Raptor

  What would you do, Zack? she thought. What would you have done if the raptors had gotten me?

  She fought to stop her tears. She knew the answer. Zack wouldn’t have given up so easily—look what he’d done to find Honker! He wasn’t a coward. She had seen the raptor take him, but she wasn’t absolutely sure what had happened.

  Ten minutes!

  She stopped. After a moment, she spun the bike around, kicking up dirt, and sped back down the path toward the mountain. The Yamaha handled as easily as a dirt bike, and she raced up the slope to the hidden entrance. The back wheel slid from side to side, but there was enough momentum for the tires to grab onto a bed of fern and slate chips. Inside the tunnel, she opened the throttle wide, and flicked on the headlight. The motorcycle flew over the gravel and railroad ties, and raced back down toward the darkness of the gruesome larder.

  Before the nasty hatchlings could catch him, Picasso had made it through a narrow opening and into a tiny alcove in the cave wall. Only one or two raptors at a time could thrust their long necks through the entrance of fallen stones. They snapped ferociously, taking turns to bite Picasso with painful cobralike strikes. Several were able to sink their needle-sharp teeth into his short white fur, but he shook them off violently, and counterattacked with swift hard nips to their snouts.

  Frustrated, the hatchlings finally stopped their frenzy. They sat exhausted, staring at Picasso from the mouth of the alcove. Picasso kept his eyes on them.

  Suddenly, the hatchlings started clawing frantically at the dirt and guano and entrance stones! Their forelimbs dug rapidly, like squirrels struggling to reach a cache of chestnuts. Picasso whined as the stones began to loosen and fall away.

  1

  NIGHT

  The eerie silence of the cave was broken by the scream of a motorcycle as Uta hurtled through the tunnel, narrowly avoiding the stalagmites, and shot into the larder chamber. The noise echoed off the walls as she crashed her way through the dripping and bloated sacks. Finally, the bike broke into the clearing in front of the towering grisly wall. She knew the raptors heard her. It was just a matter of time.

  She braked to a stop, and let her eyes drift up over the cocooned prey. The bike’s headlight picked up a fresh hanging form. At first she thought it was a weathered piece of wood, a bleached mass that had been sculpted like driftwood. She got off the motorcycle and walked closer. Now the beams from her helmet lit up the grisly sack like a lava lamp. It was spun of ghostly, wet, and translucent fibers wrapped tightly like bands around a mummy.

  Uta reached up. She could barely touch the bottom of the hanging sack. She gasped when she recognized the distorted features. Inside, Zack’s face was twisted, flattened by the filaments. She began to cry out. She wanted to brush the matted hair off his brow and close his lips from their frozen scream.

  She couldn’t leave his body there. She would take him down and get him out of the cave before …

  Uta climbed onto a rise of shale and managed to grasp the bottom of the sack. She grabbed his ankles through the membrane and tried to pull the sack down, but the fibers held strong. She tried again, tugging for all she was worth, until her footing gave way and she slipped to the ground. “Forgive me, Zack,” she said, stepping back. She stared up at him. For a split second she thought she saw movement. A faint twitch of a finger. She knew that there were reflexes after death, but then his chest heaved and he coughed. She thought she was hallucinating. His eyes blinked.

  And opened!

  “You’re alive!” Uta cried out. “Zack! You’re alive!”

  She remembered the supplies in the Yamaha’s saddle-bags and rushed to them. She grabbed a penknife, opened it, and raced back. She sliced at the bottom of the bag. “Zack! I’ll get you out!”

  Uta hadn’t noticed the shadow creeping up behind her. Suddenly, she felt a tightening around her waist, a pressure crushing the air out of her. Her hands dropped to grasp gnarled, thick, and clawed fingers clutching her. Savagely, she was ripped away from the sack and turned in the air.

  She looked up into the roaring face of Honker’s mother.

  “No!” she screamed at the raptor. The claws began to cut into her. “No!”

  She tried to break loose as she was lifted toward the raptor’s gaping jaws. She begged, thinking she’d be understood—but she was lifted toward the jagged, terrible teeth. “I’m sorry,” Uta said quickly. “I’m sorry” She made her apology, and quickly, with all of her strength, she plunged the knife into the mother’s shoulder. The mother raptor roared again, this time in surprise and outrage and pain. She dropped her prey, and Uta turned to flee—but the blackback suddenly roared out of its den to block her escape. Behind her was the cave wall and a mound of sharp, fallen shale.

  BAM!

  A distant explosion sent a shock wave through the larder that rippled the sacks like wind crawling through a field of wheat. The blast was muted, but massive. Boneid had blown the shunt.

  Picasso crouched and barked, alert as a hawk. The hatchlings had quickly undermined the narrow entrance to his alcove. Several of the snapping heads shot at him. Others were behind them, pressing forward, hissing, shrieking to be part of the kill.

  A large stone was scraped away and the attackers’ teeth began to find their mark. One of the hatchlings bit Picasso’s neck and began to shake him like a shark trying to tear off a piece of flesh. Picasso pulled loose, but the others nipped at him again and again.

  Picasso heard the sound of the motorcycle, but somewhere, better than that was another sound.

  HONK.

  Picasso knew an old friend was racing toward the alcove long before he saw him.

  HONK. HONK. HONK.

  Picasso’s growl transformed into a happy bark. A new energy surged into him as he fought wildly against the horde of invading hatchlings. He was holding his own as Honker ambushed the hatchlings, rushing at them from the rear. Honker was firstborn, well fed—bigger than the others.

  Smarter.

  He shrieked and hissed and honked until all of the smaller raptors scattered. Honker went to Picasso’s side and began rubbing his head against him. Then they heard Uta’s distant cries. Together, they scampered out of the alcove and raced for the heart of the larder.

  Uta’s screams jolted Zack into consciousness. He felt woozy from the claw thrust up through his chin. It had been like an injection.

  Something deadening.

  A few moments more and all of his memory returned, howling into his mind, and he realized where he was. Strength flowed back into him as he strained against the slimy, binding fibers. He tried to kick, but his legs were lashed. Below, through the weaving of the grisly sack, he saw the blackback teaming up with the mother raptor. They had Uta cornered against a wall, and he saw the terror in her face.

  He heard barking.

  Picasso!

  Zack spotted the yapping ball of shaggy white fur running out from the labyrinth of dripping sacks. Zack called to him and saw who was at his side.

  HONK. HONK.

  Picasso ran under the sack and took a flying leap at the bottom of it. He swung and clawed, trying to tear a hole, but his jaws lost their grip and he fell. He jumped again, Honker along with him. Their teeth locked into the fibers, but it wasn’t enough to tear the sack loose.

  ROAR.

  The blackback and mother raptor heard the frenzy. It disturbed them. Troubled them. They turned away from Uta and began to move toward Zack. He saw what was happening and struggled wildly—but still the bindings held! His mind raced like a computer. Desperate images. Snippets of faces and thoughts. His father. Fragments of ideas. Strategies twisted and mixed up. He thought of Uta.

  And Spider Grandma and her crazy stand and the grubs and the fire and the phone and …

  And …

  The arrowhead in his pocket!

  He wiggled and struggled, and sucked in his gut. Slowly, he managed to slide his hand down and into the pocket of his jeans. His fingers curled around the sharp edges of the st
one. It began to cut into him, but he inched the arrowhead up and out, and began to slice at the sack. The slippery bands split like packing tape against a knife blade. Covered with slime, Zack spilled out onto the floor.

  The blackback and mother raptor closed on him now, lunging at him. Uta threw stones. Picasso and Honker snapped at the raptor’s heels, but there was a new sound cutting across all the others. A low trembling, escalating with the force of an earthquake. The whole ground of the cave shook. Suddenly, at the far corner of the cave, a wall of water exploded up through the floor. “Bones blew a shunt!” Uta shouted to Zack.

  “What?”

  “A shunt! He’s flooding the mountain!”

  “He’s crazy!” Zack yelled. He saw the Yamaha and ran to it. For a moment he thought about leaping onto it, starting it, and getting Uta—but the deluge was barreling toward him with the speed of a tidal wave. Geysers exploded from the alcoves. Fragments of limestone shot through the air like spears. The raptors, reeking of death and crusted blood, loomed above Zack as he yanked the gas hose loose from the motorcycle. He dragged the bike along on its side, the gasoline from its tank gushing out onto the ground. The raptors opened their massive jaws, but Zack grabbed one of the flares from the saddlebags, struck its lighter tip, and dropped it into the fuel.

  BAM!

  The raptors shrieked as a sea of bright white fire climbed up their haunches.

  Zack ran to Uta. He grabbed her hand and fled with her away from the dinosaurs as the flames of the gasoline floated atop the flood. Picasso and Honker raced along behind them to a last patch of high ground. The only light now shot forward from Uta’s helmet. It caught a slab of rock paintings, images of shrieking buffalo being butchered by stick figures with axes. Above one tunnel were painted demon faces with fangs and bulging evil eyes. Above another exit was the image of a dancing rope and a laughing man playing the flute.

  “This way!” Uta yelled.

  “Coming,” Zack said. “Picasso! Honker!” A sharp incline kept them above the level of the rising floodwater as they raced up it. The tunnel ended at a dizzying shaft with rotting railroad ties for stairs. Honker hung back now, shivering and staring at the rising torrent. He began to cry plaintively.

  “What’s wrong?” Zack asked.

  Uta saw Honker at the water’s edge. “He’s looking for his mother?’

  “Why?”

  “Who knows? She’s ugly as sin, but he must have figured out she’s all his.”

  Zack groaned and picked up Honker. “Sorry, boy.” He carried him up a half-dozen flights of stairs and set him back down on the ties. Picasso took over urging Honker upward. They kept ahead of the raging, rising water. They had climbed several hundred feet up the shaft when a step broke under Uta.

  CRAAAAACK.

  She tumbled backward toward the black hole of the shaft. Zack grabbed her arm and pulled her to him—stopping her fall into churning water. “You okay?”

  “Yes,” Uta said as she steadied herself and climbed back up to the broken tie. Quickly, Zack locked his hands into a cradle. She held onto his shoulders, put a foot up, and he hoisted her to a solid tie. He handed up Picasso and Honker, and scrambled up after them.

  “Come on!” Uta yelled as the water rose faster. “We must be halfway up the mountain.”

  “We hope.”

  Honker led them now, bounding up two ties at a time. A wind howled down into their faces, and Zack knew they were near an exit. There were voices drifting down.

  Men’s voices.

  “Listen,” Zack said.

  The light from Uta’s helmet shot straight up the shaft.

  There were pipe railings now, and ties protected with fresh linseed.

  “I know where we are,” Uta said. “This was part of the cave tour.”

  There was a loud crackle, a sound like a lightning bolt hitting a tree.

  BAM! BAM! BAM!

  A hail of bullets rained down splintering a wooden tie. “Rifle shots!” Uta yelled, halting the climb. “They’re firing at us!” Another shot exploded the step next to Honker. “At Honker!”

  “Don’t shoot!” Zack called up the shaft. “Honker! Honker!”

  BAM! BAM!

  Sparks flew from the shaft wall and as more bullets ricocheted off into the darkness. One of the bullets whizzed by, inches from Zack’s head. “Stop it!” he shouted furiously up the shaft. Whimpering and trembling, Honker ran back down toward him. Zack scooped him up and held him close to his chest.

  “Boneid’s gunmen won’t shoot us!” Uta cried out.

  “They’re in the upper shafts waiting to shoot everything. They don’t even know we’re here! Anything that moves they think is a dino!”

  “If we shield Honker, they might let him live.”

  Zack held the hatchling closer. “It doesn’t matter. If Bones gets him, he’ll turn him into some freak show and hog all the glory.”

  Uta directed the light from her helmet into a side tunnel she recognized. “Unless …”

  “What?”

  “We get him to the other side of the dam,” she said. “To the badlands!”

  “What badlands?”

  “Across the dam. There’s a mess of canyon lands. Cliffs and sandstone caves weave in and out like a crazy maze. There are ridges and shadowy craters, and sinkholes and crevices. It’s like a crazy puzzle, rugged and craggy and forsaken. There could be a herd of elephants or wild horses living there and nobody would find them. Ever! If we set Honker loose there, that’s the only place in the world where he’d be safe.”

  Zack thought of his father. And the dream of money. Lots of money. And fame. He thought about the dream he had of being with his friends back in L.A. again. He thought about himself and everything that had seemed so important to him. He stroked Honker’s snout. The baby raptor’s wide, frightened eyes looked up at him. “Couldn’t they just shoot at us up there, too?’

  “No! They won’t expect us to come out on the east side of the dam. Follow me,” Uta said. “We don’t even have to go to the top! We can go right through the dam!” She turned and started jogging down the tunnel she remembered from taking tourists on endless summer tours. For a few moments, Zack held back—paralyzed at the shaft. There was another crackle of rifle fire as he set Honker down, and they raced after Uta.

  11

  THE DAM

  Uta and Zack reached a massive corrugated door at the end of the tunnel. “This leads to the penstock level,” Uta said excitedly.

  “What’s in there?” Zack asked as he tried the door handle.

  “It’s where they let the water in to turn the turbines. The dam’s got three levels. Bones is on top where the gantry crane is.”

  “The one on tracks?”

  “Right. The crane’s computer controls and opens the water gates at regular intervals. We’re a couple of hundred feet below that on the pipe level. The turbines are at the bottom.”

  Zack grabbed the handle harder and tried lifting the door again, but it wouldn’t budge. “It’s motorized,” Uta said, heading for a control box on the right. “You have to punch in a code. I hope they haven’t changed it.”

  She punched in four numbers. An electric motor whirred and the door lifted in short, jerky motions. Fragments of old bird nests and dried rodents fell from its beams. Like a curtain lifting on a stage, it revealed a huge tiled room that stretched the length of the dam.

  They slipped under the rising door and Zack saw the gaping mouths of a series of immense water pipes. “They’re huge.” Each of the five pipes had a diameter over thirty feet with a hydraulic gate above it holding back thousands—millions!—of gallons of reservoir water. Water leaked from the seals and trickled hundreds of feet down to the blades of gigantic turbines.

  The door closed tight behind them as Zack and Uta walked out beneath rows of dim lightbulbs that hung from the massive vaulting ceiling.

  HONK.

  Zack saw the excitement in the raptor’s eyes, and Uta sensed the sadness creepi
ng into Zack.

  “He smells his freedom,” Uta said gently.

  “I know,” Zack said.

  Dr. Boneid went to the main control turret of the dam to make certain the flooding was complete. He left a couple of the older Ute workers to smooth things over with the raving old Indian woman who kept shouting that there were kids in the mountain. Boneid told them, “Give her money. Anything. Get rid of her!” As far as he was concerned, anyone left in the bowels of Silver Mountain was dead.

  At the first report of a lizard seen in the main shaft, Boneid had dispatched Manny Spencer to make certain they’d bagged it. He wanted at least one good specimen out of the hunt.

  “Is it a dinosaur?” Boneid had screamed into his radio.

  A trapper’s voice crackled back. “All we know is that it looks like a lizard?’ He could tell from the trappers’ voices that they weren’t about to swear that they’d seen a living dinosaur. The chief engineer sat in front of the dam’s main control console. “The mountain’s as flooded as it’s going to get, Dr. Boneid,” he said.

  “Good.” Boneid’s eye picked up a flashing white dot moving across a section of the console. “What’s that?”

  The engineer glanced over. “Somebody’s on the penstock level?’

  “I didn’t send anybody down there.”

  “They must have come in from the caves,” the engineer said. “One of your men probably has the access door combination.”

  Boneid didn’t like the idea that anybody was opening doors anywhere. He thought it might be the Kinski brothers, who had a reputation for never taking orders and screwing up everything they touched. They probably thought they’d set the bear traps wherever they felt like it.