The Dinosaur Four (7 page)

“Don’t touch that,” Lisa said. “
It’s disgusting.” Downy tufts clumped on the skin. “It looks mangy.”

Morgan held it up in the air.
“I’m touching actual dinosaur skin. No other human being in the history of time has ever done that.” He leered at Callie. “Now you can put me in the record books too.” The others crowded around and examined the skin, but no one else felt the need to touch it.

Outside, t
he sun had climbed above the treetops and now shone on their building. Most of the hadrosaurs settled into the cool mud halfway between the river and the tree line.

Lisa retreated to the back corner.
She felt more comfortable there, partly because it was where she normally worked and partly because it was as far from the water and windows as she could get. She sat on the station that held sugar, creamer, and wooden stirrers.

William sat down at a table near the front corner. Beth took a seat next to him. Tim stood nearby, watching out the windows. The three of them had formed a tidy little group, Lisa realized.

Al wandered back and sat next to her. Lisa
leaned into him and he put his arm around her.

Hank paced back and forth through the room. “There must be
something special about this location. Most of us don’t even know each other. We all just happened to be here at the same time. It’s the only thing we have in common.” He stopped next to Helen. She had produced a ball of yarn and knitted away at one end of a short red scarf. Lisa found the noise of the clicking needles comforting.

Hank put a hand on Helen’s shoulder. “I think you might be right. We
need to stay close by, in case someone comes looking for us.”

Al
spoke up. “A few minutes ago, you wanted to leave.”

Hank looked up, nostrils wide. “I don’t know what we should do.
I just don’t like being trapped in here.” He resumed his pacing.

Lisa reached
across her body and found Al’s other hand. “Thank you for fishing me out of the river,” she said quietly. Al flexed, hugging her tightly. His
arm felt solid. Right now she needed solid. She closed her eyes and listened to the conversations in her café.

“That noise reminds me
of the forests in Florida,” William said. A cacophony of strange buzzes came from the woods around them.

“You’re from there,” Tim commented more than asked. “I’ve never seen the ocean.”

“It’s beautiful. I miss it. Being transferred to Colorado was supposed to be a punishment, I think. But it turned out for the best.”

“Punishment for what?” Beth asked.

“A few years back, I blew the whistle on my boss’s boss for phony billings. In hindsight, I think my boss was in on it too. My career went nowhere. I always got the worst routes and the holiday shifts.”

He sat back and looked
at the jungle, his long legs stretched out under the table. “The transfer to Colorado ended up being a fresh start. I got off my high horse and just did my job.” He smiled. “The thing of it was, once I stopped being a crusader, things started going my way. I even got a good raise two months ago. Started allowing myself a morning beverage at this place. Maybe that was unlucky, after all, huh?”

“What do you think is happening back in
Denver?” Beth asked. “Do you think they’ve figured out where we are?”

“I’ve been wondering about that,” Tim said. “
We’ve been here more than an hour now. I keep picturing this gaping hole in the corner of the building, with yellow police tape around it. I don’t know what Julie’s thinking. It’s a hell of a way to get stood up.”

William looked over at Tim. “You just met this girl?”

He nodded. “Get this; she took me flying on our third date. How’s that for cool? We went up in a little Cessna that belongs to one of her pilot friends. Flew south and circled over the Garden of the Gods.”

"So she’s a pilot?”

“She only has a basic license. She really wants to be a commercial pilot for the airlines. Right now she works as a flight attendant.”

Hank stopped pacing and stood next to Tim. “That’s a nice story and I’m sure she’s a real sweetheart, but do you think maybe we could focus on figuring out how to get the fuck out of here?”

William turned around in his chair. “Listen Hank, I’m as scared as you are. I want to get home to my boys. But until those duckbilled dinosaurs leave, we are stuck here. If you’ve got some new ideas –
hey!
”

William pushed back in his chair and looked down at his leg.

“I thought something bit me. Ow!” He pulled up his pants leg.

“What is it?” Lisa jumped off the counter and ran to the front.

A pale tick the size of a small pancake clung to William’s sock. Eight legs as thick as pencils dug into his skin. The tick’s face was buried in the flesh of William’s calf.

“Aaaahhh! Aaaahhh!! Get him offa me! Aaaahhh!”

Morgan
danced around, squirming. “What the shit!” A second tick crawled across the floor under the table.

“Get hi
m offa me! Aaaahhh! Aaaahhh!”

Helen stepped forward,
grabbed the tick behind its head, and pulled. An inch-long needle-like proboscis came out of William’s skin, dripping clear fluid. William’s blood pumped visibly inside its translucent body.

“Aaaaaaaahhh!”

Helen dropped the tick and Tim stomped on it. A mixture blood and white guts squirted onto the café floor. Helen pointed to the other tick, which scurried toward her like a crab. Tim crunched it under his heel.

William finally stopped screaming and pulled his
knee up against his chest, rubbing his leg rapidly.

Several giggles came from the group. Tall, stoic Will
iam had been reduced to jelly. Nevertheless, Lisa was sure as hell glad there weren’t any giant ticks crawling on her legs. She checked again and again and noticed that the rest of the group did the same.

William seemed not to care. He turned to
Helen and embraced her. Tears spilled down his cheeks. “Damn bugs.”

Lisa noticed Morgan standing
halfway through the front window. He stopped with one foot out on the sidewalk. “Yo, everyone, check it out.” A juvenile hadrosaur peeked its head around the corner of the building.

A
s big as a stallion, the hadrosaur calf stood on long toe-tips and sniffed at the same wall the female had used as a scratching post. A blue-gray blaze on its face contrasted the flecks of orange in its eyes. It lacked the red blistery wattle found on the older members of the herd.

Morgan peered around the clearing. The nearest adult stood by the edge of the forest, a good distance
away. He turned back to the dinosaur. Morgan thought it looked cute. He had once agreed to watch his sister’s puppy. After the animal pissed all over his bed, he had taken it out to the park. Never before and never since had he received so much female attention. The juvenile hadrosaur was far cooler than a puppy. “Hey ladies, come have a look at this guy!” Beth and Callie walked over and stood along the front wall where they could crane their heads to the right and see most of the animal. Morgan pointed to a series of pale, uneven gashes on the back of the animal’s neck. “Look, this little bastard got bit once.”

Lisa winced
. “I think it’s nasty.”

Morgan studied the animal.
Mud and feces caked its hide. The folds of its skin were speckled with more of the saucer-sized ticks. “He just needs a bath.”

Hank,
crouched over the smashed body of the tick that had bit William, looked up. “Hey! Get away from there, you dumbass. What the hell are you doing?” The calf wailed softly and stretched its neck, sniffing.

Morgan reached out for it, feeling its hot breath on his hand. “I don’t think the little ones are quite so bad, dude,” he called over his shoulder. And he imagined that he looked pretty brave in front of the women, standing so close.
The duckbill dinosaur was cool. Not as cool as a Triceratops, maybe, but still pretty impressive.

“
Yeah, and Patricia didn’t think the big ones were quite so bad,” snapped Hank. “Get away from there,
NOW!
”

The commotion
seemed to interest the juvenile hadrosaur. It had wandered over after all of William’s screams about the ticks. Now it stepped up onto the sidewalk with one webbed foot. As it shifted its weight forward, a square block of concrete cracked off and fell into the mud with a thud.

The rest of the sidewalk
moved an inch toward the river, rotating the building a few degrees. Morgan teetered forward, now fully outside. He caught himself on one of the parking meters. “Shit, you might be right, Hank.” He hurried back into the building.

The juvenile followed him with its gaze, craning its neck around the corner and into the front of the
room.

“Go on, now, shoo!” said Morgan, waving his hand.

The hadrosaur bleated and pulled away. It mewled pathetically as it disappeared around the side of the building.

Morgan beamed.
“Ha, it minded me!”

The
bookshelf wall shuddered as if hit by a truck. Morgan yelped and tumbled out of the way. All of the remaining boxes and mugs flew onto the floor. Helen jumped up from the couch and hurried to the back of the room, taking her knitting and her purse with her.

The wall took another hit. S
everal shelves broke off and fell to the floor. A hole appeared up near the ceiling and the flattened mouth of the bull’s face poked through.

The bull hadrosaur pulled
away and reared back to paw at the opening. Patricia Hayman’s blood darkened its forelegs. The creature’s smell filled the room: shit, mud, blood, and a horrible vinegary musk.

The bull had protected its harem for three years since challenging the previous alpha. It kept the herd small by casting out young males at an early age. A small herd traveled quietly and attracted less attention. Now the watering hole at the center of its territory had been invaded and the bull felt threatened. It pounded the wall again.

Helen stumbled and fell behind the counter. Callie moved to help her.

“You idiot
!” Hank screamed at Morgan. “Look what you’ve done!”

The bull slapped at the building like a child
kicking a cardboard fort. Chunks of plaster fell away as the hole widened.

Morgan stammered. “I didn’t think -”

“God-
damn
right you didn’t!” Hank shouted. “We’re gonna die in here because you
can’t
think!” He slapped his hand down on a display table near the counter, knocking a stack of coffee grinders to the floor.

Morgan froze, wanting to retreat to the back but unwilling to move past Hank.

The building lurched a few inches and another chunk of plaster fell inward from the top of the wall. The dinosaur stumbled forward, its head fully inside the room. Beth screamed. The creature snorted and moved its neck back and forth, slowly widening the hole.

The hadrosaur blocked their only exit. William
called to Helen and Callie. “Come on, ladies. We may be going for a swim. He’s going to tear this place apart.”

Hank grabbed an aluminum kettle from the display table, “No shit, thanks to that asshole
Morgan!” He slammed the kettle down on the table, cracking the cheap particle board. A clanging noise rang through the room.

The animal froze.

Hank brought his kettle down again on the remains of the table, shattering it with a loud C
LAAANNNG!

The bull hadrosaur bleated and pulled its head out of the
café.

“The noise!” Tim shouted
. He grabbed a pair of metal carafes and brought them together with a metallic bang. “HEY!” he shouted. He slammed the carafes together again and again. The clangs echoed inside the room.

Tim
ran to the front and stepped through the window, still banging the metal containers together. The bull hadrosaur twisted away and actually stumbled backwards as it fled from the sound. Morgan burst into delighted laughter as he watched the giant creature run. He grabbed the door handle and began to slam it against the frame. The sound echoed in the clearing.

Hank
followed Tim outside, still holding the kettle. Tim held up one container in Hank’s direction and they high-fived each other with their instruments, producing a loud
BRONNNG
.

Callie, Lisa, and Al picked up
utensils of their own and joined in while Tim and Hank moved down onto the mudflat and continued their discordant symphony.

The bull hadrosaur fled with shit pouri
ng from the vent under its tail. It disappeared into the forest in long bounding steps. The other hadrosaurs followed, crashing away through the trees. One, still lying in the soft mud, floundered to its feet and fell over on one side in a panic before finally getting traction.