Cryptozoica (25 page)

Bai stood with Jimmy Cao on the foredeck. Despite the bore of the Casull revolver the man pressed against her ribs, she kept her face completely expressionless, except for an anticipatory glitter in her dark eyes. She instantly grasped Kavanaugh and Crowe’s strategy—with their boat almost hull to hull with the
Keying,
the Ghost Shadows would have no choice but to expose themselves in order to effectively exchange shots with their attackers.

A bullet fired from a Ghost Shadow thumped the air between she and Cao. The man instinctively ducked, relaxing his grip on her arm. She exploded into motion.

She yanked free of his fingers, her right hand stabbing out and securing a handful of greasy black hair. Jimmy Cao’s mouth opened but before he could scream or curse, she kicked upward, her left foot chunking solidly between his legs. Convulsively, he plucked at his crotch. She released his hair and he fell to his knees. At the same time, she grabbed his wrist, twisted and pulled the big Casull revolver from his grasp.

A man reached for her from behind, but she spun on her toes, the edge of her left hand chopping at his throat. The Ghost Shadow staggered away, trying to bring up the jian sword he had stolen from Pai Chu. She squeezed the trigger of the pistol and shot him in the chest, the heavy round bowling him off his feet. As the sword fell from his fingers, Bai snatched it from the air and whirled on the four men converging around her. She swung out with the jian, her arm curving up, then crossways across a man’s torso. Blood sprayed as the Ghost Shadow lurched backward, careening into two his comrades.

Bai Suzhen moved with the deadly speed and grace of a cobra. She swept the blade at the three other men, spattering them with crimson droplets.  They backed away. Anger possessed her, but not to the point where she became careless. The Ghost Shadows sidled around her, circling, their attention torn between the gunfire erupting from the cabin cruiser and the pistol in her hand.

The
Keying
surged at an angle across the river, the bow turning to starboard. Vines and low-hanging branches snagged in the masts, saplings snapped against the junk’s bulwarks. There came a grinding, sucking sound as the vessel’s flat bottom dragged in the mud of the shallows. The junk ran aground on her starboard side. The deck shuddered underfoot and men staggered, stumbled and fell.

Bai managed to stay on her feet. With a running leap, she gained the top of the portside railing. She paused for an instant, standing tall and straight, her taunting smile much like the enigmatic smile of the Naga princesses on display in her quarters.

Struggling to his feet, one hand cupping his testicles, Jimmy Cao screamed, “Kill the bitch!”

A subgun rattled as a Ghost Shadow panicked and fired a burst at nothing at all. Bai jumped from the
Keying
and landed on the leaf-shrouded prow of the
Alley Oop
a little less than six feet directly below her. She bent her knees to absorb the impact and threw herself forward, but the heavy revolver in her hand skewed her balance and she slid to the right.

Mouzi steadied her with a hand to her wrist.

“Thank you,” breathed Bai.

The girl flashed an appreciative smile and went back to squeezing off shots with the carbine. A Ghost Shadow who ran along the railing slapped at his left leg, staggered and pitched headfirst into the water only a few yards away.

The man’s arms flailed as he reached out for the hull of the
Keying.
A great sheet of foam-crowned water flew upward behind him. He abruptly vanished, snatched beneath the surface.

A heartbeat later, he reappeared, rising from the river, red water pouring from his open mouth. A pair of giant, fang-filled jaws clutched him at the hips. The Sarcosuchus lifted the screaming, writhing man high above the surface. His legs kicked in a futile spasm as the muscles at the hinges of the creature’s jaws flexed. The huge fangs sheared through the man’s flesh, crunching against, then pulverizing his pelvic bones. The upper half of his body splashed down into the river. The lower half slid down the monster’s gullet, swallowed in two snapping gulps.

Mouzi cried out in wordless fear at the sight of the huge Sarcosuchus and adjusted the aim of her carbine, centering the sights on what she could see of its head, but she hesitated to fire. Once blood spread through the water, predators who hunted along the riverbanks would be drawn to their position.

The men crowding at the
Keying’s
rail howled with terror and directed their gunfire at the enormous crocodilian. It submerged quickly amid a flurry of bullet-driven waterspouts.

Crowe yelled, “Mouzi, Bai! Hang on!”

Spinning the wheel to the left and gunning the engine, the
Alley Oop
surged away from the junk, the Sarcosuchus and the howling men who fired their weapons in a mad frenzy. The two women crouched down on the prow.

When the cruiser swung around a slight bend, out of direct range of the subguns, Crowe eased off on the RPMs, allowing Mouzi and Bai Suzhen the opportunity to climb back into the cockpit. The gunfire from the direction of the
Keying
tapered off and ceased altogether, although they could still hear men yelling.

Pistol in hand, Kavanaugh said casually, “I guess you understood my message.”

Bai smiled slightly. “I’m somewhat surprised Jimmy Cao didn’t understand it, too. Subtlety is not one of your strong suits.”

Honoré’s analytical gaze flicked from the woman to the man and then focused on the bruise darkening the side of Bai Suzhen’s face. She asked, “Are you all right? Do you need medical attention?”

“An aspirin wouldn’t be out of line.” She looked around the boat and asked, “Where is your colleague, Dr. Belleau?”

“We put him ashore,” Kavanaugh said. “If Jimmy Cao wants him so much, let him find him.”

Bai shook her head. “We can’t let him fall into the hands of the Ghost Shadows. Belleau is our only ace, our only source of information on the real agenda behind all this madness.”

Mouzi handed the woman two aspirins and a bottle of water. “What agenda?”

Bai Suzhen swallowed the aspirins, washing them down with a swallow of water. “That’s the point. I don’t know. United Bamboo has apparently turned its back on my triad. My men and Howard Flitcroft have been murdered and I want to know what it’s about.”

“Mr. Flitcroft is really dead?” Honoré asked.

Bai nodded tersely. “His body was weighted down and thrown overboard, as were those of all of my crew who were murdered.”

“Howie managed to get a warning out to Pendlebury,” Crowe said. “Who got it to us. If he hadn’t, we’d all have probably been killed by now. I can’t say that I ever thought Howie was anything other than a jerk—

“—But he was our jerk,” Kavanaugh interjected grimly. “We won’t let his killer get away, I can promise you that.”

From his chair astern, McQuay said, “So after all this, everybody just ended up trading one for the other, didn’t they?”

“More or less,” Kavanaugh said. “Did you get of any that shootout on tape?”

He shook his head, smiling abashedly. “’Fraid not. I was too busy ducking. Besides, I came here to shoot prehistoric monsters, not gang wars.”

Bai asked, “Where did you leave Belleau and Oakshott?”

Crowe gestured upriver to the copse of pagke trees rising from the shoreline on their left. “Over that way. They couldn’t have gotten far.”

The
Alley Oop
cruised past a small island rising near the mouth of a narrow channel on the right-hand riverbank. It was thick with mud, marsh reeds and dead tree branches.

As the boat purred past it, a vile odor tickled Kavanaugh’s nostrils. Absently, he fingered his nose, then realized the effluvium had a familiar scent.

Crowe reacted to the stench and glanced toward Kavanaugh. “You smell that?”

The small island of reeds and plant matter rustled violently and then arose, heaving itself out of the shallow water. A deafening bellow exploded from directly behind them, a mist of water spraying in all directions. Semi-liquid mud streamed down, splattering against the vinyl roof covering.

Beneath a layer of muck and gnarled twigs, grinning jaws bared double-rows of yellow fangs. The massive head reared fifteen feet above the deck of the
Alley Oop
.Two huge legs, as big around as pagke tree roots, supported its massive, barrel-shaped trunk. Tri-fingered forelegs tipped with six-inch long, scimitar-curved talons were held close to its chest. Its wet hide bore a golf ball-like pattern of pebbled, dark brown scales.

Huge, soulless eyes, like those of a serpent’s a hundred times magnified stared down from beneath arched, knobbed protuberances. A narrow ridge of bone rose from the center of the snout and extended to a point just above the pair the dilating nostrils. Thick swellings at the sides of its head told of the great muscles that worked its maw.

Although rooted in place by shock, Honoré Roxton breathed, “Majungasaurus.”

The creature extended its massive head on the end of a long neck, opened its jaws wide and voiced a grunting roar. An odor like that of decomposing meat mixed with an open septic tank washed over their faces.

“Stinkosaurus!” shouted Crowe, reaching for the throttle.

The sound of the
Alley Oop’s
engine rose in pitch and the craft churned forward. The Stinkosaurus leaned over so its upper body was parallel to the river, its forelegs lashing out.

Crowe spun the wheel, veering to port, but the creature’s three-fingered forepaws slapped against the stern of the Nautique, the long talons penetrating the fiberglass, vinyl and steel hull with loud squeals and pops. The saurian gripped the boat tightly, as it slowly straightened up, water sluicing down its armored hide. In the suffused sunlight, the creature’s scales glistened like a coating of molten metal.

The boat tipped upward, the bow rising like a whale leaping from the depths. A great geyser of water spumed from the engine as the vessel’s stern was pushed beneath the surface. Everyone staggered, grabbing chair-backs and handrails. McQuay screamed as he clutched at a chair with one hand but kept the other on his camera. Everyone else added their own panicky shouts to his screams.

Bai Suzhen lifted the Casull, but the deck underfoot pitched violently and she fell to one knee. She was forced to drop the pistol to keep from sliding astern. The revolver skittered down, but Honoré scooped it up with her right hand.

The predator’s massive jaws opened and its head dipped forward. The jaws closed on McQuay’s torso. Screaming in agony and terror, McQuay was torn away from the chair and lifted upward. His shrieks ended abruptly when the creature shook his body violently from side to side, like a puppy would shake a chew toy. Trapped between the vise of the creature’s jaws, the man’s arms and legs flopped as if they were filled with paraffin.

Bracing her feet against a chair-back, Honoré held the pistol in a two-fisted grip and squeezed off a  pair of booming shots. Even at virtually point-blank range, the heavy caliber rounds did little damage to the monster’s upper thorax. She could not draw a bead on the Stinkosaur’s eyes, its really vulnerable points, because of the way it wagged its head to and fro.

But the bullets stung it, and drew little patches of blood on the scales. With a liquid snarl, the creature drew back, releasing its grip on the
Alley Oop
. The keel splatted against the surface and the boat shot forward wildly, like a cork spewed from a champagne bottle. Crowe fumbled with the wheel, trying to turn it. The bank, thick with marsh reeds, rushed up with appalling swiftness

The boat plowed through a mud flat, rocking to a halt when the prow skated upward at thirty-degree angle, wedging itself between a gnarled pagke root and a thicket. The engine stalled, acrid black smoke curling up from the enclosed inboard module.

Kavanaugh struggled to his feet, helping Mouzi up. Bai, Crowe and Honoré slowly stood, shaken and very nearly paralyzed by shock. Silently, they stared at the Stinkosaurus standing in the center of the river, examining the bloody corpse of Chet McQuay hanging limply in its paws. The man was only recognizable as a human because of his dangling arms and legs. His upper body resembled a crimson-seeping mass of freshly slaughtered beef, gutted and flensed.

The creature’s head bobbed up and down, rolling its tongue within its maw. Kavanaugh was reminded of the way his childhood dog, Ajax, acted after he had been given a peanut butter sandwich.

Then, with a sound like a man sneezing but many times amplified, the animal spit out a small object. It sailed across the river and splashed down in the shallow water very near the boat. Before it sank out of sight, they recognized McQuay’s treasured Sony ENG camcorder.

In a voice pitched low to disguise the tremor of fear running through it, Crowe said, “We’d better get the hell out of here before Stinky remembers us.”

“I thought the vision of those Tyrannosaurs was keyed to motion,” Kavanaugh whispered.

Honoré shook her head. “That’s only a theory and a specious one at that. Besides, it’s not a Tyrannosaur…it’s a Majungasaur, of the family Abelisuridae and sub-family of Carnotaurinae. Late Cretaceous fossil remains have been found on the Indian subcontinent and Madagscar. While the animal is occupied, we should quickly and quietly collect everything useful and make ourselves scarce.”

The five people carefully recovered their weapons, the first-aid kit, the metal case containing Darwin’s journal, several bottles of water and the box of power bars. Crowe removed an emergency survival kit, a tightly latched waterproof vinyl box. While they worked swiftly and methodically, the Majungasaur seemed content to stand in haunch-deep water and nibble at McQuay’s body.

The crunching of fangs into bone and the moist sound of flesh being chewed seemed unnaturally loud to Kavanaugh, but he hoped the noise would cover the scuff and scutter of their activity. He felt bile rise in a burning column in his throat when the giant saurian ripped out a chunk of cloth, flesh and viscera from McQuay’s midsection and tugged at the intestines as if they were strands of pasta.

Honoré Roxton’s face paled by several shades and her lips turned the color of old ashes, but she maintained a composed and controlled expression. But to Kavanaugh’s surprise, Mouzi looked as if she were on the verge of fainting or throwing up or both.

One by one, they climbed out of the upward-canted
Alley Oop
onto the marshy riverbank. Crowe said softly, “We still have Belleau’s satphone, so we can call for help.”

“The trick is to stay alive until help arrives,” murmured Bai Suzhen, holding her appropriated jian sword in her right hand.

As Mouzi clambered out of the boat, carrying both the carbine and the first-aid kit, she put her foot down on a slippery stretch of reeds. She stumbled, sliding down the bank toward the river. As she tried to regain her balance, her finger closed around the trigger of the carbine.

Although the shot went ricocheting up into the trees and wasn’t overly loud, the Majungasaur jerked erect with a startled snort. Its head swiveled on its neck like a gun turret. Everyone froze in mid-motion.

The carnotaur stared at them unblinkingly for so long that Kavanaugh began to wonder if Honoré’s dismissal of the vision-keyed-to-movement theory wasn’t too hasty. Then, the loose flesh at the animal’s throat vibrated, and from its blood-flecked lips issued a hissing, rumbling snarl. The Majungasaur thrust its head forward, opened its jaws wide and voiced a ferocious roar that combined the worst aspects of a trumpet, steam valve and the howl of a dying dog. Its tail swept back and forth, whipping the water to froth.

“Ah, shit,” rasped Crowe.

The Majungasaur dropped McQuay’s mutilated corpse into the water and charged the riverbank with long, hopping steps. Water splashed in sheets before it.

“Run!” shouted Honoré, wheeling around. “Try to keep among the trees!”

The five people plunged into the rain forest, ducking under a canopy of overlapping ferns. The carnivorous dinosaur clawed its way up the bank, making a panting noise like a laboring engine.

The Majungasaur pounded across the ground toward them, lowering its head and opening its jaws wide, crashing through the undergrowth, showers of leaves flying in its wake. The ground shook to the saurian’s thundering tread, the clawed feet tearing up great clods of earth, its counterbalancing tail held straight out behind it.

Kavanaugh glimpsed Honoré stumble and nearly fall, catching herself on a tree. She dropped the case holding the Darwin journal. The carnotaur turned its head toward her. Kavanaugh whirled around, diving low, knocking Honoré off her feet into a thicket. Both of them rolled and tumbled, head over heels. Unable to slow its charge, the gigantic reptile crashed into the trunk of a tree with a splintering impact, stumbled and wallowed clumsily in a copse of vegetation.

Honoré and Kavanaugh staggered to their feet. More quickly than either person expected, the Majungasaur untangled itself and with a roar of fury, pivoted around to face them. Kavanaugh fought down a surge of panic. Although he had proved his courage hundreds of times in his life, the creatures of Big Tamtung did not seem like animals—they were like demonic forces unleashed from some unknown, nameless hell that pursued him for their own vicious reasons.

Honoré and Kavanaugh turned and ran. Ferns and thorns whipped at them, the needled tips of coniferous shrubs scored red lines across their arms and faces. Drooping lianas snagged at their necks and heads, but they fought free.

Behind them thundered the reptilian leviathan. Ripped up by the taloned feet, divots of the soggy earth pattered down all around like rain. His lungs straining with the effort of breathing in the thick, humid air, Kavanaugh warred with the fear that ate away at his nerves like acid.

He and Honoré burst through a barrier of foliage, ignoring the sting of thorns on their bare arms and hands. The monster came crashing after them like an out-of-control locomotive.

Over the pounding of the creature’s footfalls and their own hearts, they heard the snap-and-crack of gunfire. The Majungasaur’s charge slowed and it turned to bite at the place on its thigh where a bullet struck. From somewhere in the forest, Crowe and Mouzi shouted wordlessly, trying to draw the animal’s attention. It lurched to a halt and snarled, then licked at the bullet wound with a black, slimy tongue.

Kavanaugh and Honoré raced through a cluster of ferns, slapping the fronds aside––and nearly pitched into empty space. They dug in their heels, grabbing one another, rocking to clumsy stops. Directly in front of them, the lip of a gully sloped downward for twenty feet. At the bottom of it spread a very smooth and invitingly open space of dark green.