I blinked my Eye-Q and read the name that appeared: Dilophosaurus wetherilli, male.
“Shit! Faster, Bob!” I shouted as I tried to reach back for the spear on my saddle. I wasn’t much of a dinosaur expert, but like any boy, I’d seen all the Jurassic Park movies, and I remembered that the Dilophosaurus was the fucker that spit the acid.
And it looked like he was closing in on Kacerie so he could spit on her.
I was still a good three hundred yards away on the beach, but the stalking dino crept onto the sand, and it was only forty yards from Kacerie. I had no doubt that it could rush across the gap and kill her if it wanted to, but the feathered monster seemed more interested in sneaking. Then the dilo seemed to notice I was rushing toward it, and it turned to me with its head tilted.
“Kacerie!” I screamed as I got my spear out of the saddle sheath. The woman didn’t seem to hear me, or at least she didn’t look up, so I screamed again.
The dilophosaurus turned its head to Kacerie, and then it looked back to me as if it was a bewildered dog. It was the second best outcome I could have hoped for, the first being the thing just running away, and I readied my spear.
“Kacerie!” I shouted again, and the woman finally looked up toward me.
Then she glanced over at the pony-sized dinosaur sneaking up on her and let out a horrific scream.
The terrified screech seemed to snap the dilophosaurus out of its confused stupor, and it dashed toward the woman with an angry hiss. It wiggled across the ground with a movement that almost looked snake-like, but I had already planned on rushing Kacerie first, so I managed to slam Bob right into the flank of the dilo like a snow plow.
The white and cream feathered dino tumbled over with a surprised yelp, but it wiggled out of the way of Bob’s crushing feet and tried to dash around toward Kacerie.
I leaned down off the side of the saddle and shoved my spear down at him when he tried to slither around Bob. The tip of my spear punched into his upper shoulder, but the creature sunk away like a mongoose and only a small spray of blood fell upon the sand.
“Kacerie, get--” I started to tell her to get away from the dilo I was tangling with, but as I swung my head over to look at her, I saw a shape come to the surface of the lake right behind her.
It was one of the super crocs that had tried to kill me when I first got to this planet.
“Run toward me!” I screamed as the second reptile emerged from the water and sprinted toward her. Kacerie turned to see it as soon as she heard the splash, and she leapt back toward me with surprise. She was totally off balance from her head looking one direction while she ran the other, and her feet tripped over themselves as she tried to run.
Sonny read my mind and came to her rescue.
The croc was about the size of a small 80s Japanese truck, but Sonny was a big rig. The parasaur dashed forward on all fours and shoulder checked the croc some twenty feet from where Kacerie stumbled. Sonny’s attack actually caused the other dino to fly through the air and flip on his side, but I had to turn my attention away from the battle so that I could focus my spear thrusts on the dilo who was still trying to get around Bob’s legs.
This fucking asshole was persistent, cunning, and moved quicker than I would have thought possible given his size. He ducked away from every spear thrust I made, and my best attempts at pinning him down did little more than strike the sand. The issue I had really was that I was too high on Bob, so the dilo could just retreat away from the parasaur’s flank to stay out of the reach of my spear.
I made a few quick thrusts to try and predict his movements and got lucky with my third guess. The sharpened point of my spear tore across his back, but it didn’t really sink into his flesh and take out any vital organs. It still pissed him off, and he backed away a little farther than usual. This gave me an opportunity to turn around and see how Sonny was doing. The big parasaur had kicked the croc away from Kacerie, but the monster’s jaws were trying to snap around the parasaur’s legs. I would have thought that the size difference would have made that difficult, but the croc’s maw opened crazy wide, and Sonny almost didn’t get his leg out of the way.
I commanded Cher to go after the croc so I could focus on the dilo. The cream feathered snake-dino opened its jaws to caw at me, and I saw that its teeth actually looked less like a raptor’s and more like the crocodile’s behind me.
“Victor!” Kacerie screamed, but I couldn’t really turn my attention away from the fight with the dilo. He kept opening his mouth at me, and I half expected for a stream of poison to shoot out. Nothing did, though, and I wondered if the movie had been wrong about the way the dinosaurs spit acid.
“Victor!” Kacerie screamed again.
“I’m fucking busy!” I shouted as I managed to get another hit on the dilo. The thing moved really gracefully for its bulk, and it seemed to be getting a better idea of how my spear could move. I kept having to command Bob to back up, spin around, and then swing his tail in an effort to keep the thing away from Kacerie, but the beast was getting smarter.
“There is another monster in the lake!” she screamed, and I turned around just as Sonny let out a trombone blast of pain. A second croc had jumped out of the water and clamped its massive jaws around his tail, and the parasaur was trying to spin and throw him free. Cher was tangling with the other croc and winning, but I could almost feel Sonny’s pain come through in his loud toot sounds.
“Damn it!” I growled as I turned around so I could focus on the dilo. I needed to get rid of this fucker so that I could deal with the crocs in the water, or I needed to get rid of the crocs in the water so I could focus on the dilo trying to get to Kacerie. My brain jumped through a few solutions while I danced with the dilo, but the fucker almost managed to get around Bob, so I knew I had to come up with a plan quickly so that I could win out on this stalemate.
I made another quick glance back to Sonny and Cher. The male parasaurs had gotten his tail free of the croc, and he was trying to push the thing back into the water. The sight gave me an idea, and I changed my orders a bit so that my newest parasaurs instead focused their attempts on pushing the crocs out of the water, onto the beach, and grouped kind of close to where the dilo was so that we could present a united battlefront.
Within a few seconds, Sonny and Cher had twisted around the crocs and began pushing them toward the shore. I could only catch glances of their battles out of the corner of my eye while I defended against the dilo, but the two large parasaurs seemed to be pretty used to fighting these things. The crocs were soon rolling around on the sand of the beach in an attempt to escape the parasaurs’ stomps, kicks, and shoulder hits.
“Good job guys!” I shouted with encouragement when it was obvious that the two crocs were trying to crawl away. Unfortunately, as soon as I turned my head away, the dilo sensed the opportunity and did something I hadn’t expected.
He clamped his teeth around my spear and yanked the weapon free of my grasp.
I tried to keep a hold of it, but the dilophosaurus must have weighed around eight hundred pounds, and he’d really put his back into the movement. I instantly moved to grab the second spear, but the fucker was hellbent on eating Kacerie, and he dashed in between Bob’s legs before the parasaur could step on him.
I threw myself off Bob’s back and fell toward the dilo with my spear pointed down, as I floated in the air for a moment, I wondered why I was risking my life again to save Kacerie, especially now that I had decided to kick her out of the camp.
Then my spear punched through the dilo’s spine below his neck, and all I could worry about was the thing trying to turn around a chomp my face off.
“Shit!” I growled as I pushed, pulled, and swung the spear around. I knew I’d hit the creature with a critical wound, but it was still refusing to believe that it was dead, and the thing kept trying to spin on me so that it could rip a tooth or claw through my flesh.
I ordered Bob to move in, and the parasaur brought his massive foot down on the
tail of the speared dilo. This stopped the fucker’s attempts to lunge at me, but I left the spear in his back so that Bob could keep walking up the tail. Each step the parasaurs took shattered the dilo’s bones and spine, and the thing finally let out a death rattle after Bob’s feet almost reached my spear.
I turned to Sonny and Cher. Both of the parasaurs had pushed the crocs all the way into the jungle, so I commanded them to retreat back to me. They did so quickly, and the crocs wiggled across the sand so they could get back into the water.
Then the dinosaur fight was over, and I turned to face Kacerie. Her face was still covered with tears, but the terror was easy to see in her eyes.
“You saved me?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said with a sigh. “Look. I didn’t want you to get--”
“Please Victor!” she begged as she threw herself at my feet. “Please don’t leave me out here. I’ll do whatever you want me to do. I’ll have sex with you, or cook for you, or clean, or do whatever. I’ll be your slave. Just don’t leave me out here!” It was a bit hard to understand her words through her sobs, but I got the gist of it after she repeated it a second time.
“It’s not about you fucking me, or being my slave,” I said as looked down at her bright pink hair. “I just don’t trust you. You are going to get your Lance back and then use it on us.”
“No!” Kacerie screeched as she looked up at me. “I won’t. I get it now. You left me alone for five minutes and three dinosaurs tried to kill and eat me. There is no way I’d survive without you. Please, Victor. I want to live. I’ll work for you. I’ll do everything you, or Trel, or Galmine, or Sheela asks. You can have sex--”
“Stop talking about sex,” I interrupted her. “I get it. You don’t need to offer yourself to me. That’s not how I am.”
“I just want to live,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry I complained. You’ll never hear it from me again. I’ll do two guard shifts. I’ll cook every meal. I’ll figure out how to fit in and add to your group. Just please don’t leave me out here. Take me back. I need you.”
“Alright,” I said after I thought about it a moment. “Let’s get back on Bob.”
“Really?” she gasped as if she didn’t believe that I’d actually reconsidered.
“Yeah,” I replied as I helped her stand. “It seems like you realize what’s going to happen now if we don’t work together.”
“I do, yes! Oh, Victor!” she threw her arms around her shoulders and cried into my neck. “Thank you! Thank you!”
“That’s fine. It’s okay.” I patted her back awkwardly and then just wrapped my arms around her narrow waist in a hug. She sighed when I held her, and we stood together in silence for half a minute.
“Sorry,” she whispered when we parted. “You were right to leave me. Thank you for--”
“We aren’t going to talk about this anymore,” I interrupted her. “We are going to get back to camp, and you are going to cooperate with a smile on your face. When the others ask you what happened, you just tell them that everything is great between us. Got it?”
“Yes,” she nodded.
“Good,” I said. “Don’t make me regret this.”
“You won’t,” she said as she held her hands up in a praying position. “I will work as hard as the three of them to make you happy. Thank you again.”
“Get up on Bob,” I said as the parasaur kneeled behind me. “I need to go look at Sonny’s tail.”
“Yes, Victor,” she nodded, wiped her nose with the back of her hand, and then climbed up into the saddle.
I walked over to Sonny and Cher and then checked their legs, arms, bellies, and tails for damage. Cher had a few scratches on her legs that were bleeding a bit, but it didn’t look like a major injury. The bite mark on Sonny’s tail was deep, but even though it leaked some blood on the sand, it didn’t look like it had cut into an artery or vein.
“We are going to go a bit slower on the way back,” I said to Kacerie when I climbed up onto the saddle. “I don’t want their cuts to open up anymore.”
“Whatever you want to do, I’m fine,” she said as she wrapped her arms around my stomach. “Just don’t leave me again.”
“Yeah, I won’t if you do what you said you would do.” I ordered Sonny and Cher to run a bit ahead of Bob so that I could watch their injuries, and then the three parasaurs jogged up the hill and out of the lake valley.
“I’m going to make another loop,” I said as soon as we descended back down into our valley and reached the river we normally forded.
“Okay,” Kacerie agreed, and we turned left at the river and followed it down the edge of our territory until we reached the spot where we usually got water. I crossed the river here and then ran the parasaurs around the massive fallen redwood. I intended to keep going around the river and maybe approach the orange bird cave from the other side, but the sight of the massive fallen tree had grabbed my attention, and I felt the beginnings of an idea spin around in my head.
I didn’t know what the idea was, but something about the fallen tree was making my brain overheat, so I stopped our little caravan as soon as we reached the end where the roots were exposed. Each strand of the fallen tree’s roots stretched through the air as if they were trying to grasp onto the small amount of sunlight cutting through the canopy. I knew the tree was long dead, but the shape of the roots made it look as if it was some sort of terrible Kraken that was rising up from the sea of brown dirt.
“Shiiiiit,” I gasped as I stared at the dirt.
“What’s wrong?” Kacerie asked fearfully.
“Oh damn.” I laughed as the idea fully formed in my brain. “I just figured out how to get the trees down way faster. If this works how I think it will, then we’ll finish the new fort wall in two days instead of six weeks.”
Chapter 10
“Let’s get back!” I shouted a second before I ordered the parasaur trio to run through the forest.
“What did you figure out?” Kacerie asked, but I told Bob to increase his speed, and the wind filled my ears.
We made it to the clearing half a minute later, and I saw that the crowd of scavengers had almost tripled in size. There were probably a hundred smaller dinos feasting on the corpses, and I saw a few dozen vulture looking birds circling overhead. The sight of the birds worried me a bit since it was a clear indication to anyone watching the sky that there was something dead below them. It could alert an enemy tribe we were here, but then again, dinosaurs were dying all the time, and anyone watching the skyline might not think much of it.
The gate of the fort was closed, and I called out to Sheela, Galmine, and Trel when I pulled up with the three parasaurs. They opened the gate a moment after, and I gave them a wide smile as I gestured to Sonny and Cher.
“I’ve got more friends,” I said. “The big male is named Sonny, and the female is named Cher.”
“Wow, Victor,” Galmine cooed. “You are amazing! They are so big. I love their names!”
“That big one’s tail is bleeding,” Trel said as she pointed to Sonny.
“We got into a fight with three other dinos,” I said as I commanded Bob to lay on his stomach. “These guys took care of the attackers, but check it out. I’ve got more clay, and I think I’ve got an idea that will help us knock down the trees quicker.”
“Oh?” the spider-woman said with a bit of skepticism.
“Yeah,” I said as I commanded Hope to come out of the door. “Sheela and Galmine, get on Hope so you can ride over to the forest real quick. Trel and Kacerie will ride on Bob with me.” There weren’t enough seats for three of us on the saddle, but Trel just kneeled in front of me, and we rode the four hundred yards to the forest while Cher and Sonny followed.
“I really think this is going to work,” I said once we had all gotten off the parasaurs again.
“What is your plan?” Sheela asked.
“Watch,” I said as I glanced at the closest tree that was the right size and shape for our new fort wall.
I imagined the four parasaurs digging up the roots at the foot of the tree, and the four of them trotted over to it quickly. There was a bit of confusion as to where each of them should stand, but I made a few mental clarification commands to them, and they were soon circling the tree like the spokes on a compass rose.
They started digging, and the four women and I watched in silence.
Sonny and Bob moved the quickest and took the largest chunks of dirt out. It was just like they were digging a tunnel, but the way they frantically dug made me think more of four giant dogs trying to bury a bone quickly.
“I get it,” Trel whispered after a few minutes had passed, and the parasaurs hadn’t let up with their task.
“I believe I do as well,” Sheela said.
“Well, I don’t,” Kacerie said. “What are they doing? How is this going to cut down the tree?”
“They are almost done,” I said. “Give it a few more minutes, and you’ll see.”
“Okay,” she said as she wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
“Were you crying?” Trel asked her.
“No, I’m fine,” Kacerie answered as she glanced at me. “Everything is good. I’m happy to be here. Thanks for asking.”
“Uhhh. Yeah. Fine.” Trel turned to give me a confused look, and I just shrugged and then nodded at the tree.
“I think that’s good,” I said. “Hope is slower than the other three, but I’ll tell them to do it in that direction.”
I ordered Hope, Sonny, and Cher to come back to us, and then I instructed Bob to stand up and push his bulk against the tree. The parasaur must have weight four tons, and the tree began to tip almost as soon as he pushed his shoulder into it. The parasaurs had unearthed all the roots, and the tree didn’t stand a chance.
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