Escape From Dinosauria (Dinopocalypse Book 1) (31 page)

“You’ve said that before.”

“You care so much about everyone else? You are willing to throw your life away for them? When you are gone, you might be lucky enough to be remembered as a pioneer, a woman who raised a standard in organized cage fighting. Perhaps people will lament the fact that you did not get a chance to star in a superhero film. But they will go on with their lives, without you. If you save them, they will not thank you. They will never know. They will never care.”

She had enough speeches from over-talkative bad guys. Raising the sword up, she tried to rush down the ramp, but her body was not fast, her rhythm non-existent. She was just an idiot flying through the air with a sword, feathers on her arms.

Kresevich’s hands remained clasped behind his back as he kicked her in the shin, then in her midsection. She fell off the side of the ramp and dropped to the tarmac.

Somewhere, a voice in her corner was telling her to stay down. Help was on the way. The medics were coming. Stay down.

A cold object landed on her stomach. She tried to look down, but she could only see the familiar ribbon that held the medal she had lost in the river beneath the bridge.

“I want you to live,” Kresevich said over the roar of the plane’s engines.

Fading again. Nothing in her head. Silence. Even the noise of battle was disappearing into a black hole. She was conscious enough to see the snake-troops run up the ramp and disappear into the plane. With a metallic whine, the door slowly shut behind them.

Jamie was able to crane her neck and see the dinosaur version of Kenshin lying on its side, not breathing, body riddled with holes.

12

Here was one achievement he was going to unlock for sure.

Izzy waved over to the remaining chopper. The pilot glanced at him, maybe even recognized him. He slid into the back of and pointed his gun at the pilot’s head, which was shaped like a snake’s, with a helmet sitting squarely atop it.

“Only one pilot?” Izzy asked.

He wasn’t even sure why he said it, but he knew why he pulled the trigger. He had already killed people today. Even if they were dinosaurs that had once been people, they were people all the same. Their lives were gone the moment they injected the serum into their veins.

The pilot slumped forward from the gunshot, and Izzy pushed the heavy body out of the seat.

A loud
ping
slowed the rotor on the roof, and smoke began to fill the cabin. Izzy coughed into his fist, and tried to focus. The getaway ride off the island was fucked. 

Kenshin was down and Jamie was near him, also down. The cargo bay door on the transport plane was closing.

“Okay, buttons,” Izzy said as he assumed control over the console. He was going to bring that plane down.

The world was not going to be destroyed by his work. He had a gift, and he was damn good at what he did, and it had been used for evil. The wholesale slaughter of entire groups of people was made possible because of his research, perfecting the very solutions that were designed to create the perfect genetic specimens for war. Even with all of the advertised idealism, Izzy had not cared. He cared only about the wealth, about the women. All of it had been great, but with the push of a button, he could make sure his mistake never made it to the mainland.

The transport plane rotated on the tarmac and picked up speed.

Izzy located a joystick with a red button on top. He flicked a bunch of switches that weren’t flicked yet. He had to try. This would be his only chance.

When the plane was lined up in his field of vision, Izzy pushed the red button.

A loud hiss accompanied a bright spark and trail of smoke from the wing where the missiles were located. The trail of smoke nailed the plane in one of the turbines, as a bright ball of orange flames ballooned into the sky.

“That’s what I’m talking about!”

He pressed the button again because the plane was still trying to take off. Another hiss, spark, and smoke trail. This time, the rear tail caught fire and the plane spun slightly. The transport plane’s trajectory sending it straight into the hangar, steel groaned and fire blossomed brightly into the sunset-smeared sky. The mash of metal and grind of machinery as it collided with the hangar was louder than a team of
T. rexes
bellowing with rage.

The barbecue was interesting to watch. He leaned back in the seat and managed to find a way to shut the chopper down. The rotors slowly whined to a stop. The fruit of all his labors had evaporated in a cloud of fire. It was a beautiful sight, if not a tad bittersweet. Izanami, his former employer’s trophy wife, was dying now, toasted alive with a contingent of super-soldiers with snake heads and huge muscles. The entire island was still teeming with wild creatures, but the real army could go in and dust wipe everything out, and they could start with a clean slate.

A part of him wondered if this was his chance to blow up the compound. Destroy all evidence of his work. Make sure none of it ever fell into the wrong hands.

There wasn’t a lot of time. He still had to pump Jamie full of drugs.

He searched the cockpit for a first aid kit. He cracked it open and found the syringes that would help Jamie feel a lot better about life.

As long as she was still alive.

He walked across the tarmac, unafraid. There was an eerie peace that he had never felt before; no bullets, no dinosaurs. Kenshin’s tragic corpse lay dead, and a trail of dinosaur corpses littered the road to the airport. He had driven an armored truck and crashed it right through a
Triceratops,
while his arm had been shredded by a dye-non that he shot in the face. And for all the shit that might be blamed on him, he did his best to stop it from getting worse when he had the chance.  The airport smelled like a bonfire, and most of the sky now had become dark blue, with only a faint hint of light remaining in the sky. Dancing shadows from the dinosaur inferno flickered across the tarmac.

Izzy knelt beside Jamie and picked her up. She felt like a big doll that had been left in the mud, lifeless and filthy, smelling like blood and piss.

“Hey,” Izzy said.

“Oh, fuck you,” Jamie groaned, eyes barely open.

“That’s the girl I know. I got the stuff. You ready?”

“Yes. I hurt. Everywhere. Hold me close.”

It was an odd request, and he felt weird grabbing her into the crook of his arm and cradling her head. She placed her hand against his bare chest.

He was a hero. He had blown shit up and saved the world.

Izzy found the spot on her neck where he could plunge the syringe. Her fingers curled over his chest; he was self-conscious, being touched by a hot world championship cage fighter who had sliced and diced dinosaurs with a sword reminded him that he was a young pup, in the scheme of things.

“How long?” she asked. “Is it working?”

“I guess. Um, yeah.”

“What do you mean? Izzy?”

“We have to get you cleaned up. Find where you’re cut and disinfect you, put some band aids on you. I have to clean up my arm, and then we’re out of here. Going to be flying in the dark.”

“Izzy. Am I cured?”

“Cured? I never said there was a cure.”

She growled his name. “Izzy…”

“The serum I just gave you is supposed to stop the mutation. There’s no way to reverse it. I mean, just straight-up transform someone
back
into a human. Your entire physiology has been screwed with. All of your hormones, your brain chemistry. You’re all…different on the inside, and a bit on the outside, too.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“I’m not laughing. There’s no cure. No way to reverse-engineer it. We had the nanomachines as fail safes, but they were tampered with. Listen, on the bright side, you can probably heal pretty fast.”

“I. Am. Going. To. Slap the ever-loving shit out of you. But not today. Some other time.”

“I can live with that.”

Her body was not tense in his arms, and she still held onto him. She was beaten, exhausted, pushed beyond the limits any person could possibly handle.

Jamie Rock had done what all champions do, and for the first time in his life, he knew what that was.

“You know how to fly that bird?” Jamie asked.

“Fuck no. It’s damaged, anyway.”

“So we might need to use your codes.”

“Tanaka kept a small plane in that little hangar over there.” Izzy pointed across the airfield. “One of his pilots flew me around the island in it once, so I could get a view of the place. He taught me a few things.”

“So you’re saying you can fly a plane.”

“Well, maybe a little.”

“Good enough.”

HOME

Jamie might have slept. She drifted in and out of consciousness. She sat in the plane and watched Dinosauria grow smaller and smaller through the window. They had done it. They had escaped. They’d beaten the fucking island. Her boyfriend had died. A lot of people had died. She’d mutated into a dinosaur, but goddammit, she was alive. She had won. Undefeated, motherfucker. Undefeated. She caressed the medal Kresevich had returned to her at the airport and smiled weakly. After everything she’d gone through, she was still breathing. Still fighting. She’d never quit fighting. Throw the biggest, meanest sonofabitch in front of her and she’d still go down swinging.

She didn’t know what the world would think of her time at Dinosauria. Would they outcast her as a freak? Would she be imprisoned and experimented on? Or would she be considered a hero? She pictured all the websites now, naming her Woman of the Year. Dinosaur of the Year. Mutant Badass of the Year. She’d write a book which would then be adapted into a movie, which would then be remade into another movie a few years later, followed by a miniseries on HBO. Nothing like this had ever happened in the history of mankind. Jamie was the real deal. Nobody would ever dream of fucking with her.

Now all they had to do was get home.

She wanted a hot shower and a comfortable bed. She wanted a bacon cheeseburger and a chocolate milkshake. She wanted meat. Dead animals displayed on her kitchen table. A feast of death.

“Ten hours,” Izzy had told her when they first departed. “We should be home in ten hours.”

How much time had passed? How long had she been resting?

Jamie stood up, approached Izzy. Something didn’t seem right. He was drenched in sweat, shaking.

“What’s wrong?”

Izzy didn’t look at her when he talked. “Oh, uh, just a little bit of everything. How’d you sleep?”

“Tell me what’s happening.”

“Well, I, uh...”

“Izzy.”

“Okay, well, for starters: something I didn’t think about ahead of time, but, uh, the United States has a pretty complex security grid. There’s a reason terrorist attacks don’t happen very frequently on US soil. Any foreign aircraft carries get close, they shoot those fuckers down.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, it ain’t gonna be a piece of cake getting over the Pacific. As we get closer, the shit’s gonna hit the fan.”

“They’re gonna blow us up, aren’t they?”

Izzy nodded. “Probably. But I doubt we’ll make it that far anyway.”

“Why’s that?”

“We’re basically out of fuel.”

“What?”

“Yeah…I don’t know what Kresevich had planned, but the chances of us reaching the States before our tank runs dry seems highly unlikely.”

“Well, shit.”

“I know. Hence the freaking out.”

Jamie paced back and forth in the back of the plane, looking out the window and seeing only clouds. She wondered how far the two of them could swim in the Pacific before either drowning or getting eaten by a big-ass shark.

“How much longer?”

“I don’t know. Maybe an hour. Maybe ten minutes. Who knows? If we were that close, we would have probably gotten shot down by now, but shit, we’ve been flying a long fuckin’ time, so…beats me. I don’t understand any of this shit, plus I’m completely blinded by clouds. We might not even be going the right away at this point!”

“I thought you said you could fly this thing.”

“I never said I could fly it
well.
”

“Just keep going.”

“What do you think I’m doing?” Then Izzy gasped. “Oh…oh shit. Shit, shit, shit.”

“What?” Jamie stopped pacing and ran to the front of the plane. The sound in his voice sent more fear through her than anything that’d happened on the island. “What’s wrong?”

Izzy pointed ahead and Jamie followed his gaze. They had finally broken through the sea of clouds. One step closer to home. One step closer to a warm bed. It wouldn’t be a smooth trip, but then again, it hadn’t been a smooth vacation. The journey home would just as miserable as the island adventure. Whatever waited for them, they would figure out a way to handle it. After everything they’d just gone through, nothing could stop her now.

At least, that’s what she’d been thinking before seeing what Izzy was pointing at.

The coastline of California was now in view.

At first she thought there was a cloud hovering above it, but then she realized it was smoke.

And the sharp, red lights consuming the city wasn’t sunlight, either.

California was on fire.

Jamie sat down next to Izzy, knees weak.

“Shit.”

The End

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