by Michael Todd
“Rhinosaur. I seen ʼem but never outside the Zoo, and never enough to crash a house party. They’re not the nicest blokes—as strong as a rhino but faster, like a football player who can dance ballet. They have thick scales like armor, sharp teeth—although I suppose almost everything in the Zoo has sharp teeth—and worst of all, that nose of theirs.”
“They hunt by smell?”
“I don’t know anything about that, but it has a big ol’ spike on it and they know how to use it.” Manny stared ahead and cringed visibly.
Ava watched in horror as one of the rhinosaurs caught up to a Zookeeper who’d stopped running and turned to fight. He tried to use his flamethrower on the creature, but the flames weren’t nearly as effective as they were on plants. Without even breaking stride, the beast lowered its head and charged through the spurt of flame and raised its long, spiked nose into the man’s chest. The victim was launched back by the impact, a bloody hole all the way through him from chest to back. Sand billowed as he landed and settled once more on his motionless figure. The rhinosaur thundered on, its shoulders aflame. It didn’t seem to notice, let alone care.
“Gunnar, are you already chomping at the bit back there?” Manny yelled over the headsets.
“If by chomping at the bit you mean ready to shoot, then yeah, I’m chomping.”
“Peppy? Whaddya think? These blokes are about to break rule number thirty-seven—never feed the critters. Let’s show ʼem how to properly break a rule. Feed ʼem some lead!”
“How many of these rules do you have?” Peppy said.
“A hundred and six.”
“And your plan is to break them all?”
“Is ol’ Manny already that predictable?”
“Obviously.”
“What about the mission?” Ava asked. “Lieutenant Cort said not to engage. We’re supposed to get as many people as possible to safety.”
“Rule number one—fuck orders,” Manny retorted. “Wait, shit, that’s gonna be a hard one to break.” He seemed genuinely conflicted.
“That was before we knew about a pack of rhinosaurs,” Gunnar pointed out. “They won’t be able to hold those things back with flamethrowers and weed killer, and there are too many people for one chopper.”
“As much as I love watching people get trampled to death, I think I like shooting big, murderous Zoo creatures even more,” Peppy said.
“More helicopters are coming,” Ava reminded them.
“They’ll be ten minutes at least. Those people don’t have that kind of time, and Gunnar’s right. We can’t fit half of them in here with us. You’re the smart one. What happens if we don’t save them?” Manny said.
“The Zoo uses their biomass to spread,” she said and gritted her teeth. How foolish had she been to think that she had felt prepared for this? Like anyone could be prepared for this insane place. Like anyone could expect anything to go according to plan, ever. “Which means we don’t have a choice. We have to stop those rhinosaurs.”
“I love it. The smart one has given us dumb advice. We’re going in!” Manny shoved the stick forward and the helicopter plunged as the Aussie gave a huge, hearty bellow. Ava yelled too, although her scream was higher-pitched, less of a war cry, and more of a function of her stomach doing somersaults as they flew into almost certain death.
The aircraft descended rapidly, and Manny hollered the whole time like they were about to jump into a bumping pool party instead of a stampede of half-crazy rhinosaurs.
The helicopter shook and Manny pulled up sharply as someone fired a volley from the back.
“What was that?” Ava said as she strained against her seatbelt to see what had hit them.
“Funny, I was gonna ask you the same thing!” The pilot tightened his grip on the controls.
“Rhinosaur. The nose of one, anyway. I think it wanted to expedite our landing,” Peppy said. “I shot it in the face and got blood all over your shiny new chopper. Sorry, not sorry.”
More gunshots erupted as both soldiers released a barrage at the rhinosaurs, but they seemed to have little effect.
“The damn things need more than a few bullets to take them down,” Gunnar shouted between bursts of fire. “But I can’t unload into ʼem. There are too many Zookeepers in the way.”
“Maybe the Zookeepers would prefer to be slaughtered from above by their allies instead of gored or trampled to death by something that looks like it can’t decide whether it belongs in a breeding program or is already extinct,” Peppy said. “I know I would.”
“Can’t we find a middle ground between death and death?” Gunnar retorted.
“Ava,” Manny said and unbuckled his harness. “Do you remember when you told me you always wanted to learn how to fly?”
“Yeah. I also said that I like pumpkin cheesecake and am especially fond of staying alive!” She grabbed the controls, but only because someone had to. Without a doubt, she didn’t like where this was headed. “Why do I have the feeling you’re not going to get cheesecake?”
“On a flight this short? You’d be lucky for peanuts.”
“Manny!”
“We’ve waited too long. It’s time for your first lesson.”
“Manny, stop it. Manny! Manny, where the hell are you going?”
“Did I show you my fancy new helmet? It has Wi-Fi and everything.”
He scrambled into the back of the helicopter.
“He jumped out!” Gunnar said and sounded entirely too amused.
Immediately, the tail of the helicopter began to drift to the side.
Ava grabbed the joystick and shoved to the left. The craft moved left but the tail didn’t straighten out.
“Use the pedals to straighten the tail out,” Manny hollered over her headset. “Cyclic—that’s the big stick between your legs—controls where you’re going and pull up to get higher.”
Ava, not able to see him but thankful he was still alive, pulled back on the stick between her legs—the cyclic. The helicopter slowed.
“No, not that. Pull the collective. The armresty doo-dad in your left hand. Yank that sucker!”
Ava did so, and the helicopter rose obediently.
“Now use the pedals to bring her around.”
“Can you get us closer to Manny?” Gunnar shouted. “The dumbass looks like he has a plan worse than most.”
Ava pushed the right pedal—starboard? Did that apply in helicopters? Thankfully, the aircraft spun until she could see Manny.
He rode a rhinosaur—or tried to. Despite the creature’s huge size, it bucked like crazy. It really wasn’t that much like a rhino, she thought. It was too fast, too nimble, and far too spiky. Riding a werepire looked simple by comparison, and the Australian hadn’t had much success with that little adventure either.
Not that she did much better in her first attempt at piloting. The cyclic bounced around in her hands, and she had to constantly adjust her feet to ensure the tail didn’t spin out.
When she finally managed to get it moderately level, she pushed down on the armrest thingy—the collective—to move forward. That didn’t work and instead, sent them down once more. Ava pulled back up on the collective, and the helicopter thankfully slowed scant seconds before it impacted, then rose once more.
“Manny’s still ahead of us, not dead on the ground yet, just FYI,” Peppy said. Despite the fact that they had almost crashed, Peppy didn’t even sound flustered. Ava supposed that compared to the horrors of the Zoo, dying in a fiery explosion didn’t sound that bad.
She wrestled the helicopter back above the nose spikes of the rhinosaurs—and only sustained a few hard whacks as she did so—and managed to hold it moderately still.
Directly ahead, Manny still perched on the beast. He worked his way up its back, eased his legs over its shoulders, flexed, and let go with his hands.
This was crazy beyond anything she’d seen before.
She had no more time to figure out how to fly. She had to go, now. She thought she knew the man and wh
at he was capable of, but riding a stampeding pissed-off half dinosaur was beyond anything she’d expected. Cautiously, she pushed forward on the cyclic but kept her left hand on the collective in case she needed to lower them to pick Manny up, and hoped like hell that she wouldn’t need to work the pedals too much.
The aircraft skimmed forward as the pilot held onto the rhinosaur with both legs.
“We lost visual on the Australian back here. How’s he doing?” Gunnar asked after a sustained barrage that had seemed to go on forever. Ava could feel the mounted machine gun through the frame of the helicopter, that’s how powerful it was, but it still didn’t kill the monsters.
“I’m doing fine. Bring those dinos this way. I have a plan!” Manny yelled over the headset.
“You don’t look like you’re doing fine,” Ava retorted and pressed even harder on the cyclic between her legs as she willed the helicopter to move faster.
Despite the rhinosaur bucking, Manny brought his arms out wide like he wanted to take flight, then he brought his arms together, right into the sides of the creature’s head.
It screamed, although it sounded much like a roar as well like the two had somehow mashed together into a single sound. Ava didn’t know what to call the cry, but it sounded like a foghorn had gotten seriously pissed off.
The beast shook its head a few times like it had an insect flying near its ears, but at a hard jab from Manny’s heels, it raced away even faster than it had before.
Only now, it seemed to obey the pilot’s commands.
“Do you see this? I’m the Goddamn monster whisperer!” he whooped from the back of the stampeding rhinosaur. He brought it around and back toward the rest of its kind that attacked the Zookeepers. One against twenty. Great odds.
Ava lost sight of him for a moment. Somehow, he was able to make the rhinosaur more maneuverable than she could the helicopter. The man really could fly anything.
“Holy shit. I thought I’d seen it all,” Gunnar shouted from the back.
“What’s happening?” Ava asked as she worked the pedals to change the direction of the helicopter and try to get eyes on Manny again. She seemed to have a decent grasp of the cyclic and the collective, but the pedals still felt weird.
“He made his little pony run between some Zookeepers and other rhinosaurs. They were nose to nose, that’s how close he was,” Gunnar said.
“Have you ever seen an Australian sheepherder?” Manny shouted over the headset.
“I had one when I was a kid,” Peppy said. “We had to put it down before it died a horribly painful death.”
“Yeah, well, let’s rewind on that!” the pilot shouted, seemingly unperturbed by her joke. “I did an exchange program on a farm and spent time with some dogs instead of the dingoes. Follow my lead. Get these things moving together. Bullets oughta serve as decent motivation.”
“Roger,” Gunnar and Peppy said together as if his request was completely reasonable instead of absurdly dangerous.
Ava finally saw him. He still rode his ungainly mount and cut a path between the Zookeepers and the attackers. The rhinosaurs gave chase and sustained fire rang out from the back of the helicopter. Peppy and Gunnar aimed at the heels and flanks of the rhinosaurs that didn’t get the idea.
The creatures converged into a stampede. Together, the noise was so loud that Ava could hear the rumble over the sound of the helicopter’s rotors.
Cautiously, she pushed the cyclic forward. She didn’t know what he had planned but she knew she had to catch up to him before the animals did.
“Whatever his crazy plan is, it’s working,” Gunnar yelled. “The rhinosaurs are leaving the Zookeepers alone!”
“I think he’s leading them back into the Zoo,” she said, already terrified at the prospect. She did well enough flying the helicopter for the moment, out over the desert and moving in mostly straight lines. It would be another thing completely to try to follow Manny into the dense jungle. Tall trees, tiny clearings, and swarms of giant, angry locusts would make the rescue a little more difficult.
“I don’t think he’s headed for the Zoo,” Peppy said. From her tone, Manny could have been sending the rhinosaurs to do their taxes.
Ava saw the pilot kick the rhinosaur repeatedly with his right leg, and the beast veered left to get away from the sensation.
“Don’t let them follow me. I’m coming around to chase the stragglers.”
Gunfire rang out and the sand immediately behind the Australian spurted. Thankfully, the rhinosaurs didn’t run through the hail of bullets.
Manny peeled off to the left, back, and around until Ava lost him from sight.
She was utterly confused. Where was he going? Where was he trying to lead the monsters? Back into the Zoo? Surely that was suicide.
She froze in the instinctive awareness of catastrophe when she saw the tanker where the Zookeepers stored the fuel for their flamethrowers. It was directly in the path of the stampede.
“Oh dear,” Ava said, her eyes wide. Adrenaline surged and thrust her shock aside. She steered the cyclic to the right, jammed hard on the right foot pedal, and pulled up on the collective.
Together, it was barely enough to save their lives.
The first rhinosaur sliced a gash in the bottom of the tanker as if it were made of aluminum foil rather than steel. Fuel poured out into the sand, a river of fuel that the animals churned up as they crashed through it.
One of their horns caught the steel at the wrong angle and the tanker erupted.
The explosion sucked on the exposed fuel and the resultant inferno engulfed the herd in flames.
The shockwave pummeled the helicopter and Ava battled the controls. She struggled to maintain control as a huge ball of fire rose from the blaze.
Below her, the charred corpses of the rhinosaurs belched smoke into the desert air. Only one of the of the beasts was still standing and Manny was on its back.
Ava watched and tried not to grin as the pilot vaulted off its back and rolled through the sand.
The monster maintained its headlong pace past the charred corpses of its kin, through the wreckage of the burning tanker, and back into the jungle.
Now, all Ava had to do was land a helicopter.
Chapter Two
Manny laughed so hard he couldn’t breathe. He held his sides, tried to catch his breath, and succumbed to laughter once again.
“What is so funny?” Ava shouted as she marched toward him from the grounded helicopter.
“Maybe his whole life passed before his eyes,” Peppy said. She had hopped off the helicopter as soon as Ava had accomplished her rocky landing, taken a crate from Gunnar, and opened it. From there, she’d pulled out an enormous gun, big enough to need its own legs. Despite the fact that the blast had killed more than twenty monsters from the Zoo, the private wasted no time in setting up a perimeter.
“No! No, that woulda had me crying too. Life o’ drama, the majesty of a man’s existence, an’ all that.” Manny wiped tears from his cheeks.
“Then what?” Ava asked, furious. She reached him and grabbed him by the shoulders, studied his face and checked his vision, then examined his arms and torso in search of injuries. Somehow, he didn’t have any except for a few scrapes from where he’d rolled in the sand.
“That was the worst damn landing I ever saw. You almost smashed the tail into the sand and compensated by hitting one of the pedals? What did you think would happen except set the old bird to spinning? Where did you learn to land?”
“From you,” she returned sharply and smacked him on the chest.
“That explains it,” Gunnar said with a bellow of laughter.
Ava snorted despite her fury. It was so absurd. Manny had jumped on the back of a rhinosaur, herded a bunch of the damn monsters into a fuel tanker, and they laughed at her landing? She smiled. When she thought about it that way, she supposed it was kind of funny.
“Can you imagine if I needed an extraction? You would have taken my head clean off with one
of the blades,” the Australian said.
“An improvement, to be sure,” Peppy said. “But Manny makes a good point. You didn’t even manage to decapitate him. Your landing needs work.”
Ava laughed at that. She couldn’t help herself. What next? Maybe Manny would suggest having a cook-out with the dead rhinosaurs.
Instead, the pilot shook his head, wiped his eyes once more, and headed to the helicopter.
“There, there, girl. Are you all right? Did little Ava scare you as shitless as she did me?” He went about checking the aircraft with exaggerated care.
Gunnar grinned as Peppy, as straight-faced as ever, barked orders at the Zookeepers. “Reinforcements are incoming. There’s no telling if the Zoo is doing the same. We need a tight perimeter and I want it yesterday!”
Ava had a role to play as well. She unloaded two stretchers from the helicopter and recruited a couple of Zookeepers. Both men glanced at Peppy’s hard stare before they followed Ava’s commands, she noticed.
She sent them to bring her the wounded.
In minutes, the team had the helicopter prepped for launch, a rough perimeter with a slightly reassuring spool of razor wire unwound between them and the Zoo, and a triage tent.
When she looked up from her work, Ava saw that some of the Zookeepers were already back to work. They burned the few vines and shrubs from the jungle that had managed to survive the explosion and their earlier onslaught. She knew, as well as anyone, that even one bush would be able to start the Zoo’s spread. To hold it back, they had to destroy every plant they saw and burn the soil as well. Nothing but blackened sand would do, and the Zoo could colonize even that if it chose to. All it needed was more biomass.
Fortunately, they’d denied it a sizeable meal today.
“Hold still,” Ava told a Zookeeper with a four-inch piece of shrapnel protruding from her arm. The woman nodded and prepared herself for the pain but still flinched and cursed violently when Ava eased the piece of metal from her.