Up ahead, four men with guns and one with an unusual megaphone-like contraption—evidently the sound weapon—walked warily down the path. They were uniformly well-muscled and moved like big cats. Though Tatiana was the first to appreciate good-looking men, something about these left her cold. Brazilian guys were just as well-muscled and handsome, but they were warm and human as well. The men with Park looked like they’d kill you without even blinking. She wasn’t the kind to chase violent thugs.
But in certain situations, it was extremely comforting to have them along.
Something rustled in the trees and six dinosaurs emerged. Tatiana’s heart began to thump in her chest, and these weren’t even big ones. To her eye, they looked to be about a quarter of the size of the creatures that had overrun YekLab, about waist-high on a person. They took one look at the group of humans advancing on them and disappeared back into the trees.
For a second, as the morning sun beat down and she watched the dinosaurs scuttle away, there was nothing in her line of sight to indicate that she didn’t live a hundred million years in the past. Grass. Rock. Trees. Dinosaurs. Only when a bird, frightened by the movement in the trees, burst from the upper branches, did the spell break. She wasn’t an expert on prehistoric creatures, but she knew birds didn’t exist when the thunder lizards walked the earth.
As they advanced, the single building that had been visible from the landing site turned out to be a group of wooden houses which appeared to have been bombed. The front of the houses were torn out, windows gone, doors bashed in.
A group of minute scavengers clustered around something, growling at one another with tiny voices. Like the dinosaurs, they scattered at the humans’ approach. Obviously, theirs was a world where hiding from anything larger than you was a key survival trait.
Tatiana turned away as the form on the ground was revealed. She’d seen plenty of bodies when she was just starting out. In her first job, the editor of Folha had assigned her to the police beat, a typical tactic to see if she had what it took to be a reporter. The effect hadn’t been to scare her away, but it had taught her that bodies were not as interesting as their surroundings, which often gave a better clue as to why there was a body on the ground in the first place.
So she looked around. If the trees and the dinosaurs belonged in the past, so did the village, albeit a more recent past. The path in front of the houses, the de facto main street of the village, consisted of hard-packed dirt and there was no sign of motorized vehicles that might have justified anything else. None of the typical accoutrements associated with farms were present. No pickups, no tractors, not even an old clapped-out banger in a yard.
In addition, there were no electric wires or telephone poles in evidence. These people lived in the past. No. These people had been intentionally left in the past in order to ensure that they were completely helpless when the time to use them as human guinea pigs came.
It made sense. There was no need to give lab rats computers before you injected them.
Park Sun-Lee waited until his men gave him the all-clear before standing in front of the nearest house, another clapboard construction, painted pale yellow.
“As you can see, the dinosaurs have been here already. These houses are typical Russian rural homes, and sturdier than much of what you’ll find in the countries around us. Some places might build with stone, but they don’t even use wooden doors. Can you imagine how much protection a curtain would be against some of the creatures they’ve released into this valley?
“In case anyone is skeptical about what happened here, I’d like to point out a couple of pieces of evidence. First, look down that hill. Do you see those lumps in the distance beside the trees? Those are diplodocus. They really did release all kinds of dinosaurs here. Of course, diplodocus was a plant eater, but that makes little difference, because they’re only here to support the predators that feed on them. The lab bred them expressly for that purpose.”
Tatiana looked in the direction Sun-Lee pointed. She saw something that might have been a little hill… until it moved. The distance made it hard to judge size, but if those trees were the same height as the ones nearby, she did not want to tangle with anything that ate diplodocus. Sun-Lee appeared confident in his men, but she suspected that anything large enough to eat that wouldn’t even notice their little weapons and sonic blaster or whatever it was. But maybe the thugs could buy the rest of them enough time to run back to the choppers while the dinosaurs ate the soldiers.
“The second piece of evidence is a little more concrete. See these farmhouses? They were built specifically for the people here. They have no amenities whatsoever. No electricity, no running water. They’re heated by burning wood that the farmers themselves cut from the trees. There are more than enough natural resources to keep them alive. Every once in a while, the government releases deer into the forests, too, and the farmers hunt that. They think their life is hard, but bountiful and peaceful.
“One thing they would never, ever have had is a telephone connection, because giving your missile-launch decoy population the capacity to call NATO and tell them when a missile was being prepped is the very definition of stupid. Their only communication with the outside world happened once a month, when a person from the government would drive down here and ask them what they needed, take some of their surplus in trade so that no one suspected what was really going on.”
He pointed at the roof. “But, as you can see, each house has clusters of security cameras on the roof. Those round pods over there. I’ll ask one of my men to retrieve one so you can have a closer look. Those, as you can imagine, aren’t for use by the inhabitants, but are connected wirelessly to YekLab’s systems.”
“How? I don’t see any wireless networks here,” a German woman who Tatiana hadn’t met before coming there asked, glancing at her phone.
“There’s a cell tower hidden in the woods over there on a military frequency. You won’t get anything unless you have a specially designed phone.”
Tatiana’s peers walked around listlessly, the journalists not truly able to cope with the magnitude of the atrocity. These were fashion reporters and perfume critics. Their outrage was reserved for people who disagreed with whatever socially-conscious agendas on social media or insisted on combining black pants with brown shoes. Faced with any situation more serious than someone who failed to give adequate lip service to the current social or political hot-button topic, they fell apart.
And, she realized, she was doing exactly the same thing. That was unacceptable. She was from Brazil. She was tougher than these soft people full of first world problems.
“Can we take pictures?” she asked.
“Of course,” Sun-Lee replied. “Not much use in showing you this if you can’t share it with your readers.”
After getting a few shots of the damaged buildings, Tatiana strode determinedly over to the one dead body she could see—well-gnawed by the scavengers—and took a few pictures of it. She knew Caipi would never run anything that graphic, but she needed to document this, perhaps for a publication that dared to show the unvarnished truth.
She turned back to Sun-Lee. “What else is there? All we’ve seen is one dead person who could have had an accident, and a couple of broken houses. Other than that, we have to take your word for everything.”
“You’ve also seen some dinosaurs.”
“Herbivores and little things that run as soon as we come close. Nothing that comes close to confirming your story.”
Their host smiled as the other reporters watched, slack-jawed. “Then we’ll have to get a little closer, won’t we?”
Tatiana returned his smile. “If you want us to be able to report truth, yes.”
He barked something in Russian and the men strode forward, eyes scanning the plain. Ahead, mere dots in the distance, another cluster of buildings came into view. At that distance, it was impossible to make out whether any larger dinosaurs were close to the houses, but they’d soon find out.
> Tatiana wasn’t afraid. All she could really think of was to wonder if Marianne, had she been present, would have acted the way she had. Then she caught herself. Trying to live up to the approval of an impossibly idealized version of another reporter was a good way to go nuts. She should be proud of herself when she got back, if she got her story.
Besides, this place was starting to get on her nerves. How could a meadow on a summer morning feel creepy? She didn’t know, but this one certainly managed.
Besides, she felt an itch between her shoulder blades, as if someone was watching them.
***
Marianne watched from the trees, mouth agape. Was that Tatiana? What the hell was she doing here? She wanted to jump out of concealment and scream that she should get the hell out of there, but she was pretty sure the soldiers with her would shoot her if she tried. They were on her side… but only as long as their side and hers happened to be aligned.
Exposing their position was not something they would appreciate.
Max turned her way. “That’s your reporter friend, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Why is she with Park Sun-Lee?”
“How should I know? Reporters don’t share their scoops with each other.”
“Well, those are the men I was afraid of. It’s extremely clear they’re here to hunt us down. Sun-Lee works with Selene Grosjean, the woman who was going to shoot you. No one is really sure who works for who, so they’re probably working for different agencies within the government, and are only temporarily collaborating. He’s bad news, too. North Korean. He's the one who cooked up all the dinosaurs we’ve seen, or at least he must have been a part of it. He’s the head of YekLab.”
She studied the scene below. Tatiana didn’t look like she was under any duress. She appeared perfectly at ease, studying the broken buildings and asking questions. Vintage Tatiana even if this wasn’t the kind of place one would normally have expected to find her: not one runway model or beautiful male hanger-on in sight. For a second, Marianne envied her colleague for getting information that was forbidden to Marianne herself.
“I suppose going down there to ask for a ride on the helicopters is out of the question?”
“Completely. But we may be able to borrow one, if they left the pilots behind.”
Marianne smiled. “Well, I’m already a fugitive from the KGB, so I guess adding aerial piracy to my list of crimes won’t hurt too much.”
“The KGB no longer exists,” Max replied, suddenly icy. “We don’t talk about them anymore.”
“Look, I’m sorry.”
“No matter. Let’s see about the helicopters. I want to get back to base and tear someone’s head off.”
“Can you drop me off at the hotel?”
As soon as she said it, Marianne felt a wave of anguish. The only thing waiting for her at the hotel were some clothes she could do perfectly well without and a room next to hers that would remain empty because its occupant lay dead in a dinosaur pen ten thousand miles from home, all because Marianne couldn’t leave a dangerous story well enough alone.
“You’ll be safer at the base,” Max replied.
She said nothing. She couldn’t. But Max didn’t seem to be expecting a reply, so she followed, choking down her anguish, as he cut across the woods. They soon reached the other side of the small clump of trees and the helicopters came into view.
Standing directly between the troops and the aircraft was a dinosaur that could very easily have been the same one that had nearly eaten her in YekLab.
“Well, now we know what we’re going to waste our last AK bullets on,” Max said. “Too bad about the noise, but it can’t be helped. With any luck we’ll be in the air before Sun-Lee catches up to us.”
He put his spear on the ground, put the rifle on his shoulder and fired a burst into the dinosaur and waited for it to collapse as the empty rifle clicked. He discarded it, and then pulled his handgun out of its holster, picked up the spear and strode out into the open towards the fallen monster.
Only then did they see the other deinonychus.
It saw them at the same moment.
***
Happy Bunagu watched the video time and again. The email had come from the Electric Buddha, and therefore was absolutely trustworthy. Could someone really be thinking of putting these things on the market?
When his watch ended, he stood and walked towards the captain’s rooms. The warlord had taken over the mission building, a single-story brick rectangle with a corrugated roof—the only house for fifty miles around that was wired for light. The jungle night in central Africa was pitch dark, but he could find his way with his eyes closed. The light from his cell phone was mainly to keep the animals out of his way.
The door, like the windows, had been bashed in when the captain had taken the village. The white priest and his treasonous acolytes had thought they would be safe inside, but the door had fallen almost immediately. He still remembered the resignation of the white man and the huge, terrified eyes of his black collaborators as the captain read the charges and sentenced them to death. The fact that Happy had pulled one of the triggers was the reason he was still pulling headquarters duty; the warlord liked to keep his friends close.
He knocked on the shattered remains of the door.
“What is it?”
“You have to see this, Captain.”
“Happy? Is that you?”
“Yeah.”
“Come in, then.”
Happy entered. The long room was illuminated by candles—the generator had packed up and no one was willing to deliver the parts they needed to fix it into the lawless lands on the border between Nigeria and Cameroon. Especially not since the captain had established his fiefdom.
The working generator in the village proper was used for important things: keeping cell phones charged and powering the satellite dish which gave the rebels their internet access. The boss could get drunk and get laid by candlelight, but his men couldn’t stay in contact with the outside world without communications. And if they didn’t know what was going on, they wouldn’t be able to hold their territory, inconsequential though it might be.
Cigarette smoke hung in the dim light. One of the captain’s women was smoking, another lay fully nude on the bed, the remaining two must have had the evening off. Or maybe he’d loaned them out to his lieutenants. Happy was a trusted soldier, but he was too far down the food chain for that kind of reward to come his way.
Jacques, the only white man tolerated in the captain’s presence—he was the captain’s blood brother, whatever that meant—snored on a chair in his underwear, a bottle in one hand.
The captain slapped at a bug. “Well, what is it?” he said.
“Sorry. Look at this. It came from the Buddha.” Happy handed over his phone.
Three minutes later, the captain handed it back. “You’re a fool. This is fake.”
“It came from the Buddha.”
“But it’s ridiculous. Those are dinosaurs.”
“Yes. And they’re for sale.”
“Probably more than we can afford.”
“Buddha’s email says there is a special price for Africa. Look.”
“Interesting. Ask him how much. One of those in the forest…” The captain smiled. “You did well to bring this to me.”
“He says they aren’t ready yet.”
“Then I want to be first in line. Boko Haram will hate us. We’ll show them how to really sow terror.”
“Yes, boss.”
Happy left without saying that he thought Boko Haram’s outrage would be more focused on the fact that they were playing with God’s creation than with envy that another insurgency would deploy dinosaurs first. Boko Haram would denounce them for being heathen infidels.
He would let the captain think of those things. Anyway, Boko Haram was far away, up in the north, and besides, Happy didn’t think even those fanatics would want to tangle with a dinosaur.
***
The monster paused a second, as if unsure what to make of this group of people and their loud banging. Then, it shrugged and charged straight toward him.
Max, hand still vibrating from shooting the AK-47, clutched his spear and tried to slam it into the creature’s belly. He didn’t quite get the point planted in the center of his target and it slid across the dinosaur’s skin, tearing feathers away, twisting the spear to one side, and wrenching his arms in the process.
Max dove out of the way as a fearsomely-clawed back leg sliced the air above his head. He kept rolling until he managed to regain his footing a reasonable distance from the creature.
“Vasily, look out. It’s too strong. I don’t think you’ll be able to stab it.”
“You’ve obviously never hunted boar in the forest. Try to bring it this way.”
Max sprinted across the grass as fast as he could move. The initial rush had taken him in the opposite direction from his soldier, and he’d also dropped the spear. He debated whether to shoot the dinosaur or do what Vasily suggested. In the end, he decided to trust the other man and circled around.
The arc he chose wasn’t wide enough. One of the dinosaur’s forelegs, which served it as arms, shot out and clipped a foot as he passed. He tripped and flew through the air at full tilt.
Max got lucky. He rolled with the impact and popped back to his feet in a single instinctive motion. He was running in the right direction as soon as he got back. In fact, he might have gained a fraction of a second in the spill.
He made straight for Vasily. Twenty meters, ten. He felt the floor shaking with pursuit. He knew he was losing ground, but didn’t dare turn around to look. If he turned, he was a dead man.
So he ran. The final ten meters should have taken him less than two seconds. Instead, time seemed to stretch out until he was certain that every instant would be his last.
He passed a hair’s breadth from Vasily, as close as he dared.
Behind him, he heard a thump and an enormous outgassing of air. He got himself stopped and turned around.
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