The Ark Plan (25 page)

T
his was a bad idea. Spectacularly bad, actually. It went against everything I'd learned in my short time topside, but all that didn't change what we had to do. I glanced back down at my dad's map, but it showed the same thing it had always shown. The only way to get to Lake Michigan was to leave the shelter of the trees and make a run for it—in the open. My eyes flicked up to take in the sprawling grassland in question, filled, as I knew it would be, with dinosaurs.

“I can't believe we're doing this,” Shawn muttered, running a hand through his blond hair so it stood up in sweaty spikes. “There is no way we can make it to the lake without getting eaten.”

“What's your point?” Todd asked as he swung his arms in lazy circles to warm up his shoulder muscles.

“My point,” Shawn said, grimacing, “is that there has to be a way around this, a way that isn't so exposed. We've always gone around the open areas. Except,” he amended, “for that time we almost became a T. rex's lunch.” He paused a moment, stifling a shudder. “At least in the trees the only dinosaurs we encountered were little ones. Out there,” he said, gesturing in front of us, “there's nowhere to hide, no trees to climb, and nothing to slow down those massive monsters.”

“We knew that the closer to the lake we got, the more open it was going to be,” I said flatly, annoyed that he was bringing this up again.

“Yeah, but I didn't think it was going to be that open,” Shawn grumbled. I turned my attention back to the grassland. I'd read that dinosaurs liked to congregate near a source of water, but this was a little ridiculous. Herds of green-, brown-, and rust-colored dinosaurs were scattered in every direction as far as I could see. To our left, a large group of stegosauruses grazed quietly in the knee-high scrub grasses. The sun reflected off the wide flat plates that sat in single file down their sloping backs.

“Try to relax,” I said, even as the knot in my gut twisted a little tighter. “If we read the map correctly,
the lake should be just on the other side of those hills.”

“Dunes,” Todd corrected. “Those things that look like hills are called dunes.”

“What's a dune?” Shawn asked.

“Big mounds of sand,” Todd explained. “They border the lake.”

I glanced back out across the tall wavy grasses and wished Shawn was right and there was another way. While the prospect of finally getting to the lake sent a thrill of excitement through me, Shawn's reminder of our last dash into the open made my stomach churn.

After a lifetime underground, we hadn't known any better than to run across an open meadow. It had been the first of many near-death experiences. The note and map my dad had left for me, urging me to take his compass and the small memory plug it contained to Lake Michigan, hadn't said anything about how to actually survive topside. That part we'd had to figure out the hard way.

I tugged at my ponytail to free it from the snarled thorns of the bush. A few curly red strands got caught in the branches, and they fluttered gently in the wind. I snatched them and shoved them in my pocket. I wasn't taking any chances. North Compound's marines had found us twice now. We'd eliminated any chance that we were carrying a tracking device, so that left the
old-fashioned way of finding us. By foot. Ever since we'd realized this, we'd gone out of our way to hide all traces of our movements. Hopefully it would be enough. I took a deep breath to calm my nerves. The tangy, earthy flavor of this topside world still felt foreign, but unfortunately, it did nothing to slow my hammering heart or shaking hands, so I balled them into fists and mentally commanded myself to get it together.

“Can we just get on with it?” I asked.

“Sure,” Todd said as he leaned forward to stretch out his leg muscles.

Shawn scowled at Todd and then turned to me. “How are you so okay with potentially getting eaten alive?”

“Or trampled,” Todd added, adjusting his pack, “don't forget trampled.”

“If you were trying to make me feel better, you just failed miserably,” Shawn grumbled.

“I wasn't.” Todd smirked. A week ago, that smirk would have fooled me. Now I could see the slight tension around his green eyes that gave away his own nerves. Seeing Shawn's glowering face, Todd shrugged. “Look at it this way,” he said, gesturing flippantly to the massive dinosaurs, “if that many plant eaters are comfortable enough to feed, they don't think there are any large predators around.”

“Yeah,” Shawn muttered. “But they could be wrong.”

“Just keep running no matter what happens,” Todd said. “Both of you are still too bad of a shot to turn and fight if something comes after us.”

“Hey,” I protested. “You said this morning that we were getting better.”

Todd wrinkled his nose apologetically. “I was being nice.”

“You aren't nice.” Shawn scowled.

Todd laughed. “You
are
improving. Especially since you had that lesson with Ivan. You might actually be a step above horrendous now.”

“Well, that's something,” Shawn muttered. My heart clenched painfully at the thought of Ivan. He should have caught up to us by now. Either he hadn't survived his encounter with the marines two days ago, or something had happened to delay him. I swallowed hard, trying not to imagine all the terrible things that could slow down someone as survival savvy as my grandfather.

Todd looked at each of us in turn. “Ready?” he asked. I nodded, and Shawn grumbled something unintelligible. Todd must have taken that as confirmation, because he sprang up from the bushes and sprinted into the open.

“Really?” Shawn said, clambering to his feet. “Not
even a one, two, three? Or a ready, set, go?” He was still grumbling under his breath as we took off after Todd.

The feeling of being exposed intensified as we left the looming shelter of the trees. Todd flew through the waist-high grasses, his long legs eating up the distance with powerful strides. Shawn and I were not powerful or fast. Short and stocky, Shawn pumped his arms, his face already flushed a bright red as he struggled to keep up. I wasn't sure what I looked like, but I doubted it was much better.

The herd of stegosaurus picked their heads up as we passed, bugling a warning to their young, who quickly found shelter under their parents' tree-trunk-like legs. Their wary brown eyes and solemn faces studied us as we passed. If I hadn't been sucking air as fast as I could get it, I would have let out a sigh of relief. Todd had been fairly certain that they wouldn't stampede and squash us, but fairly certain and certain were two very different things.

The wind whipped across the grasses, making them sway and bend like waves, and I looked back to see the trees quickly disappearing behind us. Suddenly my foot caught on a rock and I flew forward. I hit the ground hard, my hands thrown out instinctively in front of me. They landed in something soft and slimy, and an awful smell met my nose. Before I could figure out what I'd
just fallen into, I was scrambling to my feet and running to catch up with Shawn and Todd. Glancing back, I saw a gigantic pile of what looked like fist-size brown balls in a slightly smashed pile. My stomach rolled as I realized that I was liberally coated in what had to be fresh dinosaur poop.

Todd slowed his pace a few minutes later, allowing Shawn and me to catch up enough to run on either side of him.

“See dead ahead?” he asked, pointing. I tried not to be too bitter that he wasn't even breathing hard. Following his finger, I spotted several large circular depressions in the ground, each of them with a pile of white ovals in the center.

“Are those nests?” I asked.

“Yup.” Todd frowned. “Not sure of what though.”

“They're everywhere,” Shawn huffed, and I saw that he was right. The huge nests lay in almost every direction.

“It'll take too long to go around. We have to go through,” Todd said. “Whatever you do, don't touch the eggs. Somewhere around here are their parents, and the last thing we want is for them to think we're messing with their babies.”

“Got it,” Shawn said, shaking his sweat-drenched hair out of his eyes.

Todd turned to me, his nose wrinkled. “Did you fall in dinosaur dung?”

I grimaced. “Do you even have to ask?” The smell radiating off me alone should have been clue enough.

Todd shook his head, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Follow me,” he called, shooting ahead of us again as we entered the nesting area. The ground underfoot turned to sand, and suddenly running was even harder than it had been before. As we flashed past the nests, I caught a glimpse of the large white eggs, each delicately speckled with brown.

“Jump!” Todd yelled, leaping suddenly into the air. I jumped, glancing down to see a strip of three nests, side by side, impossible to avoid. Shawn was not as quick, and I heard a surprised grunt followed by a shower of sand spraying across my back. I whirled in time to see him sprawl face first into the middle of a nest. A sharp crack rang out as his head hit one of the eggs. The shell buckled in and started oozing a clear liquid. Shawn sat up quickly, but in his attempt to get to his feet again he bumped the broken egg, sending it clattering into one of its neighbors. It split in two and a slim brown creature flopped out, struggling to free itself from a gooey membrane.

I stared in wonder.

“Not good,” Todd said in my ear, and I realized I'd
stopped running. He lurched past me and yanked Shawn out of the sandy nest. The little brown dinosaur opened its mouth in a wordless cry, its eyes sealed shut.

“Take your tunic off,” Todd barked at Shawn, his face drawn and pale.

“What?” Shawn asked, trying in vain to wipe the goo from the egg out of his hair. Todd didn't wait—ripping Shawn's pack and large bow off his back, he thrust them into my arms and then yanked Shawn's tunic up over his head. Shawn yelped in protest, but Todd was already chucking it away from us. Shawn grabbed his pack from me just as the tiny dinosaur let out a high-pitched cry that made the hairs on my neck stand up.

“Run,” Todd commanded. Shawn slung his pack and bow over his bare shoulders, and we took off. The screech of the tiny dinosaur followed us as we wove through nest after endless nest. The sound of an ear-piercing shriek from behind us forced me to turn my head. To our left, still not much more than dots in the distance, was a herd of rust-colored dinosaurs. And they were coming straight for us, fast.

“What are those?” Shawn called.

“The parents,” Todd called, putting on a burst of speed. I hadn't thought it was possible to run any faster, but I found a reserve of strength and pushed harder.

The sound of the advancing dinosaurs grew more
deafening by the second, their angry shrieks reverberating up my spine and right into my brain. I craned my neck to look back again. They were predators. If their rows of gleaming teeth hadn't made that immediately obvious, the fact that they were running on well-muscled back legs sealed the deal. But it was their eyes that had me doing a double take. Unlike most dinosaurs I'd encountered whose eyes were along the sides of their heads, these sat in the front under lethal-looking spikes, almost human in their positioning.

Suddenly the sand was deeper than before, and I looked up to see Todd on all fours scrambling up a mountain. The dunes, I thought as I automatically mimicked him. The sand burned under my hands as I fought to keep up. For every step I took, I felt like I slid back down two, and within moments my eyes, nose, and mouth were full of grit. The sound of Shawn's hoarse breathing behind me made it obvious that he wasn't faring much better, and even Todd was gasping for the first time. Despite everything, that fact scared me most of all. If Todd was struggling, did we even have a chance?

PHOTO BY J. VAN WEELDEN

LAURA MARTIN
believes in chasing her dreams, and she brought that philosophy to her classroom for six years as a seventh-grade English teacher. This is Laura's first novel—and a dream come true. When she isn't writing stories about dinosaurs and underground civilizations, she can be found in Zionsville, Indiana, with her dashing husband, Josh, her adorable daughter, London, and two opinionated bulldogs.

You can visit her online at
www.lauramartinbooks.wordpress.com
.

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COVER ART © 2016 BY ERIC DESCHAMPS

COVER DESIGN BY SARAH NICHOLE KAUFMAN

EDGE OF EXTINCTION #1: THE ARK PLAN.
Copyright © 2016 by Laura Martin. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2015946556

ISBN 978-0-06-241622-3

EPub Edition © April 2016 ISBN 9780062416247

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