Cryptozoica (26 page)

Panting, sweat stinging his eyes, Kavanaugh said, “Maybe we can lose that goddamn thing down there.”

Too winded to respond, her breasts rising and pressing against her perspiration-soaked shirt, Honoré shook her head. Bending over, she picked up a rock and tossed it down to the floor of the gully. It splashed against the green expanse and sank from view.

Swallowing hard, hands resting on her knees, she husked out, “Quagmire.”

“Bad for us and old Stinky.”  Kavanaugh drew the Bren Ten from its clip-on holster at his waist.

Honoré stared at him uncomprehendingly through the tangled screen of her hair. She started to speak, coughed, turned her head, spat, and asked, “You mean to lure it down there.”

Kavanaugh nodded. “I don’t think we’ll be able to get away from it for very long. Listen—”

They heard the tramp of heavy feet, the crash of undergrowth and deep-throated, snuffling grunts.

“It’s hunting us, sniffing us out,” Kavanaugh continued, dropping his voice to barely a whisper. “Even if we sneak past it and hook back up with the others, it’ll get wind of our scents and stalk us wherever we go.”

“How can you be so sure of that? When did you become an expert on carnotaur behavior?”

Kavanaugh drew in a breath, common sense and pragmatism overwhelming the residue of panic. “I’m not, but I’ve been around this part of the world on enough hunting parties and expeditions to get a good idea of predator psychology. Do you know how Komodo dragons hunt?”

“No.”

“Like Stinky, they rely mainly on scent and what’s known as a ‘Jacobosen’s organ’, a vomeronasal sense. That means, with a favorable wind, they can sniff out prey up to six miles away. They’re stalkers by nature, they take all the time they need. They’re patient…they don’t mind waiting. In fact, they’ve been known to get ahead of their prey and then charge out from ambush. Stinky apparently has an issue with one of us—and I’m betting it’s me.”

Honoré straightened up, raking her hair out of her eyes. “Majungasaurs and Komodo dragons aren’t motivated by personal vendettas, Jack.”

“Maybe not…but maybe whatever—or whomever—is nudging Stinky along has one.”

Honoré blinked at him in confusion. “Are you proposing that this attack was planned?”

“And the kamikaze dive of the Quetzalcoatlus and maybe even the Sarcosuchus.”

“I think you’ve been out here in the tropics so long, you’ve let your imagination run rancid. There was blood in the water, remember, and McQuay’s wound had begun bleeding again, too. You said yourself that the Stinko—Majungasaur—hunted around the river banks.”

“Yeah, but I never heard of one camouflaging itself before.”

“That was probably due to foraging at the shoreline and it just picked up a covering of detritus by accident. I’m sure that wasn’t a deliberate act.”

“I wish I could be. What’s that old saying: ‘once is happenstance, twice is coincidence and three times is enemy action?’ ”

“That applies to mobsters in Chicago, not dinosaurs.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kavanaugh replied impatiently “What does matter is we’re going to have to take action if we plan to stay alive on this island long enough to get off it—unless you just enjoy running around screaming like an extra in a Japanese monster movie.”

“No,” she stated stolidly. “I do not.”

“All right, then. Let’s go do something about it. How many bullets does that cannon you’re packing have in it?”

Expertly, Honoré popped open the cylinder, spun it, slapped it back into place and announced, “Two.”

“Let me handle the musketry, then.”

As silently as they could, they retraced their steps, alert for any sounds, but they heard nothing but the inquisitive cheep of birds. They entered a small glade and looked all around.

Worriedly, Honoré said, “Perhaps it decided to give up on us and go after Captain Crowe, Mouzi and Bai Suzhen.”

Kavanaugh nodded as if he considered the possibility, and turned slowly around, on the verge of calling out for Crowe. He had just opened his mouth when the Majungasaur crashed through the foliage, running at full speed with its head low, jaws wide in an unmistakable posture of attack.

Honoré cried out incredulously, “It was laying in wait for us––!”

The two people heeled around and began a frantic dash again. The monster bellowed behind them, a roar so loud and full of fury it hurt their ears. They plunged on through brush, trying to not waste time or risk a misstep by looking over their shoulders.

Kavanaugh and Honoré sprinted among fern trees, tearing their way through clumps of shrubbery. When they reached a copse of evergreens, the two people tried to disorient the snarling saurian by ducking around trees and leaping over fallen trunks. The carnotaur stumbled to a clumsy halt, its huge splayed feet trampling the spongy ground. It snapped viciously at Kavanaugh as he jumped over a log, its jaws closing around it and splintering the wood.

Kavanaugh bounded toward another tree and the Majungasaur followed him. Even though Honoré shouted and waved her arms, she failed to distract the animal from coming after him.

He slid around another tree and the thickly muscled, scale-sheathed tail of the creature battered deep into his midsection, slamming him off his feet. All the breath left his lungs in an agonized bleat between his teeth.

Kavanaugh was only dimly aware of collapsing to the ground, but he knew the monster’s open jaws hovered above him. Although his vision was blurred, he saw the salvia-slick fangs champing only inches away. It was like glimpsing a slow-motion scene from a bourbon-fueled midnight nightmare.

Through the pain haze swimming across his eyes, he caught a foggy impression of Bai Suzhen bounding forward, her long sword upraised. She slashed at the creature's right flank, scoring a shallow, scarlet-leaking gash through the pebbled pattern of its scales. Voicing a sibilant snarl of anger, the Majungasaur spun toward her. She tried to run in the opposite direction of the monster’s turn, but the long lashing tail clipped her at ankle level. Her legs swept out from beneath her, she hit the ground heavily on her back, with none of a dancer’s grace.

Kavanaugh forced himself to his knees. He braced the Bren Ten with his left hand and squeezed the trigger. The reports of the pistol were far less loud than the scream of pain erupting from the throat of the carnotaur as the bullets punched dark little dots into its upper back.

At that instant, Crowe appeared from behind a tree, and fired his M15 General Officer’s autopistol in a steady roll. Screeching, the Majungasaur lurched away from the hail of gunfire, wheeling around to face Mouzi, who triggered the carbine at its head. The two people arranged themselves to make the giant saurian the apex of a triangulated crossfire.

In a volcanic convulsion, the creature pivoted, bending almost double as its tail whiplashed against the trunk of a tree with sledgehammer force. Flinders of bark flew from it and showered Mouzi with wood chips, driving her to cover.

Kavanaugh stepped forward, firing his pistol, even though he knew shooting at the creature's body would have little effect. He could waste an entire clip trying to hit a vital organ. Only a headshot, through the eye into the brain, had any chance of killing the thing. The monster's sibilant snarling took on a high-pitched, keening note. Then the firing pin of the Bren Ten clicked dry on an empty chamber.

The Majungasaur turned toward him, and he leapt to the left, barely avoiding a pair of vicious, disemboweling swipes of the saurian's feet. Honoré jumped from behind a tree, the Casull in hand.

She worked the trigger of her pistol, holding it in a double-fisted grip, sending out booming shock waves of ear-shattering sound. The impact of the two steel-jacketed blockbusters against its left thigh sent the Majungasaur staggering sideways.

The creature continued to turn in the direction Honoré's bullets slammed it, spinning around and swinging its tail laterally. The tip struck Honoré a glancing blow on the right hip, knocking her headlong to the earth, the pistol bouncing end over end from her hand.

The carnotaur lifted a big, hook-clawed foot, preparing to stamp on the fallen woman. Yelling at the top of their voices, Crowe and Mouzi marched forward shoulder-to-shoulder, firing their weapons in tandem. To Kavanaugh's surprise, the creature recoiled from the barrage, stumbling backward.

Without hesitation, Kavanaugh heaved Honoré up from the ground and began running. He half-carried, half-dragged the dazed woman, the toes of her boots barely touching the earth as he bore her along. Within seconds, he heard the snap of twigs and the crash of shrubbery as the huge saurian rushed after them, like a ship pushed in front of a hurricane.

“Jack!” Crowe shouted. “What the hell are you doing?”

Kavanaugh didn’t have the spare breath to explain. Honoré recovered sufficiently to do her own running. She put her feet down and sprinted flat-out. She panted, “This is insane! It should have retreated once it was wounded, run from all of us!”

“Told you,” he husked out. “Personal.”

They ran through the tangle, ducking and dodging, zigging and zagging, as if they were following a trail left by a broken-backed snake. The heard the Majungasaur’s crashing progress through the undergrowth and its panting grunts of exertion. Kavanaugh hazarded a quick, backward glance and glimpsed the animal still loping along behind them. The dull reverberations of the heavy footfalls slamming repeatedly against the ground sent little vibrations shivering up their spines.

The two people tore their way through a intertwining of vines and tottered on the lip of the gully, only a few meters from where they first emerged. Breathlessly, Honoré said, “How do we know it’ll find us—”

Amid an explosion of leaves, twigs and jungle flowers, the Majungasaur burst through a wall of foliage, giving vent to a prolonged, eardrum-compressing roar. Honoré and Kavanaugh sprang to one side just before the animal was upon them.

Roaring in maddened fury, the carnotaur dug in its hind claws, blundering to a halt at the edge of the gully, loose leaves and loam cresting up in front of it like a loose carpet. It teetered on its toes, tail held up straight behind it as it seesawed back and forth, trying to regain its balance.

Kavanaugh lunged out from the brushline and delivered a fierce kick to its rear end. Snarling and slobbering, the Majungasaur tipped forward, then it toppled headlong down the slope of the gully, rolling and thrashing, the weight of its body causing a dozen miniature avalanches. Its great hind limbs kicked spasmodically as if it were running in place.

The weight of at least five tons slapped into the quagmire. The impact sent mud cresting in a fountain, splattering Kavanaugh and Honoré. The Majungasaur sank flank-deep into the mud very quickly but it continued to flounder and flail.

Wiping the muck from her eyes, Honoré said hoarsely, “If it wasn’t personal between you and Stinky before, it is now.”

Honoré peered through the viewfinder of the Nikon, brought the right forepaw of the Majungasaur into focus and pressed the shutter button. Unlike the first few times, the animal did not react to the high-pitched whine of the digital camera. It remained motionless, trapped in the bog, flies swarming over its blood and mud-encrusted body.

The creature panted noisily, eyes closed against the insects crawling over them. It assumed the attitude of dignified patience common to many injured animals. A big dragonfly, its carapace glistening like wet jade, landed atop the Majungasaur’s head, its broad wingspan lending the saurian the impression of wearing a hair bow.

Honoré suddenly looked at her watch, realizing she had lost all sense of time since the chopper crashed on Big Tamtung. She was shocked to see it was past six o’ clock. At least a lifetime and a half felt like it had passed since first climbing into the helicopter.

The trees of the jungle were still, even birds and monkeys stayed silent, as if they feared drawing the attention of the helpless Majungasaur. She wiped at the film of sweat on her forehead, desperate for an ice-cold ginger beer. Her shirt was plastered to her body, soaked through with perspiration. The humidity enclosed her without mercy. She tugged her shirt from the waistband of her jeans, unbuttoned it and knotted the tails beneath her breasts. The relief from the heat was negligible.

She wasn’t sure if the heat or post-adrenalin comedown made her entire body feel leaden. Anxiety about Belleau was at the forefront of her mind. Despite her anger at the little man, she couldn’t help but worry about Aubrey. The pursuit and gun-battle with the Majungasaur should have drawn his and Oakshott’s notice, regardless of how far they had walked from the riverside.

She looked up and toward the distant ramparts of the escarpment, rising from a shroud of haze above the treeline. She recalled Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel
The Lost World,
and the fabled plateau in Amazonia upon which prehistoric animals still frolicked. If what Belleau had told her held any truth, then she was standing in the actual Lost World, the real-life inspiration for Maple White Land. Nor was the irony lost on her that she shared the surname with one of
The Lost World’s
major characters, the big-game hunter Lord John Roxton. Although the Majungasaur was definitely big game, she reminded herself with a wry smile,
it
had hunted the Roxton this time around.

At the sound of rustling foliage, Honoré turned to see Kavanaugh and Crowe emerge from the brush. She smiled gratefully when she saw her Stetson in Crowe’s hand.

“Thought you might want this,” he said, passing it to her. “It’s only a little stamped on.”

“Thank you,” she replied, brushing dirt from the crown and settling it on her head. “A ridiculous accoutrement I admit, but it helps me stand out in the crowd from the mob of paleontologists and naturalists.”

Kavanaugh gestured toward the Majungasaur. “Stinky seems to have calmed down.”

“I think he exhausted himself trying to escape. Did you bring anything to drink?”

From a back pocket, Kavanaugh removed a bottle of water and handed it to her. As she unscrewed the cap, she asked, “What about everybody else?”

“In pretty good shape,” Crowe answered flatly. “Mouzi is backtracking, looking for the Darwin journal. Bai is limping, but nothing is broken.”

Honoré eyed Kavanaugh. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You took quite the clout to the gut from Stinky’s tail.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, well…the fat absorbed the impact.”

After taking a long swallow of the tepid water, Honoré said, “If you’re hurting, best say so now. We can’t have you collapsing on us.”

“She’s right,” Crowe agreed

Kavanaugh pulled up his T-shirt. His belly was fairly flat, but a livid purple bruise stretched across it. Honoré winced and reached out with tentative fingers. Backstepping a pace, Kavanaugh tugged down his shirt. “It looks worse than it is.”

“Hard to believe. Have you found any sign of Aubrey or Oakshott?”

Crowe shook his head. “No, but we haven’t been looking very hard, either. It’s going to be dark in a couple of hours and we need to find a defensible place to spend the night.”

“Do you think that Jimmy Cao fellow will try to sneak up on us?” she asked anxiously.

“I doubt it,” Kavanaugh said. “The
Keying
has run aground on the opposite side of the river. Even though they have a couple of skiffs, most of those triad soldiers are too superstitious to paddle across so close to nightfall…especially with a fifty foot long prehistoric crocodile swimming around waiting for them to do that very thing.”

“Speaking of prehistoric crocodiles,” Crowe said, stepping to the edge of the gully, “why didn’t it attack Stinky? The croc is actually bigger than he is.”

“Stinky is under average size for a Majungasaur,” replied Honoré. “Which makes a certain amount of sense… isolated populations of large animals tend to become smaller.  The hippopotami in Madagascar became pygmies, for example. Elephant remains found in Sicily showed they had declined to the size of German Shepherds.” 

Crowe nodded. “Large animals trapped in small regions downsize to maximize their population versus their food supply…but most of the dinosaurids here are damn big.”

Honoré gestured toward the Majungasaur. “Stinky is still considerably different physically than most of the fossil reconstructions I’ve seen.”

“What do you mean?” Kavanaugh asked.

“For one thing, his rib cage is more narrow and compressed than the standard specimen from the Cretaceous. That large flexible area between the thorax and the pelvic girdle allows him to have a long stride and be able to swivel from the hips to grab prey. We saw first-hand how maneuverable he can be. Even his neck is longer, and not quite as squat, which makes me think that Stinky might be a closer relation to a Tarbosaurus than a T. Rex.”

“He looks like a T. Rex to me,” muttered Crowe.

“There’s a superficial resemblance. Most Tarbosaurus fossils have been found in Asia. The structure of their neck vertebrae was more elongated than the conventional T. Rex.”

“Oh,” Kavanaugh said, repressing a smile. “Conventional T. Rex, right.”

Honoré pointed. “What I find the most intriguing is that even though the forelimbs are still small in comparison to the rest of its body, they’re substantially longer than those of its Cretaceous ancestors, by nearly a quarter of a meter…not to mention that most Majungasaur fossils have only two fingers on their forepaws, and Stinky has three like the Giganotosaurus.

“Note the dark coloring of the scales, how they vary from medium brown to black. It’s a sophisticated way using shadows as natural camouflage…Majungasaurs were thought to employ ambush tactics.”

She tapped her nose. “That bony extension on its snout is part of the olfactory area and is probably full of air.”

“Air?” echoed Crowe.

“The air spaces probably helped to lighten the load of the Majungasaurus’s skull, making it about 18 percent lighter than if the head were a solid structure. A fully fleshed-out T-Rex head likely weighed more than 500 kilograms…1,100 pounds, while the skull of Majungasaurus might weigh 70 pounds. Neck muscles and can only support so much cranial heft. So if all the other features remained the same, the weight savings from having the air-filled pockets may have allowed T-Rex and Majungasaurus to have jaws that were the largest of any land animal, and capable of exerting incredible pressure…even a casual bite is around two tons per square inch.

“For that matter, perhaps the extension is used for long-range communication with others of its type, much in the way elephants communicate through infrasonic rumbles, too low for the human ear to hear.”

Alarmed, Kavanaugh looked around. “Do you think it could call for help?”

Crowe shrugged. “Why not? There has to be more than one Stinkosaurus on the island.”

“Exactly,” said Honoré. “It would be a small breeding population, but apex predators tend have their own widely separated territories and only come together during mating season. There’s nothing in the fossil record that––”

Honoré’s voice trailed off. She uttered a jittery little laugh. “I can’t believe I’m standing here, doing a comparative analysis between fossil reconstructions and an actual living specimen of a Majungasaurus. The only word for it is...humbling. Aubrey was right…here on Big Tamtung, the past has not stopped breathing. I feel like I’m in shock…or in a dream.”

“Taking all that into account,” ventured Crowe, “you think there’s still been a form of evolution taking place here”

“Not a form,” Honoré said firmly. “Evolution is evolution. However, the changes aren’t as dramatic as one would think, particularly after the passage of sixty-four million years. Aubrey suggested quantum evolution as a possible explanation, but I find that unconvincing.”

“Quantum evolution?” Kavanaugh repeated.

“Yeah,” said Crowe. “It’s a theory that has gained some acceptance among biologists and geneticists. The main thesis is that the basic goal of any organism is to survive in its environment and reach an age where it can reproduce and pass on its genetic code, and any newly acquired mutations, for one more generation. In a closed eco-system such as this one, any mutations would eventually achieve a state of equilibrium.”

Honoré nodded thoughtfully. “That way, mutations are accumulated over time in the gene pool of any given species of any organism. Since not all mutations are created equal, only those that are beneficial to the organism, or only those that are selected for, are passed on to the next generation. Those are the mutations that do not negatively impact the organism’s ability to survive in its environment.”

“So,” Kavanaugh said, “there wasn’t an environmental reason for the dinosaurids to mutate in a dramatic way…they’re already suited to survive in this environment.”

Honoré absently brushed a strand of sweat damp hair away from her cheek. “True, but even that explanation doesn’t take into account all of the—”

In the distance came a crack, like the breaking of a tree branch. Honoré, Kavanaugh, and Crowe reacted with surprise, heads turning in the direction of the sound. Another crack came and this time they recognized it as the report of the carbine. Crowe plunged toward the brushline.

“Mouzi!” he exclaimed.

*   *   *

Mouzi moved cautiously through the sunlight-splashed fringe of jungle and into the gloomier vaults at the edge of the rain forest. She was alert for venomous spiders, scorpions and even anacondas hanging from low branches. She wasn’t too worried about leopards, since any that might have been in the vicinity had likely high-tailed it to safer quarters once the Stinkosaurus came thundering ashore.

Although she had grown up in a ghetto, Mouzi possessed a natural affinity for the wilderness. She felt the most comfortable with herself when out-of-doors, relying only on her senses to get by. She carried the carbine over her right shoulder, finger resting on the trigger guard.

The sun shafting through the leaves of the trees cast a dappled pattern of shadow on her sweat-filmed bare arms and legs. Her tank top was so wet with perspiration it adhered to her body like a second layer of epidermis. Her small breasts thrust tautly against the damp fabric. However, she did not feel uncomfortable.

The dimensions of the ancient rain forest, where time had no meaning, reached out and embraced her. As far as she was concerned, the animals populating Big Tamtung were not freakish survivors of a bygone epoch. They belonged here on the island, whereas human beings did not—except for her, she told herself smugly.

Mouzi stumbled slightly in a depression on the ground. Looking down, she saw deep parallel tracks that had squashed and flattened the vegetation on the jungle floor. The outside edges of the prints showed the impression of huge splayed, three-toed feet.

Mashed down in the center of one print, lay the metal-case containing the so-called Darwin journal. Bending down, she dug the box out of the ground with her fingers. Although slightly warped and compressed, it looked intact. She worked it loose of the damp earth and pried open the lid. The journal lay inside, without so much a scuffmark on the leather cover.

“I’ll take that, thank you.”

Mouzi spun in the direction of the voice, raising the carbine at the same time her eyes registered the figure of Aubrey Belleau standing only a few yards away. An arm encircled her neck from behind, yanking her up and off her feet. Instantly, but with an accompanying surge of shame, she realized she had been outfoxed, distracted by the dwarf while Oakshott crept up behind her.

The giant grasped the carbine by the barrel, wrestling it from her grip. She resisted, and squeezed the trigger twice. The echoes of the shots were swallowed up by the dense screen of the forest.

Mouzi back-kicked, fiercely clawed behind her with her fingers, and tried to sink her teeth into the forearm at her chin. She felt a thick thumb probe, then press into a nerve cluster below her right mastoid bone.

Oakshott released her and she fell to all fours, gasping in pain, every muscle tingling. A hundred needles felt like they pricked her neck and she wondered if the big man had dislocated a vertebrae.