“Great! Coming back!” I threw my plate and the jug of water in my basket of cut sinew and then carried it back to the door.
Trel held it open so I could walk inside, and then I set down the basket at her feet. Sheela was teaching Galmine and Kacerie how to remove the tendons of the dead dinosaurs inside of our walls, and I could tell from the look on the pink-haired woman’s face that she was not excited about the task.
“Looks good,” I said to Trel as I checked on Hope’s saddle. The side straps looked a lot thicker, and there were now loops to hold a total of six jugs. “I’m really happy that you could do this so quickly.”
“I’m highly motivated,” Trel said as she bit her lower lip. “Please hurry back.”
“You got it,” I said. “Sheela, get a new leaf basket, we are going to get clay. Everyone else, cut as many tendons as you can from the bodies. Try to get them from outside of the wall, but don’t be too far away. Safety first.”
“Yes, Victor,” Galmine said with a wide smile, but I saw Kacerie’s face pale.
“You expect me to go outside? Uhhh. No.” The hairdresser crossed her arms.
“You have your orders,” I said as I climbed on Hope’s back. Trel handed me two spears, and I pushed them into the sheaths on the saddle.
“And who made you boss? Why do I have to listen to you? It’s not safe out there.” Kacerie’s voice cracked a little.
“Look, just stay close to the walls, so you can run back inside if you need to. We need the sinew, and it’s time you contributed.”
“I’m just going to stay inside,” she said.
“Then I’ll deal with you when I get back,” I growled as our eyes met. The old Victor would have probably tried harder to convince her, but I’d saved the woman’s life from a group of green raptors more than once. She could pull her fucking weight.
“That sounds like a thre--”
“Sheela!” I shouted, and she darted out of the hut with one of the leaf baskets. The cat-woman made the leap onto Hope’s back without using her arms, and then I spun the parasaur around so we could exit the fort.
Then we pushed under the door, and I kicked the parasaur into overdrive.
The wind caressed my face and Sheela’s hair tickled my nose as Hope dashed across the clearing. Even though I could smell the blood in the air, and there were corpses of flying dinos everywhere, riding Hope made me feel alive.
“How are you holding onto the basket?” I shouted over my shoulder as I angled Hope adjacent to the area where the orange birds occupied the cave. Both of her arms were wrapped around my waist, but I didn’t want to turn around while I was guiding Hope.
“I used cordage to tie it around my waist and the saddle!” Sheela shouted over the wind, and I nodded.
Hope hit the foothills next to the cave, and I pushed her up to the side of the slope. I kept her pace a little slower than I would have on flat ground so she didn’t actually stumble, and we were soon riding near the tips of the smaller pine trees that skirted the much larger redwoods. Other than the parts deep in the redwood section, the rest of our small valley was visible, and I slowed even more so that I could twist my head around.
“Something wrong?” Sheela asked as I looked back over my shoulder.
“Just want to get a high view of our valley.” I turned from side to side to look over the clearing and the distant river where we got our water, and I noticed Sheela watching me instead of looking toward our home.
“Looks fine,” I said. “One day we might want to have a scout station up here. We can give someone a fast dino to ride down to the camp, or some sort of signal flare. I doubt the larger carnivores can climb up a slope this steep.”
“It is a good idea,” Sheela said, and our eyes met. The tension between us was more than obvious now, but it was hard to tell if she was upset at me that I’d made a pass at her, or interested.
I was really bad with women, and I knew even less about beautiful alien women. I was feeling a lot more comfortable bossing them around because of the success I’d just had with the fort, and the sex with Galmine had boosted my confidence, but I really didn’t know how far I could toe the line with the beautiful warrior woman.
“Let’s continue,” I said, and she nodded before I kicked Hope’s sides.
The rest of the ride to the lake was uneventful. We forded through the second river in the valley, pushed up the far hill’s switch back game trail, and then came to the top of the crest where we could look down on the lake. A few herds of parasaurs drank on the far distant side of the water, but the finger area where Sheela and I preferred to fish and get our clay was unoccupied by any other dinos.
That might not have been a good sign.
“Keep a look out,” I said to Sheela as I guided Hope down the far slope. The area over here was dense jungle, but I stayed on the lower part of the hill’s slope until we could get down onto the sandy beach.
“Should we hunt for some fish while we are here?” Sheela asked. “We have eaten the orange birds for the last two weeks.”
“It’s a good idea, but I don’t want to spend too much time on it. I’ll gather the clay, and you spear whatever fish you can. If you don’t catch any by the time I’ve got all the clay in the basket, then we’ll leave without any.”
“I will get some,” she said with a sly smile.
I rode Hope in a circular pattern around the spot and checked her attitude. She didn’t seem nervous, or excited, or tense, but I still looked into the dense jungle to our side. After a few minutes of riding slowly around our spot, I guessed that there was no danger, and I edged us closer to the shore of the lake.
Sheela took her hands off my stomach and untied the rope around her own waist. We both dismounted with practiced movements and I traded her one of the spears for her basket. The fishing spot and the area to collect clay were about forty feet from each other, and I saw her test the waters a bit with her spear before she stepped in. The sight of her long muscular body walking into the water with her tattered swimsuit on almost made me trip, and I turned away so I could focus on getting the clay.
Then I froze in my tracks and felt the air leave my chest.
There was a group of boot marks in the clay, and they were most definitely not the ones I left from the last time I was here.
“Sheela!” I hissed as I turned to the woman. She looked up from where she was fishing, saw the expression on my face, and then jumped out of the water.
“What is wrong, Victor?” she whispered after she ran to my side, but her golden eyes focused on where I was pointing.
“How many do you think?” I asked.
“Three,” she whispered as she carefully stepped toward the clay. “The sand did not keep their footprints, so it is hard to know where they came from, or where they went, but they were most definitely here.”
“How long ago?” I should have been excited by the tracks since it meant more people were alive besides us, but I only felt a bit of dread.
I had no idea who these people were. They could have been evil men that would gladly kill me and rape my friends.
“Yesterday,” she said. “Perhaps the day before.”
“Doesn’t look like they took any clay,” I said as I studied the spot. My hypothesis might not have been true since the muddy stuff tended to reform after I took pieces out, but I’d made multiple trips here and seen the gouges I made when I collected for a few days in a row.
“They must have come for water,” she said as she scanned the jungle. “I can patrol the edge of the trees and attempt to see where they exited.
“I don’t like the idea of tracking three people we don’t know through a dinosaur infested jungle,” I said. “Let’s stick to the plan, get the clay, maybe grab some fish, and then get back to our fort.”
“Understood,” Sheela said as she returned to her fishing spot.
I set our new leaf basket down on the sand next to the clay and grabbed a massive handful of the light vermillion colored material. I was unsure exactly how much weight the basket would safely carry, so I paused after my tenth scoop and carefully tested the bottom. It was still holding, so I scooped ten more handfuls in before testing it again. I guessed it weight about twenty-five pounds, and the bottom was still holding strong. It was also about half full, so I put ten more handfuls in before trying to lift the basket. The bottom felt surprisingly sturdy, and I guessed that I could probably do another ten scoops, but this was significantly more clay than we had ever been able to pull in one trip, so I didn’t want to get too greedy. If the basket broke then the whole trip would have been pointless.