Short Murder in Paradise

1

Murder/Bennett

Jeffrey C. BennettWC-2412

Paradise

The compound was quiet and empty, except for Roy and me. And Roy was very quiet, even as I stuffed him into the back of a waiting jeep. It’s funny how names for things never change. Jeep. There hadn’t been an internal combustion vehicle called a “Jeep” made in almost 300 years. But we still called them jeeps, whether they floated a bit above the ground or rolled around on wheels.

And we still called a sunrise a sunrise. I love the sunrises back here; the freshness of the colors and shadows playing across the fern prairies sends shivers through me. I always feel like I am standing on the edge of a cliff, waiting to leap off into death’s smiling arms. So much beauty, sometimes I can’t take it all in!

I don’t think Roy cared much for beauty. He was too busy being hypocritical; it’s one of the reasons I never liked Roy. He was a Neo-Malthusian, a follower of a 450-year-old relic who espoused the extinction of the human race. At least I think that’s what he said. All I know is that Roy and his kind felt that we humans have come to the end of our road, that we chose extinction for ourselves by releasing the virus into the food chain. No food, no people.

But really, it wasn’t our fault the plague got loose. Sure, untold millions starved to death because of it, but if we were supposed to go extinct, why would we be here, with the ability to save ourselves?

So Roy and I had had a discussion. Now he was quiet and messy in the back of the jeep. I reached over and patted him on the head, and leaned against the fender.

I waited...then slowly, like the sounds of an orchestra tuning up, came the first sleepy calls of the apatosaur pod that was near the river. Their long, soft, hooting calls washed over me in a wave, and my heart skipped a beat or two. This was the third day, and I knew what was coming. I always timed my kills with the allosaurs’; it was safest that way. I just hoped they would be quick. I didn’t want the compound waking up before I was on my way.

I could see down the fern plain, touched with soft reds and deep shadows, to the beginnings of the small conifer forests bordering the river. The late Jurassic birds were also waking up, filling the air with their song, almost in harmony with the big sauropods.

I jumped as several long, steam whistle roars silenced the birds, then some pounding as the pod tried to run. The allosaurs were having some fun…

The distinctive wail of a dying apatosaur is a terrible sound, a cross between the squeal of giant terrified pig at slaughter and lost baby crying…I hate that sound and it lasted for twenty minutes. But I knew the allosaurs had made a kill, and I could drop my present off to them unmolested.

I smiled. This dinosaur hunter team would go down in history as having the most accident-prone logistics staff ever sent back to the Jurassic. Fortunately for me, the allosaur nest was not far from the compound--a nest I’d used often to dispose of the carrion that had the audacity to call itself human. I liked watching the chicks; they were growing fast, almost three feet long now, and seemed to like my frequent offerings. I enjoyed watching them tear apart the meat I brought. Seemed only fair, considering the number of animals we killed and sent home to eat.

Something else…there was another noise; a higher pitched screeching intertwined with the allosaurs. I shivered again…

Ceratosaurs, a flock of them. They were the smaller country cousins of allosaurs, lighter, slender, with short arms and four-fingered grasping hands that were constantly moving, opening and closing in some sort of neurotic saurian dance. They had a single nose horn, oddly bigger on the females than the males. The horns were usually longer than you’d think, sometimes with a weird twist in them, making ceratos look too much like four-fingered unicorns from hell.

But that wasn’t their most distinctive feature. Not by a long road.

It was their eyes. Ceratos are insane.

If you look into a predators’ eyes; hawks, bears, allosaurs, you see the same thing: fierce cunning, intelligence, and mercilessness. But sometimes there is also curiosity, compassion, maybe an odd quizzicalness that gives us something to identify with as they are killing us.

Ceratos have wild, mad eyes. Looking into them is looking into death made manifest on earth. Sharks, it’s been said, have black, dead eyes, like you are being bitten by something that’s not real. Ceratosaurs are very, very real, and their eyes are glowingly alive.

Allosaurs will hunt a stegosaur, for instance. Dangerous animal, stegosaur: stupid, willful and hardwired to be aggressive. Allosaurs will stalk them, drive them, wear the down until an ambusher grabs its head and suffocates it. There was one time I’d seen a half dozen ceratosaur males leap onto the back of a healthy bull stegosaur, slashing and biting it until they dragged it to the earth, eating it to death. One of the smaller ceratos had been gored by the stegosaur, and as it lay dying the flock’s alpha female came down and killed him--ate him--her beautiful horn dripping crimson in the afternoon sun.

Fortunately, they usually stay in the deep forest uplands, drinking from streams and eating the local dryosaurs, with lizards and mammals on the side. I liked them fine as long as they stayed there.

I looked at Roy; he wasn’t worried, and neither was I as I slid into the driver’s seat. But I couldn’t keep my belly from shivering, making me wish I hadn’t had breakfast. But I had to go. I needed to drop off my prize before the adults got back to the nest. I liked spending time with the chicks alone, almost birds of a feather!

Birds of a feather…I was still chuckling over that as I left the compound and drove across the ferns towards the forest. I heard noises rising from near the river--fiercely intermingled roars and shrieks: the ceratos were probably fighting with the allos over the kill. I would be safe from them as long as they were distracted…I checked my weapons, fully charged gauss rifle and sidearm and sighed, feeling warm and comfortable again. The ceratos were well off by the river, and the birds had started to sing again. I sang with them.

Thirty minutes passed as I drove though this beautiful land. There were no flowers, but the air was so clear and warm, not as humid as you’d think. The trees were lush and there were greens that you never, ever see back home. Occasionally an archaeopteryx would swoop by, chased by wings of small, brightly colored protobirds.

I should’ve expected it. Lost in the moment, I was riding too close to the forest’s edge. They came bounding out in mad leaps, racing after me, surrounding me in high-pitched bellows. Suddenly a small ceratosaur appeared ahead of me; I plowed into him, bowling him over the top of the jeep and onto the ground behind. I spun, and finally stopped in a cloud of ferns and dirt.

They took that moment to leap onto the jeep, the biggest female on the hood, driving the car into the ground nose first, jamming me hard under the steering wheel and vaulting poor Roy out of the back seat in a tall, wide, graceful arc.

I heard the metal hood under her claws give, the sound hurting my ears, the weight of her pressing me down…

She was gone! I looked up and saw the flock in front of me, five males of varying sizes and the huge female. They were all head down, making slurping-grunting noises as they tore poor Roy apart; I couldn’t help smiling. My God, though, the female was almost allosaur sized, maybe thirty feet long, nearly ten feet tall. I didn’t think they got that big…I reached for my rifle…and saw it was out of the jeep far to the right, almost hidden in the trampled ferns.

I needed to leave, and I slowly untangled myself from under the steering wheel. As I sat up, the jeep suddenly popped out of the ground: the floater effect was pretty strong, which was too bad for me---the circle of ceratosaurs all looked up at once, bloody mouthed and curious. The female shook her head, her horn catching the sun and walked over.

I tried to start the damn machine, but it wouldn’t go. She was there when I turned the key a second time. I sat very still; her hot, rotting breath blew my hair around my face. She stepped back then lunged forward, ramming the jeep, spinning it.

It slowed and finally stopped, and as the world refocused, I felt calm. I was surrounded by death, and it felt like home.

The ceratosaur female was green and brown, her horn a brilliant, blood splashed white. She was sitting on the ground, watching me.

It pissed me off.

I shook my head and jumped out and onto the hood, screaming, “Get out of here, momma! You think you can eat me and get away with it? I give you indigestion, like my real momma! Go on, shoo!”

The cerato leapt to her feet and bounded over, throwing ferns and dirt, the others cowered a little ways off-- I was a dead man.

She slid to a stop and roared in my face, a loud, trumpet sound that vibrated through my bones.

I stood, and stared at her, and roared, screamed, shouted, howled at her, so long and so loud that the blood that sprayed from my lips covered her snout in shining red droplets.

She blinked and moved back slightly. Her dark head hung before me in space as she looked at me, studied me with those mad, wild, bird-black eyes, cocking her head side to side, taking in all of me. She was so close I could see my own reflection there, looking into my own wide, dark eyes. We watched each other, and I could see into the depths of those huge, dark eyes, so calculating and cold-- there was something in there, more than the usual madness, and it spoke eloquently to me. I knew I would soon follow Roy.

I glanced at the others; they were lying around, ignoring us.

She moved, fast, oh my, so fast, she reared her head up--I watched it arc to the deep blue sky, a great shadow, then her mouth opened, displaying her sharp, brilliantly white teeth against the deep maroon red of her gums and tongue. She didn’t speak. Her gaping mouth came down, so slow it seemed, and I could do nothing: there was no time. She descended, and I felt my head in her mouth, her brilliant white teeth at my neck, feeling the skin break ever so slightly at her touch.

They say time slows down at the moment of death. I’m sure Roy could tell me all about it, having already done it.

This was slow, so slow.

My head was pillowed against her hot, thick tongue. I found that I was turned onto the right side of my face, my eye and part of my nose sunk into the running saliva. It stung, a lot, but I didn’t really care. I opened my left eye, seeing so close the serrations of those huge teeth. Her gums were bleeding and pale near the base of those teeth, and stuck between a pair near the back were strings of meat, and, I was surprised to see, part of a zipper. Roy must be laughing now, the rat bastard!

I looked outward and saw, framed between the huge, sharp teeth and brown lips, the deep blue sky I’d seen before, and green trees and white clouds. I could swear I saw a bird fly by. I couldn’t smell the freshening breeze I thought I felt whispering on my hands; but then I didn’t smell anything, I didn’t know if I was even breathing…

I wished this was all over with. Being caught between ticks of the clock, between now and soon, is uncomfortable. I wondered why the hell this was all going so slowly. Familiar feelings of anger electrified my enervated body, and I thought I felt my arms reach up and my cold hands push at the warm, pebbly snout of my eater.

There was no panic nauseating my belly, only boredom. “Get on with it!” I tried to shout, and got a mouthful of spit for my efforts. “Damn it!” I mumbled to the tongue, and pushed harder.

The clocked ticked, and I was in the open air, dragging in that cool morning air and retching out the dinosaur mucus. She was looking at me again as I gasped, bringing one eye close, so close I could see myself in it---she barked once and turned, trotting off into the forest. The others followed; the smallest one stopped and picked up what was left of Roy.

I thought he was leaving, but he turned around and trotted back to me. I tensed, dripping and sore, and waited. The small dinosaur dropped what he was carrying to the ground---he was so close-- hidden by the fender-- I couldn’t really see what he was doing. He ducked down, tugged and stood up.

The ceratosaur dipped his head at my feet and opened his mouth. I felt something stop against my boot…then he turned and raced off for the pack.

I looked down-- Roy’s chewed head grinned up at me. My God, they had left me a present!

They were gone. In the distance the sauropods were hooting again, and the forest sounds were coming alive. I slid off the hood of the jeep and hit the ground, sprawling. My legs shook as I stood, and I saw a broken bit of mirror. I stopped and just looked at the eyes in the mirror, wondering if the ceratosaurs had come back.

Then I recognized those eyes, and smiled. I picked up my rifle and headed back to camp, whistling.

The End