The Dinosaur Four (20 page)

“Isn’t the machine going to go off automatically when time is up?” Helen didn’t begin to understand how the time machine was supposed to work, but she remembered hearing about that part. “If they don’t make it back here in time, they won’t be able to stop it.” She scoffed, “Do you honestly think they would step aside and let it go back without them?”

Helen saw the despair dawning on Lisa’s face.
It hurts to feel like you’re going to be left behind, doesn’t it?
She didn’t enjoy Lisa’s pain, but was glad the young woman finally knew how she felt.

Helen
adjusted one of the lines. “We’ll know by the end of the day, won’t we? And if we are stuck here, we’ve got a lot of things we can use to get by.”

“They’ll be back,” Lisa said. “Al will make sure of it.”

“Oh, looky!” Helen squealed. One of the bobbers disappeared under the surface and the line zig-zagged toward deeper water.

The
crocodile had drifted along leisurely after eating the bodies that floated down the river. The four easy bites had left it feeling full and lethargic, but its curiosity drove it onward.

It
found the raft floating quietly at the edge of the water. The reptile approached from the surface, watching carefully for any reaction. Motionless, like a log floating in the current, it waited until it was three feet from the yellow inflatable. In a violent burst of energy, it threw open its six-foot jaws, rolled its head, and grabbed the side of the boat with its teeth.

The crocodile was rewarded with a foul hissing as the raft collapsed between its jaws. Nothing in its mouth suggested the taste of food.
It shook the yellow rubber free and turned away.

Having made the journey almost all the way to the sea, it decided to swim
the final stretch. Females could sometimes be found near the mouth of the river and it was never one to turn down a visit with a female.

The crocodile
almost gave up when it reached the seaweed, which caused as much trouble for it as it did for the six small creatures ahead. But their irregular splashes tantalized the reptile and their scent matched the smell of the four morsels it had eaten earlier, so it carried on.

As it clawed through the tangled strands, the crocodile
focused on its prey, but it also watched the giant sauropods further out. Millions of years of evolution had taught it to avoid anything that large. It grew increasingly uncomfortable as it moved away from the mouth of the river, but one of the small creatures stopped just a short distance ahead and off to one side.

The small creature that captivated the crocodile’s attention was Morgan
Baker.

Back on the beach, Buddy abandoned the remains of
his fish and rose to his feet. Staying above the high tide line, he began to bark.

Hank Atherton had played soccer every year of his life since the age of eight. It helped him stay fit. It helped him make and maintain important connections in Denver’s political scene. Most of all, though, it provided an hour each week where his mind was distracted from the troubles of his job. When he played, Hank focused entirely on the game and nothing else. Few things in life occupied him so fully.

H
olding the time device over his head, Hank made the throw-in toss of his life. He reared back and flung the device forward with all of his might. The motion tore three of the tendons in his rotator cuff, though he did not notice.

The device arced high over the water, its
orange light blinking on and off like the beacon on a passing airplane. The rest of the group watched with dismay and wondered what he was doing. The time device landed at the exact spot Hank Atherton had aimed for, behind Morgan and alongside the head of the giant crocodile.

As soon as the device left his hands, Hank sucked in a lungful of air and shouted
, “
RUN!
”

Morgan
followed the arc of the football until it splashed into the water next to the creature behind him. He saw the beast, screamed, and sloshed frantically toward the others. The seaweed and water caught him in a slow-motion nightmare.

Run, dammit
, Hank thought. Morgan looked like the stupid teenager in a horror movie unable to get away as the monster closed in.

When the football splash-landed
next to the crocodile, the reptile whip-snapped its head and clamped its jaws on the orange metal.

As the
creature spun its forty-foot body, it created a wave that washed across the shallow water and into Tim, whirling him under the surface.

“
Goddammit, run!
” Hank shouted again. He waded back to meet Callie
,
caught her hand, and yanked her forward, pulling her out to sea. It was the only place to go. The crocodile was between them and the shore. Hank laced his fingers around hers and vowed that he would not let go until they were back at the damn café. The crocodile had been within striking distance of Morgan and not all that far from Callie. He wondered briefly if it would swallow the device and leave them stranded forever. Then it occurred to him that it might still go off inside the animal and transport the monster to downtown Denver.

Tim spun around underwater until he found the sandy bottom with his hands and righted himself. He tried to rise, remembering not to breathe until his head was above the surface. Other people did that automatically. He realized that his life vest was not inflated and groped for the red handle hanging near his waist.
A sharp tug should trigger it
, he thought. Then he remembered the high-pitched
whoosh
of the inflating raft and wondered if the life jacket would make the same noise. The last thing he wanted was to draw the crocodile’s attention.

When he
finally surfaced, he found himself only a few feet behind the reptile. It closed its jaws repeatedly on the football. Several eight-inch teeth snapped off in the process.

Tim froze, afraid to make any sound or vibration. He remained in a crouched position with
his head just out of the water and tried to catch sight of the others.

“It’s coming,” William warned,
looking back over his shoulder. He started running again, still at least ten yards behind Hank and Callie. “Get closer to the dinosaurs. Hide around their legs.”

Tim questioned William’s judgment but didn’t have any better ideas.
Still afraid to move, he let the waves bob him slightly, hoping he would continue to go unnoticed.

The crocodile
released the football and turned toward William and the others. A swish of its tail propelled it forward, creating a new wave that washed Tim away and upended him a second time.

The seismosaurs generally did not pay attention to other creatures. Once they survived their first four years, nothing threatened them, simply because of their size. Every now and then, however, some intruding creature needed to be taught a lesson.

The seventy year-old matriarch of the herd swung her head toward the noise of the shouting humans. Her neck travelled a slow, wide arc as her eyes scanned the sea below. She did not notice the
six small creatures running in her direction. They amounted to little more than white-caps on the water. She focused on the giant crocodile. Crocodiles rarely came out into the sea, but when they did, they sometimes attacked the juveniles. The seismosaur lowered herself forward on her front legs and cocked her long muscular tail up into the sky. The end of the tail, a strand of sinews and bones no wider than a child’s wrist, rose up to a height of one hundred and fifty feet above the surface of the sea.

Most of the other adults in the herd assumed the same
defensive position. Thirty whip-like tails rose high in the air.

The crocodile had been watching for exactly this posture. It flipped around without hesitation. At ten tons, the reptile outweighed most of the animals it encountered from day to day, but not the seismosaurs. They were more than triple its size. Instinct told the crocodile that the tail-up posture was something to flee immediately.

“It’s leaving!” William called out. “Hank, slow down.”

Hank
looked around. He and Callie were the farthest out, still some fifty feet from the nearest seismosaur.

Al and Morgan stood near William, both breathing heavily. “Hey, where is Tim?”

“Dammit, I don’t know where he is!” Hank couldn’t be responsible for everyone. Anyway, the more important question was, “Where is the goddamn time device?”

The old seismosaur matriarch saw that the crocodile was moving away, but decision-making did not come quickly to her. Once she began a course of action, she usually finished it. She turned her hips and swung her tail downward in the general direction of the commotion.

The very tip of her tail, a
thin series of bony scutes connected by sinewy ligaments, reached the speed of sound as it swung toward the water. It maxed out at sixteen hundred feet per second just above the surf. The end of the tail swept an arc in the general direction of the threat and then curled back inward and upward. The thunderous crack it produced, like the sound of a giant tree splitting in two, spurred the crocodile faster, exactly as the old seismosaur intended. The swimming reptile kicked off the bottom of the sea in a clumsy run back toward the mouth of the river.

The other
seismosaurs snapped their tails within the next several seconds. The ocean boomed like a fireworks finale as the thin, whip-like ends of each tail broke the sound barrier. Several tails skipped across the surface, cutting through the spray. The tail of a seismosaur was strong enough to split the hide of a dinosaur. Years before, the matriarch had hobbled a desperate tyrannosaur that had come after her offspring.

The very end of the tail of the nearest seismosaur passed through Hank’s neck at just over one thousand miles per hour. Hank’s blood, enriched by the dense oxygen of the Cretaceous air, fed his brain and kept him alive for three full seconds as his head fell from his body.

Hank
looked back up at his chest as he felt himself tumble forward and splash into the water. In shock, unaware that he had been decapitated, he tried desperately to raise himself up, but found that he had no control over any motion. Finally his neurons stopped firing and he died, just as his headless body pulled free from Callie’s hand and collapsed in the opposite direction.

Callie was scanning the water behind her, still trying to find Tim, when the tip of the dinosaur’s tail cut through her fiancé’s neck, missing her own head by inches. She heard what she thought was machine-gun fire and felt a misty breeze. Callie wondered if the military had shown up to save them and reclaim the time device.

Then she heard a splash and Hank started pulling her hand again. She wanted to tell him to stop, that they were safe, or at least that they could quit running. The giant crocodile was swimming away. She doubted she would ever
really feel safe again. Before she could get the words out, Hank pulled free and fell into the water.

“Hank?” She started forward. “Guys, Hank fainted! Get up here.” Reaching into the
sea, Callie grabbed her fiancé’s shoulders and pulled him up, trying to get his mouth above the surface. For several seconds she watched blood spurt from his empty neck.

U
nderstanding slowly came to her.
No. Not us. We were the fast ones. We were going to make it.
These thoughts cycled again and again in her head as her mouth opened with a wailing cry that she had no ability to stop.

Helen
untied the fishing line from the parking meter. The tension felt right. She gave it a quick, gentle tug. “He’s hooked!”

“What do I do
, what do I do?”

“Get the bucket and bring it over. Just hold
it underneath so he doesn’t flop away.” Lisa grabbed the bucket, which was actually a five-gallon plastic trash can that had been used to collect coffee grounds behind the counter.

“Look at him go!”
Helen said. She wrapped the line around her hand and felt it squeeze tight.

Lisa
danced behind Helen as she pulled in several arm-lengths of fishing line. The bobber splashed back and forth across the surface.

“Get over here
. Get ready!”

Lisa held out the
trash can with her head turned back as far away as possible.

Helen
reached down over the edge of the sidewalk, grabbed the line just above the bobber, and wrapped another length around her fist. It cinched against a blue ridge of veins. Holding tightly to the parking meter, she rose in one swift motion, lifting her arm high into the air.

A four-inch fish
flew from the water, thrashing at the end of the hook.