There was no time to waste and we quickly performed a circuit around the containers. From a sensible distance, of course. Mr Triceratops had kindly plodded away in search of more vehicles to chase, like a gigantic, prehistoric dog with a penchant for impalement and crushing people to death. The atmosphere-aided heat from my explosion’s blaze had started to spread to the adjacent machinery and bedding. Nothing else awaited us in the fireless nests beside them except for scat smeared straw and the dead machinery.

To my horror, I was looting the corpses of the dead dinosaurs, and the fallen civilians as we walked. My money balance went absolutely apeshit from the sheer amount that the corpses had hidden on them. Hundreds of thousands. A million. One and a half. I stopped looking after that.

I moved a little closer, carefully stepping over the ravaged bodies, and took a chance on slipping the steel pens into my pack. They remained firmly in place.

“Fencing and stone is ok, but not shipping crates,” I said. “Got it.”

“You tried to steal them too?” asked Sun.

“I try and steal everything I see. Most of it is junk, but you never know when it’ll come in handy. I feel really guilty for the poor fuckers who have to sort it out in the cosmos.”

“Don’t,” she replied. “They’re dicks.”

I chuckled in spite of our predicament. The Pteranodons on the surrounding rooftops screeched in reply and I shut up instantly. They were perched on their new eyries, their long, pointed beaks covered in gore. As tempted as I was to have my team open fire on them in revenge, I didn’t want to startle them into flight with a foolhardy attack. Cody had only managed to hit them with alien-provided gifts as they were flying directly away from him. Reb and the others would be firing on them in a panic while running as they hunted us down. We’d end up in the nests alongside their previous victims, so I let them be.

“Do you think Jessop could get to the bottom of what those things are?” asked Cody, kicking the box attached to one of the raptor’s heads.

“There’s only one way to find out,” I replied, slipping three gory trophies into my stash to keep them fresh.

Moving around to the T-Rex pen, I stepped inside the monstrous space. The stink was awful, the home of a predator born and bred. I surveyed the bolted hydraulic arms that were mounted near the door, then moved deeper. Surprisingly, the electronic equipment itself wasn’t off limits to my pack. It vanished, leaving a gaping hole in the steel wall. I doubted there was much use for a redundant nerve agent processor, but I already had coasters, door stops, coat hangers, pillows, all manner of shit, so I took it anyway.

I’d been hoping to find another of the items that had pinged mid-battle, but everything was empty. I wasn’t even sure how they’d managed to do it considering they were supposed to be drugged at all times. Sure enough, though, sat in my inventory was a prize that had only one logical home. “Cody, I’m giving you something.”

“What?” he asked, then he gasped in shock. “Is that really…?”

“Yup.” I pulled up the description.

Companion Gained – Velociraptor (Egg)

Description – The offspring of a velociraptor. Once hatched, requires meat to survive.

I saw his eyes flick over the mottled green shell of the item on his hidden viewscreen. “Holy shit. Wouldn’t it be better if you had it?”

“Not with your companion affinity skill, mate. I think Rappy the Raptor will be amazing when he finally matures.”

Sun groaned. “I’m going to ban you from naming the pets going forward. Your imagination is derisory.”

I scowled at her. “Ouch. Who made you high queen of the naming kingdom and all the surrounding lands?”

“I did,” said Cris. “You’ve got plenty of positives. Choosing catchy pet names isn’t one of them. You called her pet warg, Wargy for god’s sake.”

“Not to mention the ratling, Ratty,” added Sun.

Cody pulled an apologetic face before throwing me under the bus. “Spidey for a spider? Come on, man. You know she’s right.”

“Fuck all of you!” I spluttered in faux-outrage. “You wait until I get Rexxy, Pterry, Steggy, Tri… erm, Tricerry? Yeah, ok, I suck.”

“But you can fight with the best of them,” said Cris by way of apology, slipping a supportive arm around my waist.

“What now, Mark?” asked Rhys.

“Now we pull a meerkat and get the hell out of the open air. I want to get a full inventory of our weapons so that we can start to plan some attacks of our own.”

“Already done, Mark,” said Reb. “I don’t want to jinx it, but I think we can put a heavy dent into their numbers with what we have. If the Blood Nation manage to put up a decent fight, we may be able to retake the city. I know these things are horrific, but they’re still flesh and blood. The T-Rex went down with some well-placed hits.”

I nodded without reply, unwilling to add to the possibility of universal karma giving us the shaft. The fight had been bloody and close, but we’d still managed to kill or injure at least half of the dinosaurs that had been released. On top of that, the biggest threat was taken out immediately. It gave me an all too tempting glimmer of hope and I poured black paint all over it lest I get too cocky.

The universe had heard, and replied. Beneath my feet, the scarlet stained carpark began to tremble. Atop the apartments, even the Pteranodons felt the vibrations and cawed angrily at the approaching creature.

“We need to go, now!” I yelled as the psychotic triceratops thundered down the street. It smashed the parked cars aside, sending them flipping and crashing into the railings and buildings.

Unbeknownst to me, the vehicles were all still running, the drivers sat behind the wheel. They put the pedal to the metal, and rocketed towards us down the road. I had to give them credit, because in their position, I’d have been handbrake turning and beating a hasty path as far away from the dinosaur with its mangled hood ornament as I could. They did yank the handbrakes, but only to come to a stop near the kerb and position themselves to face the direction they’d arrived from. Which was also away from the dinosaur intent on flattening us.

“Everyone in!” I yelled as the monster jumped the flowerbeds on the other side of the lot and headed right for us.

“Do we split the party up?” asked Cris as we reached for the door handles, the thunder of impacting hooves growing closer by the second.

“No time! Get in!” I snapped, pushing her ahead of me. Everyone jumped in and the drivers were gone before the doors slammed. I was laid atop Cris, which at any other time would’ve been awesome, but I knew what was chasing us. Cody’s face was buried in Sun’s lap, and he quickly changed position. I shuffled onto the seat and watched as the other vehicles skidded, their wheels trying to bite on the tarmac. Finally finding traction, we were away at a rate of knots, barrelling down the empty streets.

“Do you know where the sewer entrances are?” I demanded of the driver.

“There goes one!” he shouted in terror as we zipped past a group of fleeing people who’d resorted to jumping down the hole to escape a group of the compys we’d scared off. “Want me to stop?”

I looked behind me at the galloping triceratops. What remained of the man waved at us from a ragged, bloody arm with each stride. Nothing that massive had any right to be able to keep up with a car. “No! Just floor it!”

“What do you think I’m doing?” he replied, a hysterical lilt to his voice as he checked the mirror.

What was it the stickers said? Objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are? Well it was bollocks, because this ten ton brute was close enough to sniff our arses.

Reb came over the radio, telling everyone to spilt up at the next intersection. We roared forward, central to the trio of parallel vehicles. The narrower streets opened up into one of the major crossroads, and the adjacent cars slowed as much as they dared. Taking the bends at speed, the drivers fought to retain control. One fishtailed and nearly lost it, but after kicking out a plume of grey smoke, the wheels caught and it was away again. I was both relieved and horrified that the triceratops only had eyes for us. We were dead meat, but the other brave souls could flee below ground and retreat to our safe zone.

Before we’d hit the other side of the intersection, I caught sight of people in the roads to the left and right, running for their lives. I then caught a glimpse of other things in hot pursuit. Hungry things. The outbreak was in full swing.

The wind howled through the open sunroof and I snarled, picturing a grinny Lake to boost my fucked-off-o-meter. Bracing my feet, I stood up through the opening. The HMG was long gone, leaving nothing more than ugly scratches on the pristine paint job. My crossbow wasn’t gone, though. I yanked the string, aimed for the head, and fired. My bolt glanced off the thick skull, buried itself into a wall, and showered the road with bricks when it exploded. I fired again, and it scored the thin leather of the armoured frill before pinging up into the air. I tried one more time, and the furious dinosaur turned its head aside, as if it knew what I was using. The projectile whined as it chipped one of the horns, flying off through one of the windows before lighting up the apartment and blowing out the curtains.

“Fuck!”

“What is it?” yelled Cris.

“There’s no meat to hit! They just bounce off!”

“Let me!” she called, struggling up to joined me.

Cris fired an orb, but the driver had to veer to the right at just the wrong moment to avoid a screaming woman who was beset by a group of troodons. We hit several of the little green dinosaurs. One bounced over the hood, hit me in the shoulder, and continued over to land beneath the feet of our pursuer. The diverted chaos sphere hit a fire hydrant and melted the thick steel. Water exploded into a geyser, rising thirty feet into the air.

“Bastard!” Cris snapped, regaining her balance.

“Sorry!” called the driver.

“Not you! Them!” she growled, firing off another dark projectile.

The dinosaur used the man’s bloody remains as a meat shield to absorb the magic. It struck the shoulder, and I could heard the fizzle of burning flesh as it ate through the joint. A moment later, the rest of the arm fell off and disappeared beneath the charging bulk.

“What are these things?” she gasped, trying for a third only to hit the corpse in the chest, burning away blood, a fading tattoo, and flabby meat to reveal the charred ribcage below.

“Mark!” called the driver, urgency upping the pitch of his voice.

“What?”

“We’re outta road!” he screamed, and I spun round.

The next intersection was partly cordoned off to allow for the containers that littered the road. There had been no fight here, only death. I thought the blood and gore had been bad in the furniture store carpark, but this was so much worse. With nothing to fight back and scare them off, the dinosaurs had cut through the crowd like a scythe through wheat. It was a writhing carpet of feeding and agonised torment.

A pair of marauding tyrannosaurs heard our approach and stared at us.

“Shit, shit, shit!” wailed the driver, knowing we were caught between a rock and a very hard, tri-horned place.

I frantically searched for a way out, and there was only one direction to go. And it was going to hurt. A lot. Ducking back inside, I dragged Cris down. She yelped in surprise. I leaned over into the front and pointed desperately. “There!”

He saw my wagging finger’s target, groaned, and then slowed as much as he was able without letting the triceratops tear us apart. We hit the steel fence running along the pavement at fifty, instantly losing ten miles an hour from the impact as the railings gave way. We connected with the arched subway entrance at forty. The roof crumpled as it hit the top of the structure, crushing me painfully between the two seats while tiles and glass from the shattered lights rained down behind us.

Deflected downwards like a ricocheting bullet, I heard the rapid thudding as the wheels bounced down the steps. The undercarriage of our car spewed sparks as it ground against the thick divider which bisected the staircase. We hit the turn in the wall below at thirty-five. I felt my body twist and break as I shot forward into the passenger footwell that wasn’t built for a man my size.

Steam erupted from the ruptured engine, flooding over and through the shattered windscreen like a thick, oily fog. I necked my personal health potion before I passed out from the agonising pain. There was a chance I would heal, only to have the bones break again when they couldn’t regain their true shape in my confined space. At that point I was willing to take the risk. My neck righted itself and I saw the driver was dead, the top of his head flattened like someone had worked him over with an iron. Muffled groans came from the back seats, but I couldn’t see anyone through the cloying smog.

“Cris? Sun? Cody? Can you hear me?” I groaned, managing to wriggle partway onto the passenger seat before by broken back reset itself.

“We’re here!” said Cody, coughing and wheezing in pain.

“We’re ok!” exclaimed Cris. “Just some bruising and broken bones. Are you ok?”

I considered the question while surveying the carnage, remembered what we’d been fleeing from, and replied, “Yeah, I’m ok, but I’d kill for a cuppa.”