Chicago suddenly tensed and sniffed the air. Murky snapped her head back to look at the entrance, but she didn’t immediately see anything that might have alarmed the dinosaur. “Did you hear something?” Murky asked him. “Or smell something?”
The dinosaur growled in a way that was very familiar. It took Murky a moment to realize this was the same kind of noise he had made right before they’d been attacked by the carnivorous mushroom.
“Is there something dangerous down there?” Murky asked. “Are the others in trouble? Maybe we should go help.” The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea to go down there even if the others weren’t in trouble yet. Surely they would be soon, and once they were, she would need to be ready.
“You’re right. We should definitely go help. How’s your leg doing? Do you feel well enough for me to try something?” Again, Chicago made no coherent response, but neither did he try to pull away as Murky went right up next to him and began rubbing a hand on his back. “Your back seems pretty strong, and I’m pretty light. Do you think I would be able to ride you?”
Chicago made no movements or sounds that she could interpret as either positive or negative, so she decided to just assume that meant yes. It took her several awkward seconds to try swinging her leg over Chicago’s back, but he did seem to lower his body a little as though he were trying to help her get on easier. She’d never ridden on any kind of animal before, so she wasn’t sure if she was even astride it right, but she did know she was supposed to have some kind of reins, and there just wasn’t anything that would work.
“If I hold on really tight to your neck to keep from falling off, is that going to make you angry?”
Chicago’s only response was to sneeze.
“Okay, so how do we do this? Am I supposed to say ‘giddy-up?’ Do you even know what that means?” He didn’t seem to, so instead Murky tried to think back to all the times she had seen people ride horses in movies. She thought they did something with their ankles or heels to get their rides moving. Gently, she dug her heals into Chicago’s sides.
She had expected him to start along at a slow walk or trot, if he moved at all. Instead he took off immediately down the rough, rocky slope that the others had gone down, and Murky had to clutch his neck hard to stay balanced. It seemed like he was helping her though, shifting his body beneath her to keep her at the center of his back and preventing her from falling off. Murky would have tried to steer him, but honestly she had no idea how to do that or even where exactly they wanted to go. Chicago seemed to have an idea of his own about what they needed to do, and Murky was just along for the ride.
Chicago sprinted along the path to the same gate that the aphids had gone through and reached it just as one of the guards was coming out. It looked confused, like it wasn’t sure if it should be running from the dinosaur or attacking, but Chicago never gave it the chance to do either. Instead he snapped his jaws at the ant’s abdomen, and to Murky’s surprise and awe, the bite was strong enough to rip the ant guard in half at the waist (if ants could even be said to have a waist). The two halves hit the ground and twitched independently of each other for several seconds before finally going still. For someone like Murky, who genuinely found any life at all to be fascinating, it was a disturbing thing to watch, even if it was just an insect.
It also made her glad Chicago was on her side rather than theirs.
From inside the gate, Murky could now hear what might have been shouts or screams. A lot of them definitely sounded human, but many others were chittering and screeching that Murky could only assume were the ants. She would have urged Chicago inside to investigate, but she didn’t need to. He dashed through the gate all by himself, snarling at any of the ants that got too close and ripping holes in their shells with his powerful claws if they got too close.
They didn’t get far down the initial hall of the city before they ran into the scuffle that had been causing all the racket and alerted Chicago. There was a fight going on between the ants and the people of Kettle Hollow, and while the townsfolk didn’t seem to be armed with anything but a couple of jagged bones, they weren’t putting up too bad of a fight. Lots of children, and even a few adults, were screaming and cowering in fear, but most of them were going bare-knuckled into battle, knowing that their lives literally depended on it. But even though the people looked like they were making the ants work for every ounce of spilled blood, it was obvious that they wouldn’t be able to continue on like this for long.
“Good thing I’ve got a velociraptor, then,” Murky said aloud to no one in particular. “Chicago, charge!”
She dug her heels into the dinosaur’s sides and spurred him forward, but he did all of the rest of the work. Murky wouldn’t have known where to even begin when attacking astride a velociraptor, but Chicago’s instincts took over and he ripped through a large number of the ants before they even realized
