The Dinosaur Four (17 page)

Tim chewed on his lip. “Her name is Julie. We were supposed to meet up this morning. She just
got back from flying up and down the coast of California.” He gave a small grin and his shoulders dropped a little. “She’s a flight attendant. I met her playing softball.”

“That’s pretty cool. She sounds like a keeper.”

“Yeah. Julie is different.”

“What makes you say that?” Callie
asked.

Tim tilted his head. “Oh,
I’m on your couch now, is that it? What will this session cost me?”

“It depends on your insurance,” she said with a chuckle.

Al squeezed the stick in his hand. Their small talk came so natural. Tim was clearly terrified of being out on the water, yet he was slick and charming.

Tim thought
for a moment. “Julie is someone to live up to. All the girls I went out with before… They were, I dunno, they were just dates. I had fun, they had fun, but I honestly never wanted to spend any real time with them. Julie, she’s not like that.”

Morgan raised his hand for a high-five. “
Score.
”

Tim left the hand unanswered. “
Nah. Believe me, I know a score. But Julie... I want to impress her because I sincerely want to impress her.” He shrugged. “I don’t know if that makes any sense.”

Morgan lowered his hand.

William gave Tim a wide smile. “Makes perfect sense to me, brother.”

Bullshit
, thought Al.
If she isn’t a score, she will be soon enough.
Some men treated women well and some did not, but they all wanted the same thing. His mother had pounded that simple fact into him. And as he grew into puberty, he found it to be true. Sometimes it was all he could think about. You only had to look at the nearest screen to know how the world worked. Television, movies, the internet. It was all the same. Men wanted sex. Women controlled access. Once you understood that, life made sense. It certainly explained why Al’s father had run away with his smoking hot secretary.

“She must be quite a girl,” Callie noted.

Tim nodded. “Yeah, we’ve only been out three times, but she’s pretty amazing.”

“Three dates and she still isn’t putting out?” Al
blurted. He wasn’t sure how many dates it should take, but he wanted to sound like he knew. He wanted to sound like one of the guys.

Callie glar
ed. “Al, don’t be a jackass.”

He
felt his stomach drop.
Good job, Stevens. Way to let ‘em know what an idiot you are.

Tim said
, “Right now, I just want to see her again.”

Al felt his face grow red. The rest of the world never had trouble getting laid.
He turned to watch the river behind them and bit the inside of his cheek.
It isn’t too late. Apologize. Tell them it was a stupid comment and you’re sorry.
Apologizing always worked, even when you didn’t do anything wrong.
Especially
when you didn’t do anything wrong.

“
Listen, Tim,” he began.

Morgan stood up and pointed. “What the shit!”

A clearing opened on the right. More than twenty Triceratops stood along the curved shore. The raft drifted straight toward them.

B
uddy’s hackles rose and he began to bark.
Arp Arp Arp Arp Arp Arp!

William scooped water with
the shovel, trying to move them back out to the middle. Morgan plopped down on his seat.

A
large male sporting a half-broken horn above his right eye lifted his head and squawked like a tropical bird. He stood with his shorter front feet in the water and his back legs on solid ground. Spiked quills grew along the top of his tail. Buddy continued barking, a non-stop
Arp Arp Arp!
All of the Triceratops turned to look at them.

The
half-horned male charged, kicking up spray. Everyone scrambled to the far side of the raft.

William shouted,
“Spread out or we’ll tip over!” He moved back to the empty side, facing the dinosaurs, and pushed at the water with the shovel. For a moment, Al thought William was trying to splash the animals, then he realized he was trying to push the raft away from them. Al raised his stick, ready to shove off of the animal’s face if it got close enough.

Six other
Triceratops followed the half-horn, charging into the water in a great phalanx. “They’ll pop the raft,” Tim said. Each animal sported long javelin horns and a parrot beak.

A
surge of water from the rushing dinosaurs reached the raft and pushed it farther from the shore. Al grabbed one of the nylon straps on the edge of the raft and held tight.

Callie pointed. “
Look, they’re stopping.” The seven dinosaurs glared, standing in water up to their chins. Their faces formed a wall of horns. Their massive heads turned as one, the horns slowly tracking the passing raft.

William stopped paddling. “They can’t come in.” He laugh
ed. “Their heads are too heavy.” The wide frills growing out of the backs of their skulls looked like solid bone. “Those frills must weigh three hundred pounds. If they go in any deeper, they’ll drown.”

“Look at them all,” Callie pointed. Beyond the shoreline, the forest opened up to reveal a great open
slope. A series of rolling hillsides covered with thousands of animals stretched off in the distance as far as they could see. “It’s like those paintings of bison on the prairie."

Hank pull
ed his cell phone out of a plastic baggie. “Cameras!” He held the phone steady to record a video while several others raised their phones.

The raft floated
away from the clearing and the trees closed in again along the shore. The seven Triceratops slowly retreated from the water. A pair of short-horned juveniles wandered down to the bank and lapped with fat tongues.

W
hen the Triceratops were no longer visible, Buddy finally stop barking.

Morgan
sealed up his camera in a plastic bag. “We are going to be so famous when we get back. I wonder what they will call us on the news.” He counted on his fingers. “
The Prehistoric Eight.”

“Hey,” said Callie. “You forgot about Buddy.” She gave the dog a scratch on his chin.

“I don’t think they would count the dog, babe,” Hank said. “Besides, I’ve been thinking. There may not be any publicity about us at all. We may get money just to keep quiet.”

“What?” said Morgan. “No way. We’ve got the best story ever.”

Al thought Hank might be onto something. If they did somehow make it back, the government would cover this up before word got out that time travel was possible. There was a good chance all eight of them would quietly disappear. Al wondered if they should be in such a big hurry to get home.

Hank crossed his arms. “Between the liability suits and the hush money, we could all become millionaires.”

Callie said, “I could keep quiet for a few million bucks. I’d quit my job. Hearing other people complain all day gets old.”

“
Europe,” said Hank. “We could honeymoon in Europe for a year.”

C
allie grinned. “Sounds like fun.”

“I would buy the biggest party house and never work again,” said Morgan
, rocking back and forth. “Sweet!”

“You’d burn through it in less than a year.” Callie chuckled. “What about you, Tim? What would you do with a million dollars?”

“I’d help Julie pay for the hours and training she needs to get her professional license. Then I’d have my own personal pilot. We could go anywhere.”

“Funding her pilot’s license would seal the deal, huh, bro?” Morgan said with a dirty grin.

Callie shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Boys!”

Boys?
Al thought.
Morgan can say whatever the hell he wants, but I’m the one who gets called a jackass?

Tim smiled. “You know Morgan, I would help her out regardless.”

“You would, wouldn’t you,” Callie said. “
That
little fact, Morgan, is what will get him laid.” Tim’s smile grew wider.

“Hey, whatever it takes.” Morgan winked at her. “Not everyone can rely on the formidable reputation of
Morgan’s organ
.” This brought a round of laughter.

Al turned away from the group and scanned
the sides of the river for the so-called football. He forced himself to breathe slowly and thought about what he would do if he became a millionaire. He could make the trip to Nevada a lot more often. His year revolved around the annual vacation, which his friends thought was a gambling trip. He claimed he went to Reno because the odds were better than in Vegas, but in fact, it was easier to get to brothels in northern Nevada.

Each year, for four days, Al Stevens
knew love. The release came after twelve months of building, pent-up frustration and those last few weeks were both unbearable and delicious with anticipation. He thought about that first moment, when the girl would reach down into his pants and grasp him. He cherished that first grab almost as much as the climaxes that came later. A multi-million dollar windfall from the government would buy a lot of grabbing.

You don’t need that anymore
, he told himself. He actually had a chance with someone. Lisa Danser had felt his erection and smiled. The girls at the brothels smiled, but they were paid to smile.

Al wondered if there was some way he and Lisa might stay behind
when the others returned to the present. Here was an entire world to conquer, without all of the bullshit of modern life. They could be Tarzan and Jane. She would never go for it. She would hate him forever if she knew he was even thinking about it.

As they rounded a bend, a smaller river joined theirs from the right. The swirling currents spun them around in circles. Morgan held his hands overhead like a
kid on a roller coaster. Beyond the junction, the river slowed again and William used the shovel to straighten them out.

Dizzy from the spinning, Al
turned to face forward once more, just missing a swarm of bubbles that surfaced behind the raft.

The bubbles rose from the nostrils of a forty-foot crocodile which had followed them from the ruined building. It had feasted a day earlier on the carcass of a drowned ankylosaurus and would not be hungry again for more than a month. But the raft had piqued its curiosity, so it followed. The great reptile had lived for eighty years but had never smelled anything like it. Submerged, the crocodile allowed the current to push it along, adjusting its course with the occasional swish of its fifteen-foot tail.

At first, the strange yellow shape seemed like flotsam
, speeding up or slowing down with the currents. But every so often, it wriggled and splashed like an injured animal. There was some kind of life to it. Life meant food.

At
the Triceratops shore, the object had really come to life, but the crocodile had steered clear, wary of the old guardians along the shore. Their horns posed no threat to an animal that struck from below, but their sharp beaks could slice through hide and bone.

After the yellow object flounder
ed and flailed out to the middle of the river, it grew motionless again. The crocodile drifted and watched. Finally, it decided to attack. The reptile exhaled and sank to the bottom, where it began to swing its tail back and forth in larger and larger motions, increasing speed. It angled upward; poised to open wide just before it reached the surface.

Lisa held the
length of pipe like a sword as she crept across the laboratory. She heard small angry hisses and a wet smacking sound. She was trapped on the upper floor. The only way back to the café was to climb down the outside of the building and run past whatever was down there.
It can’t reach you up here, whatever it is
, she thought. Then she pictured the dinosaurs with the long necks. If one of those came along, there wasn’t anywhere to hide.

She had to see what was
making the noise. She crept to the end of the leaning shelves and looked over the jagged wall. Nothing.

Uck! Uckawk!
A barking screech came from the back side of the shelves. The pipe felt heavy in Lisa’s hands. She jumped around the corner.

Three small
winged creatures pecked at the open side of the dead man who had been sliced in half. They looked like oversized bats with stork-like beaks. Blue veins ran across pale blotches on their piebald skin. The largest pulled a length of entrails from the body.

“Hey! Get away
from that!” Lisa burst forward, waving the pipe. The reptiles took flight, screaming a guttural
Uck Uck Uck
at her. The pterosaurs flew to the tops of the surrounding canopy, where they landed gracefully and perched in a row.

“Yuck.”
The sliced man lay by a doorway that led out of the lab and into whatever room or hallway had existed next to it. The body had been cut in a diagonal line that ran from one side of his head to the middle of his thigh. He had probably been trying to flee from the room when the accident occurred. Organs lay on the floor, spilling out of his abdominal cavity like some kind of mortician’s cornucopia.