Dinosaur World

by Logan Jacobs

  As we got closer, I still couldn’t see the body of the raptor, and I started to get confused. We kept walking along the side of the building and I was about to look up to check where the window was when I heard the crunch of glass breaking under my foot.

  The three of us froze.

  I looked down at the grass and saw that it was coated in shards that had fallen from the broken window. Some of the glass shards were covered in blood, and there were even small pieces of wood and metal from the glass supports that had broken as well.

  But there was no dead raptor.

  Chapter 4

  “What the fuck?” Becka hissed.

  She had clearly put the pieces together like I had. There was no doubt this was the spot where the raptor had plummeted to the ground, and now it was gone.

  Hae-won looked up from the broken glass to me. “Jason, is it alive?”

  I scanned everything on the ground again, but there was no sign of what might have happened, or where it could have gone, but it was definitely gone.

  “It must be,” I replied. “Unless someone else took it, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

  “I can’t believe it.” Becka lowered her face into her hands. “Is he the god damn Terminator? How could he just walk away from that?”

  “I don’t see anything.” I scanned around us quickly, but there was nothing to see. “He might have left, but we should hurry up with these spears and head straight to the dorm.”

  “Yeah, good plan,” Becka said.

  I listened for anything out of the ordinary, and I could still hear the sirens in the distance, but now they were accompanied by a few echoing gunshots.

  “Were those guns?” Hae-won asked, and her pretty blue eyes opened wide as she looked at me.

  “Uhhh, let’s just get the spears made,” I said.

  The darkness now felt even more oppressive. I knew we needed to get to the dorm and barricade it as quickly as possible, but I wasn’t willing to give up on the spears.

  “Here, this piece is good.” Hae-won held up a long triangular shard of glass and went to hand it to me but winced and dropped it.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  I grabbed her hand and studied it, her skin was soft and I ran a finger over her palm looking for the wound. She had sliced a bit of her thumb on the broken glass, but it was a thin cut and it wasn’t bleeding too much.

  “Yeah, it just stung,” she explained.

  I didn’t let go of her hand for a moment, and she looked up at me with an expression I couldn’t read.

  “You should let me handle the glass.” Becka said as she looked at Hae-won’s hand.

  I let her hand drop and pulled my gaze away from her magnetic blue eyes.

  “No, I can do it,” I said. “I don’t mind a couple scrapes.”

  “Don’t worry, I can do it without getting cut,” she explained.

  Becka reached down, grabbed the piece Hae-won had dropped, took one of the poles from my hand, and placed the glass along the top.

  “My mum always says broken glass is like anything,” Becka continued, “It won’t hurt you if you’re gentle with it.”

  While the blonde girl held the glass, I grabbed the duct tape and wrapped a strip around the bottom of the shard until I was sure it would stay in place. I thought about telling Becka that her mom’s theory wasn’t true for everything. There was plenty of stuff that would hurt you no matter what, but it seemed to be working with the glass so I kept my thoughts to myself.

  “Thanks, Becka,” I said. “Do you think you could find another two pieces?”

  “Of course,” she answered, and then she went over to the pile of glass and started sifting through the pieces.

  “Hae-won, would you mind keeping a lookout while we make these?” I asked. “I don’t want the dino sneaking up on us.”

  The Asian woman nodded and took a few steps away from the building for a better view of the surroundings.

  “Jason?” the blonde woman asked from her spot by the glass.

  I turned around, saw her hands were covered in blood, and guessed that her tactic must not have worked so well after all.

  “Oh, my god,” I gasped.

  Becka seemed confused for a moment before looking down at her hands, and then she smiled and looked back up at me.

  “Oh, no,” she said, “It isn’t my blood, it’s that creature’s. I thought I saw a good piece under those, but they’re drenched in the stuff.”

  “Oh, good,” I said. “I thought you’d need a transfusion in a minute.”

  “No.” She grinned. “I was just wondering if you could get this hair tie off my wrist and pull my hair back. I can’t see anything when it’s in my face, but now my hands are all bloody.”

  “Sure, no problem,” I said.

  I walked over to her, saw the blue scrunchie she was referring to on her wrist, and pulled it off without getting any of the blood coating her fingers on the band.

  “So… uhhh… how do I do this?” I asked.

  I’d never had to tie up anyone's hair before, and I didn’t want to do anything weird or terribly wrong.

  “Just get all of it together and wrap it around my hair twice.” She laughed.

  I brushed all her hair back behind her shoulders with my fingers. The wavy locks felt like smooth silk in my hands, and I fought the urge to caress it further. I gathered it toward the back and twisted the scrunchie around it until it stayed in place.

  “Thanks.” She twisted her head back and gazed up at me.

  “No problem,” I muttered and tried not to stare.

  Even with her hands covered in dinosaur blood and the terrible ponytail I’d just given her, she was stunning, and standing above her like this I could see the tops of her perky breasts.

  “Here, this one.” She turned back to the glass, and I hoped that she hadn’t realized I was looking at her boobs, but then again. If dinosaurs were really back, and in London, I had bigger things to worry about than if she caught me staring at her nice breasts.

  “Yeah, that looks good,” I said as I examined Becka’s spear tip.

  She held up another glass shard similar to the one Hae-won had found, and I picked up another pole so she could place the glass against the top where I could tape it.

  About a minute later we had the other spear ready, and I passed them out to the girls.

  “Alright, let’s make our way to the dorm carefully,” I said. “We’ll keep an eye out for that animal and try not to make too much noise.”

  Both women nodded, and we started to cross the grass and paths that led to my dormitory. We didn’t have a light this time, since we needed to be as stealthy as possible, so at every turn we stopped to check the surroundings before we stepped out. It took us longer than it normally would, but we still reached the front door before long. I got my ID card out of my wallet and swiped the scanner at the door. A light flashed green, the door clicked, and I pulled it open.

  Inside the hall was dark, and I stepped in with caution until the motion sensor caught sight of me and the corridor lit up. I gave the hallway and foyer a quick scan, but it looked exactly like it had before.

  “Where is your room?” Becka asked from behind me.

  “It’s on the second floor,” I replied. “The stairs are this way.”

  I led them down the long carpeted hallway toward the center of the building where an open area with tables and large windows sat on the right. To the left, a staircase curved back and up and led to the next level, and I glanced around the common room in case there was any sign that another person was staying here, but it was exactly the way it had been earlier that night when I headed for the library.

  We moved on up the stairs, and I led the women to my room, unlocked it, and stepped inside. It was a simple one room dorm with a large window on the far wall facing the square, my bed pushed up against the left wall, and a desk and wardrobe along the right. The three of us moved inside and set the spears against the side wall.<
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  Then we all let out long sighs of relief.

  “We made it.” Hae-won said, and then she moved to turn on the light.

  “Hold on a second.” I grabbed her shoulder to stop her, and then I moved across the room to pull the curtains shut.

  I nodded, and she clicked on the light.

  “Alright,” I said, “I think we should barricade ourselves in for the night and see how things are in the morning.”

  “Okay, but first, is there somewhere I can wash up here?” Becka asked as she held up her hands. “Is that your bathroom?”

  “Yeah, it’s just here.” I pointed to the bathroom door off to the left.

  “Thanks,” Becka said and walked into the other room.

  I looked around my place and realized what a mess it was. I knew the girls weren’t over as a date or anything, but I still didn’t want them to think I was a slob. I hurried to pick up any loose clothes, tossed crumpled and torn paper into the wastebasket, and tried my best to make things look presentable. Hae-won came over to the desk as I was straightening up things.

  “You should see my place,” she said as she smiled up at me.

  “Oh, I swear it’s usually better than this,” I protested. “I’ve just been lazy over the break.”

  Hae-won just laughed before turning to Becka as she walked back into the room.

  “I’ll make this up.” I gestured to the bed. “One of you can have it if you want. I’ve got some extra blankets and stuff for the floor, too.”

  The two girls looked at each other.

  “You can take it,” Becka said to Hae-won.

  “No, you have it,” the blue eyed woman replied. “It’s okay.”

  “We could share it,” the blonde suggested.

  Hae-won looked at the bed again. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I don’t move much in my sleep,” Becka said. “You can take the side by the wall, I’ll be fine.”

  My mind froze for a second on the idea of the two gorgeous women sharing my bed, but then I remembered I would definitely still be on the floor.

  “We should try to secure the door,” I said and nodded to the old-style wooden entrance. “The lock is fine but it might not hold if something starts ramming itself at it.”

  “Yes, I’d feel better if something else was blocking it,” Hae-won agreed.

  We all grabbed a side of the desk I had just cleared and heaved it into the space in front of the door. When the two of them were out of the way I gave it a final shove to wedge it tight into the door. The desk was heavy, but I still wasn’t satisfied with the barrier. I still had the rope from the tool closet, so I tried to think of a way to use that to strengthen the door. It would need to go around the handle and then to the side. The radiator followed the wall by the handle and it was pretty close to the door, there was only maybe five or six inches between its top corner and the handle.

  I decided to try it, so I set to work wrapping the rope around the handle of the door several times and tying it securely. Then, I took the loose end and wrapped it a few times around the main section of the radiator. I did another loop around the handle every couple of loops around the radiator and before long I had a web of blue rope between the two. It wouldn’t stop the door from opening, but it would keep it from opening more than a few inches, and if nothing else, that would buy us some time.

  When the door was secured as best as we could make it, I turned back to Becka and Hae-won. They both looked a bit calmer now that we were all in a closed and secured space. I also felt a lot more secure knowing that nothing could sneak up on us from anywhere now. We were off the ground level and it would take something a lot stronger than those raptors to break through the door and push past the heavy, ornate desk.

  “I guess now we should try to figure out what the hell is going on,” Becka said.

  “I guess so,” I replied. “If anyone knows.”

  “I need to wash up first,” the dark-haired woman said.

  “The bathroom is all yours.” I gestured to the door.

  “Thanks,” she said and walked off into the other room.

  The blonde moved across to the bed, sat down on the edge, and took her phone out of her pocket.

  “It’s weird that we haven’t gotten any alerts or anything?” Becka noted. “You would think if there’s a time to use the emergency text service, it would be now.”

  “Yeah, that is strange,” I agreed. “There was pretty much no warning before we got ambushed.”

  “Maybe there’s something wrong with the phone networks,” she suggested. “Like there’s a tower down or a power outage or something.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I did get a text a bit before the attack, though.”

  Now that I was thinking about it, the text had actually been a kind of warning. It looked like a joke, that’s probably what everyone thought. I’d have to watch the video now, if I could, and see if those ‘lizards’ the text mentioned looked anything like the ones we had fought.

  “I’ll try calling my mum,” Becka said as Hae-won walked back into the bedroom.

  “Good luck,” I said and smiled at the blonde woman.

  Hae-won and I moved over to the open area where the desk had been to try to give her as much space as we could. The Asian woman unlaced her boots and placed them down in the corner. I noticed that they were now a pristine white again and realized she must have cleaned them off in the bathroom.

  “Do you have a phone charger, by the way?” The ebony haired woman asked. She looked smaller without the heavy boots. She had seemed delicate before, but now she looked as light and graceful as a ballerina.

  “Yeah, what type of charger?” I asked.

  She held up her phone in reply, and I took it and studied the plug. Luckily, it was a USB-C like mine. I grabbed the charger from the desk drawer and passed it to her before grabbing my laptop and heading back. She plugged it into the wall by the open space and I offered her the desk chair to sit in while I took a spot on the floor. Sitting this close I could smell a fresh flower and pear scent coming from her long dark locks of hair. It was subtle and pleasant, I had to keep myself from leaning in closer to smell it more.

  I was about to start searching for information when I looked up and caught Becka’s eyes across the room. She looked concerned, so I got to my feet again and went over to her.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked.

  “She isn’t answering,” Becka said.

  She looked like she might start crying, and I really didn’t want that to happen.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” I said as I took a seat next to her. “As far as we know everything there is perfectly normal. You said you lived in the north, right?”

  “Yorkshire, yeah,” She said and took in a shaky breath.

  “Well that’s so far from here, they probably haven’t heard anything about it yet,” I reasoned. “And it’s almost one in the morning. She’s probably just sleeping, right?”

  Her face brightened at my last comment.

  “You’re right,” she said, “Mum can never manage to stay up past eleven, she must be asleep.”

  “You can try again in the morning,” I said. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

  She nodded, though she didn’t comment on my optimism.

  Becka wrapped her arms around me and leaned her head into my chest. Her action shocked me for half a moment, but then I wrapped my arm around the curve of her slender waist. We stayed like that for a few moments before she pulled away and looked up to my face.

  “Thank you, Jason,” the brown-eyed beauty said. “For everything. If you weren’t there, I probably would have ended up just like that librarian.”

  “Don’t think about that,” I told her. “We’re all safe now.”

  I stood up from her side and considered sitting back in my spot by the wall, but I didn’t want Becka to feel like I was walking away, so I settled for the middle of the floor between the two women.

  I opened up my laptop and started sear
ching for anything that would tell us what was going on. First, I typed in ‘London dinosaurs’ and dozens of articles came up. The most recent one talked about the attack and mentioned the government’s response.

  “Hey, this article,” I started, “it says that the Prime Minister has issued an order authorizing armed police units to deal with the threat.”

  “That’s good,” Hae-won said from her perch on the desk chair. “It looks like the same thing happened in Korea.” She gestured to her phone. “There’s something about dinosaurs attacking Seoul. I should try to call my family, but it’s not a good time there. I don’t know that they would answer.”

  “You could try tomorrow,” I offered. “I think that if the police are dealing with it, we should try to stay calm and figure everything out when things settle down.”

  They both nodded and continued to scroll through their phones. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea to read all the panic and speculation going on in the news, but somehow I couldn’t keep myself from looking, either.

  “The queen has been moved to the underground war rooms,” Becka said without emotion.

  I looked down the list of articles. If what Hae-won said was true, did that mean that this had happened in America as well? I searched ‘america dinosaurs’ next and a hundred or so articles popped up in the results.

  “They attacked New York, too,” I told them, “Chicago, LA, Dallas. What the fuck is going on?”

  “Is it only major cities?” Becka asked and looked up from her phone.

  “That’s all I’m seeing,” I replied. “So far, anyway.”

  “That’s so odd.” The blonde shook her head.

  I snapped my laptop closed because these articles weren’t helping us. Clearly no one knew what was really happening and we were only going to work ourselves up by reading more.

  “We should try to sleep,” I said. “Maybe tomorrow there will be more useful information.”

  The girls agreed and Hae-won reluctantly left her phone plugged in and moved over to the bed. I grabbed a couple blankets and set them up on the floor while the girls got settled.

  “I’ll turn the light off,” I said. “Then we can open the curtains again. I’m a light sleeper. I’ll keep an eye out, and if anything looks out of the ordinary, I’ll wake you up.”