by Geoff Jones
“Are you serious?” Callie sneered. “Is this some kind of prehistoric orgy fantasy for you?”
A bead of sweat rolled from Al’s forehead into one eye. He blinked it away. “I’m only trying to keep the group safe,” he said quietly. He looked at the angry faces around the room. They frightened him more than any of the dinosaurs.
Tim shifted his weight, as if winding up to throw a punch. Al suddenly realized where he was standing. If Tim hit him, he might knock him back into the river.
Helen rapped the tabletop with her knuckles. “There are going to be some surprised folks back in Denver when that dinosaur shows up.”
Tim froze. “What?” He turned to her. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t understand all of that timeline nonsense, but the idea of the swap is pretty clear in my head. The time machine will still go off on schedule, won’t it? That woman upstairs told you it was tough.”
Tim nodded. “That’s right.”
Helen continued. “It already floated down to the ocean. Sitting in the belly of a dinosaur for a few hours isn’t going to hurt it. So when time runs out, won’t it take the dinosaur right back to Denver?”
Lisa nodded slowly. “And if it arrives in a spot where there are people, they’ll be swapped too. They’ll show up here, wherever the Tyrannosaurus was.”
Al had not considered this. “We might get lucky. Something useful might be swapped back.”
“How long until that happens?” Callie asked. “How long until the device goes off?” She stared down at the table.
Tim chewed on his lip. “I don’t know. William was keeping track. A little more than two hours, I think.” He stepped away from Al. “When the device was eaten, I thought it was gone.”
Tim looked uncertain. He’s still waiting for William to make a decision, Al realized. Tim was too much of a follower to take charge of the situation. “Okay then,” Al said. “We wait around another two hours and see what shows up. After that, we focus on surviving. I’m going to find a cave, or high ground, or some sort of place we can fortify.” He spoke to the room, but he looked at Lisa. “I hope you will come with me.”
“How long before the dinosaur moves its bowels?” Helen asked.
Callie jumped up. “We can’t wait for that T-rex to take a shit. We’re wasting valuable time right now.” She looked at Tim, who stared off into space chewing on his lower lip. “Tim, we have two hours.” The words came out slow, loud, and clear. “What are we going to do?” Al thought she sounded like Hank.
Tim looked at Callie. “We’re going to find that rex and slice open the son of a bitch.”
Callie nodded. Her eyes glistened.
“Are you insane?” Al started toward Tim, but backed off when he saw the look in the younger man’s eyes.
“Al, we’ve got to try,” Lisa said.
He looked at her, suddenly exhausted. He had been so close. “We don’t even know where it went. It could be miles from here.”
“That Tyrannosaurus has been staying nearby,” Tim said. “He’s still got a meal back there. I don’t think he’s gone very far.” He echoed Lisa’s words. “We’ve got to try.”
Helen rose and walked over to Lisa. “Sweetie, let’s show them what we were up to while they were gone on their little boat ride.” The old woman smiled. “I’ve got an idea.”
[ 51 ]
Lisa went behind the counter and returned with one of her twelve-dollar canvas bags. Thin points poked against the sides, as if it held a jumble of sticks. “After you left on the raft,” Lisa explained, “Helen taught me how to fish. We caught eight.”
“We didn’t even have to leave the building,” Helen explained. She pointed out the front door. “We just dropped in our lines from the sidewalk.”
“Is that them in the bag?” Al asked. He looked impressed. Lisa felt proud.
“Nope. Most of them were stolen from us, by this guy. Lisa reached into the bag and pulled out the body of a dead pterosaur. She held the animal by its snake-like neck. Its wings flopped to the ground. The tail of a small fish hung from the pterosaur’s mouth.
Lisa explained, “Helen’s husband used to take her hunting. She hated it, but she sure learned a thing or two. Like how to tie a snare, for instance. Have a look out there on the shore.” She led them over to the front windows and pointed to a trap rigged near the edge of the mudflat. Their last fish sat on the ground, encircled by a loop of wire. The end of the line was tied to a nearby branch, which curved over it in a tight arc.
Helen raised her forearm, showing off her new bandage. “That little bastard pecked me, but I wrung his neck!” She held her fists next to one another and twisted them in opposite directions.
“Is that also what happened to your head?” Callie pointed at the bloody spot in Helen’s hair.
“No, that was an oster-rich-a-saurus. He came after us while we were setting the first trap and pecked us both in the head. Lisa cut his head off.”
“Not all the way off.”
“Oh, whatever. It was hanging by a thread as he ran away. But one thing is for sure. You killed him.” Lisa felt proud of this. No one else had ever killed a dinosaur.
Al smiled at her and examined the pterosaur. “That has more meat on it than a Thanksgiving turkey.” He turned to Helen. “You’ll have to teach me how to rig one of those traps.”
Helen looked back out at the snare. “We almost caught a second one right before you all returned, but Buddy showed up and scared it off.”
Callie pounded one of the tables. “I don’t understand. How does any of this help us?”
Tim raised his eyebrows. “Helen means for us to snare the Tyrannosaurus.”
Al turned to him. “That’s insane.”
Callie held up her hand in Al’s direction. “Shush.” She looked back and forth between Tim and Helen. “How? How do you snare something that big?”
“The heavy cables in the lab upstairs,” said Tim. “There are lots. Some in the walls and some loose in the room.” He nodded, working it out in his head. “It’s a long shot, but we might be able to bring it back here by banging the pots and pans again.”
“Yeah, that’ll bring it back here,” Al spat. “But how are you going to get it to put its neck through a snare? This bat-thing would barely be a crumb to it. Besides, it’s got plenty of meat waiting for it back on the dead Triceratops by the cliff.”
“That’s right,” Tim said. “The Triceratops is our source. We cut some meat from the carcass and use that. It’s only ten minutes from here.” He looked at the others. “We’ve got one last shot to get home. That device will go off in less than two hours.” He stared directly at Al. “I won’t stop trying as long as there is still a chance.”
Lisa took Al’s hands and looked up at him with wide, hopeful eyes. “Come on, Al. We can go home together. We can get our lives back.” She did not understand the tension between Al and Tim, but she knew they needed to all work together if there was any hope.
Al squared his jaw and said, “Let’s do it. What are we waiting for?”
[ 52 ]
On the second floor, which felt more like a rooftop, Al and Lisa gathered cable for the snares. Al looked over the edge of the building as Tim and Callie disappeared into the woods. They were going to collect bait for their half-baked plan. Al did not like the two of them going off alone. He felt a pang of jealous suspicion. What were they talking about? Were Tim and Callie forming some sort of alliance against him?
Sweat soaked Al’s shirt. The sun had disappeared beyond the trees and the sky overhead had grown pale but the temperature had not dropped. Just two more hours. Maybe less. Soon it would be dark and all the talk about getting home would have to stop. Along with any thought about wanting to attract a Tyrannosaurus.
“We’re going to be famous when we get home,” Lisa said as Al pulled on a heavy black cord. Electrical cables ran through an eight-inch gap in the walls. They had pulled out several hundred feet so far.
; Pulling the cable was exhausting. It weighed more than it looked like it should. Lisa had offered to help, but Al insisted on doing the heavy lifting. He wanted to show her that he could be counted on to get a job done. He paused to pull his shirt over his head.
His barrel chest wasn’t exactly lean, but he was strong. He caught Lisa stealing a glance, just as he sometimes caught the women at the gym.
Al took hold of the cable again with both hands and pulled another three or four yards up through the gap in the wall. She really thinks this plan has a chance. Al knew that he had to go along with it. “Maybe we could go on tour together,” he said. “You know, go around to all the news shows and talk shows and whatever.”
“Sounds like fun.”
He looked over at her, trying to detect any hints of sarcasm or mockery on her face. She smiled and raised her eyebrows. It seemed like an honest smile, but he could not tell what it meant. Did she picture them meeting at a television studio, doing an interview, and then going out for lunch? Or did she picture them returning to their hotel room together?
The cable stopped moving. Al gripped it tightly and pulled with all of his strength, but it wouldn’t budge. “Time to cut it.” Lisa came over and began to saw through the cord with a serrated knife from the survival cabinet.
The second floor was slightly higher than the tyrannosaur’s head. The plan was to lure the creature into position by hanging bait from the side of the building. Helen’s pterosaur was already in place at the first snare, putrefying in the heat. Such a waste. The body held enough meat to feed all five of them for two or three meals.
In order to eat the pterosaur, the tyrannosaur would have to step inside a circle of thick cable lying on the ground. The loop of cable had been tied in a noose and the end of it ran up the side of the building and across the second floor. On the opposite side, above the river, the line was anchored to a heavy object, ready to be shoved over the wall.
Tim had helped Al set the first snare. They tied it to one of the computer shelves leaning precariously on the far side of the building. The shelf held dozens of racks of hard drives and had to weigh more than three hundred pounds. Satisfied that the snare was secure, Tim and Callie had rushed off to collect bait. The irony amused Al. Just a few hours earlier, the second floor had been littered with bait.
Lisa and Al were responsible for setting three more snares, which required collecting hundreds of feet of heavy cable. Al twisted the current section of wire so that Lisa could cut the opposite side. She was through the plastic sheath and sawing away on the tightly wound copper coils inside. He looked across the rubble-strewn room, trying not to stare at her while she worked. Women did not like to be stared at. A black smear on the floor caught his eye. He followed it to the survival cabinet and realized it marked the path Mister Slushy had made when Lisa dragged him to the edge and dumped him into the river. “Too bad you got rid of the bodies. Who knew we would actually want to attract the T-rex back here.”
Lisa frowned. “We couldn’t use them as bait. That’s horrible.”
“Sorry. Bad joke.”
Her frown disappeared, but her mouth twisted off to one side in a sneer. She thinks I’m a sicko. He had to make it right, and quick. Complement her. “In all seriousness, you did the right thing, Lisa. Clearing out those bodies was smart.” He wanted to call her brilliant. He remembered how her face lit up when William called her brilliant, but somehow the idea of disposing of corpses didn’t seem quite up to the word. “You cleared our shelter of something that would attract the attention of a predator. Smart decisions like that will keep us alive.”
“It wasn’t exactly a lot of fun,” she noted.
“That’s one of the things I like about you. You don’t shy away from hard work.” Her smile returned, but her face did not exactly light up.
“I hope they get back soon,” she said. “We don’t have much time.” Sweat beads rolled off her forehead.
Al wanted to point out that the plan was crazy. He wanted to prepare her for the disappointment that would come when time ran out and they were still here. The tyrannosaur was probably miles away, slowly digesting William. Instead, he said, “I just hope Tim and Callie don’t run into any trouble.”
“I know. It’s dangerous, them going off alone.”
“They’ll be ok. Tim has the shovel.” Other than a few small knives, it was the closest thing they had to a weapon. Al imagined Tim trying to fight off a dinosaur with a short-handled shovel. He fought to keep the smile off of his face.
Just another couple of hours, he told himself. After that, everyone would forget about trying to get home and they could focus on real survival. Their ridiculous plan would never work. First, they had to get the tyrannosaur to return to the café by banging pots and pans again. Then they had to hope it would stand still on a snare while they shoved a piece of rubble off the far side of the building. The falling weight would pull the loop tight around its leg and maybe even yank the creature off its feet. If they were lucky, Helen explained, its leg might break.
Once the dinosaur was snared, the plan was to lower a second loop of cable over its head. Then, they would shove another heavy object off the far side of the building to either snap its neck or strangle it. After the creature was dead, they could cut open its belly and retrieve the device. This, Al thought, was the most foolish thing he had ever heard.
With any luck, Tim would run into the tyrannosaur on his hunt for bait and Callie would come back alone. He did not want to compete with Tim, neither for leadership nor for the women. He should have killed him in the woods when he had the chance. He vowed not to pass up another opportunity like that.
Once Tim was out of the picture, Al Stevens would be the only human male on the face of the Earth. It would be him and Lisa and Callie. A beautiful brunette and a stunning redhead. And old Helen to teach them about hunting and fishing, at least for as long as she lasted.
[ 53 ]
Tim and Callie jogged through the trees, back toward the cliff and the dead Triceratops. The light in the forest had grown dim, but it was still easy enough to see.
“So much for us not splitting up,” she said.
Tim nodded. “Yeah, I know. But we don’t have much time.”
Buddy passed them, chasing after a foot-long dragonfly.
At first, Tim had considered sending the dog back to the café, but then he decided that having him along might be a good idea. Buddy’s senses of hearing and smell might give them an early warning if anything dangerous showed up. Just as before, the dog came and went as he pleased.
“What do you think about what Al said?” Callie asked. “About not being able to save Hank?”
“I don’t know. Nobody’s ever done this before.”
“I’ve been going over it in my mind. I think there might be some truth to it.”
“Don’t listen to Al. He’s an asshole.”
Callie laughed. “You were ready to hit him back there, weren’t you?”
“I was ready to knock him into the river.” He laughed with her, but then grew serious. “I feel bad about it. Beth said that the second biggest threat in a horror movie was the other guy. I don’t want to be that person.”
Small gliding reptiles leapt from branch to branch in front of them, floating on membranes of skin between their legs. One snatched Buddy’s dragonfly out of the air. Buddy chased the creature to a tree and pawed furiously at the bark below it. Another glider swooped by, seeming to taunt him.
“I don’t think you are that person,” Callie said. “I think Al is dangerous. I don’t think he wants us to get back.”
Tim looked at her sideways but kept jogging. “That’s crazy. Why would anyone want to stay here?”
“Did you see the look on his face when I made that comment about an orgy?”
“You embarrassed him.”
“Tim, he has been ogling all of us ever since we got here. Especially Lisa.”
Tim agreed that Al was strange, but the idea that anyo
ne would want to stay here was ridiculous. Callie had lost her fiancé. She wasn’t thinking straight. “This is a crazy-ass situation. I don’t think any of us are really at our best.”
Callie stopped, breathing hard. She put her hands on her hips. “What do you do for a living again?”
“I’m a carpenter. I build the wood framing for new houses mostly.”
“Well, my job is to observe people. And I’m telling you, there’s something not right about that guy.” She started running again.
Ahead, the forest brightened slightly as they approached the clearing. Buddy stood perfectly still next to the last few trees, staring forward with one paw lifted. Tim slowed to a stop and held the shovel before him in two hands. Buddy growled quietly, a low rumble from deep in his chest. Tim was panting too hard to hear anything up ahead.
“What is it?” whispered Callie. They saw movement in the clearing, low to the ground.
“It isn’t the T-rex. Whatever it is, it looks small. Let’s find out.”
He stepped forward tentatively, trying to get close enough to see. Buddy launched himself through the trees, his legs splayed wide with each bound. When he reached the clearing, he began to bark wildly.
“Buddy!” Tim dashed after him. Callie ran close behind, also calling his name.
In the clearing, Buddy threw himself into a pack of seven bird-like Deinonychus, which scattered from the remains of the Triceratops.
The Deinonychus were less than three feet long from head to tail, but their emerald plumage made them seem larger. Long wispy feathers sprouted from their heads and ran in a row down their backs.
The two-legged dinosaurs fled in all directions, screeching and hissing. Their mouths were filled with more than sixty sharp points, lined up like the teeth on a saw.
“They look like birds,” Callie observed.
“Yeah, birds with arms and hands instead of wings,” Tim said. “They’re acting more like a pack of dogs, though. Coyotes maybe.”