The Extinction Games

Chapter 1

1

The stifling heat has me sweating like a pig. The sweat interacts with bacteria on my clothes, giving off a fair pong. Not a good odour to have around here. Not if you want to stay alive.

The thicket rustles with the movement of something sinister. I hear its rasping breaths, its nostrils surely tantalised by my stinking armpits. I’d been upwind and purposely so. The beast shows itself in all its glory: menacing red mohawk, blue face with an orange snout, mouth full of curved ripping teeth, and feathered arms with vicious talons on the end of them. A two-foot-tall killer chicken.

It squawks and flails at me, hobbling on its hind legs. One of its arms is limp and this affects its balance. It looks drunk. I’m being attacked by a demented prehistoric turkey. I swipe at it and slit across its throat with my knife. Blood drips from its long thin neck, and it gargles a final squawk before slumping to the ground. I wait for it to come back to life, give me one last fright Freddy Krueger-style, but it doesn’t. This isn’t the movies, this is reality.

I carry its carcass through the woods, chopping at branches and sticky willies until I reach my temporary shelter. I’d bandaged its wound because I didn’t want blood dripping a trail to my bed. With my kindling, I light a fire to slow cook my prize. If only I could science this s**t, I would grow potatoes to go with it. Alas, Matt Damon can’t make it for dinner tonight.

Right on time, the comms screen—which is basically a souped-up contact lens with a speaker somehow built into my ear—pops up in my vision, and my mentor, Charles, comes on screen.

‘Congratulations, Jersey. You have just killed your first Velociraptor.’ He gives an uncanny smile which further distorts his messy beard. ‘How does that make you feel?’

‘I killed a dinosaur who was mortally wounded. Yep, not covering myself in a lot of glory here.’

‘Needs must, dear child.’

Needs must. It’s better than what he said after I killed my first dinosaur. He had rubbed his hands together and said, ‘Now tell me, what does it taste like?’

What does a dinosaur taste like? The question itself had implications that Charles probably hadn’t even considered. It’s very possible that I’m the first human to taste dinosaur, the first to actually cook and eat dinosaur. I gave a response that lent gravitas to that seminal moment in human history. ‘It tastes like chicken.’ It wasn’t the first time I had him stuck for words.

Charles has that look on his face. The one that knows I’m not going to like what comes out of his mouth.

‘Go on, spit it out,’ I sigh.

‘Have you thought about what I said?’

‘Not interested.’

‘It would increase your odds manifold if—’

‘I join the group, blah blah blah. I work better on my own. I’ll survive better on my own.’

‘But—’

‘No buts.’

This was all I heard from Charles, since the first day he appeared in front of my shocked retinas. Join a group. Make friends. Get out there and meet people. Okay, maybe not that last one. What part of loner didn’t he get? Why couldn’t a girl enjoy her own space? There are seven other humans roaming these woods, and I’m in no rush to meet any of them.

I have everything I need. Weapons—a sword and a knife. A backpack with a water bottle and a single smoke bomb inside. It came with two, but I used one to scatter a group of adolescent Pachycephalosaurus—with bony domes 10-inches thick—who were having fun headbutting each other on the path I was trying to cross.

In saying that, I don’t have toilet paper or a toothbrush.

Charles urges me to rest and bids me farewell, knowing that our comms could disconnect at any moment. Planetary static electricity ensures interference and speaking with Charles is an intermittent luxury, not a given.

I finish off the leg of my Kentucky Fried Velociraptor also known as Robbie the Raptor. They are much smaller than the films would have you believe, and they are dumber too. And you have to pluck their feathers before eating them. Being a carnivore, Robbie doesn’t taste as good as a herbivore. I suppose that makes sense. On Earth we’d eat herbivores: cows, chickens, sheep. Not tigers, bears and wolves.

The fish is edible and let me tell you, there are some weird fish around here. I just pray that I don’t get food poisoning or stomach cramps. The last thing I need is s**t dribbling down my legs. Again.

On this planet I was vegetarian for a couple of days, but berries do not maketh the woman. I wasn’t going to be on a catwalk anytime soon, so resembling a bag of bones wasn’t going to help me survive this place.

Of course, messing with a fully-fit Velociraptor could’ve been a deadly scenario. He might’ve nicked an artery on my ankle and I’d have bled to death. But I'd been watching Robbie for the past two days, however long a day lasted.

Staying downwind, I’d seen how he hunted anything that moved, taking down prey with the three sharp talons on each hand and the gnarly killing claw in the middle of his feet. But his eyes were bigger than his belly, and he got into a scrap with a juvenile Protoceratops, who was like Little Red Riding Hood lost in the forest. And Grandma Raptor, what curved teeth you’ve got, and plenty of them; he pounced on the poor thing, flailing around, his talons slashing and grazing. There was no skill to the savagery, just sheer instinct to kill, eat and survive.

Riding Hood was on her last legs, blood streaming from a thousand cuts, the game was over. Robbie just had to wait for her to bleed out. Instead, he made a schoolboy error, got too close to Riding Hood’s beak, and she clamped down on his arm, breaking it with a crunch that made me wince.

I don’t know if it was the blood or Robbie’s screeching wail, but more Velociraptors appeared, confirming that these creatures were naturally small and Robbie wasn’t simply a juvenile. They fought with each other over the now dead Riding Hood and Robbie was chased from his kill without so much as a bite. I’d deemed it time to let him have a whiff of me and lured him into my trap.

I think about honouring him by giving him a eulogy—Robbie the Raptor, I never knew ya. But I want to enjoy eating him, not feel guilty, and I need as much protein as I can get. The end justifies the means.

Truth be told, I don’t enjoy his not-like-chicken-at-all meat, and a tinge of guilt eats at my conscience. I make a pact to never name my prey in the future.

I’ve eaten too much, and my body sends surplus blood to my digestive system to help digest the dinosaur in my tummy. The temporary shortage of blood to my brain has my eyelids hanging, just as I witness a second sun creep over the horizon, the brightness of this world turning up by half against my bloodshot eyes.

One thing’s for sure: this planet has no love for an Earthling like me.

I keep moving. Now is not the time to crash. I’m drifting in and out when Charles pops up on my comms. He’s sporting a big cheeser.

‘Hi, Jersey.’

Maybe it’s the lack of sleep, or the aching feet after walking for god knows how long, but I’m delirious and put on my best Yoda voice. ‘Hello or Goodbye. There is no Hi.’

‘Do you ever tire of greeting me these ways? This morning it was “Konnichiwa, Miyagi, son” although perhaps you meant Miyagi-san.’

Yes, I did tire of it. It didn’t take me long to realise that I need Charles more than he needs me. Why he was chosen to be my mentor? I presume it’s because we’re both English. But to be truthful, I don’t know and he never says. I almost don’t want to ask in case he changes his mind. He may be some old geezer, in his forties or fifties I dunno, but he’s the only human contact I have and he’s handy in a pinch.

‘I have a surprise for you.’

I perk up, the blood rushing to my ears in anticipation. Charles is about to tell me that the Great Hall is just around the corner and this ordeal is almost over. I’ve survived killer chickens and made it to the end.

‘It’s just around the corner.’

Am I good or what?

I make my way to the thick bush that obscures my frontal view and slowly push through it. I can hear voices. Too loud for the place we are in. Just who are these amateurs?

In the circular clearing, a young boy with a mop of dark hair remonstrates with a pensioner who’s waving her cane around. They look like they should be haggling in a market, not screaming at each other in a dinosaur reserve.

‘Okay Charles,’ I whisper, ‘where’s my surprise?’

‘You sound dejected,’ he says, in all seriousness, too.

‘No s**t. Anyway, I thought it was all teenagers who got sent here?’

‘I was told they were. These are people, Jersey. People you can make bonds with, people who—’

‘Shhh! I hear something.’

It’s just a chirp at first. I thought maybe a Velociraptor, but it’s deeper. The chirping gets louder, and it’s apparent there’s more than one animal making the noise.

The chirping ceases, replaced by a low hiss. Then a blood-curdling shriek. My heartbeat races, and now the mismatched couple are hugging each other in a union of shaking bodies. I’m wishing I could hug my brother. Or even Charles.

‘What’s out there?’ shouts the boy, making sure that the creatures not yet in sight know where to find him.

The first creature emerges from its camouflage. It stands about half the size of a grown man, lean, muscular, and the body keeps coming, especially the long stiff tail. The whole body looks over three-metres in length. Like a Velociraptor, it has feathers, but they’re dark browns and blacks, with larger feathers concentrated on its head, arms and tail. Its talons look like they could slice your skin like a knife through butter. The third claw on both feet is huge. It’s like the Grim Reaper’s sickle. A six-inch meet your maker.

It’s worse than I thought.

‘Deinonychus,’ say Charles, ‘pronounced Die-non-ee-kus. Intelligent, savage beasts.’

There are four of these killers creeping towards the hapless pair who are frozen to the spot.

‘Perhaps joining a group is folly,’ says Charles, before committing to a serious face. ‘Get out of there, get out of there now.’

I turn my head away for a moment, then I look back.

The boy is petrified, the woman equally so. She’s so small and frail. They don’t look like they’ve killed a pigeon never mind a vicious carnivore. Never mind a pack of them.

‘I can’t let them die.’

‘What do you mean, you have to leave them, you have to—’

I switch off the comms, the first time I’ve purposely shut off communications with my mentor.

I step into the clearing and hope I’ll be alive later for Charles to admonish me.