She was just finishing up when Quinn popped out of the bushes, holding his broken umbrella high overhead. His face was strained and very pale, rain running down in rivulets over it and into his collar. “You’d better come immediately, Sasha,” he called over the wind. “We’ve got a great deal of bother!”
CHAPTER 12
By the time she made it back to John’s cave, most of the damage had already been done. It had been raining for five days straight, the ground a muddy bog, and the few trees bending almost all the way over with the assault of the ongoing windstorm that made walking into it feel like a barrier. The river, though it moved fast, had stolen more than twenty feet on both sides of the valley. It carried with it all manner of debris now, including a number of floundering birds who were being steadily swept downstream.
A number of hanging nests had been washed down while she was busy tuning the machine. They must have been old nests, dry, not fixed well to the walls of the canyon. They were just muddy patches of brambles now strewn across the area before the cave, some of the flightless hatchlings creeping through the mud like giant, naked slugs.
None of it was their fault; the three of them hadn’t disturbed the nests. But the birds didn’t see it that way. Four or five of them were dive-bombing the area where their nests had fallen and their young were struggling. They rose up in the air, then tumbled expertly toward the target area before swooping upward once again to repeat the attack. They were screaming hysterically, clacking their enormous beaks at anything that moved.
John, standing at the mouth of the cave, was stabbing at a young pterosaur that had crashed and was clawing its way toward him, snapping at his feet like a rapid dog. Sasha cursed the sight of the chaos all about them, cursed as hard and as badly as she had ever heard Quinn, or her father, curse, and started racing toward the cave.
Quinn caught her arm. “You can’t go charging in without a weapon,” he shouted through the drenching rain. “Be reasonable!”
“Do you have your bow?”
“No,” he said with regret. “I left it in the cave.”
All they had between them were two javelins and a broken umbrella.
Sasha glanced back at the dive-bombing birds, each as large as a man. Quinn had been right to stop her, of course. If any of them stepped into that chaotic arena, the irate birds were going to pull them apart. She glanced at the young ones clawing their way across the ground. Inside the cave, John struck the pterosaur on the head, but his javelin just bounced off its bony crest. “The little ones,” she said. “We’re going to have to kill them, Quinn.”
“What will that accomplish?”
“Maybe nothing. But if the chicks are dead, the nesting adults might give up and fly away.”
“We’ll be fully exposed.”
“You’ll need to cover me with the umbrella…” She glanced at the flapping mass of holes. “What’s left of it.”
He looked at her keenly. “Go.”
She went, racing as fast as she could toward the nearest youngster, with Quinn at her back, acting as a defensive shield. One of the birds targeted them immediately, but Quinn turned and thrust the broken umbrella at it. The flapping, broken material started the bird and it withdrew for a moment, giving Sasha a chance to level her javelin up and aim it at the chick lying in the mud, crying piteously. She experienced a moment of regret—she loved animals, and the idea of killing a baby, even if it was a dangerous predator, didn’t sit well with her. But this was about their survival, and Quinn and John were depending on her. She couldn’t afford to falter. She took the javelin in both hands and, gritting her teeth, drove it through the chick’s back. It screamed and fell still. She let out her breath, happy it had died so quickly.
Together they raced toward the next chick, which left them even more exposed in the middle space between the weedy jungle and the cave entrance. John gave a cry of triumph, and Sasha knew he had finally killed the young adult. She raised her javelin and slew the next chick, which, regrettably, took two stabs this time.
One of the dive-bombing adults ripped at Quinn’s umbrella, sending him reeling into her. She tumbled down in the mud, only barely recovering before Quinn pulled her up. “Hurry, Sasha, please,” he said, sounding far more levelheaded than she felt in that moment. “I don’t think this silly umbrella is going to stop them anymore. They’re no longer afraid.”
She raced to the nearest chick, her javelin already raised for the killing blow. There were ten or twelve chicks by her estimation, and she had to get every last one, she knew, even those that had crawled under debris for shelter. The adult birds continued to attack Quinn’s umbrella, the cries of their fallen chicks driving them into such a bloodthirsty frenzy that some of the adults began attacking each other in midair. She knew John was eager to help, but the adults had trapped him in the cave. Every time he tried to rush toward them, another adult appeared, snapping at the cave entrance before flapping away in disappointment.
She’d slain half the chicks when the unthinkable happened. One of the adults had gotten tangled in Quinn’s umbrella. He was holding it in both hands, so couldn’t reach the javelin he’d strapped to his back. The pterosaur, a huge, crested adult, pulled, and Quinn was pulled with it, his bootheels leaving furrows in the mud as it yanked him closer to the marsh weeds that grew in wild tangles alongside the overflowing river.
Sasha, now fully exposed, stopped killing chicks and started trying to kill adults as they swooped down upon her. She screamed, raising the javelin as a particularly aggressive adult descended on her, bawling in anger. Her braids flew, covering her face. She jabbed at the bird, but the bird only screamed and clamped its jaws over the end of the javelin. The wood simply burst apart in her hands. She dropped the ragged stick that remained and started racing toward the cave as John urged her to run, run, run!
She was running full tilt by the time she reached him and threw herself into his arms. He pulled her into the cave, and a moment later she felt a cold wind at her back as the bird on her heels swooped away. But she didn’t stay in John’s arms, cowering, as she might have some weeks earlier. Instead, she jumped free and turned, calling for Quinn. Surely if he was out there in the rain and wind and flocking, angry birds he would answer her pleas.
But she heard nothing in response.
CHAPTER 13
After a few hours most of the birds gave up on their chicks. A few continued to wheel over the ground where the young called in hoarse, tired voices, but even animals are capable of seeing the futility of their mission after a while. With no way of rescuing their fallen chicks, and buffeted by wind and the rain they so hated, the adult pterosaurs slowly began drifting back up the walls of the plateau.
The rain continued to fall non-stop and the wind blew even harder than before, making the storm a steady wet sheet of debris. The whole land was in disarray, as if a natural disaster had blown through it. She couldn’t see Quinn anywhere. She’d been calling to him all through the wait, but she’d received no response. When the last of the birds finally disappeared, she picked up a javelin and ventured out of the cave.
“Sasha, be careful!” John said before his voice was lost in the hiss of the rain.
She stumbled through it and over the boggy land, stomping through the vegetation at the edge of the river. She screamed over the roaring white water of the river, screamed Quinn’s name over and over, but there was absolutely no sign of him, no blood, not even a scrap of clothing to indicate that he’d been there. She didn’t know if that was a good sign or a bad one. A big part of her had feared finding his bloodied body on the ground near the river, and she’d felt a tremendous wash of relief at finding nothing at all. But the more she looked, the more she realized the possibility that he’d been dragged into the river by the pterosaur.
The problem was, Quinn couldn’t swim. She’d been helping him with that, but she hadn’t been overly successful. Quinn could have drowned. His body could have washed downstream. Or he may have been carried downstre
am whilst still alive. It was a possibility. Not a big one, but still…she returned to the cave, sat down on a large rock, and just thought.
“Do you know where the river lets out?” she asked John as soon as he’d returned from killing the last of the chicks.
“Raptor Canyon,” he said, looking at her with concern.
She stared back in question.
“That’s what I call it, anyway. It’s a small, secluded canyon about seven miles from here, with plateaus on three sides. The Velociraptors nest there in clans. I went down there one day, turned around, and came right back.”
She stood up.
“You’re going, aren’t you?” he said warily, leaning on his blood-slicked javelin.
“What else can I do, John?” she asked, presenting her hands to him. “I can’t leave Quinn here. He might be alive.”
“Or he might not. He could have drowned in the river, Sasha. You said he can’t swim.”
“I know.” She got busy putting a rucksack of supplies together, trying to calm her panicked heart. She had to think straight. It was imperative to both her safety as well as Quinn’s. The last thing she needed was to go running off willy-nilly and unprepared.
“Let me go with you.”
“No, John, stay here. There’s less than two days before the storm season is over.” She sat back on her heels and looked up at him. “At least that way, if something happens, and we’re delayed, you can get back home. There’s instructions on how to use the Tuning Machine chalked on the side of the dais. Besides, Quinn might be alive. He might make it back ahead of me.”
He nodded his head reluctantly.
“Maybe, if you make it home, at least you can use your machine, or mine, to return for us.”
John looked worried. “I’m not certain I’ll be able to find this place again.”
“John,” she said, standing up and adjusting the pack on her back. She looked at him seriously. She felt old and tired and weary beyond measure. “Just do your best. Just do what you can. I’ll be back as soon as I’m able.”
“And if it’s hopeless? If he is dead?”
She took a deep breath and commanded her heart to slow down from its frantic gallop in her chest. “I’ll still be back.”
John handed her his javelin, the longest, strongest one they had.
She took it, then asked for his survival knife as well.
“You really love him, don’t you?” he said with regret as he handed it to her.
She secured it to the belt of her tunic. “Yes. I really do.”
John shook his head. “I can’t figure it. He’s not young or handsome. He’s nothing like you, so far as I can tell. I fear he’s not even very bright.”
She smiled, grimly. Newton jumped to her shoulder and twittered in her ear. She touched him. “He’s my mate, John. He’s the man I intend to marry when I get back to London. He belongs to me. I intend to find him.”
He nodded. “Good luck, then, Sasha Strange.”
She took a deep breath. Then she and Newton stepped out into the wind and the rain.
CHAPTER 14
She had never been so frightened in all her life.
Wind and rain slashed at her, making her progress slow and deadening all her senses. Newton had taken to hiding in her rucksack, so the journey was lonelier still. She could barely see more than a few feet ahead of her, and that distressed her all the more. If there were ambush predators lying in wait, she’d never see them until it was too late. The best she could hope for was the rain was keeping most of the animals in their hidey holes. The wind howled constantly through the rock formations with a voice almost human. She couldn’t cry out for Quinn; the uncaring wind simply took her voice and threw it away.
A part of her wanted to cry. The part that was the old Sasha Strange, the child. But the woman she was now wouldn’t allow for it. She had to conserve her strength, she knew.
She pushed on, sheltered by a homemade umbrella that John had made for her from bamboo and reeds, shivering and watching the frothing river for some sign of Quinn. It was the longest seven miles of her life.
By nightfall she was exhausted and on the verge of giving up, crying, or just pitching herself into the river. She thought she might get where she was going faster that way, and she’d be no wetter than she was now. But common sense reared its head. Instead, she took shelter in a cave, peeled off her soaked-through clothes, and tried warming herself around a fire while the storm raged on. She shivered and pulled a blanket closer about her shoulders and tried not to think of all the bad things that could have happened to Quinn, and how all this might be in vain. And, maybe worse of all, how she would likely miss crossing over with John and be stuck here at least another year. A year she probably would not survive alone.
Sleeping was a very bad thing, she knew, what with no one to guard the cave entrance, but after an hour of worrying, Sasha nodded off, then jerked away when she thought she’d heard something. She waited, her heart flitting in her chest, but nothing slunk into the cave, thankfully. She hoped it was only debris blown into the cave by the storm. She kindled the fire and made it higher just to be on the safe side. And so her night went, sleeping in spurts before jerking violently awake. By morning, she felt even more exhausted and achy than when she’d first arrived. She changed clothes, approached the entrance to the cave, and looked out at the unceasingly stormy weather and just felt miserable.
The pterosaur appeared like something out of a nightmare. It shrieked, so close to her that it made her ears ring. Sasha instinctively flung herself backward and landed hard on her backside while the bird slammed into the cave entrance. It was big and bulky; the cave entrance was small, only a little larger than Sasha herself. She had chosen it for that reason.
The bird, grounded, started wriggling into the cave, clawing at the rocky floor in an effort to reach her. Its eyes were black and bright and wild.
Sasha didn’t scream this time. She was too tired. She reached back for her pack lying on the floor and dragged it close, unhooking the bow and quivers from it. Quinn had shown her how to shoot. She wasn’t good, but at close range, that didn’t matter. She took the bow in hand and aimed, letting a quiver fly straight at the bird less than twenty feet away. The quiver bounced off its bony crest as it floundered, thrashing its head from side to side as it tried to crawl awkwardly on its wings and weak little talons. Heart thudding so hard she could barely breathe, Sasha chose another quiver and carefully aimed this time for its breast, puncturing its heart dead center.
The bird went into a frenzy, snapping wildly at the air before falling dead, bleeding out of the wound in its chest and out of its mouth.
Sasha sat stunned for some moments, her body humming with fear and adrenaline. She was either going to fall apart or she was going to get to work getting the bleeding bird out of the cave before it attracted predators. She opted to get the bird out of the cave, pushing at it with her javelin until its heavy wet body had cleared the entrance.
She scarcely reacted when the second pterosaur attacked. It came out of nowhere, swooping down on her as she was jabbing at the dead bird. She instinctively raised the javelin and found it jammed in the second’s bird’s enormous beak. The creature screamed. Sasha screamed in response but did not loosen her hold on the javelin. If anything, the bird helped her jam it harder into its own mouth, forcing it to break off its attack.
The third bird caught Sasha on her blind side. Only its dark, swooping reflection in a puddle of water at her feet made her swing around and jab at the creature with all her might. The javelin stuck into the creature’s throat, just under its beak. Sasha yanked the javelin out, its blood spattering her up and down. Her feet slipped on the wet, muddy ground and she went down hard, scooting backward into the cave on her backside. The wounded bird twisted in agony in midair and snapped at her. She grabbed up her fallen javelin. This time she aimed for its breast, jabbing at her target even as the huge beak came down and struck her a glancing blow across the fo
rehead. She saw stars and blackness but kept screaming and pushing the javelin until fresh blood poured over her.
The bird fell dead in the rain.
This time, Sasha retreated to the back of the cave. She was panting, her throat hoarse, her body thrumming with terror. Her mind kept jumping, seeing dark shapes in the peripheral of her vision, seeing shadows that simply weren’t there. Newton stayed out of her way, keeping to the rocks higher up in the cavern, and chirped with concern.
Sasha waited, watching the cave entrance.
More birds came, swooping low and snapping at their fallen comrade, ripping off bloody chunks of meat. There was no honor amount pterosaurs, apparently. After an hour, the bird had been picked clean and the carcass was blown over by the wind and ripped away. Sasha’s mind worked automatically, numbly, like a lifeless doll programmed for just one task. She picked up the bow and moved stealthily to the entrance. She breathed slowly, steadily, her voice rasping in her throat. Through the sheets of rain she could see the dark winged creatures circling. They’d smelled blood. They didn’t care about the rain anymore.
Planet of Dinosaurs, The Complete Collection (Includes Planet of Dinosaurs, Sea of Serpents, & Valley of Dragons) Page 24
