Scrambling to her feet, Anya said, “First things first. Food, then shelter. And then—”
Her words were cut off by the sounds of splashing, close enough to startle us both.
For the first time I took detailed note of where we were. It looked like a swampy forest filled with enormous ferns and the gnarled thick trunks of mangrove trees. Heavy underbrush of grotesque-looking spiky cattails pressed in on us. The very air was sodden, oppressive, steaming hot. No more than ten yards away the spongy ground on which we rested gave way to muddy swamp water flowing sluggishly through stands of reeds and the tangled mangrove roots. The kind of place that harbored crocodiles. And snakes.
Anya was already on her feet, staring into the tangled foliage that choked the water and cut off our view a scant few feet before us. I forced myself up, tottering weakly, and gestured for Anya to climb up the nearest tree.
“What about you?” she whispered.
“I’ll try,” I breathed back.
Several of the tree trunks leaned steeply and were wrapped with parasitic vines that made it almost easy for me to climb up, even as weak as I was. Anya helped me and we crept out onto a broad branch and stretched ourselves flat on its warm, rough bark. I felt insects crawling over my skin and saw a blue-glinting fly or bee or something the size of a sparrow buzz past my eyes with an angry whizzing of wings.
The splashing sounds were coming closer. Set’s troops, already searching for us? I held my breath.
It looked as if a hillside had come loose from the ground and was plodding through the swamp. Mottled mud brown, olive green, and gray, a fifteen-foot-high mass of living scale-covered flesh pushed through the dense foliage and into the clear area of the swamp where the green-scummed water flowed sluggishly.
And I almost laughed. It had a broad flat shout, like a duck’s bill. The curvature of its mouth gave it a silly-looking grin permanently built into its face, like an idiotic cartoon character.
No matter the expression on its face, though, the dinosaur was cautiously looking around before it came further out into the open. It reared up on its hind legs, taller than the branch on which we hid, and looked around, sniffing like the huffing of a steam locomotive. Its feet were more like hooves than clawed fighting weapons. Its yellow-eyed gaze swept past the tree where Anya and I were clinging.
With a snort like the air brakes of a diesel bus, the duckbill dropped down to all fours and emerged fully into the lethargic stream. It was some thirty feet long from its snout to the tip of its tail. And it was not alone.
There was a whole procession of duckbilled dinosaurs, a parade of forty-two of them by my count. With massive dignity they plodded along the swampy stream, sinking knee deep in the muddy water with each ponderous step.
We watched, fascinated, as the dinosaurs marched down the stream and slowly disappeared into the tangled foliage of the swamp.
“Dinosaurs,” Anya said, once they were out of sight and the forest’s insects had resumed their chirruping. There was wonder in her voice, and not a little awe.
“We’re in the Cretaceous,” I told her. “Dinosaurs rule the world here.”
“Where do you think they were heading? It looked like a purposeful migration—”
Again she stopped short, held her breath. All the sounds of the forest had stopped once again.
I was still lying prone on the broad tree branch. Anya flattened out once again behind me. We could hear nothing; somehow that bothered me more than the splashing sounds the duckbills had made.
The foliage parted not more than thirty yards from where we were hiding and the most hideous creature I have ever seen emerged from the greenery. An enormous massive head, almost five feet long from snout to base, most of it a gaping mouth armed with teeth the size of sabers. Angry little eyes that somehow looked almost intelligent, like the eyes of a hunting tiger or a killer whale.
It pushed slowly, cautiously into the sluggish stream that the duckbills had used as a highway only a minute earlier.