River. The trail that we were following snaked crookedly down the hills. As we rounded the sharp angle of a ridge, we came upon the camp. Ben braked the car to a halt and for a moment we sat there, saying nothing. Tents, many of them down, fluttered in the wind. One truck was tipped over on its side. The other was in a ditch, one of those deep gullies so characteristic of the Cretaceous, its nose buried against one wall of the gully, its back canted up at a steep angle.
Nothing moved except the fluttering fabric of the tents. There was no smoke; the campfires had burned out. Here and there were clutters of scattered whiteness lying on the ground.
“For the love of mercy!” said Ben.
Slowly, he took his foot off the brake and let the car ease forward. We crept down the slope and into the camp. The place was littered with debris. Cooking utensils were scattered about the dead fires. Torn clothing was tramped into the ground. Dropped rifles lay here and there. The scattered whitenesses were bones — human bones polished clean by scavengers.
Ben braked the car to a halt and I got out, cradling the heavy rifle in the crook of my arm. For a long time I stood there, looking around, trying to absorb the enormity of what 1 saw, my mind stubbornly refusing to accept the full impact of the evidence. I heard Ben get out on the other side of the car. His feet crunched as he walked around the vehicle to stand beside me.
He spoke harshly, as if he were fighting to keep his voice level. “It must have happened a week or more ago. Probably only a day or so after their arrival here.
Look at those bones. Stripped clean. It took a while to do that.”
I tried to answer, but I couldn’t. I found that I had my teeth clenched hard to keep them from chattering.
“None got away,” said Ben. “How come none got away?”
I forced myself to speak. “Maybe some of them did. Out in the hills.”
Ben shook his head. “If they had been able, they would have tried to follow the trail back home. We would have found them coming in. A man alone, or an injured man, would have no chance. If something didn’t snap him up on the first day, they would have on the next, certainly the next after that.”
Ben left me and walked out into the campsite. After a minute or so, I trailed after him.
“Asa,” Ben said. He had stopped and was staring at something on the ground. “Look at that. Look at that track.”
It had been blurred by rain. Little pools of water stood in the deep imprints left by the claws. It was huge. The blurring might have enlarged it or given the impression that it was larger than it actually was, but the print appeared to measure two feet or more across at its breadth. Beyond it and slightly to the left was another similar footprint.
“Not rex,” said Ben. “Bigger than rex. Bigger than anything we know. And look over there. There are more tracks.”
Now that Ben had found the first track, we could see that the area was covered with them.
“Three-toed,” said Ben. “Reptilian. Two-legged, I’d guess.”
“From the looks of the evidence,” I said, “a pack of them. One, or even two, couldn’t make that many tracks. Remember our pair of tyrannosaurs? We thought they hunted in pairs. Before that, the impression was they hunted alone. Maybe they hunt in packs. Sweeping across the country like a pack of wolves, grabbing everything they can find. A pack would pick up more prey than a lone hunter or even a pair of them.”
“If that is the case,” said Ben, “if they hunt in packs, Aspinwall and the others didn’t have a prayer.”
We walked across the campsite, trying hard not to look too closely at some of the things we saw. The four- wheel drives, curiously, stood where they had been parked. Only one of them had been knocked over.
Cartridge cases gleamed dully in the half-light of the cloudy day. Rifles lay here and there. And everywhere, the marks of those huge, three-clawed footprints.
The wind whined and moaned in the hollows and across the ridges that ran down to the river valley.
The sky of torn and racing clouds boiled like a cauldron. From far off came the rumble of thunder.
Leering out of a small thicket at me was a skull, tattered bits of hairy scalp still clinging to it, a patch of beard adhering to the jawbone. Gagging, I turned back to the car. I’d had enough.
Ben’s bellow stopped me. When I looked back, I saw him standing at the edge of a deep gully that ran down the southern edge of the campsite.
“Asa, over here!” he yelled.
I staggered back to where he stood. In the gully lay a pile of massive bones. Bits of scaly hide fluttered from some of them. A rib cage lay gaping, a clawed foot thrust upward, a skull with the jawbone still attached had the look of being interrupted in executing a mangling snap.
“That foot,” said Ben. “The one sticking up. That’s a forefoot. Well developed, strong, not like the forelimb of a rex.”
“An allosaur,” I told him. “It has to be an allosaur.
One grown to gigantic size, its fossilized bones never found by anyone.”
“Well, at least we know our people got one of them.”
“They may have gotten others. If we looked around …”
“No,” said Ben. “I’ve seen enough. Let’s get out of here.”
TWENTY-NINE
Ben phoned Courtney, while Rila and I listened in on other phones. We were a fairly sober lot.
“Court, we have bad news,” said Ben when Courtney came on the line. You know one of the safaris is overdue.”
“Yes, a couple of days or so. Nothing to worry about. Found better hunting than they expected. Or drove farther than they realized. Maybe vehicle break-down.”
“We thought the same,” said Ben, “but this morning I got a call from Safari in New York. They were a little nervous. Asked if we could check. So Asa and I went in. Asa’s on the phone with me now. So is Rila.”
Suddenly, Courtney’s voice took on a note of worry.
“You found everything all right, of course.”
“No, we didn’t,” said Ben. “The expedition was wiped out. All of them dead….”
“Dead? All of them?”
“Asa and I found no survivors. We didn’t try to count the bodies. Not bodies, really — skeletons. It was pretty horrible. We got out of there.”
“But dead! What could …”
“Courtney,” I said, “the evidence is they were attacked by a pack of carnosaurs.”
“I didn’t know carnosaurs ran in packs.”
“Neither did I. Neither did anyone. But the evidence is they do. More footprints than would be made by just two or three …”
“Footprints?”
“Not only footprints. We found the skeleton of a large carnosaur. Not a tyrannosaur. An allosaur, more than likely. Quite a bit bigger than rex.”
“You talk about skeletons. Not bodies, but skeletons.”
“Court, it must have happened quite a while ago,” said Ben. “Maybe shortly after they went in. Looks as if the scavengers had a while to work on them.”
“What we want to know,” said Rila, “is where we stand legally. And what do we do next?”
There was a long silence on the other end, then Courtney said, “Legally, we are blameless. Safari signed a waiver to cover each group that went in. The contract also makes it clear we are not responsible for anything that happens. If you’re wondering if they can sue us, I don’t think they can. There are no grounds.”
“How about the clients they took along?”
“Same thing. Safari is responsible if anyone is. I suppose the clients also signed waivers, holding Safari blameless. I would think it would be regular procedure.
