Dinosaur Wars

Chapter sixteen - Fire

Masters plunged into the smoke, a handkerchief over his face. Despite the small 'officer's mess' at the center of the ship being further away than the crew's entrance near the stern, he dared not risk encountering the battling giants.

He'd taken a last look at them before he headed to the companionway. Their massive bodies slammed into one another. The Triceratops proved equal to the T-rex, using its horns to joust with its fearsome predator, who parried with its great head. The carnivore would clamp down on the Triceratops' body, but made little impression on the metal-hard hide. The T-rex's eye was a red hole, though the wound where it had been gored had vanished. The brawling animals looked like something that had leapt whole from a Greek myth, as elemental and awesome as the mighty sea that surged in steep peaks and sheer ravines behind them.

In front of this backdrop, Masters could see Addison issuing orders, gesticulating to the assembled men. With his beard and stern face and decisive manner, he could have been a general arranging the fate of his troops. A new spark of admiration lit in Master's chest for the old man. Then he stepped into the suffocating smoke.

Inside the mess Masters took a satchel from a rack and slung this over his shoulder. He then tracked through the labyrinth of passages that led to the stern of the ship. Even though there had been an explosion, the engines continued to rhythmically clank on. The closer he got to the boiler room, the thicker the smoke became. Half blind and coughing, he passed the iron door that opened on the boiler room itself. Starved of oxygen, the fire had died back after its initial eruption. The vents that opened out from the room discharged the smoke into the rest of the vessel. The door radiated intense heat that bit into the exposed skin on Masters' face and hands.

He found what he was looking for - the small hold at the rear of ship. This was like a safe and was used to store fragile cargo. Inside were barrels of dinosaur eggs. Smoke swirled around him. He pulled a lid from one, reached in, took out an egg then wrapped this using the stack of cloths beside the barrels. As carefully as he could, he deposited each of these into the satchel, coughing all the time as he did so.

Masters began to feel faint, he could take no more of the choking air. He made his way out into the corridor again and collided with the open door of the boiler room. Smoke poured from its opening. He stepped past this, stood on something, then almost fell, his boot slipping off it. What it must have been was a man, as it started to moan. Masters wondered if he too would join the prone man. His eyes stung, his head pounded, every breath was a gag of smoke that his lungs immediately rejected.

And then a miracle - a rush of sweet, blessed fresh air. It swept down the corridor and washed over him, pure and refreshing as spring water. He breathed, coughed, breathed again.

Then he saw the eyes looking up at him. Bright blue, they stared out of a face so badly burned it was hard to recognize it as human. One of the firemen had somehow survived the blast and fire and had crawled out of the boiler-room door. He was horiffically burned, his body a mass of raw flesh, blackened and deformed in places, and oozing bright yellow patches of plasma.

He lifted a twisted arm to Masters and croaked, "Help me."

Masters squeezed past him, and continued along the corridor. The fresh air was reviving him, bringing the energy back to his legs. He hurried toward the officer's mess in the forward part of the ship then suddenly stopped. It occurred to him what the fresh air meant, the fire that had abated would be fed anew. He was halfway between the two companionways that led to the top deck. Should he go back or forward?

He rushed on, away from the boiler room and the inevitable catastrophe, then the ship convulsed. Another explosion ripped through the boiler room. He felt a hot wind at his back and he ran harder.