by Adam Carter
Torrance’s face twitched and her eyes flickered open. Valentine smiled at her, forcing his sadness away. “Hey,” he said, his voice cracking. “Couldn’t keep away from me, eh?”
She attempted a smile, but her face lacked the passion to be able to make it pleasant. “Hunter?” she asked.
Valentine glanced over to where Hunter’s body lay crumpled and unmoving.
“Kind of like kneaded dough.”
Torrance did not find joy at his words, but then Torrance was not someone who would ever find death amusing. He could see forming words was a strain for her and fought for something to say for the both of them.
“Everything you told me,” he asked. “Was any of it true? All that stuff about Io and conscription?”
Her eyes closed, and her voice was fading. “Does it matter?”
“I just want to know who you are, Aura. I want to know the real Aura Torrance.”
“Aura’s a name that came with the armour, Dex. My name’s Becky.”
Valentine smiled a genuine smile. “Becky.”
“Becky Torrance,” she said, her voice almost too small to hear now, “was a messed-up kid who made mistakes.”
“Kids make mistakes, Becky. It’s what helps them grow into adults.”
“Cute, Dex.” She even managed another smile. “Whitsmith.”
“She’s not here.”
“Good. Look after her, Dex. She’s sweet on you.”
“Aubrey? I ... I’m getting that impression.”
Torrance convulsed and Valentine panicked, but the spasm passed and he could feel her slipping away even more quickly. “Cartello was right about me, Dex. I never contributed anything, I was always just in the way. I was never any good for anything.”
“You contributed to me, Becky,” he said, his voice cracking. He could feel his face was wet with tears. “All my life I’ve worked with numbers and profiles. I never got to know people, real people. They were just statistics to me. You helped me see what people are really like, Becky. You helped make me realise I’m human. Can you see that?”
But Torrance did not reply. Her face was set in a peaceful calmness, her hand was limp in his grip. He had no doubt she had not heard a word he had said. And she had died in the firm belief that she was a nobody.
“You know you’re better off without her, stupid girl.”
Valentine looked across to see Hunter’s broken body attempting to right itself. One of her legs was entirely crushed, and blood soaked her torso and face, but she had managed to get to her good foot by using the wall as a backrest. She had brought a pistol to bear. All her previous show of egotism had been beaten out of her, but as she levelled the weapon shakily upon Valentine he realised she still thought she was walking out of this.
“When that doctor gets here,” she told him, “the three of us are leaving. Any funny business and I shoot you. Do you under ... What are you doing?”
Valentine had collected Torrance’s body in his arms. He looked at Hunter for several moments, shaking his head. “Becky wasn’t the pathetic one, Hunter. Because even dead she has someone who cares enough to get her out of here.”
Hunter’s face took on a look of terror and Valentine knew she was finally accepting the reality that she was going to die in this pit.
“Goodbye, Hunter,” he said. “Pretty soon no one will even remember you existed.”
He turned his back upon her and moved towards the single-door exit. He had seen Hunter’s shaking hands and knew with the realisation of her death they would only tremble further. Hunter shouted obscenities at his back, promising to wreak all kinds of vengeance upon him. Then she pleaded, promising him in her desperation so much reward. But she could not shoot him, even if she could hold her aim. She needed him to survive, and to shoot him was to shoot herself. And the only thing Hunter loved in life was herself.
With a sudden yell, Whitsmith appeared from the massive doors and Valentine watched as she tore across the arena, waving her arms at him, shouting for him to keep moving. Then Valentine saw what was giving chase and he needed no other urging. Carrying Torrance as he was, Valentine could not properly run, but he would not relinquish her body. Whitsmith reached him moments later, surprising him by taking some of the weight, and together they made it to the door. Valentine turned back to see the bipedal reptile bounding across the arena. Hunter fired at it, her shot pinging into the ground, and the monster recognised the threat and turned its full attention upon her. Valentine did not tear his eyes away as the creature ripped out her throat in one savage horizontal slash. Hunter’s cry was brief, and as she fell, blood gurgling in her throat, she looked up at Valentine pleadingly, so far across the arena.
Valentine turned away. Whitsmith had the door open by this point and he handed Torrance to her. “Go,” he said.
Whitsmith stared at him in horror. “What?”
“It’s going to follow,” he said calmly. “I need to slow it down.”
“Dex, you can’t stay here and ...”
“Aubrey, I’ve never done anything selfless in my entire life and I just watched a good woman die in my arms. I have the opportunity to save the life of the only other woman I care about on this whole world and I’m going to take it. Go. Please.”
Whitsmith looked over his shoulder, and he knew she could see the creature beginning to stalk him. Her eyes found Valentine’s once more and she kissed him again. He allowed himself to savour the moment, knowing it would be the last time he ever saw her, and as she pulled away he could see the tears welling in her eyes.
Without another word, Valentine closed the door upon her and turned to face the monster.
It was still around ten metres away, sitting in a crouch and observing him. Perhaps it was searching for weakness, perhaps it was trying to work out whether he was holding a weapon. He suddenly remembered he had taken one from Stone and drew his pistol. He had to assume it was loaded because he had no idea how to check. Holding the weapon at arm’s length he steadied his hand as much as he could and pulled the trigger.
Then he yelped as the gun all but exploded in his hand, the bullet flying into the air. It was the first time Dexter Valentine had ever fired a gun, and the ricochet tore up his arm and left his hand stinging. The gun itself lay on the floor where he had dropped it.
The creature seemed to raise its eyebrows as though asking whether that was his big attempt at survival.
“Attention!” he shouted, but this creature either did not have the same conditioning as the other or else did not care at all for his commands. Placing his back to the door, Valentine tried to calm his own raging heart and said, “Well, it was worth a try.”
The creature rose to its full height, moving towards him in the same way a human being would walk. What it was he could not say: nor did he even care any more. He had already slowed it enough for Whitsmith to get away, for her to find the protection of some people with some really big guns and the knowledge of how to use them. He had played his role and was now prepared for the curtain to fall.
The reptile reached to within a metre of him, snarling and sniffing him, always searching for something. Always trying to learn. Valentine felt his body shivering and somehow he still had control of his bowels. It would be something of which he was certain Whitsmith would be proud when she buried what was left of him.
Apparently having finished its assessment, the creature bared its razor fangs and stared at him directly in the eyes.
That was when its head exploded.
Valentine cried aloud as blood spattered his face, his tongue. The creature hesitated upon its feet before it toppled, slamming into the ground and spilling its brains clear across the floor. Valentine stood staring, his mind fighting to make sense of what he had seen twice now in one day.
“Got him,” Cartello said, and he looked up to see her crouched by the railing behind which people would gather to watch the pit fights. “Worked so well last time, thought I’d give it another shot. Literally.”
“How ... How long have you been there?”
Cartello shrugged, checking her weapon.
“There’s no one left to shoot!” Valentine shouted. “You don’t need to check your guns!”
She paused, considering his words, then checked the rifle anyway. “Always more enemies out there, Valentine. Welcome, by the way.”
Valentine collapsed against the door, sinking to the ground and spitting dino-man blood. He sunk his head into his hands, his entire body collapsing as he began to weep. It was over, and he at last knew what it was like to be a man.
EPILOGUE
“So Cartello just left?”
Whitsmith stood before Valentine’s desk, a report in her hand. Valentine himself sat behind the desk, of course, filling in reports. A day had passed since Death had stalked the former prison and things were getting back to normal. The moschops was back in its pen, the reptile-men’s bodies were cleared away and burned, along with what was left of Hunter. They had never even discovered her real first name, although Whitsmith knew none of them cared. Rebecca Torrance had been buried in the prison cemetery along with the victims of the two creatures. Only Hudson’s body was missing, for that had been left outside and would have long been picked clean by animals.
Cartello was the only loose end, so far as Whitsmith could see, and Valentine had just very calmly informed her the faux-sergeant had gone.
“Yep,” Valentine said without looking up from his writing. “Said she wanted to see the world. Wasn’t about to stop her.”
“Did you at least give her a radio?”
“She didn’t want one. I’m sure she’ll be fine, Aubrey.”
“Oh.”
She had never known Valentine to be this distant from her and knew it had to do with Torrance. She had spent so long being jealous of the girl that she felt bad about the entire affair. Especially the rolling around in the mud, pulling her hair and stamping on her face thing.
“You don’t have any work to do?” Valentine asked, still scribbling away.
“I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Moved on. You know me, Aubrey, nothing gets to me.”
She did not know whether she wished that was true. “We need to make a decision about this abandoned base to the north.”
“If it’s abandoned, it’s no problem.”
“Hunter said it was Lustrum.”
“I heard that too. Doesn’t make it true; and it doesn’t make it any less abandoned.”
“Shouldn’t we check it out or something?”
Valentine sighed, his pen even stopping long enough for Whitsmith to realise he wasn’t actually writing any proper words. “It’s been five years, Aubrey. If anyone was going to come here they would have done so by now.”
“Yeah, but we have no idea why no one’s ever come to check on the prison. I mean, we killed the guards five years ago and no one’s even turned up to ask why.”
“Leave it, Aubrey.”
“But don’t you want to know why? Even just for peace of mind?”
“It’s sometimes best we don’t know.”
He still had not looked up, and now resumed his writing. Whitsmith narrowed her eyes. There was something about his tone, about his demeanour, which did not sit well with her at all. She knew Valentine better than anyone, better perhaps than he knew himself, and she could sense there was something big he was holding from her.
“You know, don’t you?” she asked. “You know why no one’s come sniffing around?”
Valentine said nothing.
“I don’t believe this,” Whitsmith whispered, astounded by the possibilities this opened up. “How could you just sit on information like this? Don’t you think the rest of us have a right to know?”
He looked up now, and Whitsmith felt suddenly ashamed. His eyes were red, his lips were dry and he looked far more scared than she had ever seen him before. “It won’t change anything,” he told her. “Nothing ever does.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling bad for questioning his motives when he was so obviously grieving. “Torrance was ... well, she didn’t deserve what happened to her.”
“She was a good woman. Can’t you even bring yourself to say that little?”
Whitsmith wished she could, but to do so would be to lie, and she knew Valentine was very good at knowing when people were lying.
“She was wrong about you,” Valentine said, his voice stern only because it saved it from choking. “She told me to look after you, Aubrey. She told me you were worth it.”
Whitsmith blinked. “She said that?”
“Yes. She’s not quite the monster you thought is she?” He looked back down to his papers. “Now get out and do some work, Miss Whitsmith. I’m too busy right now to chat to my staff.”
Whitsmith hung her head and left his office. She had fought Torrance so much, she was wishing now she had instead got to know the young woman. Perhaps they could have been friends, or even the sisters Hunter said they were like. But that was gone now, in the past, extinct. And nothing extinct ever returned.
Carefully and gently, Aubrey Whitsmith closed Valentine’s door behind her.
The dinosaur books of Ceres form a series of (mostly) stand-alone adventures set on a quarantined dinosaur world. Since the stories are spread across the world (and several generations), there is very little interaction between the books and most feature characters unique to that particular story. The intention is that any book can be read independently, without even realising there even are any others. The main exceptions to this are the Dinosaur Prison World stories which, while each can be read alone, do feature recurring characters. Any Dinosaur Prison World book is marked in bold and underlined on the list below.
I also have a timeline into which all of my books slot, so if you wish to read the books in chronological order, they are as follows:
Excavating a Dinosaur World
Dinosaur Fall-Girl
Dinosaur Plague Doctor
Ike Scarman & the Dinosaur Slavers of Ceres
Dinosaur Prison World
The Dinosaur That Wasn’t
Awfully Wedded Strife
Tales of a Dinosaur Prison World
Deities of a Dinosaur World
Return to the Dinosaur Prison World
Nikolina Finch & the Dinosaur Utopia
Of Stags, Hens & Dinosaurs
Dinosaur World Gladiator
The Wounding Tooth
Dinosaur World Massacre
Dino-Racers
Dinosaur World Unscripted
Lost Treasures of a Dinosaur World (gamebook)
Christmas on a Dinosaur World
Utara the Savage
Also available by the same author in e-book and paperback:
Sheriff Grizzly:
Book 1: Sheriff Grizzly
Book 2: The Horse Thief Honey
Book 3: The Coyote Colt Kid
Book 4: Joins the Circus
Book 5: The Haunting of Athelstan Swift
Book 6: The Santa Claws Showdown
Book 7: The Kangaroo Claim Jumpers of Crumbling Gulch
Book 8: Gets a Reality Check
Book 9: Bets Against the Card Shark
Book 10: The Hairy Walrus of Truespire Peak
Book 11: The End
Book 12: In the Afterlife
Knights of Torbalia gamebooks:
The Return of the Stolen Jewel
Into the Massacre
March of the Demon Trees
The Thief of Tarley Manor
The Class War
The Haunting of Past Wraiths
The Hunt for the Adulterous Bard
A Peacock in the Den of Foxes
Attack of the Demon Trees
The Slave Scandal of Torbalia
Miscellaneous gamebooks:
Lost Treasures of a Dinosaur World (300 paragraphs)
The Underworld Horror (300 paragraphs)
Sheriff Grizzly: The Good, the Bad & the Grizzly
Sheriff Grizzly: The Wild West Dungeon Adventure
The Christmas Adventure of Sam and Klutz
Operation WetFish: Vengeful Justice
Operation WetFish: A Wealth of Sin
Jupiter’s Glory: Oppression of the Press
Dinosaur World: The Forest of Fiends
The Temple of Death: The Villain’s Gamebook
Hero Cast trilogy:
Book 1: The Villainous Heroes
Book 2: The Heroic Villains
Book 3: The Forge of Heroes
Jupiter’s Glory:
Book 1: The Dinosaur World
Book 2: The Pirates and the Priests
Book 3: The Obsidian Slavers
Book 4: Just Passing Through
Detective books:
Detective’s Ex
One-Way Ticket to Murder
Who Slew Santa?
The Curse of the Genie’s Detective