Dinosaur World Read online

  “There is more where that came from, bitches!” I shouted as I turned to face the remaining two, but the others had disappeared. “Where the hell did they go?”

  “They just ran.” The blonde girl shook her head.

  “Shit.” I gripped the club and stuck my head around the side of the shelf, but there was no sign of them there.

  “Do you think they left for good?” the blonde asked.

  “I don’t know,” I replied as I scanned the rest of the room.

  Behind me, the ebony-haired girl stepped forward to look at the crushed raptor on the ground, and I glanced over to her as she reached down to touch one of its curled claws. The talon was nearly the size of the Asian girl’s hand, and she reached out a finger and sighed as she ran it over the top of the beast’s nail.

  Suddenly its head twitched to the side, and its hand spasmed.

  The girl yelled something in another language, jumped back, raised her heavy white Doc Marten boot, and then stomped down on the creature's head. She must have had a powerful kick because I heard bone crack under the force, and blood splashed up onto her shoe.

  “Gayy say!” she spat down at the creature, and then she gasped a few heavy breaths before she glanced at me.

  “You okay?” I asked, and I couldn’t help but think that she looked incredible standing over the raptor with her eyes focused and her chest heaving.

  “Yeah,” she huffed. “Scared me. Is all.”

  “I can’t hear the other two. Can either of you?” I asked as I pulled my eyes off of the beautiful Asian girl and glanced at the equally beautiful blonde.

  “I say we leg it now, before they come back,” The blonde girl said in a posh British accent.

  “No, wait,” I said. “They might be hiding so they can catch us by surprise.”

  “How would you know?” she asked. “And what do you suppose we do, then? We can’t stay here.”

  She was right about that, but I didn’t want to start racing down the rows of shelves, giving them every opportunity to catch us blind.

  “You’re right,” I said. “What’s your name? I’m Jason.”

  I needed the women to trust me enough to go along with the plan I was about to suggest, and though I didn’t have much time to build trust, I thought names were at least a decent place to start.

  “It’s Becka,” she replied.

  I could tell she was about to ask me more questions, but I quickly turned my attention to the Asian woman. “And your name?”

  “Hae-won.” Her voice was sweet and melodic.

  “Hey wan?” I asked. “Is that Korean?”

  “Yes.” She nodded but smiled ever so slightly, and I knew there must have been something funny about the way I said it.

  “Alright, Becka, Hae-won, we need to get out, you’re right, but we can’t just ‘leg it.’ They’ll have too many opportunities to surprise us. We need to move carefully and quietly. I think if we move through the space between the shelves and the back wall over there, we’ll be the most protected. If we stick together and watch each other’s backs, we’ll have a chance of making it out of here, okay?”

  “Yes,” Hea-won said.

  “Okay,” Becka agreed.

  I nodded and motioned for them to follow me to the aisle by the far wall. I kept the chair leg gripped tightly in my fist and the corners pressed into the skin. Every step was cautious, and I kept glancing around for the beasts. Part of me wondered if maybe Becka’s idea was better and we should have just bolted, but I didn’t like our chances of outrunning them, either.

  For just a moment, I pondered the insanity of everything that was happening right now. Somehow I was leading a tactical escape from a pair of, as best I could tell, actual dinosaurs. They definitely weren’t some type of weird attack robot because the blood was way too real for that. Could it be some kind of attack animal, though, like an advanced weapon? If that were the case, I couldn’t see what reason anyone would have for attacking Cambridge’s Downing College.

  I mean, there was a science lab on campus. Did some modern Frankenstein get out of hand? That seemed more believable than a weapon, but still far-fetched. Then again, if someone had told me this morning that I would kill a raptor before midnight, I would have called them insane, and yet that had happened. The truth was that anything was possible, but the reason didn’t make a difference right now. I needed to worry about getting out of here, and then I could start to figure out what the hell was going on.

  The three of us came to the aisle, and I motioned for the two women to wait so I could peer around the corner of the first shelf. There was nothing in that row, and I realized that the way the shelves were aligned, we would be exposing ourselves to every row at some point but at least this way it was one at a time and the raptors would have to pick a specific row to get at us.

  I signalled for the girls to follow as I glanced around the next row, and then I kept my side close to the wall as I moved to the next row.

  So far, so good, but my heart was still hammering in my chest.

  The silence and suspense was agonizing, but I knew silence was good.

  We kept moving and were halfway to the stairs when I heard Becka call out from behind me.

  “Jason!” she shouted. “Above you!”

  “Shit!” I hissed as my gaze narrowed on the shelf above my head where a raptor stared down at me with piercing eyes.

  Then he leaped down at me.

  “Ahhh!” I raised the chair leg before the dinosaur could land on me. The broken tip of it caught on the creature’s claws, and the beast thrashed back and forth as it landed. It was strong, but I was holding onto my makeshift club for dear life, and the feathery asshole couldn’t tear it from my grasp. All I could see were claws and teeth as I stepped back to counter his momentum and keep myself safe from his attacks.

  His nails dug themselves into the wood of the chair leg, and I fought not to drop my only weapon. I twisted to the side and thought he might let go if I slammed him into the wall, but when I forced his body to the side, I saw that we were lined up with a window.

  Then I knew what I needed to do.

  I took a few struggled steps backwards before thrusting the raptor and my arms to the side with all the strength I could gather. To my relief the glass cracked, and the weight of the thrown dinosaur shattered the window. His skin caught on the broken glass, and he let out an ear shattering cry. The creature flailed his arms and legs around like a surprised chicken, slipped from the glass, and plummeted headfirst out the window.

  His cry faded as he fell, and the thud boomed up to the window like a cymbal crash when he hit the ground outside.

  “You got him Jason, he’s dead.” Becka said after she walked to the window and glanced over the edge. She turned to me and smiled slightly, and I realized that her eyes weren’t blue after all, they were the loveliest shade of soft brown.

  “No problem.” I felt myself flush under her gaze, but I was also sucking in a couple large breaths as I recovered from my struggle against the raptor. I was lucky I hadn’t been skipping the gym over term break, or I would have crumbled under its weight.

  “There is still one more,” Hae-won said, and I snapped back to attention.

  “Yeah, let’s keep going.” I nodded.

  We made it as far as one more row before I saw the third and largest raptor fifteen feet down the aisle.

  It looked fucking pissed off, and I suddenly realized that the second raptor had taken my weapon with him in the fall.

  “You two need to head for the stairs.” I kept my eyes trained on the final raptor and tried to figure out how I could face it empty handed. I felt a sinking feeling when I finally realized there was no way.

  “What? No.” Hae-won shook her head.

  “It’s okay, you guys go,” I said. “I can draw it off for a little while.”

  “What, are you a madman?” Becka asked. “That thing will shred you to bits.”

  “Better than all three of us,” I sighed
. “You both make a run for it.”

  “No,” Hae-won whispered. “We’ll--”

  Then the raptor took a step forward, and we were out of time.

  “Go, that way. Run!” I yelled as I pointed up the aisle we’d been traveling on.

  Then the girls hesitated a second before they took off in the direction I told them.

  “Alright, you little bastard,” I said as the raptor’s head lowered and its eyes narrowed. “How about we have a nice sprint?”

  I sprinted down the next row like Scooby and Shaggy. Through the spaces between the rows of books and the next shelf, I saw the raptor spring forward and go to run around the shelves toward me. I heard him skid into the wall behind me, and I felt a wave of relief that he ignored the girls. It might have been crazy, but at least I did something to help them.

  I rounded the next row, grabbed the edge of the shelf, and spun around it like a flagpole so that I could maintain as much speed as possible. I heard the raptor skid and scramble, so I allowed myself a glance back. The dino was farther back than it had been a few moments before, and I guessed that the tight turns must be slowing it down. Maybe if I was far enough away on the next row I could make a run for the stairs? It couldn’t be too far from there and the girls had to have a good head start by now.

  I turned into the next row and by the time it turned into that row, I had about thirty feet on him.

  “Now!” I heard someone call out.

  There was a thundering noise from the direction of the stairs, and I heard the banging grow as it got nearer. I turned my head back and saw the shelves tipping over like massive dominos. I glanced back over my shoulder and saw the raptor freeze in his tracks as he tried to figure out what was happening.

  Then all the shelves finally toppled, and the raptor was crushed as everything collapsed on top of itself in a giant pile of wooden racks and an endless tsunami of books.

  Dust from the thousands of old books and poorly cleaned bookshelves flooded into the air and made the whole scene look something like a war zone. I stifled a sneezing fit when it reached my nose, and then I covered my mouth with my shirt sleeve to keep myself from breathing too much of it in. The wreckage filled the majority of the second level, and I scanned across all the fallen shelves to see Hae-won and Becka standing at the far end of the library by the start of the shelves.

  I raised a hand, gave them a thumbs up, and then glanced back toward the wreckage laying on top of the dino.

  “I’mmmmmm pretty sure he’s dead,” I laughed.

  “That’s the idea,” Becka laughed, and then they both smiled at me as I walked over to them.

  “Thank you, guys.” I grinned.

  Becka smiled back at me and rolled her eyes. “Like we would just leave you to die.”

  “But you wanted to--” Hae-won started.

  “Only for a second,” the blonde explained.

  The relief and adrenaline combined to make me feel amazing, and I nearly laughed out loud at their disagreement. There were three actual dinosaurs that had just attacked us and we managed to fight them off. The feeling was unreal.

  “Do you think that’s all of them?” Hae-won asked.

  “That seemed to be all that was in the library, at least,” I answered as I snapped out of my celebratory thoughts. “I think we need to figure out what’s going on before we go anywhere else.”

  “This is all mental.” Becka said. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Let’s go back downstairs to the study desks,” I said. “You two can collect your things, and we can call the police. Maybe they’ll know something about what’s happening.”

  “Totally,” Hae-won said.

  I looked at the dark haired woman again and raised an eyebrow.

  “I used that correctly, right?” She asked when she caught me looking. “Do not American’s say ‘totally’ all the time?

  “Yeah,” I laughed. “You did it right.”

  “Cool,” she cooed.

  Her small, excited smile was insanely cute, and for a few seconds I forgot why we were in this situation.

  We all headed down the staircase together. I could see the claw marks in the carpet where the raptors had clambered up the stairs. Between that and all the toppled shelves, it would be a long time before they got this library back to normal. I only hoped they wouldn’t find a way to stick us with a bill for the property damage.

  The three of us headed through the lower shelves, careful not to look toward the front desk as we passed it. None of us needed a reminder of what could have happened.

  We reached the spot where we had been studying only about an hour ago. Some books were scattered and the bust was shattered by the wall, but other than that there was almost no clue as to what had happened here. I packed the stuff from my desk into my backpack, grabbed my phone, and moved over to one of the larger tables so we could all sit together.

  “So, do I call 9-1-1?” I asked.

  Becka and Hae-won had gathered their things together and sat at the table on either side of me.

  “It’s 9-9-9,” Becka corrected as she rolled her eyes. “Yank.”

  “Right, yeah.” I stared down at the phone. “And what do I tell them? They might think I’m crazy if I say dinosaurs attacked us.”

  “Just say some kind of large animal attacked,” Becka said. “And say that there’s a man who died. They have to come then.”

  “Do you really think they were dinosaurs?” Hae-won asked.

  “Honestly, I have no clue what they are,” I replied. “They looked like dinosaurs to me, but, like I said, it sounds crazy.”

  “Maybe some bloody idiot decided to try a Jurassic park experiment,” Becka suggested. “Who knows? We’ll let the cops figure it out.”

  I nodded and took a deep breath before opening my phone and dialing the British emergency number. The line rang and I started running through how to start in my head. I had gotten a decent first sentence when the ringing stopped.

  “We’re sorry,” An automated voice on the other side said. “All our emergency lines are currently busy. Please hang up and try again.”

  The call ended and the two women stared at me.

  “What happened?” Hae-won asked.

  Instead of answering, I called the number again. The automated message started to play again and I hit the speaker button so they could both hear.

  “...all our emergency lines are currently busy. Please hang up and try again.”

  “Typical,” Becka scoffed. “No fucking bobbies around when you fucking need them.”

  I tried again, but the message played back the same way.

  “What should we do now?” I asked Becka. “Is there another number for the local police?”

  “Let me see,” Becka replied and pulled out her phone.

  “We could wait here,” Hae-won suggested. “Maybe they’ll answer if we wait.”

  “Maybe,” I muttered, but I wasn’t convinced. There had to be some kind of reason for them not to be picking up the emergency line.

  And it could have been because we weren’t the only people to encounter angry dinosaurs.

  “Hey, Jason,” Becka said in a gentle voice. “I don’t think they’re going to be answering any time soon.”

  I turned to see what she was looking at and she held her phone screen up for me. It was open to the web browser on a page from The Telegraph's website and the headline for the article read ‘London Under Attack.’ Underneath there were a few photographs showing creatures loose on the city streets looking very similar to the ones we had just fought.

  Somehow, dinosaurs were back from extinction.

  Chapter 3

  I grabbed the phone from Becka’s hand and started reading the article.

  “Those things are everywhere?” Hae-won asked as she leaned over my shoulder to look at the phone.

  “Shit, looks like it,” I said as I glanced up at the Asian girl. Both she and Becka both looked shaken, and I couldn’t say I didn’t share
their concern. It was one thing if this was a freak incident with a couple of strange creatures, but the more I read, the more I realized that if this was happening on the scale they were saying, there must be hundreds of those blood-thirsty beasts.

  The thought was terrifying.

  “It says they’re all over the city,” I summarized. “There might be hundreds and the police and emergency services are doing their best, but people have already been killed.”

  “What do we do now?” Becka asked. “Should we just wait here and hope they sort it?”

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” I said. “They already got in here once. We need to be somewhere safer.”

  “Where exactly is safer?” the British girl asked. “We can’t exactly travel anywhere.”

  “Yes, it might be dangerous outside,” Hae-won sighed.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean, but the library is too big,” I replied. “The dinosaurs managed to sneak up on us once and we didn’t hear them coming at all. It would take a lot of material to barricade the front doors, we don’t have the keys to lock them, and beside that there are way too many windows.”

  “We could just use the top level,” Becka suggested. “We could use shelves to barricade the stairs.”

  “Then what happens if something gets into the lower level,” I countered. “We’ll be cornered with no food and no way down. Besides, the window on that floor is broken and it’s bound to start getting cold in here.”

  The girls nodded, but they didn’t suggest a better option and I was still trying to think of one.

  “Do you think there could be others nearby?” Hae-won asked. “More students who stayed over Easter break like us?”

  “I think we need to at least have a look around,” I said. “We can see if there are any immediate threats and try to get anyone else on campus to join us. That way we can work together. If there’s anything too close, we can always come back here and figure out a new strategy.”