Footprints of Thunder

by James F. David

  Ripman led off. John saw the doubt on Cubby’s face, but he shrugged his shoulders and started after Ripman.

  The boys emerged in a meadow and cut across it, although the animals were out of sight. They had nearly reached the other side when they heard a commotion behind them. Turning to look, they suddenly saw an animal burst out of the forest and come running toward them, bent over and speeding on two powerful legs like the plucked ostriches they had just seen. But this animal was taller and bulkier. Its neck was shorter and thicker and its head larger, with a ducklike bill for a mouth. Covered with slick-looking skin, with a long tail, it was undoubtedly a dinosaur.

  John was staring in disbelief when he felt Cubby jerking on his pack, screaming for John to run. Turning, he started following Cubby’s retreating back, his legs pumping away. He felt his heart come up to speed and his breathing quickened and deepened, and now his fear turned quickly to panic. His legs pounded recklessly over the uneven surface of the meadow and drove him into the forest. He jumped grass clumps and ferns that he couldn’t run over and followed Cubby’s charge even when it led through razor grass.

  When John realized he had reached his top speed he glanced over his shoulder. The dinosaur was gaining on him. It wasn’t the huge monster that he had expected, but it was big enough to make a meal of him. John’s heart was pounding faster than it ever had before, his lungs burned, and his legs were weakening. To his horror John realized that they were now heading up a hill. He could see the ground dropping away to his right. He knew the hill would slow him and tire him more quickly.

  A movement down the hill caught his attention. Ripman was weaving his way through the trees. For some reason Cubby had continued up the hill when Ripman headed down, and John had blindly followed Cubby. John, forgetting all loyalty, glanced over his shoulder again in the hope that the dinosaur had followed Ripman.

  When John looked back the dinosaur was still behind him, and the head would be within snapping distance very soon. He saw something else. There was a second dinosaur, and this one was huge, with a mouth big enough to bite him in half with its double rows of pointed teeth.

  At last John had a plan. He used the remainder of his energy to push up so that Cubby could see him in his peripheral vision. Then when he spotted a large clump of grass a few feet to the left, he headed toward it, noticing Cubby’s head jerk in his direction when he broke. Six feet from the grass John dove headfirst, sliding to a stop in the middle of the clump. He pulled his knees up to his chest and waited. As he expected, the smaller dinosaur ran past without stopping. The ground began rumbling then, and the monster that had been following them charged past. Even in the clump of grass John could see the head of the dinosaur towering above him.

  He lay in the grass a long time. Slowly his heart rate dropped and he was able to bring his breathing under control. As his adrenalin cleared from his bloodstream, he began to feel the grass cuts on his arms, neck, and face. Before long he risked stepping out. He stood still, listening hard but could hear noshing. His first impulse was to run back the way they had come. He wanted to run back and find Ripman. But what had happened to Cubby?

  John started in the direction the dinosaurs had run. It was an easy path to follow, since the big one had flattened everything it stepped on. After a few yards John began to whisper Cubby’s name so he could honestly tell Ripman “I searched for Cubby but couldn’t find him.” Still, John continued looking, to convince himself that he had done a reasonable search. He was about to turn back when he heard Cubby’s voice, no longer tentative but loud and clear. “Over here, John.”

  Cubby was sitting on a log unlacing his shoe. Rivulets of red ran down his arms and face. Occasionally he wiped away some of the blood from his face. Overwhelmed by relief, John bright-ened. “Man, I’m glad to see you. How did you get away?”

  “Did the same thing you did. I dove behind this log and waited. Did you see the size of that monster chasing the little one? That little one wasn’t after us, it was trying to save itself.”

  “Come on, Cubby, those things might come back. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Wait”

  John watched Cubby untie his shoe and dump rocks out.

  “What’s the point of that? Do you really think you could outrun that big one if it decided to make a snack out of you?”

  “John, I don’t have to outrun him, I only have to outrun you.”

  John thought briefly, then laughed out loud.

  21. Iguanodon

  The term dinosaur means “terrible lizard.” and terrible they would have seemed had mankind had the misfortune to evolve simultaneously. The naked ape would not have survived to develop into modern man under the onslaught of the giant carnivores.

  —Dr. Robert Hampton, Kingdom of the Dinosaurs

  New York City

  PostQuilt: Sunday, 9:37 A.M. EST

  The day Mariel spent waiting for the iguanodon to return was a day like no other—a constant parade of surprises. The iguanodon didn’t appear, but other dinosaurs did. Mariel sat with her book identifying them as best she could, cursing her eyes and herself for giving away Phillip’s binoculars.

  A couple of hours after the iguanodon left, she thought the wind had come up because large sections of grass moved simultaneously. But as the movement came closer, she began to see small heads poke up and down quickly. Mariel never got a good count, but she estimated two dozen of the little dinosaurs. They sprinted forward and back in the grass like seabirds running from ocean waves, but Mariel never got enough of a look to identify them. Soon the bobbing heads vanished.

  Mariel fell asleep late in the morning, exhausted from the previous night. When she woke it was with a start, to another blast from that air horn. She looked out the window in time to see three big-headed dinosaurs running through the grass, leaning forward on two legs with their tails held straight out behind them. The three ran in formation with one in the front and the other two behind on either side, in a triangle. When they disappeared into the distance quickly, Mariel chided herself for her weakness in falling asleep. Flipping through her dinosaur book again, now familiar with the pages, she found their picture right away. They were deinonychus. The book described them as hunters, probably in packs, and pictured them around the body of a much larger dinosaur, with blood on their huge jaws and with hunks of red meat hanging from their mouths. It made Mariel glad these carnivorous dinosaurs had been chased away, and she worried the deinonychus might attack her friend.

  Though she munched on crackers and drank fruit juice, she was about asleep again when she heard someone turning her doorknob. Instantly she was awake. She watched the knob turn back and forth, and then she heard voices in the hall. Mariel knew friends would have knocked first, so she yelled to let them know the apartment wasn’t empty.

  “Get away from my door! I’ve got a gun and I know how to use it.” She never heard the voices again and her doorknob didn’t move after that.

  Later she thought she heard the sound of splintering wood somewhere. Now, she suspected thieves were loose in her building but knew she was too old to do anything about it alone. So she sat by the window watching for the dinosaur with the sweet tooth to come back.

  A new dinosaur appeared after noon, a funny-looking, dome-headed dinosaur with small spikes sticking up on its snout and ugly green bumps along the back of its head. It ate its way through the meadow, its rounded head coming up frequently to sniff the air and scan the horizon. This dinosaur was nothing like the iguanodon. It was much smaller and obviously much less intelligent. Mariel could tell because it didn’t seem surprised by the building—too dumb to know her building wasn’t some big rock or cliff. No, this Dome-head had no curiosity like her dinosaur. Dome-head worked through the meadow along the length of Mariel’s building, and shortly after it disappeared from her view she heard the sound of the air horn plus car horns. A minute later Mariel saw Dome-head emerge and then disappear into the trees in the distance. Flipping through the pages of
her book again, Mariel saw similar dinosaurs but only one with spikes on its nose. She had trouble pronouncing the name, pachycephalosaurus, but didn’t care. It was an ugly, dumb dinosaur anyway.

  It was midafternoon when Mariel’s iguanodon reappeared. He was grazing through the clearing again, but at a much faster rate. Every time he stopped to eat he reared up on his hind legs and surveyed the surroundings, watchful for danger. Mariel hoped the deinonychus were well gone.

  Soon the iguanodon forgot all about the grass and fixated his eyes on the window where Mariel stood. The dinosaur swung his head looking left and right. When he was sure there were no lurking predators, he lifted his head and opened his mouth wide making a low “aaaaah” sound. When the sound died, Mariel dropped a paper bag of sugar into his mouth, which immediately snapped shut.

  Now the beast made loud smacking sounds and licked his lips. Opening his mouth he started “aaaahing” again. Once more she dropped a bag of sugar into his mouth. When the explosion of sweet faded, the dinosaur raised his head and opened his mouth a third time, Mariel scolded him.

  “Two is all you get. Now you get back out there and eat some more of that grass. You’ll get sick if you eat nothing but sugar.” She had raised three children and knew better than to give in. This dinosaur had to learn that two treats was all and that was final.

  The dinosaur stood outside her window “aaaahing” over and over again. But Mariel held firm, and finally the dinosaur dropped his head and walked back into the meadow toward the distant treeline. Smiling, Mariel prepared two more bags of sugar and put them by the window, then picked up her crocheting and waited.

  Toward dusk, her iguanodon came back.

  This time he wasn’t wasting any time eating grass. He walked through the meadow on his two rear legs, headed straight for Mrs. Weatherby’s window, lifting his head and “aaahing.” Mariel waited again for quiet and then dropped the sugar bomb into the dinosaur’s gaping mouth. After a second helping the dinosaur put his head down, turned away, and walked out into the meadow.

  “I knew you were smart, Mr. Iguanodon.”

  Mariel beamed. Back in the kitchen she filled two more paper bags with sugar. She was running low, but it wouldn’t be safe to go to a store for more. If her neighbors were home she could borrow some sugar. Then Mariel remembered the splintering wood. “Well, I guess it wouldn’t exactly be stealing,” she said to herself, and then started down the hall to do her shopping.

  22. Little Ones

  Near Yorkshire, England, eighty feet above the valley floor, we found a cave. If the remains in that cave were to be believed, then reindeer, hippopotamus, lions, and grizzly bear all lived together once in England. What a strange England that would have been.

  —William Buckland, 1823

  North of Bend, Oregon

  PostQuilt: Sunday, 9:45 A.M. PST

  Petra and Colter met the rest of the group in Bend and they traveled north in Dr. Coombs’s RV, toward Warm Springs. Petra tried to contact Mrs. Wayne and Ernie, but the airwaves were filled with the curious and the panicky. In the back, Colter drifted in and out of sleep, still hung over from the night before.

  The road to Warm Springs was clogged with confused travelers, so Dr. Coombs backtracked and found a dirt road angling across the Indian reservation. They drove through arid lands, treeless and covered with sagebrush. Small houses in poor repair sprinkled the low hills. Barbed wire lined the road, the fence held up by a variety of wooden posts. Most posts were well-weathered split rails, but a bewildering variety of replacement posts mingled with the originals. Metal posts were most common, but also axe handles, an oar, a two-by-four, some four-by-fours, and what looked to be the legs of chairs could be seen. Horses gazed near some fences, but there were no cows or sheep.

  The dirt road ended in a branch. Dr. Piltcher pointed left and they followed the ruts that led north. Shortly, the road declined sharply, leading to a valley. Dr. Coombs braked to a jolting stop as their mouths fell open in surprise.

  They had expected something to happen. They had predicted it—Zorastrus had predicted it, but even he wasn’t specific about what would happen. The road zigzagged down the hill and then straight into the valley below, which was bisected by a green line. On one side was the arid land they had been driving through. On the other side was a lush green landscape, thick with bushes and undergrowth. In the distance they could see a lake, and behind that a forest. They sat in silence, trying to understand what they were seeing. Only Colter seemed unimpressed.

  “Let’s get going, it looks cool down there,” Colter said impatiently.

  Dr. Piltcher, sitting in the front passenger seat, turned to look at Colter, irritation in his voice.

  “Colter, doesn’t it strike you as strange that this… this tropical forest is sitting here in the middle of this desert?”

  “I dunno. Maybe they irrigate.”

  Dr. Piltcher rolled his eyes and then turned back to face the front, speaking over his shoulder as he did. “They irrigate crops, not jungle. Let’s get closer, George.”

  Dr. Coombs drove down the zigzag road toward the scene below, Petra and Colter bouncing from side to side in the back of the RV. Suddenly Petra cried out.

  “Look! There by the lake. Something’s moving out there. Something big.”

  “I don’t see it, Petra. Do you, George?”

  “No, I’m watching the road.”

  “I saw it, Dr. Piltcher,” Colter cut in.

  Dr. Piltcher was exasperated. “And what did you see, Colter?”

  “It was big, like Petra said. I think it was a tractor. Maybe this is an irrigated farm.”

  Dr. Piltcher’s only answer was a disgusted snort. At the end of the ruts, they found themselves facing a small meadow against a wall of lush greenery seven to nine feet in height, concealing the lake and forest. Dr. Coombs slowly drove up onto the grass to park the RV.

  “Petra, try the radio again,” Dr. Piltcher ordered.

  As she began calling Mrs. Wayne and Ernie, her voice was flat, devoid of hope. She wasn’t surprised that no one answered.

  Now the others climbed out and walked into the meadow. Dr. Coombs and Dr. Piltcher began examining the grasses and ferns.

  “Extraordinary,” Dr. Piltcher muttered over and over.

  “Exactly so,” concurred Dr. Coombs.

  The noise of a stream distracted them and they turned to see Colter urinating into the grass. Dr. Piltcher began to stomp toward him, but Dr. Coombs grabbed his arm and began pointing out more of his observations of the flora, temporarily subduing his friend. Petra came out of the RV and shook her head before anyone could ask about contact. Suddenly Colter yelled, “Hey you, come here!”

  The others turned to see Colter running in circles through the tall grass, yelling and chasing something through the meadow. Occasionally he stopped abruptly and leaned down with his arms outstretched. Petra began running toward him, though Dr. Piltcher called after her to wait. Dr. Coombs trailed after her, his well-conditioned body carrying him like a younger man as Dr. Piltcher stumbled along behind. Colter bent down again, jerked up and sprinted ahead, and then he dove, disappearing in the grass as a piglike squeal erupted. Then Colter came up on one knee, and then stood holding a squirming animal none of them had ever seen before.

  It was eighteen inches in length, its skin a bright green. Colter held it by its thick tail—which was a third of its length—and its thick neck. Its head was a little larger than the neck, and the face resembled a parrot, with a beak that curved over the lower jaw. The eyes on either side of the head were covered with thick lids. Its two oversized back legs contrasted with two thin front ones. The animal was using its clawed front feet on Colter’s hand, and from Colter’s reaction the claws were sharp.

  The others jogged up to Colter, staring openmouthed.

  “What is that?” Petra asked.

  “It’s an omithopod,” said Dr. Coombs, his voice bubbling with excitement.

  “Psittacosaurus, I believ
e,” Dr. Piltcher added, just as excited. “But the color seems wrong. I wouldn’t have expected it to be this bright green.”

  “Too bright by far, Chester,” Dr. Coombs agreed. “But notice, the color is fading. Like a chameleon perhaps?”

  “I do believe you’re right, George. It seems to be adapting to the blue of Colter’s shirt.”

  “Come on, you guys!” Colter hollered. “I can’t hold this thing forever. Do you want it or not?”

  “Yes, of course we want to study it,” Dr. Piltcher said. “But what do we do with it?”

  Without a better idea they led Colter to the RV, the creature struggling every step of the way. Then they decided to put the psittacosaurus in the back, where the beds were, and block off the front. They used the mattresses to create a wall, and then Colter leaned over and dropped the psittacosaurus on the other side. As soon as it hit the floor it stopped squealing and came up running. The little beast ran through the back of the RV on its two back legs, leaning forward with forelegs outstretched, looking for an escape route. The only way out, however, was past the mattresses, and the four heads peering over them. Still, the beast would not give up and its panic grew.

  “The poor thing’s scared,” Petra said. “Maybe we better let it go.”

  “No, not yet,” Dr. Piltcher pleaded. “I want to study it. Just for tonight. We can let it go in the morning.”

  Petra’s conscience pricked her because the little animal was suffering. “Maybe we should give it something to eat,” Petra suggested.

  Dr. Coombs suggested fruit or eggs, and Colter came up with a peach. They rolled it across the floor to the psittacosaurus, but it ignored the fruit and continued to search for an escape route.

  “What did you call this thing again?” Colter asked.

  “Psittacosaurus,” Dr. Coombs replied.

  “Let’s just call it Sid,” Colter suggested. “How come I’ve never seen anything like Sid before?”