Anonymous Rex (14 page)

“Hmm?”

“Where are we?”

“Yes, yes. Excellent food!”

Even if the cabbie’s English ain’t so hot, at least he’s now figured out that I want the other taxi followed, and at a distance. For a little while, at least, I can sit back, relax, and—

The cab stops.

“Thirty-three fifty,” he says.

I peek out the windshield, making sure to keep my head down. A hundred feet away, Sarah climbs out of her taxi and jogs hurriedly across the street. I toss a fifty to the surprised driver—one of the only two I have left, and I don’t have time to get change—and, impressed with my tip, he proposes to take me to a place he knows downtown where I can spend my money and find fine female companionship in return. I politely decline the offer and take off down the road.

Sarah is swift, slipping through the shadows of the street with surprising delicacy. I feel like a donkey in comparison, every misstep braying and betraying my presence. I try to remain at least fifty yards behind her at all times, occasionally dropping below garbage bins or scooting behind corners to remain unseen.

Looking around, I can’t find a single street name or number; it’s as if a confused Pied Piper had strolled through the neighborhood, his sheet music all mixed up, his new tune convincing not rats but street signs to pluck themselves out of their concrete beds and follow him to a happier, less graffiti-intensive land. I do know one thing: Sarah and I are not the only ones on the street. We may, though, be the only nonfelons.

After a few more twists and turns through downtown Crazyville, we arrive in front of what I would assume to be an old warehouse, but for a faded sign that reads
CHILD CARE CLINIC
in bold, crooked letters. Two shuttered docking bays stand on either side of a covered entrance, and it is this poorly lit door to which Sarah heads. Ducking down behind a mailbox littered with graffiti tags and gang slogans, I am pleased to find out that Reina is Julio’s girl, at least as of 9/18/94. I hope all is still well for the couple.

The prospect of dealing with the denizens of yet another hospital is as unappetizing as the Tar Pit Club’s infamous Fish and Peppermint Soufflé, but my job necessitates that I suck it up and deal. The clinic door opens for Sarah—I can’t tell whether she has a key or someone within the building has emerged to unlock it for her—and she slips inside. After counting ten-Mississippi, I hop across the street and sidle up to the entrance, my eyes pulling Felix the Cat tick-tocks across their sockets, checking out the clinic, checking out the road, checking out the shadows and the darkness beyond.

The door is closed, bolted up tight, and a quick perusal of the clinic’s safety precautions tells me that a credit card jiggle isn’t going to be my ticket in this time. The direct approach is out as well, though in some respects it would be better for all concerned if I could simply rap away on the clinic door, announce my presence to whomever might answer, and ask if they wouldn’t mind terribly if I sat in on their private get-together, maybe take a few notes, record a few conversations, just for posterity’s sake. Unfortunately, I doubt I’d get the real skinny on the action using this tack.

The rolling sheets of aluminum that serve as bay doors are padlocked in place, and though I could probably pick them in less time than it takes a hummingbird to sneeze, opening those metallic monstrosities would all but announce my presence over the PA system. Time to look for a back entrance. I slip around the side of the building.

But now, on the hunt, things change:

It is midnight, and something is amiss. Everything has intensified—the smell of decay, the rough gristle of the clinic’s concrete walls. The night has grown darker, the graffiti more obscene, and I can taste the sharp sting of metal in the back of my throat. Ernie always taught me to use my instincts, the primal base of my knowledge, to guide my actions in any and all situations. That primal base is telling me to run. To get out.

I press on.

There are noises in any city—the catcalls of the homeless, the cries of lost animals, the moans of a breeze whipping through concrete canyons. But now I am hearing clicks and swishes, the buzzing of lips, the tongue-tooth pop of a guttural stop. I am hearing whispers and I am hearing voices, and I do not know how much of it is real and how much of it is imagined, and I do not know why I have become so apprehensive in a matter of minutes, whipping around at every faint breath of wind on the back of my neck.

Then it comes to me—

Somewhere nearby, there is a backyard barbecue burning away. Odd neighborhood for a family cookout. Odd time of night, too. But I can smell it, smell it strong—the coal, the lighter fluid, the fatty juices stoking the fire, flaming it out, egging it to new heights. And
something else in there. Something … wrong. Something on the edges of my perception, coming into play, revving up, making a move, jockeying for the pole position …

Plastic. Burning, sickly sweet.

I duck.

A spiked tail slams into the wall above my head. Concrete flecks shoot out like shrapnel, and I stumble backward into darkness. What the—

Left arm—fire—a streak of pain, lancing down my shoulder—a ragged intake of breath, not mine, drawing near—I spin and leap away, shoulder screaming, instincts humming.

Sugar-water scent mixed with that burning plastic, sugar in the air, and it is blood that I smell—mine, mine, all mine—streaming down my arm as I back into the wall. There is something back here with me, something on the prowl. My guise is ripped, latex torn to shreds.

A snort—a roar—I brace for the attack—and in the black pit of this alley I can make out the tail, lined with glistening spikes—the claws, filed to razor-edges—the teeth, hundreds of them filling a mouth impossibly wide, impossibly deep. Eight feet, nine feet, ten feet high—taller than any dino has grown in the last million years. This is not a Stegosaur. This is not a Raptor. This is not a T-Rex, and this is not a Diplodocus. This is not any of the sixteen species of dinosaur whose ancestors survived through the Great Showers and evolved into our kind sometime during the last sixty-five million years.

But it is kicking my ass.

With the shriek of a railroad train lying hard on the brakes, it lunges, firm flesh and sharp spikes hurtling toward my body. Shadows—outlines—shift in the darkness, and I take a gamble, leaping right. It pays off. The … 
thing
I am fighting—evading—bangs against the clinic wall, a satisfying crunch of bone on concrete.

Have to fight back, defend myself. Free up my weapons, let it loose. Let it all hang out.

Shoulder throbbing, I tear away at my guise, girdles belted down tight to prevent mishaps like the one at the Evolution Club. I struggle with the G series, ripping off buttons, destroying zippers. No time to save the wrapping paper. My tail flops out, a wide slab of muscle
covered in a thick layer of green leather hide—no spikes, but excellent for hopping, tripping, parrying, countering all attacks.

That scent, that
wrongness
—the smell of burning plastic, of industrial waste, of creation gone awry—intensifies. Anger, frustration pour from my opponent’s pores as he/she/it rises to full height and roars out a challenge.

Fight or flight, fight or flight. Adrenaline is the drug of choice.

G series gone. Tail out, legs uncovered.

E series off. My retractable claws, once aching to be clipped, zing out of their slots and curve ever so slightly down and across my hands, obsidian knives glinting in the moonlight.

P-1 and P-2 discarded. With a wail of my own that would send small villages into paroxysms of panic, I tear away at my mask, ripping the rubber from my head. Bones, softened, set into place, as my snout, tucked for so long beneath its polystyrene confines, flips into position.

M series remaining. With a violent spit, I disgorge my bridge, my caps, my mouthpiece, and they clatter to the filthy ground. It has been three months since I have uncovered my real teeth, those fifty-eight sharp syringes, and it feels so good to snap at the air, to break it in half with a vicious chomp.

The thing pauses. I roar in delight. Bring it on, big boy! Bring it on!

Thinking is muddled, primal instinct all I have.

Plastic, burning still, growing, growing, drafts of rage and confusion—

A staredown, a smelldown—

Growling. Watching. Grumbling. Waiting.

To move is to lose. To move is to die.

A flinch—left—screaming, roaring—my claws whip out, reaching for flesh, grasping for muscle, for tendons, for bones—legs pounding the pavement, grappling for purchase—streams of crimson flowing, gushing, can’t feel a thing—mouth working, jaws slamming, snapping down on open air, inching, inching toward a throat—

Blood smell, sugar smell—my own, not my own—flying through the air, but there is no pain, there is no fear, there is just the
thing
, this mélange, with a tail and claws and teeth that do not—cannot—go together.

I lash out with my tail, whipping it up and under my feet, leaping into the air, hoping to bring the beast to the ground, and it feels so good, so right to be locked in mortal combat. Through the part of me that is in every other dino, our shared, archetypal memory, I am momentarily flung to the shores of an ancient river, the air thick with moisture and the wings of Pteros, buzzing with insects long since fossilized, the soil littered with the bones of a thousand conquests. And I know that this creature I am fighting, whatever its genetic makeup, can feel it too. Clinics and taxicabs and warehouses are a hundred million years in the future as we grunt and grab, muscles straining.

A break—I retreat, backpedaling hard, blood loss coming under control. Waves of black gauze shimmer across my field of vision, the world rippling with speedboat wake. Shoulder wound, leg wound, tail wound, neck wound—some deep, some glancing, all stinging.

It
slinks into the shadows—to recuperate, perhaps, or to rethink its attack. I will not have much time before it reaquires the taste for my blood. I can only hope that its strength, like mine, is running low, approaching the E mark on its internal gauge.

“Enough,” I pant, breath coming in ragged heaves. “Tired.”

A rabid-dog bark in return, drool trilling the growl into a sizzling roll. Could it be trying to respond?

“English?” I have no idea what this thing speaks, and I don’t want to assume anything.

No response. At least, not an understandable one. Breathing, growling, lateral movement in the shadows.

Cautiously—even as I fight against the urge—I raise my arms, claws half-retracted, baring my breast, a nonverbal question, can we call a truce?—traces of my settle-out-of-court upbringing in this human world.

I am vulnerable.

I am wide open to attack.

I am a fool.

The creature leaps high into the air—it is laughing behind that roar, chuckling as it shrieks—and I shrink back—my arms moving into a protective cross, claws outstretched—and the beast falls, teeth glistening, tail aiming, saliva dripping, burning holes in the pavement. My eyes closing, squinting, the end coming near—our eyes locking, our gazes meeting—

And my upthrust claws tear into its belly.

Blood drenches my arm and the howl of a thousand dying wolves shreds the night. My fingers grasp viscera, my claws snip through cavities, and the thing I am fighting wriggles its body like an eel impaled on a slow-roasting skewer.

It flings itself backward, down into a gutter, and my arm, still attached—claws digging farther, digging up, aiming, target-locked—drags me along for the ride. We tumble through the alley, blood streaming in rivulets across the pavement and into storm drains, heading out to sea. Our faces are inches apart, and even as my body is fighting, tearing away, I am looking into those muddy yellow eyes, eyes shocked with lightning-bolt streaks of crimson, searching for an essence, a clue as to its origin. But all I can see is pain, anger, frustration, and confusion. It was not supposed to lose. It was not supposed to end like this.

Blood gurgling up its throat, choking out all sounds, the creature plants its legs and tail against the curb and pushes—jumping—falling—flinging its ravaged body up, up, and away from my arm. I can hear the ripping of tissue as my claws come away grasping an indistinguishable organ.

I am bleeding, no doubt, but the creature that now stands a few yards away has cornered the market on blood loss. My claws and teeth have torn gaping holes in its hide, and I can see its entrails leaking out of that belly wound, flopping like pasta to the pavement. It stumbles backward, not out of fear or caution, but weakness, its legs trembling, barely able to hold its improbably massive body upright.

Flashing in its eyes, then, what I could not see before, hiding behind those distorted, contorted features—beyond the pain, the anger, and the confusion. There is a sadness there, a cry to be let free. To end it all. To not exist any longer.
Thank you
, this gaze says to me.
Thank you for my ticket out
.

With one final wheeze, the beast pitches over and lands on the ground with an unappetizing squish. The plastic is no longer burning.

It is ten past midnight, and I cannot help but cry out, in my Raptor tones, a song of conquest, the howls welling up within me, filling me like so much carbonation, exploding, foaming, bursting out. There is a rational section returning to my mind that is telling my body to move on and get out, to pick up my belongings and hightail it
into the darkness as fast as possible before someone comes to take a look at the prehistoric battle site in this New York City alleyway. But it is a ninety-eight-pound weakling, that rational part, and it is overpowered by the stronger need to croon out my victory and feast on the flesh of the vanquished.

Mouth creaking wide, tongue prepping teeth, I instinctively lower my snout, aiming for the throat, the meaty muscles around the neck unprotected, easy access, a victor’s supper—

Police sirens. Distant, but coming closer. No time to hesitate. My jaws, still operating under last standing orders, chomp closer to the fallen creature’s body, and I have to muster my willpower to give it up and back away. That sugar-water smell, the scent of blood, is pulling my desire into knots, lashing away at my primal need. But there will be no taste of flesh for my raging dino-instincts, not tonight. In the morning, I know I will be happy about this. I rarely eat red meat even when I’m not killing my own dinner, and I can’t imagine what this creature’s raw flesh would do to my stomach. Shades of my life as a relative pacifist are returning to my mind, embarrassed at the carnage, the gore littering the streets.