Isle of the Extinct

Five: Mangrove

He had not known him for long, but the death, the bloodshed, it was all too much for him to cope with.

He was gone. His head was still floating like some morbid ball on the water's surface, edging away with the splashing currents as the river dinosaurs continued to feed, bathing in their prey's own blood as they rent and savaged his body. Their eyes were bestowed with a primal, predatory light like that of wolves when they tore into a caribou carcass, flecks of meat and blood thrown about as they thrashed their heads from side to side like crocodiles to tear the flesh off the corpse. He recoiled, and stumbled backwards, upset, in turmoil, head vibrating and breathing coming in tear-filled gasps. It all came so soon, so suddenly, like a curveball hurled in his direction. He was so upset.

Alan's head was flung several metres away from the frenzy by one of the adult carnivores, left to be nibbles upon by fish and crustaceans. The dinosaurs delved into their meaty prize, one of them holding Alan's tattered shirt in its serrated-toothed jaws, while the other was busy cleaving off his thighs, and the tiny youngsters were pecking away at his eyeballs. One of the adults reared it's filthy, blood-and-flesh-caked head, and seemed to redirect its attention towards this live prey on the riverbank. Brushing away a salty tear, Shane sniffled, before picking himself up and retreated.

At the base of a broad-branched banyan tree, the quivering, emotional wreck of a man huddled beneath the tree's shade. As a man, he did not like to admit it, but he was a natural born coward, born to hide rather than fight. His only shield had just been ripped to ribbons right before his eyes, there was no hiding from these prehistoric monsters now. Without Alan, he was nothing more than a pathetic little weasel in this merciless, dinosaur-eat-dinosaur world.

"Shane, I need you to toughen up a little. You can't keep going on like this, stuttering and jumping outta' your skin at the slightest sound. Ya' gotta' man up if you're going to face what's beyond your comfort zone. Its crazy scary out there, I know, but if you don't quit being like this something's going to gouge your eyes out in a second.So to get your inner fight out, I'm gonna let you go on that adventure I was talking about."

"Need me to toughen up..." Shane gasped, the lump in his throat beginning to soften. The five words repeated themselves again and again, and Shane began pondering over them. His cowardliness, the perpetual stutter seemingly ingrained in every word he spoke, he really was what Alan had made him out to be. The others! What would become of them if one man was dead while the other was a depressed wreck? And what about Jake, his arm still critically mauled, waiting for him to return and heal him. The raging maelstrom of thoughts and reckoning in his mind was getting fiercer and fiercer, shaking his soul to the core. And, just as suddenly as he had started, the storm subsided, and the decision was made.

Picking himself up on his scabbed, scratched legs, Shane edged out, growing ever more certain in his footsteps, emerging from under the comforting shade of the banyan and came to face the big, wide wilderness, with its rushing deltas, never-ending forests and colossal mountaintops. What Alan had set out to do by bringing him along had successfully been accomplished, and Shane knew, deep down inside, that he was going to save Jake, that he was going to be the one to step up and lead his companions out of this prehistoric hellhole.

The morning sun began to intensify, and Shane's spine began to mark out in sweat at the back of his shirt. Hunger began to gnaw at the walls of his stomach, and he clutched it, trying to restrain his pangs. He dug around in his pocket, fishing for any leftover berries or meat, before finding his grip on a couple wild fruit, warmed and softened but still edible. Lifting them to his teeth, he munched, scanning the landscape once more.

The  delta outlet was beginning to diverge even more, some channels snaking off into the treeline, while other flowed towards a series of colossal, craggy mountains situated in the distance. The last channel was flowing into a grove of peculiar-looking trees. Shane squinted, before his eyes widened in remembering what they were. Mangroves, he thought, looking at their oddball roots, the curved appendages emerging out of the ground much more than regular roots. The ends of the roots too stuck out of the ground like brown cones, dotting the marshy ground like seasoning on a freshly-roasted spring chicken.