Dinosaur World

by Logan Jacobs

  Becka leaned onto her elbow, “How will you be able to see? If anything is out of the ordinary, I mean. It’s really dark.”

  “The sun will start to come up in a few hours,” I shrugged. “Until then, we’ll just have to hope it’s alright. We are on the second floor, and the door is closed tight, so we should be okay.”

  She seemed uneasy, but she lowered herself back down onto the bed. I turned off the light, pulled the curtains back, took a quick look around, and laid back down on the folded blankets.

  We laid there for about five minutes before Becka’s gentle whisper cut through the silence.

  “Are you two asleep?” She asked.

  “No,” Hae-won whispered back.

  “No,” I said. “What’s up?”

  She sat up and glanced out the window, her blonde hair glowing in the moonlight.

  “I don’t think I can sleep,” she sighed. “I’m too worried.”

  “Yeah, I can’t sleep either.” Hae-won agreed.

  “Maybe we could talk about something else for a while?” the blonde suggested.

  “Okay, should I turn the light back on?” I asked.

  “No, it’s okay,” Becka said.

  “Yeah, I like seeing the stars,” Hae-won agreed.

  “So, what course is everyone doing?” the British girl asked.

  “Mine is History,” I said. “Not that interesting, I know.”

  “I think it’s interesting,” Becka protested.

  “Really?” I asked. “Most of the time I say History, and everyone’s eyes kind of glaze over.”

  “Awww.” she chuckled. “I suppose I wouldn’t like to study it, but sometimes it’s nice to hear stories, like National Treasure.”

  “You know that movie didn’t really happen.” I teased.

  She made a small indignant sound. “Of course, I know that. I meant the stories they talk about in the film, like Benjamin Franklin and all that.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “Some of those are real, and I have to admit I like that movie, too.”

  “What about you, Hae-won?” Becka asked. “What’s your course?”

  “Oh, I take music,” she explained.

  “Wow, really?” I asked and looked up at the dark haired woman from my seated position on the floor.

  “Yeah, piano,” the Korean said. “The course is classical, but I don’t know if I will go into that.”

  “You want to be a musician?” I asked.

  “I guess so,” she said. “I’m not sure it will work out, though. My parents think I came here to study engineering.”

  “Oh, do they not want you to study piano?” I asked as I turned to look at her dark shape in the bed.

  She shrugged but didn’t say anything else in reply.

  “I don’t really want to do what my parents want me to, either.” I explained, trying to make her feel better.

  “No?” Hae-won asked.

  “My dad wants me to be a lawyer,” I said. “That’s what he is, and he has his own firm that he wants me to join. I’m supposed to go to law school after I graduate.”

  “What do you want to do, then?” The dark haired woman asked.

  I thought about it for a second before I replied.

  “I really don’t know,” I admitted.

  There was a second of silence before Becka picked up the conversation again.

  “I suppose that makes me the boring one, then,” she said. “With the parental support and all that.”

  “What are you studying?” I asked.

  “Psychology,” she replied. “I want to be a therapist, eventually.”

  “Well, I don’t think your parents could justify not agreeing with that choice,” I said.

  She shrugged. “Really, I think my mum is just happy I went to Cambridge. She’s one of those people that thinks if you go to a good school, you’re bound to have a good life.”

  “A good school is important,” Hae-won added.

  “That’s true,” Becka mused. “But I’m just not sure it’s everything.”

  I nodded in agreement, and the three of us all fell silent for a minute.

  “So, do you want to tell us more about your idiot ex boyfriend?” Becka asked with a sly smile.

  “I’m tired now,” the dark-haired woman said as she laid down and pulled the blanket over her.

  “Okayyyyy, we don’t have to talk about that,” Becka laughed.

  A smile spread across my face. “We really should get some sleep.”

  Becka sighed. “Yes, master,” she said in a joking tone before laying down to sleep as well.

  I rolled over and tried to get comfortable on the blankets, but I realized after a minute that no matter what I did, I likely wouldn’t sleep well tonight. I laid there with my eyes open for a while, thinking about everything that was going on. If this was happening all over, even in America, it might be affecting my parents, too. Neither of them lived in a large city, though my mom didn’t live far from Orlando. I wondered if that was a big enough city to be a target for whatever the hell was happening. Still, they were both in America where everyone had guns and the police had armored vans and even tanks. These dinosaurs would be no match for them.

  I even knew for certain that my dad kept a few shotguns in the house. They would be fine, I just needed to sleep through tonight and everything would seem clearer in the morning. I hoped that the armed police the Prime Minister talked about would be enough to fight off all these things.

  I tried to get the thoughts out of my head. Of course they would be able to handle them. We had taken out three as complete amateurs, and they were armed professionals.

  Everything was going to be okay, and I tried to focus on other things.

  I heard Becka’s gentle snoring from the bed and smiled to myself. If I had to be stuck in a shitty situation like this, at least I got to be with these two incredible girls. They were both smart, bold, and beautiful, and I was glad to have them by my side.

  Those thoughts seemed to ease my worries slightly and at some point I drifted off to sleep.

  I woke up to the sound of loud banging followed by a frantic high-pitched clawing sound. For a few seconds I was still half asleep, and I tried to figure out what was going on and why I was asleep on the floor.

  “Jason!” Hae-won’s voice cut through my confusion.

  I jumped to my feet and turned my attention to the banging. It was coming from the door, behind the desk barricade.

  “What is it?” Becka asked.

  The door started rattling, and I stepped in closer. I put my hand on the wood and I felt the power behind each blow, but it seemed to be holding strong. The loud, unsettling scratching started again and I leaned forward to look into the door’s eye hole. I almost didn’t need to look, I knew exactly what had to be causing the sound.

  Sure enough, as I glanced through the sight, I saw the same type of raptor from earlier, covered in scrapes with one arm hanging limp at its side. There was no doubt about it, it was the raptor from the library, and it had somehow tracked us here.

  Chapter 5

  “Jason?” Becka’s voice cut through my thoughts. “Jason, what is it?”

  “It’s that asshole raptor from before,” I groaned as I stepped back away from the door.

  “What?” Hae-won shouted. “The same one? How is that possible?”

  She hit on the question that I had thought to myself. How could it be possible for that thing to find us in here unless it had seen us come in?

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  The door rattled again.

  “What?” Becka asked. “What difference does that make?”

  “Just tell me the time,” I demanded again.

  “3:37,” she replied after she glanced at her phone.

  “It’s been a while, then,” I continued. “We must have come here around midnight. It didn’t see us then, or it would have come after us sooner. Somehow it figured out where we were hours later.”

  “If i
t didn’t follow us,” Hae-won reasoned, “How did it find us in this exact room?”

  That was a good point. Even if the creature had seen us enter the building and waited, for some reason, before it attacked, how did it know we were in this room?

  “It tracked our scent,” I said.

  “Are you saying these things can smell where we went?” Becka asked. “That’s crazy, there’s no way.”

  “Well, we don’t know much of anything about these dinosaurs,” I replied, “Even the people who study fossils don’t know exactly what they were capable of. Besides, we don’t know that what’s out there is the same as those. For all we know, it’s some scientifically engineered mutant.”

  I wondered if that was the case, did it mean we were being targeted somehow? Did the animal come after us because we killed his friends, like some type of revenge mission? Maybe it only came after us because we were the closest, but somehow that didn’t feel right. It must have taken a while to break through the glass security door in the lobby and now it was throwing its entire body at a solid wooden door. This had to be something personal or some kind of directive.

  “So, what do we do?” the Korean girl asked.

  “We know it followed us here and that somehow it knows this is the room we’re in,” I explained. “For some reason it wants to kill us specifically.”

  The slam of the raptor’s body against the wood sounded again.

  “Can it get in here?” Becka asked.

  I looked back at the entrance and studied the barricade. The desk was still in place, and all the ropes were secured. The door shuddered, and it pounded against the desk, but the solid piece of furniture didn’t move. The lock was still intact as well, though that seemed to be the main weak point of the barricade.

  “I don’t think it can,” I said. “It’s putting its whole body weight into these hits, but none of the supports are moving.”

  “Should we just hope that it tires itself out and goes away again?” The blonde woman asked.

  I thought about that as an option. Letting it tire itself out sounded like a good idea, but if it went away again, that meant it could come back and try to attack us again. Next time we might not have the protection of all the barricades.

  “I don’t know if it’s a good idea to let it get away,” I began. “If it disappears, it can just pop up out of nowhere. We’ll need to leave this room eventually, and probably sooner rather than later.”

  “Should we try to kill it now?” Hae-won asked.

  “That might be the best option,” I explained.

  There was no saying how long it could keep ramming itself against the door. Maybe it was better if we went on the offensive rather than waiting until either it or the door gave in.

  “No way,” Becka said. “If we wanted to fight it, we would have to move the barricade. It’s like inviting it in here to kill us.”

  “Maybe there’s a way we can open the door part of the way,” I offered. “The spears are really thin, and we can stab it through a crack in the door if we just open it a bit.”

  I thought it was better not to mention it to Becka, but I also reasoned that it was a good opportunity to test out the spears we’d made. I was worried they wouldn’t be as useful as I had hoped, and this seemed like the best way to test them out with the lowest stakes. If it didn’t end up working, we could put the barricade back and try to figure out another way.

  “How would we keep it from just pushing through anyway?” The British girl asked. “It’s really strong. I don’t think the two of us could hold it long enough for you to kill it.”

  “Maybe we can use the desk to hold it?” Hae-won suggested.

  I thought about that idea and studied the desk. It was solid but it was also big and it took up most of the space by the entrance. I feared that using it to hold the door would leave the creature with too much space to get in and me with almost no space to maneuver.

  “It’s kind of big,” I explained. “Maybe we could use the ropes instead.”

  Becka’s mouth fell into a surprised ‘o’ at my suggestion.

  “No,” the blonde woman said. “You must really be mental. There’s no way we are doing that. It’s a thin rope, it’s not going to hold that thing. Besides, I still don’t think we should open the door at all.”

  I was starting to feel like this was a circular discussion. I would have to try to convince Becka of the need for killing the dinosaur or just try to do it without her help or support, but that was a last resort.

  “What do you think we should do?” I asked. “Letting it go away just to jump out at us later is a bad option. Do you agree with that at least?”

  “Yes, I get that, but should it really be us that kills it?” she sighed.

  “Who else?” I asked, not understanding her meaning.

  “They said they deployed armed police, right?” she explained. “Won’t some of them be able to deal with it?”

  “They won’t know it’s in here,” I countered, “And I’m not willing to bet on them finding it before it finds us if we let it leave.”

  “Let’s call the police, then,” she said. “The lines were busy last night, but that was ages ago. They could be free now, especially if the police have been taking out the creatures.”

  “You’re welcome to try,” I agreed. “It would be great if they could come here and shoot it for us, but somehow I just don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  Becka took her phone out and dialled three numbers before putting the phone to her ear. I heard it ringing from across the room, and then it clicked and what sounded like an automated voice played before the call ended.

  “Well?” I asked. I felt bad highlighting the fact that no one was coming to help us, but I wanted her to see why we needed to do this.

  “Fine, okay,” she relented, “but we only do it if we have a good plan. We can’t just swing the door open and hope we can stab it fast enough.”

  “Of course,” I agreed.

  “The rope might work,” Hae-won spoke up. “We could wrap it around the handle then the radiator and tie it to something heavy.”

  “And we would only open it a crack?” Becka asked. “We can arrange it like that?”

  I thought about Hae-won’s plan for the rope. Becka had been right about the two of them holding the door. I didn’t want to bet on them being able to keep a grip on the rope. But maybe if we set it up like Hae-won suggested and moved the desk to the center of the room, we could use that as an anchor. Then the two of them would be able to open the door slowly by holding onto the rope, but if the raptor made a sudden jump at the door and they couldn’t hold it, the desk would catch it and keep the door from flying open.

  “I think we can do it,” I said. “Let’s start by moving the desk into the middle of the room.”

  The three of us worked together, picked up the heavy desk, and placed it down around the middle of my dorm room. I went back over to the door and examined the lock closer. I needed to be sure that it wouldn’t break suddenly after I removed the rope.

  I watched as the door vibrated beneath the raptor’s weight. The catch moved slightly, giving the door its rattling sound, but the lock itself looked solid. The screws were firmly in place, and I didn’t think there was a reason to worry that it would suddenly give way.

  “Help me with this rope,” I said to Hae-won.

  The beautiful Asian woman walked over, knelt down by the radiator, and studied the knots I had made before starting to dig at them and untangle the rope. I turned my attention to the knots around the handle and began to undo them. I kept my shoulder wedged into the door to try to stop it from shaking too violently. Soon the two of us had undone the web of ropes, and we now had the whole length of it to work with.

  “Okay,” I said as I collected it. “We need to get it into a good position so we can keep the door from opening all the way.”

  “We should use the middle part for the door handle,” Becka suggested.

  “What
do you mean?” I asked. “Here.” She came over by the door, took the rope from me, rolled it out, found the middle, and folded the whole thing in half. Then she fed the folded end through the door handle and then passed the two loose ends through the loop she had created.

  “Now it can’t come untied by the door,” she declared and passed the doubled up rope to me.

  “Good idea,” I said. “That should work pretty well. Now the rope is twice as strong, too.”

  “What are we doing with the rest of it?” The British woman asked.

  “We need it to go through the radiator,” I explained. “That will hold it to the side and make sure it won’t open.”

  I fed the two ends down the side of the radiator and wondered if I had enough rope to loop it through again. In the end I figured that it was better to save it for the knots around the desk since they would be what was really keeping it in place.

  “And now we tie it to this.” I wrapped the rope around the central portion of the desk twice. “But we need to leave some slack so the door will open enough for me to stick the spear through.”

  I loosened the rope, trying to gauge where a good length would be. I figured I wouldn’t need much but put just a little more than I thought. That way, there wouldn’t be a risk of us fighting the raptor to close the door again and having to reset the whole thing. The girls could take some of the slack, too, at least at the beginning.

  I tied a couple figure eight knots to keep the ends in place and looked at my work. It looked a tiny bit convoluted, but it looked like it would work and at this point that was all I really cared about. I reached down and picked up the slightly loosened length of rope between the radiator and the desk.

  “Can you two pull this tight?” I asked. “I want you to try to let it out slowly so the door doesn’t fly open and put extra strain on the rope.”

  “Yes,” Hae-won answered.

  “Sure.” Becka nodded in agreement.

  The women grabbed the rope and pulled it tight against the radiator. I studied the three spears lined against the wall and chose the one with the plastic handle. It looked the best secured and I figured if it failed and we lost it then at least we had two wooden ones left that we could sharpen.