by Rick Jones
“We can use other maps,” Ben said. “We can use the sun as a tool since we know that the constant of its trajectory is that it moves from east to west.”
“We need more than the sun,” Sommers said dejectedly. “We need landmarks to tell us if we’re on course.”
“We can do this,” Ben said.
Sommers took a seat on the loose gravel on the shoreline. “We’re all going to die here.”
“You’re giving up, Bryon?”
Sommers looked at him. “I was thinking about it.”
Ben took a seat beside him, with Cheryl flanking him on the other side. Yakamoto stood to the fore of Sommers, while Albright stood apart from the rest of the group, about twenty feet away.
“There’s five of us now,” said Cheryl, hooking an arm around his and pulling him close. “We need each other.”
Albright chortled. “Like brother and sister? That come-together feeling of uniting with one another and band together to assure the survival of all? You’re absolutely pathetic,” he told her. “Sommers is right. We’re all going to die out here.” Then he turned and walked away.
“Ignore him,” Ben told her.
“I already have.” Then to Sommers, Cheryl said: “You and Ben have been the backbone of this team, along with Mr. Yakamoto, who pitched in when the time called for it.” She looked at Yakamoto, who gave her a light smile and a nod. She returned the smile with one of her own, one that said I-told-you-so, but in a way of good will. Sometimes it is more honorable to conform to existing conditions, rather than to be locked in by the standards of ancient tradition.
Her smile was very telling, and it was a lesson learned by Yakamoto. One he appreciated.
Yakamoto went to a knee before Sommers. “If I may, Mr. Sommers, your services have proved valuable to us thus far. And this isn’t about you. If Cheryl taught me one thing, this isn’t about just one person. This is about all of us.”
Sommers looked at Yakamoto, at his tattoos. Yakamoto was a killer, an assassin with the yakuza. But he was not without honor either. It was obvious to Sommers that when a person like Yakamoto gave his word, despite his background, he would keep it.
Sommers sighed. Pity time was over. He got to his feet, brushed the dirt off his backside, and looked up at the next challenge, a two-hundred-foot wall, straight up. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
When he said this, there was no pun intended as the cameras mounted on the wall began to focus and home in on their position.
Then they started to climb, the cameras catching everything.
#
The climb up was a cautious one. No mistakes were made. And everyone succeeded.
They hoisted themselves up and over the edge, lying supine on the ground for a moment to catch their breath. Scudding clouds passed overhead, the atmosphere was hot and muggy, and not a measureable breeze blew to soothe the skin. The day was setting itself up as a promise to be one of hardship.
When they stood along the ravine’s edge, they looked across to where Hughes had built a small fire. Nothing was left of him with the exception of a few stones set in a circular pattern that contained a few smoldering ashes. There was no pack, no splashes of blood or gore, nothing, the area had been completely sanitized.
No one said a word.
When Ben finally took point, the others followed.
And the cameras watched their every move, their every step, as ratings continued to soar.
Chapter Twenty-Two
When Haynes returned to the studio’s viewing room, the entire production crew was there milling around with beehive activity. People were on landlines talking to sponsors, editors and producers were discussing angle shots, and others were simply gofers who did the menial jobs that no one else wanted to do.
By the time Peter Haynes stood before the studio monitor, the cast members had just finished climbing up the wall of the ravine. “What did I miss?” he asked the producer. “Anything?”
“Nah. They made the climb topside,” he said. “No fatalities. They’re heading for the central region of the valley.”
Haynes was pleased. The central valley was where the herbivores were, the creatures feeding off the lush vegetation. And where there were herbivores, there were carnivores.
“Well, I guess now we actually get to see their mettle,” he said, watching the five march across an open plain. “They thought it was rough before. Wait until they get a load of what they’re about to walk into. No raptors, no Megalania Priscas, no Kronos. Now it’s time to play with the bad boys.”
Haynes watched the screen as the squad of five headed toward a hillside. On the other side something throbbed as a blip on the monitor screen, a life force of some kind.
“What are they heading into?” asked Haynes. “Lock on and bring it up.”
The producer did. He worked nearby cameras, zoomed in from a plethora of angles, then turned to Haynes with a wry grin. “Niiiice,” he said.
Haynes smiled as well. “This is going to be spectacular. Keep all cameras live.” Then to his production team, he announced, “All right, people, listen up! We have a situation coming up in the central quadrant! I need a chopper in the air immediately!”
Haynes placed a hand on the producer’s shoulder, and said, “We have to get this right.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
They were coming up to a series of hillsides.
The sun was directly overhead, and hot. But not sapping hot like the day before. And they were better able to manage their water supplies.
For the several miles they walked, little was said about their progress to move forward. But everyone knew that Ben’s plan was to get them to a central point in the valley, then head north to the Gates of Freedom by using the sun as a compass point. But finding the gate would not prove to be easy, regardless.
As soon as they crested the hill Ben froze, then hit the ground, waving for the others to do the same.
They did.
But not without drawing the attention of what was on the other side.
#
A Tyrannosaurus Rex was a master hunter with a heavy body balanced by a thick tail, was quick on its feet, and could process information through a master set of olfactory senses sited along the nasal canals to supply immediate messages to its brain.
Despite rumors that dinosaurs had walnut-sized brains that were hardly functional, this is incorrect. It is now believed that the brain of a dinosaur had intellectually evolved with a complex system of data processing, with the dinosaur using a large capacity of its brain, much higher than the ten percent that man currently uses. This accounted for their survival on this planet that lasted for more than two hundred million years. If it wasn’t for the extraterrestrial bolide that caused the last and final extinction event sixty-four million years ago, they may still be ruling the planet.
There had been other suggestions that the T-Rex wasn’t a hunter at all, but a scavenger, which is also untrue. This creature was specifically designed as an apex predator with a massive head, powerful jaws, and speeds to run down its prey upwards in the vicinity of fifty-miles-per hour.
On this day, however, it had taken down an orphaned Triceratops calf that was less than half the size of an adult, a quick and easy kill. Then it picked up something downwind, a scent that was alien and familiar to it at the same time.
It raised its head and turned to the origin of the smell that was so miniscule, it was able to determine what they were from a drop of sweat that emerged from a single pore of their skin, the Rex having crossed the path of these creatures before, knowing they were out of their element.
The Rex stepped off the dead calf with its pinning leg, took a few tentative steps toward the cast members, then stood as idle as a cat on the hunt, its head forward, eyes focusing.
When a helicopter flew into range from the central part of the valley and hovered overhead, the T-Rex reared its head and bellowed, its cry long and loud with enough decibels to ra
ttle the bones of those hunkering down on the hillside, the air a conduit as the vibrations carried.
And then it started forward, its pace slow at first, then gathering momentum, its speed picking up, the beast running faster, going from thirty to forty miles an hour within a few steps, the Rex coming closer, its jaws extending, its roar as abrasive as fingers being drawn across a blackboard.
From above, the chopper drew closer for the money shot.
#
Ben got to his feet, aiding Cheryl to hers. “Move!” he cried.
The five raced down the hill toward a rocky berm about a hundred yards away.
The T-Rex was closing, and fast, the tremors of its footfalls rattling the earth beneath their feet.
Ben looked behind them, saw the Rex nearly upon them, and pressed everyone to move faster.
The stretch of land before them.
The rocks.
The recesses between the rocks—the safe havens they could provide.
Salvation seemed so far away, the safety of the boulders and stones an impossibility to reach.
The head of the T-Rex was leaning in, its fetid breath hot against their backs, its mouth widening and reaching for Sommers’ backpack, its teeth about to bite and snatch him away, to lift him high in the air and crush him between its jaws, then sending his broken remains to the back of its gullet before swallowing.
It bore down on Sommers, the man crying out something nonsensical as he felt his impending death quickly approaching.
The T-Rex was upon him.
#
While the T-Rex was giving chase, the telecaster in the helicopter motioned for the pilot to get closer. But the pilot balked at this until the analyst issued threats, saying that Peter Haynes could either reward him for diving down for the premier shot, or find his ass on skid row working in sweat shops in places like York or Queensland, places of societal oppression, places of hell with no hope of manning a chopper ever again.
With the threats striking a chord deep, the pilot banked and dipped sharply, the chopper losing attitude and closing in until the scaled patterns on the T-Rex’s back could be seen.
“Closer!” yelled the telecaster over the sound of the rotors.
“Are you out of your mind?!”
“I said closer! This is going to be a million-to-one lifetime shot!”
The pilot drew so close to the T-Rex, he was sure that the analyst could reach out and touch it.
#
Just as its jaws were about to close on Sommers and snatch him off his feet and into clenching teeth, its senses picked up another threat, one that was very close. Something directly above its head was silhouetted against the sun, the darkened shape of a flying predator.
In a split moment of reaction driven more out of self-preservation than hunger, raised its head and rammed it against the skid of the helicopter, causing the chopper to lose its stability and to spiral. The beast snapped its head again, this time ramming its skull against the chopper’s body and severely denting it as if its side was as thin and pliable as a sheet of aluminum foil. The chopper spun madly, the pilot and analyst hanging onto straps for dear life. And then it hit as blades struck and chopped at the ground, kicking up dust and earth as the rotors smashed into pieces that flew in every degree of direction.
The chopper lay still on its side as smoke rose from the bay.
The telecaster checked himself. A small cut on his hand—that was it, a small price to pay for such a violent crash. The pilot, however, wasn’t so lucky. His helmet cracked from impact, a hard blow to the skull, smashing his head like a melon with pulpy mass caught within the bowl of the broken head gear.
The analyst began to whimper and whine as a fire and smoke started to break from the panel. He undid his harness, stood up, grabbed the lip of the bay’s opening, and pulled himself up.
The Rex was standing over him with a foot pinning the downed helicopter to the ground.
The analyst froze, and then his bladder released.
The T-Rex cocked its head and snorted, the twin blasts blowing the analyst’s perfectly coifed hair into a tangled mess.
And then it roared, one of victory, as it snatched the analyst cleanly and devoured him.
The telecaster got exactly what he wanted.
He got his money shot.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It was a money shot all right.
The production staff was beyond jubilation. The shot the pilot provided was priceless. The chopper swooped close, so close they could see the colored patterns on its hide. And then the Rex’s reaction when its head hammered the skid that sent the chopper into an uncontrollable spin, downing it, the pilot dead and the telecaster soon to be.
Haynes was high-fiving his producers, his staff, loving every moment of it.
The kill was incredible, the action more than they could hope for.
Even though the five managed to get away, the producers were still able to put together a gorgeous piece of footage.
#
They had reached the rocks and crevices with no one more relieved than Sommers.
From their vantage point, they were able to watch the epilogue of the scene play out. The Rex was angered upon the helicopter’s approach and acted summarily by defending its ground. It had used its head as a ram and did irreparable damage on the first blow. When the chopper fell to the ground, the apex predator went to finish off the job. At first it sniffed at the copter’s fuselage, treating the takedown as it would any other animal. Then it raised a leg, pinning the machine to the ground, a trait we still see birds do today.
As soon as the analyst raised his head from the bay and the T-Rex took notice, nobody needed to see more with the exception of Albright, who watched the outcome to its last bloody moment.
“Are you all right?” Ben asked Sommers.
Sommers nodded. Then he raised his machete. “How useless is this against something like that?” he asked rhetorically, then he tossed the blade aside in disgust.
They were well hidden inside a recess inside a rock wall surrounded by large stones and boulders. Not quite deep enough to be a cave, but not shallow enough to be considered one, either.
“Now what?” Cheryl asked. “No matter what direction we go in, we’re always being redirected.”
“Whatever the hell that thing was,” said Sommers, “it's not just going to let us parade right through its territory, and we need to go north.”
“Then we detour,” said Ben. “As soon as it leaves, then we head south, then northeast, we give it a wide berth, and maneuver back to the north.”
“You’re talking about another ten-plus miles,” Albright complained.
“Hey, look. If you want to cross paths with whatever the hell that is again, be my guest.”
Albright shook his head and went to the other side of the recess.
“But, Ben.” Cheryl looked at him with tired eyes. “There’s no guarantee that there won’t be any more of those things to the south of us, or to the northeast, and then to the north as you’re proposing. We just don’t know.”
“You’re right,” he told her, placing a calm hand on her forearm. “We don’t. But we don’t know if there are, either. We just have to try. We have plenty of water to see us through.”
“Yeah,” said Yakamoto. “But the food supply is pretty much gone.”
“We can’t stay here,” Ben finalized. “We can go more than a few days without food.”
No one responded to that. In fact, a quiet passed over them like a horrible pall.
Ben leaned against the wall and measured the faces around him. They were sad faces, lost faces, faces that no longer held any weight of hope. And Ben couldn’t blame them. His hope had become just as diminished, a smoldering ember that was losing any means of being rekindled.
When he looked at Cheryl, she feigned him a smile. He feigned one back, the measure was one of invitation. She inched her way beside him with Ben sweeping an arm around her and pulled her close.
>
They were down to five now.
And they had so far to go.
Worse, they had no idea where the Gates of Freedom were.
After two days, not only were they lost directionally but spiritually as well.
The valley was beating them.
Burying her face deep against Ben’s jumpsuit, Cheryl began to cry.
Even she had lost hope.
Then Ben remembered what Sommers had said earlier in the day about how they were all going to die out here. Ben then came to the realization that Sommers was right, they were going to die out here. Every single one of them.
He looked at Sommers who reciprocated, their eyes fixing.
You were right, Sommers. You were always right.
A moment later Sommers turned away.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The night was raw with rain, and bodies grew cold no matter how close they congregated. Fire was definitely ruled out since it would likely serve as a beacon rather than a source of comfort.
Albright, however, seemed unaffected. He sat aside from the others and alone by choice, staring at the landscape with his knees drawn up and his elbows resting on them.
Situated against the small of his back and tied in by the waistband of his jumpsuit was a Smith & Wesson. He had lost the other when the Kronosaurus lifted the raft, the weapon falling free as they were sent airborne from underneath.
But he still had the other, fully operational and plenty of ammo with a full magazine and one in the chamber. Out here, though, it was useless, like a peashooter against a gorilla. But it was still the scepter of rule amongst team members. And he considered that the producers knew this would build drama within to betray and kill your associates to save yourself in the end, and all sense of unity be damned. Let the human condition play out as it was meant to be: kill if you had to for the sake of self-preservation, even if it was at the cost of another’s life. After all, he didn’t have to outrun the bear, only the individual running beside him. And with a bullet in their leg . . .
