by Adam Carter
Aubin had no idea its purpose there but could not take the chance it was here to kill them and not the large beast. “Look out!” she shouted, and all eyes turned immediately to her.
Fear was etched into the faces of Honeywood and Garza, anger upon that of the dinosaur-man, while the ankylosaurid bellowed with unrestrained rage as it turned towards her and attacked.
Aubin ducked, feeling the wind of the tail as its flat club slammed into the rock which had been her hiding place. Stone exploded in all directions and she fell backwards, slivers having pierced her flesh. She landed upon her back, her body a quivering mass of pain and fear, and she looked down to see rock fragments standing as if to attention across her body, bathing in pools of sickly crimson ichor. She reached for one with a trembling hand and pulled it free. Pain seared her entire body. She cried out, clamping her eyes shut against the pain, and knew she was unable to move.
She opened her eyes to see the great dinosaur looming over her, rising itself on its hind legs once more to trample her as it brought its entire weight down upon her. The great black shadow engulfed her and something inside her cracked in terror as she wished she could just die of fright before the thing crushed all her bones in one great strike.
And then the dinosaur-man was in her vision, lithely and swiftly by her side. It scooped her up in its arms and shot forward even as the ankylosaurid stamped down, sending shock waves coursing through the ground once more. Aubin threw her arms about the throat of the dinosaur-man, not knowing whether she was saved, not knowing much of anything; and then saw the dinosaur-man had miscalculated its step and had plunged them through the gap in the mountain pass. Aubin saw the sky suddenly fill her vision, the swamp below, the tree cover like clouds beneath her. She clung tighter to the neck of her odd saviour as her body screamed in terror at such a suicidal plunge. Fifty metres straight down was far more than anyone could survive.
Mercifully she blacked out and did not experience the final, sudden halt. The last Cassie Aubin knew was that she was flying through the fresh air of the mountain path. She was flying, and she was free. Finally she was a prisoner no longer.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
There was no way down to the swamp, and even if there had been Honeywood knew all they would find would be the broken, battered body of the girl. Taking advantage of the ankylosaurid’s distraction, Garza had dragged Honeywood away from the raging behemoth and together they scrabbled along the sides of the valley, keeping as far from the beasts as possible. Trudging wearily on, they could see the others of the species didn’t much care for them and they were able to walk between them without any problem; even their initial antagonist seemed to have calmed somewhat by this point and had offered no pursuit.
They walked in silence – a sullen, damning silence – until they were clear of the creatures, and approached the end of the valley. All throughout the journey Honeywood’s thoughts had never once left Aubin. She was the best of them, the one thing which had kept them all going, and now they had lost her and they couldn’t even bury her or say goodbye. The swamp took back its own, and laughed in the face of the just.
What the dinosaur-man was Honeywood still could not say, and knew now she would never be able to. Perhaps it had been an experiment gone wrong, perhaps it had indeed somehow evolved, it no longer mattered. It wasn’t coming back from such a plunge either, and its secrets had died with it. Why it had done what it had was the real mystery for her, since this was twice it had tried to save Aubin. Yet when it had confronted Garza it was to draw a gun on him. Perhaps it had a moral sense to protect women, perhaps Aubin reminded it of someone who was once kind to it, perhaps it just didn’t like Garza. Whatever the truth, Honeywood knew she would never find out, and nor did she any longer much care. Aubin was dead, and nothing else about the situation mattered. That was the only truth that counted for anything.
“What do we do?” Garza asked while they walked, the first thing either of them had said to one another aside from cursing since Aubin had died. He sounded sullen, but if he had been in shock he had worked through it. It seemed everyone had liked Aubin.
“Do?” Honeywood asked. “We find Garret and get back to the institution.”
“Prison, Ashley. Call a spade a spade.”
“You don’t want to go back?”
“You do?”
“I thought you wanted to become a prize pit fighter, like me.”
He shook his head angrily. “I don’t much care for anything any more.”
She knew how he was feeling and yet could not bring herself to be nice about any of it. “We find Garret, then we can work out what to do from there.”
He nodded; it was a good enough plan anyway.
Two minutes later they stumbled upon a grave. It was a loose mound of stones, the barest attempt at a hole had been dug. The headstone was a stick stuck in the rocks with a handkerchief tied about it.
Honeywood and Garza looked at one another, although neither had any idea what this meant. Whatever it was, it was liable to be something bad.
“Maybe someone passed through here,” Garza suggested, “and the dinosaurs flattened one of them.”
“Which means someone must have survived to lay the grave. Someone from the prison?”
“Or Seward.”
“Seward was alone.”
“Or so we think. Maybe there’s a fancy woman neither you nor Hargreaves know about.”
He had meant it as a joke, but Honeywood was hardly in the mood for such. Thankfully she was too tired to rise to the bait and simply ignored him. She silently pressed on, knowing that the answer to the mystery could not be far away. She could not shake the feeling, however, that their dinosaur-man might have been the one to make the grave. Maybe this was where it lived and this was where it had lost its friend.
As the valley came to an end they broke out into solid ground. There were trees dotted about, with rocks rising in the distance, but no sign of swampland anywhere. It was in fact more a dusky desert area than anything, although there was the barest hint of forestation farther along the road. Presently they had stepped into a large clearing and here they stopped, staring aghast at what lay before them.
It was large, probably around twenty metres in length, and six or seven in height. Its body was tough and plated, but not heavily armoured, while it rested upon the ground upon four stocky legs, each of the same length. It bore no neck to speak of, although its head was almost flat and compact, with a dull nose and a bright shine to the eyes. The tail tapered off thickly, raised from the ground to keep it horizontal with its body.
“What the hell …?” Garza gaped.
“This isn’t possible.”
Yet it was there, so it was clearly very possible.
“Nice, isn’t it?” a new voice said, and Honeywood spun with glee to see a ruggedly handsome, muscular individual stepping out of nowhere. He wore a week’s worth of beard growth and could have done with a hairbrush, but there was a tender light to his eyes which made Honeywood want to leap into his arms and forgive him everything.
“Garret!”
“Seward!” Garza said at the same time. “You’re alive!”
Seward gave a little shrug. “So, what do you think of my acquisition?”
Honeywood glanced back to the massive thing standing in the centre of the field. “It’s an exploration shuttle isn’t it? Where did it come from? I mean, who’s even exploring this place? The whole world’s off-limits.” Her mind was buzzing with questions and as happy as she was to find Seward alive, she was far more excited by the notion that there was a very real chance they could now get off this world alive.
“It belonged to a surveyor,” Seward explained. “At first I was wary, thinking she’d come to see why there’d been no contact from the prison. But she was only a surveyor.”
“How did you know it was here?” Garza asked with a frown.
Seward smiled at Honeywood. “Ash and I always sit on my shack gazing at the stars, looking for shi
ps passing in the night. I was up there alone one time and saw one come down. I knew then I would have to track it and find it.”
“You were going to leave without me?” Honeywood asked, a tremor to her voice.
“I knew if my café was attacked by dromaeosaurids a party would be sent out to find me. And I knew you’d be at the head of it, Ash.”
“Why not just tell us before leaving?” Garza asked, ever questioning. “You didn’t have to wreck your own café.”
“Why not? It’s not like I’m going back there. I’m sorry, do I know you?”
“Abe Garza.”
“Garret Seward. Nice to meet you.”
“We’ve met before. I used to use your café. Before you destroyed it.”
Honeywood could not understand Garza’s hostility. They had finally found Seward, which had been the entire point of them heading out here to begin with, and Garza was just finding fault with it. “What does any of this matter, Abe?” she asked.
“I get seeing the shuttle land,” Garza said, “and I get why he rushed out here before it could leave again. Just wondering why he went to so much trouble to make sure no one in the prison knew about it. If you’re not intending to go back, what does it matter?”
“Because,” Seward said amiably, waving away Honeywood’s protestations that he should owe the man an explanation, “there are some very psychotic people back there. They may not like the idea of my leaving and they may want to stop me.”
“You’re paranoid.”
“So they told me in court.” He smiled once more.
“None of this matters,” Honeywood said. “We have a shuttle, we can get out of here. We should go. We should go right now, before something happens to screw things up for us.”
“What about Hargreaves?” Garza asked flatly.
Honeywood’s face fell at the sudden remembrance of that woman, but she shook such thoughts aside. “She doesn’t matter if she’s staying.”
Garza laughed without humour. “Good lord, no wonder he cheats on you if you make it that easy.”
Honeywood fixed him with narrowed eyes. “You know, we don’t have to take you with us, Abe.”
“That right?” Garza asked, and there was something to his tone which gave Honeywood pause. There was trepidation to his eyes, and she could see he understood more to this situation than she had considered. She thought about it then, trying to work out what it was she was missing, and then realised they were indeed missing something.
“What happened to the pilot?” she asked Seward.
“Didn’t make it,” Seward said.
“Didn’t make what?” Honeywood laughed. “There’s not a dent on this thing, it didn’t crash.”
“Didn’t make the cut,” Seward said.
Honeywood blinked. “Say what? Is she the one buried under the stones we passed?”
“Thought it was the least I could have done for her. I do have some sense of morality after all.” He spoke, as ever, in a dry tone. His voice was always flat, which was why he smiled so much, to convey emotion. But his eyes seldom shone, and Honeywood had realised a long time ago his smiles were faked. She supposed in his days as a chef he had had to force a great many smiles in his time, before poisoning his patrons for questioning his cooking methods. There were those who considered Seward psychotic all right, and yet for Honeywood that was part of the draw.
“I take it,” Honeywood said, “she was crushed by one of those ankylosaurids back there?”
“The aletopelta? Harmless beasts, no, no. Takes a lot to rile up one of those things.”
Honeywood felt nervous about where this conversation was going. “So she went to relieve herself in the bushes and didn’t realise there were dinosaurs around here, right? Some carnivore got her?”
Seward stared at her blankly.
“Oh,” Honeywood said. “Why? Who was she?”
“No idea,” Seward said. “Oh, I got her name and everything. She was practically screaming information at me by the end, but none of it was relevant. Quite frankly I just didn’t care; and then I tired of her company.”
“Ashley,” Garza said without taking his eyes from Seward, “how did you get so good at pit fighting?”
The question threw her. With so much information being flung her way she almost thought she had misheard the question. “What?”
“Pit fighting. Those machines you sit in when you fight the dinosaurs.”
“Oh. I’m a mechanic.”
“So you’re good with machines?”
“Yeah.”
“So you can fly anything?”
Honeywood knew what he was inferring. Seward was a chef, not a pilot, and if he had waited for them to get here it was because he couldn’t get out alone. Honeywood could not know the reason the craft’s original pilot had refused to cooperate, but she was no longer able to help at all. Honeywood knew full well how Seward could get carried away in his work, and could only imagine how much he cursed when he realised he had gone too far with her.
“He’s quite bright really,” Seward said. “Shoot him and we’ll be going.”
“Shoot him?” Honeywood asked. “Why?”
“Didn’t we cover this?” Seward asked in mild annoyance. “We don’t want anyone back at the institution to realise we’re still alive, otherwise they might find a way to come after me.”
“No one can come after you,” Honeywood told him. “No one here has a space craft, otherwise they’d have left.”
“Valentine has a craft.”
“What?”
“He has it hidden,” Seward said. “If he ever needs to leave the world at a moment’s notice he can do so. Until then he’s content to run things here. A whole world living under his thumb; why would he ever want to leave?”
“But he’d leave to get his chef back?” Garza asked.
“Naturally. The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, Abe.”
Garza shot Honeywood a look which told him he thought Seward was beyond paranoia and had delved into insanity. Honeywood wasn’t sure she disagreed.
“Now kill him,” Seward said, raising a pistol and holding it upon Honeywood’s head, his hand not shaking in the slightest, “or I kill you.”
“What?” Honeywood yelped, her heart racing. “Why would you want to shoot me?”
“Because I’m paranoid?” He laughed. “No, the only way I can be certain you’re still with me is if you kill Abe here. Then the two of us can leave and go … well, anywhere we choose.”
“But you can’t fly the craft alone,” Garza said quickly.
“True,” Seward said. “It’ll mean having to go back to the institution and bringing back someone who can, and it’ll be a lot of effort. But better a lot of effort now than leaving with someone who’s going to stab me in the back the instant we’re safe on another world. Now shoot him, Ashley. Please. For me.”
Honeywood did not know what to do. She produced the pistol with which she had been shooting the aletopelta – one she had ironically swapped with Garza for her knife, since her own gun had become bent at the death of Stiggs. She held the weapon on Garza between trembling fingers, her eyes wide and unblinking, her mind frantically screaming at her to do something: anything. She didn’t want to shoot Garza, but Seward was right. All she had to do was squeeze the trigger just once and she could get off this world and back to civilisation. She didn’t even have to stay with Seward if she didn’t want to. She could start a new life, they could part ways, she could be happy again.
And all she had to do to attain that life was kill a man she’d never been sure she even liked that much.
Her hand grew less unsteady and she controlled her breathing. Perhaps this wasn’t such a difficult choice after all.
Garza shifted his nervous gaze from her eyes to the gun and back again. “You’re not a killer, Ashley. You’ve never killed anyone in your life. You don’t want to turn into Seward do you?”
“Standing right here?” Seward said.
> Honeywood ignored both men and narrowed her eyes. All that mattered was getting off this world. Stiggs, Aubin … did either of them ever mean anything to her? And if Aubin was dead, why should Garza be allowed to live? How was that fair?
“Ashley,” Garza said, taking a small step in her direction. “Ashley, put down the gun, we can …”
And she fired, the explosion shredding her last trace of morality. Garza spun in the air, a look of complete bewilderment frozen upon his face. She fired again and again and finally lowered her arm, the gun stuck fast in her trembling grip. Her eyes were riveted upon where Garza lay upon his belly, his naked torso a mass of grime and muck and the blood collected from so many wounds across their journey.
A hand was placed upon her shoulder and she jumped, only to find Seward gazing at her, no longer smiling. His was a look of respect and, at last, of trust. “Good girl. Now get on board.”
“They’re all dead,” Honeywood said breathlessly. “My entire team was wiped out to save you.”
“Tragic. I’m sure Valentine will mourn you more than he will all of them put together.”
“I’m not going with you.”
“What? Why ever not?”
“Don’t you see, Garret? We’ve killed people! We’ve killed people just to escape this place.”
“That’s what we do, Ashley. We’re killers. It’s why we’re here.”
“Then maybe we deserve to be here after all.” She raised her gun before he could stop her and pressed the muzzle to the side of her own head. It should have been the most difficult, most controversial decision she had ever made, yet the action came so easily that Honeywood did not even flinch as the hot metal pressed against the side of her temple. Her life was a mess of her own making. She had tried so hard to make the best of a bad situation and all it had created was a sea of bodies upon which somehow she had managed to float. She could still see the young, smiling face of Cassie Aubin whenever she closed her eyes, could still hear her uncertain laughter tickling her upon the breeze.