Page 20 of Caveman Alien's Bride

The T. Rex bends down and looks at us from up close. I fumble with the little mirror, wanting to stick my hand into the sunlight. But that would mean lifting it closer to the T. Rex’s mouth, and it could be too tempting a morsel for it.

The T. Rex cackles with a sound that goes through me like a spear of ice. The stench washes over me. It’s not rotting vegetation this time —thismonster stinks of rotting meat.

“Can we move?” I ask, my voice flat.

“We’re stuck,” Piper says tightly and shifts the grip on her stick, staring up at the monster. “Aim for the eyes.”

The T. Rex pulls its head back in a move that distantly reminds me of a chicken. Of course — the birds on Earth are the direct descendants of the dinosaurs. And this alien one intends to peck at me like a hen eating grain.

I have nowhere to go. In desperation, I thrust the mirror and my hand into the sunlight, and I know I’m aiming it right. But it has no effect.

“I hate this, but we have no choice!” Piper yells. She grabs my hand and drags me all the way up to the dead dinosaur, into the knee-deep pool of bright red fluid. We’re sprayed with its blood, and it stings my eyes. But we wade through it and climb over one of the dinosaur’s legs, ignoring the stench, the greasy skin caked in tons of mud, and the noxious fumes from the blood.

The T. Rex is still looking our way, but the cackling has stopped and it’s trying to come after us.

Ahead of us is the jungle, green and red and dark.

And swarming with predators.

It takes me about a second to realize we’ve gone from the frying pan and into the fire. Now we’re surrounded on all sides by smaller dinosaurs of all types, but it’s obvious they’re carnivores. Quite a few of them are not-raptors, too.

They don’t care that we’re covered in the blood of the dead monster — we’ve caught their interest, and now there are a dozen predators snapping at us with their giant gapes and ugly teeth.

“I think this is the end of the road for us,” Piper says, whipping her stick at a dinosaur and making no impression on it. “We deserved better.”

Clawed limbs come searching and jaws keep snapping, closer and closer, blocking the sunlight from above and throwing us into darkness.

“We really did.” The panic I felt gives way to sadness. There’s no way out of this circle of death.

A small dinosaur climbs over the backs of the others, coming closer.

Wait — that’s not a dinosaur. That’s…

“Korr'ax!” I exclaim. “Look!”

He’s bouncing from one dinosaur to the next, making his way towards us. Before I know it he’s here, on the ground with us, his sword in his hand.

The other hand he’s holding out to me. He raises his eyebrows.

“Geefday mehmay,”he rumbles.

Even to my panicked mind, it’s obvious what he’s saying: ‘Marry me and I’ll save you.’

It’s blackmail, but I don’t care right now.

“Yes, yes,” I yell, reaching for his hand.

He lifts it so I can’t reach. “Geefday mehmay.”He says it very slowly.

“Yes! I will! Come on!”

“Geefday.”

“Yes! Geefday! Geefdaaay!”

He fixes me with his eyes for two heartbeats. Finally he grabs my hand and pulls me close.

He swings his sword at the snout of a raptor, and it withdraws with blood pouring from its front. Cutting and swinging and prodding with his sword, the caveman makes a path for us through the dinosaurs, fending off attacks and using the monsters’ own size against them. They crash with each other and forget we’re there.

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