Chapter 4
CHAPTER
FOUR
LILY
“No freaking way,” I say out loud, then immediately clamp my mouth shut, because the last thing I want to do is draw attention to where I’m dangling overhead like a piece of meat on a spit.
Thankfully, there’s no fire. I screw my mouth up to one side. On the other hand, maybe the smoke from the fire would get this over faster.
It’s taken some time for my brain to catch up to what it is I’m actually looking at.
My first thought was a dinosaur.
My second was that was impossible.
My third was that chickens are in fact dinosaurs, and this is without a doubt the largest chicken I have ever seen.
Not that I’ve seen many. I didn’t grow up on a farm, and being a personal assistant to the city’s most notorious personal injury lawyer didn’t exactly put me in a position to handle a lot of chickens.
But I am in fact a human, which means that I spent a lot of time identifying barnyard animals as a toddler.
And this is, without a doubt, a chicken.
Thank you very much to Old MacDonald and his farm.
A chicken roughly the size of a tank.
Its beady little dinosaur eyes look at me, and I swallow, all too aware of the fact that I’m still dangling overhead like some sort of yummy treat.
Or worse, a pinata ready to be burst open. I wince. That mental image did not help my mental state.
Fuck.
Chickens are omnivores, and judging from the way this chicken’s looking at me I’m definitely on the menu.
“BAAAWK,” the chicken thunders loud enough to make the tree tremble, which in turn sends me shivering as the rope jostles on the branch above. Blood floods loudly back into my ears, and I wince, slightly horrified by the indignity of my inevitable demise by chicken beak.
Didn’t have that as a possible death scenario I played on repeat before bed after the Roth invaded.
“Bawk?” the chicken asks, tilting its head, one foot in the air, huge talons lifting.
I never stopped to think about how sharp a chicken’s talons might actually be, probably because I’ve never been around a live one, but also because typically chicken talons aren’t the size of my torso.
I never really thought a lot about dinosaurs and the evolution of chickens, but I sure as hell am now.
“You have nice feathers,” I tell it weakly, the sound of my voice strange in my ears after being upside down for so long.
The chicken lifts a wing and preens underneath it, eyes closing, before its attention is diverted to another sound behind it.
“Oh balls,” I mutter, doing my best to stay utterly still as a second chicken comes into view.
It’s even more enormous than the first, with the large red appendage bobbling on top of its head, and I swallow hard, a difficult thing to do when you’re upside down, I might add.
The goddamned rooster looks pissed off. And hungry. It stretches its throat out, looking straight up into the sky, and screams, “COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!” so ferociously that it hits me all at once: forget the chicken, the thing I need to be afraid of is this beast.
Unfortunately, I have a feeling I’m going to be dinner for the monster rooster.
“Shit shit shit,” I mutter frantically.
How the hell am I going to get out of this?
Maybe if I can finally get the comms tablet out of where it’s tucked into my pants, something I haven’t been able to do yet…
Oh shit. I shouldn’t have moved.
The rooster’s head tilts, and I don’t even have time to close my eyes before its beak lashes out, cutting me down from the snare that’s held me up in the air for who knows how long. Well, Ken No Privates probably knows, but fuck that guy.
Ground slams into my back, knocking the air from my lungs, and I lay there stunned, mouth gaping like a fish as I try to get oxygen back into my body and fail miserably at that incredibly important task.
A task I might, in fact, have taken for granted.
Shouldn’t the chicken, rooster, whatever the fucking megafauna poultry, have tried to eat me by now?
Something crunches as I move, the snap crackle pop signaling a major problem.
The comms tablet.
I want to scream, but there’s not enough breath in my lungs. It’s crushed where I had it tucked into my waistband.
There’s no way to communicate with my friends now, but since it’s looking like I’m about to be winner winner literal chicken dinner, that’s the least of my problems.
I finally get air, and some of the stars clouding my vision wink out of existence. I rub my leg, willing sensation to return to my deadened foot, before a beak plunges down in the dirt next to me, causing me to scramble away as fast as I can. I hardly feel the rock slicing into my palms.
Something slams into the ground in front of me, blocking me from the rooster’s line of vision, purple wings spread high, and I nearly weep with recognition.
“Zan,” I say on an exhale.
“Bawk, bawk,” the huge hen thunders, reaching around Zan to stare at me with her large beady eyes.
“Good chicken…. Please don’t eat me,” I add. “Zan, the comms tablet is broken.”
“No one will eat my human but me,” Zan roars.
Maybe I hit my head harder than I thought, because I know he did not just tell that to two giant dinosaur birds.
He’s a hell of a lot braver than me.
Or dumber.
Maybe both.
I rock a little, trying to sit up, trying to get away, the comms tablet crunching even more under my butt, making me cringe.
I want to cry, but I’m too scared.
The rooster cock-a-doodle-doos again, and I’ve never heard anything so vicious. They didn’t have that in the barnyard books; that’s for damn sure. The huge yellow foot raises, claws sparkling in the sunlight.
The bird raises both wings, flapping harm, and aiming his spur directly at Zan.
I screech and scrabble further backwards up until a tree trunk blocks my escape.
Zan, meanwhile, has tucked and rolled to the side, avoiding the rooster’s strike better than I could have.
I nearly weep with relief because Zan came back.
He came back when I needed him. And by god, he is putting himself in the line of danger for me.
I have never had anyone do that for me before in my life.
I also have never been attacked by a giant rooster and a giant evil hen, but that’s neither here nor there.
In fact, it’s squarely in front of us.
“Do you have chickens that big on your planet?” I yell at Zan, cringing away as the hen pecks up the ground near me, dust flying up.
My stomach growls, and I put my hand on it.
Not that it’s going to do anything, the noise has already drawn the attention of both huge birds.
There must be some strange lizard part of my brain still firing from caveman days.
One look at that rooster’s glossy plumage and huge wings, and my brain immediately pings to all you can eat barbecue.
He’s got some meat on him.
And I am really freaking hungry.
“Do you think you can kill it?” I yell at Zan, which is a stupid thing to do because the rooster cockle-doos again, laser-focusing one beady eye on me. The hen pecking at the dirt decides to lay down with both wings spread, dust flying in every direction.
“Of course I can kill it.” Zan looks outraged at the mere suggestion that he might not be capable of striking down some mutant rooster on an alien planet. “You question my honor?” he asks, thumping his chest with a fist, wings flying high.
“No, I don’t question anything, I’m just hungry. I want to eat the rooster.”
“Maybe my translator isn’t working,” he says with a questioning look, a spark of delight igniting in his gaze.
The rooster slams another talon foot down, flapping its wings to get extra height before enacting a strike that Zan dodges neatly again.
Really, he’s pretty agile, and if I weren’t so completely dumbfounded by everything that’s happening, I might actually be impressed at how he’s parkouring around a killer rooster with ease.
My stomach growls again. “I love chicken… So delicious.”
My mouth is watering just thinking about it. Yeah, I definitely hit my head on the way down.
I’m so damned hungry. On the Earth reality TV shows the contestants at least got rice.
We haven’t had anything.
Zan hoists a fallen tree branch up, waving it at the rooster, who bawks incredulously at Zan’s bravery or foolhardiness—who can say—and backs up slightly, still staring at him through beady eyes.
“I do not think my translator is working correctly. But if it is cock you want, it is cock you shall have.”
“What?” I ask, completely confused. “Yeah, I want to eat the rooster.”
Zan stares at me, mystified, then grabs his package between his legs. “I will make sure you are well fed by sweet cock.”
“What the fuck?” I blurt, burying my hands in my face, then peek through my fingers. “Shit, get out of the way,” I screech.
Zan narrowly dodges the attack. He lets out a garbled noise of surprise, and I suck in a breath, my heart racing because he narrowly dodged it.
Except, the rooster has his tail. The curved, viciously pointed beak starts to peck, and Zan screams again, wielding the branch as best he can to fend off the rooster’s attack.
It’s not a scream of pain, though.
It’s anger.
The rooster’s barely made a dent in his scaled draegon tail, thank goodness.
I look around wildly while the huge hen dust bathes next to me, seemingly oblivious to the death—rooster megafauna homicide, or mutual planned homicide, on my part.
I’m so flipping hungry.
“You don’t get to kill that asshole on my watch,” I scream at the rooster, rooting around next to me until my hand closes over exactly what I hoped it would—a massive rock.
Zan’s fending off the attack as best he can, but thick, viscous blood trickles down the tough draegon hide on his tail.
“Pick on someone your own size!” I scream at the rooster.
That manages at least to get his attention, which is really all I wanted. I throw the rock with all my might and hold my breath as it whizzes through the air—and stops, falling just short of the rooster.