Jochen explain, that the rains hit a little further south, so the city itself wasn't hit hard at first, only later once the maniacs began to migrate, which must have been quite a few, judging by the number of wrecked vehicles we've seen, I muse. But I keep my thoughts to myself. Jochen said he lost his parents during the first days and his wife a little later on, to one of the maniacs. He met other survivors, and together they fled into the forest, where they kept moving like nomads ever since. Always trying to avoid the Verrückten as they call the maniacs, and what I gather means crazy in German.
"But where are all the maniacs?" I ask when we reach the clearing, greeted by curious stares.
Jochen scratches his head: "Yeah, that is the.... what's the word? Crazy? It's a crazy story. We saw spaceships land and the Verrückten just marched right in."
He looks at us sheepish as if we aren't going to believe him.
"All of them?" I ask, astonished.
Jochen nods. "As far as we know. Haven't seen any since."
Colin and I exchange a glance. "Think they're cleaning house?" I wonder out loud.
Colin knows I'm referring to the alien corporation; he shakes his head thoughtfully. "I have no idea. Could be, could be that they're shuffling them somewhere else to attack."
That thought makes the fine hairs on my neck stand up; we really need to get back to Alaska and talk to our President and the other leaders.
"Is this why you guys didn't stay in the city?" Colin asks.
Jochen nods. "There were too many at first. I guess now we could try to go back."
"Komm, komm. Come and sit, eat." Erika invites.
She indicates a group of larger rocks to sit on. As soon as we do, a young girl, who can't be older than ten, hands us plates loaded with freshly roasted meat.
"Thank you." I smile at her.
Her face turns fire hydrant red, but she smiles shyly back at me. The meat is juicy and delicious; it tastes spicy, and I wonder what they put on it. Jochen sits next to me; he, too, is balancing a plate.
"It's good, isn't it?" He asks, smiling.
"What is this? It's great." Colin asks.
"Another crazy thing," Jochen explains. "It looks like a.... what do you call it? You eat it on Thanksgiving."
"Turkey?" I ask helpfully.
He nods enthusiastically. "Yes, yes. Turkey. All of a sudden, they're everywhere around here. They're delicious."
I start to laugh; Colin, who didn't see the turkey-saurus we first encountered in Oregon, doesn't get it. I don't care, dinosaur or not, the meat is good, and I'll be damned if I let the fact that this thing died out millions of years ago get in my way. I don't think the meat will harm us in any way; those dinosaurs are all real enough, they were bred in a lab, but they are biological beings.
When Colin looks at me, questioning, I enlighten him. "Remember when I told you about the turkey-saurus Martin, and I found?"
His face, first still questioning, turns slowly into understanding before turning into revulsion.
"This is dinosaur meat?" He asks, spitting it out.
I grab another piece and stuff it into my mouth. "Yap. Delicious."
Colin reaches for one of our water bottles and rinses his mouth. "How can you eat that?"
"How can you not?" I retort.
"I don't understand." Jochen looks confused.
"The aliens, resurrected dinosaurs and infested Earth with them, this thing," Colin points towards the roasting spit, "is a small dinosaur."
Jochen's face turns from disbelief into a bright grimace as he slaps his leg and laughs. "You're funny."
Colin shakes his head. "No, for real."
Jochen looks at me as I chew happily on yet another piece. I nod. "Yap, it's true."
I wrinkle my forehead in concentration, then snap my finger as the name comes back to me. "Hesperonychus elizabethae."
Proudly I wait for acknowledgement of my expertise, but everybody just stares at me like I lost my mind. I didn't think I would miss Sven, but I know he would appreciate the fact that I remembered.
Even Jochen spits the food out, so do some others, except another young man, who grins at me while eating another piece.
"More for us." He laughs.
"You got that right," I reply happily.
"I think you better tell us what you know now," Jochen says with a serious face, pushing his plate to the side.
And that's what we do. We take turns telling our story, interrupted only a few times by some questions, mostly because we use some words they don't understand. It takes a couple of hours, and by the time we're finally done, the moon and stars are out, but nobody has turned in, everybody hangs on our words, even though some—especially the smaller kids, don't understand most of what we're telling them. Older ones seem happy enough to translate for them. The language barrier is becoming bothersome.
"We didn't know." Jochen says when we finish fibbing that we were dropped off. No reason to get into all the political betrayal at this point.
"The news said nothing about any of this." The young man who also enjoyed the dinosaur meat interjects.
An older woman shakes her head. "Until the Verrückten appeared, nobody told us anything, and then it was too late. We ran, we hid. We live here. We thought our men went crazy when they said the aliens took the Verrückten away."
I sympathize with her. I've been in the thick of it since the beginning, but I can see how a lot of people were completely overrun by everything that happened. It seems like the German government held its cards even closer to the chest than the American's did. At least towards the end, warnings were issued. I can't even imagine going through all
