Chapter 19: Leader Of The Heard Part 2

"Yah...Yah!"

Her back throbbed to the rhythm of the caveman chant. Her skin crawled and sizzled with pain. Every joint and muscle felt swollen.

The sky boiled red and rose behind the black silhouettes of the trees sliding overhead. Creatures chittered and scuttled and coiled in those twisted branches. And between those trees and her face swayed a column of flesh, broad and pebbled with scales.

"Yah...Yah!"

Hallucinations. Andrea closed her eyes and the pain swallowed her again.

She could not move her arms or legs. She was wrapped, no, cocooned in what felt like mud. The stuff stank like low tide and she was sure she could feel things moving through it. Andrea thrashed and wriggled, but she was weak. Getting weaker. She had to escape. But if she did, Trals would kill her. Suicide by caveman.

It was all Andrea could do to lift her head, look down her body. Bloody light cast leaf-shadows on the sacks and cloth-wrapped objects piled around her. They'd lashed her to a sort of tilted frame or platform. Not a cart, because it had no wheels, only skids that scraped over the mud and tree roots. A travois. So that scaly thing hanging above her was the tail of whatever dinosaur was pulling the travois.

And it wasn't alone. Peering past her feet, Andrea saw the second triceratops following her.

The animal's triangular head was almost twice as long as she was. Hell, the horns alone were probably taller than her. They sprouted from midway up the triangle, over where the eyes must be, polished points bobbing as the dinosaur trudged forward. Behind the horns, the skull spread out in a natural shield, painted a bold black and yellow design. Or maybe that design was natural. Iridescent blue highlights glinted of its slick scales.

A wave of tingling warmth swept up Andrea' back. She was missing a lot of skin, trussed up like a turkey, sliding through the mud, on a one triceratops open sleigh, laughing all the way...

Andrea gasped and the sky blinked blue. She'd passed out. Or moved into a deeper layer of delirium. Now the sun was almost directly overhead, and the trees were sparser; palms with scraggly, sick-looking brushes of leaves. The palms didn't cast much shade, and Andrea could feel herself baking in her mud pot. If shock and fever didn't kill her, heat stroke and dehydration might.

"Help," Andrea croaked. Cold sweat trickled down her cheeks like tears. The sun rippled overhead. She swallowed, worked up some spit. Tried again. "Help me!"

There was no answer but the rhythmic calling. "Yah...Yah!"

A man stood on the travois above her head, held away from the thicket of porcupiny quills that grew down the animal's rump. Andrea twisted around, squinting into the light, and saw his feet flexing. His right arm worked back and forth, waving over his head like a fly-fisherman.

Andrea looked over her chest at the triceratops following her. Yes, she could hear someone back there yelling the same chant. The animal's neck shield blocked the other rider from her view, but something moved back there, in time to the yelling. A rod or a pole, striped black and white, draped with fluttering tassels, slapped rhythmically at the triceratops's shoulders. If the man holding it was standing on a travois like hers, that goad must be something like fifteen feet long.

Another wave of dizziness hit her. "Hey," she said, "hey, you."

The triceratops driver didn't respond.

"You want me to die here? Huh? You think Trals would like that? Trals? Where's Trals, you motherfucker!"

No response.

"Goddamn it I'm talking to you! Trals. Get Trals. Get help." The light stabbed her eyes like knitting needles. "Trals! Upton! Yang! Larsen!" Who else was there? "God! Mother! Please - "

The travois rocked. Someone clambered up the frame and a shaggy silhouette slid between Andrea and the hateful sun. It wasn't Trals.

"The blond one," Andrea coughed, "Vrem."

His hand caressed her cheek, touched her lips. Andrea shivered. The caveman drew back his hand, hissing. Grr! Jungle fever burn hot with bad spirits! she imagined him saying. Me make better. He rummaged in his utility belt and produced a small glittering knife.

"No! God no."

The triceratops driver spoke, voice annoyed. Probably something like, Grr. Me no like crying woman! Vrem make crying woman quiet. Vrem laughed and held up the knife. Me make woman real quiet.

Andrea would not shut her eyes. Not as the knife rose...and rose more? Vrem reached up and made a small, expert slash in the triceratops tail swaying over them.

The elephant-sized animal didn't even grunt at the wound, which oozed dark red blood. Vrem caught some in his cupped palms, and passed it to Andrea's lips.

She swallowed, profoundly grateful.

Good, good. Vrem's face hung over hers, yellow dreadlocks brushing her ears. What was he saying? Your unearthly beauty fills me with an overwhelming urge to protect and help you.

Probably more like, Future woman die here soon. He bent closer, features flickering and sliding like candlelight on oil. She die from dinosaur diseases. A million years from nearest hospital. Andrea blinked, and sparks filled her vision. No, the sparks were his eyes. Green, like Trals's.

"Oh, God," Andrea's teeth chattered. Her head pounded with fever. "Oh, God, no."

"Heh, Vrem!"

The caveman jerked up and the sleigh-platform rocked. Trals's head swam into view. Andrea didn't know whether to cry out in joy or in terror, but she couldn't do either. Her muscles had stiffened like old jerky. Grr, the caveman leader growled. Go away. Woman Trals woman!

Me just help woman, the blond caveman said.

Another hand, huge and rough, felt her forehead. Trals's voice rumbled. You go, Vrem. Trals have her now.

Or maybe that was I'll take care of her, or, rest now, my darling.

When Andrea opened her eyes again, the trees were gone. There were some tall things like palms or scraggly pines, dead and brown against the blue sky. The sun was still stuck at noon. She couldn't have been out for long this time, but the forest had been replaced with shoulder-high scrub, spiky and inhospitable. "What is this place?"

"The Face of God," Trals spoke into her fever. "Kingdom of the Tyrannosaur. It's the beginning of your new life, Andrea." God, he sounded like her father. The old lion, she and her sisters had called him. "No lions here, mija," the caveman said. "Only tyrannosaurs. And you will be their queen."

"God, no!" Andrea's skin bubbled into scales. Her mouth bristled with steak-knife teeth. Talons extended from fingers. "No!" She tried to get up, to break out of her cocoon, before she transformed utterly.

Trals pushed her down. "You have no choice. Either die or take up the mantle of your destiny, my Tyrannosaur Queen."