In the Time of Dinosaurs Page 7

  "Jake!" Cassie cried. "Where are you?" I wanted to tell her to shut up and save herself. Another part of me wanted to beg her to help me.

  I was shaking. Literally shaking. Like I had fever chills and I just couldn't stop them. CHOMP! The huge head came down and ripped violently into the long-necked dinosaur.

  CHOMP! The Tyrannosaurus was eating ravenously. Just a couple of feet above my head. Then I guess it chomped into something tough, because it yanked. And that yanking lifted the big dinosaur's weight off me for a second.

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  I was out!

  I rolled. I jumped to my feet.

  "Ooof!" I went down. My legs had gone numb from being pinned. I could move them, but

  Down it came! Flashing teeth all around me. No way out. I curled into a ball.

  "Oh, God!" I cried.

  The Tyrannosaurus's jaw closed around me. I clenched my arms and legs tight together. Still those teeth cut grooves in my left shoulder. No room! The mouth was too narrow. I pushed my numb legs out before me, down the Tyrannosaurus's throat.

  I was in the Tyrannosaurus's mouth. No room to move. Stinking foul air. Sticky saliva all over me. A big tongue that tried to push the rest of me down the waiting, greedy throat. He closed his mouth and crushed the air out of my lungs.

  I grabbed that tongue. I locked my fingers on the rough, wet thing and focused with all that was left of my terrified, jibbering brain.

  I wasn't even sure I'd acquired the DNA when I started trying to morph. I was doing it all at once. I was acquiring and morphing and screaming in terror.

  But I began to grow. I couldn't be near those teeth when I grew. They would lacerate me. I wormed down the roaring Tyrannosaurus's throat. Down away from the teeth. Its powerful throat muscles were pummeling my legs now, but I was morphing.

  The Tyrannosaurus realized something was wrong. It had swallowed the wrong thing. It coughed and gacked. Then, a massive surge of muscle spasm, and I was falling.

  Flump!

  I hit the soft side of the fallen long-necked dinosaur. I tried to grab on, but failed. My hands weren't my hands anymore.

  I rolled onto the ground at the Tyrannosaurus's feet. I was at his mercy. Utterly.

  But the big monster was not able to attack. Something had happened to its insides. I don't know if I ruptured something, or what. But the tyrant lizard stomped three, four, five steps away and collapsed. It sat down on its tail, then fell over onto its side, moaning.

  I lay there gasping, not knowing what body I had, not caring. I was alive. I tried my mouth. No, I couldn't talk. I demorphed. Then tried again.

  "Cassie! Marco! Ax!"

  "Jake?" Cassie's voice cried in the darkness.

  It took a few seconds for us to find each other back at the glowing embers of the campfire. Cassie put her arms around me, slime and all, and hugged me. I was too shaky to return the hug, but it felt good.

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  K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs "Is it dead?" Marco asked.

  "No," I said. "But I think I hurt it. It's on its side over there, I think."

  "You know what we should do," Marco said grimly. "We should all acquire that Tyrannosau-rus. We need one alive to acquire. It's alive. Until we acquire a Big Rex we're just going to get chased around till sooner or later we get eaten."

  "I already did it," I said. "But you're right."

  None of them were anxious to walk over and start touching that creature. Even moaning on its side, it was terrifying.

  We came up slowly, carefully, tentatively beneath the tail. We earned small torches to light our way.

  Marco was the first. He pressed his hand against the crocodilelike flesh.

  And then Ax.

  And lastly Cassie.

  It was strange. Like some kind of ritual. Three humans and an alien, all carrying torches that might as well have been cinders in the endless darkness. We cowered before the groaning, wheezing monster and touched it.

  "It's so strange," Cassie said. "We're humans in a time millions of years before the first humans. In our time, Homo sapiens run the planet. In this time it's the Tyrannosaurus. You always wonder who would have won, if humans and dinosaurs had lived at the same time. Who would have survived?"

  "They would have hunted us like cats hunt mice," Marco said. "Primitive humans with sharp sticks and maybe a couple of torches? No contest."

  «Yes, but you are not just primitive humans,» Ax said. «You are primitive humans with Andalite morphing technology.»

  Not for the first time, I wondered if Ax had developed a sense of humor.

  And then the adrenalin and lack of sleep and the physical beating all came together. My eyes closed all on their own. My legs buckled. I fell, and arms reached out to take me.

  Marco

  After we let Jake sort of doze for awhile, we decided that maybe sleeping between a dead long-necked dinosaur the size of Nebraska and a moaning, sick Tyrannosaurus was not a great idea.

  So despite the fact that it was so dark we couldn't see our own feet, we trudged on. At least it wasn't raining. After that big huge flash, I'd assumed rain was coming. But maybe that's not the way it worked in this millennium.

  "So basically everything is fine," I said, shifting my pathetically dim torch to my other hand. "We're tens of millions of years in the past. We have no food except charred scraps of dinosaur-on-a-stick. There's a river over there, but if we do go and get a drink, some monster crocodile will jump out and chomp us. We're lost, which is fine because let's face

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  K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs it, we're not exactly looking for the nearest Taco Bell, so who cares where we are? Plus, just to make things perfect, we're wearing Tyrannosaurus skin sandals, which is going to really, really endear us to the next Big Rex we see."

  "I wish Rachel were here," Cassie said.

  "Yeah," I said, suddenly sad. "She'd say something like, 'I can stand the dinosaurs, Marco, I just can't stand listening to you whine.'"

  Jake laughed softly. "You do a pretty good Rachel impression."

  I heard Cassie sniffle.

  "You know what occurs to me," I said. "We survived, right? I mean, twice we've been jumped by tyrannosaurs or tyrannosauri, whichever. I'm still here and I'm not Captain Heroic. And Jake is still here, despite the fact he's a big, galumphing, clumsy oaf, and not even all that bright."

  "Thanks," Jake said.

  "My point is, if we could survive, are you going to tell me Rachel and Tobias -Xena, Warrior Princess, and a Bird-boy who has to hunt his breakfast every morning -didn't make it? Come on, anything that wants to kill Rachel would have to be meaner than Rachel. And you know that's not even possible."

  Cassie chuckled. She sniffled, too. The truth was I was talking total bull, but who knew? Maybe somehow Rachel and Tobias really did make it. It was easier to believe they did.

  I've always said you make a choice in this world. You can see the world as being tragic, or you can see it as being funny. Some things just flat-out aren't funny, of course. But with very few exceptions, you can usually find the humor in life and in people. I guess if you want to see the world as being sad, terrible, unfair, boo-hoo boo-hoo, that's fine. But man, what kind of life is that?

  We trudged. We stopped and dozed. We got up and trudged some more. And gradually that humongous comet in the sky grew faint as the sky began to light up with the rising sun.

  Then with shocking suddenness, pop! The sun just seemed to jump up off the horizon. I tossed away my charred stump of a torch, closed my eyes, and spread my arms wide to welcome good old Mommy Sun.

  It illuminated a scene out of some museum diorama. The plain stretched out before us, punctuated now with clumps of trees and sudden jutting rocks. The stream still wandered beside us. The woods were off to one side. The volcano was still smoking away, looking intimidating as it towered up above
the plain.

  And scattered about on that African-looking savanna, where you might expect to see gazelles or wildebeest or lions, there was a small herd of Triceratops. They moved along calmly, maybe a hundred of them. Like an old-west buffalo herd, I guess. Only Buffalo Bill would have hung up his hat rather than go after these bad boys.

  «Does the rising sun make humans feel more optimistic?» Ax asked.

  "Yeah. Unless it's a school day," I said.

  «We are the same. It doesn't make complete sense, but it does make me Page 47

  K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs

  feel better. I can see. Seeing is useful.» "Plus it blanks out that comet, and that thing was starting to bug me. On the other hand, I'm looking at a bunch of dinosaurs the size of cement trucks, so -"

  «The comet bothered you? But not the flash of light?» "Lightning. So what?" «No, no. Not lightning. I assumed you knew. It was artificial in origin,

  not natural.»

  It took me about five more steps before I said, "What?" I stopped. Jake stopped. Cassie stopped. "Artificial?" Jake asked. "What do you mean, artificial? Doesn't that

  mean man-made? Or at least, made?" «Yes, of course. The flash was not a naturally occurring phenomenon. It was all wrong for light

  ning. My stalk eyes are capable of seeing a little further into the ultraviolet and infrared spectra of light and -» "Just tell us what it was!" Cassie yelled impatiently. That shocked us

  all. Cassie never yells. But then again, maybe she's just not a morning

  person. «I believe it was an explosion. I would have thought it was a Dracon beam striking a target, only it was too blue.»

  Jake took a deep breath. "Ax? Do me a favor. Don't assume we know these things, okay?"

  «Yes, Prince Jake,» he said. Jake looked at me. "You think Yeerks got transported back to this time with us somehow?"

  «Prince Jake, I don't -» "Don't call me prince," Jake said automatically. "There weren't any Yeerks anywhere near that submarine when it blew up,"

  I said. "Especially not any Yeerk spacecraft. I mean, come on, I think

  we'd have noticed." «It isn't the Yeerks,» Ax said. «I assumed there must be some sort of highly advanced species of these dinosaurs. But it isn't the Yeerks.»

  "Highly advanced dinosaurs?" I said. "Professor T-rex? I don't think so." "Last night I saw some weird flashes far off," Jake said. "Me, too," Cassie said. "I assumed they were lightning or something." We resumed walking. "Ax-man, I think maybe you're just nuts." «Me? Wrong? It is possible,» Ax said dubiously. «But the nature of the

  light certainly seemed to . . .» He droned on for a while about the wavelengths and the retinal impact patterns and distance-sense and a lot of other Andalite stuff that Page 48

  K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs humans would probably learn about someday.

  I tuned it out. I was watching the Triceratops herd, which was off to our side now. I mean, come on, every little kid has a toy plastic Triceratops at some time. And here they were. Real. Actual dinosaurs moving along, munching the grass, occasionally using their huge long horns to dig up a tasty herb. It was cool. Set aside the fact that we had taken a big elevator ride about ten floors down on the food chain. It was still cool.

  "Oh, man, look. I think we're coming up on some kind of big gorge or whatever," Jake said.

  The prairie before us did seem to stop suddenly. The grass wasn't waving beyond a certain point.

  "We'll have to go around," Cassie said.

  "Why?" I wondered. "Where exactly is it we think we're going?"

  "What do you want us to do?" Jake asked peevishly. "Sit down right here and start building a new civilization?"

  "I'm just saying it's not like we have an appointment to be somewhere."

  We marched on, unable to see the extent of the rift till we got close.

  And then suddenly we could see. It was incredible. Like walking up on the Grand Canyon the first time. We were at the edge of a valley hundreds of feet deep and miles across. It gave me vertigo just standing there, like I might fall in.

  And it would be a very long fall, with plenty of time to scream on the way down.

  But that wasn't what really knocked the wind out of us. Because see, the valley wasn't empty. Down there, spread across a mile of valley floor, were glittering, shining buildings.

  Buildings.

  And hovering protectively above those buildings was something that looked an awful lot like a flying saucer.

  Tobias

  How's the wing?" Rachel asked.

  «It itches. How are your feet?»

  "They hurt all over again."

  «Am I hurting your shoulder?»

  "Nope. Not like you hurt my stomach when you opened me up like you were gutting a fish."

  «I said I'm sorry. I've said it over and over.»

  "I know. I'm cranky. I didn't exactly have a good night's sleep. I seem to remember having to morph the grizzly bear, only to have you come along and slice me up like I was a pepperoni pizza. Slice me up like I

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  K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs was a hunk of cheese."

  I sighed. I tried to balance on Rachel's shoulder without digging my talons in. We'd ripped a patch of the dead Deinonychus's skin to cover her shoulder, but it wasn't staying on.

  "Sliced me up like I was a ham," Rachel muttered. "Like I was bacon. And eggs. And some hash browns. Denny's. I'd give up shopping for a Denny's Grand Slam breakfast right now. The one with the pancakes. Get the hash browns as a side order. Two sausage links, two slices of bacon, two eggs over medium, you know? Not too soft and runny. I don't like them soft and runny. Maple syrup on the pancakes. Has to be maple. What kind of person puts boysenberry syrup on pancakes?"

  «So I'm guessing you're hungry?»

  She turned her icy blue eyes toward me. "Like a loaf of bread. That's how you sliced me up. Like a loaf of bread you get fresh from the bakery, all crusty and crispy and golden on the outside and soft and white and still-warm inside. And raspberry preserves. Has to be raspberry. I like Smuckers. A big jar of raspberry preserves with the seeds. I mean, what kind of baby has to have seedless preserves?"

  I looked at her with my hawk's eyes. I was inches away. It was like looking at her through a microscope, practically. She hadn't slept, hadn't brushed her hair, and she was in a bad mood. But she looked great.

  I looked away. What was the point? Jeez, my own tiredness and hunger must be affecting me. I was starving. I could see little shrewlike mammals flitting between tree roots and cowering beneath ferns, but with a busted wing there was nothing I could do.

  All I could do was watch the trees as we walked. We had left the Deinonychus pack behind in the night. As leader of the pack, I'd snarled at them till they backed away. I left them looking lost and stupid. But pretty soon they'd get around to choosing a new leader.

  Rachel had acquired one of them. It hadn't been easy, but I'd been able to control the murderous creature long enough for her to touch him.

  Now we were wandering along in the forest. Looking for food. Looking for Jake and the others. Looking for a clue of what to do.

  We were entering an area with more vegetation now. There were clusters of palm trees here and there. Clumps of five or ten trees with some bushes around the base. It made me nervous. They blocked my view.

  On the other hand .... «Hey, don't dates grow on trees?»

  "Not according to my mom. She's thinking about dating again. You know, it's been awhile since the divorce and ... oh. You mean like dates you eat? I guess they grow on trees."

  «On date palms, right?»

  "Like I know? Like I go food shopping out in the wild? Picking dates off trees and tomatoes off vines and corn out of, I don't know, corn trees?"

  «Corn trees? Corn trees?»

  "Oh, fine. I'm starving and you're picking on me because I'm not a farm girl like Cassie."
<
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  «We could go look at those palm trees. Maybe they have dates or coconuts in them. Something for you to eat, anyway.» "I could use a rest. And some shade." We headed toward the second nearest clump of trees. Two monstrously big

  Triceratops were over in the shade of the nearest trees. Supposedly they were peaceful plant-eaters. But they were big as elephants, with three-foot-long horns. So no matter how peaceful they were, I didn't want to share the shade with them.

  «There's definitely something up in those trees,» I said. I could see

  pods of some sort clustered under the fanlike fronds. We reached the shade of the tree. Rachel set me down on the ground and threw rocks till she knocked a pod down. It was brown, about the size of a coconut. She used another rock to bash it open. Inside was a whitish pulp.

  "Well? What do you think?" «I don't know. Most likely it won't kill you.» Rachel made a face. She held a piece of the

  pulp up to her nose. "Smells okay." Then she shrugged, popped some

  in her mouth and swallowed. "Hmm. Not bad." «What's it taste like?» I asked. I gazed up jealously at the fruit. I was low down on the ground, not able to see much but the towering trees. But something caught my eye. Through the smooth trunks and riotous bushes, I saw something curved. It looked ridiculously like a handheld fan. Only much bigger. There were spines or spokes with brightly-patterned green and red fabric between them.

  No, not fabric. Skin. But it had to be from something dead. It wasn't