“Damn son, that’s a thick ass dinosaur,” Steiner said, looking through night vision binoculars at the Allosaur with its snout in the air, its back now turned to them. He panned downward to see its legs, and a slow trickle of some dark liquid down the left one.

“It’s got a wound on the left leg.” Steiner lowered the binoculars to relight a cigar he’d half finished earlier. “Go check on it, Bass, maybe it’ll be the first friendly Allosaur we’ve ever met.” Steiner reached across the driver’s seat to punch Bass on the shoulder playfully.

“Yeah, I’ll get right on that. Maybe I’ll invite it back to camp for one of our five star ration packs and a neon blue energy drink.” Bass sat back, feeling exhausted from being up for so long. He could hardly keep his eyes open and his foot twitched anxiously.

Carribo approached, having stirred awake after being poked on the cheek with a thin bendy stick by Marlin and Sleeper. “Goochie-goo, goochie-goo, there’s an Allosaur out there, waiting for you!” Sleeper joked.

“Mannaggia, mannaggia,” Carribo grumbled as he flung the light jungle blanket and netting off himself, rolling out of the jeep into the wet grass. Half asleep, he began to wander down the row of vehicles clutching his D1 in his right hand, feeling the cool bite of humid nighttime air.

“What now?” he asked the gathered rangers staring at a large, dark silhouette looming a short distance away. “Swear on my fucking nonna, Bass, if this is a joke.” Carribo took a pair of binoculars handed to him, setting the filter to night vision to see an Allosaur standing a hundred meters away, breathing heavily.

Carribo, suddenly awake, pulled a key from his pocket and handed it to Sleeper. “Get the tranquilizer gun,” he said, “and someone get Oakhill up here!”

Sleeper pulled a hard plastic case from one of the jeeps and unlocked it, picking up a long tranquilizer rifle with a scope mounted on top. “How long has it been standing there?” Carribo asked Bass, who had been watching the Allosaur.

“About ten minutes,” said Bass, checking his watch. An annoyed groan came from behind him and Collins revealed her head from under a blanket. “Go back to sleep, sweetcheeks.” Bass turned to look at her and shot her an air-kiss, then felt her kick the back of his seat.

“It’s wounded,” Carribo said. Sleeper loaded a dart, then rested the rifle over the hood of the jeep. He could see the outline of the predator through the scope, but not its features, or much else around it due to the darkness.

“I already said it’s fucking wounded.” Steiner and Carribo exchanged a glance, then looked away at the same moment to return their focus to the Allosaur.

“You’ll have to get closer than that, Sleeper,” Carribo bluntly stated. “The tranquilizer only has a range of about thirty meters,” he added, turning to look at Sleeper, who had gone tight-lipped and hung his head.

“Well, guess I’ll just go and shove my head up its ass, why not?” Sleeper complained.
“Give it a prostate exam to go with the colonoscopy while you’re at it,” Moon called to him as he started walking slowly toward the Allosaur, a middle finger raised above him.

Oakhill came running down the convoy of jeeps wearing a rucksack with a large medical cross patch on it and a ridiculous amount of pouches attached to it all over. “You look like a tortoise with that thing on,” Raker said to him, but Oakhill paid no attention.

“We’ve got a-” both Steiner and Carribo had started talking at the same time, with the exact same words. “A woun-” they started again after a short pause and exchange of looks.

“Do you fucking mind?” Carribo blurted out.
“Not at all,” Steiner said.
“There’s a wounded Allosaur, Sleeper is going to tranquilize it.” Carribo lifted the binoculars up to watch Sleeper’s advance. Without warning, Oakhill trotted into view, running out to join Sleeper.

“Coming up behind you,” Oakhill whispered so as not to frighten Sleeper. He tripped over a dead body from the earlier firefight and crashed face-first into the grass with a wet thud. Sleeper looked down at him, then back up to see the Allosaur was turning around to face them.

Sleeper pushed Oakhill back down to the ground, then joined him. “It’s looking right at us, don’t fucking move,” Sleeper whispered. The wet grass around them stood up stiffly, curling over toward the tips like the tail of a cat. They hoped the waist-high sea of green would be enough to hide them, but then again, an Allosaur had a distinct advantage given its height.

They felt soft tremors in the ground as the Allosaur took a few steps, milling around where it was standing. A low rumbling emanated from it, and they could hear its deep inhalations sniffing the air.

“Fuck!” Sleeper shouted as a Compsognathus burst through the grass and ran over top of both of them, chirping in alarm. Its foot pressed to Oakhill’s skin, the little claws dug in as it launched itself off him, leaving a streak of claw marks across the back of his neck. It was gone as quick as it came, then a second one passed a couple feet in front of them.

In the confusion they’d ignored the continued tremors in the ground, then felt the hot breath of the Allosaur rushing through the wet grass, blowing it toward their faces from only a few meters away.

“Well, this isn’t good,” Oakhill whispered.
“Not fucking good at all,” Sleeper replied, flipping the safety selector on the tranquilizer to the red marking.
“Don’t uh, don’t look up,” Oakhill said quietly, lying face down with his hands on the back of his head.

“I looked up.” Sleeper sat up on his knees, staring at an Allosaur head turned sideways, the eye examining him curiously. The scales were thick like armor plating, and the colorful crest atop its head appeared amber orange with red striations throughout.

Even while paralyzed with fear, Sleeper’s lip curled in disgust at the rotten, foul, hot breath that was invading his senses. Suddenly the lights of the jeeps had turned on and were focused on the beast, revealing a mouth full of bloodstained serrated teeth.

Sleeper noticed something else: a bubbling foam around the edges of its mouth that mixed with dripping saliva in long, thick strands. The spotlights blinded it, illuminating the features even further as it stumbled back in a daze with a loud roar.

The tail whipped over their heads, that was when Sleeper shot up from the grass and fired a dart directly into its neck. “How long do these usually take to work?” Sleeper asked Oakhill, who turned to look up at him.

“About five minutes.” Oakhill got up on his knees to see the Allosaur was trying to walk away from the lights shining directly at its face, flattening the grass around it. It let out a series of roars, turning to direct them at the jeeps.

The Allosaur took a few more steps, pausing with a half-roar, then let out multiple shallow breaths in three-second intervals before lowering down to the grass, resting on its belly. Its head shook around in circles, struggling to fight off the tranquilizing agent until he gently lay down.

It made one last attempt to stand back up, staggering around on buckling legs until it crashed over on its right-hand side, presenting its left perfectly for the DinoVet. It let out one last heavy breath, followed by a kick that straightened out its leg, then it fell motionless in place.

Oakhill wasted no time and rushed forward, sprinting across the thirty meters the Allosaur had covered before succumbing to paralysis. Sleeper hesitantly followed him, slinging the tranquilizer rifle and switching to his regular one.

“It’s going to twitch for a couple minutes, then we’ll have maybe a half hour to work.” Oakhill shrugged off his large rucksack and pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, fishing around for a particular kit in the bag. “Hold this,” Oakhill said, handing Sleeper a small aluminum tray.

With a headlamp on, Oakhill began to triage the Allosaur to the best of his ability. “Looks like he took a bullet to the leg, we’ll have to dig it out.” Oakhill began to fill the tray with medical instruments as the jeeps moved closer, their headlights shining on the dinosaur in front of him.

“What’s the damage, doc?” Carribo asked, standing beside Oakhill as he worked feverishly.

“Bullet to the leg, and an abscessed jaw.” Oakhill pulled out a large wound spreader, multiple pairs of hemostats, and a pair of forceps. “Captain, could you spare someone as a second set of hands?”

“My hands aren’t the steadiest, doc,” Carribo said, turning to the others. “Who wants to help the DinoVet?” he asked. A couple seconds went by, then Moon jumped down and stepped forward, tying her hair back in a ponytail.

Carribo gave her a nod and stepped away. “You’ll need these.” Oakhill handed her a pair of black rubber gloves, then began dousing the instruments on the tray in alcohol. Moon pulled the gloves on with a snap and turned to examine the wound.

Oakhill made an incision with a knife specially designed by him, the first DinoVet and only one of two in the entire world. It was small and thin with a serrated edge intended for use on the large, thick hides of dinosaurs. “Hold the wound open so I can get the spreader in,” Oakhill said.

Moon reached her fingers in, pulling it open to see the bloody, pink-colored meat of the Allosaur inside. “You ever wonder what dinosaur meat tastes like?” Moon asked him quietly as the stainless steel spreader was inserted and opened to give him a better view into the wound.

“All the time,” Oakhill said, “but I don’t want to be the one to kill a dinosaur just to taste it.” The blood trickled out, and Oakhill peered inside to see the dull copper jacket of a bullet. “Thankfully it’s full metal jacket,” he sighed with relief. “I can get the whole bullet out without fishing for fragments, or causing more damage.”

“Go check on its abscess for me, Moon. It should be one of the teeth on the left toward the back from the looks of it,” said Oakhill, inserting the forceps to grasp the bullet. The forceps clamped down, but the blood made it slippery, taking multiple attempts to get it out.

Moon knelt beside it, pulling back the flesh to expose the gums, finding a swollen red bump and a blackened cavity infecting a tooth. Moon reached her hand out to run it along one of the uninfected teeth, feeling the sharp serrations along each one.

“Like steak knives, huh?” Steiner stood behind her, kneeling to join her beside it. “This big bastard can open its jaws seventy-five degrees, maybe up to eighty. There’s nothing else like it.” Steiner reached his scarred left hand out, running it over the scales above the upper teeth.

“Even killing machines have their place, Steiner,” Oakhill said, lighting a portable propane torch that he used to lightly cauterize the wound. “This is going to be the most pissed off Allosaur for a couple weeks.” Oakhill removed the spreader, then began to stitch the wound closed with biodegradable sutures.

Moon looked at the abscess closer, noticing something between the infected tooth and the one behind it. She reached in and peeled back what she thought was an infected piece of the Allosaur’s gum, finding a stringy, leathery piece of flesh and with something green attached to it.

“I think our buddy ate someone,” Moon said, prying the rotten flesh from between the teeth along with the green fabric. The fabric had the tail end of a cotton nametape attached, the color and style of an ADC one. “Check it out, even the Allosaurs are fighting the ADC,” Ryujin grinned.

“Well, hopefully he gets a few more after this.” Sleeper followed Oakhill to the head of the Allosaur, holding the tray of instruments steady while Oakhill pried the infected tooth out.

“I’m telling you, Roscoe, you gotta write that book on dinosaur medicine before the other guy does,” Sleeper said. Oakhill was surprised at how easily the tooth popped out, and the fact it left behind no fragments or roots for him to fish for.

He placed the tooth on the tray with a clattering sound. “I’ve already got it ready to go, I’m just waiting on command to approve it. And I’ll have to add more later when I finally work on Iguanodons.” Oakhill pulled the lower jaw slightly, opening the mouth and getting a sudden whiff of the putrid stench of the Allosaurs breath.

He brushed the propane torch over the bleeding stump where the tooth had been until he saw that it was properly sealed. “Animals this big, man, it’s too much of a risk to just stitch them when they’re in the jungle, gotta keep insects from laying eggs in the wound and they like the water so it’ll just get infected if not sealed,” Oakhill sighed.

“I’ll make sure this is documented for your records, Oakhill,” said Carribo from his jeep. Oakhill stood up and removed his gloves, looking down at the sedated dinosaur, then his watch. More time than he thought had passed, and they were approaching the wear-off window for the tranquilizer.

“We’ve got about five minutes before he starts waking up, and he’s gonna be pissed off, so let’s be ready to shake bones,” Oakhill said, packing up his instruments and throwing the bag into the jeep.

Everyone loaded up and the jeeps began to back away to the road where they’d been prior. After a few more minutes, the Allosaur rose up slowly, able to be seen above the grass as it looked around and shook its head. It tried to stand up but wobbled around, then returned to the grass to curl up quietly.

Hours came to pass, and when dawn arrived the Allosaur was still snoozing at the edge of the field. “We can’t wait all day, doc, we have to get moving,” Carribo told Oakhill with a hand on his shoulder.

The sun was now shining on the Allosaur, and Oakhill knew they really could not wait any longer for it to show signs of recovery. “Alright,” he said, climbing up into a jeep to sit in the back with Raker. The long line of jeeps started up, and Oakhill looked back one more time.

The Allosaur had its head up, yawning deeply, snapping its jaws closed audibly. “Wait, Steiner!” Oakhill said, the jeep came to an abrupt stop as the Allosaur rose to its feet and took a few shaky steps. Oakhill looked at it, and the Allosaur looked back at him, then the jeep began to move forward and the Allosaur turned to walk away in the opposite direction.

With a smile, Oakhill looked forward, scribbling in his notepad that it had been a very good night. His ears were met with a loud, cracking roar, and he shot a glance over his shoulder to see the Allosaur with its jaws wide, head high in the air.

It disappeared into the trees, and Oakhill scratched out his previous entry, replacing “very good” with “the best damn night of my life”.

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Tanganyika, October 1931.

A high sun traced itself across the plains of eastern Tanganyika. Below it, a few dozen British soldiers thought it had certainly come to a full stop at midday.

The small, remote outpost was nothing more than a single airstrip, and a poor one at that. Made of dirt with potholes throughout, and several small buildings that acted as storehouses and places for the garrison to sleep.

Most of the men were sprawled out beneath the shade of palm trees listening to the birds and trumpeting of elephants in the distance. “Where you going in such a rush, corporal?” shouted one of them as Corporal Graves sprinted across the station grounds.

“None of your bloody business!” Graves shouted back to him, continuing on toward the command building with a piece of paper clutched in his left hand.

“Uptight bastard,” one of the soldiers said to the man next to him before lying back on the soft grass. Inside the command building, two men were sitting about trying to avoid the heat of another African day.

“Wretched heat,” Colonel Toombs said. The sweat beaded down from under his cap, soaking his white hair and saturating his thick mustache with a bit of curling at each end. With a red handkerchief he wiped it away, only for it to return a short few seconds later.

“Telegram from Zanzibar, sir.” Corporal Graves saluted and presented the folded sheet of paper, which had no small amount of sweat soaked into it from his run. Toombs took it from the corporal with a simple grunt and a short salute that hardly saw his hand raise beyond the lowest rib.

The colonel skimmed at first, and then his eyes narrowed. He pulled the paper closer to his face, squinting as if he couldn’t read it. “Preposterous!” He let out a deep, boisterous laugh, the sound was like that of a walrus.

“Giant birds on Zanzibar!” He shouted, crumpling it up and tossing the paper onto a wooden desk. Lieutenant Stone picked it up, began to straighten it back out, and his brow furrowed with confusion upon the first line.

REQUEST IMMEDIATE MILITARY ASSISTANCE. GIANT FLYING LIZARDS OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN AND SPECIES ATTACKING. CITIZENRY IN TERROR. SEND HELP URGENTLY.

Stone was a man of stoic personality that rarely slipped. Quiet, intelligent, and tactically sound, if not a bit too lenient. Having survived the western front of the first world war, and then spent a not insignificant amount of time across Africa, he had suffered through horror, then officer after officer, each stricter or more lenient than the last, but never the same.

“Birds, sir?” Stone asked the colonel, who was lighting a tobacco pipe. “It sounds to me they’re describing something more akin to flying lizards.” Stone looked across the desk at the colonel’s back, the bright light pouring in around his stocky frame to illuminate the weathered features on his face and hands.

“A sham and waste of paper. I imagine the dullard who sent it is taking the piss on ale.” The colonel peered through a window, the African sun beamed across his white hair and beard. In the glass he could just make out Stone’s... Well, stony face, and the paper in his hand that he was still re-reading.

“Regardless, sir, they’ve requested military assistance,” said Stone. “By law I believe we’re required to render it, drunk dullard or not, sir.” Stone knew by the way the colonel had stopped expelling smoke that the next words would either be a tirade for the ages or, at best, very passive aggressive.

Corporal Graves, who had been standing beside Stone the entire time, now took three steps back, placing himself within arms length of the doorknob in case the colonel grabbed something, as he often did, to throw in that direction.

“By all means, lieutenant, render it to them,” Toombs said in a low, eerie, sarcastic voice that made Stone’s eyebrow raise.

Stone gulped and straightened out his uniform, brushing back his dark brown hair with one hand, his hat clutched in the other. “Sir?” he asked, now taking a couple steps back like Graves had done.

“Look about this pathetic excuse for a station, lieutenant. We have a decrepit German zeppelin, three Sopwith Camels that may or may not fall apart before the tires leave the ground, and three dozen men who couldn’t be whipped to carry out an order under any penalty other than death. By all means, if you see fit to render aid, I shall not stop you from doing so. That is, of course, assuming you could get these dogs to render it.”

“Very good, sir.” Stone didn’t linger on the sarcasm, nor did he dwell on what might happen should the colonel be playing a joke on him. Stone placed his peaked hat atop his head and marched straight out of the command building, making a line for the airfield.

“You can’t be serious, lieutenant,” Graves said, marching beside him. “These planes aren’t airworthy, and even if they were we could only send three, what good would three planes do? Those men undoubtedly need rifles and grenades for whatever is going on there.”

“That’s not for me to question, corporal. Another station has requested aid, and we are charged with answering that request by any means that we presently have. That includes broken airplanes and drunken idiots.” Stone continued across the grounds, making his way to the airfield where the three Camel planes were sitting side-by-side in a row.

“Coffin, how long until the Camels can be ready?” Stone asked in a slightly rushed tone. For a few moments there was no response, so Stone kicked his leg to see if he might be dead.

Coffin’s lanky frame was laid out across a mat of palm fronds, upon which he had crossed his legs and placed his hands behind his head to watch the birds above. “Frankly, lieutenant, they’re about as ready as they’ll ever be until we get proper parts.”

“Will they fly?” asked Stone.
“For a time,” Coffin replied dryly.
“How long is for a time?”
“I don’t quite know, how could I know? They’re mechanical things, they work when they want.”
“Get them fueled,” Stone commanded.
“Aye, sir!” Coffin was suddenly on his feet in a startlingly fast manner, saluting the lieutenant.

“And the airship, sir?” piped an Irish voice from somewhere that Stone couldn’t seem to identify exactly where he was. “Could have her ready in two hours, right and proper like.”

“Morton, I’ve told you to stop faffing about with the nettings.” Stone searched around, his brow furrowed, eyes focusing on anything that may look amiss among the tropical vegetation.

“Aye, sir. Was too good a chance to not play a mite bit of the sneaks,” Morton replied. Stone watched Morton rise from the ground itself, his form covered in a thick blanket of foliage and debris he’d attached to a rope net to cover himself with.

“Works a charm, dunnit? I’ve been creeping inch after inch toward Coffin for the last two hours, wanted to see how bad he would flail if he believed the earth was swallowing him up.” Morton gave the lieutenant a goofy smile, as if he were proud of himself. Stone returned the smile with a clear expression of annoyance, and Morton began to roll it up and stash it away next to a small wooden bunkhouse.

“If I catch you faffing about with the nettings once more I’ll have your red Irish scalp on my belt.” Stone glared at Morton, who went tight-lipped and nodded.

“I’ll be seein’ to the zeppelin, lieutenant!” Morton said, saluting and dashing away. Stone shook his head and opened the door of the bunkhouse, stepping inside to have his nose overwhelmed by the stench of unwashed men who had gone noseblind to it.

“Grimm, Wolfe, Sexton, you’re coming with me,” Stone said. There was a groan, a sigh, and a fist dully thumping the wall upon hearing the words.

“Must we?” Wolfe asked from his bunk with one arm over his eyes. The bunkhouse itself was cool, thanks in large part to terracotta pots filled with water. It was also in the shade at all hours except when the sun was highest, so it made a natural choice for men to rest.

“Private!” Came a shout from behind Stone, causing him to jump. Corporal Graves had been standing just inches behind him, and was now barging his way into the bunkhouse. Stone pulled a cigarette from a metal case, lit it, and leaned against the doorframe.

“Need I remind you that you are a soldier in the service of his majesty, King George, and you shall exemplify yourself as such! You lousy load of slovenly, lice infested, no-good jackhorses!” Graves went about with a bendy stick, rapping each of them on the ankles with force enough to leave welts until they’d jumped out of their bunk.

“Attention!” Graves shouted. Once every soldier had gathered, Graves stopped in front of Stone and stood at attention, saluting him.

“Much appreciated, corporal.” Stone removed his hat, dusted it, then placed it back on his head and glanced around. “We’ve received a request for aid from Zanzibar, and we intend to take the zeppelin there. I feel it a fine chance to get out of the station, and perhaps have some leave permitted to spend some of the money you lot have piling up.”

The men were no longer as upset as they were, in fact, they were visibly struggling to contain their joy at the prospect of getting to leave the station for any amount of time.

“They do have good ale and food in Zanzibar,” Wolfe said.
“And ladies,” said Sexton.
“I’m keen for a game of cards against someone with money,” Grimm smiled slightly.

“Shall I fetch the Vickers and Lewis guns, sir?” Graves asked. Stone nodded, and Graves turned to the men. “Alright, you heard the lieutenant, go fetch the fucking guns and get them ready! Lazy bastards!” Graves shouted, whipping the stick against the wooden floor.

The three men darted out toward a nearby storehouse that served as the armory. “The colonel has apparently decided to embark upon the journey, sir,” Graves informed Stone, who had taken a single step out of the bunkhouse before pausing.

“He what?”
“Colonel Toombs will be joining us.”
“How do you know that?”
“He’s coming this way, and he has his cane, sir.”

Stone’s gaze fell across the grounds and saw the colonel dressed for field duty, wielding the cane that he so often brandished and used to prod the men when they’d fallen asleep during their duties.

“Corporal, see to it that extra provisions of tobacco and rum are aboard the zeppelin.”
“Yes, sir!” Graves stamped a foot on the floor and saluted. Stone saluted back, and then turned to step out into the sweltering sun.

The zeppelin was already being worked on, and the men were carrying the machine guns and ammunition toward it. Coffin’s tall, slender frame came walking up to the lieutenant, a halfhearted salute followed.

“About the planes, sir.”
“What of them?”
“Well, they’re right fucked, sir.”
“Right fucked?”
“Absolutely sir, right fucked down to Gehenna.”
“Right fucked how?”
“The engines will not start, and the seats are gone.”
“The seats are gone?”
“Yes sir, they’ve disappeared.”
“That is right fucked, indeed. Go help Morton and the others with the zeppelin.”

Stone didn’t question it further, and assigned a few of the men lounging about to set upon the Sopwith planes and repair them with anything and everything they could find. “If you must take parts from two others to make one, then do it.”

“No bloody clue why the Krauts left such an abomination here after the war. They could’ve flown this heap back to whence it came and I wouldn’t have to look upon its horrid state each day.” Toombs limped along with the aid of his cane, breathing heavily until he reached Stone.

“Fucking hell,” Toombs rasped, “I wouldn’t trust this to the end of the runway, let alone to make it over to Zanzibar.” The two of them looked over the rigid framed zeppelin, listening to the hiss of the gas cells inside filling up.

“Colonel, where exactly did we get the hydrogen?” Stone began to wonder. Considering the zeppelin itself was massive, some one hundred and fifty meters long, with corridors, catwalks, and massive bags inside it to fill with the gases needed, he didn’t recall any stores of hydrogen, or anything else.

“Germans left us underground reservoirs, according to Morton. Some massive cylinders they buried, enough to refill it many times over.” Toombs said. He turned to look at Stone, then glanced over at the Camels. “And the Camels? Will they be joining us?”

“They’re right fucked, sir.”
“Right fucked?”
“The seats have disappeared, right fucked.”
“Disappearing seats, yes, that is right fucked. Perhaps they read H.G. Wells before coming to Africa.”
“Sir?” Stone asked, looking at the colonel.
“Like the Invisible Man, lieutenant. Wonderous stuff.”

An hour later, the zeppelin was almost fully ready to go, much to the surprise of everyone, but especially the colonel. “I fucking hate it already,” said Toombs gruffly. Stone stood next to him, watching the tied down airship float a few feet from the ground.

“It’s our only option, sir,” Stone remarked. “Unless the men can repair the planes, in which case they’ve been instructed to fly to Zanzibar and join us.”

“I suppose that death is preferable to this station, at any rate.” Toombs hobbled along with a cane in hand, smoking like a chimney from his tobacco pipe. “Death by old age? Ha!” He laughed heartily as he walked up the ramp and entered the zeppelin to look about.

The men had fashioned gun ports, and Morton was preparing the controls for flying. Most of the station’s men had boarded to man the various sections of the gigantic structure, including Sergeant Slaughter and Lance Corporal Butcher.

“Are the provisions loaded?” Stone asked.
“Yes, sir,” Sexton replied, pointing at a pile of crates filled with rations.
“And spare ammunition?”
“My God, Stone, this is nothing more than a fool’s errand based on a drunken telegram,” Toombs rasped, sitting at a station with his hands resting on his cane.
“I’m just being prepared, sir.”

Toombs continued to smoke his pipe, which soon filled the entire compartment with a lingering haze that would only evacuate when they opened a couple of the windows.

“I thought the Empire made men, not coughing little Nancy boys,” Toombs quipped. “Three dozen men and not a damn one of you smokes. The utter barbarity sickens me.”

“Colonel, lieutenant, we’re about as ready as we can get,” Morton called from the pilots seat. Wolfe and Grimm were tending to the engines, making sure they were fully fueled and that they had enough spare fuel for a return trip.

Sexton, Graves, Slaughter, Butcher, and Coffin were manning their stations, each positioned at a machine gun. Toombs coughed slightly, then pulled the pipe from his mouth and exhaled a billowing plume of smoke.

“Get this ruddy old sack of wine in the air and get it over with,” Toombs commanded. Stone pulled the ramp inside, then shut the door, and the men on the ground outside released the ropes holding the zeppelin down.

“We are underway!” Morton proclaimed excitedly. The zeppelin began to move at a slow, but gradual pace, picking up speed with the wind. They flew over the coast of Tanganyika, the massive rigid frame of the airship casting an oblong shadow over villages of wide-eyed people who had never seen anything like it before.

But Stone had seen one before. The creak of the walls, the floors, the drone of the engines, it all brought back memories he’d prefer not to remember. Toombs had extinguished his pipe, now he tapped the bowl of it against the edge of the table to knock out the dregs and ash.

“Stone,” Toombs said, holding his hand out to a chair across from him, inviting his lieutenant to sit. Stone took a seat across from the colonel, and for a moment they locked their gaze upon each other.

“You served against the Krauts, no?” Toombs asked.
“Yes, all four years, sir,” Stone said with calm confidence.

Toombs looked around for a moment, then sniffed and rubbed his nose. “I watched one of these contraptions bombard my men for weeks. It would come at night, blindly dropping an unholy amount of ordnance and then be gone like the phantom it was.”

“What did your men do to stop it?” Stone asked him.
“It was taken down by French planes, finally. I’m still rather sore it was the French who did it in and not our own.”

Toombs became pensive for a few moments, and Stone went silent, unsure of what to say to the colonel. “We saw them from time to time, lingering up there where nobody could touch them.” Stone had finally mustered up a few words, which he was terrible at.

“Ah, yes, those damn Germans were very good at lingering. I remember the first time seeing one of their trenches; they built them like they planned to live there permanently. Those last two years, my God, they were impossible to drive out unless we tunneled beneath them and set explosives.” Toombs turned to look out the window, his misty blue eyes looked sullen.

“Ypres, Passchendaele, the Somme, all of it to be stationed in the asshole of the Empire. Squirreled away with incompetents and sent a letter once every six months to ensure I am in fact still alive.” Toombs was musing aloud, and Stone turned his attention to the window, trying to avoid awkward sympathy.

“Some days, sir, I wish I had been among the dead at the Somme. At night I can see the faces of my brothers and my enemies, but I remember the mud of no man’s land better than I can remember their names.” Stone sighed, pulling a cigarette case from his pocket to pluck one out and light it with a match.

“At Ypres an artillery shell killed most of the men around me, and it was by virtue of another colonel’s rotund nature that I escaped with only flesh wounds,” Toombs said idly, still watching out the window as the ocean crept into view.

“And now we fly about in the workings of the men who tried so hard to kill us both.” Toombs turned back to Stone, and began to repack his tobacco pipe until it was full.

Toombs pulled out a book and began to read in silence, and while he did so, Stone went to the front to sit with Morton a while. The zeppelin carried out to the ocean, and with time the coast of Tanganyika sank away behind it. It would be a short trip to Zanzibar, which was only some seventy miles away from their station.

“What’s with all these damn birds?” Graves asked. He stared out of the gun port at flocks of birds heading toward Tanganyika. Birds of all types, too. Smalls ones, big ones, not-so-big ones. “It’s like they’re flying away from something,” he remarked.

“Flying away from you, ugly bastard,” Coffin said.
“Piss off, my mother says I’m handsome.”
“She’s ugly, too.”

There was a sudden excitement as Coffin and Graves became entangled in a scuffle, to which Toombs was taking great delight in watching unfold. “That’s it, corporal! Give him the left hook, like I showed you!” Toombs shouted with smoke pouring from his nostrils and a wide smile upon his face.

Stone, Sexton, and Butcher pulled the two apart with no small amount of force. “Stop it!” Stone shouted, holding Coffin back, which proved to be much easier than holding back Graves. Slaughter, the largest of anyone in their unit, marched forward and placed a hand on Coffin’s shoulder.

“You know the rules, no mothers, no fathers.” Slaughter had the darkest eyes; they were nearly black, and he was driving nails into Coffin with them.

“I’m sorry, Gravesy, I shouldn’t have insulted your mother and I’m sure she’s an attractive woman,” Coffin said. Graves relaxed a bit, at least enough the others no longer had to hold him back.

“Shake on it,” Stone said sternly. Graves stood upright and he was released, extending a hand out that met with Coffin’s.

“Good scrap,” Graves said.
“Wouldn’t be a ship of the Empire without a good scrap, would it?” Coffin smirked.

The trip went mostly silent as the zeppelin glided over the ocean, and then the silence was broken by Morton, who shouted for the colonel and lieutenant. “Look out the windows!” Morton yelled, and both of them did.

The coast of Zanzibar was coming closer, but so were several very large shapes flying slightly lower than the zeppelin itself. “What the hell are those?” Toombs asked, “planes?”

All the men had gathered at the windows, each looking forward at what was approaching. They really did look like planes, but the shape wasn’t quite right, and the wings were visibly moving up and down. “Birds, I think,” Graves said.

The men fell silent for a couple more minutes, which amplified the rattling hum of the engines against the metal frame and the gondola in which they rode. Vibrations ran through the floors, the windows shook, and the occasional ominous creaking filled the cabin.

The dark silhouettes were approaching rapidly, and Stone’s eyes went wide upon realizing what they were. “Man the guns,” he started lowly, “MAN THE GUNS, NOW!” He shouted as loud as he could. The men scrambled to the Vickers and Lewis machine guns, each loading rounds into the chambers.

“It’s just a few albatrossed,” Toombs said dismissively. “They’ll tuck tail and run once they see this God forsaken death trap.” Toombs calmly strolled back to his chair and picked up his book, crossing a leg without thinking much of it.

Stone looked at him, then back at the shapes. He couldn’t believe it; they were diving to get away from the zeppelin, diving straight down to the ocean and disappearing into nothing more than small dark specks contrasting against the deep blue sea.

Yet, Stone knew they were far too large to have been albatross. The shapes were bigger than any bird he’d ever seen before, easily the size of a plane, maybe even larger. But for now he couldn’t do anything further, not in this slow-moving, clunky, bloated airship.

“Chin up, lieutenant, they would’ve made a lovely dinner,” Sexton said to Stone. Morton continued flying toward Zanzibar, which had now pulled so close they could make out the details rather than just the colors. The bright sandy beaches, the palm trees, small villages.

Like Tanganyika, the people below stared up in awe as the shadow passed over them. The zeppelin truly was massive, and Morton was beginning to wonder if they would have the space to actually land it.

“Sir, where are we going, exactly?” Morton called back to lieutenant Stone, who turned to look at Toombs, who raised both eyebrows and shrugged.

“I’ve never been to Zanzibar, lieutenant. I assumed by your gusto to provide assistance that you had some modicum of an idea where this place was.” Toombs looked at him, and Stone could feel his own blood beginning to boil. Why hadn’t he thought of asking whether Toombs knew before leaving?

“I don’t know, Morton.” Stone forced himself to say the words, knowing it would be the last thing anyone wanted to hear at the moment. “It has to be somewhere on the coast, just follow the coastline.” Stone sank into a chair and began staring out the window defeatedly.

“Aye, sir,” Morton replied.

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Ferns and palms dripped with humidity. The ground below was soft and spongy, covered in layers of decaying plant matter. Bullet ants trailed up the trunks of rotten trees, centipedes scurried across logs and rocks. Rodriguez paused and looked up at the trunk of a tree where a large snake was coiling upward around it.

Lost for five days after the rest of Anaconda team accidentally left her behind during a running gunfight with Nicaraguans, Rodriguez refused to give up just yet. She knew Anaconda was forced to make a tactical retreat, leaving her to fend for herself against the horrors of Gorro.

Despite that, the thoughts lingered in her mind by the hour. What if leaving her behind wasn’t an accident? They hadn’t exactly been welcoming, and captain Wilson had tried to send her to other teams twice. Maybe it was because she was a native and didn’t fit in with them, or that she refused to be a barracks bunny passed around as a sex object.

To an outsider, being left behind would be an unforgivable trespass, but for Rodriguez, born and raised on Gorro, this was a test. She had been recruited from her small village to help guide the OSF and act as a translator when needed. The whole village had lined the streets for her departure, showering her with blessings, gifts, and flowers. She would be the first Gorro native to be taken into the ranks of the Ossuaria Security Forces.

Since Anaconda’s abandonment, she slept in caves and large trees for safety, showered in waterfalls when able, and refused to use her machete much out of fear that the sound of hacking underbrush could attract predators. The bugs had eaten her alive, leaving behind large red welts and swollen bumps across her arms, neck, and face. No amount of mint or conifer resin would repel them.

Out of food, feeling weak, each step brought her closer to exhaustion. She prayed for help soon despite knowing it likely would never come. Sweat poured down her brown skin and matted the black hair pulled in a tight side ponytail flowing down her left shoulder. Straight-cut bangs touched thick brows above a pair of hazel eyes. Around her neck dangled a bone pendant attached to purple paracord.

It was hot, too hot. “Stupid OSF regulations,” Rodriguez groaned quietly, finally pulling the sweat-soaked field jacket off. Her feet finally met the unmistakable dry dirt of an old service road with dozens of different tracks in it. Most of the tracks were harmless animals, but some belonged to terror birds, those were her biggest fear right now. Despite their size, terror birds were both quiet and quick, able to ambush and kill a human in seconds.

Rodriguez took a deep breath and paused for a moment to think about which direction to go in. One was slightly uphill, the other sloped down gradually, tracks led in both directions. The road curved in a shallow S both ways, trailing off quickly. There were no vehicle tracks, no signs of humans, it was becoming overgrown and hadn’t been used in a very long time.

Rodriguez checked her D1 to make sure it was loaded, a shiny brass case gleamed in the chamber. A quick check of her pouches for inventory showed two more full magazines and two empty ones. She clutched her triangular shaped Zemi pendant that she’d shaped from a bone as a little girl.

With a loud exhale she pulled her knife from its sheath, sharpening the end of a stick with it. “Decide for me,” she said, tossing the stick end-over-end into the air to drop on the road in a small cloud of dust. It landed pointing uphill, and that was the direction she decided to take.

Uphill meant multiple things, none of them particularly good. It meant more physical exertion, lower chances of finding water, potentially hotter, and more of a struggle overall. It also meant higher ground and a better vantage point to look for outposts or OSF units.

She wasn’t more than a half mile in when paranoia began to take over. Every few steps she would turn to look behind her, making sure nothing crept or stalked silently. On and on she walked, feeling grateful for every step that didn’t encounter something deadly.

It was getting dark again. Rodriguez knew she had to find some shelter soon or she wasn’t going to see the next sunrise. A cursory look around found her a shallow cave roughly 20 ft up a rock wall that would take some climbing to reach. She wasted no time climbing up and draping her mosquito netting over the entrance in an attempt to camouflage it from anything that may take a peek, and of course, keep the incessant bugs out.

Rodriguez laid out her foam sleeping mat and crashed on top of it, almost instantly falling asleep. Her stomach rumbled, begging her for even the slightest amount of food that wouldn’t come to satiate it. A few hours later she stirred awake slowly, her eyes and ears adjusting to the near pitch black of the island beyond the netting.

She sat up for a moment feeling more confused than she ever had in her life up to that point. Delirium was setting in, the cave was spinning in warped colors and blurs. Dehydration was setting in too, it felt like someone was pressing on her skull from inside.

Rodriguez focused her eyes on the dial of the Timex watch another ranger had given her. It was after midnight and pitch black outside. The netting was covered in bugs, huge ones. Creepy and crawly, zipping, hissing, and covering it in a thick matting of life.

Insects were nothing new, she’d coexisted with them her entire life. It was the stark silhouette of how many there were against the silver backdrop of a full moon illuminating the netting. Rodriguez picked up her issued titanium canteen with an unsteady hand and opened it to gulp down the remaining water.

She was in no mood to pull down that netting, nor face the terrors of Gorro at night. It was safe up here, even if all that separated her from the outside world was a thin nylon net keeping the bugs at bay. Rodriguez got up for a moment to make sure there was a tight seal around the netting, then laid back on the foam mat and stretched out in an X.

Her eyes closed gently, snapping open a split second later. She sat bolt upright, eyes wide, snatching the D1 from its propped position against the wall beside her. The yelping of a terror bird filled the air, and calling to it were others.

They traveled in small packs, rarely more than half a dozen. Rodriguez counted at least three distinctly different calls, each sending chills and shivers down her spine. Goosebumps spread across her arms and skin. The muscles in her core tightened, so did her chest.

Trembling hands clutched the D1 as they had been trained to do. Rodriguez looked through the holographic sight atop her rifle, focusing the green cross with a circle around it on the entrance of the cave. Terror birds were aptly named, they had incredible hearing and were able to pick up on footsteps and movements hundreds of meters away.

Rodriguez shifted to the very back of the cave where total darkness enveloped her. She took in a deep, silent breath, and waited. For thirty seconds she refused to breathe, believing the predators outside could hear it if she did.

The sound of sliding rocks filled Rodriguez’s ears with dread. They were trying to climb up. Eyes wide, Rodriguez suddenly felt herself slipping into what the OSF called the “Zero Box”, a state of adrenaline-induced hyperfocus drilled into every ranger during their three-month training.

Rodriguez’s eyes focused, the world around her shrunk down and narrowed. She keyed in on the entrance with her ears attentive to each sliding rock and scratch of claw. Breathing steadied, heart beat slowed. This was it, this was the Zero Box, the invisible 0 shaped killbox in front of her.

This was what they called terminal intensity, this is what won the fight.

Rodriguez knew her fate if that bird made it up here, and it wouldn’t be a nice one. Terror birds didn’t always kill their prey, they would gladly start tearing flesh from bone and plucking organs while the victim flailed and screeched. The rangers had observed them seemingly enjoying it, even.

The OSF had specific doctrines and equipment for these predators. Most Gorro based rangers would have a small compact 12 gauge shotgun capable of holding between two and four shells. Being these were birds, rifle bullets had a tendency to zip through cavities without causing damage to their internal organs.

Rodriguez did not have a shotgun, she had a rifle. A rifle that fired a 5.56 x 45 bullet suited more for varmints and small game than a ten-foot tall Kelenken. The shuffling of rocks and repeated chirps of a frustrated bird outside continued for a few minutes. Rodriguez didn’t dare move or get up to go see how close it was.

Then she saw it; a thick, curved beak peeking over the edge at the front of the cave. Only its head was visible, and that was more than enough for her to stop breathing entirely. Rodriguez felt her heart rate spike, veins being pushed to their limit. The terror bird turned its head slowly and looked right at her, or so she thought.

The gigantic predator snapped its beak lazily with an audible chomp but didn’t move otherwise. Rodriguez’s finger pulled the trigger to the wall, preparing to fire if it moved any closer. The bird continued looking into the cave, turning its head side to side curiously.

Rodriguez had a sudden realization: maybe the netting was obscuring its vision. Those nets sometimes would give off a slight glare at night, especially on a full moon. She tested it by silently raising a hand and waving slowly, getting no reaction from the bird at all. The bird turned its head away and hopped down the rocks, leaving Rodriguez alone in the cave.

Minutes went by with nothing more than the soft ticking of her watch and the pulsing of her heart pounding against her throat. Twenty minutes went by in dead silence before Rodriguez mustered up the courage to pull the netting aside and look down from the cave entrance.

She shouldered her rifle and stepped to the edge, ready to fire in full auto. There was nothing. No terror birds, no flesh-ripping beaks, no claws ready to disembowel her. Just the soft breeze rustling the grass under a full moon.

Rodriguez breathed deeply, taking a moment to admire the moon with her Zemi pendant clutched in the palm of her hand. She would live to see another dawn, to fight another day, but how many did she have left? She brushed aside the netting and returned to her foam mat, collapsing atop it with a heavy sigh.

Rodriguez felt her heavy eyelids close soon after, drifting off to sleep. The dark jungle full of horrors gave way to dreams of a dugout canoe with an outrigger and sail circling a bright island surrounded by sparkling blue waters. Rodriguez could see through crystal clear Caribbean waters straight down to the reef where silver passed under her in schools.

The island had golden beaches, plentiful coconut trees, and in the center was a large lagoon with a convenient inlet just big enough for her canoe to sail through. This place smelled slightly sweet, almost like the husk of sweet corn. In her dream she pulled the canoe ashore, venturing inland to find the interior covered in crimson and purple amaranth.

Wild squash, peppers, and papaya could be found. Cactus with small red fruits were widespread, she loved those and began to pick them. Once she removed the glochids from the skin, she began to lift the juicy, dripping fruit to her mouth. That’s when she saw it-the head of a Kelenken towering over the amaranth with its red eyes looking right at her.

Rodriguez snapped awake and sat upright again. A terror bird was right outside the netting, turning its head to the side and then plucking a large insect from it. The netting rippled with each insect the bird snapped up with its beak. She feared that it would pull the netting down, that this was going to be it.

Dying in a dark and humid cave wasn’t a fate that Rodriguez was willing to accept. It was so big though, the bird took up the entire entrance and had to stoop down to not hit its head. Rodriguez knew she couldn’t grab her D1 without making noise, so she rested a hand on her knife in its leather sheath.

“Just go away, just go away,” Rodriguez thought to herself over and over. The pecking at the net was starting to cause a sagging in the top and creases across the nylon. The edges that she’d tucked into nooks and cracks were starting to be pulled out little by little.

An edge sprung free and the netting sagged to one side, dropping the veil that was hiding her from the terror bird’s view. Rodriguez grabbed her D1 and rolled to the side without further hesitation. The Kelenken bird let out a horrific otherworldly cry, alerting the others outside that it had found something substantial.

Rodriguez flipped the selector to full auto and depressed the trigger just as the Kelenken lunged forward with its massive jaws snapping open. She wasn’t aiming for accuracy, she felt forced to dump the entire magazine for the best chance at hitting vital organs. Rodriguez looked directly into the mouth of death, gasping for her life until the magazine had been fully expended and every round dumped into its body.

Rodriguez scrambled backward like a crab on all fours, screaming as her head hit the stone wall of the cave. The Kelenken continued lunging forward, but it was staggering and struggling to stay upright. Blood poured down its thick, muscular legs, leaving behind bloody three-toed footprints in the dirt.

In two more steps it was close enough to reach Rodriguez, but on the third it keeled over forward and fell with its beak crashing into the dirt between her thighs. The adrenaline was pumping and Rodriguez barely had the wherewithal to react as the Kelenken continued snapping its jaws.

It wasn’t completely dead yet, it was still trying to take a pound of flesh even as it bled out. Rodriguez kicked it in the face, deflecting every attempt it made at biting her. She screamed, pulling her knife from its sheath and rolling to the side.

The Kelenken flopped with ear splitting yelps, using everything it had left to turn its robust neck and follow her. It staggered to its feet for one last moment, just as Rodriguez plunged her knife directly into its neck and used her body weight to open it like a zipper.

Blood spurted from its neck, covering Rodriguez until she was drenched in crimson gore. It tried one last desperate lunge and Rodriguez shoved her rifle into its open maw, choking it barrel-first. The Kelenken flailed around, trying to eject the weapon, but Rodriguez pushed it from the buttstock until it couldn’t go any farther.

The Kelenken stumbled sideways, crashing into the wall of the cave and collapsing on the floor in front of her. Its head flopped over, the final gurgling breath of life bubbled up blood from its neck. She watched its body go limp, the life draining from its eye.

Rodriguez stood over it heaving deeply, blood dripping from her hands and face. The knife was slick, strands of tissue draped from it, dripping blood onto the floor. She gave the predator a shake with her boot and then retrieved the D1 from its wide open mouth.

She pulled another magazine from a pouch, readying her rifle for another round. “Just go in!” she shouted in frustration as the scratching of rocks and yelping of more terror birds outside alerted her that more were trying to climb up. Still, she couldn’t steady her hands quite enough to get a solid, straight shot at inserting the magazine into the magwell.

Rodriguez finally slammed the new magazine in and hit the bolt release, chambering a new round. She breathed a sigh of relief with her chest heaving. She moved away quickly, looking back over her shoulder at the fallen Kelenken, its body twitching but certainly dead.

The combination of exhaustion, stress, and hunger sent her over the edge into a state of pure rage. Rodriguez wiped the blood and sweat from her face, she wasn’t going to die screaming in the dark, she was going to die fighting like a ranger. A deep breath prepared her before she stepped to the edge and looked down to see a Kelenken looking back at her.

Anaconda left her, but she was still alive, still fighting, still a ranger.

Only the dawn would know if she was still surviving.

Chapter Two.

Rodriguez stared down at the Kelenken, her rifle swung up to meet it. Before she could fire, the massive terror bird began to slide down the loose pile of rocks outside the cave, landing on the grass below to shake its head. Its feathers ruffled, a soft call emanated from it, then it began to walk away.

Rodriguez stared in disbelief at three Kelenkens, all gathering close together and walking away into the open fields beyond the cave. She watched them disappear calmly into the trees, as if they had no further interest in her or anything in the area. Perhaps it was too much work to try and get her, or they were wary of humans covered in Kelenken blood, Rodriguez thought.

She clutched her D1 in her right hand, lowering it to her side. Her entire arm trembled, rattling the ammunition inside the magazine. The beating of her heart slowed, then her breathing returned to normal from the labored rapid breaths that had plagued her for the last few minutes.

Her left hand ran through her matted hair, brushing it back out of her face. Rodriguez dropped to her knees at the edge of the cave entrance, rifle laid out on the ground beside her. For a few minutes she felt dissociated, staring blankly into the distance without thoughts, her brain trying to piece together what she’d just been through.

She began to laugh, it came in short spurts with her hands upon her strong thighs. Laughter turned to tears that cut through her blood-soaked face and ran down her neck.

Under a bright moon that was nearly full, Rodriguez sat on her knees and watched the landscape for a while. She felt her mind slipping into a feedback loop of the snapping beak, the flurry of sounds, the hot blood spilling out on her.

She felt something on her hand, something bug-like. She looked down to see a praying mantis sitting on the back of her hand, colored brown and tan. Her eyes blinked rapidly, lifting the mantis up to eye level to look at it. A large mosquito landed right in front of it, and the mantis grabbed it without hesitation.

Rodriguez felt an odd comfort watching it devour the mosquito. “Are you my spirit animal?” Rodriguez asked the mantis, which had grabbed another bug out of the air. She set her hand flat on the ground, the mantis stepped off and she watched it for a few more moments.

“You might be the only thing not trying to kill me out here,” she said to it. “That makes you my only friend right now,” she smiled softly, watching the mantis picking up ants around the edge of the cave.

Rodriguez picked up a sharp rock and laid her D1 across her lap. She used the rock to etch a mantis into the side, doing the best she could to capture the shape of one. “Mantodea,” she said, looking at her work. “That’s what I’ll name you. Manto for short.”

Being a native was hard, Rodriguez thought, but being a ranger was a whole new world of hardness she couldn’t have envisioned. These outsiders were living in a world where violence and death were everyday things like eating breakfast or watering the garden.

They would throw themselves into gunfights, sacrifice themselves for each other, and pursue their enemies like human ancestors would pursue game animals over many miles. They didn’t care about numbers or advantages, only about the outcome and each other.

No matter what Toko did within Anaconda team, she felt that she could never garner their respect or trust. She went largely ignored by her fellow rangers who only called her by “translator” or “Rodriguez”. Rodriguez wasn’t even her name, she’d been forced to accept it because the OSF database required a first and last name, they wouldn’t accept just Toko.

She asked for Toko de Salur, or Toko Arawana, but the Anaconda man behind the computer rolled his eyes and printed out a list of Spanish surnames. She questioned why she needed a Spanish one, but he insisted he couldn’t use Salur or Arawana, stating the computer wouldn’t accept either.

While reading the list, she mumbled “Rodriguez” and the next thing she knew that was her last name. It was the first of many bitter moments she had in Anaconda, and one she would not easily forget or forgive.

Her hands scooped up sand and rock, rubbing her hands together to remove the blood as best she could. She thought about how good it would feel to be in one of those hot showers back at base, or relaxing in a hot spring near her village.

Rodriguez had sudden thoughts of the day she left her village. The vibrant colors of the clothes and native dress, the warriors who danced around fires for seven days to honor the first of their people to join the OSF. They lined the small street, each embracing and saying goodbye as if to their own child.

The women wept and the men smiled proudly. The chieftain, Kal Kula, stood at the end of the lines of people waiting for her. It was the first time in native history that a chieftain had knelt; something reserved almost exclusively for the native gods.

She tried to show respect by kneeling lower, but the chieftain would not have it and demanded she stand. “Toko,” he said, handing her a leather bag full of native items. “From our people you will go, and with this knife you shall return to us.” He handed her a knife, one that had taken no small amount of effort for them to create.

The chieftain then sat back on his knees, his eyes closed, and the other natives joined him. The waiting OSF rangers looked on as the entire village began to sing a ghost song. It was intended to invoke the Zemi spirits of Taino ancestors, and to provide protection to warriors.

Rodriguez stifled tears, but her emotions were clear. When the song had finished, she pulled the knife from its sheath and held it above her head, as her ancestors would have done before war. “I am Toko of Sular, you have honored me, and now I will honor all of you by defending this land,” she shouted to her village in their native language.

The chieftain stood up and embraced her one final time. “Go now, and repay the oppressors of our people with vengeance.” He pulled away from her and Toko looked up at him.

“I swear, Kal Kula. I shall not return until they are defeated.” Toko felt the chieftain’s hands on her shoulders, and the eyes of hundreds watching her. A necklace of flowers was placed around her neck, and bracelets made of copper and leather around her wrists.

Kal Kula held out his hand, ushering her toward the jeep. He walked her to it and she got in, the jeep started. “We will await your return, Toko. If you should not return to us, I know the gods will take you into the great halls.” He turned and walked away, and the jeep started to move.

The faces of her village fell away. Rodriguez found herself back at the cave, rifle in hand. Her stomach rumbled violently, reminding her just how hungry she was. She rose to her feet and turned around, seeing the dead terror bird inside the cave.

Her eyes widened and Rodriguez had a sudden realization: it was a bird, a multi-hundred pound bird, an endless buffet for one, and all she had to do was cook it. Cautiously she climbed down to begin collecting wood nearby, constantly checking over her shoulder for any stealthy Kelenken.

She grabbed up some deadfall and threw it up into the entrance hurriedly, gathered a bundle of kindling and tinder, then climbed back up. Her people were not the biggest fans of the OSF, but they were infinitely better than the oppressive Cubans and Nicaraguans who had terrorized them for decades.

They were an uncontacted tribe until the 1990 s, when the ADC made contact and began to force Spanish and modern education upon them. Some of the men were taken away, forced to work in factories or manual labor. And the women were often abused by ADC soldiers.

One good thing about the OSF was their willingness to listen and give any tools the natives might ask for; something the ADC had been reluctant to do. Toko pulled out a ferrocerium rod with a striker on a lanyard, using it to strike sparks onto the dry tinder bundle. “Huh,” she said, impressed by how fast it had worked. She now had a small fire at the entrance that was driving the insects away.

Rodriguez turned to walk into the cave and kneel beside the dead Kelenken. She reached her hands out and placed them upon the side of the terror bird, bowing her head in respect. “I’m sorry that our paths crossed like this. I pray you find yourself in fields of endless prey and rivers of fish that leap into your mouth. May the sun shine on your soul.”

Knife in hand, she reluctantly began to butcher a large chunk of Kelenken meat from the dead bird, singing a native song of gratitude as she did. She speared it with a sharpened stick and placed it over the fire, roasting it. While she waited for it to cook, she took the time to look over the bird and see it up close, something few ever had the chance to do.

It had massive claws, which she removed and placed into the leather pouch Kal Kula had given her, along with as many feathers as she could stuff into it. “Wish I could take that beak,” she sighed, it was as big as her torso, and probably weighed far too much.

Rodriguez cut as much meat as she believed she could carry from it, slicing it into paper thin strips, then created an A-frame rack out of sticks to try and smoke it overnight. She did not expect it to be the most delicious meat she had ever tasted. From the moment it touched her tongue she had her head in the clouds.

Hunger satiated, she now craved water, which she was fully out of. Her head was throbbing, a splitting headache building. She rubbed her forehead and winced, praying that rest would make it go away. She built the fire up, then struggled for more than twenty minutes to move the large carcass of the Kelenken out of the cave and over the edge.

The headache was now in full force, and Rodriguez could no longer bear to move out of fear she might antagonize it to become worse. She loaded the last of the wood onto the fire, then reset the netting to keep the bugs out, and crashed on her foam mat with her rifle propped against the wall above her head.

She passed out instantly, falling asleep and only waking when the light of the next day’s afternoon became so intense she couldn’t keep her eyes closed any longer. The fire was still smoldering, and the meat had dried completely into a tough jerky.

She filled up a pouch with the jerky, then rolled up her mat and slung her rifle. Water, she needed water. All she could think about was rushing rivers, waterfalls, faucets, anything that could give her water. There were small scavengers on the Kelenken, little green striped Compsognathus, chirping loudly and nipping off bites of fly-infested flesh.

Rodriguez rubbed her head and climbed down, starting along the dirt road that led into the jungle. One of the little Compys ran up and bit her on the ankle, hissing at her. Rodriguez turned angrily, holding her hands out like claws to try and scare it.

To her surprise, it lunged and tried to bite again. She kicked it, punting it a few feet away angrily. “Puto!” she shouted, chasing it. The little chicken-sized dinosaur hopped up on the Kelenken corpse, hissing and chirping angrily at her. Rodriguez watched them all become frenzied, hopping up and down in place, bobbing their heads at her.

Out of nowhere a Kelenken came rushing out of the jungle, screeching as it approached the horde of green lizards feasting on its dead companion. The ten-foot tall bird snatched one, launching it high into the air and catching it in its beak, severing it in half with a forceful bite.

The Kelenken had its back turned and Rodriguez sprinted, not looking back until she made it to where the road began to lead into the jungle. It hadn’t followed her, and it was fighting the Compys that were scurrying around, biting at its legs. She could see a second Kelenken coming and she wasn’t going to be around for them to see her.

Rodriguez sprinted for nearly two miles, refusing to stop until she had enough space between herself and the terror birds to feel safe again. She fell over forward, faceplanting into a pile of what she thought was dirt, but it was some kind of crusted dinosaur feces.

It was all over her hands, her face, neck, the front of her uniform. She sat back on her knees and breathed in deeply, trying to stifle the anger and slow her rapid breathing. She wiped the dino dung from her eyes and did what she could to clean herself with leaves and ferns.

She paused, hearing a strange calling that somewhat resembled an owl. It continued off and on, drifting from somewhere deep in the jungle. She got up and started to walk again, knowing she had to find somewhere to get water and clean up.

Another mile passed and the road was now so overgrown it might as well not even exist. She couldn’t tell where it was under the ferns, and it had led her up to a large curve with a steep hill to her right. At the bottom was the thing she needed most: water.

A flowing, sparkling, narrow river was at the bottom, and Rodriguez was sliding down the hill enthusiastically on her side to reach it. Her boots hit the base of the hill and she ran over to the narrow river, dunking her head under and shaking it around.

She lifted her head and brushed her hair back, sighing loudly in relief. She opened her eyes and saw a crested head, and the dark body of a juvenile Dilophosaur. It was standing on the opposite bank, looking at her with great curiosity. Rodriguez could feel the life draining from her face, heart pounding against her chest.

She pulled her D1 into her hands slowly, never taking her eyes off it. The Dilophosaur turned its head side-to-side, looking at her through each eye. It bobbed up and down for a few moments, then leaned down to drink from the river. Rodriguez knew this was her only chance for water, and pulled her canteen from its pouch with a shaking hand.

Still staring at the Dilophosaur, she dunked the canteen underwater, filling it. The same repeated call emanated from the jungle behind it, sounding very close. The Dilophosaur looked behind it, then turned back to her and returned to drinking.

“That’s it, keep drinking. Good dinosaur,” Rodriguez said. She rose to her feet and began to back away whenever it wasn’t looking. It stood up straight, then cocked its head at something in the water. Rodriguez took her eyes off the Dilophosaur for a moment, seeing rows of spikes and scutes, and a snout protruding.

The surface of the water exploded like a bomb had gone off in the river. There was a sudden gnashing of teeth and a series of cries from the Dilophosaur. The jungle filled with the crashing sounds of a mother Dilophosaur coming to the aid of its child.

Rodriguez fell into a panic of fight-or-flight, backing away as quickly as she could while still watching the scene unfolding. The two Dilophosaurs were attacking a massive crocodile of some kind, their teeth tearing into it, feet pinning it down.

The juvenile was wounded on its leg, screeching in pain while still ripping hide and chunks from the crocodile. The mother latched her sharp teeth around its neck, biting deeply with a sickening crunch that made it go limp.

Blood filled the river that continued to flow unbothered by the violence. The surface ran red, and Rodriguez took the second opportunity of the day to run while the Dilophosaurs were distracted by their kill. Her gum-soled barefoot boots were normally dead silent, but on the gravel they made a crunching noise that sent spikes of terror through Rodriguez.

She made it to the trees again, then looked back to see the Dilophosaur raising its head, letting out a triumphant, haunting call. Rodriguez stood still to watch, realizing they had no interest in her when they had a large meal right in front of them.

She breathed heavily, bent over clutching her thighs for support, rifle dangling down on its sling in front of her. Something touched her back, something slithering and heavy. A gigantic anaconda was coiling down out of a tree directly above her, its head and body sliding over her back and down her left leg.

She didn’t move, she couldn’t move. It was huge, the biggest anaconda she’d ever seen in her life. If she spooked it then she ran the risk of it reacting, and one as big as this could choke the life out of her with ease. The head of the snake turned and flicked its tongue, looking right at her face.

She held her breath and swallowed loudly. The snake was inches from her face, and the tongue was now touching to her forehead and cheeks, causing her to tremble.

The ground began to shake, and the snake’s attention suddenly turned to the long gravel bank of the river where a Saltriovenator entered into view. It was rumbling, making a beeline right for the Dilophosaurs that hissed and let out eerie yelps.

The snake had turned its attention, its body still resting across her back. She dashed as quickly as she could, running for her life across the crunching gravel. She reached a shallow crossing and didn’t think twice about running through the water to the other side.

She looked behind her, the Saltriovenator was following, and it was picking up the pace in her direction. Rodriguez clutched her rifle and turned to sprint, slipping on loose gravel and getting back up again. Death was feeling inevitable to her, and she found herself preparing to feel jaws around her body.

The Saltriovenator was closing in, she was running faster than her balance could keep up. The rumbling, roaring, shaking of the ground, it was getting close behind her. She heard the jaws snap right behind her head, her hair flowed through its teeth, its hot, putrid breath washed over her neck.

Rodriguez dropped to the ground and it ran over above her, crashing onto its side and rolling as it tried to change course at the last second. She scurried for the nearby water and jumped in, diving under the surface of the shallow river.

It followed her in, water up to its knees, chasing after her as she made it to the opposite bank and began running along it. Up ahead she could see a waterfall, a big one, and boulders all around it. She mustered up what strength she had left and made a last-ditch attempt to reach it.

The Saltriovenator came close to grabbing her twice, but Rodriguez threw herself over a slick boulder and went headfirst into the basin pool of the waterfall. She swam toward it, hearing a massive series of splashes behind her. The Saltriovenator roared, rippling the surface of the water as Rodriguez climbed desperately onto the rock ledge behind the waterfall.

There was a narrow, shallow cave, barely big enough for a human to fit sideways. She rushed inside, pressing her back flat to the wall of it as far as she could go. The Saltriovenator burst through the curtain of water, head lurching inward, snapping at her with its putrid breath filling the cave.

It let out a bellowing roar, one so loud it caused Rodriguez to momentarily lose her hearing, leaving her ears ringing. She clutched her hands to her ears, her teeth clenched tight, screaming for it to go away.

When she opened her eyes, it was gone. Her ears were ringing, heart pounding, chest heaving, lungs and abs burning, but it was gone. Rodriguez spent the next hour standing upright in the cave until her knees and feet began to ache, forcing her to venture out again.

She emerged with her D1 ready, looking around to see that the Saltriovenator was gone. She climbed up onto a large boulder to look down into the pool, scanning for anything that looked dangerous. Too many close encounters today, she thought, she wasn’t going to risk another.

After an hour of sitting around chewing on Kelenken jerky, she got up and cautiously began to undress, stripping naked to shower herself at the edge of the waterfall. The cold water cascaded across her tan, honey-colored skin, washing away days of grime and filth.

She hand-washed her clothes, agitating them in a shallow pool of water that she added cut leaves of aloe to. Her uniform hung on tree branches to dry, and Rodriguez took the time to drink as much water as she possibly could.

A couple hours later she pulled her uniform on, and as she tied her hair back in a ponytail she heard the sound of helicopter blades. With no time to waste she grabbed her rifle and battle harness, carrying both in a hurry as she rushed toward the open bank of the river where she’d been chased earlier.

The chopper was coming closer, she could hear it. And then it burst over the trees into view, she began to wave frantically, jumping in place to try and get its attention. It continued onward and Rodriguez felt her heart sink to the pit of her stomach.

Convinced it was gone, she pulled on her harness and buckled it, preparing to pick a new direction to head in. The moment she pulled her compass out she heard the chopper returning. She looked up, the wind from the blades was shaking the trees and rippling the surface of the river. It was landing! Rodriguez felt the first smile in days spread over her face.

She sprinted to it, ducking and jumping into the chopper. She was greeted by a full team of rangers dressed in leopard spot camouflage, all looking like they had just finished a rough mission.

“Where’s the rest of your team?” Bass asked her, extending his hand to help her inside. Rodriguez lifted her leg up, then climbed inside.

“They left me behind a week ago, I’ve been on my own,” Rodriguez said.
“What team are you with?” Carribo asked.
“Anaconda, sir.”
“We’ll take you back with us,” Carribo said, noticing how clean she was.

Rodriguez stared blankly, giving him a nod and a bite of her lip. Carribo banged on the wall of the chopper and it began to ascend, flying over the jungle toward wherever it was going.

“Want one?” Bass asked, offering Rodriguez an orange that he pulled out of a pouch. The gesture alone was enough to almost bring her to tears, and with a shaking hand she accepted it.

Rodriguez sat by the door, slumped back in her seat, head tilted sideways to stare out at the jungle she’d been lost in for a week. The scenes flashed across her mind as she unpeeled the orange and ate it slice-by-slice.

“They left me,” she thought to herself, chewing the sweet citrus. She’d had a whole week to think about what Anaconda did, and what she might say to them when she returned. She looked around the chopper at the others. They were joking, jovial, laughing with each other, sharing snacks.

They weren’t the dreary, foul-mouthed, depressing Anaconda that Rodriguez knew. These were real rangers, the kind of team that she thought she would be joining when she first signed up for the OSF. Rodriguez relaxed in her seat and let out a sigh of relief.

The terror was over, and for the first time in days Rodriguez felt safe.

“It is up here,” said the man in front, whose head was concealed by a wrap of cotton cloth. They approached a large dune, then reached the top to look down and see the ruins of an ancient city.

Gertrude Cazal lowered the cover upon her face and pulled back the hood of her shawl, gazing out at the half-buried obelisks and weathered buildings. The camels began to stir and paw at the sand beneath their riders.

“Qasr al-Akharam,” said the guide. “Once a fortress, and now it is abandoned,” he said, raising his hands up toward the night sky.

Cazal looked over her shoulder at him, raising an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t be so sure that it’s truly abandoned.” She coaxed her camel down the dune, followed by the rest of the caravan behind her.

They arrived at the desolate ruins soon after, seeing more structures half-buried by a desert claiming them for its own. Latin and Arabic writing were scattered across the walls, and a large circular dome in the center of it all, seemingly untouched by the ages.

Cazal dismounted her camel and stepped forward into the terracotta colored dome, by far the most intact of the buildings. Inside were the motifs of both the Roman Empire and the Umayyad Caliphate.

“Remarkably preserved,” Cazal said, looking around. “As if someone has been here to care for it.” Her fingers ran over a crack in the wall patched with a different color of clay, the long line of grey contrasted against the burnt orange.

“I don’t trust the Arab,” she said lowly to the man next to her.
“What do you think he is hiding?” Archias, her commander asked.
“Nothing, and everything,” Cazal said. “Take photos, and tell the caravan we will stay here for tonight. The Arab goes nowhere without an escort.”

Engineers began to set up sensitive equipment, some of it would be used to probe deep into the earth and retrieve detailed maps of what lay beneath. Within a couple hours the dome had transformed into more of a command center, a very busy, very loud one.

Cazal felt herself becoming annoyed by the level of chatter and went to oversee the rest of the encampment being set up. The first sight was an unruly camel crying and struggling against its handler, not wanting to enter the corral with the other camels and horses.

She saw men in circles to her left, each cleaning their weapons. Others were patrolling around outside the ruins, covered from head to toe to protect their skin from the wind. “Look at this,” said Archias, presenting a very old rolled up piece of paper.

“German?” Cazal examined it, seeing the date read February 1943. Archias handed her a medal as well, one that she recognized as French. Carefully, she unrolled the paper, seeing it was a map of canyons and the Atlas mountains.

“There’s more, a lot more. Random things left in the buildings, and footprints, but given where they are they could be months or years old.” Archias looked up at a sentry who was standing atop a dune with the moonlight surrounding him. “I’ll make sure to keep a rotating watch through the night,” he said.

A short time later, Cazal stood with a foot up on a sandstone block, a custom .357 magnum revolver in hand. She swung the cylinder out, checking each round, then closed it and spun the revolver the way that cowboys of the old west might have.

She had two of them, one on each side of her belt, and a large fighting knife attached horizontally to the back of it. A rust colored cotton shirt tucked into brown trousers, which in turn were tucked into trooper-style boots. Leather suspenders held spare rounds of ammunition, and a lever action rifle was propped against a block next to her.

“Are you going to say something or just stand there staring at my ass?” Cazal asked out loud. Archias turned away quickly, trying to avoid her gaze as she glanced over her shoulder at him.

“Are you expecting something to happen out here?” Archias asked her.
“Have you learned nothing in your time with the Legion?”
“I’ve learned much, but I don’t see what could happen. This is the middle of nowhere.”
“Do your job, commander,” she snapped. “Go get thirty men and begin the nightwatch.”
“Aye, marshal,” Archias said.
“Archias,” she called to him, “I apologize.”
“No need, marshal,” Archias nodded, turning away from her.

Cazal sighed, looking up at the curved walls of the ancient dome. She needed some fresh air from the constant hounding of those under her command. It had some seams in its construction that were just enough to get her fingers and the toes of her boots into. Her fingers tested them, then she began to climb.

“Marshal! What are you doing?” Archias shouted to her. She was halfway up the dome by the time anyone noticed what she was doing. She didn’t look back at him, and kept climbing.

“It’s only half the height of Menkaure’s pyramid,” she shouted back. Archias and a group of legionnaires stood open-mouthed at the bottom of the dome, watching her climb the massive structure casually.

“Twenty-four and she’s going to be dead by thirty if she keeps this up.” Archias kicked the sand, sending grains of it into the wall to roll down gently.

“Perhaps you should go after her,” one of the legionnaires said in a half-joking tone. Archias sneered at him, then tried to place his fingers into the seams, finding them to be too small for him to grip correctly.

“What’s the matter, commander? Sausage fingers?” one of them joked. A dozen had gathered, and all burst out laughing as Archias scowled.

“Wouldn’t be able to stop her anyway. She’s a headstrong lass. More experience on her belt than the rest of us combined,” another said. “What’s a bloody big jungle gym to someone like that?”

Archias sighed. He was fourteen years older and a veteran of the Sea Wars, Anatolian War, Caspian Conflict, and now the ongoing North African Conflict. Still, even he hadn’t seen half of what the young woman scaling the dome had.

“Don’t worry, boss, she’ll come down on her own. In the meantime, got some meat roasting up on the fire, the boys are fixing for gyros, just like back home in Greece, eh?” Reluctantly, Archias and the legionnaires made their way to a campfire and slumped down, waiting for the food to be ready.

Near the top of the dome Cazal could straighten out. The wind was higher up there where the dunes didn’t block it as well. Her clothes pressed tight to her body, hugging her tall, slender frame. Her hair whipped along her forehead as she gazed out at the moonlit desert, seeing indiscernible waves of sand surrounding pools of silver-tinged shadow.

In the very center of the dome she stood with her legs pressed tight together, her arms extending out to her sides in a cross shape. She let the wind envelope her, and listened to it with her eyes closed.

It rushed through her hair, roared in her ears, and threatened to catch her shirt like a sail and send her tumbling over the dome backward. And then it fell away, and Cazal let her thoughts roam as they pleased.

The cherry trees back home in Brittany swayed. She could smell freshly baked bread and salty sea. Her father’s office door creaking open, revealing his perpetual smile. That smile faded, replaced by men in brown uniforms crowding behind him, each with a grotesque scowl upon their ghostly face

And then her thoughts turned to bodies face down in the mud, floating in the flooded craters left behind by artillery fire. They were bloated, the rats feasted upon them with impunity. Water ran red as she tried to fill her hands for a drink.

The haunting sounds of drones whirring above, their high pitched whine like a banshee searching for unfortunate souls to reap. Gunfire in forests, ambushes, explosions, screaming, the bodies piled up along the side of highways and city streets.

Her eyes opened to see a dark figure atop a camel riding fast across the sands. It was the Arab guide. “Archias! The Arab is escaping!” she shouted from atop the dome. She threw herself onto her side, sliding feet-first down the curve of the dome, landing on the sand the same way a paratrooper would.

Legionnaires attempted to help her, but she brushed them off and began to sprint, looking for her camel. She threw on the saddle and tightened it down, then bolted out of the ruins atop its back. Dozens of mounted legionnaires scrambled to follow her out onto the sand, the camels and horses thundering across it in pursuit.

Cazal pushed her camel onward, riding bent over and out of the saddle as it pulled away from the main body of men behind her. They crested over a dune, and were met by twenty armed men mounted on a mix of horses and camels.

Her camel cried out, rising onto its hind legs. It knocked a man from his horse with its foot. Cazal wrestled it back under control as it wheeled around in a full circle to face the oncoming attackers again.

“Yaw!” Cazal shouted, spurring the camel back up to speed and rushing headlong toward the main body of men clad in robes of varying colors.

She pulled her revolvers and let go of the reins. The unbalanced gallop of the camel made it hard to aim and she found herself taking shots at anything not wearing a Legion uniform, praying they would find a target. Gunfire rattled, shotguns blasted, and the acrid smell of burning gunpowder hung in the air.

Cazal pulled a grenade from her belt and popped the pin, it landed a short distance away with a soft thump against the sand, exploding a couple seconds later to knock three men off their horses.

She saw the flashes of muzzles, and men on the ground fighting each other with knives, pistols, and swords. Cazal ducked suddenly, a man riding up to her with a shotgun in hand fired a round inches from her head. The heat of the muzzle washed on her neck along with several sparks. She heard a rushing in her ears, followed by high pitched ringing that filtered out everything else.

Snatching up the leather reins, her camel turned to face him. She was seeing double as her hand brought the revolver up, head spinning slightly as the ringing faded and the world rushed back to her.

Suddenly the two blurry images snapped together into one. The revolver fired and the round caught him in the shoulder, knocking him from his horse. She looked down at him still trying to pump his shotgun, then shot him through the head.

Within two short minutes the skirmish was over, and the surviving attackers were retreating into the desert. “Gather the wounded, the dead can wait until dawn. You lot, set up a perimeter to cover the men on their way back.” Cazal pointed at a group of about ten, who fanned out as mounted sentries.

“Archias, oversee the withdrawal. I’m riding back to task the remaining men with fortifying the ruins.” Archias saluted her while helping a wounded man to his feet. Cazal rode back atop her camel, reloading her revolvers while doing so.

“Use anything and everything to create a fortifying wall around the dome, destroy anything that limits your line of sight.” Cazal directed them as she began to move the nearest stones toward the dome. “Stack them high enough to create cover, thick enough to absorb rifle fire,” she said.

“Marshal, what happened?” a legionnaire approached and began to pry.
“The guide betrayed us. He’s led us into a trap.”
The legionnaire’s eyes looked down at the sand pensively. “This is not Akharam, is it?” he asked.
“No, it isn’t.” Cazal placed her hands on his shoulders, seeing the weariness in his eyes. “We will find it, legionnaire. You haven’t spent five months trekking North Africa for nothing.”
“I didn’t mean to complain, marshal. This has been an adventure.” His eyes snapped back up, meeting hers for a moment. He stood upright, saluting, and Cazal returned it.

“Let’s get these defenses ready, legionnaire,” she said to him. Together, they began to stack rocks, bricks, anything they could find into a makeshift wall to use as defensive cover. Legionnaires had formed assembly lines, moving stones quickly until the dome was encircled.

“Caesar would be proud of your efficiency,” Cazal called out to her men. They had constructed defenses in short order, and were now setting up the M60 machine gun emplacements at various intervals, staging boxes of grenades within reaching distance.

Cazal looked up to see Archias returning. She rushed down to a legionnaire on a stretcher, his face covered in blood, hands clutching gauze to his stomach. “I will hold it, just stay awake,” Cazal said to him, applying pressure to the gauze while walking beside them.

“Take the wounded into the dome, we’ll tend to them there.” Cazal held the pressure on the wound until they were inside, where a medic took over for her. She looked around at the wounded, some were minor, some were critical, and a couple were in their death throes.

A quarter of her men were in front of her, some screaming in agony as medics tried to pull bullets or perform surgery without much anesthetic. She stood over a man, pale-faced and boyish looking. He bit into a thick cut of rope while the medic inserted forceps into a gaping wound.

His eyes rolled back, the writhing stopped, and the young man went limp before the medic, who began to panic. “No, no no no!” the medic said, desperately performing CPR in a last bid to keep him alive. After a full minute, Cazal placed her hand on the medic’s shoulder.

“There are men still alive among us, they won’t be if you don’t tend to them,” she said.

“And who the hell do you think you are?” he blurted out, the color draining from his face upon seeing who it was. He glanced down at the ground, removing his bloody gloves to wipe his eyes. “I’m terribly sorry, marshal, I didn’t realize,” he said, feeling her grip on his shoulder tighten slightly.

“The living, doctor,” she said. The medic breathed deeply and rose to his feet. Cazal straightened out his collar, clutching his arms around the biceps. “Go on, do your work,” she said to him. He nodded and rushed with his bag to the next critical patient.

Cazal cast her eyes over the lifeless body, blood still pouring from the wound onto the stone floor. She pulled a brown cloth over him, then went back outside to rejoin the other legionnaires.

“Prepare yourselves with spare ammunition and grenades. Runners will be designated to reload spent magazines. Stay close to your fellow legionnaire.” Cazal’s voice carried out to the men and women taking up positions around the dome.

A corporal made his way up the steps, a D1 rifle across his back and a lever action in his hands. “I fetched your rifle, marshal,” he said, approaching Cazal. She gave a slight smile and held out a hand, he tossed her the rifle and she caught it.

He handed her the bandoleer of magazines that went with it, ten of them in canvas pouches that she lifted over her head and wore across her front. “There’s nothing like fifteen rounds of 308, is there?” Cazal smiled. She pushed the lever down, inserted a magazine, and then racked the lever back into place with a new round chambered.

An hour passed, silence had fallen over the Legion. Half had been granted sleep while the other half stood watch, and they would rotate throughout the night.

A group of men crouched around a small fire with Cazal, all of them painting their faces with dark colors. Archias, however, chose to stand, a frown upon his face as he watched the group before him. “This isn’t necessary, marshal,” Archias began. “We’ve radioed the Legion Corps in Tunis, they’re sending the Third Paras.”

“You think we’re going to let them have all the glory?” Cazal asked him blankly.
“It isn’t about glory, marshal, it’s about us potentially losing our leadership,” he replied. “Not just any leader, either, one of ten marshals.”

The compact of face paint snapped closed and two green colored eyes surrounded by brown and black streaks stared at him. “Your objections will be noted in the record, commander,” she said to him.

“Our scouts have reported the enemy camp is not mobilizing, but two groups joined them. Further, messengers on horses departed in different directions. That means we don’t have much time.” Cazal knelt near the fire, the men gathering around to listen carefully.

“Just like in the war, we cross no man’s land with minimal supplies other than ammunition and grenades. Our objectives for this raid are three: destroy any heavy weapons, neutralize any stores of weapons and ammunition, kill anyone who looks like an officer or leadership.”

“Aye, marshal, we’ll cause quite the ruckus in that camp,” one of the men snickered, holding a gleaming knife.
Archias, looking on, cleared his throat and stood upright. “Requesting permission to form a scout team of cavalry,” he said.
“We already have scouts, Archias.” Cazal raised a paint-caked eyebrow at him.

“Those scouts reported messengers set out from the enemy camp. I’m requesting to pursue them, and run down any who flee as a result of your impending raid.” Archias and Cazal were locked in a staring contest. The butt of Cazal’s rifle shifted in the sand slightly, and then she stood up.

“Permission granted.” Cazal’s eyes burned with the reflection of the fire in front of her, and through the flames she watched Archias give a short bow and turn to leave.

“Old man is dying for that honor, isn’t he?” asked a gruff British legionnaire.
“Man spends a decade and a half at war, and still thinks he needs laurels because he missed out on the big one.”
“Let it be,” Cazal said, “you know how the Sea Fighters are.”
“Hell of a place for a man of the sea to end up,” the Brit said, placing a tobacco pipe between his teeth.
“Cotton, weren’t you a Moleman?” Cazal said to him, giving him a playful slap on the back of the head that cocked his hat forward.

“Aye, and when they tried to rotate us from those damn tunnels the other men would come screaming back to the trenches. Something about that black maw in the earth, knowing you could swing your pick right into the enemy’s tunnels, find a very angry little man on the other side with a pistol, too much weight for many.” Cotton puffed on his pipe, the fire crackled, and then a lone gunshot rang out.

“I got one!” a legionnaire scout called to the encampment, raising a chorus of approving cheers and clapping.

“They tried to make me a nurse, but I refused and was put on a mortar team instead.” Cazal sat with her legs spread a bit, knees arched, arms resting over them with her fingertips touching. She gazed into the fire while speaking.

“Entire team was wiped out in the first week. I wandered for hours choking on dust and my own bloody tongue. Found a trench with familiar looking uniforms and became part of the 97th Rifles. They almost shot me, though, it was pitch black when I walked up on them.”

Another legionnaire, younger with heavy scars on the back of his hands, sat forward for a moment. “They sent me to my unit on the first day of fighting at Jakarta, sent me straight into the furnace. Every damn building was blown out, and they carpet bombed indiscriminately at all hours of the day and night to flatten the rest.”

“It was Malacca for me. Those bastards had forever and a day to fortify the place. Had to go street by street, building by building, eventually we just started demolishing everything because the casualties were too high,” said another.

On and on the war stories went, until Cazal checked her watch. Zero hundred hours, the perfect time to put their raid in motion. The raiders gathered at the edge of the ruins performing last minute checks.

Cazal stood behind her commander, who was adjusting the saddle on his horse and hadn’t noticed her presence. “Archias,” she said, startling him enough that he whirled around. “The raid is commencing.” She extended her hand and a blue envelope, which he opened.

She was gone when he looked up, leading the raiders up the dune and over the top into the dead of night. The paper inside the envelope contained clear instructions and who would be promoted if she were to die. “Saddle up!” Archias called out, tucking the paper away.

“Sergeant Winters, if the marshal and I do not return, you are in command of these legionnaires. That is by order of the marshal herself.” Archias held the reins of his horse, steadying it in place. The sergeant gave a salute and a nod.

“Should the worst come to pass, I shall do my best, sir.” Winters puffed his chest a bit, looking on as Archias led a dozen men on horses and camels out into the desert.

“Don’t get your hopes up, not a damn chance some dunies with clapped out guns will kill either of them,” a legionnaire called to him. Winters spun around, raising an eyebrow.

“Neither are here at the moment, so that does leave me in charge, Thomlinson,” Winters said, a smirk spreading across his face. “And I do believe we need another latrine dug.”

The motley crew of raiders approached the enemy camp that sprawled in a thin line along the base of a large sail-shaped rock jutting out of the earth. “Using it to block the wind, maybe these guys aren’t so stupid.” She thought to herself while peering through a pair of night vision binoculars.

“Rektor, Poole, Mann, there’s an artillery piece at the far left of the camp, I want you three to destroy it,” she whispered. Three men acknowledged silently and made their way across the dark sands, dropping to their bellies to crawl slowly toward the objective.

“Cotton, Riley, you’re with me. Graves, June, Young, head over to the corral they’ve made and liberate their horses. Let’s move.” Cazal and the raiders paced themselves on the approach, sprinting short distances and diving into the sand to look around.

The first team were nearing the artillery piece, and Cazal’s team were at the very edge of the camp outside the first Berber-style tent. There was a gap in the covers and Cotton spied inside, seeing three men sleeping around a lantern.

He held up three fingers and Cazal nodded. She lifted up the edge of the tent and Riley slipped inside silently, followed by her and Cotton. They drew their knives, and in one swift motion covered the mouths of their victims while slitting all three throats.

The men were dead, and the three raiders pulled on the robes and keffiyehs to obscure their pale outsider faces. “Right, let’s go then,” Riley said, pulling open the fabric door of the shelter to look around.

The new outfits gave them a precious few seconds to examine the camp, and Cazal identified one particular shelter of interest that she thought would house someone in a leadership position. “Whatever you’re cooking up, gonna have to flip it quick, the boys are about to blow the artillery,” whispered Cotton.

Not more than five seconds later the explosion went off. A fireball reached into the night sky, climbing its way up the side of the rock face to knock debris and loose rubble down onto some of the tents below.

Cazal sprinted forward toward the larger one, pausing once the door flung open and a man in black robes stepped out. Without hesitation she shot him dead, a single round of 308 to the temple made his brain evacuate through an exit wound the size of a baseball.

That one shot in the dark triggered a chain reaction of cries and wailing, and suddenly the entire camp had erupted into chaos. Men were firing blindly into the darkness that the raiders had just come from, and the raiders were standing in the middle of the camp in their disguises, equally confused.

Cazal thought it was all going right, almost too right. The rocks had crushed a good portion of the tents, the man she shot now had a swarm of others on him, which indicated he was important in some way, and the artillery had been neutralized.

“Marshal!” Riley wrapped his arms around Cazal’s waist, lifting her up and throwing her aside as a stampede of horses and camels began storming through the camp. The three of them crawled up to the rocks, their backs to it as they got back on their feet.

Then, a terrifying roar emanated from the desert, followed by a low rumbling. The enemy were shouting again, running toward the eastern portion of the camp along the base of the cliffs.

Cazal’s attention focused on the first tent they encountered as men rushed past, some of them swinging up onto a horse or camel to disappear. Two glowing nocturnal eyes hovered over a tent, just beyond the light of the campfires. Rektor, Poole, and Mann trotted out of the darkness, guns blazing, slotting anyone and everyone that fled.

They aimed their guns at their fellow raiders in disguise. Bullets slammed into the earth around them until Riley ripped off the robe and flipped them off. Cazal and Cotton removed their disguises, and the other three began to apologize profusely.

Graves, June, and Young were creeping through the camp and rejoined the others moments later. The camp had cleared out, mostly, but some men had ducked into tents to hide from the towering predator that wandered into the firelight.

It used its teeth and meathook claws to rip open the tent with the three dead men inside. It snatched a body up, crunching it in half and swallowing the lower body whole. Its head bent down again, dripping blood on the sand as it engulfed the torso.

Its teeth clamped down with tremendous force, severing the head that fell to the ground and rolled to within a few feet of the raiders. The eyes were still open, the tongue slightly protruding through the lips, a blank expression on it. Cazal couldn’t take her eyes off it, and a couple seconds later the eyes began to blink rapidly, the muscles contracting.

“Marshal?” someone whispered, they sounded muffled, distant. Cazal’s eyes raised themselves upward, locking with the reflective pupils of the theropod. “Marshal!” someone shouted, shaking her.

Cazal snapped back to reality, the sounds of chaos and terror echoing through the camp. The large theropod took a few steps forward, sizing up the raiders, each of them pointing their rifles at it.

Then the sound of hoofs came from their left, along with a shout. Archias and his scouts had entered the camp waving bright orange flares in their hands. The dinosaur turned its attention to them, letting out a deafening roar and charging at the horsemen.

“That’s it! C’mon then!” Archias shouted, turning his horse away with the predator pursuing. Cazal let out a deep, rattling sigh, slumping against the rocks behind her.

“There’ll be no living with him after this,” Cazal said aloud. The raiders let out a short chuckle, and then followed her forward. Cazal pulled the pin on a grenade and tossed it into a tent, sprinting to the next one while Riley covered her from anyone that might emerge.

The others did the same. Each structure and tent received a grenade and a quick look around inside afterward. Cazal circled around to the tent with the man she’d shot still lying prostrate in front of it. The raiders were behind her, and she pulled aside the golden-fringed fabric covering the front.

A shotgun blast went off and Cazal tumbled over backward, crashing into the sand . Graves stuck his D1 through the door and magazine dumped into the tent, then Young did the same. Cotton and Riley rushed to Cazal, who rolled backward onto her feet.

“Are you alright, marshal?” they asked her. Cazal’s eyes closed tightly, her hands cupped her ears as they rang and drowned out the world. She gave the sides of her head a couple slaps, trying to get the ringing to stop, but it continued.

Graves and Young forced their way into the tent, followed by the sound of two magazines expending everything they had. Cazal staggered back to her feet, picking up her lever action to shake the sand out of the barrel. “Am I bleeding?” She ran a hand through her hair, feeling relieved to see no blood.

Cotton shook his head no, as did Riley. Graves and Young held the rug doors open and Cazal entered to find a lot of strange objects. “Some kind of bandits or treasure hunters?” asked one of the raiders.

“Thieves,” Cazal muttered. A bag of gold and silver coins sat on a small table, a bag of modern currency beside it. Golden cups, jewelry, gemstones, and other valuable looking items were scattered about. Two dead men were on the floor, both facing down.

“Grab what you want, we don’t have much time.” Cazal snatched a jambiya knife from one of the dead men and tucked it into her belt as a trophy. The raiders were grabbing up anything they could fit in their pockets, and Cazal spun to face the door.

A loud snort followed by the rush of hot air entered the tent. The smell was ghastly, like meat that had gone sour and rotten. And through the rug doors a long snout poked through, the nostrils flaring, the lower jaw slightly open.

Cazal was paralyzed in place. She recognized what it was, an Afrovenator, the aptly referred to ‘Sultan of the Sahara’. But why was it so far into the desert? Normally they only stalked the northern forests along the coast where the Jobaria, Spicomellus, Atlasaurus, and Adratiklit lived.

The raiders went still, wide-eyed. “Don’t. Fucking. Move.” Cazal was only a couple feet from the tip of the snout, the rank, nauseating stench of its breath made her eyes water.

Mann inched backward, his hand brushed against the table and knocked a metal cup from it, which clattered against a wooden box on the floor. In a split second, the head lunged forward and Cazal jumped to the side, feeling the scaly skin brush against her.

It lifted up, the tent collapsing, fabric covering its head and blinding it. It shook wildly, swinging its head around, roaring and letting its putrid breath waft over the raiders.

“Run!” Cazal shouted the moment the tent walls lifted from the ground. The raiders took off, their pockets clanking and chinking with golden trinkets and coins. Archias and the scouts had returned, more flares in hand, but the ear-splitting roar behind the raiders told them it wasn’t interested in bright lights.

Archias held out a hand, trying to get Cazal to swing herself up and onto the horse along with him. She passed him in a dead sprint, her red hair pushed back by the wind to expose her painted forehead. Ahead, Cazal could see the outline of a truck, an old Toyota with a machine gun in the back.

“Damnit, marshal!” Archias shouted at her. He spurred his horse forward, trying to entice the aggressive beast to chase him instead. The scouts began to ride around it in wide circles, confusing it. It lunged at them, turning in place, kicking waves of sand up with its large feet.

“Commander!” a scout shouted, throwing him a rope. Archias caught it, looking confused. “Ride in the opposite direction!” the scout called. Archias didn’t question it and they began running in opposing circles around it with the rope coiling around both the dinosaurs legs.

The rope tightened with each pass, and the Afrovenator began to stumble, unable to walk correctly. A couple more passes and it toppled over, roaring and kicking, snapping its teeth in a fury of blood-stained serrations.

Cazal flung the door of the truck open and searched for the keys. They weren’t in the ignition, nor the visor, the glovebox, or anywhere. She punched the steering wheel and pulled out her knife, using it to break open the ignition. The truck cranked over, but it wouldn’t start. That was when she realized it was a manual transmission, she’d never driven a manual before.

“Anyone know how to drive a manual?” Cazal asked through the rear window at the men climbing into the back of the truck. They all shook their heads no, and Cazal turned back to the wheel, trying to remember how it worked.

“Okay, alright,” she said to herself taking a few deep breaths. “Something about a clutch.” She jammed the clutch in, turned her knife in the ignition, and it fired right up. “Oh god, what’s next?” she asked herself, seeing the handbrake was on.

She released it, along with the clutch. The truck lurched forward, the clutch made a crunching sound, and it stalled out after rolling a few feet.

“Hey uh, marshal, no pressure but the big fella’s getting up again,” said Riley from the back of the truck. Cazal glanced to her right, the Afrovenator was getting back up. It let out a roar that shook the passenger side window.

“You’re pressuring me!” Cazal shouted back at him.
“I said no pressure!” Riley responded.
“Well I feel pressured!” Cazal yelled.
“Bloody hell, we’re going to die because of a damned stick shift,” said Cotton.

She repeated the process, and this time gave it some gas. The Afrovenator was charging at the truck. Its jaws were open wide, a bone-shaking roar tearing through the cool night air. The men in the back began to shout and raise their guns.

The tires spun and kicked up sand, launching some of it into the Afrovenator’s mouth, causing it to pause and shake its head. The truck, however, seemed to be going nowhere. “Get out and push!” Cazal shouted through the window. “Hurry! While it’s distracted!”

Cursing ever having gone on the raid, the men jumped out and pushed the truck forward, and it started to move on its own. It pulled away from them for a moment before Cazal slammed on the brakes and the truck rocked back and forward, creaking on its chassis.

The Afrovenator had recovered just as the men were climbing back into the bed of the truck. Cazal punched it, speeding through gears and tearing across the sand as fast as the truck would go. The theropod chased after them, keeping an impressive pace, until it started to catch up.

“Marshal!” the men in the back began panicking, pounding on the window for her to drive faster. She snapped her attention up to the rearview mirror and her eyes went wide. A massive pair of jaws were right over the bed of the truck, obstructed only by a machine gun flopping around on its mount.

The raiders were flattened to the front of the bed, pressing against each other for every inch they could put between them and the predator with its gleaming eyes.

Cazal depressed the gas pedal as far as it would go, the speedometer reading 55 km/h and climbing. The jaws of the Afrovenator snapped as the truck pulled away, speeding off into the darkness to leave the glowing eyes behind until they were gone entirely.

A roar echoed across the desert, and the truck went careening into the ruins, coming to a stop with Cazal double-footing the brake pedal. Her hands gripped the wheel, white-knuckled and breathing rapidly.

The men in the back couldn’t get out of the bed fast enough. Cotton fell to his knees and began to kiss the ground. Riley prayed thankfully as he walked. The others rushed to hide their golden goodies before the rest of the legionnaires spotted them.

The truck idled in place and Cazal sat breathing heavily, still clutching the wheel. A horse came to stand beside it, lowering its head through the window to prod at her with its nose.

“Couldn’t keep just one trophy, huh?” Archias asked from the saddle. The truck turned off and Cazal turned to face him with her head resting against the back of the seat.

A wide smile contrasted against the dark face paint, and for the first time since he’d known her, Cazal began to laugh.

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Steep jagged ridges jutted up from the earth like inverted shark teeth. To his left was the unforgiving jungle. A place so dense that rangers could rarely see more than a few meters ahead while on patrol. The canopy always cast a long shadow over everything below, making the job of the rangers that much harder.

To his right were sweeping grasslands sloping down to a slow-flowing river full of S shaped curves and twists. Today was sweltering, like every day. His uniform was soaked through with sweat and weighed down by the mud stuck to it. His plate carrier weighed in around 30 lbs and clung tight to him, holding in the heat.

All his thoughts about how miserable he was seemed to drift away with the slight breeze. A mixed herd of Kentrosaurs and Stegosaurs were grazing in the waist-high grass. He could see Epidexipteryx and Compsognathus scurrying around the herd.

It was fascinating to him. He fell into a sort of trance-like observation of the small creatures hopping around and climbing onto the larger Stegosaurids. The herd weren’t just tolerating these little guys-they were welcoming them.

Bass lifted his AG3 rifle, a domestically produced version of the HCAR re-chambered in 308, and peered through the LPVO scope on top. He zoomed in and watched a Compsognathus picking an engorged tick off a Kentrosaur. An Epidexipteryx fanned its vibrant feathers upon finding a girthy blood-filled leech to munch.

Bass held a small notebook in his left hand and a fountain pen in his right. He took detailed notes of the behavior to give to Orange Coral Labs. They valued that kind of observation and those small details. What they were doing here was nothing short of a miracle by the modern world’s standards.

Steiner, the driver next to him, coughed loudly. “We’ll be sitting here until dark if these frat house pussies don’t figure out a damn compass.” His raspy accent bled through the otherwise peaceful scene and snapped Bass back to focus.

“I bet if I crack open a ratpack they’ll start moving within a few minutes,” Bass said. Steiner laughed and reached behind the passenger seat to grab a ration pack, handing it to Bass. With a sigh, Bass cut open the ration with an old slip-joint stockman knife.

“Oh yeah, we’re moving out in about two minutes,” Bass chuckled as he read the menu.

LAMB WITH PEPPERS
GREEK STYLE FLATBREAD
TZATZIKI SAUCE
SARDINES IN OLIVE OIL

“No way this gets heated before they order us out.” The blade of the knife made a slight metallic snap as it closed. Steiner sat back in the driver’s seat, looking at Major Moody and Captain Carribo in the mirror. Moody was talking, Carribo was pretending to be listening.

Steiner scratched at his scruffy beard impatiently. “An Italian and a boat salesman from Florida walk into a bar,” Steiner started, but paused and didn’t progress the joke. Bass filled the ration heater to the line with water and then turned to look at him.

“What happens next?” Bass asked him in an almost cartoonish tone dripping with sarcastic exaggerated curiosity.

Steiner coughed again. “The bartender promotes them to officers and they get a whole damn company lost in the fucking jungle,” he said bluntly. He pulled a small metal tin from his plate carrier and opened it to reveal several cigarillos. “You mind?” Steiner asked Bass. He didn’t really care if Bass minded or not, he was going to smoke regardless.

Bass shook his head. He was preoccupied with counting the seconds on his watch. Moody shouted to start the Jeeps, they were moving out. “Ha!” Bass said. “I nailed it,” he continued. His watch had just struck the two minute mark from the moment he opened the ration, which was now heating up on the dash.

Carribo began walking to the front of the Jeeps where he’d dismounted. “I’m tryna eat here boss,” Bass said to him in a stereotypical New York Italian accent. “Finally get the holy grail of rations and you rat bastards gotta ruin it for me. Cavolo! Cavolo!” Bass pinched his fingers together and moved his hands up and down like the Italians in movies did.

“Shut the fuck up,” Carribo snapped at him. “Ya motha!” Bass replied.

Carribo raised a middle finger and kept walking. He turned after a couple steps and added a second middle finger. “Better watch that fucking cocksucker mouth of yours when you speak to an officer,” Taylor said. Taylor was the biggest asskisser in the OSF. He kissed so much ass they started calling him Captain Colonoscopy.

“I got something for ya motha too,” Bass said to him with both middle fingers up as the Jeep started to roll. The long line of Jeeps followed a winding service road that had been worn into the landscape by previous convoys. Bass skillfully timed his movements to build the ration into gyros. He wrapped the meat and peppers up in the flatbread, then drizzled Tzatziki sauce over the top. He tucked the tin of sardines into an empty pouch to save for later.

“It’s getting late,” Raker said from the back. The sun was making its push to the western horizon where it would be setting soon. They didn’t appear to be anywhere closer to an OSF outpost or their home base. They were just pushing deeper and deeper into the interior for no clear reason.

“It’s gonna be a bug nets and bullshit kind of night,” Steiner grumbled. They hadn’t been back to base in more than 36 hours and many rangers were beginning to wonder why. Field operations typically ran a whole day, 24 hours or less. Everyone felt like the brass knew something they didn’t.

“Maybe we’re on a search and destroy.” Bass took the last bite of his gyro and brushed the crumbs off his lap. He looked forward at the Jeep in front of them, staring at the back of his girlfriend’s head. Somewhere deep in his rucksack was a simple gold ring that he was going to give to her soon in hopes that she would say yes to his proposal.

A herd of Apatosaurs caught his eye and he turned to look at them. They were tall and stationary, grazing on the leafy canopy. A couple of much taller Brachiosaurs were scattered among them. But it was the Diplodocus with their long whip-like tails that stole the show.

Diplodocus were long, low, slender. Varying patterns of stripes and spots colored each one like the sauropod version of a fingerprint. Each one was unique in its own way. Brachiosaurs were amazing too, the biggest dinosaur on the island. When a Brachiosaur walked it caused tremors in the ground that could be felt.

All those sauropods weighed in between a couple tons for juveniles and up to sixty for adults. Sixty tons! It was hard to imagine without feeling that kind of weight in motion firsthand. The ground shook when they walked, but if the sauropods got spooked, things could turn into a localized earthquake in seconds.

Bass understood why some were called names like Thunder Lizard, also known as the Brontosaurus. They were big, beautiful creatures, he thought. Creatures more than worthy of him being out here in the agonizing heat of Ossuaria to protect them.

The momentary serenity shattered in an instant. A couple RPGs flew overhead and crashed into a Jeep in the rear. Gunfire erupted from the jungle treeline. The convoy had driven directly into an ambush.

The ADC, known as the Alliance of the Caribbean, had a sporadic presence on the island. It was made up of Cuban, Nicaraguan, Panamanian, and Haitian guerrillas funded by the Venezuelans and Indians. Who they were and what they wanted were not the focus of the moment for the convoy caught off guard.

Raker wheeled the M 60 around on its mount and aimed at the treeline. It rattled off rounds that tore through the underbrush, seared through flesh, and helped to suppress the enemy while others moved into position. Bass and Steiner dismounted with rifles in hand, taking cover on the opposite side of the Jeep.

Bullets whizzed overhead and crashed into the grass behind them. Rangers were taking up positions like they trained for. This was it, the first contact for Bass. The adrenaline was pumping, the air felt thinner, the world seemed to narrow slightly.

“Don’t worry, kid,” Steiner grunted. “The ghouls can’t shoot for shit,” he said. Steiner flipped the safety selector of his M60 off and aimed at the treeline. He let off a couple shots and then scanned for more targets or muzzle flashes to aim at.

Collins, Bass’s girlfriend, came running and crouched down beside him. Bass moved to his right and placed Collins in front of the wheel, making a conscious attempt to give her the best cover possible. “I’ll stand up and shoot. When I go to reload, you cover me,” Bass said to her.

Collins readjusted her boonie hat and nodded. She seemed flustered and nervous, but so did every new ranger at first contact. Bass took a deep breath and stood up to shoulder his AG3. There was a sudden hiss, then a snap. He recognized those sounds from ranger school.

“A hiss means it’s close, a snap means it’s close enough to kill you.” That’s what the commander said. Bass looked through the scope and saw his first target. He didn’t hesitate, his finger snapped the trigger to the wall and let off a round of 308. It hit dead center on a Nicaraguan who looked like he was a couple ranks higher than the rest.

He had a flashy red beret that fell to the ground as he clutched his chest and collapsed. The moment was shocking for Bass, but he didn’t have time to process it. ADC guerrillas were pouring out of the jungle and into the waist-high grass of the field.

“Ah shit,” Raker groaned. The gunfight had startled the sauropods enough that they were moving now. Normally they ran in the opposite direction, but this herd was gaining momentum and stampeding toward the area that the ADC were taking cover in.

Within seconds the field was being flattened. ADC fighters were being crushed under a moving forest of sauropod feet that turned them into a bloody pulp. The sauropods didn’t know any better, they were animals, and they were frightened.

They continued their stampede without pause. A couple sauropods were heading right for the front of the convoy. “Oh fucking shit,” Carribo exclaimed as a Brachiosaur flipped a Jeep at the front like a toy, a Diplodocus did the same to the Jeep right behind the first one.

The earth quaked so violently that the suspension on the Jeeps creaked and bounced. At one point the Jeep that Bass, Raker, Collins, and Steiner were using as cover lifted off the ground for a split second. When the stampede ended, the rangers scanned for any remaining ADC fighters.

“If there’s any left, it won’t be many,” Carribo said. “Let’s get a full sweep going,” he ordered. Machine gunners returned to the Jeeps and aimed at the field, preparing to cover the advancing rangers. Collins clutched her FR F 2 rifle and unfolded the bipod, placing it on the hood.

Collins watched through the scope as Bass moved forward with the other rangers. They were spread out in one long line, each only a few feet apart. Sauropod footprints riddled the field with deep depressions. The bodies of guerrillas were strewn about, some pushed deep into the ground.

Bass caught movement in his periphery. He swung his rifle up to meet it, but before he could take action a ranger with a D 1 rifle had mag-dumped about ten rounds into a guerrilla. “Fuckin’ get some!” The ranger shouted excitedly. The line moved forward cautiously with occasional shots ringing out.

Bass had a feeling that at least a few of the guerrillas had avoided the stampede. They could be lurking anywhere, or they could be a mile away by now. Something just didn’t feel right. He felt the nagging of instinct and the clawing of his training thus far. Everything was telling him he was being watched.

A Cuban popped up in front of him with an AK raised and ready to fire. Bass raised his rifle, firing two shots center mass. His life had flashed before his eyes. The corn fields of Missouri, the Union Pacific trains that rumbled through his small town, the dirty warehouse he’d worked in.

Star Trek flashed in his mind for some reason. The Magnificent Ferengi episode. He thought for a moment that he wasn’t so different from Quark staring down the Dominion. There could be more, he thought. Many more.

He approached the dead body to confirm it was indeed dead. He’d fired two shots center mass, but this guerrilla had a bullet through his forehead. Bass turned to look back at Collins, who was giving him a thumbs up from the Jeep.

Steiner stood beside Bass, looking down at the body. “That’s one studly broad you got,” Steiner said. He relit his cigarillo and cracked his neck before moving on. Bass shouldered his rifle in the low ready and moved forward with him.

An hour of sweeping the field and surrounding jungle went by. Darkness fell over Ossuaria, and along with it came the deafening noise of the jungle at night. Every insect and nocturnal creature imaginable was now active. It sounded like an alien world to the rangers.

They moved the Jeeps into a wagon circle, not that it would do much against a hungry Allosaur, Ceratosaur, or Torvosaur. Rangers were selected to take the first watch while the others ate. In a couple hours they would be relieved, then they would rotate until dawn.

Bass was once again in the passenger seat of a Jeep with his rifle in hand. Collins sat in the back behind him. She had a book in her hands, one that she’d stopped reading almost a half hour ago. She was staring at the pages blankly while replaying the headshot on the guerrilla in her mind.

“Want me to read to you?” Bass asked her softly. He turned to look at her for a moment, just in time to see her return to reality. Collins blinked rapidly and nodded, rubbing the back of her neck with her hand. Bass took the book in hand.

Collins was not assigned watch yet, and she was exhausted. The moment Bass began reading, she started to feel her eyes closing heavily. Soon, Collins had passed out with her head resting on her rucksack, using it like a pillow. Bass sighed and reached into his own bag, pulling out a woobie poncho liner to drape over her.

He returned to his position in the seat. A pair of night vision goggles illuminated the field, revealing dozens of Compsognathus darting around in the grass. Bass realized they were scavenging, feeding on the dead guerrillas. He wondered what to do in this situation.

These men had trespassed with intent to poach and kill. But they were human, and humans deserved rights regardless. Did poachers really deserve rights? Did armed invaders deserve rights? Did men who arrived here to do harm in hopes of making profit on suffering and death deserve those human rights?

“You think we should scare off the scavengers?” Raker asked Bass. There was a long, silent pause between them. The Compsognathus chirped and called to each other eagerly and excitedly. They were undoubtedly thrilled at the bounty of free meat on offer.

“No,” Bass said. Something was shifting inside him, something that was opening his eyes to the situation and adapting him to it. He remembered something else he’d been told during training. The grizzled old veteran had stood in front of them on the final day in formation.

“Welcome to the Boneyard. The living keep fighting, the dead get picked clean,” he shouted to the new company of recruits.

Bass and Raker looked at each other for a moment. “Just leave ‘em,” Bass told him. Hours passed by, ticking slowly on his watch. Bass continued to volunteer for sentry duty, keeping himself awake until about 3 am.

He watched the Compsognathus groups running around with their stomachs painfully bloated. They had gorged themselves on human flesh and organs, gnawed on the bones, and were now searching for somewhere safe to rest.

Bass watched them slowly grouping up to head into the jungle. When he turned back to look at the open grassland, he nearly jumped out of his seat. A large Allosaur had lumbered into the field. It stood about a hundred meters away, snout high in the air.

The Allosaur lowered its head, looking directly at the encampment of rangers.

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