Dinosaur World Read online

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  Chapter 1

  “There’s no drinks in the library,” the old man at the front desk said.

  I swiped my student ID through the scanner, looked up at his hardened expression, and saw ‘Jason Mattley’ flash onto his computer screen along with my terrible ID photo.

  “Yeah, I know,” I sighed.

  The guy who ran the desk during the Easter term break always seemed to be in a sour mood. Still, I needed to study, and the college library was where I could focus.

  “Bloody Americans, always trying to bring their coffee,” he grumbled.

  I had no idea if he was talking to me or just complaining to himself, but I decided to answer him.

  “Uhhh…” I started as I glanced down my chest to where both my hands held onto the straps of my backpack. “I’m not carrying a cup, soooo… How could I bring any coffee?”

  “Like I said,” he huffed. “You American’s and your coffee. Just watch yourself. It’s not allowed.”

  “Whatever man,” I snorted as I turned and walked past the front desk and into the Cambridge Maitland Robinson Library.

  I was always amazed when I stepped into the central room. I looked up past the hundreds of rows of countless books that climbed the walls, to the second level over the balcony, and then all the way up into the grand domed ceiling. It was awe inspiring and one of the main reasons this place was my regular study location. I also loved the smell of all those old books in one place. It was calming in a way, and I could deal with a few snarky comments for the atmosphere here.

  When I first got to London, I was shocked by how rude some people could be. They seemed to snap at people for the smallest things. Not standing to the right on the escalator, talking on the tube, walking too slowly.

  And once they found out I was American, they only seemed to get worse.

  Still, that was only some people, and I also figured that growing up in the midwest made me expect too high a level of kindness from strangers. When I considered everything, I was glad I decided to come to Cambridge for the year. The history courses here were difficult, and I spent a lot of my time trying to keep up with the reading, but they were interesting, and London was an incredible city. I was glad I had decided to travel while I still could. Soon, I’d be stuck in a stuffy law school spending all my time keeping up with less interesting reading.

  I walked through the rows of packed shelves in the library and made my way to the section full of desks, tables, and chairs. I started to edge into the corner desk and froze when I saw that I wasn’t the only one in the library this late at night.

  At the table across from me, absorbed in a book, was one of the most stunning Asian women I’d ever seen. Her jet black hair flowed around her in waves that reached all the way down to her slender waist. She wore a tight burgundy shirt with long sleeves and a few open metal buttons at the top which spread to reveal her perfect cleavage. The black mini skirt she wore was short, and from the side I could almost trace the curve of her ass from her alabaster leg. Most interesting was the brilliant blue of her eyes, edged with tan eyeshadow and thick eyelashes. Her skin was flawless, and her cheeks had the slightest hint of blush to them.

  I could have spent much longer looking at her if I hadn't caught the movement of another girl sitting further back. I glanced over and was surprised to find she was just as beautiful. This one was blonde, I suspected British, and her wavy golden locks just reached the peak of her perky breasts. She wore a loose white v-neck shirt that clung to her sides and fitted dark denim jeans. She had well defined eyebrows, a few shades darker than her hair, an oval face with prominent cheekbones, and full baby pink lips. I couldn’t see from this distance, but I wondered if her eyes were blue, too.

  I sat down and wondered why these two insanely gorgeous women happened to be at the library during break and this late at night. The library had been entirely abandoned during my previous visits this week, and I supposed the Asian girl might be an exchange student like me, but then why wouldn’t she use the week to travel like most of the other foreign students? The blonde girl made even less sense. Most of the British kids I knew had gone to visit their families during Easter break.

  I really needed to study, so I tried to shake the thoughts of the two women from my head and picked a desk to sit at. Even if either of these beauties could be interested in me, it didn’t matter. I hadn’t had time for a girlfriend since I could remember, and even girls I had dated casually were quick to point out that I always prioritize school over them. Maybe I didn’t have the patience, but I couldn’t see the point of spending all my time trying to keep someone around if it was only going to make things harder for me.

  I opened up my British History 1066-1284 textbook and flipped to the correct page. It wasn’t what most of my classmates considered the interesting years, but I had a knack for the early stuff. In fact, it was almost too contemporary for my liking. I was into Rome, Greece, the great battles and civilizations they built before there was any machinery or powerful weapons to do it. It was incredible, and I could never seem to read enough about it. My grandfather had gotten me started with history, though his obsession was the American Civil War.

  I managed to get about halfway through a chapter before my phone lit up and drew my attention away again. I glanced at the screen and saw it was a Whatsapp text message from one of my friends back in America. I had lost most of my general contact with them through my year abroad, but James and I still kept in touch through texts every so often. The five hour time difference made it hard, but I knew when I came back next year they would treat me like I had never even left.

  I opened the message, and it showed a link to a Youtube video with the title “Lizards Attack Japan” complete with a cutesy little emoji of godzilla. I rolled my eyes. James was always sending me the most random stuff. I enjoyed the memes and bullshit videos, but I really needed to get back to studying, so I just typed ‘lol’ and sent it back.

  I decided to put my headphones on and power through the reading. Somehow, even the library’s silence seemed to be distracting now. So, I turned up the volume and felt the pace and rhythm of the music fill my head. After a minute, I saw my phone light up with a reply, but this time I didn’t open it.

  I had almost finished the chapter and was halfway through a Killers album when a scream cut through the music.

  “Huh?” I yanked my earbuds out and looked around to see what was wrong.

  The scream came from the blonde girl across the room. Several of her books had been pushed off the table, and she stared with wide eyes down a row of bookshelves.

  “Oh, my god!” she screamed again as she backed slowly away from the desk.

  Then the thing she was startled by stepped around the bookshelf.

  I almost couldn’t believe my eyes when the creature finally came forward. Standing in the middle of the library, just outside of the shelves, was a strange three foot tall animal that I could almost swear was a fucking dinosaur. It looked like one of those raptors from Jurassic Park, only not as tall, and dark feathers stuck out around its arms and the crest of its head. Its skin was a dull gray mixed with a bright blue, and it looked tough, like an elephant’s hide. Although the lizard was small, its legs and arms appeared muscular and dense. Its tail looked longer than it was tall and waved back and forth for balance. Curled claws extended out from its hands in weird “U” shapes, and I could see they were sharp even from here.

  The creature
growled at the blonde woman, and the movement almost looked like a smile that revealed a row of glittering, and super sharp looking, teeth. The smell of the creature drifted across the library, and it was a smell like old earth, like a dirt cellar that had only been opened after 20 years of disuse.

  “What. The. Fuck.” I gasped.

  This wasn’t really happening right now. I had probably just fallen asleep at the desk reading again and this was some type of weird, horrific dream. That made more sense that there were dinosaurs attacking a library in Cambridge. For a second I almost laughed at myself for believing that it was real, but then the animal’s scent came toward me again, and I realized that this couldn’t be a dream. I had never had a dream where I remembered smelling something, especially something so strange.

  By now, the Asian girl had seen the creature, too, and she screeched as she jumped up from her desk.

  I didn’t know what to do, clearly none of us did, but as I stared at the creature and tried to process what was happening, two more appeared behind it. The two new lizards were slightly smaller than the first one and not as brightly colored, but they looked just as dangerous. Then they formed what the Macedonian military called a phalanx triangle, with the first animal in the lead.

  What the hell was going on? Was this some type of weird practical joke? Was Ashton Kutcher about to jump out and yell ‘Punked’?

  There was no way there could be dinosaurs here. This had to be a joke.

  Then I stared at their teeth and claws again, and yeah, they looked crazy dangerous.

  This was real.

  I heard the dark-haired woman mutter something in another language before switching to English.

  “What is that? What the fuck is that?” She tried to back away from the desk, but she kept her eyes glued to the three creatures, so she backed into one of the other tables.

  “What do I do?” The blonde woman looked up at me and I saw the panic forming in her eyes. “Do something, please. It looks like it’s going to--”

  Her sentence cut off when the lead dinosaur tensed his back legs and jumped onto the table, and she screamed as she took a few stumbling steps backward.

  She seemed frozen in place, though I couldn’t imagine running would help her very much.

  I looked around the room for anything I could use as a weapon, but the best thing I could see was a ceramic bust of Richard III, so I moved over to the pedestal and picked it up.

  “Where are you going?” The asian woman gasped when I turned to grab the statue.

  “Hold on!” I yelled.

  I gripped the statue tight around the king’s neck and felt the smooth matte finish. The weight of it in my hands made me think that it might actually work, so before I could think through any more of my plan, I squared up and lobbed the statue at the raptor on the table. The bust hit the dinosaur full on in the side and sent him skidding onto the floor.

  “Run!” I shouted at the two women as soon as the dinosaur tumbled, and they both startled and sprinted through the desks toward me.

  “Oh my god, what is happening?” the blonde asked as soon as they both reached my desk. “Do you know what those are? Can they hurt us?”

  “I don’t fucking know,” I replied, since I couldn’t think of a good way to answer her questions.

  “What should we do?” The other woman asked.

  “Follow me, we need to move,” I said as I took the hand of the Asian girl and pulled her along behind me through the shelves.

  The other girl followed behind us, and I could see the worry in her expression as I looked behind us for the creatures, but the one I had clobbered with the statue was still on the ground, and the other two were standing over him with their heads tilted sideways like confused dogs. I hoped I’d knocked the leader out, but I doubted I’d done much more than injure it. Even at three feet, the lizards seemed solid, so I guessed the only reason I managed to knock it from the table was the momentum and surprise.

  “Where do you think we should go?” the blue-eyed Asian woman asked.

  “All I know is we need to get the fuck out of here.” My fight-or-flight reflexes had kicked in, and my heart was racing while I struggled to breathe. “Then we need to find weapons or something. The claws on those guys look really sharp.”

  I’d always been a planner, though, so I was already thinking about what to do after we got somewhere safe and acquired weapons. Our best option was to get out of the building and hope that we could get someone-- anyone-- more qualified to handle the situation. It was break, but there were still security guards on campus. They might at least have tasers and direct lines to the local police. Someone else would be able to deal with this, right?

  We raced toward the front of the library, and I kept scanning for anything to use as a weapon. Luckily, I couldn’t see the raptors pursuing us either, and we were nearly at the front desk. Then I slowed as I saw that the old man who harassed me on the way in was nowhere to be seen. Had he really just cut and run without yelling any kind of warning to us? Somehow, that didn’t seem out of character, but as we approached, I could see that wasn’t what had happened.

  Blood coated the desk and dripped down the wooden front. Dark footprints from the dinosaurs marked the blue carpet around the space and led off into the shelves. I heard the blonde girl behind me let out a short cry when she saw it, and the other girl pulled her hand from mine to cover her face.

  I looked around, but I didn’t see the man anywhere. I stepped in toward the desk to inspect it further, but the pretty Asian girl caught my arm, and I looked back to see her shaking her head at me.

  “Don’t, it might be dangerous.” She shook her head, and her blue eyes were wide with terror.

  “He could be hurt. I’ll look quickly.” I stepped away toward the bloodied countertop, stood on my tippy-toes, and then leaned over a bit so that I wasn’t too close to the edge of the desk.

  As I looked closer at the amount of blood, I wondered how much of a chance there really was that he was still alive, and I was proven correct a moment later when I saw the pile of mangled flesh and bones. It didn’t seem like enough to be the body of the man, and I cringed as I realized they must have eaten some of him.

  “We need to get the fuck out of here.” I turned back to the two women and shook my head.

  I could see the blonde woman had started to cry, “I knew it. He’s dead, isn’t he? Those things got him.”

  “Come on,” I said as I grabbed both of their hands. “Get out, fast. Go!”

  But as soon as we turned from the front desk toward the exit doors, I heard a strange noise coming from behind us.

  It was a broken hissing that almost sounded like clicking.

  The sound chilled me to my bones, and the three of us turned back to the shelves. Two of the raptors were now standing in front of them and about fifty feet away. It was the two groupies of the big one I’d hit, and they hissed and clicked as their claws gripped at the air.

  “We have to sprint to the exit doors,” I whispered to the women.

  Before we could take a step, the big one that I'd hit with the statue emerged from a side shelf. The feathers on the crest of his head narrowed back behind him as he lowered himself into a defensive stance, and it looked like he was holding a serious grudge against me for hitting him with the statue.

  I glanced toward the library doors and tried to figure out if we could still make it there. The big raptor wasn’t in our path, but he was about the same distance from them as we were. Even if we made it at the same time, the odds of us escaping didn’t look good. I knew there was a staircase behind us, we would have to make a break for them.

  Chapter 2

  “This way! Run!” I bolted for the stairs as I pulled on both of the girls’ hands.

  We reached the base in a matter of seconds and began Usain Bolting up to the top, but I could hear the raptors hissing and clawing at the stairs right behind us. Once we reached the top, I took a second to look back down at the dinosaurs.
To my relief, their feet were too big to step on to the stairs, so they were kind of claw-crawling up the stairs like angry drunk kittens. Still, they made decent progress and I guessed they would reach us in another ten seconds.

  “What now?” The blonde woman asked. “Which way?”

  “Follow me.” I led the way through the rows of shelves and away from the stairs.

  We got to the back of the second floor, and I saw there was no alternate way down to the first floor’s exit doors. We would have to fight the dinosaurs if we wanted to get out of this alive. I didn’t have any good weapons, but I spotted the grouping of desks and chairs tucked back in the corner.

  I ran over, picked up one of the heavy wooden chairs, grasped it by two of the legs, and swung it toward one of the thick stone walls. The chair shattered on impact and one of the front legs had snapped off the back frame, and I picked up the rough wooden leg and felt the weight of it in my hand. It wasn’t even close to as strong of a weapon as I wanted, but it was the best I could do right now, and I’d have to make it work. The end was splintered but not sharp, so I’d need to rely on pure blunt force.

  I adjusted my grip on the leg just in time to see the three raptors round the bookcase to meet us. They held their triangle formation for an instant before the back right one broke from the group and moved toward us. The other two backed up like they were giving him space to deal with us, and they kind of clicked to each other like they were talking.

  Holy shit. Were these fuckers talking to each other?

  “Stay behind me,” I said to the two girls.

  The smaller raptor moved closer and his head lowered toward the ground while his hind legs coiled. I knew he was about to pounce, so I tried to steel myself against the terror and time my swing just right. As he launched himself into the air, I moved one foot back to anchor my weight and swung down with the thick wooden leg. It struck the raptor square in the skull, and he dropped to the ground at my feet with a yelp of surprise.

  I knew one blow wouldn’t be enough and recoiled for another, and I expected one of the other two raptors to attack me in a second, but I wanted to make sure this one was dead first, so I brought my chair-leg-club down on his neck twice to make sure it was dead.