فصل 8

CHAPTER 8

As soon as I was out, I clipped the large metal padlock from the storage closet onto the hatch lid, sealing it shut. The marines would just have to backtrack to a different entrance hatch before they could follow us; this one was closed for business. I’d known that I’d need a head start, but I hadn’t planned on needing it this badly. I also hadn’t planned on being responsible for a life other than my own. I stood up and jumped when I noticed that Shawn had a small black stun gun in his hand. How in the world had he gotten that? The guns packed a big enough electrical punch to stun a five-ton dinosaur, and I had thought it was impossible to steal one. Obviously, I’d been wrong.

“Which way?” he asked. He was whipping his head left and right, his eyes frantically scanning for potential threats. I yanked my compass out of my shirt. The dial spun crazily before finally settling on north.

“That way.” I pointed toward a tightly packed bunch of pine trees to our left and took off, Shawn close at my heels. Moments later we were among the thick trees. I sighed in relief and felt myself relax a fraction. The trees grew too close together for most of the larger dinosaurs to maneuver through. It was our only advantage over the beasts. Most of them hadn’t been built to survive in Indiana’s dense forests and were confined to the open areas where their massive bulk could move freely. The smaller ones that made their homes in the trees wouldn’t bother us unless they were hunting in a pack. I hoped.

An earsplitting screech brought me up short, and I whirled to look back at the compound entrance. A few marines had emerged in an attempt to follow us, but they were now in retreat, sprinting toward the hatch. The pack of deinonychus I’d met the day before had returned, and I bit my lip as I saw one of the marines stumble three feet from the entrance. Shawn cried out as the man scrambled for the hatch on his hands and knees. He made it inside, but part of his right leg did not. I choked back the bile that rose in my throat as the dinosaur swallowed his prize and began clawing at the concrete surrounding the hatch.

“We need to move,” Shawn said. I nodded as guilt tugged at my guts. That man had lost part of his leg because of me. We ran.

Ten minutes later the compound sirens had faded behind us, and I stopped, breathing hard. I’d never been topside this long before, and the air felt heavy and moist, as though I were breathing water. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation. The deinonychus attack had ensured that no one would be able to come after us for at least a few hours. We could rest, just not long. The fact that the marines had even bothered to risk their lives over a few ration packs and a suit of body armor was shocking. I would have thought they’d be glad to be rid of me. I turned to face Shawn. He had his hands on his knees, and his face was an alarming red. Sweat drenched his gray uniform.

“Okay, Shawn Michael Reilly.” I huffed. “Spill it. What are you doing here?”

“First of all,” he said, holding up one finger. “Don’t call me that. I feel like you’re about to assign me a work detail.” I rolled my eyes and pulled out my canteen, taking a small sip. I would have to ration it until I found fresh water. When I tried to offer it to Shawn, he shook his head, pulling out a much bigger canteen than my own and taking a few deep pulls. I eyed his backpack curiously. He’d apparently gotten his hands on more than a stun gun.

“Yesterday,” I accused, “you went on and on about how no one survives topside.”

Shawn shrugged. “That’s because no one does.”

“Then why are you here?”

Shawn sighed and shoved his canteen back in his bag before looking at me. “To make a long story short, I decided that I wasn’t going to let you go alone. So this morning, I was planning to sit you down and tell you that I was coming with. I even brought all my gear along to show you that I was prepared.” He frowned. “Then I get to your room, and you’re already gone. I thought I was too late. I beat a path for the compound entrance, and that’s when I heard the alarm and found you stuck behind a dinosaur stun gate. So here I am. You’re welcome.” “You’re welcome?” I asked, eyebrow raised. “Says the boy who got stuck in the gate.”

“Oh, right.” Shawn looked down, a little sheepish. “My grand rescue did lose a little something when that happened.” I shook my head stubbornly. “This is a horrible idea, Shawn. You can’t come with me.”

“I can,” he countered. “And”—he paused dramatically, looking around himself—“it looks like I already am.” I just scowled at him, my arms crossed.

“Seriously, why would it be so horrible to have me along?” he asked.

I began pulling on my new camouflage body armor, ignoring him. “There is no way you have all the gear you need,” I pointed out, motioning to my suit.

“Already taken care of.” He pulled out a suit identical to my own.

I gazed at him in surprise. “How?”

“You aren’t the only one who knows how to steal things around here.” He began to pull his own suit on over his gray compound-issued pants. I noticed with envy that his suit fit him like a glove where mine hung in loose wrinkly folds, the high-tech fabric bunching awkwardly at my elbows and knees. I was just under five feet tall and small-boned, which meant that nothing the marines stocked would have fit me well. I brushed aside the thought; I would have to fix that later.

“What about your aunt?” I cajoled. “Won’t she be frantic if you just disappear? Go back now and you can claim you had nothing to do with me leaving or stealing the body armor or . . .” “Stop,” Shawn interrupted me. “We have two options. Option one is that we both go back to the compound. Where it’s safe. I know my aunt could smooth this whole mess over.” He saw the look on my face and sighed, resigned. “Option two is that you stop whining so we can get on with finding whatever is in the middle of Lake Michigan before something shows up to eat us.” My resolve to send him back faltered. “But your aunt?”

“She’ll be fine. She has her new baby to worry about. She barely notices I exist these days.” Shawn grinned, but something felt off about that. His aunt was the only family he had left, and I couldn’t imagine her being okay with her nephew’s illegal escape from the compound.

“You said yourself that no one survives up here,” I tried one more time. “I believe the word you used was insane?” When he just looked at me, I sighed. “Option two.” Shawn grinned.

“But if you die, don’t blame me,” I snapped.

“Do dead people blame you for things often?”

I groaned. “I’m already regretting this decision.”

He raised an arrogant eyebrow at me. “Do you even know how to use that suit you’re wearing?”

“I know how to use it,” I said. I did know how. You put it on, and it made it harder for dinosaurs to see you. I didn’t think they had instructions beyond that.

“Do you know what this button does?” He flicked a button on my right shoulder, and the suit started to constrict around me like a balloon deflating. I gaped at it in surprise.

“How did you know how to do that?”

“Just do. A side effect of being brilliant. Should we get going again?”

I bit back my retort and nodded. He was right. The farther we got from the compound, the better.

“Shawn?” I asked as I readjusted my pack on my back. “Why do you think the marines bothered to come after us?” He shrugged. “I’m not sure. I was kind of surprised by that too.”

“I know stealing supplies is illegal, but it still seems extreme. Don’t you think?” I swallowed hard, remembering the marine who had made it back to the compound hatch, but not in one piece. I hoped he’d survived.

“Maybe,” Shawn said. “But you know the marines will do everything and anything to ensure the continuation of the human race. Maybe they thought we stole something more than a few supplies?” “Maybe,” I said, fingering the compass that sat around my neck. Something about the whole situation was bothering me, but I forced myself to focus on the lush forest around me instead. In this world, the marines were the least of our worries. I looked around at the dappled green light that filtered down through the thick canopy of leaves. It seemed so peaceful, but I knew that it hid deadly predators. We needed to be on high alert if we had any hope of surviving. Still, when Shawn was preoccupied with his pack, I ran my hand down the bark of the nearest tree trunk, soaking in its rough texture. I needed to reassure myself that this was really happening. I was a little worried that I was going to wake up and find myself back in my room in the Guardian Wing. Everything had happened so fast that I hadn’t really processed what it would mean to come topside. And now that I was actually here, it seemed unbelievable. I glanced up from my musings to find Shawn giving me a strange look, and I immediately stopped petting the tree. My face flushed red, and without another word, I glanced at my compass and headed north.

It turned out that we weren’t very good at hiking. After spending all twelve years of our lives walking on smooth tunnel floors, we found ourselves on uneven earth for the first time. Rocks, tree branches, and animal holes seemed to come out of nowhere. We both fell. A lot. To make matters worse, our thin compound shoes didn’t do much to protect our feet, so that we might as well have been walking barefoot. Blisters were growing on top of blisters, and I was pretty sure there was at least one hole in my right shoe. I chose not to look. There was nothing I could do about it. My only consolation was that Shawn looked just as bad as I did. Maybe worse.

I tried to stay alert to noises, but there were just too many sounds swirling around us to concentrate. Our feet crunched over the forest floor, and although at first I enjoyed the chirping birds and buzzing insects, before long it was nothing but deafening background noise. Dinosaurs were everywhere, but luckily since the trees we walked through grew practically on top of one another, they were all smaller species. I recognized a lot of them, noting in my head which ones were plant eaters and which weren’t. Shawn kept his stun gun out, but the dinosaurs only stared at us curiously, scurried away, or ignored us entirely. They’d probably never seen a human before, and since we were too big to eat, we were ignored. It was going to be a different story as soon as the trees started thinning out.

The forest was also a refuge for a lot of the animals that had managed to survive the dinosaur takeover. I smiled at a family of chipmunks that watched us with interest. They were so much cuter than I’d ever imagined. When I’d read about them in class, I’d pictured smaller versions of the rodents that sometimes got into the compound supplies. But these were nothing like the scrawny rats and mice that lurked under supply crates and hissed when cornered. These were little balls of furry energy with their black button eyes and twitching whiskers. I wondered what other animals my science class had failed to do justice to. The thought worried me. To my surprise, the chipmunks didn’t run at the sight of us. They’d forgotten that humans were predators. We probably looked like kittens compared with the giant scaly guys stomping around these days. I thought about the pictures I’d seen of deer. Those gentle souls had gone extinct shortly after humans went underground.

Three hours later, the sun was high overhead, and we were still alive. I was kind of shocked. We’d lived our whole lives underground, convinced that the topside world was an instant death sentence, but we hadn’t died yet. We were walking in silence, aware that noise could alert predators, when Shawn’s voice made me jump.

“Remind me again why you thought topside was better than the compound?” he asked, slapping at one of the mosquitoes that had plagued us for the last hour or so.

“It’s beautiful,” I said defensively. “You just aren’t used to it.”

“You aren’t either. Your face is bright red. I think it’s sunburn.” He pressed a finger experimentally against my nose, and I flinched. “I always thought that was just a myth.” “I never thought about sunburn,” I admitted.

“How dare you not think of everything,” Shawn said. And even though I knew he was joking, I suddenly and stupidly felt like crying. Shawn noticed and threw a companionable arm across my shoulders and squeezed. “It’s a little different than the compound, isn’t it?” “That’s the understatement of the century,” I agreed.

“Would it have made you feel better if I’d said I told you so?”

“No,” I said, jabbing him in the ribs with my elbow.

He grinned. “Let’s take a break and eat something before we pass out.”

I nodded gratefully, and we plopped down next to a large tree.

“I didn’t grab enough for two people,” I apologized as I dug through my bag. “So we’ll have to make do and keep our eyes peeled for anything edible.” “It doesn’t look like you brought enough for one.” Shawn eyeballed my meager stash of stolen supplies. “Here.” He offered me a muffin from his own bag. My stomach snarled greedily as I took it. I pulled off a piece and popped it in my mouth. It was gritty and bland, but it tasted divine. Shawn pulled out a muffin for himself and dug in. Apparently, he’d managed to get more food than I had. Suddenly he sprang to his feet and pulled his gun as he focused on something behind me. I whirled to see a pair of black eyes peering at us from under the gloom of a pine bough.

“Can’t be that big,” he breathed. “It would never be able to come in this far.” The eyes blinked, and then slowly a tiny dinosaur emerged into a slant of sunlight. It stood just under two feet tall and perched on its well-muscled back legs. It had a head like a triceratops, but its two front legs were short and carried in front of it like a T. rex. It cocked its head to the side and sat back on its haunches.

“What’s wrong with it?” Shawn asked. “All the other dinosaurs this size avoided us.”

“Maybe it’s just friendly?” I shrugged as I crouched down to get a better look at the tiny creature. “I think it’s a microceratus. I read about them. They are supposed to be really smart.” I had a picture of one somewhere in my journal. I’d gotten the front claws wrong, though, given it too many toes. I made a mental note to fix it later.

“Could you explain to me why dinosaurs all have such complicated names? I mean seriously, who decided that every one of them needed a name with ten syllables?” I snorted. “You’re just bugged because you failed all those spelling tests when we were in third grade.” “It’s hard to believe that people used to keep these things as pets.” Shawn had lowered his gun, but he kept a wary eye on the creature. “Ugly little suckers, aren’t they?” “I don’t know. I think it’s kinda cute in an awful, I’m the reason you almost went extinct kind of way.” Shawn snorted. “You would.”

“Do you think it bites?” I cautiously extended a piece of muffin toward the creature.

“Probably.” He settled back down against the tree. “If you feel sentimental about keeping all your fingers, I wouldn’t do that.” “Oh, you worry too much,” I muttered. However, deciding that it wasn’t worth the risk, I tossed the piece of muffin so that it landed a few feet in front of the creature. I jumped as it darted forward to take the muffin and then scurried back to its hiding place under the trees. Pulling my journal out of my pack, I made a note about the quickness and began reworking the claws with my pencil.

“Don’t feed it anymore,” Shawn cautioned as our tiny green friend came creeping back out from under the pine, its nose twitching as it eyed my muffin hungrily. “It isn’t Shamus hiding in the storage closet waiting for you to save him. That’s a dangerous animal, Sky. And I didn’t pack enough supplies to feed the entire dinosaur population.” “Right.” I flipped it the last bite of my muffin, which it caught dexterously between its two tiny front feet and carted away. “Just enough to give Herman a nice snack.” After years of being hungry, I got a weird joy out of feeding things. I’d never told Shawn about the mouse I used to feed in the Guardian Wing. I’d named him Herman too. I named most things Herman. He’d been killed in a trap, and I’d cried for days.

“Herman?” He rolled his eyes in exaggerated exasperation. “You’re impossible.” He stood up and brushed himself off. A quick glance at my compass to orient myself, and I led the way into the woods. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Herman was still following us, and smiled. I now had two friends along on this journey.