Landing Party: A Dinosaur Thriller

by Rick Chesler

  But he didn’t have long to wonder as both triceratops broke into a lumbering gallop toward each other.

  Fight!

  Ethan brought up his camera and hit the video button. He took more care than usual to verify it was actually recording. This was a once-in-a-lifetime event, and he wouldn’t be able to live it down were he to find out later that he hadn’t actually been recording, or that the battery had died or the memory card was full. But everything was in order, and so Ethan held the camera steady while he watched the action unfold.

  It reminded him of two bighorn sheep he’d once observed ramming each other in the mountains of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona. Only this, of course, was on a much larger scale. Both animals ran headlong at full speed into each other, the sharp crack of their bony impact echoing off the sides of the volcanic lake. Then, as with the sheep, they locked horns, twisting and turning their heads as they grappled for an advantage.

  The triceratops Ethan had been watching before the challenger arrived was the first to go to its knees, employing its front legs to clinch its opponent while it knelt on its hind legs. Both dinosaurs roared as they did battle, each seeking to intimidate the other. What they were fighting over, whether mates or food or territory, Ethan didn’t know. But whatever it was, he could plainly see that it was deadly serious. The newcomer gyrated its neck until it unlocked one of its tusks. With its newly freed weapon, the challenging triceratops swung its mighty head at its rival’s neck, but the blow glanced off its foe’s armored collar.

  Ethan’s triceratops (for some reason he silently rooted for the one he’d been watching first) pushed off of its opponent and countered with its own gore attack. It lowered its head and thrust its twin longhorns at its adversary’s flank. The maneuver was successful, the right horn embedding almost its full length into its attacker’s flesh, while the left sunk to within half its length. The gored triceratops brayed loudly and rolled over onto its right side, but the beast with the upper hand stayed with its quarry, moving forward to keep its formidable tusks buried in its opponent’s flesh. It then placed its two front feet atop its fallen adversary’s side, preventing it from rolling off the horns.

  The gored triceratops lifted its head off the ground, shaking it to and fro to no avail. It could not reach its attacker. Then Ethan’s charge reared back, pulling its horns from the other dinosaur’s side with a wet sucking sound that made Ethan cringe. Then the standing mega-beast gored its opponent anew, this time in the lower abdomen. It shook its head violently in order to inflict massive damage. When it backed off, it left a gaping hole in the fallen creature’s belly, spilling intestinal mass onto the charred rock.

  In a final coup de grâce, Ethan’s triceratops leapt onto its enemy’s head and neck above the fringing armor, breaking its spine while simultaneously delivering a concussive blow to the skull as it smashed it into the rocky ground.

  With a last gasp, the felled triceratops closed its eyes and was no more. The victorious animal threw its head back and vocalized a thunderous howl that told the island, I have won. Then the victor began to feed, ripping out chunks of its dead opponent’s shoulder meat with its sharp beak and wolfing them down like a hungry dog with a raw steak.

  Ethan slowly and silently retreated from the edge of his high hide, turning off the video. He shook his head at the ultimate fate of the defeated triceratops—resting in some dormant, hibernation state for untold millions of years only to be resurrected for a blink of an eye in order to fight and die.

  The triumphant dinosaur apparently didn’t like the taste of its own kind, for it stomped off in the direction from which it came before it had consumed much. When he was certain it was not returning, Ethan jumped down from his ledge. He looked over at Richard. Unbelievably, the explorer was still sound asleep, now beginning to snore again. Probably not a good sign. He’d heard somewhere that seriously injured people shouldn’t be allowed to fall asleep, or was that only if they were in the freezing cold? It’s a good thing the doctor was on the way over, he thought.

  Ethan went to Richard and shook him gently by the shoulder. “Hey, you okay?”

  The explorer took a long time to snap out of it, slowly awakening as if from a dream. “Yes, yes, quite all right,” he said at length.

  “Good. You missed one hell of a show while you were out. Take a look at—”

  Before Ethan could finish his sentence, they felt the ground rumble beneath their feet. Rock began to tumble down from high above. Ethan froze with fear. Not this. Not now… But as the shaking continued, he knew it was real, it was happening.

  Earthquake.

  Chapter 16

  “How much farther is it, Anita?” Skylar’s voice carried more than a hint of frustration.

  “Why are you asking me, anyway?” Anita swung her flashlight out into the lake as they walked, hoping she wouldn’t spot their little raft adrift in the middle of the strange body of water, but at the same time knowing it was possible.

  “You’re the boat expert, you’re in charge of the boat, that’s why.”

  “You were there when we got out of the raft and left it there. Why don’t you know where it is?”

  “Ladies, please!” Lara tried to keep the peace. “We’re all friends here. We need to stick—”

  Lara, who had been walking along the narrow ledge with her left hand trailing along the wall so that she knew how much room she had, suddenly felt that wall move. She stopped walking to be sure she wasn’t imagining things. The earth shook again, this time beneath her feet. Sheets of rock started to slide down the wall to their left, slamming into the lava shelf both in front of and behind them.

  “Earthquake!” Skylar moved forward, toward where the raft was supposed to be, but froze in place when a slab of rock crashed a few feet in front of her. Lara made forward progress off to her right while Anita stood in place, screaming and crying.

  Waves began breaking over the ledge, flooding it knee deep with a forceful rush of water that made it difficult to stand. Lara waved her light beam further out along the lake shore, maybe 25 more feet, where a cave entrance offered shelter from the falling debris. Or did it?

  Lara yelled over to Skylar as more rocks exploded on the flooded ground around them, splashing them head to toe. “We could hang in the doorway of that cave!”

  “What if it collapses in the quake?”

  The ground shook violently, and all three of the expedition members lost their balance. “Chance we’ll have to take. Not sure how long we’ll last out here.” Skylar and Lara started for the cave, but when they looked back, Anita wasn’t following.

  Lara called back to her. “Anita, come on—we’ll be safer under there until it stops.”

  But the explorer stayed where she was, trembling as water swirled around her waist. Skylar made a move for Anita, to help her, deciding it was time to endear herself a little to the team. She eyed Lara as she dodged small pieces of shattering rock on her way to Anita.

  “Keep going, check it out. I’ll bring her there.”

  Lara nodded and ran to the cave entrance, where she stood under the natural arch opening watching the rocks fall outside. If a cave-in did happen, she would likely have time to run out before being buried under countless tons of lava rock. That’s what she hoped, anyway.

  Skylar arrived at the cave entrance with Anita in tow. The sailor seemed to have calmed down some and stood with her two colleagues as they stared out into a vision of Hell, of brimstone and fire and falling rock.

  Part of the lake surface itself was ablaze, the water itself seeming to burn. Skylar speculated aloud it was excess sulfur gas igniting, but no one cared. More of the wall fell until it seemed like the entire volcano was coming down around them. They backed deeper into the cave to avoid the geological shrapnel of fragmenting rock. Skylar and Lara walked slowly, side by side, back into the cave, Anita right behind them. All three wore their headlamps while they swept hand-held lights around the walls of the cave.

  Skylar directed h
er light beam up near the ceiling and watched, stunned, as one of the stony boulders fell to the ground and cracked, not ten feet in front of them.

  “It’s one of the cysts!” she warned.

  And then another of the boulders loosed from the ceiling and dropped to the ground. This one didn’t shatter or crack on impact, but was clearly wobbling under its own power long after it should have stopped moving from the fall.

  “More of them are coming down!” Anita backed toward the cave entrance.

  “I think the shaking is stopping.” Skylar held out her arms, as though balancing on a beam. The ground no longer rolled beneath their feet, but outside the cave, they could still hear the sloshing of lake water as it swept over the ledge.

  “It’s cracking open. Let’s go, c’mon!” Lara turned and ran toward the exit while Skylar continued to examine the ceiling, trying to figure out some geological quandary that would tell her if the collapse was over or not. But now she looked back at the cysts and knew she had bigger problems to worry about.

  The first one that had dropped, also the largest, now had a dinosaur head poking out of it, and a tail, too. Anita tripped and fell but got to her feet quickly, running after Lara to the edge of the cave. Skylar turned away from the hatching lizard for a split second to see what was going on with Anita, and when she turned back around, she found herself laying eyes on a full-grown stegosaurus. It was unmistakable, an iconic dinosaur that an appreciable percentage of school-aged children would always be able to identify. The armor-like plates along the back, the spiked tail, the comparatively tiny head…

  Skylar thought they were plant eaters, but still, it didn’t much matter what they ate if a 7,000-pound animal trampled over you or whipped you with its spiky tail. Skylar, afraid to turn her back to the beast, walked backwards toward the cave exit while the stegosaurus shook off the remaining rock fragments. Then it started to walk away from its crumbled cyst, also toward the exit. Skylar watched as it sniffed the air, raising and lowering a head that seemed more apt to fit a large snake than a three-and-a-half-ton animal.

  When it leveled out its head and began to charge, Skylar turned and ran, warning the others as she fled. “Move out of the way, it’s coming!”

  Lara and Anita peeled off to the left and right, respectively, outside the cave. Skylar came running through the middle, straight out of the cave toward the lake.

  She saw the raft off to her left, hanging half off the rocky shelf. “I see the boat! C’mon!”

  Lara started to run for the raft, but Anita still clung to the wall just outside the cave. Then the stegosaurus barreled out of the opening, skidding as its feet slipped on the wet rock shelf, its front legs splaying awkwardly until it recovered, slowing a bit but still running toward Lara and Skylar.

  “Let’s go, Anita!” Lara yelled behind her.

  Skylar got to the raft first and kicked it over the ledge into the water, a three-foot drop. She heard Lara’s boots pounding the rock shelf behind her. She could also pick up the dinosaur’s heavy gait as it galloped after Lara, thundering toward the raft. Skylar was in a kind of mental auto-pilot, doing nothing other than carrying out direct physical actions needed to launch the boat.

  She picked up the paddle and jumped into the raft.

  “Wait for us, Skylar!” Lara sounded panicked, and Skylar knew she must be in order to level such an unspoken accusation at her. Did she really think she would leave two team members behind to be mauled by a prehistoric monster? You stole those diamonds, doesn’t that make you a bad person? Skylar knew her conscience had chosen a terrible time to rear its ugly head, so she went into pure action mode again, paddling the boat so that it stayed butted up against the rocks, ready for the others to jump into.

  Lara flew over the edge of the shelf and landed in the raft like a hyper kid jumping in a bounce house. Skylar reached out and kept her from bouncing out into the water, pulling her back down into the boat.

  The stegosaurus slowed as it reached the edge of the shelf and swung its head out on its long neck until it passed over the raft. Skylar smashed it in the neck with the edge of the paddle. It snorted once and then reared up on its two hind legs, withdrawing its head and neck.

  “Wait for me!” Anita appeared in the middle of the ledge, to the right of the dinosaur from Skylar’s vantage point. Was she crazy, drawing attention to herself like that? Skylar had to shake her head, but Lara shouted, “Run, Anita!” She waved her arm in a rapid beckoning motion. “We need to go right now, c’mon, you can do it!”

  Anita bolted. Where the sudden burst of physicality came from, neither Skylar nor Lara was sure, but there was no doubt that Anita suddenly looked like a track all-star as she tore across that wet ledge.

  The stegosaurus, alerted by her sudden motion, also spurred itself into action. It lumbered toward her like a jerky locomotive. Anita kept her eyes focused straight ahead on the raft, not turning her head, while Skylar and Lara continued to urge her on.

  “Jump, jump, jump!” Skylar paddled the boat a few feet out from the ledge so that the sprinter would be able to land in it after a flying leap from the ledge. That would also put them a little further from the charging dinosaur’s reach.

  Anita launched into a high jump that had her sailing through the air over the ledge. Skylar backed the boat out some more even as Anita traveled through the air. Lara shifted her body to the middle of the raft, aware that Anita was going to land at the front end where she had been seated.

  The explorer hurtled into the raft with an oomph, propelling it further out into the lake with her momentum.

  The dinosaur reached the edge of the shelf where Anita had jumped off, digging its feet into the rock to keep from sliding off the edge. Its right front leg slipped over, but it stopped itself in time. Then it stuck its head out over the water, raising and lowering it as though it might not be able to see the raft but was sniffing for its scent.

  The three boaters watched as the animal turned around and walked back toward where the ledge met the inner wall of the volcano. At first, it looked like it was heading back inside the cave from where it had hatched, but then it stalked off to the right.

  Skylar pointed. “Look, it’s going for that opening there.” A fissure that was tall and narrow glowed orange at its opening, no doubt containing still flowing rivers of lava inside. The women watched as the stegosaurus disappeared into that opening. Another minute passed and still it had not come back out.

  “That looks like a newly created crevice. Wonder if it leads somewhere?” Skylar aimed her light at the fissure.

  Lara saw a flashlight strobing on the other side of the lake and reminded them that they should get over to Boat Team and see how they had fared in the quake.

  Anita held an arm out to Skylar. “I’ll take the paddle now.”

  Chapter 17

  “Damn it, where are they?” Richard deflected a volley of small stones from his face with an arm. The brunt of the earthquake had passed, but the rock around them was decidedly unstable. The novelty of the dead triceratops had worn off, as had the wow factor of having slept through two huge beasts fighting to the death, and now there was only concern for when the rest of their team would reach them.

  “They’re coming across now!” Ethan pointed out to the middle of the lake where a flashlight winked. Then the radio came to life with Lara’s voice.

  “We see you and we’re coming for you. Hang tight.”

  “Do we have a choice?” Richard muttered. Ethan frowned at him and replied into the radio. “Copy that. Standing by.”

  Ethan could see that the earthquake had further soured Richard on their situation. And he couldn’t exactly blame him. Ethan had entertained similar thoughts, but the difference was he kept them to himself. There was no need to damage morale in the already-fractured group. Richard was such a seasoned explorer, didn’t he know that? He was about to say something about it—he wanted to put an end to the bickering before the Boat Team got here—when he heard scratching sou
nds coming from both right and left of them.

  Not again! Richard feared the victorious triceratops was back, but then Richard got his attention.

  “What is that?” Richard pointed at a bird-like animal, no more than two-feet high, that hopped into sight on the ground from their left. It possessed two legs like a bipedal reptile, but also had feathers that gave it a red and white striped appearance, while its leg skin was a drab shade of green.

  “Looks like a cross between a bird and a lizard.”

  “Never seen anything like it. Why is it here? How is it here—this is a brand new island!”

  Ethan looked at Richard. “They hatched out of those rocks, I guess, like the bigger ones.” He indicated the dead triceratops in their midst.

  “You mean, these little ones are dinosaurs, too?”

  Ethan shrugged as a second one of the bird-like lizards hopped into view from the right side. It bumped chests with its fellow reptile and then the two of them ran around in quick circles while making clicking noises.

  “Normally, I’d say no, but given that we just saw two triceratops, an ankylosaurus not too long before that, and some other aquatic one, too, I’m inclined to say yes, because we know dinosaurs are on this island. I have read that dinosaurs were probably more bird-like than we thought and that they had feathers, too.”

  “You’re really annoying, you know that, Ethan? Is there anything you don’t—?”

  “Heads up, here comes more of them!” A veritable avalanche of the animals tumbled down from the cliff above, hitting the ground hard but seeming to suffer no ill effects, immediately churning around in circles with the first two individuals. Soon after, a group of them broke away and began eating the gored triceratops. Their crow-like beaks pecked stringy morsels of flesh from the slain giant while the two men wondered if the herd of predators would turn on them next.