Page 77 of Caveman Alien's Bride

I hear the sound now — it’s like an enormous wood chipper, churning and breaking and grinding whole trees and dinosaurs and rocks.

“Go into the cave,” Korr’ax says tightly. “I will send every man in there. Perhaps the tentacles won’t get us all.”

We both know it’s useless — those tentacles are clearly sticky, and they don’t miss anything. The skarp leaves a deep, black groove in the jungle as wide as an eight-lane freeway.

I’m going to suggest we all get out and run to the sides, but it’s too late for that and we’d all get trampled by that massive horde of dinosaurs anyway.

There’s only one thing to do.

“I’ll go down to the gates,” I say flatly.

“Why?” Korr’ax asks, instead of just brushing it off as a crazy idea.

I grab his steel-wire wrist. “My love. You are everything I would ever want in a husband. And much more. I love you. I’m sorry it took me long to know. If this is end, I’m grateful that I was allowed days with you. Stay here and get the men up here. I will try something.”

I turn and run before he can stop me.

On the way down I meet the tribesmen on the way up.

“Go!” I urge them. “Run! Get in the cave!”

Breti’ax is last, slowly hobbling up the stairs. “I don’t think this is your doing, Bryar,” he creaks with a crooked smile. “Even you don’t control the skarp!”

He has to yell because I’m already halfway to the gate. Ignoring the sounds of dinosaurs crashing into the wall, I climb the watchtower.

The skarp is close now. Soon I’ll have to duck to get out of the way of the tentacles.

I look up at the sun. It’s still climbing in the sky behind the skarp. If it were just a little higher, I would not be able to do this. But now, there’s a chance.

I get my bowl-shaped mirror off my belt and direct it at the skarp’s eye cluster. I can’t even see the spot of light. It’s still too far away, but I need to practice.

Aiming at a big dinosaur that’s coming towards the log wall at an alarming speed, I hit one big, round eye with the concentrated sunlight and it veers to the side, missing the wall.

I try it with other creatures, and as long as I can keep the mirror steady, it makes an impression on most of them. Still, one heavy dinosaur breaks a hole in the log wall and lumbers on along it.

The skarp’s noise is getting more intense as it comes closer. I can feel the first tendrils of panic in my mind as my instinct tells me nothing in the universe should be making that sound.

The mouth is twice the height of the tallest trees, and I see it coming right at me, a nightmare of churning teeth. With the mouth’s lower edge, it scrapes and eats the very soil.

“Worth a try,” a deep voice rumbles behind me. “It does have eyes.”

“I hope it work,” I tell him with the understatement of the century. “If not, we dead anyway. But I happy you here with me.”

Korr’ax puts his big, warm hand on my shoulder. “This isn’t over yet. I still have my sword, and you have yours. Those tentacles are nasty, but they’re not steel. If we go down, we’ll fight to the last breath. We’ll slash that mouth from the inside!”

I love his fierceness, and him being here makes me brave.

The skarp is so close now that it towers over us. Its movements are making a hard wind blow, and the noise is deafening. The first tentacles are snaking along the ground towards the wall.

The cluster of eyes hangs in front of the mouth, and I aim the first sunray at it.

I see the small spot of intense light as I aim it at the eyes. There must be thirty of them. Each as big as my head, crusty and brown, with only one dark lens to take in light by.

I focus my ‘death ray’ on one, seeing the bright spot dart around the cluster and steadying my hands against the structure of the tower.

Not much happens. Do I have to burn out all of its eyes for it to have any effect?

My hair is being blown wildly around my head, and the noise pierces my ears. Still I aim at another of the skarp’s eyes, and another and another. I keep the intense light focused on each dark lens for ten seconds before moving on to the next.

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