by Russ Watts
“Take my hand.”
Maria looked up and saw Mackenzie’s face appear. Frantically, she grabbed his outstretched hand, and he pulled her away from the rock.
“Mac, you have to get going. It’s…” Maria saw Mackenzie’s eyes drift upward and widen in terror.
“Quickly!” Mackenzie shoved Maria out of the way and stepped forward. He held out a large pressurized can and lighter, and just as the Goliath came in for the kill, he ignited the burst from the can, spraying the Goliath’s face with flames. He had been lucky to find the bag with them in and hoped it would work just like in the movies. As he stood there burning the creature’s face, he wasn’t sure if it would do anything. In the next three seconds, either it would snap its jaws around him, or he might get lucky and scare it off.
The monster recoiled as the fire licked its face, singeing its eyelids, and Mackenzie let out a sigh of relief. Mackenzie knew it wasn’t enough to really hurt it, but was probably enough to surprise it. He had bought them no more than another thirty seconds, but it might be all they needed. He kept the fire burning until they were in the clear and only when he saw the Goliath step back, wiping an arm across its face as it disappeared once more into the sandstorm, did he toss the can and lighter aside.
“Maria, get to your store. Hide in the wreckage. Stop running and making any noise, and it might not find you. Laurel and Alyce are there too. Just go, now, before it comes back.”
“What about Vic?” she asked.
“Haven’t seen him,” said Mackenzie. “I don’t think the Goliath has either though, so we just have to trust he’s okay. I figure if we play dead, maybe that thing won’t be able to find us. This dust storm is clearing, so we don’t have much time. Go that way, now. To the store.”
Maria ran and Mackenzie heard the Goliath thundering across the road under the darkening evening sky. He heard gunfire and engines again, and he reckoned Randall’s unit must be close. They must have heard the monster resurface. He hoped his plan would work. Movement and noise only attracted it, so their best option was to be still and hope the army would deal with it. With all the noise they were making, the monster would probably go after them, which would make it easier to hide in the store. He couldn’t see the monster anymore, so it may have already gone for them. As he turned to run after Maria, Mackenzie heard a distant voice calling for help.
“Vic?” Mackenzie listened and heard it again. It was close. “Vic, where are you?”
A shadowy figure stumbled through the dust, and when it emerged, Mackenzie recognized Vic.
“I got lost in all this shit.”
Vic looked scared but unharmed. He approached Mackenzie cautiously. “Where is it? I thought I saw it a moment ago, but then it disappeared.”
“It’s going after the army. Come on, Vic, we’re heading back to the store. We’re going to…”
Mackenzie stretched out his arm to offer Vic a hand, and then felt the sand and dust in the air shift slightly. It was almost imperceptible, but it was there. Just behind Vic, there was a disturbance in the swirling air. Mackenzie looked up and froze. It was still here. The Goliath hadn’t gone anywhere. It was stood right there, not moving, hiding in the storm, watching them. It was happening just as when it had started attacking the store. It was toying with them, letting them think they were hiding from it, when it was just hiding from them. They had been foolish to think they could outsmart it. The monster might be a big brute, but it certainly wasn’t dumb.
“What is it?” asked Vic as a frown spread across his face.
Mackenzie didn’t know what to do. He had been outwitted. Outrunning it was impossible. He had nothing left to fight it with, and it was slowly, quietly, lowering its head right over Vic. Mackenzie said nothing. He opened his mouth to tell Vic to run, but what was the point? Where would he go?
“Fuck,” said Vic quietly as he looked up at the monster above him. The snarling jaws of the monster were directly above him, close enough that he could count its teeth and reach out and touch them. The front incisors were dripping with saliva that left patches of oily liquid on the ground. As the monster opened its jaws wider, foul air overwhelmed Vic, and something dislodged itself from between the creature’s teeth. An arm fell, landing beside Vic on the ground. The fingernails were manicured and painted red, and a gold bracelet was still wrapped around the wrist. The arm had been ripped off with such force that the bone had been severed neatly, and only a few straggly veins and thin muscle tissue remained.
It was then that Vic lost control of his bladder. He opened his mouth to scream, aware that Mackenzie was calling out to him, but there was nothing he could do. The Goliath lunged and snapped up Vic in its powerful jaws, breaking his spine instantly as it closed its jaws around him, squashing his fragile body. Vic’s blood was forced to find an exit route, and it spurted from every orifice, showering Mackenzie in gore and viscera, splattering his face with brain tissue and warm blood.
He was barely six feet away. Mackenzie took a step back from the monster. Vic hadn’t cried out once he was inside the thing’s mouth. He was probably killed quickly, and Mackenzie watched in awe as the monster suddenly reared up, threw back its head, and swallowed Vic whole. The Goliath opened its mouth, and Mackenzie noticed its whole body quivered as it roared.
“Yakazar-yakazar…”
The dust was clearing quickly now, and Mackenzie could see the ruins of the Kelso Depot and the store, the burnt-out bus, and the splattered remains of Randall and Mr. Stepper. If he ran to the store, Mackenzie knew he might lead it to the others. It was too risky. He was a dead man, and he knew it. At least he wasn’t going to lead it to his family, and Mackenzie began running in the opposite direction, waiting for the creature’s bloody teeth to snap around him.
CHAPTER 17
Mackenzie could hear the gunfire from the still invisible army as he ran, and the ground in front of him exploded as a grenade missed its target. There was shouting as soldiers behind him closed in, and the rumble of engines grew in volume.
Mackenzie snaked a shaking hand across his face, wiping the blood away as best he could. He was in awe of the monstrous thing that was slowly picking off the tour group one by one. It truly was the ultimate killing machine and he despised it with every inch of his soul. Knowing it was there, right behind him, made him feel sick. His knees felt weak, and he wanted to go back home. He wanted to take Laurel and Amy back home to Milwaukee where dinosaurs didn’t exist, and he led a mundane but satisfying life selling second-hand cars. It wasn’t an exciting life, but he had a good life, and a happy family. Why did this have to happen now, to him? Why was this happening at all? What Randall said bounced around his brain. They had created this. They had messed with things they shouldn’t have and boy, were they paying for it now. Everything was fucked up. It was so confusing. Everything was mixed up in his head; the bodies, the military, Amy, the Goliath ripping Vic apart. The only thing he could hold onto was Laurel. All day her face had been so full of worry and fear that it broke his heart. He had to get her out of here. She would get to Amy, take care of her. That was what he had to do. It was something he could control, something he could make a plan about. Being bait for the Goliath was about as useful as he could make himself right now.
A fiery crackle of bullets flew past his ear and ripped into the ground to his left, narrowly missing him. A cactus was shredded into pieces, and Mackenzie kept running. He could feel the beast behind him; he didn’t need to look. He knew it was there. It wanted him. Mackenzie felt pleased, not at his own impending death, but that he had given Laurel a chance. There was satisfaction mixed in with all the guilt and grief and fear. If she made it out of this alive, then it hadn’t won completely.
The monster let out a bellow, and Mackenzie jumped over a large rock as more bullets whistled past him. The dust had really settled now, and he was out in the scrub, off the road, and well away from the store. There wasn’t much more he could do. He could tell from the noise the monster was making tha
t it was only a few feet away. It was now or never. Mackenzie slowed to a jog, and saw a jeep in his peripheral vision. It was going fast, and on the back were men firing at the monster. Mackenzie wished they had gotten here just a few minutes earlier. He stopped, out of breath, and sank to his knees. He couldn’t run anymore. He was exhausted. Collapsing to the floor, he wrapped his hands around a small sharp rock. If the Goliath was going to eat him, he would make it as painful as possible. He could smash a lot of teeth with that rock.
Mackenzie turned and found the beast standing right over him. Its upper jaw was peeled back in a snarl, and its thick skin covered in bloody holes. Evidently not all of the army’s bullets had missed their target. Saliva and blood cascaded down from the vicious creature’s jaws, showering Mackenzie in a gentle rain of viscera that sickened him. He looked into the monster’s red eyes, into the black orbs at their center.
“Come on then, you bitch,” shouted Mackenzie. “You want supper, come and get it.”
Mackenzie lifted the rock in his hand knowing he was unlikely to get to use it. The monster could destroy him right where he was; squash him like a bug on a windshield. The Goliath opened its mouth letting out another roar, its stinking breath engulfing Mackenzie.
A burst of gunfire behind him made Mackenzie duck, and he saw a six-foot gash open up across the monster’s forehead as the bullets tore through the skin. Another round of gunfire caught the monster off guard and Mackenzie saw one of its front incisors shatter under the pressure. Suddenly, the monster backed up and reared up to its full height.
“Get the fuck down!”
Mackenzie didn’t see who had said it, but knew when the time was to follow orders. He dived behind a rock and made himself as small as possible, pressing his body up against the rock. Five soldiers ran past him, their weapons hot and letting out an endless parade of gunfire. The men shot at the dinosaur as they ran, and Mackenzie felt the ground shaking as they ran past him. Looking past the men, Mackenzie saw a convoy of trucks, jeeps, even a tank, and soldiers; lots and lots of soldiers. Mackenzie looked around to see another convoy on the other side of the monster, and smiled inwardly. They were trying to flank the beast, take it down from both sides so that it had nowhere to go.
The sound of gunfire was deafening, and Mackenzie wondered how the thing was still standing. Making sure to keep his head down low, he peered over the rock. It was war in a microcosm; destruction wrought real on a miniature scale, as if a world war was taking place in a snow-globe filled with sand. The soldiers still standing were firing their automatic rifles as the Goliath moved around the desert trying to dodge them. It was like a dance, a twisted ballet that could only result in death. Mackenzie thought about trying to get to the store, but there was no safe path such was the barrage of bullets whizzing through the air. He wondered how long the men could keep going. One got too close to the monster, and it took him down easily. Even with the man firing his weapon at point blank range, the Goliath snapped him up in its jaws and crushed him, before swallowing the remains. Another repeated the same mistake and the monster simply stood on him, killing him instantly under its powerful, heavy legs. A missile of some sort whistled through the air above Mackenzie’s head and punched into the monster’s mid-riff, exploding with such force that Mackenzie expected to see the monster torn in half. When the fire and smoke dispersed, he could see the monster was still standing, attacking the platoon now despite the bloody hole in its side.
Swiftly, the Goliath charged at the men, mowing them down with ease. It ignored their guns, ignored their shouts, and simply ran them down where they stood. It punched a hole through its attackers, and rushed one of the jeeps. It was no more difficult than kicking a football and Mackenzie watched in amazement as it smashed through the jeep, causing it to explode in a fireball and scatter the men surrounding it. Turning back quickly, the Goliath swept up the standing men in its jaws, smashing them under its feet, and carving a deadly path through the men who were struggling to contain it. The Goliath raced over the desert ground and headed for the other convoy of vehicles. It raised a foot over a truck and brought it down on the front of the vehicle so that the engine was crushed under its weight. A huge claw extended from the creature’s foot and dug straight through the armor plated metal. Then it tossed the truck from side to side, ignoring the hail of bullets still pouring into it from all sides, and tore the truck open. The driver was thrown clear and hurtled through the air before being caught in the creature’s snapping jaws. Its teeth shredded the man, and his dying screams were drowned out by the roaring noise of the magnificent creature as it frenziedly ate the unlucky soldier.
Mackenzie sensed the monster was angry. It could have retreated underground, gone far from the battle to lick its wounds, yet it stayed above ground to fight. This was going to end one way or another. Mackenzie watched as another truck drove straight at the beast. The flashes of gunfire from it suddenly ceased when the monster bent its head down and smashed into the truck’s side, sending it tumbling over and over through the desert. Several men were thrown clear of the truck as it came to a halt and the Goliath tried to pick them off one by one, hunting them down like dogs as they fled the burning wreckage. Mackenzie saw limbs flying in all directions as it ate them. One soldier was pinned down under its claws, unable to escape. The monster’s head hovered briefly over the man before sinking its sharp incisors into the man’s torso and plunging right through him into the ground. Mackenzie heard the poor man call out in pain before choking on his own blood. Then he was gone, swallowed up like so many before him, into the belly of the beast.
A massive fireball erupted into the crisp air as a shower of grenades fell onto the monster’s body. It let out what Mackenzie could only describe as a howl, before straightening up. The monster took an unsteady step forward, almost as if it was dizzy. Was it actually hurt? Were they finally making an impression on it? Mackenzie had to take his chance and get to the store. He had to make sure Laurel was still all right. Creeping forward carefully, ensuring he didn’t catch the monster’s attention, he made his way toward the ruins of Maria’s store, scarcely able to believe he was still alive.
“Yakazar-yakazar.”
The vicious sound erupted from the Goliath’s throat like a sword cutting the air, slicing through the very atoms and sending a chill over Mackenzie’s body.
“Yakazar-yakazar.”
It moved sluggishly, as if it was weak or drained of energy. Mackenzie watched as the Goliath stumbled, swung its arms at another jeep, but missed. It looked cumbersome and heavy, and Mackenzie started to believe it was finally going down. He watched as the tank he had seen earlier took aim and fired a shell into the side of the monster. The explosion took a huge chunk out of the Goliath’s torso and sent massive chunks of sizzling flesh flying through the air. As the dinosaur sank to its knees, he couldn’t help but grin. The monster was dying. It had killed numerous soldiers, but it appeared to be succumbing finally to the battering it was taking.
“Mac? Oh God, Mac, I thought…”
Laurel came running from the shelter of the ruined store and grabbed Mackenzie.
“Are you okay?” Mackenzie hugged Laurel and looked her over. The fight was still raging behind him, and he didn’t want to risk them getting caught up in it, so he rushed Laurel back to the store. A truck sped past them, crunching over the dry ground as it raced toward its target. Several soldiers ran after it, all firing at the Goliath.
Sheltering under a collapsed wall of the store, Mackenzie hugged Maria and Alyce. “Is everyone okay?”
“Considering we’re in the middle of World War Three, we ain’t doing so bad,” replied Maria. “Oh, and we picked up someone else hiding in the rubble of my store.”
Mackenzie watched as Beers poked his head out from underneath Alyce’s backpack. He laughed as it sniffed around, and then hid when Alyce whispered to the dog.
“I thought he was tucker. How on God’s green Earth did you find him?”
“He found us
. Just sniffed us out, poor little thing. One of his legs is broken, and he’s half scared to death, but I think if we can get out of this, he’ll be fine.”
“You had us worried, Mac,” said Maria. She coughed as a plume of powdery dirt swept past them.
Suddenly, a soldier stopped and knelt down right beside them. Dirt coated his face. Grime and sweat mingled to form an oily complexion, and he looked at them all quickly as a tank rumbled onwards behind him. It bounced across the road as the ground continued to swell and subside as the Goliath crashed around. To Mackenzie, the explosions and roars of the dinosaur sounded like they were in the final stages of the battle.
“Incoming! Stay down!” ordered the soldier.
“Wait, what?” Mackenzie put the others behind him, forming a barricade between him and the soldier.
“Airstrike. Sixty seconds out. We’re taking this animal down. Stay behind this wall, and don’t move.” The soldier rapped his knuckles across his helmet and grinned. “We’re going to take its head off.”
“But what about…?”
“When this is over, get the hell away from here. The Mojave is no place to be right now.” The soldier spotted Alyce cowering behind Mackenzie and stood up. “Especially for a kid. Jesus, man, what the hell are you guys doing out here? This was supposed to be a clear area.”