The Dinosaur Four (35 page)

In front of the empty cavity
where the café had been, the woman collapsed to the ground, clutching her arm. Tim stood and watched, wondering what he should do now. Blood from the tyrannosaur slowly dripped from his clothes onto the sidewalk. There was no way to prevent the trip. The café would return with the tyrannosaur in any moment.

A woman in a blue coat passed by
. She made a wide circle around him and headed in the direction of the café.

“
JULIE!”

She turned at her name, but her smi
le quickly disappeared. “Oh my God, Tim? What happened to you?”

Before he could answer, a loud pop came from the café down the street. They both turned and saw dust rolling away from the building.
Tim realized he was witnessing the moment he had lived through just over twenty minutes ago. The café had returned with Tim, Callie, Lisa, and Helen inside. And the tyrannosaur.

Tim’s heart
jack-hammered in his chest. The tyrannosaur would come out any second now. He grabbed Julie and pulled her into an alley. He laughed hysterically. “You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive!” He backed into a wall behind a dumpster.

“What -”

“I love you,” he told her. He put the time device down on the ground and kissed her on the lips. She gave him a half-smile, half-grimace.

“Please tell me what’s going on.”

A crash came from outside the alley and they heard screeching cars.

“Don’t worry, you’re safe. You’re safe! Just
stay down
. Take cover.” He started to kiss her again but he froze, his mind racing.

I
’m back.
A second Tim had just arrived in the café. He knew he needed to let the football jump him forward to a world where there was only one of him, but he felt a strange urge to go into the café and tell the other Tim what he had done. He wanted to march Julie over and show him that she was alive. He had saved her life.

Any second now, the T-rex would come out of the café and
it would not kill her
.

Tim stopped breat
hing. What will happen to Julie then?

The Tim in the café would have no reason to chase down
the dinosaur. No reason to go back in time and save her. If he didn’t go back in time to save her, how would she end up in the alley? Tim squeezed his eyes shut. Time travel didn’t make any fucking sense. It felt like an endless loop.

A roar came from the street outside the alley.

“Tim, what was that?”

He ignored her.
If the Tim in the café doesn’t see her die, he won’t come back and save her. He won’t be here to pull her into the alley. I won’t be here to pull her into the alley.
He had to decide quickly. The football would go off soon. The timer showed 0:00:05:52.

Tim pulled out his phone. He would call himself. He would call the Tim that just returned in the café and tell him what to do.
No matter what, Julie needed to be pulled into the alley. It dawned on him that he would be calling with the exact same phone, with the exact same number. “I can’t use this.”

He looked up at Julie, knowing how crazy he must seem. “Give me your phone. Call my number and hand it to me. Hurry!”

Julie fished her phone out of her pocket, only snagging her hand once this time. She pressed a few buttons.

Oh no.
He was holding his phone in his hand. Which phone would she connect to? Tim dropped his phone on the asphalt and smashed it with the football.

Julie looked at him with disbelief.
He grabbed her phone and held it to his ear. There was no answer, only an electronic ringing every few seconds. Just as he started to hang up and try again, he finally heard a voice,
his voice
, from inside the café. “Hello? Julie, you are not going to believe what-”

“Tim, this is you, from the future.”

“
Huh?
”

Tim froze as the tyrannosaur passed by the alley.

“What the hell was that
?
” Julie asked.

He ignored her and continued into the phone, giving instructions to the Tim who had just arrived but had
not
seen Julie get eaten. “Take the shovel and grab the white truck across the street. Drive it into the T-rex and kill it. Cut the football out of it and use the fail-safe. Go back and find Julie. Keep her away from the café or
she will die!
Then call yourself.”

“
Is this some kind of -”

Tim screamed into the phone:
“Shut up and do what I said or JULIE WILL DIE!”
He heard a click on the other end. “Please,” he whispered.

Julie
backed away. “I don’t like this. It isn’t funny. Why did you say I would die?”

“You won’t,” he said, hoping it was true. He handed her the phone and kissed her on the forehead. “Please just stay here, out of sight, until
this is all over.”

She
grabbed for his arm, but he pulled free. “I’ve got to get out of here. I don’t have much time.”

He picked up the device. 0:00:03:
25 flashed on the display. He looked at her one last time. She was alive. Would she still be alive when he jumped forward? He wanted to stay here, but he could not. There was another Tim here.

He
took a deep breath and stepped out of the alley. A white pickup truck swerved to avoid him. “Yes!” he shouted. “Go get him!”

He ran straight toward the creek as the truck raced
in the other direction, pursuing the dinosaur. All the way, he silently urged the counter in his hands to slow down, to give him enough time to get back. His leg screamed at him as he ran.

He reached the pedestrian ramp. The greenway at the bottom was empty. Tim ran down the gentle slope. At the bottom of the ramp he looked around helplessly, trying to figure out
exactly where to stand when the device went off again.

0:00:00:23

A roar came from above and the tyrannosaur stepped down directly in front of him.

Oh
shit.
Tim froze, silently urging the counter to speed up.

The tyr
annosaur took two steps forward and opened wide. There was nowhere to go and no way Tim could outrun it.

The white truck
barreled through the guardrail and slammed into the tyrannosaur. It knocked the giant off of its feet. Tim stumbled down the bike path, trying to get far enough away before the device went off.

A woman pushing a jog stroller ran up in his direction, craning her neck to look at the dinosaur ahead. Tim shouted at the top of his lungs, “
Stay away! Get away from here!
” She turned around.

The ticking sound began again.
Tim sat down and watched as the other Tim climbed out of the truck and stabbed the tyrannosaur in the eye. The final few seconds flashed by on the timer. The ticking stopped with a pop and Tim was transported ten minutes forward.

Upstream,
the gutted carcass of the tyrannosaur lay next to the truck.

Where is Julie? What happened to her?
He concentrated and the memories flashed in his mind. He saw her die. He saw her ripped to pieces. It had happened. He still remembered it.

A piercing pain ran through his head.
Tim collapsed, lying back in the grass. The muscles around his fractured leg trembled. He had seen her die, but the memory felt foggy and dreamlike. There was something else. He began to remember something different. He remembered standing up in the café as the tyrannosaur stepped out of the building. Lisa put her hand on his shoulder. Callie had been there too, helping Helen, who had received yet another cut that would not stop bleeding.

They had all been together: Tim, Callie,
Helen, and Lisa, soon to be dubbed “The Dinosaur Four” by the press. Buddy made five, of course, but they didn’t count the dog. They all climbed out into the bright morning sunlight and watched the tyrannosaur lumber away. Buddy barked incessantly, but the dinosaur ignored him. Across the street, a man gaped from a white pickup truck on the sidewalk.

Tim remembered feeling a vibration in his pocket. Had he answered the phone? He remembered the words. “
Take the shovel and grab the white truck.
” Had he spoken those words or had he heard them? He wasn’t sure. He remembered both. Thinking about it sent the sharp pain through his head again. He remembered taking the man’s truck and not really understanding why.

Tim lay next to the slow burble of Cherry Creek, feeling cold and clammy. Sirens grew close. Above, at street level, an excited crowd gathered along the edge of the c
anal. Dozens of phones were out, snapping pictures of the dead dinosaur, the smoking pickup truck, and Tim MacGregor, exhausted and covered with gore.

He closed his eyes and tried again to
sort out the images in his head. All of his memories from the prehistoric era were the same. Ten people had gone back, but only four had returned. The fuzziness began when the tyrannosaur lumbered out of the café. Two memories overlapped, one full of anger and despair and another full of confusion. Had the timelines actually merged? Both memories included him killing the tyrannosaur and cutting the device out of its gut. Was the football still here, lying beside him on the grass?

He opened his eyes to look for it, but before he could turn his head, he saw her in the crowd above.
Up at street level, Julie shoved her way to the front. Tim didn’t care what he remembered. Julie looked down at him. His face broke into a wide smile as he took her in. The blue pea coat. The blond hair resting on her shoulders. And the most beautiful eyes in the world.

My heartfelt thanks go out to those who read early drafts and provided feedback. You helped make this book better. Thank you especially Jacob Beucler, Cathy Bowen, Melissa Dixon, Poornima Farrar, Tara Giovenco, Ben Gomez, Ned Harding, Amy Holland, Jordan Itkowitz, Reed Knight, Steve Love, Mark Wayne McGinnis, Sara Moeller, Michael Starks, Brandie Stephens, Jacob Stephens, Nate Stormzand and the Louisville Writers Workshop.

I could not have written this book without the support of my wife Erin, my daughters Shannon and Sydney, my parents, Bill and Lida, and my brothers Christopher and David. I love you all.

Thanks to Rachel Weaver for editorial services and David Kang for the cover art.

Finally, I want to thank you the reader, for coming along on this ride. I hope you had as much fun as I did. If so, please take a moment to post a review and
tell a friend.

Geoff Jones

Broomfield, Colorado 

May 2014

Geoff Jones lives in
Colorado with his wife and two daughters. THE DINOSAUR FOUR is his first novel.

For more information, visit
www.GeoffJonesWriter.com

For
updates from the author,

Email:
[email protected]

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