The Extinction Games

Chapter 2

2

It’s like the Wild West. A standoff between me, a pair of scaredy cats, and four Hell-spawned Deinonychus. If only I had a g*n. Or a tank. Time has slowed, and all I hear is my pulse thumping in my ears.

‘The tree.’ I try to say the words without moving my mouth like I’m a ventriloquist. I don’t know why I do that. The beasts can’t understand me, never mind lip read.

The boy and woman look at each other in confusion.

‘She need to pee?’ the woman says, gripping on to her scared partner like it’ll help. Who the hell is mentoring these clowns?

‘The tree!’ I point this time, and the Deinonychus twitch.

The boy looks behind him, and finally twigs, no tree-pun intended. The tree has roots crawling up its trunk. If they are quick, they can climb up.

The largest Deinonychus, the Pack Leader, takes a step towards me, tapping his meet-your-maker claw against the dirt. The white mark on his snout marks him out from the rest.

My knife might’ve taken care of Robbie, but I’ll need something bigger now. I unsheathe my curved sword, a Japanese katana, pretty sharp, too. Light reflects off the smooth steel and the beast blinks.

Without warning, a beast from the left leaps at me. Its speed is frightening, and I only manage to roll under it through sheer instinctual response.

‘The tree, now!’

The boy helps the woman climb the tree, as the Deinonychus pack take turns to attack. A second beast leaps at me, and I roll forward again, but this time I swipe my sword upwards, and the tender meat slices and warm blood rains over my head.

I stand up, a blood-covered mess like I’m Stephen King’s Carrie. What I’m lacking in telekinesis, my sword is more than making up for it.

The pack eye up their fallen comrade, and then Pack Leader shrieks. This changes them. They encircle me. Unlike the Velociraptor, these beasts are smart.

Pack Leader approaches his dead comrade and takes a sickening bite out of its neck. He leans his head back, swallowing the windpipe whole, then looks directly to me, mouth dripping with blood.

I’m now regretting turning off my comms. Charles would have some advice, some way of getting me out of here. But I can’t take my eye off the beasts for a second. And then I realise. I should take my own advice.

The boy and the woman are safe on the tree. I need to join them.

From my left approaches Second-in-Command. To my right, Pack Leader. Their movements are slow and considered. They seem to know my sword can do damage. Straight ahead is the smallest of them, who is now blocking my route to the tree.

I have only one option.

I run straight for Private Munchkin. He shrieks but doesn’t move, like he’s a rabbit caught in the headlights. In my peripheral vision the two big ones run at me. At least they’re not leaping. They’ve learned not to.

Private Munchkin takes a step forward and I swing my sword, decapitating his head clean off. I don’t break stride, sheath my sword and reach the bottom of the tree, practically jumping onto the roots. I climb up without looking back, and then a heavy weight clamps onto my back. My eardrums are attacked by a close shriek.

‘They’ve got her,’ I hear the boy scream.

I turn my head, and the rotting mouth of Second-in-Command is behind me, her talons stuck into my backpack. Luckily her killer claws are ripping at the tree and not my legs.

The weight is unbearable, she must weigh around the same as me, a good sixty kilos. My grip loosens.

The boy’s face is wrecked with terror. I can’t grab my sword, so I pull out my knife, and jab it behind me, hoping to strike her face. I hear a whine, and the weight releases itself from my back. I pull myself up the tree and sit on a branch so thick it could hold a treehouse on its own.

Second-in-Command is shaking her head, blood pouring from her snout. Pack Leader is jumping at us, talons tantalisingly close to our dangling legs. But we’re safe. We’re going to be oka—

The woman slips, and Pack Leader snaps on her skinny leg, pulling her from the tree. She lands on the ground with a back-breaking thud. Before she can scream, the Deinonychus tear her limb from limb.

The boy shields his eyes.

I lose myself in the woman’s last moments and imagine another reality where I lost my grip on the tree and that woman is me. There is no life left in her, and Pack Leader gives a triumphant shriek before dragging her body into the thicket. Second-in-Command follows, dragging Private Munchkin’s carcass with her.

The cacophony of survival is now a deathly silence, save for the boy’s sniffling.

‘They’re gone,’ I say. I turn my comms on, but there’s no Charles. ‘Static—’

‘Interference.’ The boy has turned his head, his face streaming with tears. ‘My comms wasn’t working the entire times.’

At least this puts to bed my regret about turning my comms off.

‘I’m sorry about your friend.’

‘I didn’t really knows her.’ The boy wipes the snot with his forearm. ‘But likes, to die like that…’

‘No one deserves that.’ I make a move to climb down the tree.

‘What are you doing?’ says the boy, panic-stricken. ‘They’re still downs there.’

‘They’re busy eating.’

‘Please show some respects, she—’

‘And when they finish with her, they’ll be back for this dead one, and back for us. Respect can be afforded once we’re back home. If we ever make it home.’ I’m being brutal, but honest. I lower myself onto the ground, check the wind, and cross the clearing.

I head in the opposite direction of the Deinonychus but I don’t backtrack. I don’t want to meet them again on my way to the Great Hall.

Footsteps drag behind me.

‘Lift your feet. You’re alerting the entire forest to our presence.’

‘Sorry! Cools, yeah.’ He catches up with me. He’s so short his head reaches my chin. His puppy dog eyes entice me to pat his head, but his hair is matted and nasty, so I don’t. ‘I kinda lost my bag earlier. You wouldn’t happens to have anything to eat?’

I sigh. Not content with me saving his life, he now wants to raid my imaginary fridge.

‘I’d offer you Raptor meat but we’re going in the wrong direction. My stash is back that way.’

‘You’ve killed a Velociraptor?’ He says, eyebrows raised.

‘Course I have,’ I shrug. ‘Haven’t you had Raptor Burger?’

‘I’ve been feeding on berries.’ He lowers his head. ‘The dinos all scares me.’

His sharp cheekbones and protruding collar bone suggest he might be telling the truth.

Then again, maybe this was the game he was playing. The sympathy card, the victim. Once you had him in your trust, he’d stab you in the back, then take your belongings and your Raptor Burger.

It gets me thinking. Did the woman just happen to slip, or did someone give her a helping push?

‘You must be someone right? I mean you looks like you’re fit.’ He slaps his forehead. ‘I don’t means you’re sexy fit.’ He slaps himself again. ‘Not that you’re not! You’re like a real-life Tomb Raider. The one with the normal-sizes milk carriages.’

‘Digging deeper.’

‘But you have skills with those blades. Like a samurais warrior. Are you some kind of Army or Navy or NASA?’

I snort and say, ‘I’m none of that.’

‘Then your parents must be somebodies? You’re a rich socialite or reality TV star.’

‘All these questions. I take it you don’t know why you were sent here? Why you were chosen.’

‘I can’ts remember.’

‘Yeah, I know that feeling. What I can remember is my father. He was a d**g dealer who died when I was an infant. So if you thought I’m here through nepotism, think again.’

‘Oh.’ His eyes open wide. ‘Sorry, I mean. Hmm. What did he sells and how much?’

‘Are you for real?’

‘I’m trying to makes you feel better, ya. I don’t judge. I’m a Pisces. We, umm, empathise.’

‘Listen, kid, I really don’t need your empathy. How about you leave me be?’

He doesn’t listen and keeps following me. At least he’s keeping his voice down.

‘You’re English, ya? Do you knows the King?’

‘Not personally, no.’ God give me strength.

‘I don’t knows the mayor of my town, I suppose. Another town in my state elects a dog to be mayor. Can you believes it?’

‘Do you always talk this much?’

‘Only when I’m nervous.’ He looks around. ‘We should gets back to the group.’

What group is he talking about? I assumed his group had just been eaten. I want no part of any group.

‘Are you listening, man?’

Man? I shoot him daggers and he takes the hint.

‘I don’t means to push, ya, but we needs to find the others. They’re smart, we could—’

The shriek of the Deinonychus echoes in the distance.

‘Yeah and look where your teamwork got you. Almost dead. And where were your group? Nowhere to be seen.’ I wave him away. ‘Your mentor should’ve warned you about hooking up with the wrong kind of people.’

‘It wasn’t their fault. We gots separated and—’

‘Stockholm Syndrome. You’ll be better off on your own.’

‘But I won’t. You saw yourself, I nearly died.’ His eyes plead with me, and it’s hard to push him away.

What can I do? Tell the kid I think he’s alright but I can’t handle him slowing me down? Tell him it’s a travesty that anyone thought it a good idea to plop him down on this planet of meat-eating killers? Tell him…a lie that would get him out of my face and out of my conscience.

‘At least if—when—you die, you’ll be out of your misery.’

A sharp intake of breath reveals his ribcage.

‘You don’t means that,’ he says, half shocked, half indignant. ‘You wouldn’t have saves me otherwise.’

I couldn’t watch him die, but that doesn’t mean I want to look after him either.

‘Look kid—’

‘My name’s Pip.’

‘I don’t wanna know your name.’

‘You just don’t wants any emotionality attachment to me!’

‘There you go.’ I give a sarcastic clap. ‘Bingo. Now leave me alone.’

I walk away, pacing as fast as I can without making it look like I’m running from a kid. The last word I hear him utter is ‘s**t’ before I duck under the foliage and the kid disappears from sight and hearing.