by catt dahman
Shimei launched himself over Haylee to pin the remains of her arm in place while Tony used the hot blade to cauterize the stump. Shimei didn’t envy Tony the job he was doing. Shimei held on tightly to Haylee’s arm, hating that they caused her pain, wanting to find some way he could take away her fear and pain, and wishing this smart, beautiful girl hadn’t lost her arm. With a degree in psychology, he knew that she would not only have a grueling physical battle, but also a tough emotional war for healing as well.
Haylee screamed again; her eyes rolled back in her head, and she passed out. It was a relief to see her unconscious.
The flesh sizzled and smoked, releasing a noxious, porkish odor, but Tony and Corrine held the blade tightly while Shimei gripped Haylee’s stump. Haylee’s bladder released, and the strong urine scent mixed with the other smells made some of the people feel sick.
They all fought to retain control and not cry. Emma doused the arm again with antiseptic, welcoming the strong aroma since it covered the other scents, spread cream on the flesh, and bandaged it with plenty of gauze padding. When she was finished, she used strips of the shirt to form a binding so the arm was immobile against Haylee’s chest.
Tony vomited in the corner. He was repulsed by what he had to do and felt sick in his heart to have caused Haylee pain, even though he was asked to.
Rick and Luke carefully lifted Haylee and took her down the slope close to the fire and tucked her into a sleeping bag. She needed an IV of fluids and antibiotics, but when she awoke, all they could do was get her to take the pills and drink as much water as possible.
Emma felt helpless. For all her training in medicine, she had nothing she needed and felt she had done her patient harm although it was all she could do. Making Haylee feel such horror and pain made Emma question if she were in the right career; in fact, she was sorry she was a nurse.
“Are you okay?” Shimei asked Tony.
“Yeah, I guess,” he said as his hands shook; he held them out for the rest to see, “Some tough cop, huh? I’m gonna quit when I get back ‘cause I am a total puss. My dad would say, ‘Antonio, what you doing being this way? Where are your balls, Chico?”
“Look, none of us trained for this. I am questioning why I thought I was a nurse,” Emma said, “but fate and curiosity brought us down here to try to solve a mystery.”
“I was sick because I hurt her. Damnit, I hurt Haylee,” Tony said.
“It wasn’t you. It’s the situation,” Audrina said.
Shimei interrupted, “One that keeps getting more and more convoluted. Rocks fell. Maybe someone caused it, or maybe it just happened, but Haylee and Wyatt were hurt. It’s fate and bad luck, but here we are, and we have to do things we don’t like.”
Emma reached over and squeezed his hand. And without a word, she also reached for Tony; he clenched her hand so hard it felt as if he might break it, but he needed some comfort. Shimei took Audrina’s hand, and she took Tony’s, completing the circle.
“We can do this,” Audrina whispered.
As they fixed their meal, they talked quietly, watching Wyatt and Haylee. The route they chose which took them into the cavern wasn’t one they could take again. The stewardess was proof that exits did exist, so Rick argued that they could find a way out. Ann felt they should wait to be found since they had injured people.
Theo grumbled, “But don’t forget that even if we look for a way out or wait for help, the fact is that someone above us cut our rope and pushed rocks in. We may not be able to sit and wait since someone has attacked us.”
Ann frowned, “Why would anyone attack us?”
Rick shrugged, “Simple. Someone is either mean and did all that, or we have stumbled into a secret that someone wants to stay secretive.”
Shimei whistled the theme song for The Twilight Zone.
“Stop it, ass,” Ann said.
“You called me an ass for whistling?”
Ann glared at Shimei, “I sure as hell did. We don’t need you implying anything weird or scary is afoot.”
“Afoot?” Daisy laughed.
Rick waved at them to listen, “We do think that back way, the one behind the nose of the airplane, might be a way out. There is light that direction.”
“But because it is close to the surface doesn’t mean that is the right path. Sometimes you go down to get out, and we know we are inside a mountain. Down is down the mountain,” Theo explained.
“All we have to do is swim across?” Corrine asked again after they explained there was water along the route they planned to use.
Rick nodded, “It’s not a bad swim, but everyone here says he can do it. We can wade some and then swim across. Ed and Tony think that’s the best way out. I agree. The pool is clear enough to see the bottom. I can even see fish swimming.”
“What about Wyatt?”
“We’ll help him, and we’ll help Haylee. It’s about hundred yards, and we can walk it easily with our packs staying dry. But there is light in that direction. High, but we might climb out more easily, and it’s a ways from where the line was cut. No one up there can guess where we’d be climbing. Ann, if you want, stay back with those who refuse to go, and we’ll find a way out and bring back help for the rest,” Rick told them, making sure his pack was settled.
Theo told the rest, “When I get out, give me a few minutes to beat the hell out of whoever is up there cutting ropes; then, I’ll get all of you out.”
“You might need back-up,” Tony warned him.
Theo grinned, “Not unless there’s over five or six.” He enjoyed the chuckles he got.
Several of them helped carry Wyatt with them, past the airplane wreckage and to the edge of the little pool of water. It was a hard trek, carrying him strapped to a part of the plane that once had been the door; he was heavy. They sat down to rest; it was mostly a trek uphill and a long way.
Wyatt moaned, “I can’t understand. Why can’t I feel my legs?”
Tony knew Wyatt was only complaining because he was afraid, but it was a never-ending question from him and made them all feel more helpless. Emma reassured Wyatt several times that the medical team at the hospital would know those answers. After a while, she ignored his question. She didn’t know.
Audrina looked at the water longingly. She was hot, tired, and itchy. The cool water would feel wonderful. Prepared, they inched Wyatt into the water and tightened their packs; the first group was almost ready to go.
“Do you think they can fix me? I mean, do you think I’ll be okay?” Wyatt asked. He had the same desperate look on his face as always
“I am sure they’ll do a great job,” Emma told him, “we’ll carry you over our heads and across; that spot over there does look better for camping.”
Audrina smiled, “I bet the water will feel good on your scrapes.” She almost bit her tongue off, wondering if she had said the wrong thing. Could he feel his scrapes? Was that insensitive to say? Audrina clenched her eyes shut as they set him partially in the water; Emma thought the water was cold enough that it might reduce swelling. Emma and Audrina discussed how they would move Wyatt.
“Audrina? Tonyeeeeeeeeeeeeee.” Wyatt began to scream.
Audrina looked upwards, wondering if someone were pushing rocks in again, but there was nothing. Desperate, she looked all around. Tony did the same and looked down at Wyatt. He was the only one in the water so far, and when the attack began, he didn’t feel a thing. What alerted him was when the creatures began, in a frenzy, to flip and thrash, and as they became more aggressive, they bit above the line of his paralysis.
The clear blue pool was murky burgundy and reddish from the blood that poured from his lower body. He slapped and hit the creatures, but they were all over him.
Tony and Theo grabbed Wyatt, yanking him away from the water with little care for his back injury. Audrina and Corrine stepped away from the water as if it were acid.
Audrina yelled, “What is it? What’s in the water?” She saw a nose break the red surface and a tai
l flip.
Tony, Theo, Shimei, and Luke shouted, smacking the lizard-birds as the creatures waded from the water onto the rocky bank of the pool. They were no more than a foot and a half tall and feathered in bright plumes of green and yellow. They had sharp, deadly teeth that they snapped, threatening everyone, and they walked like a bird on two legs. On each foot was a dewclaw that had a sickle-shaped, razor-sharp nail that could be raised or lowered. As they sniffed at the scent of blood in the air, they clicked their dewclaws against the rock floor as if they were drumming a sickening attack song.
Their teeth looked way too big for such small animals.
The creatures stood up on their hind legs and waved their front legs, chattering and hissing angrily at their meal being taken away. The front legs ended in sharp-clawed hands.
“What are those bastards?” Shimei used an old branch that was almost rotted away with age, but it made pulp of the animal’s head. With brilliant, wet plumage but still elaborate, the creatures stalked their prey, refusing to give up.
Tony kicked one to a rock, and as it lay stunned, he smashed its head with his boot. Theo yelled as one nipped at him, kicked it, lobbed a baseball-sized rock at it, and finally crushed it with his boot. To his side, Luke smashed several creatures with rocks as Katie, Rick, and Quinn cornered the animals and killed them before they were attacked.
“Just smack them. They bit Wyatt,” Theo yelled.
The rest of the cavers pulled Wyatt away, and Emma and Audrina began trying to stop the bleeding. Both kept looking over their shoulders to make sure one of the bird- lizards didn’t sneak up close and attack.
They didn’t see the creature in the water drawn by the activity and fresh blood. It slithered and dove right past where everyone stood, a dark shadow of blue that was difficult to see. Moving rapidly with a long, sinuous tail, it found nothing interesting in the water but a few floating bodies of velociratpors which were easily cleaned from the water by opening its mouth and taking in a big gulp; three bodies vanished into the huge, pointed maw of a crocodilian creature that was longer, rounder, and softer than a crocodile, but which had the same kind of tail and the beginnings of scales.
It had not evolved yet into a crocodilian-type animal. When it was finished, it swam away, back into the deep and hidden caves where the creatures lived: multiplying, changing, breeding, nesting, and turning into more fearsome monsters as years past.
Wyatt’s legs were partially devoured. In some places, the flesh was untouched, but in other places, there were holes ripped to the bone. His legs looked as if someone had randomly taken bites out of his legs and left some strips of skin hanging like festooned decorations, almost translucent wisps of bloody tissue paper.
Corrine yelled for Emma and Audrina to do something and tried to keep Wyatt from looking, but he kept raising his head up to see his torn up, shredded feet, legs, and privates. Only two toes remained: a half of a big toe and his second toe on his right foot. He couldn’t feel the pain but could see his bloodied lower half.
The woman yanked down his thin shorts, some tight nylon things that he liked to wear to show off his butt and muscular thighs. The shorts looked moth-eaten with runs and missing part. His buttocks were chewed deeply and full of deep craters since the meat was fatter there.
Wyatt looked at Audrina pitifully, “See if Brother Mike and the boys are there. I can’t see or feel.”
“Who? See what?”
“Fuckin’ hell, Audrina, see if my dick and balls got eaten,” he demanded as he lay back crying, exhausted, and drained.
Audrina closed her eyes a second, took a deep breath, and forced herself to look into the bloody, torn mess, “Ok, one of the boys looks good…one or two cuts. The other boy, he doesn’t look too good. He was bitten.” (She didn’t add that it was hanging by a thread and seventy-five percent gone.)
“And Brother Mike. How’s he faring?”
“Eh…he was bitten on the side and a little on the end. Emma, can you help me?” This was not only way too personal for Audrina, but she also didn’t enjoy the bloody, disgusting medical part. Above all, she hated being the bearer of bad news; she had a new respect for Emma and nurses everywhere. Audrina sighed with relief when Emma took over, looking at the wounds.
Emma looked over the situation, “One testicle is gone, and one looks salvageable. Wyatt, they chewed off the glans and most of the shaft. It isn’t gonna work right. We need to get a sterile straw in there at once so you’ll be able to pee and it won’t grow up. You need emergency surgery right now, and we don’t have equipment for that, so what you need is make-shift work.” Her face was pale.
“Hell, no, you ain’t sticking a straw into my water works.” He barely had the strength to mutter a response as black dots danced across his vision.
“Then, you’ll die of urine poison, Wyatt. I can do the straw, and you won’t feel the damned thing. Let’s be real here.”
“Just do it,” he moaned, “coming down here has sucked for me. Do it. Why am the one getting hit and bitten? What did I do to deserve this shit?”
“It’s going to be fine, Wyatt,” Emma said.
“He’ll live then?” Audrina asked.
Emma tightened her lips an said, “I can’t stop the bleeding.” She held a cloth between his legs, but the cloth was bright red, and Emma just shook her head. If they had time to cauterize the wound, she might be able to save him, but he was torn up in too many places.
In a few minutes, she sat back, defeated.
“What? Why, Emma?” Corrine asked.
“Do something. Why are you quitting?” Audrina asked.
“He’s gone.”
Emma looked at Audrina; they said nothing.
“We got them all,” Tony said. “What’s…Audrina?”
Audrina cried against his shoulder, and he looked at Wyatt and then to Emma and understood. He rubbed her back. When Audrina stopped sobbing, they gathered, looking at the dead creatures
“I told you we needed to leave.”
“Tate, I’m about to knock your ass out, so unless you want me to hit you, shut the F up,” Shimei warned Tate.
Luke grabbed Shimei’s arm to avoid seeing a big clobbering, “Shut up, Tate. Now isn’t the time. Ann, you need to close your mouth and not say whatever you are thinking. Not now.”
Ann closed her mouth.
“I was thinking about swimming,” Audrina looked at the bloody pond and lizard bodies. “What are they?”
Rick rubbed his mouth with the back of one hand. He showed everyone that along the rocky shore were old skeletons from the odd creatures. “We aren’t the first to have a fight with those things. Someone else killed a bunch of them about seventy years ago, give or take.”
“You aren’t saying they attacked the plane passengers?”
“I don’t know if anyone was attacked, but someone killed some whatever-they- are,” Rick said. “Over there is a pile of bones and teeth.” He pulled a sharp tooth from his pocket to show off.
“Are they birds?” Quinn saw that everyone gave him strange looks, “I mean they look like lizards, but then they have the teeth and feathers like a bird. Lizards don’t have teeth like that as you know. Those are like razors. And look at their hips and the way they walk. They act more bird-like.”
“Those are not birds,” Ann replied in a way that implied she thought Quinn was stupid. “And those are like the bones we found. Your crash victims ate those damned things.”
“Yeah, I know, Ann, because I am not stupid. I didn’t say they were birds. I said their hips and movements were wrong for lizards. What do they remind you of?”
“Dinosaurs,” Rick shrugged, “maybe compsognathus. No, they’re too big for those. Holy shit, they’re velociratpors.”
“Oh, come on, Rick Parker. That is ridiculous, and you know it. That’s the last thing we need right now is you agreeing with that kind of make-believe.”
Rick frowned, “Dinosaurs were real. They weren’t make-believe.”
&nb
sp; “Were. Were is the key word. Millions of years stand between were and now.”
Tony held a hand up to Ann and Rick, “You are arguing something irrelevant. They look like the little dinos on movies. What they are, we can’t know unless someone is suddenly an expert with zoology or paleontology something like that or…. No? Anyone? So let’s not argue.”
“Weren’t velociratpors big and lizard-like?” Corrine asked.
Rick shook his head, “No. They were as big as turkeys like these, feathered, possibly had big teeth, and they had the dewclaws on their back legs. That’s what these things are, and they are fast.”
“Sudden peace keeper,” Tate smirked at everyone.
“They do look like velociraptors,” Fran said. “What? I read. I pay attention. So I know the name. They do look like them except the ones on television and in books don’t have teeth like those have.”
“They were too small to be raptors.”
Fran shook her head at Theo, “No, movies and television have them wrong. They weren’t great big things but were no more than two feet tall and mostly smaller.”
“Maybe people never found the teeth and bones of these more nasty ones. Maybe we discovered them. They can be parkersaurs,” Rick thought aloud.
“That will make Wyatt’s family feel a lot better,” Shimei said sarcastically as he frowned at the professor.
Dr. Parker composed himself and said, “That was in poor taste. I apologize. And Emma and Audrina, thanks for trying your best for Wyatt. It was an unforeseen tragedy.”
“We have no business here,” Ann pointed out again.
Before the group could take sides again and argue, they heard yelling and running. Rick motioned all of the rest back to the main camp and told them that they’d come back for Wyatt’s body. Daisy screamed for help, and that was first priority now.
“They have Haylee,” Daisy screamed and waved her arms.
“Who?” Luke demanded, ready for a fight. Theo looked all around for an enemy to take on since his adrenaline was still flowing from the fight with the lizards or dinosaurs or the composites. Whatever they were called. Composers. No, that was wrong, too. Raptors. Velly C. Raptors. That wasn’t it either.