Dragons Teeth Crichton 2017 (WWT)

Sternberg went out and shot an antelope for dinner, the herd hardly responded. But Johnson later
remembered that Cookie had said to Cope, “Shall I unhitch the wagon tonight?” and Cope looked at
the sky and said thoughtfully, “Better not tonight.”
Meanwhile the antelope was butchered, and the flesh was found to be crawling with maggoty
parasites. Cookie announced he had eaten worse, but they decided on a meal of biscuits and beans
instead. Johnson recorded that “I am already thoroughly sick of beans, with six more weeks of them
still before me.”
But it was not all bad. They ate, sitting on a rocky outcrop beside the camp and watched the buffalo
tinge with red as the sun set behind them. And then, in the light of the moon, the shaggy shapes, and the
occasional distant snorting of the creatures, made “a vision of great majesty stretching away
peacefully before us. Such were my thoughts as I turned in for a much-needed sleep.”
Lightning cracked the sky at midnight, and the rain began again.
Grumbling and swearing, the students dragged their sleeping outfits under the wagon. Almost
immediately, the rain stopped.
They rolled on the hard ground, trying to get back to sleep. “Hell,” Morton said, sniffing. “What is
that smell?”
“You’re lyin’ in horseshit,” Toad said.
“Oh God, it’s true.”
They were laughing at Morton’s predicament, with the steady rumble of thunder still in their ears.
Then suddenly Cope ran around the wagon, rudely kicking them. “Up! Up! Are you mad? Get up!”
Johnson glanced up, and saw Sternberg and Isaac hastily loading the camp equipment, flinging it
into the wagon; the wagon began to move over their heads as they scrambled out beneath. Cookie and
Little Wind were shouting to each other.
Johnson ran to Cope. His hair was matted down by the rain; his eyes were wild. Overhead the
moon raced among storm clouds.
“What is it?” Johnson shouted over the rumbling thunder. “Why are we moving?”
Cope shoved him roughly away. “The lee of the rocks! Get in the lee of the rocks!” Isaac had
already gotten the wagon near the rocky outcrop, and Cookie was struggling with the horses, which
snorted and reared, agitated. The students stared at each other, not understanding.
And then Johnson realized the rumble they were hearing was not thunder. It was the buffalo.
Terrorized by the lightning, the buffalo stampeded past the men in a wet, dense river of flesh that
flowed around the rocks on both sides. They were all spattered by copious quantities of mud; for
Johnson, it was a peculiar sensation, in that “the mud covered our clothing, our hair, our faces, and
we grew heavier as we became transformed into mud-men, until finally we were all bowed over by
the immense weight of it.”
They eventually could see nothing, and could only listen to the thundering hooves, the snorting and
grunting, as the dark shapes hurtled past them, ceaselessly. It seemed as if it went on forever.
In fact, the herd had stampeded past them, without interruption, for two hours.