Emily’s tears fell onto his face and she grabbed for his right hand. “We came. We used bits of mushroom like body boards. This place sure is crazy, huh?”
“You’re crying. Am I dying? How hurt am I? I can’t feel my body anymore. Am I real bad? When I broke my leg, the femur, playing soccer—I was nine—they gave me morphine, and I couldn’t feel anything, nowhere, I can feel my head now, Will you hold my hand, I’m real scared, how come I can’t move?”
Emily began sobbing, gasping and snorting back snot.
“I can’t be dying, I don’t see any lights, my grandma was dying once before she really died and said she saw lights but decided to turn around, she told everyone Heaven was real and then she died like a month later when she was on the toilet taking a dump, I think she pushed too hard, like Elvis, but she wasn’t on a whole bunch of drugs,” Peter’s legs began to shake, “like he was, and how I was when I broke my—hey, I can feel them again, that’s means I’m okay, they hurt but I’m okay, I can feel them, so I’ll be okay, right?”
Emily was nodding, couldn’t say anything.
“I’m glad, I’m so glad, think they’ll still do a plaque or statue like the cop said ‘cause I hit Rob with the—?” Peter gasped and his eyes rolled. Dead.
Emily fell forward onto him. “No. No. Nononono.”
“Shh.” Stevie leaned down. “I hear something on the river.”
Both turned to watch through the orange haze until they saw Dick floating on a fresh cap about the size of a paddleboard.
9
Wednesday, April 30, 2019: 7:22PM
Doobie watched everything, had to race to catch up when David Bowie Bowtie went down the river. The bad side was a dangerous place, but Doobie wasn’t scared. He’d hunted there a half-dozen times, liked the thrill.
When he reached the spot where he could see his brother-nephew, he crouched and watched, amazed. One of these new people was saving him, protecting him from snake-chicken.
This image hardly fit with the evils Jane had painted.
But she knew best and it was not for him to question.
10
Wednesday, April 30, 2019: 11:52PM
They had only to go a few minutes from the scene at the river to stumble upon a long squat cave. David crawled inside first, leaving behind the Velociraptor he’d taken from the river. He was gone no more than a minute before climbing out, suggesting they each gather an armload of small mushroom caps and hunker down for rest and a bite.
Drowning took much out of him and knowing Peter had died while he simply slept was a nasty drink to swallow. Punishing himself, he didn’t answer any of Dick’s questions about what he was doing with the drier mushrooms they’d collected.
David began into a strange project. The base was a flipped cap, the biggest they had, then he pulled fins from the undersides of the caps by natural threads, shredding and thinning until he had a pile of glowing orange hair. He selected two of the harder stalks and began rubbing them together.
“Ah,” Dick said and then went quiet.
“You building a fire?” Stevie asked. He gathered that the only value in the Velociraptor carcass was as food, but avian meat, pre-historic or packaged by Maple Leaf, would kill them. “Those mushrooms will burn like that?”
Dick watched him. His complexion had turned peaked and he kept his eyes on the mouth of the tiny cave. He couldn’t even get to his hands and knees.
Emily looked worse, but she looked good since they arrived. Never for a minute did the worry that she was next leave her mind. Even when Stevie put his arms around her and chanced to kiss her neck did her thoughts sway for very long. She thought she’d screw him if only to take her mind off things. Lose her virginity in front of a savage boy and an old man, just so long as she didn’t see herself a mangled mess surrounded by dinosaurs.
Suddenly, it seemed David gave up on the project, dropped the stalks he’d been rubbing and worried about feathers. It took time and he grunted and groaned often, once sucking his finger when he pulled a feather and his pinky grazed the tip of one talon. He slipped all but one of the feathers into the pile of mushroom strings. That last feather he, wordlessly, handed off to Emily. She accepted it without question and David began ramming the skinniest mushroom stem they had up the bird’s ass.
“What’s with the feather, lover boy?” Stevie tightened his hold on Emily.
David took a second stem and forced it down the meal’s throat. Then he leaned the ass stem down into the middle of the unlit pyre, shoving it deep enough that it stood on its own.
“Don’t you need it to burn to cook?” Stevie asked when David flattened out and watched the cave mouth a few feet ahead of him, a foot and a half beyond the meal.
Dick swallowed, cleared his throat. “Mushroom’s burn like coal.”
“What?”
“There’s a fire, in the cap. Look. It’s very small, but those threads David cut up are transferring heat to everything they touch. Not spreading it everywhere.” He swiped a sleeve across his brow. The cave was a little cooler, as at the back, a trickle from the creek ran a vein, but it was still too damned hot to function with comfort.
“I don’t see… Yeah, how long’s that going to take to cook the stupid chicken?”
“Can’t you just be nice?” Emily was staring into the feather, turning it in her hands, the colors and flowing design calming her.
Stevie said nothing to this. Loosened his hold, but didn’t let go entirely. He’d kept calm most of this time because he couldn’t help but imagine having sex with Emily. It was the entire universe in his brain, a place where hormones had come to reign with a marching band in tow.
The cooking Velociraptor began changing shade and the scent bloomed. The mushroom strings began to shrivel and darken. Mosquitoes and dragonflies buzzed in and out of the cave, diving near the heat and charging away.
David turned to lie on his back. “My chest hurts. Was I dead?”
Nobody knew what to say; he’d been so quiet and socially odd about everything leading up, but there, in the cave, he seemed like a hurt boy.
Emily tried to force her head onto a different subject. “What’s it like to be naked all the time?”
David didn’t answer.
“David?” she prodded.
“Oh. What’s naked?”
Jane had ceased attempting to dress children more than two decades prior. The word had fallen out of use.
“Jesus Christ.” Stevie lifted his arm and rolled flat. He was getting too hot and he needed to focus on this situation, not how nice Emily’s ass felt against his crotch. If he could just man-up, he’d kiss her mouth, get it out of the way, break some tension. She’d let him, he was pretty sure, but that she didn’t play coy or disinterested in his touch confused him. “Clothes, naked is without clothes.”
“Oh. I don’t know. I never had clothes.”
The conversation flowed more easily from then. The scent of cooking bird had mouths watering and David used a rock to inspect the inside. The blood had disappeared almost completely. They ate. It tasted like seafood chicken, bland with heavy skin.
Dick moved to the mouth of the cave, rejuvenated some, and stared out onto the world. From his view, everything appeared calm. He wished there was some way to see the complete truth out there. He would try; the trick was worth the reward. At his age.
“Must be difficult to keep a sleep cycle with no sundown?” Dick turned to face David, showing him the question was meant for him. “The sun is—”
“I know what the sun is. Grandma talks about it sometimes, named some of us after the sun. Two are dead, I only heard of them. They came before me and died before I remember things.” David had a Velociraptor leg and was working every morsel free.
“How do your people die?” Dick leaned over and picked up the Velociraptor head, looking in the mouth. “I mean usually.”
“Medium dinos. Rocks. Broken bones. Grandma has words for stuff, but I think she makes them up or gets them wrong
because they’re not always the same, like they sound the same, but she says it different, but means the same things. Lots die as babies, but Grandma says that don’t count because they aren’t full people yet. We sometimes use babies to catch snake-chickens.”
Dick whistled, had his hand in the head, clacked the jaw twice.
“You use babies as bait?” Emily’s eyes were slits, her lids puffy and red.
“I guess so. Is bait putting out meat to catch more meat?” David asked.
“You called it meat. Do you eat the babies?” Dick turned his eyes from the dinosaur head to their cave-host.
“Not meat to us. You go crazy when you eat a person.”
“Your grandmommy tell you that?” Stevie whined these words. His eyes were closed and he was again leaning on Emily.
“Yes.”
“That’s okay, maybe it’s true. Eating mammal brains certainly causes issues often enough. Best not to tempt fate. Maybe we should get some sleep?” Dick rolled over and crawled away from the entry, close to the trickling water. It was like a room at an Arizona one-star motel that needed an air conditioner but only had a fan.
David gathered a handful of moss, tearing it from the ground, and pushed the hot mess of cooking mushroom out the cave mouth. “Goodnight.”
Only Emily reciprocated his nicety.
11
Thursday, May 1, 2019: 4:59AM
The shadows worked in reverse. The dark seemed to shine down and the little bit of light cast from the mushrooms reached flimsy arms. They’d decided once they rose from the cave to boot it in a way they hadn’t yet. The keen of the medium dinos and the snorts of tank-pigs were never far behind them and to their sides, but also never felt on them. Still, they pushed until Dick had to stop, but not in a ruse; he needed air, bent over and gasping. That was only thirty yards before the ground changed and the moss thinned, the river running beneath. The mushrooms became rarer, making the light quality poorer.
“I’ve never seen a place like this.” David had his knees bent, ready to jump.
A dirt floor over bedrock. Dinosaur bones mixed and mingled. Those not yet crushed stood out, many reaching as high as transport trucks.
“Fascinating.” Dick seemed to stray, his lesser stamina suddenly a non-issue as they pushed forward, walking with their ears as guides—the river was a gentle hum beneath them.
“Freaky, you mean.” Emily shivered.
Stevie reached for her hand. “Man, I don’t know about this.” Incredibly, he wasn’t thinking about sex. This place reminded him of that scene in The Lion King where Scar tried to get Simba killed by the hyenas. The elephant graveyard.
“We follow the river.” Dick was firm.
“What if it goes like this forever?” Emily’s voice was small, awed.
No answer came to this and the group carried onward. It wasn’t long before looks back revealed nothing of the brightness they’d left behind. A side-effect they hadn’t expected seemed to play in their favor, however.
“How come it’s so quiet?” Emily whispered.
They hadn’t heard a dinosaur since stepping into this part of the cavern. The only sound was the rush of the water.
They hadn’t brought any food or drink. The trek into the darkness became arduous and boring. They had no way of knowing, but three hours had already passed them by since beginning to move. This lifeless place made it seem like double that. There were few smells. Zero intriguing sights—aside from what Dick saw, everything intrigued him. It seemed as if that area would never end, just as Emily worried.
Then the sound of the river increased and a hole appeared not far from a straight route. They veered and drank from cupped hands. Dick filled himself first, at the same time Stevie did. He then straightened and wandered a circle, stepping in search of something interesting, but not wanting to lose the group.
He kicked as he stepped and something too smooth to be a rock in that cave flipped three times. He bent and picked it up. A triangular tooth, about the size of a hardback book. He took a step forward and there was another one. He picked it up, compared them. They were incredible, the biggest damned teeth he’d ever touched. He took another step, found a yard-long piece of jawbone, full of enormous teeth.
“Look at these!” He was excited, shouted. The sound near that hole was loud, distracting. “Incredible, huh?”
“What are they?” Stevie asked. He remained nearer to the hole than Dick, though Dick hadn’t gone far.
“Either Tyrannosaurus rex or Albertosaurus. Incredible. I can’t believe I’m holding these like this. If only we saw one of—” Dick stopped, certain he was about to eat his words. He spun and let out a laugh. If this was a movie or a book, he’d say that line and suddenly be eaten by his wish. He dropped the teeth and put a hand to his chest, felt his heart. As he turned, he said, “We’d better get—Run!”
His wish was right there, eyes glinting oh so slightly about one hundred feet away, next to one of the suddenly rare mushrooms.
Dick was off, still trying to run in the right direction, hoping that section of cave ended soon and he might dive into the river and ride the flow beyond the reach of that giant beast. Even from that far away, he understood it was bigger than anything he’d ever seen. Understood its brethren were probably the deceased owners of those teeth.
Emily shot up without looking back, as did David. Stevie had stalled for an extra second to drink in the shadows. He didn’t see anything, but then he felt it. The vibration of the ground beneath his knees. He ran, caught up to Emily and took her hand, pulling, trying to force his pace into her feet.
David pulled ahead of them and then ahead of Dick. His bare feet reacted to none of the rough edges of the floor.
Dick held his chest, started gasping. Stevie pulled Emily along, past the older man.
“We…can’t…leave…him!” Emily panted.
Stevie opened his mouth to shout, say they could, say it was the law of the land—only the strong survive—but was cut off.
The roar was deafening and they could feel the breath, hot and stinking, wash over them. Stevie nearly stumbled over a large claw the moment the din struck his ears. Then they all heard the crunch and dared to look back. The thing was taller than a hydro pole. It had Dr. Dick Sapperstein between its enormous jaws, swinging its head to gulp the man back. The claws of its absurd little arms tingled with pleasure as blood ran and the body disappeared. It chewed and chewed, like a horrid cow.
The man’s leg dropped and the enormous beast pulled back its lips and pinched the meat beneath teeth.
None wanted to see any more. None wanted to hear more of the crunching bone. None wanted to smell the stench of physical annihilation. Then they made distance. They didn’t look back again. Didn’t feel the vibrations. Didn’t hear a roar. Once their lungs and legs demanded it, they stopped, found a huge pelvis and couched low behind it to watch the shadows around them.
“We’re going to die,” Emily whispered.
Stevie saw that this was true, fully and wholly true. He leaned in and kissed her deeply, madly. She kissed him back, their hands roving one another, pulling tight enough that their teeth clanged together while they took turns forcing their tongue into the other’s mouth. David said nothing and felt nothing, didn’t think to give them space, and simply stayed where he was, a third wheel behind an albertosaur’s hip bone.
“If we ever get out of here…” Stevie’s words trailed, his lips still touching Emily’s.
“I know.” Emily reinforced the seal of their lips.
David looked at the pair and leaned in close. “Could be good to run again. What if that big one starts coming for us?”
And like that, the passion fell to the wayside and they ran. The bone and stone chips crunched beneath their feet and suddenly they had to strain harder to hear the river at all. They began veering left and right as they continued in what felt like the right direction, trying to catch a stronger sound.
It seemed hopeless. What if they ha
d to retrace? What if they kept going and the river never reappeared? What if they had to go all the way back?
A sound to their left sent their feet back into sprints. It was big and distant, but those things could boogie. They ran on an angle, continued in their ardent push, but leaned heavily to the right, away from the noise.
They ran until gasping again and stopped when Emily begged them to. They all bent over their knees, drinking in the air as fast as it would come. Sweat dripped down David’s forehead and neck, then he felt it. It was gentle, but there. He turned his face to a slight chill wafting through the balmy air.
David didn’t understand at first, then he remembered Dick taking the back of the cave and what he’d said about the trickling water. “Feel that?” David tipped his chin out.
“No,” Stevie said.
“Yes,” Emily said.
“Cooler feeling, huh?”
Stevie closed his eyes and focussed. “Okay, yeah. That way.”
In a jog, because that’s what they had aside for what might linger in the reserves, they chased the comparative chill. The heat was tremendous still, but comfort is relative and they wanted to bask in the declining temperature.
The rushing sound came back to them and it fueled their legs a hair. The effort was heavy and hard and the longer the time from any death, the more their bodies and brains relaxed. The mushrooms suddenly became fuller and more sprouted. The orangey haze conquered the shadows.
They saw it then. The river, running in a skinnier route, but a route nonetheless. It moved down a short waterfall and into squatter territory, all this in the twenty or so yards they could see before the mushroom glow died abruptly.
“That’s it then?” David had excitement in his voice. “We take a cap, you think?”
“Yes! Yes!” Emily charged over to the line of mushrooms. They needed a smaller cap than last time and she picked one that had a radius of about six feet. “This one!”
David was right behind her, punching a groove in the stem. Heat filled him, possibility filled him. The before times place, he could see, live it, be it.
Great Big Teeth Page 10
