Jurassic Hell

by Russ Watts

  “Not this time, you bastard.” Phoenix reached the top of the beast and straddled it. The machetes were buried deep within its body, wedged between its scales. “You like that?”

  Phoenix plucked one of the blades out and put it between her teeth. The monster’s blood, coppery and warm, filled her mouth, but she ignored it. She put her hands onto the monster’s scales and crawled forward to its head. It was difficult holding on, but she was determined, desperate; she held on as the monster began to crawl back from where it had come, back to the beach. From the top of the monster, Phoenix saw Jane swimming in the water. She was almost back to the beach. The monster roared and Phoenix’ body shuddered. The monster was heading back for the ocean, back to where it knew it was safe. It was trying to escape.

  “You’re not getting away that easy,” said Phoenix as she took the machete from her mouth. She knew that if she let it get back to the water then it would be gone. She wouldn’t be able to hold on. She had to finish it whilst she had it. This was their last chance.

  Phoenix screamed and gripped the machete with both hands. She used her knees to hold onto the beast as she plunged it down, forcing the long blade right through the thick scales and skin into the creature’s head. It roared in pain, letting out a sound that rippled over the ocean and sent pain soaring around Phoenix’ head. The dinosaur charged forward, thrashing around as the blade stuck in its head. Phoenix tried to hold on, but the monster was weaving across the beach now and riding it was like trying to sit atop a bucking bronco during an earthquake. Her hands slid off the machete and she felt herself falling, slipping down the dinosaur’s flank. Suddenly, she had lost contact with it altogether and she hurtled down toward the ground. The beach rushed up to meet her, and Phoenix slammed into it with such force that it knocked the breath out of her.

  Phoenix lay on the hard sand, seaweed and shells scattered around her, unable to move. Her shoulder had popped out again, and she could barely keep her eyes open as she painfully tried to suck air into her lungs. She saw the dinosaur reach the edge of the ocean and then it slumped down to the ground. Its legs folded underneath it and its huge body hit the beach sending shuddering vibrations through Phoenix as she lay there. Sandflies bit her skin and she watched the dinosaur carefully. Was it finally dead? She tried to see if it was still breathing, but she couldn’t tell. Its head was in the shallow water and it wasn’t moving.

  Phoenix coughed and blood trickled over her lips. The pain in her shoulder had spread to the rest of her body and it felt like someone had rammed a jagged knife through her chest. Phoenix tried to sit up, to look for Jane, to check that the dinosaur was dead, but her body refused to listen to her brain. It hurt too much. It hurt to keep her eyes open. Her head lifted only a few inches off the sand and then fell back down. The warm Pacific water began to wash up the beach, colored red, tainted with the dinosaur’s blood. Phoenix closed her eyes. The sun was setting. Jane would find Freddy. The creature was dead. It was over. Phoenix let the welcome blackness envelope her. She would just lie here for a moment while the sun warmed her aching body. She just needed to rest for a minute, perhaps two. It hurt too much to do anything else. At least the dinosaur was dead. She had done it. She had killed two dinosaurs in one day.

  And with that satisfying thought, Phoenix closed her eyes and slipped into unconsciousness.

  CHAPTER 17

  As the sun disappeared over the island’s peak, Freddy turned off the boat’s engine. They should have been back by now. They should be on the boat headed home. Yet the beach where he had dropped them was deserted, utterly devoid of life. Even the ocean was quiet, lapping gently at the sides of his boat. He scanned the trees looking for them, looking for an indication that they were on their way, perhaps just struggling to get through the undergrowth, but there was nothing. He listened intently, hoping to hear voices, cries for help or the sound of guns even, but still nothing. He waited until the sun sank almost out of sight and the island’s shadow grew as dark as his mood. The sky began to turn from navy blue to black and the stars began to shine. Freddy began to realize that they might not be coming back at all. Something bad had happened here. He couldn’t understand what: Phoenix and her men were well armed, prepared, and knew that they had to be back before sundown. What could possibly have stopped them all? There was nothing on the island but ghosts. He knew that the island was uninhabited. The most dangerous animal that they could meet was a scorpion or a wild hog, certainly nothing capable of stopping an entire unit of men armed with guns and machetes.

  Freddy stirred the engine back into life. He had very few choices. There were three options open to him, none of which felt very satisfactory. The first one was to get out of the boat, go onto the island and look for them, despite his reservations about stepping on sacred land. The island was a big place, and realistically, he didn’t hold much hope of finding them. He would have to cover a lot of ground in the dark and on his own. He had no more knowledge of the island and its interior than they did. It seemed futile to wander about in the dark, armed with nothing but a winning smile. The second choice was to take the boat around the island. It was possible that the unit had got themselves lost. It was certainly believable that they had ended up back on the wrong beach and been unable to find a path to the right one. Just because they had missed the rendezvous with him didn’t necessarily mean something untoward had happened to them. He wanted to believe that. He wanted to find them just around the corner waiting patiently on another beach, hopefully with the three missing people they had come for. He truly thought that if he took the boat around the island and kept close to shore, he might find them. They would hear the sound of his engine as there was nothing else to hear, nothing to block it out at all, and all it would cost him was another hour or two of time. In the dark though he was going to need to be very careful not to breach or hit the shallow coral. If he miscalculated his distance from the shore, the horrible reality was that he would hit some rocks and then everyone was finished, including him. If the boat went, then so did their chance of getting home. Nobody knew where he was. He hadn’t told the chief, his family or any friends about the excursion to the forbidden island. That meant the third and final option presented him with a dilemma. Choosing the third option meant going against his own will, against everything he stood for. He was responsible for these people. He had brought them here, left them with a smile, a wave and a promise to return.

  He kept watching the beach hoping to see Phoenix step out of the grass and call to him. He watched through the setting darkness carefully, but of course, he saw nothing. The third option was really the most practical one: he had to leave.

  Freddy pulled the boat out of the small inlet slowly. He steered the boat around to the north where he knew there were other small beaches. It wouldn’t hurt to look, just in case they had accidentally made their way to the wrong place. Still, he was nervous and spent half of his time watching the shallow ocean for rocks. Keeping a constant watch on the island’s shore was impossible. He would sail right past them if he wasn’t careful.

  Remembering Phoenix made Freddy smile. He admired her, how she managed to control all those men and make them work for her. It couldn’t be easy, leading people into unknown territory. For all he knew, she had a husband and children back in America. He really knew very little about her or her unit. All he had been told was that he would be taking a small band of soldiers to the island to look for the three missing people he had taken a few days previously. He hadn’t realized one of them would be a woman.

  Freddy watched the jungle carefully as the boat rounded a small bay. Perhaps he should have stayed. If something had gone wrong, they would have been able to signal him. If they had needed to get away, he would’ve been right there. He chastised himself for being such a coward. In truth, he feared the chief finding out that he was helping them. The island was a sacred place, off limits to everyone, even the chief. He had returned home and spent the day fishing, doing a little bookkeeping in between tak
ing care of his nieces. He had kept himself busy when he should have been looking out for the Americans. What happened to them was on him. He knew he couldn’t leave, not yet. He had to at least search for them thoroughly. In the gloom of night, he couldn’t see that the island had changed. It looked the same as when he had left it that morning. So, where were they? What had the island done to cause them such a problem that they couldn’t return to him as planned?

  There was an outcrop of rocks and then a larger beach that stretched for at least half a mile. The beach was empty and he watched the trees for any sign of a disturbance. If Phoenix was late and still leading her men back through the jungle, then any birds nestling in the high branches of the trees would be unsettled. But nothing flew into the air. Nothing crawled out of the grass flanking the edges of the beach and nobody called out to him to stop.

  The third option was fast becoming the only choice. The faint dim sunlight over the horizon was casting barely any light now, creating a red glow in the distance. The moon was low behind him and not yet bright enough to light the island. He had brought these people here and now they were lost. Freddy knew he had to go home. He wasn’t going to find them. If he stayed any longer, he would be stranded himself. It was almost time to leave. He would give them a few more minutes, until the sun disappeared for the day, and then he would have to go home. He had responsibilities there too, to his family, and he couldn’t spend the night out here alone.

  As Freddy turned the boat away from shore, something caught his eye. There was movement at the furthest end of the beach. Something was moving in the darkness, although he couldn’t be sure what it was. A natural jetty headed out to sea made up of large volcanic rocks. It extended out into the ocean about thirty feet. At its tip, where the rocks disappeared under the water, something was moving. It could be Phoenix or one of her men, and Freddy felt excited. Had they simply got lost after all? He throttled up the engine and headed straight for the outcrop of rocks. He kept his eyes firmly on the moving shape and waited for it to get clearer. Quickly, it became apparent it was one of them. Whether it was Phoenix or not he wasn’t sure, but it was a start. All thoughts of leaving were long gone. He felt foolish for thinking the worst. They had simply taken a wrong turn and ended up on the wrong beach. He smiled with relief. It was time to go home.

  “I’m coming!” shouted Freddy, hoping they would hear his voice above the engine. “Stay there, stay there.”

  As he got closer to the rocks, the faint moonlight and last droplets of sunlight illuminated the lone figure, and Freddy recognized Phoenix.

  “Phoenix? Hold on!” Freddy yelled and felt his heart racing. She was waving to him. She was alone which was worrying, but she was alive. Maybe she had got separated from her unit, or perhaps her men were just waiting under cover of the jungle. Either way, Freddy was pleased he wasn’t going home alone. He had thought about telling the chief what he had done, and was pleased that was a conversation he no longer had to have. The consequences of bringing more people to the island would have been severe. Now, with Phoenix back, he felt relief. They had simply got lost. He imagined the rest of her unit waiting on the beach, sitting around telling jokes with the people they had rescued. It was going to be okay. Freddy exhaled, relieved. It was going to be okay.

  He heard her voice only when he was much closer. Over the rumble of the boat’s engine, he had heard only his own thoughts. She was still waving at him, one arm high above her head, and as he got closer, he began to make out her face. Her face was troubled. There was a nasty gash above one eye and she was covered in dirt and sand. She looked beat up. He had to get her off that outcrop quickly. He slowed the engine down and let the boat drift the last few feet.

  “Phoenix, I’m sorry, I thought I had lost you. Are you…?”

  She continued waving at him and then he finally heard her, finally hearing what she had been saying to him all the time. “Get out of here, Freddy. Get away. Just leave!”

  “What? I’m going to take you home. Don’t worry, whatever’s happened, I can help you.” The boat was barely twenty feet from her now and he could see pain etched over her face. It made no sense. Why was she telling him to leave? He was right when he thought something bad had happened, but quite what he had no idea. For her to tell him to leave made him think that one of her men had done something, perhaps gone insane and taken out the others? Was she trying to protect him from her own unit? What if there had been some sort of mutiny and they had hurt her?

  “Stay there, I’ll get you, Phoenix.” Freddy steered the boat closer. “Just stay there, okay?”

  He could see Phoenix begin crying. She collapsed to her knees and continued waving at him. Her other arm hung by her side motionless. She wasn’t beckoning him to her but trying to tell him to go back.

  “Freddy, get the fuck out of here, for your own sake.”

  Through the gasps and sobs, he heard her, but he didn’t understand.

  “Look, it’ll be okay. Just try to relax and I’ll—”

  There was a bump on the hull of his boat and Freddy anxiously looked down. He expected to see a rock sticking through the steel and water leaking onto the boat, but there was nothing there, just the gangplank and his supplies. He had been lucky. He knew he must be getting closer to the rocks now and it was just a fluke that he hadn’t torn a hole in the underside of the boat. He had to be more careful and not rush.

  “Wait, I’ve got to figure out how to get you.” Freddy wondered if she would be able to swim. He wasn’t going to be able to get the boat right up to her. Given her current state, he didn’t think she had the energy to swim the twenty feet to the boat. The best option was the beach. He would be able to collect her there. “Phoenix, can you get back to the beach? The water is too shallow. I can’t get close enough to—”

  Another bump under the boat knocked Freddy off his feet. He fell backward and grabbed hold of the gangplank. Yet despite a small splash of water, he was still dry. The boat was still intact. That was twice he had got lucky. He had narrowly missed being thrown overboard by whatever the boat had hit. The volcanic rocks were difficult to navigate in daylight, and in the gloom of the late evening, he was worried that another strike might put a hole right through the hull.

  “There’s something in the water. You need to get out of here, right now.”

  Freddy heard Phoenix shout and he managed to get to his feet as the boat swayed and rocked. The ocean was quiet and still, so why was the boat moving around so much? “Phoenix? What are you talking about? It’s the rocks. I need to—”

  “Freddy, listen to me,” pleaded Phoenix. “I thought it was dead. I thought I’d killed it. But it was just another trick. When I came around, it was gone. Don’t you see? It’s in the water. You need to get the fuck away from me. It’s not the rocks. Jane—”

  The skin on his arms shivered and Freddy saw it just before his world turned upside down. A creature was rising out of the sea, approaching quickly to his port side. It was huge, magnificent, like nothing he had ever seen before. This was neither a shark nor a whale. This was something else, something new—or old. As the monster’s jaws opened and threatened to swallow the boat whole, Freddy remembered tales of leviathans that his tribe used to fight. They were just stories passed down through the generations. He hadn’t believed any of them until now. The beast racing toward him was beyond what those tales had described. It had elongated jaws and yellow eyes, a tail that had to be fifty feet long, and terrifying teeth that would rip both him and his boat apart in seconds.

  Freddy screamed as the monster rose up out of the water. Its body was as large as an airplane and it was like a jumbo jet flying up out of the water. The monster made a roaring sound too, not dissimilar to the noise of a jet taking off at full speed. The thing’s skin was glistening wet and its head was the size of his home. He felt like laughing, but Freddy was too scared. It was absurd, but it was real, so real he could smell the musty, salty stench oozing from its pores. Phoenix had tried to warn him,
but he hadn’t listened. Now he understood that she wasn’t waving at him to come and get her, but for him to get away. She had tried to warn him, to save him, but it was too late. She hadn’t got lost or had a problem with her unit. The problem was the monster. It didn’t occur to Freddy that it might actually be a dinosaur.

  Freddy caught sight of the creature’s eyes. It had two massive yellow eyes on either side of its head and its black pupils were looking right at him. Freddy felt his bladder weaken as he looked upon its teeth. Even in the dim light, he could see it had a mouth full of sharp teeth that would snap him in half before he even knew what was happening. There had to be a hundred razor sharp teeth baring down on him. This thing had hunted him, probably followed him for a while before taking its chance. Had it waited until he was in shallow water? The monster was terrifying, roaring as it sprang out of the water and descended upon Freddy and his little boat.

  There was only a second before he would be hit, and there was no way of navigating the boat out of the creature’s path. His engine was simply not large enough to power him out of the way. Freddy knew it was over. He tried to jump out of the boat before the impact, but there was not enough time. In the split second that it took him to jump, he hoped that he might be able to swim to the rocks, to Phoenix, but the monster crashed down onto the boat, smashing it instantly into pieces. Freddy felt the brute force of the thing’s lower jaw smash into him and then he was under water. Pieces of his boat were swirling around him in the chaos and bubbles of air swarmed and circled around him. Freddy was tossed around roughly in the churning water as the monster destroyed the boat. He gasped and tried to swim for the surface, but the water was throwing him around like a fish in a hurricane.