CHAPTER 63
When Seth opened his eyes he was gazing up into the canopy. He figured he couldn't have been unconscious that long, because there were still leaves fluttering down from above. His body hurt when he tried to move, so he gave himself another moment to lay and rest. In his head he was collecting his thoughts and piecing back together what had just occurred. Beside him he heard a grumble followed by a moan that was far from human. When he shifted his eyes Seth saw a long neck stretching away from him into the canopy. At the top there hovered a narrow pointed head, like that of a large sea bird. He remembered the quetzalcoatlus and his brief flight aboard its back. The creature was now standing right over him.
"Oh no." Seth tucked his limbs a little and remained quiet. He watched the pterosaur, waiting to see what it would do.
With another moan the beast swaggered to one side and bumped its head on a tree branch. Within the jungle Seth was really getting a gage for just how tall it was. In a full upright position it had to be close to twenty feet high. As the quetzalcoatlus continued to pace in a disoriented stupor Seth felt like he was observing a drunk giraffe. The resemblance was unreal. Everything about its lanky walk and its oversized neck reminded Seth of giraffes he'd seen at the zoo, but its beak and leathery wings made it a whole different animal.
By the way it was tripping and bumping its head Seth figured the pterosaur must have hit the ground pretty hard. He propped himself up and watched the beast for another moment. There were fern beds all around. Seth figured if he could crawl through them quietly he might be able to sneak away unnoticed.
With his elbows he began to crawl and shimmy his hips and legs behind him. He steered himself toward the nearest cluster of bushes and continued forward. He was on the verge of slipping among them when he noticed that he didn't hear the moaning of the pterosaur any longer, nor did he sense it stumbling about.
Seth paused and turned his head. Next to his face he saw a scaly hand with claws and a large wing that extended off the far digit. The quetzalcoatlus had snuck up on him like a silent spider and was now straddled right over his back.
"Crap." Seth got up to run and the pterosaur snatched his ankle in its beak. With a yank it hoisted him upside down and drug him away from the bushes. Seth raked his fingers through the dirt and reached for plants, but he couldn't grab a hold of anything.
The quetzalcoatlus tossed him, and he tumbled onto his face. Seth jumped to his feet as the pterosaur's beak speared at his gut. He dodged back, and the beast pursued with another strike and another after that. Seth kept up for only so long before he tripped over a root and fell on his back. The quetzalcoatlus pinned him with a set of fore claws and reared its head to bite.
Seth thought he was about to be disemboweled by the sharp beak of the pterosaur, but as the spearing mouth came down on him Kyra appeared from the side with a thick club of a branch in her hands. With a scream she walloped the red crested quetzalcoatlus over the cranium and it toppled to the side.
Kyra grabbed Seth's arm and pulled him to his feet. "Come on!"
She led him off into the jungle at a run, guiding them through thicker patches that she hoped the large pterosaurs would not be able to navigate through. Behind them the red quetzalcoatlus flapped to an upright and bellowed through the trees. Seth and Kyra kept running without a look back.