Caught between predatorial dinosaurs and a group of armed men, Kat worries more about the dinosaurs.
Kat, an out Kat, an outdoor video star, tries to make amends with her mother on her home world, an alternate Earth where dinosaurs never went extin...
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"Hey, it's time," James whispered. He said nothing concerning what happened earlier, but his tone seemed even gentler than usual.
Kat opened her eyes and then closed them again while placing the back of her hand to her forehead.
James tossed a few sticks onto the fire and went off to his hammock. "You up?" he asked as he slid into his bag.
"Yeah, yeah. I'm getting up." She opened her eyes again and slowly rotated her body until she was sitting in the hammock in the dark. She had not fallen asleep immediately earlier, and now she was tired on only a few hours rest. She sat there for a while. Then she rubbed her eyes with her thumb knuckles and stretched her arms out high and wide while yawning.
Over the next several hours, she did little more than toss occasional sticks on the fire and exist, due to her lack of sleep, in a sort of stupor.
In the twilight before dawn, she woke her parents and James. It was not wise to travel before full light on Cretacia since it gave ambush predators an advantage, but Kat knew they needed to get up and moving before the soldiers behind them did. She hid the firepit under a pile of dirt while the others stretched and then stashed their hammocks back into Kat's bag.
Once everyone had stretched out, they hiked up the ravine to the top of the ridge where they met the sun. There was no apparent deer trail, so they hiked along the top edge of the slope. There were traces of a few wispy clouds, and it was already a comfortable temperature which likely meant it would be miserably hot later in the day. The tree line ran to the edge of the slope; grass and short shrubs covered the top with a few small trees here and there. The grass was still wet from dew, so they stuck to the tree line. They also knew the trees and the steep bank could provide an escape route if a rex suddenly appeared.
After half an hour of marching, they spotted a large herd of hadros ahead and a couple of hundred yards from the tree line. They didn't spot any rexes, but that didn't reassure them. They took a left turn down a ravine and followed it down to the river. Any rex up along the ridge edge was not going to be able to get down the steep side.
They took a short breather while they refilled their canteens.
"Hey, everyone. Look ahead," James said. "We can't go this way."
Just upriver from them, three spinos stood in water nearly up to their bellies. Their snouts were stuck halfway underwater which they seemed to do whenever the water was too murky to see through. It was as if they could sense fish swimming past with their snouts.
"Mm, dang spinos," Kat's dad grumbled. He hated spinos ever since one had almost killed him when he was much younger. Two scars still remained on his stomach to remind him of that encounter.
"We'll have to climb half-way back up and skirt along the side of the ridge." Kat stood having finished refilling her canteen with filtered river water. Hers was the last to be refilled.
