by Logan Jacobs
“We’ll be careful,” I replied. “You know we can be. We made it to the shop today and we even saved that kid. Who knows, it might be easier with the military out there. They will be going after the dinosaurs and keeping a lot of the attention away from us.”
“That is true,” Hae-won added. “But, I do think this means we need to change our plan. If the military are out on the streets and they don’t want people involved, they might stop our car if they see it.”
“Yes, I guess they would,” I reasoned. “That means we’re making the trip on foot. We can still take the route we planned, it will just be a little slower. I think if we avoid the main sections, we should still be okay.”
Becka still looked uncertain, but she didn’t make any further comments about the trip.
“What else does the news say?” Hae-won asked.
I clicked back a page and looked over the other articles. I stopped when I came across a picture that looked familiar. I clicked on the article and the full image zoomed onto the screen.
“That’s the dinosaur from the quad,” Becka commented and pointed at the image.
There in the picture was the same dusty orange and gray lizard creature that had chased us earlier that day, only in this image it was eating an entire cow.
Chapter 15
“What’s it say?” Hae-won asked.
“It’s talking about the most dangerous types of dinosaurs and apparently these top the list today,” I said scanning down the article. “They’ve been identified as Torvosaurus.”
“Really?” Becka asked. “They know what type of dinosaurs these things are? Is it like that with all of them?”
“It looks like it’s mostly an educated guess,” I replied. “But a few paleontologists have agreed it has the right characteristics. They identified a few of the others, but mostly they can’t be sure about anything.”
“Does this mean they have ideas about how to stop it?” Hea-won asked.
“Hold on,” I tried to skim through the rest of the article as quickly as possible. “It just mentions that they aren’t like T-Rexs in the movies and they can still see you if you’re standing still, but they are also arguing about if that’s even true about T-Rexes. Like… no one can agree about anything.”
“Wow, so helpful.” Becka rolled her eyes. “Like anyone would just stand there in front of a thing like that.”
I clicked back to the main page and found an article about a plane being attacked by one of the flying dinosaur types that we had seen take that man. Apparently it had punctured through the engine and part of the cabin and caused the plane to lose altitude and crash.
I clicked back without commenting on it.
“What does that one say?” Becka asked and pointed to an article.
“Here,” I said after I pulled it up for her.
It seemed to be about an attack in another part of England, but I wasn’t sure exactly where.
“That’s not far from where I live,” Becka explained. “I need to try to reach my mum again.”
She stood up and crossed the room to the sofa before trying the number again.
I looked over to Hae-won. “Should we try our families again, too?”
“Yes, we probably should,” she answered.
I grabbed my cell phone off the counter and passed Hae-won’s over to her. Then I took a seat and tried the same three numbers I had last night, but they all either went to voicemail or rang out. I glanced over to Becka, and it didn’t seem like she was having any better luck.
“Ya-bu-seyo?” Hae-won said next to me.
She must have reached someone because she started speaking into the phone in Korean. Becka and I watched the conversation, but Hae-won was really good at keeping her face emotionless, and I couldn’t understand anything from watching her. After a couple of minutes, she hung up the phone and looked at Becka and me.
“I got my oldest brother’s phone,” the dark-haired girl explained. “He said that my family have all been moved to our island home, but that North Korea is starting to attack the South. There must be something wrong with the phones, too, because he says that our parents have been calling me, but I didn’t get any of the calls or messages.”
“Well, at least your family is safe right now,” I said. “And this is good news, in a way. About the phones, I mean. It means that everyone else could be fine, too, we just can’t reach them yet.”
“Why not, though?” Becka asked. “Why would the phones be acting like that? And how did Hae-won reach her brother?”
“Let me search it and see if anyone knows anything about this,” I replied as I typed a question into the search bar. “There aren’t a lot of results that look related, some of them are conspiracy theories.”
“What do you mean conspiracy theories?” Becka asked. “There are freaking dinosaurs outside, I think it might be time to just call them theories.”
“Well, some of them blame aliens and some of them point to it as evidence that the government is involved,” I read off. “But the cell phone companies are just saying that networks are overloaded and they can’t get anyone to work on stuff because… you know… dinosaurs.”
“Perfect,” Becka sighed.
“It does say it appears to be cutting off about ninety-five percent of all texts and calls,” I explained. “That’s something. Not really that helpful, but at least more information.”
“That doesn’t sound like we have good odds of reaching either of our families, then,” Becka said to me.
“It’s only been a few days,” I explained. “The networks could still become fixed, so we’ll keep trying every day.”
“Okay,” the blonde girl said and sucked in a deep breath. “I’m really worried about my mum.”
“I know,” I said. “Let’s take care of one thing at a time, okay? We’ll get your shot and then get some more food and then talk about your mom.”
“Right,” Becka said as she nodded at me. “Thanks, Jason. Have I told you how brilliant you are lately? You are brilliant. Especially for a yank.”
“Thanks,” I laughed, but when I glanced at her brown eyes, I noticed they were staring at my lips.
“I don’t want to know any more news,” Hae-won sighed. “It is sad and not making me feel better at all.”
“Good idea,” I said and closed the laptop. “We should probably get some sleep soon.”
“Alright,” Becka said and turned to Hae-won. “Do you mind if I take the bathroom first?”
“No, go ahead,” the blue-eyed girl replied.
“Thanks,” the blonde said before she gathered a few things and headed out the door.
I glanced over to Hae-won and saw her staring off into the middle distance.
“Hey, are you doing okay?” I asked.
She blinked a few times and snapped back to reality. “Yeah, I’m fine. I guess it’s just my brother.”
“Is something wrong?” I replied.
“Not definitely wrong,” she said, “It’s just that on the phone he mentioned that my parents were trying to reach Sun-hee as well. I guess he was on a trip to China. He didn’t tell me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “Did they reach him?”
Hea-won shook her head and frowned.
“Well, like we said, it has to be the phones,” I assured her. “I’m sure we can reach him, eventually.”
“It’s not just that,” she said. “My brother said that my mother wanted to try to get a plane to go and find Sun-hee and then me, but no one is flying right now.”
“I did see the article about the plane crash,” I replied.
“That is happening in Korea now, too,” she explained, “There are a lot of flying dinosaurs and no one knows what to do about them.”
“I’m starting to think I might not be able to go back anytime soon,” I said.
“That’s what I was thinking,” she said. “If there are all those flying things, they won’t have any flights until they’re all gone.”
&
nbsp; “I’m sorry, Hae-won,” I tried to console her, though I couldn’t tell that she was that upset.
“It’s the same for you,” she replied. “You don’t have to be sorry. At least this way we can all get through this together.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And we will get through it, you know. I’m sure of it.”
Becka walked back in and both of us fell silent.
“You both okay?” the blonde asked as she looked at Hae-won.
“Yes,” the beautiful Asian girl said and jumped up to get her things. “My turn.”
Becka raised an eyebrow at me as soon as Hae-won had closed the door to the bathroom.
“She’s missing her family,” I explained. “You understand.”
“Yes,” Becka sighed, and then I went and collected some of my things and headed out to the men’s bathroom.
There were no showers in this building, and that was the one flaw with choosing this as a base. Everything else about it made it too good of a spot to change, though, so we would have to figure something out. For now, I used the sink to try to wash myself off a bit from the day. The water here was still warm, so that was a good sign.
I still wasn’t sure how long the power would be around for. I had read somewhere that a nuclear power plant could last for weeks without anyone there to oversee it, but then again I had no idea if that was the type of power the school used. Still, for now it was holding out, but it wouldn’t hurt for us to take some precautions.
The main thing on the list for tomorrow was to get Becka the vaccine. I didn’t want to risk waiting any longer, but with our extended route and all the extra obstacles, it was possible the trip there and back could take us all day. Stockpiling information from the internet would have to wait until after.
I changed into some sweatpants and a clean t-shirt for bed and made my way back into the staff room. Hae-won wasn’t back yet and Becka was scrolling through something on her phone.
“Everything alright?” I asked.
“Not really,” she said. “I thought if I could go on Facebook or Instagram or something I could get in touch with some of my mates from school, see if they knew about anything happening back home, but everything I go to is shut down.”
“What do you mean shut down?” I asked.
“Look, I loaded up Facebook, but it gives me this error message.” She tilted her phone screen toward me to show me. “Instagram, twitter, both errors, too. Even fucking Tik Tok won’t load.”
“That’s really weird,” I said and pulled out my phone to see if my accounts were the same. I didn’t have as many as Becka did, but the couple I still used on my phone showed the same error messages. “It’s the same for me.”
Hae-won walked into the room, “What is wrong?”
“Check your social media apps,” I said. “Do any of them work?”
“One second,” she grabbed her phone from the table and started clicking through it. “Hmm, that’s weird. That one isn’t… not this one, either. No, they aren’t loading.”
“Neither of ours are, either,” I explained. “Something must have happened to the sites in the last hour.”
I started to worry that we had waited too long to gather information and now we would have to be stuck with only our own knowledge.
“I think I know why it’s like that,” Hae-won said. “I bet the servers overloaded.”
“What do you mean?” Becka asked.
“There must have been a lot of people on there, sharing stuff about what’s happening,” she continued. “It must have overloaded the servers and there’s obviously no one there to fix it.”
“Really?” Becka asked, “You think people actually saw those creatures and their first thought was to take a Snapchat?”
“I don’t know about British people,” I said. “But you can bet that’s what Americans did.”
“Same in Korea.” Hae-won nodded.
“I guess this is happening everywhere,” Becka said. “That’d be a lot of posts.”
“Hae-won, is it possible that could happen to the rest of the internet?” I asked.
“Well.” She tilted her head in thought. “I guess so. It would take longer, but it depends on how much got into the social media servers before they collapsed.”
“How do you know this stuff?” the blonde girl asked. “I thought you studied music.”
“I have hobbies,” the Asian girl stated. “Also, my parents think I study engineering. I found out if they ask about what I’m learning and I start talking about computers, they don’t ask follow-up questions.”
“How long do you think it would take?” I asked.
“I could only guess.” She shrugged.
“A guess is better than what I’ve got,” I sighed.
“Anywhere from a couple days to a couple of weeks,” she replied. “If a lot got onto the social media servers, that will speed things up. It’s good that they’re down now, though, that should slow it down.”
“So, we don’t really know what will go first,” I said. “The power or the internet.”
“I have no clue how long the power would last,” The dark-haired girl admitted.
“I think we should make a list tonight of things for us to look up and print off in the library,” I said. “That way we can try to do that when we get back from the clinic.”
“Okay, I can get a notebook,” the blonde girl said and went to her bag.
“Can we talk about it in bed?” Hae-won groaned. “I’m tired, I want to at least lay down.”
“Sure,” I laughed. “But I think we should probably move the beds into the gallery.”
“How come?” the brown-eyed girl asked. “What’s wrong with here?”
“We’re still exposed through the windows,” I said. “I know it isn’t very likely, but I don’t want one of those flying creatures spotting us and trying to get in. Hae-won and I moved the rest of the materials from the bookcases into the main lobby. Tomorrow we can work on boarding up these top windows. We think we have a good plan for them, so all the light isn’t blocked out, but for right now I think it’s a good idea to sleep in the gallery.”
“The gallery is creepy, though,” Becka said. “Are we going to leave the lights on?”
“Hmm.” I hadn’t thought about that. We had been keeping the lights on pretty much twenty-four seven in the gallery, since without any windows, it was impossible to see. “I think we would all sleep better in the dark, but I don’t want all the gallery lights off. I can go downstairs and switch off just the ones up here. Does that sound okay?”
“I guess so,” Becka said.
“I would feel safer away from the windows,” Hae-won agreed. “Let’s move this stuff in there.”
“We should stay close to the room,” the blonde girl added. “just in case something gets in.”
“Sure, we won’t go very far away,” I agreed.
The three of us each picked up our mattress and moved them out of the staff room and into the main gallery space. There wasn’t much space in the little side hallway, so we had to move just outside of it. The main gallery was a bit cooler, which I didn’t mind, but I noticed that Becka immediately draped a blanket over her shoulders. The floors were harder and most of the walls were blank, so the place was much less cozy than our rug-covered corner in the staff room, but at least it felt safe. Tomorrow we could board up the windows and sleep back in our other spot.
I took a seat on my mattress between the two girls. The three of us had pushed them all together again, despite the ample space. The Asian girl laid back on her mat and threw a blanket over herself while Becka sat on the other mattress with a notepad and pen in her hand.
“Ok, what should I write?” the blonde girl asked.
“I think we should look up more about barricades,” I said. “I’m sure there’s a better way to do the gates. Maybe eventually we can figure something out where we build our own fence around a smaller section of the campus.”
“That sounds like a l
ot of time and a lot of materials that we don’t have,” Becca replied. “I don’t think it would be worth it, since we would have to spend so much time finding more materials.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe I am thinking a little too big. It would just be nice to have more space that was entirely safe.”
“We could try to barricade up another building,” Hae-won said from under her blanket. “Somewhere with showers and maybe a TV.”
“Shower sounds good,” I said. “But I don’t think the TV will be working for very long.”
“It would be easier,” Becka said. “We can just board up the windows of a larger building so that we have somewhere else to go during the day.”
“Ok, we can think about that later,” I agreed. “For right now, though, what should we print from the internet?”
“You should look up how to make those three-oh-eight bullets,” the Asian girl said. “We could make some more for the gun, that would be useful.”
“That’s a bit beyond my hunting skills,” I told her.
“I can do it,” the dark-haired woman replied. “I told you I was good at making things.”
“Right, but packing gunpowder can be dangerous,” I explained. “You would have to get it exactly right or the whole thing could blow up in someone’s face.”
“That’s why we need to look it up.” she insisted. “Just trust me, if the instructions are good, I can make it.”
“Ok, fine, add that to the list.” I told Becka. “I think we should also look up stuff about gardening and food storage. If this thing goes on more than a couple weeks, we’ll really start to need a way to save and produce food.”
“That seems far off, but if the internet will crash soon, I suppose it can’t hurt,” Becka said and scribbled a few things down on the notepad.
“Some basic survival stuff would help, too,” I explained. “Like knot tying, starting a fire, that kind of stuff.”
“Should we look up stuff about the dinosaurs?” Hae-won asked.
“What kind of stuff?” Becka asked.
“They said the names of some of them,” the blue-eyed girl replied. “We could see if there’s anything that would help us.”
