Their necks were ludicrously long, a good twenty feet from the creature’s snout to the curved beginning of the mountainous back. The tail was equally long, and if there had been a head on the end of it, it would have been difficult to tell one end of the animal from the other.
Chuck knew which end was which at the moment.
The end that was bearing down on them with remarkable rapidity was the front. The other end carried a powerful tail that could probably knock the underpinnings from the Empire State Building!
Figures were figures and they meant nothing. They were only numbers until they were compared to other known figures. The creatures were more than sixty-five feet long. What was sixty-five feet? A number, yes. But more. It was a locomotive engine attached to a railroad car. It was a good-sized swimming pool. It was a three-story house laid on its side.
Chuck didn’t have to compare thirty-eight tons with anything. He knew what thirty-eight tons added up to. Two thousand pounds in a ton, and he weighed 160 pounds. He weighed 160 pounds and each of the creatures charging for the camp weighed at least 76,000 pounds! That was a lot of beef-an awful lot of beef-and it was all angry; it was all destructive and it was all intent on doing something about these people who made disturbing noises with rifles.
The fear gave way to the need for immediate action. They began to run. They would have run straight into the thundering herd if Owen hadn’t shouted, “This way! To the rocks!”
The rocks rose like a beckoning fortress a few hundred feet from the camp. They weren’t high, but they were long, set like the thousands of stone walls that dot New England. Ferns and mosses grew around and over the natural barrier, and it was a little hard to see exactly where the rocks ended. But they offered protection-a wall behind which to hide from the murderous, trampling limbs of the brontosaurs.
They began running, Owen leading the way, Pete behind him, Denise next, then Arthur and Chuck. Only Masterson turned in the opposite direction. There was fear in his eyes, an unmasked fear that told Chuck the erstwhile hunter hadn’t expected anything quite like this. Firing at a stegosaur was one thing and firing at a fragile-looking pterosaur was another. But a brontosaur was a mountain on legs. No man in his right mind stood and fired at a moving mountain.
The party straggled across the countryside like the tail of a kite, running, stumbling, reaching for the rocks. Behind him, Chuck heard the whine of the jeep’s engine as Masterson started it. He turned his head, still running, in time to see the jeep back away from the truck and head off in the other direction, away from the rocks.
The word “coward” crossed his mind rapidly, but he shoved it aside when he caught sight of the brontosaurs again. They weren’t bothering with the jeep They had swerved and were heading for the majority of the party now. They were headed for the group that staggered toward the rock barrier.
“Owen!” Chuck shouted.
Owen stopped dead in his tracks. Pete stumbled past him, intent on reaching the rocks, and Arthur took Denise’s hand and dragged her after him. It didn’t take Owen long to see what was going to happen. Even the rocks would offer poor protection if the herd decided to trample them into the ground.
Chuck had started to run back for the truck and he glanced back over his shoulder to see that Owen was following him. He had reached the truck and started the engine when Owen popped into the cab beside him. They didn’t waste many words.
“What’s your plan?” Owen asked.
“Cut them off. Drive around them and try to head them the other way.” Chuck spoke rapidly, his voice hoarse.
He had already started the truck in motion, turning the wheels toward the charging brontosaurs.
“Right,” Owen said. He swung out onto the running board and climbed the slats into the back of the truck. When he returned, he was carrying a rifle.
The truck rolled forward, bouncing over the pockmarked ground, driving in a straight line between the enraged herd and the rock barrier. Chuck couldn’t see any of the party, and he assumed they were down low behind the wall, flat against the trembling ground.