by Brian King
Sheela and I did most of our backbreaking labor in the afternoons. I’d worked out a loose plan to do the job in three phases. Phase one was chopping down sixty trees and then dragging each of them to the job site near the giant sequoia. I had figured each wall would need about 20 six-inch-wide logs stacked on top of each other in order to make a ten-foot tall barricade. It took us about four days to chop and drag them all.
Phase two was stripping the branches off each of the fallen trees so we’d have somewhat straight logs for the walls. It was easier on the hands but there were so many branches that it took another three days of mind-numbing work to get them prepared. We tossed all the trimmed-off wood in a huge pile behind our home sequoia tree, which gave us an appreciation of how much cutting we’d done.
The final phase of the fort entailed stacking all the logs on top of each other and joining them together with our homemade cord. I’d planned to have the walls about ten feet high so that large predators couldn’t hop over them, but we had to stop at seven feet because it became too hard to lift the heavy logs any higher.
We built it to be a lot like a big log cabin without a full roof. Trel was absolutely correct about laying the logs one on top of the next so we kept the digging and hammering of poles to a minimum. We did have to drive in a few smaller support posts on each side of our walls, but her way was much easier than trying to stick all the larger logs into the ground. I tried to compliment her for the design each day, but her replies often included heavier than usual amounts of insults. Now that it was nearly done, I planned to thank her at least one more time.
“We can move in tomorrow,” I said to Sheela while she rested near the corner of the seven-foot wall.
“Have you decided how to attach the fort to the big tree?” Sheela replied.
We used the sequoia as one of our four walls, but there was no way to join the other two walls directly to the thick bark of the giant tree. I had an idea to tie a rope to each side of the fort and then loop it all the way around the base of the trunk as a support. However, it took me thirty paces to walk around the whole thing, meaning we needed over one hundred feet of very strong rope. It would have taken us days to make one long enough.
“We’ll tie each wall to the roots,” I said. “We can do that after we move in. We’ll dig the holes together.” I came up with several other ideas for bracing the walls against the redwood, including some rather crazy ones like carving out stone nails to hold it all together. But after thinking about it for a few days, I realized I didn’t have to tie a rope all the way around the trunk, I only needed to tie around a couple of strong roots. I dug a test hole and discovered the tree’s roots were just below the surface.
“I admit I am glad we do not have to make all that rope,” the sexy feline woman said in her steady voice. “However, we are going to have some hard work digging, so I suppose it all remains in balance.”
“It’s going to be super cool once we have this all done,” I said. “The fort almost looks like it’s a part of the redwood tree, don’t you think?”
“Super cool? It is very hot, Victor.” Sheela looked to the sky as if to check the weather.
“No, in this case I used ‘cool’ to mean something awesome,” I said with laughter. “Our fort looks great. I sure as hell wasn’t suggesting anything on this world is a cool temperature, but I’d love to build us an air conditioning system once we complete the hut part of the fort.”
“Do you think it ever gets cold here?” Sheela replied as she looked over the hot and dusty work site.
“I honestly have no idea,” I answered. “I think dinosaurs lived on Earth in a time when it was much warmer than I’m used to, so maybe the aliens cut and pasted the climate, too. I do know that jungles generally don’t get snow where I come from,” I looked at the big tree next to us, “but the redwoods of California do get snow from time to time. Maybe the aliens can make it snow on us here in the grove, but keep it hot at the jungle lake?” I laughed, though there was no reason to believe they couldn’t.
“We have cold periods on my planet, but it very rarely snows where I live,” Sheela said. “If our lives did not depend on finding plant and animal life to survive, and we had the proper shelter to keep us warm, I think I would enjoy watching peaceful snow in this place.”
“Yeah, I think so too. I’d take almost anything over this oppressive heat.” I wiped my brow with my forearm at the mere mention of being hot and sweaty. The high pines of the towering redwoods provided quite a bit of shade but did little for the humidity.
“Tomorrow we will build the door, anchor it, and then move in?” she asked while pointing to the opening at the corner. Since Trel refused to help, I had to think of how to make a door without massively complicating our simple little fort. If I put it in the middle of one of the twenty-foot long walls like a typical log cabin, we’d have to spend all kinds of time cutting it out. It seemed a lot easier to put the opening on the inside corner of the fort next to the redwood, so there was no cutting involved. All we needed was a bunch of straight pieces of wood to build a door, and I’d already found what I needed on a nearby cedar tree.
“Yep,” I said.
“You took little time to think about it, which is unusual,” she said with a slight smile. “Are you sure?”
Sheela and I had worked closely on the fort since day one, and I’d come to appreciate her dry sense of humor. The cutting, pulling, and stacking was backbreaking labor and left me completely and utterly dead each night, but it was made bearable because she saw the positive in most things and always seemed to nudge my spirits when they were low. I’d been saying “we can move in tomorrow” for a few days now because problems kept delaying the big event.
“Yes, I think tomorrow we will finally, without a doubt, move in,” I declared. “I want to use a bunch of straight cedar branches, so it is extra strong. I saw one of those trees down the hillside, so we’ll just have to cut the branches off.” Sheela and I had been talking about the door ever since we set the wall back a couple of feet from the tree, but there was no point cutting it down until we were ready for it. I’d been saving it kind of as a celebratory final piece of our fort “empire.”
“Your fort looks pathetic, Victor!” Trel said just loud enough to be heard from forty yards away as she stood near the top of the ramp. She loved to pop out of the cave every so often to critique my work.
“I was beginning to think she’d forgotten about me today,” I said in a muffled voice to Sheela. It was already late afternoon and Trel hadn’t said a word since the start of the day, but that was fine because her complaints were getting repetitive and less creative. I was tempted to shout back and ask Trel why her sisters weren’t showing up, but even though she had it coming, it would have been a douchey move to rub it in her face.
“Do not worry about her,” Sheela replied. “I think your fort looks great.”
“Our fort,” I corrected her. I’d been planning for and building the fort almost every waking moment for ten days, but I couldn’t have done it without her and Galmine.
“Hi, guys!” Galmine called from her spot next to Trel. She spent a lot of time at the top of the ramp acting as our lookout and water supplier. Her cheerleader-like support was an extra benefit to having her around, and it was the rock woman’s little way of countering Trel’s negative vibes.
I waved back to her and couldn’t help but smile approvingly.
“All right, Sheela,” I said as I pointed back into the forest. “Let’s go get that door built while there is still time in the day. If we are lucky, we can get it attached tonight, and then we can work on the hut tomorrow and move in before nightfall.”
“I will see it when I believe it,” she said; flubbing one of the phrases she’d heard me say recently.
“Follow me,” I replied as I snagged my axe and spear. Carrying both weapons was now second nature everywhere we went. I still wanted to craft a bow and arrow, but there was no time for new projects until the fort wa
s off our plate. Sheela had also mentioned creating slings, improved rock-tipped spears, crossbows, and something called an atlatl. We couldn’t decide if that last one was a real word or something the translator couldn’t convert from her language, but she described it as a piece of wood you held in your hand to better throw spears.
We walked about a hundred yards along the base of the hill until we reached a patch of green cedars standing together a little up the slope. I guided Sheela to the large cedar tree I’d found earlier, and we stood under the ladder-like branches, so I could point out the correct size I wanted for the door.
“Those branches are all perfectly straight and about as thick as my arm,” I explained while pointing to my targets about ten feet up. “We’ll cut a bunch down and tie them together.”
“I trust you to see pieces of a door up there,” Sheela said in such a way I was unable to tell if that was a joke or her being serious.
“Hold my spear,” I said while handing it to her. I jammed my axe handle inside my belt, so it wouldn’t fall out during my ascent. Then I grabbed the first branch just over my head and pulled myself up. From there I was able to shimmy the rest of the way into the limbs. I was surprised how easy the climb was. Ten days of axe-swinging had given me a little extra muscle to pull off the climb without complaint.
That made me think about my stats. It was fucking weird to think of myself as a character inside a game, but the aliens somehow translated my strength and movement into statistics, so maybe the values changed since I’d discovered them.
I pulled up the Eye-Q and tapped on my name.
Strength: 4
Stamina: 2
Movement: 3
Special Skill: TAME - Level 2.
Hell yeah. Just like going to the gym, the hard work eventually paid off. My strength had gone from a 3 to 4. But I didn’t know what my player character stats meant in real life. I didn’t feel any stronger, but climbing this same tree back on earth would definitely have been harder. Would I have to run a marathon to get my movement stat to go up?
I hung in the tree and paged through the Eye-Q until I remembered my mission.
I pulled out my axe and checked below to see if Sheela was clear of falling debris. I was surprised to see her smiling back up at me.
“What is it? Is my underwear showing?” I called down.
“No, well, it is a little,” she said matter-of-factly. “But I was only noting how your muscles have improved since I first met you. You are no longer as weak as you used to be. I like that.”
“The 4 instantly pays off,” I whispered to myself. I was thankful I wasn’t getting weaker, but I did find it a little embarrassing she’d noticed my unhealthy Strength: 3 condition in the first place. Instead of an active lifestyle back home, I’d excelled at fast food, driving my car to work, driving my truck at work, and then coming home to spend hours a day in my gaming chair. I still had my natural muscle tone from playing soccer in high school, chasing animals around backyards, and doing a little surfing, but I’d come to Dinosaurland looking a bit out of shape.
“What does the number four--” Sheela started to say.
She whipped her head to look at something up the hill. She crouched with her spear in hand and took a few tentative steps forward. I couldn’t see anything beyond the dense canopy of the cedar.
“What is it?” I asked a moment later.
“You have to see this,” Sheela said in an insistent voice. I hopped to the next lowest branch, then I dropped the final six feet with a heavy thump on the ground. I stood up just in time to catch the spear Sheela had tossed to me.
“What’s happening?” I asked a moment before I saw flashes of movement on the hillside above us. “Oh, shit.”
I saw what had her worried.
A handful of small golden dinosaurs ran along the hill about fifty yards above us. They adjusted their directions as if they shared the same brain, which made me think of them as a flock. However, they were generally headed to our left, which would take them right past the cave.
A strange female voice shouted my name from far away.
“Victor! Sheela! Help!” The voice was so unusual it took a second to place it as Trel’s. She was always dramatic and intense, but I’d never heard her say anything at that volume. A reply lodged in my throat while my heart rate soared and my adrenaline spiked.
“Something’s going on back there. We have to help Trel. Run, Sheela!” I took a few half-steps to ensure she would follow and then ran faster when she caught up to me. My heart blasted into the red zone as I sprinted that hundred yards. Sheela got a little ahead of me because she had longer legs and better conditioning.
“Oh, shit!” I said with shock.
Something white ran by my left side like I was standing still. It was about the size of a German Shepard with a meaty three-foot tail. My first impression was it was related to the green raptors I knew from the beach, but this one was smaller and covered in downy white feathers. More importantly, it didn’t stop to eat me.
A few seconds later two other white dino-birds ran by, and I snapped one with my Eye-Q to see what we were dealing with. It flashed a picture of the animal’s outline and displayed the name. It said Identification: Dinosaur, Saurornitholestes Langstoni, female. I knew for sure was that they weren’t the same type as the featherless dinosaurs up on the hill, nor were they the same as the shark-man killers from the beach.
The bird dinosaurs reached the ramp of the cave well ahead of us, but they ran right by it without pausing. The golden dinos up on the hillside also ran past the cave without stopping.
“What the hell is happening here?” I called to Sheela as we both arrived at the rocky area below the entrance of our cave.
“Victor! Help us! A dinosaur is in the bushes by the ramp!” Galmine called from up in the cave. She wasn’t outside, which was good, but I finally saw what made her and Trel scream for help.
A member of a third species of dinosaur thrashed wildly in the head-high bushes and small trees just next to the ramp. He was about the size of a horse and had greasy black feathers, a long neck, and crazy-long claws. It came across as a strange mix of sloth, bird, and a Tyrannosaurus Rex. My Eye-Q tagged him as a male Erlikosaurus. It appeared as if he’d come down the hill from above the cave, lost his footing, and tumbled into the bushes where we now saw him scrambling to get free.
Though Trel and Galmine had gone back into the cave, but the ungainly creature flailed and clawed his way in their direction. He was already about halfway there, and he was bulky enough to crush the wood barrier blocking the cave, so I had to take the initiative.
Before I could do anything, a couple more white-feathered dinosaurs ran past us screeching and whistling like they wanted those ahead to wait up for them. Far into the grove more of the white fast-movers ran after the others.
Something big was going on down at the lake, and it was coming this way.
“We have to stop him from getting into the cave,” I said while breathing heavily. Whatever was going on in the forest, my primary concern was only for the black nightmare at our front door. My pulse quickened at the thought of tangling with something that large, but there were no alternatives.
The black dinosaur used his claws to slice through some remaining bushes and made it back to his feet. When he looked down and saw us, he seemed to lose traction on the rocks and slipped a bit. I couldn’t read his mind, but it was almost as if he was daring us to stop him from going up the hill. He honked an off-key trumpet roar that sounded more like a cow’s than a proper dinosaur.
“I will search for a spot to attack it!” Sheela yelled as she jumped into the bushes on the right side of the creature. I ran a few paces to his far side and got into the undergrowth a moment later.
I had no idea why the sloth dinosaur was so close to our cave. Maybe it stumbled in by accident. Maybe it smelled Galmine and Trel and wanted a snack. Maybe it needed a new place to live. All I knew for certain is that it had to be stopped, so I
moved toward it with my spear in hand. I soon realized the tangled bushes and numerous rocks made it very difficult for the dino to climb up the thirty-foot slope.
Sheela grunted just as her spear came rifling out of the bushes and into the creature’s flank. He trumpeted in shock but did not fall over dead as I’d hoped. In fact, I had to hop away from his tail because the crazed beast shifted to keep his injured side away from Sheela. It was a behavior I recognized from animals back home, but this wasn’t some pet. This was a monster that could rip me in half with a flick of its massive claws.
I was presented with a prime opportunity to chuck my spear into the injured side of the beast, but I couldn’t orient the long javelin from inside all the branches. I hovered there for a second before deciding I was already too close to those claws.
“Get out of there, Sheela!” I shouted while letting myself slide a bit off the slope. “I have another idea. I’m going to attack him from above.”
“I will try,” she replied over a constant string of howls from the injured beast.
I waited until I saw her run out of the bushes carrying her axe, and then I scurried onto the ramp about two-thirds of the way to the cave. I didn’t want to lead the thing into our home, but I did need to get a little above the black-feathered creature so I could throw my spear from outside the bushes. He yelped and howled as he crushed branches and kicked rocks during his struggle up the slope. The hill wasn’t very steep, but it narrowed toward the cave, and the bushes made it difficult for such a large dinosaur to climb.
My hands got sweaty holding my spear as the ugly sloth-dinosaur neared. The head itself looked a little like a small T-Rex or possibly a Velociraptor, except the end of his jaw was a funky bird’s beak. The back half of his mouth was full of teeth, but the beak part of the mouth had none.
