by Logan Jacobs
“What about the food?” the first man countered.
“If we wait, it might leave,” the other suggested.
The man in the rugby shirt looked up at me as I passed and turned away.
“It sounds like there’s a dinosaur in there,” Hae-won whispered to me. “What do you want to do?”
“We need food,” I replied. “Especially now after that giant dinosaur and the empty shop. Our food won’t last and it looks like this is far from being over.”
“You think we should go in,” the Asian girl said without the tone of a question.
“Yeah, we need to,” I replied. “I’ll keep the gun out, though, just in case.”
I went to take the carrier off my back, but Becka’s hand reached up and stopped me.
“Wait, Jason,” she said, and I watched as her eyes flashed to the people gathered around the store. “Don’t take it out until we’re inside. It might startle people.”
I followed her gaze and nodded. I didn’t know if the weapon would really startle people, since we were all dealing with a dinosaur apocalypse, but this was London, and they really didn’t like guns.
When we reached the door, the crowd seemed to notice we had armor and swords on, so they parted silently so that we could get through. Then I peered inside the frames while I heard a few of the people in the crowd whisper about the gun case on my shoulder.
I’d been in this grocery store a few times since living here. It was a lot bigger than the little corner shop, but it was still far from being anything like the stores I was used to in America. Still, it had all the things I usually needed. From my current point of view, I could only see a couple of the rows. Most of them had been picked clean, but I could tell there was food remaining farther inside.
I was about to step in through the door when I heard someone call out from a few feet back. I looked over to see a woman grasping the hand of a little boy who looked to be about three years old. She looked at the three of us with a concerned expression.
“I know you’ve got weapons, but you kids shouldn’t go in there,” she said. “One of those horrid things is in the back.”
I wasn’t sure how to answer her, but Becka took a step forward and did it for me.
“It’s okay, ma’am,” she flashed her short sword and held it up so the woman could see. “We’ll be safe.”
The woman gave Becka a sad smile, “You do look like a group of right warriors with all that metal on. Just be careful, loves.”
Becka nodded to her and waved at the boy before turning back to us. Then the three of us gave each other an understanding look and stepped in through the door frame.
I stepped off to the side, checked to be sure no one from outside would be able to see me, and then I unslung the gun case from my shoulder.
“Cover me while I get this out,” I said to the girls.
“Sure,” Becka said, and the two of them stood guard with their swords out around me.
I put my sword in the sheath, bent down, unzipped the rifle case, and looked over the weapon as my pulse began to race. Then I slipped it out of the case and flipped the safety off.
“Okay, let’s go,” I whispered as I set my trigger finger outside of the trigger guard.
The girls nodded, and I guessed they knew not to say anything with the unknown creature lurking somewhere deeper inside the store.
We moved into the second row where not everything had been taken yet, and I nodded at Becka.
“Got it,” she whispered, and then she quickly opened her backpack and slid in a few packs of pasta and cans of sauces.
As soon as she was done, she nodded at us, and we moved as quietly as we could to the next aisle. Here we found several different varieties of canned veggies, but while I could see that the aisle was clear, I started to hear rustling from deeper inside the shop.
“You guys grab some food,” I hissed and nodded in the direction of the noise. “I’ll check that out.”
I kept the gun raised up so I could see through the sight mark and stepped around the side of the shelf. The center aisle was clear, aside from some scattered patches of food coating the linoleum floor. The row of registers were all abandoned, of course, and there wasn’t a single person in sight.
The noise came again from the last row, and I tried to figure out what could be making a noise like that. It was a squishing and tapping sound, almost like chewing. My heart stopped for a second as I realized it could be the sound of the dinosaur eating someone.
Oh, fuck. Please don’t let it be a dinosaur eating someone.
I stood as far away as I could and peered around the edge into the last row. It was larger than the other aisles and a well-lit set of refrigerated shelves lined the back. Halfway down the aisle I saw the creature that all the other people had been talking about. It was about the same shape and size as the three raptors we had fought in the library, maybe a little bigger, but the main difference was that this one was bright orange. It looked like it had way more feathers than the ones we had seen, but still nothing that resembled working wings. They formed something closer to chicken wings, but his body looked so stocky I doubted they could lift him even the few flaps that chickens could get.
The orange raptor was alone in the aisle, and he had his back turned to me because he was focused on the row of packed meats scattered on the ground.
The noise was coming from him chewing what looked to be ground beef, and I took a thankful breath.
Hae-won approached me slowly from the side, and I held up a finger to signal she should stay quiet. She nodded and crept over to my side far quieter than I would have thought possible in her heavy combat-style footwear.
She spotted the creature among the wrapped packages, and her eyes narrowed a bit as she studied the dino. Then she pointed to another aisle, mouthed Becka’s name, and pointed over to the cash registers. I looked at her in confusion until she mouthed ‘bag’ to clarify her meaning.
I guess Becka must have wanted more bags for a different aisle. I gave Hae-won a nod to show I got her meaning and refocused myself on the raptor.
I made sure to keep the gun trained on it as Hae-won went over to grab some bags. Right now the creature was entirely focused on the meat it was eating, but I knew that could change in a split second.
I flinched at the rustling sound of the bags, but the creature didn’t seem to notice. It sounded like there was some kind of commotion outside, too, but the beast didn’t turn. I chanced a quick glance over to Hae-won, and I saw that she had frozen in place by one of the registers.
She was staring just past them to something on the other side and it took me a minute before I realized what was happening. Across the registers, the three-year-old boy from outside was wandering around, alone and seemingly oblivious to what was happening.
My eyes went wide as I saw that he seemed to be wandering closer and closer to the orange raptor. I wasn’t sure what we should do, but I knew there was no way we could walk away from the situation.
Hae-won looked at me with wide eyes, so I pointed to her and then to the child, hoping that she would understand that I wanted her to try to grab him. If we could get him out of there without alerting the raptor, that would be the best-case scenario.
Hae-won nodded at me and started to move past the registers toward the boy. She took calculated steps so she wouldn’t make any extra noise, and I tried not to watch the two of them so I could keep the raptor in my sights. So far the beast was still focused on the case, but then I heard a slapping sound from the other side of the registers, and my stomach dropped to my feet.
I looked over to see that the kid had taken a tumble and was now sprawled on the floor. His face scrunched together, and I knew he was about to let out a massive cry. Hae-won must have known as well, because she closed the last few steps quickly, clamped her left hand over his mouth, dropped her sword, and wrapped her right arm around his waist to pick him up.
The beginning of his cry cut off just before her hand clamped down and her
sword clattered, and my eyes flashed over to the raptor as it turned away from the case and toward the direction of the noise.
Hae-won had ducked down below the registers, and for a second I thought that the raptor wasn’t going to notice them. It must have caught some movement, though, because it kept its attention trained on that side of the room and gradually turned its body toward them.
In one short hop, it jumped from the display case and onto the ground. I knew I would have to do something before it got any closer to them, so I lined up my shot.
“Over here, you bastard!” I shouted as my blood rushed to my head.
In a moment of confusion, the creature turned itself to face me, and I aimed the crosshairs on his feathery chest, moved my finger onto the trigger, and fired. The gun kicked back into my shoulder, but I had been expecting it and my aim didn’t suffer. The shot rang out and echoed around the shop, and I watched as the creature reeled back, croaked a dying breath, and crumpled to the ground. The bullet had hit him square in the chest and blood poured out from the fist sized wound that the .308 had left.
“Fuck yeah,” I gasped over the sound of my ringing ears, and then I yanked back on the bolt to eject the smoking spent brass casing and load a new bullet before I walked to the front of the store to make sure the beautiful Korean girl and the boy were okay.
Hae-won rose to her feet while carrying the child, and brought him back through the registers. His mother came running up from behind her and took the boy from her hands.
“Oh, my god, Dylan!” the woman said as she hugged him. “Are you okay? Why would you run off like that? You can’t do that, okay, you’ll get hurt.”
I wasn’t sure the kid knew exactly what had just gone on, but he was still crying from his fall. He just nodded to his mother through his tears, and the woman hugged him again and turned to Hae-won.
“Thank you so much for getting him,” she turned to me. “And thank you for killing that thing.”
“No problem,” I lied as I grinned at her.
In reality, my legs were shaking and my head was still spinning. Yeah, I’d killed the dino with a single shot, and that was pretty badass, but it wasn’t at all something I was used to doing.
And I had the feeling I was going to be doing it a lot in the next few days.
Maybe for the rest of my life, if we didn’t figure out what was causing the dinosaurs to come back and stop it.
I looked over to the door and saw that a few of the people who had been standing around outside were now starting to look through to see what had happened, and I knew we didn’t have long before the shop was packed with people trying to get food.
“We need to grab the food and get out of here,” I whispered to Hae-won.
“Okay, Jason,” Hae-won said, and then she hurried back to collect the bags and find Becka.
“Sorry, but we have to get going,” I said to the woman who was still kneeling on the ground with her son.
I hurried off before she got the chance to say anything, and then I took another glance at the dinosaur when I passed his corpse. Yeah, it looked dead alright, and the rifle bullet had nearly blown out his chest. This gun was definitely a lucky find, but I really needed to conserve as much ammo as I possibly could. If this was the US, I could walk into pretty much any house and find boxes of 9mm or .308 ammo, but here in the UK it was going to be a lot harder.
I walked past the dinosaur’s corpse and into the meat aisle. which had mostly been destroyed. Beef and pork packages had been sliced through by the raptor’s claws and bitten into, and some of it was strewn around the case and coating the other packs. I tried to find anything that was untouched by the carnage, and I ended up locating a few packs of chicken breasts, some pork chops, and a few containers of ground turkey.
I grabbed what I could and went around the aisle to find the girls. They were next to the meat section and were packing away more rice, beans, and a couple of dairy products.
“You guys have enough?” I asked.
“Yeah, I think we have enough to last us for a few weeks if we’re careful,” Becka replied.
“Here, pack this up.” I handed her the meat containers.
“Okay,” she replied and took the meat to place them in another bag.
“Let’s go before this place gets any crazier,” I said.
We picked up the supplies and headed for the door where a group of people were starting to gather. The group parted when they saw our armor, swords, and my rifle, but we just kept our heads down as we went through the crowd.
I heard them talk as we passed, some of them speaking to us but others speaking about us to each other. It was evident that not all of them were as happy as the boy’s mother about our actions. A few people did say thank you, and I gave them a nod as we went.
“Should that kid really have a rifle?” I heard one man asking when he noticed the rifle.
“They’re taking a lot of food, don’t you think?” another woman commented.
I noticed how, now that the shop was clear, the rest of the crowd outside had instinctively started to form a line to the entrance.
“Typical Brits,” Becka said. “The place could be on fire and they’d still form a well-spaced queue for the door.”
“It is a bit weird,” I said. “Let’s get out of here, though. I don’t like the way some of them are looking at us.”
“Me, either,” Hae-won agreed, and we quickened our pace through the crowd and didn’t stop until we were back around the corner.
“Becka, can you keep an eye out for any of those people trying to follow us?” I asked. “I need to put this gun away. I should have done it before we left, but I don’t think any of them will get through to the police when they call to complain.”
“Of course,” she replied.
I put my rifle back in the case, put the case on my shoulder, and then pulled out my sword. It was becoming very clear that though the rifle would be great in a crisis, it was making people jealous, and I didn’t want to give anyone a reason to attack us. When I had swapped out the weapons, I slung the gun back over my shoulder and picked up the bags I had set down. Then we carried on back toward Cambridge, and I kept looking behind us for followers, but everyone seemed to have lost interest in us now that we’d cleared out the grocery store.
We came back to the destroyed neighborhood, and I wondered what had happened with the giant dinosaur and the circling hunters. Maybe they had already taken it down somewhere in the distance, or maybe it had been too big and they’d had to let it go. I imagined if something that big kept lumbering around London, we would find something about it on the news next time we checked.
We reached the gate of the campus without encountering any other dinosaurs, but then we came to a stop about 50 yards away when we saw a flurry of feathery movement.
“Shit.” I looked toward the main entrance and saw that a pair of small raptors was crowded around the large dinosaur carcass that had been left by the gate.
They were the blue-gray type we had seen in the library, and their claws and mouths were covered in the blood and meat from the larger dinosaur. The raptors seemed completely engrossed in their meal and didn’t look like they were in any mood to attack.
But there was no way we could get through the gate without alerting them.
Chapter 11
“What should we do?” Hae-won asked.
“We can’t get in that way,” I said as I watched the feasting raptors. “They’ll attack us.”
“There are only two,” the asian girl noted.
“I mean, we could fight them, but one of them might get away,” I said. “Then we would have the same issue as before with being tracked.”
“You could shoot them from here,” Becka suggested.
“That’s another two bullets.” I shook my head. “I don’t want to waste any more, especially if we don’t have to.”
“Then what?” Becka asked. “If we don’t attack them, what are we supposed to do?”
“That’s by the main paddock, though,” She replied. “Won’t it be more dangerous there?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But if we go around on the street, we’ll have the buildings for cover. We can check the space and make sure there’s nothing more deadly there. If we see something, we can always come back here and try to fight these guys.”
“That sounds good,” Hae-won said. “And you’re right about the barricade. I’ll need to analyze the space to make sure my plan will work.”
“Alright.” Becka nodded slowly.
“Great, let’s get going, then.” I grinned.
We edged around the street and made sure to keep as much distance between us and the two raptors as possible. They seemed oblivious to us, and once we’d gotten past them, I felt sure they would leave us alone.
As we passed, I took stock of the surrounding streets. They were extremely familiar, since I had lived on campus around half a year by now, but everything felt empty and abandoned, and there was a dense and alien feeling in the air. Very little was actually changed, aside from a few broken windows and some stray debris, but it was like I was seeing the place through different eyes.
It took us about fifteen minutes to circle the outer half of the campus and come up to the gateway by the paddock. When we got close, I slowed my steps and kept a tight hold on my sword. I looked out into the open area, but I didn’t see anything moving in the fields.
“Let’s watch the area for a bit longer before we go in,” I said. “Becka, you keep an eye on the street so nothing catches us off guard. Hae-won, watch the paddock. I’ll focus on the quad.”
“Got it,” Becka said.
“Okay,” Hae-won replied.
The three of us focused on our individual areas, and I scanned over the quad repeatedly. After the longest five minutes of my life had passed, I decided we had been careful enough.
“Anything?” I asked the women.
