Danger: Dinosaurs!

Chapter 17 King of the Beasts

It all happened very suddenly and yet it seemed to take ages. From his perch on the ledge, Chuck viewed the entire scene stretched out below him. He had the vague impression that he was sitting in the balcony and watching a play on an immense stage. Gardel’s shout served as a signal, and everything followed from it — like the opening gun in a horse race or the bell in a prize fight. Gardel shouted and ripped away from Dr. Perry, starting across the clearing toward the boulders.

But Gardel hadn’t pointed and he hadn’t looked up. He’d done nothing to indicate where Chuck was, and Masterson had no way of knowing.

Masterson reacted the way any man in his position would have. The situation had been a tense one up to then, and his finger was probably curled nervously around the trigger of his rifle. When Gardel shouted, he pulled the trigger all the way.

He didn’t aim. He fired blindly across the clearing and he continued to fire.

Gardel screamed and threw his head back, clutching at the steel-jacketed slugs that were ripping into his chest.

“Brock!” Masterson shouted. He stopped shooting. The ragged edges of his voice seeped into the land. The smoke from his rifle rose in a mournful black cloud that hung over his head like a specter of doom and then vanished.

“Brock!” he called again.

Gardel dropped to his knees, his fingers threaded with the red strands of blood that spilled from his torn chest.

He staggered forward, moving on his knees, leaving a trail of blood behind him.

“Dirk... Dirk—” His voice was a dry whisper, the voice of a man a hundred million years from all other men, the dry voice of a man who was dying in a strange time, in a strange land. There was fright in the voice and a pathetic disbelief. He could not understand why Masterson had shot him, and worse, he could not understand why he should be dying at this time.

He pitched forward on his face, rolled over onto his back and spread his arms.

Brock Gardel would do no more wondering.

“Brock! I didn’t... Brock!” The last was almost a scream. Masterson was alone now. It was Masterson against the land and Masterson against his fellow men, and Masterson against whatever conscience he had. Chuck dropped to his belly and shouted, “All right, Masterson, it’s all over now.”

Masterson whirled, bringing up the rifle and triggering off a fast shot.

Chuck hugged the ledge, his face and chest pressed against the coarse rock. He heard the strange sound again, far off to Masterson’s left. The sound of... of hoofs. Above that sound, the terrible soul-shattering cry of a nonhuman thing.

Masterson heard the sound, too, and he turned rapidly, bringing the gun to bear on the boulders over to his left.

It appeared suddenly.

There was nothing at first. Only boulders and a gray sky and an alien land.

And then the land was filled. The thing blotted out the sky, reared high on its hind legs. The blood cry tore from its throat again, and Chuck froze to the ledge, unable to move, his muscles paralyzed.

Allosaurus!

At last, like the star of the show putting in a late appearance. This was the fierce carnivore; this was one of the master beasts. Tall as a monarch he stood, thirteen feet high, thirty-four feet from the gaping, open jaws to the end of his tail.

He bellowed to the sky and bellowed to the land, bellowed his superiority to the puny man who crouched behind the boulders with a rifle in his hands.

Allosaurus was green, a dull green, the green of a tarnished penny. His eyes were cold and flat, and his open jaws revealed teeth a full three inches long. The jaws snapped shut, and the teeth gnashed furiously. And then the jaws were open again, revealing the fearsome, razor-sharp teeth, exposing a yawning red maw in the twenty-seven-inch-long head. He held his short forefeet close to his massive chest. He took a long, hunched stride forward, the powerful muscles of his hind limbs shoving him over the ground.

“No! No!” Masterson screamed.

The claws on the beast’s hind legs scraped on the rocky ground as he came forward hungrily. His flat eyes gleamed malevolently. Saliva dripped from his jaws, and a deep rumbling came from within his enormous body. Those claws and jaws could tear and rip. They could penetrate the armor-like hides of his contemporaries, slashing them to bits, cleaning their carcasses to the bone. This was no minor beast. This was one of the kings, one of the fiercest, flesh-eating land animals ever known to Man.

He dwarfed Masterson. He came closer to the boulders. His scream chilled the blood, quickened the heart. It was impossible not to know fear. There was something about the monster that brought fear immediately. Not his size alone, and not the knowledge that he was extremely dangerous. It was something else. A fear that sprang up full-grown. A fear that made Chuck want to run, but that made him incapable of running. A fear that froze muscles, mind, heart, body. A fear that chilled him, yet covered him with sweat. A fear that was a living thing inside. Fear! Real fear. Fear that crackled along Chuck’s skin like a blazing thunderbolt. Fear that crawled in his belly and turned his knees to mud. Fear such as Chuck had never experienced before.

Chuck knew that fear and he knew that Masterson was experiencing it, too. The horrible cry ripped at the sky again, provoking insanity, gripping the skin in a shivering, clammy grasp.

“No!” Masterson shouted again. Suddenly he was firing the rifle. The beast opened its jaws wide, the loose skin around its throat tightening with the motion. Masterson fired until the gun was empty and then he loaded it with trembling fingers. Dr. Dumar and Denise were far to Masterson’s right. Chuck saw them edging their way toward the clearing, ready to make a break for it.

Masterson’s bullets seemed to do no good at all. If anything, they simply infuriated the beast more. Chuck knew, then, that Masterson was firing at the dinosaur’s tough hide, where he could hope to do no damage. A bullet between the eyes might stop the beast — but his eyes were in his head, and his head towered far above Masterson.

It did not tower above Chuck.

From his position on the ledge, he could get a clear shot at Allosaurus.

He caught his breath, feeling a hot lump in his throat. What if his fire drew the beast to him? Allosaurus was closer now, much closer. The jaws snapped at Masterson now. In a little while it would be all over.

Slowly, fear making his hand tremble, Chuck raised the .45.

“Owen.”

He took aim, looking down the length of his shaking arm.

“Owen.”

The voice whispered across his memory, gently, gently, like a mild breeze soughing over a cold mountaintop. “Owen,” it called. “Owen.”

His finger hesitated on the trigger. His brow curled, and his memory struggled with the name, pondered it, frantically wrestled with it until he was almost on the verge of tears. He looked at Masterson, and the name whispered across his mind again. He did not pull the trigger.

Then the voice was gone, his mind was clear and the name was forgotten. There was left only a great awareness of the sharp outline of figures against a background of gray sky. Allosaurus lunged, and the automatic leaped in Chuck’s hand at the same time. He fired again, saw the blossoms of red sprout between the beast’s eyes, saw its jaws snap on Masterson’s body at the same time.

Masterson screamed, a terrifying scream that curled Chuck’s stomach into a rigid ball. He kept squeezing the trigger until he’d fired the seven shells in the clip. He unslung the rifle then and kept blasting away at the bloody, gigantic head. The jaws stopped working, opened wide to reveal teeth crimson with Masterson’s blood. Masterson dropped to the ground like a stone, and Allosaurus wobbled backward. His hind legs gripped unsteadily at the ground, his forefeet drooping weakly. Suddenly the beast toppled over like a giant tree falling. Down, down, he came, hitting the ground with a shock that caused the surrounding rocks to tremble. A great cloud of dust rose over the beast, covered him like a shroud and settled over his thick hide. He lay there in a spreading pool of his own blood, motionless, the flat eyes blank.

Allosaurus was dead.

Chuck looked down the face of the cliff to where Masterson lay crumpled against the rocks. One look told him all he had to know.

Masterson was dead, too.