Post by hotcha on Nov 30, 2009 18:23:08 GMT -6
I wrote this for my English class under the prompt of "It's the end of the world as we know it." Feel free to comment and critique! PS does anyone know how to get it to keep the indentions on the forum?
Teeth taller than men ground together, ripping open everything in their way. I heard Angelo groan as the Mosasaur tore through the whale. The peaceful giant of the sea had stood no chance against the massive killer that now lapped up blood with a tongue larger than a school bus. The monstrous creature was almost unrecognizable for what it had been in life. Instead of a sleek, graceful beast that killed for food, the horror that had beached itself just to reach to whale was bloated with the blood of its victims.
I lifted my rifle up and braced myself against the cab of the truck. I aimed for the massive, tapered head that capped one end of its grey body. If I hadn’t been loking through my scope, I might have mistaken it for a dolphin. A larger than life dolphin, but there was still a resemblance. I squeezed the trigger with one finger of my gloved hand, and with a quiet “whuff” sound, I fired a single round. Even from our location on the cliffs overlooking the beach, we could see fluid burst from the Mosasaur’s eye as the bullet pierced it. A long, gurgling howl cut through the air, echoing through the stillness.
Carmichael handed me another air cartridge. Gunpowder rounds were useless, seeing as the monsters could smell them even easier than they could blood. Sure, it had taken nearly a year to fix a rifle this size to run on compressed air, but it was well worth not having to worry about a horde of vamps and their minions coming out of nowhere.
The second round finished the job. I felt the beast’s massive head slam down, sending up clouds of sand around it. I heard Carmichael whistle in approval as he climbed back into the truck.
“Alright kiddos, let’s get down there.” I saw him run a hand over his graying hair through the back window as I sat down. I never sat up front with Carmichael and Angelo. I preferred to stay in the back, with my guns.
“Stop calling me kiddo! I’m twenty-seven!” Angelo whined loudly as Carmichael revved the engine and headed down the road to the beach.
Angelo leaned against the truck as Carmichael displayed a seldom shown agility as he scaled the corpse of the Mosasaur and began to douse it with gasoline. He splashed a healthy dose of the whale, too. No point in all the work of killing the dinosaur if the victim just got back up once we left. Humming happily to himself, Carmichael leapt off the corpse and hurled the almost-empty gas can into the air, its remaining contents spilling over the corpses.
“Care to do the honors?” Carmichael held out a beat up book of matches, but I shook my head. I left the pyro stuff to him. Shrugging, he turning his back on me a lit the corpse aflame. Even though the Mosasaur was an aquatic dinosaur, its flesh was still desiccated, and it caught fire quickly. Despite the sudden heat from the flames, I pulled my coat tighter around me. I always wore a coat and gloves. The simple fact of the matter was that I got cold easily. Angelo, who was still in the truck, moved over to the driver’s seat before hollering out the window at Carmichael.
“Hey, the doc said she wanted everybody back at the base before noon! If you don’t get in the car, I’m gonna leave you!” Revving the engine for added affect, Angelo rolled up the windows to keep the black smoke out. Carmichael was inside the cab and had his seat belt buckled in a flash. Angelo snorted in derision, “If there’s one thing that get’s you moving, old man, it’s the doc.” I didn’t hear Carmichael’s retort because at the exact moment, Angelo flattened his foot against the gas pedal and we were hurtling down the road.
The “base” was actually a private high school with high stonewalls and a wrought iron gate. Dr. Iddesleigh, the woman who acted as the leader of our ragtag gang, had once been a student there, and thus had been welcomed by the students, faculty, and their families who had taken shelter there. Dr. Iddesleigh had brought about a dozen people with her, and along with those already staying in the school, there were close to a hundred people hiding out there. It was a depressingly small number of people, but survivors were being found every day. Unfortunately, many of them were already infected by the time they were found.
“Everyone, we have some news.” Dr. Iddesleigh leaned heavily on her cane as she spoke to the gathered crowd. She was a tall, thin woman with steel-grey hair in a severe bun. At first she had joined a team to hunt dinosaurs, but now heart complications forbid it. This had once been the school’s auditorium, but it now served as a briefing room. “From tests conducted and from data gathered by specialists in the field,” Someone scoffed at this. The only real specialist here was the Doctor herself. She had been the only one directly involved with the source of the outbreak to survive, and thanks to this, all her “helpers” were pseudo-scientists, crypto zoologists, and straight-up nut jobs. Dr. Iddesleigh glared into the crowd before continuing, “As we were saying, we have discovered that humans and animals, while capable of being infected, cannot spread the plague.” A ripple ran through the crowd at this. Infected humans couldn’t spread the plague? That changed everything! I saw Angelo grin. He was best at close-range combat, which wasn’t exactly helpful when what we fought could infect him at any time. But if he could fight the infected minions that meant we could drastically cut down the numbers of vampires. The sooner the vampires were gone, the sooner humanity could reclaim the planet!
The rest of the news was not nearly so interesting, just a list of who had killed what. The numbers of dinosaurs were dropping fast, now that we finally had reliable weaponry. The limited number of dinosaurs was comforting, but the rate at which they infected humans was insane. Ever since the meteor fell to Earth over three years ago, and its intergalactic plague had resurrected the then newly-uncovered, amazingly preserved dinosaur corpses, the vampiric pandemic had spread across the world like wildfire. Samples of the meteor had been sent to leading science research centers around the world, and any human that handled the sample had become infected.
Now dinosaurs roamed the empty, ruined cities, surrounded by mindless hordes of infected minions that served as both a guard and an emergency food source. But with Dr. Iddesleigh’s leadership, we’ve been cutting down on those numbers. Teams of three people each went out daily, killing from a distance and slowly chipping away at the monsters that ruled the world.
“Hey kiddo, the meeting’s over. Haven’t you been paying attention?” Carmichael looked down at where I sat in a folding chair. With a start I realized that almost all the other chairs in the auditorium had emptied. Getting to my feet, I followed Carmichael and Angelo. Tomorrow was going to be a big day, after all. Every team would want to kill as many vampires as they could. My team would be no different.
The next morning was just fight after fight after fight. I was much too small to be of much use against the shambling hordes of bloodsucking monstrosities, so I was left in the truck or up a tree, providing support fire as Carmichael and Angelo ripped through more vampires than either man could count. They weren’t that hard to kill from the looks of it. None of the vampires looked very well fed; they were all skin and bones, and most were already sporting injuries. As long as we didn’t run into a dinosaur, today would be an easy sweep through the city, clearing the area Dr. Iddesleigh had assigned us.
The teams had been given sections of the city to scour clean of the infestation of vampires. We were supposed to be killing them carefully, from afar as usual, but the Doctor would have to turn a blind eye. Those of us who could fight these things hand to hand had been itching to do so for the whole three years, and now was the chance to get dirty, to get up to their eyeballs in blood and guts.
I winced as Angelo snapped one vampire’s neck. It was a young woman with short, straight blond hair and her bangs matted to her forehead. She didn’t look like much more than a high school student. Her jaw went slack and I could easily see her protruding fangs, even without the scope on my rifle.
The tree I sat in shook. Immediately I prepared to climb higher and sound the alarm, but I soon saw it was just a squirrel. Sighing, I lowered my rifle for a moment, looking around.
That’s when I saw it. The raptor. It was small and its eyes gleamed cruelly. Scratch that, its eye gleamed cruelly. As it turned its head, I saw that one eye was blank and white, while the other eye was jaundiced yellow with a terrifying red iris. This glaring eye sent shivers running through me, despite my coat and gloves. Its body was marshy green with yellow striped across its back, while its underbelly was ghostly pale. Dagger-like teeth shone white, and oddly enough, its muzzle was clean of blood. I waited for it to charge at me. It could obviously see me, smell me, and maybe even hear me. Why wasn’t it madly running at the tree, desperate to drain the blood of any living thing it could get near?
The raptor turned its good eye back to me. The creature was a large one, perhaps close to six feet tall at the top of its head. It seemed to grin as I lifted my rifle, and with a flick of its long, stiff tail it was gone.
I lowered my rifle before turning back to look back to Carmichael and Angelo. They were surrounded by corpses, and still somehow able to argue over something as trivial as who had killed how many vampires. I whistled the signal to call them back to the truck as I began to climb down. Carmichael had parked it about half a block away, and by the time we were all back together, I was winded from running with my gun.
“What’s up?” Angelo grinned at me as he skidded to a stop with Carmichael a few steps behind him. I did not return the grin, but instead waited for Carmichael to catch his breath. Everyone knew he was too old to be on a team, but he stayed out in the field despite all good sense.
“I saw a raptor.” Carmichael snorted, but it turned into a cough.
“A raptor? Is that what you called us back for?” He wheezed, pushing sweat-soaked grey hair out of his eyes. He really needed a haircut.
“It looked at me.” Carmichael rolled his eyes in derision, and I could see Angelo turn red. He hated it when Carmichael picked on people. Especially when Carmichael picked on me.
“It watched me. It didn’t just see, it actually thought about what it was looking at. And it didn’t even move to attack me. It left, like it was going to tell others.” Carmichael scoffed at this, but had to pause to cough again. Taking that opportunity, Angelo spoke.
“The Doc told us to report any unusual behavior to her. That definitely qualifies as unusual.” Carmichael began to protest, but Angelo interrupted him. “C’mon, we’ve already killed everything within a half mile. What else are we gonna do?” Angelo was dragging Carmichael into the truck before he’d even finished talking. The old man may have been surly and predisposed to disagree with me, but he was just as lazy as the rest of us. He’d still take driving back to base over walking around blindly any day.
We weren’t the only ones with news of raptors. Other teams, even civilians keeping watch on the walls had spotted raptors that simply watched, simply waited. Dr. Iddesleigh was unnerved by the news, and had announced to everyone that no more teams were to go out, the gates were to be barricaded, and guards on the walls were to be doubled until we knew what was causing this change in behavior. And it wasn’t just raptors, other small dinosaurs had been seen skulking around. It seemed all dinosaurs that were larger than a car had been killed, and those remaining were getting smarter.
Angelo seemed unusually worried by this news. Carmichael never felt anything other than irritation, but even he seemed wary. I knew exactly why. Ever since I had seen that Cyclops raptor, I had felt it. A strange, niggling sensation, as if there was something just outside of my line of sight, but I still knew it was there.
But I had no idea what was there. And I still had no idea the week after that, when I stood guard duty one morning. I was on the wall that was opposite where the gates had been barricaded. I was facing the dead forest that surrounded the school grounds. The woods had been burned on Dr. Iddesleigh’s orders so that nothing could hide there. Now, the ground was ashy and the only trees left were dark skeletons silhouetted against the sky. The walls weren’t actually that high, perhaps a little under ten feet tall. And yet, when I looked down, I still felt dizzy.
“Hey, take a look over there.” It was Guillame, a survivor who had taken refuge here two years ago, who spoke. He pointed to the south, past the grey horizon of our own personal no-man’s-land. Something was ther. Something was coming closer.
“Sound the alarm! Call Dr. Iddesleigh immediately!” My voice sounded strange to my own ears: it was calm and full of authority, despite the abject terror that now beat alongside my heart. Guillame may not have realized it, but I knew exactly what was coming.
That dark shape amassing in the distance was an army of dinosaurs and their minions. The last dinosaurs walking, and they were coming to lay siege to us.
Dr. Iddesleigh was there within minutes, leaning on her cane and gasping for air. I pointed, even though she didn’t need me to direct her to the dinosaurs. They were easy to spot, and other people were coming to have a look now. Even before the Doctor gave her orders, the people, even the civilians, were preparing for war. Everyone who could hold a gun was armed; triple guards were stationed on every wall. If those dinosaurs could gather into a group, who knew what else they could do? What was to say they wouldn’t attack from multiple directions at once?
Angelo was a heartbeat behind the Doctor, his feet pounding up the stairs. The moment he spotted me, his relief was obvious. And yet, that relief was dashed as he looked out over the wall. The dinosaurs weren’t alone. Crowds of humans, every one infected, were swarming around their dinosaur masters. They were close enough now I could see that several wore white lab coats.
These were the first of the infected. These were Dr. Iddesleigh’s colleagues who had come in contact with the meteor and become infected. I glanced at the Doctor, but she showed no sign of caring that these were her co-workers we would have to kill.
“Aim for the dinosaurs, then take out as many humans as you can. That’s all we can…” Dr. Iddesleigh grunted and clutched at her chest before collapsing. Angelo barely managed to catch her before she went toppling off the wall.
“You!” Angelo pointed at Guillame, “Get her to the infirmary!” Angelo barked his orders and helped Guillame lift Dr. Iddesleigh in a fireman’s carry before urging him on as the younger man charged down the stairs.
Angelo let out a long, slow sigh before sweeping his black hair away from his face. He turned to look at me. For a moment, he just looked at me. And then, his customary grin was back on his face.
“Here, I brought you these.” He handed me a pair of sturdy leather gloves. “They’re my lucky gloves, but since I’m already pretty lucky, I figured you’d have more use of them.” The gloves were obviously made for someone Angelo’s size, there was no way they’d fit my hands… Unless… I pulled them on over the gloves I already wore and tugged them back until the elastic wrist was tight over the sleeve of my coat. There. The new gloves fit snuggly over my old ones. I looked up to smile back at Angelo. “They’re waterproof, too.” Angelo seemed incredibly pleased with himself to have thought of bringing me the gloves.
“Thanks.” I wasn’t exactly talented with words, and it was all I could say before someone yelled that the dinosaurs were within firing range. The response was more reflex than anything. I spun and hoisted my rifle to my shoulder. Bracing myself on the wall, I peered through the scope.
Whuff.
A raptor was sent spinning to the ground, a gaping hole where its eye had been a moment before, dry grey fluff bursting from the fresh opening in its skull. Angelo handed me a fresh air cartridge.
Whuff.
The Deinonychus was thrown into the air as the bullet passed through it and punched into the human behind it.
Whuff.
I was aiming for the humans that were getting close now. They hadn’t reached the walls, but I didn’t intend to let ANY of them reach the wall.
Three hours later, my resolve to take down this onslaught was still going strong, despite the sun that was beginning to set and the ever-growing mound of corpses at the wall. There were just so many of them. People were running up and down the stairs, carrying ammo, air cartridges, even cinderblocks and bricks. Anything that could be used as a weapon against the horde was being used.
Angelo hurled a half a brick with astonishing accuracy into the skull of a vampire that was crawling up the grizzly mountain that threatened to engulf us.
“I used to pitch softball,” Angelo joked as he hefted another chunk of loose stone that had been scrounged up from within the school. As he grinned at me, something charged from within the ranks of the vampires.
A Velociraptor, barely knee high on a man Angelo’s height, sprinted up the tower of death and made the incredible leap from the top of the most recently killed vampires head up, over the wall, and directly into Angelo’s face.
Claws like razorblades slashed at Angelo’s face and neck, and the tiny beast let out a rasping screech as it tried to sink its fangs in his throat. Angelo held the monster off, closing his hand around its jaws and holding them shut while it opened cuts along his arms and hands. I acted without thinking. Letting my rifle fall with a heavy thud, I snatched the hunting knife from where Angelo kept it on his belt. Lifting the surprisingly heavy blade, I tore into the Velociraptor’s twig-like neck. I felt dry bones give way under the force of sharpened steel, and the thing’s body went still.
But its head still blinked, still tried to bite. I snatched it from Angelo and threw it to the stone of the wall we stood on before crushing the frantically snapping skull under my heel. I looked up at Angelo. He grinned, despite the blood that poured from his face and hands. For a moment it seemed as if he was going to say something, but then his eyes slid out of focus and he began to tumble backwards. I caught him, or more accurately, directed his fall. I wasn’t strong enough to support the weight of a man Angelo’s size, that was for sure.
“I’ve got a casualty up here!” I bellowed, catching the attention of a pair of civilians who were carrying a stretcher, ready to take those who were hurt to the infirmary. I didn’t wait to watch as they carried Angelo away. There was no telling whether he had been infected or not, but that didn’t matter. No matter how much my heart wanted to run down those stairs and accompany Angelo to the sick ward, my place was up here. It had to be.
We were still under siege. Another civilian hurried up the stairs, carrying a box of ammo and air cartridges. She was a student of the school, perhaps sixteen at the oldest, and yet, as she held out an air cartridge, her face was emotionless and her eyes full of a steely resolve.
I realized I was still holding Angelo’s knife. There was no blood on it. The Velociraptor hadn’t fed in so long that it didn’t even have enough fluid left in it to bleed. I grabbed the headless corpse and hurled it over the wall before picking up my rifle and loading it. It didn’t matter who handed me the ammo. I had a job to do.
Another hour and the sun was balanced precariously on the horizon behind us, spilling bloody light across the ashen battlefield. Corpses of humans and dinosaurs alike littered the ground, yet we held out amazingly well. There were few casualties, mostly from exhaustion, and everyone was in good humor. It seemed that this would be the dinosaurs’ last stand, and when we were done here, humanity would finally be able to reclaim the planet that was rightfully hers.
That’s when I heard it. A bloodcurdling howl. It started slowly, like stones grinding together, but then rose into an earsplitting wail that destroyed all other sound. I was deaf to all but the sound. I couldn’t aim, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t even comprehend what could be the source of such a lament. It wasn’t long after the cry ended when it appeared. It was twice a man’s height, it towered over the walls, and I felt it survey us as if we were lesser beings.
No. We WERE lesser beings. I could feel how different this creature was the moment I had hear its call. This, this, this thing was as much different from the other dinosaurs as humans were from apes. It was intelligent, it was cunning, it was… evil. I could feel in my bones how much it hated us. It harbored emotions that were beyond human words to describe. I vaguely realized it was an Allosaurus, the “different lizard.” Yes, this was a different lizard, indeed. It was egg yolk yellow with a long, dark brown stripe running from its nostrils to the tip of its tail. Blood splattered its muzzle, and its powerful claws also dripped with scarlet fluid. And yet, its teeth, those instruments of murder, were pearly white.
I met its eyes. Oh, those eyes! Those abominable green eyes! So full of hatred, so full of malice. This anathema was filled to brimming, no, it was spilling over with an evil, a covetous abhorrence of life, and the behemoth that now surveyed me was so envious of the living that it would drink every living creature dry before it would rest.
And now it had turned that caustic frenzy on us. I couldn’t move as it began to make its awful way towards the school. I couldn’t move, but the girl that stood next to me could. She shoved me aside and lifted the rifle to her shoulder before aiming at the Allosaurus. The rifled whuffed no differently than usual, but the girl was not used to its weight, and lost balance as her shot hit its target and the savage screamed in fury.
I knew what would happen. The Allosaurus would charge, it would lean down over the wall, and the brave youth would vanish between two rows of dazzlingly white teeth. For the second time that day, I acted without thinking. I could feel the Earth shaking as the titan progressed, I could hear dry sinews stretching as it opened jaws wide enough to swallow a sedan.
I shoved the girl off the wall. She tumbled backwards, landing heavily in a pile of empty ammo sacks, taking my rifle with her. I stood, armed with only Angelo’s knife. I was alone, and I had denied the Allosaurus its meal, denied it revenge.
One massive foot smashed the wall a few feet to my left, sending stone and mortar flying. I took the opportunity, and prayed the gloves I wore were as lucky as Angelo had said they were. Its skin was desiccated and loose, providing handholds as I climbed the monster’s leg. It had expected me to run away from it, not towards it, and it paused a moment to guess what I was doing, scaling its Herculean torso, careful to stay out of the reach of those grasping claws. It seemed not to realize what I was going to do until I had already reached its head.
Straddling the ridge of its skull, I stared down into an eye the size of a dinner plate. I dug the fingers of my left hand deep into the folds of its skin just as it threw its head back in an attempt to unseat me. I nearly lost hold on the knife as I raised it, and I almost stabbed myself as I brought it down.
It was like stabbing a basketball. Without any fluid to keep it supple, the eye had toughened, and I had to twist my wrist, had to dig the knife in deeper just to cut through. I was thankful for the weight of the knife. It guided easily down, and then back. Back, into the skull cavity, searching. I sought the brain, the nerve center that, when destroyed, would bring this giant crumbling to the ground.
I had forgotten how small dinosaurs’ brains were. It seemed the only way I held onto the bucking, thrashing monster was that my arm was sunken up the elbow in its eye socket. I could hear nothing but the Allosaurus, see nothing but the Allosaurus, feel, smell, hell, I could even taste nothing but the dry decay of the Allosaurus.
Something gave way under the knife’s razor edge. The next thing I knew, I was falling. Gravity ceased to be for three whole heartbeats, and then all I knew was pain. I hadn’t been crushed under the mighty skull of the Allosaurus, but the impact of the fall had still shaken me. I tried to stand, but something held me down.
Oh yeah, I was still arm deep in dino brains. The fall had jarred my arm even deeper into the Allosaurus’ eye, so now I had to extract my entire arm from the eye of the devil beast. It was sickening. Pus-like fluid dripped down from my arm, but it didn’t feel like any had penetrated the layers of my coat and gloves. I swallowed a sigh of relief. I wasn’t out of the woods yet. There was plenty of chance I could still be infected.
I heard someone cheer. Looking up, I saw that the survivors had gathered around the broken wall, and now they were cheering for me. Me. I had killed the last dinosaur. The last creature capable of spreading the plague. Even the people from the infirmary had been brought to see our victory. To see my victory. I saw Dr. Iddesleigh, supported by Carmichael, and there was Angelo, in a wheel chair and covered in bandages, but he was fine. Even the girl I had pushed from the wall was all right.
I stripped off my ruined coat and gloves, careful not to touch the lumpy fluid that clung the right arm of my coat. Throwing them all over the Allosaurus’ eyes, I turned back to everyone, grinning so widely that even Angelo would be proud. But as I ran to throw my arms around Angelo, to tell him that it was all over, that humanity had won, I saw it.
It stood at the very edge of the wasteland. Its single good eye seemed to laugh, almost applaud my actions. There was one dinosaur that had not joined in the siege, no, there was one left, one that was not only equal to the Allosaurus, there was one that was superior, one that understood this was a human’s world, and was willing to let it stay that way, was even willing to work with humans, or at least use them for its dirty work.
But I let the creature leave. I didn’t say anything as the swamp-colored tail whipped out of sight. I just savored the moment of victory, the moment of Angelo’s arms around me, and I put the Cyclops raptor out of my mind.
But just for that moment.
Teeth taller than men ground together, ripping open everything in their way. I heard Angelo groan as the Mosasaur tore through the whale. The peaceful giant of the sea had stood no chance against the massive killer that now lapped up blood with a tongue larger than a school bus. The monstrous creature was almost unrecognizable for what it had been in life. Instead of a sleek, graceful beast that killed for food, the horror that had beached itself just to reach to whale was bloated with the blood of its victims.
I lifted my rifle up and braced myself against the cab of the truck. I aimed for the massive, tapered head that capped one end of its grey body. If I hadn’t been loking through my scope, I might have mistaken it for a dolphin. A larger than life dolphin, but there was still a resemblance. I squeezed the trigger with one finger of my gloved hand, and with a quiet “whuff” sound, I fired a single round. Even from our location on the cliffs overlooking the beach, we could see fluid burst from the Mosasaur’s eye as the bullet pierced it. A long, gurgling howl cut through the air, echoing through the stillness.
Carmichael handed me another air cartridge. Gunpowder rounds were useless, seeing as the monsters could smell them even easier than they could blood. Sure, it had taken nearly a year to fix a rifle this size to run on compressed air, but it was well worth not having to worry about a horde of vamps and their minions coming out of nowhere.
The second round finished the job. I felt the beast’s massive head slam down, sending up clouds of sand around it. I heard Carmichael whistle in approval as he climbed back into the truck.
“Alright kiddos, let’s get down there.” I saw him run a hand over his graying hair through the back window as I sat down. I never sat up front with Carmichael and Angelo. I preferred to stay in the back, with my guns.
“Stop calling me kiddo! I’m twenty-seven!” Angelo whined loudly as Carmichael revved the engine and headed down the road to the beach.
Angelo leaned against the truck as Carmichael displayed a seldom shown agility as he scaled the corpse of the Mosasaur and began to douse it with gasoline. He splashed a healthy dose of the whale, too. No point in all the work of killing the dinosaur if the victim just got back up once we left. Humming happily to himself, Carmichael leapt off the corpse and hurled the almost-empty gas can into the air, its remaining contents spilling over the corpses.
“Care to do the honors?” Carmichael held out a beat up book of matches, but I shook my head. I left the pyro stuff to him. Shrugging, he turning his back on me a lit the corpse aflame. Even though the Mosasaur was an aquatic dinosaur, its flesh was still desiccated, and it caught fire quickly. Despite the sudden heat from the flames, I pulled my coat tighter around me. I always wore a coat and gloves. The simple fact of the matter was that I got cold easily. Angelo, who was still in the truck, moved over to the driver’s seat before hollering out the window at Carmichael.
“Hey, the doc said she wanted everybody back at the base before noon! If you don’t get in the car, I’m gonna leave you!” Revving the engine for added affect, Angelo rolled up the windows to keep the black smoke out. Carmichael was inside the cab and had his seat belt buckled in a flash. Angelo snorted in derision, “If there’s one thing that get’s you moving, old man, it’s the doc.” I didn’t hear Carmichael’s retort because at the exact moment, Angelo flattened his foot against the gas pedal and we were hurtling down the road.
The “base” was actually a private high school with high stonewalls and a wrought iron gate. Dr. Iddesleigh, the woman who acted as the leader of our ragtag gang, had once been a student there, and thus had been welcomed by the students, faculty, and their families who had taken shelter there. Dr. Iddesleigh had brought about a dozen people with her, and along with those already staying in the school, there were close to a hundred people hiding out there. It was a depressingly small number of people, but survivors were being found every day. Unfortunately, many of them were already infected by the time they were found.
“Everyone, we have some news.” Dr. Iddesleigh leaned heavily on her cane as she spoke to the gathered crowd. She was a tall, thin woman with steel-grey hair in a severe bun. At first she had joined a team to hunt dinosaurs, but now heart complications forbid it. This had once been the school’s auditorium, but it now served as a briefing room. “From tests conducted and from data gathered by specialists in the field,” Someone scoffed at this. The only real specialist here was the Doctor herself. She had been the only one directly involved with the source of the outbreak to survive, and thanks to this, all her “helpers” were pseudo-scientists, crypto zoologists, and straight-up nut jobs. Dr. Iddesleigh glared into the crowd before continuing, “As we were saying, we have discovered that humans and animals, while capable of being infected, cannot spread the plague.” A ripple ran through the crowd at this. Infected humans couldn’t spread the plague? That changed everything! I saw Angelo grin. He was best at close-range combat, which wasn’t exactly helpful when what we fought could infect him at any time. But if he could fight the infected minions that meant we could drastically cut down the numbers of vampires. The sooner the vampires were gone, the sooner humanity could reclaim the planet!
The rest of the news was not nearly so interesting, just a list of who had killed what. The numbers of dinosaurs were dropping fast, now that we finally had reliable weaponry. The limited number of dinosaurs was comforting, but the rate at which they infected humans was insane. Ever since the meteor fell to Earth over three years ago, and its intergalactic plague had resurrected the then newly-uncovered, amazingly preserved dinosaur corpses, the vampiric pandemic had spread across the world like wildfire. Samples of the meteor had been sent to leading science research centers around the world, and any human that handled the sample had become infected.
Now dinosaurs roamed the empty, ruined cities, surrounded by mindless hordes of infected minions that served as both a guard and an emergency food source. But with Dr. Iddesleigh’s leadership, we’ve been cutting down on those numbers. Teams of three people each went out daily, killing from a distance and slowly chipping away at the monsters that ruled the world.
“Hey kiddo, the meeting’s over. Haven’t you been paying attention?” Carmichael looked down at where I sat in a folding chair. With a start I realized that almost all the other chairs in the auditorium had emptied. Getting to my feet, I followed Carmichael and Angelo. Tomorrow was going to be a big day, after all. Every team would want to kill as many vampires as they could. My team would be no different.
The next morning was just fight after fight after fight. I was much too small to be of much use against the shambling hordes of bloodsucking monstrosities, so I was left in the truck or up a tree, providing support fire as Carmichael and Angelo ripped through more vampires than either man could count. They weren’t that hard to kill from the looks of it. None of the vampires looked very well fed; they were all skin and bones, and most were already sporting injuries. As long as we didn’t run into a dinosaur, today would be an easy sweep through the city, clearing the area Dr. Iddesleigh had assigned us.
The teams had been given sections of the city to scour clean of the infestation of vampires. We were supposed to be killing them carefully, from afar as usual, but the Doctor would have to turn a blind eye. Those of us who could fight these things hand to hand had been itching to do so for the whole three years, and now was the chance to get dirty, to get up to their eyeballs in blood and guts.
I winced as Angelo snapped one vampire’s neck. It was a young woman with short, straight blond hair and her bangs matted to her forehead. She didn’t look like much more than a high school student. Her jaw went slack and I could easily see her protruding fangs, even without the scope on my rifle.
The tree I sat in shook. Immediately I prepared to climb higher and sound the alarm, but I soon saw it was just a squirrel. Sighing, I lowered my rifle for a moment, looking around.
That’s when I saw it. The raptor. It was small and its eyes gleamed cruelly. Scratch that, its eye gleamed cruelly. As it turned its head, I saw that one eye was blank and white, while the other eye was jaundiced yellow with a terrifying red iris. This glaring eye sent shivers running through me, despite my coat and gloves. Its body was marshy green with yellow striped across its back, while its underbelly was ghostly pale. Dagger-like teeth shone white, and oddly enough, its muzzle was clean of blood. I waited for it to charge at me. It could obviously see me, smell me, and maybe even hear me. Why wasn’t it madly running at the tree, desperate to drain the blood of any living thing it could get near?
The raptor turned its good eye back to me. The creature was a large one, perhaps close to six feet tall at the top of its head. It seemed to grin as I lifted my rifle, and with a flick of its long, stiff tail it was gone.
I lowered my rifle before turning back to look back to Carmichael and Angelo. They were surrounded by corpses, and still somehow able to argue over something as trivial as who had killed how many vampires. I whistled the signal to call them back to the truck as I began to climb down. Carmichael had parked it about half a block away, and by the time we were all back together, I was winded from running with my gun.
“What’s up?” Angelo grinned at me as he skidded to a stop with Carmichael a few steps behind him. I did not return the grin, but instead waited for Carmichael to catch his breath. Everyone knew he was too old to be on a team, but he stayed out in the field despite all good sense.
“I saw a raptor.” Carmichael snorted, but it turned into a cough.
“A raptor? Is that what you called us back for?” He wheezed, pushing sweat-soaked grey hair out of his eyes. He really needed a haircut.
“It looked at me.” Carmichael rolled his eyes in derision, and I could see Angelo turn red. He hated it when Carmichael picked on people. Especially when Carmichael picked on me.
“It watched me. It didn’t just see, it actually thought about what it was looking at. And it didn’t even move to attack me. It left, like it was going to tell others.” Carmichael scoffed at this, but had to pause to cough again. Taking that opportunity, Angelo spoke.
“The Doc told us to report any unusual behavior to her. That definitely qualifies as unusual.” Carmichael began to protest, but Angelo interrupted him. “C’mon, we’ve already killed everything within a half mile. What else are we gonna do?” Angelo was dragging Carmichael into the truck before he’d even finished talking. The old man may have been surly and predisposed to disagree with me, but he was just as lazy as the rest of us. He’d still take driving back to base over walking around blindly any day.
We weren’t the only ones with news of raptors. Other teams, even civilians keeping watch on the walls had spotted raptors that simply watched, simply waited. Dr. Iddesleigh was unnerved by the news, and had announced to everyone that no more teams were to go out, the gates were to be barricaded, and guards on the walls were to be doubled until we knew what was causing this change in behavior. And it wasn’t just raptors, other small dinosaurs had been seen skulking around. It seemed all dinosaurs that were larger than a car had been killed, and those remaining were getting smarter.
Angelo seemed unusually worried by this news. Carmichael never felt anything other than irritation, but even he seemed wary. I knew exactly why. Ever since I had seen that Cyclops raptor, I had felt it. A strange, niggling sensation, as if there was something just outside of my line of sight, but I still knew it was there.
But I had no idea what was there. And I still had no idea the week after that, when I stood guard duty one morning. I was on the wall that was opposite where the gates had been barricaded. I was facing the dead forest that surrounded the school grounds. The woods had been burned on Dr. Iddesleigh’s orders so that nothing could hide there. Now, the ground was ashy and the only trees left were dark skeletons silhouetted against the sky. The walls weren’t actually that high, perhaps a little under ten feet tall. And yet, when I looked down, I still felt dizzy.
“Hey, take a look over there.” It was Guillame, a survivor who had taken refuge here two years ago, who spoke. He pointed to the south, past the grey horizon of our own personal no-man’s-land. Something was ther. Something was coming closer.
“Sound the alarm! Call Dr. Iddesleigh immediately!” My voice sounded strange to my own ears: it was calm and full of authority, despite the abject terror that now beat alongside my heart. Guillame may not have realized it, but I knew exactly what was coming.
That dark shape amassing in the distance was an army of dinosaurs and their minions. The last dinosaurs walking, and they were coming to lay siege to us.
Dr. Iddesleigh was there within minutes, leaning on her cane and gasping for air. I pointed, even though she didn’t need me to direct her to the dinosaurs. They were easy to spot, and other people were coming to have a look now. Even before the Doctor gave her orders, the people, even the civilians, were preparing for war. Everyone who could hold a gun was armed; triple guards were stationed on every wall. If those dinosaurs could gather into a group, who knew what else they could do? What was to say they wouldn’t attack from multiple directions at once?
Angelo was a heartbeat behind the Doctor, his feet pounding up the stairs. The moment he spotted me, his relief was obvious. And yet, that relief was dashed as he looked out over the wall. The dinosaurs weren’t alone. Crowds of humans, every one infected, were swarming around their dinosaur masters. They were close enough now I could see that several wore white lab coats.
These were the first of the infected. These were Dr. Iddesleigh’s colleagues who had come in contact with the meteor and become infected. I glanced at the Doctor, but she showed no sign of caring that these were her co-workers we would have to kill.
“Aim for the dinosaurs, then take out as many humans as you can. That’s all we can…” Dr. Iddesleigh grunted and clutched at her chest before collapsing. Angelo barely managed to catch her before she went toppling off the wall.
“You!” Angelo pointed at Guillame, “Get her to the infirmary!” Angelo barked his orders and helped Guillame lift Dr. Iddesleigh in a fireman’s carry before urging him on as the younger man charged down the stairs.
Angelo let out a long, slow sigh before sweeping his black hair away from his face. He turned to look at me. For a moment, he just looked at me. And then, his customary grin was back on his face.
“Here, I brought you these.” He handed me a pair of sturdy leather gloves. “They’re my lucky gloves, but since I’m already pretty lucky, I figured you’d have more use of them.” The gloves were obviously made for someone Angelo’s size, there was no way they’d fit my hands… Unless… I pulled them on over the gloves I already wore and tugged them back until the elastic wrist was tight over the sleeve of my coat. There. The new gloves fit snuggly over my old ones. I looked up to smile back at Angelo. “They’re waterproof, too.” Angelo seemed incredibly pleased with himself to have thought of bringing me the gloves.
“Thanks.” I wasn’t exactly talented with words, and it was all I could say before someone yelled that the dinosaurs were within firing range. The response was more reflex than anything. I spun and hoisted my rifle to my shoulder. Bracing myself on the wall, I peered through the scope.
Whuff.
A raptor was sent spinning to the ground, a gaping hole where its eye had been a moment before, dry grey fluff bursting from the fresh opening in its skull. Angelo handed me a fresh air cartridge.
Whuff.
The Deinonychus was thrown into the air as the bullet passed through it and punched into the human behind it.
Whuff.
I was aiming for the humans that were getting close now. They hadn’t reached the walls, but I didn’t intend to let ANY of them reach the wall.
Three hours later, my resolve to take down this onslaught was still going strong, despite the sun that was beginning to set and the ever-growing mound of corpses at the wall. There were just so many of them. People were running up and down the stairs, carrying ammo, air cartridges, even cinderblocks and bricks. Anything that could be used as a weapon against the horde was being used.
Angelo hurled a half a brick with astonishing accuracy into the skull of a vampire that was crawling up the grizzly mountain that threatened to engulf us.
“I used to pitch softball,” Angelo joked as he hefted another chunk of loose stone that had been scrounged up from within the school. As he grinned at me, something charged from within the ranks of the vampires.
A Velociraptor, barely knee high on a man Angelo’s height, sprinted up the tower of death and made the incredible leap from the top of the most recently killed vampires head up, over the wall, and directly into Angelo’s face.
Claws like razorblades slashed at Angelo’s face and neck, and the tiny beast let out a rasping screech as it tried to sink its fangs in his throat. Angelo held the monster off, closing his hand around its jaws and holding them shut while it opened cuts along his arms and hands. I acted without thinking. Letting my rifle fall with a heavy thud, I snatched the hunting knife from where Angelo kept it on his belt. Lifting the surprisingly heavy blade, I tore into the Velociraptor’s twig-like neck. I felt dry bones give way under the force of sharpened steel, and the thing’s body went still.
But its head still blinked, still tried to bite. I snatched it from Angelo and threw it to the stone of the wall we stood on before crushing the frantically snapping skull under my heel. I looked up at Angelo. He grinned, despite the blood that poured from his face and hands. For a moment it seemed as if he was going to say something, but then his eyes slid out of focus and he began to tumble backwards. I caught him, or more accurately, directed his fall. I wasn’t strong enough to support the weight of a man Angelo’s size, that was for sure.
“I’ve got a casualty up here!” I bellowed, catching the attention of a pair of civilians who were carrying a stretcher, ready to take those who were hurt to the infirmary. I didn’t wait to watch as they carried Angelo away. There was no telling whether he had been infected or not, but that didn’t matter. No matter how much my heart wanted to run down those stairs and accompany Angelo to the sick ward, my place was up here. It had to be.
We were still under siege. Another civilian hurried up the stairs, carrying a box of ammo and air cartridges. She was a student of the school, perhaps sixteen at the oldest, and yet, as she held out an air cartridge, her face was emotionless and her eyes full of a steely resolve.
I realized I was still holding Angelo’s knife. There was no blood on it. The Velociraptor hadn’t fed in so long that it didn’t even have enough fluid left in it to bleed. I grabbed the headless corpse and hurled it over the wall before picking up my rifle and loading it. It didn’t matter who handed me the ammo. I had a job to do.
Another hour and the sun was balanced precariously on the horizon behind us, spilling bloody light across the ashen battlefield. Corpses of humans and dinosaurs alike littered the ground, yet we held out amazingly well. There were few casualties, mostly from exhaustion, and everyone was in good humor. It seemed that this would be the dinosaurs’ last stand, and when we were done here, humanity would finally be able to reclaim the planet that was rightfully hers.
That’s when I heard it. A bloodcurdling howl. It started slowly, like stones grinding together, but then rose into an earsplitting wail that destroyed all other sound. I was deaf to all but the sound. I couldn’t aim, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t even comprehend what could be the source of such a lament. It wasn’t long after the cry ended when it appeared. It was twice a man’s height, it towered over the walls, and I felt it survey us as if we were lesser beings.
No. We WERE lesser beings. I could feel how different this creature was the moment I had hear its call. This, this, this thing was as much different from the other dinosaurs as humans were from apes. It was intelligent, it was cunning, it was… evil. I could feel in my bones how much it hated us. It harbored emotions that were beyond human words to describe. I vaguely realized it was an Allosaurus, the “different lizard.” Yes, this was a different lizard, indeed. It was egg yolk yellow with a long, dark brown stripe running from its nostrils to the tip of its tail. Blood splattered its muzzle, and its powerful claws also dripped with scarlet fluid. And yet, its teeth, those instruments of murder, were pearly white.
I met its eyes. Oh, those eyes! Those abominable green eyes! So full of hatred, so full of malice. This anathema was filled to brimming, no, it was spilling over with an evil, a covetous abhorrence of life, and the behemoth that now surveyed me was so envious of the living that it would drink every living creature dry before it would rest.
And now it had turned that caustic frenzy on us. I couldn’t move as it began to make its awful way towards the school. I couldn’t move, but the girl that stood next to me could. She shoved me aside and lifted the rifle to her shoulder before aiming at the Allosaurus. The rifled whuffed no differently than usual, but the girl was not used to its weight, and lost balance as her shot hit its target and the savage screamed in fury.
I knew what would happen. The Allosaurus would charge, it would lean down over the wall, and the brave youth would vanish between two rows of dazzlingly white teeth. For the second time that day, I acted without thinking. I could feel the Earth shaking as the titan progressed, I could hear dry sinews stretching as it opened jaws wide enough to swallow a sedan.
I shoved the girl off the wall. She tumbled backwards, landing heavily in a pile of empty ammo sacks, taking my rifle with her. I stood, armed with only Angelo’s knife. I was alone, and I had denied the Allosaurus its meal, denied it revenge.
One massive foot smashed the wall a few feet to my left, sending stone and mortar flying. I took the opportunity, and prayed the gloves I wore were as lucky as Angelo had said they were. Its skin was desiccated and loose, providing handholds as I climbed the monster’s leg. It had expected me to run away from it, not towards it, and it paused a moment to guess what I was doing, scaling its Herculean torso, careful to stay out of the reach of those grasping claws. It seemed not to realize what I was going to do until I had already reached its head.
Straddling the ridge of its skull, I stared down into an eye the size of a dinner plate. I dug the fingers of my left hand deep into the folds of its skin just as it threw its head back in an attempt to unseat me. I nearly lost hold on the knife as I raised it, and I almost stabbed myself as I brought it down.
It was like stabbing a basketball. Without any fluid to keep it supple, the eye had toughened, and I had to twist my wrist, had to dig the knife in deeper just to cut through. I was thankful for the weight of the knife. It guided easily down, and then back. Back, into the skull cavity, searching. I sought the brain, the nerve center that, when destroyed, would bring this giant crumbling to the ground.
I had forgotten how small dinosaurs’ brains were. It seemed the only way I held onto the bucking, thrashing monster was that my arm was sunken up the elbow in its eye socket. I could hear nothing but the Allosaurus, see nothing but the Allosaurus, feel, smell, hell, I could even taste nothing but the dry decay of the Allosaurus.
Something gave way under the knife’s razor edge. The next thing I knew, I was falling. Gravity ceased to be for three whole heartbeats, and then all I knew was pain. I hadn’t been crushed under the mighty skull of the Allosaurus, but the impact of the fall had still shaken me. I tried to stand, but something held me down.
Oh yeah, I was still arm deep in dino brains. The fall had jarred my arm even deeper into the Allosaurus’ eye, so now I had to extract my entire arm from the eye of the devil beast. It was sickening. Pus-like fluid dripped down from my arm, but it didn’t feel like any had penetrated the layers of my coat and gloves. I swallowed a sigh of relief. I wasn’t out of the woods yet. There was plenty of chance I could still be infected.
I heard someone cheer. Looking up, I saw that the survivors had gathered around the broken wall, and now they were cheering for me. Me. I had killed the last dinosaur. The last creature capable of spreading the plague. Even the people from the infirmary had been brought to see our victory. To see my victory. I saw Dr. Iddesleigh, supported by Carmichael, and there was Angelo, in a wheel chair and covered in bandages, but he was fine. Even the girl I had pushed from the wall was all right.
I stripped off my ruined coat and gloves, careful not to touch the lumpy fluid that clung the right arm of my coat. Throwing them all over the Allosaurus’ eyes, I turned back to everyone, grinning so widely that even Angelo would be proud. But as I ran to throw my arms around Angelo, to tell him that it was all over, that humanity had won, I saw it.
It stood at the very edge of the wasteland. Its single good eye seemed to laugh, almost applaud my actions. There was one dinosaur that had not joined in the siege, no, there was one left, one that was not only equal to the Allosaurus, there was one that was superior, one that understood this was a human’s world, and was willing to let it stay that way, was even willing to work with humans, or at least use them for its dirty work.
But I let the creature leave. I didn’t say anything as the swamp-colored tail whipped out of sight. I just savored the moment of victory, the moment of Angelo’s arms around me, and I put the Cyclops raptor out of my mind.
But just for that moment.