Dinosaur Wars: Earthfall

  ***

  “Great dinner.” Chase leaned back from the dinning room table and patted an over-full belly. “I’d have a second steak if our prisoner—I mean, Gar—hadn’t eaten the rest.”

  Dr. Ogilvey rose, daubing a napkin at his mouth. “Kit,” he said, “you are to be commended for your skill with a skillet, potato masher and gravy boat. I’ve rarely had so fine a meal. But now I must get back to Gar.”

  While Chase was helping her clear the dishes Kit said, “I want to go look for the horses before it gets dark. Will you come with me?”

  “Sure,” Chase agreed. “I hope you don’t mind if I bring my rifle along.”

  “I’ll bring mine too.”

  After the dishes were put away, they went out the back door into the early evening twilight carrying rifles. With the peak of Sandstone Mountain silhouetted in the afterglow and the ranch seemingly at peace, Kit let herself into the garden through the gate in the white picket fence, and began gathering a bouquet of mixed flowers. Not quite sure what she was up to, Chase kept an eye on the landscape around them but spotted nothing threatening. He let his gaze be drawn to the garden’s profusion of early summer blooms and to the prettiest thing in the garden, Kit Daniels. Holding an armload of scarlet columbine, long-stem daisies and snapdragons, she was as enchanting as any girl he had ever seen.

  “You plan on giving a peace offering to a dinosaur?” he quipped.

  Looking serious, she shook her head. “There’s something I want to do while we’re out. It’ll just take a minute.”

  She went out through the gate and he followed her for a hundred yards to a low knoll with a cluster of headstones. The tall grass had been trimmed. She put the bouquet in front of a granite marker engraved with the name “Evelyn Daniels.” She lowered her head and paused a moment in thought.

  Chase pulled the bill of his cap low over his eyes and scanned the hills again. Still no sign of trouble. After a moment he asked, “Is that your mother?”

  Kit nodded. “She died when I was only eight. Daddy brings her flowers at least once a week in the summertime, but he’s—”

  Chase could see her face was strained. A lot had happened to her since he had met her one day ago. Another headstone caught his eye. He read the inscription aloud. “ ‘Charlie Summermoon. Born 1898. Died 1958.’ A relative?”

  “Yeah.” She seemed cheered a little by his interest. “My great-great-grandfather. He was half Blackfoot Indian. His daughter married my great grandfather Arthur Daniels. They’re over there.” She pointed to a matched pair of headstones on the far side of the group. “There’s four generations of Daniels buried here.”

  “So you’re a lot like the pteronychus,” Chase observed.

  “How do you figure?”

  “Their ancestors are buried on this ranch, too.”

  “I guess so, then.” She bent to arrange the flowers by her mother’s headstone. “Where are your folks, Chase?”

  “They live in Seattle. At least I hope they’re still alive.”

  “I hope so too.” When Kit got the flowers arranged to her satisfaction she pointed to a taller grassy hill overlooking the ranch compound. “We might be able to see Lucky from up there.”

  She led the way up a narrow animal path that meandered to the top of the hill. Halfway up, they paused and listened to a sound echoing off the cliffs of Sandstone Mountain. It was a wolf howl.

  “Sounds like your pet project is still alive,” Kit said, flashing him a smile.

  “It’s good to hear they’re okay,” Chase said. They howl like that when they’re hunting.” A thought made him chuckle. “Maybe they’re after a dinosaur. That would even the score a little.”

  The evening was warm and calm. The almost-quarter moon had nearly set. Although the beam still flickered, it seemed a little less threatening coming through the rosy evening light. On the flat hilltop was a large lichen-covered boulder. Kit propped her rifle against it and climbed up to sit with her arms wrapped around her knees. Chase sat beside her.

  “This was my favorite getaway when I was a kid,” she explained. “It’s got a panoramic view of the homestead. I must have come up here a thousand times.”

  Looking out over the ranch’s little valley, they saw the parasaurolophus family clustered together at the end of the pasture farthest from the house, just inside a section of the equestrian fence with the top rail knocked off. Kit touched Chase’s arm and pointed to a spot near them.

  “Look!” she cried happily. “There’s Lucky, Buck, and Nelda.”

  The horses and cow were grazing on green pasture grass not far from the duckbill family, seemingly at ease near the colossal creatures.

  “Whew!” Kit sighed in relief. “I’m glad to see they’re all getting along together.”

  Chase spotted something. “Look at the mother parasaurolophus. Is she on a nest?” The female squatted at the center of a wide mound of dirt dug out of the pasture soil. Her body covered a central crater-shaped hole. The male squatted on his haunches near her, keeping an eye on their surroundings with his head held high.

  “I wonder if there are any eggs in that nest?” Kit mused.

  “Let’s go check,” Chase wisecracked. “Rufus won’t mind, will he?”

  Kit looked puzzled. “Rufus? Who’s that?”

  “That’s the name you gave the big one, right? I heard you call him that.”

  “Oh, rufous,” said Kit. “Dr. O said the Latin word for his red color is rufous, so I called him rufous.

  “I like it,” said Chase. “Rufus, the para-sauro-LOO-phus.”

  “LAH-phus,” Kit corrected. “It’s pronounced para-sauro-LAH-phus.”

  “I say LOO-phus, and you say LAH-phus,” Chase teased. “You don’t want to call him RAH-fus do you?”

  The big animal looked up the hill in their direction without apparent concern. Kit said, “No, Rufus is just fine. And let’s call her Henrietta. She looks like a mother hen on that nest.”

  “Rufus and Henrietta,” said Chase. “Sounds good. And the little ones?” They watched the three yearling duckbills, which seemed in constant motion, cavorting in the pasture near their parents. “How about Huey, Louie and Dufus?”

  She laughed the first happy, warm laugh he’d heard from her in a long time. As she did, he turned to look her fully in the face. He noticed again, as he had noticed when he met her, how beautifully her eyes sparkled when she smiled. Dangerous eyes, he thought. A guy could get his heart all tangled up.

  Noticing his silence, she turned to him and they looked into each other’s eyes for a long moment. Then an unfamiliar sound from the pasture broke the spell. Kit glanced down and scowled slightly. “Now, what’s this?”

  A group of a dozen smaller animals moved out of the woods beyond the far end of the pasture.

  “Bighorn sheep?” Chase suggested. “They’re about the right size, right buff color, and the bleating noise they’re making sounds right.”

  “But everything else is wrong,” Kit observed. “I don’t think they’re sheep.”

  The animals trotted toward the pasture fence on two legs, not four, with long reptilian tails stretched out behind them. They vaulted the fence easily and trotted into the middle of the pasture as a group with their arms hanging down in front of them dinosaur-style.

  “You’re the dinosaur expert,” said Chase. “What are they?”

  She looked the animals over carefully. “They’re a type of pachycephalosaur. Boneheaded dinosaurs.”

  The crowns of their heads were bony domes rimmed on the sides and rear with bristling spikes. Though much smaller than Rufus and his duckbill family, the newcomers looked at least as formidable as bighorn sheep.

  Kit was still working on a name. “I think they may be stygimolochs.”

  “Stygi-who?” Chase laughed. “Now that’s a name. They look like dino-sheep. Kind of woolly, too.” Though it was hard to tell at a distance, the buff-colored bodies of the animals seemed covered in thick curly fur of some kind.
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  “Hey!” Kit exclaimed. “Now I see what chased them out of the woods.” A black-and-white animal streaked in under the fence and charged after the sheep-dinosaurs. “Zippy! I wondered where he’d gotten to after the T-rex attack. He’s a wanderer and he’s got a mind of his own. I was worried he had run off for good, with all the weird animals around here. But I’m glad to see he’s back.”

  Zippy raced after the stygimolochs, yapping excitedly and driving them along, seeming to get on all sides of them at once.

  “Look at him go!” Kit exclaimed. “His herding instincts are in high gear.”

  Zippy drove the creatures toward the windmill at the center of the pasture and then stopped and lay down just as they reached the watering trough. No longer harassed, the newcomers calmed. They dipped their muzzles in the water or nibbled the lush grass around the trough, bleating constantly like a herd of sheep.

  Now a pair of new animals appeared. Ten feet tall and two-legged, they quickly crossed from the woods, leaped the fence and landed heavily inside the pasture. They hurried to join the smaller sheep dinosaurs. These animals also had domed, spike-studded heads.

  “Mom and Dad?” Chase ventured.

  “That makes sense,” Kit agreed. “There’s a theory that stygimoloch isn’t its own species. Instead, it’s the young of pachycephalosaurus. And there’s living proof. Dr. O will be glad to see it.”

  The larger of the two adults stamped its foot and lowered its domed head in Zippy’s direction. Prudently, the dog slunk away. The adults joined the young at the trough for a drink and then the entire group trotted away, jumping the fence near the barn and moving off up the gully that led to Sandstone Mountain.

  Chase asked, “How smart do you think dinosaurs are?”

  “Pretty smart,” said Kit. “Just look at Gar.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of Gar,” Chase corrected himself. “What about the T rex? I wonder how well it can think?”

  “Depends on what you mean by thinking,” she said.

  “When I shot it the third time, it looked right at me and then it ran. I wonder if it understood that my gun could hurt it?”

  “Maybe,” said Kit. “But that doesn’t make it intelligent.” She looked around as though the mention of a tyrannosaur had suddenly made her nervous.

  “You’re right,” he said. “It was just a self-preservation instinct. This thing really packs a wallop.” He patted the 30-06 leaning on the rock and spoke to it as if it were a living thing. “Stick close to me, baby.”

  “I will,” Kit replied while still looking around. Then, when she realized he wasn’t talking to her, a flush of color rose on her cheeks. Chase noticed and suddenly felt as skittish as one of the sheep-dinos. She was all the more beautiful when she blushed. After a moment, a shy smile crept across Kit’s face. She leaned near him. In a low voice she said, “I haven’t thanked you properly for saving me from that tyrannosaurus.”

  She put her arms around his neck and gave him a small kiss on the lips.

  He reacted quickly and instinctually, surprising even himself. Wrapping an arm around her waist and the other around her shoulders, he pulled her to him tightly, kissing her powerfully and passionately. She tightened her arms around his neck and kissed back. Her breath deepened. His heart raced dizzily and he nearly fell off the rock. But he found his balance and they swayed together, sharing a new pulse that seemed to throb in the landscape around them.

  Then she pushed him away and drew in a sharp breath. “Whew!” She fanned at her open collar where the skin of her throat had flushed a brilliant pink. “Easy, boy.” With her blue eyes gone wide she searched his face for a moment. “Why’d you do that?” she asked.

  “Do what? Shoot the rex?”

  “No. Why did you kiss me like that?”

  It was his turn to flush red. “I guess— Well, I—” he sputtered, tongue-tied.

  A sound arose overhead, the whup-whup beat of powerful wings. Chase quickly grabbed up his rifle.

  “There!” Kit spotted the source of the sound a hundred feet above them. It was a huge pterodactyl flying on wings that spanned thirty feet. Chase raised the 30-06, ready to shoot if the airborne colossus turned in their direction. But it passed calmly overhead, paying no attention to them.

  “What the heck was that?” he asked.

  “Quetzalcoatlus,” Kit said with certainty.

  “Quetzalcoatlus,” Chase repeated the tongue-twisting name as the long-beaked beast continued serenely on its way, disappearing beyond the next hilltop.

  “It was the biggest animal ever to fly,” Kit asserted.

  Chase chuckled. “Don’t say ‘was the biggest,’ Kit. Say ‘is.’ I guess it’s not a predator, or we’d be in trouble.”

  “No, it’s a scavenger, like an overgrown stork.”

  “Good,” he said. “Last time I checked, we weren’t dead meat yet. Let’s keep it that way.”

  “It’ll be dark soon,” Kit said, noticing the evening shadows creeping across the valley. “Maybe we should get back to the house.” She picked up her rifle and led the way down the trail, pausing to look at the parasaurolophus family. Rufus was bringing a mouthful of hay from the barn to Henrietta. “Do you suppose they mate for life?” she asked.

  “Wouldn’t that be nice?” Chase replied. He paused a moment, watching Kit walk down the trail. His mind was full of a thousand new thoughts. He shook his head, smiled, and followed her.