Star Noir

by Paul Bishop

  “Let me get this straight. She’s in Tyrannosaur Valley and the rangers cannot find her.”

  “They’re in the wrong valley.”

  This simply grew weirder by the moment.

  “Wrong valley?”

  “You remember our first adventure. We crossed the Copper Plateau, heading for Mount Azure and—”

  “Got lost for three days.”

  “The valley.”

  “That wasn’t Tyrannosaur Valley.”

  “Not the Tyrannosaur Valley. It wasn’t even a valley. It was a canyon with caves and that little river at the bottom of the gorge.” Vincent’s dark eyes danced under his thick eyebrows.

  “What makes you think she’s there?”

  He gave me that sly smile, the one that seems to make women do things it takes me weeks of begging to convince them to do. For the record, I told him no, I wouldn’t go. He packed up anyway and intended to head out here on his own.

  “No problem,” he said. “I understand this adventure might be too dangerous.”

  This he says to the man who accompanied Mister Vincent Daniel across a great deal of this planet on a dozen death-defying adventures. I cataloged them mentally in the space of seconds.

  Deadly Dive at Ichthyosaur Isthmus; The Willowy Blonde’s Brush with Death; Attack of the Allosaur; The Sizzling Redhead Uncertainty; Valley of the Terrible Claw; The Curvaceous Brunette Escapade… I could have continued, but that seemed sufficient.

  My involvement started by virtue of the simple fact that I’m an illustrator. My best friend Vincent Daniel turned me into a writer because he won’t write his own escapades. I was merely supposed to draw the covers of the books, but no, he’s too busy being an adventurer and bedding all the pretty women and I’m left to make him famous because what I really am is a sidekick.

  The sound that brings me back and draws me from my sleep is a grunt. No, a sniffing. My eyes crack open to bright light and—did the fire explode? No, it’s sunlight. Vincent forgot to wake me, and I see him and Wendy lying side by side next to what’s left of the fire. A trail of smoke rises from its dying embers and slides out the cave’s entrance, where a tyrannosaur’s huge head blocks most of the opening as it sniffs the air.

  I raise my 30-30, aim for the nearest nostril, and squeeze the trigger. A splotch of red dots appears on the snout and the big beast howls, snorts, and backs away. Vincent and Wendy roll away from the fire and toward me. My friend draws both stainless-steel six-shooters and aims them out of the cave.

  Laser rifles and particle fragmentation guns are illegal on Octavion. The only weapons allowed are pre-twenty-first century Earth weapons, which gives us a wide variety to choose from, but they aren’t effective against the bigger dinosaurs. At first, only the military and police had weapons, but the reach of the old second amendment is vast, and every citizen has the right to keep and bear arms, so firearms came to Octavion.

  Vincent half-drags Wendy to me and we both aim weapons outside the cave. The 30-caliber round I’d delivered into the tyrannosaur seems more effective than I thought. Getting his bearings now, my friend admits he fell asleep on the job.

  He crawls to the cave opening and I follow and we both peer out cautiously. Two tyrans are immediately visible—a smaller one with brown stripes on its orange hide and a huge one with blue stripes on its red hide. That’s the one I nicked with the round and it licks its wound with a long, black tongue. We inch away from the opening too small for a tyran—even the smaller ones—to enter unless it’s a baby and we haven’t seen any of them. That’s why we built a blazing fire, the great deterrent for any animal, raptors included.

  Vincent stands and stretches and still favors the left knee he’d wrenched in our flight into the cave yesterday afternoon. He looks toward the back of the cave. We’d gone partway into it and found the stream of water that was a good thirty feet across.

  He nods to me and I start gathering what’s left of our gear. Thankfully, our backpacks are full of food and ammo. We lost the water bags, tents, and foodstuffs with the mules but still have our canteens. He re-kindles the fire and it blazes again quickly. Wendy puts the torches she made in the fire, gets them alight, and we carry them into the cave’s darkness.

  The other man leads and I take the rear. The air is stuffy and smells of decayed flesh and I have goosebumps again. We reach the stream that must run straight through the mountain, and the rushing water glistens black in the flickering light. I ease toward the left wall and Vincent moves to the right and calls back. It’s wider at my side and there’s an opening for the stream with a rock ledge above.

  “I wonder where it ends up,” Wendy remarks.

  “It could stay underground,” he replies, “or dump out the far side.”

  It’s narrower along the left wall and this is where the stream emerges from the wall.

  “There’s a ledge,” I call out. It’s not much of a ledge but we move carefully with him first and edge along the rockface above the opening where the stream emerges. He waits for Wendy and I move close so we’re on both sides, but she crosses to his side much quicker. She is light-footed. As I inch along the ledge, my right foot slips and I barely hang on.

  Thankfully, I don’t fall in as Vincent and Wendy have already moved ahead without me. Thanks. I hurry to catch up to their torches as they round a corner. A second later, she utters a high-pitched cry and I run, take the corner, and almost tumble into them where they stand and stare at the dead-end of the cave.

  The stench is almost unbearable now. In the flickering light, I see at least twenty strips of meat hung from the low ceiling. On the cave floor beyond lies a cache of dinosaur bones. Along the right side of the cave, hides are suspended on wooden poles. A large hole in the floor, surrounded by burned rocks, indicates a fire grotto. Slices of burned wood are within a large pile of ashes. I test the stones tentatively but none of them are warm.

  “The meat is curing,” Wendy says. “Do you think some kind of mountain man lives here?”

  I move around while she examines the hides. My eyes begin to burn from the stench of the meat or maybe from the torches in the confines of the cave.

  “There are markings on the wall,” she says, and I join her and Vincent. The combined light of our torches reveals an incredible panorama. Carvings cover the far wall from ceiling to floor. They are intricate figures of tyrannosaurs, raptors, anklosaurs, and a myriad of aquatic dinosaurs from long-necked elasmosaurs to ichthyosaurs of various sizes and other wicked-looking sea monsters I’ve never seen.

  Her torch moves to a figure standing below an excellent chiseling of a raptor. The figure is a man of some kind. He holds a long spear but there’s something different about his feet. Maybe the artist wasn’t that good after all, I think, but immediately disregard that. He or she rendered the tyrannosaurs and raptors correctly and I can only assume it’s accurate that the man’s feet are webbed. Wendy’s hand shakes as her fingers trace the figure’s face and arms. We all freeze when a loud screech reverberates from the front of the cave.

  “I hope it got its head stuck,” Vincent says as he heads for the cave’s entrance with me right behind. I almost fall in the stream again. We drop our torches as we near the front of the tunnel. He stops, raises his 30-30, and fires and I move to the other side to peer around. Three tyrannosaurs have entered, smaller than the ones we call juveniles, but these aren’t babies. He continues to fire at the first one and it snaps in defiance and advances. These youngsters are as big as an Earth lion and clearly shouldn’t be taken lightly. A second darts around the first and I aim and fire in quick succession and repeat the process a few times. My rounds make contact but seem to have no effect.

  The first one staggers against the wall and Vincent maintains his barrage until it goes down. The one I’ve targeted is now twenty feet away and I fire again but I’m now out of ammo. I draw my nine-millimeter while my friend fires two shots from his 30-30 into the side of the tyran’s head and it goes down.

  The third
beast hesitates but two others join it and Vincent and I turn and race to the stream. We sprint headlong and hear them thundering behind us but manage to cross on either side seconds before the tyrannosaurs reach the water. They almost tumble in and mill on the bank while they snap their jaws at us and snarl defiance, anxious to reach us.

  We shove rounds into our 30-30’s. They each hold twenty cartridges and I drop a bullet but manage to retrieve it. Younger tyrans arrive, hissing, growling, and biting at the others. Wendy rushes to Vincent as we fall back.

  A creature leaps across the stream and lands in a heap between Vincent and me and we shoot it again and again. It lunges and stumbles past me and I fire at point-blank range into its huge head until it collapses.

  “The stream!” My friend points to the churning water. “It has to go somewhere!”

  Two tyrans jump the stream to my left and another beyond Vincent. We both wheel and empty our 30-30s. The volleys stop them but more make the attempt as the scent of blood fills the room with a nauseating stink that seems to rile the tyrannosaurs even more.

  He yells something and I turn as he and Wendy jump into the water. They whirl past me and I dive in after them and sink several feet before the strong current pulls me along. I hold my hands in front of my face as I move swiftly into total darkness and I tuck my head, close my eyes, and hope the stream—which seems to be running straight, does actually exit the mountain. My lungs burn and I hold my breath, knowing that if I let it out, I’ll suck water in and it will all be over. Something brushes my hands and it isn’t rock and I wonder if it’s Vincent or Wendy’s foot. I hold my breath and hope, and the water twists me before I impact sideways into a wall and the air is forced out of my lungs. Still, I refuse to open my mouth and slowly, ever so slowly, I feel it all go away.

  Warmth seeps in.

  The cool water is gone, and I try to breathe but cannot. There’s light around me and someone moves. Someone coughs but it’s not me and I cannot take air into my lungs. I struggle to raise my head, and something pushes me down before wonderful, warm air fills my lungs and I breathe deeply again and again.

  My eyes open to the bright Octavion sun and dark blue sky. The coughing turns my head to see Vincent struggling to sit. He does, sees me, and leans against a boulder. I still hear rushing water and feel wetness spraying my back as I sit and turn to see I am perched above a waterfall.

  I look at Vincent and croak, “Wendy?”

  He nods and points behind me, back toward the waterfall. On the other side of the falls, Wendy lies spread-eagled. Seated beside her is a blue man who gapes at her as if he’s never seen a human before. I stare at him as I’ve never seen a man with skin only a shade lighter than Octavion’s royal-blue sky. The man’s leg dangles over the ledge above the water that surges from the rocks and tumbles down the mountainside. His feet are webbed and when he looks at me, he’s close enough for me to see his eyes are emerald-green. He pulls his long, light-brown hair away from his face and looks at Wendy again when she stirs. I notice that he wears some kind of animal hide around his waist down to his thighs. It’s tight so I’m sure it won’t hinder him in the water.

  The man rises and retreats to the edge of the cliff. Wendy coughs, sits up, and sees him. She rubs her eyes and he’s still there. Vincent struggles to rise and crawls on all fours now. When she tries to stand, her limbs won’t cooperate, and she sinks down again. I find my feet and move to the edge of the falling water. The blue man turns, narrows his eyes, and looks at Wendy. He dives off the cliff into a river fifty feet below. I shade my eyes and peer down. The water meanders from this mountain through rolling hills to the towering Mount Azure and down to a wide delta. The Painted Ocean sprawls in the distance, shimmering dark-blue.

  A low growl snaps my head around as a full-sized tyrannosaur raises its head above the side of the cliff beyond Wendy. Vincent is up now and hobbles to the edge of the waterfall. She stands slowly and I realize I still have my Glock in my holster. He draws both his revolvers as I withdraw my weapon. We aim in the same moment that she dives over the falls into the river below.

  My friend shoves his revolvers into their holsters and jumps in after her. The tyran sees me and tries to come around the rise but it's steep and slows its progress. I holster my Glock and dive. It’s a breath-taking fall and the water is cool and thankfully, deep. I come up directly behind Vincent who swims toward Wendy. She holds onto a branch of a large violet bush dangling over the river. When he reaches her, she coughs, winds her arms around his neck, and almost pulls him down. He catches hold of the bush as I swim over. I have to work hard as the current is strong and shoves me downriver. I no sooner reach them when I see a flash of orange with blue stripes as a Tyrannosaurus approaches through the Violet Woods directly toward us.

  “Can you swim?” Vincent asks Wendy as the tyran roars.

  She releases his neck and we are all swept downriver. I’ve never seen a tyrannosaur swim, thankfully, and the big orange one runs along the shore to keep pace with us. We use the current to pull away from the snapping jaws. As we near the far side, three juvenile tyrans race parallel, their black eyes trained on us in anticipation that we’ll reach their bank when the river begins to narrow.

  We’re in the center when the current slows. A tyran races along the edge of the river and splashes water high with each step. It keeps pace, snarling and snapping at us. I wonder again whether or not they can swim while we press on.

  A huge tyran steps into the river and begins to walk toward us. The water is deep, and it sinks to its short arms, stops, and returns to the shore while roars echo from the Violet Woods. We continue downstream and the tyrans suddenly seem to vanish, although we can still hear them making a racket in the woods, which thicken around us.

  The river takes a lazy turn around a hill and the plain opens to our left where the pack of tyrannosaurs has found more interesting prey. A herd of about twenty stegosaurs has bunched in a tight group. The larger ones are positioned on the outside and swish their long tails so the pointed spikes slice the air like scythes. The tyrans snarl and snap as they circle but not even the largest moves forward. We continue and before the confrontation is out of sight, we see the tyrans stop and settle around the stegosaur herd. They now simply sit in the grass and wait. There are enough to completely ring the herd.

  Two juveniles stumble on an unfortunate ankylosaur and kill it quickly, and a feeding frenzy ensues. One of the big tyrans wanders over to share in the ankylosaur and I wonder what it will be like when the stegosaur herd finally has to move.

  “One is still pacing us,” Vincent says.

  On the other side of the river, a green tyran with light-blue stripes moves along the edge of the woods. It occasionally has to step into the shallows to keep up and it’s beady eyes remain focused on us. It’s not full-grown but almost.

  The river takes another turn and by now, my arms are burning and my legs feel like lead. Wendy swims ahead of us and doesn’t seem to have a problem. Vincent moves well and looks constantly at me as I’m slowly falling behind. I raise my head to see the river has widened.

  “This way,” he calls and we veer to the bank opposite our lurking tyran. I pull harder and kick my legs and don’t know if I can make it. Somehow, I manage to grasp the grass on the bank and drag myself out of the water. Vincent and Wendy lay on their backs in the grass, both breathing heavily. I manage to get close, roll on my back, and feel the sun on my face as I close my eyes and catch my breath.

  The minutes creep by. I hear them moving beside me but I keep my eyes closed, hoping I’ll fall asleep and that when I wake, this will all be a nightmare.

  “Damn!” My friends stands, draws his Colts, shakes them to get the water off, and nods at the river. “Someone taught this bastard to swim.”

  Despite my weariness, I elbow myself up enough to see the tyran from across the river is now in the center and heading our way.

  “We have to move.” Vincent pulls Wendy to her feet, gives me a hand, a
nd hauls me up.

  “Where?” I ask. We’re on a flat river delta.

  He hauls her along and I realize my boots are missing. She is barefoot and her shirt is more torn and now reveals her white bra. Even Mr Particular Vincent Daniel’s denim jeans are ripped and there’s a tear in his shirt. We jog as best we can over the grass toward our right and away from the tyrans surrounding the stegosaurs.

  My legs, fortunately, aren’t as weary as my arms and I ease close to Wendy who is beginning to flag. Vincent nods as he peers ahead, then looks over his shoulder.

  “Is it still coming?” She won’t look.

  “Yes. But I have an idea.” He smiles.

  In the years I’ve known my infuriating best friend, he has always evidenced the knack of seeing humor when everyone else sees disaster, but this is the first time he sees humor when we’re about to be eaten. I look back and the T-rex is on the grass now and has begun to pick up speed. We all know the biggest tyran can run up to forty miles per hour—twice as fast as a human, even one running for his life.

  Vincent takes us toward the river again. We might be able to out-swim the bastard if we make it—and if I can find strength in my arms and legs. I can’t be moving more than ten miles an hour right now so either way, I don’t hold out much hope. We make it to the riverside and I can hear the tyran clumping behind me and don’t dare to look back. My friend’s limp is pronounced and his left leg hinders him as he looks over his shoulder, winks at me, and turns along the river. He points ahead and grasps Wendy’s hand to pull her along.

  I’m not at all sure what he’s pointing at. It’s all flatland beside the river and now, we’re running in mud…and I finally see. The delta is a wide patch of murk and sludge, and as we struggle to keep moving, the tyran slows on the grass, snarls, and comes after us.

  It gets about twenty feet away from the vegetation before it realizes the mud won’t support six tons of muscle and bones. Tyrannosaurus rex is a top predator because it’s wily enough to get the hell out of the mud and back up on the grass. Prey species get stuck in mud, not hunters. T-rexes have tempers and this one is howling mad. It roars at us, snarls, and snaps its jaws as we continue through the sludge to make sure the damn thing can’t reach us.