(Flipside 02) The Savageside [A] Page 14

Definitely Russian markings. And the operator on comms had not been wrong about the state of the vehicles. Half of them looked like they were being held together by duct tape. Bloom studied them for a couple more minutes then lowered the binoculars and shook his head.

  “That’s not black smoke,” he said. “That’s exhaust.”

  “Exhaust?” Thompson exclaimed. “Give me those.”

  He grabbed the binoculars from Bloom’s hand and put them to his own eyes.

  Bloom was going to protest, but figured it wasn’t worth the trouble. Not with Tyrel Thompson.

  “Impossible,” Thompson said. “Rollers are not designed to handle fossil fuels.”

  “Someone did some retrofitting,” Mike said. “May I look?”

  “Here,” an operator said and handed him a different pair of binoculars.

  “Thanks,” Mike said and took a look. “Yep. That’s diesel exhaust. Burning rough from the color of it.”

  “Diesel?” Tressa asked. “Fossil fuels need fossils to be fuels, Mike. The fossils are still alive Flipside.”

  “Probably biodiesel,” Mike said. “They could have rendered down the fat from dinos and used that. Or used nut or tree oil.”

  “You see any nuts or trees?” Thompson asked.

  “There are plenty close to the coast,” Bloom said. He activated his comm. “Give them a warning shot that says we mean business. About fifty meters in front should do it.”

  Bloom waited and in seconds an RPG was launched from the wall. It sailed out over the landscape and hit about fifty meters in front of the Russian forces, exploding on impact to create a hole about five meters square.

  The Russian rollers slowed then stopped. It was not a graceful, well-oiled stop. A few of the rollers in back accidentally bumped into the rollers in front.

  “Something is off,” Tressa said, having commandeered her own pair of binoculars from a willing operator. “I’ve seen the Russian’s work. They move like their ballet, with perfect precision. That was a drunken hoedown we just saw.”

  “Maybe they’ve had it worse than us,” Mike said.

  “They attacked every single base on this planet,” Bloom said, his voice even but harsh. “I do not care how bad they may have had it.”

  He turned and climbed down from the wall.

  “I want six rollers at the ready!” Bloom ordered over comms. “Two crawlers as backup and every available operator on the wall! They make a move and we will light them up!”

  “Commander!” Tressa called as she climbed down and tried to keep up with Bloom’s determined stride across the base. “Are we attacking?”

  “No, Ms. Thompson, we are not attacking,” Bloom said, the grin on his face filled with violence. “We’re going to parlay. If I don’t like what they have to say, then we’ll talk about an attack. And if we do, we will win. This is the day we’ve been waiting for. The Russians don’t get this base!”

  ***

  The dino call came again, but much closer.

  Cash sat on top of the Russian roller and slowly pivoted his body, his eye to his scope, the night vision function still working. He scanned the area, but saw nothing other than a couple of wingers still picking at the corpses of the fighting teeth. To everyone’s surprise, the teeth fought to the death, none of them surviving longer than a couple hours after their skirmish.

  And the wingers took full advantage, ripping and tearing hunks of flesh free until their claws and maws were jam-packed. Then they lifted off and were gone.

  “Haroooo...”

  Cash frowned. He had no idea what species of dino it was, but he knew pain and distress when he heard it. Elvis had made a similar noise one year when the dino had been diagnosed with kidney stones. Kidney stones and an Ankylosaurus were not a fun combination.

  “Harooooooooooo…”

  “You should go check it out,” Barbara whispered from down below. “It sounds hurt.”

  “I had the same thought,” Cash replied. “The it sounds hurt thought. Not the go check it out thought.”

  “Fine. I’ll go do it,” Barbara said. “Toss me down your flashlight and I’ll find the damn dino.”

  “No,” Cash said. He slung his rifle and climbed off the roller. “I’ll go.”

  “I’m capable of—”

  “I know,” Cash interrupted. “But I’m trained. I have the rifle. And I need to stretch my legs out. Not having powered servos in these exo-braces is killing my calves and thighs.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Barbara said.

  “Fine. But we aren’t using a flashlight, so hang onto my belt.”

  “Why no flashlight?”

  “Messes with my scope. I can see farther without light interfering.”

  “Then lead on, brave dino hunter.”

  She kissed his cheek then tucked a hand into the back of his belt.

  The night truly was nearly pitch black. Even the stars above seemed dim and so far away. Cash gave them a look of reproach. He’d been out in the field before where the stars were so bright it was like he was walking during day. But that wasn’t the case now. The stars refused to give it their all and the night was dreary and muted for it.

  “Harooooooooooo…”

  Cash turned in the direction he thought the call was coming from. He focused through the scope, sweeping his rifle slowly back and forth, back and forth, searching the night for the dino.

  “Harooooo…”

  There. Maybe… Yes. There.

  “Twenty meters dead ahead,” Cash said as he locked onto the shape of the dino, the range-finder in his scope telling him the exact distance.

  “What kind?” Barbara whispered.

  “No idea,” Cash replied.

  He continued walking until they were only a couple meters away. Cash kept his finger close to the trigger, ready to drop the dino if it showed itself to be a threat to them.

  “Stay here,” he said and reached back to unclasp Barbara’s hand.

  “Like fuck I will,” she snapped.

  “Harooooo!” the dino called, lifting its head up then letting it flop back down to the ground.

  They inched closer and closer until they were only a couple steps from the dino.

  “Herbivore,” Cash said. “Sauropod?”

  “Diplodocus,” Barbara said with a little gasp.

  “How do you know for sure?” Cash asked.

  “Haroooooo…”

  The dino tried to raise its head and angle its long neck to see where the voices were coming from, but it was too weak. Its head flopped back into the grass. Wet grass. Dark grass.

  “It was my favorite when I was a kid,” Barbara said. “This is a baby. Not even a juvenile.”

  “Gonna ask again: how do you know that?”

  “Have you not learned anything about Flipside?”

  “I know the major sauropods lived at the end of the Jurassic period, not at the end of the Cretaceous period, which is when Flipside is,” Cash replied. “Not that I know what time we’re in anymore.”

  “This is a Diplodocus,” Barbara insisted. “And it’s a baby because a mature Diplodocus can reach over a hundred feet full grown from snout to tip of tail.”

  “One hundred feet? This guy is over ten feet long,” Cash said. “I think it’s wounded. Looks like blood around it.”

  “Give me the flashlight,” Barbara said.

  “Bad idea.”

  “I don’t care about your scope’s night vision.”

  “No, you turn a light on out here in the open and every nocturnal predator around will come running.”

  “That’s why I have a big, bad operator with a big, bad rifle to protect me.”

  “Sweet Jesus… Fine. Here.”

  Cash handed her his flashlight.

  Barbara took it and switched it on, aiming the light directly on the dino.

  “Harooooooo!” the creature cried and tried to get up again, but it couldn’t. There was something wrong with it.

  “Its back legs are hurt, Tre,”
Barbara said. “That’s why it’s crying out. And that’s not blood. It’s…fluid. From the egg.”

  “The egg?” Cash said. “This is a fucking hatchling? At over ten feet long? You have got to be kidding.”

  “We have to help it,” Barbara said.

  “Barb, where’s the nest?” Cash asked. “Where are the other eggs? The other hatchlings? The mother? I really want to know where the mother is? We would have seen a hundred foot long dino if it’s one hundred fucking feet long. All we saw today were wingers and teeth.”

  “I can’t answer any of your questions, Tre,” Barbara said. “So stop asking. But I can say we are going to help this little guy. Now. I’ll wait here while you go get the others.”

  “While I do what now?”

  “Get the others. Use the axles to make a cart. I’ll wait and see if I can help with the wounds on these legs.”

  Cash stared in the darkness at the shape that was Barbara crouching next to the shape that was a baby dino. A very big baby dino.

  “Tre!” Barbara snapped. “Move ass! You want it to keep calling out? Calling to all those nocturnal predators that it’s sitting here hurt and waiting to get eaten? The sooner we help it, the sooner it will be quiet and not draw teeth our way.”

  “There are ways to silence it that do not include carting it back to camp,” Cash said.

  “I’ll pretend you didn’t fucking say that.”

  “Jesus Christ… Fine. But here.” Cash handed her his rifle. “Don’t tend to it. Just hang out with it and keep sweeping the area with the scope. You see any danger, any at all, and you fire a shot into the air. We’ll be back as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  “Yeah. Sure. Do not wander. Do not go looking for more dinos. Stay right here.”

  “I’m staying right here.”

  “Good.”

  “Good.”

  “Fuck…”

  Cash muttered as he turned and walked off, heading back to camp. He knew Raff was going to laugh his ass off when Cash woke him up.

  ***

  With the storm past, Ivy stepped out of the speed roller, barely able to squeeze through the gap the wall of the rock outcropping allowed for.

  Cosio had done a good job in finding them cover. Both speed rollers were able to back into the space as long as the passenger in the follow roller and the driver in the lead roller didn’t want to open their doors. They had to fold the side mirrors in order to get the two rollers to fit side by side.

  Water dripped from the edge of the outcropping, creating a muddy trough a meter in front of Ivy. She watched the water splatter in the dirt, watched the rivulets form, the puddles merge, the trough grow.

  “We should fill that in,” DeLuca said, joining her. “Or it’s gonna be a bitch to drive through when we leave.”

  “The rollers can handle it,” Ivy said. “They’ve stayed tough so far.”

  “For now,” DeLuca replied. “But we have no idea how long the shielding will last. Yesterday may have been our last good day of driving.”

  “We’ll be fine…” Ivy turned her eyes away from the dripping remnants of the storm. “How’s Nochez?”

  “She’s holding it together,” DeLuca said. “Still dehydrated, but overall, she’s good.”

  “Great,” Ivy said.

  She rubbed at her face and looked out past the dripping water and into the muddy landscape beyond. She paused as movement caught her eye.

  “You seeing that?” Ivy asked.

  “Yeah,” DeLuca said. “Dinos?”

  “Smaller ones,” Ivy said. “But a lot of them.”

  “I’ll grab a rifle,” DeLuca said and hurried off. She clambered up over the hood then windshield then was gone through the speed roller’s top hatch, her head reappearing a few seconds later. “They still there?”

  “Still there,” Ivy said.

  DeLuca eyed through her scope. Ivy waited patiently.

  “I count a dozen, at least,” DeLuca reported. “Maybe a meter in length.”

  “Teeth?”

  “Maybe…? They’re weird looking.”

  “How so?”

  “They’re hind legs stretch out in front when they walk.”

  “Huh? I can’t picture that.”

  Ivy walked back to the roller and squeezed into the cab to grab her rifle. She returned to her observation point, put the rifle to her shoulder, and sighted through the scope.

  “Well, shit. You’re right. They’re like kangaroos when they walk on all fours, but their front legs are longer.”

  “And no pouches,” DeLuca said. “And the whole looking like big lizards instead of boxing rats.”

  “Boxing rats?”

  “My grandma called kangaroos boxing rats. No idea why.”

  “Those are the ones that surrounded us,” Nochez said, climbing out of the other speed roller’s top hatch. “Some are looking this way. They’re going to get curious and come have a look.”

  “Let’s give them a reason to stay away,” Ivy said.

  Ivy put the crosshairs in the mud directly in front of the lead couple of dinos and squeezed the trigger. The report was deafening in the confined space, but Ivy didn’t even flinch. She waited until the mist of mud she’d created with the shot floated off then grunted.

  “That only got their attention more,” Ivy said.

  The dinos were standing up on their haunches, looking directly at the outcropping and the two rollers. They didn’t look alarmed or wary. If anything, they were even more curious.

  “Did they threaten you?” Ivy called back to Nochez.

  “What the fuck was that?” Blumhouse asked, rolling down the roller’s side window.

  “We in a fight?” Morgan shouted from behind him.

  “Just trying to spook some dinos,” Ivy said. “Didn’t work.”

  “I wouldn’t say they threatened us,” Nochez said, answering Ivy’s original question. “But they were aggressively interested. Would they have eaten one of us if given a chance? Maybe. They certainly ate the dead quickly. But I’m not sure if they’re hunters or merely scavengers.”

  “Those aren’t plant-eating teeth in their mouths,” DeLuca said. “Want me to take one out? That might make them think twice about coming closer.”

  “Or could piss them off and start a war,” Ivy said.

  “We can take them,” Blumhouse said. “Little pissers got nothing on us.”

  “Move your ass so I can see,” Morgan shouted.

  “Everyone out of the rollers,” Ivy said. “Grab shovels. We’ll fill in some of this mud then get back on the road.”

  “Rest time is over,” Blumhouse said and disappeared.

  Everyone climbed out of the rollers and joined Ivy. She handed Morgan her rifle and took the folding shovel he held.

  “I’ll dig, you’re on watch,” she said. “The dinos get closer, make them regret it.”

  The dinos weren’t getting any closer. They all stood in a horizontal line, up on their hind legs, and watched as Ivy and her team took the semi-dry dirt from around the rollers and used it to fill in the muddy trough that was getting deeper by the minute.

  By the time the trough was full enough not to be a worry, the sun had almost set. Yet the weird dinos remained. Watching. Waiting.

  “Think maybe we should camp here for the night, boss?” Blumhouse asked.

  “No,” Ivy said. “I want to move. We drive through the night.”

  “No offense, boss, but where to?” Blumhouse asked. “Do we even know which way we’re going?”

  “Out,” Ivy said and shook her head. “Don’t argue, Blumhouse. Just do.”

  “Copy that,” Blumhouse said. “Who’s driving?”

  “You drive the follow roller, DeLuca can drive the lead roller,” Ivy said. “Morgan up top on the follow, Cosio up top on the lead. I’m lead shotgun. Nochez, you’re follow shotgun. You feeling up to it?”

  “I’m an operator,” Nochez said. “I feel better when working.�
��

  “Good,” Ivy said. “Load up and let’s head out.”

  “Uh, boss, there’s nothing to load up,” Blumhouse said and got a very pointed look from Ivy. “Right. Us. Load us.”

  The operators packed into their vehicles, started them up, and drove off from the outcropping.

  The weird dinos watched them go, their heads swiveling in unison on their necks. Then the weird dinos fell in behind the rollers.

  Ivy adjusted her side mirror and stared at the reflection of the dinos on their tails. Surprisingly, they were keeping up with the vehicles fairly well. They weren’t as fast as the speed rollers, so the vehicles’ lead began to stretch, but as they drove on, Ivy could still see them back there, their strange bodies loping along at a steady, consistent pace.

  ***

  “How do you think Elvis is going to react?” Raff asked as he helped Cash struggle with loading the hurt Diplodocus up onto the makeshift cart. “We bring back another dino to Flipside BOP and he may get jealous.”

  “As long as he gets all the food he wants and my father continues to dote on him then I think Elvis will be fine,” Cash replied.

  “Me too,” Raff said.

  “He’s your dino, Raff, you know him best,” Cash said.

  “Just wanted a second opinion.”

  The dino before them whined and moaned as Cash and Raff managed to get it settled on the cart. Or most of it. Even as a baby, the diplodocus was large and its tail hung off by almost a meter.

  “Elvis is his own dino,” Raff said. “You learned that. Does he love me best?” Raff frowned. “Well, no, he loves your father best. And Lakshmi second. And maybe Barbara third.”

  “I might be second,” Barbara said, as she walked next to the cart, her hand stroking the moaning dino’s neck. “He hasn’t seen Lakshmi in a long while.”

  “But I’m fourth, at least, so there,” Raff said triumphantly. “Still ahead of Cash here.”

  “Everyone is ahead of me,” Cash said. The cart hit a bump and the dino cried out loudly. “Careful on your side, Raff.”

  “Brother, it is nearly pitch black out,” Raff complained. “We’re lucky to be going in a straight line back to camp. I got no time to look out for bumps.”

  “See that light? The one we left lit when we left camp?” Cash said. “Head that way.”