I followed his gaze.
Three round holes were punched through the pit wall. Just above the fracture line.
Bullet holes.
My gut dropped. "Did you shoot the wall?" I bellowed, rage spiking through me.
His face flickered with guilt. His stance didn't deny it. He shifted the rifle higher on his back and took a step toward the ladder, eyes darting like he'd just realized how badly he'd screwed up.
I glanced toward Zeus. My horse was still where I'd left him, head down against the sleeting rain, but he was getting skittish.
Water now gushed from the rim in a relentless torrent, and the pit was filling fast. Muddy runoff swirled around their ankles, rising higher with every thunderclap.
"You bloody idiots!" I shouted. "Get out of the hole before you drown!"
"No!" the woman yelled, glaring up at me through a curtain of rain. "These ancient fossils are precious. If this storm's as bad as it looks, the entire site could be compromised."
Thunder exploded overhead, the sound ripping through earth and sky. The ground beneath my boots turned to sludge, and a stream of mud poured into the pit.
"I don't give a shit about your bones!" I crouched near the skull by the rim. It was the size of a goddamn engine block. That thing wasn't going anywhere. "You have no right to any of those fossils. This land is mine."
"Yeah! Well, this ancient graveyard is mine!" she shot back, fierce enough that her neck tendons bulged. "And it's not just a fossil, it's a new species!"
What the hell?
Another crack boomed overhead. The far wall shifted, and a fracture split open across the weakest point.
That wall is gonna blow.
"Charlie, we gotta go!" the man shouted. He grabbed a kit bag and slogged through knee-deep water toward the ladder.
"No, Doug. I can't!" She yanked out another tarp and dragged it over the biggest ribcage I'd ever seen. The damn woman thought she could hold back a tsunami with a tarp.
A roar thundered behind me.
"Oh fuck!" I jumped back as a wall of water roared over the ridge, plowing over a tent as if it wasn’t even there and charging straight for me.
Zeus reared and moved away putting distance between him and the mud.
The torrent divided into two. Half of it blasted into the creek, doubling its size. The other half became a waterfall of sludge pouring into the pit, crashing between Charlie and Doug, and smashing a rib cage to pieces.
I dropped to my belly, and gripped the edge. "Get out of there!"
"Charlie, come on!" Doug charged through muddy water toward her.
"Move!" I barked. "That pit's about to collapse!"
The far wall groaned like a wounded beast.
She spun toward the sound. Her jaw dropped. Her gaze snapped to me, and the fear in her eyes carved straight through me.
"Get on the ladder!" I shouted.
The far wall exploded outward in a deafening roar and a wave of clay, bones, and red sludge ripped through the pit. The ground tilted as the entire ledge gave way, and the water surged toward the ravine like a drain plug had been pulled.
"Hang on!" I jumped to my feet and raced along the rim, boots skidding, mud sucking at my heels. The earth beneath me trembled as though it might go, too.
A flash of silver tarp spun out of the hole. A dinosaur skull the size of a boulder tumbled after it.