CHAPTER 172
As Dr. Conners sped towards the hadrosaurs Shelly's words haunted his brain.
"We're all gonna die."
He shook his head and cleared his mind. He was still alive. His daughter was still alive. Dianna and Seth were still alive.
Ahead of him the herd of corythosaurus and parasaurolophus began to stir and take note of the two oncoming vehicles. Many of them raised their heads and trumpeted. A few were already starting to run the other way.
Bryce took the lead and headed straight for the middle of the group. Cutting between the first few of the large herbivores he got them to split apart, making room for the Jeep to enter among the herd.
As Dianna followed Bryce in she could see that the hadrosaurs didn't quite know what to make of the situation.
In some ways they looked like they wanted to charge the Jeep, and in others it appeared that they just wanted to keep running from it. The part that seemed to be stressing them out the most was that the growling CJ7 was directly among them and keeping pace with the herd.
One parasaurolophus eventually flanked in and sideswiped the Jeep from the right. As its ribs and thigh hit the roll bar the CJ tilted up on two wheels and then slammed down. In the back seat Seth and Kyra fell into each other screaming. The parasaurolophus backed away a little but continued to follow them while bellowing over and over.
To the left of the Jeep a pair of corythosaurus kept rushing in and then backing away until one of them finally bumped the vehicle. This corythosaurus practically had its snout down through the roll bar and was trumpeting in Seth and Kyra's ears. Between aggressive vocalizations it rutted at the roll bar with the side of its head, and then it would snap at Seth and Kyra.
"Seth, the taser!" Kyra pointed.
Seth had had enough as well, and he jammed the shock prod into its nose. Rearing back with a bellow the herbivore stumbled and fell over. Another corythosaurus running further back tripped over and fell on top of it.
"Holy crap, Seth!" Kyra yelled while watching the two dinosaurs tumble over each other.
Dr. Conners was riding between two parasaurolophus. Both herbivores kept looking down at him with anxious eyes, though neither of them charged. Ahead of him the herd looked to be avoiding obstacles that were among the tall grass, though he couldn't directly see anything until he noticed a thin plume of steam rising through the long blades. When the realization struck him he cut the handlebars fast to avoid the large pile of dinosaur dung that was just out of sight among the tall grass.
Dianna saw Bryce do this and followed his lead, swerving sharply though she did not know why until the front tire clipped the heap. The CJ7 bounced and plowed through the droppings. Dianna quickly became aware of what Bryce had been avoiding as splatters of crap hit the windshield. Through the dirty glass she was having trouble spotting the columns of steam rising off the dung heaps, so she had to solely rely on following Bryce.
Dr. Conners wove through the mine field of feces with relative ease on his bike, but Dianna found it challenging to keep up. In a mere matter of moments she sideswiped several more piles, causing the Jeep to jolt and rock violently. Without seatbelts Seth and Kyra bounced up and down, knocking against the roll bar and almost flying out of the Jeep many times.
"Hold on!" Dianna yelled into the back seat.
Zipping between a few more columns of steam Dr. Conners felt like they had reached the end of the mine field. The hadrosaurs' movements had smoothed out, and he didn't see any more steam rising from the grass. Through the stampeding herd he could see the slope they needed to ascend in order to get to the air strip ahead on the left. He didn't anticipate the herd was going to head that way, so when the timing was right they were going to have to break away and finish the final leg without any cover.
With a bellow the parasaurolophus to the right of Bryce made a sudden blunder toward him. Bryce swerved, but the only place he had to go was under the belly of the parasaurolophus to the left of him. Fortunately for Dr. Conners this one reared up, leaving him just enough room to pass to the other side of it. As soon as he was there that parasaurolophus blundered at him as well.
"What the hell is going on!" Bryce yelled.
It did not look like the herbivores were directly attacking him, but something was making them stumble his way.
He swerved again and was almost kicked by a corythosaurus on the other side. From a dangerously narrow space between the two hadrosaurs he looked up at the parasaurolophus and caught a glimpse of what was making it so distressed. Gripped to the shoulders of the parasaurolophus was a velociraptor.