Raptor (The Zone Unknown)

by Paul Zindel

  “Hey, it’s moving,” Zack yelled out. “The egg is moving!”

  “Great,” Uta’s voice came out of the intercom. “Let me know when you’re the proud father of an ostrich.”

  Zack stared at the egg. Fluid from it was shooting out in quick, short spurts. He reached out and prodded it with the tip of a comb. A single green claw shot up through the hole and began tugging at the comb.

  “Hey, Uta, you’d better get in here,” Zack called. “Don’t think it’s an ostrich.”

  Zack poked the egg again.

  Squish.

  A second claw broke out of the shell. The egg shuddered and rolled like a Mexican jumping bean as the tears widened. The rest of its slimy fluid burst out like shots from a water pistol.

  “YEOOOW!” Zack yelled.

  The claws tore away the covering and a wet pathetic little shape began to uncurl. It swelled and doubled in size as it shook and stretched free of its casing. Picasso came running into the room and jumped up, planting his paws on the rim of the tub. He saw the glistening, twitching hatchling and barked wildly.

  Uta called from the kitchen. “Want your meatballs on a hero or with spaghetti?”

  Zack didn’t hear her. The hatchling unfurled until it was the size of a gnarled green chicken with a long tail. Picasso cocked his head and looked puzzled, then spun around and raced out of the bathroom.

  The lizard lifted its quivering snout. It stared at Zack with enormous yellow eyes and opened its mouth to reveal teeth that protruded from its jaws like the tips of steak knives. A glob of slime shot from its throat and hit the shower wall.

  “Nasty,” Zack said. He grabbed a towel, and the creature stared intensely at him as he gently patted its skin. Another burst of projectile mucus flew into the air just missing Zack’s face.

  “Really nasty,” Zack mumbled.

  Uta stood in the doorway. “I’ve never seen a lizard like that before. It looks really weird.” The creature looked at Uta and began hissing. Zack stroked the lizard’s neck. “This has got to be what my dad was excited about. Maybe he knew he’d discovered a whole new species.”

  “What’re you going to do with it?”

  The hatchling opened its mouth as if yawning. Its long thin tongue slid out and licked Zack’s hand. “Keep it until my dad gets back.”

  “Well, I’m starving.” She turned, and went back to the kitchen. “I still think you should have left it alone,” she called out as she rummaged for forks in a drawer. “It probably has a mother somewhere who’s probably missing it.”

  Zack leaned over into the tub and scratched the hatchling’s chest. Picasso sat in the doorway growling. “You rest awhile,” Zack told the lizard. He started to leave when the hatchling made loud, desperate sounds.

  HOOOONK. HONK. HONK.

  The lizard jumped out of the tub and ran to Zack, rubbing its snout on his legs.

  HONK. HONK.

  “Hey, I think this thing likes me!” Zack called to Uta.

  “Don’t touch it. It could be poisonous!” Uta called. “Besides, it’s probably imprinting on you, thinks you’re its mother.”

  Zack came down the hall with the lizard scooting along at his heels. Picasso trailed trying to nip at it. The lizard stopped short and swung its crinkled head around to stare at the dog. It opened its mouth, bared its teeth, and let loose an earsplitting HONK. Picasso ran for his favorite toy, a rubber hot dog that squealed. He began shaking it crazily. The lizard spit at Picasso and screeched louder.

  HONK. HONK.

  “Spitting is impolite,” Zack told the hatchling. He faked right, and the lizard headed right. He made a quick step left. It turned left.

  Uta carried a plate of steaming spaghetti to the kitchen table. She set it down next to the meatballs, a basket of whole wheat bread, and a tub of butter. She saw Zack coming down the hall. “Did you figure out what kind of lizard it is?”x

  Zack looked closer at the hatchling. The back edge of its teeth were perfect for sawing meat. It began to sniff at the air like a hound, and moved more confidently now—walking totally upright on its thick, muscular haunches. It held its tail stiffly out behind like a balance, and its hips tilted backward like a bird’s. A single large claw on each foot stood erect.

  Uta saw the expression change on Zack’s face.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “I think it’s a baby …”

  Zack hesitated to say the word, knowing it was absurd. The lizard was in motion now, running toward the steaming platters. As it leaped up onto a kitchen chair, Zack knew it was the impossible.

  “IT’S A RAPTOR!” Zack shouted. “A DINOSAUR!”

  Uta screamed as the lizard plowed toward her with its mouth wide. It skidded to a halt at the center of the table, and began snapping at the plates. Meatballs scattered and bounced up into the air. The raptor’s jaws gnashed, devouring everything they touched.

  Uta grabbed her own plate of food and moved fast back against the wall. The creature thumped its tail down, used it like another leg as it sunk the large claw from its left foot into the spaghetti. The pasta and red sauce clung to the talons and splashed across the table.

  “It can’t be!” Uta cried out. “Dinosaurs are extinct!”

  “This one isn’t!”

  The hatchling began tearing the tablecloth and eating the wicker of the bread basket.

  “Stop it,” Uta scolded as she threw her crumpled napkin at it.

  Zack salvaged a few meatballs and pieces of bread that had slid onto a chair. He added them to Uta’s plate and shoved it into the refrigerator. Within minutes, the raptor had picked the table clean, jumped down on the floor, and began snapping up the scraps and globs of hurled sauce.

  Picasso spun in circles, barking.

  “It’s still hungry,” Zack said.

  “Sure,” Uta said. “It hasn’t eaten in a hundred and forty million years!”

  “Here!” he shouted to the creature. Zack dashed into the pantry and opened the lid on a storage freezer. The raptor ran after him, jumped up, and began sinking its claws into frost-covered packages. Zack and Uta stood back and watched in shock as the raptor looked grateful and ripped off mouthful after mouthful of icy meat and fish sticks.

  “It can’t be …,” Uta said.

  “Hey, I’ve seen sketches of what baby raptors were supposed to have looked like.” He moved back into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and took out the plate of food he’d salvaged. Both he and Uta grabbed at the meatballs with their fingers. “You know what this means?” Zack whispered.

  “No.”

  “It means my father’s going to be rich and famous,” Zack said, trembling with excitement. His mind was still trying to accept what his eyes saw. “He found a dinosaur. My dad found a dinosaur.”

  “He found the egg, but you hatched it.”

  “It’s still his find. But maybe we’ll all be famous!” Zack said. “And loaded! Our pictures will be in every paper in the world! We’ll be on CNN and do fast-food commercials!”

  HONK.

  “Well, I still think you should have left the little honker where he belonged,” Uta said.

  Zack’s eyes shone as he reached out to pet the raptor. “You know, that’s a good name for him.”

  “What?”

  The hatchling looked up as though he knew they were talking about him.

  “Honker.”

  The mother raptor searched frantically through the mountain’s caves. She had been confused by the intruder and the rockslide. Several of her huge saw-edged teeth had been chipped and she’d bruised one of her forearms. Already she could feel her body healing itself. Secondary teeth began to replaced damaged ones, growing swiftly like stalks from fertile garden bulbs.

  Her first instinct was to safeguard the tunnels leading to her nest. She roared and lurched, sniffing through every side chamber and alcove. Then she traced and retraced her steps, returning each time to count her eggs. Eleven. Each time when she returned she s
aw only eleven. Finally, she had calmed enough to know what had happened. She began to shriek, cries steeped in pain and sorrow and rage. Her body shook with anguish, and she withheld her body heat from her nest.

  Night had fallen in the landscape beyond. She breathed deeply and dared to leave the mountain. She paused on the slope, letting the wind bring her all she’d need to know. Her nostrils, a hundred times more sensitive than a bloodhound’s, detected the trail. She gave a last matriarchal roar before bounding down the slope, her jaws wide with fury.

  Zack and Uta babbled nonstop as they cleaned up the kitchen and finally collapsed on the living room sofa. Zack ignited the propane feed to the fireplace. After a while Picasso and Honker got tired of bickering, sprawled on the hearth, and began to nuzzle each other.

  Uta asked, “Why are they rubbing their heads together?”

  “Maybe it’s the way dinos show affection.”

  “It’s cute.”

  Zack went out to the kitchen and brought back the bone from a frozen leg of lamb. Honker and Picasso gnawed on it together.

  The hall phone rang. Zack went to answer it. He was glad to hear his mother’s voice. “Your dad’s going to be okay,” Mrs. Norak said, sounding very tired. Zack sighed with relief.

  “He had some internal bleeding, so they had to operate—but he did fine. He’s in the recovery room now. The stitches can come out in a week, but he’s going to be on crutches for a while.”

  “Can I talk to him?”

  “Not right now,” his mother said. “They had to sedate him. He was screaming. It was so strange. He was wide awake but it was as though he was trapped in a nightmare. He’ll have his own room in a few hours with a phone and TV and newspapers and all those things. He’ll probably sleep the rest of the night, so we’ll call you in the morning, okay, dear?”

  Zack glanced over to Honker. He thought about telling his mother about the big secret, but he knew she’d think he was out of his mind. She’d freak out with worry and end up calling Dr. Bones or one of his assistants. The news of his father’s discovery would get out, and his dad would end up with nothing. His dad had found the egg on his day off and far away from the official dig. It was his find, but that wouldn’t matter. Bones’d take the credit for it, like he did everything else.

  “Did Dad say anything about what happened?” Zack asked.

  “No. His head injuries were pretty bad. The only thing the doctors were puzzled about was the scar under his chin. I told them he hadn’t had it before he went into the cave. I know this sounds crazy, but they said it looked like it had been cauterized.”

  “What do you mean, cauterized?”

  “Burned. Scarred. Like something had sealed it over so it wouldn’t bleed.”

  Zack hesitated, then decided what he wanted to say. “When you can, tell Dad I found what he wanted me to.”

  “What?”

  “Just say I found it. It’ll cheer him up.”

  “I’ll tell him.” His mother gave him the phone number of the hospital. “You take care,” she said. “Water the plants. Lock the doors. And try not to make a mess of the house, all right, honey?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good night, dear.”

  “Night, Mom,” Zack said, and hung up the phone. He went back into the living room. “Everything’s okay,” he told Uta. “I didn’t tell her about Honker because she’d go bonkers.”

  “I know what you mean.” Uta checked the time. “It’s getting late,” she said. “I guess you should give me a lift home. My folks won’t worry about me. They know I can take care of myself—but you don’t want to be out driving too late.”

  CLUNK.

  A noise outside.

  “What’s that?” Uta asked.

  “Skunks and raccoons have been raiding the garbage cans,” Zack said.

  He checked out a side window The garbage cans in the breezeway were upright with their lids on. A wind rustled the leaves of the trees and whipped tumbleweed toward the cattle pond. Honker sniffed at the air. Picasso growled.

  Uta reached out to pet Picasso. “They hear something.”

  “It’s nothing,” Zack said, coming back to sit on the sofa.

  CLUNK. CLUNK.

  “That’s no skunk,” Uta said. She got up and pulled open the drapes covering the glass sliding doors of the living room. The outside patio was a maze of shadows.

  Nothing moved.

  She turned away from the slabs of glass and sat in one of the rattan chairs. Zack slid to the floor next to Honker and started talking to him. “She wants me to bring you back to the cave—you believe that?”

  “Look, even if he is a real, living dinosaur—which I still don’t completely believe—you’ve got a responsibility …”

  CLUNK. CLUNK. CLUNK.

  “What if that’s his mother now, Mr. Egg Man?” Uta added.

  Zack laughed. “Mothers don’t go running around all over looking for their eggs.”

  “I wouldn’t underestimate what any mother would do,” Uta said. “My uncle knew a man who found a bear cub and brought it back to his trailer. He was going to sell it to a zoo in San Diego—but the mother bear came down from the mountains, tore the door off his trailer, and started chewing on the man. She took her baby back and ran off with the man’s arm in her mouth.”

  “We’re not talking bears.”

  “Well, it’s the same thing. You don’t find a fantastic creature like a baby dinosaur, and say,’ Oh, I think I’ll keep it so my dad can be famous and make a few bucks!’ You’d be a jerk.”

  “My father only took this job because he needed the money. That’s the only reason he agreed to live in this wasteland.” The words had spilled out before he could stop them.

  “Wasteland! This is not a wasteland:’ Uta said. “You just don’t like it because it’s not wall-to-wall malls and surfing bimbos and amusement parks like L.A. All I’m saying is that you’ve got to realize you’ve found something that’s very important. Something priceless.”

  “I sure hope so.”

  Uta’s face turned red and she put her hands on her hips. “Don’t you understand? There are dinosaurs; maybe a bunch of them—a herd!—has survived somewhere in Silver Mountain! And one of their babies is right here in this room with us! Can’t you realize what that means?”

  “Yeah, I realize what it means,” Zack said, laughing. “A truck full of money!”

  The sounds were at the front door now

  SCRATCH.

  SCRAAAAATCH.

  4

  ATTACK

  Picasso got up, dropped his bone, and froze, staring at the front door. The scraping sounds were quieter, but closer. So close they seemed to be coming from inside the house.

  Quietly, Zack got up from the sofa. When he reached the hallway, he heard a creak. Slowly, the front door bent in, its thick brass hinges straining under the pressure. He tiptoed to the door, silently set the dead-bolt lock, and peered out through the peephole.

  Nothing but blackness.

  Creeeaaak.

  The door pressed in again as a low beastly growl began to shake the floorboards. A stench of rot filled his nostrils, and for the first time in a long, long time, Zack was scared. The chain lock rattled in his hand as he hooked it in place. He was aware Uta was standing right behind him.

  “What is it?” Uta whispered.

  “Something big. Real big.”

  Zack looked back through the peephole. He saw an enormous silhouette backlighted by a bulb burning in the breezeway. A moment more, and the massive shape blocked everything from view. “No rhinos in Utah, right?” he joked nervously.

  SCRATCH. SCRAAAATCH.

  “Get away from the door,” Uta said. She backed up into the living room, taking Honker and Picasso with her.

  Zack eased the palm of his hand against the door. He felt a vibration, a movement, as though something sharp was being drawn slowly back and forth across the door. The motion became faster, like the way Picasso would scratch the bottom o
f the door when he wanted to come in.

  “Don’t,” Uta warned Zack, as he pressed his ear against the door.

  Suddenly, there was a roar, and a single claw punched through the door, just inches from Zack’s face. The roar rose in volume and pitch, topping out into a chilling, junglelike scream. Combined with Uta’s shriek, it pained Zack’s ears.

  Zack realized that he, too, was screaming.

  Within a moment, the entire door was torn away and in the doorway loomed the immense mother raptor. Zack was paralyzed at the sight. The upper ridges of her skull were pronounced like a gorilla’s—thrusts of brow overhanging hugely swollen and yellow eyes. Her teeth were bared, thick jagged points that meshed perfectly into a hideous smile. A dark band ran from her head down to the tip of her thick, rigid tail.

  Zack stared into her huge, freakish eyes as they swung like radar discs in deep glistening sockets. They stopped—riveted on him.

  ROARRRR.

  The mother raptor’s jaws shot forward, a blur of teeth biting into what was left of the door frame. Zack’s mind spun madly. He was barely aware that Uta was shouting at him. He heard Picasso barking, and he remembered the hatchling. He turned and ran down the hallway toward the kitchen.

  The mother raptor saw the motion and took a single rapid leap after him. Her tail swung, skittering a hat rack across the floor. The smells of the house stunned her. She sniffed frantically at the new terrain, then continued deliberately after Zack. Her body listed and smashed against the walls, knocking a row of framed photos to the floor.

  Zack glanced over his shoulder as he ran. He saw the long snout of the raptor striking out ferociously, snapping at him like the beak of a great, monstrous hawk. Folds of loose, dead skin on the giant lizard’s neck fluttered as her jaws chomped at the air. Zack flicked light switches off as he ran, searching madly for pockets of darkness, anything that could hide him.

  Anything to let him escape.

  One of the raptor’s claws slammed into the wall behind him, tearing off a strip of molding. Zack saw the raptor’s eyes clearly now, huge glaring bubbles larger than raptor’s eyes in any paleontologist’s sketch. The dinosaur’s absurdly small forearms were rippled with muscles. They flailed at Zack, claws whooshing through the air. A single sickle-sized claw on each of its thick hind limbs tore into the rug runner, shredding it like paper.