Escape From Dinosauria (Dinopocalypse Book 1) (10 page)

The restaurant was empty save for waiters and a man at the head of the table.

At the head of the table was a slight man whose expensive suit sagged over his flesh; candleglow revealed a sickly pallor to the Japanese man who must have been Boss Tanaka. He smiled politely and bowed his head barely an inch to his guests.

“It is a pleasure to meet you at last, Mr. Vance,” Tanaka said without any hint of an accent. His American English was perfect. Jamie had expected another exotic accent to add to the gallery of mysterious people she had met so far at the resort.

“Boss Tanaka himself,” Jordan said, and returned a slight bow, though he did not attempt to walk across the room to shake the man’s hand. Jamie felt Jordan’s hand touch the small of her back, and she momentarily flinched. “Allow me to introduce you to Jamie Rock, whom I’ve sure you’ve heard much about.”

“Yes, the fighter.” Tanaka turned to her, but did not bow. “The pleasure is mine, Ms. Rock. You are a damn fine piece, I must say. Mr. Vance, I thought we were going to eat alone? Why don’t I get a taste of your girl and you go back downstairs for a bit.”

Jamie clenched her fists.

“I’m kidding, man!” Tanaka said and slapped Jordan on the shoulder. “Relax. Don’t act like it’s the end of the world. You could be dead in the next five minutes. Grab her tits and squeeze ‘em while you still can.”

Gajillionaire or not, she would have punched this dickhead in the face if it weren’t for Jordan.

Before they could even sit down, Jamie was thrown into the middle of an awkward and uncomfortable meeting.

“With all due respect,” Jordan began, “we are absolutely in love with our accommodations. Before you begin apologizing up and down for what happened to us at the airport, I’m going to point out that you brought me out here. You need me more than I need you. And I expect you to be very forward and honest with me. My roller coaster of a day isn’t the kind of adventure I expected on your tourist resort.”

Tanaka chuckled. “Very aggressive, Mr. Vance. I can respect that. Sit then, and we’ll dine. Our situation has changed. We will not be serviced until after we eat, and you’ll see the refreshment is light. And maybe you’ll be a nice guy and let your girl service me a bit.”

Jamie wanted to get the hell out of there. Whatever spark of curiosity remained had fled upon meeting this unlikable skeleton of a man. He was sickly and weak, and in the flickering shadows she could see the puffiness and red ridges around his sleep-deprived eyes. The remaining thin lines of hair over his egg-shaped head were draped tiredly atop his skull.

They sat down and Tanaka coughed several times without covering his mouth. There was a bottle of cheap wine on the table, and disappointment sank further into Jamie’s gut. No meat, no beer. Not even a fucking salad bowl.

This wasn’t going to go well, although it was pretty cool to see Jordan become aggressive.

“Let’s assume that things are not going as planned,” Jordan said. “You called me out here because you wanted to deliver a story to the world. You wanted me to deliver it for you. But the story is changing.”

Nobody touched the food or the wine. Tanaka stared at them for a moment, his gaunt features making him appear to be a diseased old man on the edge of life.

“Things have changed,” Tanaka said. “Everything has changed. I should not have brought you here. It was desperate. I knew it was desperate but I couldn’t admit it to myself. It’s too late now, Mr. Vance. Far too late. I have not had ass in days, either. Things are going badly for me. And my wife, that dumb little whore…man, I got no idea what happened to her. No. Fucking.
Clue.
”

The boss was clearly drunk. He was probably a throbbing penis to begin with, but this was ridiculous. Jamie regretted coming up with Jordan.

“You’re going to have to be very clear about your expectations,” Jordan said.

“You came here to learn about the billions of dollars in biotech contracts that were invested in this project. The billions of dollars in biotech weapons research that financed this enterprise. I was doomed from the start. I was used. Manipulated. My wife is a victim. Everything I have worked for is lost. Everything. Everything has led to this. Even Kenny turned into a piece of shit.”

“Mr. Tanaka—”

“I should have listened to Kenshin. He was always right. If I could have one more request, I would ask him to forgive me. I wasted all those years of our friendship, threw them away because I could not believe him. I refused to believe him. I did not want to believe him.”

Jamie shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She glanced back to the doors.

“Mr. Tanaka, please…” Jordan tried.

“We are cut off. Everyone who is here will die. Soon, we will all die together. Time is growing short. You sure I can’t have a taste of Jamie’s pussy?”

Jordan pounded his fist on the table. “Goddammit, I don’t have time to screw around with your rambling. Give it to me straight. What did you drag me into?”

“I have always been a selfish man.”

Jamie stood up suddenly. “It’s time to go. I’m out of here.”

Jordan looked up at her and said nothing. He stared at her while Tanaka coughed through a bout of laughter.

“The families are complaining,” Tanaka said. “Everyone here was invited. All the guests are going to be assassinated in one carefully-orchestrated strike. Time runs short now. We are cut off from the world. Kresevich has won. He has broken me. They have all broken me.”

“Who is ‘they’?”

“What did I just say?” Jamie shouted. “Both of you assholes aren’t making sense. I’m getting out. I’m gone. Jordan, you can have your story of the century and your giant lizards. Fuck this shitshow.”

Again, coughing laughter from Tanaka.

The wine glasses on the table shook. The table shook. The room vibrated.

The rumbling passed momentarily, and returned again. Jamie forgot to breathe, and the entire room was frozen in a moment of realization. Her first thought was that it was an earthquake, but then she remembered where she was and understood why both men stared at each other, one with malice in his eyes, the other with sorrow.

Jamie ripped the shoes from her feet and left them on the floor as she ran to the doors. Electronically sealed, they would not open.

The room shook.

Jordan shot out of his seat. “Tanaka, you’re going to let us out of here.”

“Oh? This is the best thing for all of us. My selfishness. It has defined me. It has brought us to this.”

Jamie was ready to storm over to Tanaka and start beating his head in.

When she saw the shape beyond the window.

The shape wasn’t an airplane, although that was the first thing that popped into her head. Airplanes don’t wobble up and down as if they were suspended by wires from a puppeteer’s hands. Maybe a glider of some kind would drift up and down as easily as the flying object.

Her thoughts were electric impulses, nearly as fast as the speed of light, ideas transmitted behind eyes that did not blink.

Jordan stood, his mouth agape.

Tanaka didn’t even turn around.

The restaurant quaked again.

Spinning now, rotating within midair, the flier’s approach seemed to slow time. In one instant, Jamie realized it was a large bird, and in the span of an electric impulse firing through the realization, she looked into a large, black eye.

An explosion of glass. Not like glass shattering in a movie. More like a massive wave crashing against the shore. Jordan’s eyes met hers for that millisecond before his entire form was engulfed in the glass storm.

Snowflakes. The glass shards looked like snowflakes in a blizzard.

Jamie crouched and covered her face with her bare arms, and it felt like fingernails were constantly scratching across them. She was punched in the head, and her body sagged against the door. Who punched her? It was a good hit. Couldn’t have been Tanaka—the guy looked like a paper-mache skeleton.

Who punched her?

Blood in her eye. She had never been hit so hard by a single punch. Her thoughts were far away. Her body was rubbery and dropped her arms from her face. Off guard. Exposed. One punch away from being knocked out.

The room tilted, and she looked over a blanket of glass shards. A large chunk of thick glass lay beside her, a long vertical line of dark blood staining its surface.

Shaking, everything was shaking.  She needed to stand up, needed to figure out what she was looking at. Where was Jordan? What the hell happened? She had to stand. The fight wasn’t over. She was still in this.

Jamie rose to her feet, steadying herself against the door. The huge dinner table was gone, replaced by a monstrously large bird. She had been hit pretty hard by the glass chunk. The room spun. She had to get back to her corner. The bell needed to ring. She needed one more round. Just needed a moment to get her shit together.

She let go of the wall and stumbled forward while the room shook violently. The massive bird was not a bird at all, but a leathery lizard with wings. She knew what she was looking at but she couldn’t admit it to herself. Its body broken and bleeding, the creature groaned and its beak opened to reveal rows of sharp, curved teeth. Its crested head lifted a couple inches and dropped weakly. She thought about baby dragons.

One black eye closed on the side of its head. A thick red tongue full of blood rolled out of its toothy jaw. Glass shards were embedded in its scaly flesh and blood seeped from hundreds of wounds, pooling over the carpet of shattered window beneath it.

Yeah, she knew it was called. Every kid in America who had the privilege of going to school knew what a pterodactyl looked like. And here it was. A dying pterodactyl.

“Jamie,” a voice groaned.

Jordan’s hand stretched out from beneath a leathery, bat-like wing. She bent down and nearly fell flat on her face. Her strength hadn’t returned and she had to wipe blood out of her eyes. The room was still shaking and the wounded dinosaur moaned louder.

Gripping his hand tightly, Jamie tried to lift the heavy wing and became light-headed again. She lost her grip on Jordan’s hand and stumbled backward. She couldn’t fall again. She had to keep standing. Jordan needed her.

The room tilted again and Jamie slipped on a glass shard, its edges cutting into the pads of her foot. The sharp pain was easy to ignore, but falling to her knees again was something she cursed herself for. Her hands were cut by more glass, and maybe her knees, and maybe her ankles; she was bloody but she wasn’t beat. She had to stand again.

“Jamie!”

Up. Stand up.

Tilting, spinning. Arms and legs refusing to respond.

She stood and felt the cool wind’s gust from the opening where the window had once been before a massive dinosaur crashed through it. She was on the edge now, looking out. Cobwebs in her brain. Synapses slow. Nothing firing. Her body breaking down and becoming useless. Her will was nothing without her body.

“Jamie!”

Below her, smoke billowed out of shattered windows and doorways. Vehicles burned and people screamed. Tiny bodies scurried in the street below, nothing more than shadows thrown onto the concrete by the growing flames reaching higher into the night.

A terrible roar shook her bones, and she tried to clench her hands into fists.

She needed to save Jordan.

Stomping down the street on hind legs, cresting sail upon its scaled back, a dinosaur lifted its cannibalistic jaw and bellowed. Jamie stared. The long, narrow neck swung the mouth around as if that monstrous face was a weapon. She remembered what Jordan had said about it on the plane. She remembered how long it might be, and looking upon it now, she wanted him to see it. She wanted him to be next to her.

A strange thought: he might be dying and all she could think about was the fact that he needed to see it. His childhood dream come true.

A helicopter buzzed through the sky. People screamed. The lumbering dinosaur clumsily stomped through the street, lowering its neck on occasion as if dipping into a pool of water to snag a fish. Its head came up, and it shook wildly as human limbs flailed from between its teeth.

Fire. Screams. Smoke.

The prehistoric creature looked demonic in the orange glow cast by the fiery streets. Unopposed, the beast ruled the street, pounding up the avenue and pawing at windows with its short arms while lifting itself up on its hind legs. Jamie thought of Bones, the Jack Russell she used to have as a little girl. The beast was an eager dog, clawing through concrete and glass to get its prey. Tiny shadows darted past its feet, and in the firelight Jamie could see long, stiff tails following those shapes down the street.

The beast began to scale the hotel, punching its greedy claws through windows so it could climb up.

Jamie mouthed the large creature’s name: “
Spinosaurus
.”

If only she could stand. If only she could bring Jordan here to see the creature in all its terrifying majesty. This was the story of a lifetime. He had survived gunfights in desert climes and had walked up frozen mountain paths.

His hand stretched out from beneath the pterodactyl wing.