Escape From Dinosauria (Dinopocalypse Book 1) (15 page)

“My dad and brothers used to take me deer hunting,” Jamie said. She wasn’t sure why she would share a personal story with this stranger, but it felt right. Jordan never even heard this story. Guilt tickled her throat now and her voice felt heavy, but she continued. “One time, I missed the buck. I was sulking about it. Dad asked me if I liked hunting. I told him I did. He said next time I better hit the target or I shouldn’t bother anymore.”

Kenshin’s eyes rested upon her.

“Next time we went out, I missed another shot. I must have been six or seven. He told me I should just give up. He said instead of moping, I could get out of the way and let the professionals take their shots. That’s not how he said it. That’s how I think about it now. Shit. Can’t even string a sentence together.”

Kenshin plucked an egg from the pile and dropped it into his sack. Jamie felt silly and vulnerable now. She had given away too much of herself to a complete stranger. This feeling she had now was the same reason she held back from Jordan. The same reason why she treated him like shit the night he died.

Maybe she needed to think about Daddy’s advice again.

“Breakfast,” Kenshin said about the eggs in his sack.

“What does Kresevich want?” she asked.

The strange man sighed. “You would think it’s the same thing Tanaka wanted.” He paused, catching his words. His clenched jaw moved back and forth. “The same thing we wanted. Kresevich is quite insane, and extremely dangerous. He loves his country more than any man could, and his country no longer exists.”

“Let me guess: the Soviet Union.”

Kenshin nodded. “Correct. As his army evolves and grows stronger with each passing day, he gets closer. He is part of the experiment too, in his own way. Nobody is coming to get him or his force until the results are satisfactory.”

Screw satisfactory results and government conspiracies. She was trapped on an island of nutjobs and dinosaurs, and her body was a wreck. Jordan was gone and she had to keep telling herself it had nothing to do with her, that it wasn’t her fault; he was gone and she never told him how much she really cared. She never told him that she wanted to forgive him for dumping her into this shithole. Even now, she couldn’t be mad at him. He was dead.

She hadn’t seen him die.

“Speaking of insane,” she said, “you’re wearing a robe and pretending to be a ninja. What’s your problem, anyway?”

“Samurai,” he corrected her. “The robe is called a kimono.”

“That’s it? You’re not going to answer my question.”

“Why do you fight, Ms. Rock?”

Enough of his garbage. There was work to do. Find Jordan and anyone left from his crew, and get off the fucking island.

She stood and began to walk out the cave. Almost like she had never been passed out for three weeks, her desire to get shit done and force her body to move had returned. This was the disciplined part of her mind. Only a champion could think and act like a champion. Her trainers and father had taught her
how
to be a champion; she had always been good at fighting, even though she had used a baseball bat more than once to help her out.

And then she learned how to use her fists.

And now she had to do the hardest part. Now, she had to fight against the foe she could not see, the foe that was all around her, the foe that was inside of her.

She stopped outside the cave mouth and felt the sunshine’s heat upon her face as a light breeze tickled the boughs. A hell of a lot better than being on an airplane or a hotel, but without Jordan…

“You must eat, recover more of your strength,” Kenshin said from behind her.

“I could use a Happy Meal right now. Speaking of ketchup, you wanna race back?”

Jamie pushed herself to the limit, but she had her work cut out for her. When she found him waiting for her back at HQ, she couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across her face. A long time had passed since anyone beat her at anything.

After three months lying comatose, she was in pretty good shape.

7

They made a small fire behind the cavern and cooked one of the dinosaur eggs. It didn’t taste half bad. Jamie couldn’t help but wonder what the activists would have to say about this. The ones Kenshin said lived on the beach. Dinosaur rights freaks. Back in the states, there was probably already a couple tabloids going to print that featured a snapshot of her eating breakfast with a caption like: CFI SUPERSTAR MURDERS BABY DINOSAURS. On Twitter, #alldinosmatter was trending worldwide. She’d get back home to a couple thousand tweets of people calling her the new Hitler.

If she ever made it back home.

Right now, home had never felt so far away. She’d been trapped here three weeks, and still nobody had come to rescue her. Maybe nobody would ever come. Or if they did, it would be too late and a
T. rex
would’ve already chosen her as a midnight snack.

“Hey, Kenny,” Izzy said between mouthfuls, “you think this egg belonged to Tanaka’s bitch?”

Kenshin paused before taking another bite of his own serving and stared at the kid scientist. “Doctor Israel, need I remind you that the human tongue is one of the easiest objects in the world to lose?”

“Yeah, but that’s only when the person you’re pissing off has a katana. And you, ninja man, are currently bladeless.”

Kenshin bit into his egg, eyes wandering the wilderness. “My katana is not far.”

Jamie set down her bowl of eggs in the dirt. The food was decent, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy her stomach. She was craving meat like a motherfucker. A triple bacon cheeseburger sounded pretty damn good.

“I need to know what the plan is here, you guys,” she said.

Izzy and Kenshin turned to her, almost as if they’d forgotten she was with them. And maybe they had forgotten. They were probably used to her being unconscious. If this was a horror movie, she’d be concerned about how long these two men had gone without seeing a woman. Surely they would rape her any second now. Except this wasn’t a movie, and every man wasn’t dying for a chance to become a rapist. Plus, Jamie could easily kick both their asses if it came down to it. Kenshin might have some weird ninja tricks up his sleeve, but the kid would be like stepping on a grape.

Right now, though, she didn’t have a reason to fight them. As far as she could tell, they were the only reason she was still alive.

“The plan?” Izzy said, after exchanging glances with Kenshin. “Shit, the last couple weeks, the only real plan we’ve kept in our sights was keeping you breathing.”

“What am I to you? You could have left me in that restaurant to bleed to death. Why save me? Are you CFI fans or something? Do you want my fucking autograph? Because that’s about the best I can do. If you expect some kind of miracle from me, you’re more delusional than I thought.”

“People know you,” Kenshin said. “When you open your mouth, people listen. When you close your fists, people fall silent. You are a face people recognize and respect. Now that your journalist companion is unfortunately gone, we need you to return home and share what has happened here. Kresevich cannot succeed. If he finds us, he’ll take Doctor Israel back to his homeland and force him to create an army of dragons.”

“Dinosaurs,” Izzy coughed into his fist.

Kenshin shot him a look and continued. “With this army, Kresevich could destroy the world. Everything Tanaka died trying to accomplish will be twisted and destroyed. Tanaka’s death cannot be a waste.” Kenshin paused; his eyes seemed faraway, his gaze looking at the memory of a dead man. “Ms. Rock, you must tell them everything Tanaka has worked for, and you must tell them about the man who wants to crack the earth and bleed it from the inside.”

His words were heavy, but she understood. Tanaka had made a powerful impact on Kenshin while he was still alive. The only reason she wasn’t also dead was because he thought she could help continue this insane, mad-scientist dinosaur shit. Of course, he was incorrect. As far as she could tell, Tanaka was the reason she was in this situation to begin with. By inviting her and Jordan to the restaurant and refusing to let them leave, he was directly responsible for Jordan’s death and her own imprisonment on the island. She didn’t give a shit if every dinosaur here died. They should have never been forced back into existence to begin with.

But if it made Kenshin satisfied to hear that she was onboard, and he helped her off the island, then screw it, she’d play along.

“Okay, so how do we get off the island?”

Izzy pointed in a seemingly random direction. “The beach, where the activists camp out. We figure eventually a boat’s gonna have to arrive to drop off supplies and more members of their weird little cult. So we stake it out and ambush them once it arrives.”

“That sounds pretty half-assed,” Jamie said.

“Thanks.”

“You’ve been sitting around for three weeks now. That’s the best you got?”

“Well, let’s hear your brilliant ideas.”

“I thought you were supposed to be some boy-genius. Can’t you build us a plane or some shit?”

Izzy stared at her for a moment, unsure if she was joking. “No. I cannot build a plane. I am not an engineer. I...I don’t think you understand what a scientist does.”

“I’m sorry,” Jamie said. “This all just seems completely hopeless to me. I don’t see how sitting around is going to get us off the island. What if a ship never comes? There has to be another way.”

Izzy sighed. “Kenny, this is the woman you made me waste weeks of my life to. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“She is our only hope,” Kenshin said.

“Lady ain’t no Obi-Wan, man.”

Kenshin frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t—”

Izzy waved him away and stood up. “Yeah, yeah, you don’t understand. I get it. You’re out of touch with pop culture. What a quirky fuckin’ character trait. How adorable. Do us all a favor and go eat Diablo Cody’s asshole.” He stormed off into the cavern.

Jamie and Kenshin sat around the dying fire in silence. After spending so long in a comatose state, she knew her body should have been begging to return to bed, to continue resting. But she felt the opposite. She was overflowing with energy. The urge to run through the jungle and scream nearly possessed her.

Kenshin cleared his throat. “I apologize for Doctor Israel’s temper. He is still young and has much to learn.”

Jamie wasn’t concerned about petty arguments. She wanted off this fucking island. “Didn’t Tanaka have some kind of helicopter on-sight? In case he had to make a quick getaway?”

Kenshin shook his head. “You haven’t seen the city since the dragons turned on us. Death is a guarantee for anyone who enters.”

“So there is a helicopter?”

“I do not know. I’ve wondered the same thing myself, but Tanaka never shared such information with me. If there is one, I am not aware of its location.”

“Okay, let’s say we find one. You know how to fly?”

“I do not.”

“What about the kid?”

“I don’t think so.”

Jamie sighed and settled back against a log. Jordan had been thoroughly trained as a pilot, but he was no use to her dead. All of those wasted hours learning to fly, and when the training was finally of some use, he’d gone and got himself killed by a fucking dinosaur. A pterodactyl, no less—as ridiculous as that sounded. Who the fuck gets killed by a pterodactyl in this day and age? Jesus Christ.

She hadn’t seen him die.

The thought kept repeating itself in her mind. She hadn’t seen him die. She’d seem him seriously injured, but she hadn’t witnessed his final breath exhale from his lungs. He could have escaped. He could still be out here on the island, possibly even searching for Jamie. She didn’t know. How could she?

“Hey.” She waited until Kenshin turned toward her and gave her his undivided attention. “How positive are you that Jordan…?”

“At the restaurant, I found two bodies,” Kenshin said. “One belonged to the greatest man to have ever lived, George Tanaka. The second body was you, barely breathing. However, there was a lot of blood, too much to belong to only two people. If your companion escaped, he most likely did not last long.”

“So he could still be alive.”

“It is not probable.”

Jordan wasn’t dead.

“The city is our shot, then,” Jamie said. It seemed obvious, like Kenshin and Izzy should have already had this idea planned out. “Since the attacks, have any of you gone back in?”

Kenshin nodded. “When it first started, that’s when I collected your body. I’ve only attempted to explore the area once more since then. It did not end well.”

“What happened?”

“My blade has never shed so much blood.” He lowered his head, seemed to gather his thoughts. “You should rest. Your body has endured much.”

“That’s the thing, though.” Jamie jumped up and stretched. “I don’t feel like I just woke up from a coma. I feel like I’m about to step into the octagon.”

Kenshin raised his brow. “The octagon?”

“The cage. Where I fight.”

Kenshin smiled in recognition. “Your battlefield.”

“My battlefield.”