Bone Beds of the Badlands, page 12
“What did you yell back there?” I asked Dorothy. “Castles?”
“If we have any hope of meeting anywhere,” she gasped, “it has to be at a landmark. We all know the Valley of the Castles is somewhere west of here. It’s big and it can be spotted from a long way off. I hope they understood.”
Finding it would take a lot of luck. But so would surviving.
We headed west. Of course, the best plan would have been to move as quickly as possible. But we had little energy left and trudged along very slowly. Soon we came to more caves. One of them seemed larger than the others, and as we approached it, we could see that it had something over its entrance that looked like a roof sticking out from the earth.
“This must be one of those old caves that people lived in!” I said.
“Yeah, but nobody would live here now.”
We walked up to it and entered. Sure enough, it had a roof, an old corrugated piece of tin driven into the side of the hill just over the opening. Inside we found remnants of an old table and chairs. The table was sitting upright and was littered with crumbs, including some scattered oats and a single cube of sugar. They seemed to have been left there recently. That should have meant something to us, but we were too tired to even try to figure it out.
We got out Dorothy’s canteen, and then realized it was empty. She threw it at a wall, like she wanted to smash it into a thousand pieces. We sat down—angry, scared, and feeling desperate. We couldn’t last much longer. And we couldn’t pause in the cave for long, either. If we did, either the Reptile, hunger, or thirst would catch up to us. It was early afternoon. We both knew we had to make something happen today. So we roused ourselves for one last push.
“Let’s head straight west as far as we can and keep walking as fast as we can. We have to find those castles,” I said, with as much energy as I could muster.
But hours later we were as lost as ever. A couple of times we thought we saw our castle valley, our Emerald City, but each time we were disappointed. There just seemed to be so many rock formations that looked like magic kingdoms now. The only good news was that we hadn’t seen the Reptile. Or at least that seemed like good news. It was hard to tell what was good and bad now, who was chasing and who was hunting. I started drifting in and out of dreams as I walked. The hills began to look like other things—dinosaurs at first, but then people, like my lost friends, and even my mom and dad. Dorothy and I were barely staggering forward.
It was time to give up. I had nothing left and I didn’t care any more. I just wanted to drop and stay there. I wanted to find a way to say goodbye to my parents…maybe I would hold my hand over my heart. I figured we should look for some place out there, like another cave, where at least our bodies wouldn’t be found by the Reptile.
Soon it would be dark. In fact, the sun was almost directly in our eyes. Dorothy was still walking with her head up. I was trying to figure out how to tell her what I was thinking: that I wanted to give up. For some reason my brain couldn’t get my mouth to even form the words, and my legs just kept moving me forward mechanically. Finally, I focused. But just as I was about to speak we started hearing the strangest thing.
Music.
At first it was distant, but then it grew louder. Though I wasn’t sure I was really hearing it, I did recognize it. It was an old rock song, one Mom and Dad listened to all the time. Dad used to crank it up so loud I had to leave the house. It was kind of spooky and he loved it.
“The Doors, man!” he’d shout at me as I tried to ignore him. “This is by The Doors!” That was an old band he was really into…still. “RIDERS ON THE STORM!” he would shout. Then he would dance around a little (very, very embarrassing) and try to explain what the lyrics meant, and tell me that people used to take drugs and listen to this song (all the time reminding me never to take drugs). He also said that the guy who sang it was into that sort of thing and died a mysterious death, and many people believe he’s still alive (of course, when I say “people,” I mean the parental units and their friends). But I had to admit that “Riders on the Storm” was quite a tune, even if it was from the twentieth century. It was like a song sung by a ghost and his band. It had this freaky organ and a deep bass, and the sound of rain falling and thunder, and that dead guy’s voice, just crooning over it all, about dogs in need of bones and riders in storms.
What a weird way to die, I thought. Maybe this was some sort of message from the parental units. Or from God or something. Why couldn’t I sign off to some rap music, or maybe a little hip-hop?
I was hoping that Dorothy was hearing it, too. She had come to a halt.
“Do you hear that?” she asked.
“Uh-huh.”
Good.
“Pretty freaky, eh?”
“What are riders on the storm?”
“Uh, I think it sort of means everybody, good and bad, except we’re ghosts.”
We walked towards the music. A little farther along, horse tracks began appearing on the ground. We stopped and looked at each other. We couldn’t believe it—everything was happening at once! At first, the hoofprints led directly towards the song. But when they veered off, in the opposite direction, we had a decision to make. Finally, we decided to stick with the music. It just seemed to make more sense—we could always go back and pick up the tracks if this didn’t work out. We moved on. The music became louder as we approached a particularly high hill.
We climbed it.
As we neared the crest, the landscape below began to open up for us. It was not only perfect for this spooky music…it was our Emerald City. It sat there in the fading light of the hot day like some sort of fantasy, coloured red and purple by the setting sun. The Valley of the Castles!
We slumped to our knees and stared at it the way we might have gazed at a fireworks display.
There was still no sign of where the music was coming from, or of our friends. But we did see something just a touch unusual. It was down in the valley, no more than five hundred metres away.
A dinosaur!
It was standing there looking as calm as could be. It wasn’t a model or a painting or a cardboard cut-out or even one of the tiny lost dinosaurs that legend said lived somewhere in these parts. It was a ten-tonne, twenty-metre-tall dinosaur…as real as the setting sun. A plant-eater. An apatosaurus. A terrible lizard.
The music kept playing. The dinosaur raised its head and lowered it. It turned its long, slender neck, blinked its enormous eyes, and took a bite out of a tree. I couldn’t remember any trees being there when we first came through.
I am hallucinating, I told myself.
“I am hallucinating.”
And now I’m hearing myself speak in a girl’s voice while my mouth is perfectly shut.
Dorothy shoved me. “Did you hear what I said? I’m hallucinating.”
“Did you say that?”
“No, Dylan, it was the other guy. Who do you think said it?”
“Then, you’re not hallucinating…and neither am I.”
“But there’s a ten-tonne dinosaur down there, munching on a tree.”
“That’s right.”
“Oh, wow,” she said softly.
We moved up to stand at the very peak of the hill. What we saw next chilled us.
There was a man, standing not far away, between the dinosaur and us. With each step a new part of him came into view. First, his black Stetson, then his white face, then his black coat and seven-foot-long frame. He was grinning from ear to ear.
“Riders on the Storm” grew louder. The thunder crashed, the organ played its eerie notes. The Reptile was singing along.
15
The Showdown
Adrenaline is a funny thing. It can jump-start your body-engine even if you have no gas. It flowed through me now like Niagara Falls.
We turned and ran, splitting up again, this time totally on our own. I glanced back to see what the Reptile had done. One part of me wanted him to go for Dorothy; the other hoped he wouldn’t. His head was snapping back and forth between the two of us. Then he made his decision.
He was after me!
I tore down the hill and did a sharp right turn. I had about a fifty-metre head start and I would need it. My plan was to go for that dinosaur. Plant-eater or not, it looked like help. It occurred to me, as I ran, that the Reptile hadn’t seemed surprised that there was a seventy-five-million-year-old beast the size of an oil tanker just standing around in the sand behind him. Maybe the Reptile knew something about it. Maybe he would tell me before he killed me.
I glanced back again. He was gaining on me.
As I finished my wide turn and came back up the hill at a different angle, the apatosaurus came into view again. And so did Dorothy. She was heading for it, too. I didn’t care now that we were going in the same direction. And neither did the Reptile. The three of us were in a straight line.
We hit lower ground and then it flattened out. I had to jump and twist and do all sorts of manoeuvres to get over the rough terrain, the dry riverbeds, and past the hoodoos, sitting there like ancient pillars.
The music grew louder. I gained on Dorothy. The Reptile gained on me. He started shouting and groaning. He seemed anxious to get to us before we got to the dinosaur.
Curiously, the apatosaurus didn’t turn to see us. Its head just kept going up and down, sort of rhythmically. Were we just too small to see? I wracked my brain to try to remember…were dinosaurs hard of hearing?
Soon I could almost touch Dorothy. Her arms were pumping at her sides, I could see the sweat on the back of her neck, and she was puffing like a steer. When I reached her she didn’t even turn to look at me. She just kept running, her eyes locked on that dinosaur. As we drew nearer, its size became absolutely awesome. I couldn’t believe there had ever been an animal like this. It was a whole building on feet.
But the dinosaur still didn’t look at us. Maybe it was the music, now so loud that we didn’t even bother to yell to each other. Where was it coming from?
I couldn’t hear the Reptile but I could feel him, within metres of us, reaching out. I arched my back and stretched my head forward, like a sprinter straining for the finishing line.
“Ahhhhhh!”
It was a high-pitched scream—from a girl. Dorothy was crying out like someone had shot her. And I could sense that she wasn’t running any more. I stopped and turned around. About twenty metres behind me, the Reptile had her by the neck, one huge hand just wrapped around it from behind the way someone might grasp a chicken. And he was squeezing. She looked at me, terrified.
He glared.
What was I to do? Should I yell? Would the dinosaur respond? Weren’t we still too far away? Or should I just run? The Reptile couldn’t chase both of us at once. I could be free. I could go for help.
I hesitated.
Those eyes kept glaring at me. I could see the swelling over his right eye where I had nailed him with the rock. He raised his free hand and extended his index finger and beckoned for me to come to him.
No way.
I started to turn in the opposite direction.
“AHHHHHHHH!”
The Reptile squeezed Dorothy’s neck like he was going to crush it in one hand. “STOP!” I shrieked.
He loosened his grip on her.
I walked slowly towards him, my shoulders slouching, my hands hanging down at my sides. When I reached the place where he was standing, his free hand snaked out and grabbed me, gripping me by the neck, too. He paused for a second, like a predator standing proudly over his prey. And then he started moving in the opposite direction from the dinosaur, almost dragging us along the sand. We didn’t say anything. And neither did he. We were exhausted, starving, and beaten. I barely even cared where he was taking us. I just wanted this to end.
Five minutes later, he pulled us up a hill. He was heading towards a cave.
16
The Evil One
It was the biggest of all the caves we had seen. He dragged us a few steps inside and then threw us onto the ground. We lay there for a few seconds and then lifted our heads. We weren’t alone. Farther back in the cave, where it started to get dark, Rhett, Bomber, and Terry sat against a wall, looking grim. Their hands and feet were tied.
But none of us said anything. Our captor did all the talking.
“Welcome to the Reptile’s nest,” he hissed, walking as he spoke, never straying more than a leap from the entrance. “This is where it gets exciting; where it gets real. Let’s just say, you’re not in Drumheller any more.”
Each time he came near me, I flattened myself against the wall in fear. My mind was racing. I couldn’t believe he had us. We were going to die.
I hadn’t really looked very closely at Rhett, Bomber, and Terry at first. Now I did. They glanced back in fear. They all seemed weak, and their eyes were blood red.
“I’m sure you’re all dinosaur fans,” continued the Reptile, his deep voice echoing in the cave. “Like to see them ripping each other apart, no doubt. Well, I’m a bit like those beasts you admire. Think of me as the new albertosaurus.” He chomped his teeth at us.
Suddenly those video games we all loved seemed pretty awful. Near me, Dorothy was starting to cry, which I couldn’t believe. “I want to go home,” she said quietly.
The Reptile heard her.
“Home? To dreary Drumheller?” he barked at her. “And miss all this excitement?”
“I want to go home,” said Dorothy again. “Why were you following us? What are you going to do to us?”
“Following you?” He seemed surprised. “I wasn’t following you. I came from Drumheller along the same route, no doubt, but if you think I was following you, then you were imagining things. I was just trying to get away. Once you were lost here, though, I realized that I could use you. You were young, vulnerable prey, cut from the main herd. But frankly, I’m still just doing what I need to do to survive. I will only harm you if you get in my way. So far you’ve done what I require. I drew you to me, and here you are.
“You see, the world thinks I kill children, but I have never harmed a child in my life. Murdered someone who picked me up by the side of a highway, true, but these things happen. Passion and love sometimes turn to violence. Unavoidable.” He smiled.
Smiles aren’t supposed to make you feel like your life is about to end. But this one did.
“I could harm a child, of course, if that were necessary. But accusations linking me to children’s deaths in the past are preposterous. They needed a suspect when the fools couldn’t solve certain crimes, and I was convenient. After all, I like to dress the part—all in black with the matching Stetson. That’s how I looked at my court appearance, useless as it was. I am rather tall, though not seven feet, as they say. I like to wear my hair rather short, am prone to a little drama, and admit to my crime—though I don’t believe I deserve all my sentence. And these children who were murdered—the diseased person who did it had a thing for human bones. So do I. What of it? They seem to think there is some similarity. I am a perfect suspect for them to demonize. They have a prejudice about me. But it’s a good thing, in a way. For me, it’s best to be feared. When a bone is found lying around in my wake, it creates a certain edge. So I found that bone and left it not far from the museum. It was meant to keep their focus on Drumheller, as was my appearance at Horsethief Canyon. All in preparation for my flight here. It seems to have worked.”
He walked over to me and squatted down, staring straight into my eyes. My heart started pounding so fast I thought it would break my ribs.
“They will likely track me here before long. And you, my little ones, are my insurance policy, perfect protection. You see, if they think I will murder you,” he whispered, “if they think you are in mortal danger, then so much the better for me. I want them to pursue you, not me. There is only one way to get them off the Reptile’s scent. Children! You will be their priority. Out in a desert like this I can get away if I have a diversion. You are like a gift to me. You will help me escape…forever.”
He stood up and walked towards the guys. Reaching down, he put his hands on Rhett, who froze. The others cringed. But the Reptile just sighed. Then he untied each one of them.
“I will let these three go…because I am so caring and loving.” He turned towards Dorothy and me and lowered his voice. “Then I will take you two with me for protection and head east.” He obviously didn’t want the guys to hear his plans, but maybe he’d spoken too loudly. I glanced at Bomber and our eyes met.
The Reptile’s head snapped sharply towards the three of them and he stepped away from the entrance. “Be off with you!” he said.
They struggled to their feet and walked as quickly as they could. Terry took the lead.
Near the entrance the Reptile shoved them out. “Move straight out from here. You’ll run into some company soon. And don’t try to follow us or have us followed, or it will mean death to your friends!”
The guys glanced over at us, scared, unsure, and then vanished into the night. I kept my eyes on Bomber. Had he heard what the Reptile said?
There was silence after they left. Our big captor just stood there watching them for a while.
“Fools,” he finally said. “Do they really think I would tell them which way I am going?” My heart sank as he turned on us. “We will head northwest, back towards Drumheller. Halfway out I’ll leave you two, hands tied and blindfolded, nowhere near shade or water. If your friends pass on the message to their rescuers—and they will be rescued, believe me—then everyone will search for me in the wrong direction. And when they figure out which way we really went, if they figure it out, then I will be long gone. Perhaps they will find this cave, the last place your friends saw you alive, and they will track us to the place I’ll leave you, deep in the desert. But will you still be there? Or will you have wandered blindly in search of shade, in search of water, knowing that your life depends on it? They will be forced…morally…to devote much, or even all, of their manpower to following your tracks, not mine. It will kill their search, or weaken it, fatally. Save the children first, you see…. Suckers.”
