The Dinosaur Four (22 page)

The
reptile had raced past though, correcting its course and aiming for the mouth of the river. It seemed to take forever to go by. Then the sound of gunfire had erupted across the sea, adding to Tim’s fear and confusion. The crocodile had leaped forward and its tail actually connected with Tim. He saw stars as he was knocked yet again into the water.

As he came back up
, gasping, he heard Callie’s screams and knew something had happened to Hank.

Tim thought back to his father’s funeral. At the service, Tim had tried to console his mother, a stoic Minnesotan. “Happens to all of us,” she had told him.

Maybe
, he thought.
But it shouldn’t happen to your fiancé
. He wanted to console Callie. No one had ever told him what sorts of things to say at a time like this. Everything that came to mind seemed trite.

As they moved away from the sea, the grou
nd became less sandy, making it easier to walk, until finally they entered a dense forest. The trees slowed them, occasionally blocking their passage and forcing them to circle around. Overhead, the canopy filtered most of the sunlight. They walked through a mixture of conifers and strange palm trees with fronds that sprouted at regular intervals along their trunks, instead of just at the top.

William tried to keep the group close enough to hear the river on their right, but the thick foliage often drove them deeper into the woods. For several long stretches they left the sound of rushing water.

Tim trusted William and the dense forest made him feel secure. It was difficult to imagine a dinosaur coming at them when the trees were only a few feet apart. At least, not a very big one.

Buddy came and went, sometimes darting ahead and sometimes lagging behind, always sniffing furiously
at whatever strange smells he encountered.

They entered a stretch where low plants covered the forest floor about two feet off the ground. Flat, horizontal leaves grew
closely together, creating the illusion of a floating surface. As they walked through these plants, they disturbed several small unseen creatures underneath. Buddy ran after one of the scurrying sounds, barking furiously, with only his tail visible above the leaves.

“Buddy!
Shhhh!
” William snapped at the dog. To Tim’s surprise, Buddy quieted immediately. The dog raised his head above the leaves and looked back, ears lowered. William smiled. “I vowed I would never get another dog after what my boys went through when Max died. This little guy might change my mind.”

William, Al,
Morgan, and Tim each took turns carrying the football. At forty pounds, it was not too heavy, but its size and shape made it awkward to hold. Except for the blinking light on one side, the device was completely smooth.

William walked over and spoke quietly to Tim, so that none of the others could hear. “Have you noticed what I noticed?”

Tim looked around. “No. What?”

“No fail-safe.” William patted the device in Tim’s arms. “That woman was lying to us.”

Tim rolled the device over, revealing a panel the size of a dollar bill and held in place by four flat-headed screws. “Did you see this? I’m hoping it’s under here.”

“I’ll be damned
.” A broad smile broke on William’s face.

“I
’m just hoping,” Tim went on, “that we aren’t supposed to plug it into something back at the café. I never finished my degree in quantum mechanics.”

William chuckled.
“This thing had better work, considering what it cost us.”

“He wanted to be a hero,” Callie said, turning to the others. “That’s what he told me. He wanted to save us all.” It was the first time she had spoken since the sea. “That’s why he was the farthest out in the water. That’s why he was
… where he was when it happened.”

Morgan looked at her. “He saved my lif
e, Callie, when he threw the time machine. That croc would have snapped me up if he hadn’t. He really was a hero.”

Tim smiled. Morgan of all people had found the right thing to say.

Callie’s mouth clenched as she fought off fresh tears. She reached for Morgan and embraced him.

Al watched them from behind. He had tried to console Callie on the beach. He had been there for her, hugging her as she sobbed and mewled. And she had practically shoved him away from her.

Then
the damn delivery man had been holding hands with her, and now she had herself wrapped around Morgan. Fucking Morgan. It didn’t make any goddamn sense. But then again, it never did.

Helen carefully pulled the branch down and tied it to a sapling. Lisa stood back, trying to memorize exactly how the snare was laid out without getting in the way. They stood at the edge of the forest, downstream from the building and about twenty feet from the river.

“This wire will loop around his neck when he reaches for the fish, see?” Helen pulled gently on the wire.

Lisa pictured one of the flying dinosaurs sticking its neck through the loop.
“That isn’t going to be enough to kill it, though, is it?”

“Probably not. It might choke
itself if it struggles, but you’ll probably have to come over and kill it yourself. For that, you’ll want to build a catch pole.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a long stick with a circle of rope hanging from one end. The rope runs down the stick. You reach out and loop it around the animal’s neck. Then you pull the rope tight.”

Lisa nodded
.

Helen placed loose leaves and debris around her snare. “We’ll want to cook it straight away, so
the meat doesn’t spoil.”

“
Oh no,” Lisa said. “I just thought of something. Those bird dinos were pecking at one of the bodies upstairs. We can’t eat them. That would be like cannibalism.”

Helen
considered this for a moment. “We’ll gut them, just like we would a fish. We won’t eat what’s in their stomachs. Just the meat on the bones. Think of them as drumsticks and chicken wings.”

“Chicken wings,” Lisa repeated
. She looked at the lone fingerling fish that swam in her trash can, which she had carried over from the café. “I hope none of this matters and the others get back here soon.”

“Al will be back
for you, I expect,” Helen said. She augured a pointed branch through the gills of the other fish.

Lisa nodded. “He doesn’t think we’re going to get home. He wants to find permanent shelter here.
”

“He seems
pretty interested in you.”

“Yeah. I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about him. My first husband cheated on m
e. I need someone faithful. Someone I can trust.”

“My Larry was a jealous one. He never trusted me.
He claimed that he took me on all of his hunting trips just so we could do something together and he wasn’t about to take up knitting or play bridge.” She huffed. “I think he took me hunting to keep me close, so that I couldn’t be seduced by the mailman or the deacon while he was away.”

“Did you ever fool around on him?”

“Me? Aw, no. I didn’t have time for that nonsense. Put your finger here.” Lisa did as instructed and Helen tied a knot in the string she had tied to the fish.

Lisa pulled her finger away and stood back up.
“Most guys I’ve dated in the last year or so seem to expect dinner on the table every night and breakfast every morning. That doesn’t work for me. I need to run my business. It’s everything to me.”

“Your business isn’t in very good shape. Maybe it’s time to try something else.
”

“Tell me about it.” Lisa sighed and turned to look back at the
café.

A seven-foot tall dinosaur stared at
her from halfway across the mud plain.

“
Helen,” Lisa whispered.

Helen looked up and inhaled sharply.
“What kind is that? It looks like an oster-ich.” She pronounced the word with an extra syllable.

The dinosaur, a
Struthiomimus, stood on two long, naked legs. Its head bobbed at the end of a tube-like neck. Bright yellow eyes blinked as it studied the two women. Fuzzy blue down covered its body, except for the rust-colored feathers that hung from its arms.

Lisa
shifted her weight, getting ready to run.

The dinosaur
puffed up its neck and boomed,
Woo Woo Wooooooooo!

“Make some noise,” Helen said. “Scare it away.”

“The noise is what brought the T-rex,” Lisa answered.

Lisa
felt like a cornered cat. She looked toward the jungle. She thought she could probably reach the closest tree before Helen even got to her feet.

The
Struthiomimus strutted forward until it stood less than twenty feet away. It flexed the claws on its hands.

“Don’t leave me
,” Helen said.

Lisa reached down for Helen’s arm and whispered, “Get up.”

Helen clamped onto the crook of Lisa’s elbow, gripping it hard enough to hurt.

William stopped the group in a small clearing. “Let’s take a few minutes to rest and eat.” A lone tree stood near the top of a rounded hill.
Callie sat against the trunk and watched everyone break out the pastries Lisa had packed in plastic zipper bags for them.

William wolf
ed down his bear-claw, licking the sweet almond paste from his fingertips. Callie realized that lunchtime had long since passed, but she did not feel hungry. She shoved pieces of a muffin into her mouth mechanically and wondered how soon the device would go off. She guessed they had a little more than five hours, but did not feel like asking the others.

Morgan unwrapped a chocolate-filled croissant and stuffed it into his mouth. He chomped noisily.

Al, sitting next to him, said quietly, “You know, my mother told me it was good manners to chew with my mouth closed.”

Morgan brought his lips together. His cheeks bulged. He chewed slowly
for a minute and then leaned over in Al’s direction. With his mouth wide open, Morgan moaned, “Gaaaahhh!” A thick brown croissant paste bulged between his teeth.

Al looked aghast. “What the fuck is the matter with you?”

Morgan bent over, laughing and snorting.

Al rose to his feet and stood in front of the young man. “Why don’t you
stand up, asshole?”

Morgan looked up at him, tears in his eyes, and opened his mouth again. “Gaaaahhh!”

Callie thought that Hank would have pulled Morgan to his feet and knocked out his lights.

Al
looked like he wanted to kick Morgan where he sat. “William, any advice here? Were either of your boys ever this fucked up?”

“My boys showed more sense than
both of you.”

Al raised his hands. “What the hell did I do?”

“With all that’s going on right now, you’re gonna complain about that idiot’s manners?”

Morgan tried to swallow his croissant as he giggled.

“Hey everyone, come have a look at this,” Tim called from a patch of ground on the other side of the tree. Callie rose and walked over. The others followed. Tim had found a small stone with a flat edge and had removed three of the four screws holding the panel on the side of the time device. He finished twisting the final screw out with his fingers and lifted off the metal plate.

Underneath, an LED readout displayed a line of red digits. It showed 00:04:52:23 when Tim first opened it. The seconds counted down relentlessly. “Just under five hours,” William said. “Less than I thought. Still, it’s good
to see a number. It confirms the story from the woman in the lab and it gives us concrete information.” William looked at his wristwatch and set a timer to match.

“This must be the fail-safe,” Tim noted, pointing to the
only other component under the panel. A hard plastic shield protected a rectangular red button. “There’s nothing to it. It’s just a button.”

Callie
thought it looked like the sort of button used to launch nuclear missiles in movies.

What does that do again?”
Morgan asked.

“It takes us back in time twenty minutes, if that woman upstairs
was right,” Al explained.

“Everything she
told us has been right so far,” William pointed out.

The Hank-voice in Callie’s head returned:
Babe, the fail-safe! Why didn’t you think of that sooner? Seriously Callie, I wonder about you sometimes
. His tone was light-hearted, but she hated the idea of him questioning her.

Tim looked up.
“After we get home, we’re supposed to go back twenty minutes and clear everyone out the café.”

“That’s the plan,” William said.

“What happens if we press it now?” asked Al. “Will it take us back twenty minutes ago, here?”