” said Ravenus. “I’ll handle the creature.”
“You’ll what?”
“Trust me, sir.” Ravenus flew off in the opposite direction.
“Where the fuck is your bird going?” asked Cooper.
“He said he was going to handle the T-Rex.”
Cooper snorted. “Sweet. Can I recommend that, for your next familiar, you choose something less stupid. Like, I don’t know, a rock or a piece of toast or something?”
“Ravenus isn’t stupid,” said Julian, whipping branches out of his face as he ran. “And I don’t sense any fear in him. He has a plan.”
Julian had risked his life on more than one occasion to protect that stupid bird. The fact that he hadn’t doubled back to fight a tyrannosaurus now was evidence that he had complete confidence in whatever plan Ravenus had concocted in his little bird brain. Tim only hoped that it didn’t involve trying to choke the beast to death by flying into its trachea.
The tyrannosaurus roared again. It was closer this time, but the ground had suddenly stopped shaking.
Julian slowed to a jog, then stopped running altogether. Cooper, Gilda, and Tim stopped as well.
“He did it!” said Julian.
Tim searched Julian’s face for signs of crushing despair, but Julian was smiling. Ravenus had clearly not gone with the trachea gambit.
Something smaller, but much closer, crashed through the tall ferns toward them.
“Shit!” said Cooper, readying his axe. Julian gripped his quarterstaff. Tim fumbled nervously while trying to load a bolt into his crossbow. Even Gilda, who Tim hadn’t realized was armed, produced a dagger from her sleeve.
“Bwaah!” said Dave, stumbling into view as his companions all stopped just short of chopping, stabbing, shooting, and bludgeoning him.
“Oh shit, sorry,” said Cooper. “I forgot you were behind us.”
Dave stopped to catch his breath before answering. “Thanks a lot.”
Tim exhaled, relieved that he hadn’t been able to load his crossbow in time to shoot Dave. “Dude, I’m starting to think that armor is doing you more harm than good.”
“What’s going on?” asked Dave. “Why did we stop running?”
“Ravenus took care of the T-Rex,” said Julian.
Another roar, and the ground started to shake again.
“The fuck he did!” said Dave, hurriedly waddling past the group.
The rest of the party soon overtook him, but Julian stopped again after about thirty feet.
“Wait,” he said. “Stop.”
Cooper stopped because he was stupid. Who knows why Gilda stopped. Tim stopped because he didn’t fancy continuing to run into the dinosaur-infested jungle alone.
Dave caught up to them after a few seconds. “Why are we stopped again.”
“Feel the tremors,” said Julian. “They’re getting fainter. The T-Rex is ru
nning the other way.”
Gilda put her hands on the ground. “Hmm… maybe. How can you be sure?”
“Empathy,” said Julian, looking at Cooper.
Cooper rolled his eyes. “Not this shit again.”
“Empathy?” said Gilda. “With the tyrannosaurus?”
“No. With Ravenus. We share an empathic link. I can sense that he’s quite pleased with himself right now.”
“I still think we should keep moving,” said Dave.
“I’m with you,” said Tim. The musty jungle was alive with sounds that might have been monkeys or might have been velociraptors. He couldn’t see past the ferns more than a few feet in any direction. “It’s too claustrophobic in here. I feel like we’re being watched.”
“Bullshit,” said Cooper. “You’re paranoid because we just got chased by a dinosaur.”
“As reasons for being paranoid go,” said Julian, “that sounds like a pretty good one to me. So what do you think? Make for the shore, or make for the house?”
“The house,” Gilda answered very abruptly. “The only protection the shoreline provides us is that we can see what’s going to kill us from a little farther away.”
“And what kind protection do you think a wooden house is going to provide?” asked Dave.
“Well we just don’t know, do we? And not knowing sounds just a little bit better than certain death if you ask me.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Tim. “Let’s move.”
They continued walking in the same direction they had been going while running from the tyrannosaurus. Tim replayed himself running into the jungle in his mind, and he was pretty sure they were headed roughly north by northwest.
“What other kinds of dinosaurs do you think they have here?” asked Julian, like he was on a class field trip. “It’d be cool to see those ones that spit acid.”
Tim jumped when he thought he saw a fern move in his periphery to his left. Looking in that direction revealed nothing. Just jumpy.
“You mean like the ones that killed Newman?” asked Cooper.
Julian laughed. “I think his name was Nedry in the movie.”
“He’ll always be Newman to me.”
A twig snapped somewhere beyond the ferns to Tim’s left. He was sure of it this time.
“Would you two just shut up about Wayne Knight for a minute?”
“Who the fuck is Wayne Knight?” asked Cooper.
“He’s the actor who plays Nedry,” said Dave.
“Newman,” corrected Cooper.
“What are you all talking about?” asked Gilda.
“Nothing,” said Tim. “Just everybody shut up for a minute. We’re being followed.” He raised his hands and stopped walking.
When the group stopped walking, it sounded like at least a small part of the background jungle noise fell silent.
Tim looked up at Cooper and pointed his hands in opposite directions. Cooper craned his neck to look left, then right over the ferns. He frowned and shook his head.
“Stay together,” Tim whispered. “They’re stalking us, waiting for one of us to fall behind for an easy kill.”
“Who?” asked Gilda.
“Velociraptors.”
“Sweet!” said Cooper.
“He’s right,” said Julian. “We need to get to that house ASAP.”
“Don’t you guys start running,” said Dave, his voice shaking.
Gilda folded her arms. “Look at the lot of you, foolish men! You’re working yourselves up into a frenzy over nothing. What makes you suspect we’re being stalked?”
“We have our sources,” said Tim.
“Is this the same source that told you a tyrannosaurus can only see you if you move?”
Tim looked at his feet. “Yes.”
“You’re all jumping at your own shadows. I’m not saying we’re safe, but let’s at least wait until there’s a visible threat before we soil ourselves with fear.”
Cooper grabbed a handful of ferns and reached under his loincloth. “I was hoping nobody noticed. That wasn’t fear, by the way.”
“Maybe you’re right,” said Tim, trying to convince himself that it was even a possibility. “But we should keep moving just the same.”
They walked in silence after that, which only amplified every leaf rustle, frog croak, and bug click, each one threatening to stop Tim’s heart. He wished they’d go back to talking about bullshit, but he dared not start up a conversation himself.
After about fifteen minutes, Tim’s heart rate began to slow. Maybe Gilda had been right. Or maybe the raptors had given up on trying to separate them and moved on in search of easier prey.
“Look!” said Cooper.
Tim’s heart nearly cracked his ribs. “WHAT?”
Cooper reached down with his shit-caked hands to grab him.
Tim ducked and tumbled away from Cooper’s grasp. “Just tell me what you see.”
“The jungle ends just up ahead,” said Cooper. “And I can see the house.”
Tim was tempted to let Cooper lift him over the ferns, but he resisted. His curiosity would soon be sated without him needing to smell like Cooper’s bowels.
After a few hundred more feet, Tim finally broke through the last of the jungle undergrowth. A forest of stumps and scorched earth stretched out for another five hundred feet, leading to the house that Ravenus had discovered.
What Ravenus had failed to mention was the giant wooden fence surrounding the property. Tim guessed it was no coincidence that it was around the same height as a tyrannosaurus.
“I guess that explains how they keep the place free of dinosaurs,” said Julian.
“No way,” said Dave. “It’s tall enough for sure, but it’s just a latticework of wood and bamboo. A T-rex would tear that to splinters in a matter of seconds.”
“And yet there it stands,” said Julian, sounding slightly annoyed. “I don’t know what else they’d need a fence that big for.”
“Why bother with all of this speculation?” asked Gilda. “The important thing to do right now is to get on the other side of it. There’s the gate. Let’s go.”
“Wait!” said Tim. “What about the velociraptors?”
Gilda sighed. “I thought we already established that there are no velociraptors.”
“You established that. I’m not convinced. I still feel like we’re being stalked.”
“So you want to hang out here with them?”
“I’m just saying that maybe they haven’t attacked us yet because they think they can still hide in wait for an opportune moment to strike. If we go out into the open, we deny them the ability to hide, and they might just go for broke and attack us before we make it to safety.”
Gilda shook her head. “I think you’re giving these imaginary stalkers of yours way too much credit. So what do you propose we do?”
Tim looked up at Cooper. “You’re our fastest runner. Run like a motherfucker and see if that gate is unlocked. Julian and will cover you with Magic Missiles and my crossbow.”
Cooper looked down at him and snorted. “Against velociraptors?”
Tim shrugged. “It’s all we’ve got.”
Cooper nodded. “Get your shit ready.”
Tim raised his crossbow to eye level and scanned a path from the edge of the unmolested jungle to the gate. “On three. One… two… THREE!”
Cooper bolted like a racehorse out of the gate, his feet pounding the burnt ground. The cloud of disturbed ash he left in his wake made him look cartoonishly fast as he darted and weaved around tree stumps.
Tim remembered he was supposed to be watching for velociraptors and jerked his crossbow back toward the trees. Nothing had emerged from the jungle. He glanced back at Cooper, who had now made it halfway to the fence, then back at the jungle. Still nothing. When Cooper neared the gate and slowed down to a jog, Tim lowered his crossbow.
“Feel better now, dinosaur hunter?” asked Gilda.
Tim turned around. Gilda and Julian were grinning at him.
Only Dave appeared to be appropriately nervous.
“You’re not going to shame me for being cautious. We’ve been attacked by dinosaurs twice already, and I’m not about to let my guard down to –”
Something buzzed and crackled loudly. Tim looked just in time to see Cooper engulfed in a web of blue lightning emanating from the fence.
When the lightning disappeared, Cooper fell backwards, hitting the ground hard without even trying to brace himself.
“Shit!” cried Tim.
“Horse!” said Julian. A white horse speckled with brown spots appeared next to him.
“Don’t waste all your spells on horses!” said Tim. “It’s not that far a walk.”
“I’m not wasting them all,” said Julian. “Just this one.”
“Real nice,” said Dave. “Take off and leave the rest of us to get eaten by dinosaurs.”
Julian glared down at Dave. “It’s not for me, stupid. It’s for you. Get over there and help Cooper.”
Dave’s face turned pink. “Oh, I’m sorry. I was just –”
“Just get your fat ass on the horse already.”
Helping Dave mount a horse was normally a task reserved for Cooper. Without him, it took the combined efforts of Julian, Gilda, and Tim to shove Dave onto the animal’s back.
Julian slapped the horse on the ass. “Go!”
Dave bounced in the saddle as the horse galloped toward Cooper, kicking up an even thicker cloud of smoky ash. Tim, Julian and Gilda ran behind, coughing their way through the cloud.
When they finally made it to Cooper and Dave, Cooper was sitting up, confused and disoriented, in a puddle of his own shit that radiated away from him like rays of the sun.
“I heal thee,” said Dave.
Cooper shook his head and gently pushed Dave away. “I’m good.”
“You’d better be. That was my last healing spell.”
Cooper looked from the black claws on his right hand, to the quietly humming gate, to the base of the fence, which was littered with the charred and surprised-looking corpses of countless birds, frogs, and small mammals. They were all lined up neatly a foot away from the fence. A butterfly fluttered past his face toward the fence until it exploded in a tiny globe of blue lightning. Its wings vaporized instantly as its body turned to white ash and fell to the ground. “How the fuck do you electrify a wooden fence?”
