MEGAMORPHS #2: IN THE TIME OF DINOSAURS

Sample Chapter

::MARCO::

CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!

The ground shook!

"HrrrrRRROOOOAAAARRR-unh!"

It was so loud it had to be right behind me! I was screaming. I was crying as I ran. It was panic. Pure panic. Leaves slapped my face. Twigs whipped my bare arms.

I glanced back. Through my blurring tears I saw it bounding, leaping, running after us.

Forty feet long, from head to tail. Twelve thousand pounds. Seven-inch, serrated-edged teeth.

But it was the eyes that were the worst. They were intelligent, eager eyes. Hungry eyes. Eyes that seemed almost to laugh at me, helpless creature that I was.

Could I morph? Morph what? Morph what? There was nothing that could stand against a Tyrannosaurus rex. Nothing! My gorilla morph? The Tyrannosaurus would eat it in two bites.

I saw flashes of the others, all in flat-out panic run. It would have us all. None of us could fight it. Not even Ax, who was pulling ahead of the stumbling humans.

No! Wait! There was a way!

"Get small!" I screamed. "Morph small!" The words tore my throat as I yelled.

Wham!

The root seemed to reach up out of the ground to grab my foot. I hit hard. I sucked air but nothing came. My lungs were emptied. Heart pounding. The others kept running. Didn't realize I'd fallen. Roll!

I rolled over just as the impossibly big talon came raking down.

WHAMMM! The tyrannosaur's foot hit like a dropped safe. I bounced from the impact.

Down came the head, teeth flashing, eyes greedy for my flesh.

I sucked in a breath. Rolled, scrambled, tripped, kicked forward and landed in a fern at the base of a tree. The tree trunk was no more than a foot in diameter.

I pulled myself behind it. No way to hide.

The dinosaur kicked at me with one foot. I dodged.

"Morph, you idiot!" someone yelled at me. I recognized my own voice, but I couldn't imagine speaking the words.

What? What could I morph? What was small enough?

SCRRRRRAACK! WHAAAMMM! A talon came down and scraped the bark off the tree before it hit. I yanked my leg out a split second before it would have been crushed.

Talon? Yes, huge bird feet, Bird, that was the trick. See if the big, evil creep could fly!

I focused some part of my mind on the image of an osprey. Small, too small for the T-rex to care about. And it could fly.

I felt the changes begin, but the Tyrannosaurus hadn't gotten to be the biggest flesh-eater in history by being stupid. It came around the tree for me. And now my body was growing clumsy as my hands shrank and my legs thinned.

You have no concept of how powerful that Tyrannosaurus was. You cannot possibly even begin to understand till you've cowered beneath it, peeing in your pants, and wanting to dig a hole in the dirt.

I scrambled around the tree. Jaws opened four feet wide and snapped shut an inch from my head.

"Aaaahhhh!" I screamed in sheer terror.

The big lizard dodged the other way and it roared in frustration. He was so close I felt the sound waves. I saw his pebbly-skinned throat vibrate. And worse, I saw into his mouth. A mouth glittering with teeth like butcher's knives and stained with the blood of his last kill.

I scrambled away again, stiff, barely able to move.

CRUNCH!

The Tyrannosaurus chomped its jaws shut on the tree itself. He began to twist and rip the tree, like a dog with a bone. Rending, tearing, bark flying, white wood pulp chewed to chips.

In a few seconds the tree would no longer be between us. And already I was too far morphed to run to another tree.

Grrr-UNCH! Scree-EEEE-crrUNCH! RrrrOOOAAAARRR!

The Tyrannosaurus had gone mad with frustration. It was screaming in rage, ripping, grinding, throwing its huge weight back and forth. Shaking the ground. Bruising the air with its insane roar. Just a few seconds more and ...

Crrr-SNAP!

The tree fell slowly away, crashing down through layers of vines and ferns.

The Tyrannosaurus lunged, mouth open, red tongue lolling, teeth wet with drool.

I tried to leap back. I fell. Rolled. Thrashed, out of control.

Wings! I had wings!

Too late!

The mouth came down over me like some kind of earthmover, like a diesel shovel. A prison of teeth all round me. The jaw bit into the dirt itself. A root! Teeth snagged by a root. I flapped, ran, beat, rolled, scrambled.

Out between the jaws!

Running on osprey talons, running, wings open, flapping.

SNAP! Jaws an inch behind my tail.

Fly, fly, fly you idiot!

Bonk.

I never saw the tree trunk. I hit it head-on. I was stunned, senseless, helpless.

The Tyrannosaurus roared in triumph.

It towered above me, huge, irresistible. Pure destruction. Why had it chased me? I wondered. Why? I was too small, wasn't I?

But of course. I'd been in predator morph before. I knew why. Because killing was what it did. Killing was what it was. It had gone beyond food or hunger now. It simply wanted to do what it did best.

I flapped weakly, too dazed to move.

Down came the head. Down from so far above. Down it came.

A swift movement to my right. What was it?

Fwapp!Fwapp!Fwapp!

An Andalite tail, too fast to be seen, struck three times.

The dinosaur swung its head hard. Ax went flying and rolled twice as he hit the ground.

The T-rex sagged. Tried to roar. And fell.

Human hands snatched me up as six tons of malevolence fell to the ground.

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