Dinosaur: 65 Million: Book 2 Change Them, Survive Them Read online

  Dinosaur: 65 Million: Book 2

  Change Them, Survive Them

  Catt dahman

  © 2013 catt dahman

  [email protected]

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book, including the cover, and photos, may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher. All rights reserved.

  The characters, places, and events depicted are fictional and do not represent anyone living or dead. This is a work of fiction.

  Dedicated to my cover artist who inspired me: Michael Bray

  Part I: Asgard (Prologue)

  Chapter 1: Spring Trip

  “Today should be warm,” Mali said, “you’ll have it easy if you avoid the hunters. They are out but still lazy, I hope.”

  “The only problem with the warm weather coming is that hot weather will follow,” Ruby said, “reminds me of last year. Bad memories.”

  Mali cooked eggs for breakfast. Besides that, there were dried fruit with grain and bacon from a wild boar. All winter, there was never a shortage of food, most of it very palatable, and during those cold days and nights, they had learned to make water-proof baskets and wineskins for water and watered wine, but everyone craved warm weather and being outside more.

  “How is Lawryn?” Mali asked.

  “Good. I just checked her. I want her to stay on as much bed rest as

  possible, but if she feels okay, she can rest by the fire and weave or do something later.

  “Getting Marcus to stop hovering will help her more than anything,” Susan said.

  During the night, Lawryn had a few pains, but Susan wanted to keep her from delivery as long as possible, and Lawryn wasn’t due for a few more months; she was big with twins. Marcus was like a strutting peacock, proud and ready to be a father, but also worried about Lawryn since her delivery would be in a cave. He knew long ago, back when he was born, there were clean hospitals and health care; this was a step above what most people had now anyway.

  “She’s in good hands with you and Sandra,” Ruby told Susan.

  Sandra had military medical training, and Susan was an herbalist and had been a midwife before. Compared to the outside world where everyone in the United States lived in abject poverty, had no medical care or very little clean water, no energy except for what ran their televisions, and almost no food, they were far better off living in a cave in the middle of the Arkansas mountains. Each of them had chosen to forgo returning to his life and stayed there in the wilderness, preferring freedom to oppression.

  Trevor and Sandra ate, thanked Mali for cooking, and left to finish packing their backpacks; they wanted to carry light packs in case they found things, so they left almost everything behind. Ruby hid a smile, fascinated that the pair stayed together almost all the time, got along perfectly, cared for one another, but had yet to even hold hands, much less declare their feelings.

  Ruby finished her meal, grabbed her pack, already packed, went to hug Lawryn good-bye, and joined Jack outside the cave. He was ready to go and eager to begin the adventure they planned, “All done?”

  “Ready.”

  “Marcus is still pissed off. He thinks I can’t go without him to watch my back,” Jack said.

  “Well, he has saved your ass a few times.”

  When they first came as contestants on the reality show Dinosaur: 65 Million and nearly half their number was killed by the creatures, Marcus was always the one Jack depended on to watch his back and to fight the dinosaurs. Several times the men saved one another and others. Jack hated to lose his wingman, but Lawryn would be way too anxious with Marcus close by since her pregnancy was high risk.

  “Wodanaz will be with us. He’s dependable,” Jack said.

  Jeremy, who had been called Wodamaz back then, was a fledgling survivalist, and a loner, but over time, the man had changed. By far the best with survival ideas and battles, he was surprised by a female wolf that attacked him, taking his eye and leaving scars. Not to lose his unique, quirky outlook, he took the name Wodanaz from Norse mythology and christened the cave and area as Asgard.

  Susan was nervous about his being away from the cave and would miss him, but she knew that as he respected her as a healer and a brilliant herbalist and crafter from items in the wild, she had to respect that he was a warrior and an explorer. It only made it barely tolerable for her. He kept her sane.

  “You should have everything. You be careful out there,” Bert McTone told them. Originally the host of Dinosaur: 65 Million, Bert had been sent with his co-host and a military escort into the dinosaur zone to film the adventures of the contestants, but once out in the wilds, he felt differently about his life. He despised the way contestants were typecast, the brutal deaths enjoyed by the audience, and perversion of reality shows.

  Over the fall and winter, as they put up food and wood for use when the weather was cold and snow came, Bert built lean muscles and earned respect and friendship from the contestants. When Ruby and Jack reminded him to tell Analisa goodbye, he nodded. Analisa had been Bert’s co-host, but in a battle with the dinosaurs, her escape caused her arms and face to be scarred deeply. Before, she depended on her looks, but since being scarred, she was quieter, doing most chores in her little area of the cave unless it was just the women around.

  “She hopes all are safe. She would tell you herself….”

  “It’s okay,” Ruby said.

  Analisa’s face was hideous, but Bert never seemed to notice, and he loved her anyway; it was clear she really loved Bert so much and was appreciative that he cared about her despite her scars.

  “Take care of John and the kids,” Ruby said again. She had said those same words often before. John, a micro compsognothus that she had carried around and made a pet of, still preferred to be with Ruby although his mate and young ones were less friendly and didn’t stay in the cave often.

  Adrian was going on the adventure too since he knew the way to where they were headed: a cave where he and several others had found skeletal remains of a most curious type. All winter they had discussed the cave and what was there and then had made plans to go there and explore.

  Chris and Nina were going as well. They were from a later group of contestants that came through the area, trying to reach the finish line in eleven days and win millions of dollars; four of them were left in that group, the third group to try. The second group was said to have vanished and never crossed the finish line.

  Chris and Nina and four others made it to the cave; all were dehydrated and hungry, and the other two were wounded badly after a battle with carnotaurus. One of the six who was gangrenous in both legs died within days after the others found them and helped them to the cave. The other died shortly thereafter with what Sandra said were non-repairable internal injuries. Two more in that group of six refused to stay, saying they wanted the millions of dollars and Chris and Nina were insane. So the two left with waves and some confusion at those who wanted to stay.

  They didn’t make it to the finish line.

  Rumor was that a fourth group had two people almost make it but died within eyesight of the finish line when they were attacked by a tyrannosaur. The fifth group made it only halfway into the area as the dinosaurs began learning and expecting prey. Eight from the sixth group survived, three of those joined the original contestants, and five went on, trying to win.
There was no word on those as winter set in, and no other contestants were sent in since the season for reality ended.

  Of just over a hundred and forty-four people sent out into the dinosaur area, twenty lived in the cave. It was that sort of thing that made Bert sure he made the right choice to stay and be out of the rat race of entertainment television.

  Trevor, Sandra, Ruby, Jack, Wodanaz, Adrian, Nina, and Chris walked through the pass. Usually, they hunted and scavenged the other directions, so this way was, for the most part, uncharted, once they were a few hours from the cave. One of the wolf pups, Larry, followed along; they left the other two, Curly and Moe, at the cave howling; despite the fact their mother had been the wolf that took Wodanaz’s eye, the three pups and Wodanaz were inseparable.

  Barasaurus thundered by in a small herd. They were fascinating: at twenty tons, they were huge, were eighty feet long and had short tails and very long necks. Their heads were tiny, and they were not overly bright, but they were amazing in that they often stood on their back legs, extended their long necks, and used their long fore legs with five fingers to strip away leaves and feed high in the trees, pulling branches deftly down to their level. Their skin was shades of green with random stripes and spots of brown, which camouflaged them.

  The ground shook under the weight of the running creatures that moved like a herd of cattle, running lazily in a straight path to a new grazing area. The spring growth allowed them tender leaves and branches to feed on and replenish fat lost over the winter. Over the next months, this herd alone would put on tons of weight, literally.

  “Amazing,” Nina said, “they look so strange with those long necks and shorter tails. I wonder why SSDD chose them to recreate?” They were puzzling creatures to the humans because while they were camouflaged, they made wind noises often: loud, trumpeting farts, bellowing wet sneezes, and random loud snorts and sniffs. They made plenty of sounds between those and the occasional stomps and the rattling, crackling, and snapping of leaves and twigs. The grinding of the beasts’ molars sounded like boulders rubbing against each other.

  “Better yet, why did they choose any?” Ruby asked. “If you had the technology, why not make more and better food or medical advances and cure diseases or something useful? Seems wasteful to have billions of people starving, sick, and freezing in the winter, but then scientists develop dinosaurs, not to show the public nor learn about them nor educate people nor even entertain them with a zoo, but instead to make a reality show, pitting humans against the creatures.”

  “Money. Because it’s easier to amuse a billion people than to solve their problems. Always been that way.”

  “Be on alert. Where there are plant eaters, there are meat eaters,” Wodanaz reminded them.

  “Gotcha, Jerm-Wod,” Ruby said, calling him her pet name.

  She laughed as Larry dodged and lunged at them, playing. The wolf pups had proven to be exceptional guard dogs, alerting them to trouble and proving to be loyal, well behaved pets.

  Despite the warning, no predators showed up to hunt.

  The night was cold, but they had skins sewn and fashioned into cloaks that kept them warm as the group settled around the fire and ate. It was the same little spot that Adrian, Mike, and several others had slept when, over seven months before, they had tried to make a run to the finish line so Adrian and two women, Wendy and Serinda, could win the money.

  “This brings back memories, doesn’t it?” Ruby asked Adrian.

  Adrian nodded, “Good and bad ones. We really thought we could make the finish line and win the money and have better lives. Everyone thinks that when he joins the game, but then it hits him, it isn’t going to happen.”

  “But everyone keeps trying. Better we know what’s going on over at the small cave so there aren’t any surprises here.”

  “Yes, that was as surprised as I ever intend to be again,” Adrian said, “but I’m not sure there were answers there. It could have been a random half human-half saurian pile of bones that ended up there and has nothing to do with creepy scientific things. Maybe it was a weird, long-lost missing link.”

  “Right. Sorry, A, but I doubt it’s that non-nefarious. Around here, everything is always far worse than we expect, not better,” Jack replied.

  In the morning instead of going the way Adrian wanted to, they had to take cover when they heard roars and furious stomping, along with smelling the stench of carrion, ammonia-rich urine, and reptilian feces. Trevor whispered, “What are they?”

  “No idea,” Ruby said. She was usually the one who could identify the various kinds of dinosaurs, but this one had her stumped.

  They were shades of blue: blue violet, indigo, periwinkle, royal blue, and purple, weighed about six tons, and were forty feet long. A fin lined their backs, smaller than what would be seen on a spinosaurus, but still prominent and colored a few shades darker than their skin color. They had very long heads and jaws and looked like alligators with big bodies and muscular, long legs.

  “Alligatorsaurs,” Ruby whispered with a laugh.

  They were suschomimus, in fact, dinosaurs a lot like alligators with jaws full of pointed, slightly serrated, small teeth like those of the reptile they resembled. They were not timid, but they didn’t aggressively attack other dinosaurs either, living on fish and carrion. They were migrating from one wet area to a new one in search of fish and frogs.

  If there had been a large pack of them, they could have been dangerous, especially if starved, for they were large animals with a lot of teeth, but unlike crocodilian cousins, they didn’t attack without hunger or threat. The worst thing about them was their stink. They loved rotten fish and ate carrion while they walked in it; their skins and breaths reeked of the odor. Their feet stayed filthy and caused a cloud of foul miasma to stay with them since they also walked in their own bowel droppings that reeked like their diets.

  To avoid them, the group of humans took a different trail towards the cave they sought. Carefully and quietly as they rounded a bend of granite boulders, they listened and sniffed for the scent of feces and carrion that would indicate meat eaters. It smelled safe. Underfoot, shale skittered and slid as they walked, making them slow their trek, but this was common in a pass between two higher bluffs. They could have taken a higher route along the rocks, but this one seemed safe enough.

  “What the hell?” Jack asked.

  Before them in a pass between tall cliffs, lay a jumble of bones and old clothing. Several bones had shredded pants and a shirt hanging on. Other places had more pairs of pants, no bones. An old rope was twisted around a rib cage. Shooing Larry back, Wodanaz knelt as he looked over the pile of remains. Many smooth, yellowed bones of all shapes and sizes lay there, along with skulls, all picked clean by carrion-eaters and then by birds and rats. Most of the clothing was ripped and torn to shreds, rotted and faded.

  Sometimes there was almost a full set of bones with a femur missing or a full set except for a skull. In other places might be three skulls with a body and a half, but scavengers had stolen away some bones and scattered the rest into random piles; water from heavy rains washed away some of the other bones from other piles.

  All of the backpacks were ripped apart, the contents strewn carelessly, only a few remained somewhat intact although the fabric was in bad shape. One backpack was shredded apart, half of it missing and the rest tattered, some pieces as small as a finger and lying amid pebbles. A pot, rusted knife, and part of a shirt were wedged between two larger rocks.

  Emblems on a few of the packs showed this to be the second group in the dinosaur zone trying to win the contest.

  “I count eleven,” Chris said, “I mean skulls.”

  “Me, too,” Wodanaz said. He picked up a machete, several knives, and an axe. Searching around, he found mess kits with plates and spoons and items they could use. “I think there could have been twelve or maybe thirteen, but it would take a lot of time to gather enough bones to be sure, and I doubt they are still here anyway.”

 
Ruby stuffed a fairly well preserved back pack with tarps, para cords, and carabineers, several sewing kits, toothpaste and toothbrushes, and more medical kits than she could carry, “Okay, I can carry this, but barely. Someone clip it to my pack with the D rings I found? Get the rest.”

  Another pack was ripped in places but had ended up wedged in large rocks of granite and hadn’t been opened for months; everything was still as carefully packed as when it was dropped in the gully. Some of the supplies were useless, and those she tossed out to make room for the usable things she did find.

  Chris and Nina thought some of the socks were salvageable and took the rest of the medical supplies and sealed iodine tablets, vitamins, and two ropes. They filled their own packs and the used bags full and clipped other items onto to their packs with D rings they found half buried in the detritus.

  Trevor and Sandra took tarps, three folding shovels that they handed off to Wodanaz, gloves in good shape, sealed duct tape, flint, packs of glow sticks, a few compasses and clipped six of the canteens to their backpacks which were getting heavy.

  “I am not about to leave these good canteens here. They aren’t like new, but they are in great shape,” Jack said.

  “Like the tarps. Not great shape, but they are better than nothing; we may as well take them and use them,” Sandra agreed.

  Jack took the other five canteens, remembering months ago when all thirty-two members of his group had rushed into a supply room to gather everything they needed to survive. Back then, they were eager to grab things, not sure exactly what they would require, but determined to find the best supplies possible.

  Each was allowed sixty-five pounds of weight. All but a few went far over the weight limit and were forced to toss away supplies: last added to the backpack, first discarded until the weight was correct. They hated to lose a thing but also knew they couldn’t carry more than that weight limit anyway.