The Dinosaur Four (28 page)

They sat in the pizzeria that Tim’s softball team, cleverly named “The Runs,” patronized after every game. The rest of the team had departed more than an hour
earlier.

“What were you studying? Had you picked a major?” She twirled her straw absently, but she did not look down at it. Those eyes stayed locked on target. They were the color of the ocean
from a tropical resort on a travel photo.

“Architecture. I took a drafting class in high school that I really liked.” He shrugged with a sigh. “But the outdoors, the sun
... I learned so much on the job. Stuff I could put to use.” He looked around the near-empty restaurant. It wasn’t often that a girl put him off his guard and Julie had him on the ropes. To his surprise, he loved it.

Julie
had shown up as a substitute player at that night’s game, filling in for her friend who was out with a cold. They barely spoke during the game. Julie coached first base each inning, aggressively sending runners to second if they had even a remote chance of making it. They always did. Tim watched her from the bench, captivated. He caught her stealing a glance in his direction more than once. Somehow, for reasons he couldn’t explain, she wasn’t a score. He wanted her, sure. But first he wanted to find out all about her. He wanted to know her.

They stayed at the restaurant long into the night and everything he learned made him want to learn mo
re. She told him about her job as a flight attendant and her goal to move up to the cockpit. She had a son named Joe from a fling nine years earlier. She regretted the fling, but not Joe. She lived with her younger sister Stacie, who took care of Joe while she was away for work, sometimes for several days in a row.

Everything about her
seemed interesting, but that wasn’t what truly captivated Tim. It was the way she challenged him with probing questions. “What country would you visit if you could go anywhere in the world?”
Argentina
. “What language would you like to learn?”
Spanish
. “What’s stopping you?”

Tim went to the library the very next day and checked out an audio book called
Learn on the Run: Spanish
. It was marketed as something to listen to while jogging, but he listened to it on his commute. He quickly found that he knew more Spanish than he realized, from years of working alongside immigrant laborers.

On their second date, Tim took
Julie to a Rockies game. Midway through the fourth inning, he took her hand.
Holding hands on the second date!
For Tim, the second date usually meant a few shots in a bar and then a rowdy one-night-stand back at his condo. Now his big move was holding her hand. She smiled and gazed at him. It brought a rush he had never felt before, certainly not from the weekend scores.

“
Tienes los ojos mas bonitos del mundo.”
He had memorized the phrase from his audio book
.
It was cheesy as hell, but it was also real. How could anyone argue with real? She laughed, impressed by his follow-through. He could not tell if she understood what it meant.

You have the most beautiful eyes in the world
.
Tim repeated the phrase in his mind as he huddled in the crevice on the side of the cliff. He could hear flies buzzing above the ruined body of the Triceratops. Only one full haunch remained. Round shapes nestled in the folds of its skin and Tim realized that they were more of those giant ticks.

The tyrannosaur did not move.

After another breathless minute, Tim heard the snoring resume. He stepped out of the hollow and moved on, choosing a path closer to the wall and deep in the shadows.

When he reached the woods and looked back, Tim noticed how
heavy the air had grown. He looked to where William and Al should have been, but couldn’t make them out. The haze and humidity obscured the view. Tim took off his cap and ran his hand through his choppy blond hair which was soaked with sweat. He was ready to get back to the high desert air of modern day Denver.

We split up
, he thought, remembering Beth’s comment about horror movies. We should have agreed to regroup here at the edge of the forest. He thought about going on. Callie had probably reached the café by now. It was only five or ten minutes from the clearing. He started to follow, but then realized that getting back to the café wouldn’t do him any good if the football wasn’t there. He decided to wait and crouched down behind the trunk of a large tree.

In the shadow of the overturned tree
roots, William studied Al’s face. The stocky man’s square jaw clenched and unclenched as he watched Tim disappear in the distance.
What is your problem, Al?
Was it the race thing all over again? William’s boys scolded him for blaming racism on everything. He was glad they didn’t see it as much as he did. He wondered if Al took issue with having a black man in charge.

“You know,” William began, “
I never really wanted to be the leader here.”

Al
turned to face him, but did not respond.

“It just sorta happened.” He paused, waiting for an answer.

Finally Al said, “You’re doing a good job. This whole thing is just pretty fucked up. I haven’t given you enough credit. You got us this far.” Al inhaled. “And I really believe you can get us home.”

William
could see that Al meant it. “I appreciate that.” He looked at the device in Al’s hands. There was no way on God’s green Earth, and this
was
still God’s green Earth as far as William was concerned, that he was going to leave the time device with Al Stevens. “Here. Let me carry that for a spell.” William took the football and handed Al the shovel without waiting for an answer.

Al squeezed the handle of the shovel as William walked off with the device. He thought about Lisa’s kiss, right before they had left on the raft. Once before, in the eighth grade, a girl had kissed him in the school library. He had gotten in trouble for it. Every kiss after that had been paid for. Until today. Today, Lisa had kissed him because she wanted to.

Al put down the shovel and
picked up a round rock the size of a grapefruit.

In his mind he
imagined two different Lisas. He saw one who was polite to him every day in her café. He pictured her safe at home after all of this was over, surrounded by the press. She smiled at him as lights flashed from all of the cameras. But that was it.

The second Lisa was the one he
had pulled from the river, her wet blouse clinging to her body. The one holding his hand. The one who kissed him behind the building and pulled his crotch against hers. She was his. He imagined exploring this exotic world with her. Learning what plants were safe to eat and when to harvest them. Learning to hunt. They would be conquerors. He pictured her safe in a cave, cooking a haunch of meat over an open fire. They would feast and fuck every single night.

William reached the cliff wall and began to make his way along the base.
He walked slowly.

Lisa
would sleep with him, Al knew, for comfort if nothing else. Callie would too, eventually. If he was the only living man on the planet, he could have both of them.

Al chucked the rock as hard as he could in the direction of the snoring monster. Branches hung over the edge of the clearing.
Don’t hit a branch, don’t hit a branch.
They were spread out thinly and Al knew he couldn’t hit one if he actually tried to, but with his luck-

The rock flew just below the canopy before landing squarely on the back of the sleeping tyrannosaur. It thumped and bounced off.

The snoring stopped.

William, a third of
the way across, did not notice.

You think I have issues with your leadership?
Al picked up a second rock and threw it, placing this one out in the open, halfway between William and the tyrannosaur. It landed on stone and split in two with a loud clap.

William froze, staring at the dinosaur. Then he turned to look back at Al. Four hundred feet separated them, but Al could see the disbelief in William’s wide eyes.

He knows what I did.
A cold chill ran down Al’s spine and he felt his bowels begin to loosen.
The others will know what I did. Lisa will know.
He clenched, starting with his sphincter, and then moving up through every muscle in his body.

A slow rumble came from the belly of the beast. It shifted its weight, extendin
g its long tail up into the air. It used its tiny forearms to push up from the ground.

Al shouted as loudly as he could, “
William, FREEZE!
” He ducked into the cavity left by the roots of the fallen tree.
You just woke up a Tyrannosaurus rex.
He knew he should stay hidden, but he couldn’t help himself. He leaned to the side and peered through the upturned roots.

William pressed himself against the base of the cliff, holding the football against his hip
. He disappeared against the rocks.

The
predator stood and looked around. Dried blood from the Triceratops caked its muzzle. The downy fluff on its hide looked almost golden in the late afternoon light that shone down over the edge of the cliff. Al wondered if he had made a terrible mistake.

At the end of the clearing, Tim rose to his feet.
How the hell had William made such a racket?
He felt an urge to distract the dinosaur, to draw its attention. Then he wondered how attracting the attention of a
Tyrannosaurus rex
could possibly be a good idea. Al shouting for William to freeze had been insane. Brave and selfless maybe, but insane. Looking straight down the cliff wall, Tim could not actually see William. The delivery man had found a cavity deeper than the one he had been in. He hoped William was hidden from the dinosaur as well.

The tyrannosaur looked over at the
Triceratops carcass and gave a series of deep sniffs before scanning the area.

Just
sit tight, William,
Tim thought, watching from the trees.
It’s got a perfectly good meal right there. Let it start feeding
.

William tried to hold every muscle completely still. Droplets of sweat trickled down his back and sides. He was wedged deep in the shadows. He wore his dark UPS uniform. Even his skin was dark. He should be invisible. The football in his arms was metallic, but in the shadows, it was just another rock. Without moving his head, William turned his eyes down to be sure.

He noticed something strange on the
rock wall to the side. The wall lit up, then went dark, over and over again. Bright, dark. Bright, dark. The orange beacon light blinked on and off.

William’s breathing picked up. He
moved a hand across the surface of the football until he found the light near the bottom of the device. He cupped his fingers over it.
Why didn’t I think of that before?

The tyrannosaur
took a step toward the cliff.

Very slowly, William turned his head to the left. The forest was too far. He would never make it.
But the cliff.
The wall directly behind him rose only twenty feet or so and it dropped quickly between him and the end of the clearing. Just a few short yards away, it was low enough to climb.

The tyrannosaur took another step closer.
Its head was still in the sunlight coming over the forest above the cliff. It lowered its face. The tip of its nose stuck through the edge of the shadow.

Clutching the time machine tightly against his side, William turned and pushed off the wall. He sprinted along the base of the cliff.

The tyrannosaur’s nostrils flared wide as it sucked air to power its two-hundred-pound heart. It leapt forward, thrilled by the chase.

The
cliff wall descended next to William as he ran. Soon it was even with his head. Then his shoulders.
Just a little farther.
He made himself wait until he was sure it was low enough, knowing he would only get one chance.

He saw Tim directly ahead,
pressed against a tree trunk. The look of horror on Tim’s face told William that the tyrannosaur was right behind him.

Watch this
, William thought. He found the perfect spot and vaulted up onto the higher ground. He spun on his heels, making a tight u-turn, and ran back up the cliff where the group had fled some twelve hours earlier.

The tyrannosaur
reached the cliff right as William passed by, even with its mouth. The dinosaur turned its head and snapped forward. The end of its snout shoved into William. He teetered, but kept his balance. “
Yaah Haaa!
” William kept running up the edge of the cliff.

The tyrannosaur turned toward the end of the clearing. Tim had smiled and pumped his fist at William’s escape. Now his smile died and he sank into the tree trunk. It was coming straight at him. It took three steps in his direction.
Oh shit...
Tim’s knees locked.