Dinosaur World

by Logan Jacobs

  The door was now fully open, and I could see inside to where the three dinosaurs had been eating. Whoever it was, they were nothing more than a mass of blood and bones now. I could just make out the shape of a blood stained lab coat underneath and I wondered if it was a doctor from the clinic.

  “Do we keep looking?” Hae-won asked.

  “Yeah, we should be thorough,” I replied. “Let’s search the rest of the rooms. I don’t think there will be anything else lurking around here, but be careful.”

  “Of course,” Becka said.

  I decided to take the room with the dead doctor in it and let the girls search the room next door. It had more than the other rooms and some of the medication left in the cabinets seemed like stuff we could use, so I took it. Still there was nothing for Becka there, so I kept looking.

  The girls came back into the hall empty handed as well.

  “The room there seemed fairly stocked, but it still didn’t have the shots we need,” I explained. “I really think that stuff would be more likely to be in a supply closet.”

  “But it was raided,” Becka pointed out.

  “There might be more than one,” I replied. “I think we should look for those before we search the rest of the rooms.”

  “Good idea,” Hae-won said.

  “Let’s search this way,” I said and started to scan my way down the hallway.

  Most of the doors looked the same, but the closet we found before had a smaller door and no nametag, so I kept an eye out for that. There was nothing in the hall at the back of the clinic, so we rounded the corner again and started up the hall that led back to the lobby.

  In this hall, I could clearly make out the blood stains that led all the way to the front entrance. The thinning trail curved here and went into another doctor’s office. The door to this office was open, too, and I wondered if there was another pack of raptors standing over another corpse.

  “Should we check that?” Hae-won asked in a muted whisper.

  “Let’s just close the door,” I replied. “If something starts pounding on it, we’ll know to get the hell out of here.”

  She nodded, walked over to the door, grabbed the handle, and pulled it shut quickly. We waited to see if anything inside noticed and tried to get out, but there was only silence.

  “Maybe the raptors we killed got somebody else earlier,” Becka observed.

  “Yeah.” I eyed the door with suspicion. “Let’s just find the closet.”

  “Is this it?” Hae-won asked and pointed to a door further up.

  I walked down the hall and saw what she was looking at. It was another smaller door with no tag on the wall beside it.

  “Yes,” I said and rushed over to the door and tried the handle, but it didn’t budge. “Fuck it.”

  “What’s wrong?” Becka asked as both girls joined me by the closet door.

  “It’s locked,” I answered and turned to the blonde girl. “Do you think you could pick the lock?”

  Becka reached out and tried the door handle, pulled on it and tested its movement, “I don’t know. I can try, but it’s solid. I’ve never picked a lock like this before.”

  “Will there be a key in here?” the Asian girl asked.

  “That’s a good point,” I said. “Let’s search around the front desk.”

  We headed back to the lobby and searched through the contents in the reception area, but it was mostly computers and files. There was no key anywhere around it. I tried to think of anywhere else that they might keep a key to a medical supply closet. I figured at least some of the staff would have to have them, but that didn’t really help.

  Then my thoughts flashed back to the half-eaten doctor.

  “Wait, I think we need to go back to the room with the raptors,” I told the girls.

  “Why?” Becka asked.

  “I think the guy they, you know, ate, might have been a doctor,” I explained. “He could have the key with him.”

  “Ewwww.” Becka cringed. “Okay, but I’m not touching him.”

  “Don’t worry.” I snickered. “I can look.”

  “Did I tell you yet today that you are my hero?” The blonde batted her eyelashes at me.

  “A few times,” I chuckled as I tried to keep my mind from remembering the taste of her lips on mine or her demand for Hae-won to kiss me.

  I really had no idea where my relationship with the two beautiful women was going, but I really wanted to live long enough to find out.

  We headed back to the hall with the dead dinos, and I stepped over the dead creature in the doorway. I walked over to the corpse and now that I was close, I could see the creatures hadn’t touched the man’s face. It was so covered in blood that it was hard to make out the features, but he looked like an older English man, probably in his sixties.

  I looked around him and tried to spot anything that could be connected to a key, like an ID pass or wristband, but then I saw that his lab coat had pockets. I took a deep breath, reached into the first blood soaked pocket, closed my hand around a small piece of metal, pulled it out, and then let out my breath when I saw it was a key.

  I stood up, went back out into the hall, and on toward the closet door.

  “Did you find it?” Becka asked hopefully from beside me.

  “Yeah.” I grinned as I wiggled the bloody key in the air. “Let’s just hope it’s the right one.”

  I pushed the key into the closet lock, and my heart leaped when it turned. I opened the door and saw the whole thing crowded with supplies and medicines.

  “Yay,” Hae-won smiled and took out her phone light to search through the names on the various bottles.

  “Come on, let’s find this,” I said to Becka, and we both followed hae-won’s example and began reading through labels. “If you find anything that you think we could use, set it to the side.”

  “Is this the vaccine?” Becka asked. “You said Tdap, right?”

  Hae-won took the bottle and studied the label, “Yes, this is the one for the vaccine. We need the one for the toxin, too.”

  “Damn,” the blonde said. “It’s too bad, there’s loads of this stuff. I guess I’ll keep looking.”

  “It’s good that we found that, too,” I noted. “It means we won’t have to worry about this again.”

  “I think I found some,” the dark-haired girl exclaimed and passed a small bottle over to me.

  “Tetanus immunoglobulin,” I read. “Yeah, this is it? How much of this is there?”

  “Just three of those small bottles,” she explained.

  “Grab those and anything else you think we might need,” I instructed the girls and took the bottle out into the hall so I could read it better.

  It seemed like one bottle was 250 units, a single dose according to what Hae-won said. It was more than enough to treat Becka’s wound, and I felt my spirits rise. I was starting to think we wouldn’t be able to find the stuff, but now I had it here in my hand.

  I looked at the bottle top and unscrewed the lid. Inside it had a second cover with a rubber circle and a small hole in the center. It must be an injection.

  “Hey,” I called out to the girls who were packing up more stuff from the closet. “Are there any syringes there?”

  “Yes there are plenty in this case,” Hae-won answered and stepped out from the closet to pass them to me.

  “We have to inject it, don’t we?” Becka asked and stepped out with the packaged supplies.

  “Yeah, looks like it,” I replied.

  “I thought we might,” the blonde said. “I mean, I was hoping it was more like a vitamin, but of course it has to be difficult. Do either of you know how to do injections?”

  Hae-won and I looked at each other and shook our heads.

  “We can look it up,” the dark-haired girl suggested.

  “Should we wait until we get back?” the British girl asked.

  “No.” I shook my head. “I don’t want to risk something happening and us losing it. We may as well do it
in one of these offices, they’ll have all the supplies.

  “Alright,” Becka said. “I just… really don’t like needles, though.”

  “I’ll be gentle,” I said.

  “Jason is very gentle,” Hae-won said matter-of-factly, and I felt my cheeks heat up.

  Becka also seemed to guess at what the beautiful Asian woman was hinting at, and she quickly glanced at me as her own cheeks reddened.

  We went into one of the empty office rooms, and Becka sat up on the examination table.

  “You tell me what to do, Hae-won,” I said as soon as I’d unpacked one of the needles.

  “Let me look,” the Asian girl started searching on her phone.

  “I can’t believe we’re using google for this right now,” Becka said with a half-hearted laugh.

  “I mean, I could ask the doctor, but I don’t think he’s up for it right now,” I said.

  “Not the time for jokes,” the blonde chuckled as she playfully punched my arm.

  “Okay,” Hae-won cut in. “It says you can’t inject it into the bloodstream, or you might go into shock.”

  “Fun,” Becka commented.

  “Then where do you inject it?” I asked.

  “It says, intramuscularly,” the blue-eyed girl replied. “Let me look… okay, the top of the shoulder works. There is a red tip needle for sucking in medicine and then a blue tip one for injecting it. You inject at ninety degrees about two to three centimeters below the top of the shoulder.”

  “How do we know it won’t go into a blood vessel?” I asked.

  “It says to aspirate the needle,” she explained. “So once you put it in, you pull back a bit with the syringe pump and if blood comes back into the tube, you have to try again.”

  “Okay, that actually sounds pretty smart,” Becka said. “Can you do it?”

  I took the phone from Hae-won and looked over the instructions for the shot. It didn’t look too difficult, I studied the process again and thought I could do that.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “We should be alright.”

  I heard Becka take a few deep breaths as I handed the phone back and started to ready the syringe. I had to admit, I was pretty nervous, too. I knew that messing around with medical stuff like this could get someone killed, but we didn’t have much of a choice right now. I would just have to follow the instructions and be extra careful.

  I finished drawing in the dose and switched the needle tip to the injection needle, “Are you ready for this?”

  “Yeah, just do it,” the blonde said and looked away from the spot on her arm I swabbed with the alcohol patch.

  “Alright.” I pushed in the needle at the right degree and pulled back on the plunger slightly. There was no blood in the needle, so I pushed the injection in and pulled the needle away.

  “Is it done?” Becka asked, letting out a breath.

  “Yeah,” I said, “Now just the vaccine.”

  “That is muscular, too,” Hae-won explained. “It should be the same.”

  I grabbed the vaccine bottle from the counter and filled another syringe, “Good, I’ll use the other arm, though.”

  “Thanks,” Becka said and smiled at me.

  I switched to the injection tip and swapped her other shoulder before following the same process I had with the other shot. When it was done, I pulled the needle out and tossed it into a waste basket.

  “Thank you, Jason.” Becka grinned. “Does that mean I’m cured?”

  “Yes,” I smiled, “It should.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered as she wrapped her arms around me.

  I returned her hug for a few seconds, but then I motioned for Hae-won to join us, and my lover stepped in so that the three of us could embrace each other.

  Then I helped Becka off the exam table, and she wrapped her arms around my neck once more and kissed me deeply. Her soft lips pressed into mine and her tongue curled briefly between them before she pulled back, and I stared at her in shock.

  “Thank you, really.” the blonde woman released her grip and turned to Hae-won. “Thank you, both. There is no way I could have done any of that alone. I would just be dead.”

  “No problem,” Hae-won said with a gentle smile. “I’m just happy you’re okay. We all need to be together to survive.”

  “Absolutely,” Becka said as she nodded.

  “Great,” I smiled. “Now let’s get the fuck out of here, please.”

  “Definitely,” Becka laughed.

  We headed out of the clinic and back out onto the street outside. It was still bleak and raining, but somehow the fresh air and open space felt so freeing. We searched around the area, but there was nothing alarming and the place was pretty quiet.

  “Should we head back the way we came?” Becka asked.

  “No,” I replied. “Let’s just cut up this way and take the main street back. We can try to find a car there since if we get stopped now and they make us go home, there’s no issue. Hell, maybe we could even get a lift.”

  “I doubt it,” the blonde said.

  It was pretty unlikely, but I was riding a high from our successes and Becka’s kiss, so I felt like anything could happen. The girls seemed to agree with my plan for the route, and they followed me out down the road and across to the other street.

  “Do you see that?” Hae-won asked, and I immediately switched back into defense mode.

  “What?” I asked. “What is it?”

  “It looks like…” she squinted her eyes. “A military truck.”

  “What?” I looked over to where she pointed and I could just make out a large tan square shape.

  “Should we check it out?” the blonde asked.

  “Yeah, let’s be careful, though,” I replied. “We can get a bit closer and see what’s going on.”

  The three of us crept up the street closer to the giant block of a vehicle. I was expecting to see a group of soldiers or some kind of commotion, but everything was quiet when we approached.

  I studied the truck and realized it was more like a large jeep. It was tall, had four huge wheels and the back had no windows. I could see through the front windows, and there was no one inside of it.

  “It looks empty,” Becka observed.

  We were just across the street from it now, but there was still nothing around to indicate that there was a reason for the huge car to be there.

  “Let’s go up to it,” I suggested.

  “You go, Jason,” Hae-won said. “We can keep watch for you.”

  I nodded and crept across the street to the base of the massive wheels. I reached up to the door handle and tried it, just on the off chance that it was unlocked. To my complete surprise, the handle clicked, and the door swung open.

  “Huh,” I said as I climbed up the step to the vehicle. Then I saw that there was no one inside it, so I motioned for the girls to join me.

  “They just left it here?” the blonde asked as she climbed up to the seat beside me.

  “It seems like it,” I replied.

  Becka moved into the back seat, and Hae-won climbed up beside me.

  “There’s some bags back here,” the blonde commented from the back.

  “Shut the door,” I said to Hae-won and climbed into the space in the back with Becka.

  I unzipped one of the canvas bags in the back seat and gasped at the sight. Sitting on the top of a case of ammunition was a military-looking assault rifle in black and army green. Before I could form the words to tell the girls what I’d found, I was startled by the vehicle’s engine roaring to life.

  I looked up and saw Hae-won sitting in the driver’s seat and studying the control panels.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “They left the keys in,” she shrugged.

  “Really?” I grinned. “Do you think this will block the side gate?”

  “For sure,” the blue-eyed girl said and smiled.

  “You really think we can take it?” the blonde woman asked and pointed to the open bag. �
�The gun, too?”

  “I think we’d be as stupid as they were if we just left it here,” I replied. “The military can come and get it back if they want to.”

  “Does this mean you’ll teach us to shoot?” Becka grinned.

  “Sure,” I said. “Check that other bag, maybe there’s more.”

  “Whoa!” she yelped as she opened up the second canvas bag and pulled out another automatic rifle inside. “These look powerful. Do you know what kind it is?”

  “It’s a bullpup,” I said, “But I’m not sure what--”

  “Bullpup?” Becka asked.

  “Oh, yeah, uh… see how the magazine is behind the grip?” I pointed to the magazine. “It makes the gun a bit smaller and easier to carry around.”

  “So, it will be good for Becka and I?” Hae-won asked as she turned around.

  “Yeah, and…” I trailed off as I glanced at the markings. “L85 looks like the rifle name and… 5.56 NATO. They’ll have no problem taking down human sized dinos or smaller,” I replied. “I think we just hit the jackpot.”

  “Brilliant,” Becka gushed. “This was a lucky trip.”

  “Hell, yeah,” I said as I gave a little fist pump. “Hae-won, can you drive this thing?”

  She studied the dashboard for a minute, “Yes, it looks like the gears are normal. I should be able to do it.”

  “Great.” I zipped up the gun bag and climbed back into the front seats beside the blue-eyed girl. “Come on, Becka, let’s head back home.”

  The blonde woman joined us in the front and Hae-won set the engine into gear. The armored van started to roll forward and soon we were travelling down the street and back toward campus.

  I glanced to my left and right, to the girls on either side of me, and I realized we were all smiling. Despite how terrible and difficult today had been, it seemed like our luck was finally turning around. We’d just found two high-powered weapons and a damn tank on wheels.

  The rain started to clear as we drove, and I got a rushing feeling of triumph. No matter what anyone threw as us now, I felt like the three of us could handle it.

  End of book 1

  End Notes