“One more thing.” Emma came up beside him. Her eyes were luminous, and he couldn’t help bending toward her. She smiled and pushed her face back at his, their lips meeting, hard. She broke the kiss.
“For luck.”
“I’ve loved you… ” He grinned down at her. “… for 100 million years.”
She laughed and the pair turned, about to leave the jungle edge, but Ben threw an arm out in front of her.
“Don’t move.”
From the other side of the clearing, the monstrous snake slid from the jungle like a waterfall of dark brown and green scales. It was on its belly, but the arm-thick tongue continued to dart out, tasting the air. The tongue’s movements became more frantic and then the snake reared up, raising its head around 20 feet from the ground.
Emma couldn’t help her intake of her breath — to her, the nightmare was back. Out in the open, its size was colossal, and even though she had witnessed a full-grown creature before, her modern mind still had trouble processing it as being real.
They both eased back behind the trees and tried to stay motionless. The red, glass-like eyes of the Titanoboa were impossible to read, but the tongue began flickering again, and the head began to turn as it looked along the line of foliage.
“Drake and Helen will be sitting ducks,” Emma whispered.
“So are we,” Ben responded.
“We can run for it,” she replied.
“To where? And for how long?” Ben answered. He hefted one of the spears. “No, we’ve got to discourage it from entering — we need that temple.”
“Yeah, we do.” Emma swallowed. Suddenly, the spears and her handgun seemed a joke when contemplating a war on this thing. She wanted to run and hide, but Ben was right. Running and hiding might mean life for now, but it would also mean missing their window of opportunity. Did she want to try and live in this place for 10 years? Or condemn Ben for another decade?
“Goddamnit,” she whispered.
“No, this is a good thing.” Ben pulled her along behind the tree line. “We wanted to flush it out. Now we don’t have to.” Ben’s jaw worked for a moment, as he seemed to come to a decision. “Cover me.”
“What?” Emma grabbed at him, but he had already moved further along behind the line of trees, getting closer to the snake.
Even though Ben crept along and tried to stay behind cover, the snake spotted him almost immediately. Its five-foot-wide diamond-shaped head swung around to watch him. The creature’s body was around four feet wide at the neck, but then broadened to be about seven wide at its girth. It was a monstrous animal and emanated power and lethality. Ben would have made a perfect bite-sized snack for the creature.
“Oh no.” Her mouth dropped open as Ben broke cover and sprinted at the monster, yelling and holding up one of his spears. The snake must have been taken by surprise by a prey animal charging it, and stopped its advance, rearing up even higher in a defensive display.
When Ben was just 50 feet away, he whipped his arm forward and propelled the spear like a javelin.
It flew, wobbling, and as a first effort, it wasn’t bad. But it was obvious that Ben needed practice as the swirling wind caught the missile and nudged it just enough to make it land several feet wide.
“Shit!” Ben yelled.
It got worse, as it struck a patch of thicker grass and didn’t even detonate. Emma grimaced, her teeth clamped together so hard they hurt.
Ben fumbled with another of his spears, but it was obvious that the odds had moved even more out of his favor.
“Fuck it.” Emma gripped her gun tight and stepped from the line of trees, knowing they were now on a suicide mission.
But instead of the snake bearing down on them, it swung away as an earth-shaking roar came from the other end of the clearing.
The thundering, predatorial bellow of the carnivore was a challenge, a warning, and designed to freeze its prey to the spot — it worked, as Emma cringed to be rooted to the ground from the noise alone.
She watched in awe as the massive theropod emerged from the jungle. Giganotosaurus, she breathed. The thing had tracked them from when she was in the crevasse. It seemed the monster decided it still had unfinished business with them. One problem: to get to Ben and Emma, it might have to fight for them.
The effect on the snake was instantaneous — Ben was forgotten, and the colossal snake reared up, rising high from the ground. Its head shivered slightly and the tongue flicked out, faster and faster, in clear agitation. Amazingly, its throat flared red with aggression.
Ben backed up, trying to keep watch on both monsters, but he was insignificant and nothing more than food to the victor, and right now, the two formidable beasts, both territorial, undoubtedly knew their meeting could end in only one way.
He joined Emma back in the tree line, and both could only watch with mouths gaping.
Though the snake was colossal in size, the Giganotosaurus lived up to its name — it was the biggest carnivore on this primitive continent, and this one was 40 feet long and stood 18 high at the shoulder. Though the snake was longer, the saurian massively outweighed it by many tons.
The Giganotosaurus roared, and its massive box-like head split open, showing the rows of razor-sharp, backward-curving teeth, each about 10 inches in length. It started to move, keeping its eyes on the snake and trying to circle it.
With small twitchy movements, the snake kept itself facing toward the threat. The dinosaur edged sideways, bellowing and snapping massive and powerful jaws at the Titanoboa. It looked like a monstrous guard dog threatening an intruder.
“No, no, no, not that way,” Emma said.
The dinosaur was moving the snake, and they could see that the Titanoboa was going to end up between them and the temple. If the snake decided to cut and run, it’d be back inside with Drake and Helen before they could blink. That’d leave them alone with one of the most fearsome creatures of the Late Cretaceous Period, and Emma knew how that would go.
There came a long hiss from the snake, and it tried to rear up even higher, perhaps to make itself seem even bigger. It didn’t work; the dinosaur charged.
The ground shook beneath their feet as the three-toed monster closed the gap between them in seconds. Ben and Emma were transfixed, watching the two land leviathans come together.
The Titanoboa snake was reputed to have fed on dinosaurs, and it was easily big enough. But the Giganotosaurus was a species of theropod that ruled its domain for a good reason and amazingly, for something of such a titanic size, was even faster than the snake probably suspected.
The snake went to strike the beast on its flanks, but the dinosaur lowered its head like a bull. The front of the creature’s skull was a massive plate of many-inches-thick bone, and even though the snake’s teeth caught and dug in, they inflicted little real damage.
In turn, the Giganotosaurus angled its head and opened its massive jaws wide and clamped them down on the snake’s upper body. The machine-like head brought a bite pressure of 1,000 pounds per square inch to bear on the giant pipe of scale and muscle.
The Giganotosaurus clamped down with an audible crunch, and the snake went mad. It became a monstrous worm in a bird’s beak. The body and tail of the snake whipped and thumped down, raising dust and making the ground shake.
“Now’s our cue,” Ben said, snapping Emma out of her trance and grabbing her hand. They sprinted across the clearing and were at the temple doorway in seconds. But just as they reached the steps, they were both thrown backward as a second colossal snake flowed from the doorway.