“And for the cheapies,” said Mouzi cheerfully, “you got to ride twenty-five miles inland on the monorail. Five hundred bucks per head, but there had to be at least five in the party. But to do any of them, you went to the Petting Zoo first.”
“Which is what?” asked McQuay.
“It was built as a research center,” Kavanaugh declared. “There’s a jetty and the tour boat, a helipad and the monorail train station…not to a food concession and a little zoo where some of the smaller and less dangerous animals were to be confined.”
“Confined why?” Honoré demanded. “So tourists could have their pictures taken with them?”
“No,” said Kavanaugh. “So they could be studied by paleobiologists like you,”
In a tone thick with disgust, Honoré said, “This sounds so…American. Hot dogs and popcorn and dinosaurs. Bloody absurd.”
“What I find absurd,” said Belleau, “is that we have yet to see so much as a spoor or a footprint of these creatures. If they truly exist, where are they?”
“Don’t worry about it, Doctor,” said Oakshott. “Everything is fine.”
Belleau ignored his valet’s reassurance. “I’d like to take a closer look at the area around the escarpment if you don’t mind.”
“There’s not much to see,” replied Kavanaugh. “Trees and rocks and fog.”
“Nevertheless.”
Kavanaugh resisted the urge to roll his eyes, and angled the ASTAR toward the north face of the rock formation. “Is there anything in particular you’re looking for?”
Belleau did not answer for a long moment. When he did, his voice was tense. “Why do you ask me that?”
“Only because you seem so insistent on looking at the one place on the island where visibility is a problem. I was just wondering
why.
”
“Quite the coincidence,” challenged Belleau. “I was just wondering if this whole enterprise wasn’t a hoax, after all.”
“Like I said before,” Crowe retorted testily, “It’s the heat of the day. If you’ve ever spent time in the tropics, you’d know almost every jungle goes to sleep until late afternoon or early evening. The animals conserve their strength for hunting at night.”
“Don’t lecture me about the tropics, young man,” Belleau snapped. “I’ve been to more remote places on Earth than you could ever—
A massive black shadow seemed to peel away from the shaded side of the escarpment. A booming clap of thunder was followed by a burst of turbulence that buffeted the ASTAR, causing it to pitch violently to starboard.
Ignoring the frightened cries crowding into his earpiece, Kavanaugh struggled with the stick, the vanes whining. The chopper surged upward at a steep angle.
“What the fuck was that?” McQuay yelled, no longer sounding laconic or bored.
Belleau’s wordless shout of surprise compressed everyone’s eardrums.
The huge black wedge swooped past the chopper and came into full view. Although he had seen it before, Kavanaugh felt his breath seize painfully in his lungs at the sight. The mottled mass dove and disappeared into the haze of vapor rising from the treeline, its passage tearing a great hole in the cloud.
Sounding as if she had just run a mile, Honoré husked out, “I could not have seen what I just did.”
“It looked as big as the helicopter!” Belleau cried, his voice hitting a high note of fear.
“Don’t worry about it, Doctor,” said Oakshott. “Everything is fine.”
“I didn’t see much of anything but a big-ass shadow,” McQuay declared resentfully, jamming the camcorder against his shoulder. “Can you follow it?”
“It was probably one of the pterosaurs we told you about,” Crowe said, striving to sound calm and even nonchalant. “Nothing to be concerned about.”
“Nothing to be concerned about?” Honoré repeated in disbelief. “It was monstrous! If it’s a form of Quetzalcoatlus, then it most definitely is something to be concerned about.”
Kavanaugh said soothingly, “It’s just curious about us. We’ll be setting down at the Petting Zoo site in a minute anyway and it’ll lose interest once we’re not airborne.”
A stuttering screech penetrated even the earphones of their headsets. The winged creature glided alongside the ASTAR’s portside, easily keeping pace. Its scale-ringed eyes coldly surveyed the chopper as if it were trying to figure out what kind of creature it was and if it were edible.
The jaws were enormous, longer than Oakshott’s body, and they led back to a round football of a head covered in pimpled hide resembling discolored black leather. The membranous wings stretched out like those of a bat, folding and unfolding in flight, making a sound like huge sections of carpet flapping before a gale force wind. Four highly developed fingers, each one tipped with a curving yellow talon, protruded from the juncture of the first joint of the wings. Clawed feet trailed out behind it and between them fluttered an appendage like the tail of a kite made of oiled rawhide. The creature’s wingspan looked to be a minimum of fifty feet.
Peering through the viewfinder of his camera, McQuay murmured, “Goddamn, godfuckingdamn.
“Isn’t seeing that thing better than measuring footprints or putting poop under a microscope, Aubrey?” Kavanaugh asked, not allowing his own sense of awe and apprehension to affect his controlled tone.
Urgently, Honoré said, “Jack, that pterosaur is considerably bigger than most of the Quetzalcoatlus fossil finds and it’s acting very aggressively.”
“Maybe we’re flying over its nest,” Kavanaugh replied. “It could be reacting like a mama bird protecting its eggs. Once we go past, it’ll lose interest in us.”
“It’s not a bird,” Honoré shot back. “Pterosaurs weren’t the ancestors of birds, they were a form of theropod with wings, like a flying Deinonychus!”
At the mention of the raptor, a queasy, liquid sensation began to build in Kavanaugh’s stomach. “It didn’t bother us before.”
“I think it’s scopin’ us out,” Mouzi said tightly, eyes focused on the creature less than a dozen yards away from her seat. “Makin’ up its mind about takin’ a piece outta us.”
“It just flew around us the first couple of times,” Crowe said. “It didn’t seem dangerous.”
“That’s because you were in a winged aircraft,” Honoré replied, “and it probably thought the plane was one of its own kind—”
The Quetzalcoatlus swiveled its head toward them, arching its long neck and opening its jaws. It voiced a high-pitched cry that sounded like steam escaping from a leaky valve combined with a man gargling. Sunlight glinted on the needle-pointed fangs lining its dark red gumline.
“Quetzalcoatlus aren’t supposed to have teeth!” blurted Belleau, sounding almost accusatory as if the creature had tricked him.
“All things being equal,” said Kavanaugh, adjusting the ASTAR’s attitude, “this one does.”
The Quetzalcoatlus banked, climbing higher, and then it heeled over for another pass at the helicopter.
“It must’ve made up its damn mind,” Mouzi observed.
“This is fucking great!” McQuay declared, unbuckling his seat harness and edging close to the window, camcorder pressed against his eye. “I can’t believe the fucking great footage I’m getting! Oscar quality stuff!”
“Get back in your seat and buckle up, McQuay,” Kavanaugh ordered.
“Not a chance,” the cameraman retorted.
“Suit yourself.”
Kavanaugh pushed the stick forward and the chopper went into steep dive, toward the mist-shrouded treeline in the shadow of the escarpment. A dangerous maneuver, but with an unknown animal almost as large as the ASTAR swooping after them, it was the only chance worth taking.
He glanced up once and glimpsed the Quetzalcoatlus wheeling overhead, a scant five meters above the main rotor, wings stretched out to their utmost. The speed of its passage made the chopper jerk in the slipstream. Kavanaugh dropped more altitude while coaxing more speed from the engines.
“What are we going to do, Jack?” Crowe asked, worry evident in his voice for the first time.
“If we try to head on back to Little Tamtung, there’s no guarantee that thing won’t overtake and splash us into the ocean. I’m going to try to lose it in the fog, down around by the trees.”
“Good plan,” Honoré said approvingly, although her voice trembled. “A creature with that size wingspan can’t maneuver well in close areas.”
“Neither can we,” Kavanaugh said flatly. “I’m still going to land at the Petting Zoo site, providing Rodan will let us get there.”
They heard the banshee scream of the Quetzalcoatlus as it arrowed by, barely a yard from the nose of the ASTAR, before plunging into the mist. The downdraft hit them and the helicopter dipped. The haze left in its wake whipped over the forward windows, swept across the nose, and limited Kavanaugh’s visibility. The chopper skimmed over three tall trees, shearing off the tops as if the landing skids were scythes. The helicopter shuddered brutally amid explosions of leaves. Kavanaugh struggled with the control stick, pressing the anti-torque pedals judiciously. He followed the glistening windings of the Thunder Lizard River below, barely visible through the layer of mist and overhanging trees.
The Quetzalcoatlus burst out of the vapor right beside them, the tip of its left wing barely an arm’s-length from the co-pilot’s side window. Scraps of fog trailed from its feet and tail like froth. Turning its head toward the helicopter, the creature snapped its jaws open and shut in a threatening motion that resembled that of a hungry crocodile.
“That is one tenacious son of a bitch,” Crowe commented.
“Isn’t it just,” said Belleau. “I can’t help but wonder why.”
“Where is this Petting Zoo place?” Oakshott asked, anxiety making his mild voice sound almost squeaky.
“Not far as the pterosaur flies,” Kavanaugh answered. “It’s been a while since I’ve been here. Landmarks tend to change.”
“The jungle takes over everything,” said Crowe, looking down at the vine-entangled treetops blurring by below. “But I think we’re pretty close. Stay on this heading.”
Mouzi said, “We got guns—why can’t we open the windows and just shoot the fucker?”
Scandalized, Honoré demanded, “You brought guns aboard?”
“Hell, yes,” said Mouzi.
“This was supposed to be sight-seeing jaunt, just a flyover—”
“—And you can see how quickly things change from the supposed to be’s,” broke in Crowe. “We’re going to have to set down and even if we don’t use the guns, it’s better to have them and not need them than to need them and—”
“Oh, spare me,” Honoré said irritably.
“Just do something, Kavanaugh,” Belleau demanded.
Kavanaugh turned the chopper a few degrees to starboard, away from the pacing Quetzalcoatlus. Beneath the dark masses of foliage sliding by below, a flat expanse of ground came in sight, surrounded by a ring of trees. He glimpsed structures overgrown with vines.
“There it is,” Kavanaugh announced. “I suggest everybody stay seated until we’ve come to a full stop and the seat belt signs are turned off. I’m talking to you, McQuay.”
“Don’t worry about me,” declared McQuay defiantly.
Kavanaugh’s hand pushed the cyclic stick full forward and the ASTAR dove down among the treetops. The chopping vanes flayed branches of leaves and peeled bark from the trees. Flat wide palm fronds slapped against the windows. Gently he pulled back on the stick, worked the foot pedals, brought up the nose and adjusted for the chopper’s tendency to drift and achieved a hover mode.
“I think we’re safe now,” he said. “It’ll be tricky, but if I can work us through and around the trees until we get to the landing pad—”
The Quetzalcoatlus plummeted out of the misty sky overhead, plunging downward and smashing against the rear rotor assembly. The spinning blades sheared through leathery flesh and hollow bone. Blood sprayed across the windows in an artless crimson pattern. The creature shrieked once, a painfully shrill cry and twisted away, its claws scrabbling and squealing on the hull like fingernails dragged over a blackboard.
The ASTAR sideslipped, hurling everyone to the left, their shoulder harnesses cutting into their flesh. McQuay clutched at a seat back with one hand and balanced his camcorder in the other. Kavanaugh hauled back on the stick as the chopper went into a wild spin. The on-board collision alarm blared discordantly. Voices blended in a frightened babble inside his earphones. Through the windows, it appeared as if the jungle wheeled crazily around them, a centrifuge whirl of greens, yellows and reds.
Kavanaugh worked the cyclic stick and foot pedals frantically. Their uncontrolled pirouette slowed, then stopped. For an instant, the helicopter hung suspended, swinging back and forth pendulum fashion, the vanes fanning the air. Then it spiraled down, crashing through tree limbs, jolted by one battering-ram impact after another.
With a screech of rupturing metal, the tail boom assembly broke away. The main rotor blades chopped through tree trunks, slicing into the wood with semi-musical chimes. They bent backward at forty-five degree angles.
Kavanaugh’s head snapped forward, slamming against the window. His body strained against the harness and then slammed back against the seat. The ASTAR continued to fall, leaves and vines covering the windows, adhering to the Quetzalcoatlus blood.
All the air exploded from his lungs as he was engulfed by a wave of shock, followed by red-hued pain.