I stared in wonder.
“Not good,” Todd said in my ear, and I realised I’d stopped running. He lurched past me and yanked Shawn out of the sandy nest. The little brown dinosaur opened its mouth in a wordless cry, its eyes sealed shut.
“Take your tunic off,” Todd barked at Shawn, his face drawn and pale.
“What?” Shawn asked, trying in vain to wipe the goo from the egg out of his hair. Todd didn’t wait – ripping Shawn’s pack and large bow off his back, he thrust them into my arms and then yanked Shawn’s tunic up over his head. Shawn yelped in protest, but Todd was already chucking it away from us. Shawn grabbed his pack from me just as the tiny dinosaur let out a high-pitched cry that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
“Run,” Todd commanded. Shawn slung his pack and bow over his bare shoulders, and we took off. The screech of the tiny dinosaur followed us as we weaved through nest after endless nest. The sound of an ear-piercing shriek from behind us forced me to turn my head. To our left, still not much more than dots in the distance, was a herd of rust-coloured dinosaurs. And they were coming straight for us, fast.
“What are those?” Shawn called.
“The parents,” Todd called, putting on a burst of speed. I hadn’t thought it was possible to run any faster, but I found a reserve of strength and pushed harder.
The sound of the advancing dinosaurs grew more deafening by the second, their angry shrieks reverberating up my spine and right into my brain. I craned my neck to look back again. They were predators. If their rows of gleaming teeth hadn’t made that immediately obvious, the fact that they were running on well-muscled back legs sealed the deal. But it was their eyes that had me doing a double take. Unlike most dinosaurs I’d encountered, whose eyes were along the sides of their heads, these sat in the front under lethal-looking spikes, almost human in their positioning.
Suddenly the sand was deeper than before, and I looked up to see Todd on all fours scrambling up a mountain. The dunes, I thought as I automatically mimicked his movements. The sand burned under my hands as I fought to keep up. For every step I took, I felt like I slid back down two, and within moments my eyes, nose, and mouth were full of grit. The sound of Shawn’s hoarse breathing behind me made it obvious that he wasn’t faring much better, and even Todd was gasping for the first time. Despite everything, that fact scared me most of all. If Todd was struggling, did we even have a chance?
Reaching the top of the dune, Todd launched himself off the peak, soaring a good ten feet before landing in the soft sand of the downhill slope. He immediately jumped again to land with a spray of sand another ten feet down. There was no time to think about it. I jumped. The wind tore at my clothes, and my stomach dropped as the dune rushed up to meet me. When my feet finally touched down, they sank into the soft sand just long enough for me to take off again. But in that second of flying, I felt wildly and amazingly alive.
My elation fizzled when I saw Todd scrambling up another dune even bigger than the first. Blinking the grit out of my eyes, I followed. I hadn’t thought it was possible for anything to be harder than that first dune. I’d been wrong. My muscles shook and cramped in protest as I forced them to do battle with yet another endless sand mountain.
When we finally made it to the top, I turned back in time to watch the dinosaurs crest the first dune. The entire herd hadn’t pursued us, presumably leaving the majority behind to defend the undisturbed nests. Not that it mattered. Even one of those beasts was more than our match. The handful still following us were much larger than I’d originally thought. At close to twenty feet from muscled tail to blunt snout, they were almost as big as the T. rex.
I looked ahead to see Todd and Shawn already halfway down the second dune, but before I took my own flying leap, I saw something that made me cry in relief. There, spread out as far as I could see, was Lake Michigan. My hand went involuntarily to the compass that hung around my neck. I’d made it. Almost. Three more dunes, smaller than the one I stood on, separated me from the lake and successfully delivering the data plug that, if my dad was right, meant the salvation of the human race. I leapt after Todd and Shawn.
The next two dunes were smaller, but our exhaustion made us clumsy and slow. Even Todd stumbled and slid backwards as we made our way up their hot, slippery surfaces. Luckily, the deep sand seemed to slow the smashed-faced dinosaurs down as well, and I heard their frustrated squeals every time we disappeared from sight over the top of a dune. Finally, we were climbing the last one.
Shawn was struggling more than me. The veins on his neck and forehead bulged, and sand stuck to his sweaty arms and shoulders like a mottled, grainy second skin. He looked to be on the verge of collapsing.
“We got this,” I encouraged him, grabbing his pack to keep him from slipping backwards again. “We’re almost there. The lake is just over the top of this dune.”
“Can’t. Breathe,” he gasped.
A triumphant roar sliced through the air as the dinosaurs crested the dune directly behind us. If we didn’t move, they’d be on us in seconds.
“Come on!” Todd shouted, and suddenly he was on the other side of Shawn. Together we hauled him up the dune. Instead of leaping off, we kind of tumbled and slid down the far side, sand spraying up to catch in my hair, tunic, and mouth.
We ran, arms churning, as we battled to make it to the water before the dinosaurs that were already sliding down the last dune. Even though the expanse of blue-gray water got closer and closer by the second, I knew we’d never make it. The dinosaurs were close enough that I could smell them now, a pungent mix of decay and old blood. This was where it was going to end.
When we were still a hundred yards away from the lake, I spotted the brown object floating on top of the water’s surface with two men standing inside of it. Sweat stung my eyes, but I didn’t notice. Boat, my exhausted brain provided for me, that’s a boat. I’d read about boats, of course, but I’d never seen one. Todd must have spotted it too because he immediately veered towards it. It flashed across my mind that those men could be marines, but in that moment I didn’t care. The pack of rust-coloured scales and flashing white teeth were mere feet behind us now.
The men in the boat were dressed in strange blue jumpsuits and had black guns pressed to their shoulders. As we approached, a flash of red erupted from each barrel, and I heard an angry shriek as a spray of sand pelted my back. The men fired again as we raced into the icy water. The cold was so shocking after the heat of the sand that it would have taken my breath away if I’d had any left to take. I sloshed through the shallow water, running until it was too deep, and then I instinctively paddled, pulling handfuls of water past me. Moments later my fingernails dug into the rough wood of the boat. One of the men grabbed the back of my tunic and heaved me up over the edge, while the other stood firing shot after shot into our would-be assailants.
Todd and Shawn landed on top of me as they too were hauled in. Managing to untangle myself from the boys, I struggled to my knees and peered out over the edge of the boat. The dinosaurs were slumped across the beach, their legs stuck out at all angles and their mouths hanging open. There had to be at least twenty of them, their eyes vacant.
I realised suddenly that the only sound I could hear was the water lapping against the side of the boat, and the silence seemed deafening after the earsplitting roars of moments before. The two men lowered their guns as Todd and Shawn pulled themselves to standing