Page 19 of Caveman Alien's Bride

The dinosaurs gradually spot the sea monster and pull back from the beach, getting really close to Piper and me. The smell is sobad we both hold our hands in front of our faces while we hope not to get crushed by the immense creatures. They’re the size of houses, and if we have to escape from here, we have to run under them.

They squeeze us right up to the rock face, and we can only see glimpses of what’s happening down by the water. The sea serpent Korr'ax called atrokhas arrived and is moving up the beach, out of the water. It’s the worst of all the creatures here, bigger and stranger and even more dangerous-looking. But maybe it doesn’t smell as bad as they do.

The big herd of dinosaurs starts to move, and now their grunts are replaced by trumpeting and roaring as they churn. Between their many legs I spot the trok. It seems to be fighting, swinging its tail and biting with its head. It’s coiled its body around a big dinosaur and is squeezing it to death like a python.

The whole thing makes my skin creep. I don’t want to get any closer to that trok. I grab Piper’s hand. “Let’s get away! We’ll go into the jungle!”

We slowly slide along the rock wall, doing our best to not get crushed against it by the dinosaurs. There’s now a cacophony of sounds as angry dinosaurs dig the sand, push others out of the way, or just bite their neighbors.

In short glimpses I see the trok strangling more dinosaurs and even flinging them out into the sea, where they land with great splashes.

“Do you think they can swim?” Piper asks, a big grin on her face.

This is one of the reasons I really like her — she’s calm in dangerous situations, and she makes silly jokes at exactly the right times.

We inch our way towards the jungle, but it’s slow going. The dinosaurs keep bumping into the rock face, and getting caught between them would be certain death.

The stench isn’t helping — I keep wanting to retch.

The sounds from the shore are still getting louder. It’s a real fight going on there now, and the occasional dinosaur still flies through the air before landing on the ground, making it shake. Or landing in the ocean, making splashes.

“I think the trok is winning,” Piper says as we make our way past a T. Rex-like alien dinosaur, trying to not be noticed by it. “But I’m not sure that’s good for us.”

The T. Rex is the biggest dinosaur here, and also the scariest. It's definitely looking down on me with its giant, yellow eyes. They’re as dead and ice cold as the not-raptor’s. But the T. Rex is ten times bigger, and that goes for its teeth, too. I know because the monster is opening its mouth as it watches me. Big drops of greenish slime drip from its gape to the ground, splashing my ankles.

“Let's go, let's go!” I urge, pushing Piper ahead of me. I'm close to panic.

“Calm down,” she hisses back. “We're moving as fast as we can. You want to get trampled?”

“Rather trampled than having my head bitten off,” I tell her. “That T. Rex is definitely interested in us.”

We move as fast as we can, sideways with our backs to the jagged edges of the rock.

The T. Rex nudges another dinosaur out of the way so it can keep up with us. The ground shakes as it takes a step forwards.

“Comeon,” I try again. “There's no sun here to blind him with!”

“He can't bite us when we're this close to the rock,” Piper says, sensibly enough. “This might actually be the safest place for us.”

“Want to stake your life on that?”

“Hell no.”

We keep moving, slowly inching towards the green of the jungle. Because of the curve of the cliffs behind us, that also means getting closer to the water. And the noise from there keeps getting worse. The trok is fighting the dinosaurs, still winning. But more monsters keep coming out of the jungle.

We've passed the biggest concentration of prehistoric alien monsters. Only the T. Rex is left. And it's still more interested in us than in the trok. That's probably good news for the sea monster, because the T. Rex would be a formidable opponent.

I clumsily open the powder case. Soon we’ll be back out in the sunlight—

The trok’s gigantic tail comes flailing through the air, moving like the end of a whip and making a piercing screech like a jet fighter. The end of it slams into a huge dinosaur and knocks it over, the body pierced by dozens of spikes the size of light posts.

It completely blocks our path.

The trok’s tail swings away, leaving its dead victim on the ground to slam down somewhere else.

The T. Rex gazes down on me, and I swear I see a smile on its terrible, toothy gape.

Piper and I no longer have the cover of the rock face nor of the other dinosaurs. We go as close to the dead dino as we can, butcold, watery blood is fountaining out of dozens of holes in the carcass and we’ll be drenched if we go any closer.

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