The Dinosaur Four

by Geoff Jones

  “What the hell happened?” Tim shouted across the building.

  Al gave an exaggerated shrug.

  - - - - -

  The first cable, still holding the tyrannosaur’s leg, moved across the room as the dinosaur walked beside the building. Tim ducked as bits of debris snapped loose and bulleted off in all directions.

  The beast finally noticed the snare around its foot. It lifted its leg and wiggled it in the air.

  “That’s right, you bastard! We got you!” Tim shouted.

  As if in response, the dinosaur kicked sharply down and back. The block of concrete at the other end of the line rocketed up the outside wall and crashed into the room, shattering free from the cable that held it.

  Released from its tether, the tyrannosaur lifted its leg again. It reached halfway up the building and dug in. Grasping with the massive claws on its toes, it pulled down a section of wall as easily as a child stepping on the edge of a sandcastle. Concrete dust rose like smoke. Screams came from the café below.

  “This isn’t working,” Tim hissed.

  Al glared. “Are you fucking surprised?”

  The building shuddered from another attack and shifted a few inches toward the river.

  It’s right there, Tim thought. The time device was only a few feet away from them, inside the creature.

  The tyrannosaur noticed Tim again, raising its head to peer onto the second floor. Its nostrils flared. A trash bag full of ticks sat just a few feet from the tip of the dinosaur’s nose.

  What the hell am I supposed to do now? Tim thought. He had been foolish to think they could catch, much less kill, such an enormous creature. Their only source of shelter was about to be demolished. It was growing dark. How far could they flee into the woods in the dark? And what about Helen? Tim reached for the bag of ticks. Maybe he could throw it over the side and buy them a few minutes.

  Before he had a chance, the tyrannosaur lifted its chin and brought it down on the edge of the building. A larger section of the wall collapsed, taking down the floor around it.

  Almost playfully, the dinosaur raised its foot again, grasping the edge of the hole it had created. It pulled outward. The floor under Tim bent downward, no longer supported by anything. He grasped fruitlessly for something to hold onto as he slid into the coffee shop. A wooden table broke his fall and collapsed under his weight. Dust and darkness filled the room.

  [ 57 ]

  Despite herself, Lisa screamed as Tim fell through the ceiling. She stood with Callie and Helen in the back, next to the counter. “What’s happening? Where is Al?”

  “Still up there, I think.”

  “What’s the Tyrannosaurus doing? Did you snare it?”

  “The snare is worthless.”

  “Well what are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Tim shouted.

  Lisa looked at the new opening on the side of the room. The wall of bookshelves was gone. The snout of the tyrannosaur appeared in the hole, sniffing. It backed out, rooted around in the rubble below, and came up with the bag of ticks. It crunched and blood poured from between its teeth.

  The shovel lay on the floor just below the missing wall. Tim darted forward, grabbed it, and backed away quickly. The dinosaur’s snout reappeared, its chin soaked with blood. Tim held the shovel up like a softball bat. He took a lunging step forward and swung for the fences.

  The edge of the shovel blade caught the tyrannosaur’s face, slicing the skin just above its nostril. The beast rumbled and withdrew.

  Al lowered himself down through a newly-formed hole in the ceiling. He landed on the pastry counter, cracking the glass in a spider-web pattern. “I told you this was a bad idea.” He jumped down off the counter.

  Lisa gave Callie a long hard look. Then she moved to wrap her arms around Al. “You were right. You were right all along.” Her voice hitched as she spoke.

  “You’re goddamn right I was.” He squeezed her tightly. “It’s going to be ok, though. Just stay close.” Lisa nodded.

  Holding the shovel before him, Tim turned. “Al, I need your help here!”

  “Forget it.” Al looked at the women. “Any second now and that thing will be inside. We have to get out of here.”

  Lisa nodded. “Whatever you say. Lead the way, Al. I’ll do whatever you say.”

  Al pulled her across the room.

  Tim’s mouth hung open in disbelief. “Al? Lisa? What are you doing?”

  The couple moved behind Tim, near the opening over the river that Lisa had fallen through almost fifteen hours earlier.

  The tyrannosaur leaned into the building again. Its face filled the side of the room and it sniffed greedily.

  Tim took another swing with the shovel, hitting the gash on the dinosaur’s nose. “I’m hurting it, guys.”

  Al cheered him on. “Good job! You’ve almost got it!”

  Lisa pulled at Al’s arm, getting his attention. She looked up at his face, eyes wide. “You’ll keep me safe if I stay here with you, right?”

  He looked down at her, his face flush. “Yes.”

  “I want that. Keep me safe and I will give you everything.” She waited a beat and then smiled. “I want that too. Don’t you?”

  Al inhaled deeply. “You have no idea.”

  The tyrannosaur backed out. The pile of collapsed rubble from upstairs blocked it from entering the café. It dug methodically at the debris with its foot. Another chunk fell from what was left of the ceiling. Al and Lisa flinched, moving closer to the river.

  “Tim, what are we going to do?” Callie called out. She held Buddy tightly as the dog barked itself hoarse. Helen cowered next to her.

  Tim lifted the shovel, ready to take another swing as soon as the snout reappeared.

  Tick. The sound came from nowhere and everywhere at the same time.

  Lisa put her hands on Al’s arms. “I saw you earlier,” she said, still giving him the puppy-dog eyes. She had to be sure. Despite what Callie had told her and despite what she had seen with her own eyes, she had to be one hundred percent sure.

  He looked at her, clearly confused. “What are you talking about? What did you see?”

  Tick Tick

  “I saw you cut the lines, on the backside, where Tim wouldn’t find them.” She said this simply and pleasantly, as if they were discussing the weather.

  TICK TICK TICK TICK

  Al looked confused. “You were downstairs… How did you..?”

  It was a question, not a denial. It was the confirmation Lisa needed. “I was taking a piss on the sidewalk. I looked up and I saw you do it, you sick son-of-a-bitch.”

  She gave him a hard shove high in the chest and Al Stevens fell backwards, arms flailing, into the river.

  Tim grabbed Lisa and shoved her back behind the counter. He held the shovel up before him, ready to fend off the mouth of the monster.

  TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK

  The tyrannosaur, having cleared away enough of the rubble, pushed into the café. The front sidewalk broke off from the building and dropped into the river.

  - - - - -

  Al surfaced a few feet out and shouted, “You cunt!” The river swept him along. The first stars appeared overhead, but there was still enough light to see the tyrannosaur stand up inside the building. Two of the remaining walls fell away completely.

  TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK

  A loud pop filled the clearing as most of the building disappeared.

  Because the time machine was not in the exact same position it had been in fifteen hours earlier, the swap was imperfect. A hollowed shell of bricks and mortar remained behind, and new portions of the building arrived, swapped out from the future. They seemed to float in the air for a moment, but then collapsed into a pile of worthless blocks as the current pushed Al Stevens around the bend in the river.

  [ 58 ]

  At 8:05 a.m., Mountain Daylight Time, Carmen Madera walked her dog Buddy toward The Daily Edition Café a
t the edge of downtown Denver. Mixed into the normal cacophony of morning noises, she noticed a ticking sound that increased steadily in frequency. Buddy seemed to notice too. He pulled at his leash with a growl.

  A young man walking ahead of her glanced back at the dog. “What the shit, lady? Control your pooch!”

  The trainer had told her to stop walking when Buddy pulled. The trick, he explained, was to only move forward when the dog walked politely. It wasn’t easy. Carmen did not like to slow down. She liked to get where she was going. Still, she made herself stop and stood her ground, her arm outstretched. As the ticking grew louder, Buddy dug in and pulled harder. Carmen reached out with her free hand to hold onto a parking meter.

  The arm holding the leash disappeared just below the elbow, as did Buddy, the young man, and a large, hollowed-out portion of the building next to her. The ground was replaced with a mixture of mud and water, which sloshed out onto the street. Lights flickered and went out on the high ceiling of the second-floor room above. The café, like her hand, was gone.

  Carmen held her arm out in front of her. Blood squirted from the end like water from a hose. She realized that her hand was gone just as the pain from two thousand severed nerves reached her brain.

  Carmen collapsed to the sidewalk.

  - - - - -

  The time device was programmed to return at exactly the same moment it departed. However, over the course of sixty-seven million years, a tiny error crept in. For a little more than forty-one seconds, the space previously occupied by the café sat empty, save for the mud and water that had taken its place. A few loose cinder blocks fell from the walls above, but the top eight floors remained intact, supported by the copy center and mortgage company that also occupied the ground floor.

  After forty-one seconds, most of the café returned. The football, inside the tyrannosaur’s stomach, was offset some thirty feet off from its original position within the lab. A slightly different chunk of building was displaced, and the chunk that returned from the late Cretaceous did not align with the space it had originally occupied. As a result, what was left of the café fell apart in a pile of rubble, with a twenty-five foot tall dinosaur standing in the middle of it.

  Breathing became difficult for tyrannosaur. It inhaled and exhaled rapidly to compensate. The mile-high modern air contained half as much oxygen as the air in the late Cretaceous. It turned and poked its head out of the crumbling building and looked around the city streets of downtown Denver. In every direction, it saw blocky canyon walls and shiny, boxy shapes that stank and rumbled like thunder.

  Cars screeched to a halt. Pedestrians froze in their tracks.

  - - - - -

  Tim, lying in the back of the café, rose and looked out the front of the building. The mudflats had been replaced by city streets. Dusk had turned to daylight. He saw metal, concrete and glass in every direction. “Yes! We did it!”

  His mobile device buzzed in his pocket. That’s Julie, wondering where I am. He began to reach for his phone. Then he saw her across the street.

  Julie Moss stood at the corner, her blond hair spilling onto the shoulders of a bright blue pea coat. She was every bit as radiant as he remembered. Despite everything, he had somehow made it home and there she was. A euphoric smile grew on his face. He realized he was just as excited to be home as he was to learn that she had actually shown up for their date.

  Tim grabbed the counter and pulled himself forward, ignoring the shouts from Callie and Lisa behind him. His phone continued to buzz, but he ignored that as well.

  - - - - -

  The tyrannosaur knew it had to find better air. It also knew that when things went bad, the best reaction was an aggressive reaction. It stepped into the intersection, snapping power lines with its neck. The stinging bite of electricity enraged it further.

  Julie stared in disbelief as the dinosaur emerged from the hollowed-out café where she was supposed to meet her new boyfriend. In the back of her mind, she wondered if it was too early to think of him as a boyfriend. Maybe not. She had spent the last three days talking about him with the other flight attendants, after all.

  The tyrannosaur stepped forward and Julie started to think that Tim MacGregor really should not be the most immediate focus of her attention. Of course, that was silly because there could not possibly be a dinosaur standing in front of her. She tried pulling her hands out of her coat pockets. The material bunched up each time she pulled, causing her to flap her elbows like a bird. She wondered why she even cared about her arms. Why wasn’t she simply running? She looked toward the café, or rather, to the spot where the café had been two minutes earlier. It looked like a bomb had gone off. But that couldn’t be true either, because she saw Tim emerge from the side of the building. Thank God. He would explain what was going on. After her coffee. What she really wanted right now was an espresso. Maybe a triple.

  The tyrannosaur bent down and snapped Julie up in its jaws, destroying her between its teeth. It shook its head violently. Pieces flew from the sides of its mouth as it tore the young woman apart.

  Then it started up the street.

  [ 59 ]

  Tim fell to his knees, unable to breath. His lungs constricted. He was trying to inhale and scream at the same time. His mouth hung open and his vision blurred with tears.

  He stared at a small clump in the middle of the street. A clump that had fallen from the tyrannosaur’s mouth as it shook Julie apart. A piece of her. He had brought this monster here. His breath hitched and he vomited into the gutter. It was his fault. He wanted to go back. He would go back and stay in the past forever if he could. He would get the time machine and use it to –

  “The fail-safe.”

  Tim struggled to his feet, dizzy. A hand grabbed his shoulder. “Tim, the fail-safe!” It sounded like Callie.

  His breath returned in quick hitches. The fail-safe was inside that fucking dinosaur, walking down the street.

  Callie thrust the shovel into his hand. “Tim, go get the fail-safe now!” Callie sounded commanding. She sounded like Hank.

  Tim started moving. Across the street, an oversized white pickup truck sat half on the curb. It was exactly the sort of truck driven by the crews at Tim’s construction jobs. He had owned one himself for a few years. The driver of the pickup craned his head out the window, watching the tyrannosaur stomp away. Tim ran to the truck, forcing himself to not look at the clumps he passed in the street.

  The driver was more than six feet tall and covered with tattoos. The ends of his mustache drooped below his chin.

  Tim ran toward the pickup, a Dodge Ram, holding the shovel low to his side. He ripped open the door and shouted, “Get out of that truck!” Hank would have been proud.

  Two gashes ran down Tim’s face. His clothes were filthy and ragged. Dark blood covered the shovel in his hands. The driver scrambled across the cab and flung himself out the passenger door.

  Tim tossed the shovel onto the seat next to him, slammed the truck into gear and fishtailed around a hundred and eighty degrees. He ignored the flapping passenger door and scanned the dashboard for a clock. 8:08 a.m.

  How much time did he have? The time machine would only take him back twenty minutes. If he didn’t use the fail-safe before twenty minutes passed it would not do any good. It would take him back to a point in time after the café returned. After the tyrannosaur killed Julie.

  In order to stop all of this from happening, he had to get the device, trigger it, and get everyone out of the café before they went back in time. He really only had seventeen or eighteen minutes. Two or three had already gone by.

  Tim swerved to avoid a pedestrian coming out of an alley and accelerated after the dinosaur.

  - - - - -

  On a parallel street to the north, Lieutenant Harold Daniels of the Denver Police Department received a report of an explosion at the corner of Chestnut and 15th. Lieutenant Daniels, a mounted patrol officer, guided his chestnut mare Hadley away from the 16th Street pedestrian mall to i
nvestigate. He expected to find a blown transformer or possibly a backfiring car.

  As he approached 15th Street, still several blocks east of Chestnut, the forty-five foot long tyrannosaur passed by. Lieutenant Daniels saw the blood-stained teeth of the beast and determined immediately that the creature was both real and dangerous. He dug into Hadley’s flanks. The brown horse galloped forward alongside the dinosaur.

  In one continuous move, Lieutenant Daniels unclipped his holster, drew his pistol, flipped off the safety, and fired ten rounds into the tyrannosaur’s left shoulder, close to where he thought its heart should be. Hadley continued to gallop, neither slowing nor swerving. She had trained for many hours with Daniels, including live fire exercises, and she performed masterfully.

  The bullet stings annoyed the beast. It lurched to a stop, clenching into the asphalt with its claws. It twisted around and roared, mouth wide. None of Hadley’s training had included anything like this. She reared up and whinnied, but Lieutenant Daniels held on. He decided to get clear and call for backup. Hadley’s front hooves hit the ground and Daniels spurred her like a jockey, hunkering down as low in the saddle as he could get. The tyrannosaur took one step and grabbed the horse and rider between its jaws. It bit down until the neck and flanks of the horse fell away to either side. It swallowed the rest, including most of Lieutenant Daniels.

  The tyrannosaur ignored the pieces that dropped and pressed forward. Its heart pumped with adrenaline as it looked left and right, trying to find a way out of this foul, rocky ravine it had somehow ended up in.

  Suddenly it felt a new stinging across its chest. It had wandered into the power lines over one of Denver’s light rail train tracks. The stinging persisted and the dinosaur backed away, enraged. The street behind it was nearly empty, so it started back in that direction.