by Paul Zindel
Today she grazed along the edge of a subterranean stream, letting her heat-sensing tongue slip from the end of her snout. Suddenly, her tongue felt a hot, burning sensation near a cluster of rocks. She swung her weight onto one foot and kicked the pile violently aside. A visiting family of plump otters snarled and screamed and scrambled toward the cave stream—but the mother lizard was too fast for them. Her snout shot quickly left, then right, her jaws catching the otters by their heads, crushing each skull as though it were a grape. The burst of dripping warm brains soothed the back of her throat but baited her day’s hunger.
When the last of the otters lay still and mutilated on the rocks, the mother lizard allowed herself to eat the fattest carcass. When she had finished, she leisurely chewed and swallowed the bloody pulp and bones of the others into her storage stomach. Soon she would regurgitate the half-digested feasts—to vomit strength and energy into the eager mouths of her brood.
Professor Norak knelt for a closer look at the “nest.” A sharp, fetid smell tore up into his nostrils. Oh, you’re good, he thought about the student culprits. You must have laughed yourselves silly imitating a mother raptor building her nest. The marks from her birth ritual. A scattering of vegetation at the fringes as she would have set her hind legs, rigidly holding on to the rim with deadly front claws.
The light from a single Coleman lamp cast the shadows of Professor Norak and the mule high onto a quartz-veined wall. Mario snorted, drooled, and began to sidestep like a crab.
“A mother dinosaur would have laid her eggs, spread a last layer of greenery, then straddled the mound.” Professor Norak spoke softly to the mule, trying to calm it. “She’d have snuggled and gently lowered her swollen belly. Her body heat would have generated steam. Ammonia. Decaying fern. Vapors drifting in the mine wind.”
SCRATCH. SCRAAAATCH.
Norak heard the distant sounds of scraping on stone and gravel being moved. A raccoon or possum, he thought. His hand touched something oval in the nest.
He laughed out loud.
Eggs!
He could see his students shopping in a toy store, checking all the footballs and toss-toys they could marinate to look like the perfect dozen “dinosaur eggs.”
SCRAAAATCH…
More sounds. Something was approaching from one of the rear passages of the mine.
Something bigger than a raccoon.
A coyote, the professor thought now. A coyote or a bear that called the abandoned mine and caves its home. Or the sounds could be scratchings from hiding, giggling interns.
“Hello,” Professor Norak called out to the blackness. “I’m on to your little hoax!”
No one answered.
A new, nauseating smell hit him. The mule began to bray and try to shake the bit from its mouth. “Take it easy, good buddy,” Norak said, standing as he held tightly to the single glistening egg. He went to pat the animal and assure it—but it spooked. Its hooves shot high into the air tumbling a cluster of stones and crashing the Coleman lamp to the floor. The light began to flicker.
“Whoa,” the professor said. He fumbled to fix the lamp.
THUMP.
Another sound from the labyrinth of tunnels and caves was louder and closer. There came more scratching. A slight chill grabbed Norak in spite of himself. He tried to laugh it off, but now there were vibrations beneath his feet, as though a truck were barreling toward him.
CLOSER.
Big deal. A cassette player, the professor told himself. The interns had probably set speakers all over the place. Woofers and tweeters from any electronics store. It had to be all part of the prank. Still, Norak clutched the egg and started to retreat. He would return to the main dig and then send an Indian worker back for the mule. He began to jog toward the mine’s exit. It was a prank. A very elaborate prank.
There was the flapping of small wings, and shrewlike mammals darted near his feet. Tiny green lizards appeared on the walls—spindly-legged chameleons with long tails and dark-crested eyebrows. The contacts of the lamp held for a moment. Norak looked behind him. He glimpsed the mule bucking madly.
Tethered.
Suddenly, beyond the animal, an enormous form began to emerge from the darkness. He saw a bounding shadow of pebbled, leathery skin racing toward him. It was the shape of a creature familiar to him from textbooks and years of exhuming bones. A thing he had studied his whole life.
Oh, God. Oh, God…
A scream erupted from deep inside Norak as the creature began to run upright with shining eyes, a flash of teeth, and its stiff tail protruding behind it.
A raptor!
Something extinct!
Norak believed he was hallucinating. It was heatstroke or a rapture from the mine gas. His chest heaved with painful gasps as the raptor propelled itself forward with thick, powerful hind legs. Its enormous body cut a swath through twisted fingers of limestone. Its mouth was open revealing jaws the size of a bull crocodile and the serrated fangs of a meat eater.
Shrieking, the raptor pounced on Mario, seizing the mule by its throat. The animal bleated as the raptor balanced on one hind leg, then quickly lifted its other leg high into the air. It thrust a single large claw into the mule’s underbelly, exploding blood and entrails out onto the ground.
Again the claw was lifted and swung.
And again.
Within seconds, the carcass was reduced to a steaming, shredded heap of lymph and muscles and bowels. The raptor clamped its jaws onto one of Mario’s legs and shook the carcass like a rag doll. Blood splashed over the cave wall until the leg was ripped free. The raptor’s neck expanded as it swallowed it whole.
Norak ran as in a nightmare. The Coleman lamp was dead now, and he hurled it away. There was light at the end of the mine shaft. His mind was out of control. A Utahraptor!
Alive!
Real!
He thought the creature would stop, believed it would stay at its nest and protect its eggs.
ROAR.
It was after him, with shreds of Mario’s intestines hanging from its mouth.
The ground behind Norak shook. He tripped and fell near the end of the tunnel. There was a snorting above, and he was lifted into the air, his legs dangling. The raptor held him with its small but muscular forelimbs, and began to turn him like a spider examining a fly. Norak felt the creature’s hot, stinking breath. He looked up hopelessly into the face.
The raptor cocked its head to stare at him with outsized glassy eyes.
ROAR.
A thick green froth dripped from the bony slabs that were its lips. The raptor pinned him with a forearm against a slab of quartz. It slammed its free limb into the crystal, shattering it into a web of ruptures. Slowly, it slid a claw gently down the left side of Norak’s face.
Norak’s body shook. Sweat poured from the pits of his arms as he looked into the cold, dark eyes of the monster.
Jesus, help me…. Baby Jesus, help me….
He realized he was still clutching the egg!
With a single, violent headshake, the raptor’s teeth ripped the shirt from his body. Norak felt terrible pain now, as the raptor slowly pushed the point of its claw up into his chin. The tip moved higher, piercing a neck gland, then up into his gums like a thick dentist’s needle. Norak’s mouth filled with blood, and the world tilted madly.
ANOTHER ROAR.
Louder.
Deafening.
The ground and the walls around them began to shake and crumble. Chunks of dirt and stone and rotting beams fell away from the mouth of the tunnel. Suddenly, Norak was aware of sunlight crashing into the blackness. The earth opened up. The raptor dropped him, and he was falling.
Rolling.
Only now, the egg slipped from his grasp. He covered his face as branches of sagebrush ripped into his arms. In his last conscious moment, he heard the escalating scream of an avalanche and glimpsed the bloodied, disembodied head of his mule tumbling past him.
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About the Author
PAUL ZINDEL (1936-2003) wrote more than 40 novels, including The Pigman, one of the best-selling young adult books of all time, and Pardon Me, You’re Stepping on My Eyeball! His Broadway play, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, won the Pulitzer Prize and was produced as a film directed by Paul Newman.
Mr. Zindel taught high school chemistry for ten years before turning to writing full-time. His work as an author brought him to exotic destinations around the world, from Australia’s Great Barrier Reef to the monkey forests of Indonesia. Drawing from those experiences, he created The Zone Unknown series—packed full of horror, humor, adventure and bravery—with reluctant readers in mind. It includes six titles: Loch, The Doom Stone, Raptor, Rats, Reef of Death, and Night of the Bat.
Fans can visit Paul Zindel on the Web at: http://www.paulzindel.com/