Free Landing Party: A Dinosaur Thriller by Rick Chesler Page A

its own. At first, he thought the cave was collapsing, but as he watched, he understood that only the one rock was being affected. It happened so fast that neither man had time to run. One second they were looking at the rock, and the next, it had burst open, releasing a head-high reptile.
    The lizard was thin and spry, very agile even right out of its cocoon.
    Richard froze stock still. Ethan wasn’t sure if he was trying out some motion-vision trick on the beast’s eyes or if he just didn’t know what to do, but either way, Ethan sensed that the outcome wouldn’t be good. A little voice in Ethan’s head couldn’t resist telling him what he was looking at: Velociraptor .
    Another dinosaur. Fast. Meat-eater. Thought to hunt in packs…before he could recall more facts, the reborn lizard began tentatively snapping its jaws, as if awakening after a very long time and reacquainting itself with its basic functions.

 
     
     
    Chapter 12
     
    Skylar withdrew her hand from the big jewel-laced rock just as it split in half. She stepped back—in surprise, not fear. Did she not know her own strength with the rock hammer? As a professional geologist, using that tool was second nature to her. She was certain she hadn’t struck the specimen too hard or at a structural weak point. So then what was happening? Did the mineral possess some unique lattice structure that caused it to fracture easily?
    Joystna, Lara, and Anita were crowded around the rock behind her to see what was inside the strange boulder that had been spit from the lake by a geyser. The two halves fell to the cave floor, leaving a dust-covered form in between them. At first, Skylar mistook it for part of the rock.
    But then it started to move.
    Anita screamed. Joystna backed up, putting distance between herself and the strange spectacle playing out before them. Lara simply turned around and fled as fast as she could toward the rear wall of the cave.
    Leaving Skylar face to face with an adult pterodactyl.
    The bird-like lizard stamped its feet and squawked once, a hideous screeching noise. The sound awoke Skylar to the fact that this was absolutely not part of a rock. The pterodactyl pecked at Skylar, its hard beak jabbing at the geologist’s forearm, drawing blood. She yelled incoherently, a wordless reaction to the primeval assault.
    Then the ptero lunged at Skylar again, putting its whole body into it this time, enveloping her with its leathery wings while batting at her head with its two-foot-long beak. Still holding the rock hammer, Skylar brought it up as hard as she could, but one of the creature’s wings restricted her movement. Still, the metal head struck the animal in the side of its neck, eliciting a sharp squawk accompanied by a jumping motion that took the ptero off of her.
    It landed a few feet away on flat ground, in the midst of the four dumbstruck women. The ptero turned in little jumping circles, hopping slightly while turning its body in mid-air so as to give itself a 360-degree view of its new surroundings. Millions of years of evolution, awakening. Even after a slumber of eons, the animal’s genes knew what to do. It began to strike out in exploratory pseudo-flights, hopping high into the air while flapping its wings before landing back on the ground and pushing off again.
    On one of these hops, it flew out over Lara, who had reached the end of the lava shelf with nowhere to go other than the lake. The ptero body slammed her, hitting her sideways with its wing. She teetered and then splashed into the lake while the flying reptile wheeled back for another pass across the ledge. Fortunately for Lara, the edge of the shelf was not high up from the lake at this point, and so she was able to scramble up and out of the water, though not without an assortment of deep cuts and severe scrapes. She hunkered down on the edge of the shelf while the winged dinosaur continued to rampage on the ledge.
    The ptero bumped against the cave wall and then