Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 55551 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 278(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55551 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 278(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
I need to get to civilization, not ride out into the wild. I need a ship. I need a crew. I need a lot of things I’ve lost lately, and none of them are going to be found rocketing through increasingly dense foliage.
Slowing the bike, I endeavor to make a turn. But there’s not exactly a lot of space here, and the same massive mechanical beast that seems so impressive and powerful at full speed, turns into a big, lumbering, and damn-near-impossible-for me-to-maneuver metal rock when it is idling. It doesn’t help that my feet don’t actually reach the ground from the seat, so I have to get off and push and…
THUD
Something makes the ground shake beneath the force of its bulk.
THUD
These are not sounds. These are feelings. Vibrations running through me. There are sounds too though. I can hear large trees being snapped like twigs. I can hear birds screeching and wheeling into the sky. Something very, very large is coming toward me. Not at a run, but at a saunter that is somehow faster than I could ever hope to move. It’s too big to escape. It’s too late for me to run. There’s no outrunning something this massive.
I freeze.
I might not feel fear, but I still have basic survival instincts, and right now every single one of them is telling me to Stop. Fucking. Moving.
This entire planet is making me feel as my ancestors must have felt an impossibly long time ago. Once upon a time people were prey to pretty much every animal on ancient Earth. Here, I feel much the same. The little mammal in the middle of my brain is crouched, alert, and helping me survive.
There are only two more thudding impacts before this force of nature is upon me. Each one of them is louder than the last, and by the time it is atop me, the shaking and the cracking of ground and foliage fills my ears to the exclusion of all other sounds. It is though the world is ending and beginning all at once. Even if I could feel fear, I think I would be too overwhelmed to process it. This is one of those events in life where one forgets about oneself and is instead entirely overwhelmed by that which is happening instead.
It’s not an animal. It’s an event.
A truly leviathan scaled creature standing at least forty feet tall is standing over me, head as big as a small shuttle swinging back and forth, scanning the area. It senses something, because it has stopped moving entirely.
Three moons have risen since the sun set, and the silvery light from those triple orbs reflects and bounces around the landscape in ways that illuminate this creature all too well. Even at this relatively great distance from my head to its head, I can see that the jaws are powerful. The teeth seem to be longer than I am.
A little worm of logic tells me that there is no way a massive predator like the one above me feeds on creatures my size. It looks like it is made to kill creatures far, far larger. I tell myself I’m like a fly to this thing. It doesn’t want me. It’s just passing through.
I hear the bushes behind me being crushed by its tail swinging as the leviathan lowers its head. I feel a fetid breeze blow across me from nostrils practically large enough for me to crawl up onto. Then the air is sucked up around me, little pieces of leaf and stick being drawn up with the dust around me. My hair flows up with the breath too, and I know that a few of my particles are making their way into the beast. There is a brief snort, a shower of dinosaur snot raining around me as the beast attempts to work out what is happening beneath its nose. I know I stand out among the typical scents for this planet, and that is going to make any animal curious.
I hunker down next to the bike, hoping its scent will cover mine. It has to smell like saurian alpha and hot oil. This is the most tense of moments, in which literal death hangs mere inches above my head. One little snap of monstrous jaws and that is the end of me.
There’s a grunt. A grunt that sounds like the universe itself trying to work out a problem. And then the jaws open, and heat rushes out around me, the wetness of the interior of something that wants to eat me.
There’s a snap, and the beast grabs the seat of the bike and its handlebars, and crunches them both, sharp teeth going right through the metal and mechanical bits and pieces like a hot knife through cotton candy. There’s a small snacking sound as it tests what it put in its mouth.