Escape From Dinosauria (Dinopocalypse Book 1) (28 page)

“Those ideas are the reason why Kenshin was here. Nobody else gave a shit about what he thought. I don’t think he knew that.”

“Your boyfriend. I’m sorry. You liked him, didn’t you?”

“How did you figure that out? Was it when I kicked Kenshin through the window?”

Izzy didn’t seem to know what to say. Still an awkward kid with terrible social skills, he was doing his best to be nice to her. He didn’t have much hope for his future, or maybe he truly felt guilty about turning people into dinosaurs.

This was a good conversation to have. He needed his nerves calmed. There had been a whole world promised to him, and he could lose it all. She knew that feeling. She was a champion, after all, and anyone who tried to take the title from her learned the hard way what it was like to try and steal someone’s sense of worth from them.

But that wasn’t right. Sense of worth? The title belt didn’t define her.

What if it did? She was worried what would happen to her career when she returned to the States if the massacre on the bridge had been uploaded. More importantly, she was worried what her father would think if that title was taken from her for acting like an idiot and losing control of herself. How would she explain that to him?
“Dad, listen, I was turning into a dinosaur. You wouldn’t understand.”

Everything she had achieved could be ripped away from her, despite how hard she had fought to keep it. Despite how hard she had fought to make sure she never had to call her father and tell him that he was right; her parents paid for her dance classes and she turned them into capoeira and scissoring boys who tried to put the make on her. God would have wanted her to appreciate all the little things she had in life and get married, raise a family. They had everything they could ever want. A lot of property to hunt on, a good Christian school her kids could attend, and decent government subsidies that would enable them to keep working the land. All she had to do was call her father once to tell him she had lost, to tell him that she was no longer undefeated, and it would all be over.

Izzy had to be in the same boat. If he made it past the Feds or whoever else could use him, he would have to hide for the rest of his life; otherwise, he was the kid who helped kill a whole lot of people on an island resort that was supposed to be a family-friendly, dinosaur-themed attraction.

“I am probably in for a good ass-kicking from my dad when I get back,” Jamie finally said.

“Nobody’s going to just let me back into the States,” Izzy said. “And I can’t figure out why Kresevich would make it a priority to pick me up, then leave me behind.”

“Once you get the right drugs into me, I’ll try to use whatever pull I can to keep you from disappearing.”

“Thanks for that. But you’re supposed to be dead, I think. I doubt they’ll let you back, either. We’ll both be outlaws. Doogie Howser and the Dino Queen.”

The truck swerved to the side of the dirt road.

“You just have to keep it on the road,” Jamie said.

“Obviously.”

The truck swerved again, to the same side.

“I don’t feel like I’m losing control,” Izzy said.

Jamie sighed and stuck her head out the window. Through the dirt and rocks kicked up by the tires, she was able to spot the various dinos chasing after them. They weren’t much bigger than goats, and they were brightly-feathered with clawed hands.

“Dye-nons,” Izzy said. “They’re fast. Their feet have long nails. Used to climb on their prey or latch on, maybe even scale trees. Real nasty fuckers.”

“Nothing comes easy.” Jamie grabbed the sword, machine gun, and sack full of grenades.

“I’m looking at your ass!” Izzy said while she climbed through the back.

Several dinosaurs were chasing after them, each running on its hind legs, tongues lolling out of their mouths. Their shrunken arms remind her of the pain in her own limbs, and she stopped too long to think about it.

One of the creatures leapt forward and latched onto the truck bed with its hands, the talons gripping the heat-treated steal as if they were sharpened Adamantium claws; there was no way in hell these little bastards should be able to claw into the truck.

“Son of a bitch,” Jamie said, mostly because she admired it.

The
Deinonychus
scrambled onto the truck bed like a skittish cat. The thing wasn’t about to wait for her to invite it to her place for a drink; its long, spiked toenails were propped up, and the beast bounded forward. Jamie squeezed the trigger, but the dye-non’s momentum allowed it to bowl into her, the crown of its feathered head hitting her in the gut, knocking the wind out of her. Its clawed hands snatched up her legs and flipped her onto her back. She landed hard, stunned.

She swung the gun up just as the little fucker leered over her, its nails digging into her flesh. Its mouth and the muzzle of the gun were a perfect match for each other; the gun fit nicely, and chunks of skull and tiny chunks of meat flopped out of the back of its head when she pulled the trigger. She kicked it over the side of the truck.

Cut on both sides of her body, she managed to stand while the truck rumbled forward. “You okay back there?” Izzy shouted.

Jamie didn’t have time to answer him. She emptied the machine gun into every fucking dye-non she could see.

A lot of them dropped and disappeared in the dust.

Jamie wiped sweat out of her eyes. It was like using a chainsaw; the tool might do the majority of the work, but she had to make sure the tool could work effectively. Smoke poured out of the gun.

Click.

Another dye-non had scrambled onto the flatbed.

No,
two.

Three.

Fuck.

One second to move.

She dropped the gun. She didn’t take her eyes off them.

One knee. Hand dropping, reaching. Fingers clasping around the handle of Kenshin’s sword.

She swung the blade back-handed and tried to throw her shoulder into the cut. She didn’t know her mouth was open until she tasted the dinosaur blood that splashed down her throat. The blade met resistance, but Jamie’s strength was no longer human, and the blinding shower of gore surprised her.

Blinking blood out of her eyes, she saw that a headless dino lay in front of her, twitching and shitting. Through feathers, flesh, muscle, and bone, she had decapitated it with a backhanded swing while kneeling. An impossible position. An impossible swing.

Nails click-clacking against the metal bed, the other two feathery creatures charged forward. Jamie stood on her heels, bent her knees and tried to hold the sword in a position she imagined Kenshin might hold it. Only one side of the blade was sharp, but that side had proven sharp enough to slice through a dinosaur’s neck with the same ease that a lubricated Ron Jeremy might use when sliding into a veteran porn starlet.

A strange thought, considering the only time she had seen a Ron Jeremy porn video was the night she had broken her boyfriend’s hands because he “missed her too much.”

The curve of the sword was positioned over her shoulder. She breathed in the blood-tainted air. The truck rumbled over the dirt road. Screeching through the air with its claws outstretched like a desperate falcon, the first dinosaur was easy to sidestep; she dropped the sword over its stiff tail and sliced clean through it, but only managed to get half the easy target. Blood sprayed and the beast squealed. Jamie kicked it in the chin, sending it over the side of the truck.

Jamie felt knives stab into her trapezius muscles, while another set of knives dug into the back of each thigh. The shock of sudden pain opened her hand, and Kenshin’s sword dropped from her grasp.

6

Izzy couldn’t find the switch for the windshield wipers, which was unfortunate, considering the only goddamn thing he could see was blood. Either Jamie was kicking some serious ass, or she was being brutally slaughtered. Either way, somebody was getting fucked up.

He remembered the time he threw a can of strawberry jam at a neighbor’s car. He thought the jar was going to burst and splatter thick, oozing jam all over the place, but instead, it created a spiderweb of cracks across the windshield. His parents paid for the damage, and he paid with a grounding.

The good old days.

He couldn’t even remember why he’d thrown the jam. One day he’s destroying windshields, the next he’s destroying the world.

“Can’t see shit,” Izzy muttered. Seeing might be the least of his concerns, mostly because he could barely control the vehicle to begin with. As long as he didn’t have to make any sudden turns, he’d probably be fine.

As long as he didn’t need to see anything—driving a huge armored truck would be a piece of cake.

The whole damn jungle was scarlet.

If he stopped to clean off the blood, an army of dinosaurs might climb up the truck and rip Jamie’s face off before getting to him. That might be happening anyway.

Keep driving.

Until something slammed into the front of the truck.

The armored cab shuddered. What the fuck did he hit?

“Goddammit.” Izzy’s right hand fumbled around blindly for the gun they had packed in their bag.

He was expected to drive, shoot, get them off the island.

The cab shuddered again. Izzy pressed hard on the pedal.

Out of the corner of his eye, a shape emerged.

A toothy dye-non mouth opened wide as the creature found a way to sticks its sharp nails into the armored door. The creature’s feathered head rippled in the wind, until it violently bashed its skull against the window.

“You gotta be kidding me,” Izzy said.

The gun had to be in the pack somewhere. As long as he managed to find it, he could shoot without a problem; every character in an action film could fire a gun under pressure, so why couldn’t he? He was a genius, after all. He could figure it out.

What kind of creature would be willing to bash its head through bulletproof glass to get to him? The creature slammed its head against the window again, leaving a smear of blood where its head had kissed the glass.

If Jamie was right, then these things could be directed somehow; they could communicate, although in a limited capacity. The only person who had a personal grudge against him was Tanaka’s bitch trophy wife, Izanami.

There was no way it could break the glass. This was a state of the art machine designed to endure a storm of fire and bullets.

The window cracked.

“Ah, shit.” Izzy jerked the truck to the side and the pack fell onto the floor.

The dinosaur reared back and smashed through the window. Izzy was too shocked to look away. Glass rained into the cab. The feathered head drooped over the side of the door, brain matter slowly dripping out of its head—lifeless.

Except for humans, animals did not willingly endanger their lives unless they battled for food or the lives of their young. How did it know to use its head to bust through the glass?

That’s right: it used to be a human being capable of rational thought.

These weren’t your momma’s dinosaurs.

No time to beat himself over it now; the truck hit a huge bump and he still couldn’t see anything through the bloody windshield. A savage scream that might have been Jamie chilled him, and he did not want to look behind him. He did not want to see one of those wild-looking bastards staring back at him, nothing else on their minds except for his death.

The dye-non was still attached to the door, and its head lolled around on broken glass. The pungent blood-smell was strong enough to make him want gag in that confined cab, but he wasn’t about to roll his window down.

Conveniently, he found a switch for the wipers and cleared off the windshield.

It would have been better to drive without being able to see.

He released his foot from the pedal slightly because he lost control of all motor functions, his fingers slowly releasing their grip from the steering wheel. His stomach flopped around and he had to clench his ass cheeks tight to keep from adding his own stench to the cab.

Lined up down the road—hundreds of them. All running toward the truck as if they were a school of eager children chasing down an ice cream truck. The bastards looked like they were smiling, too, with mouths full of teeth and wide-awake eyes.

“Okay, I got this. I got this. Yeah. This can be fun, actually.”

In
Grand Theft Auto
, he loved jacking cars and running over pedestrians just for the hell of it. Steal a nice car, run people over, get chased by the cops, blow up helicopters, all that kinda good shit.

Izzy slammed his foot on the gas pedal.

Most of them moved out of the way, but not all of them.

A dye-non ran straight into the cab as if it could go
through
the cab, but instead it smashed against the truck and was sucked beneath the wheels. The truck crushed it easily. Another dino rush into the cab, but this one clung to the grill with its claws, and its head disappeared beneath the windshield. Izzy leaned forward for a better look. One of its claws reached up and punched into the heat-treated steal in an attempt to drag itself up.