“Yes,” she answered as she looked up at me. The clay basket on her saddle looked almost too big, and I knew we’d be able to carry three times as much on the back of Bob. Hell, I could carry Galmine, Trel, Kacerie, and a bunch of baskets on the back of Bob if I commanded him to walk on all fours.
But now I had him on his back legs, and I wanted to see how fast he could go.
“Giddyap, Bob!” I hissed as I tapped my heels against his flanks.
My new parasaur took a long step forward, then another, and then a third before he found his jogging pace. It immediately became apparent that he couldn’t accelerate as quickly as Hope could, but it only took another six steps for me to figure out that his top speed was way faster. The wind almost instantly began to make my eyes water, but I didn’t care. His long lopping steps set down perfectly on the sandy beach, and there were almost no jarring bounces. He was actually a bit easier to ride than Hope, and I turned around to see Sheela chasing behind me.
“Is that as fast as you can go?” I shouted at her as I willed Bob to pick up some more speed. My new pal obeyed me, and he bent his neck down a bit so that he could really bring his tail into play.
Then his engine opened up like a race car.
“Shiiiitttt!” I growled as he seemed to go from thirty to seventy in two steps. I clamped my fingers harder around the ridge on his neck and ducked my head low so that I could see through the wind. I really had no idea how fast Bob was going, but the wind was pushing on my chest like crazy, and it took every ounce of willpower to keep my eyes open. I thought about him slowing down a bit, and he made a few more steps at a much slower pace.
Then he let out a quick bass toot as if to tell me that I should be careful about what I wished for.
I turned around and saw that I’d put a good hundred yards between Sheela and me. She wasn’t riding Hope as fast as I normally did, but she was moving at a good clip; Bob was just a big lumbering drag racer.
But I guessed he also had a good tractor engine. He must have weighed four tons, and I imagined his wide lizard feet would really be able to grab onto the ground. He probably couldn’t haul as much as a triceratops, but he was going to be a great help with our future build plans.
“He is fast!” Sheela shouted as she pulled Hope up alongside me.
“Yeah! I’ll go a bit slower. Try and keep up! We’ll do a quick ride around the north side of the valley.”
Sheela nodded, and I kicked Bob’s flanks lightly so that he’d pick up speed. The big parasaurs let out a French horn sounding note and then floated across the sand on his massive legs. We ran past the same few obstacles I had Sheela steer Hope around, and I practiced steering Bob around the palm tree, past the boulder, and over the downed log. He was big enough to just step over the log without even jumping, and I let out a short laugh.
The green raptors weren’t going to be much of a problem for Bob. They might be able to nip at his legs, but a single stomp from his foot would squash one, and I’d be able to spear or rain arrows down from the safety of his high back.
I glanced back to ensure the Sheela was still following me. She was, so I angled Bob toward the side of the jungle where the hill slope met the beach. My new pet plowed up the slope with no perceived loss of speed, and I angled him up to the higher parts of the hillside. I was soon racing across the wide path on the ledge, and I turned to look back down on the lake.
Then I saw the smoke and ordered Bob to stop.
It was hard to tell how far away the fire was. Or even if it was a fire. All I could see was a thick plume of black smoke lifting up into the eastern sky.
“Sheela!” I hissed when she rode up next to me, and my friend turned to look where I was.
“It is far away,” she said. “Perhaps over fifteen miles.”
“There hasn’t been any sort of storm recently,” I said. “So I don’t think lightning caused it.”
“I agree,” she said.
“It is probably another camp,” I said. “Maybe they are clearing the forest for space.
“Victor, I do not think that is the reality.” She shrugged.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “It’s probably something bad. Either dinosaurs attacked someone’s camp, and a fire got out of control, or…”
“Or a tribe of survivors is attacking another tribe of survivors,” Sheela finished my sentence.
“Let’s do as I planned. We’ll do a quick ride around the valley’s crest. Keep an eye out for any fires or trees that we didn’t clear. Got it?”
“Yes, Victor,” she said. “Will you tell the others about this once we return?”
“Hmmmm. Let’s not. Whoever is fighting is far away, but I think we need to consider that the dinosaurs aren’t the only threat here. We need to put a priority on building our walls and saving people that come with the teleport beams.”
“So you will not mention this to Trel, Galmine, or Kacerie?” Sheela asked.
“Definitely not Kacerie,” I said. “She’s having enough problems dealing with the menial tasks. If I tell her there are survivors out there that might not be friendly, she could freak out even more. I’ll tell Trel and Galmine tomorrow. Today, we need to celebrate getting Bob, and cut out as much sinew as we can.”
“Understood,” Sheela said.
“The problem is that this creates even more pressure on us,” I said. “It’s only a matter of time before someone finds us. If they are cool, then it will be cool, but I’m guessing they aren’t going to be cool, so it’s not going to be cool.”
“You use that word often,” Sheela said.
“It’s cool.” I winked and got a half-smile out of the cat-woman.
“There is much more work to do.”
“Yeah, and on top of learning how to survive, we might also need to learn how to fight. Good thing we have a badass warrior woman that can train us.” I smiled down at my friend, and it seemed as if the skin beneath the fur on her cheeks reddened a bit.
“I would enjoy teaching you all,” she admitted.
“Let’s do our patrol.” I gestured to the side of the hill and thought about all the tasks we had to do. If there were other tribes out there, and they were aggressive, they weren’t going to wait around for us to get our shit together.
We had a lot of work to do, and no time to do it.
Sheela and I both kicked our parasaurs into sprints that took us over the crest of the hill and into our valley.
Chapter 8
Sheela and I had already made a few trips on the north hillside of our valley and hadn’t seen any sign of other survivors, so I wasn’t expecting to see any on this trip. However, I was a bit more concerned about the possibility of getting attacked by things that were not dinosaurs, so I paid closer attention to the trees we rode past. I also looked at the side of the hill for any signs of passage while we rode our parasaurs down the shores of the river we had to ford to make it to the lake. We didn’t see signs of anything humanoid, but we still made a wide loop around the redwood grove that circled our camp clearing before we rode back toward our fort.
The clearing was pretty much how we left it. There were still a few hundred corpses on the grass, the pile of dead raptors, and a small pond of blood off to the side of our fort. The pond was about half the size it was before we left to get clay, so I figured it would all soak into the ground in the next hour.
Trel, Kacerie, and Galmine were actually outside of the gate working on cutting sinew from a pile of corpses by the door. Trel had been super smart, and just dragged the corpses over so that the women could process them right by the entrance to our fort. If they saw danger, they could duck inside the door.
The three of them looked up as soon as Bob emerged from the clearing, and I saw Kacerie turn and dash into the fort. I guessed that she hadn’t seen me on top of the giant parasaur.
“Trel! Galmine! Kacerie!” I waved as I dashed through the clearing. Bob seemed to sense my excitement, and the big boy let out a few low toots that sounded like he was blowing raspberries into a trombone while pulling on the slide.