He slid to a stop. Underfoot, the soft swampy ground changed. Hard. Hot. Sparkly. It smelled like dead stuff. And yucky other things too. Chemically things. Garbage things. Rex tried to bite the hard stuff. Tasted bad. Gritty. Hurt his teeth. Not food.
A rumbling sound came bouncing down the hard ground. It growled, sounded angry. Fight? Rex craned his neck to see what had challenged him. It was a shiny beast with one huge, glassy eye. It charged at him, loud and snarling. It looked ferocious. No teeth but still mean. Bigger than Rex. Fight or… Run! Rex jumped back and the beast roared by. Its disappearing fluffy gray tail stank like burnt things. Stung Rex’s nose. He snorted.
A new smell floated on the breeze, coming from the other side of the hard ground. Meat! He looked and listened for the charge of another one-eyed beast. Nothing. Run! He raced across the hard stuff, his claws skittering and scraping, and picked up the delicious scent again.
Food, food, food! He ran, the rumble in his stomach controlling his legs, like he was just a passenger along for the ride. And the meat. He was definitely along for that.
Rex didn’t notice the other stretch of black ground until he was on it. He slipped, lost his balance, and rolled forward, slamming hard into another one-eyed shiny beast.
The creature screamed a high-pitched pulsating howl that made Rex’s ears ring and his heart race. Adrenaline flooded his blood. Fight! Rex rolled back onto his feet and then leapt onto the creature’s back. He slashed at it with his claws, cut long silver lines in its weird scale-less skin. It didn’t bleed, but didn’t stop howling, either. He kept slashing and slashing—slashing felt good, almost as good as biting. Then suddenly he fell into the beast’s insides. Meat? He sank his teeth into the hide that covered its guts and ripped it apart, pulling out white fluffy stuff and flinging it around. He slashed at everything, cut it all to pieces. Finally, with one last dying wheeze, the beast became quiet. Dead.
Rex climbed out of the creature’s belly, proud of his first kill, though it didn’t taste good or like anything he wanted eat, which was disappointing. Then he turned and realized that he wasn’t alone. He stood in the middle of an entire herd of the creatures. They stared at him, silent, still, ready to pounce, singular eyes glinting stupidly. Too many to fight.
Run! He burst from the pack with incredible speed, slapped one with his tail as he went, which had been an accident but not altogether unpleasant. The lumbering beasts stood no chance of catching him moving at such a fast pace.
He rounded a corner and froze. A huge creature—or maybe it was a cave, the kind humans lived in—blocked his path. Maybe TJ was in there. Maybe this would be Rex’s chance to win him back, to prove that he wasn’t a menace, that they were still friends, that accidents happened and sometimes limbs were eaten or whatever. It really wasn’t a big deal, was it? It was just a hand, after all. Rex would make it up to TJ. He had to. He sniffed the air then blew out again, a fine spray of dino boogers coating the clear hard stuff at the front of the cave.
A mesmerizing smell came wafting through the cave’s opening. It wasn’t TJ, but it was a smell he recognized, like something he’d eaten at home. Salty, like the time he’d licked TJ’s face so big his tongue had gotten in TJ’s eye. It put him in a food trance. His body moved on its own. The odor pulled him toward the door on the promise of yumminess, and he was helpless to do anything but obey.
Rex broke out of his stupor when he spotted the creature standing guard. It looked familiar. Like a lizard, but different. Like him, but different. It was a winged animal the color of TJ’s favorite Batman pajamas, and it was carrying a boy on its back. Another creature like him…with a pet boy? A surge of happiness heated Rex’s cold blood. If this boy and animal could be together, maybe that meant… He inched closer to it, pressed his nose to the hard clear stuff again. Two steamy circles took shape then disappeared as Rex breathed. He snorted a greeting in universal lizard language to introduce himself, but the creature didn’t answer. It just stared. Rex turned his head to the side so his arms could reach the glass and flapped them around, scratching and clawing to get the animal’s attention. No response.
He looked up at the young human riding on the creature, laughing. Friends. TJ was his friend. Used to be. He whimpered, and then thought of the only thing that mattered anymore. Food.
A little bell rang as Rex squeezed through the door. The two humans inside didn’t notice him, but he noticed them. The fat one behind the counter smelled like cheese doodles. “Tori, I told you to swap out that How to Train Your Dragon cutout,” he said. “It’s so old.”
The girl human sounded like a mouse, squeaky and frantic. “I like it. Toothless is adorbs. Wouldn’t you totally love to have a dragon?”
“No,” the doodle man said. “Those aren’t real dragons. Game of Thrones has real dragons. Have you seen what they can do?”
Rex sniffed the air and followed his nose to a red machine. The smell made his head swim and his stomach growl even more than it already was. Everything started to get foggy. Food foggy. All he could see was the food.
“What is that?” said something cheesy from behind him. “By the popcorn machine.”
“Oh my God. Is it a mouse? Because I will totes flip out if it’s a mouse.”
Mouse? Squishy. Delicious. Meat? Something screamed. The mouse? The cheese doodle? Though Rex thought his stomach might implode any second, he roared a greeting as loudly as he could to both introduce himself and to be polite. Humans seemed to like politeness, so the louder the better, he thought. He wanted to smash the red thing and stuff face on its insides, but he was trying to be a better dinosaur after the whole near dismemberment incident with TJ. He didn’t want to blow it with humans again.
Rex must not have had his pronunciation down quite right though because in response to his greeting—which truly had been wall-rattling and perfect—the cheesy human screamed words so quickly Rex couldn’t make them out. Then something hard struck Rex in the back of the head with a hollow thud. He tried to shake it off but the world become even foggier. And red. Everything was covered in red. Suddenly, he no longer cared about being polite, and the new better dinosaur plan flew right out the window. He heard the whistle as the hard thing came down and clocked him again. He spun, caught the weapon in his mouth, and snapped it to pieces. The humans screamed and squirmed like… meat.
Food! Rex jumped forward and landed on top of the living cheese doodle, who whacked him repeatedly in the head with the teensy piece of broom handle he still held. The mouse threw something else at him, and hot, bitter smelling brown stuff burned Rex’s eyes. He spun, confused, snapping his jaws. Through the red fog, he spotted the lizard and his boy, still laughing. Laughing at him. Threat. He lunged at them, smashing through the window. Fight! The black lizard didn’t even fight back as Rex ripped it to smithereens.
Looking at the bits of boy and lizard scattered on the ground, the fog began to clear. The world was not red anymore. The humans screamed and threw things at him, but Rex’s fight was over. They looked like TJ had the last time Rex had seen him. Scared.
Rex fought his instincts, but he couldn’t ignore the smell. He was super hungry, and those two humans wrapped in their weird human clothes looked like a couple of pigs in a blanket. He couldn’t eat them though—he wouldn’t. They were rude, but he knew TJ would be mad if he did. Instead, he ran back toward the woods like a scaly hurricane and disappeared among the trees.
Chapter Nineteen
The cut in his hand hurt more than TJ let on. He didn’t want Sam to worry. And part of him still couldn’t believe Rex had attacked him. He knew it had been a mistake. It had to have been. There was no way Rex would have hurt him on purpose.
But that look in his eyes. He hadn’t looked like the Rex TJ knew at all. He would have killed Eddie if TJ hadn’t been there. He might have killed TJ if Sam hadn’t intervened. Maybe he didn’t really know Rex after all.
How well can you really know a Tyrannosaurus rex you found in the swamp?
/> Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he noticed how bad the cut on his hand really was. “That’s a lot of blood,” he slurred as he slumped against a tree.
Sam spun on her heels. Obviously, she hadn’t realized how much TJ had fallen behind. Sure she was faster—girls were always faster than boys, or so she always told him—but not that much faster. “You idiot,” she snapped when she saw his hand. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“I just did.” The world spun around him. “Whoa, I’m starting to feel a little barfy.” The color drained from his face.
Sam’s jaw clenched. TJ thought at first it was from anger, which, he knew, was probably exactly what Sam wanted him to think. She didn’t like to blubber. Even a quivering lip was bad enough in her books. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.” She bit down so hard on that non-quivering lip it must have hurt. “You should have said something to me.”
TJ slumped a little further down the tree. He would have been scared if he weren’t so light-headed. “Okay, so, I need to get some more blood. Might be time for me to channel my inner vampire. Don’t worry, I’ll be one of the sparkly ones.”
Sam chuckled despite the fear bubbling up inside her. “We need to get you to the hospital.”
“No,” TJ said. “Everyone’s probably looking for us.”
Sam ducked down and looped TJ’s arm over her shoulder. She stood, taking most of his weight, and hoisted him onto his feet. “Yeah, hopefully one of those people can help. If you keep bleeding like that, your hand will probably fall off or something.”
“Then I’ll have to channel my inner zombie.” TJ made his best zombie face, which was probably pretty good considering how pale he must have been.
“Seriously, TJ, you need a doctor. I don’t know any vampires or zombies, and even if I did, I doubt you’re strong enough to survive the change right now anyway.”
TJ tried to muster a chuckle, but it died in his throat. Sam struggled to drag him. They only made it the ten yards to the edge of the woods when she had to stop to rest. A caravan of police cars, sirens blaring, raced by.
“Looks like they are looking for us,” Sam said. “But school is the other way. I wonder where they’re going.”
The cars stopped a block away, in front of Movie World, Greenmarsh’s only theater.
Sam shuffled across the street with TJ leaning on her shoulder but stayed out of sight of the police. She knew she needed to bring TJ to them. He definitely needed to get help. But she also knew that they were going to be in trouble. Big trouble. And they’d definitely take Rex. Or worse. She knew what typically happened to animals that attacked humans. She didn’t want to be responsible for hurting TJ like that. But what choice did she have?
They stopped in the alley next to Movie World. She leaned TJ against the wall, careful not to look him in the eyes so she didn’t lose her nerve. Just as she was about to step around the corner, TJ grabbed her arm.
“Wait,” he said. “Rex didn’t mean it. It was an accident.”
“Accident or not, you still need help.” Sam peeked around the corner, trying to get an idea of what would bring so many cops to the local Movie World. Jeff, the pretentious clerk, was standing out front on the sidewalk, which was covered in shards of glass.
Her curiosity got the better of her for a moment. She waited and listened.
Jeff stammered over himself, trying to say two things at once. “It was huge. But it must have been someone in a costume, right? It had to be! It was the best costume I’ve ever seen. Maybe a professional cosplayer? I’m a member of a local cosplay club. Some of the members aren’t too happy with my proposal to ban all Harry Potter costumes. I can work up a list of suspects if you want them. Surprisingly, they’re all Hufflepuff.”
The officer taking his statement scratched her head as if trying to sort through his frantic rambling. “Wait, you said someone in a costume did this? What kind of costume?”
“A dinosaur,” Jeff said. “Or maybe Godzilla. But the new Hollywood Godzilla, not the classic Japanese one. Or maybe it was Godzuki, Godzilla’s son. Did you know Godzilla had a son?”
The officer shook her head and squeezed the bridge of her nose. Two others started talking as soon as Jeff mentioned a dinosaur. “Sounds like the thing at the school,” one said. “Better call it in. Chief says we got orders from some government muckety mucks to keep them in the loop about this case.”
Sam tried to swallow the lump in her throat. She didn’t want to turn Rex over to the government, or mad scientists, or anyone for that matter. Maybe Rex hadn’t meant to hurt TJ, but he had, and she’d seen that look in his eye. That wild animal look. What if that was who Rex really was, and the friendly pet they had been hanging out with was just a passing phase? Or worse, fake? What if Rex went cuckoo again, and no one was able to stop him? Then what?
The other officer’s hand instinctively moved to the gun on his hip. “If this really is some kind of freak lizard, I say we just shoot the thing and let the suits sort it out later. I’d rather keep this thing from hurting anyone else than suck up to the feds.”
Sam slunk back into the alley beside TJ before any of the officers noticed her. She didn’t want Rex to hurt anyone, but she didn’t want Rex to get hurt, either.
What do I do?
TJ groaned and shuddered next to her. His eyes were glossy, and he couldn’t seem to keep his lids open anymore.
The weight of decision was crushing. Either way, she felt like she was responsible for someone getting hurt. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She let time slow down around her as she debated with herself.
Her eyes shot open, alight with determination. “The heck with this,” she said and hoisted TJ onto his feet again. “You need a doctor. I know a good one.” She dragged TJ down the alley to the street behind Movie World, which was only a few blocks from where they needed to be.
***** ***** *****
Police cars and ambulances and fire engines could be heard not far off. Their sirens looked like the Northern Lights on the horizon. Doc had heard something on his police scanner earlier in the day about a disturbance at the school. He prayed that it was nothing serious, hopefully just some foolish prank, a kid pulling the fire alarm, but he’d seen on the news time and again how awful things could really get. And considering the response… An ache in his gut told him that someone had gotten hurt.
The whistle of his teakettle made him jump. He’d been so focused on watching the commotion from his front porch that he completely forgot he’d put it on. He walked through the house, his head hung with heavy thoughts.
He saw the blood first, tiny red splatters on the tile floor by his back door. Then he saw TJ sitting at his kitchen table, Sam doing her best to tend to the bloody mess that was his hand.
His first thought was that his gut had been right — something awful had happened. Then his mind filled with dozens of thoughts all smashing together at once like atoms in a nuclear reactor. His head would soon explode if the reaction weren’t stabilized.
“Okay, so, like, here’s the thing.” Sam did nothing to help matters. Excuses leaped out of her mouth half-formed only to dissolve before they reached Doc’s ears. “I kicked my ball over the fence, and TJ tried to climb over after it, and…” But then the adrenaline visually finally burned out of Sam’s blood. The sobs started in her chest, building in intensity until they climbed out of her throat and her whole body started to shake.
Doc reached for her. He wrapped her up in a big hug and whispered that it would be all right. But he didn’t take too long doing it. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the nasty wound on TJ’s hand. He sat Sam down at the kitchen table with a glass of water, then sat next to TJ to examine the wound. “What happened?”
Sam’s instinct to protect TJ and Rex was still there, strong as ever according to the look on her face, but she hardly had the energy to speak. Still, she tried. “There was a broken window and—”
Doc cut her off. “I know a bite when I see one, young lady. N
ow, what really happened?”
Doc moved about the kitchen, gathering up the supplies he’d require—gauze, saline, antibacterial wipes.
TJ explained as much as he could. “That pet I asked you about before…”
Doc nodded like he knew what was coming next. “The stray. I see.” He uncapped the saline. “This might sting a bit.” He sprayed it onto TJ’s hand to wash away the blood and get a better look at the wound. His brow creased as he studied it.
TJ winced and sucked a breath through his teeth. “He just…I don’t know what happened. It was like he became a different animal.”
The words different animal echoed in Doc’s ears as he continued to study TJ’s injury. “Maybe he did. Maybe he was the wolf inside, not the dog you found.” Doc ripped open the antibacterial wipes with his teeth and then cleaned the cuts.
TJ’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the table. “Will he always be like that now? Is he always going to be the wolf?”
Doc wrapped gauze around TJ’s injured hand. “That’s hard to say. When an animal lives as a stray, sometimes it becomes feral. It has to in order to survive. Those instincts don’t just go away when someone takes it in.”
“But he doesn’t need to do that anymore,” TJ pleaded, as if Doc could change things. “I’ll take care of him.”
“I’m afraid that’s not how it works. Rehabilitating a stray can take a very long time. And, even then, those feral instincts may never go away completely.” Doc secured the gauze with medical tape. He gave TJ a couple aspirin and a glass of water. After TJ gulped them down, Doc refilled the glass for him and sat back in his chair. “Drink up. You need to replenish your fluids.” Doc saw the pain in TJ’s eyes. Not the physical pain from the gash in his hand but the emotional pain, the feeling of hopelessness to save a friend. And, under all that, a sliver of betrayal. And resentment.
Rufus stirred from the corner when Doc got up to pour himself a cup of tea. “You remember what I told you about old Rufus here?” Rufus whimpered at the sound of his name. “He was a stray.” Doc looked at his reflection on the surface of his tea. Conflicting feelings of guilt and pride tugged his heart in different directions. “Well, that’s not entirely true, I suppose. He had an owner, but he wasn’t a nice man. He brought Rufus to me several times with cuts and scrapes, once with some internal injuries, and once with a broken leg. He always had an excuse, but I knew the signs. I’d seen it before, unfortunately. That man was abusing him.”
Rex Page 13