Escape From Dinosauria (Dinopocalypse Book 1) (17 page)

Izzy exchanged eye contact with Kenshin, then looked down at his feet.

“There’s something you aren’t telling me,” she continued, “and it’s time to spill whatever dirty little secrets you’re holding. I say we have a few minutes before more of those bastards outside attempts to kill us. This time, I’m not going to stop them.”

“Tell her,” Kenshin said.

“But she’s gonna be pissed.”

“I’m right here,” Jamie said, and pushed Izzy against the dirt wall. “What the hell is happening to me?”

“Uh…”

“Time’s ticking.”

“Well, okay, just...don’t hit me, okay? I don’t want to be hit.” He brushed her hands off him. “When Kenny found you, you were practically dead. But not quite. Somehow, your heart was still beating. So he brought you here to the shit palace.”

“The shit palace?”

Izzy shrugged. “Now, picture yourself here on the ground, cut open from some asshole dinosaur, bleeding to death, unresponsive. I’m not exactly a doctor, you know? But I
am
a scientist, so I did what any professional man of science would do.”

Jamie squeezed her fists and all her knuckles cracked. “What did you do?”

“I...experimented.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

10

Izzy shook his head and paced around the lab. “We’ve been compromised. Kresevich just sent a few of his guys, not all. It’s hopeless.”

Jamie didn’t feel bad for him. Maybe he spent most of his life trying to accomplish a scientific breakthrough that would win him a Nobel Peace Prize, or maybe he was just a wiz-kid with an infatuation with dinosaurs; he had brought her into his savage world.

He didn’t want to fess up. He could hardly look at her. Did he think she would be dead by this point? He had no clue what he had created. Tanaka and his millionaire buddies had manipulated this kid; there was no way it was going to turn out well. Greed and ambition had blinded these people, and now she had to pay the price. How many were dead on this island?

Jordan Vance likely numbered among the victims. And everyone in their crew, including poor Wayne, who had just wanted an autograph from her when they were on the plane and she had been a bitch to him.

“Talk,” Jamie said.

“Look, you should be thanking me. You should be thanking Kenny for getting your ass out of the hotel, and you should be thanking me for having the juice to give you another chance.”

“Thanking you?” Jamie couldn’t believe it. “Your people made this mess. We shouldn’t have come out here in the first place. Your boss brought Jordan here to try and bail him out, to tell the world how you idiots fucked this all up.”

Kenshin bowed his head. “You have every right to be upset, Ms. Rock.”

“What have you done to me?” Jamie stood up too quickly and her head was rocked by another wave of pain and blurred vision.

Izzy shook his head at Kenshin, a sign that he wanted to deflect blame to someone else. “I injected you with the same thing the Russians have. I didn’t know if it was going to work.”

There was a dead man in their cave who had produced a massive, disgusting tongue that was far from human. She could smell and hear too much, her head was ringing, her body felt overcharged with power.

Jamie shook her head. No. No way.

“You should be dead,” Izzy said.

There was no point arguing with him. Any minute now, more of Kresevich’s mutated goons were going to find them.

“How long do I have?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I…”

The brilliant young scientist sat on the floor and hung his head. He squeezed his eyes tight and shook his head several times. “I never thought it was going to be like this. I was promised… Tanaka promised that it would be used for good. I still think about what happened at the track. And Izanami. God, I’ve fucked up. I had it all. Money. Women. All of it. All mine. And I was asked to do more and more. I was promised…but then I didn’t care anymore. I stopped asking questions.”

“Quit feeling sorry for yourself,” Jamie said. “You saved my life because you thought I was going to help you somehow. You brought me back from the brink of death. You want me to thank you? I’ll thank you when I know what the hell’s going on.”

Kenshin wiped the blood from his blade with a cloth. “Doctor Israel will be captured, interrogated, perhaps worse. You are a hero, Ms. Rock. Boss Tanaka brought you here, with Mr. Vance, to tell his story.”

“Keep talking.”

“We have specific codes that we can relay to a military unit that’s waiting to hear from Doctor Israel. There is communication equipment at the airport.”

“So you could have left this whole time? You waited for me?”

She wanted the kid to say something, but instead, Kenshin continued. “I will be shot if I try to return with Doctor Israel. He will be quarantined, and I cannot say what will happen to Dinosauria. The activists have complicated things, but it is not for me to guess the resort’s fate.”

“Keep talking. Kresevich could just interrogate the codes out of you, so he wants something. For his soldiers, right?”

“There’s another injection,” Doctor Israel said. He looked at Kenshin warily; these two were still hiding something. Kenshin was feeding her a bullshit story, but she had to play along until she could figure a way off the island. “We don’t even know if it works. It was something I played around with. Just in case we were ever sued by an insurance company. At least, that’s what I was told.”

“A cure,” Jamie said. “How long do I have before I become a full-blown mutant?”

“I never said it was a cure,” Izzy said. “And I don’t know how long.”

“You want me to get off the island and tell people what happened here, but I don’t even know what happened. There’s more to the story. You kept Doctor Israel here just to make sure I woke up? So you could use me?”

Kenshin sheathed his sword. “We are running out of time here.”

“You’re trying to make a deal with me. You’re gonna guarantee another injection, and in return, I’m going to tell everyone what happened here. Right? Is that what you want? And whatever happens to the kid doesn’t matter, right?”

Kenshin bowed his head deeply. Doctor Israel stood and began to rummage around the cave. Jamie knew what he was going through; she had signed endorsement deals for terrible shoes and reading programs that were going to utterly fail the kids they were supposed to help—she had fought opponents with no other reason than to boost their profile or promote some other fight. She had been used until she decided to take charge of her own career. She had been used until she met Jordan, and even he tried to use her.

Russians. Dinosaurs. Conspiracies. Plots. All of it was too much for her. Whatever genetic revolution Tanaka had tried to usher in had killed a lot of people, and now her head buzzed with the frantic energy of power she did not understand. Kenshin had made sure he hooked her into his scheme; even if his buddy Tanaka was dead, he managed to screw her over and drag Doctor Israel down.

In many ways, she was a lot like Kenshin. She had always found ways to fight for herself rather than for whatever principles or ideas her father or fans had tried to cram down her throat. She did it all for herself. Kenshin had his own dream, and he found a way to make sure he got what he wanted.

Jamie could respect that.

If he had used someone else besides her.

“Yeah,” Jamie said. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

CHAPTER THREE:

BLOOD CITY

1

After packing a few necessary supplies—and a brief argument in which Jamie was able to convince Kenshin she should have a shiny Russian rifle with some bullets and Izzy should have a handgun tucked into his pants—they left the cavern and headed through the jungle toward the resort. Kenshin, knowing the geography of Dinosauria intimately, led the way. Izzy carried their supplies in a backpack, given he was least likely to be able to defend the group should a dinosaur attempt to eat them all or one of Kresevich’s Russian soldiers ambush them with a round of gunfire. Kenshin had his katana and Jamie, evidently, had her dinosaur powers.

She was a mutant with dinosaur powers. The idea was so ridiculous she couldn’t help but smile. There had already been moments where she felt like she was nothing more than a zoo exhibit; a sweaty blonde with concrete-hard abs locked in a cage with another woman with concrete-hard abs on display for the world to see. When was she going to grow a huge tongue of her own?

The more she thought about it, the more she realized it pissed her off on principle alone. She had never been afraid of death or defeat, but the idea that her body was enhanced without her permission made her feel as if her entire genetic chemistry had been raped by a kid with a do-it-yourself science lab. Steroids, smelling salts, painkillers—she hated all forms of unnatural enhancement. Feeling pain in the cage made it feel all the more real to her. If she couldn’t work hard for her victory and earn it the right way then she wasn’t a winner at all, but another freak dropped into the sports pages for the world to glorify.

She had been the second choice. They could have injected Jordan with the dino genes, but they didn’t find his body. Jordan would have been able to complete Kenshin’s selfish plan.

Floyd Mayweather and Lebron James had bet big money on her in several matches. The world’s secretive millionaires had bet on her and Jordan to participate in a big show with dinosaurs and blood. She was here whether she wanted to be or not. She didn’t book this fight. She didn’t choose this shitty jungle.

But she had to make the best of it. She had to do something. When it was all over, the kid was going to pump more of his drugs into her system and purge her corrupted blood, and she could try to live a normal life. She could try to pick up the pieces without Jordan in her life, and she was not looking forward to it.

Even when she made it back home, there were going to be too many questions. Could she face the cameras without Jordan? She hated the press. The first thing she was going to do when she got back was head home and see her dad. Maybe they could work on the Bronco in the backyard. Anything but this. Anything but another fight. No more bright lights. No more Jordan Vance. No more title defenses. She had more money than she knew what to do with, and she could retire peacefully without ever talking about Dinosauria to anybody but the military or whomever needed to know.

The jungle canopy kept most of the sun off her face, but that didn’t stop the streams of sweat from running down her face. Kenshin set a rugged pace and she kept up tirelessly, a reminder that she had been genetically tainted.

“Hey,” Izzy said.

They stopped. The kid sat against a tree and wiped his forehead. “Need to stop for a minute.”

Jamie wanted to keep going. The longer she stayed on this godforsaken island, she felt like her chances of escape diminished. But she had forgotten that Izzy did not have her stamina, especially in the humid jungle.

And he was probably not a mutant.

“I will go ahead to make sure the way is clear,” Kenshin said. He did not look at them when he spoke.

“You do that,” Jamie said. She wouldn’t be disappointed if he never came back, especially if Izzy had the codes she needed to contact the military.

Kenshin disappeared into the brush and Jamie set her rifle against a tree.

Jamie had to make the most out of this moment alone with the scientist. “What exactly can I do? What are my limits?”

Izzy shrugged, digging through his pack until he found a bottle of water. He uncapped it, took a long drink, then said, “I don’t know. It’s different for everyone, I think.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, that’s what they paid me to do. Think.”

“I don’t need the smartass comments.”

“Oh, is that so? Well shit, my bad, why didn’t you say so?”

Jamie could feel herself losing control. She wished that she wasn’t walking toward him aggressively, but the kid had gone too far. “Listen, you little shit. You injected me with that crap, so you must know what the hell it does. I want this out of me. If I turn into one of your projects, I’ll make sure to shove a dinosaur claw up your ass.”

“Whoa.” Izzy put up his hands and stood. “Hold on there, sister. You need to back the fuck off. You haven’t thanked me once for saving your ass.”

“You didn’t save anything. Kenshin brought me to you. He made you put that shit in me.”

“So what if he did? Your ass would be dead. I did what I was told to do, just like I’ve been doing from the beginning.”

“Nobody is going to feel sorry for you out here, kid.”

“Well that’s just fucking great. That’s why I did this in the first place. You know what I was up to when all hell broke loose? I was tearing into a fine piece of ass I never would have gotten if I lived a normal life. Everything that made me different is the same thing that made all my wildest dreams come true. I got the girls and the money. I was important. I’m
still
important. My brains made all this happen, and I was lied to. Shit on. I should have seen it coming, but I wanted it. I wanted to taste the good life. I wanted the same good life you’ve had.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No? You’re a millionaire. You’ve got caviar. You could swim in a pool of champagne. People worship you. People pay to look at your body. Nobody gives a shit about you, and you don’t care.”

Jamie shut her eyes tight and took a deep breath. Izzy was pissed and had to get a lot of weight off his chest. He had been used like she had been used, and he couldn’t know what she was going through. The young genius had been promised the world just as she had been promised the world, only she had never wanted it, nor did she need it. She enjoyed fighting and had always been good at it. She had never sat back and wondered why, even though hundreds of interviewers had asked her the question during her rise. Jordan once told her that she was only as important as the 24-hour news cycle, and if she could avoid a few questions along the way, it wouldn’t matter.

But Izzy was dealing with those questions. He knew why he wanted to be successful, and he didn’t have to apologize for it. Nobody should apologize for being successful. Winners didn’t apologize. Winners fulfilled their duty—they won.

Izzy, for the most part, was right about a lot of things.

They stood and let an awkward silence settle between them. Birdsong chimed in the sticky air, and a distant, primal roar echoed.

“It had to be dinosaurs,” Jamie said, her voice barely a whisper.

Doctor Israel lowered his head and sat down again. “It had to be. Loved them when I was a kid. I guess that’s how it always starts, though, huh?”

“I don’t know. I don’t sit and think about why. I know what I like to do. I know what makes me happy.”

“I guess it’s pretty simple then.”

Here was another conversation that nearly spiraled out of control for her, and somehow, she managed to salvage it. Jordan would have been happy; he always had sage advice for all these little social encounters that she struggled with. Empathy was always difficult for her.

“I kind of just randomly found capoeira and started learning about it. There’s really not a lot to tell.”

“And now you’re turning into a dinosaur,” Izzy said. “The world works in mysteriously ways.”

“Well, yeah, thanks to you.”

He shrugged. “You healed pretty quickly. I tried to estimate how long it would take for you to notice anything different, and I’ve been pretty accurate.”

“How long?”

“It’s going faster now. It accelerates.”

“How long?”

“Maybe a day, maybe two.”

Jamie instinctively pivoted and slammed her fist into the trunk of a tree. It didn’t occur to her how idiotic it might be to punch a tree until she realized that her fist had blown up a crater, and her fist was still inside it.

There was no pain.

She was enhanced. Pumped full of a new designer drug that kept her from feeling pain while doubling or tripling her physical strength. Athletes who got their hands on this stuff were going to be able to beat the shit out of each other all day long to the delight of fans everywhere. Big hits. No pain.

Jamie remembered the brochures inside the hotel. A never-ending food supply and the cure for hundreds of illnesses had proven to be a brilliant cover for yet another attempt to use technology in the best interests of a superior army.

Did Doctor Israel have any idea what he was doing? The kid had been used to help save the world. Maybe people would live longer, healthier lives. The disgustingly-rich would be able to buy the perfect drugs to maintain their appearances. Jamie could hold on to her championship belt for as long as she remained popular; her skills would be useless.

And Kenshin wanted to keep Doctor Israel alive. Sure, killing the kid outright wasn’t going to solve the problem, but the whole damn island should be nuked.

No way. A lot of people had invested big time in this project.

And Jordan was dead because of it.

But what the hell did Kenshin really want? He seemed to believe in some part of whatever “dream” he and his buddy Tanaka once had.

She cared too much about this crap. It was better to get the hell off the island, get her cure, and let the world’s governments do what they did best.

Only, they might not do a damn thing at all.

“Will ya look at that!” Doctor Israel said, his voice infused with sudden happiness.

He sat up and pointed at the ground at a large, red and black oblong shape slithering across the dirt.

“What the fuck is that?” Jamie said. The squirming shape was thick and long, the majority of it buried under dead leaves. A peculiar scent wafted into her nostrils, like butter on burnt toast. Her stomach rumbled.

The shape belonged to one of Izzy’s prehistoric creatures, and Jamie wanted to eat it.

“That is, uh…” Izzy leaned forward, squinting his eyes at the creature. He relaxed and nodded. “Yeah, that little guy is definitely an
Arthropleura
.”

“This thing is one of your dinosaurs?”

“Yeah. It’s basically a giant millipede.”

“Why on Earth would you bring this thing back?”

Izzy kneeled and talked in a baby voice. “Because it’s just so gosh darn adorable. Who’s a cutie pie? You are! You are!”

“I suppose you know what you’re doing.”

“It’s cool, man. These things were herbivores. I mean,
are
herbivores. They don’t give a shit about us.”

The giant millipede stopped moving. A race of energy shot through Jamie’s body and she was immediately alert; she felt like she was staring at a fighter who had just assumed their stance in the ring.

She didn’t react fast enough this time.

The millipede changed directions and slithered up Izzy’s arm, then sprung at his face, wrapping a section of its body around his head. Izzy’s screams were muffled from his new insect mask as he fell to the dirt, shaking his arms and legs savagely as he attempted to free himself.

But the millipede’s grip was locked down.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Jamie said, and rushed forward. The tail of the millipede swung around and slapped her in the chest, sending her back into a bush. By the time she regrouped, Kenshin had appeared from out of the bush and sliced the millipede in half. He tried to pry the dead insect off Izzy’s head. Bits of flesh peeled off Izzy’s face as Kenshin pulled the dead carapace away, as if Izzy’s face was actually a rubber mask and it was coming off in the millipede’s tiny feet. Izzy screamed.

Now that the whole creature was out of hiding, she figured the thing was at least a good seven feet long, if not more. Jamie found it hard to feel sorry for Izzy. It was his own fault this thing existed.

No, not thing.

Things.

More of them now, slithering in the dirt, under leaves. Maybe one mega-sized centipede, or dozens of large ones.

“We must leave,” Kenshin said. “Now.”

Jamie picked up her rifle. “Way ahead of you.”

“My face!” Izzy screamed. “It fucking ate my face.”

“Now is not the time,” Kenshin said, and guided him toward Jamie.

Izzy noticed the other centipedes surrounding them and started crying again. “Aw man, aw man.”

Jamie grabbed Izzy’s neck collar and dragged him as she bolted through the trees. He had no choice but to maintain her pace. Half a minute later, he was pleading for her to slow down, so she released her grip and watched as he tumbled to the ground. Behind them, Kenshin slowed to a stop, still calm and zen with the universe. Izzy curled up into a ball and wheezed.