by Paul Zindel
Zack’s chest heaved painfully. He spun away from the bright lights of the kitchen and made a sharp turn into the darkness of his parents’ bedroom. Dark was safe, he thought. She wouldn’t see him in the darkness.
The raptor turned into the room after him. Too late, Zack realized he had backed himself into a corner without windows.
Nowhere to run! He pressed against a wall to hide behind the end of a heavy oak bureau. The mother raptor stopped at the foot of the bed. She reared herself up, her head scraping the ceiling. There was a spill of light from the doorway, and Zack saw her deadly anatomy. Her forelimbs dangled in front of her now, both ending in four gnarled, thick fingers tipped by claws the size of a grizzly’s. Each foot had three large, thick spikes pointing straight forward—with a fourth longer, more terrible claw arching up from the ankle.
The raptor’s nostrils quivered. She sensed Zack hiding in the shadows. Roaring, she lurched forward, swinging her forelimbs out at him. A claw hooked into the bureau, and she hurled all of it, its drawers and mirror and stacked clothing, through the air. Zack leaped across the bed, but the raptor was fast after him. He tripped on a bedpost. As he fell the raptor’s arm swished below him like a samurai’s blade.
ROAR.
Zack felt a stabbing pain as his head bashed into the corner of an end table. He felt something trickling down his face and into his eyes. He wiped at it. Blood.
His blood.
The raptor turned. Its tail ripped through his mother’s lotions bottles and crushed a white wicker desk. Zack tried to stand, but he was dazed. He looked up into the gaping jaws of the mother raptor. His body began to shake with terror as he reached out into the shadows, his fingers searching for a shoetree or a loose hanger.
A weapon.
Anything.
Zack’s lungs filled with the wet, stinking graveyard breath of the raptor. Hot yellow froth drooled down onto him from the spray of ginzu fangs that jutted out from the raptor’s gums. The buzzardlike fingers of her forearms seized him, began to lift him up. Her tongue slithered from between her fangs. It crawled over his face, its slimy and scalding strip writhing down his brow toward his chin.
The forearms squeezed him, pressed the breath half out of him. Gnarled fingers welted his skin, and he could barely think. What are you doing? He wanted to ask. What’s happening? What? The raptor’s thick rough tongue halted on Zack’s lips and began to force down his chin and creep into his mouth.
“NOOOOOO!” Zack screamed. He tasted the slippery tip of the tongue as it crept through his lips and down his throat. Its rancid froth and ooze reeked with the rot of death, and he began to gag, to feel his own vomit moving up to greet the pulsing, wet slime.
Somewhere in his clouded mind he heard something. Noises. Sounds coming from behind the raptor.
The mother raptor dropped Zack, and he glimpsed Uta shouting in the doorway of the bedroom. Picasso barked and growled ferociously, and nipped at the dinosaur’s heels. Honker scooted up to Picasso’s side and joined in sounding the outrage. The hatchling hadn’t the faintest idea it was scolding his own half-ton mother.
The giant raptor turned from Zack toward the shrieking trio.
ROARRRRR.
The entire bedroom shook like an earthquake. The raptor lunged toward Uta. She went silent, backed up, and took off toward the living room, Picasso along with her.
Honker held his ground, hissing fiercely.
The mother raptor cocked her head and looked curiously down at the hatchling. She lowered her snout and slowly extended her stinking, slimy tongue toward her offspring. Honker glared at the giant creature. For a moment he spun like a dazed chicken, then understood that this monstrosity wanted him.
He turned and fled.
ROAR.
The raptor took off after Honker. She closed on him, but he made a sudden turn out the gutted shell of what once was the front doorway. The mother raptor raced out after him, roaring into the night.
Zack wiped the raptor’s slime and froth from his lips and patted at the clot forming on his forehead. He staggered back down the hallway to the living room. He had seen the raptor leave, but knew she could return at any moment. He spotted Uta crouched behind the sofa. “Come on,” he called to her—and she came running.
Zack led the way down a back hallway, with Picasso trailing. It was narrower and darker. It would be more difficult for the raptor to follow them. He herded everyone into a shadowy bathroom and slammed the door. Uta looked around at the cramped little room with its shower tub and cinder-block walls. “Great,” she said. “Now we’re really trapped.”
“It doesn’t want us,” Zack said. “Besides, you haven’t lived until you’ve been sloppy-kissed by a raptor!”
“You’re going to make me throw up.”
“Shhh. Quiet.”
Zack slid his back down against a tiled wall until he was sitting on the floor. Uta sat down next to him. “D’you hear that?” she asked as she petted Picasso, keeping one hand curled around his snout in case she had to muzzle him.
“What?” Zack asked.
“That.”
He listened. After a moment, he heard what sounded like the whistle of a distant teakettle. It grew louder. Closer.
Uta gasped. “The window!” Zack shifted forward onto his knees. He slid open the shower doors mounted on the tub. Reflected light from the breezeway bounced off a small, open window.
There was the sound of scurrying, like a small animal was running through the gravel and wood chips of the back garden. Something spooked and shuddering flew up onto the windowsill. Zack thought it was a cat.
Uta screeched. “Oh, God, it’s Honker! Get him out of here! Out!”
“Too late,” Zack said, slamming the window closed and locking it.
“What do you mean, too late?”
Zack cradled Honker in his arms. “He’s shaking.”
“So what?”
“It’s okay, little fella. It’s okay….” Honker started to nuzzle into Zack’s lap. He honked gratefully and then began to rub heads with Picasso.
“He missed Picasso,” Zack whispered.
Uta looked at Zack like he was insane. “Get him out of here! The mother wants him! You said it yourself?”
“Hey, he’s scared.”
“Who isn’t?”
“She’ll eat him.”
“No, she won’t.” Uta slammed the shower doors closed. “You don’t seem to realize that we’re the only ones on the menu tonight!”
Zack put his a finger up to his lips. “Shhh.”
For a while there were no sounds.
“Is she gone?” Uta whispered.
The silence went on.
“She must have gotten tired of looking,” Zack said. They began to relax and breathe again.
CRAAAASH.
The mother’s head exploded through the window like a battering ram. She roared at them, with only the glass of the shower doors between her and them. She swung her jaws the length of the tub. The tip of each fang was chalk white, a light yellow film coating the shank, with a sludge of green rot on the gum line. Remnants of the decaying otters were wedged between the teeth, sinews of the carcasses dropping upon the glass like bleached worms. There were maggots in her nose.
The mother raptor looked directly at the cowering foursome. She shot a single hind leg up onto what remained of the windowsill. She thrust down hard, and one of her razor-sharp claws sliced through the wall. Strips of metal siding and tile fell away, leaving a gaping hole.
Shaking violently, the raptor shimmied the whole of her body in at them, her forelimbs clawing at the shower doors. The aluminum frames bent until the glass pinioned the four of them like butterflies.
ROARRR.
The mother raptor slid her snout along the surface of the glass until her jaws were over Zack’s face. She snapped at the glass, puzzled why she couldn’t taste flesh. She swung her jaws directly to Uta.
“How can it see us in the dark?” Zack yelled.
/> “Look at her eyes?” Uta screamed. “Things in caves grow fat eyes. They can see fine in the dark!” Her gaze shot up the shadows of the wall as the mother raptor pounded ferociously on the glass. The slabs began to shatter, squiggly cracks radiating out from each impact. Picasso yelped. Honker shrieked. Zack saw Uta pointing to the light switch high on the wall.
“Put the lights on!” Uta yelled. “ON!”
Zack realized she was right. He began waving beneath the glass to distract the raptor. She swung her head to look at him, then slammed her claws relentlessly down onto the glass.
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
One of the slabs shattered. Zack pushed up hard on a large piece of jagged glass. He rose into a crouch. Using the slab as a shield, he pushed it into the raptor’s face, reached out, and hit the wall switch. A ceiling bank of fluorescent lights burst into blazing strips of brilliance. The raptor swung her gaze upward, her bulbous eyes wide open. She roared with pain and reared as her forelimbs flailed in vain to bring back the darkness.
“Come on!” Zack shouted to Uta.
He gave the wedge of glass a final thrust, allowing Uta to scramble out from under it, with Picasso and Honker right after her. When they were clear, he let go and started out the doorway. Crash! The raptor shattered the lights, tubes bursting and raining sparks onto the tile floor. She saw the motion now, lurched, and struck out at it. A claw caught Zack’s shirt and he cried out.
Uta saw what was happening and turned back. She grabbed Zack’s hand, pulling him after her. His shirt ripped free from the claw, and they dashed back down the hall. Another tube burst, showering glass and fluorescent powder into the raptor’s eyes.
ROAR.
ROAAAR.
Uta turned to flee out the front of the house. “No!” Zack shouted. “We wouldn’t stand a chance out there!” He yanked her after him into the living room and dragged a halogen floor lamp to the far wall. A row of track lights hung from one of the beams. “Grab all the lamps you can!”
Uta seized a lamp from a table near the sofa and set it into the cluster of lights. Picasso began to chase his own tail. The trembling form of the hatchling stayed by Zack as the roars of the mother raptor became louder.
Closer.
They had every lamp in the room bunched together. “Get behind the lights!” Zack said, flicking on all the switches. Uta grabbed the poker from the fireplace. She reached it up to the blazing track lights and focused them toward the black hole at the end of the hallway.
CRASH.
More glass shattering.
The mother raptor, bruised and cut, emerged roaring from the hall. Her tongue shot out to lick at the blood oozing from gashes on her shoulders. She stared at the wall of lights.
“She can’t see us,” Zack said.
A chill slid down Uta’s spine. She began to pray that something magical would happen. Something crazy, like the Great Spirit would appear and turn the raptor to stone. She squeezed Zack’s hand. Picasso was silent. Honker made short, terrified sounds.
“Give him up or we’re dead!” Uta hissed.
“No.”
The mother raptor lowered her head. Her jutting brow shaded her eyes, and she started toward them.
“Oh, God,” Zack said. Crazy ideas began to race through his mind. He thought of throwing a lamp and trying to electrocute the mother raptor. He saw the TV remote on a table next to Uta.
“Turn the TV on! Turn it on!” he shouted.
Uta saw the control, picked it up, and pressed the power button. Behind the raptor, a platinum-haired weather woman came on the TV screen, her voice blaring about a coming storm.
The mother raptor halted. She looked at the TV and let out a roar. Zack couldn’t get Honker to be quiet. He saw the intercom in the wall behind him, turned it on, and lifted Honker’s squawking mouth up toward the mike. With a twist of the volume dial, Honker’s cries came out of speakers all over the house.
ROAR.
The mother raptor turned in confusion. She looked toward the hall, then back to the TV. She took a leap away from the blazing assembly of lights, but then turned suddenly, like a monstrous bird of prey.
Uta gasped. “I think we went too far.”
The raptor charged up to the burning lights. She was close enough for Zack and Uta to see the wet fungus and lice that festered on her snout. Now, her eyes locked on Honker.
ROAR.
She spun. Her tail, with a single sweep, knocked out half of the halogen lights. Bulbs exploded, and the raptor thrust her jaws forward. Uta screamed. She struck at the window behind them with the poker. Honker shuddered and leaped out of Zack’s arms. He ran along the floor, trembling as the mother raptor’s jaws swooped downward.
“Don’t!” Zack shouted.
The jaws of the raptor closed on Honker. Zack thought the hatchling was being devoured alive. The mother flipped Honker, positioned him in her mouth as she retreated with her prize.
“Let him go,” Zack yelled. His shins slammed into an overturned table and he fell. By the time he was on his feet, the mother raptor had fled out the hole where the front door had been.
Zack limped outside into the light of the breezeway, with Uta and Picasso fast behind. Beyond the circle of light, they saw the dark shadow of Silver Mountain as the roaring of the mother raptor and faint shrieks of Honker faded into the night.
5
SPIDER GRANDMA
Zack ran after the sounds for several hundred feet, beyond a paddock and up a hillside until he was surrounded by night and the pounding of his heart. Uta and Picasso ran after him. Uta took his hand and made him turn back. Inside the house, she had him stand under the kitchen light. The cut on his forehead had stopped bleeding, but it was swollen.
“Are you okay?” Uta asked.
“Yes,” Zack said.
Uta grabbed a handful of ice cubes from the refrigerator and wrapped them in a dish towel. She pressed the towel gently on the cut. “We’re lucky we’re not dead, you know.”
“What about Honker?” Zack asked. “Maybe he wasn’t so lucky.”
“You never should have taken that egg. That’s the first rule about wilderness—leave wildlife alone!”
“He’s probably been devoured by now.”
“Hey, I’ve seen a lot of lizards in the desert. They’re not cannibals.”
“These are dinosaurs!” Zack said.
“So? Honker’s with his mother,” Uta said. “They wouldn’t have survived this long if they didn’t protect their young. That’s all she was doing, you know—protecting him.”
Zack took the compress and pressed it harder on the small wound. “Well, then he’s in that mountain somewhere, and I want to see where!”
“Why?”
“There’s got to be more of them, you know! There could be all kinds of weird stuff going on in there!”
“Great. Freak Mountain.”
“Right. There could be time mutants all over the place!”
“You’re going after him, aren’t you?” Uta asked in disbelief.
“Yeah, so?”
“So, you’re crazy.”
“Didn’t you like Honker?”
“Sure. I had a pet skunk once, too. And I liked him. I like all animals. But I wouldn’t want to die for one.”
“Honker imprinted on me,” Zack said. “Besides, he’s cool. And he doesn’t deserve that nasty biological mother he’s got!”
“Hey, she came all the way back for him, you know.”
“Oh, I know, all right.” Zack tossed the compress into the garbage and headed down the hallway.
Uta followed and spoke softly. “You and Picasso can’t stay here tonight.” She brushed her fingers through her hair, sweeping out specks of plaster. “We’ve got to tell somebody what happened. Maybe we should contact Dr. Bones.”
“No way.” Zack opened a closet and grabbed a hammer and nails from a tool kit. “My dad found the egg. We were almost eaten alive. We tell Bones nothing!”
Uta and Picass
o followed Zack out to the front of the house. He picked up the remnants of the front door and began to hammer planks, crisscrossing them over the entrance.
“You going to call your dad?” Uta asked.
“Not tonight. He’s too sick.”
“Then tell your mom.”
“She’d call a shrink. You don’t tell anyone on the phone that you’ve found a dinosaur. Nobody’ll believe us. Nobody!” They used a few old sheets of plywood to patch up the other windows.
Later, exhausted, Zack stood frozen in the light of the breezeway. He reached down and picked up Picasso. “My father’s dino is in that mountain,” Zack said. “You don’t know, really, what this would mean for him. I’m not going to let it disappear. My dad didn’t get hurt for nothing!”
“Well, that baby dinosaur has rights, too.” Uta saw Zack’s eyes were glistening. “Right now, we’ve got to get out of here,” she said gently. Uta headed for the motorcycle. “I’ll hold Picasso if you drive slowly.”
“It’s okay,” Zack said. “He’s got his own wheels.” He went to a storage shed and came back pulling a tiny trailer with bicycle wheels. It looked like a miniature trotting rig.
Uta laughed. “I should have known you’d have invented something.”
“Hey, he loves it,” Zack said, hitching the trailer to the back of the motorcycle. He put Picasso into his safety harness, then climbed on and kick-started the engine. The headlight cut into the night as Uta swung up behind him.
“Where to?” Zack asked.
“I want to stop by my house,” Uta said. “My folks and Larry Ghost Coyote’ll want to know we’re back from the mountain. Then we’ll go visit somebody.”
“Who?”
“Spider Grandma.”
“Spider who?”
“She’s my grandmother. You’ll like her. She’s the one with the turquoise concession and tents on the road to Altamont. The one with pinwheels and reflectors, and the big neon sign that flashes fireworks! She’s got old maps of Silver Mountain and the caves. Lots of stuff. We can trust her and she’ll know what we should do.”
