The Dinosaur Four

by Geoff Jones

  Morgan unwrapped a chocolate-filled croissant and stuffed it into his mouth. He chomped noisily.

  Al, sitting next to him, said quietly, “You know, my mother told me it was good manners to chew with my mouth closed.”

  Morgan brought his lips together. His cheeks bulged. He chewed slowly for a minute and then leaned over in Al’s direction. With his mouth wide open, Morgan moaned, “Gaaaahhh!” A thick brown croissant paste bulged between his teeth.

  Al looked aghast. “What the fuck is the matter with you?”

  Morgan bent over, laughing and snorting.

  Al rose to his feet and stood in front of the young man. “Why don’t you stand up, asshole?”

  Morgan looked up at him, tears in his eyes, and opened his mouth again. “Gaaaahhh!”

  Callie thought that Hank would have pulled Morgan to his feet and knocked out his lights.

  Al looked like he wanted to kick Morgan where he sat. “William, any advice here? Were either of your boys ever this fucked up?”

  “My boys showed more sense than both of you.”

  Al raised his hands. “What the hell did I do?”

  “With all that’s going on right now, you’re gonna complain about that idiot’s manners?”

  Morgan tried to swallow his croissant as he giggled.

  “Hey everyone, come have a look at this,” Tim called from a patch of ground on the other side of the tree. Callie rose and walked over. The others followed. Tim had found a small stone with a flat edge and had removed three of the four screws holding the panel on the side of the time device. He finished twisting the final screw out with his fingers and lifted off the metal plate.

  Underneath, an LED readout displayed a line of red digits. It showed 00:04:52:23 when Tim first opened it. The seconds counted down relentlessly. “Just under five hours,” William said. “Less than I thought. Still, it’s good to see a number. It confirms the story from the woman in the lab and it gives us concrete information.” William looked at his wristwatch and set a timer to match.

  “This must be the fail-safe,” Tim noted, pointing to the only other component under the panel. A hard plastic shield protected a rectangular red button. “There’s nothing to it. It’s just a button.”

  Callie thought it looked like the sort of button used to launch nuclear missiles in movies.

  What does that do again?” Morgan asked.

  “It takes us back in time twenty minutes, if that woman upstairs was right,” Al explained.

  “Everything she told us has been right so far,” William pointed out.

  The Hank-voice in Callie’s head returned: Babe, the fail-safe! Why didn’t you think of that sooner? Seriously Callie, I wonder about you sometimes. His tone was light-hearted, but she hated the idea of him questioning her.

  Tim looked up. “After we get home, we’re supposed to go back twenty minutes and clear everyone out the café.”

  “That’s the plan,” William said.

  “What happens if we press it now?” asked Al. “Will it take us back twenty minutes ago, here?”

  Callie looked up at this. More than twenty minutes had passed since Hank died. Could we have used that on the beach? If they had tried, Hank might still be alive.

  William gave Al his best smile. “I don’t have any idea, but I’ll tell you one thing. We are not going to find out. We are going to stick to the plan.”

  Callie put her hand on William’s arm. “So when we go back to the café, we can get everyone out of there, right?”

  William nodded. “That’s what I’m hoping, Callie. That’s what I’m hoping.” He picked up the football. “We just have to survive another five hours here. Let’s get going again.” He led the group onward, setting a faster pace than before their break.

  About a half hour after their rest in the clearing, they encountered a river cutting directly across their path. They followed it to the right until it joined the larger river, the one that led back to the café. They looked out at the swirling junction that had spun them around on their raft ride a few hours earlier.

  William wiped sweat from the back of his neck. “Normally I’d suggest we swim across. It would feel pretty good, I reckon.”

  “But we don’t know if our friend the crocodile or one of his little brothers is around,” observed Al.

  “Yep.” William turned and headed left. “We’ll have to follow this river upstream until we can find a fallen tree or some other way to cross.” He looked at his watch and shook his head. “Damn. This is going to take us out of our way.” They started off again, keeping close to the smaller river.

  A few minutes later, a raucous call stopped them in their tracks. It seemed like a series of vowels strung together and shouted at top volume. It was answered by another shout in the distance, somewhere behind them.

  “What the hell was that?” Callie whispered. Even Buddy froze in his tracks.

  “Probably something small,” William answered quietly. “Something way up in the treetops. It wouldn’t make that much noise unless it was safe up there, right?” He sounded as if he was attempting to convince himself. As the forest grew silent, they slowly started forward again.

  Have you thought everything through, Calista? Hank asked. That fail-safe only works one time. Don’t fuck it up.

  She did not want to think about it. She wanted to curl up and sleep. It was only mid-afternoon here, but it felt much later. Of course it does. They had gone back millions of years and a handful of hours. I’m time-lagged, she thought, inventing a new term.

  That’s cute, babe, Head Hank said. I love it. Callie allowed herself a small smile, her first since the beach. She had always liked it when he called her “babe.” Tears welled in her eyes and she wiped them away with the back of her hand.

  “What will happen to us if we succeed?” she asked the group. “Help me think it through. What will be going on when we arrive back in Denver?”

  William described the scene. “They’ll have a police perimeter, with news vans all around. Maybe they haven’t figured out that we went back in time yet, but sooner or later they will. They’ll analyze the dirt and river water that got swapped out where the café was. I bet my boys are worried sick.”

  Callie shook her head. “That’s not right, though, is it?” She had insisted on a turn carrying the device and held it awkwardly against her stomach with both arms. The scientists upstairs were smart enough to build a time machine, but apparently they weren’t smart enough to put handles on the damn thing. “No time will have passed. When this machine goes off again, it will return us to the moment we left.”

  “What makes you think that?” Tim asked.

  “The fail-safe. The fail-safe button is a twenty-minute jump back. That’s what the woman said. We’re here for fifteen hours, right? The fail-safe is meant to help you in case…” She paused while Hank finished the thought for her. In case your fiancé gets his fucking head lopped off. “In case something goes wrong. Twenty minutes won’t help if fifteen hours have also passed by in modern Denver. So for the fail-safe to actually do any good, this thing must be rigged to take us back to the exact moment when we left.”

  “You’re assuming a lot on the part of the inventors,” Al said as he maneuvered around a cluster of boulders. “They obviously got a few things wrong, considering how all this went down. I’m not sure how smart those people really were.”

  William gave him a patronizing look. “They invented an honest-to-God time machine, Al. I think they were smart enough.”

  Callie went on, “Let’s keep going. We arrive back in the café right at the moment we left. Then what?”

  William answered, “We get outside and push the button to go back twenty minutes. This all started at about eight a.m. When we use the failsafe, it’ll take us back to around 7:40. We run into the café and tell ourselves to get of the building.”

  “Why do we have to go outside first?” Tim asked.

  Callie answered for William. “Because most of us
were already in the café at 7:40. We don’t want to swap them forward; we want to get them out of the building.

  William nodded. “She’s right. We can find an empty parking lot or something, hit the button there, and then go inside and tell ourselves to clear out.”

  “This is crazy,” Morgan said. “I hope you all understand what you are talking about.”

  Hank’s voice urged Callie to keep going. “So then what?” she asked.

  “Then we’re good to go,” William answered. “None of us will ever go back in time. No one has to die.”

  Callie shook her head. “There’s more. We can’t just stay there. The seven of us have to return to our empty parking lot and jump back forward twenty minutes. Or else there will be duplicates of us. Two of us, living in the same time.”

  “Hell yeah!” Morgan said. “I want to party with another me.”

  The hike grew steeper. The small river flowed down a slope next to them in a series of small rapids. William broke away from the group to look for a section where the boulders were close enough to rock hop across. He returned shaking his head. “The river is still impassable.”

  Al let his shoulders sag. Callie thought the movement seemed forced, theatrical.

  “Do you think we will remember this?” Tim asked the others as they continued on. “When we jump forward twenty minutes again, what will we remember? I mean, if we successfully convince our other selves to get out of the building, they will never go back in time. So what will we remember?”

  Morgan laughed. “This is so fucking nuts.”

  “I guess we’ll find out when we find out,” William said. “Here’s another question: When we trigger the fail-safe and go back twenty minutes, how much time will we have there? Here, it’s set to last fifteen hours. When it goes back twenty minutes, how long will we have before it goes forward again?”

  [ 40 ]

  The two-legged Struthiomimus took a step closer. Helen squeezed Lisa’s arm so hard she cried out in pain.

  The dinosaur cocked its head and held open its long beak. It tasted the air with a pointed pink tongue.

  “It’s got no teeth,” Helen said.

  Lisa pulled a kitchen knife from her belt. She pointed the blade toward the animal. “Yeah, but look at its hands and feet.” Dirty black claws protruded from its scaly fingers and toes.

  The dinosaur took a step closer. Lisa waved her knife. “Shoo!” The dinosaur curled its long neck and snapped at the shiny blade. Lisa jerked it back, out of reach.

  “Don’t leave me,” Helen said.

  The Struthiomimus took two quick steps forward, pecked Lisa’s forehead with its beak, and stepped back.

  Stars swirled in Lisa’s vision. They looked like the small sparks that sometimes erupted at the end of a fireworks explosion. I got pecked. She wanted to laugh, but she couldn’t find the air to make the noise. She teetered backwards and landed in the mud on her ass. Everything went blurry.

  Helen dumped the trash-can holding their last fish and threw it at the dinosaur. It bounced off the creature’s chest and landed in the mud. The dinosaur lowered its long neck and studied the black plastic. It reached down and brought both hands together to pick it up. The dinosaur held the trash can and sniffed it from all angles.

  “Holy shit,” Helen said.

  It looked up at her, dropped the trash can, and stepped forward. With another quick snap of its neck, it pecked Helen, grazing the side of her temple. It arched back for a second strike but Helen had already fallen out of the way. The animal leaned over her and reached down with its claws.

  The fog slowly began to wear off. Lisa saw the dinosaur grabbing at Helen’s sweater with three sharp fingers. It shredded the fabric as it tried to find something to grip.

  The kitchen knife stuck from the mud a few inches from Lisa’s hand. Just beyond it, the dinosaur finally found purchase on Helen’s arm and began to pull her up.

  Lisa grabbed the handle and rose in one smooth motion. She felt dizzy but made herself keep going. She swung the knife up, striking the dinosaur’s neck halfway between its head and its body. The blade bit into flesh, struck bone, and slid free.

  The Struthiomimus screamed. CAAAAHHHH! CAAAAHHHH! CAAAAAAAAAAHHHH! It released Helen and rose. It lifted its head into the air, but its neck flopped at an obtuse angle. Blood geysered from the sliced opening in cadence with its screams. The head flopped back into place, pinching the cut closed. Blood misted straight outwards, covering Lisa in a cloud of wet red vapor.

  CAAAAHHHH! CAAAAHHHH!

  Lisa took a step toward it, brandishing the blade. The animal ran in a circle, flapping its winged arms. Its neck teetered back and forth, like a bent reed in the wind. Several times, it looked like its head would snap clean off, but it always bowed back in the other direction at the last minute.

  That dinosaur is food for a week, Lisa thought. She needed to finish it off before it got away. The Struthiomimus began to zigzag across the mud flat.

  Helen moaned. Lisa looked back at the old woman, who lay motionless on the ground near her unfinished snare.

  Before she could decide what to do, the dinosaur reached the opposite side of the mudflat. Its screams grew louder as it disappeared into the jungle.

  Lisa turned and knelt over Helen. Blood shone through her silver hair.

  “I’m okay,” Helen said. She pulled back her sleeve to reveal purple and brown bruises where the dinosaur had grabbed her. Lisa hefted her to her feet. They could still hear the shrieks of the Struthiomimus in the woods.

  “We’ve got to get inside, quick.”

  “Why? It’s gone now. I’m okay.”

  “The noise.” Lisa’s ears still rang from the dinosaur’s screams. “That’s what brought the T-rex last time.” Helen stumbled and Lisa pulled the woman’s arm over her shoulder.

  “Come on, Helen, help me out.” They trekked slowly across the mud.

  [ 41 ]

  Tim used the trunk of a small tree to pull himself up the incline. A fast moving cascade flowed by on his right. Lush green moss covered the rocks close to the falls and dappled sunlight filtered through the treetops. A pure, earthy smell filled his nose. It did not feel like Colorado. It felt like some exotic location. Hawaii, maybe, or New Zealand.

  William stopped to catch his breath at the top. The ground flattened out as far ahead as they could see. Above the cascade, the river pooled lazily. “This is getting us nowhere. We’re only moving farther and farther from the café.”

  “At least we’ve got the device,” Morgan said. He placed one foot on a boulder and rested the football on his thigh.

  William shook his head. “We can’t let it go off here. We’re still way more than twenty minutes from the café. We aren’t close enough to go warn ourselves.”

  “I’ll give you another reason,” said Al. “Lisa and the old lady ain’t here.”

  William smiled. “You’ve got a thing for Lisa, don’t you?”

  “Is there a problem with that?”

  “Of course not. I think she likes you, too.”

  Al circled past William, glaring at him. Tim thought that Al was the sort of guy who would punch you for looking at his girlfriend the wrong way. Lisa wasn’t even his girlfriend though, as far as Tim could tell.

  “The clock is ticking,” Callie said. “All this yammering is a waste of time. Guys, we should swim across.” The opposite shore was a little less than thirty feet away and the water had flattened out above the falls. “The current here doesn’t look too strong.”

  “What about crocodiles?” asked Al. “Don’t you think we should search a little farther?”

  William walked over to the river. “This pool does look like the perfect home for a crocodile. A normal-sized one, anyway.”

  “Or maybe something else,” Al prompted.

  William nodded. “When I was a kid, I had a friend who walked with a limp after losing his big toe to a snapping turtle. It happened in a pool just like this one.”

  Al took
a step upstream and looked back. “If we keep going, we’ll find a safer place to cross.”

  Callie looked at the others. Morgan shrugged. She turned to Tim, “What do you think?”

  “I’m not so comfortable in the water,” he answered, chewing on his lower lip. “But I’ll do whatever William says. If he thinks we should cross here, I’ll get across.”

  Al blew out a breath of air. “What a follower. If William told you to jump off of a bridge… no, wait. If William told you to jump into a crocodile-infested river, would you do it? Sure looks that way.”

  Tim’s eyelids narrowed. “William has gotten us this far. Fighting him over every single decision doesn’t help.” He turned to look at the river. Inside, he felt sick. He would be in over his head. Nevertheless, William had not steered them wrong yet. All that mattered was getting back to Julie. “I can cross that river.”

  William raised his eyebrows. “Are you sure?”

  Tim smiled. “Hell no. But I’m sick of wandering and I’m sick of debating everything.” He turned to Al. “I want to get home.”

  “What about the crocodiles?” Morgan asked.

  William stepped closer to the water. “You know, there shouldn’t be any crocodiles above those falls. We haven’t seen any this whole time.” Since leaving the sea, they had not encountered any wildlife except for the small creatures Buddy had chased under the plants, and they had not actually seen those. “Tim’s offer settles it. The man can’t even swim, but he’s willing to cross here. Let’s do it.”

  “I suppose you’re an expert swimmer, William?” Al challenged.

  “Sir, I was a teenage lifeguard at the neighborhood pool. Best job I ever had. Girls love lifeguards. Girls in bikinis.” Al bristled at this but William did not seem to notice. “I taught both of my boys to swim as soon as they could walk.”

  “I want a lesson when we get back,” Tim said.

  Al stepped over to Morgan and gestured at the football resting on his knee. “Okay then. If we’re crossing, we’re crossing. Why don’t you let me take a turn with that?”