All day they marched through grove and clump. The jungle was hot, rotten. Fur grew on the trees. All four of them were sweating. Far off they could hear the grousing of the dinosaurs, the hysteria of monkeys.
They had not seen any dinosaurs yet—and Lily was happy to keep it that way.
They had seen another clue at the military base before they set out. Whoever had been sneaking around the night before had written a message on the door in fading Magic Marker. It said, in English, REMEMBER YOU…—and then the intruder had run out of ink. The door had no more to say.
Lily was not enjoying the trip. Her head was surrounded by a turban of flies. When she tried to brush them out of the air, or out of her hair, they gathered around her hand like a wristlet. They would not go away.
But it was more than that. She was frightened of what lived in the jungle. She knew that Katie was used to dealing with monsters, but Lily was not. On the far slopes, she could hear the distant crash of allosauruses through ferns and baobabs. She could almost hear their size. And she knew that she and her friends were headed straight for one of the most dangerous, dinosaur-infested places in all of Delaware.
“This afternoon, visitor children,” said Bntno, “we come to the ruined city of Greylag. Very ancient city. Large amount of monster.”
“We have my ray gun,” said Jasper.
“I’m a little worried about this,” said Katie.
“Yeah,” said Lily hesitantly. “Do we have a plan?”
“We go through this city, yes? To bridge. We cross bridge real quick, only lose one of us by snatching.”
“Great,” said Katie. “How do we decide which one of us?”
Bntno laughed. “Very droll friend,” he said, “monster decides!” He acted out the monster choosing. He pointed at the air. “Which for lunch? Hmm! This one tasty!”
“It’s not funny,” said Lily. “How are we going to get through these ruins alive?”
Bntno smiled. “Old saying of Delaware: Slow girl asks most questions about running.”
Lily was embarrassed. She caught Katie casting a glance back. Lily knew that the others were thinking of her as the slow one, the one in the most danger. And they weren’t wrong.
She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want to seem like a coward, but out of the four of them, she was the one person with almost no experience of towering evil. Bntno had been to this city before. Katie had escaped from centipedes the size of commuter trains. Jasper had fought his share of sea-serpents, lunar ogres, carnivorous swamps, battle bots, tankopods, and Saturnian blimp-beasts with suctiony mouths, bundles of eyes, and weird whistling songs sung entirely in chlorine.
Lily, on the other hand, had only encountered some irritable whales. She saw Katie looking back at her again, concerned.
Katie offered, “Maybe Jasper should go on ahead and Lily and I can stay here on this side of the city. We’ll walk back along the path to the gravel road.”
Jasper thought about this and said, “Yes, that sounds like a good plan, Katie. I don’t want to put either of you in danger.”
Lily protested, “I don’t want to slow us down.”
Both of her friends rushed to say she wasn’t slowing anyone down, no way, don’t worry. She could tell by the way they rushed to reassure her that they didn’t mean it. She really was slowing them down.
“I hope no one slow us down…,” said Bntno, holding his finger up in the air.
“No one is slowing us down, Bntno,” said Jasper firmly.
“…because listen.”
They listened. They heard a distant shrieking.
“What is it?” muttered Jasper. “Dinosaurs?”
“Triceratops?” whispered Katie. “…es?”
Dramatically Bntno declared, “I think, the Kangaroo-Riders of Armstrong. They are move to here.”
“Huh?” said Katie.
Bntno remained silent, still holding his finger up. The rest fell silent, too.
Then they heard the drums in the forest. Then they heard the triumphant yelps. Yelps of men on the hunt. Yelps broken by Oomph s and Orkkk s as steeds hit the ground and bounced, knocking the wind out of their riders. The four heard the cannibals hopping through the wood—and they heard them getting closer.