***
The afternoon went slowly for Chase, and that wasn’t a bad thing after all he had been through lately. He added another layer of two-by-fours to strengthen the patch on the kitchen and boarded up the house’s first-floor windows, watching the surrounding hills for signs of the invaders, or T rex, or whatever else might appear. Other than the peculiar fact that the moon quit flickering late in the day, nothing new or noteworthy happened.
Kit and Dr. Ogilvey spent most of their time conversing with Gar in a strange common language the doctor was developing—half English and half Kra-naga. As the lessons continued in the living room, Chase put away the tools and went to look over the hunkered-down fighting machine again. He thought of his pickup, overturned and mangled by the pachyrhinosaurus up near Sandstone Mountain.
“I wonder what it’s like to drive one of these babies?” he murmured. He put a hand on the sleek nose of the fuselage and felt its shining surface. The machine was about the size if not the shape of a large pickup. It resembled its intended driver, having the overall configuration of a two-legged dinosaur. The silver metal fuselage sat on a pair of hunkered-down legs like the body of a large resting ostrich, just as Gar was now hunkered in the living room. The bent arms projecting out on the sides bore impressive arrays of instruments at their ends: pincers, antennae and cannon-like barrels. The front of the fuselage and open cockpit canopy looked vaguely like an alligator’s head with jaws agape; the body tapered rear-ward to a streamlined point, in which there was plenty of room to enclose the driver’s stretched-out tail.
The machine’s birdlike squatting posture brought the cockpit low enough for Chase to see the strange controls and instruments inside. They beckoned to him. “How hard could this thing be to drive?” he mumbled, stepping up onto the knee of a mechanical leg and climbing into the cockpit. He nestled into the trough-shaped black leather-cushioned interior where he supposed a dinosaurian driver would squat rather than sit. Instead of a seat back, there was a cushioned slot behind him where he could have put his tail if he had one.
The lack of a proper seat bothered Chase but he discovered a pair of gas-peddle-like levers on the floor in front of him with sleeves like the toe-pieces of water-ski bindings. He slipped the toes of his hiking boots into them for leverage and was able to sit comfortably while exploring the controls bristling from every interior wall of the cockpit. Most of the instruments and gauges had no decipherable purpose but a few looked familiar. Two large joysticks, one at each hand, seemed like they ought to control the arms. Each had two buttons on its front surface where fire-control triggers should be.
“So, where’s the on-switch?” he murmured.
“Chase?” Kit had come out on the back porch. “What are you doing?”
He grinned at her. “Gonna give this baby a test drive.”
Without waiting for her reaction he flipped a likely looking toggle switch in front of him and the machine came to life, making small clacking and whining noises. He flipped another toggle beside the first and the legs of the machine automatically stood up, lofting him eight feet above the ground. “Sweet,” he exclaimed.
Kit didn’t share his enthusiasm. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”
“Sure,” said Chase. He grabbed the right-hand joystick and pulled it to him. The right arm lifted. He pushed it outward and the arm lowered. He pushed forward, the arm went forward; he pulled back, the arm went back. He pulled up, pushed down, the arm pointed up or down. He torqued the stick and the wrist rotated. He tried the same maneuvers with the left joystick and got the same responses from the left arm. Wiggling both joysticks simultaneously made the machine flap its arms like some big, preposterous chicken.
Kit smiled and shook her head. “Careful, Chase. Don’t get carried away.”
He laughed out loud. “This thing rocks.” So far, the controls were easy. Guessing the sleeved pedals were leg controls, he wiggled his feet to see what effect they had. The left foot was fixed in place, an anchor-point to maintain the driver’s balance and keep him sitting upright. But at a slight pressure on the right-side foot control, the machine took several steps forward. Unfortunately, it went straight for the house and crashed nose-first into an upright porch beam, causing Kit to scurry inside the back door with a scream. Chase immediately realized his mistake and put his foot in the neutral position, halting the machine. It took several quick back-steps on its own to regain its footing and then righted itself and stood still, almost as if it had a sense of balance.
Kit crept back onto the porch and Chase called to her, “Did you see that? It practically drives itself.”
“It had better drive itself,” she chided, “if that’s the best you can do.”
Undaunted, he noticed there was room to fit someone behind him.
“Want to go for a spin, Kit?”
“No!” she retorted. “That thing is dangerous, especially with you in it.”
“C’mon,” he smiled. “I’m starting to get the hang of it.” He flipped the second toggle and the machine hunkered down to let her climb in.
She took a long, dubious look at him but finally stepped off the porch, climbed up on a leg and then slipped into the cockpit behind him. She settled down and put her arms around his waist like a motorcycle passenger.
“I think I’m gonna regret this,” she said as he flipped the toggle again and the machine rose, jostling them and causing her to hug more tightly against his back. Chase didn’t complain.
He tried the foot-control more gingerly this time and the machine took a single step forward. Then he pulled back with the toe of his boot, rocking the foot-sleeve up rather than down, and the machine responded by backing up. It moved away from the house, swaying smoothly with each stride. Chase halted by putting his toe in the center position. Then he swiveled his foot to the left. The machine started a leftward rotation, walking in place as it did. “Awesome,” he said, swiveling his foot to the right and getting a similar right turn in place. When the machine had turned enough to face away from the house he said, “Okay, let’s take this baby on the road.”
“Wait a minute,” Kit protested. “Can’t you put the lid down, at least?”
He searched around the array of dials and switches in front of him until he found another promising toggle on the opposite side of the cockpit from the first two. He flipped it down and the canopy closed over them. “There,” he said. “Safe enough?”
He didn’t give her time to answer before he pressed his right foot down harder this time—and the machine began striding forward. He found that a combination of forward pressure plus a sideways swivel of his foot made the machine walk in a long smooth turn, steering out from behind the house and onto the driveway.
“Just what we needed,” he grinned. “A straightaway.” He pressed his foot forward harder and the machine jogged ahead briskly, covering ten feet at a pace. He floored it and the machine started a smooth, ostrich-like run, quickly getting up to about fifty miles an hour.
Kit’s head snapped back and she hugged him tighter to keep from falling over. “Jeez!” she cried. “This thing really moves.”
He brought the foot control back to neutral and the machine loped to a halt under the ranch gate, having covered most of the quarter-mile length of the driveway in seconds. “This machine is hot,” Chase exclaimed. “I wonder what else it can do?”
Dr. Ogilvey appeared at the front door of the house and came jogging toward them on the driveway shouting something, but the closed canopy blocked the sound of his voice. Chase turned the machine in place and flipped the toggle to raise the lid.
“Hey!” Ogilvey puffed as he approached them. “What do you think you’re doing? Somebody could get hurt.”
Chase tried vainly to suppress the cocky smirk that had spread across his face. “Lighten up, Professor. It’s not so dangerous. It keeps its own balance. Watch—” He swiveled the foot control to the right and the machine turned in that direction. This time he forced the control as far
as it would go and the machine went into a dizzying spin.
As the landscape whirled around him, Chase could see Dr. Ogilvey with both hands raised, making ‘slow down’ motions at him. Instead of heeding the paleontologist, Chase pushed and pulled the joysticks until the arms of the whirling machine were flailing wildly. Finally satisfied he’d shown off enough, he came to a halt facing Ogilvey. “See?” he laughed. “I know what I’m doing.”
For once, the doctor was speechless.
“Look,” said Chase. “These joysticks move the arms—” He tugged the right joystick to show Ogilvey how the arm moved but his index finger accidentally squeezed a trigger button. There was a sharp ripping sound and a white-hot bolt of light shot from the arm’s gun barrel. Without the benefit of aiming it flashed over Ogilvey’s head and tore through one of the ranch gate uprights, sending a shower of red-hot cinders in all directions. Startled, Chase let go of the joystick. Severed neatly by the blast, the upright groaned and toppled. The crossbar and placard came with it.
“Look out!” Kit shouted as the heavy wooden structure fell straight for them. She dove across Chase and swatted the canopy toggle and the lid snapped shut just as the wreckage pounded them from above. Somehow the machine maintained its balance against the impact and the wooden wreckage caromed off it, clattering down toward the spot where Ogilvey stood. He dodged away just as the crossbar landed in his footprints.
Chase raised the canopy. He looked down sheepishly at Ogilvey, who stood coughing and sputtering with dust billowing around him. The doctor’s bifocal-magnified eyes goggled wider than usual. “Not dangerous, indeed!” he fumed. “I’d say that depends on who’s driving.”
“Sorry,” Chase apologized while looking around and inspecting the machine. Despite the rattling blow, it was unharmed except for the right arm, which had taken much of the crossbar’s impact. It hung at an awkward angle. Chase tried the joystick gingerly but there was no response.
“Way to go,” Kit drawled. “You broke it.”
He had to admit it looked that way. But he didn’t have to admit it out loud. “I’m sure it can be fixed,” he said without conviction.
Ogilvey approached the front of the machine. “Perhaps you two had better get down from there before any more damage happens—to this machine, or to us.”
Chase noticed a small red light among the dials and gauges in the front of the cockpit, flashing like the ‘Check Engine’ light on his pickup’s dashboard. He tried the hand and foot controls but they were unresponsive.
“Nice driving,” Kit scoffed, climbing out of the cockpit and making her way down a set of ladder-like footholds on a leg. “I think I’ll walk home.”
There was nothing Chase could say to ease his embarrassment. He flipped the power switch off, climbed down silently and left the machine where it was, trailing Kit and Ogilvey back to the house.
They stopped midway when a noise like the gabbling of many geese arose in a grove of aspen trees bordering one side of the driveway. Chase glanced toward the ranch house and a qualm ran through him. They were a good hundred yards from the front porch and they hadn’t brought weapons with them. The underbrush beside the drive suddenly erupted with dozens of small two-legged dinosaurs. A jolt of alarm shot through Chase but the animals reached the roadway before he could react and divided into two streams racing around, not at him. As the mini herd rushed by, Dr. Ogilvey laughed loudly, turning one way and another to watch the little dinosaurs stampede past.
“Relax Chase,” he chortled. “They’re herbivores and they’re not interested in us. Watch them run. How lovely!”
The knee-high creatures surged past like a herd of small graceful gazelles. Even the largest of them was no more than three feet high and none were armed with dangerous horns or claws.
“Look at their coloration!” Ogilvey enthused. “Gazelle-like, wouldn’t you say, Kit? Tan bodies, bars of red-brown along their sides, white underneath, all in a soft fur-like covering.”
Occasionally one would make a gazelle-like leap that brought it as high as Chase’s head. But these were by no means gazelles. They lacked visible ears and had long reptilian tails whipping along behind them.
Chase bent down and picked up a long stick that had splintered off the ranch gate, just in case. “What are these things?” he asked.
Ogilvey gave him an amused, owl-eyed glance. “No need for a weapon, Chase. They’re harmless.”
“I’ll keep it just the same,” Chase replied. “What I really want to know is what scared them.”
“Probably running from their own shadows,” the professor chuckled. “They’re timid creatures. Hypsilophodons, I believe, one of many varieties of small harmless dinosaurs that far outnumbered the larger and more dangerous ones.”
The creatures streamed across the driveway and into a field of tall grass on the other side, moving away in fluid motion like a single unit rather than individuals. They flowed around bushes and boulders, overrunning obstacles in a flood of delicate tan-and-brown striped bodies.
“I don’t think they’re hypsilophodons,” said Kit. “I’d say thescelosaurus.”
“Aren’t they rather small for thescelosaurs?” Ogilvey countered. “If they’re not hypsilophodons, then I’d pick orodromeus.”
“I’m sticking with thescelosaurs,” said Kit.
Ogilvey raised an eyebrow as if quite impressed. “My, my. You really have been studying. And now you’ve begun questioning your teacher.”
“Can you two talk as we walk?” Chase urged. “I’m still not sure what spooked them.”
As they resumed their stroll to the house a loud snapping noise came from where the herd had emerged from the woods. A moment later, the ominous cracking of tree branches heralded the approach of a much larger animal.
“Let’s not stick around to find out what it is,” Chase exhorted. All three of them broke into a run for the house. The cracking of tree branches intensified and a huge creature hove into view. “Oh my God!” Kit cried. “The tyrannosaurus!” The monster stepped clear of the trees less than fifty feet from them and paused to size them up.
“Keep running!” Chase shouted as the beast lowered its head and charged. He followed Kit and Ogilvey at the slower pace set by the old paleontologist’s scrawny legs, even though his own long legs could have outrun them both. Looking back over his shoulder he gauged the speed of the beast and realized it would overtake them long before they reached the house. He silently cursed his stupidity for bringing them so far from safety. There was no way any of them would reach the house before those huge jaws closed for the kill.
Chase’s mind raced in search of a plan as the predator’s footfalls thundered behind them. Kit shot a glance back at the creature and Chase glimpsed the desperation on her face. Realizing she was about to die for his stupidity, he felt his fear turning to rage. In the grip of that powerful emotion, he wheeled and faced the onrushing beast.
“Yahh!” he shouted, raising both arms high the way he had learned to intimidate grizzlies into breaking off a charge. But the tyrannosaur thundered toward him without pause.
Stupid move, he thought to himself. You’ve got nothing but a stick in your hand.
Beneath the gaping jaws he noticed a streak of dried blood on the animal’s breast and realized this was a wound left by one of his bullets. He was facing the same rex he had fought two days before. Simultaneously, he realized the stick in his hand was about the size and shape of a rifle. Experience had taught him animals learned fast when it came to the risk of injury.
The tyrannosaurus was within a few strides of him when he raised the stick and sighted along it like a rifle, pointing it directly between the beast’s eyes.
It reacted instantly. Its massive, fang-lined jaws snapped shut and it skidded to a halt on its huge taloned feet no more than a dozen feet from Chase.
It remembered the rifle.
Anticipating the pain dealt by the weapon, the rex half-closed its eyes and turned its head to the side. A
momentary thrill of victory coursed through Chase. He could hear by their footfalls that Kit and Ogilvey had nearly reached the house. His ruse had paid off—for them—but as he continued sighting along his stick he knew the die was cast. Either his bluff would work and the monstrous predator would stalk away, or…
Or what?
It towered over him, teetering in a balance between aggression and fear. For a moment both Chase and the tyrannosaur were locked in place. Chase was sure if he turned to run, it would have him in its jaws in an instant. But what else could he do? He held his phony weapon steady, hoping the animal was just smart enough to remember the danger but too stupid to figure out this was no rifle.
Chase kept the point of his stick trained on the creature’s face and did his best to look tall, straight and dangerous. Incredibly, the rex took a step backward, flinching its head left and then right, dodging Chase’s attempts to sight in on its eyes with the stick.
It took another step back but then it stopped and held its ground. It ceased weaving its head and its eyes opened, focusing on the end of the stick. Chase sensed it was gaining confidence, realizing this stick had none of the wallop the other had.
Chase’s heart sank. A moment before, the beast had looked cowed. But it had only been fooled for a moment. Now it lowered its head and both red eyes focused keenly on the stick. It opened its monstrous mouth wide and let out a roar that shook the ground under Chase’s feet. It was trying to scare him into running. The noise made his knees almost buckle under him but he held his ground and kept the stick pointed between the rex’s eyes.
This is the end, Chase thought. He had seen enough of the behavior of grizzlies and other predators to know this one was working up its nerve for a charge. There was nothing he could do about it. He was out of tricks.
The tyrannosaurus roared again and took a pace forward. But this time its bellow was answered by another sound. From Chase’s left came the siren blast of a parasaurolophus call.
It was Rufus.
The duckbill had left his place in the pasture and charged to the scene of the confrontation. He came straight at the rex, seemingly in defiance of any logic or survival instinct. The tyrannosaur forgot Chase and squared off with the oncoming parasaurolophus. The two creatures, nearly matched in size, hesitated twenty feet apart and exchanged ferocious bellows.
Chase was mesmerized by the primeval confrontation until Kit yelled from the porch, “Run, Chase! Run this way.” The sound of her voice shook him into action and he threw down the stick and sprinted to the house, joining her and Ogilvey on the porch watching the dinosaur showdown. The tyrannosaurus roared a thunderous challenge, but Rufus cut it short with a honk so powerful it made the hills reverberate.
Rufus was the first to attack. He charged the rex, rearing up like a boxing kangaroo and flailing out with his forearms. His hooved front feet caught the predator on the chin and throat and almost knocked it down. Without hesitation, Rufus lashed out again and his quick punches sent the rex reeling backward. But the carnivore dodged Rufus’s next thrust, opened its mouth wide and snapped its jaws shut inches from Rufus’s throat.
That slowed the big duckbill’s attack. But now Henrietta charged onto the scene. The pair pressed forward, raining blows on the tyrannosaur’s sides and back until it struggled just to keep its feet. With their hooves pounding its flanks, the tyrannosaur wheeled and rushed back toward the forest. Rufus and Henrietta pursued, honking and snapping at the tip of its tail as it plunged into the trees. They paused at the edge of the woods, satisfied their enemy was in full retreat. After a moment of defiant snorting and honking, they turned and trotted toward the pasture where their brood was waiting.
Chase sat down on the front porch swing, shaken and dazed. He pulled off his cap and wiped sweat from his forehead with a sleeve.
“Whew,” he wheezed. “I can’t believe what just happened.”
Ogilvey and Kit both talked at once, the paleontologist praising his bravery and Kit expressing her thanks, but their words faded into a buzz. He was overflowing with adrenaline and relief at simply being alive. His mind reeled until Kit put a hand on his shoulder. That calmed his jittery nerves and brought him back to present company.
“You sure like heroics,” she said, grinning.
Dinosaur Wars: Earthfall Page 49