Escape From Dinosauria (Dinopocalypse Book 1) (16 page)

“It is a wonder that you are so energetic.”

“Well, I’m a fuckin’ fully charged battery, so I don’t know what to tell you.” She turned away from Kenshin and headed around the cavern toward its opening. Right outside the entrance, she spotted a rabbit sniffing at something in the dirt. Before it had a chance to react to her arrival, she scooped it up with one hand and tore a chunk of its stomach out with her teeth.

Hungry. She was so fucking hungry.

8

Kenshin hid in the trees, in the shadows. He stared at the moon and listened to the whispers of nature. Crickets and frogs sung their lullabies. Off in the distance, prehistoric beasts growled and attempted to devour each other. Tanaka’s creations were free of ownership, free of obedience. Like all creatures, man-made or otherwise, they’d finally gone down the inevitable path of violence and chaos. What would Tanaka say if he could hear his dragons tear each other apart? Would he be devastated? Or would he be proud?

What would he say if he could see his once beautiful, lovely wife now? Would he still feel love for Izanami, or would he have the courage to be her executioner?

Not for the first time, Kenshin wondered if he was doing the right thing by allowing Izanami to live. The reality of the situation was the beast that called itself Izanami no longer possessed an ounce of what had once been Tanaka’s wife. The thing was not a woman, it was a monster. It was evil.

Next time, he would not let her escape. He would do much worse than cause a minor blinding. He would strike to kill.

But before their next battle, he would need to find his katana. Kenshin was naked without his weapon. So he listened. He drowned out the sound of insects and dragons and he listened for his katana. It was out here somewhere, calling his name. His katana, his companion. He could feel it burning into his heart. Burning like a heart burns for another. Burning like a star for a planet. Like a soul for a body.

A change was coming in the morning. Ms. Rock was determined. Nobody would be able to stop her from heading into the city, especially if she’d evolved into what he feared. He would join her on her quest, and he would gladly spare his own life if it meant assisting her off the island, off Dinosauria and back to the States where she could keep Tanaka’s vision eternal.

It was his duty to protect Tanaka, even in death.

Kenshin stood and slowly strode down the branch, to the tip. His weight did not sink the wood. He was a leaf in the night, waiting to blossom and blow away in the wind. He extended both arms out like a professional diver preparing to plunge, and slowly leaned forward, as if he were a latch connected to the branch, and someone was simply closing him over an invisible bolt. He continued down until he was perfectly horizontal, until the branch melted into his skeleton, then he released his ghost grip and fell through the air, through the night, landing on his feet in the moist grass. The katana laid next to his feet, its beautiful blade glimmering in the moonlight.

It was home.

9

Jamie awoke to the sound of men whispering. Men she did not recognize. They all slept in the same section of the cavern—it felt safer. Izzy was snoring. Kenshin sat with his back against the wall, eyes open, staring into some void only he could see.

Jamie sat up and looked at him. “Do you hear that?”

He snapped out of his daze and seemed to notice for the first time that she was awake. “I hear nothing but your heartbeat.”

“People are coming.”

Kenshin nodded and held his index finger to his lips, then stood and crept down the tunnel leading to the cavern’s mouth. Jamie kneeled over Izzy and nudged him awake.

He stirred, irritated. “What?”

“Some shit’s about to go down, kid. You ready?”

“Huh?”

Jamie sprinted down the tunnel after Kenshin. She found him crouched behind a boulder just outside the cavern. She rolled silently across the dirt and fell into a spider-like stance next to him. “Do you see anybody?” she whispered.

Kenshin nodded. Jamie followed his stare and saw three soldiers dressed in black riot gear, each wielding large machine guns. They moved cautiously, sweeping their guns over the tall weeds, which danced in the wind.

“That’s not all of them,” Jamie whispered. “I hear more footsteps coming from the west. I think they’re surrounding us.”

“You can hear them?”

“You can’t?”

“There is only the wind.”

Jamie shut her eyes. Something was wrong: her boundless energy, wild appetite, and now this. Kenshin hadn’t heard the armed men whispering. Blood pounded through her ears and a rush of static noise exploded between her ears. Insects screamed and worms oozed their slender bodies through the dirt. The pants worn by the men brushed up against the weeds.

She could hear everything. The world was full of noise and pain. Jamie felt herself falling, and she found herself looking deeply into Kenshin’s dark eyes.

Suddenly, she could smell a combination of earth, cheap aftershave, and body odor. Kenshin’s mouth moved and he seemed to be shouting into her face. She winced and tried to stare at his lips, to focus.

“Ms. Rock.”

The noise subsided, and it felt like she had just stepped into the silence of the locker room after a big fight.

“You,” she said.

Kenshin frowned.

“You did something to me. You and that idiot kid.”

He bowed his head deeply. “No matter what happens, he must not be captured. Even if it means taking his life, it will be a better fate than what awaits him in Kresevich’s prison.

Jamie didn’t respond. Adrenaline surged through her veins, depriving her of rational thought and control. She was a predator, and these soldiers—these sons of bitches responsible for Jordan’s death—were her prey. Kenshin was just as responsible.

They did something to her. Kenshin, Doctor Israel, Kresevich. The soldiers were just another part of it. Heat coursed through her and her entire body stiffened. She wanted to destroy. To maim. To hurt everyone and everything that caused Jordan to die or suffer. She wanted the blood to run over her hands.

And she wanted to taste it.

All of her masterful training was lost in her savage lust for mayhem.

She moved quickly and silently, out of sight until she was on top of the first soldier, snapping his neck with her bare hands. She backflipped behind the other two soldiers before they could figure out what had happened, and grabbed their skulls with each fist and proceeded to bash them together until they were mush. Blood and brain matter splattered against her I HEART DINOSAURIA T-shirt.

Jamie licked salty blood from lips.

A thought popped into her head:
What the hell is wrong with me?

Someone screamed back at the cavern. Jamie hurried toward the sound just in time to see another soldier split apart, vertically, from groin to skull, and drop in two separate halves. Kenshin had already moved on to the next soldier, first cutting off the hand gripping a machine gun, then the head attached to his neck. Jamie was impressed.

Then a bug bit her on the thigh, only when she looked down her shorts had turned red with blood and she realized it wasn’t a bug at all, but a bullet. Some motherfucker had shot her, and it didn’t even hurt, it just pissed her off, like a mosquito had taken a chunk out of her. The man responsible for the bullet stood off behind a tree, still aiming at her. She dove out of the way of another storm of bullets and leapt up a tree. She felt like a coked-up cat as she scurried up the bark and sprung from tree to tree, dodging bullets and terrified birds as she chased down the mosquito responsible for her new bite. And when she was below him, she did what any reasonable person would do to a mosquito.

She squashed him.

The sound of their comrades storming the cavern invaded her ears.

Six were dead—four from her hands alone. But she heard dozens more approaching.

This was only the beginning of her new career as a killer. For years, she’d beaten other women to a pulp inside the octagon. Now she was inside the island, inside Dinosauria, taking shit a little bit further than a K.O.

Like a hellhound scented on a new soul to drag to hell, Jamie moved toward the next wave of soldiers. They were after Izzy. They didn’t give a shit about Jamie or Kenshin, but they sure weren’t planning on leaving them alive. It was either her or them.

It was not going to be her.

She moved hard and fast. Too fast for them to react. She grabbed one soldier and threw him at another. Bullets sounded from behind her, but somehow missed and smashed into the two soldiers she’d just used as a pin and bowling ball. She sprung backward and landed on the gunman’s shoulders, snapping his neck in a 180 degree angle before he could pull the trigger again. In her peripherals, Kenshin spilled the guts of another soldier who’d gotten the drop on her. Shit was moving at an insane pace and there was no time to think, just react. So she reacted.

Now inside the mouth of the cavern, Jamie and Kenshin defended their hideout. Bullets whizzed past but did not find their targets. Other soldiers charged inside, frustrated with the blind spots of the cavern. Jamie and Kenshin were ready. He decapitated the first asshole to storm inside, and Jamie leapt up and drove the other one’s nose into his skull with the ball of her foot.

Machine guns spat bullets at a horrendous pace, and she was killing the shooters with her bare hands. In the back of her mind, her father’s familiar mantra reverberated:
Guns don’t kill people…

A third soldier dived into the cave with his finger pressed down on the trigger of his machine gun, firing blindly. The bullets smashed into the wall of the cavern ten feet away from where Jamie and Kenshin were standing. Rocks and dust dropped into her eyes. Jamie calmly walked over to the soldier as he attempted to stand back up, then took his machine gun and pointed the barrel into his face.

She winked. “Howdy.”

The guy looked like he shit his pants.

“How many more of you assholes are there?”

His Russian accent was thick. “We are infinite. Kill one, another takes his place. So why not fuck yourself now, save us both the favor?” He smiled and Jamie shoved the barrel forward, knocking the top row of his teeth out of his gums. He fell to the dirt and coughed, gagging.

She turned him over on his back with her foot and stepped on his chest, emphasizing the machine gun still pointed in his face. He opened his mouth and blood poured out each side and down his cheeks, turning his lips into a smeared Glasgow smile.

“Now,” Jamie said, “should we try this again?”

“Eat cock, American whore.” The Russian soldier spit a glob of broken teeth at her.

His words echoed throughout the cave. No. They echoed throughout her skull.

…
American whore…

…American whore…

And the weeds outside rustled. She could smell the cold metal on each rifle that waited for them outside, and she could hear the tramping feet of tiny dinosaurs running along the ground.

The Russian’s gun dropped from her hands and her vision blurred. Her knees buckled, and she thought she could hear her father’s voice calling out to her. The smell of blood overwhelmed her as if she had been swimming in a pool of it and had opened her mouth to let the red tide in.

Jamie’s head was flooded with pain and noise, and she tried to look up at the shape that stood over her now.

The Russian stood over her and opened his bloody mouth. A long, scaly tongue rolled out of his mouth, saliva and blood spilling onto the cavern floor.

“I can see how hungry you are,” the Russian said, his voice a dull throb in her skull. “Let me give you a taste, American—”

Jamie’s acute hearing allowed her to hear Kenshin’s blade sing through the air as it crashed through the massive tongue, slicing it clean off. Dark blood gushed from the Russian’s mouth as he spun around in circles, clutching his damaged tongue. Another quick swipe from Kenshin’s blade cut the air, and the Russian’s head slid off his shoulders while the body continued to spin madly for a split second before following the head to the ground.

“What. The. Fuck.” Jamie tightened her fists.

“No time,” Kenshin said. He helped her stand. A wave of nausea dizzied her again, and she leaned against her strange ally. One hand around her waist and the other holding a sword that dripped blood, he tried to lead her deep into the cave.

Jamie looked over her shoulder at the dead Russian. Half of the scaled tongue floated in a pool of blood.

They found Izzy hiding behind an overturned table, hugging himself in the dirt. At the sight of Jamie standing above him, covered in blood, Izzy gasped and crawled up the table, standing up and attempting to wrap his arms around her. She pushed him away.

“Holy shit, you’re alive,” he said, eyes wide and animated.

“Yeah, it’s a fuckin’ miracle,” Jamie said. “I just beat a group of men—highly trained soldiers—to death. Some of them, I snapped their necks like they were plastic. I did all this, having just woken up from a coma. And my head…”