Dino

I didn't know the blue pig monsters lurked behind the foliage until they jumped out and chased me with their spears.

When I ran, the ball of alien pheromone sloshed open, giving a swarm of pterodactyl things entirely the wrong idea about my romantic life.

This whole mess began because of those pterodactyl things.

Kurroks.

Don't know why my team drove a Jeep out in the middle of that field of candy striped crab grass, I wasn't there. Also don't know how that swarm of leathery winged creatures got the idea to use it as a nest. The only thing I knew: My team had captured a female, milked a gallon of secretions out of it, and poured it into a breakable ball...and I had ball duty.

A simple enough plan: I'd hurl the object away from the Jeep, then we'd move the `nest' away real quick. Didn't count on an ambush.

All around the Jeep, there stood these huge clumps of green and purple plants, resembling French chocolate curls, peppered with lollipop-like berries (which, if consumed, cause embarrassing sexual side effects).

The moment I neared the Jeep with the `orb,' a crowd of spotty, warthog faced savages in loincloths jumped out at me.

They snorted, nocked arrows and raised spears, their spots glowing as they charged into the open. I turned to flee.

Glimpsing the cover of a nearby tree, I ran toward an opening parallel to it, in the direction of our Hummer.

I'd only gotten a few yards when another blue figure popped out of a sinkhole in front of me, aiming a bow.

Frightened, I hurled the ball in the creature's swine face. It squealed, launching its arrow into a mound of dirt.

A disgusting yellow slop smelling of rotten bagels and jasmine splashed back on me as it coated my assailant. I pushed my way past the creature in haste, breaking into a run as I frantically brushed my shirt and pants in attempts to remove the substance.

A cloud of leathery bodies filled the air. Something big and heavy knocked me into the ground.

A purple fleshy shaft extended from the winged creature as it pounded me with its wings. Sickened by the thought of where it wanted to thrust it, I threw off my shirt. The cloud of leathery wings took off with it, filling the air with confused squealing sounds.

I ran in the opposite direction as fast as I could make my legs go.

A spear whistled past my head. I glanced back and saw I'd been followed by a mob of the blue savages.

Dirt exploded around me with the muted pop of silencer pistols. Light from the weapons flashed from the bushes. I ducked, glancing back with anxious dread.

Not wanting to get hurt, I crawled on my hands and knees across the field, hoping and praying that no loose ammunition came my way.

I made it past the line around the Hummer, within seven yards of my team. Dirt sprayed up in my face.

Mike, a Spanish guy in jeans and a Chivas shirt, gestured for me to stay put. I laid still.

Well...until something latched onto my leg.

One of those winged things, but small, roughly the size of an adult German shepherd.

Kind of adorable, actually. I tried gently pushing it off.

It didn't work.

Frustrated, I tried using my fists, but the creature didn't react to my punches.

"C'mon! Get off of me!" I groaned, pulling its head back.

The creature only whimpered, nuzzling its beak against my pant leg.

The shots and squealing noises stopped. My coworkers now stood over a pile of blue bodies, a bald headed figure with a red shirt spraying something on the Hummer.

Safe.

Relieved, I stood up, shaking my leg in hopes of dislodging the creature. When that didn't work, I took off my pants, which seemed to distract the thing enough for me to get away.

The leader of my team, a squatty little dwarf, wrinkled his face in disgust. "Why is it that every time I see you, you've got your pants off?"

I shrugged, turning pink. "It's not my fault, Victor. That little guy won't leave me alone."

I pointed to the creature gnawing on my pants.

Victor laughed. "Would you like me to shoot it?"

"No!" I protested. "It's cute! I just don't want it stuck on my leg!"

The creature looked up from my pants, squawking at me.

It parked itself by my feet, butting me on the bare leg.

"Hey!" I laughed as it butted again. I petted it, and the creature squawked in response.

Suddenly, it shot into the air, tackling me to the ground as it barked, licking me in the face.

"All right, rump ranger," Victor grumped as he threw me my pants, along with some rags, bottles and a spray can. "Enough fooling around. Help Snakey with clean up."

I got myself decent, got Lysol All Purpose and a bathroom scrubber from a bald African American dude in a tank top. I spent the next two hours clearing caked on slime from the sideways vehicle.

My little friend, in the meantime, filled his stomach with parts of blue corpses, particularly the eyes and other soft areas.

Although starving, the sight and smell of the Kurrok's feast quashed my appetite. My only consolation: It had stopped making annoying whining sounds.

Snakey wiped his hands on his tank top. "Hungry?"

I shrugged.

He scrubbed the frame of a shattered window with foam and a brush. "You know, I think there's a lockbox of food in the trunk, if the Kurroks haven't gotten to it."

After clearing away the broken glass, I crawled into the the trunk, where a battered metal box lay sideways in a pile of dried slime.

The thing had been so badly dented and caved in that nothing short of wire cutters and a wielding torch would open it. Sighing, I went back to scrubbing.

"Hey, Snakey...I, uh, saw a group of pregnant women in my training group. They just randomly showed up. Do you have any idea why?"

He chuckled. "Don't look at me! I'm careful! Must have been something you did."

I rolled my eyes. "I just thought it weird. They just showed up out of the blue...after we arrived here."

"Oh." Snakey shook his head. "Those must be the American Provincial girls. A group of them won some kind of employee excellence award, got an all expenses paid vacation to Wrigley's Pleasure Planet. What happens on Wrigley's stays on Wrigley's, you know what I mean?"

"Um...not really?"

He snickered. "Stay with us long enough and you'll probably get to see it. You'll come back a changed man."

A thump on the floor beside me indicated my new pet had returned.

For a few moments, its cyclops eye peered at me with curiosity, but as I continued my dull task, it pawed around the wall panel (currently `the floor') in a circle and laid down, snoring softly in a corner.

"Lucky those gals came back when they did, and where they did," Snakey continued. "They might have disappeared with the rest of the employees."

"How long were they there? Nine months?"

"Naw, man! They probably came to term when they got back. The lucky thing was being shipped off to Boukzi for OBGYN at the same time. Just narrowly missed the attack. We took `em in last night when the shuttle came down."

"Funny, I didn't see them."

"You were probably asleep or something."

Once I had completed the scouring of a rear passenger seat, the creature's eye popped open wide, its beak pointed at the trunk. It broke into a frantic squawking fit.

A couple minutes later, an engine growled nearby.

Overwhelmed with curiosity, I poked my head through the broken window up top, gawking at the rear end of an idling pickup. "Hey! Where'd that come from!"

"Storage!" Mike called.

"I don't get it. Why couldn't we have used that before?"

"We only got five barrels of gas," Snakey explained. "And this Hummer takes half that just to get to Hell's Gate and back."

"What's Hell's Gate?"

He shrugged. "A military base."

"I see they've brought a barrel with them."

"Yep."

He threw me a heavy chain with a hook attached to the end. "Here. Make yourself useful. Stick this on the underside of that behemoth."

I did. A few moments later, we had the Hummer dragged into an upright position.

At first, my Kurrok fought against the strange machine, but when he failed to destroy the rear bumper, he settled down, letting the humans work.

We made the final touches, cleaning the last bits of slime from unimportant areas.

Victor climbed into the front seat, tossing me a couple sandwiches in baggies. "You probably noticed you're missing dinner. Admittedly, it's not much, but I didn't have time to bring a full course meal."

I opened the bags, tearing into the sandwiches while Snakey and the others in the pickup started on their own.

As I dove into my second sandwich, trying hard not to let my pet snatch it from my hand, Victor squeezed into the back of the vehicle, fumbling around with something.

He yelled and banged something around. Sparks flew up from behind the seat, then the unpleasant sound of rending metal filled the vehicle.

A cluster of mangled rectangular packages got passed over the seat.

I stared at the foil wrapping. "What's that?"

"Protein bars. Granola bars. Beef jerky. It's probably all expired, but if you're hungry, eat up."

Looking bored, Mike manually pumped fuel into the Hummer.

The rear passenger door slid open, and in came a narrow, well muscled green and orange dappled body. I admired the well toned hips and thighs as they sidled in close to me.

"Ibira!" I stammered. "H-hi!"

I chewed on a piece of beef jerky, forcing my eyes upwards. A Nextel phone had been clipped to the upper part of her harness, making occasional chirps and monotone mutterings.

"No shirt today?" the female asked.

"I dunno," I mumbled as I swallowed jerky.

"Did it get too hot, or is this your normal fighting attire?"

I shrugged, looking into one of her eyes. "I, uh..." I lowered my voice out of embarrassment. "I didn't want to get molested by crazy pterodactyls. I was lucky to keep my pants. The pheromone sprayed everywhere!"

She giggled. "I heard what you did. It was very brave."

The phone chirped again, explaining how she acquired the knowledge.

"Hey, why can't I get a phone?"

Ibira smirked. "Perhaps because it would get lost, like your clothing." She glanced in the trunk. "Who's your friend?"

"Dino." I'd been tossing the name around since the first time it knocked me to the ground and licked my face.

She gave me a blank look.

"Flintstones. It's a cartoon."

Ibira looked at me like I were an idiot. "I know. But your pet has wings."

"It's more about the personality."

She smiled. "I see."

"Wait. How do you know about the Flintstones?"

"I have a Hulu account, Jason. I don't actually live in the stone age."

I smirked as I imagined her watching TV.

Ibira glanced at my feet. "Do you always wear shoes of this type? It seems very inefficient."

"Nobody told me I needed to pack anything."

"Hmmm."

"So...what are you doing out here?"

"I wanted some fresh air." She rested her chin in one left hand to gaze into my eyes, the fingers of her other left brushing the side of my ribs. "Plus they wanted me to help reclaim Hell's Gate."

I blinked. "We're doing a raid?"

"That's why they brought me out here."

Still not completely comfortable with her touching my body, I grabbed her roving left.

I thought about brushing it away, but instead I held it, boyfriend-like.

Ibira smiled, lowering her hand. "I hear you've met my friend Sigma."

I blushed. "Um...That furry alien chick?" Then, remembering my manners, "I mean, the...Harfon? A couple times, actually."

Ibira's second left hand drifted toward a knife on her harness. Although I hated to say more, I feared her killing me over a rumor. "Nothing happened."

She grinned. "I heard."

Her second left moved away from the knife.

I stared at her questioningly, afraid to speak. If I said the wrong thing, I could ruin her friendship, or ours, our ruin my chances with...Sigma, if Ibira dumped me. "W-what did you hear?"

"You showered together."

I blushed. Her friend had barged into my shower. She'd said a few...racy things to me. It took me a moment to formulate words. "Wait, that was a test?"

She shrugged. "If it was, you passed."

And you're still friends with her? I thought. Definitely a test. She had to have put Sigma up to that!...Guess she still didn't believe I wanted to be her boyfriend.

I felt an electric thrill as the back of my fingers brushed Ibira's bare thigh.

"A little help?" someone called.

With a nod, Ibira climbed out, and I followed.

"What's this about?" I asked Victor.

Without a word, he and Mike pulled a thick piece of sheet metal out of the truck bed, dragging it over to the Hummer. Mike brought out a wielding torch, and I got instructed to hold the sheet in place while they attached it. I think arc wielding is supposed to be done with face shielding, but nobody seemed to care. I turned my face away and hoped for the best.

For the next half hour, I helped Victor and the others wield metal plates to the Hummer as Ibira and the others bolted down chain mail and soldered metal plates over the window panes.

"Why are we using chain mail?" I asked Mike. "Shouldn't we box it up like an armored car?"

"We have guns, and they have arrows," said Snakey. "It's easier to shoot bullets through chain mail."

"Wouldn't it also be easier for them to shoot us that way?"

"Gun beats arrow, and bullets don't get caught in rings that size."

Once finished with our work, we boarded and we got rolling.

Ibira held my hand again, but worry overtook me. "Do we have a strategy, or are we making it up as we go along?"

Still holding my hand, her other hands opened a pouch on her harness, giving me a photocopy of a scribble on a piece of notebook paper.

"The perimeter is full of landmines and razor wire. Holes have been cut in the fencing , but it's unwise to use it. Our best strategy is through the gate in the front face, or cut across the helicopter pads. The razorbacks don't like technology, so we're hoping they left it deserted."

I stared at the map, releasing her hand as I clenched the paper with shaking fingers. "You'd think that an army of blue pigs with spears wouldn't be able to conquer a base with this much military equipment."

"It was espionage. Well, espionage and biological agents."

I stared at her in bafflement. "They used germ warfare?"

Ibira shrugged.

"Is it safe now?"

"Yes. The structure has been occupied continuously since the initial invasion. We just don't have the numbers or the strategy to retain the territory."

"But we don't have numbers now," I protested. "What good are we going to do taking the place over again?"

"Admittedly, not much, but at least we have strategies to avoid the mistakes of our predecessors."

Snakey had been listening from the front passenger seat. "Not wearing clunky spacesuits is a good start."

"Are we just going to drive through the gates, then?"

"Basically."

A few minutes later, the foliage disappeared, and we stared through our chain mail at a gray cube framed in fences and razor wire.

The blackened remains of guard towers stood at four corners of the complex, framed by demolished cannons, overturned vehicles, and what appeared to be a collection of silver statues of mutilated arthritis sufferers, apparently...dismantled robots.

We passed a weather cracked helicopter pad, watching the fence loom closer.

The mechanical features of the statues became more pronounced, a series of defaced hydraulic limbs, carrion nests and broken glass.

A cluster of blue pigs emerged, peppering our chain mail with arrows. I got handed a gun.