CHAPTER 39
"Hey, do you guys see that?" Seth was pointing past the triceratops herd to a place further along the road.
As all their heads turned, they each saw the same thing. A dark figure stood in the middle of the roadway. It was roughly the height of a man but not shaped like one at all. The creature was rigid and stared with piercing eyes.
Another one walked out on the road to join the first. It bobbed its head like a bird when taking a step. Seth noticed that in fact most of their features and mannerisms were bird-like. Their bodies were covered in black feathers. Their ankles and feet were scaly, with hooked talons on the toes.
A third figure appeared now. There was a purring on the air, but not like a cat. It was unlike anything Seth had ever heard. The sound was not friendly and calming but aggressive and unsettling. The more Seth examined the creatures, the more he recognized them to be the same as the dinosaur that was trapped under the jeep. These were velociraptors.
"Get on the four-wheeler, Seth." Kyra spoke quiet and stern.
Seth did as he was told and avoided making any sudden moves. It didn't seem to matter though. As soon as he was on the ATV the raptors screamed and charged. There was a moment where no one seemed to know how to react. They were all stunned with incomprehensible thoughts about what was actually happening. They stared as the triceratops herd rose their heads and roared. They watched as the herbivores began to stampede in their direction.
Kyra was the first to snap out of the trance. "Come on!" she shouted. The motor on her four-wheeler screamed to life, and she sped off down the dirt road.
Shelly and Dallas tore after her and followed close. Seth held on tight as they accelerated. While crouched against Kyra's back he looked over his shoulder. All six triceratops were stomping behind them. What he saw was a stampeding wall of rutting horns and quaking tonnage. He looked forward again. To their left, the tall metal posts of the electric fence whipped past. To their right, the jungle flew by in a blur. As the wind cut through Seth's hair, he began to sense that something wasn't right. When he thought about it, the velociraptor's could have attacked them from any point along the tree line. Why did they choose to drive the herd from such a distance?
"Kyra, we need to get off this road." he hollered over the screaming four-wheeler motor.
"What?"
He couldn't tell if she was disagreeing with him or if she hadn't understood at all. "We need to get off this road!"
"Why?"
"Because they're corralling us." Seth could tell by the look on her face that she didn't get it, and he didn't know how else to make her understand. In a panic he grabbed for the handlebars.
"Seth, stop it!" Kyra shouldered him away.
"We need to get off this road now! There's more of them coming!" His finger shot forward as he screamed in her ear, but his warnings were already in vain.
A dark figure shot out of the jungle at their right. Its black feathers prickled on end. Its teeth and claws cut through the air. No doubt, it was a velociraptor. The carnivore sliced onto the road, its stiff, slender tail flexing to help direct it. On swift feet it carved a path to Kyra and Seth, and there was nothing to stand in its way. With a bound it sprang to the air, and they coward away. Their eyes flinched, and their muscles locked. Through squinted vision Seth saw the raptor's open maw at his face. Its teeth, stringy with saliva, were flashing at his brow, and then the carnivore vanished. There was a scream of engine, and two knobby rubber tires spun past Seth like a pair of buzzsaws.
When the events all came together in his head, he saw Dallas popping a wheelie and plowing the raptor over. With a shudder and a bounce, he saw Dallas and his four-wheeler rumble over the body of the velociraptor. Seth whipped his head back and watched the dinosaur convulse in the middle of the road with its neck turned crooked. A few moments later it was trampled by the stampeding triceratops.
Ahead, the road came to an abrupt fork. Out of the jungle at its crook, two more velociraptors emerged. They sprinted forward and jumped at the four-wheelers. To avoid them, Kyra cut a sharp left at the fork, and Shelly and Dallas went right.
"Seth, are they still behind us?" Kyra shouted.
Seth snapped his head around and saw that one of the raptors had circled to pursue them. It shrieked with open jaws as it sprinted up the road. The hunter was clearly gaining on them.
"Yes. Definitely," he shouted back. "Can't this thing go any faster?"
"I'm trying!"
The road had gotten rough and muddy. Large tire ruts made it difficult to maintain speed. Throughout the jungle around them there was a terrible crashing as the stampeding triceratops moved among the trees. To the velociraptor's right, one of the horned herbivores stumbled out into the road and skewered the predator as it was running by.
Seth smacked his hands together. "Yes!" He shook Kyra's shoulders. "Hey, I think we're ok. I don't think they're following us any more."
Kyra sounded like she was on the verge of hyperventilating. "We're not ok, Seth. That other fork in the road was the one we wanted. It leads back to the lava tube," she started to shout. "I have no idea where we're going right now!"
Seth tried to stay calm, but there was a growing tension in him. "Maybe we can turn-"
She cut him off. "We can't turn back, Seth! You saw how many of those things were back there."
Throughout the jungle Seth heard the rough barking of more velociraptors. He knew she was right. Along the roadway behind them he sighted two darting figures weaving amongst the foliage. "Just keep going! We've gotta find something."