Dinosaur Lake (17 page)

Henry raised the rifle and also fired at the beast. Even in the dark, the monster was so huge it was hard to miss. The bullets bounced off as if they were made of rubber. Must be covered in plate-like scales or its hide was so thick the bullets couldn’t penetrate, Henry thought, as he fired again and again.

Just as he’d feared, to fight the creature they’d have to have something with a lot more firepower.

“Good god! The bullets don’t faze it.” Justin screamed, as the monster swung its bulk around and roared down at them.

Rearing up on its hind quarters, the last of the day’s light glinted off narrow, reptilian yellow eyes and glowed off bared, jagged teeth. The head was bigger than a man. A monstrous fin followed the curve of its back. Its arms tapered to webbed claws. As it swiped at them with one, Henry could hear the wind whistle from the power of the stroke. It drove them backwards.

Justin’s teeth were clattering like castanets. Henry could hear him making the strangest whimpering sounds in between shots.

Yet instead of coming after them, the creature swiveled around to its cornered quarry and went in for the kill.

“I’ll be damned,” Henry gasped. “It’s too smart to be drawn away from a sure thing.”

“Aim for the head!” Justin yelped. “The eyes. Stop it!”

Henry kept firing, but the beast cleverly hid its face, protecting its eyes from its attackers, and the bullets continued to bounce off. Nothing deterred the creature from getting to the woman.

“I have to get closer!” Henry shouted.

He yanked Justin along with him, hunching over as he ran, holding the rifle up high. “I just have two shots left, so we’ll have to get around to the other side, if we’re going to save her I have to make both shots count. It’s got to have an Achilles’ heel somewhere.”

He had extra ammunition on him, but he didn’t believe he’d have the time to reload the rifle before the creature would have the woman. He got positioned and got off his last two shots. He missed the eyes, it was moving too much. The creature was untouched.

Henry bent down, and with trembling fingers reloaded his rifle as quickly as he could.

It wasn’t quick enough.

The monster scooped up the woman reporter.

It was over in seconds. One moment the woman was there in the beast’s claws, and the next she was gone. Her final scream haunted the air.

Justin doubled over and retched.

Reloaded, and angry beyond reason, Henry scrambled in closer and, while the thing was busy, he got off as many shots to its head as he could. The bullets were like throwing pebbles. The creature was too swift for him. Henry found himself cursing at the thing, shaking his fist, an insane rage gripping him strong enough that it overrode the fear. He continued firing at the leathery skin until most of his bullets were gone. Useless, as well.

Justin, cognizant of their sudden danger now the woman was gone, had to drag him away while the monster was occupied, which wasn’t for long.

The beast’s head swung about and glittering eyes fixed on them, really seeing them for the first time. More food.

Facing them, it roared, its jaws yawning wide to reveal blood-stained teeth. That snapped Henry out of his defiant, senseless rage. Justin no longer had to pull at him to get him to leave.

“We got to get the hell out of here!” Justin yelled. “Now!”

They ran toward where they’d left the jeep, slipping in the dark over tree limbs and rocks.

It was a good thing Henry knew the area as well as he did or they wouldn’t have gotten away at all.

They were almost at the vehicle when they heard the brute crashing behind them. Still hungry.
Hell, we’re not going to be its dessert.

“It’s right behind us!” Justin yelled as Henry leaped into the jeep. The tires threw rocks as they raced off. Henry deliberated over switching the headlights on, and then did. The monster knew they were there. Its eyes must be keenly adapted to the darkness. No use trying to hide. Speed was the only advantage they’d have.

That brute could move.

Henry hadn’t used his police academy Emergency-and-Evasive Driving experience for years but hadn’t forgotten any of it. It returned easily, second nature. He drove the jeep harder than he’d ever done, dodging trees and boulders, spinning its wheels on the narrow pathway and ramming the accelerator to the floor.

An expert driver, he was familiar with the terrain, the trail; the woods. His car had great traction. Still, the monster was breathing down their necks. The route wasn’t always clear and fragments of limbs and rocks rocketed everywhere as they hit them.

The jeep bucked like a wild horse, crashing through brush and sliding along the rocky path. Justin was holding on for dear life, praying. Out loud.

“I think we gave it the slip,” Justin exhaled a while later with relief. Except for their heavy breathing, the crunch of the rolling tires on the ground, and the racing of the engine, there were no other sounds.

The snarling and booming footfalls behind them had ceased a ways back.

But Henry didn’t stop. He didn’t drive as crazily as before, but he didn’t slow down much, either. It was too quiet.

He didn’t trust the damn thing. It was up to something.

They raced through the night. All Henry could think about was getting Ann, Laura and Phoebe safely out of the park and away from the monster. He’d been a fool to think the creature would stay forever in or around the lake…a fool to allow his family to return.

No telling where the monster would go now. It traveled as easily on land as it did in the water. Now Henry knew that for certain. He’d seen it. Could longer deny it.

“I can’t believe we got away,” Justin breathed, slumped against the inside of the door. “Can’t believe we’re safe. In one piece. Alive. Sheesh, that was close. That poor woman.”

“Yes.” Henry felt so awful, he couldn’t say anything more.

They heard a bellowing roar and looked up. The monster was looming above them in the night, ahead of them…right in the middle of the road. Waiting.

It bent down, claws reaching. Bloodied saliva churned in a yawning mouth full of wicked looking incisors and dripped down in its drool. A powerful stench of carnage hung about it.

Henry had a split second to evade the mouth. He wrenched the wheel savagely to the left and hurtled the jeep into the blackness of the nocturnal woods–into the unknown that could have been a tiny gully, or a steep cliff of rocks or an endless plummet into a chasm of empty air.

But any death would have been better than the monster’s fangs and claws.

The jeep disappeared into the darkness amidst a screeching ruckus of twisting metal and breaking tree limbs. It flew through the air and before it rolled, Henry shouted at Justin, “
Jump!
”

Henry’s body rolled down the steep hillside and landed in a bed of branches and leaves, enough to soften his fall. His fingers reached up and touched scratches that burned along his face. His shirt and pants were ripped, but he was fairly sure he hadn’t broken anything; there was no howling pain anywhere in his bruised body. Just a general aching.

As he sat up, rubbing his side where something sharp had poked him, he heard Justin’s moaning. Dizzy-headed, Henry crawled past the upside-down jeep toward the scientist. The jeep’s tires spun in the silence.

“You okay?” Henry’s voice was hushed. He didn’t hear the monster anywhere, but wasn’t taking any chances. It’d already proven smarter than they’d ever imagined. So much for Dr. Harris’s dumb-dinosaur theory.

“Breathing,” Justin answered. “I hit a tree coming down. I’m going to have a hell of a head bump and something inside my chest hurts. But, otherwise, I think I’m okay. And,” he chuckled, relieving the tension, “imagine that? My glasses are still on my face, unbroken. You?”

“I’m going to be as sore as hell, scratched up like a cat post, but I’m in one piece, too.”

“We’re lucky. Someone’s watching over us.

“Where is it?” he asked.

“Don’t know,” Henry whispered. “We went a good distance before we crashed. We left our nemesis up there somewhere.” He waved a hand upwards in the darkness and prayed to god the beast wasn’t looking for them. Without a car they wouldn’t have a chance in hell to get away.

It was cold in the deep woods. A faint moon was rising to their left and provided just the tiniest bit of light to see by. Better than nothing. Henry had no idea where they were.

“That was close,” Justin groaned. “I thought I was dinosaur chow. I still hear those poor woman’s screams echoing in my head and my heart’s still doing a rain dance.”

Henry struggled to his feet and carefully helped Justin to his. The boy could hardly stand.

“I had a cell phone in the car but there’s no way I’m going to find it now,” he said. “Darn thing rarely worked out here anyway, so no big loss. So we have to get to a telephone, and warn Ann and Laura to get out of the park, if we can’t get them out ourselves. Alert those scientists at the dig. Ranger Headquarters is the closest telephone I can think of. I also had a flashlight in the jeep, darn it. We’re going to have to hoof it in the dark. As silently as we can.”

“We couldn’t have used a flashlight anyway, Henry. Too risky. It’d be like sending out a beacon on us. We don’t know where that bastard is.”

“You got a good point there.” Henry was standing beside Justin and reached out to steady him. “We need to be in stealth mode. No lights. No noise.” He was listening to the woods. Shivering. “And my rifle bounced out somewhere on the flight down the hillside, too. It’s gone. We’re defenseless.”

“As much good as it did us anyway. It didn’t seem to affect the creature at all. Just made it madder.” Justin swayed in the chilly air. Henry wondered if he was in shock or hurt worse than he was letting on. “I still have the pistol you gave me. Here.” Justin handed him the gun and Henry slid it into the empty holster around his waist.

“Thanks. Are you really all right?”

“Sure,” Justin sighed, “I’m fine. Just a tad shaky, that’s all. Let’s go.”

They climbed in the direction they believed they’d come from. Feeling with their hands…using trees as railings…cursing the darkness. Wishing the moon would rise quicker and give more light.

They located a road and trudged in what Henry thought was the right direction for headquarters. Every step treading on eggshells because they weren’t sure where the monster was, if it’d come after them again, or if it was rampaging at that moment where their loved ones were.

Panicked human cries shattered the night about a half hour later. They stopped to listen, trying to tell where the shouts were coming from.

“It’s your friends at the dig,” Henry declared with a horrible certainty. “They stayed too long.”

“When it couldn’t get us, it went after them.”

“I have to see if I can help, it’s my job, Justin, but I can send you in the right direction to get you to park headquarters. You tell them where I am and that I need reinforcements pronto. Tell them to bring the biggest guns we have. Can you do that for me?”

Not a hint of fear, not a word of excuse. The young man didn’t hesitate. “I can.”

“By the noise, if the dig is that way,” Henry turned to his right, “then headquarters is that way.” He pointed in another direction.

“On second thought, no,” Justin blurted out. “I’m coming with you. I know them and I want to help. If I know Harris they’ll have some sort of weapons we can use.”

Henry didn’t have to think about it. There wasn’t time. “Okay. Let’s go.”

As exhausted and battered as they were they broke into a scrambling run, fighting through the trees in the direction of the shouting…and gunshots. It wasn’t hard to locate the site.

Human cries mingled with the monster’s roars as it thundered through the woods, its jaws snapping. And they heard other awful sounds long before they arrived.

They burst into what had once been an archeological dig, but the only way they could tell that now was by the crushed tents and knocked-over shadowy RVs around them in the spreading moonlight. There were no lights. The scientists were gone, most likely scurrying or hiding for their lives–if they’d been lucky.

A steely stench of fresh blood clung to the place, it reeked of it, and Henry feared there’d be bodies or partial bodies strewn in the wreckage when daylight broke. The creature hadn’t stopped to feast on its kills, perhaps still chasing some unlucky scientist or expecting to return later and finish its smorgasbord. It, too, was gone.

Henry and Justin stood in the middle of the destruction, until they heard the cries deeper in the woods and followed them. There were survivors and Henry was relieved; then appalled as he and Justin thrashed through the dark trees, the bedlam forever seeming somewhere just ahead of them, to their right, or to their left. Always somewhere else.

The human wails rose to a crescendo and dwindled into the night air. There was nothing the two men could do to save any of them. Henry felt helpless. It was a feeling he wasn’t used to.

They found no one.

In time silence came.

Justin halted Henry’s movement by restraining him. “It isn’t going to do any good, us crashing through the woods like this in the dark. We’re not going to find them. They’ve all scattered. They’re hiding, dead, or trying to get to the lodge. We’ll never find them in the dark without shouting. That’s not such a hot idea. We don’t know if the monster’s moved on or not. Let’s pray most of them escaped. And we need to get to headquarters, don’t we?”