Escape From Dinosauria (Dinopocalypse Book 1) (14 page)

“My brain.”

“What?”

He tapped the side of his head for effect. “He wants me to train his people in Mother Russia to clone dinosaurs and program them to act as soldiers. Weapons of war. Nefarious shit like that.”

“Is he still on the island?”

He shrugged. “Beats me.”

“What are we still doing here? Why has nobody come to help?”

“Politics, pretty much. I assume you saw the activists when you flew in.”

“On the beach. Yeah.”

“Nobody wants to fly in and risk killing one of them again. Last time it happened, riots lasted for weeks. Plus, we can’t even be sure the government knows what has happened. There’s been no communication from either end.”

“Bullshit. In three weeks, someone is bound to wonder what the fuck happened to an island full of dinosaurs.” Plus, she thought, people would have been questioning why she hadn’t attended any of her press interviews. She was a celebrity. Her presence was constantly expected. Not to mention the hundreds or thousands of other guests visiting the island. Were they all dead now? Had they escaped?

The kid threw up his hands. “Then your guess is as good as mine.”

“I...I gotta pee.”

Jamie stood up before he could respond and walked outside, not caring that she was naked. If what the kid said was true, then the only things outside this cavern that might spy on her were dinosaurs. Besides, she’d never been shy. Her body was a temple and she treated it as such.

Although right now she was fully aware she probably looked like shit, and she was okay with that too, because fuck everybody else.

A mask of humidity peeled off her face as she stepped out of the cabin. A breeze slapped against her body as she moved to a nearby bush. By instinct, she tried to brush her hair out of her eyes, thinking the wind would have blown it across her face. She frowned, still confused, still full of questions, still full of urine. She squatted, holding on to a tree. If she returned to bed and went back to sleep, would she wake up in her hotel room? Or maybe back in California? The thought of sleep sounded dangerously appealing after spending three straight weeks unconscious. It seemed like a human body could only experience so much sleep at once before it started confusing what it was like to be alive and what it was like to be dead.

She walked back inside in search of clothing.

6

The sun. The heat. Someone needed to turn the sky off, pull the shade down over the world.

Just a dream. She was on the plane headed to this silly island and she was passed out, head on Jordan’s shoulder. The dread she felt about the trip had followed her into dreams, and now she was about to wake up.

Jamie had been shielding her eyes with her forearm and slowly dropped it. She expected to smell Jordan’s cologne and feel that stifled sensation that comes with being on a plane, no matter how nice of a ride it was.

Trees. Above her and all around her. Trees.

The smell of earth instead of cologne. It was a good scent, one she associated with home. Hunting with her brothers. Hard work and sweat. Long naps and cold beer.

She ran her hand over the crown of her skull. She felt lighter, and the thick blonde hair that was absent from her fingertips made her cringe. She brushed her scalp with her hand again. And again.

Insects chattered and birds sang. Her head was full of noise. Her head was full of blood and broken glass. She remembered the sound of glass, the terrible noise that sounded like a pile of cymbals crashing onto the floor after being piled atop each other in a fragile pyramid shape. Noise. Noise and pain.

She lifted the shirt and looked at the long scar across her body.

Unconscious for three weeks. Left alone on an island full of dinosaurs. Jordan dead.

Nope. She wasn’t buying it.

In the back of her head, she could hear her trainer’s voice. Gregorio had told her that losing a fight was not unlike a death in the family. There were stages of denial. Disbelief. Anger. Sorrow.

Jamie never lost a fight.

Aimlessly, she stumbled through the brush. She had no idea where she was going or where she wanted to go. She needed to walk. Inhale the air. Pump oxygen into her blood and figure everything out.

It didn’t occur to her that she might be in hostile territory or there might be a shred of truth to that whiz-kid-doctor’s claim that dinosaurs were all over the damn place. Nothing occurred to her. She clumsily pushed aside brambles and her feet crushed twigs. Silk threads of spiderweb glanced over her arms and face.

“Easy prey,” a gentle male voice said behind her.

She turned and found the Japanese man who had come into her room during her shower. He wore a bow and quivers on his back and a long gray robe cinched at the waist. His shimmering black hair was tied behind his head. He carried a brown sack over his shoulder.

“For what?” she asked. The words surprised her. Her throat was parched and her stomach rumbled hungrily.

“The jungle,” he said. “Come with me. There is something I must show you.”

“What if I say no?”

Kenshin bowed his head slightly. “Your life is your own. I cannot tell you how to lose it.”

The man’s smooth and calm demeanor made her want to trust him. He had gone out of his way to warn her before the shit hit the fan, and here he was again like a guardian angel, ready to help and guide her. There was nothing to gain from pushing him away. She was confused and damaged; telling him off again would get her nowhere.

“I got nothing better to do,” she said.

Kenshin bowed slightly again. He began to guide her through the brush soundlessly, and she noticed he was not wearing any footwear, nor was he wearing the katana she saw the first time.

“No sword?” she asked.

He stopped and half-turned, his profile framed by sunlight-touched leaves colored shades of amber from the tree-obscured sun. The light and leaves made a sort of halo around his face.

“No,” he said.

There was a lack of confidence in his tone and she realized it was a touchy subject. When he continued forward through the brush, she followed his example and did her best to remain quiet and careful. He always kept just ahead of her, and she knew he was setting an easy pace for her to keep up with. As her stomach rumbled angrily again, she thought about asking him when they were going to stop and where they were supposed to be going, but there was a sense of calm she felt because she was moving, going somewhere. She momentarily forgot all of the questions that nagged her and all the aches and pains her body suffered because she was moving forward.

A shrill cry above the trees stopped her, and that cry didn’t come from any bird she knew. She could hear the thunderous explosion of a million glass shards crashing into her memory. When a large shadow passed over the trees and temporarily blotted out the sunlight, a shiver ran down her spine.

“We’re close.” Kenshin’s calm voice snapped her back to the jungle.

The mysterious man led her through a shaded ravine. Foliage patterns and the strange color patterns she glimpsed among the scattering insects that traveled over dead tree branches made her wonder what other secret lives this island was home to. Jamie wasn’t a tourist here, but a stranger lost in an alien world. She walked behind a man who was completely out of place with the society she understood. Still, she followed Kenshin down a slope and maintained her footing, doing her best to imitate his graceful and fluid movements.

When he stopped in front of a looming cavern mouth, she was grateful for the rest.

“Here,” he said without looking at her.

“Sure.”

“You are okay?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“I increased the pace and you continued to keep up. I…you did not notice?”

“No. So what?”

“You have been unconscious for three weeks. I know that you are strong-willed, and your physical conditioning could match that of an Olympian, but what you did should not have been possible.”

“A lot of things don’t seem possible to me.”

Kenshin looked to the ground and focused his gaze on a pile of dead leaves. He frowned, but it wasn’t because the leaves were thought-provoking. Something was on his mind, and it had to do with her. Here was a careful man who did not make mistakes, and now he was wondering how he could have underestimated her.

He had tested her, and she felt no worse than if she had gone through a morning job, though her calf muscles were sore and her knees felt stretched. It felt good to exercise and taste the fresh air, and even better to sweat. Her last few waking hours had mostly been spent on a plane.

And in a hotel.

And then, unconsciousness.

“Sorry to surprise you,” she said. “Can we move on?”

“Of course,” he said, though his eyebrows were furrowed and he remained in deep thought.

Kenshin led her into the cave and the humidity followed them. Sunshine dappled the cave floor in white lines that crossed borders of shadow and rock. The darkness never completely swallowed the light; when Kenshin stopped, Jamie could see a pile of rocks neatly piled together in an odd show of organization amid nature’s chaos.

But that’s because they weren’t rocks at all.

“Fucking eggs,” Jamie said.

“Just eggs this time,” Kenshin said. When he glanced up at her, she realized he had just failed to make a joke.

Dinosaurs. Dinosauria. A plane trip to a tropical island. Activists-turned-terrorists. A Pterodactyl crashing through a window.

Jordan.

Everything.

Dizziness slapped Jamie upside the head and she awkwardly backed up into the cave wall.

“Why?” she asked.

“These creatures,” Kenshin said. “You’re asking why they are here?”

“I don’t know. Everything. All of it.”

Kenshin crouched near the eggs and stared at them while he began his story. “Tanaka was my friend. He was also my superior, but in the end, he was my friend. I honor him now by doing what must be done to stop this madness.”

“I don’t give a shit about Tanaka.”

“Of course not. Why would you? His dreams became lost somewhere. These dragons of old are all that he has left. The dragons that my ancestors struggled against have returned. Demons now. The old gods have never left us. We are at the beginning of time, which is also the end of time.”

She closed her eyes and sank to the cavern floor. She couldn’t handle his frustrating nonsense-babble, but there was no other choice. Home and everything familiar to her was far away, as if everything before this moment was nothing more than a dream.

“Now Tanaka’s wife has been corrupted, just as he was corrupted.”

“I still don’t understand why nobody has come here to stop this. Three weeks and no military? I’m not buying it.”

“Dmitri Kresevich. A very shrewd and intelligent man.” Kenshin stood and walked around the eggs, inspecting them. “Entire groups of soldiers have appeared here and many have been rescued. The wealthy tourists who came here, like yourself. Most of them got out. But others have arrived. Activists. Cultists. This place here, this cave—it is sometimes a shrine. People come here to pray to the beasts.”

She could feel herself falling into drowsiness. If she didn’t stay awake, she might wake up somewhere worse than this, somewhere darker. Maybe in the stomach of a monster that was supposed to be extinct.

Everything he said next was predictable. Everything Kenshin explained sounded typical of the whole damn human race.

“The island is full of scientific miracles,” he said, his voice fading quietly into the darkness as Jamie struggled to keep her eyes open. “Nobody is ready or willing to destroy Dinosauria outright. There was a large investment. A very large investment. The majority of the world’s superpowers wanted a piece once Doctor Israel convinced them.”

“The kid,” Jamie said.

“Yes. You have met him. Tanaka wanted to do something bold, something different. Like all men, he wanted to live forever.”

“Like George Washington and Shakespeare,” she said.

“No. He wanted to breathe and walk among men forever.”

“Oh, Christ.”

“We thought Doctor Israel’s genetics would help. It was the next phase of the project. There was a lot of effort and money devoted to it.”

“We?”

“I encouraged him. Tanaka was my friend.”

“You said that.”

Kenshin paused for a long time, inspecting the eggs. She opened her eyes wide and watched him stare at his memories. There was a lot to this story; Kenshin had his own personal demons to fight and he wanted to expose them, shape them into physical opponents he could confront with his bare hands. But he was hesitating now because he was not prepared to give voice to personal horror. He was afraid of himself.

A lot of fighters locked themselves up inside. After injuring an opponent or becoming injured; after losing an important match or saying something stupid in public; a fighter who didn’t have an opponent looked for one. A fighter who couldn’t fight anyone else fought their reflection.