by Rick Jones
Then Cheryl screamed.
And everyone ducked.
The tail of the Giganotosaurus came around wildly and clipped the concrete wall of the compound close to them, the wall smashing enough to show the rebar underneath, as the broken pieces of concrete scattered and skated across the landing.
They quickly got back on their feet, pushed and pulled at the door, loosening it, until they were able to peel enough of it back to give them access inside the studio.
They were in.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Everyone inside the studio was watching the dinosaurs challenge each other, two against one, which always made for great TV. But when a Spinosaurus was felled and took down a major line of defense in the cables, mouths dropped. Peter Haynes was no longer relentlessly cheerful. In fact, he thought his heart would misfire in his chest.
When the battle got increasingly close to the compound, tensions began to mount almost exponentially. But when they saw the Jeep take flight like a toy battered into the air over the monitor screen, and the Jeep rotating rapidly through space and closing in on the communication tower, they knew the inevitable was about to happen.
The moment the Jeep struck, the visuals went off, the bank of monitors suddenly going off as blank screens of snow, the transmissions lost, which included worldwide viewership. Then there was the subsequent crash as the communication tower fell against the rooftop, the twisted steel coming down hard against the power grid, smashing it.
And then the lights went out with the backup system kicking into place, a few amps of juice and power to manage a systematic abandonment of the facility.
The snow on the TV screens disappeared, the images pinching down to the size of a light mote in the centers of all screens, then disappearing, the monitors now completely blank.
Nobody moved.
Nobody said a word.
They were all running blind inside the world of The Valley.
#
“What do we do?” somebody finally whispered.
Haynes thought it might have been the producer, maybe the co-producer, but didn’t care. The question was a good one: What do we do?
“What about the maintenance crew?” someone suggested.
“The tower’s down. The power grid’s destroyed,” another offered. “We do have enough power to light the hallways to the tram system, and enough to get us out of here.”
“My show,” Haynes said disbelievingly as he rubbed his hands over the blank screens. “What happened to my show?”
A co-producer grabbed Haynes by the shoulders and escorted him away from the screens. “The transmission feeds are off-line,” the co-producer told him. “We have to get out of here, Mr. Haynes. We need to leave the facility immediately.”
“My show.” Haynes seemed stunned and detached. “My show.”
“Please, Mr. Haynes. We need to get to the tram bay. It’ll be all right.”
But it wouldn’t be all right.
Not by a long shot.
#
The corridor was dark, but cool. Along the ceiling the lights to the backup system were on, but they cast more of a feeble glow than strong illumination.
Ben took lead with a machete in his hand, tightly gripped, with Yakamoto close by, a machete also in his hand. Cheryl divided them from Albright, who moved with caution with the firearm gripped in his right hand.
They took a series of twists and turns—nothing but warrens and endless tunnels. Then they finally came to a door that could only be accessed by a keycard.
Yakamoto grabbed the door’s handle and pulled. It was firmly locked in place. “It doesn’t look like we’re going anywhere,” he said.
“Here,” said Albright. “I got the key.” He pointed the Smith & Wesson, took careful aim, and pulled the trigger, twice. The bullets struck the keycard receiver and coughed sparks, the unit shorting out. “Try it now.”
Yakamoto did, and the door opened with ease.
#
The moment the power grid was laid to waste, a massive power surge pushed through lines at unbelievable rates of speed that overloaded and blew relays and computer chips. Commands and directives became disrupted at the blink of eye, the computers altering and misreading corrupted orders that allowed the dismissal of all safety protocols.
The locks that secured the pens of all the creatures in the bio-labs were released, freeing the Utahraptors and Megalania Priscas. The computers, the incubators and lab equipment were nothing but pieces of an alien landscape of inanimate objects to them, which they pushed aside with little effort as they took new ground.
They ventured through hallways, sought new directions, and scoped new territory. They discovered new bounties of fresh meat and new prey.
The raptors found little difficulty in taking down the biologists, the creatures putting up no fight at all as the raptors eviscerated them with clean blows across their chest and abdominal cavities with a single rake of their sharp talons, their innards spilling and uncoiling with splashes to the floor before they even realized what happened to them, their eyes suddenly registering the surprise of their own mortality before the raptors finished them off.
The Megalania Priscas took to the corridors, intercepting those running toward the tram in panic, the large Komodo-like dragons outrunning, outpacing their victims, their piercing teeth and venom crippling them, and then they were consumed, the victims still alive but numbed, and forced to watch their own remains being torn, as the lizards wrenched their heads back and forth to pull certain body parts free.
Hallways sounded with horrific screams as the corridors filled with living nightmares.
And the numbers of the living were counting down to a few.
And the few, eventually, to none.
In a world where the past met the present, there was simply no competition.
None whatsoever.
#
In the Giganotosaurus Room, Stan Tremblay felt the shudder of the crashing tower, and the subsequent fallout of the backup lights turning on.
The primary power had failed.
Suddenly, the hangar-sized panels to the Giganotosaurus pen began to open, slowly, and the outside door began to open, allowing the female its freedom.
She paced along its cage impatiently as the door slowly raised, the creature snapping her powerful jaws as if to hasten the moment, its way of telling the door to ‘hurry up.’ When the door opened far enough for her to slip through, she was gone, staking the valley as her own.
Stan felt an odd sense of relief as he stood by a console that was apparently working with a life of its own, the commands it understood and reacted upon obviously corrupt. If this console responded wrongly, then he knew that others had as well.
He knew that pens had opened, allowing herbivores and carnivores to roam free inside the facility. Though herbivores could be dangerous, but usually when they felt cornered, it was the carnivores he was worried about. Especially the juveniles who, like teenagers, were fairly reckless by nature and took more chances. It was a constant in all creatures, the process of learning what was dangerous and what was not. Being hunters, however, they would test the waters to see which prey was easy, and which was not. In this facility, he knew that no one stood a fair chance at survival.
Unless they made it to the tram that would take them north to the Gates of Freedom.
Without further hesitation, Stan raced toward the tram system.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“Do you hear that?” asked Cheryl. They were inside what was apparently a lab. But the area was destroyed. The eggs in the incubator having been broken open, the inhabitants inside consumed.
Distant screams could be heard at the far end of the hallway, but quite distant. The shouts continuing until they were cut off abruptly.
“Yeah. I hear something,” Ben returned. Then: “This way.”
They raced down the corridor. Cries and shouts grew, becoming louder. And the hallways started to stink of urine, the creatur
es now marking territories.
“Careful,” commented Yakamoto.
Everybody knew what he was talking about. They were not alone. And he wasn’t talking about the production crew, either.
They moved cautiously through production rooms. Banks of TV monitors along the walls were cracked or broken, some even remained untouched. TV cameras lay on their sides, the once heavy pieces of machinery obviously pushed aside by something strong, something large.
Groves and long stretches of claw marks streaked the walls, the telltale signs announcing that something highly dangerous roamed these halls.
Ben gripped his machete, as did Yakamoto. Cheryl stayed close. And Albright, as always, took rear position, though not as far, staying near to Cheryl and closer to the team.
As the screams in distant hallways began to taper off, Yakamoto pointed out the sign on the wall at a junction. “Look,” he said.
Office of the Executive Producer
Producers
Co-Producers
Rooms 101 - 107
Left
STUDIOS, BREAK ROOM
1A – 7C
Right
EXIT/TRAM SYSTEM
STRAIGHT
“What do you think?” Yakamoto asked. “Tram system sounds good to me.”
“That’s how they must get in and out of here,” Cheryl said. “They take an underground tram from here to the gates.”
Ben nodded. “Sounds good to me.”
They pressed on, knowing that they’d have to go through Hell before they would get to Heaven.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Peter Haynes, along with more than a dozen others, had made it to the tram platform where two cars were held together with an accordion center for flexibility in turns. But when they saw that the sides were stained with Jackson Pollock-like designs of blood and gore, he took stutter steps before taking firm root, the man refusing to take another step.
“Check it out,” Haynes whispered to a co-producer.
“Why me?”
“Because you’re a co-producer, that’s why.” He pointed to the tram. Check it! Now!
The co-producer took tentative steps forward and traced his fingertips along the blood patterns along the tram’s side. The blood was fresh and still warm. Definitely not a good sign.
The door was open. So he stepped inside.
A nauseous wave of blood and copper assaulted him, causing his stomach to flex into a slick fist.
Along the floor lay bodies that had been carved and eviscerated. Limbs and garlands of intestines lay coiled at his feet. The sludge of blood and body fluids pooled around his feet with syrupy thickness, the floor slick.
Those who had come before them had walked into an ambush.
He took cautious steps into the tram’s interior, actually a small space with a capacity of forty people, by stepping over bodies that had arms or legs wrenched clear from their joints, the pieces laying haphazardly around as if whatever it was that had pulled them free simply tired of toying with them and set them aside.
He made his way toward the front car, to the tram’s console. The stink was worse than a butcher’s block, he thought, having served as a carver in his father’s meat shop. And eventually found the dash with the joysticks that started it, sped up, and slowed the tram. The console was smeared with blood. Worse, the tram’s windshield was broken.
The tracks were dark, the mouth of the tunnel as black as pitch.
Slowly, as if not to startle something, he reached for the switch that turned on the bank of lights on the tram’s hood above the windshield, hesitated for a long moment, and then he flipped the toggle.
A row of lights kicked on, bright and reaching far into the tunnel.
Utahraptors, several of them, stood idly by before the lead raptor honked through its nasal cavity first in warning, then relaying a command to attack and defend its territory.
Raptors closed in with incredible speed, leaping through the hole of the windshield with their talons raised, the points ready to gore and gouge.
The co-producer only had time enough to raise his arms in defense, a natural act to defend himself, only to be added to those who already lay dead inside the tram.
#
Everyone saw the light to the tram switch on, saw the raptors along tracks.
“Oh, my God,” someone murmured.
The tunnel had been completely compromised. The tram was useless.
And then the scream as they attacked the co-producer. The tram shook violently, the cars rocking as they tore the man to pieces, his blood jettisoning across the side windows as streaks a moment before they started to that drip slowly down the panes.
The attack galvanized those on the platform to retreat, to return to the studio.
Where other raptors and those of its kind waited.
#
But most never made it back to the studios.
Some of the raptors gave chase, easily taking down those in the rear first by clipping them off one by one. And then those in the middle, the raptors cutting them down quickly and efficiently with a raking strike of their talon.
Haynes was in the lead and took glances behind him as he ran. He saw the lizards take his associates down in play. One minute they were there running with him, the next they were gone, like magic, their bodies disappearing into the shadows faster than the eye could see.
He picked up his pace and ran as fast as he could. Those who were faster tried to pass him. But he disallowed this by forcing them behind with a strike of his elbow or a tug of their collar, pulling them back just as they were beginning to edge ahead.
He needed to stay ahead, to stay in the lead, to outrun his opponents because they would be the first to go, not him.
As he rounded the bend that led to the central studio, he was not alone. Two others were still beside him, a co-producer and a female staff gofer, neither whom he truly recognized.
The raptors were gone.
And play was apparently over.
Haynes bent over with his hands on his knees and sucked air with deep draws and pulls. As did the others.
And then he heard a voice that was familiar, though not one he heard often.
“How does it feel?” it asked.
Haynes turned to Ben Peyton, who stood there with a machete. And he was not alone. He recognized Cheryl Dalton and that yakuza assassin, Yakamoto, also carrying a machete. But the worst of the bunch was Darius Albright, the Boogeyman, a serial killer.
Haynes lowered his head and laughed. “It just gets better,” he commented.
Peyton stepped forward. “I said, how does it feel?”
Haynes faced him. “How does what feel?”
Ben looked at him in mock surprise. “You don’t know,” he said sarcastically. “Well, let’s see. You’re no longer an MC. You’re not a star. You’re not even a superstar. You, Mr. Haynes,” Ben leaned forward to punctuate his point, “are like us . . . You’re entertainment.”
Haynes stood straight and fixed a hard stare. He still continued to breathe heavily as he set his jaw firmly.
“Not a good feeling, is it?” Ben returned, not expecting an answer. Then in a more civil manner, but flatly, he said, “You were coming from the tram station.”
Haynes nodded. “Utahraptors are everywhere back there. The tram system is down. The tunnel’s filled with them.”
“Another way out?” Ben asked in a clipped tone.
A co-producer stepped forward, nodded. “The way you came in.”
Albright sounded stunned. “Through the front door?”
Another person from the production staff stepped forward, a young female who was obviously forcing back tears. “The tram was the only way in and out. Now it’s gone.”
“We stay here,” said Haynes. “Once the studio execs realize what’s happened, they’re sure to send help.”
The co-producer turned on him. “You know as well as I do that they seal us in in order to keep everything inside the valley f
rom getting out. It’s procedure. The moment they learn that the facility has been compromised, they’ll take every measure to keep what’s inside . . . inside. We’re expendable, Mr. Haynes.”
“Maybe you are,” he told him. “But not me. Without me, the studio would fall. I created this show.”
“And they’ll replace you,” the co-producer said. “They’ll take your idea and bankroll it into a success with someone else managing the reigns. So get over yourself.”
Ben Peyton was enjoying this little banter, liking the co-producer even more. “If you want to stay,” he told Haynes, “do so. But this place is crawling with your little friends. You wouldn’t last a day in here. No one would.”
“We have to go back out through the ‘in’ door,” Cheryl stated. “We have to go north.”
“It’s the only way,” said the co-producer. “We can take the Jeeps.”
“All of them?”
Ben looked at Yakamoto, then at Cheryl. He didn’t know. Only two had been swept away by the tail of the Giganotosaurus. Maybe some still existed. Maybe not. And then he gave them a you-think look.
Yakamoto shrugged. “Maybe.”
Haynes piped up. “You’re idiots if you go back out there,” he said. “You’ve seen them. You know what’s out there waiting.”
“They may be gone,” said Ben.
“And then again,” said Haynes, “maybe not.”
“Then stay here with your little pals, for all I care.” Ben turned to the others. “It is what it is,” he told them somberly. “The studio’s been compromised. And only God knows how many of these things are running loose in here.”
“We have no choice,” said Yakamoto. “We go topside wishing for the best, but expecting the worst.”
“You’re idiots,” said Haynes, taking a seat at the co-producer’s desk. “You want to walk out there where you’ll have no chance, be my guest. Have a nice day—”
Suddenly, the tapered head of a Megalania Prisca rose up behind the desk Haynes was sitting at with its tongue lashing in and out, the organ tasting the air to get its bearings and to draw conclusions of those in its surroundings.