How Teddy Roosevelt Slew the Last Mighty T-Rex (23 page)

Martin giggled like a schoolgirl. “This is undoubtedly the finest meal I’ve had in months! Are you two certain you would not like a bite? I’m afraid I’m fresh out of tea. And with all of these delicious smells permeating the jungle, our friend will surely pay a visit. Only then will the real excitement commence!”

Roosevelt noticed the sky brightening with the approach of the full moon that hovered just beneath the trees to the west. Roosevelt maneuvered his wrists again, finally freeing his left hand. Hurriedly, he stretched his cramped fingers before untying his right wrist. Roosevelt caught Cherrie’s eye and grinned.

Cherrie nodded in response.

“And just how did you receive those nasty scars on your back,” Cherrie said. “Did the British deal you some of their own brand of justice while you awaited the sentence you so rightly deserved?”

Martin tossed Julio’s remains into the pit. He turned slowly toward Cherrie.

Roosevelt sensed immediately that Cherrie had finally struck some hidden nerve.
My friend has just struck gold. And just in time!

Martin reached up and gently stroked the jagged ridges crisscrossing his bony shoulder. “No, Mr. Cherrie, these scars were not the result of the British justice system, but they were the handiwork of a British patriarch, nonetheless.” Martin grabbed his spear and sat on the ground just a few feet in front of the captives.

Roosevelt noticed a distant blankness in Martin’s stare.
Just come a little closer
, Roosevelt thought.
A bit closer….

“I was shipped off by my Aunt to a prestigious boarding school in Derbyshire when I was a mere innocent lad of fourteen. My father had been dead for many years and my mother, a pathetic shell of a human being, was a worthless alcoholic. But my dear Auntie inherited a comfortable sum and took me under her wing.

“My grades were always exemplary, but I eventually became bored and fell in for some schoolboy tomfoolery for which I promptly ended up in the Headmaster’s office awaiting punishment of the sort I had not previously been privileged to endure.

“The Headmaster, a stern and proper family man in his late forties, lectured me of my bad behavior. Then he grabbed a heavy wooden paddle and whacked my backside several times. The pain was mild compared to my bruised sense of self-worth, but there was something else that struck me oddly as I played the incident out in my own mind over the next several days and weeks.

“So I continued to get into more mischief and I was sent to the Headmaster where he administered increasing harsher punishment, sometimes hitting me hard enough that the welts lasted for days, and yet I still could not get enough to satisfy my… unique hunger.

“After a month of these staged encounters, I noticed a fleeting glimmer in the Headmaster’s eyes. He invited me to his home, claiming that his wife and children were away for the weekend, whereupon I beheld—much to my sheer delight—an abundance of odd artifacts and devises scattered throughout the Headmaster’s dank cellar.

“At first the games were mildly mischievous, but as boredom took hold over several months, we began to escalate our adventures to greater heights, including the bullwhip welts you see evidenced on my back. Several of my bones were shattered during these encounters, yet I lived in unparalleled ecstasy, much of which I could not explain at the time, being so young.”

Roosevelt returned Cherrie’s befuddled glance with a shake of his head and widened eyes.

“About a year after beginning our little dalliance, the Headmaster made an odd request. He asked that I allow him to choke me to the point of asphyxiation but relent at the very the moment of losing consciousness. This was the most dangerous of our games but I felt so utterly unable to control my basic urges in any way. We took turns binding one another’s neck until the blood ceased to flow to our brains, and yet I still remained unsatisfied. It was then I realized I was beyond all hope—nothing short of death would fulfill my deepest needs.

“So I tied the cloth around the Headmaster’s neck and drew tightly, but when he signaled me to relent, I pulled even tighter. I will always remember the look of terror on his smug face as he gasped his last breaths, much like those helpless Afrikaners and our friend Simplicio when he swam to shore looking for a friendly, helping hand that he unfortunately never received.”

“You should have committed yourself to an asylum,” Roosevelt said woefully. “Even as a schoolboy, you must have known this was deviant behavior.”

Martin shrugged. “The Headmaster was hardly missed in the end. His family covered up his death out of embarrassment, and I resumed school under no suspicion. Besides, with me being a mere lad, would his manner of depravity not be considered even more deplorable?”

“Lieutenant Martin!” George Cherrie cried suddenly. “You must release us all immediately!”

Theodore Roosevelt knew in an instant what caught the naturalist’s attention. All around them, the usual sounds of the nocturnal jungle forest had abruptly silenced.

Martin grabbed his spear and scampered back to the pit’s edge. He stood frozen peering out over the shadowy jungle. Abruptly, he kicked the fire’s ashes aside until only some smoldering logs remained.

With Martin occupied and his hands freed, Roosevelt fell to his side and pulled at his ankle’s bindings.

“Hurry, Colonel,” Cherrie hissed. “Get to the rifles!”

“I’m trying my best,” Roosevelt muttered breathlessly. “Damn-it, they may… have to be…cut.”

Martin crouched low and crept slowly around the outside of the pit and then downward toward the jungle. He halted, leaving thirty feet of open space between him and the forest. Martin raised his spear and stood motionless.

“Colonel, Look!”

Roosevelt suddenly felt the jungle move. He leaned up and turned toward the dim forest. Beyond the moon-lit clearing, he heard small trees crunch and scrubs pushed asunder. Listening closer, he heard the unmistakable sounds of deep guttural breathing. Something about this situation triggered a vivid memory—tracking the mighty bull elephant in deepest Africa, the beast lurking in the dark forests of the savannah; although this felt larger, quicker, and far more dangerous.

Roosevelt noticed the blood-stained axe lying just ten feet away, and he began slithering like a serpent toward the smoldering fire. Suddenly Roosevelt heard a cavernous growl, like the sound of a big cat but with the deep resonance of a rhinoceros. His heart raced.

“Colonel!”

 
Nearly out of breath, Roosevelt saw that the axe was now within his reach. Lying on his side, Roosevelt extended his arm and grabbed the handle, pulling it inward toward his feet. He bent awkwardly, chopping at his ankle’s bindings.

Beyond the pit, the forest exploded.

Roosevelt looked up. An immense grey mass sprung forward from the shadows. Roosevelt lay frozen, mesmerized by the creature’s gigantic stature and its snakelike eyes that glinted in the moonlight. Just barely discerning the monster’s form in the darkness, Roosevelt noted it standing on two legs with two small forehands that offered little practical function—very close to how Osborn had envisioned the beast from its ancient skeletal remains. The monster swung its menacing head back and forth across the clearing, drawing scent through its elongated snout. Roosevelt’s heart thumped.

Martin held his spear at chest height as the shadowy mass advanced with a terrifying roar and toothy jaws that snapped like an angry crocodile. With a nimble pitch to its left, the monster bypassed the pit’s opening, instead lurching upward along the pit’s edge and directly toward the waiting Martin.

Martin yelled loudly in words that Roosevelt could only describe as a native language. The Englishman gripped his spear firmly and lunged forward, directing his weapon upward and toward the beast’s chest. In the blink of an eye, the creature whacked Martin to the ground with one of its two colossal legs, knocking his spear from his hands and down into the pit.

Roosevelt looked on horrified as Martin lay prone, presumably at the mercy of the shadowy bulk hovering at him. The monster’s head lurched forward, snatching Martin’s torso between razor-sharp teeth. Roosevelt cringed listening to Martin’s bones snapping like twigs. The Englishman’s muffled scream faded mercifully into silence. The beast raised its head high into the air, gnawing Martin’s body until nothing at all remained. The creature raised its head and paused briefly, drawing the remainder of Martin’s corpse down its throat.

Crazed with fear, Roosevelt chopped at his feet’s bindings with renewed urgency. Finally, he broke free. Turning briefly, he slung the axe back along the ground toward the two remaining hostages.

“Colonel!” Cherrie shouted.

Roosevelt rose on cramped, wobbly feet. He scurried over to the makeshift arsenal and pulled his Winchester Browning rifle from the pile. Reaching into his pocket with quaking hands, he pulled out four bullets and began loading. One of the bullets fell to the ground.

The creature lurched forward in three huge strides, knocking Roosevelt to his side with its crocodilian foot. Roosevelt clung to his rifle and rolled aside.

“Colonel!”

The monster overshot its target. It halted and lowered its head, sniffing. The beast swung its gigantic tail around like a battering ram, brushing Roosevelt’s shirt but missing its unseen and undersized assailant by only inches.

Roosevelt rose to his knee. He raised his rifle, but the only angle available was the beast’s belly. He fired.

The creature stammered but swung around freely.

Roosevelt pumped another round into the beast’s neck.

The beast roared. It sidestepped, knocking Roosevelt onto his backside once again. Swiftly, the monster turned its head, face to face with the prone and vulnerable Roosevelt.

Roosevelt aimed and fired directly between the monster’s eyes.

The creature stomped downward, sinking its giant toe-claw through Roosevelt’s trousers. Roosevelt felt a sudden piercing pain in his right shin.

The monster reared back, howling madly; it dragged Roosevelt by the trouser leg like a rag doll. The beast teetered on the pit’s edge, attempting to regain its balance. The pit’s wall abruptly gave way and the monster rolled over the edge, flinging Roosevelt free but headlong into the pit along with the writhing giant.

Roosevelt, still dazed and winded from the fall, quickly took inventory of the situation. Next to him, the monster lay on its back gyrating wildly, attempting to right itself between the narrow walls of the pit. His gun was gone, and he was trapped with no way past the beast and in no condition to scale the pit’s wall. Roosevelt rose tepidly to his feet with his shin dripping blood. Beneath him, he noticed the glimmer of Martin’s spear.

The monster braced its tail against the pit’s wall and pushed itself over on its side. Roosevelt knew he had only mere seconds to act.

Roosevelt grasped the spear and staggered forward. He lunged with all his remaining strength directly at the beast’s throbbing neck. Then, he fell backward into a heap thoroughly depleted.

Theodore Roosevelt’s last conscience sensation this night was of witnessing an erupting volcano of gushing blood.

Roosevelt woke slowly, feeling like he had just been stampeded by a hundred buffalo. His mind spun and his head ached as if recovering from his worse hangover. Directly above him, the skies brightened with the dawn of a new day, and he was surrounded by the usual jungle sounds at daybreak. He would have thought the previous evening a bad dream, if he were not lying at the bottom of a pit with George Cherrie standing above him administering some sort of first aid to his right knee.

“George, where is Kermit?”

“He is fine, Colonel. He is standing guard against predators. Kermit and I heard some prowling jaguars just before sunrise. Come, we have little time. Soon, all hell will break loose when this beast’s corpse begins to rot and every creature in the Amazon closes in for the feast.”

Roosevelt glanced over at the mound of dark greenish flesh piled next to him. The creature’s once menacing head and torso lay silent and still, swarmed over by a cloud of flies as dense as the forest thicket. Adjusting his spectacles, Roosevelt noticed the creature’s skin covered with swirling black patches—millions of ants pouring forth from the Amazon’s base already hard at work with nature’s inexorable cleanup.

“How is my leg?”

 
Cherrie smiled. “Merely a good rub, Colonel. I wrapped it the best I could.
Dr. Cajazeria
can tend to it properly once we get back to the river. Come, you must get up and we must get going! I will snap a few photographs, and then it will be imperative we get away from this clearing.”

Roosevelt, with a little help from Cherrie, rose slowly to his feet. His trusted Winchester lay on the ground alongside what appeared to be the severed claw from the beast’s vestigial forelimb.

Cherrie grinned. “Kermit thought you might want a little souvenir to take back to Osborn.”

Cherrie hurriedly unpacked his Kodak model 3A and unfurled its accordion-like lens. He directed Roosevelt to stand beside the slain monster holding Martin’s spear, but Roosevelt refused, instead choosing to stand unarmed with his hands at his hips.

“No, Mr. Cherrie,” Roosevelt said. “This magnificent creature was a survivor from a different time, another world long since passed to the ever-shifting sands of mother earth. And like any old warrior who had survived the battlefields of life, it would have been better to let it walk away and die of old age and in peace. It certainly deserved a better fate than at my feeble hands.”

Cherrie triggered his camera. “But we had little choice, Colonel.”

“Perhaps, yet I somehow feel wholly unworthy. I cannot in good conscience stand proudly as the creature’s glorious conqueror. I will not, and I suppose I never will.”

The three men hustled from the clearing, entering the jungle to the east. Theodore Roosevelt immediately lagged behind, hindered by an acute attack of asthma and favoring his right leg. After twenty minutes of determined trekking, Roosevelt could not advance any further. Breathing heavily, he sat down and shook his canteen. “I have… about a pint… remaining,” he said. “Here… you two can share what’s left.”

“No, father,” Kermit said. “You are in much worse shape than George and I. Drink! You must keep your strength.”

“Kermit, if I am too great a burden… then you must abandon me here. Just leave me my rifle… and a single bullet.”

“Nonsense!” Kermit pointed eastward. “Father, you are going to get up and walk to the river. George and I will carry you on our backs if we must.”

“Colonel Roosevelt,” Cherrie lectured sternly. “I just want to make it clear that we will never abandon anyone of our own party, especially you! You saved both of our lives last night, and I will be forever in your debt. Now, enough of this foolishness, we must keep moving!”

They pushed onward as the morning sun rose slowly behind the trees, and soon, the ground began sloping downward. Ever short of breath, Teddy Roosevelt rested often, and although his shin throbbed with intense pain, he never complained to Cherrie or Kermit. Upon sight of the river’s valley, Roosevelt’s stomach churned and he promptly vomited.

Kermit caught Cherrie’s eye before pressing forward once again.

Theodore Roosevelt felt too weak to walk the final three hundred yards through the underbrush and to the river. Propped up by both Kermit and Cherrie, Roosevelt hobbled out of the thicket and collapsed to the ground beneath the Wide Belt’s stone monument. Roosevelt breathed a deep sigh of relief when he noticed two of the dugouts pulled up on shore surrounded by Colonel Rondon and the other members of the expedition.

Cherrie hollered loudly, drawing Rondon’s attention. Rondon motioned to Antonio, and the two men crouched low and scurried toward Cherrie.

“Colonel Roosevelt is hurt,” Cherrie said. “He needs the doctor right away.”

Rondon motioned sharply. “Antonio, see the Colonel down to the boats.”

“
Sim
,
senhor
.” Antonio reached down to assist Roosevelt to his feet.

“It’s so good to see you Antonio. I have never been—” Roosevelt’s eye caught some movement amongst the trees. Looking closer, he clearly saw a native’s face amongst the bushes. “Antonio! Look over at those—”

”
Sim
,
senhor
Roosevelt,” the ever-polite Brazilian interrupted in a hushed tone. “I’m afraid the Wide Belts have had us surrounded since before dawn.”