Dinosaur Lake (26 page)

She didn’t look behind her. She knew if she did, and the monster was too close, she’d faint, and the thing would have her for lunch.

A tall man in dark green pants, gray shirt and a wide-brimmed brown hat was suddenly standing in front of her, arms outspread as if to catch her. A ranger. Someone she knew, but she wasn’t sure. Her mind wasn’t working right.

“George!” Ann found her voice and her mind. “It’s coming! The monster’s behind me!”

George didn’t hesitate, didn’t ask any questions. Her terror-stricken face must have convinced him what she said was true.

He grabbed her hand and they sprinted for the building down the road. George yelling a warning and screaming for back-up as they went. He didn’t bother to use the gun he had on his hip, it wouldn’t hurt the monster anyway, Henry had told her that, but those ex-FBI agents might have a more lethal arsenal. She prayed they did, or they were all dead people.

***

Henry and the others had arrived at headquarters and heard someone shouting outside that the monster was coming. For a heartbeat, he was taken off guard, and then demanded of Greer, standing beside him, “I don’t suppose you and Patterson brought any larger weapons?”

“Nothing major, we have those on order, should be coming in any minute. All we brought was my personal arsenal, HK PDW’s, TMP’s, and a few machine pistols. All state of the art Personal Defense Weapons which offer accurate semi and full-auto fire at a rate of 900 rounds per minute. I stashed them in the back room.

“Those weapons might not kill it but could make it think twice or chase it off.”

“A Russian RPG with rocket propelled grenades might kill it,” Henry suggested. “Got one of those?”

“Sorry, we don’t have any RPGs,” Greer said. “Yet.”

Henry sighed. The commotion was getting closer. “We’ll give the HK PDW’s and TMP’s a chance. Pray they do the trick and send the thing running.”

Greer ran for the back room.

“Wait a minute, your orders are to bring it in alive, remember?” Dr. Harris, eavesdropping, growled. His face was red, his eyes blazing. “Not blow it to kingdom come!”

“All righty, Dr. Harris, what do you propose we do if it attacks us? Let it eat us? We hadn’t planned for it to follow us from the lake, come in this far, and if it poses a direct threat I’m sure as hell going to try to get rid of it. I don’t care what anyone says. We’ll protect ourselves.”

Outside they could hear the thunderous growling. Roaring. The ground was thumping like a herd of elephants was coming.

It must have sunk into Harris’s head that the monster was outside the door because the expression on his face morphed into one of panic. “Y-e-s, I guess we should protect ourselves…if we’re in immediate danger. I see your point.”

“Glad you feel that way, Harris,” Henry said. “Because the monster’s here and survival is our top priority at the moment. Don’t you agree?”

Harris glared at him. Nodded his head.

Jim Francis was still red-eyed from the loss of his friend. “We’d better stop standing here yakking like idiots and get down to business or it’ll get us, too.” It was the first thing he’d said since they’d arrived.

Henry rubbed his eyes, fighting to think. But the noise outside was too much competition. Time had run out. Greer reappeared with an armful of guns and quickly handed them out.

Henry looked at Greer and Patterson, then the building around them. “If we’re not sure about our weapons, we should evacuate everyone now before the creature stamps us out like ants. This building is little more than a trap. It wasn’t built to withstand a rampaging dinosaur.”

“You’re saying we haven’t got a chance if we attempt to fight it?” Patterson stuttered. He’d dealt with human monsters most of his career, but real monsters were a different game than rapists and serial killers. He must be wondering, how did one fight a nightmare?

“Me? Truthfully? I don’t think so. It’s come hungry, we’re its prey and it’ll do what it has to do to get to us. It’s already surprised me a few times with its cunning. I wouldn’t put anything past it. Retreat is our safest option.”

Greer nodded. “I second that.”

Henry heard the monster’s bellowing and the thundering noises outside. Much louder. It was close. Too close.

His men were scurrying about, yanking weapons from their holsters, and looking to him for orders. With frightened expressions they tried to conceal, they crowded around him.

“We’re in for it, I’m afraid,” Henry reported to Greer. “I’m going to need your help.”

Greer nodded, swung around, and began giving orders to some of the rangers. Henry caught him reassuring the men as he directed them, and his standing in Henry’s eyes went up yet another notch.

The human screaming outside had increased, and the voice became recognizable.

“That’s George out there,” Henry cried.

Alarmed, he peered through the window and saw two figures staggering towards them and, in the same instant, he saw the monster looming over them.

In the daylight the creature appeared even more unreal, if that was possible. For the first time Henry could see in detail what it looked like. Its head was high above the trees and cocked to the left, its eyes liquid granite as they locked onto the escaping people far below. It threw up its ugly, scaly head and its roar shattered the afternoon’s stillness, and revealed a mouth full of drooling, dagger-sharp teeth. With a grace that belied its size, it picked up a tree, wrenched it from the ground by the roots and tossed it at the running figures.

The earth shook when the tree hit close, too close, to the people.

One of the figures lost their balance as a thick limb brushed it. It tripped and sprawled in the middle of the road. A woman screamed, and Henry’s blood tingled hot in his veins.

He tore his eyes away from the beast and looked down.

“It’s Ann…what the hell is she doing here!”

Then Henry growled at Greer, “It’s here. Get everybody out right now. I’m putting you in charge. Tell them not to fight it, just run, get out of its way. Fighting it will make it angrier and more will die.”

Henry was out the door before Greer could reply or object. The only thing on his mind was Ann and that she was in danger. He had to save her.

Bursting out the door, he sprinted past the cars on the parking lot. The place was pandemonium. Everyone was pouring out of the building, running everywhere, raising their weapons, taking positions or hiding.

A person would have to be a fool not to want to run from it. But Henry’s men were well-trained. They hid their terror behind strained faces and did what they were supposed to do.

Henry sprinted towards the two figures in the web of leaves. His anger at Ann’s hair-brained stunt of sneaking into the park in the first place snuffed out as he grasped the danger she and George were in. For it was George who was with her. He’d recognized him as he got closer.

The monster was before him, hulking above his wife and his friend who hadn’t made it to the building. The beast had them trapped.

Ann had ceased shrieking and was trying to extricate George from beneath the tree limbs.

A bullet zipped past Henry’s head and another exploded feet away from Ann. Bullets, angry wasps, were filling the air; their target, the creature.

The other rangers were trying to divert the monster’s attention to save Ann and George. They were hiding behind trees shooting at it, and the rounds were bouncing off the creature’s hide, which must have made it angry because it was howling.

It advanced on the two humans. George, with Ann’s help, had untangled himself from the downed tree and had come to a standing position.

After that everything happened so swiftly Henry couldn’t move fast enough.

Oblivious to the gunfire, the beast grabbed for Ann and in those final moments before the monster’s claws reached her, George flung himself in front of her and rushed into the thing’s arms, sacrificing himself instead.

“George! No!” Henry screamed, as Ann ran into his arms. But George couldn’t hear him.

For the rest of his life Henry would never forget the way his friend died. The images. They’d haunt him forever. In the movies they always made a death look so quick and clean. It wasn’t. Not the kind of death George had.

With tears in his eyes, Henry took his wife by the shoulders and propelled her to the nearest hiding place. The crawlspace beneath headquarters porch. He shoved her under and scuttled in behind while the monster was busy. It was their only chance of survival, unless the dinosaur trampled the building.

From beneath the porch, among the dirt, bugs, and spiders, Henry and Ann watched the slaughter. His men were shooting at the intruder to keep it away from them, but, again, that only seemed to make it madder. The men scattered as the beast clamored after them, slavering, swiping and mauling everyone it captured, before it tossed the ragdoll-like bodies aside.

Men stumbled, crawled or fled for their lives. Some made it, some didn’t. Henry was powerless to help them. The pistol in his hands was useless.

He spotted Greer, firing at the monster from behind a tree with one of his PDW’s. He wasn’t hiding or running, but was keeping the beast away from the others. Firing the automatic like he knew what he was doing, he hit the creature dead target every time, but his weapon was as ineffectual as Henry’s Sig and Greer eventually fell back to save his own skin.

Henry wondered what kind of weapon it’d take to defeat it. An A bomb?

Patterson was on the edge of the woods over to Henry’s right, aiding a wounded ranger. Gillian it looked like. Patterson, too, had given up fighting and was attempting to help the injured. A brief thought wisped through Henry’s mind. Patterson had finally gotten to see his Godzilla up close. God only knew what the man was thinking.

The air had filled with anguished cries and moans as the monster fed. Some men had tried to reach their cars and few had made it. Their vehicles were smashed on top of them or the beast had picked up and thrown them like toys into the woods.

Henry had never seen anything so strong or so aggressively lethal.

It seemed to relish maiming and killing, stopping to eat little of its kills. Cowering under the crawlspace as far back as they could scoot, Henry watched in horror as Ann hid her eyes and sobbed silently into his chest. He stroked her head and hushed her. If she made too much noise it’d come for them, too. There was nothing he could do to save the men who’d died or were wounded, not now, and it made him as sick as George’s death.

Ann peeked up when the yelling stopped. The creature was charging towards the building. “It’s coming this way,” she gasped. “
Oh, my God!”

“We have to get out of here! Crawl backwards and to the right. That’s it. We’ll sneak out on the side.”

He slithered in reverse dragging Ann with him. They slipped out from under the crawlspace and scrambled into the woods as the monster, growling and roaring, stomped on the building.

Henry prayed everyone had gotten out.

From behind a cluster of large rocks, they stared as the monster demolished headquarters until it was a pile of flattened timber. Then the beast crashed back into the forest, leaving behind a battleground of strewn bleeding body parts, crushed cars and a heap of splintered wood. The whole attack, from beginning to end, had taken less than ten minutes.

“Thank God it’s leaving,” Ann wept, clinging to his arm.

“It’s not leaving, it’s heading towards Rim Village,” Henry’s voice was hoarse. “And there are still people there.” The ones who’d stayed behind to take care of the buildings and the properties. A few of the student workers who hadn’t left yet. Die-hard, hard to roust out, residents who didn’t believe in the lake monster. Were they in for a surprise.

“Stay here, honey,” he told Ann who’d collapsed on the ground. “I’ll be back for you.”

“You’re not going after it, are you?” Panicked. “You can’t.” Her hand reached up and grasped his.

“Not to fight it. To warn anyone left in Rim Village that it’s coming.” He released her hand. “I’ll be careful, but I have to go. They’re unprepared. They don’t know what’s coming.”

Before she could protest he was gone. He left Greer in charge and shouted for willing survivors to accompany him. Kiley and another ranger, a newer man called Cummings, fell in with him and the twilight woods swallowed them up. A short cut he knew through the woods would be faster than using a car.

As they ran, the whole time all Henry could think about was George. The brave look on his face as he’d faced the monster, protecting Ann. His muffled screams as he’d died. And he ran faster.

***

They got to Rim Village as the monster was finishing up and evening was claiming the day. In the remnants of the light they could see it had decimated over half the buildings in the small community. The restaurant and several of the shops had been destroyed and it had ripped apart most of what was left. Water was running somewhere from broken pipes, and a few of the structures were haloed in electrical sparks, which faintly lit up the area.

Henry stood at the edge of the forest and took in the damage. It crossed his mind: Had the creature been so vindictively destructive because they’d retaliated? Shot at it? Because they’d angered it? Henry believed that to be true, but no one else would. Well, maybe Justin would.