“Yeah.” He shrugged. “They can have the night, and we can have the day. Works out okay.” He waggled a finger at her, grinning. “As the saying goes: you’ll be able to sleep at night, as long as your windows and doors are locked nice and tight.”
“That’s good advice.” She let her head rest on the concrete and knew then that this was not their world anymore. She shut her eyes and breathed deeply. “So what comes next?”
CHAPTER 37
Andy ran, hard, keeping his head down and arms pumping as he used his slim frame to dart, burrow, and dodge through animal tracks that were little more than tunnels bored through the tangled green maze of the jungle.
Behind him, the predators closed in — a pack of them, theropods, Austroraptor probably — about 400 pounds each, covered in tiny, shimmering feathers that looked like scales, and with their long hard snouts filled with razor teeth, they seemed like a cross between a bird and an upright alligator.
They had flushed him out before he could find cover, and he prayed that the jungle stayed as closed in as it was because he knew that if he broke into open territory, he was as good as dead.
Unfortunately, they were a large raptor species and big and strong enough to bullock their way after him, and their sense of smell meant there’d be no hiding behind any fallen logs.
Andy had been trying to move as quickly as he could manage back to the plateau in time for the arrival of Primordia, and he stupidly had been breaking all his own rules for survival — travel by night, be quiet, invisible, silent as a ghost, and where possible, coat himself in mud or plant sap.
Instead, he had taken to wearing strings of vines over himself like a homemade ghillie suit that had worked a treat to break up his outline and also cover his odor. Well, it usually worked.
But he forgot that the raptors were smart, and learned quickly, and you could only fool them for so long before they worked out what was really happening. He recalled from his paleontological studies that they were probably as smart as dogs — he knew now that wasn’t true at all — they were far smarter than anyone realized, and he guessed he should have been thankful that at least this one species was wiped out during the great Cretaceous — Paleogene extinction event or instead of humans, it would have been them as rulers of Earth if evolution had allowed them to progress.
Andy paused for a split second at a fork in his green tunnel. It was long enough to hear that the lead pursuer could only have been 50 feet at most behind him. He chose, going left, the smaller tunnel, and he crouch-ran as he burrowed onward.
Then to his horror, he broke cover into bright sunlight and had to sprint hard to cross a small clearing unusually devoid of any plants. Behind him, the Austroraptor broke through as well. Andy’s eyes were wide with panic, as he knew he had never been a sprint champion, and even though he had a head start, he was racing something as fast as a cheetah.
Andy’s teeth were bared as he concentrated on the opposing wall of jungle, but he could already hear the hissing breath of the carnivore as it must have been craning forward, mouth open, to sink its row of razor teeth into his shoulder.
And then he was falling.
Beneath him, there was no more ground, and as Andy fell into space, his mind screamed: sinkhole, way too late, as he had already fallen through the thin layer of vines hiding the deep cavity in the earth.
He wasn’t the only one, as he heard the massive raptor fall as well.
Andy splashed down first into the pool of dark, fetid water, followed by the larger eruption as the creature fell in beside him.
He came to the surface first, tasting brackish, stagnant water, and something sweet like corrupting flesh. He immediately thrashed to the slick rocky shore.
From above, sunlight streamed down, throwing a halo of light onto the sunken pond. The raptor rose up as well, but was more stunned and confused, as its larger body had undoubtedly struck the bottom of the shallow basin of water.
Andy seized the moment to clamber higher in the darkness and squeeze himself in between two boulders, trying to wedge himself in as far as the tiny gap would allow.
The theropod stayed in the middle of the pond, tilting its head to look upward. It began to make a series of short barks, and from high above, it was answered. A number of boxy-looking reptilian heads craned to look down, but its pack could do nothing.
You’re trapped like me, sucker, Andy thought as his eyes began to better adjust to the gloom.
Andy quickly looked around to better understand his predicament: they were in some sort of sinkhole pocket. There was a pond of soupy water at its center, and the walls were slick and rising sheer for about 50 feet to then curve in toward a small opening at the top. Depressingly, Andy also saw that there were animal bones lumping the water and around the pond edge — this sinkhole had probably been trapping unwary beasts for thousands of years.
Turning back to the roof, Andy saw what could have been vines hanging down. He might be able to climb out when the time was right — he looked back down at the pond and at the raptor standing at its center — and if he could survive long enough.
Above, the raptor pack pulled back and then vanished. The lone creature stuck in the hole with him let out a long hiss that turned to a scream of frustration. It stomped around in the small pound for a few seconds, swung its head to look along the slick walls, and then stopped to stare into the crevice where Andy was hiding.
Oh shit, he thought and stared back while trying to wedge himself in even tighter. He glanced up at the vines and knew he’d never make it.
The box-like head began to swing slowly away, when a tiny voice floated up from the bag tied over his shoulder.
“Is it gone?”
Andy grimaced and clutched at the bag, squeezing the small pterosaur to silence it as the head swung back to them. The Austroraptor began to move out of the water, its head now craned forward and directly at him.
Andy quickly looked up again, calculating, but no matter how many options his mind presented him, he knew the reality was there was no way he’d be able to clamber to and then up a vine quickly enough. Plus, the slick walls were impossible to scale, and from what he could make out in the darkness, the cavity they were in was pretty much the size of a double bedroom so he had nowhere else to go — he was royally screwed.
The raptor took another step toward him, but then suddenly became motionless. It slowly turned its head to the side as if listening. Andy also froze, thinking that the thing was trying to get his bearings again — it had night vision like a cat, hearing far beyond his own, and a sense of smell like a bloodhound. It would eventually ferret him out, no matter how dark it was, or how well he concealed himself.
But then it slowly turned away, and began to hunch over and hiss into the darkness. Behind the column of light streaming into the center of the sinkhole, Andy thought he heard another sound — a soft noise he could just make out that was like a typewriter’s keys being struck. He eased out a fraction, concentrating his senses.
The raptor turned again, obviously aware of the sound and probably a smell that was beyond Andy’s senses to detect. Whatever it was, the raptor could hear and smell it, but hadn’t found the source yet.
Then came the soft zizzing of water as if something was being poured into the stagnant pool.
“I think we got company,” Andy whispered.