Jurassic Dead (4 page)

7.

Antarctica: American Drill Site Montgomery-Alpha

Refreshed if not at all rested, Alex felt too snug in his father’s sweater, but the casual sweatpants worked fine. His fingers and toes tingled, and the padded loafers felt like little slippers from heaven. As he entered his father’s command office again, he felt a sudden crushing weight of guilt.
Tony.
His body, torn and broken, was out there, a few miles to the east, and it was likely they would never get it back, and this icy wasteland would be his tomb for eternity.

“Alex, sit down,” his father’s voice broke him from his misery, “and grab a cup of coffee if you like, right in the corner.”

Shuffling in that direction, Alex never made it that far. His eyes tugged to the window and view of the action outside: blazing spotlights, the cranes in full action, then men rushing back and forth, securing crates and readying a pair of giant ice-rovers with a flatbed trailer, equipped with great chains and harnesses.

“It’s going to fit on that?” he wondered.

“It will, I’m told.” Marcus stood, stepped away from his desk, and walked to the window. He was dressed a little more professionally, with a dark tweed sports coat and white turtleneck, khakis and a set of alligator skin boots that Alex couldn’t recall ever seeing him wear before. Of course, it had been a long time since Alex had spent much time with his father, let alone noticed what sort of footwear the man preferred. When he wasn’t busy ignoring his son or his wife, Marcus Ramirez was consumed with writing papers, researching, and giving boring talks at conventions full of equally boring scientists theorizing about everything except what was going on right under their nose.

Alex decided to switch the conversation to an arena where he stood a chance.

“So, heard from mom lately?”

Marcus tensed, and Alex could see his reflection in the glass. Flinching. “Ironically, yes. Just yesterday.”

“Oh, how’s her health?”

“You know your mother, talks about everyone else’s problems. Never her own.”

“Well, I can tell you. She’s not doing well.”

Marcus nodded. “Kind of figured, but how would you know? All she wanted to ask about was you. Appears she hadn’t heard from you either, in a year at least.” He leveled a glare at Alex. “So, it’s not just your wayward father that you reserve your apathy for?”

“That’s not fair.”

Marcus shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not having this conversation, not now. I told her you would most likely turn up somewhere in custody and needing one or both of us to bail you out again. I just never imagined it would be here.” He sighed. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“I was thinking of making the biggest point, the largest splash possible. Given the circumstance. Exposing—”

“Yes, yes, I get it. All the corporate greed and worldwide hypocrisy, but did it have to be here? Now? You have no idea who it is that’s bankrolling this operation.”

Alex crossed his arms over his chest. “Oh, we were quite aware. How you got into bed with someone who’s the worst kind of monster, one who claims to be a philanthropist.”

“DeKirk is paying the bills and this… this is good work, damn it. Important work.”

“Unlike what I do?”

Marcus closed his eyes and shook his head. “I have no idea what it is you do, son. Other than get in trouble and drag everyone else down into hell with you.”

The barb stung, and coming right on the heels of his guilt about leaving Tony, and Alex had no comeback. Instead, he decided to shift back to the unfamiliar arena, where at least he wasn’t a target. “So where are the others? The
Cryos
or whatever he called them?”

Marcus pointed to a pair of ordinary-looking shipping containers at the edge of the pit. “Already packed and ready for their trip.”

Alex whistled. “They were…in the same condition? Preserved?”

“They were. Flesh-on-bones. Same strata, and I have a theory that the bites and tears what you saw on the
T. rex
? Might have been from these little critters.”

“Did you say they were sub-adults?”

“Right, from their bone structure and general traits that’s our thinking. Only twenty feet long, a ton in weight. Early Jurassic period, the only carnivorous dinosaur discovered up until…well, our other friend down there. Cryos as you called them, have a crest on the tops of their heads, and are probably capable of color distortion for mating and battle purposes. A real amazing specimen, one I can’t wait to explore at length, if DeKirk will still allow me that honor.”

Alex shrugged. “Sorry for almost blocking you from playing with your toys.”

“Alex—”

“No, listen. I…wait, what’s going on down there?” He pointed to the cranes, which were straining, then sharply rocking to one direction, and then the other. The spotlights spun and tracked down, and sharply back and forth.

“Oh shit,” Marcus hissed, and rushed back to his desk, eying the monitors, sizing up the situation—a blur of images and faces. The winch cables straining and the body on the platform spinning out of control, as men were tossed from its side and others hung on.

“It looks like a fight,” he said, grabbing the microphone.

“No,” said Alex, “get your men out of there. Those are—the
others
.”

“Who?”

“The things. The Russians…”

8.

“I’m going out,” Marcus said, sounding hollow as he tried to follow the blurry and frenetic action on the screens.
What the hell was happening down there?
Some kind of fight. Had the Russians followed Alex over? Now the contest was in earnest for the prize, and
shit
…if they damaged the specimen! His mouth dried up and he found himself frozen to the spot. He wasn’t cut out for this, didn’t know the protocols. These men, the soldiers… DeKirk, where to start? What could he possibly do in this situation?

In moments, however, the decision was taken from him, and a different instinct took over. “I’m going out there,” Alex said, already rushing for the door, and snagging his dad’s coat from a hook.

“No, you’re not!” Marcus yelled, but the door had already been flung open.

Alex whipped the hood over his head and pulled out the gloves. “No one knows what they’re facing but me.”

“You? Now you’re a combat soldier?”

“No,” he said over the whipping winds on the metal stairwell outside. “Just someone with a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

With that, he was out, and Marcus—after a moment’s hesitation—was energized. He rushed to a closet and started dressing in one of the spare jackets and gearing up. Done, he snatched a phone and raced out after his son.

#

Down at the drill site, Alex rushed around one of the shipping containers, giving it a cautious look, as if expecting something to burst through the metal at any second, with spear-length teeth and snarling jaws.

The sound of gunshots echoing off the glacial walls and splitting through the hissing wind snapped him back to the moment, and he was back, rushing—still in those damn comfortable slippers—through the packed ice, racing for the edge. He yelled and waved his arms, trying to get the attention of the men along the edge, framed in the shifting spotlights.

At least a dozen soldiers stood around the edge, aiming, trying to get clear shots of whatever it was down there.

Then suddenly, Marcus was there, running beside Alex and waving his arms. “Don’t fire! You can’t damage the specimen!”

Dad,
Alex felt like saying,
it’s damaged enough already, a few bullets won’t make a difference.
  Then he thought, if that was the case, how did it move? Those wounds should have killed it—if the millions of intervening years hadn’t done the job in the first place.

One of the grunts, decked in a white camo jumpsuit, looked back and aimed his M5 at them both as they skidded to a stop.

“Back off, civilians. This is a military operation now.”

“The hell it is,” Marcus spat, pointing into the pit. “DeKirk gave me orders, too, and that thing—his investment—better be intact when he comes to collect it.”

The soldier made a snarling face and looked back into the pit—where Alex, bending over the edge, could barely make anything out. With the dueling spotlight beams and the twisting wires and lifting apparatus, the makeshift metal scaffolding and the shadowy
thing
on the rising platform, about a hundred feet below, he couldn’t make out anything in any kind of focus. At least, nothing that made sense.

Were those
men
on the dinosaur’s carapace, climbing and fighting each other? Gunshots intermittently lit up the deep shadows, and as the platform continued to rise, Alex got a momentary glimpse of something that made his heart lurch.

A pair of black-clad figures with scales on their faces and bright yellow eyes…contrasting with the scarlet dripping from their flashing teeth as they tore through an American’s jacket and feasted on his insides.

#

“Are you getting this, sir?” the soldier snapped into his communicator. 

Marcus grabbed Alex’s shoulder and tried to pull him back from the edge.

“No, Dad. Listen, everyone—
stop the excavation!
”

“We can’t,” Marcus said.

“We won’t,” the soldier in charge returned.

The platform continued to rise, and now Marcus saw what hadn’t been clear before: it was covered with soldiers, men in black fighting those in white, and…blood. Blood everywhere. Not from gunshots so much as… “Jesus, they’re
eating
our men…”

“My God,” the soldier at his side said. He aimed through his weapon’s scope. “Screw this. Alpha Team, fire!”

“No!” Marcus yelled and lunged for the weapon, only to have the soldier swing it back hard and knock him on his back. He aimed it at Alex.

“You going to be a problem, too?”

“No,” Alex said, hands raised, “but
they
are. Unless you kill them all.”

The man nodded and aimed again. “Oh, we’ll get them.”

He commenced firing.

Alex could only watch, and Marcus, as he pulled himself up, nursing his bloody lip, looked down in dismay. He flinched with every shot.

“It’s not working,” he said, seeing the black outfits pierced again and again. Nothing slowed down the Russians in their ravenous attack on the Americans, who were doing their best to find cover around the
T. rex’s
body, crawling and climbing across the platform, taking shots with handguns. “Body armor?”

The soldier nodded, and spoke into his communicator again. “Sniper shots, to the head. On my command, go!”

Then the real carnage began.

Fifty feet left to the surface, and the dozen soldiers around the ridge, emptied their clips and reloaded. Aiming and firing, aiming and firing. Marcus winced, watching heads blown apart, brains and gore splattering his dinosaur. Hoping against hope the shots weren’t going wild, imagining he’d be extracting bullets from the specimen for weeks.

The Russians were dropping now—and for an instant, Marcus thought he saw something impossible. One of their faces an instant before impact: blurry, but unmistakably covered with thick scales, yellowish and pallid, spattered in blood, and those eyes—then the head exploded and the twitching body pitched off the side of the platform.

The Americans were regrouping. Several fighting valiantly, ganging up on the remaining Russians, tossing several over.

Still the gunshots rang out, taking out the few remaining enemies.

Marcus started to breathe a sigh of relief, along with the Americans, he imagined. Then, the soldier in charge paused in his shooting, listening to commands in his helmet.

“What? But…yes sir. I understand. Copy that.”

He raised the weapon again, sighting.

“What are you doing?” Marcus asked, as his prize, the
T. rex
, in all its bloodied immensity, was lifted almost into level view. “You got them all, you can stand down now.”
And return me to command,
he felt like adding.

The soldier fired. An American dropped, the top of his head blown off.

Alex screamed and tried to rush the soldier, but Marcus held him back. They both turned. “What the hell!”

Then more shots, from all sides. The Americans were sitting ducks, and in seconds, it was over. Twitching, nearly-headless bodies draped over the triumphantly-raised
T. rex
. A few bodies flopped with the jostling of the platform and fell over the edge.

“Toss the rest back into the pit,” the soldier growled into his radio, “and continue with the extraction. He slung his weapon over his shoulder and faced Marcus.

“Your show now, Doctor.”

“Why?” Alex whispered, still staring at the bodies as they were tossed unceremoniously over the edge.

“Orders,” the soldier said.

For just a moment, Alex had a sudden image of Tony, his skin changing. The gash in his arm…

He swallowed hard, even as Marcus found his voice and was about to argue. “Dad,” he said, “let it go, I think they did the right thing. The only thing.”

Marcus turned to his son. “Are you mad?”

Alex had turned away, and now approached the platform, getting as close as he could to the giant’s cranium and that eye…now closed. Alex shuddered, thinking for a moment. “They weren’t wearing body armor, Dad. “I saw it, down there on the other side.”

“Impossible,” the soldier said.

“But true,” Alex replied, “and if they were infected with whatever was in that lake, then…”

He stared at the
T. rex
, its enormous jaws, and the hint of teeth. The overlapping scales and thick epidermis. The knick marks from the bullets that had failed to penetrate.

“You had better have a very cold shipping container, and hope this thing never thaws…”