5

- Sophia -

With shaking hands I get it into my hand and untangle it from my lab coat.

But it's too late. I hear the not-dactyl right behind me, and the dinosaur in front of me is slowly shifting its position to pounce on me with one of its mouths. I bend my head down, making myself as small as I possibly can. I don't want to see this.

Then there's a loud thud, like a huge whale hitting the ground from the top of a skyscraper, followed by a not-dactyl scream that makes me drop the gun and press my hands to my ears.

When I look up, the yellow-eyed dinosaur's neck is at least fifty feet long and the not-dactyl is tumbling through the air away from me, still screaming furiously. It looks like the dino has head-butted the not-dactyl, because it has no other limbs that could do anything like it.

The not-dactyl hits the trees far away with a terrible rustle of leaves, and I don't stick around to check if it's okay. I just run, shaking and sobbing.

At least now I know where I'm running, because the tuna can is shimmering in the sunlight just a short distance away. And of course the door is shut.

I scramble over and bang on the door. “Hey! Open! It's me! Sophia!”

The door slides open and I dive through it, then someone slaps the button again and it slams shut.

I collapse on the floor and just breathe furiously, and then I break down in panicked tears of terror and anger. Well, sometimes you just have to let it go. And I guess this is my time.

I've had enough. Not only am I the bitch of the story, it looks like I'm the coward, too. “I'm all the bad ones rolled into one!” I sob, and I sense the girls exchanging glances.

Heidi and Aurora hold me while I get to my senses.

I look around, but the girls are blocking my view. “How many made it?”

Caroline puts a hand on my shoulder. “Not many.”

How can she be this calm? Norwegians are hard to shake, I guess. I stretch my neck to look past her.

No one.

The room is empty except for us translator lab girls in our white lab coats. Six. Alesya was the seventh.

I count one more time. Caroline. Aurora. Emilia. Heidi. Delyah. Me.

That's it. All the other women were taken by not-dactyls. Including the woman who found the mound of rocks. And the owner of the gun, whoever that was.

I lean my head back against the wall. “Shit.”

“Yeah,” Emilia agrees. “Those flying things just picked them up and – well, they're gone. We were sure you were, too.”

“I almost was.” I tell them what happened.

Heidi shakes her head. “So damn weird, this planet. Giant trees and weird piles of rocks and not-dactyls and sophiasauruses.”

I frown. “And what?”

“Sophiasauruses,” she repeats. “That dino of yours. You discovered it. And also, you're the only one who's seen it. That's the right way to name something, nicht wahr, Delyah?”

Delyah considers it. “Not really. But I guess it works. We can do the formal classification later. That's typically not done in the field.”

I shrug. It's a name as good as any, and I guess I can't expect to have an actually cool creature named after me. So a lumbering, three-legged ugly dinosaur that throws punches with its neck it is. It's okay. It saved me from the not-dactyl.

But now we have much more important things to talk about. We're stranded on an alien planet with deadly wildlife everywhere. We hug each other and calm down. I probably shouldn't think it, but I'm glad I'm not here alone.

Emilia asks the obvious question. “So. Guys. What the hell do we do?”

We sit down and talk for a good while, but we keep going around in circles because we don't really know anything. And we try to avoid saying the thing that's on everyone's mind: we might be stuck here for good.

In the end we don't make any decisions, except for one: we have to get water. And since I know where the stream is, because I almost fell into it, I have to go.

“That's fine,” I say and get up again, hoping to at least not be considered the coward of the group. “But can I have company, please? Just one is enough.”

“Sure.” Caroline gets up and takes off her lab coat. “We'll get water. Do we have anything that can be used as a bucket to carry it in?”

We don't, but Emilia claims to have seen a bush with very large, funnel-shaped leaves right outside.

I open the door and peer carefully out. Nothing's moving and the light is more reddish now than before.

“You guys better be quick,” Aurora says. “Looks like the sun is setting.”

I take off the lab coat, put the gun in my jeans pocket and step outside the tuna can. “It's not far. Ten minutes at most if we find something to carry the water in.”

Caroline and I find Emilia's leaves right away. They're deep and have a waxy surface that should be pretty water tight. “These should hold, what? A couple of quarts each?”

“Yep,” I nod. “Enough not to die of thirst.” But not enough to wash in, I add to myself. The jungle is hot, and I'm soaked in sweat.

“Better not talk too much,” Caroline says. “We don't know what else lives here.”

We walk silently through the woods, trying not to step on dry branches. We find the stream right away. The bank is muddy, but the water itself flows pretty fast and looks clean enough. A little further up the bank is sandy and looks a little like a beach, so we make our way there.

I peer down into it. “Think there are any monsters down there?”

Caroline scratches her chin. “I only see sand.”

“That's what worries me. It looks too inviting. But I think I have to step into it. The water close to the bank is too shallow to fill these things.”

I consider taking off my sneakers and my socks, but if I have to run, I'd prefer not to have to put them back on first. But I fold up my jeans as far up my calves as they will go.

I grab one of the cone-shaped leaves, take a deep breath, close my eyes and step into the stream. The water is cool against my calves and actually feels pretty great. Some flowers on the bank are sending a sweet fragrance my way, and with the setting sun and the balmy air the whole episode almost feels pleasant, like I'm on vacation in some tropical paradise.

Except we witnessed at least twenty women taken by terrible not-dactyls just a couple of hours ago.

I shudder and fill one leaf, then hand it to Caroline on the shore.

She gives me the other one and I fill it with upstream water. Then I lean over to hand it back, and I slip on a rock under my foot and fall backwards into the stream with a huge splash.

I splutter and cough and try to get a foothold on the bottom, but the current is pretty strong in the middle of the stream and I can't quite make it. It's deep, too. I can hear Caroline yell something from the bank, but I'm busy not drowning in this stream that suddenly turned out to flow much faster than it looked.

Then the bottom just disappears under me and I'm sucked down a hole along with most of the water in the stream.

I panic and try to swim up and against the current, but it's just too strong and now gravity is pulling me straight down, too.

I'm dead. I just know it.

Then there's another splash, I'm floating, and I realize I've fallen into a pool of some kind. I swim desperately, and this time I move the way I want to. I feel air on my face and gasp with relief, then take many panicked breaths as I keep my head above water.

It's a cave. I can see red daylight not too far away, and the water flows lazily in that direction. I can see the rocky shore and swim towards it, then hang onto the smooth rock. I'm exhausted. Totally. The edge of the rock is a half-inch higher than the water level, but when I try to climb up, I don't even get halfway. I just don't have the energy.

It's okay. I'll just hang here for a while and regain my strength.