- Heidi -

The canopy of treetops is dense and keeps me out of sight of the dactyls. That's what I'm hoping, at least. They haven't attacked me yet. Maybe the sight of Fluffy discourages them. Or maybe it's Alice. She has sharp teeth, can jump high into the air and, I'm told, bit a dactyl right out of the sky not so long ago.

But they're still there. I can hear their screeching. It's not an angry sound now, more self-assured and mocking. Sometimes it almost sounds like laughter.

Alice is in front, dangling from a branch with one arm and staring ahead and up. She doesn't like this any more than I do.

Fluffy doesn't seem to mind the frightful noises, and keeps walking right for the spot where I saw the dactyls circling. I'm much more steady riding her now, and I've practiced taking both hands off her to load a rock in my sling. I'm as ready for this as I'll ever be.

The sun has set, but the moon is at its highest and bathes the jungle in an eerie, blue light.

I must be very close now. I can see the dactyls circling over the treetops, and there is an occasional sound of flapping bat wings and a metal blade striking tough dinosaur skin.

The terrain is rising steadily, and before I know it, there is no dense canopy of leaves above me and I crouch reflexively. The sky is so full of dark, deadly shapes I can feel the hairs standing up on my arms and neck.

In the sudden terror, I almost don't notice the little figure in front of me, but then I hear her thin scream and I pull back on the stick right before Fluffy tramples her. The raptor comes to a hard stop, scraping up the ground with her immense claws.

Then I see a pale little face and large, scared eyes staring up at me. I lean forward over Fluffy's head and smile brightly in genuine joy of seeing my friend. “Hi, Caroline!”

Her jaw drops so far it just about hits the ground. She's incapable of making sounds for the first three seconds.

“Heidi!? Is that ...” she finally splutters.

I climb down and run to embrace her. “Caroline! Ohmigod I'm so happy to see you!”

She's trembling all over, the poor thing, and she feels cold in my arms, breathing fast. She weakly returns my hug. “Yeah, I'm ... I'm glad to see you, too. But what in the name of fuck ...?!”

“The raptor? That's Fluffy. Alice is here somewhere, too. Where are the others?”

“Shit, I thought I was dead. First dactyls and then a raptor.” She collects herself. “The others are over there.” She points.

“Is everyone okay?”

“They're all alive. Still. But the dactyls are attacking us, and we don't expect to survive it. We thought the trees would protect us, and they did for a little while, but the really big dactyls are just tearing them up by the roots, and there are more and more coming and Ar'ox and Jax'zan are both badly injured.”

She squeezes my hand hard. She's on the brink of panic, and she's barely holding it together. “Shit, it's a fucking nightmare ...”

I hug her once more. “It's okay. Get up on Fluffy and we'll check it out.”

She stares past me at the raptor. “I don't know if I want to get close to that thing.”

“It's fine,” I say with a confidence I don't feel. I take her hand and lead her to Fluffy's huge leg, then climb up and reach my hand down to help her. “Sit behind me.”

But as soon as Caroline places her foot on Fluffy's knee, the raptor shoots its head back and snaps at her with the sound of a thousand giant scissors. Caroline squeals and falls backwards, and for a moment it looks like Fluffy will take a huge bite out of her. Then the raptor calmly swings its head away again.

“Oh fuck.” I jump down and help my friend up. “I'm sorry. I had no idea.”

Caroline brushes the dirt off her dinosaur skin outfit. “Let's not try that again. I don't think it likes me.”

“I don't think it's that. She probably won't let anyone else ride her. That's fine, we'll go on foot.”

I get my bag of rocks for the sling. Caroline leads the way, and soon I can see the others. They're inside a kind of primitive fortress made from rocks and tree trunks, and it looks like they must have made it recently.

The dactyls are still circling, but none of them are attacking right now.

The girls are there, looking shaken, holding their spears and always staring up at the dactyls in case one of them were to suddenly swoop down. All around there are fallen trees, confirming what Caroline said about them being no help at all.

She drags me behind the barricade, but I don't feel any safer here. There's nothing to protect us from aerial attacks.

“Hi, girls,” I say feebly. This is not the magnificent entrance I dreamed of.

But they all come over and hug me, except Emilia and Sophia, who're tending to their wounded husbands and just wave and give me tired smiles. I can see the guys are bleeding, but at least they're both sitting up.

“You picked a bad time to get here,” Aurora says. “You should have stayed wherever you were.”

I shake my head. “No chance. We're all in this together. Why are you here, though? I thought we were moving to Bune?”

“Weird things happened in that old spaceship,” Delyah says and wipes a drop of blood from her face. “We thought it was safer to move back to the cave and take our chances there. But before we got that far, the dactyls attacked. We've been fighting them ever since.”

“She rides a freaking raptor now,” Caroline exclaims. “Fuck, you should have seen it. I was scared to death.”

“You ride a raptor?” Delyah says, frowning. “So I guess that caveman on the T. Rex is somewhere in the picture?”

“He was,” I state with finality. “But he has his own tribe to care for.”

Delyah nods slowly. “We saw the tracks right outside that hidden exit of the spaceship, so we were pretty sure he had abducted you. We never expected to see you again.”

“I wasn't too sure about that myself,” I say sincerely. “But he turned out to be the good kind of kidnapper. Then Alice brought me the gun, and I knew you guys were in trouble. And that maybe a raptor might come in handy. But I'm not sure she'll be much good against those.”

I point up. It seems like there are more and more dactyls filling the sky, and they're almost blocking out the blue moon.

“Nothing is much good against those,” Sophia says and gets up, holding a bloody rag in her hand. “The guys have taken out a couple of them, but when they decide to attack for real, we don't think we'll stand a chance. Seriously, Heidi, if you've got decent transportation, then get the hell away from here. Jax'zan can't walk far now, and I'm not leaving him.”

“And I'm not leaving Ar'ox. Can your raptor carry more than one?” Emilia says, glancing over at me.

I scratch my chin. “She can. But I don't think she wants to. And I think it might be dangerous to try again. She almost bit Caroline's head off.”

It makes sense to me that Fluffy will only carry me and Dar'ax. He tamed her, and then gave her over to me. She's a proud and majestic predator, and not a beast of burden. I kind of get the fucked-up logic of her unwillingness. I guess I'm going native on this planet.

“Seriously, Heidi,” Delyah says. “Get the hell out of here. We will stay with Ar'ox and Jax'zan. We've tried everything for a couple of days now. We just can't get away from the dactyls on foot. Soon they'll launch their final attack, and we'll fight them until they leave us alone. We know they can be cowardly. There's hope still.”

I look around at their haggard faces. They're exhausted. They have no chance to fight off even one determined dactyl. A thousand of them? No, there's not even a slim hope. Delyah knows that. They all know it.

“Damn,” Aurora mumbles and quickly takes an arrow out of her quiver. The girls all look past me and grip their spears firmer.

Fluffy is sauntering slowly out of the jungle and comes up to me, towering over all of us.

She could probably carry me away fast. The dactyls would let me go, I'm pretty sure of it. I could still make it.

Everyone is looking at me, expecting me to jump up on the raptor and escape, now that I can see how bad the situation is.

And I look at them.

There's Jax'zan, a gentle giant of a caveman, destined to be chief of his old tribe, now the rock-steady backbone of our little community.

Ar'ox, the proud blacksmith who handles his sword like it has a life of its own, his dark, serious face breaking up into uproarious laughter whenever his wife Emilia tells him a joke.

Sophia with her caring leader qualities that she tries her hardest to keep hidden, her dress now stained with Jax'zan's blood.

Intense Aurora with her bow and arrows and furry outfit, looking so much like Xena, Warrior Princess I can barely keep from smiling.

Sweet-faced Caroline with her mild eyes, a leaf in her hand, full of berries that she'll let the others eat before she takes one herself.

Quiet Emilia with her fancy fabric outfit and the knife that Ar'ox made for her, always with an easy smile to anyone around her.

Alice, the weird ape-like alien creature that gives us salen fruits at the strangest times.

Soft-spoken, super intelligent Delyah with her serious face and hard logic, always having the best for the tribe in mind.

We've been through so much together, and I know these people better than I ever knew my family. I know all their strengths and weaknesses. And they all know mine. This brutal planet makes it impossible to keep any pretense up for more than five minutes.

Dar'ax had his tribe. Well, this is mine. And I understand now how he felt. For your tribe, you'll do anything. Even dying with them. It's not even a hard decision.

I walk over to Fluffy and untie the ropes that keep the control stick fastened to her side, then gently pull out the part that went inside her skin. I toss the sticks into the woods, knowing that she will revert to her wild state. Probably immediately.

Still I reach up to place my hand on the side of her head, an inch from her razor teeth. “This isn't your fight, Fluffy. Off you go now. Thank you for everything.”

For several heartbeats she stares at me. But for someone who has looked deep into Dar'ax's laser eyes and survived, her icy gaze doesn't even register. Then she blinks, just once, slowly turns around and runs back into the jungle in easy bounds.

“That was the stupidest thing I've ever seen,” Aurora says, and there's a little smile playing around her lips. “But also the fucking greatest.”

The other girls murmur agreement, and the they all com over and hug me again, one after the other.

I look up into the sky. There are black, flapping shapes everywhere.

I put a rock into my sling. “I think they're about to attack.”

- - -

I've been attacked by dactyls before. But not like this. These things are huge, and they swoop down so fast and hard I can't even separate one attacker from the next. It's all a chaos of terrible screeches, flapping wings, huge talons, giant beaks with brown teeth, lifeless eyes, hard clangs of metal against tough dinosaur skin and scared yelps from me and the other girls when one of the dactyls comes too close.

Jax'zan and Ar'ox are on their feet, despite their wounds, and heroically slash their long swords up at the flying horrors. Alice will sometimes jump straight up to bite a dactyl's throat out, but they soon get wise to her tricks and it only succeeds once for her.

The other girls use their long, iron-tipped spears to little effect, and Aurora fires arrow after arrow straight up, aiming for an attacker's eye or open gape.

I fling many rocks at the dactyls, and one or two of them even hit. But it doesn't seem like the dactyls notice.

And this isn't even a serious attack. The dactyls are just playing with us before they come in for real. They're just having fun.

Then the sky clears as they all fly away.

We lower our weapons and just stand there, frowning.

“Was that it?”

“Are they leaving?”

“We can't have actually fought them off, can we?”

We stare after the huge swarm of dactyls as it slowly grows smaller in the distance.

Then it dives down and turns around.

“Shit.”

“They're coming back.”

“This is the attack. They were just playing before.”

“Stars, they're coming in fast!”

They are. It's just a giant, black cloud of attackers coming straight for us at a speed so great it seems impossible. But they're coming. And this time, they mean it.

“Girls, I think this is it.”

Then we can't hear anything over the insane screeching of the thousands of giant dactyls coming in to kill us. They're a cloud of talons and teeth and beaks and claws, a storm of death.

I instinctively crouch down behind the low wall of logs, painfully aware that it won't protect me from anything.

I close my eyes and clamp my hands over my ears. Bitter tears are stinging my eyes and closing up my throat.

No. This isn't right. This is not what he would have done. Dar'ax would not die like this.

I slowly stand up and ready my sling. I still have three rocks left.

To my joy, I also see the other girls getting to their feet, one by one. We'll go out fighting.

The dactyls darken the night sky, and their screeches fill my whole world.

I start swinging my sling in lazy circles over my head. I'll get that first one right in the fucking mouth.

Then I hear a strange sound. Someone is calling my name.