Paleo

by Yvonne Navarro

  Oh . . . normal lighting for one. And twentiethcentury noises, like cars and people and anything but the low growling and snarling that seemed to surround her and Oz on every side in this huge room. And weapons— yeah, weapons would be good.

  “Wait,” Oz said in a low voice. He’d stuffed the floor plan into his pocket and he pulled it out now. “What happens if we do find something? Let’s backtrack and go here first.”

  He pointed at one of the pages and Buffy followed his finger. “North American Cultures?”

  “With benefits.” He shoved the book back into his pocket. “Stuff like spears and axes. We’ll pick up a few things, then come back in through the rotunda entrance at the far end.”

  Buffy sniffed. “What? And not charge our beasts empty-handed? Why does this sound like a much better plan?” Glib comment or not, she could have hugged him.

  Together they backed out of the dinosaur entrance, then crept back toward the fossil room. “Down there,” Oz said. “Then turn right and go through the mammals, circle around that way. We’ll get to check the whole exhibit and pick whatever we need.”

  She nodded and let Oz lead the way this time. He seemed to have a knack for reading the museum map and finding his way around in here, while she was doing pretty well at picking up on when the guards walked their rounds. As Oz guided them deftly into a room filled with Native American exhibits and relics, she could only hope she’d do as well when it came to their prehistoric foes.

  “Jackpot,” he said in a low voice.

  Oz stopped her with a hand on her arm and pointed to an array of objects high on the wall, but still within reach if they stood on some of the exhibit cases. “Try not to break anything,” he said in a pseudo-whisper. “Cracking glass guarantees an alarm.”

  Buffy nodded. “Got it,” she said, and scurried forward with him right behind her. What they could take was limited to what they could comfortably hold and actually use, so instead of long spears, Buffy opted for four wicked-looking tomahawks, ones with good, heavy edges. They could each carry one, plus have another tucked into their waistbands. The tomahawks, she figured, would be much more effective than spears. Once a spear was thrown or stuck into their target, that was probably the end of its usefulness, plus she wasn’t sure of the strength of these ancient, wooden-handled ones. Ignoring several bows and arrows, she also chose a couple of long, antique-looking knives. Even if the blades weren’t sharp, the points could still deliver a mortal blow, and she thought it was doubtful that the strings on the bows would hold up if she actually tried to fire an arrow. The arrows themselves just seemed puny when she considered the target.

  “We’re set,” she whispered to Oz. “I’m ready if you are.”

  Oz looked like he wanted to comment—maybe say something like “Ready for what, our final glory?”—but he only nodded and moved in front of her, guiding her up and through the rest of the exhibit to where the spacious rotunda branched out from the room’s back exit. There, a quarter of the way around on their left, was the smaller rear entrance to the dinosaur room. Dim, vaguely golden light spilled from the doorway, the toned-down version of the daytime’s full tropical effect. Oz’s face was pale in the low light and they could both hear the muted sounds of the faked dinosaur growls and grunts, the electronic chittering of small animals for which Buffy had no name, and the noises of insects that were thought to have lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. Didn’t they say cockroaches had been around for millions upon millions of years? The thought made Buffy shudder as they ducked inside, and she wished desperately that the staff had simply shut the sound effects off entirely when the museum closed.

  “Whoa.” Oz breathed beside her. Buffy glanced at him, then followed his gaze to something huge and dark hanging above their heads. The thing up there, poised in a downward swoop, was so realistic it nearly made her cringe. Despite the darker area near the ceiling, she could still see the meticulously created veining in the enormous wings of the reproduction of a savage pterodactyl.

  “Could’ve done without that,” Buffy muttered. Thank God Kevin and Daniel hadn’t gotten hold of any pterodactyl eggs. As the Slayer she could do a lot of things, but she still hadn’t mastered the fine art of flying.

  “Lot of ground to cover in here,” Oz said quietly. “And a lot of noise.”

  Buffy peered past him. Green and black shadows filled the room, and between the close, damp atmosphere and the breezes ruffling the leaves of the interspersed real and fake plants, the place seemed way too alive, like something could easily blend in . . . and would she even notice? “Yeah,” she started to say—

  Something moved between a couple of the exhibits farther up on the right, about a third of the way into the room. For the briefest of seconds, she saw a shadow, bigger and darker than the rest, slide across the dark green floor.

  “Time to rock?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Buffy said. “I think it just went behind that . . . bunch of ugly, bird-faced things over there.”

  “Oviraptors,” Oz said matter-of-factly.

  “Over-whatevers. Let’s go.”

  The two of them ran forward in a half-crouch that still let them move quickly, hugging the line of an imitation rock wall that separated the Oviraptor exhibit from the designated walkway. Oversize leaves fluttered around them but Buffy couldn’t tell if they were supposed to or not. It was like being in the middle of a forest at twilight, one filled with movement and whispers. Was that odd snuffling sound really just part of the museum’s programmed sound effects, or was it something else entirely?

  “Up there,” Oz said. “On an angle to the right—see between the Carnotaurus and the Cynognathus?”

  “Again?”

  “The big thing on the right with lots of teeth and stupid little horns, and the fuzzy things on the left that look like mutated tigers.”

  Buffy squinted, trying to pinpoint what he was talking about. “Oh . . . yeah. I see it now. Great.” What he was talking about wasn’t particularly big, but it was undeniably their boy. Or maybe it was a girl. Did it really matter? She scowled and stayed where she was. “But where’s the other one?” she asked Oz softly. “There should be two.”

  “I dunno. Maybe it’s moved on, maybe it’s right around the corner.” He was silent for a moment. “Buffy, how the hell are we going to do this?”

  She gripped one of her tomahawks, wanting the weight of the primitive weapon to somehow make her feel better. No such luck. “With this, I guess,” she said. “We just are. And there’s no time like the now time.” Yipes! Hadn’t she said that the last time they’d faced a dinosaur? She hated déjà vu.

  Backing up her statement, she fixed her sight on that bulky shadow and skittered forward. She could sense Oz as he followed her, although she couldn’t quite hear him. It wasn’t just the noise of the fans and the sound effects still softly pumping through the dinosaur exhibits that blotted out his movements, but his own unconsciously wolflike tendencies. He probably didn’t even realize the way every gesture, every step that he took, resembled the stealthy creatures whose legacy was now a hidden part of his own makeup.

  But as well as Oz moved, her own sure actions must not have been nearly as quiet. They didn’t even get to the juncture of where the wall ended before they heard a low, warning growl that was frighteningly different from the noises coming from the speaker—sounds that instantly seemed pathetic when compared to the real thing. Buffy forced herself to keep going when her legs wanted to freeze, putting a mental override on the flight impulse that shot through every nerve in her body. She’d faced few things in her time as the Slayer that threatened to so completely overwhelm her.

  Another throaty rumble came out of the greenery in the exhibits ahead, then the creature they sought stalked through a curtain of vines hanging from the ceiling and stepped into the aisle in front of them.

  Neither Buffy nor Oz said anything. Buffy’s mind went blank, and if she’d been drowning—which she knew from experience—she might have seen her
life flash before her eyes. As it was, she heard the air expel from her lungs at the same time that Oz inhaled sharply; funny how people showed fear in individual ways. It didn’t matter, though. At this point, all choices had been taken out of their hands.

  The Tyrannosaurus Rex that stood and snapped at the air a few yards away was more of a toddler than the baby they’d vanquished in the alley the night before. It was taller by at least a foot and had a lot more meat on its bones—a result of the passage of only one night? Buffy didn’t want to think that its healthy roundness had anything to do with a diet of Daniel and Kevin, but she couldn’t get the idea to go away once it surfaced. It looked at them with the same glittery golden gaze that its sibling had possessed. There was a hotter quality to this one’s eyes, though, something reminiscent of the hellish glow that they’d seen in the eyes of the Timimus that night in the library, when this whole mess had started with her capture of that birdlike creature. She hoped that radiance didn’t mean it was any more intelligent, but the way their luck was running, it probably did. As if it could read her thoughts, it suddenly bobbed its head up and down, like an angry bird. Its movements were fluid and strong, with no hint of awkwardness or hesitation.

  “My, my,” Buffy finally managed, never taking her gaze from it. “What big teeth you have.”

  “What big everything you have,” Oz said very quietly. “It might be just wild speculation on my part, but I’m thinking that junior at the Bronze might have been the runt of the litter.”

  “Well, that’s good, right?” Buffy tried her best to sound encouraged. “That means the other one is probably no bigger than this, yes?” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one side of Oz’s mouth twist.

  “Nice try.” He peered at it, obviously fascinated in spite of their predicament. “You know, the brow ridges on its head are awfully prominent. I’d say they look a lot more like demon horns than dinosaur—”

  Dino Baby charged.

  This time, the flight instinct took over both Buffy and Oz. She went one way, while he leaped in the other direction, and for a moment the small T. Rex faltered, unable to decide which prey was the more worthy. For all his natural stealth, however, Oz was not as swift as Buffy, and since he was the slower of the two, the young dinosaur ultimately chose him. It twisted sideways and lunged as Oz leaped over the mock-stone wall and into the Oviraptor exhibit, coming down in a roll that sent him into a knot of foliage next to a grouping of the crested, pale models on a fake hill, none of which was very big. Buffy skidded to a stop and tried to reverse direction to head back toward Oz, and found herself facing the same problem the T. Rex had just discovered: Despite colors chosen to carefully blend it in with the jungle theme, the floor was still slick granite tile and quick maneuvering was damned near impossible. Both Buffy and the T. Rex slipped and went down, though Buffy seemed to land a lot on the lighter side.

  The dinosaur’s left leg went forward and under it— nature had never intended for this creation to run on polished granite tiles—and it lost its balance. When it fell, its bottom jaw came down hard on the stone wall; no doubt the floor vibrated all the way up to the guards’ desk by the main foyer. The wall, it seemed, wasn’t stone, but it wasn’t Styrofoam either—maybe only chunks of painted, dried plaster or molded globs of hardened plastic. Still, whatever it was constructed of apparently hurt because the creature gave a notsoquiet roar of pain as the stuff cracked and dug into the flesh of its face. So much for stealth.

  Sprawled painfully on her elbows, Buffy managed to haul herself to her feet before the dinosaur could find any traction. Its own drool had served to make its position even worse. While the powerful back legs and toes tipped with long, curved claws scrabbled at the floor and its tiny front legs clutched uselessly at the air, the T. Rex’s head was still pointed in the direction it had last seen Oz run. Beneath the heavy, malformed ridges of its brow, the thing’s eyes burned with malevolence and the desire to kill.

  Hefting one of the tomahawks, Buffy ran toward the dinosaur before she could change her mind, her only thought that she should strike, as hard as she could, at its neck. This was something she’d never imagined she’d encounter. Did it even have an artery close enough to the skin surface for her to reach with this dull-edged weapon? Memories of the nice piece of pipe she’d found in the alley came back, and in hindsight she wished she had grabbed one of those spears she’d seen a few minutes ago. Despite their wimpy wooden shafts, she might’ve had more of a chance at victory with something long and pointed. Even with it struggling on the floor, swinging at the dinosaur’s neck with the short-handled tomahawk was going to put her precariously close to the thing’s monstrous jaws.

  But there was just no other way.

  She came down just behind the baby dinosaur’s right shoulder and slipped in the more than generous amounts of dino-saliva. No wonder the beast couldn’t regain its footing. Ick. Was this natural, or was it just the idea of human flesh that made the dinosaur, or maybe the demon spirit inside it, salivate in anticipation? Buffy had hoped to bring the tomahawk down with both hands, as hard as she could, into that really good soft spot right below the line of its jaw, dig in nice and deep and hope there was a big artery waiting down there. But the goo on the floor threw everything out of whack. She managed to keep her grip on the tomahawk’s base but her other hand automatically slapped downward to break her fall at the same time that her right knee rammed into the T. Rex’s shoulder.

  So much for its not noticing her.

  Forgetting about Oz, it twisted around and tried to bite at her, and the blow that Buffy wanted to land beneath its jaw ended up slamming into its snout instead. The blade surprised her by cutting skin, but then it came back and nearly hit her in the face. There wasn’t much padding on the dinosaur’s nose and it had hit bone and bounced. The low roar the T. Rex had maintained so far changed to a bellow of outraged pain that was unmistakably not something on the museum’s tape. Long and loud, it carried a pulsing undercurrent that made Buffy grit her teeth without realizing it.

  Her target bucked, tried to bite again and missed, then got one knee under itself, the prelude to getting upright. Not good. Buffy much preferred it to continue flopping around on the floor like a giant fish. She barely avoided its teeth and flailed at it again with the tomahawk, her swing awkward and uncontrolled. Even so, she had the satisfaction of feeling her weapon thunk solidly into the excessively protruding brow ridge above the baby dinosaur’s right eye. She would have been a lot happier had she taken out the eye itself, but sometimes a girl had to be satisfied with what she got . . . and was that fear she heard in its next bellow?

  The T. Rex wrenched its head away from the pain and Buffy lost her grip on the tomahawk. It was kind of like trying to stand on wet ice, but she managed to scramble upright, then squashed her instinctive urge to aim a hard roundhouse kick at the dinosaur’s head. It would be a weak blow and comparatively speaking, the mouth thing here was a lot bigger than a bloodsucker and she really didn’t want to lose her leg if it managed to bite her. Unfortunately, dino-toddler was also finally getting its balance and rising; in a few more seconds she’d be facing something that was a good foot or two taller than she was and probably two hundred pounds heavier. She’d fought a few chunky vamps along the way, but none of them had teeth like this baby.

  Then it was up and leaning toward her, and despite its size it had an almost fascinating reptilian grace, a fluidity to its movements that vaguely resembled those of a lizard. Instead of going for the other tomahawk, Buffy chose the long, pointed knives she’d picked up, one for each hand. She felt and smelled its breath, a nauseating mixture of blood and meat, and tried to block the instantaneous memory of the comment by the lab tech outside regarding Daniel Addison—“ What’s left of him, anyway . . .” When the dinosaur’s mouth yawned wide, instead of stabbing at the bony jaw, Buffy darted forward and shoved the first of the knives up and into the roof of its mouth as hard as she could. In a split second that felt like forever, she
felt the flesh catch, then rip for at least ten or eleven inches; then it hit something, maybe a protrusion of bone, and she yanked her hand out of the thing’s mouth and left the knife behind, jammed firmly in place.

  The T. Rex reared backward and screamed, a horrendous noise that sounded more like a train engine than an animal. More proof that she’d scored a victory was the blood blanketing her hand and running down her forearm, adding to the slippery mix on the floor. Buffy switched her remaining knife to her right hand, still determined to go after that elusive neck artery, when Oz hurtled at the dinosaur from the other side. With a snarl that was eerily like the wolf into which he transformed for part of every month, her co-hunter brought one of his tomahawks around and buried it deeply into the big muscle just above the knee joint in the creature’s left leg.

  This time, the roar of the T. Rex was a blast of thunder as it buckled and went down on that side, its heavy leg knocking Oz back a good ten feet as it fell. Buffy wasn’t fooled, though. Oz had hurt it, sure, but no way would his blow be enough to keep it down and guarantee they’d win this fight. Somewhere in the background Buffy thought she heard someone other than Oz shouting: the guards, no doubt drawn to the battle by the noise and now seeing something they couldn’t begin to comprehend. Did museum guards have guns? Now that—

  “Freeze right where you are!” a man shouted from behind her.

  —answered her question.

  Freeze? Not likely, not when Dino Baby was doing a one-legged sprawl and crawl across the floor, so desperate was it to have her for its next meal. She still had half her stash of weapons, one of each; now she just had to decide how to use them.

  “Buffy, look out!”

  There was a crash and part of one of the exhibits fell over, no doubt caused by a flick of their disguised demon foe’s tail. The creature’s ploy to startle the guard and make him fire at her worked, but instinct made her duck in response to Oz’s yell and also saved her butt. She heard something kind of like a big firecracker exploding, and while it was probably not at all true, Buffy could’ve sworn she felt one of the guard’s bullets whiz over her head. And, of course, it completely missed the T. Rex squirming on the floor.