Excerpt: Making (Pre)History

Joe looked ahead to the grove of trees. They didn't seem anywhere near as far as they had when they had first started walking, but he guessed they probably still had another ten or fifteen minutes of hauling of ass to go before they reached what they hoped would be shelter. Hopefully the trees would protect them from the... whatever the hell that was.

"I think maybe we should start jogging, love," Joe said as he cast another glance off to his left. The thing was still getting bigger. It was close enough that he could (almost) make out the fact that it had horns on the neck fringe without using the field glasses.

"Do you think that would set it off?"

"I don't know. I hope not. But regardless, I really, really, want to make it to those trees before it gets here." Joe broke into a trot and headed in as straight a line as he could toward the grove. Amanda was running right in front of him.

Joe focused mostly on his wife's rear as he was running, with the occasional glance over to the monster to keep him paranoid. In addition to being (in his admittedly biased opinion) a remarkably nice thing to look at, he also figured that, since she was in front, she was taking the best path to the trees.

It seemed like almost no time when he realized that he could see the monster's eyes. And it looked to him like it saw them, because the creature lowered its head then raised it again, while making what sounded like whoofing noises. Not woof like a dog, but more like a whoof, like the sound the bull in a cartoon makes before it charges. It's possible that bulls in real life make that noise too, but Joe had never had the dubious pleasure of encountering bulls that were thinking about charging.

"Amanda," he called out, "I think he's pissed!"

"We're almost there," she yelled over her shoulder without looking back.

Sure enough, Joe looked up ahead, and the trees seemed to be only, maybe, a hundred yards straight ahead.

Then Joe looked back to his left, and the monster was only about fifty or seventy five yards off, with his head lowered and charging fast.

"Amanda, it's charging!" Joe yelled.

Amanda broke into a sprint, trying to make it to the grove before the monster did. The grove wasn't very large, maybe thirty or forty yards across, but it had quite a few trees in it.

She reached the edge of the grove, which seemed to have shorter, greener grass than the prairie (if that was the right word for it) that surrounded them. She turned around, just in time to see Joe stumble and fall to the ground. The monster continued to charge, running over the spot that she had seen her husband fall.

"Joe!" she screamed, as the monster slowed to a stop. It seemed to look in her direction, then turned around. She could hear a definite huffing sound from the beast, and it continued to raise and lower its head as it pawed at the ground. The beast was only about ten or fifteen yards or so from where she was, and it blocked most of her field of vision. She did not particularly care much for the sight of dino ass, especially one that had just trampled her husband.