The Snuggled Dinosaur

Looking all around, all Johnny could see was destruction.

Lives lost needlessly in the most painful of circumstances. Body parts littered what looked like every square inch of the courtyard, but why had he been spared? He was a lowly navigator with no real value to his name.

He could see nothing that could offer a clue and only assume that everyone was dead. He was now alone, with no way of signalling for help.

Taking a deep breath he swallowed the fear and thought of his wife at home, his children who would be starting school and his turtle. His family to put it simply gave him strength and that is what he needed right there and then. Something to silence the screams in his head, which were pleading with him to run.

He ignored the voices and continued forward gallantly. Through the mounds of body parts, both human and reptile, stopping on occasion to check for weapons as he was unarmed.

Managing to pick an AK47 from the piles he reached the end and stared out at the endless countryside ahead of him. It was intimidating but he had no choice, he needed to call for help. He clung to the hope that through the endless trees there was the hope of rescue.

This country had long abandoned hope, voting for a change that never existed, being taken advantage of by unscrupulous individuals. It was not going to help him easily. What mattered was that he stayed alive for as long as humanly possible in order to contact his family.

What felt like days went past and he found nothing, just his thoughts, alongside endless trees and a hunger that would not be satisfied by apples. These were the only thing growing in the forest and tasted weirdly like Strawberries.

More and more time passed by and the thirst was starting to niggle at him. He had streams and bottles but no matter how much he drank, it didn’t seem to make a difference, living in perpetual thirst and hunger.

He needed a release and decided to lose his clothes and stop eating for a day. It didn’t help and on the seventh day he was met by a creature he had thought extinct for thousands of years.

Looking him up and down, the creature sniffed every part of him in excruciating detail, before leaving and he sat shaking under the biggest tree he could find. What had he signed up for and what was going on here?

The country had been quiet for years after their borders were sealed and the world had carried on without them. No one had really missed them, despite their destructive history. Then almost ten years to the day the silence ended almost as quickly as it had started.

A signal was sent, which proclaimed to the world that the country was once again open. An invitation was sent to each nation to bring two representatives in order to see the future. That was all it said and naturally it sparked intrigue, with the conclusion coming in the form of Johnny’s taskforce. They had been sent to the coordinates in the message to deem if it was safe.

It was not and as soon as the last member of the team had stepped onto the ground, they had been attacked. Out of the trees the jaws came crashing down and Johnny ran inside, away from the fighting. A coward you could call him but you have to understand the circumstances. His wife and he had been childhood sweethearts and he couldn’t lose her after 30 years of marriage. His job was to navigate only and that’s all he was going to do.

He had heard the screams through the doors and shed a tear. He didn’t know those around him but to hear all of that destruction and not shed a tear would have been a failure of his humanity.

Once the screams had stopped, he stepped outside and walked cautiously over to the courtyard. Now he was naked in the middle of the forest after a creature from the depths of history had sniffed him up and down. It was something that he would never forget, wondering how he had gotten there but vowed not to die and climbed to the top of the tree.

Up there he saw the evening sky and the stars. They were beautiful, yet he expected to be cold and was surprised not to be. This land had certainly fallen but to what? The rules of life were obsolete here and he had no idea what to expect next, yet needed to keep going and so he climbed down.

As soon as he landed, three creatures appeared from the forest and sniffed him up and down. He attempted to walk away slowly but they followed him and when he tried to run, they jumped and held him down. Taking him back to their lair, they held him close, snuggling until daybreak.

To say that he was terrified would have been an understatement but what could he do?