Subterranea

by P. K. Hawkins

  Chapter Six

  On several occasions they came across more branching paths. There was no way at all they could be certain, but they continued to follow the logic that the presence of the glowing fungus, beyond just making it easier for them to not stumble around blindly, suggested the presence of other life as well. They ended up being right, but they weren’t prepared for exactly what kind of life they were about to encounter.

  They could tell they were approaching some kind of open cavern by the way the echoes of their voices changed, but none of them were ready to find an open space large enough to hold a small underground city. The tunnel opened out onto a high ledge overlooking the cavern, giving them a perfect view of the creatures grazing in the humongous space below.

  The cavern was full of dinosaurs.

  “That is so rad!” Jesse whispered. “Real, actual breathing dinosaurs!”

  While Murky may have been obsessed with animals, she had never read up much on dinosaurs, so she was at a loss to give an exact name to any of the creatures roaming around down there in the cavern. She still recognized plenty of them though, names or not. Nearest to their hiding place she could see a small group of the kind with ridges and horns around their heads, while much further out she thought she could see the huge scary kind with big teeth as it ran after some kind of prey.

  “Maybe we could go down there and pet one of them?” Murky asked.

  “Murky, I’m sorry, but we’ve got a lot more important things to do right now than try to pet giant lizards,” Laura said. She tapped her wrist, even though she had left her colorful Swatch watch at home because she’d been afraid of wrecking it while biking. “Tick, tick, tick.”

  Murky stuck her lip out in a pout, but she wasn’t going to argue with her big sister.

  “We might still have to go down there anyway,” Henderson said. “I don’t see any other way to go, do you?”

  They all looked around themselves, but they could tell right away that he was right. To one side there was a well-worn path that sloped down from their cliff and onto the main floor of the dinosaurs’ cavern. Down on the cavern floor there seemed to be a couple of different tunnels that they might choose to go through, but up here there was no way to go except the way they had come.

  “As cool as it would be to get close to one,” Laura said, “I think we need to find a path through down there that keeps us as far away from them as possible.”

  “Yeah, even the ones that wouldn’t eat us could probably still stomp on us,” Henderson said.

  “We can’t even go and touch just one of them?” Murky asked. “Not even one of the little ones?”

  “Murky, don’t even think about it,” Laura said. “We don’t have the time to go rescuing one of us if that person’s about to get trampled.”

  Murky pouted at her but nodded. “Fine. Be a spoil sport.”

  They all went down the slope as quietly as possible, partly out of awe for their situation and partly for fear of triggering some kind of stampede from the creatures three and four times their size. The closer they got though, the more it seemed that the prehistoric creatures were completely unimpressed by the four of them. Several of them looked directly at the four kids descending the slope into their domain and then went right back to whatever important dino business they felt they needed to do. A lot of them, at least the ones that didn’t seem to be meat eaters, were munching away at the glowing fungus, as well as a large number of other mushroom-like things, some of which by themselves were six or seven feet high. Every once in a while they thought they could hear one of the more carnivorous types roar in the distance, but there were enough dinosaurs here that the plant-eaters didn’t actually seem to mind that a few of them might end up as snacks.

  “This is so crazy,” Laura said once they were on the cavern floor. “How is this even possible?”

  “We’re in an underground dimension trying to find the ant people that kidnapped our town,” Henderson said. “How is any of this possible?”

  “But this is different than giant insect species that seem to have evolved differently,” Jesse said. “These are dinosaurs from millions of years ago that look more or less like they would have in our dimension back then. How did they get here? Why haven’t they changed with time to be something completely different that suits the environment? These are questions we need to ask.”

  “We don’t need to ask anything science-y at all, nerd,” Henderson said. “We just need to get through it and out. We’ll let Larson and her eggheads try to figure out the why when we get out. If we get out.”

  “Oh come on, man,” Jesse said. “You don’t wonder at all why there are dinosaurs in an underground sub-dimension?”

  “Nope,” Henderson said.

  “You’re no fun,” Jesse responded.

  Despite the earlier admonition from her older sister that they couldn’t dawdle, Murky found herself frequently stopping to stare at the majestic creatures milling around in the cavern, and the other three did very little to keep her on track. Indeed, they often stopped right alongside her to stare in awe. Jesse would occasionally chime in with their names, and Murky did her best to remember each and every one – triceratops, brachiosaurus, tyrannosaurus rex, iguanodon, ankylosaurus, dimetrodon, pterodactyl. The words made little sense to her, but she didn’t need them to. She would probably never see animals like this ever again, and she wanted to appreciate every single moment she had with them. She even wondered if she would still have the same sense of wonder for things like bats and raccoons ever again.

  “Watching them makes me feel so small,” Laura said in a hushed tone.

  “I always feel small,” Murky said.

  “I mean, not like physically,” Laura said. “I mean in the grand scheme of things. Here’s a giant cave full of creatures that were supposed to be dead millions of years ago. And to get to them, we had to go through a glowing blue portal to another dimension. Doesn’t that make anyone else feel insignificant?”

  “You’re only insignificant if you let yourself be insignificant,” Henderson said. “And I’m anything but insignificant.” Despite his words, Murky couldn’t help but notice that his tone matched Laura’s. She didn’t think he was as unaffected by all this as he was trying to seem.

  “They’re really just ignoring us, aren’t they?” Jesse said. “They don’t care that we’re walking among them at all. They’ve probably never seen anything like us before. They don’t seem to have any idea that maybe they should be scared of us, or that maybe we might be food.”

  “Let’s not go and say that until we’re away from them,” Henderson said. “You might jinx us.”

  Down on the cavern floor there were a large number of tunnels that could be seen branching among the walls, but most of them would have been too small for any of the dinosaurs to get through. If they needed to, they could run down any one of them to get to safety at any time, but most of them lacked the glowing fungus that they’d been using as their guide.

  “I don’t know if using the fungus is going to be the best option to figure out where to go here,” Henderson said. “There’s too many different paths.”

  “Most of the paths don’t have it, though,” Jesse said.

  “But the number of paths that do have it are more than one,” Laura said. “Henderson may be right here. We might need to try a different way to track down the townspeople.”

  They’d passed the largest portion of the dinosaur herds, but Murky stopped listening to her companions and instead concentrated on the noises of the various creatures. She’d thought she heard something behind them, but when she turned to look, all she saw was a number of shadowy caves.

  And, she realized, something moving around in those shadows. It was something much smaller than most of the things they’d seen down here so far, but she was pretty certain that, whatever it was, it wasn’t human.

  “Hey guys?” she said. “I think something’s following us.”

  Henderson looked doubtful a
bout that, but Laura immediately took her seriously. “What kind of something?”

  “I don’t know. But look over there.” Murky pointed into a darkened tunnel. “I thought I saw…”

  Something in the darkness opened its green, piercing, reptilian eyes. They caught a slight glow from distant fungus, making the eyes appear as though they shined with their own light. Although they still couldn’t make out the thing’s shape, they definitely heard it hiss as something disconnected from the shadows and ran right toward them.

  Chapter Seven

  “Run!” Jesse screamed. They all started running, but it was obvious right away that none of them were sure which direction would be the best one to run to. Murky went one way and Henderson another, while both Laura and Jesse went straight for the largest tunnel opening they could see with a significant amount of the fungus. Henderson recognized right away that they were probably moving in a smarter direction, but Murky wasn’t thinking clearly enough to run after them. Instead she ran for the nearest tunnel, one that had a dim glow from fungus but was still much darker than any other path they had gone down yet. Behind her she heard something running, something with sharp claws that clicked harshly against the stone. Whatever had been hiding in the shadows, it had singled her out as the one it really wanted to go after.

  “Murky! Wait! Not that way!” Laura called out to her, but Murky’s panic took over her and kept her running up until she found herself up against a rock wall with nowhere else to go. She turned around, certain that she was about to see some monster ready to rip her to shreds and eat her, only to find the tunnel empty. She didn’t dare move, though. Whatever the thing had been, it was obviously good at hiding in the shadows, and anything at all that she did might give her position away to it.

  “Murky? Where are you?” Henderson called from out in the main cavern. After about thirty seconds, she heard several footsteps as her three companions entered the tunnel.

  “Murky?” Laura asked, her voice full of genuine concern.

  “Are you sure this is the tunnel she went in?” Henderson asked.

  “No, I’m not sure, but this was the last direction I saw her running in before I lost track of whatever that was after us,” Laura said.

  “Maybe that thing got her,” Jesse said.

  “You shut your damn mouth with that,” Laura said in an uncharacteristically harsh tone. “My sister is going to be perfectly fine.”

  Murky looked very closely around her in the shadows, making sure she was truly alone, before she called out to them. “I’m over here!”

  The other three ran down the length of the tunnel to find her cowering in the corner. “Murky! Are you okay?” Laura asked as she hugged her little sister. “Where did that creature go?”

  “I don’t know,” Murky said. “I thought it was right behind me. But then when I got in here…”

  A low growl sounded from back in the direction of the tunnel opening. They all turned to it and saw a shape silhouetted against the brighter glow from other tunnels.

  “Uh, crap,” Jesse said. “I think it set up a trap for us. And we all just walked into it.”

  They all huddled against the wall next to Murky as the thing took several slow steps closer to them. It was about six or seven feet tall, and from the front it appeared to be vaguely lizard-like, or maybe more like a huge scary bird. It had a long, thick tail whipping back and forth behind it that seemed to be for balancing, and the closer it got, the more Murky thought it might be some kind of small version of the tyrannosaurus rex that they had seen roaming around out in the main cavern.

  “What is it?” Murky asked quietly. “Is it a dinosaur?”

  “It’s too small to be a dinosaur,” Henderson said. “Dinosaurs are huge.”

  “Nuh-uh,” Jesse said. “There were plenty of them that were smaller.”

  “The smaller ones were less dangerous, right?” Laura asked.

  “Um, again, that’s not exactly true.” There was a noticeable stutter in Jesse’s voice as he shook with fear.

  The closer the creature got, the more they could see of it. It was dark and rough skinned, there were a few parts here and there that looked like they might have had strange feather-like protrusions on them. On its feet and its short arms it had very large, wicked-looking claws, and its mouth was full of razor-sharp teeth. Strangely enough, despite these intimidating features, Murky found herself becoming less and less afraid the closer it got to them. If it wanted to attack them it could have already. Its mannerisms didn’t seem predatory at all at the moment, either. If anything, it looked like it was more curious about them than anything else.

  “Hello,” Murky said as pleasantly as she could manage. The dinosaur stopped a few feet away from them and made a couple of strange little chirping noises.

  “Murky, what do you think you’re…” Laura started to say, but Murky ignored her and took a step toward the creature. When it didn’t react negatively to the motion, she took off her backpack, unzipped it, and pulled out the bag of marshmallows. Murky tore open a hole in the bag and held one out.

  “Would you like a marshmallow?” Murky asked.

  The dinosaur cocked its head at the offered treat.

  “Go on,” Murky said. “It’s tasty. I promise.”

  “Um, Murky?” Henderson said. “Maybe you shouldn’t be using the word ‘tasty’ at it while it’s staring at us like that.”

  The dinosaur took a couple of tentative steps forward, sniffing the air. Murky wasn’t sure if the marshmallow smelled like anything at all to it, but it hadn’t ripped her arm off yet, so maybe that was a good sign.

  “Maybe it’s a nice dinosaur,” Murky said. “Like those ones down there with long necks eating the mushrooms.”

  “No, I don’t think it is,” Jesse said. “That looks like some kind of version of a velociraptor.”

  “Never heard of it,” Henderson said.

  “Let’s just say there’s nothing in any of my books about them eating marshmallows.”

  Yet the velociraptor really did seem intrigued by the puffy white treat in her hand. Not wanting to get too close, Murky tossed it the remaining foot in the dinosaur’s direction. It deftly snapped the marshmallow out of the air and chewed exactly twice before swallowing it down. It cocked its head as though considering what it had just tasted, then made a sound that Murky could only interpret as “Can I have another?”

  “Yeah, of course you can!” Murky said as she pulled out the next marshmallow.

  “Uh, Murky? Who are you talking to?” Henderson asked.

  “Never mind her when she does that,” Laura said. “She goes and thinks she knows what animals are thinking, then forgets that other people would find it weird when she replies. It’s something you get used to.”

  “You’re not so bad,” Murky said as she offered it the marshmallow. This time she didn’t throw it, instead growing bold and getting closer to the velociraptor. It could have easily chomped down on her and severed her hand, but instead it almost daintily took the marshmallow from her fingers and chewed. “Hey Laura, I think I made a friend. What should I call him?”

  “How do you even know it’s a him?” Henderson asked.

  “I don’t, but I’m sure he would tell me if I was wrong.”

  By the time she was finished giving him everything that had been in the marshmallow bag, she had completely lost all fear of the creature. Even though Laura made nervous noises behind her, Murky went right up to the velociraptor and tried to pet its head. It didn’t seem especially pleased at the touch, but neither did it try to shy away or attack her.

  “I’m going to call him Chicago,” Murky said.

  “What?” Jesse asked. “Why would you call him that?”

  “Because that’s his name. I decided so just now.”

  “Murky, you can’t just name a dinosaur after a city,” Henderson said.

  “Why not?”

  “I mean, just think about it. Who would call a dinosaur Minneapolis? San Francis
co? Denver?”

  “It doesn’t matter what she wants to name him,” Laura said. “He doesn’t get a name because we’re getting away from him as quickly as we can.”

  “What? Why?” Murky asked. “Can’t we take him with us?”

  Henderson shook his head. “Murky, we can’t just walk around with a valet ratchet.”

  “Um, I think you mean velociraptor,” Jesse said.

  Henderson shrugged. “Whatever. It’s still something that will try to eat us as soon as it’s finished digesting those marshmallows.”

  “He’s right, Murky,” Laura said. “Good job on stopping him from attacking us, but we have to get out of here now. He could turn on us at any moment, and we still need to figure out what direction we’re even going.”

  Murky perked up. “Maybe Chicago could help us with that!”

  “I doubt that,” Henderson said.

  “Maybe he can follow the missing people the same way a dog would. Maybe we can have him sniff something one of them touched and then we can follow him to them!”

  “One, I don’t think dinosaurs work like that,” Henderson said. “Two, we don’t have anything that could be used for that.”

  “How do you know a dinosaur doesn’t work like that?” Murky asked. “Have you ever met one before?”

  “Um, no.”

  “Then shut up! And maybe he doesn’t need something that was owned or touched by one of the others. Maybe he can just follow them by smelling us. I mean, he’s probably never seen humans before. We’ve got to smell strange and easy to track to him.”

  “I’m not sure that’s how logic works,” Jesse said.

  “Look, let’s just get moving,” Laura said. “We’ll find the tunnel that seems to have the brightest fungus and keep going with the same thinking we were before.”

  Laura, Jesse, and Henderson carefully skirted around the dinosaur and went back out into the main cavern. Murky pouted but followed them, sure that Chicago would lose interest and run away if she wasn’t continually giving him attention.

  He didn’t.