by C. G. Mosley
To his surprise, the jeep was still running. As the tyrannosaur lumbered closer, Hardcastle stomped on the accelerator and sped away. The jeep shook so badly he thought his teeth would shatter, and smoke began to wisp out from under the hood. None of that mattered to him now, as long as the jeep held together long enough to get him to safety. Hardcastle thought the tyrannosaur had turned to chase after him, but a glance in the cracked and dangling side view mirror showed that the fearsome animal had instead decided to give chase after one of the Styracosaurus younglings that had fallen behind the rest of the herd.
Glenn briefly scanned the environment for any sign of Dave. He saw no sign of him among the tall grasses of the plain. He wondered to himself if he’d have even stopped if he did. Probably not, he decided finally. Little smart-ass got what was coming to him.
Chapter 16
The trio had been traveling at a safe speed just within the shadows of the wood line where the jungle met the plain. Jonathon had passed out breakfast, which consisted of only a package of Pop-Tarts for each man. Each of them had been quiet for the most part as they ate, all of them very much aware of the fact that silence in a part of the jungle where tyrannosaurs had been known to roam was currently a necessity. It was only when Silas noticed an odd occurrence that the silence was broken.
“Look,” he said excitedly, pointing toward the wide-open valley. “Do you see that?”
Jonathon sat upright in the rear seat and leaned over to the left side of the vehicle for a better look. He heard it before he saw it. “Is that a jeep?” he asked, surprised.
Although they’d all recently discovered the road, it was still rather odd seeing another sign of the outside world on the island.
“Yes, it is,” Silas replied, “and do you see what’s behind it?”
Jonathon scanned his view further behind the vehicle and then noticed the large two-legged carnivore chasing after it. “My God,” he whispered. “That’s a tyrannosaur.”
Henry pulled the brim of his hat down over his eyes to shield the brightness of the sky and then gasped when he spotted the most well-known dinosaur of all time. He felt his pulse quicken, and although they were a healthy distance away, he began to feel an overwhelming feeling of dread.
“Well, what are we going to do?” he asked, suddenly feeling sorry for the strangers in the jeep.
“Stop the vehicle,” Jonathon said flatly, and Silas brought them to a halt. “We’re not going to do anything…yet,” he replied to his father. He reached over and grabbed a pair of nearby binoculars. He got a good look at the fleeing jeep and could easily see there were two men inside of it. “That jeep has a lot of armor, similar to the cage you put on this thing, Silas,” he said, still peering through the binoculars. “They’re traveling at a high rate of speed, if they keep that up they should be able to outrun— oh no!”
It was at that moment that the jeep hit something and became airborne. After landing, it appeared that either the vehicle was damaged, or its driver was rattled, because the jeep slowed down enough to allow the pursuing tyrannosaur to catch up. Jonathon looked on in amazement as the animal thrust its entire body into the side of the automobile, sending it rolling violently across the earth.
“Whoa!” Silas shouted. “They’re in BIG trouble now!”
“I think I saw one of them fly out of the vehicle,” Henry said somberly. “He looked like a rag doll, pitched into the air.”
“I saw it too,” Jonathon replied, bringing the binoculars down. “He came down near those boulders,” he said, pointing to a cluster of large rocks near some fallen trees.
“We should do something,” Henry said, obviously deeply concerned.
Jonathon watched in amazement as the man in the jeep somehow got the vehicle rumbling away again. For a moment, it seemed that the tyrannosaur would chase after its wounded prey, but then it seemed as if the animal realized the retreating object wasn’t prey after all. It decided instead to go after a young Styracosaurus, thus allowing the jeep to flee back to wherever it had come from.
“If we go out there, we’re taking a huge risk,” Jonathon muttered.
“I think that’s an understatement,” Silas added. “It would be suicide.”
Henry looked at the both of them, surprise on his face. “We have a moral obligation to try and help that man,” he said.
“He could already be dead,” Silas argued. “And then we could join him!”
“You don’t know that,” Henry countered. “He could be seriously injured though…he could be suffering.”
“And just what are we supposed to do for him if he is?” Silas asked. “We’ve got a first aid kit, but nothing to treat a broken back or internal injuries.”
“Well, we’re not going to know if we can treat him or not unless we go look,” Henry replied, sounding more irritated. “We’d all want someone to come check on us if we—”
“We’ll wait,” Jonathon interrupted his father. “If we go out there right this minute, we won’t stand a chance. Let’s wait for the tyrannosaur to leave the area and then we’ll go check.”
“Are you nuts?” Silas said, obviously agitated. “We’ve got a plan and we need to stick to it.”
“Silas, did you notice the direction from where the tyrannosaur was running? It’s straight ahead of where we’re going. There’s a good possibility we may run into more tyrannosaurs if we keep this same course.”
“But we’ve come this way before,” Silas argued. “We need to go the way we know!”
“We came this way seven years ago! A lot can change in seven years, Silas. I say we scope this area out until we feel it’s safe to cross. We cut straight across the valley and make a stop by those boulders to check on the stranger.”
“Sounds like a good plan to me,” Henry said.
Silas huffed and shook his head. “Well, it seems I’m outvoted,” he grumbled. “Fine, we’ll do it your way.”
***
Hardcastle limped the jeep back to the tyrannosaur nest where he’d last seen George and Dr. Cruz. As he approached, he heard screaming and then a frightening realization suddenly occurred to him. He’d completely lost track of the second tyrannosaur!
The first thing he spotted was the swishing tail of the female, and she was rather forcefully snapping her jaws low at something behind the other jeep. Hardcastle could see that the trailer was still attached, and soon after he noticed George inside it, he then spotted the juvenile tyrannosaur lying motionless behind him. The female was trying frantically to fit her large maw into the open door at the end of the trailer. She was successful, until her head widened to the point where she could go no further. Her large jaws snapped furiously at George, and he was unable to back away any further. With every failed attempt to sink her large teeth into him, the trailer rocked violently back and forth, and it did the same thing to the jeep attached to it.
Hardcastle was pleased to see that George had gotten the juvenile into the trailer and sedated it, but, with the angry tyrannosaur jostling it about, he wondered how long the trailer would remain attached to the jeep. He then noticed that Dr. Cruz was not inside the jeep, as he’d first assumed.
Normal procedure required one man on the turret at all times when on a hunt. Hardcastle had purposely broken that procedure with Dave already. He knew that Dave had no experience with a weapon that powerful, and he had been confident that he could outrun the pursuing tyrannosaur without the help of the gun. He couldn’t have been more wrong, and he had already known he was going to have to come up with one hell of a story once he returned to base camp.
Now, for whatever reason, it seemed George and Dr. Cruz had veered away from procedure as well. And now George found himself in a difficult predicament because of it. The tyrannosaur continued to snap furiously at her prey, just out of reach in the trailer. She was oblivious to Hardcastle, now only thirty yards away. He stopped the vehicle and reluctantly made his way to the overhead turret.
He found what he feared. The turret wa
s heavily damaged during the rollover, but on the positive side, the gun was not. The gun was turned awkwardly away from where Hardcastle needed to aim it. He jerked hard and repeatedly tried to get the turret turned in the right direction, but no matter how hard he pulled, it refused to break free. He knew time was running out, sooner or later, the angry female was going to get to George.
Think, he told himself. Hardcastle considered getting back into the jeep and turning the vehicle around so that the gun would be pointed the right direction, but he knew he’d only have one shot at it. If the gun was not pointed just right, he’d have to scramble back down into the driver’s seat and move the vehicle again. This would not only waste precious time, but it would also make him way more vulnerable than he wanted to be. As he considered his options once more, he heard a shout that changed everything.
Hardcastle discovered where Dr. Cruz had been; it was his shouting that had gotten his attention. Apparently, he’d been hiding underneath the trailer. He’d probably been assisting George on getting the juvenile into the trailer when the two of them were suddenly attacked. George managed to scramble into the trailer, while Dr. Cruz had to slide underneath it.
Now, when he’d finally spotted Hardcastle’s jeep nearby, he decided to make a run for it. Hardcastle cringed when he heard his colleague shouting and running his way. Of all the people on the island, Dr. Casey Cruz should’ve known better than anyone how not to act around the animals. He was the resident paleontologist, and it was he that often advised everyone else on what not to do around the animals. One of the things he’d made abundantly clear was to never panic and do something stupid to draw attention to one’s self. He’d preached that to everyone on more than one occasion. So it was shocking for Hardcastle to now see the same man shouting and running frantically in his direction. Dr. Cruz was in a total panic, and it was a long thirty-yard run to the jeep. Hardcastle wanted to shout at him to stop…he wanted to ask him what he was doing. But now it was too late for any of that.
Just as the female tyrannosaur noticed the fleeing man and began to turn her attention to him, Hardcastle clumsily made his way from the gun and back to the driver’s seat of the jeep. He mashed the accelerator, but the wounded machine responded slowly. The engine seemed to wail in protest, as if it were a living, breathing thing. It had already been pushed to its limits; there was just not much left for the vehicle to give. Hardcastle hoped the machine would hold together just a little bit longer. He set his sights on the approaching Dr. Cruz, fully aware that the tyrannosaur had done the same. She began trotting—slowly at first, and then the trot evolved into a swift run. The animal seemed to bring its head forward, and down; the tail stood straight out behind it as it ran.
Dr. Cruz ran with all of the speed a man his age and build could muster. Reluctantly, he forced himself to glance over his shoulder as he ran. When he did so, he was horrified to see the towering monster charging swiftly after him. He turned his head back forward and managed to look Hardcastle in the eyes as the jeep rumbled ever so closer to him. When the two men’s eyes met, each of them knew it was hopeless.
Glenn Hardcastle opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out. The female tyrannosaur ducked her head forward and suddenly plucked Dr. Cruz off the ground, just out of Hardcastle’s reach. He looked on in horror as the animal’s jaws tightened around the screaming man’s torso. A shower of red rained from her jaws as she did so, and any sound originating from Dr. Cruz immediately ceased.
Hardcastle only had a moment to react to prevent the jeep from colliding with the tyrannosaur. He jerked the wheel to the left, and as he did so, the right rear tire ever so slightly caught the right foot of the dinosaur. The vehicle was spun by the abrupt collision, and for the second time in only a matter of minutes, the jeep rolled over. The roll was slow and clumsy, and when it was over, the vehicle rested on the already battered roll cage.
Amazingly, Hardcastle had managed to avoid injuring himself any worse than he already was. He frantically began to clamber out of the overturned vehicle, but his foot became caught in some coiled rope that had fallen out of a storage compartment during one of the rollovers. Hardcastle tugged at his leg furiously, but it seemed the harder he pulled his leg, the tighter the rope cut into his ankle. He reached into his pocket and tried to pull his pocketknife out. As he did so, he felt a vibration that he knew could only be the tyrannosaur stomping toward him. After a brief struggle, he finally retrieved the knife. He opened it quickly, and just as he was about to begin cutting on the rope, a large shadow drifted over him. Hardcastle took a deep breath and bit his lip. He rolled over on his back and stared up at the intimidating silhouette standing above him. The tyrannosaur cocked its head to the side, much like a dog, and slightly opened its mouth to reveal all of the bloody teeth within. Warm saliva dripped off the monster’s tongue and fell onto Hardcastle’s forehead. This did nothing but enrage him.
“Come on!” he shouted. “Get on with it!” He threw the open pocketknife toward the dinosaur’s eye in a pathetic attempt to inflict some sort of pain on the creature before it killed him. The knife flew past the head without so much as grazing it on the way by. The tyrannosaur began to dip her head forward, and Hardcastle closed his eyes as he awaited the same fate that had just taken Dr. Cruz from the world.
Suddenly, he heard gunfire erupt from somewhere behind the dinosaur. He opened his eyes again just in time to see the damage large-caliber bullets could inflict on a mighty tyrannosaur. The animal immediately lost interest in Hardcastle and turned its attention toward whatever strange creature it perceived to be attacking it. During all of the chaos, George had escaped the trailer, taken control of the gun turret on the other jeep, and narrowly saved Hardcastle from certain death. The tyrannosaur roared with a sound obviously full of rage. It began to trot toward George (who was not about to relinquish firing the gun), but the trot never evolved into anything faster this time. Instead, the massive creature stopped about ten yards away, and crashed hard onto the ground.
With the tyrannosaur dead, Hardcastle had more time to work his ankle out of the rope. As soon as he was free, he jogged toward the jeep. He glanced at the tranquilized juvenile tyrannosaur sleeping soundly in the trailer as he climbed behind the steering wheel. George kept his place on the gun, and he remained there until they returned to base camp.
Chapter 17
When Dave Turner regained consciousness, the first thing he heard was the pathetic wailing cries of a nearby dinosaur. The animal seemed to scream in terror and then the sound abruptly stopped. Dave slowly rose from his lying position and to his right, about seventy yards away, he spotted the hindquarters of the male tyrannosaur that had caused the jeep to roll. The large animal was kneeling over a fresh kill and feasting as if it had not eaten in days. He eyed the dead animal the tyrannosaur was eating and noticed how small it was. It would be consumed quickly and Dave feared he would be next. He surveyed his surroundings for a place to hide. To his left, there was a cluster of five or six large boulders and at the base of the one nearest to him were the remains of a massive fallen tree. All that was really left was a hollowed-out trunk, and Dave wondered if the T-rex would be able to break through it to get to him if he climbed inside. As there appeared to be no other suitable hiding place, Dave began to Army-crawl his way toward the log.
As he made his way into the log, he briefly considered the possibility that some other deadly animal may already be inside, using the log as a home. He forced himself to dismiss the notion, as he clearly had no other option. It was tight inside, and to his dismay, there were indeed other creatures using the log as home, but they were the tiny six-legged kind. He hoped they were not ants and kept wiggling his way further inside.
It soon became apparent that the tyrannosaur had either finished its meal, or noticed him enter the log, because no sooner had he immersed himself deep inside it, did he begin to feel the earth beneath him shake and vibrate with each powerful step of the approaching dinosaur. To Dave’s horror,
it seemed that the tyrannosaur knew exactly where he was. He felt each step draw closer and closer until finally they stopped. Dave held his breath and hoped with all his being that the monster would lose interest in him and leave. He’d never been a religious man, but he suddenly caught himself praying silently to himself, begging for some sort of divine intervention.
The tyrannosaur leaned over the log and deeply, and rather powerfully, sniffed the cylindrical hollow object from one end to the other. Dave felt something scratching the outside of the log and guessed the animal was using one of its scrawny arms in a futile attempt to make a hole into it. After what seemed like an eternity of scratching, the animal seemingly became frustrated and released a deafening roar that literally rattled Dave’s skeleton. He squeezed his eyes so tight that he began to feel tears stream down his face past whatever insect was crawling over him at the same time.
After the male tyrannosaur released its furious roar, there was a long moment of silence. Dave began to allow himself to entertain the thought that the T-rex might have grown bored with him after all. The moment, however, was short-lived. The angry tyrannosaur suddenly stomped a large foot onto the end of the log and the smashed portion disintegrated into an explosion of splinters, mere feet away from Dave’s head. Remaining silent was impossible now, and Dave screamed frantically as he began to wriggle away from the smashed end of the log.
As he shuffled away, the tyrannosaur again slammed its large foot onto the log, again barely missing Dave’s head. He dug his nails into the side of the log, desperately searching for some sort of grip so that he may pull himself forward and away from the stomping tyrannosaur at a quicker pace. Once again, the dinosaur crushed another section of log, and just as Dave’s feet popped out of the opposite end, a loud, repetitive popping sound erupted from somewhere in the direction of the tyrannosaur nest.