Tamer_King of Dinosaurs 2

by Michael-Scott Earle

  I instructed the trike to backpedal a bit, and she did so as the remaining carno stepped toward her. The predator was ignoring Cher, probably because it didn’t think the parasaur would try to knock it down again, and it seemed like a perfect opportunity to show this fucker who he was underestimating.

  Cher was sprinting around the rear of the carno, and I ordered her to rush toward the asshole’s back. The parasaur picked up some frantic speed as she tore across the grassy field, but the carno’s attention was totally focused on Katie.

  I commanded Katie to dart forward as if she was attacking and then quickly back away again. The carno took the bait, leaned down to snap at the trike, missed, and then let out a roar of frustration.

  Then Cher slammed right into the fucker’s back and knocked him flat on his face.

  The carno let out a surprised shriek, but it didn’t last long. Katie charged forward with her horns down in “fuck you, asshole” position, and they punched through the carno’s skull like a kabob stick through a tomato. The carno didn’t even let out another screech; it just started twitching death spasms.

  I commanded Cher to stand on the chest of the dying carno, and then Katie yanked her horns out. As soon as they were both free, I sent them after the carnos chasing Hope and turned my attention back to the boy team of Bob, Sonny, and Tom.

  The males were rushing across the clearing toward the three carnos. Bob and Sonny were running abreast of each other, and Tom was bringing up the rear. They looked like a reverse triangle galloping across the open field, but the two parasaurs were much faster than the trike, so Tom was being left behind a bit.

  The three carnos to the west of the camp exhibited the same sort of confusion the other groups had. Parasaurs were supposed to be prey. They were supposed to run away, and the carnos were supposed to give chase. The big horned eating machines didn’t really know what to do when their food attacked, so they kind of bunched together as they slowed their run.

  I gave Sonny and Bob the command to split so they would run around the carnos, and the predators seemed to regain their senses. The ones on the end tried to dart forward and snap at the two parasaurs, but I’d ordered them to run around with enough space, so the carnos’ chomps just closed around air.

  The two predators on the sides turned to chase after the parasaurs, but the one in the center had his eyes on Tom, and he stepped toward the trike with an angry roar. I ordered Tom to fall back a few steps, but then I imagined him just keeping his horns pointed at his enemy so that the carno’s teeth couldn’t get past the trike’s armored crest. Tom was much larger than the carno, so I imagined that he’d be able to protect himself for a minute or so while I figured out how to bring Bob and Sonny back around.

  The carno rushed forward and tried to bite Tom, but the trike pulled his head back and then slammed a horn into the attacking dino. I saw the tip tear into the side of the carno’s cheek, but it coiled back with a hiss that seemed to indicate it wasn’t as much hurt as annoyed.

  Bob and Sonny had quickly outpaced the other two carnos, and I commanded Bob to slow his sprint dramatically while I pushed Sonny for more speed. The pair of carnos angled their run so that they were heading right for Bob. This was what I wanted, and I told the parasaur to accelerate just enough so that he stayed fifty feet ahead of them. They gave chase, and I mentally commanded Sonny to swing back around toward Tom. It was going to take about ten seconds for Sonny to come to his friend’s aid, so I turned back around to check on Hope. The smallest of my parasaurs was giving the cave filled with the orange birds a drive-by, and the creatures were filling the air with angry screeches. They shut up as soon as the carnos came close, though, and the sight would have made me laugh if I wasn’t still really fucking worried about this whole battle turning around at any moment.

  Katie and Cher had arrived to stand next to Nicole, so I commanded Hope to dash toward them.

  I shifted my attention back to the boy team just in time to catch Sonny slamming into the side of the carno that was harassing Tom. Just like with the other group, the carno hadn’t expected to be broadsided by a parasaur, and it tumbled to the ground like a blown over tumbleweed. The devil-horned predator snarled and thrashed on the ground trying to get up, but Tom was already circling around toward the beast’s back. The carno realized the trike was trying to angle in for an attack, and it turned to snap at Tom, but then I commanded Sonny to step in closer, and the carno got distracted by the enemy that had just knocked it over.

  As soon as the carno had its attention focused on Sonny, Tom charged forward with his head leveled and punched his horns through the predator’s skull.

  Now there were only two carnos left in the boys’ group and two with the girls’ group.

  I spun my focus back to the females in time to see Hope run past the wall of Cher, Katie, and Nicole. Hope’s chest was heaving with heavy breaths and I commanded her to slow her run as soon as she was past the line of the other dinos I had tamed. I instructed Cher, Katie, and Nicole to charge toward the two chasing carnos, but I switched up their formation a bit differently than the males. I put both Katie and Nicole in the front so that the two female trikes could put their horns into play first, and I had Cher follow some forty feet behind them.

  This pair of carnos weren’t as stupid as I thought they would be. I thought they would just charge right into the trikes’ horns and get turned into ground beef, but they knew what they were up against and skidded to a stop. My trikes were still running at full speed though, and they closed the gap before the carnos could really run away. If anything, their decision to try and escape ended up leaving their sides and backs exposed.

  Nicole and Katie tore into them like needles through a pin cushion.

  The carnos let out twin screams of agony, but there was nothing they could do to escape. Nicole’s left horn had probably ripped apart the spine of the carno she’d impaled, and Katie’s horns passed through the right flank of her carno and were coming out its stomach. Guts and blood spilled everywhere across the grass, and the two trikes began to shake their heads like bulls with their horns caught on the corpses of matadors. The carnos wailed again, and then their bodies tore open with an explosion of red blood.

  I commanded the females to run over to the males, and I turned my attention back to the last two carnos. They were still chasing after Bob, and I commanded him to circle around so he’d lead them in a wide circle that would take them back to Tom and Sonny. My parasaur complied, and the pair of carnos followed.

  “What is Bob doing?” Trel asked me, and I gasped with surprise. My lover was perched on the wall right next to me, and I hadn’t even noticed her. Sheela was also standing on the same rung of the ladder as me, and one of her arms was wrapped over my shoulder while her other clung to the wall. I hadn’t even noticed either of them, but I guessed that it was because I was so focused on the battle.

  “He’s going to circle around,” I said as I returned my attention to Bob’s long gait.

  “It looks like he is running away from--”

  “I’ve got this,” I interrupted Trel. “Watch.”

  Bob was sprinting across the edge of our clearing in a clockwise direction. It really did look like he was running away from Tom, but the male triceratops was racing toward the apex of Bob’s loop, and both Nicole and Katie were heading there as well.

  “Ohhhh,” Trel whispered under her breath. “I get it.”

  “Let’s see if this works,” I said as Tom joined up with his two women, Katie and Nicole, as they moved up north. The trikes were slower than the carnos and the parasaur, so I had to kind of adjust their trajectory as they sped toward the north cave.

  Bob was getting too far ahead, so I slowed his speed a bit. This gave the carnosaurs an excited boost of speed, and I had to make him run a bit faster so they didn’t nab him. I needed them to be just close enough, so they tunnel visioned on Bob’s tail, but not so close that they could bite him. I just didn’t want them to notice the trikes charging a
t their flank.

  The distance between the parasaur’s pursuers and the trikes closed, and I held my breath with anticipation.

  Impact.

  The two carnotaurus never saw what hit them.

  Tom, Nicole, and Katie slammed into their flanks like a train with a spikey snow plow on the front. The carnos actually lifted off the ground and slammed into the wall of the ramp below the orange bird cave. One of the carnos let out a surprised scream, but the other one who bore the brunt of the nine horns seemed to flop over dead instantly. The pair was crushed against the wall like ground beef under a spiked hammer, and the trikes continued to push the carnos into the wall until I gave them the command to shake free and come back to the fort.

  “Wow,” both Trel and Sheela said in unison as they looked at me.

  “We did it,” I said as relief flooded my head, chest, and stomach. I realized I was shaking a bit and my heart was racing.

  “No, Victor,” Sheela said as she shook her head. “We did nothing. It was you and your ability with these creatures that saved our lives.”

  “Well, we all worked to build this wall,” I said. “And we’ll all…” my head was really spinning, and I felt Sheela’s arm tighten around my shoulder.

  “Are you okay?” Trel asked, and her words bounced around in my head strangely. My skull kind of felt like it was overheating, and I really wanted to sit down.

  “I think so,” I replied, but I felt really nauseous, and the ground was starting to vibrate beneath me. I felt like I was car sick, and I kept waiting for the ground to stop moving.

  But it didn’t, and I felt myself falling.

  I heard Trel, Sheela, and Kacerie shout my name, but they sounded really far away. It was like I was sinking into a pool of warm water, but then it became like ice, and I couldn’t stop shaking.

  Then everything turned to darkness.

  Chapter 14

  I woke up to fingers stroking my face.

  I moaned since the fingers felt wonderful, but the sensation was contrasted with the worst headache I’d ever felt. It was like a hangover on steroids, and it felt as if my brain was trying to break out of my skull like a baby dino being birthed from an egg.

  “Owwwwwww,” I sighed as I raised my own fingers to my temple. I suspected the person rubbing my face was Galmine, and her gasp of joy confirmed my belief.

  “Hurry! Victor is awake!” She shouted, and it felt like someone had just screamed inside a megaphone they had pressed against my eardrum. I groaned with agony, but this also hurt, and my cry turned into a rather unmanly sounding whimper.

  It was probably the worst pain I’d ever been in. That wasn’t saying a lot since I’d never suffered from any sort of severe physical trauma, but I also couldn’t imagine a pain more severe than what I was feeling.

  But I had work to do, so I needed to get my ass in gear. The fort wasn’t going to get built without my dinos doing the labor, and my dinos weren’t going to work if I wasn’t awake to direct them.

  “Did you say he’s awake?” I heard Kacerie say from the direction of my feet, and I pried one of my eyes open. My cornea got a view full of bright fire, and another lance of pain speared through my brain.

  “He is,” Galmine whispered. “Can you go get Trel and Sheela?”

  “Yep!” Kacerie said, but I couldn’t get my eyes open in time to see her leave.

  “What’s happening?” I whispered. My mouth felt like sandpaper, and my throat felt like I hadn’t drunk water in a month.

  “We don’t know, but it appears you fainted after the attack,” Galmine said. “Everything is fine though! We are all safe, and your dinosaurs are relaxing outside of our gate.”

  “How long have I been out?” I asked.

  “Most of the day, you were still breathing, but none of us really knew how your species recovers.”

  “Shit,” I said. “We’ve got stuff to do.” I tried to pry my eyes open, but the firelight was still too bright, so I could only get them open for a few seconds before I had to close them again.

  “You should just relax,” Galmine said, and her fingers moved to rub my temples. It was the perfect spot, and I let out a loud moan as the pain in my skull began to release.

  “He’s awake?” I heard Trel say, and I cracked open my eyes to see the dark-haired woman walk into the hut.

  “Hey Trel,” I said, and I felt her clawed hands grasp my left palm.

  “I was worried,” she hissed. “You shouldn’t do that to me.”

  “I’m alright,” I said. “I dunno what happened. I just felt like shit all of a sudden and then I was laying with my head in Galmine’s lap.”

  “You must have overextended your ability,” Sheela said as she stepped into the hut. “It was a difficult battle, yet you got through it without any of your dinosaurs becoming injured.”

  “Yeah,” I said. Maybe I should have been happy, and I was, but the pain in my skull was preventing me from feeling anything but the desire to just sleep again. “What is the status of the camp?”

  “The logs we pulled inside the camp last night have been burned successfully,” Trel said. “Sheela pulled them out today while you were resting, and we’ve got the next set ready to go when the sun sets.”

  “How did you pull the old ones out and bring the new ones in?” I asked.

  “Hope let me ride her,” Sheela said. “But she seems very tired now and is resting out with the others. I also believe they need water, but the other dinos don’t seem to be responding to me when I try to ride them.”

  “It’s a good thing I’m awake then,” I said as I finally forced my eyes open. “I’ll take them all to get water. They saved our ass this morning.”

  “Yeah, but it was because you told them what to do,” Trel said, and she wore a proud smile on her full lips. “I always knew you had great power. I thought so when we first met.”

  I laughed a bit as I sat up. The movement made my head hurt more, and I reached for one of our jugs of water. I drank almost the whole jug, and my skull started to feel a little better. The four women all gawked at me when I drank, and I let out a short laugh when I finally lowered the jug from my lips.

  “I’ll be okay,” I said. “Just feels like I drank a bottle of vodka and chased it with a kick to the head.”

  “What is vod--”

  “It’s an alcohol made with potatoes,” I said as I tried to stand. My head spun a bit, but Sheela was instantly by my side, and I leaned up against her shoulder so I could stand.

  “Perhaps you should rest more,” she said. “You are obviously not recovered.”

  “Do you guys have enough clay to burn the holes in the logs tonight?” I asked, and they all shook their heads.

  “So I need to take all the dinos to get water, and we need clay. Do we need to hunt for food also?”

  “No,” Sheela said. “I’ve cut some slabs off the large horned dinosaurs that attacked us this morning. We might want to tow the bodies farther away from our camp, but we have food for the next few days.”

  “Alright,” I said. “That’s one thing off our plate. Let’s load up the jugs and baskets we need to fill on Bob, and then I’ll make a trip to the lake. Who wants to go with me?”

  “I will,” Kacerie, Sheela, and Trel said at once.

  “I don’t feel good about leaving Galmine alone,” I said.

  “I will be fine, Victor,” she said. “If we close the doors, then nothing can get in to attack us.”

  “We just had seven apex predators attack our fort,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said with a nod, “but having an extra person, or two, or even ten wouldn’t have helped save our lives. The only thing that saved us was your taming skill.”

  “Maybe I should just leave some dinos here to patrol, and then I can make a second trip for water.”

  “The sooner you leave the sooner you can return,” Galmine said with her cheerleader smile. “Just hurry back. I’ll tie the gate closed after you leave.”

  �
�Alright,” I said. “Let’s get going. Trel, I’m glad you are coming, because we need to talk about building an aqueduct either from the lake or the river.”

  “Hmm, that is an interesting project. It also makes me feel as if I have become a plumber.” The spider woman sighed, and I let out a laugh.

  “You aren’t a plumber, Trel. You are a problem solver, and one of our next problems is getting running water to our fort so we don’t have to leave it twice a day.”

  “We’ll talk about it more when we get there,” she said, and the five of us walked out of the hut with our baskets and jugs.

  The new set of logs were laid out inside of the fort, and I saw that the team had already marked the spots where we needed to burn the holes. I ensured Galmine latched the door closed behind us, and then Trel, Kacerie, Sheela, and I jumped on our dinos. Trel and I rode on Bob, and Sheela and Kacerie rode on Hope. The rest of the dinos followed behind us, and we raced over to the lake valley.

  My headache was still pretty brutal, but the fresh air and pace of Bob’s run helped my brain clear a bit. We made it over to the lake without any issue, and we slowed our steeds down by the spot where we normally gathered clay. The only other group of dinosaurs was on the far side of the lake where the parasaurs usually gathered. However, these weren’t parasaurs, they were a pair of giant brontos with necks that stretched up into the sky like roller coaster rides.

  We sat on our mounts for a few moments to study the thunder lizards, but the massive creatures didn’t seem to notice us, or they didn’t care, and we soon got to our clay gathering.

  “I’d love to tame one of them,” I said as I glanced across the lake. I didn’t feel confident that my Tame skill was strong enough to work on one and messing up would probably mean I’d be flattened into a pancake.

  “We’d need to build our walls around the perimeter of our entire clearing,” Trel said with a dry chuckle.