Dinosaur Summer Page 24

  "There isn't any until we—"

  Peter heard the roar suddenly reach a crescendo. The flood hit them first at their knees, knocking them over backward, then a second wall struck, engulfing them. Peter struggled to keep to his feet, but the water dug dirt out from beneath his boots, and the third wall spun him like a child's ball. His head poked briefly into air and then submerged again. Something hit his shoulder, poked sharply at his ear, and slammed against the back of his neck.

  He could not move or breathe. Eyes wide open, he flopped and rolled and swirled down the channel cut by the stream, bumping into tree trunks, sliding over rocks, helpless.

  When Peter came back to himself—and it seemed he had been on a long, long journey through a confused landscape of painful dreams—he was walking on the shore of a small lake. The trees on this shore were spaced far apart and the forest floor was almost free of growth. Warm sun fell on him and the pebbly beach around him. His fingers tightened around a wooden handle. Somehow he had managed once again to keep a grip on the machete.

  He was walking toward a body tangled in debris a few yards away. He knew the person was dead. "Ray," he said.

  The body stirred and an arm reached dramatically for the sky.

  "Yes, what is it?" the body replied.

  "You all right?"

  "Hell, no."

  "I think I made it."

  "What about me? Did I make it?"

  "I wasn't sure at first, but you're talking." This idiotic conversation felt perfectly natural. All Peter's fear and pain seemed suspended. He might have been on vacation, trying to find a friend.

  He unwrapped creepers and branches from Ray's body and head. Ray raised his eyes to Peter's face, winced, and said, "Just my head?"

  "I think the rest of you is here, too."

  Ray struggled out of the mud and debris. His eyes stared from a face painted with swipes of half dried dirt. Peter looked down at himself. He was covered with mud.

  "You're a mess," Ray said.

  "So are you."

  "Anything broken?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Me, neither. I think." Ray took a tentative step. "A true, honest to God miracle."

  "Where are we?" Peter asked.

  The lake stretched for about a quarter of a mile, bounded on most of its shore by thick forest. They could not see around the bend of shore to determine if it met up with a larger body of water. Peter found the sun, at its ten o'clock position, he estimated, and decided they were on the southern shore. He looked due east and saw a white prominence rising just above the tops of the trees: a tor.

  "We can climb that and get a look around," he said, pointing.

  "I'm not climbing anything," Ray said, falling back on his butt on the sandy shore and sinking his head between his knees. Peter felt too tired to argue or do much more than stand. Still, he thought fuzzily, they had to do something. He turned slowly, stumbling because of a weakness in one leg, recovered, and looked west. Debris had spilled from the stream mouth into the lake, forming a raft—a camelote—of foliage, small logs, branches, and scum. In the debris floated a small green body.

  Peter struggled through the wrack a few yards east to see the green body more clearly. It was a reptile or dinosaur, about three feet long. He couldn't tell more than that. He walked back to Ray and asked in a flat voice, "How hungry are you?"

  Ray looked up, irritated by the obvious question. "Enough," he said. "Not polite to talk about it."

  "All right," Peter said, and meticulously waded out to the debris raft.

  The green body was fresh and Peter figured it weighed about twenty or twenty-five pounds, a good-sized turkey. It resembled a small struthio, but with large eyes and no feathery scales. He dropped it in front of Ray and they both stared at it. The head flopped on its long neck, half open red eye fixed dully on nothing in particular.

  Ray lifted his face to squint at Peter. A light mist had settled over the small lake.

  "I've been thinking," Ray said.

  "About what?" Peter asked.

  "How long we can last here."

  "Not very long, without food."

  "This is food?" Ray asked.

  "Yeah," Peter said with a sigh. He lifted the machete.

  "Raw," Ray said.

  "I suppose," Peter said.

  Peter squatted by the carcass and lifted one limp leg. Then he brought the machete down on the hip joint and split the skin. Pale pink muscle and yellowish fat showed through the slice. He hacked again. Ten or eleven hacks and some sawing removed the leg, and Peter tried using the machete to cut away the thin, tough skin. The work was tiring, but he managed to rip off a strip of thigh and handed it to Ray. Ray took it, examined it with narrowed eyes, and bit into it.

  Peter cut himself a piece and was surprised to find he had no qualms about putting it in his mouth. He was too hungry to care how it tasted or felt.

  After they had eaten both legs to the bone, leaving only the horny skin around the clawed toes, they lay back on the beach and stared up at the golden fog surrounding them. "Amazing," Ray said.

  "What, having food?"

  "I ache all over, I've got bruises and welts on every square inch of my body, there's a good chance I'll be dead in a day or two . . . but I feel pretty good."

  "A full belly," Peter said. He didn't feel good, but he didn't feel bad, either.

  They heard a low droning noise. Peter tried to locate the direction, but it seemed to come from everywhere.

  "That's an airplane," Ray said, sitting up on his elbows.

  The mist was starting to thin above them, and they saw patches of blue sky and higher puffy clouds with gray bellies. They both scanned the patches. Suddenly, the drone turned into a coughing roar and a big high-winged scout plane passed over the forest and the lake at about a hundred feet. They both stood and waved frantically, but the plane continued on a straight course until it was out of sight behind the wall of mist.

  "Didn't see us," Peter said.

  "At least they're looking."

  "Who?" Peter said.

  "They must be flying out of San Pedro or Uruyen," Ray said.

  "Where can they land? Are they going to find us, or will we find them?" He suddenly felt very excited. "I was thinking earlier about finding the place where Jimmie Angel crashed, maybe that would be a landing field, and—"

  Ray shook his head. "He crashed, Pete. Must not be a very good place to land if an ace pilot crashes."

  "But maybe they would know how to find the plane—"

  "If it isn't covered with forest by now."

  Peter would not give up. The food made all the difference in the world; his spirits started to soar at the multitude of plans

  frantically crowding into his head. "But if they can see the plane, maybe they'll fly over it, and if we're there, they'll see us!"

  "We'd have to find the plane first," Ray said.

  "Then we climb a tor and look around."

  Ray shrugged, then smiled. "All right." He stared dubiously at the small, dismembered dinosaur torso. "We can't waste food."

  Peter began enthusiastically cutting up the rest of the carcass. He disemboweled it with astonishing objectivity, for a boy who had felt faint dissecting frogs in school, and washed the well-hacked body parts in the lake water. "Do we want to save the liver and stuff?" he asked Ray.

  "Let's not carry this too far. How do we know parts of these animals aren't poisonous?"

  Peter agreed and looked around for something to carry the chunks of meat in. A broad, tough leaf about two feet wide served the purpose, and he tied it with a fern stem.

  As they were about to head east, into the forest, something slopped in the lake shallows. The scythe-headed amphibian, or one very much like it, swam sinuously through the water and crawled up onshore. Its slick wrinkled skin was patterned in dark green and black spots with touches of yellow and red along its back. With a slow hunch of its upper body and twist of its broad head, it gobbled the small dinosaur's inna
rds. When it finished, it turned its widespread golden-brown eyes on them, then padded around and slithered back to the lake.

  Peter shivered. Ray watched it depart with fascination. "What a monster," he said again, as if a nine-foot-long salamander were any more monstrous than a pack of bear-sized lycos.

  "How far from the chasm do you think we are now?" Peter asked as they hiked between the tall trees toward the distant outcrop.

  "This part of the forest looks different," Ray said. "Less undergrowth. We could be a couple of miles farther north. That would make it three or four miles."

  Peter tried to imagine the flood carrying them a mile or more, and couldn't. "If we'd been swept that far, wouldn't we be dead?"

  "We should be dead by now anyway," Ray said. The package of dinosaur meat attracted flies and Peter kept having to brush them away. The biting flies were fewer, at least, and for that they were grateful.

  They traversed about two hundred yards with fair speed, avoiding a swampy hollow and an odd outcrop of low, flat stones free of vegetation. They skirted this barren area with an instinctive unease. It curved behind an intrusion of forest, and as the obscured reach gradually came into view, they saw a series of low sandy mounds, surrounded by a thick U of trees. Ray stopped and put his hands on his hips. "The ground is moving out there," he said.

  Peter looked at the low, flat rocks. A tan and orange mass crawled over the distant stones like opaque honey. This honey, however, seemed made of millions of discrete parts. "Ants," he said. "Those must be ant mounds." He walked carefully to the edge of the barren stretch and knelt. Across the rocks scuttled dozens of golden insects the size of his thumb, with wicked-looking pincers and glistening abdomens. Their eyes were black, and no matter which direction they moved, they seemed to be looking straight at him. He backed away in a hurry, scanning the forest loam for more of the big ants.

  "Nothing goes in there, right?" Ray said.

  "I wouldn't," Peter said. "They look big enough to cut away trees."

  "Maybe that's what they've done," Ray said. They were about to move on when a high, melodic skree froze them in their tracks. They looked around slowly, afraid to even move. Peter stared across the barren rocks at the forest beyond. He felt like falling on his belly to hide.

  Emerging from the forest on two muscular pillars of legs, pushing aside trees with a stealth and grace astonishing for its bulk, its broad, long tail sweeping behind, twenty-five feet high from tip of saber-clawed toes to glittering white feathery crest, white- and yellow-plumed head sporting a long snout with both a scimitar beak and long rows of knife-like teeth, two long black-feathered arms bobbing gently before it, Stratoraptor velox, the Totenadler, the death eagle, stepped out onto the denuded territory of the golden ants and surveyed the situation with dark-rimmed green eyes.

  Peter stood rooted to the ground by the sight, even though a hundred yards separated them. His only thought was that it was after them, that they had to flee, but his legs would not take instructions from his brain. Ray's mouth worked, but no words issued forth. They did not move or make a sound; the beast so quickly and unexpectedly revealed to them, descendant of the first lines of birds, monstrous cousin to the avisaurs and ancient Archaeopteryx, fixed them like deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.

  The Stratoraptor strode slowly to the flat barren area west of the ant mounds, cocked its head as if to inspect the ground and the mounds, and slowly hunkered down with arms folded by its sides. It settled itself, making deep drumming noises, and closed its eyes as if about to go to sleep.

  Peter let out his breath slowly. They quietly backed into the cover of the trees.

  "It didn't see us," Peter said.

  Ray lifted his eyebrows and sighed in relief.

  "We should get away from here as fast as we can."

  "I wonder how fast it can travel in these trees," Ray said, peering around a trunk to observe the animal. It perched unmoving on the ant field.

  "I don't want to find out," Peter said.

  "We might be able to outrun it in the forest," Ray said, a gleam in his eyes. His brow furrowed. "More curious, though, is why is it sitting on an ant nest?"

  Peter shrugged his shoulders.

  Ray sat on a low rock with a good view of the ant mounds, as if preparing for a vigil.

  "Are we staying?"

  "I want to see this," Ray said. "It's very odd. What I'd give to have my camera right now . . ."

  Peter leaned against the trunk, heart racing. He was curious, too, but more concerned about staying alive.

  "I'll take some of that meat," Peter said, and Ray handed him the package.

  "Make sure we're upwind," Ray suggested.

  "It would have smelled us by now," Peter said. He chewed on a tough strip of tail meat. The less hungry he was, the less palatable the raw flesh tasted, but he did not want to waste it, and soon it would be spoiled or flyblown. Of course, Anthony says maggots are high in protein, he reminded himself.

  The Stratoraptor drummed again, like a huge prairie chicken. It opened its eyes and blinked calmly, twisting and tilting its head.

  "Look at its legs," Ray said. Peter focused on the thick thighs, pooched out in its squatting position. Their color seemed to be slowly changing from dark yellow to greenish gold; furthermore, the color was creeping from the ground up. Closer to the dirt, the Stratoraptof s hues had changed to dark gold.

  Peter sucked in his breath. "It's letting the ants crawl on it!"

  Ray nodded. "Looks that way."

  "Maybe it's old and sick . . . it's come here to die."

  Ray shook his head. "This isn't a graveyard for monsters."

  They watched in silence. Within ten minutes, the Stratoraptor was completely covered by a glittering carpet of golden insects. Despite Peter's qualms, curiosity now gripped him, as well. He could not imagine why such a huge animal would let itself be covered by ants. Unless . . .

  "Tick birds," Peter said.

  "Cleaner shrimp," Ray said simultaneously. They stared at each other in amazement.

  "It's letting the ants clean it!" Peter said.

  "What else?" Ray said, his face bright with discovery. For a moment, they forgot their predicament, watching the Stratoraptor sit quietly for its ant bath. "Even big animals have lice, ticks, fleas . . . The ants feed on its pests, remove dead skin and scales . . . and in return, the animals stay away from the mounds."

  "Or maybe the ants clean up bloodstains, remains of prey," Peter suggested.

  "Plausible," Ray said. "I don't think anyone's ever seen this before!"

  Peter thought of his father and OBie, a sudden sharp image that obscured the delight of discovery and reminded him of their danger. "We don't have much time," he said softly.

  Ray kept watching the ant field and the huge, quiescent Stratoraptor. With a jerk, he diverted his attention and grinned sheepishly at Peter. "You're right, of course," he said. "But maybe we can wait and see where the old bird's going next. We should stay out of its path."

  "If we leave now, we'll get a head start," Peter said.

  Ray couldn't argue with this. He agreed with a clamp of his jaw muscles and a sharp nod. "Let's go."

  They kept glancing over their shoulders as they moved deeper into the forest and east once more. With the Stratoraptor almost out of sight—and still squatted contentedly, tended by a honey-like sheen of the big golden ants—they heard the airplane's drone again. They had no clear view of the sky, nor the sky of them, but certainly did not want to appear out in the open with the Stratoraptor so close. They halted and listened. Through the trees, they saw the same high-wing plane fly low over the northern forest. With a roar of its engine, it circled and dove a few yards lower to buzz the Stratoraptor at an altitude of less than fifty feet. The beast shook itself free with a quick shower of ants, got to its feet, and stretched straight out, screaming its surprise and rage. The scream hurt Peter's ears and made his knees rubbery: it was the same skreee they had heard on the southern end of
the plateau, only much louder.

  The pilot angled the plane over them, above the forest, turned due south, and continued on until the drone subsided.

  "Thanks for nothing!" Ray said angrily.

  The Stratoraptor continued to shriek its defiance, and Peter and Ray hurried deeper into the forest, toward the tor.

  Chapter Eight

  The trees here were younger and spaced more closely together. Overall, the canopy had dropped by twenty or thirty feet and was thin enough that sunlight speckled the floor and undergrowth. Ghostly white vines covered with lacy, pale leaves twined around an old log and spread out in a lumpy wave across the floor, pouring up against other, living trees and wrapping their trunks in tight spirals, like string wound around a spool. A few dozen yards ahead, Peter and Ray could occasionally see through the forest the yellow-brown mass of their goal brightly illuminated by the sun. Peter had given his machete to Ray, who opened the path for their fairly rapid progress. Peter's left arm continued to hurt with each step, but less so than a few hours before.

  They had just walked around a particularly impressive tree, with a trunk almost fifteen feet across, when Peter saw a gray shape crawling overhead. He jumped aside. "Ray!"

  Ray turned and Peter pointed up. Standing on a branch, a cluster of leaves clamped in its mouth, was a gray, heavily wrinkled, sausage-shaped animal, tiny black eyes prominent on a rounded head. It had a short snout and a stumpy tail and was no more than a yard long. The animal watched them quietly, not moving. Peter saw that its snout was actually a kind of horny beak, the apexes of the upper and lower halves divided into two flat cutting edges, like a rat's incisors.

  "Do you know what that is?" Peter asked.

  "Looks like a big mole," Ray said.

  "It has scales," Peter said. "I think it's a reptile."

  "A mole-reptile, then," Ray said.

  The animal turned deftly and wriggled along the branch toward the trunk. Three-clawed feet gripped the trunk tightly and it lifted itself with a grunt. They watched it until it vanished in the tree's thick crown.