“The sauropods...” Chuck started, but Masterson had lifted the rifle to his shoulder and was taking aim at the pterosaur overhead. When the rifle shot came, it was loud and echoing. It seemed to fill the land with its angry bellow.
“I’ll get it this time,” Masterson muttered. He swung around as the reptile drifted past, sighting along the barrel of his gun.
“Masterson,” Owen said. “The sauropods! Your fire is attracting...”
“Shut up, Spencer!” Masterson snapped. He squeezed the trigger, and another shot burst on the air, reverberating in every hollow of the land. The echoes were a long time dying, but before they were gone, another sound had replaced them.
The sound was low and steady like the sodden beat of a tom-tom. It got louder as they listened, seemed to expand until it rolled like thunder.
Owen took one look in the direction of the lake. Then he turned his head and his voice was deadly cold when he spoke.
“They’re coming, Masterson,” he said. “And your popgun isn’t going to be much help this time.”
Chapter 7
Trapped
Chuck’s eyes followed his brother’s. He looked at the sauropods as they tramped out of the lake. Owen had been right in his first guess; they were brontosaurs, some of the largest of the reptiles. He listened to the sound of their ponderous hoofs as they pounded against the earth, and he thought they had been named correctly: brontosaurs, thunder lizards.
Thunder lizards they were. Mighty thunder lizards that rumbled forward with an awkward gait. Thunder lizards with all the fury of a storm behind them. Thunder lizards that could crush the jeep, smash the truck, tear the expedition asunder.
These were no stegosaurs. Compared to these beasts, the stegosaurs with their armored backs and tails seemed like barnyard pets. No, these were real dinosaurs, the dinosaurs everyone automatically pictured whenever the word was mentioned. They barged up out of the lake, dripping vegetation from their jaws.
The land trembled, and the party was gripped in the clutches of a tight, unreasoning fear.
They looked like islands on legs. From the tips of their small heads to the ends of their long, bulky tails, they measured more than sixty-five feet. Their backs were humped in the center, giving the illusion of a mountain with a weathered, rounded peak. Their color was a dull green, the color of bread mold or tarnished metal. They moved rapidly for their size. Their weight: thirty-eight tons! Thirty-eight tons of powerful muscle and ponderous bone. Thirty-eight tons of fury and stupidity that now sought the source of the explosions.
Their necks were ludicrously long, a good twenty feet from the creature’s snout to the curved beginning of the mountainous back. The tail was equally long, and if there had been a head on the end of it, it would have been difficult to tell one end of the animal from the other.
Chuck knew which end was which at the moment.
The end that was bearing down on them with remarkable rapidity was the front. The other end carried a powerful tail that could probably knock the underpinnings from the Empire State Building!
Figures were figures and they meant nothing. They were only numbers until they were compared to other known figures. The creatures were more than sixty-five feet long. What was sixty-five feet? A number, yes. But more. It was a locomotive engine attached to a railroad car. It was a good-sized swimming pool. It was a three-story house laid on its side.
Chuck didn’t have to compare thirty-eight tons with anything. He knew what thirty-eight tons added up to. Two thousand pounds in a ton, and he weighed 160 pounds. He weighed 160 pounds and each of the creatures charging for the camp weighed at least 76,000 pounds! That was a lot of beef — an awful lot of beef — and it was all angry; it was all destructive and it was all intent on doing something about these people who made disturbing noises with rifles.
The fear gave way to the need for immediate action. They began to run. They would have run straight into the thundering herd if Owen hadn’t shouted, “This way! To the rocks!”
The rocks rose like a beckoning fortress a few hundred feet from the camp. They weren’t high, but they were long, set like the thousands of stone walls that dot New England. Ferns and mosses grew around and over the natural barrier, and it was a little hard to see exactly where the rocks ended. But they offered protection — a wall behind which to hide from the murderous, trampling limbs of the brontosaurs.
They began running, Owen leading the way, Pete behind him, Denise next, then Arthur and Chuck. Only Masterson turned in the opposite direction. There was fear in his eyes, an unmasked fear that told Chuck the erstwhile hunter hadn’t expected anything quite like this. Firing at a stegosaur was one thing and firing at a fragile-looking pterosaur was another. But a brontosaur was a mountain on legs. No man in his right mind stood and fired at a moving mountain.
The party straggled across the countryside like the tail of a kite, running, stumbling, reaching for the rocks. Behind him, Chuck heard the whine of the jeep’s engine as Masterson started it. He turned his head, still running, in time to see the jeep back away from the truck and head off in the other direction, away from the rocks.
The word “coward” crossed his mind rapidly, but he shoved it aside when he caught sight of the brontosaurs again. They weren’t bothering with the jeep They had swerved and were heading for the majority of the party now. They were headed for the group that staggered toward the rock barrier.
“Owen!” Chuck shouted.
Owen stopped dead in his tracks. Pete stumbled past him, intent on reaching the rocks, and Arthur took Denise’s hand and dragged her after him. It didn’t take Owen long to see what was going to happen. Even the rocks would offer poor protection if the herd decided to trample them into the ground.
Chuck had started to run back for the truck and he glanced back over his shoulder to see that Owen was following him. He had reached the truck and started the engine when Owen popped into the cab beside him. They didn’t waste many words.
“What’s your plan?” Owen asked.
“Cut them off. Drive around them and try to head them the other way.” Chuck spoke rapidly, his voice hoarse.
He had already started the truck in motion, turning the wheels toward the charging brontosaurs.
“Right,” Owen said. He swung out onto the running board and climbed the slats into the back of the truck. When he returned, he was carrying a rifle.
The truck rolled forward, bouncing over the pockmarked ground, driving in a straight line between the enraged herd and the rock barrier. Chuck couldn’t see any of the party, and he assumed they were down low behind the wall, flat against the trembling ground.
The huge dinosaurs kept coming. They had a new quarry now; a dull brown truck that moved across the ground and somehow resembled one of the smaller lizards. The brontosaurs knew how to dispose of other annoying reptiles. It was simple. Step on them. Step on them until they were broken and crushed and unable to move. This was the law of the times, survival of the fittest, the weak against the strong. They had felt the terrible teeth of the carnivores, had learned to seek refuge in the deeper water when Allosaurus showed on the horizon, his claws bared, his jaws snapping. But when they fought, they fought with their bodies, using their enormous bulk to stamp out resistance. This thing that rolled across the ground was the thing that had spoken with a booming voice. It should be crushed and therefore eliminated. It was as simple as that.
From behind the wheel of the truck, it didn’t look quite as simple. Chuck saw only the massive wall of green flesh as it rumbled forward, long necks bobbing, tails thumping. He thought of how easily that wall could crush the truck, and the thought sent an ache to his throat. He swung the truck in a wide circle and then headed back for the herd.