Escape From Dinosauria (Dinopocalypse Book 1) (27 page)

Izzy opened a door and motioned for her to go inside. The shelves were bare, with the exception of an M-40 grenade launcher and a handful of grenades.

“Not much,” Izzy said. “I had hoped to surprise you. Bring Christmas a bit early. You seem to know guns pretty well. You were in the army?”

“A lot of hunting,” Jamie said, inspecting the grenade launcher. “Can you believe people actually want to outlaw guns like this? How can you kill dinosaurs without ‘em?”

“You make a fair point.”

A glint of light caught Izzy’s attention. In the corner of the room, left alone because it probably seemed like nothing more than the novelty item it typically was, a katana rested against the wall.

“No way,” Izzy said.

Jamie stopped playing with the grenade launcher and glanced at the sword. “Seriously? Is that the same one?”

“It has to be. I can’t believe that anyone else would be crazy enough to have one. I never got a good look at it, but I think I recognize the handle.”

“Is it sharp?”

Izzy picked up the sword by its handle. All of his jokes about the sword coming from Amazon.com echoed in his mind. The weapon had meant a lot to Kenny, and Jamie had tossed it out the window like it was a broken toy. How did it get here?

“It feels wrong to leave it here,” Izzy said.

“Wrong? We tried to leave it here, remember?”

“No.
You
tried to leave it here.”

“Because I was pissed.

“And now you want it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you’re not telling me to forget it.”

“What would you do with it? You know how to use a sword? Can you fight?”

“I’m the guy you want when you’re cornered in a dark alley by dudes with bad ideas.”

“Be serious for a second.”

Kenny had shed a lot of blood with this goofy sword to protect him. He still wasn’t sure if he should be thankful that Kenny had protected him in the first place, because it seemed like the worst that would have happened was that he would have been sitting in his bedroom playing
Call of Duty
, and Jamie Rock would have been dead.

“We shouldn’t leave it,” Izzy said.

“So you want me to use it.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“We’re not taking any souvenirs with us. We got a few guns scattered around the halls, and we got this pretty lady.” She nodded to the grenade launcher.

“It’s still a weapon, and we know it’s a damn good one.”

Jamie licked her lips for a moment then slung the grenade launcher over her shoulder. She stuffed the last few grenades into a sack, zipped it up, then held out her hands for the sword.

“I only have one good hand to use it with,” Jamie said, “but like you said, it’s one more weapon.”

4

There was only one vehicle left, and it was a huge army truck. Izzy used to ask questions about some of the military vehicles when they first started to show up on the island, and all he could remember about this one was that it was a transport utility vehicle of some kind. With eight huge wheels and a flatbed that could haul ten tons’ worth of cargo, the jungle-camouflaged truck wasn’t going to be able to go very fast.

“Do we have keys?” Jamie asked.

Izzy found the keys and looked over the truck. Jamie opened a door on the cab and tossed her bag full of bullets inside, along with the sword and a handgun Izzy might be able to use.

“You’re driving,” Jamie said.

“I remember you telling me that. Except, um, I don’t…”

“… Have a choice. We don’t know what kind of shit we’ll see out there. I’m sure there’s a few critters you brewed up I haven’t met yet.”

Izzy peered inside the cab. At least it had an automatic transmission.

Its top speed was sixty-two miles per hour.

“Good thing we have all the time in the world,” Izzy said as he tried to get settled in behind the steering wheel.

Jamie did not have a quick retort for him. A moment passed, and he looked over to see the passenger door still open. He moved across the cab over the pile of weapons, careful not to cut himself on the sword, and found her grimacing in pain.

She slammed the palm of her hand against her forehead and swayed on her feet. Drunkenly, she collapsed against the side of the truck and groaned.

“Hey,” Izzy said.

“Get the fuck away from me!”

Jamie shivered and the gun dropped from her fingers. She arched her back against the ground as spittle flew from her lips, then whipped her head from side to side, her limbs violently thrashing. Curling into a fetal ball, Jamie whimpered as tiny spikes began to poke through the flesh on both her arms, like tiny porcupine quills; red little dots of blood beaded up on the surface of her skin. She screamed and did not stop. Fuzz began to appear on each quill.

Izzy knelt beside her, despite the fact that she might lash out and break his face. He tried to swipe sweat away from her forehead and wished he had water to give her. Anything to make her feel more comfortable.

Feathers were sprouting along her arms.

Her eyes were shut, her face masked by sweat. “It’s…stopping…I think…” Her forehead wrinkled , eyebrows furrowing.

“Is it just your arms that hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Can you still move your right arm?”

“I think so. Yes. My left…I can move it better. It’s not all…shrunken.”

“The fingers on that hand aren’t clenching. Are your ears ringing?”

“No. Not this time.”

She panted heavily and was open to his attempt to help. He expected her to say “fuck off.”

“So much for the guns,” Jamie said. Her eyes remained closed.

“We can still get out of here. I’m going to help you into the truck, and we’re going to make it to the airport.”

“And you have the codes. You can get us out of here.”

“Yes.”

“My arms. They’re on fire. They feel heavier.”

“Do you want to know?”

“Yeah.”

“Feathers. You have feathers on your arms.”

“How?”

“Dinosaurs are the ancestors of most avian species, almost as much as they’re related to reptiles. There were several dinos that had feathery arms. It doesn’t mean you can fly or anything, and I still can’t tell what you’re supposed to become. But I’d say we have only a couple hours left. It’s going to accelerate, and then all at once…”

Jamie experimented with her arms, trying to flex and test how much the pain would prevent her from using them. She slowly opened her eyes. The tips of the feathers were mostly blue with a hint of red sprinkled in. The feathers would probably get in her way and would do nothing to help her. He had seen her leap between buildings when they were in the ruins, and there was a chance the feathers could help her float through the air a bit, but there was no way she could take off from the ground and fly.

“You ready?” he asked.

“Don’t have a choice.” She tried to push herself up, and she allowed him to help her stand.

“You are
really
trying to find ways to touch my ass,” she said.

“If you had one, I might give it a shot.”

He helped her into the cab.

“Listen,” he said, “I’m sorry.”

Jamie was still trying to move her arms around and find some level of comfort. He cleared his throat; it was hard to admit that he was wrong, especially about his life’s work. It felt like he was explaining both his worst fears and the most embarrassing moment he had endured to a woman he wanted to like him. Starting at the open road ahead of them, he thought he did not want her to be attracted to him in any way, but rather, hold him in higher regard.

He wanted her to know that he was not a piece of shit.

“Sorry you’re a genius?” she asked.

“Huh?”

“Are you apologizing for being smart?”

“I don’t think so. Believe it or not, I’m starting to feel bad about all this. I knew that playing God could lead to some heavy shit, but I didn’t care. In a way, I still don’t. I did what I was supposed to do, what I knew how to do. I’ve had a lot of fun, except for the last few days. I’ve seen and done things most people will never get a chance to see or do.”

“Getting awfully sappy. Don’t know if I can take it.”

“I guess I’m sorry that people got hurt because of me.”

“Stop giving yourself so much credit. Besides, you should never apologize for being good at something, for having a marketable talent. Don’t ever apologize for being successful. We got a chance to do something right now. Start the truck.”

Izzy shook his head. “I was trying to apologize for what I did to your hair.”

Jamie ran her fingertips over her scalp. “When you’re kicking ass, hair just gets in the way.”

5

A bird, of all things. Turning into a dinosaur was becoming a letdown, especially if she had feathers that weren’t even going to help her fly. She was exhausted, filthy, and hurting.

“You seriously can’t drive?” Jamie said.

Izzy smirked. “Got as far as my permit. I mean, I didn’t have to drive anywhere.”

“Your parents didn’t teach you?”

“My parents? I haven’t talked to them in years.”

Ahead of them: a dirt road, blue sky, trees. She powered her window down and felt the cool air on her face. It felt good to get out of that abattoir. They were heading home, now.

“They don’t care what you’re doing now?”

Izzy shrugged. “What do you care?”

Jamie inhaled fresh air and looked up at the sky above them; shapes that were too large to be birds hovered in the air. Was that her fate?

“You might be the last person I talk to, kid. By the sound of it, you haven’t gotten very far with anyone besides being told what you’re supposed to do or telling people what you want. We got a few minutes.”

That was it. She could feel it in her sore bones, in her neck that became harder to move with each passing second, in her eyes that wanted to explode out of her eye sockets, pushed out by the hammer that pounded nails into her brain. In the air, she could smell
them.
Hundreds of primal creatures that had gathered at the compound were following them, and some were ahead. She didn’t want to tell Izzy there were stuck between two monstrous foes. Voices chattered in her brain—voices of former people who were afraid of what they had only recently become.

But Izzy wasn’t a fool. “You can hear them, can’t you?”

“Yes.”

Izzy seemed to be struggling to keep the vehicle straight on the road. “What are they saying?”

“It’s mostly static. A lot of people talking at once. I don’t think any of them are looking forward to living in Kresevich’s zoo.”

“Huh?”

“I guess he didn’t tell you the master plan.”

“He told you?”

“Old bastard wanted to get into my pants.”

“You’re barely wearing pants.”

Jamie tried to decipher some of the words that crossed through her mind. Could the dinos hear each other? It must have been just as confusing to them.

(“
Hungry.”)

(“I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t…I can’t…”)

(“Flying! Holy mother of fuck, I’m flying!”)

(“Please, don’t leave me…”)

(“Things. I can. Eat. Sun. Fly. They run. THEY RUN.”)

All nonsense. Izanami had said they could receive impressions of thoughts from each other, and that wasn’t a clear enough explanation to figure out what she could do about all the crap that she had to filter through her head. Could she distinguish where the voices were coming from? Was there a way to control it?

There was no way to figure it out. No way to test what she could or could not do. She had to rely on Izzy to drive and a little bit of luck; they would be pretty damn fortunate if she didn’t have to bring out the guns.

“How many?” Izzy asked. “Are they behind us? Ahead of us?”

“Everywhere, I think.”

“You’re not exactly a fatalist. You don’t think we’ll make it.”

“We don’t have a choice. We make it or die trying.”

“So what do you want me to say? You know I feel like shit about all this. We don’t have a plan. Just drive. Just drive and maybe shoot stuff, right? Kresevich isn’t going to just let us board his plane.”

“And Kenshin isn’t going to let Kresevich just board the plane, either.”

“This sounds like it’s going to be fun. So we’re distracting ourselves a bit with small talk. Okay. What happens to you when you get back home? Wasn’t that guy you were with some famous journalist?”

“Jordan. Yeah. We saw him at the hotel.”

“Before you kicked Kenny through the window.”

“Yup.”

“In a way, that was kind of funny. I mean, Kenny and I didn’t always get along. He was a glorified bodyguard with some really fucked-up ideas in his head. I guess those ideas are part of the reason why we’re here. But damn.”