Trying to get a rear advantage, the rex attempted to circle the triceratops.
The tetrapod had no problem getting outflanked; especially with Pat O’Leary’s acting as a wall on that side of the street. It spun on its five-toed feet to keep its armored head pointed at the predator.
The rex lunged, but its jaws didn’t connect. The triceratops drove its head forward, digging its horns into the rex’s gut, and backing it into O’Leary’s façade.
With its small arms flailing, the rex thrashed its head and twisted its body enough to wiggle free. Red blood oozed down its stomach where the horns had pushed two gaping holes.
The savagery of the situation had numbed Johnny Black’s patrons to silence. Kathy could hardly breathe from the firm hand of fear’s grip. For a moment, she thought the rex might be on the retreat, but the creature’s ire had it on the attack again.
The T. rex extended its mighty jaws for the triceratops’ head. Spikey teeth chomped on one of the brow horns. The triceratops struggled to pull free. The rex didn’t waver and held fast through the cries of its victim, twisting its head until the horn snapped in half.
Backing away, the triceratops kept its head up, warning the rex it still had plenty of fight left in it.
No matter. The rex dove with another crushing bite that came down on one side of the prey’s frill. Sharp snaps of breaking bone penetrated the brays of the tetrapod.
Hissing a battle cry, the rex lunged for another bite.
The triceratops twisted its head to the side to avoid the sharp teeth, leaving the back of its neck vulnerable.
The rex’s jaws opened wide and bit behind the frill. Blood squirted like a tomato smashed with a sledge hammer.
Kathy’s bowels rattled at the triceratops’ death-cry. She had to remind herself to breathe.
The T. rex’s jaws held firm. It then twisted its head from side to side until the tetrapod fell to its knees and laid on its side.
Pulling back, the rex came away with a chunk of blood-dripping meat. It threw its head back and worked its jaws until the mouthful traveled down its throat and into its belly.
Undeterred by its foreign surroundings, the T. rex went back to satiate its hunger.
Dave returned from a window with a content grin on his face. “Can you believe your very own eyes! We have witnessed an event no other human has.”
Terror’s grip had loosened enough for Kathy to move again. She understood Dave’s excitement. That was fine and good as long as the humans remained spectators and not participants.
She turned her gaze over and saw Stinky’s empty bar stool. Looking up, Kathy saw he had climbed over the bar and was in the process of preparing himself an obscenely large cocktail, with a bottle of liquor in each hand topping it off.
Stinky saw her giving him the evil eye. “Never let a crisis go to waste,” he said unapologetically.
The bartender had abandoned his station and had probably left out a rear entrance. Stinky was the kind who was going to make sure he got his, and everyone else needed to worry about themselves. His selfishness knew no boundaries.
Kathy turned back to Dave, and said, “Make that two events no other humans have ever witnessed.” She stuck a thumb over her shoulder and directed it toward Stinky.
Dave looked over and shook his head in disgust.
Chapter 5
The news reporter had left Jackson Square not long before tensions escalated. The gap between the two opposing sides now nonexistent.
Grossly outnumbered, the police had retreated and gathered in small groups. Andrew heard one officer, as he hurried by, call on his radio for backup.
Rev. Martin Scott, the leader of Tear Them to the Ground, was in the face of one member of the Sons of the Confederacy.
Andrew Jackson was so hoping that this would have remained a civil protest. Extreme right and left positions on any subject had obvious flaws. There had to be bending on both sides if differences had any hope of a resolution. The only way winner could take all was if one side obliterated the other. America didn’t need another Civil War.
Rev. Scott threw his protest sign to the ground and put up his fists, ready to defend himself.
The Sons of Confederacy member in front of him had thrown his sign aside first. Andrew quickly grabbed the man’s right arm to prevent blows from flying.
The man outweighed Andrew by a good forty pounds. And while it was a valiant effort to keep the peace, the man jerked free of Andrew’s grip, and his fist accidentally flew forward landing square in the middle of Scott’s face.
Rev. Scott, old age limited and taken aback by a sucker punch, staggered to the ground.
One ardent supporter immediately took Scott’s spot, and said, “You goin’ down, fool!”
The two exchanged blows, igniting the mêlée.
The police responded by blowing whistles and yelling warnings over megaphones.
Signs and fists became weapons. Makeshift weapons clashed as the protest turned into a full-scale war.
Andrew, unarmed with no intention of fighting, backed away as chains swung and blunt instruments struck flesh. There was no doubt that people would get hurt. Some might even receive life-threatening injuries. Today, both sides of the argument would lose.
Outside the mass of people in the center of Jackson Square, a mounted police officer had his shotgun to his shoulder and squeezed off three rounds.
Pandemonium dialed upward tenfold. The situation had turned beyond horrific. What had possessed the officer to fire a gun?
Then, more gunshots rang out from different corners of the square.
The gunfire induced a momentary pause as warring sides looked around for a greater threat than what was before them.
Andrew watched as people in the outside region of the group screamed and dashed away. Catching brief glances between those who fled, he saw a strange looking two-legged creature.
At first, he thought it might be someone pulling a stunt. That notion quickly dissipated when he watched it chase a full-grown man and take him down to the ground.
The creature looked like a dinosaur. A dinosaur? Impossible! It had a lizard-like head with large eyes. When it opened its mouth, it had rows of leaf-shaped teeth. Long, slender legs with raised sickle-shaped claws on the inside of its feet looked like they could have belonged on a bird. The head and body were reptilian, though, stretching at least six feet in length, and over three feet in height. Its olive-green skin had golden stripes marking its spine.
The dinosaur wasn’t as tall as a human, but size, in this case, didn’t matter. It bit the back of the man’s neck until he gave up all efforts to resist.
The troodon’s hunger overrode any fear of the large crowd around it. It began stripping flesh above the man’s left elbow. A flap of meat hung from its lower jaw and stained it red as it gobbled it down.
Andrew felt his insides churning and fought to keep his stomach contents in place.
Alt-Left and Alt-Right duelers, who previously battled to take the other out, teamed up on the dinosaur. One had a chain in his right hand and a hammer in his left. The second held a large diameter flagpole that easily could second as a hanbō in a martial arts match.
While the troodon’s head lowered for another bite, the man with the chain slung it forward. The chain was long enough to where when it hit the dinosaur’s neck, it wrapped around it a couple of times.
Startled, the troodon jerked its head backward.
To the chain-wielder’s misfortune, he had the other end wrapped around his right hand. The troodon pulled him off balance, and he landed flat on his face on top of the dead man.
The troodon snaked its head around until the chain pulled free.
Cursing, the man rolled on his back and saw the reptile-like jaws open and deadly, bloodstained teeth plunging toward him.
The man with the pole bounded forward just in time to shove the pole between the troodon’s teeth, split-seconds before reaching its target.
The troodon
raised its head and hissed in anger. It tried to shake the pole from its mouth, but its teeth had stuck in the wood.
The pole wielder cried out as he struggled with the dinosaur. His arms shook as he put every ounce of muscle to keep the dinosaur at bay.
In the blink of an eye, the troodon leaped forward bringing the sickle-shaped foot claws down on the man’s stomach. Clothing and flesh ripped, and a gush of crimson spewed out.
The man dropped the pole and screamed in anguish as he held his hands on his gaping wound; desparetly trying to keep his intestines from spilling out.
From behind, a rope turned into a lasso landed around the troodon’s neck.
“Got ’em. Let’s pull, boys!” a member of the Sons of Confederacy yelled.
The troodon went to its back. As the Alt-Right members held tightly, the Alt-Left members pounded the deadly creature with bricks and clubs. Some even stuck it with knives until it became a bleeding, unmoving heap.
Andrew felt naked with nothing in his hands to defend himself. He looked around in hope to find something that could put distance between him and one of those dinosaurs. There was road construction nearby where he earlier saw lengths of rebar that would make a formidable spear, but that was just outside of the fence and too far away.
Then Andrew saw Rev. Scott trying to lift himself off the ground. There were footprints on his shirt. People running in fear must have stepped on the old guy.
He dashed over to Scott’s side, keeping one eye out for another attack. “Hey, you okay? Let me help you up.”
Dazed, but coming out of it, Rev. Scott raised his right arm, and Andrew pulled him to his feet.
“Ow! My knee. Somebody stepped on my right knee,” Scott cried and gritted his teeth.
“Sorry, buddy. Here, put your arm around me, and take the weight off that leg.”
It may be true that there are no Atheists in foxholes. It was true too that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Andrew looked for a place of refuge to bring Rev. Scott. Before him stood the mighty bronze statue of General Andrew Jackson. St. Louis Cathedral, the oldest Catholic cathedral in daily use, just outside of the Square, and across Chartres Street, loomed in the background. The beautiful white building had served parishioners since 1794. Its triple steeples towered like welcoming arms, ready to comfort the poor souls in need.
“I’m taking you to the cathedral. Let’s go!” Andrew said, and the two hobbled toward the nearest gate.
Scott winced in pain with each step, but the man soldiered on.
From Andrew’s assessment, half the protestors fled the scene, and the other half willingly or unwillingly engaged with more dinosaurs. Some protestors weren’t fairing so well. Horrible death screams electrified the air sending chills down his spine. He was so scared he couldn’t feel his legs, but he kept telling them to keep churning.
At least there weren’t any dinosaurs of the magnitude of those in Jurassic Park. The movies had fascinated him when he first saw them and thought how wonderful it would be if man could bring the prehistoric creatures back. Behind bars, though. Humans had no chance of competing with dinosaurs in the wild.
A savage roar lit a fire under the fleeing men’s feet right after they passed the General Jackson statue.
Andrew had counted his blessings too soon. He looked over his shoulder and saw a two-legged dinosaur as tall as the General Jackson memorial. The creature’s head was at least six feet long. It looked similar to drawings of T. rex’s he’d seen, but the size and shape of it made him think Godzilla and a T. rex had crossed and out came that guy.
The dinosaur’s belly was off-white. The skin on its back was a light tan. Dark brown spots that reminded Andrew of a giraffe dotted near its spine. It was beautifully terrifying.
How could a creature of that size come from nowhere?
Fortunately, it had fixated its attention on the General’s statue; perhaps seeing something as large as it as a threat. It roared again and slammed its head and body into the sculpted metal.
The giganotosaurus did what the Civil War, time, and hurricanes over the last one hundred and seventy years could not. The famous equestrian statue dislodged from its granite base, and the force of it hitting the ground broke the twenty-thousand-pound memorial into large pieces.
It was indeed a sad day in history for losing such a treasure.
The day wasn’t over, and history might have worse things to record at the conclusion.
*
Officer Charles Tidwell leaned back in his saddle, rubbed the small of his back, and wished the mayor would have requested fifty or more members of the Louisiana National Guard to maintain order at the protest.
Sergeant Darryl Ginyard was on his radio now, calling for backup.
There was a time when people respected the law. Just the presence of one police officer in a situation like this would have kept events from getting out of hand. Now, even five of the eleven of the iconic New Orleans Police Department’s Mounted Unit, and a handful of other officers, were no more of a deterrent than pigeons foraging in the Square.
Tidwell had seen the worst men had to offer over the last twenty-five years of his career. Hurricane Katrina, back in 2005, had him almost finding his breaking point. The sad fact then was some of the NOPD turned out to be worse than the most hardened criminals ever to emerge from the Crescent City.
He had stuck it out, though. Reaching deep inside and finding a resolve he never knew. That was then when he was younger. The long hours, the stress of the job, and the growing anarchy in the United States made him feel twice as old as then. Fortunately, retirement hung like a brass ring on a merry-go-round just a few months away.
Sergeant Ginyard spoke on his radio, listened to the noisy response, and said to Tidwell, “Just got word the governor has approved the deployment of three squads of National Guard.”
“Three squads? Having thirty extra guys on our side might turn things around here. Should have been here this morning,” Tidwell said, wondering why politicians only acted to put out fires rather than prevent them from happening.
“Yeah, looks like this thing is about to boil over. We’re going to crack a few heads for sure. Try to keep the numbers even. We don’t want to set straight one side more than the other.”
“Wouldn’t want to be called racists,” Tidwell said.
The two men laughed together.
“Funny how both a white man like me and a black man like you could both be called racists in this situation,” Tidwell said. This new politically correct world had shifted the zeitgeist in the US where up means down and left means right as far as Tidwell was concerned. Of course, if he headed over to Cafe du Monde for beignets and chicory coffee right now to find his safe space, the snowflake Millennials would have zero compassion for him.
“When I wear this uniform, I’m not black, I’m blue,” Ginyard said. “And, I don’t care about the color of the skin of whose head I crack.”
“That’s why you and I get along so well. We’re so much alike,” Tidwell said adding a wink and a nod.
Then, without warning, Tidwell pulled his shotgun from its holster and brought it to his shoulder. The barrel pointed directly at Sergeant Ginyard’s face. He yelled, “Down, Ginyard! Move!”
Ginyard’s face went blank only for a microsecond. Then, he did as commanded and flattened to the ground.
No sooner had Ginyard unimpeded the shotgun’s aim, Tidwell pumped three rounds as fast as he could into a monstrosity only seconds away from sinking its teeth into Sergeant Ginyard. That darn thing had come from nowhere!
The creature looked similar to the green Carolina anole lizard. That green lizard only grew up to six inches or so, though. This aberration’s body was nearly six feet long, with a tail adding another three feet. Where it differed the most from a common lizard, the thing had a five-foot-sail-like fin on its back. The fin rose as high in the air as Tidwell seated on his horse. Its head was more iguana-ish and had rows of teeth that would spook
the largest gator.
Call it luck, or call it twenty-five years of training paying off, the double ought buckshot traveled a tight three-inch spread until it reached dead center of its target.
The dimetrodon’s face imploded on one side of its head; leaving a crater of fresh ground meat. The dinosaur dropped on all fours and listed over to its side.
The warring factions amped their game in response to the shots.
To confuse the situation more, other gunshots rang from around the Square. Tidwell hoped those rounds came from other police officers. Although, he was just starting to wrap his mind around what had just happened there, he realized others might have found themselves in the same predicament. What on Earth was going on?
The dead creature lying just a few yards away looked just like one of those plastic dinosaurs he played with as a kid. Tidwell couldn’t remember its official name. He just called it Donnie because it was easier to pronounce. He hoped he wouldn’t get a modern-day encounter from Terry or Rexy.
“What the heck is that?” Sergeant Ginyard said as he scrambled to his feet with his Glock .40 caliber service pistol drawn and pointing at the dimetrodon. “Is it dead?”
The beast’s remaining eye was open and looking into an unseen void. Because it showed no signs of movement or life, Tidwell declared victory. “Looks dead to me.”
Victory was short-lived. Just on the other side of the fence, where the mule-drawn carriages waited to take those who desired a tour of the city, a thunderous hiss overshadowed an almost human-like scream from a mule.
Tidwell spun around in his saddle and saw a two-legged dinosaur over twelve feet tall, with its jaws in a death-grip around the mule’s throat.
The carriage driver stood in his seat, slapping the top of the dinosaur’s head with his riding crop. “Hey! Whoa! Stop! Stop!”
No sooner as the mule collapsed, the allosaurus’ open mouth went after its interrogator, which it quickly filled with his head and torso. Its teeth mashed together as the carriage driver’s legs kicked in the empty air.
The Dinosaur Battle Of New Orleans Page 6