She missed them. She would never again be swarmed by the spring calves, never again huddle in a pile for warmth against a sudden chill, never again bray or prance for the attention of the bulls. Never again . . .
Then another thought tiptoed slowly through the sad ones, creeping in through the back of her mind. She was alone; there was no one else to protect her. No one to look out while she ate. No one to call warning. What if something was watching her now? Watching her eat? Waiting to pounce?
She stopped chewing and listened to the forest, her eyes now wide with fear, mouth agape mid-chew.
The earth was silent, dead, devoid of all life. Nothing chirped or hummed or cried or gnawed. Not insects, nor the tiny mammals burrowing below. And after a day of roars and quakes, the quiet seemed all the more eerie and dreamlike. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. It was never this way. As Triceratops thought back, she couldn’t recall a single minute of silence amid the teeming life of the forest. Even during moments of sheer panic, when beasts several times her size crashed through nearby hills, she could still hear the hot breath of her companions and the flapping wings of quetzalcoatlus taking to the air.
This was different. This was wrong.
And then she heard something. Distant at first. The sound of rustling foliage being crushed underfoot, branches and saplings snapping against lumbering weight.
Then came the scraping of flesh upon earth, the grinding of a dragging limb, and the thump of its overworked sibling. Draaaaag, THUMP. Draaaaaag, THUMP. Draaaaag, THUMP. Whatever it was, it was still a ways off, slow, wounded. As long as she kept a safe distance, it couldn’t cover that ground fast enough to catch her.
Triceratops sniffed. Death. Something reeked of rot, of boiled insides and meat smoked in bubbling tar. The scent wafted in with the sound, the air now drenched with it. For a moment she wondered if she’d stumbled downwind of her own herd’s demise. But there were no corpses, no layers of bodies liquefying in the sopping earth. If something had died here, something else had since dragged it away, but not so long enough ago that its death didn’t still linger.
Draaaaaag, THUMP. Draaaaaag, THUMP. Draaaaaag, THUMP.
It was getting closer. She looked around and saw nothing nearby. So cautiously, with as light a step as possible, she shuffled into a patch of bushes, forcing her head through the leaves to peek out the other side.
There it was, emerging through the smoke, thirty yards away, a tyrannosaur, its left leg broken, its reddish-brown side torn apart, gouged out with tremendous bite marks, its insides spilling from the wound, intestines trailing on the ground behind it. Its tail was fractured in three places, twitching and jerking stiffly as it moved, bones protruding in places. His eyes were already glazed over, milky white. It was a mystery how it even managed to stay erect, its leg mangled as it was. This king of the beasts, this mighty monster of its day, would soon fall over dead. In fact, it appeared mere footsteps away from doing so.
And yet nothing deterred its pace; its one good leg thumping forward, its broken limb shuffling bloodily behind. Its wounds were great, but no longer oozed or bled. Stranger still, it did not cry out or wince at its injuries. This tyrannosaur pressed onward, recognizing neither fear nor pain.
Until it stopped. And it sniffed. And its head turned toward Triceratops.
Then it let out a dull moan, half a growl concealed under exhaled breath. And it began to limp once more, this time straight toward her.
Triceratops bolted, her large bony neck frill tearing leaves from their branches as she turned, the forest shuddering as she galloped through it, the thump, drag, thump, drag, thump, drag speedily pursuing behind her. She needed to get back to the cave. The entrance was narrow; tight enough to have a fair fight in—perhaps even constrictive enough to keep the giant tyrannosaur out.
But it was a ways off still. She had to run, harder than she ever had, uphill, through the slick mud left behind after the rain. If she was lucky, the beast would die from its wounds long before it reached her.
But it pursued her still, though the sound of thumping and dragging grew weaker with each passing second, drifting behind her as she gained a substantial lead.
There it was. The path up the hill. She galloped faster, giving it her last few ounces of reserve strength, buying her the time she needed to make it up the slope. Then her feet hit the mud of the hill and she slid, slamming face-first into the dirt, her chin digging six inches in.
She scrambled to her feet, but her legs kept pumping, slipping in the mud. For a moment she thought of her herd, losing their footing before falling into the fire. This was how they had died. She would die screaming. Just like them.
Triceratops breathed deep, closing her eyes, tightening her muscles. She took a single measured step, finding her footing, then followed with another. Her feet sank into the mud, giving her just enough traction to continue.
Step. Step. Step.
Deadfall snapped in the forest behind her, leaves rustling, a broken limb and fractured tail dragged limply through them.
Step. Step. Step. She trudged solemnly up the hill, heart racing, sure she was moments away from death. But she couldn’t move faster. Any more quickly up the hill and she would lose her footing, belly-sliding back down into the waiting maw of a broken beast.
It was almost on her. And she was but halfway up the hill.
She could hear it.
But she didn’t have the time to turn around and look.
Trees splintered, one cracking in half, slapping down in the mud no more than twenty feet beside her.
It was here.
Step. Step. Step.
The beast moaned once more. Its jaw snapped open and shut. The smell of death flooded the air. Triceratops had only seconds left to make it to the top.
She struggled, her legs caked in mud, her muscles rigid and tense, her balance fading.
Just a few. More. Steps.
Then came the wet smack of several tons of tyrannosaur flopping into the mud. Triceratops turned. She couldn’t keep herself from looking away any longer. There, several lengths behind her at the base of the hill, flailed the angry, half-dead creature, its jaw snapping futilely, its short, stubby arms clawing in vain to set itself upright. It would never stand again. Its leg was now not only broken but twisted nearly off, the other buried a foot deep in mire.
And yet the thing would not die. It didn’t seem to notice its grievous wounds or inability to stand on its own two feet. It knew only hunger and continued to shift its mass back and forth through the muck, never gaining an inch up the hill it didn’t immediately cede back.
Triceratops sighed, relieved, turning back toward the hilltop and her steady, methodical climb, ever the more aware that a single slip could mean the end of her. She took another step. And then another. Soon she reached the crest of the hill, where it leveled off and led to the mouth of the cave.
She sniffed. There was something in the air. Something else. Looking back over her shoulder, she watched as the upended tyrannosaur writhed on its back, batting at the air. It wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. But now there was another threat. Something was on the hilltop with her.
She gazed at the ground. Fresh tracks. Something not so large as her—but still big enough to be dangerous—had climbed up in her absence and made its way into the cave. Now she suffered a terrible choice.
The hill offered no other way in, up or down. Along its sides were steep stone walls—she would never survive the drop-off. If what had claimed her cave was a threat, she had nowhere to run. Her only choice now was either to face the narrow base of the hill, and the dying tyrannosaur waiting there, or enter the cave, taking her chances.
She stared at the cave’s yawning entrance, hoping the interloper might show itself.
It did not.
Cautiously she sniffed the tracks, but the strong smell of wet earth overpowered whatever it left behind.
Then from her right, over the cliffside from the timberland below, came a terri
ble howl. Another tyrannosaur, upright, angry, and very much unhurt, staring up at her. He too had survived the day unscathed and appeared to be starving.
He gazed up, drooling, teeth bared, trying to figure out how best to scale the hill. From his vantage point he could see neither the path up nor the flopping mess of a cousin lying at its foot. Pacing back and forth, he shifted his weight from one leg to the other in a strange dance, trying to find a way up without losing sight of his prey.
It let out another shrill cry, this one sounding more frustrated than angry.
Triceratops stood her ground, trying her best not to look terrified. If the tyrannosaur sensed her fear, it would only try harder to get to her. But if she could stare it down long enough, the advantage of being on high ground might convince it to find dinner elsewhere.
Then something caught her eye. The rustling of treetops well beyond him, perhaps a hundred yards off. While many of the trees in the forest were redwoods hundreds of feet tall, the canopy of conifers in this section mostly rested below the threshold of the hilltop, and few had been spared the full wrath of the firestorm. She was looking out over miles of black patches, dipping into a valley where the redwoods once thrived and shot into the heavens, their canopy hundreds of feet high. Now most stood like black thorns poking through a choking miasma, smoke still billowing in places.
But something tore beneath it with alarming speed, swaying branches and boughs, skimming just below the surface of the fog, a rippling wake trailing behind.
The tyrannosaur wobbled, swaying with menace, unaware of the threat looming behind him.
Triceratops’s heart raced.
Twenty yards out, the tyrannosaur heard it. He perked up, looked around, slowly spinning himself to face whatever was behind him, no longer interested in Triceratops. Rearing up on his hind legs, flicking his tail menacingly, he leaned forward, roaring into the soot and mist.
She’d never been this close to a tyrannosaur before. Not a live one. Not one that wasn’t already twisted and broken and waiting to die. Triceratops pissed herself standing there, the roar freezing her in place. If something was to emerge from the mouth of the cave or make its way up the hillside behind her, there was little chance of her noticing it. The tyrannosaur and its mysterious pursuer had her undivided attention.
Trees splintered, branches snapped, and three tyrannosaurs emerged from the trees, the earth trembling with the sound of their stampeding feet. Each was mauled, broken, wounded in their own way, and all three descended upon their lone brethren, caring not a whit that they were in any way related.
The biggest, One Eye, towered a full head over the others, a large, jagged scar running from the top of his crimson head through an empty, gouged-out eye socket—healed over years ago—down to his chin. His claws and teeth were huge, chipped from countless fights, his mouth swimming in nicks and scars from eating things that had still struggled while he chewed. His hide was the color of fresh blood, his talons coal-black, his single milky eye standing out in the dark palette.
The other two, Stump and Cavity, clearly brothers, were smaller, squat and brown, their frames hulking, shoulders broad, making them slightly wider than One Eye despite being nowhere near as tall. Stump was armless, both tiny appendages having been chewed off all the way to the ball joints, while Cavity was covered in small bites, his entire lower abdomen hollowed out, devoured whole by an army of smaller creatures.
They surged forward, eyes dead, mouths wide and snarling.
The lone tyrannosaur managed a single bite on an attacker, his open jaw clamping down on Cavity’s neck, his teeth digging in deep before tearing out its throat. It would be his last and only act of defiance, as three powerful jaws rent him to pieces where he stood. His legs hit the ground, but his torso remained aloft, being torn asunder in a tug of war between three desperate mouths, before splattering apart in a shower of gore.
Cavity managed to claim a large chunk of his own, whipping his head back and swallowing the mass whole. But it slid right out the gaping hole in his throat—the wound not bothering him at all—and he turned back to the remaining bits of his prey only to see the piece that had just slipped out, attacking it again as if it were new. It continued this sad ballet, swallowing and losing the hunk of meat before snapping it back up again, whilst One Eye and Stump consumed the remainder of their meal in an orgiastic feast of gushing blood, each of them unaware they were being watched.
The smell hit her. Triceratops breathed in the sour scent of day-old dead. And she began to understand.
She turned around slowly and looked down at the foot of the hill. Mauled and broken though it was, the first tyrannosaur still thrashed in the mud, no farther up the hill than it was when last she looked. These things would not die. They would not succumb to their wounds. And they would not stop coming for her.
She needed to get into that cave before they saw her—no matter what waited for her there. It had no smell of death. Whatever was inside was still alive. And that meant she at least had a chance to kill it.
Triceratops steadied her nerve and strode boldly into the cave, her expression stoic, her head low, horns pointed down to scare anything that might think about coming at her.
Inside the cave it was dark, her immense body blocking most of the light streaming in through the narrow mouth behind her. Whatever was in there would know she was coming. It was dank, shadowy. What had only moments before been a warm comfort now seemed black, cold, terrifying. Slowly she made her way down the passage, creeping with as light a foot as she could.
Then, reaching the opening into the wider cavern, she saw it. A shadow. Smaller than her, but still threatening enough. It was more like a moving mound of bristling darkness than anything else, shuffling against the back wall of the cave. She moved her bulk from the light, letting in just enough to illuminate the silhouette.
It was an ankylosaurus, his tiny triangular head sporting two devil spurs from his temples above its black, whiteless eyes, with two more spurs farther back, jutting from behind the hinge in his jaw. From its neck backward he was armored, covered in a rippling mass of brown bony plates, each terminating in large, dull, tan pyramidal spurs that danced when the creature moved. He waddled as he walked, slow, lumbering, its yellow-brown legs just strong enough to support its own weight. And behind him dragged his tail—also armored as well—ending in a massive white club of bone that could split a skull in two with a single powerful swing.
The ankylosaurus shuffled about, his tail raised up behind him like a scorpion, the bone both broad and menacing, ready to come down. He stamped his feet, snorting, then struck the cave floor twice with his tail. The strikes were fast, almost too fast to see, sand erupting, showering Triceratops.
This beast meant business. But it was an herbivore. Its teeth were as dull as hers, its mouth too small to even get a grip of her flesh. Triceratops knew that this ankylosaurus was every bit as scared as she. So she stepped lightly, pointing her horns at the ceiling. Then she sniffed the air, checking to see if he was alive or dead, more for show than anything else.
Ankylosaurus narrowed his eyes a little, lowering his head, easing back his tail, but keeping it raised at an angle, just in case.
He took a cautious step toward her and sniffed as well.
Then he took another step, smelling deeper and harder this time. They crept slowly toward each other, investigating, each hoping their company was no real threat at all. In the wild, before the thunder and the fire and the rain and the quakes, these beasts wouldn’t have given the other a second thought. They’d eat from the same tree, chewing off adjacent leaves and never doing more than shoving the other out of the way. But here, now, things were different. Something had changed.
For a moment, each held out hope.
Then Ankylosaurus stepped back, tossing his head with a snort, padding a little dance with its feet. He quickly shuffled the sand around, dropping onto it, making himself a cozy nest, curling his tail around to touch his nose.
He didn’t care about Triceratops being in the cave at all, as long as she left him alone.
Triceratops snorted as well, chuffing under her breath before making her way past him, deeper into the cave to the spot where she’d nested before, leaving Ankylosaurus between her and the cave mouth. She curled up on the floor, her head, and more important, her horns, facing the mouth of the cave. She lay there, eyes trained on the mouth of the cave, waiting.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Eyelids fluttering, consciousness faded so slowly she barely noticed.
The roar was a hurricane gale of rotten, fetid wind belched out from the maggot-swollen belly of a barely standing beast. Their sanctuary was a secret no more. The passage out had darkened, light trickling in through the few narrow spaces not blocked by the approaching predator. Triceratops had no idea how long she’d been out, but it was clearly long enough for the monsters to have tracked them down. She was groggy, tried to shake the sleep from her head, whipping her snout back and forth.
The beast roared again, its stench beginning to fill the cave.
Ankylosaurus anxiously looked back at Triceratops, his eyes narrow, body trembling, tail swinging combatively back and forth. He had the room to engage the tyrannosaur if he had to, but just barely. Stepping back a few paces, he hunched his body forward, tail raised in the air. Then he nodded toward the far corner of the cave, eyes still trained on her. She knew what he meant.
She skulked quietly to the far side of the cave, a dark corner that put her squarely in line of anything that might emerge from the passage. There she set the charge, her muscles tense, head down, horns pointing at the corridor. Her breathing became fevered, short, tight breaths like whipcracks driving her heartbeat ever faster.
The thing roared again, clearly stuck in the passage, scraping against the rock walls. It howled, but not in pain. Only anger. This was something that knew no pity, felt no fear. It had to be one of the shambling, broken dead. No other creature would push so hard through so narrow a cave, bellowing angrily all the while.
We Are Where the Nightmares Go and Other Stories Page 8