The Dinosaur Four (32 page)

Ha. Ha. Ha.
Go ahead and make your little jokes.

I’m sorry,
Callie thought back.
I understand that you’re angry. You’ve got a pretty good reason.

Angry doesn’t begin to cover it, babe. We had something.

Callie couldn’t argue with that. They did have something. She missed him terribly and she would miss him for the rest of her life.
Whatever that’s worth,
she thought.
We’re going to be stuck here.

I don’t want to hear any of that now, babe. You need to get your ass back to
modern times.

Ahead, she saw the river crossing with their ruined chunk of building plopped in the middle. They had bait
now, but she doubted they could lure the tyrannosaur before time ran out. It could be miles away.
What the hell are we thinking? We’re actually trying to bring that monster back here?
She wondered if they would be better off looking for shelter, the way Al wanted.

She felt a chill and the Hank-voice returned.
Babe, I’ve only got one more thing to say on that matter. I think you already know this, but listen up. Al is trouble.
In her mind, he emphasized the last point by jabbing with his finger. As she approached the building, she saw Al up on the second floor tending to one of the snares.

Callie dropped her bag of blood-filled ticks by the back
corner and went to the sidewalk around front. Helen’s campfire had died. If the plan didn’t work, they would need to build up a good blaze for the night. She shivered at the thought.

Buddy ran past her into the building and coaxed a half-eaten muffin from
Helen. The room was lit by votive candles.

“We got some bait,” she
announced. “I take it there has been no sign of the T-rex?”

Helen
shook her head.

Lisa
stood back behind her counter again, where she seemed the most comfortable. She looked pale, but maybe it was just the light. Callie walked over and spoke quietly. “Listen. I don’t know if you want to hear this or not, but I gotta talk to you about Al.”

She expected a rebuttal. Callie had never known a woman to sit by and
listen to hard truths about the men they were involved with. From her experience, she thought that the only way Lisa might accept criticism about her man was if Callie coaxed it out of her own mouth. That usually took a month’s worth of weekly sessions. More time than she had right now.

For some reason Lisa did not object, so Callie continued. “He’s nutso for you. That much is obvious. But I think the key term here is ‘nutso.’ I think he has been trying to keep us from getting home.” Lisa stared silently while Callie went on. “Tell me truthfully, would you have ever given him the time of day before all of this happened?” Callie waited, but Lisa did not answer. “You wouldn’t, and he knows that. I think he wants to keep you here.”

Helen watched from her seat at the table, but Lisa still said nothing.

Is she
losing it?
Callie wondered. She had treated dozens of women for posttraumatic stress disorder, usually following some kind of abuse. Lisa showed classic signs of detachment and avoidance. “Just be watchful, will you?”

Lisa answered her with a
very small nod.

Callie couldn’t hope for much more than that. She picked up a pair of metal coffee pots. “Let’s get ready to make some noise.”

On the second floor, Al
checked the snares to make sure everything appeared in order. Callie and Tim had apparently been successful, he saw, for they had each returned with full plastic bags over their shoulders. Tim carried two of them.

How long had they been out in the woods together? Al and Lisa had finished
preparing the snares almost twenty minutes earlier, and then Al sent her back downstairs to check on Helen. Were Tim and Callie gone long enough to form a relationship? Long enough for Tim to impress her with his charm?

All four snares were now set. Each cable ran up the side of the building and across the
room to the opposite wall. The first cable was tied to the shelf full of computer hardware and the other three were looped around large chunks of loose concrete. All four counterweights were ready to be shoved over the side, where they would fall straight into the river.

A
ll four snares were also rigged to fail.

Down below, Tim dropped one bag at the base of the building and climbed
awkwardly up the wall with the other. Al put his shirt back on. Even though he was in decent shape, he was nowhere near as lean as Tim.

“How did it go?” Al asked as Tim pulled himself onto the
second floor.

“There was a pack of small dinosaurs. They were kinda like turkeys, but with more attitude. We have a dead one in one of the bags.”

Al nodded. If scavenger dinosaurs had moved in, that meant the Tyrannosaurus was long gone. With any luck, they would never see it again.

Tim looked at the four cables that ran across the building. “
How about here? Are things in good shape? We don’t have much time.”

“See for yourself,” Al invited. He
felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end as Tim inspected the wires.

E
ach cable had been cut. Once Lisa climbed down, Al had sawed halfway through all four of the heavy wires. He had watched the edge of the woods as he worked, terrified that Tim and Callie would return and catch him in the act. He had finished just in time. As they approached, he had been adjusting the final knot to hide the cut on the back side of the anchor object. His sabotage could only be seen from the side of the building that faced out over the water.

If by some slim chance the tyrannosaur did return, Al was not about to stand there and
watch their plan succeed.

Tim
checked the knot on the closest wire, making sure it was tied securely. He leaned over the side of the building. “It looks good,” he said after a brief glance. “I hope it works.”

“It has to work, man
.”

Tim nodded and climbed down to get a second bag of bait.
Al wondered if Tim had seen the scoring on the cable when he leaned over. He resisted the urge to run to it and check to see if anything was visible.

As
Tim came back up, he extended the trash bag to Al.
One quick shove,
Al thought. He could easily push Tim off and tell the others that he had slipped.
No.
The fall wasn’t high enough. The soft mud below might prevent him from even breaking a bone. Al took the bag with one hand and helped Tim up with the other.

The contents shifted
and he realized with revulsion that the bag was moving. He threw it down on the floor.

With a chuckle,
Tim reached in and pulled out a giant tick, its body distended with blood. “We gathered up a bunch of these little guys. Some were still feeding on the carcass, but most were beginning to crawl away.” He dropped the tick and impaled it behind the head with a short spear of rebar. The tick’s legs clacked desperately at the floor. “We got at least two dozen of them,” he explained. Tim held it up like a giant marshmallow on a stick.

“Do you really think the rex will be attracted by that?”

Tim leaned over the side of the building. “No, not the tick itself. Watch this.” He held the impaled parasite against the outer wall, directly above the first snare. With his free hand, he used the back side of the shovel to smash the tick against the concrete. A pint of blood spurted out onto the side of the building. Thick black clots rolled down the wall. Tim winced. “If that smell doesn’t attract him over here, nothing will.”

A second tick had escaped the bag and crawled toward Al. He
took the rebar and speared it, wincing at the smell of salty rust. Al held the dying bloodsucker over the side of the building for Tim to smash.

The tyrannosaur had fed generously on the
Triceratops, eating most of the nutrient-rich organs as well as several hundred pounds of high-protein muscle. A few gallons of blood would not attract it to the café this evening, nor would any pot-banging or clanging.

What attracted it to the café was the river itself
.

After eating William a
t the top of the cliff, the tyrannosaur wandered in a wide circle, marking its territory in several spots, until finally it turned back toward the river, where it could quench its thirst. It would drink its fill and then return to the Triceratops carcass to protect what remained of its kill.

When the t
yrannosaur arrived at the clearing and saw the strange object still sitting on the edge of the river, it paused. It felt no hunger, but the instinct to make an ambush kill stopped it just out of sight in the trees.

Buddy began to bark inside the café.

The smell of fresh blood, the noise of the dog, and the sight of the small, strange creatures moving around on top of the structure triggered the tyrannosaur’s killing instinct. Any kills, especially easy ones, helped to reinforce ownership of its territory. Twice today, the small, strange creatures had proven to be easy kills.

On the open second floor, Tim reached into the bag and stabbed another tick.

Al said,
“Somebody should shut that dog up.” He smashed his own tick against the wall below and returned to the bag.

“Let him bark,” Tim said. “In fact, we should tell the ladies to go ahead and start beating on the pots and pans now. We don’t have much time.” As Tim leaned over the wall to smash the next tick, the tyrannosaur
charged from the woods. Tim noticed it right away, but the dinosaur covered half the distance to the building before he could pull himself up from the edge of the wall.

Tim tried to dodge out of the way, but
stumbled backwards over a pile of ceiling tiles. “Shit!” The dinosaur snapped at the wall. It thrust its muzzle up, sniffing and eyeing him. Tim scrambled to his feet. He swung the rebar to fling away the tick and then made a stabbing motion at the tyrannosaur’s nose. It struck like a cobra, snapping its teeth together inches from Tim’s hand. His heart skipped.
Do not try that again
. He dropped the rebar and backed away.

Callie shouted from below, “
Tim!
Its foot is in the snare!”

He called out over the edge of the building. “Which one? Which snare?”

“The second one back from the sidewalk!”

Tim
scrambled across the room to the second block of concrete and gave it a shove. It teetered and dropped, almost taking Tim with it. He pin-wheeled his arms to keep from falling over the edge along with it.

The falling block lurched to a stop and hung in the air. To Al’s dismay, the cable did not break. The copper wire was too strong. He hadn’t cut through enough of it.

Al moved to the
corner and leaned over the wall to look down at the tyrannosaur. The snare looped tightly around the dinosaur’s right leg, just below the calf. Amazingly, their trap was working. However, the concrete hanging off the opposite side of the building did not weigh enough to lift the dinosaur’s foot.

“It’s caught,” Al called out. “But it doesn’t seem to give a shit.”

The tyrannosaur sidestepped in Al’s direction. Tim shouted out, “Is it close to the next one?”

“Yeah, it’s
right on it,” Al moved quickly away from the edge.

Tim shoved the next chunk of rubble over the side.

This concrete block fell, pulled the rope tight, and snapped free as the cable broke right where Al had scored it. They heard a solid splash as the rubble landed in the river below. Al smiled, in spite of himself.

“What the hell happened?” Tim shouted across the building.

Al gave an exaggerated shrug.

The first cable, still holding the tyrannosaur’s leg, moved across the room as the dinosaur walked beside the building. Tim ducked as bits of debris snapped loose and bulleted off in all directions.

The beast finally notice
d the snare around its foot. It lifted its leg and wiggled it in the air.

“That’s right, you bastard! We got you!” Tim shouted.

As if in response, the dinosaur kicked sharply down and back. The block of concrete at the other end of the line rocketed up the outside wall and crashed into the room, shattering free from the cable that held it.

Released from its tether, the tyrannosaur lifted its leg again.
It reached halfway up the building and dug in. Grasping with the massive claws on its toes, it pulled down a section of wall as easily as a child stepping on the edge of a sandcastle. Concrete dust rose like smoke. Screams came from the café below.

“This isn’t working,” Tim hissed.

Al glared. “Are you fucking surprised?”