by Adam Carter
She backed off herself, slowly, gaining distance between herself and the animal. She ran a quick check of her systems. The left arm was offline, most of the primaries were shot; but it was an old suit not in the best of states when she had donned it. All things considered it was holding up well. In contrast the gorgosaurus was lying upon the ground, its great chest rising and falling, its beady eyes locked onto her in hatred. There remained intent to kill her, but no ability.
Honeywood drew a blade from where it was sheathed at her thigh. She blocked out the tinny droll of the crowd’s enthusiasm as she closed upon the animal. This was always the most dangerous part, where she could easily grow overconfident. She had seen more than one combatant torn apart at this point simply through growing too confident in the victory. These creatures were to be respected, and anyone who didn’t understand that didn’t last long in the arena.
She raised her blade, a full two metres of tempered steel, hardened through a complex construction of chevrons; simple beaten metal could snap after all. If the creature understood what the blade represented it gave no sign. However it did understand that her approach meant another attack, yet it did not fight to regain its footing. It was not giving the crowd what they wanted, but through no thought of stoic disdain. The gorgosaurus had given its all and was spent, and could only lie upon the ground awaiting its end.
Honeywood paused as she reached the creature, blade poised over its almost still form. A beast so magnificent … it was almost a shame to end its life.
Almost.
The blade came down and splintered the skull of the gorgosaurus, sliding through its brain. The beast thrashed once and was still, and Honeywood released the blade to take a step back from the carnage. Blood was pooling about the head of the animal, her sword standing firm as though it was a tombstone. Conan Doyle had claimed these beasts took minutes to realise they were dead, even once their brains had been destroyed, but she had slain enough of them to know Conan Doyle hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. But then Conan Doyle had never met a real live dinosaur.
Honeywood gazed about the crowds above her, all chanting her name as though she was some Second Coming. She smiled, shouted something back she couldn’t afterward remember, although she reckoned it must have been abusive. She raised the still functional arm of the metal suit to meet the cheers and drank it all in. This was her life, and she was damn good at it.
She did not enjoy even one moment.
CHAPTER TWO
“You know, for a while there even I thought you’d had it, Ashley. That would have been bad for business.”
Ashley Honeywood had cleaned up as best she could after the fight. They didn’t have showers as such, but then nor would they have been particularly effective in this humidity. Instead she had thrown water over her face and had stripped off her shirt so she could tend to her injuries. The gorgosaurus teeth had barely pierced the skin of her belly thanks to the suit, but her ribs ached and she was applying a salve to them to aid in the healing. Presently she was sitting on a bench in what could passably be termed the changing area. Her top lay on the bench beside her as she slowly tied a bandage about her bruised knuckles – it was surprising how she seemed to absorb the punches the suit made on her behalf. If she had one time felt uncomfortable sitting in front of men dressed only in her shorts and underwear (she, not the men), this place had long since blasted such folly from her. Honeywood had heard hundreds of arguments about heat verses humidity, but all she cared about was that it was so hot you never stopped sweating.
The man before her was named Dexter Valentine. For some reason he always dressed smartly in a carefully pressed business suit, as though he was someone important, but then that was how he saw himself. He was tall, fairly thin by the average of people around here, with short blond hair and a clipboard. He always carried a clipboard. In contrast Honeywood was at least two heads shorter, with a stocky, muscular figure which bore no fat but would never have been considered attractive in the magazine sense. Her hair was dark and just longer than shoulder length, and always matted to her forehead in sweat. Her eyes were two dull pits of mud, her lips twisting her face into a permanent scowl. People like Valentine did not make that scowl ever want to go away.
He ticked two names off the paperwork he currently held on his clipboard, but Honeywood didn’t much care about them. She didn’t do what she did to keep Valentine happy, despite what he would have her think.
“If you died out there, Ashley,” he continued, seemingly oblivious of her scowl, “things would go very badly for me, you know.”
“I’m sorry,” Honeywood all but rasped. “I’ll try harder not to die next time.”
Valentine removed his glasses so he could rub at his tired eyes. Tired, as though he ever did any work. She would very much like to see Valentine enter the lists sometime. “We have enough volunteers for the security details, why don’t you finish cleaning up and get some rest.”
“I don’t tell you about my work, Valentine, I’d appreciate it if you kept yours to your clipboard.”
She finished tying her bandage and walked away before she could thump the man. She supposed she couldn’t blame him for what the way he was. Valentine kept the place running, that much was true. After the riot a couple of years back the whole place had been liberated. It had been a great victory, but no one gave any thought to how they would run things. Simply getting rid of the people in charge didn’t create new laws, so Valentine had come up with a system. They had no money, no reason to want any money and no access to it even if they did, so Valentine had proposed the fights. Everyone was hot on the idea of watching people fight dinosaurs, especially since they had a few mechanical suits and other weapons to hand. There were herbivores of course, both small and large, and there were small theropods which could be fought by teams even without suits. No one would take on a tyrannosaurid like gorgosaurus without sufficient protection, however. Valentine had tapped into the people’s primal need for violence, and took bets on the outcome. Instead of money, the losers would take on the various work details until the next fight. The winners would be guaranteed a break from the details if they were already on one, and if they weren’t they would get whatever perks there were available. That could range anywhere from extra food to a night with one of the losers.
It was a decent system and one to which they all obeyed. There had not been another riot since it was implemented, so it must have been doing something right.
If Honeywood agreed with anything Valentine had said to her it was that she should get some rest. First though she was hungry, and that was fortunate because her lover owned the best café in the bayou. That it was the only café in the bayou didn’t make the blindest bit of difference; Garret Seward was the finest chef the entire world over and Honeywood was thankful he had purposefully poisoned an entire delegation of Spain purely because they had insulted his mastery. Honeywood remembered the papers the following day, for Seward denied nothing, and had stood over the bodies with his arms folded, declaring to the police that they could arrest him, but that those he had killed had committed a far greater crime.
Seward was passionate about his work, and went on many trips into the swampland about his café that he might forage for the freshest fruits and obtain the choicest cuts of meat. That he was a perfectionist annoyed many people about the institution, but no one complained when they were sitting in his café. For one thing there was nothing to complain about when the finest food was sitting on a plate in front of you; for another, they all knew why he had been arrested all those years ago.
Being a perfectionist also meant he was the best lover Honeywood had ever experienced. It did not mean she was actually in love with him, but out here people took whatever pleasures they could find, and there was little which could meet the adrenalin rush of fighting monsters for her life.
Honeywood left the institution via the front door. It was a huge affair, bearing multiple locks, and there were of course people on guard duty w
ho had made losing bets on the fight. That they had wagered for her to die was not something she was going to hold against them. Life was cheap out here and Honeywood was not one to hold a grudge. As she watched the guards open the great doors for her she marvelled at how much of this place they had kept the same after the riots, and was thankful the riots themselves had not destroyed too much. Taking charge would have been useless if it meant they were all killed.
Moving out into the afternoon air of the swamp was not pleasant, but Honeywood was used to it. The air was oppressive and damp, and her thin sleeveless shirt became instantly stuck to her skin. The chirruping sound of a thousand insects hungry for her blood came to her ears, but long living in this swamp had all but cured her of their bites. If she hadn’t been killed by them yet she figured she probably never would be.
Keeping her foot-long knife in its sheath at her thigh, Honeywood entered the swamp proper. There were firearms back at the institution, but they were kept under strict lock and key. Fights were frequent after all and they could do without people shooting one another. Plus they had only a limited supply of ammunition. They had a great deal of it, but there was no more coming to replace it so once it was gone it was gone.
Through long experience Honeywood had learned how to keep to the firmer ground, for the swamp was a deceptive beast and a person could be dragged down to her waist, or even drowned, before she even realised she had placed a step wrong. She kept close to the trees, creeping vines that they were, and followed the well-travelled route which people took to the bayou café. She had more reason to travel this path than most, but today she was hungry and all she intended to sate herself upon once she arrived was a kentrosaurus steak.
It would of course be nice to see Seward again though. It had been a week since she had found the time to leave the institution and she had become hardened because of it. Seward’s simple ways of viewing the world always grounded her to reality, for everyone back at the institution was a sadistic thug whose only thoughts concerned violence, sex and getting one over everyone else. Seward was a dreamer, a thinker. They would often sit together on top of his shack in the swamp gazing at the stars and of course the great godly eye staring down upon them all. Seward believed one day they would be rescued, that someone would come to take them from this hell. He did not seem to understand that if anyone should come, they would be far from rescued; if they were lucky they would be arrested and tried for the riot. Either way they would be executed. But Seward’s childlike fantasies inspired Honeywood. They made her see another side to life, made her accept that perhaps there was more to living than killing.
She intended to contemplate such things over her burger.
Breaking from the trees, Honeywood began the final thirty metre walk across flat, usually solid ground (it all depended upon whether it had been raining the night before). Seward had chosen to build his shack at the end of this stretch because it enabled him to draw carts right up to his café should he require their usage. After all, if he was serving something large and heavy like a ceratopsid he would need several people to help him bring the carcass back to his shack. Seward was a skilled surgeon of course, and would often cut just the choicest meats from his kills – and he never scavenged – but the bones could often be made into a delicious soup, and there was so much bone in the skull of a ceratopsid that Seward was able to work wonders with them.
Honeywood had taken two steps onto this flat plain before she realised something was wrong. The shack was before her, in the distance still, but it was not as she had always remembered it. It was a single-storey affair with a thick chimney breaking through the centre, allowing the heat and smoke from the internal fires to escape. The chimney seemed crooked from her distance, and this made her eyes rove the rest of the structure.
Then she realised the stakes Steward had set outside to mark his territory and the seats he had placed in the shade were all destroyed. Something large and something heavy had torn through this place.
Honeywood ran, not even considering the danger inherent in the swamp, not even checking first whether whatever had done this was still around. She covered the distance in moments and burst through what remained of the front door. The shack was formed of wood and twined vines, so the walls somewhat resembled a hanging basket. The front door came off in her hand but she hardly even noticed as she cast her gaze about the common room. The tables and chairs were overturned or shredded, there was a great gouge taken out of the counter as though by some claw.
Moving slowly now, forcing herself to think clearly, Honeywood surveyed the damage with a clinical eye. There was no blood spattered about the walls, which was a good sign. It was possible Seward was alone when the attack had come, for indeed there were no bodies strewn about. If Seward was attacked, however, he would have not gone down alone, for he kept a small array of firearms behind the bar. That Seward had not been here at the time of the attack was also a possibility: he could easily have been out hunting or gathering berries. He might also be lying dead out the back amidst a heap of ornitholestes corpses, although that was a possibility she would deal with once she had finished down here.
She examined the claw marks upon the broken furniture and bar. She could not identify them all, but certainly they seemed of the correct size and height to have been made by a dromaeosaurid. There were known utahraptor packs operating towards the far edges of the swamp, although they had never come so far towards the installation before. They had local problems with small carnivores, but dromaeosaurids were not common aggressors. The nature of the claw marks, however, suggested otherwise. Honeywood ran her finger absently through the deep impression left upon the counter and knew of no creature which would be able to survive such an attack. The dromaeosaurids were small carnivores in comparison to the gorgosaurus she had just pounded to death, but she had been encased in a suit of technological armour, while Seward had only a shotgun and kitchen knife to wield.
It was time, she decided with a deep breath, to go out the back.
Stepping over broken girders, Honeywood made her way carefully to the far door. She was a prize fighter and knew the advantages of stealth; in fact she could move silently if she had to. However, there was so much debris scattered about the floor here it was difficult not to tread on at least something. Her booted feet managed to miss crunching the broken glass and wood, but a girder had fallen across the door and there was no way she would be able to pass through without first moving it.
Assessing the situation with a keen eye, Honeywood bent her legs, taking the weight of the beam in her arms. When she was certain she had the weight evenly distributed she heaved, and a flurry of dust and wood fell into her eyes. Dropping the girder, she blinked rapidly, further dust flying into the air from where the beam struck the ground. She stood tensely for several moments, but if anything had noticed the noise she had made it gave no indication.
She wasn’t certain whether to take that as a good or bad sign.
Pressing on into the back rooms, Honeywood made her way to the kitchen, which was where she knew Seward would make his final stand. He would never let a potential meal chase him out of the kitchen after all. She found the sacrosanct room not even touched, and decided the fallen beam over the door may have prevented anything reaching this far. If that was the case, it meant Seward could well be hiding here somewhere. But no, he wouldn’t hide in his domain. It would be like an artist cowering behind his prize canvas. Seward was just too damn proud of this kitchen to live while it was it destroyed.
Perhaps he had got his wish.
Moving back to the main room, Honeywood checked the place over once more, thoroughly this time. Again she could find no indication of a struggle, although there was ample evidence of attack. It cemented her theory (hope?) that Seward had not been here at the time of the attack, perhaps that he was not even aware his precious café had been destroyed. She wished she could just phone him, but communication on this world was never very reliable, and while there was supposedl
y a satellite in orbit for this very purpose it didn’t seem to work.
She left the shack to return to the swamp and extended her search. It did not take her long to find the animal tracks heading from the swamp towards the shack. It seemed she had been right about the dromaeosaurids. She found many prints of the right size and shape, and indications of the raised claw on each foot which would accidentally touch ground on occasion. Every species of dromaeosaurid had such claws; curved knives which would tear into its prey as it attacked. They kept the claws from the ground so as not to blunt them and they were the single deadliest weapon nature had ever evolved.
Perhaps excluding the human race.
Standing straight once more, Honeywood gazed into the darkness of the foetid swamp and slowly shook her head. “Garret, just what have you got yourself into this time?”
CHAPTER THREE
“Leaving? But Ashley, think about the bouts.”
“You can still have bouts without me, Valentine.”
Honeywood had returned to the institution to gather some equipment. A hunting rifle was the least she would insist upon, although a backpack of provisions and survival necessities was something she could not follow Seward without. Valentine had been buzzing about her since her return, and seemed more frantic about the running of his operation than he did Seward’s life. But then life was cheap here in the swamp, and Honeywood could hardly blame him. What she had just said was accurate though; she wasn’t the only combatant and work details could still be planned around other people’s fights. She was simply the only person crazy enough to take a large theropod head-on.
“We don’t even know if he’s still alive,” Valentine persisted. “If he was dragged back to a nest or something he’ll be long dead by now.”
“If he was dragged away there would have been blood,” Honeywood told him. She did not understand it herself, although the logical assumption was still that Seward had not been in the café at the time of the attack. Her gut was telling her otherwise, but there was no other explanation she could think of. “Besides,” she said, “once news gets out that Seward’s not going to be serving up his famous dino-burgers your people are gonna be impossible to keep in line.”