by James Maxey
“I’ve seen sun-dragons,” said Graxen. “And the skull of tyrannosaurus rex. Its teeth were as long as your knuckle blades.”
“Sounds like your biologians went shopping in the ruins of the Museum of Natural History,” said Elijah, sitting up. “Okay, this really isn’t how I planned to die, but I think I’ve got what I need. I can program the power plant at the base of my skull into a makeshift bomb. I just need to jump into the rift and blow it up.” He sighed. “Man, I should have listened to Isis.”
“Who’s Isis?” asked Nadala.
“My wife. At least, she used to be. She told me to stay the hell away from Oak Ridge. But I slipped off and came here anyway. You see, about a thousand years ago, Oak Ridge housed a research facility that did cutting edge science. The published stuff was impressive, but the black book stuff was even crazier. There were whispers they were taking apart an alien ship here. Maybe even actual aliens. They were also looking into teleportation. Telepathy. Alternate reality gates. Clones. And, you know, cybernetics.” He held up his metal hand. “Real comic book stuff. And surprisingly well built. Apparently some of the big red buttons with a hundred warning symbols around them still turn on stuff if you push them.”
He rose. “Repairs are done. Great talking to you. Dragons! Who said the apocalypse wouldn’t come with a side of whimsy.”
“I don’t understand half the things you’re saying,” said Nadala.
“Half?” asked Graxen.
“Not important. I’m talking just to hear myself talk. Old habit of mine. Or I guess, if a habit’s stuck around a thousand years, it’s not a habit anymore. It’s who you are. Or maybe it’s just a tiny glitch in the quantum processor housing my consciousness. Who the hell can tell?” He shrugged.
Graxen and Nadala shrugged back.
“It’s been real,” said Elijah. He gave Nadala a crisp salute. “By the way, would you look after this for me?”
He handed Nadala a tiny wafer, no bigger than a coin, but thinner.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Nothing you need to worry about,” he said. “If anyone comes looking for me, though, promise you’ll give them this, okay?”
“Very well,” she said.
“And keep that spear handy in case it was a t-rex. Though, what are the odds? I mean, one dinosaur slips through and it just happens to be one everybody’s heard of? On the other hand, given the long odds of anything at all getting fossilized, maybe they weren’t all that rare. I’d still get the hell out of here, dinosaur or no. This whole place is radioactive out to about three or four miles. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to save reality!”
Elijah launched into the air with a swoosh and a backwash of dust and grit.
“That was… odd,” said Nadala, studying the tip of her spear. “Between your poor hunting and my driving the tip through a metal man and six inches into the ground, this thing might not last much longer.”
“You can’t sharpen it?”
“I’ll keep sharpening it, but the blade is getting stress fractures. Sooner or later, it will fail.”
She flinched as a clap of thunder shook the mountainside. The valley grew suddenly dark. The lightning column was gone.
“He did it!” said Graxen. “Whatever it was he was doing.”
“What does radioactive mean?” asked Nadala.
“I have no idea. But the cave we’re heading to lies well beyond the radius of three or four miles.”
“Then let’s get going,” said Nadala.
“Now? In the dark? With a storm coming on?”
“I’ll survive a little rain,” she said, looking at the now dark landscape.
Graxen looked out over the darkened valley. The storm seemed to have lost its energy, perhaps sucked of its heat by the vortex, but thick clouds and smoke from the smoldering ruins made it impossible to see more than a few yards. With no moon and stars, it was dark as a tomb. If there was a dinosaur out there, it could be hiding anywhere. It could be looking at them right now, in fact.
“I’m not going to be able to sleep anyway,” he said, stuffing their few belongings into the leather satchel. “Let’s get going.”
DAWN FOUND THEM many miles away. Graxen had grown disoriented in the moonless darkness and was greatly relieved when the sun rose at their backs. The relief brought by the sun confirming his sense of direction turned into crushing weariness as the sun burned away the morning clouds and began to bake the landscape. Given their reptilian heritage, most dragons enjoyed sunbathing, but not while hiking, and most definitely not while on the verge of collapse from hunger and exhaustion.
“Are you all right?” Nadala asked as Graxen grabbed the trunk of a narrow tree and used it to steady himself.
“I’m feeling a little weak,” he confessed. “Is there any deer jerky left?”
“I finished it off yesterday before I even reached the shelter. You can’t believe how grateful I was you captured that rat.”
Graxen nodded. Yesterday, he’d wondered how hungry he would have to be to eat a rat. The answer, it seemed, was one sleepless night’s hike hungrier.
“Let’s go down to the creek,” said Nadala. “Perhaps I can spear some fish.”
“Perhaps,” said Graxen, though fish of decent size were few and far between in these shallow, rocky streams. Still, a few minutes overturning rocks in shallow water would yield crawfish and snails. The effort spent in collecting them was barely more than the energy spent, but he would… he would…
… and then he was on the ground, wondering why he was on the ground.
He was vaguely, distantly aware he’d been snoring, then decided not to fight it, and gave in to sleep.
HE WOKE IN MID-AFTERNOON. He sat up, bleary-eyed.
“What’s that smell?” was the first thing he asked.
“Good morning to you too,” said Nadala, sitting beside him beneath the shade of a giant oak.
Graxen sat up, sniffing the air.
“Urine?” he said, though he wasn’t sure why he said the word as a question. The scent reminded him of the piss of ox dogs, or perhaps sun-dragons. Some large beast with nothing but raw meat in its diet.
“Must be,” said Nadala. “It’s pretty strong when the breeze comes from the east. A bear marking its territory, perhaps? Or wolves?”
Or a dinosaur, thought Graxen, though he didn’t dare say it out loud.
“Whatever it is, we should get moving,” said Graxen.
“Whatever it is, we should kill it,” said Nadala. “After this hike, I can confidently say that when we reach the cave, I’m staying there until I give birth. If it’s this wearisome to hike now, I can’t imagine what it will be like a month from now. We’ll be living in the new cave a long time. I’d rather not have a pack of wolves or a hungry bear sniffing around when I’m caring for an infant.”
“Do you want me to track down the smell right now?” asked Graxen.
“Right now,” she said, “I want you to eat your fish.” She pointed toward two middling pan fish barely bigger than the leaves they were laying on. “Then, I want you to lead on to the cave. I don’t feel like I can rest until we’ve reached it.”
“I’m looking forward to reaching it as well,” said Graxen. “It’s a nice cave. For a cave. Perhaps, if the area proves fertile, I could build a less gloomy structure. I’ve seen the log cabins built by humans. They seem… achievable. Not easy, but doable.”
“We’ll have to do it without the spear,” she said, her voice cracking. She held up the shaft. The tip was missing three inches. “It snapped when I was fishing. It… was only a matter of time.” Her eyes were moist. “I’ve… I’ve used this spear a long time. It’s almost like losing a friend.”
Graxen nodded. It felt even more like losing the one piece of civilization that still stood between them and death in the savage wild. But perhaps it was best not to share this feeling. It was also probably best not to express relief that the spear had finally broken when she’d been using it,
not him. More and more, Graxen felt like the secret to a smooth and happy relationship with his mate was mastering the art of what not to say.
DESPITE HIS EXHAUSTION, Graxen woke before dawn on his first night in the cave, his hunger gnawing his gut like a living thing. Nadala was still sleeping. Graxen studied her with concern. She seemed dead to the world, not reacting at all to the crunching of his claws in the gravel as he rose. He had to lean close to confirm she was breathing. Her face and shoulders looked thinner than they once did. Her belly was larger, but it seemed that her body was consuming itself to feed the growing life inside her.
No more. It was time to hunt. It was time for him to prove himself capable of caring for his mate. Their months in exile had been marked by distinct stages. At first, Nadala had mourned their exile. Then, she began to trust him, to view him as a worthy companion on their journey into the unknown. Then had come the intimacy, and the happiness, and the feeling that they were mastering their new life. But ever since she’d realized she was pregnant, his failings had come into sharper view. Whether or not she had doubts about his worthiness as a mate, his self-doubt grew with each failed hunt. Catching rats and snakes wasn’t enough. It was time to bring down a deer.
He walked to the mouth of the cave. From here, he could see the field where he’d spotted the stag a few evenings before. He’d been unable to kill the stag with a spear. But what if the spear had been a flaw in his hunting strategy all along? Nadala had trained with it so long the spear was like part of her body. A few months of practice wouldn’t make him her equal. Graxen had trained his body for flight all his life. Without the spear, he felt certain he would have cleared the field a fraction of a second faster, reaching the deer before it reached the forest. His claws had failed to intimidate Elijah, but they weren’t just for show. They were sharp enough to rip flesh.
Now he just needed to find flesh to rip.
He took to the air as the sun crept over the horizon, casting long shadows through the fog that hung over the meadow. He swooped around to the western edge of the field, so that his shadow would fall over the open space. The air was still; perhaps his scent wouldn’t carry far. Or perhaps his scent would be obscured by the nearly overpowering stench that hung over the forest, the predator urine stink they’d detected the day before, now amplified by the damp air, and, perhaps, closer proximity? If there was a pack of wolves, how could he handle them? One on one, he didn’t feel like a wolf would prove a threat. But a large pack? Without a spear, they might prove challenging.
This morning, however, his focus wasn’t on the predators that he might be in competition with. He needed to be single-minded in pursuit of prey. Almost as if willing it made it so, as he circled back from the forest toward the field he saw the stag in the company of three does on the far side of the meadow. They were spread out within the high grass, fifty yards or so from the edge of the forest. Their heads were held high, but they weren’t looking toward him. Their gaze was fixed upon the forest behind them.
There was no time to plan, only to act. The fact there were four deer gave him four targets, but also four times the odds that he would be spotted. A small doe was closest, but the stag wasn’t far behind her, and would provide far more meat. None of the deer had even glanced his way. All still stared intently at the forest. This was his chance! He swooped in, gaining speed, then tilted up, bringing his hind-talons down, the fading mist beneath him swirling. A bare second before he reached the stag, the animal bolted, turning 180 degrees in a single heartbeat and leaping with all its might straight at Graxen. Graxen rose swiftly, avoiding a high speed collision with the antlers, which would certainly injure him, if not outright kill him.
He glanced around desperately, searching for another target. All the deer were in panicked flight away from the trees, out into the meadow. He still stood a chance. But before he could give chase, his eyes caught the movement of swaying trees, followed swiftly by loud crashing and snapping. The treetops trembled. To his astonishment, an enormous, bipedal lizard at least twenty feet tall leapt from the forest, charging into the field in pursuit of the deer with an earsplitting roar. Graxen beat his wings for all he was worth, rising higher, hoping the beast truly was pursuing the deer and not him. Fortunately, the creature seemed to have his attention fixed on the deer. In fact, he seemed to be in pursuit of the stag. Graxen’s stag. Graxen furrowed his brow. Should he fly away and let this thing eat its fill?
No.
Nadala hadn’t wanted a bear or a wolf for a neighbor. There was no way they could share their hunting grounds with this thing, and no way he was going to go back to the cave and tell Nadala they had to move again.
Graxen was now high enough he had no fear that the creature could leap up and snatch him. Not that the creature looked capable of much in the way of a vertical leap, despite legs thick as tree trunks. The thing was much longer than a sun-dragon from snout to tail, and far more massive. Its long, thick tail alone probably weighed more than even the largest sun-dragons. Was this a tyrannosaurus rex? He’d only seen fossils and the drawings reconstructing them. Unlike the drawings, this beast had a leonine mane, though it sported dark red feathers instead of fur. Below the neck, its skin was scaly, a mottled green and rust color that no doubt camouflaged it well in the thick of the forest.
Its muscles seemed designed for one purpose: outsprinting prey. Despite the stag’s impressive speed, it had to leap over brush, and bound from side to side to avoid thorny thickets. The dinosaur ran straight as an arrow, trampling bushes, ignoring the veers of the stag, somehow seeming to know exactly where the stag would be once it closed the gap.
With a fresh burst of speed, the creature opened its jaws wide. It looked capable of swallowing an ox-dog. It teeth clamped onto the stag’s hindquarters. The deer screamed, a shrill, shrieking, rabbit-like cry that curdled Graxen’s blood. Until this moment, he hadn’t known deer could make such noise.
The cry came to an abrupt end as the dinosaur whipped the stag back and forth like a cat savaging a mouse. When the head whipping stopped, the stag looked limp and broken. The dinosaur let the lifeless mass drop from its jaws, then sniffed the body, as if for the first time pondering just what it was it had caught.
Graxen gathered his courage and decided to get the beast’s attention before it gulped down any of the stag’s valuable meat.
“Yaaaah!” he screamed, swooping right at the dinosaur. The great beast lifted its head, its small, dark eyes looking puzzled. Graxen swooped over the dinosaur’s snout. He looked back over his shoulder and saw the creature’s head turned toward him, tracking his motion.
Graxen took a measure of inspiration from the fact that the giant predator had acted a bit like a cat in finishing off the stag. Like a cat, its attention seemed easily drawn to movement. Graxen circled back, drawing even closer this time. The beast opened its jaws and snapped at him, far too slow. Graxen didn’t have to look back as he headed for the trees across the field. He could hear the beast’s massive feet thundering through the brush as it gave chase. Graxen flew as slow as he dared, to tease the creature on. When the noise behind him grew too close for comfort, he responded with a fresh burst of speed.
Graxen reached the forest. This was old growth, as open and expansive as a cathedral once you made it past the smaller trees near the edge. It was dangerous for him to fly in the confined space, especially in such unfamiliar territory. But, if the territory was unfamiliar to Graxen, it was equally unfamiliar to the dinosaur. The beast crashed through the forest boundary and thundered into the open space beneath the older trees. Of course, open was a relative term. For a creature who could fly, the fallen, dead trees throughout the forest provided no barrier, nor did the huge piles of rocks that scattered the forest. The dinosaur leapt over the first of these obstacles, but, with its focus on Graxen, it soon stumbled when crossing a fallen log, though without falling. Still, its momentum was gone, and it seemed to forget the chase. It looked around in bewilderment, as if lost.
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nbsp; Graxen lighted in a branch. It would be a simple matter to climb up through the canopy and fly back to the fallen stag, tearing off as much meat as he could manage before the dinosaur found its way back. His earlier musings about how his claws were adequate for killing a deer gave way to calculations that he had no chance at all of inflicting genuine harm on this beast, even though it was now standing still, panting heavily, its lungs like bellows. The thing’s body seemed built for speed, not endurance.
If Graxen had the spear, he could have tried to pierce the creature’s hide. Without the spear, what could he use for a weapon? The only thing around were rocks and branches. Very well. He might be a poor marksman with a spear, but he could certainly drop a rock. He spied a pile of stone a few dozen yards distant. He flapped to it and selected a stone the size of a melon, weighing fifteen pounds, perhaps twenty.
The dinosaur watched him carefully. Drawing on some hidden reserve of energy, it charged. Graxen feared for a moment he’d miscalculated. With the stone, he couldn’t fly as fast, and he certainly wasn’t as agile maneuvering among the trees. But the weary predator was even less agile. It tripped over the very pile of stones where Graxen had been standing, caught off guard by a hidden hole left where a root had rotted away. Before it could rise, Graxen flew to the tallest branch of the tree above. He was directly over the beast’s head, which opened its mouth and looked up to roar at him.
Graxen dropped the stone. From fifty feet in the air, a heavy stone could bury itself in dense soil. The creature proved sturdier than soil, but as the stone bounced off the monster’s snout it took a portion of hide with it, leaving the creature bleeding. Graxen swooped to another rock pile, finding a stone of a similar size. By now the dinosaur was back on its feet, shaking its head, grunting. It snorted, then sneezed, sending a trail of bloody snot across the forest floor. Graxen flew right at the beast, gaining speed. The creature turned toward him, but not fast enough. Graxen let go of the rock only inches from the beast’s eye. It hit with a satisfying crack and the creature howled in pain. Graxen landed on a tall branch and looked back to see what damage he’d inflicted. The wounded eye was on the opposite side of the beast, but he could see blood dripping freely on to the litter beneath the behemoth. Had he half blinded it? Did it matter? The creature’s skull was thick enough to withstand a direct hit with a heavy rock or two. But what about four, or five? Ten? A hundred? The creature was injured and wearied, the dull look in its gaze hinted it was ill equipped to face a foe with the intelligence of a dragon. Graxen drew a deep breath, contemplating the task before him. The creature wasn’t the only one who was weary. Perhaps the wise thing to do would be to leave. Pressing his attack while tired would only put him in greater and greater danger.