Escape From Dinosauria (Dinopocalypse Book 1) (22 page)

Izzy was a shadowed figure standing at the river’s edge. “This is amazing! You have to see this!”

She wasn’t going anywhere.

A beam of bright light broke apart the darkness. Several more spotlights illuminated the dark river. A cadre of military choppers hovered in the sky, the sound of their engines and whirring blades were impossible to hear over the savage music made by beasts that should not be alive.

Tress cracked and crashed into the river. Long, serpent-like heads bobbed over the tree tops, swinging back and forth in the glare of racing spotlights.

Jamie knew what they were. Every kid knew a
Brontosaurus.
How many could there possibly be on the island?

“Nikki!” Izzy clapped. “You’re okay! And Drake, too!”

The kid had named his dinosaurs. Okay, that wasn’t too bad. Two huge plant-eaters. What else could there be? Images popped into her head. Jordan had liked dinosaurs when he was a kid, and naming the beasts would have been easy for him.

Smaller, four-legged beasts crashed into the river, three huge spikes protruding from their plated heads—two on either side of its head and one smaller spike perched atop the beak nose.
Triceratops.

Where was Kenshin?

More than anything, Jamie wanted to get up and jump into the chaos. Whatever was about to go down was going to be big. After all the bloodletting, she wasn’t satisfied. She wanted another shot at the mutant bitch, Izanami.

Where had she gone?

Several more species of beasts joined the fray, all of them roaring at each other and slowly establishing ranks among themselves. Instinctively, the dinosaurs were separating and forming battle lines on either side of the river.

Izzy rushed back to her. “Don’t you see what’s happening? Izanami and Kenny have drawn all the dinos into this very spot. The whole damn party’s going to be here.” He glanced at the sky at the helicopters.

“Why are we sitting here?” she asked.

“Well, for one thing, you can’t move. And man, just look around you. Something like this hasn’t happened in millions of years. They’re responding to Izanami and Kenny. They’re responding to power.”

“Where is Kenshin?”

Izzy pointed to a fin that seemed to be rising above the gathered creatures near their side of the riverbank. “He’s…” The scientist hesitated, tried to get over his own sense of awe. “Kenny’s a baby
Spinosaurus.
He’s going to be a big fucker if he survives this.”

“I don’t know what’s happening!”

“It’s a turf war.”

“So you’re saying we have a chance, if you would just get your shit together for a moment.”

“Nothing could be better than this. Nothing.”

“And what about the Russians?” Jamie asked.

“What about them?”

Jamie rolled her eyes to indicate the choppers. A head with beady black eyes on a long stalk of neck blocked out a helicopter’s spotlight and peered down at Jamie and Izzy.

Maybe if she were watching this on TV back home, she might find it impressive. Now, she wanted to get up and get the hell out of there.

The helicopter suddenly spun sideways as a flying
Pteranodon
clipped the tail rotor with one of its wings. The main rotors cleanly sheared through the
Brontosaurus’s
neck, severing it like the head was nothing more than a piece of string. The head dropped into the brush and the massive dinosaur body toppled like the bottom half of a Jenga tower. Blood rained over the jungle and the helicopter became tangled in the canopy of trees, its rotors twisting the machinery into brambles and branches. Jamie heard a long metallic whine that reminded her of a circular saw going through a chunk of wood.

Izzy bent and threw her arm over his shoulders. He tried to lift her, and she could do nothing to help. Her body, which she had always been able to count on, had abandoned her.

All around them, the jungle came to life. The roars became pained screeches, and beasts stomped through trees and punched the earth underfoot.

A
Triceratops’s
head jetted out in front of them and barred their way. A group of tiny chicken-sized dinos were chomping into its backside, drawing blood down the length of its massive hide. The
Triceratops
trashed and reared its head back, the beaked mouth opening in an agonized cry.

Izzy lost his footing and nearly slipped. He struggled to hold Jamie’s waist, but he managed to guide her over a downed tree.

“There they are!”

Flashlight beams scoured the shadows ahead of Jamie and Izzy. More human voices and several rounds of machine gun fire added to the battle between ancient titans.

“Keep moving,” Jamie said through her teeth as her ankle painfully surrendered. This time, she dragged Izzy down with her.

“Don’t move, stay down!” a Russian soldier shouted at them, the flashlight mounted atop his rifle blinding her.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” Jamie asked him. “You’re expendable, and the kid isn’t. Pull the trigger, asshole.”

“Are you fucking crazy?” Izzy said to her, his head nearly buried in the ground, his hands over his head.

“He’s not expendable, but—” His predictable declaration was cut off by the shiny black millipede that dropped onto him from above. His gun fired wildly and bullets slammed through the dirt next to Izzy’s head. The soldier reeled back and dropped with a scream.

“Come on,” Jamie said.

Izzy stood and once again pulled her up. “Goddamn it,” he said as another creature stalked forward on two hind legs, its quick-roving eyes moving over a mouth full of teeth that could probably bite through steel. It had long, spikey fingernails and its entire body was adorned in feathers. The creature hadn’t spotted them; instead, it leapt atop the millipede and snatched part of the creature up into its jaw, ripping the spindly carapace upward with its legs atop the insect’s remaining length. Another dino from the same species bull-rushed the first one into its ribcage.

“
Deinonychus
,” Izzy said.

The second creature grabbed the soldier—who was still thrashing about in pain—with its clawed hand, the nails digging into his face. It peeled his face away as if the guy’s entire map was nothing more than a plastic Halloween mask. The dinosaur latched its mouth on the top of the soldier’s head and crunched. When Jamie heard the sound, she thought of cracking walnuts on Christmas at her dinner table when she was a little girl.

“We don’t have time to enjoy the show,” Jamie reminded him.

Before they could turn away, an entire squad of soldiers arrived and took up firing positions. The
Deinonychus
was shredded by the volley of gunfire. The first feathered
Deinonychus
was on its feet again and repeated the same bull-rush that had been used on it, but not before eating hundreds of bullets and crashing face-first into the ground as if it were drunk.

Several of the soldiers sported fresh mutations. Their arms had seemingly begun to shrink and their heads became bulbous and hairless, yellow eyes roaming in their heads, drool running down their chins. Most of them had squat, snake-like heads with tongues slithering out of their mouths. So much for turning into super-dinosaurs.

“Target secured!” one of the mutant soldiers announced. “Ready for evac.”

A winged creature dropped through the trees and landed among the soldiers. Izzy was quickly handed off, and Jamie barely had time to figure out what the hell was going on. In the bright glare of gunfire and spotlights, she could only guess that a mutant
Pteranodon
was dragging Izzy into the sky with a terrified scream. Like professionals, the soldiers had wasted no time.

Lights shone into her face. It was her turn.

“Wait,” said a familiar voice. “I want her. We will need a distraction.”

“This is the part where you knock me out and I wake up somewhere else,” Jamie said.

A man stepped into the light. She could not make out his face, but he had two human arms and two human legs.

“Oh, Ms. Rock, I would not be happy if I took you against your wishes. Will you come with us? We will restore you, take your sickness away.”

There could be only person left on this whole godforsaken island who could talk to her as if he knew what was in her heart. “Kresevich.”

The soldiers began shuffling her through a lineup of hands. Just as they had efficiently ripped Izzy away, Jamie had become a captive of Kresevich’s dino-mutant army. She was plopped into a saddle atop a four-legged creature with an armored backside and a human head. She had no idea what they were, and could barely see anything besides shadows dancing in the battle glow.

Blue signal flares brightly fizzed over the sky. Helicopters passed overhead, Jamie was strapped securely into her saddle.

A man sat in front of her and took a set of reins into his hands. “Welcome to the war,” he said. It was Kresevich, his voice sounding like that of a debonair gentleman rather than a war-stressed soldier. “We will take you home.”

Burnt out, mentally drained, she had no idea if she could trust him or if he was blowing air out his ass. It didn’t matter. Nobody else had given her any reassurances, and this was the closest she had come to discovering something that made sense.

Jamie dropped her head onto Kresevich’s shoulder and watched the darkness race by.

CHAPTER FOUR:

I’LL SEE YOU IN THE OCTAGON

1

Jamie knew she was dreaming because she was standing next to Jordan, and he was dead. You could only stand next to the dead when you were dreaming. That, and when you too were dead, and Jamie was pretty sure she was still alive. She’d be seriously fucking pissed to find out she had died after all the shit she’d gone through. She’d ripped a guy’s intestines out through his own asshole. She was in this for the long run.

They were on a rooftop, high above the island resort. A beautiful orange sunset had settled like a mist over ruined structures overwhelmed by wildlife.

She wanted to tell Jordan that he was dead. She wanted to hold him and tell him how much she missed him, but she just stood next to him, looking out at the ruins. She hated the fact that she was dreaming. She wanted to be with Jordan in the real world and this was nothing more than an awful tease.

They talked about something but she wasn’t sure what. She turned and found Kenshin standing behind her. He drew his sword and she raised her hands to stop him. Kenshin slashed through both of her forearms in one strike. She stared at her bloody stumps as if she did not recognize her own flesh.

She awoke and found herself in a large bed with a cool blanket draped over her. A chest of drawers sat against one wall, and beside the bed was a nightstand with a framed photo positioned on top. The picture she had signed for Kresevich: the championship belt wrapped around her waist for the first time.

Jamie Rock was no longer undefeated. A mutant dinosaur had kicked her ass after she brutally killed a score of people.

Remembering all the gore that had covered her body, she quickly threw the blanket off the bed and found most of the blood had been cleaned off, though some pink stains remained. Reminders of her horror. Whoever had tried to clean her off had seemingly decided to let her handle all the hard scrubbing, because she still wore her soiled clothes.

She had to pee and she was incredibly thirsty.

Was she supposed to sit around and feel sorry for herself? Jamie had woken in a strange place for the second time in how many days. She had to get used to the idea that every moment of her life from here on out was going to be a fight. The fighter mentality came naturally. One loss wasn’t going to force her into retirement. Her father once told her that if she even thought about giving up for one second whenever she went out and didn’t get a buck, then everyone would be better off if she got the hell out of the way. The world didn’t have time for pussies.

Her sense of belief had already been suspended the moment she arrived on this island and was attacked by the same bastards who had become members of some dinosaur-cult. There was no way for her to know who was telling her the truth, or who could help her get home. She had no stake in helping the kid if Kresevich could guarantee a cure for the crap that had been injected into her.

Dinosaurs weren’t her problem. Being a dinosaur was.

The bare walls and sparse decoration in the room felt stifling. She craved fresh air, even though she had probably had enough fresh air in the past few hours to last her a lifetime. After stretching, she slid off the bed and walked through the door. She stepped into a crowded hallway full of people who marched quickly past each other as if they were all Christmas shopping at the mall on Christmas Eve. Or Xmas. Whatever the holiday was called.

Except these weren’t people at all, but mutant soldiers. She could
smell
them. Just as she had been able to smell the millipede that attacked Izzy in the jungle, there was something familiar and undeniable that drifted into her nose. Her stomach grumbled, and she was hungry all over again.

Nobody stopped. They shoved her out of their way as they passed, and she couldn’t get a good look at any of them to pinpoint their differences, not that she wanted to. The whole place felt cramped and the hustling around was accompanied by hundreds of voices speaking in perfectly-clipped, efficient voices used to relaying and receiving orders.

Jamie eventually found a bathroom. She admired the fact that her legs hadn’t sprouted much hair, considering she hadn’t shaved them since before boarding the plane out of Los Angeles. Her legs remained smooth, but the texture was harder somehow, maybe even tighter.

She splashed water on her face and stepped back into the traffic jam. For the first time in years, nobody stopped to eyeball her. She felt invisible, weaving between people in the crowded hallway beneath phosphorescent lights. She wasn’t going to sit around and wait for something to happen.

While navigating the cramped space, she began to wonder when her ears would start ringing again. Was Izzy in trouble? Was Kenshin a supermutant now? What better way to protect his childhood friend’s dream than to be a huge monster roaming around the island they both helped build together. Kenshin deserved it. Fuck him.

Jamie ducked into a room to avoid the stifling crowd. She needed to figure out exactly what she wanted to do before she encountered Kresevich or anyone else who might be semi-important to her survival. The room she entered was dark and smelled like ammonia. She turned around and found herself staring into a large chamber behind a shield of glass; beyond was an exhausted, misshapen dinosaur lying on its side, a pair of large wrinkled breasts resting like plastic grocery bags full of wet dog shit. Dinosaur eggs were scattered around her. Although the room was dark, Jamie had a sense of immensity, as if she were standing inside of a darkened stadium that had been shut down and abandoned for years.

But Jamie could see in the dark. How else could she explain to herself that, despite the fact there was not a single hint of light, she could make out the dinosaur behind the glass? There were other chambers, too, and they were filled with eggs that had already cracked open to birth whatever prehistoric creatures Doctor Israel had managed to cook up with his mad scientist mojo.

(“You can see me. Can you hear me?”)

Shit. Now she was hearing things.

(“I know what you’re thinking. I felt the same when the first time it happened to me.”)

The voice in her head was distinctly feminine and familiar. She stared into the chamber, at the exhausted dinosaur. A wide, yellow eye peered at her from the reptilian skull.

(“You know who I am. You can hear my voice. The way I used to be. The way I really was.”)

“Izanami,” Jamie said.

(“Yes. You can really hear me.”)

“So I have telepathic powers?”

(“No. I don’t think so. I think you can hear an impression of me. I am thinking and you can understand me because of what’s happening to you.”)

“Dinosaurs can read each others’ thoughts?”

(“It’s more like you know what I want to say. Like we are connected. But it won’t last.”)

“Why not?”

“(Do you care?”)

“I want to know what’s happening to me.”

(“The kid didn’t tell you much, did he?”)

“You guessed right.”

(“He doesn’t know what he’s done to us. He didn’t expect I would become like this. I have forgiven him. It’s hard now to keep my thoughts together. I am fading. Becoming less and less the woman I was.”)

“I can see that. You tried to kill me.”

(“It wasn’t about killing you so much as it was about getting to the kid. I hate that little fucker.”)

“You blame him for everything?”

(“An ignorant little punk. That’s all he is. Doesn’t want to take responsibility for anything that happened. My husband gave him everything. Everything that kid could have wanted.”)

“I bet you’re going to ask me to help you.”

(“I’m not going to beg.”)

“And you’re not getting out, either. How did you get in here? I figured you were working with Kresevich.”

(“Wrong. He wanted to capture me, and he did it. I’m a breeding pig. I used to be one of the most beautiful women in the world. I was Miss Tokyo, almost Miss Japan. Do you know what it’s like to fall so far? To be treated like a god, and then, just like that, you’re nothing. The only job I could get was a teaching job. That’s it for Miss Tokyo. Teaching is a graveyard career. The end of the line for beautiful women. No other skills. Might as well teach.”)

“Is that the world’s smallest violin I hear?”

(“They have forgotten about you by now. Nobody gives a shit. Your agent cared for two days, maybe not even that. The news cycle isn’t even twenty-four hours anymore. It’s more like fifteen. You should be thankful you don’t get to feel it. You should be thankful you don’t get to feel invisible, like everyone else.”)

Jamie had had enough of the former supermodel. The woman was tortured and lonely, crying to anyone who was willing to hear. Jamie wanted to feel pity for her, but she remembered what Izanami had tried to do to her on the bridge. All those cultists had filmed their fight, and now Jamie was a renowned killer. She might be a media sensation again, but it was attention she didn’t want.

All she wanted was to go home, but now she feared she didn’t have one.

Her life was ruined.

“If you expect me to help you, then you must have something you can trade.”

(“I want you to live, for the same reason Tanaka wanted you here in the first place.”)

Something wasn’t right. Izanami should have been talking about a cure, about a way to reverse Doctor Israel’s dinosaur growth hormones. She was starting to sound like another misguided idealist. Jamie had heard enough bullshit from Kenshin to last her a lifetime.

“What about a cure?” Jamie asked.

(“A what?”)

“You know I have the same shit inside of me. I can hear your thoughts, right? Doctor Israel promised a cure. Once I get him out of here. Isn’t that why you wanted him in the first place?”

(“I wanted to rip his face off because he’s an idiot kid. He’s dangerous and better off dead. He’s not a victim of circumstance. He wanted everything my husband gave him. He never once stopped to question what would happen.”)

“Seems to me like he had billions of dollars shoved into his bank account. And maybe some tits.”

(“We should feel bad for him because he’s young? Teenagers don’t have a conscience? That’s awfully philosophical, coming from a boxer.”)

“I’m wasting my time. I’m sure you wanted world peace when a microphone was up your ass.”

She was finished with Izanami. The woman had probably asked Izzy for the hormone injections; those brochures she had found in the lobby back at the hotel had advertised that the dream of physical human perfection was finally possible.

Izanami’s head jerked upward and her malformed body rose on heavily-muscled hind legs. She slobbered against the glass, her tongue lashing against the inside of her prison and smearing foggy saliva everywhere.

(“I can taste you,”
Izanami said.
“You’re going to die in this place. Kenshin is coming. He’s outside now. Can’t you feel him? It’s only a matter of time before you’re just like me. You’ll be just as pretty as I am. But that won’t matter, because Kenshin is taking over this island. All of the beasts are with him. They are outside, and all of Kresevich’s bullets won’t stop them.”)

Izanami scratched at the glass like a cat trying to let someone know it wanted to escape through a patio door. She paced back and forth, her head swiveling back and forth on a long, slender neck. There was almost nothing human left, save for the huge pair of saggy breasts.

People like Izanami deserved everything that was coming to them. She had tried to cheat her way to success, despite having so many good things in her life to be grateful for. Even if she had thought Tanaka to be a boring asshole, at least he would have taken care of her. If children had entered into their lives, Tanaka would have ensured they received the best education money could buy. Izanami had everything handed to her. It was her own damn fault that she didn’t have any job skills to fall back on once she realized her beauty could only take her so far. Why not pursue a career in porn? Didn’t Japanese people have an obsession with watching their women get raped in bullet train stations or classrooms?

Tanaka, Kenshin, and Izanami had all been infatuated with the idea of success at any cost, and the sacrifice had been great. Neither of them could live with failure, so they had taken drastic measures to make sure their dreams were realized.

Fuck ‘em all. She was getting out of here.

Jamie could hear the former supermodel screaming obscenities inside her head as she turned and walked out. Inside the hallway, an entire lineup of men with rifles slung over their shoulders waited for her.

2

“What took you so long?” Jamie asked.

Kresevich walked between the soldiers, a gray suit jacket with patches on the elbows snugly fitting over his bulging belly. He smiled his grandfatherly smiled and chuckled at the sight of her.

“You are the most entertaining woman alive, Ms. Rock. The tough persona never grows old on me.”

“I take it you want me to autograph another picture before you send me on my way?”

Kresevich shook his head and laughed. “You embarrass me, Ms. Rock. It is good to take a moment to admire the simple things in life, when there is so much tragedy around us.”