Cryptozoica (30 page)

They kicked up eruptions of water as they raced across the stream. Behind them, they heard the wild bawlings and shrill outcries of animals in panic. The ground quaked at the pounding of the herd’s feet as the creatures stampeded in terror.

Belleau stumbled and fell face-first into the stream, hugging the metal case to his chest.  Without breaking stride, Oakshott snatched up Belleau and carried him the rest of the way across.

The seven people reached the opposite side and continued sprinting, tearing a path through the grass. The pain of a stitch stabbed along Kavanaugh’s side and the muscles of his legs began to feel as if they were trapped between the jaws of a tightening vise. His vision was shot through with gray spots. Silently, he cursed his last few years of drinking, at the same time he prayed the nagging pull in his groin wouldn’t get any worse. Nevertheless, he kept running, although every footfall jarred his entire body, his bruised stomach muscles flaring with bursts of pain.

Mouzi, effortlessly maintaining a steady pace, took his arm to help him along. “Move it, old man!”

Kavanaugh shook her loose angrily. “I don’t need your help!”

“Suit yourself.” Her mocha-hued legs pumped as she pulled ahead.

The breath seared Kavanaugh’s lungs and his heart pounded against his ribs. His laboring legs seemed filled with half-frozen mud. Outraged roars mixed in with high-pitched skreeks penetrated even the sound of the blood thundering in his head.

He risked a glance backward and what he saw chilled him clean through. A bellowing Quinterotops came blundering through the stream, sending waves of water cascading high into the air. The huge animal crashed through a stand of cane, snapping off the stalks like matchwood.

For a few seconds, Kavanaugh couldn’t understand why the animal had chosen such a route––-then he realized it ran blindly, desperate to rid itself of the six demonic figures hanging onto its hide by cruelly hooked claws.

Mouzi reached the pylon first. Gasping for breath, she hung onto the staple-shaped rungs imbedded in the concrete. Everyone gathered around the base of the column, swaying, panting, trying to regain their breath and slow the rapid hammering of their hearts.

The Quinterotops squalled in agony, shaking its great curved shield. Its armored skin showed fresh, bloody gouges, inflicted by sickle-shaped hind-claws. The Deinonychus were lean-limbed, slender creatures, predatory death stripped down to the very barest of killing essentials.

Their mottled, red-and-black striped hide was reminiscent of the deadly coral snake. The claw-tipped forelegs were the length of an adult human’s arm and ropy muscles slid beneath the layer of scales.  Their thickly muscled hind legs terminated in three-toed feet, a scimitar-curved talon arching up and out from the second toe.

Their jaws gaped open, revealing rows of needlepointed fangs thrusting up from purple gums. A crest of sharp quills, like those of a porcupine, spiked with red and yellow feathers ran vertically down the center of their skulls and along the lines of their spines. From the ends of their whiplike tails to their blunt snouts, they averaged six feet in length.

Kavanaugh pushed Honoré toward the rungs. “Everybody climb. Get going, Mouzi!”

Crowe stepped aside to allow Honoré to follow Mouzi. “They aren’t paying us any attention, Jack.”

“Yet. You go too, Gus—get aboard the engine and see what you can do to get her running.”

Halfway up the pylon, Honoré looked down. “What about you?”

“I’ll guard everybody’s backsides. I need to have that rifle back, Oakshott…unless you’re a world-class sharpshooter on top of all your other talents.”

“Are you?”

Kavanaugh feigned a modest smile. “I qualified as a marksman-sharpshooter-expert. The Air Force even gave me a little bronze star on a ribbon. I don’t have it on me, so you’ll have to take my word for it.”

The big man didn’t respond until a soaking-wet Belleau blurted, “Give him the gun and give me a boost!”

Kavanaugh quickly checked the carbine over. He said to Bai Suzhen, “Go on up.”

She hefted her sword, giving two short strokes to loosen her wrist. “I’ll guard your backside, just in case you expose it.”

“Yeah,” he replied dryly, settling the stock of the carbine in the hollow of his shoulder. “Just in case.”

Roaring, the Quinterotops spun around in a circle, like a dog trying to catch its tail. With a gasping grunt of exertion, the animal rose up on its hind legs and tottered clumsily along the edge of the stream. It toppled backward in the attempt to crush its tormentors. All six of the agile Deinonychus sprang away as the horned creature slammed into the ground with a sound like a boulder dropped from a great height. The slender raptors circled as the kicking Quinterotops struggled to get its legs underneath it.

“C’mon, Jack!” Crowe urged from the top of the pylon. “They still don’t see us.”

As if on cue, the head of a raptor whipped around, staring directly at Crowe atop the elevated monorail track. Its gaze lowered, taking in Kavanaugh and Bai Suzhen. Opening its mouth wide, it voiced a prolonged, nerve-stinging skreek. The other three Deinonychus turned away from bedeviling the Quinterotops, following the gaze of their comrade. Almost simultaneously, they performed a sideways hopping dance step. To Kavanaugh, the movements looked like they were jumping with joy, anticipating a feast of human flesh.

Get up and run or you will die.

Softly, Kavanaugh said, “Get ready.”

The six Deinonychus flung themselves across the grass as if launched from catapults. Kavanaugh achieved target acquisition and squeezed the trigger. A splotch of blood bloomed on a creature’s breast and it tumbled head over heels, tail lashing the air.

The crack of the rifle startled the sprinting creatures. The raptors slowed, glancing in confusion at the death-throes of their companion.

“Perhaps they’ll be scared off,” Bai whispered.

“Not a chance,” replied Kavanaugh grimly, aligning another Deinonychus in the sights of the carbine.

The five animals snarled and charged, moving in eye-blurring bounds.

Instead of being frightened by the death of one of their number, they grew enraged.

Kavanaugh squeezed the trigger again and the top of a feather-crested skull floated away, surrounded by a misting of blood. The four survivors skreeked, and from the far side of the stream, other members of the Deinonychus hunting troop answered the eerie call. They broke off harassing stragglers from the herd and came loping across the stream with relentless speed.

A pair of raptors ran in opposite directions, but swerved back toward the two humans standing at the base of the pylon. A fist clenched around Kavanaugh’s heart. The Deinonychus displayed independent tactical thinking. They showed it by the way they came on in zigzag bounds to minimize the chances of falling victim to a weapon that, although new to them, they knew was capable of killing from afar.

Kavanaugh’s finger tightened on the trigger but he hesitated to squeeze it, knowing that he could not afford to miss with either of the two remaining bullets.

The feather-crested creatures surged over the ground, their maws gaping open in fanged grins of blood lust.

Bai Suzhen and Kavanaugh stood back-to-back as the two Deinonychus made snarling, rushing feints toward them, eyes gleaming, teeth snapping.

A creature sprang upward and down, slamming into Bai with breath-robbing impact with its forepaws, the fanged jaws snapping for her throat. Claws ripped three vertical tears in her blouse. Staggering backward, she fell against the pylon. At the same time, she thrust with the jian sword into the raptor’s belly.

The blade grated against the ribs. The animal twisted away with an agonized howl and went into death convulsions at her feet. Blood pumped out in spurts as it thrashed with its legs and tail in an effort to stand up.

Reversing his grip on the rifle, Kavanaugh swung it like a club. The stock crashed against the side of the remaining monster’s skull, twisting its head around on its long neck with a crunch and crack of cartilage. It fell to the ground, rolling over and over in a spasm.

Bai Suzhen put a hand over the rips in her blouse. Not taking his eyes away from the advancing Deinonychus troop, Kavanaugh asked, “Are you all right?”

She nodded. “Superficial scratches.”

From all around came a series of prolonged, paralyzing skreeks! as the Deinonychus hailed one another with their unnerving calls. They approached cautiously, hesitantly, moving in half-crouches, their attention divided between the growling, bleeding Quinterotops and the two humans standing over the bodies of their brethren.

“Up!” Kavanaugh said, spinning Bai Suzhen around to face the ladder. “Now, while we’ve got a few seconds to spare.”

Hand over hand, she quickly scaled the pylon, not objecting even when Kavanaugh propelled her upward by a hand on her rump. “Go-go-go!”

Bai pulled herself to the top of the pylon and extended a hand to Kavanaugh, gripping his forearm with surprising strength. She hauled him up over the edge. Glaring down at the raptors swarming around the base, she counted at least ten, with more arriving. They uttered little questioning barks to one another. The scene might have been cute had they been otters and not bloodthirsty predators. One of them sniffed at the metal rungs, even nipping at them experimentally.

“Do you think they can figure out how to get up here?” Bai asked.

Before Kavanaugh had regained sufficient wind to answer, the curious Deinonychus hooked a rung with its foreclaws, then planted its hind feet on another.

“Yeah,” Kavanaugh said grimly, putting the carbine to his shoulder. “I think they can figure it out.”

“Jack!” shouted Honoré. “Come on!”

She stood about twenty yards away on a small platform at the rear of the bullet-shaped car. The monorail carriage was twenty feet long, ten in overall diameter. Most of the tube-shaped exterior was composed of curved, transparent panes of Plexiglas. The glass was streaked and dirty, but he saw everyone seated within.

Kavanaugh and Bai ran along the narrow track to the engine, climbing through the open hatch into the stuffy carriage. Belleau and Oakshott sat in padded leather chairs. Mouzi and Crowe kneeled down at the far end of the car, glowering into a square depression in the floor. The air in the coach was stifling. It stank of old mildew.

Kavanaugh remained by the open rear hatch, not just so he could keep watch for ladder-climbing Deinonychus, but also because of the drafts of fresh air. He called out, “What’s the story, Gus?”

“Hell,” Crowe retorted, pulling his Swiss Army knife from a pocket, “I don’t even know the prologue yet. Keep in mind this thing has been sitting here dead for over two years.”

From his seat near one of the transparent windows, Belleau said tremulously, “I thought monorails were powered by electric motors, fed by contact wires and the like. If there’s no power at the Petting Zoo station, it can’t be started, can it?”

“This monorail is a hybrid system,” said Crowe shortly, extracting a screwdriver blade. “It uses a diesel motor to generate electricity for the rail motors. We designed a redundancy just in case the Petting Zoo station lost power. We’ve got an onboard high-efficiency Wankel.”

Honoré cast him a perplexed glance. “You’ve got a
what?
”

“It’s an engine,” Kavanaugh explained. “State-of-the-art…or it was a few years back.”

“Not that bleedin’ efficient either,” muttered Mouzi, reaching down into the engine module. “Give me the tool, Gus…my hands are smaller.”

Kavanaugh watched the activity of the Deinonychus as they clustered around the pylon, but he was unable to see the creature that had showed interest in the ladder. He remarked casually, “They’re smart little monsters, aren’t they?”

Honoré swallowed hard. “And diabolically vicious. An adult has around sixty teeth, you know…think of them like great white sharks, only with legs and the brains of sociopathic six year-olds. Together with the Troodonids, the Deinonychosauria represent the group of non-avian dinosaurs the most closely related to birds.”

“I wish they’d evolve wings and fly away,” Kavanaugh replied. “If Gus can’t get this thing rolling, I don’t know how we’re going to get out of this one.”

Honoré gestured to the walls and roof. “I assume the train was designed for the maximum-range viewing, for the photographers who paid their fares.”

“You was assume correctly.”

“How thick is the Plexiglas?”

Kavanaugh tapped a ceiling panel with the barrel of the carbine. “About a quarter of an inch, I guess. Tough enough, but we didn’t test it against raptors.”

Sitting in a seat beside the door, Bai Suzhen said drowsily, “We may have to, and sooner than we’d like.”

Kavanaugh peered through the open hatch just as a Deinonychus raised its head above the top of the pylon, looking around alertly. Its eyes fixed on the coach and the people within it. Mouth opening wide, it gave vent to a long shriek that held a note of triumph.

Kavanaugh turned to speak to Bai Suzhen. Only then did he see that the front of her silk blouse was sodden with blood. She closed her eyes in pain, shock and exhaustion and leaned her head against the transparent pane.