“Shit!” I growled as I snatched a spear from its spot leaning against the hut and ran after Sheela. The warrior woman was raising her bow, and she let one of our primitive arrows loose just as the dinosaur leapt from the top of the door.
The arrow cut through the air with an angry hiss and slammed into the skull of the beast as it dropped. The creature didn’t even let out a squeak or yelp; it just dropped in the air all insta-kill style. I reached it in ten more steps and then slammed my spear into its throat just to make sure that it was dead.
“Damn, Sheela, great job with--” I started to say, but then I saw a patch of green feathers appear as another deinonychus crested the wall.
Then three more joined it.
“I only have two more arrows!” Sheela shouted as she pulled one of the shafts from her hip sheath.
“Trel and Kacerie, get to the hut!” I shouted, and my words seemed to shock the two women out of their slow backpedal. They turned to run past us, and I prayed that Sheela and I would be able to stand against four of these fuckers.
“Hit the one on the right!” I ordered Sheela as she pulled the string of her bow back. She let loose with the shaft, and the arrow hit the raptor in the shoulder. The green-feathered bastard screamed, and for half a moment it looked like it was going to tip over and fall on the other side of the wall.
But then it fell forward into our fort as the other three jumped inside.
“Hit another one!” Adrenaline was making the world seem to slow to a crawl, and I sprinted toward the closest jumping raptor.
For half a moment, I wondered what the fuck I was doing charging these guys. Each of them was about the size of a Great Dane, with teeth that could tear through my muscles and bones ten times easier than the big Scooby-Doo breeds. Then I remembered Sheela at my side, Glamine and Trel in the hut, and Kacerie’s look of terror when I saved her yesterday.
If I didn’t kill these fuckers, these beautiful women would probably die.
I imagined that my arms were like rubber bands, and I pulled my spear back before I let it thrust forward into the first landing raptor. My weapon connected with him just as his legs took the pressure of his landing, and he really wasn’t able to dodge or snap his jaws at me. The tip tore into his chest with surprising ease, and he let out a painful yelp when I shuffled forward and drove the shaft of my weapon deeper into him.
Sheela’s last arrow whizzed by my head and hit the raptor who had landed to my right. The shaft sunk into his throat, but the dinosaur somehow ignored the damage and took three quick steps toward me.
I twisted myself around the spear I still had impaled inside of the first raptor and then pushed the shaft at the dino Sheela just injured. It was a cumbersome movement, but the monster’s jaws closed around the wood in between my hands, and I got an alarmingly close look into the eyes of the angry beast.
I could also smell its sour breath and feel the muscles in its neck strain.
“Shit!” I gasped as the raptor with an arrow in its neck thrashed the spear free of my grip. The pointy end was still attached the first raptor, and that one let out another pained screech as its friend accidentally drove the weapon deeper.
“Victor!” Trel screamed from behind me, and I kicked the raptor away before I turned to see her toss a spare spear at me. I’d always been terrible at sports, but I somehow snatched it from the air as if we had practiced the move a hundred times. It was a good thing too, since the only uninjured raptor was sprinting toward me with its head down, and I only had a single second to get my weapon pointed in the correct direction.
The impact caused a shock of energy to hammer my arms and chest. I hadn’t really based out my legs, and the speed and weight of the raptor almost threatened to knock me over. Fortunately, my bare feet were able to kind of grip the ground as I stumbled backward, and the raptor took my spear through its stomach. Unfortunately, the dinosaur didn’t seem to care that I’d run it through, and it continued to push toward me as my spear slid through its body.
“Ahhh!” I gasped as I tried to push my spear into it. The raptor’s jaws snapped closed about two inches away from my front hand, and a bit of panic replaced the adrenaline.
“Hold your spear!” Trel yelled as she landed at my side. Two of her legs thrust out like finger flicks and knocked into the nose of the dinosaur. It didn’t look like she hit it hard, but the monster was easily distracted and forgot about biting my hands so that it could try to chomp into Trel.
“No!” I growled as I leaned into the spear and tried to muscle the raptor away from the spider-woman. This was a big son of a bitch, maybe it actually weighed more than I did, but my muscles were being fueled by primitive survival instincts, and I was able to leverage the thing away from Trel.
I quickly glanced over to Sheela and saw that she’d moved to protect my back from the other raptors. She was jabbing a spear into the dino with an arrow in its neck, but the one she’d shot in the shoulder was circling to her side, and I knew she was going to need help in a few seconds.
“Fucking die!” I screamed as I tried to lift up with my spear. The problem with this raptor was that I’d gotten him in the stomach and not hit an organ that would cause him to die in a few moments. Hell, he was probably as juiced up on adrenaline as I was, and might not have even known that I’d run him through the stomach.
One of Trel’s spider legs smacked him across the face, but his eyes turned down to the spear, and I saw the spark of intelligence there. The raptor took a step away from me, and I was all of a sudden trying to keep him on my weapon instead of keeping him away from me.
“Trel, help Sheela!” I shouted as I took a few quick steps toward the raptor I’d impaled.
“Got it!” she yelled, and I saw her spider legs coil under her human body half a moment before she sprung into the air.
The raptor on my spear suddenly changed his strategy, and he surged forward when I thought he was going to keep moving backward. His sudden forward step caused him to slide deeper down my spear and his jaws angled to bite me in the face.
His teeth closed not even an inch from my nose.
I grunted, lifted up the back of my spear, and then pushed forward as hard as I could. The raptor tried to keep coming at me, but the angle of my weapon was too steep, and I was pushing too hard. We both ran across the open courtyard of the fort before I slammed the tip of the spear into a crack in the walls. My weapon pushed through the tiny gap in the logs we had erected and I felt it kind of lock in place.
“Sit tight, asshole,” I gasped as I moved my grip to the back part of the spear. The raptor let out a frustrated growl as it thrashed against the stuck spear, but it looked like it was starting to lose a bit of its strength, and blood was pouring out of its stomach as if someone had turned on a bath faucet.
A trio of spears leaned up against the wall, and I grabbed one before turning to the last three raptors. Trel and Sheela were keeping the ones with the arrows in their bodies at bay, but the one that I just speared in its chest had wiggled free of my weapon. He was spewing blood all over the ground of our fort, but he also looked really pissed off, and he turned toward me with a low rumbling hiss.
He then turned toward the hut where Kacerie and Galmine watched our battle.
“No!” I shouted as the injured raptor sprinted toward them.
I was about twenty yards away from the raptor, and I knew the beast could run faster than me, but I threw all logic out the window and sprinted toward the hut. I was already gasping for breath because of the fighting, but I ignored the agony in my chest, the blackness on the edges of my vision, and the pain of my bare feet slamming into the ground.
The raptor wasn’t moving as fast as I expected, probably because of its chest wound, but it still looked like it would reach the door of our hut before I would get there. I tried to pump my legs faster, and I felt a bit of surprise when my limbs actually complied.