I twisted back around to look at where Tom was going. I knew the carnos would catch up to us on a straight away, so I was hoping that there were some turns up ahead we could use to gain some distance. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any turns. Nor did I see much of an end to the claustrophobic jungle.
“They are gaining on us!” Trel shouted over the wind and glanced back to confirm her words. The three carnos were sprinting with their heads down, and I could see the two ones that first chased us way behind.
Fuck.
“Come on Tom!” I shouted as I urged the big guy to go faster. He grunted, huffed, and then slammed his massive feet into the dried riverbed harder, but his speed really didn’t increase.
The big guy was starting to get tired.
I felt Trel’s hand grab onto my shoulder and I glanced back to see her standing on the saddle with a spear in her left hand. The lead carno was about fifty feet behind us still, but Trel pulled her arm back with the spear and made as if she was about to throw the weapon.
“Wait till it gets closer!” I shouted as I double checked the road ahead of us. We were still on a straight path, so I turned around and reached for one of the other spears.
The lead carno was closing distance on us, and I could hear the blood pump through my brain over the sound of the wind. Our second to last spear came easily into my hands and I readied myself to fend off one of the most aggressive predators to have ever lived with what pretty much equated to a toothpick.
The carno moved to snap at Tom’s tail, but I saw the beast’s jaws move forward, and I commanded the trike to pull his ass up a moment before the carno’s teeth snapped shut. The predator actually seemed confused when his jaws closed on empty air, but he didn’t have much time to figure out what happened because Trel dashed forward onto the trunk part of the saddle and hurled her spear at the carno.
The weapon flew with surprising accuracy, and it hit the carno right square in the nose. The beast let out a surprised squawk as it flinched back, and the suddenness of its upper body movement caused its legs to slip out from under it. The beast skidded, bounced against the side of the riverbed wall, and then crashed into the other two carnos that were right behind. The three of them didn’t quite go down in a pile like the Three Stooges, but they all lost their footing for a few moments, and Tom quickly gained a good hundred yards on them.
“Great throw!” I shouted at Trel, and she nodded at me before she grabbed the last spear from our saddle.
I turned back to see where Bob was running and then felt my stomach drop. The road was slowly sloping upward, and about half a mile in the distance, I could see what looked like a massive wall of stone. I realized that it was an old waterfall made of five blocky steps, but each step was about ten feet high, and it was going to slow Tom down a bunch if he tried to climb them.
And they might actually be too high for him to climb.
I turned back around to see that the carno Trel had hit with her spear was no longer in the race. The two other were though, and I could also see the first pair of smaller ones way back behind them. I twisted my head back around to look at the waterfall and then considered the carnos’ running speed. I did the math in my head as I tried to calm myself, but I knew the truth.
They would catch up to us right as we made it to the waterfall steps.
“We have to take those two out!” I yelled at Trel. She gave me a questioning look, and then I gestured back to the waterfall wall that we were charging toward. Her eyes turned into large pools of black ink, and she nodded before twisting back to our pursuers.
“What is the plan?” she shouted.
“I can’t turn him around to charge,” I shouted in return. “We have to slow down and try to stab them.”
She nodded, but I could easily see the fear on her beautiful face.
I commanded Tom to slow his speed a bit, and the massive triceratops snorted with surprise. He still did what I told him to do, and his sprint slowed down to almost a fast canter.
The carnos roared as they realized they were closing the gap, but I then increased Tom’s speed again when they got within fifty yards. Trel wound her arm back to throw her spear again, but I grabbed onto her arm and then gestured with my own spear.
“We only have two left! Don’t throw one or we might lose it!”
She nodded at my words and then crouched on Tom’s back with her spider legs poised up to strike at the carnos.
The first one tried to bite Tom’s tail, but I made him pull up his ass again, and the bite missed. Then I made the trike cut his speed suddenly, and the two carnos darted to the side so that they wouldn’t run into him. I’d been ready for the movement, and I shoved my spear at the left one as he tried to twist away from the trike.
The point of my weapon slammed deep into the carno’s shoulder and it growled as it turned to snap at me. I’d already pulled my spear out of his flesh though, and I jabbed it into his chin when he darted close. He howled again when the spear dug into his flesh, and he slammed his left shoulder into the side of the river wall as he tried to get away.
I tried for one more stab, and my spear scratched across the carno’s nose before it fell back behind us. The beast let out an angry screech when I cut it again, and it thrashed its head back and forth as it ran.
I turned to the carno on Trel’s side and saw that my love had buried her spear into her carno’s nose like a toothpick through a cucumber. She was also slamming the tips of her spider legs into its face, but the carno jerked its head away when one of her legs caught him in the eye, and he yanked the spear out of her spider hands.
“Here!” I shouted as I handed Trel my spear and grabbed one of the axes on the saddle. It wasn’t the optimal weapon for this fight, but both of the carnos were moderately injured, and I guessed they would think twice about attacking us again.
A moment later, I was proven wrong when the pair of carnos sprinted to catch up with us again.
The one that had attacked me first went after Trel, but she jumped back as it snapped at her, poked two of her legs in each of its eyes, and then slammed the spear I had given her into the front of its jaw. The carno thrashed away from her with its eyes closed, and the right side of its skull smacked into the side of the riverbed wall. The dino went down like a tumbleweed, but the second carno stepped to the side and then crouched down mid-run as if he was going to try and jump on Tom’s back.
I commanded the trike to sprint forward as the carno leapt through the air. Tom ended up being just a little too fast for our attacker, and the predator missed landing on top of us. The movement cost the carno a bunch of momentum when he landed, and I turned around to see that the waterfall steps were getting closer. Ideally, we would take care of this fucker and then be able to climb the steps before the first pair of younger carnos got to us, but I saw them closing in fast from behind, and I knew that I was going to be cutting it close no matter what option I picked.
I slowed Tom some more so the carno could regain his footing, and then I had Tom speed up again when the carno tried to snap at the trike’s tail once more.
Trel stabbed out with her spear and caught the carno on the nose when he attacked again, but this time, the predator twisted to the right as soon as she hit him, and the spear broke in half. Trel shouted at the same time as the carno screamed, and I jumped toward Tom’s rear so that I could slam my stone axe down on the end of the spear that Trel had just used. Despite the predator’s thrashing, my axe hit right on target, and the spear dug deeper into the massive lizard’s maw and came out the other side of its chin.
The carno howled and swung its head around like a dog with a cone around its neck, but it was no longer chasing us, and I focused on the pair of younger carnos who still chased us. They were about a hundred and fifty yards behind us, and I turned to see that the waterfall steps were about a hundred yards ahead.
“We are going to try to make it up!” I yelled as I jumped back in the front seat. I felt Trel’s hand grab my shoulder ag
ain, but I couldn’t quite hear her response over the wind.
I did my best to study the wall as we approached, and my stomach dropped a little. The steps really did look too big for Tom to climb up on, and I knew I’d made a terrible mistake. Then I glanced at the sides and saw that the left side of the wall below the first step sloped up a bit, and the right side below the second step also sloped up a bit. It appeared that other dinos had climbed either up or down the steps and created a kind of switchback turn in the rocky mud on the sides. I couldn’t quite tell if the sides were wide enough for Tom to scrape up, but I didn’t really have much of a choice. I aimed him at the left corner and tried to cut his speed so he wouldn’t slam into the second step if he did make it up the slope.
“Come on, Tom!” I shouted. “Get on up!”
Tom snorted with annoyance and then kicked his rear legs hard against the riverbed. For half a second, it felt as if his front legs slipped on the mud of the slope, but then his rear legs followed through and he twisted to his right to run up on the first ledge.
“Yes! Go, Tom!” I shouted as I turned to my right and saw the two remaining carnos running toward the steps. I had thought that the wall would have given them some sort of trouble, but they were running right toward the slope, and I realized that they must have already known about this way to get up.
“Shit! Go, Tom! Go! Go! Go! Go!”
Trel’s fingers dug into my shoulders, and her hair wrapped around my neck as Tom sprinted up the next slope and twisted around the bend. He didn’t slip this time, but the next slope switchback looked slick with mud, and I felt my butthole tighten when he almost slipped off it and tumbled down the side.
“One more!” I yelled as Tom let out a huff of exhaustion and made his last sprint.
This final switchback was a bit easier to get up, and I commanded Tom to turn around as soon as we made it to the top. The area up here was covered with larger and smoother stones than below, and there was actually a trickle of water cutting down from the side of the natural road. I didn’t have much time to study the area, since the carnos were right behind us, and they were screeching as they ran toward the last switchback.
“Victor! Why are we waiting?” Trel gasped, but I ignored her question and commanded Tom to charge as soon as the pair of carnos came out at the top of the stairs.
I had no idea what the predators expected to happen, but I was absolutely positive they didn’t expect Tom to charge at them. They probably didn’t expect him to spear them with his horns. And they definitely didn’t expect to get rammed off the side of the dried-up waterfall. Yet, that was what happened, and the pair screamed when they toppled off the first step. Then they each smacked their skulls against the second step, bounced down to the third, and then tumbled the rest of the way to the floor some eighty feet below us.
One of the carnos let out a whimper and squirmed a little, but the other one wasn’t moving at all, and I guessed the whining one would soon be dead.
I looked up from the two carnos but didn’t see the injured ones following us. There was a possibility they were circling through the jungle to come at us from another angle, but I guessed that they had decided we were too difficult to eat, and went somewhere to lick their wounds.
“That was amazing,” Trel said as she wrapped her arms around my stomach and pushed her face into my back.
“You did great.” I leaned back into her and let out a long sigh of relief.
“I did nothing, Victor,” she whispered. “You controlled Tom and used him to escape and defeat those predators.” Trel squeezed me harder and sighed. “You have saved my life so many times. I am so proud to be your wife. To think that I belittled you when you first came to us. I was such a fool.”
“You aren’t a fool,” I replied. “And you did plenty during the fight, Trel. You built this saddle, and you defended us against carnos with your spear and legs. We are a great team.” I turned around in my seat, lifted her chin, and then kissed her lips. Her mouth met mine eagerly, and her pointed fingers kind of kneaded into my shoulder as she moaned into my mouth.
When our lips finally parted, she raised her fingers to stroke my beard while she stared into my eyes. We didn’t speak for a few moments, but the smile on her face told me everything I needed to know about her feelings for me. Only a few weeks ago she had told me that she would have put me at the end of her suitor line, but now she was hopelessly in love with me.
And I was in love with her. Trel was brilliant, cunning, beautiful, and in control of her sexuality like no other woman I had ever met. Part of me thought I didn’t deserve her, but that was the old Victor. That was the guy who hated that he was poor and knew he didn’t have any upward mobility anymore.
That Victor was almost dead now. I was a new man. I controlled the dinosaurs, and I protected my women.
“Let’s keep moving,” I said as I turned around in the saddle. “This road turned out to be a highway to the danger zone, eh Tom?” I couldn’t help but giggle, and then my giggle turned into a full-on laugh that melted all the stress and tension from my muscles.
“Why are you laughing?” Trel asked when Tom started moving.
“Ohhh,” I sighed. “So, I named this triceratops after this actor, Tom Cruise, and he was in this movie called Top Gun, and… well, you know, it doesn’t matter.” I laughed again and then turned over my shoulder to smile at her. “Let’s get going. We aren’t quite safe yet, and we haven’t even accomplished half our mission.”
Chapter 9
It was hard to tell the exact distance we traveled after the waterfall wall, but I figured it was another mile. Then the riverbed ended in what I guessed was once a lake bed but was now just a massive shallow bowl of rock, sand, and gravel. In the center of the bowl, some fifty or sixty feet down, was the massive skeleton of a pliosaur. The skeleton was kind of curled up on itself, but I guessed it was probably sixty feet in length.
There was a gentle slope on the side of the river bed that Tom was able to climb out of, and then we continued our trek westward through the jungle. The trees were still pretty dense, and I had to use my axe to cut through some vines and branches that would have otherwise knocked Trel and me off Tom’s back.
We cleared a path though, and the jungle soon became less dense and then faded into sporadic palm tree clusters as we approached the foothills on the west side of the valley. I felt as if we were really far away from our camp, but I guessed were probably only four miles, and I kind of chuckled to myself when I realized how the idea of distance was kind of messed up in my head. Yeah, Los Angeles had crazy traffic, but four miles to me was really just a five to ten-minute drive with little danger other than the fear of being rear-ended. We weren’t even to the ocean yet, and it felt as if Trel and I had taken an epic journey and risked our lives dozens of times.
The real crazy part was that Sheela had gone to the ocean by herself.
Thoughts of the cheetah-like woman made me smile, and I wondered how they were all doing without Trel and me. I figured they wouldn’t have any problems, but I wondered if my own quest would have been easier if I had brought both Trel and Sheela with me. Yeah, we probably would have taken care of the carnos a lot easier with Sheela’s Critical Strike ability, but that would have just left Kacerie, Galmine, Liahpa, and Emerald at the fort. Kacerie might have the leadership ability to get shit done, since she did own her own salon back on her world, but I still felt a lot better about leaving Sheela in charge.
“It looks like we can get back to the river,” I said as soon as we had emerged from the thick jungle and began to climb on the foothills, “but there also appears to be a path up ahead that cuts up the side of the hill. I think I’ll head up there. We should be able to see the ocean, and then we can cut back down to the beach and join up with the river there.”
“Fine with me,” Trel said as she squeezed her arms around me, and I urged Tom up the slopes of the hill.
Just as with the last valley, I paused just before the peak so
that I could look over without having our silhouette against the skyline. The terrain on the other side was still tropical jungle, but the green trees weren’t as dense as they were in the previous valley, and there were way more palm trees. The tree line extended a few miles out, and then it gave way to sand, sporadic palm trees, and the ocean.
And the ocean was beautiful.
The water glittered in the mid-morning light like millions of sapphires. It stretched out as far as I could see in every direction, and the scent of salt filled my nose with a comforting sensation. I saw a group of large islands about two or three miles off the shore, but I saw no signs of any civilization on the beach, ocean, or the far island.
“Look north,” Trel said as she pointed with her right hand, and my eyes followed her finger up the coast. The land a mile or two north of us was colored black as if it had been burned, but I quickly realized the blackness was kind of emerging from a peak in the hill range. It looked like there might have been a mini volcano or something that dripped lava down into the ocean.
“I’m guessing you want to check out the rocks over there to see if you can use any for filtration.”
“Yeah,” Trel said, “but let’s follow the river to the ocean first to see if we spot a spot for clay.”
“Sounds good,” I said as I pushed Tom over the crest of the hill and down the other side. The area here was rocky, so I couldn’t quite guide him down as quickly as I wanted to. After about ten minutes, we made it to the base of the hills, and then we headed south so that we could connect to the river again.
We rode past another herd of trikes and a five-member group of stegosauruses. I watched the latter group carefully as we traveled past them and wondered if I could tame one. The largest male of the group was still a bit smaller than the two female trikes I had already tamed, so I figured I’d be able to use my ability on them, but I wanted to take care of the clay and sand before I tried to work on one. I probably didn’t need a stego to join my group of dinosaurs, but they looked fucking awesome, and their tails looked deadly.
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