Dinosaur World 7 Page 2

  The alien smiled as she looked up at the treetops and kept steadily taking us down toward the ground, and a far off roar echoed through the jungle. The sound snapped me out of my technology-induced trance, and I knew it was almost time to explore.

  “Okay,” I said as I slowly lowered the eyewear. “We’ve seen there’s shit loads of dinos here, so it goes without saying we need to be careful. The three of us who can see should stay on the outside of the group. Becka and Kat, stick to the middle.”

  “Make sure to check above us, too.” Kat nodded. “Who knows what kind of dino parrots are in here.”

  “What the fuck is a dino parrot?” Becka snorted. “Aren’t modern birds just dinosaurs anyway?”

  “I guess.” Kat shrugged. “I don’t know, I’m tired, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s get-”

  Before I could finish, there was a deafening roar of gunfire, and Adhara slammed her hand down on the controls in the blink of an eye. A split second later, the forcefield zapped on, and we landed on the ground with a thump.

  It sounded like a dozen assault rifles were going full bore on our asses, and as my heartrate jacked up, I tried to remember we were safe under the cover of the forcefield.

  I sprang toward the front window with my sharp gun in hand, and the girls hurried over to join me.

  The hazy shield that wrapped around the ship was barely visible from the inside, but as bullets flew toward us, I could see them bounce off the forcefield and ricochet back into the trees.

  There were shouts from all around the ship as more shots were fired, and I slid on my goggles to get a better look.

  It was clear we were not dealing with some ragtag gang like the ones we’d encountered in England.

  The fast moving group of men were all dressed in black, and even from a distance, I could see the muscle definition in their arms. Some of the men had scarves pulled up over the bottom of their faces, and others had tight black hats down over their eyebrows.

  The weapons in their hands were slick, black rifles I didn’t recognize the make of, but they looked expensive as hell, and as the group quickly formed a circle around the ship, one man yelled in Korean to make the gunfire halt on the spot.

  I guessed they’d realized their bullets were no use, but not one of them backed away from the spacecraft.

  “Holy shit!” Becka whimpered as we stared out at the men.

  “Uh, Hae-won,” I said as calmly as possible. “Is this your family?”

  “No fucking way,” Kat said at once, and she turned to the Korean beauty.

  Hae-won leaned over the control panel as she stared out into the darkness with her goggles on, and she slowly turned her head like she was scanning every half-covered face.

  “Min-jun!” she suddenly gasped.

  “No fucking way,” Kat scoffed again. “You really know one of these guys?”

  “They will not shoot us!” Hae-won said and bolted toward the exit before any of us could grab her.

  “Hae-won, stop!” I yelled as I dove after her, but she’d already slammed the exit button, and the ship opened into the Korean night.

  “Min-jun!” she screamed through the forcefield, and the shouting of the men suddenly stopped.

  Then Hae-won screamed something in Korean, and I glanced back at the other girls to find them wide-eyed with their weapons raised at the ready.

  “Adhara, stay inside,” I whispered. “We don’t know who these people are, and you’re… well, you’re an alien.”

  The lilac alien looked unsure, but she nodded as she gripped her sharp gun.

  “Be safe,” she murmured.

  “We will,” I promised.

  “Min-jun!” Hae-won cried out again when no one replied to her calls, and her voice cracked slightly as she spoke.

  “Hae-won?” Came a deep, male voice from outside, and my Korean lover leapt out through the forcefield.

  I jumped through behind her and was hit with the fresh air of the night, and it was warm, but nothing too clammy or hot. There was a very mild breeze which rustled the jungle trees around us, and the moon shone brightly above the forest as the clouds rolled lazily across the sky.

  Hae-won raced around the side of the ship, and I ran after her despite every instinct telling me to keep my eye on the armed men. The men had surrounded the ship in a neat circle, and they held their fingers on the triggers of their assault rifles as they tracked my path until I skidded to a halt at the front of the spacecraft. The girls caught up with me a split second later, and Kat and I stared down the nearest man as he shifted his aim toward her.

  My gaze was mostly on Hae-won by now, though.

  My Korean lover was laughing as she clung to the neck of the tallest man in the group, and his muscles bulged out of his black shirt as he swung her from side to side and chuckled in a deep, bassy timbre. Then the pair started to talk in rapid Korean, and I decided we were probably okay where we were.

  I tried to give a casual wave to one of the armed men beside us, but I was met with a silent glare as he kept his gun pointed at us.

  “This isn’t exactly the welcome home party I was expecting,” Becka whispered.

  “We did just land a spacecraft in the jungle,” Kat said out of the corner of her mouth. “They’ve got every right to be freaked out.”

  “Don’t mention anything alien,” I whispered. “I know this is her family, but an actual alien is kind of a lot to spring on them as an opening conversation.”

  “Sure,” Kat hissed. “But I think they might work it out by themselves on account of the alien weapons we’re holding or the fucking spaceship we flew in on.”

  Becka snorted before she could stop herself, but then we all fell silent.

  There was enough moonlight to see some of the men around us, but I couldn’t make out anything much further than the nearby trees. I kept my goggles lowered, since I didn’t want to make our group seem any stranger by putting on what looked like sunglasses in the middle of the night.

  I watched as the tall man finally lowered Hae-won back to the ground, and he held her hands as they continued to talk in Korean.

  By Hae-won’s tearful tone, and his crazy deep voice, I guessed the guy was one of her brothers.

  He sounded too young to be her dad, but I couldn’t see his face properly since a black tube scarf was covering his mouth and nose. All I could see were his dark eyes and short, ebony hair, and his arm muscles bulged beneath his black sweater in a way that gave me the impression he was not a guy to fuck with.

  “He looks hench,” Becka whispered. “I bet all her brothers are.”

  “Do you think one of them is her dad?” Kat asked as she looked around the circle.

  “I don’t think so,” I replied. “She would have gone right to him, and that guy looks way too young.”

  “Jason!” Hae-won called as she looked over her shoulder. “Becka, Kat, come.”

  I glanced at the girls hesitantly before I nodded and swung my sharp gun over my back, and then I strode over as confidently as I could with this many fucking guns pointed at me.

  “This is my eldest brother,” Hae-won said as tears fell from her electric-blue eyes. “This is Min-jun.”

  “It’s great to meet you,” I said as I looked into the tall Korean’s eyes. “I’m Jason.”

  I held out my hand out of habit and then quickly turned it into a bow as I remembered where we were. It wasn’t my smoothest maneuver, but I figured I pulled it off alright.

  Min-jun studied my face carefully while his half-covered expression didn’t change, and the bow he gave me in return was so small, I wondered if he’d just twitched.

  “Kay, so… I’m Becka,” my blonde lover announced nervously, and she offered an even tinier bow. “Hi.”

  “Kat,” the Corporal said last, and her tone was as level as I’d expect any soldier to sound under pressure.

  “Your sister is an incredible fighter,” I told the tall Korean. “I’m guessing she learned from the
best.”

  “She is a good student,” Min-jun said, and his voice was even more impressively deep from this close.

  Then a sudden chain of whispers started up around us, and the armed men quickly turned to watch as another man silently entered the circle nearby.

  In the moonlight, I could tell he was about as tall as me, and his face was chiseled with sharp angles while small scars covered his neck. I guessed he was maybe in his fifties, but his dark stubble made it harder to tell, and he had one of the rifles swung over his arm while a dagger hung from his belt. Like Min-jun, his muscles were clearly defined, but his presence seemed to demand attention from everyone in the area.

  He kept his almost-black eyes on Hae-won, and I knew he had to be her father without needing any introduction.

  If I’d ever seen a man who suited the title of Underground King, it was this guy.

  My palms started to sweat a bit as I made sure my posture was sturdy as hell.

  Then the man suddenly barked something in Korean, and his voice was low and gravelly like an older, smoker version of Min-Jun. Within a second, every man around us lowered their weapons and bowed to him, and I did the same so we wouldn’t start out on the wrong foot already.

  “Appa,” Hae-won whispered, and the older man closed the distance between himself and the Korean beauty in four, sturdy strides.

  He growled something in their native tongue as he cradled Hae-won against his chest, and he stroked her hair as she started to softly sob. The pair stood for a moment in a tight hug, and nobody spoke as the breeze made Hae-won’s hair dance in the moonlight. Then the man whispered something to her, and Hae-won giggled before she pulled away to face him.

  I was already mentally rehearsing what I would say to him, but my concern about the alien subject kept taking over my thought process.

  How was I going to tell this group of highly-trained, armed, gangsters about the pretty alien friend we’d stashed in the spaceship?

  Getting the small town locals at Ravenscar to trust Adhara had been hard enough, but I had a feeling Hae-won’s family would be a tougher nut to crack.

  Hae-won started speaking quickly in Korean, and the older man’s eyes never left her face until I heard my name thrown into a sentence. Then the man’s dark eyes darted over to me, and I tried to give a friendly smile as he looked me up and down with no expression.

  Fuck, he looked even more intimidating than Min-Jun with his somewhat lifeless stare.

  After a few anxious moments passed, he finally looked back down at Hae-won and quietly spoke as he dried her eyes for her. Then the stone-faced Korean headed straight for me.

  My heartbeat quickened, and my palms started to sweat even more. I tried to subtly wipe them on my pants in case he shook my hand, and I stood as tall as I could without drawing any attention to the movement.

  “You are Jason?” the Korean growled quietly.

  “Yes, sir,” I replied, and I gave a quick bow. “Jason Mattley, it’s an honor to meet you.”

  The man studied me for a minute, and he looked over at the spaceship with a frown.

  “I am Kwan Gim,” he said as his eyes flicked back to me. “This may not be my real name, but it is the one you will call me.”

  “Yes, sir,” I promptly agreed, and I decided this man was an absolute badass.

  He looked at Becka and Kat next, and he offered them each a respectful bow as they stepped forward.

  “Hi, Mr. Gim,” Becka said with a small wave and a sweet smile. “I’m Becka, and this is Kat. Your daughter is pretty amazing, we love her, and we’re her best friends so… we come in peace, and all that.”

  “Hm,” Kwan replied as he looked between the two blondes. “My daughter says you have been a group from the start. Traveled together. Fought together.”

  “We have.” I nodded. “I guess we have a lot to tell you, we came--”

  I was interrupted as two young and brawny Korean men hurtled into the circle and practically jumped onto Hae-won.

  They howled with laughter as they grabbed her into a group hug, and the shorter one gave her a kiss on the cheek as she grinned and seemed to be struggling to breathe.

  “More brothers?” Kat asked, and Kwan nodded with obvious pride.

  “My youngest sons. Sun-hee and Tae.”

  I grinned as Hae-won chattered in Korean to her siblings while they nearly crushed her in muscley hugs, and when they finally let up, she clung onto both their hands as she spoke enthusiastically and gestured over to me.

  When they glanced over, I saw the young men looked less intimidating than their older sibling. Their faces were rounder, but still incredibly good looking, and they grinned from ear to ear as they spoke with their little sister. The shorter of the two men pointed to the spacecraft and snorted as Hae-won explained something to them, and I wished I knew what they were all saying to each other.

  Still, I waited patiently beside Kwan Gim and maintained an annoying straight posture, but as the minutes ticked passed, I was tempted to put my night vision goggles back on to make sure the area was still clear. There had been more rustling noises in the jungle trees in the last minute, and I didn’t think it could only be the wind.

  After conducting our thermal scan, I knew this jungle was infested with dinosaurs of all sizes, and it wouldn’t be long until something came to investigate all this noise.

  I didn’t want to be rude, though, so I just hovered my hand over the strap of my sharp gun and remained ready to pull it to my front at a moment’s notice.

  “Is that a sword?” Kwan said as he looked down at my belt, and I grinned as I saw my chance to impress him.

  “It is.” I nodded. “If you hit the button on the hilt, then the blade appears. It’s red hot and can cut through basically anything.”

  “These are not military weapons,” he said in a gravelly and intimidating voice. “Unless they are from secret American military?”

  I didn’t know what to say since it didn’t feel like the right time to bring up the whole alien invasion story. This group might have been under the impression the ship was some secret project flown in from the States, and as I stared into the abyss of his cold eyes, I decided it’d probably be way safer to let him think that for the time being.

  Hae-won seemed to notice I was struggling under her father’s sharp gaze, and she hurried over to me with her brothers in tow.

  “I feel so happy,” the Korean beauty gasped, and she smiled up at me.

  “I’m glad,” I said in earnest.

  “This is Sun-hee and Tae,” the Korean beauty explained, and she gestured to the shorter one when she introduced Sun-hee, so Tae was the one who was taller by a good few inches.

  The men had similar facial structures to Hae-won, and both shared a greenish tint to their dark eyes. They bowed to me, and I followed suit before they straightened up and gestured to the spaceship.

  “I think you will have many stories for us,” Sun-hee said, and I laughed a bit.

  “You could say that,” I agreed. “You must be relieved to have your little sister back.”

  “We have missed her every day,” Tae replied. “But she tells us you are the reason she has returned. She says she could not have managed without your help.”

  I smiled and shrugged, but then I noticed Kwan and Min-jun’s steely expressions hadn’t softened by even a centimeter. If anything, they’d somehow hardened even more.

  “Ladies,” Tae said as he bowed to Kat and Becka. “We have also heard about your bravery. You must be tired.”

  “Knackered.” Becka nodded, and she glanced at the circle of armed men. “So, I take it these guys are with you?”

  “They are my father’s men,” Sun-hee laughed. “You will grow to realize he is a well-respected man around here. Yes, Appa?”

  Kwan raised an eyebrow but stayed silent, and I wondered if Hae-won was going to explain the spaceship so Adhara could come out.

  I knew she must be watching us all through the ship’s window, and while
I was grateful she’d obeyed my order to remain hidden, I did feel bad about stashing her away like this. Adhara was part of our crew now, or maybe we were part of hers, but the sooner we could clear things up where our alien friend was concerned, the more relaxed I’d feel.

  I didn’t even get a chance to send Hae-won any silent hints, though, because an eerie clicking sound started coming from the depths of the jungle.

  At first I thought I’d imagined it, but then every man in the circle swung around with their guns raised in perfect unison, and Kwan grabbed his daughter by the shoulders and pulled her behind his muscular frame as he glared out into the night.

  I swung my sharp gun from over my shoulder, and the girls did the same while we all listened to the strange clicking.

  It echoed through the trees more rapidly by the second, and I couldn’t work out which direction it was even coming from. It seemed to be everywhere at once, and the fact that all the Koreans stayed in a circle with guns directed at the trees assured me this might be the case.

  “Dinosaurs?” I whispered, and Sun-hee nodded.

  “They are nothing like I’d ever imagined of dinosaurs,” the youngest brother hissed, and the circle of men slowly started to step forward. “They are called therizinosaurus, and they look like something from a nightmare.”

  I glanced at the girls as the clicking grew louder, but then a blood-curdling howl echoed around the jungle, and we all jumped about a foot. I’d never heard any noises like these before, and it made my skin crawl as the clicks rang out all around us.

  A whole new species of dino had us surrounded in the jungle, and it sounded like an entire herd had come out to play tonight.

  Chapter 2

  “I’ve never heard of a therizinosaurus,” I hissed as I gripped my gun at the ready. “Are they carnivorous?”

  “Herbivores,” Sun-hee whispered. “That makes it even creepier, in my opinion. They have been prowling the base for weeks, and based on what I’ve read about them, these beasts are much faster and agile than they should be.”

  “Where is the base?” I asked as I looked around, but I could only see dense trees and bushes around the clearing where the ship was.