The Dinosaur Four (19 page)

Morgan snapped his fingers.
“I know those. Those are Brontosauruses.”

William shook his head. “I don’t think so.
They’re in the sauropod family, but these are bigger. And besides, they don’t use the name ‘brontosaurus’ any more. It’s ‘Apatosaurus’ now.”

“Pat o’saurus?”
Morgan snickered. “What are they, fucking Irish?”

William
squinted at the offshore giants. “These look more like diplodocus. See how long their tails are?”

Morgan
clapped William on the back. “I am so glad I got stuck in the land of the lost with the world’s only black dinosaur nerd.”

William smiled
. “Someday, Morgan, you will have children of your own and you will become an expert on dinosaurs, or insects, or Japanese fighting robots, or something.”

“I’m already an expert on Japanese
fighting robots, bro.”

Callie
looked over. “Maybe he’ll have a little girl and become an expert on princesses.”

William
chuckled and studied the great beasts in the distance. “Diplodocus wasn’t so big though. Those look enormous.”

“Hey!”
Callie pointed. “Forget about the damn dinosaurs. Look what I see!” Off to the left, about a quarter mile out from the surf, an orange light blinked, like a buoy marking the mouth of the river. “That’s got to be it!”

They
all gazed at the object bobbing in the water.

“Fuckin’ A,”
Morgan said. “I’m going to get so wasted when we get home.” He lit his second-to-last cigarette.

Tim
focused on the device. It glinted in the sunlight.
I have got to take swimming lessons
. He had a few thousand dollars saved up in the bank.
Maybe I could take Julie on a vacation to Hawaii.
He
wondered if it was too early to invite her on a vacation. “How far out do you think that is?” he asked.

“Less than two thousand feet,” H
ank said. "You all stay here. Build a sandcastle or something. I’ll go get it.”

“We gotta be careful
now,” Al cautioned. “So far, the plant eaters have been just as bad as the meat eaters. Maybe we should wait until they clear out.”

Hank looked across the water at the wading giants. “Those things are so big, how can they even notice us? We’re like
ants
.”
Most of the herd grazed beyond the time machine and nearly a hundred feet separated the device from the closest dinosaur. They moved slowly to the right, following the coast southward. “Besides, it doesn’t look very deep.” The water appeared to be three or four feet high where it met the dinosaurs’ legs, even the ones farthest out. Hank turned to Al. “I’m going to just walk out there and get that damn thing.”

“Wait,” Callie
began. “I’ve been thinking. Remember what Beth said about horror movies? Don’t split up.” She paused. “Let’s all wade out there as a group. Let’s stick together.”

William
nodded. “It sounds like a good idea to me. If something happens, we can help each other out.”

Hank stared at his fiancé
and gave a shrug. “Alright, but I’m not waiting on anyone.” He started down the dune, sliding on loose sand.

Tim considered offering to stay behind and watch their backs
. The water
did
look shallow enough to walk in. He decided he could handle it and started after the others.

“Hey, look who’s here,”
said William, pointing up the beach. Buddy walked toward them dragging the dried remains of a three-foot fish.

Callie smacked her lips.
“Mmmm, that looks delicious.” The dog dropped to the sand and stripped bits of flesh from the bones, holding the fish between his front paws.

William let out a chuckle. "Let’s do this.” He
followed Hank down to the high tide line. Bits of shells littered the beach, along with an uneven band of withered seaweed. William jammed the shovel into the sand and knelt to remove his shoes. The others followed suit. They all dropped their mobile devices into their shoes. Even though most were sealed up in baggies, they didn’t want to risk carrying them out into the ocean. They contained the pictures they had taken, pictures that could be worth thousands. Hank snapped a few shots of the herd at the last minute.

Buddy watched
Hank lead the group down to the surf and then returned his attention to his seafood snack.

As they
drew close to the water, they picked up the smell of the dinosaurs lumbering offshore. “That’s um, that’s something.” Callie commented. The seismosaurs smelled far worse than the hadrosaurs, even at this distance.

Tim’s
stomach already felt queasy at the thought of going out into the water. The smell of goat cheese vomit added to his nausea. He opened his mouth to breathe.

The water felt warm, almost spa-like, and the surf amounted to
little more than a ripple. Tiny minnows scattered about their feet as they sloshed along. Hank led the way, setting a steady pace.

“This isn’t so bad,” Callie remarked. “A walk on the beach.”
Hank smiled and took her hand.

At twenty yards out, they encountered the seaweed which
had attracted the seismosaurs to the area. Thick, ropey strands tangled and tugged at their feet as they walked, slowing their progress. “Ok, I take it back,” Callie said. “This
is
bad. I hope nothing is living in this stuff.”

“You got that right,” Tim agreed. H
e imagined tentacles wrapping around his bare feet and eels slithering along his ankles.

“I doubt there is anything too big nearby,” Hank offered. “Not with those things lumbering around.”

Tim wasn’t so sure. He positioned himself in the middle of the group and shuffled his feet along the sandy bottom as he walked, hoping to scare off any prehistoric stingrays or crabs that might be sheltering under the seaweed.

Morgan stumbled and
he fell forward into the water. He came up soaked and sputtering. “What the shit!” The others laughed.

“What does that mean, exactly?” William asked.

Morgan flapped his arms, trying to shake them dry. “It’s like ‘what the fuck’,” he said, as if that explained everything.

Callie pressed him. “Yeah, but everyone else says ‘what the fuck.’ Why do you say ‘what the shit’
?”

Morgan pulled
a strand of seaweed from his hair. “Because a fuck is a good thing. People always say ‘what the fuck’ when they are upset about something. Why would you take such a wonderful thing as a fuck and use it to talk about something bad?”

“You’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, haven’t you?”

“Fuck yeah.”

As
they moved past the steady whisper of small waves breaking on the shore, they heard a brittle screeching sound from the direction of the herd.

“That’s a weird noise,” Morgan said. “You’d think creatures that big would sound a little more bad-ass.”

“It isn’t the dinosaurs making the noise,” William said. “It’s the creatures flying around them.” A cloud of pterosaurs buzzed around each giant seismosaur. The flying reptiles flitted about, landed on the sides of the sauropods, squawked at each other and then flew off again, only to reposition themselves somewhere else. “They must feed on parasites living on the dinosaurs’ skin.”

Methodically, each
seismosaur lowered its head and swung it sideways through the water. When it rose back to the sky, it pulled up strands of seaweed and then chewed the mass into its mouth. They never seemed to drop any.

Their tails extended straight out
behind them, ending in impossibly thin wisps that rotated in tight spirals, like little flagellate propellers slowly pushing the giants forward. Every so often, Tim thought he heard the sound of a tail slicing the air, like the swish made by swinging a thin branch.

Hank
and Callie led the group by a good ten yards. They seemed to have an easier time wading in their running shorts than the others in their long pants. Hank released Callie’s hand and forged ahead. Tim thought that he seemed determined to reach the device first, almost as if it was a race. Tim did not object. There was no reason for everyone to come all the way out and the sooner they got the time machine, the sooner they could head back.

The football-shaped object bobbed gently in the water, its yellow-orange light blinking on and off every few seconds. It looked alien and out of place in this otherwise natural world.

When he finally reached it, Hank spoke out loud. “Gotcha!” He took it into his hands. The device was more than three times as large as a real football and encased in shiny metal. Hank lifted it triumphantly over his head and turned to face the others following behind. Water dripped onto his hair and a smile broke out on his face. The object was covered by eight panels, four on each hemisphere, alternating between orange paint and polished aluminum.

Enough
, Tim thought. He turned to look back at the shore. A few yards behind the group, he saw the forty-foot crocodile. Its upper jaw and snout broke the surface, creating a low wake as it swam silently toward them.

“Fishing is all about patience,”
Helen said, watching the bobber dance in the current. Four lines extended off the sidewalk pier. Two lines ended with lures from the tackle box and two others ended with hooks holding small white worms Lisa found under a log near the tree line.

“That’s why I never fished,” Lisa told her. “No patience.”

“You got this store up and running. That must have taken some patience.” Helen had never worked outside the home. Lawrence Davies believed a family needed a wife and a mother. Helen believed it too, when it came down to it. She couldn’t imagine what it would take to run a business by herself.

“I think my lack of patience helped me,” Lisa said. “I never sat still. I always had to find an improvement.”

“You did the right thing, dumping them in the river,” Helen said. She didn’t actually believe that, but she thought Lisa needed to hear it. Helen thought that bodies should be buried. She didn’t believe in cremation and she certainly did not believe in river dumping.

The first body had startled her.
She had been sorting through the fishing supplies when it landed in the water. A few drops from the splash hit her. She had watched in horror as the remaining three corpses fell from above and then floated away.
That’s going to be you, Helen Davies, if you aren’t careful now.

Still, what’s done is done. Chastising the woman wouldn’t help and it wasn’t as if the two of them could dig four graves by themselves.

“It was starting to get pretty nasty up there.” Lisa had washed her hands three times with antibiotic soap after climbing back down.

“I suppose there wasn’t any other choice,”
Helen admitted. “Still, sweetie, when my turn comes, I’d really prefer to be buried.”

“I promise not to dump you in the river.”

Helen wasn’t sure if she was being patronized, but it did not matter. She had made her wishes known. “Look! There was a nibble.” She pointed a bony finger at one of the white and red bobbers.

Helen
had seen nibbles about every five minutes, and she pointed out each and every one, hoping to keep Lisa distracted now that she had run out of things to do. The remaining “Daily Edition” canvas bags were all stuffed with supplies. Everything that they might need had been carefully packed. She had divided up all of the camping and survival gear from the cabinet upstairs, along with what remained of their food. If they found themselves needing to depart, they could grab at least two bags each on the way out. Of course, if they needed to leave, there might not be time to grab anything. Helen was not sure she would leave the building at all, no matter what happened.

She felt hopeful about the fishing. It had all come back to her
. With fingers stiff from arthritis, she had carefully threaded each of the lures and fish hooks on the first try. Every few minutes she adjusted one of the lines and checked to make sure the bait had not disappeared.

“Do you think they’ll even find it?” Lisa asked. They had not talked about the others since they left.

Helen looked up at her. She did not like to sugarcoat things. As a mother, and now as a grandmother, she had a reputation for being blunt. Her children’s spouses found her a little off-putting. She didn’t care. People needed to hear the truth. The world had grown far too sensitive. “Lisa, sweetie, we should work under the assumption that you and I are the only two people left alive on this planet and that we will be here until the day we die. Anything else that happens is a bonus.”

“You don’t even think they will
make it back empty-handed?”

“I’m not saying that. But there’s a lot that can go wrong. Even if they don’t get gobbled up by Lord knows what, they may never find that
time machine. Or they may find it and it won’t work. Or they may find it and use it without us.”

“No way. William wouldn’t do that.” She frowned at the woman for even suggesting such a thing. “And I don’t think Al would let them.”