The dinosaur slowed a few notches, opened its great jaws, and then slammed its face downward. Charlie didn’t make a sound until those incredible, shark-like teeth broke her flesh. The pain shook her from the reverie and shock. Her self-destruction was too late to overturn. Blood showered in a Tom Savini-like flow as Charlie’s upper portion detached at the thighs. For a heartbeat, those legs remained standing, twin fleshy spikes, before tumbling sideways.
“Get up!” David slammed his fist against the stock from where he hid amidst the mushroom’s folds.
The dinosaur focused and Dick focused. It made a fresh call, followed by a snorted whistle as it chewed Charlie to bits. Dick started climbing. Surprisingly, it was only a little tougher than climbing a ladder. At the top, David and Tanya helped pull him into the orange folds of the underside of the cap.
“What do we—?” Dick started but was cut off by David. “No sounds.”
They remained still as possible and silent. The dinosaur sniffed, its beak whistling with each big breath. It circled the mushroom. On the eastern side, it stepped into the river and popped back out, made an annoyed noise, and then returned to the legs. The beast ate and then plunked down before the mushroom.
Dinosaur brains hold enough to remember food location, but not for the long term. Tanya thought her body might fall apart if she didn’t soon get down to the ground. Dick had found a good nook in which to lean more fully, so long as he maintained balance. David had done this a million times before and could wait days if necessary.
It wasn’t necessary and eventually the dinosaur climbed to its feet, yawned, and started away in a trot. The orange light swallowed it up.
David said, “Okay,” and dropped down, straight to the ground.
Tanya climbed down next, getting halfway and dropping as her weary limbs gave out. She landed with a double thump and then whined—it hadn’t been an easy day. Dick came down slowly and stepped to the ground.
All three of them were bright orange, dusty and grimy with the mushroom stuff.
David looked to Tanya, assuming her in charge. “I am supposed to get you, and then with the others, we can get out. Me too. I want to get to the before times place.”
“What?” Tanya sat up, rubbing various body parts, tears cutting lines in the mushroom powder on her cheeks.
9
Tuesday, April 29, 2019: 8:17PM
They walked and David filled in Tanya and Dick on the pertinent bits of his family’s history. Tanya had much the same reaction Stevie did to the inbreeding, while Dick had to remember to breathe between questions concerning the animals and plants. The answers came calmly, as if discussing the ingredients of a peanut butter and jam sandwich. Nonplussed at the fact they were existing in an anomaly that spanned several million years, possibly one hundred million years. Hell, maybe longer.
Dick had to shake his head.
Tanya never became so easy. Who in the hell cared what the bastards were? They ate people. Also, how the hell did they get out? And, how wise was it to take instruction from David? His gene pool had been shallowed to the size of a toilet bowl.
“More of the buildings that were partially standing have fallen.” Dick looked around. They’d heard some crashing during their quick and jittering trip across the rubble of the former Happy Village. They ducked and dodged, trusted David’s instincts and directions far enough never to question. He’d lived this life here; he’d evolved in this savage landscape. Dick understood when he wasn’t the wisest brain in the group. “Must be—”
“Tank-pigs are knocking them down.” David held up his hand and listened. The air had cooled a touch and the quality of light had lessened. A group chittering approached. “Snake-chickens,” David whispered and then grinned. He tore out from the lip of the home’s foundation they’d crouched behind and into the thick light.
“Can’t lose him.” Dick took a step and then a bird flapped erratically at about eye-level before dropping onto its side. “Jesus!”
It righted itself, but David was back and on the chase. He was about two steps behind when he lashed out a foot and stomped on the tail of the creature. It flopped helplessly, unable to do anything of use with its broken tail.
“That’s one of those things from your picture, right?” Tanya whispered, standing next to Dick. “Like from Jurassic Park, but small.”
“A Velociraptor. Incredible.”
The thing hissed and swung vicious-looking claws. Unconcerned, David bent and grabbed the dino-birdy by the tail and smashed it twice until it fought no more. “In case the others didn’t find any before times food.”
They walked another twenty minutes before the grand sounds of destruction filled the air. The bank came into view—what was left of it. Peter, Emily, and Stevie had pressed themselves against the vault door. Six tank-pigs ran a tight circle around them.
Had Dick thought David or Tanya would care at all, he would’ve told them the tank-pigs were obvious relations of the nodosaur. He didn’t think they would, so he watched in quiet horror.
Tank-pig was a pretty good name. They were wily, rough, and destructive. There was no point to crushing the buildings aside from crushing them. In the modern world, they might’ve been put to use after some generational breeding and battering left them docile until commanded otherwise. Like water buffalo. A sick thought.
“What do we do?” Tanya hid behind a sideways F-150. The driver was a pressed mess on the ground beneath. Seeing that stuff had quickly become the norm and no longer fazed them, even with the fact Tanya knew this guy’s name and where he lived and what kind of scratch tickets he preferred.
“Nothing. Hope they get bored or tired and go away.” David stood in the open, dead Velociraptor still in his hand.
“They’ll kill them.” Dick was looking around, but for what, he couldn’t say. “We have to do something.”
David picked up a chunk of stone and ran as close as he dared, winged the chunk at the parading animals, missed. He picked up another and nailed one in the back. It didn’t notice and continued circling. Returning in a jog, his face holding a strange expression that made Dick wonder, from an anthropological standpoint, if this was the equivalent of shrugging and holding palms up.
With no other options, they waited.
The tank-pigs weren’t only interested in toppling the final piece—the door and doorway framework to the vault remained mostly in place. Every third or fourth pass, one would veer and knock into the slab of steel. Peter and Emily’s shrieks carried over the din in those moments. Stevie looked a mixture of sick and furious.
Then, as if called away, one tank-pig took an elongated route, stretching the circle. A second followed and gaps formed. A third joined its brethren, still charging at a tremendous speed, but covering triple the distance it had before.
This left three running in a tight circle. David made that face, or something close to it, then sprinted to the edge of the worn smooth track and then broke hard on the backs of his heels. One of the tank-pigs veered toward him and he had to run hard and dive quickly to avoid being gored by a snout horn.
Brick dusts and asphalt chunks burst free, rolling and tumbling around David—he barrelled in behind a cropping of pipes from the town’s waterworks. The tank-pig took three steps right, then four left, searching for its target. It broke when it saw a new thing it wanted pulverized and creamed a fire hydrant and then a Silverado.
David took his chance and was out of the beast’s view and mind. He ran a roundabout journey back to Dick and Tanya.
“You’re crazy,” Tanya said, admiration thick in her voice.
“That didn’t go so great.” David huffed, his heartbeat showing through the skin just below his ribcage.
“Now what?” Dick asked, peering across to the crushed clearing. The trapped trio were waving and yelling for help, but what could they do? “If you did that again, maybe you could get another away and then…”
David pouted his lip. “I was trying to get to them, not what
happened. I don’t want to live here no more. I want to live in the before times place. They said we could all go if I got you.”
“Is that so?” Dick sighed. “I hope they don’t make liars of themselves.”
A loud, metallic clang rang out. They looked over and Peter was on the ground, and the tank-pigs were banging the vault remains. Emily was coming across the worn track. Stevie had a stake of wood, eyeing a beast.
“Come on!” Emily shouted, turning, running backward, then tripping. “Oof.”
Peter was on his feet, running toward Emily. “Come on!”
David raced in the direction of the chaos.
Stevie was losing it, freaking. He was filthy and had dried blood in his hair and on his arms. By his feet were sleeves of chocolate-covered waffle cones.
“Steee-veee!” Emily squealed.
David burned by Emily and Peter, heading directly for Stevie.
“Steee-veee!”
Stevie turned upon hearing his name again, dropping the stake, running. He slowed a moment, thinking David was coming to help him, but David blew by. Stevie watched in something like disbelief as David grabbed the cone bags, sending half the contents flying.
Stevie was running hard then.
David charged by him like he wasn’t moving at all.
10
Tuesday, April 29, 2019: 10:57PM
Jim Beam and Lazy Susan hid just out of sight and watched as their brother David disobeyed orders and moved with the strange visitors. He led them to a thick mushroom patch and then squeezed within, out of sight.
They lessened the distance and listened.
“…follow river out. Probably the best bet.”
“The river goes down. Goes to the bad side.” The brother and sister duo recognized David’s voice. “Bad side is full of dinos. Mediums and big ones. Maybe not many big ones, but it only takes one bite, then…” He made a sploosh noise.
“Have you ever been over there?”
“One time.”
“You made it back here fine.”
“Okay.”
“The river might go into a cavern and dip right out to the river. The salmon have no problems moving, might only be a mile. Maybe we can build a raft.”
“It’s real big over there.” Fear gilded David’s tone.
“In reality, it might be weeks before anybody gets to us otherwise.”
“What’s weeks?”
The duo had heard enough and ran back to tell their grandmother. The day had been good and they’d found many good things, but this was news that would anger her. It angered them as well. David Bowie Bowtie was always causing trouble.
Part Three
A Big, Bad Place
1
Wednesday, April 30, 2019: 3:55AM
Dick wasn’t being totally honest with the others or himself. The rescue teams would probably show up sooner rather than later, see what happened, and attempt contact as quickly as possible. Sometimes rescues took weeks, but he doubted that would be the issue. Holes in the stone ceiling would exist and emergency services would drop in on ropes to assess that trouble.
They’d send ready teams in, not only to rescue the survivors—and there had to be more than just the five of them—but to explore this lost world. Explore the opportunity Dick would be giving up. Sure, he felt a little guilty about lying to the others, pushing his needs on them behind an inflated sense of distrust in rescue, but he needed this. This was everything.
He rested his head on a mushroom cap. It smelled of fresh dirt and let him keep watch of the fat yellowy-white worms that lived in the moss, as well as the strange mosquito-like flies that appeared to feed on the glowing dust in and on the mushrooms, as well as blood, according to David.
The boy was an ignorant sage, had words and stories for everything down there, but how much of it was true? None of it met the tough eye of science, aside from the skeletal remains of Velociraptors that had died in the last century instead of eighty million years prior.
The boy was terrified of the world beyond a curtain of climbing and dangling moss, through a cavernous hall that existed just down the river. It had much of the same as the huge chamber they were in now, so he said, but it was so much bigger over there, and much warmer.
Far enough down, the volcanic activity could’ve gone unseen forever. Especially since nobody was looking. The majority of the planet is still a great mystery that nobody has funding to research. Scratch that—that nobody with sufficient funding cares to research. The world above has foregone true wealth for the short-sightedness of financial profit. Well here he was, about to do a preliminary find for nothing but the time it takes and the sweat on his back.
Death was a possibility, but death could come at any moment; it’s something nobody can truly prepare against because it’s inevitable.
Dick’s eyes widened as he suddenly thought of Wayne Thomas and his mine bunker. The mines dipped deep into the earth only a couple miles north of where they sat, ran below the garden shed behind his house. How close were those early miners to discovering this incredible place? Had someone of them found it? And where David’s grandmother slipped down, was that part of the mine? And, holy shit, was the reason Wayne Thomas spent so much time out by himself, secretly working on that bunker, a ruse to live and explore this lost world? Did he have an access point?
None of that mattered now. Dick tried to calm his heartrate. He needed rest. He’d kept his cellphone with him—somehow, even with teens around, he was the only one to manage that feat—and recognized the late hour and suggested they head out in the morning.
Time didn’t matter, but here he was, wasting it like a kid the night before Christmas, too excited about what lay beneath the tree. He let his eyes play on the sleeping figures around him. Peter was a starfish, three huge, though seemingly harmless, worms on his left pant leg, scavenging from something caked there. Tanya lay in a similar position to himself, head on a mushroom cap, body in a relaxed fetal coil. Stevie draped his arm over Emily, spooning around her for comfort. And David was on his side, knees bent, hand under his cheek, eyes slightly open, not sleeping at all.
Caught looking, Dick snapped his lids and tried to get some rest.
2
Wednesday, April 30, 2019: 5:19AM
A bed, by God, a bed. She didn’t need to go back to the surface, didn’t need her shameful family paraded around. They’d be infamous, a freakshow. She now had everything she needed without ever going back.
After the sky fell in and rained a town, the family began scavenging. She’d sent the small children north, thinking they wouldn’t hurt themselves on debris, thinking they could roam around familiar territory but still feel like they did something. Hours later, they came back with cans of fruit and promises of more, hundreds and hundreds of cans rolling around a place they’d never seen before. Somewhere smooth with strange blue-white lighting that did not come from mushroom caps.
Jane followed them to where they’d found the cans. The ceiling had crumbled and cracked some over there, but very little. She’d ordered everyone to stay where they were and she climbed a cropping of rock to the vertical crack. She shimmied sideways and ducked down and sucked in to get as skinny as she could be, then her feet touched a smoothness she hadn’t felt in years. Ice smooth.
Suddenly, lights flicked on and she was in a futuristic storage room with tube lights that worked automatically and cans and vacuum-sealed foods. She’d eaten like a pig all day, but seeing that package of beef jerky on the floor sent a flood to her mouth. She tore in and let the rich saltiness invade her mouth. Savoring the toughness, she played her eyes around the room. Many of the shelves still had dozens upon dozens of cans remaining. This was enough to feed her family for a decade, maybe more.
She turned and saw the door. The kids wouldn’t have known. Doorknobs weren’t part of their learned skillset.
Jane Hartman had reached out for the first time in more than forty years to turn a door handle. It clicked and pushed. The
re was another room, a grand room, revealing itself as the lights played into life one after the other. Tables and chairs, cupboards, a long hall of doors. She called out, quietly, praying nobody lived there, thinking she’d murder for that stash of food.
No answer returned to her.
She started down the hall, her bare feet chilly against the painted cement floor. She came to another door and nudged it open. The lights flickered on as she stepped in. Behind her, the hall light died.
“Sorry,” she’d gasped, about to run, seeing the naked and waiting figure with her legs spread and one hand on her thigh and the other tweaking a pointy nipple. But she didn’t run because the woman did not move. Jane stepped closer, reached out, and touched the foot. It felt like a real foot, but cooler. “Are you dead?”
Her hand went higher, pinching and poking. The woman didn’t move.
Jane looked to the bedside table. There were lubricants, handcuffs, and what looked like a remote, but much, much slimmer than the remotes she remembered. It had buttons so Jane pressed the big red one that read POWER in fine white script beneath.
“Fuck me, baby.”
The woman on the bed was alive and moving her hands. The hand on the thigh moved toward the somewhat swollen pink genitals. Jane hit the button again and the woman stopped. It was obvious then, in the future people fucked robots.
She set down the remote and backed out of the room. The lights did their power swap. Out in the hall, she ignored the remaining doors, imagining different robot women, maybe one for every household chore, or maybe just a variety to fuck.
She came upon the opening that was the living room. A man lied on the floor, bled out and cold. It hit Jane then. This was a bunker. Her immediate thought was that Canada had been invaded and this man was military and that perhaps a platoon was…but the sex robot.
Great Big Teeth Page 7