"No explosion" Malcolm muttered. "And not even communications from Kemp. Something must have happened"

Dreyfus just nodded as he continued to massage his hands. The old mayor knew something must have gone wrong.

According to the plan, the soldiers were to blow up the quarry with the dinosaurs inside and bury them under thirty-five meters of rock. A simple, quick and clean work. However, no explosion had yet occurred despite the troops had been gone for a few hours. The quarry wasn't too far away, so the bang should have been heard in the city. But no sound had violated the peace of the night, and Kemp's radio silence didn't help to decrease Dreyfus's anxiety.

"I will issue an evacuation order. We'll take refuge in the sewers" the mayor said, raising his head. "They are underground and many of the vents are narrow. They are made of reinforced concrete and protected by several meters of earth and rock, so they won't be able to break through. The dinosaurs will probably chase us, but the narrow space could allow us to resist. The bigger ones won't be able to enter, we will only have to deal with the smaller ones, which are more easy to fight"

"We won't last a few days. We have few weapons, few ammunition and few supplies, and even the smallest dinosaurs have claws and teeth, and we don't even know if they haven't learned to use weapons themselves" Malcolm pointed out. "And even if the dinosaurs chose to not chase us, we would all die from malnutrition or asphyxiation"

"I know, but maybe reinforcements will arrive in time and rescue us. It is impossible that what happened goes unnoticed, within a few days our army... and probably also the ones of other nations... will be here. We'll just have to hang on until then" Dreyfus said. It was clear from his tone of voice that he didn't believe it either and that he was just trying to give himself a little hope. "Go get your family and go ahead of me. I will warn the population and..."

BOOOOM!!!

Both Dreyfus and Malcolm jumped at the sound and the floor of the room shook slightly. The two men looked into each other's eyes and the same thought crossed the minds of both: the sound of the explosion was too close to come from the quarry. The two rushed to the window and from there they could see the east walls of the city collapse and a huge cloud of dust rising beneath them. A few moments later several shadows began to appear through the gap, shadows roaring and quickly scattering through the streets, breaking through the doors of the houses and breaking into the apartments. Soon the screaming began.

"They have arrived. We have no more time!" Dreyfus exclaimed. "Go and save yourself, Malcolm! I will try to organize a weak defense to keep them busy for a little more time..."

***********

As he'd promised Malcolm, Abe had stayed with Ellie and Alexander through the night. Ellie had been very hospitable to him and despite the difficult situation Alexander had still managed to laugh and joke with him, trying to get more information from him about his work as a 'secret agent'. After a while, the woman and the boy had gone to sleep, but Abe had stayed up to watch over the house. Having received training as a soldier, he knew when was the right time to sleep and when not, and certainly the time when an ultimatum was in progress was not right. And his prediction turned out to be correct: since he was awake, he was the first to hear the roar.

In the istant when he had heard the explosion he jumped up and ran to look out the window, only to see the walls collapse and hear the sound of thousands of furious roars in his ears. It took his brain only a couple of seconds to figure out what was going on. The man rushed to the entrance of the house, almost in danger of slipping and falling, where he found Ellie and Alexander already standing and clearly frightened by the rude awakening.

"Abe, what's going on?" Alexander exclaimed. Like many others, he still hadn't understood what had just happened.

"The dinosaurs blew up the walls! They must have used the C4 that Kemp wanted to use against them!" Abe quickly explained. "We have to get out of here, and fast!"

"What? Are they attacking now?" Alexander was increasingly scared. "Where is my father?"

"Where can we go?" Ellie intervened. "Even escaping with a vehicle, they will reach us"

"Didn't you hear me? I asked for my father!" Alexander yelled furiously.

"I don't know where it is! He is a strong and clever man, he will be able to get away with it! Now you have to think about yourself!" Abe scolded him, silencing him. "Now we can only hide underground. We have to go to the sewers, or in a even lower location... a dark, deep and narrow place where it is difficult for the dinosaurs to follow us"

"We're going to die of asphyxiation in there" Ellie pointed out. Unlike the more modern sewers of the more civilized countries, the ones of Cartago did not have ventilation, consequently there was a risk of running out of oxygen inside them.

"We will take the risk. The sewers are a labyrinth and the stench will cover our smell. They're narrow, so the dinosaurs won't be able to attack us all at once, and we won't have to deal with the bigger ones. It won't be easy for the dinosaurs to find and capture us there" Abe said. "Take only the food and the essentials. Let's go straight to..."

The entrance doors suddenly exploded into numerous fragments of wood that spilled onto the floor. Abe clearly felt some splinters hit him and had to turn away to protect his eyes. When he managed to look back to where the door used to be he found only a hole in the wall through which a stegosaurus' tail passed, probably the same one that had torn the door apart like a toothpick.

Several dromeosaurs entered and surrounded them. Abe grabbed a piece of the door and Ellie did the same. They were poor weapons, but that was all they had.

Abe darted his gaze to every corner of the room. The nearest window was two meters from him, but if he had tried to reach it the dromeosaurs would have stopped him: they were much faster than him. There was no way to escape, therefore: he could only fight, even though he knew it would be a useless fight. But just as he was preparing to start his travel into the afterlife one of the dromeosaurs spoke: "Drop your weapons and we won't do you any harm!"

Abe's eyes widened. That was an option that he hadn't even taken into account: were the dinosaurs willing to accept their surrender?

"Why should we trust you?" Alexander asked.

"Because we don't need to lie. You are outnumbered and your weapons cannot harm us. If we wanted to kill you, we would have already done it" the dromeosaurus replied. "Do as I tell you and throw away your weapons. It's your last chance"

Abe took a deep breath. The dromeosaur wasn't lying: there was no way they could win. And if the dinosaurs wanted to eliminate them, they could have done it right away. They had no reason to deceive or lie to them: they could have killed all three of them without even hurting themselves. Even if with much reluctance, Abe threw the piece of door that he had in his hands away.

"Abe?" Alexander whispered in confusion.

"Do as he says" the big man ordered, raising his hands in surrender. Ellie and Alexander didn't move for a moment, then they decided to listen to him and dropped their weapons as well.

"Wise decision" the dromeosaurus said. "Now follow us. And don't try to play cunning. We're keeping an eye on you, if you try to do something stupid we will tear your liver apart! You are warned"

The three humans were led out of the house and could finally see what was happening. On the streets, thousands of people were herded together and kept under surveillance by the larger dinosaurs, while the smaller dinosaurs broke into houses and dragged other people out. Abe, Ellie and Alexander were herded together with the group of humans, most of them sweaty and terrified more than ever in their lives.

That situation persisted for almost an hour. Then, finally, the dinosaurs ordered them to move and pushed the humans towards the central square.