by Brian Hodge
In Seward's memory the descent of the football-field sized flag seemed the most terrible thing of all. The start flag for the apocalypse, perhaps. He saw billions of reptiles blacking out the concept of countries, casting entire continents into their shadow. This was no Army experiment gone haywire. This might be the end.
After being awakened by the comedy of the late Mr. Cal Worthington, Seward digested what the Major told him about the coming of the dinosaurs … and how they began to disappear as fast as they materialized.
"Tank crew zeroed in on a biggie," he said. "Poof–that dinosaur frizzed into static. They showed the tape on the news, slo-mo, instant replay and all that. You know when your cable service goes on the blink? Looked just like that. A monster the size of a construction crane just zapped into a cloud of blue-green vapor and swam away on the westerlies. And bam, bam, bam, there were dinosaurs appearing one second and disappearing a few minutes later, like they'd established some kinda beachhead but couldn't hold, you know? Well, militarily speaking, our problem shrank like a gonad in formaldehyde. For a second there it looked like this was going to be a disaster for property values, and now and again somebody got chewed up or squished."
The major's drone blended with the TV, and Seward let the medication sweep him away for a bit. An ebony shape with hungry bronze eyes scudded past their eighth floor window. He fell into a natural sleep and dreamed again of Disneyland.
Aguilar had had himself a revelation up there on the Stirrup, or so he kept broadly hinting to Case. He squinted toward the valley of the 'dines, ciggie dangling from his sunburnt lips, an intense expression plastered across his face a hair too obviously. Aguilar rolled his own; the stench was similar to smoldering balsa wood.
"Nope. Just can't see him yet."
Case decided to humor him. "Moses, with a new, improved tablet?" He frowned. "Brontosaurus, green mottles, black saddle, alternating red and green on the tail. Black tail tip. You talk to the Shack?"
"What for?" Case dropped into his overblown imitation of Shack Cocoberra's chili pepper accent: "Chak, he say, pardone señor, we don't go no place today neether." Smoke and lees from the tepid tea in his thermos had congealed into an unlovely paste at the back of his palate. He coughed and spat uselessly. "I'm beginning to think he just wants to rack up overtime, is what I think."
"Naw. Shack's honest, at least."
"Overeducated, too." Case knew Shack's accent was mostly for atmosphere in the drive.
"Besides, it ain't worth it." Aguilar had made the argument before; this would not be the last time. "Easier to finish out, contract a new drive, get the sign-on fee upfront. When the drives move quicker he gets a faster turnaround on the fees."
"Yeah. Shack's honest." Mojos for authorized drives had to be licensed. In the beginning the licensing was akin to an emergency teaching credential, but the regs had been strengthened with the new administration. Taxes and prices always went up; wages chased but never caught them; with each preordained election came new rules. Always. These were the only facts of life with no ceiling. Thday, mojos were just part of the paperwork.
"See Jack the Ripper?" Case said.
"What?"
"On the mountain top. Playing cards. Who told you to look for the green and black bronto?" Neither man could get his mouth around calling such a creature an Apatosaurus, which seemed just too-too.
"I saw it in a vision." Aguilar had been chewing peyote again. Case realized he was smoking the fetid, crematory hand-rolleds to deaden the smell of the buttons on his breath. Still dope-conscious but curious, Case had tried it with him once. It had tasted like turd-flavored Sen-Sen.
A Dimetrodon snapped to, displacing air with a pop. Case thought of a flashgun in reverse. The paper lantern struts of its spine rattled and the webwork of translucent hide refracted the setting sun into an instant rainbow before the two startled drovers.
"Dammit," said Case. "I wish they wouldn't come in so goddamn close." The big dinosaur belched and tromped away on skinny, bent legs, defying gravity.
"That's why we be here, amigo," Aguilar grinned. "Keep 'em off the expressways." Dinosaur gridlock was still an occasional problem.
"What about the green and black one–the one your vision said you were supposed to look for?"
"Just supposed to find him; that's it."
"And all will be revealed unto us …"
"Don't make fun." Aguilar's face went dead serious so fast it was hilarious. He could get religion at the most bone-tickling times.
Case felt too centered to argue. "Whoa, me friend," he said. And it was good–the view, the time of day, a smoke and a partner and breathing space and a dash of peace of mind. Wasn't that what all the Suits cried the blues for lacking?
In his lifetime Whitman Case had bailed out of a flaming bomber, survived seven serious auto accidents and three broken limbs, weathered eight muggings or robberies (two at gunpoint; another two during which he'd gotten the drop and walked away unrobbed), killed four men that he knew of in combat, missed catching a plane that subsequently crashed near Elkins Air Force Base due to pilot error, and nearly drowned once by getting his ankle tangled in a rope while white-water rafting down the Colorado. He had lowered his cholesterol and raised his fiber intake. He had lived through two surgeries–tonsils, and a detached cornea at forty-five. He had duly earned and spent several million American dollars, fathered no children, and manned three times, beyond which he had "seriously" cohabited with seven women, not counting Iris, who was as crazy as a dung beetle in a hubcap, and counting Pearl, whom he still thought of every single day. He had smoked maybe five zillion cigarettes and tipped back an oil freighter or so of coffee, black. He had lived drunk and sober, rational and pissed off beyond sanity, benevolently then selfishly, and did not believe in supernatural deities. Ever since he had first seen a dinosaur picture book as a child he had trusted in what the scientists had said.
To wit: DINOSAURS AND HUMAN BEINGS DID NOT LIVE AT THE SAME TIME. Despite all those great movies on Channel 11, the ones broken up by all the Cal Worthington commercials.
He recalled being saddened because it meant poor old humankind had missed the chance to know what thunder lizards really looked like. And that had turned out to be wrong, too.
Case would never forget the day he had found differently. It was one of those calendar junctures people commonly stored, like the JFK shooting or the Apollo moon touchdown or that time the space shuttle blew all to hell.
He remembered, without a smile, and when he remembered there was no need to ask whether Whitman Case believed in God, friend.
"It took folks about twenty-four hours to learn how to stay out of their way," said the Major, meaning dinosaurs that materialized spontaneously. "Some say that the air ripples, just before. But once they got on the news, when they weren't knocking over buildings or eating people anymore, they were a huge hit. Some guy found out they'll eat dog food.
He got corporate endorsements. They'll eat garbage, hell, they'll eat crap we wouldn't touch for landfill. They shit all over everything. If they have enough time before they wink out, they build nests and lay eggs. Sometimes they eat each other, which is pretty funny when your lunch vanishes into thin air right when you bite." The Major chuckled self-consciously. "Nobody cares where they came from. They're famous."
"They're ghosts," said Seward. He did not look over from his bed. The quiet utterance made the Major's statistical monologue seem trivial. His unbandaged eye swiveled to. "Say again?"
"Ghosts." Seward watched the television, not seeing its ceaseless silliness.
He was reasonably sure the Major might ring for the nurse. Boy's finally tipped over, he'd say. Concussion has scattered his dice.
"How do you figure that?" The Major was honestly curious, not placating.
"They're actual ghosts. Shades. They emanate from places of the dead. Their dead, their graveyards. Remember all the dinosaurs headed north, up Fairfax? They were coming out of Hancock Park. They were materializing at
the La Brea Tar Pits."
"Ain't no dinosaurs in the La Brea Tar Pits." The major was a local, and had toured the Paige Museum. "Just mammals. Mastodons. Sloths. Dire wolves. No dinosaurs."
"The fossil deposits and museum exhibits originated deep within the alluvial layers we now plumb for fossil fuel. Not from the pits, my good Major; they're coming out of the tar itself, which means they're also coming out of the oil wells and petroleum refineries, which also means they're coming from the plastics factories and whiskey distilleries and any plant that presses vinyl." His voice hitched down to a murmur in the extremely clean room, while logic forged links. "Even the air is full of petrochemicals, hydrocarbons. Supernaturally, it makes good sense spirits are literally coalescing out of thin air. Ghosts have been known to appear from thin air, you know."
Given that the dinosaurs were real, no foolin', then Seward's mind was magnetized toward the only sensible explanation … even though it was polarized against his life's calling.
And if they came out of plastic, that meant they were coming out of compact discs and cappuccino makers and toy stores and Gucci shoppes, and even that machine at the Griffith Observatory that injection-molded you a souvenir rocketship for fifty cents.
"Real, live ghosts." The Major pretended to chew it over. His mind naturally sought a logistical panacea. "So…how many dinosaurs would that be, then? Total."
"How many centuries did the dinosaurs run the planet?" Seward asked back. "How long was the Mesozoic Era alone, ninety million years? Don't ask me what the lifespan of the average thunder lizard was, even given the bad living conditions and all. How many dinosaurs do you suppose could have been born in ninety million years? The human race has barely topped off its first million, and just look at us. All those dead dinosaurs, all back at the same time. All our smog is just calling back to its roots. Just think what it must be like in the OPEC countries right now."
The Major grinned. Patriotically.
Seward tried to find sleep; his mind, rest. He had a dream, not a nightmare, of ghost dinosaurs randomly popping up in Disneyland, where there were mechanical dinosaurs. His dreaming mind wondered if they would fight, already knowing which side would win.
All those dinosaurs. Where would we put them?
More than the end of the world, Americans dislike inconvenience. Accommodations would have to be made. Seward slept on it.
In the 1980s the theory was advanced that dinosaurs had demonstrated herding behavior, and a pile of paintings were done depicting that which had never been considered before. The paleontologist who had posited this theory was among the stampede of idea guys seeking the government's ear. Grants and endowments awaited those whose unsolicited assistance proved useful in a time of crisis. Once it was realized that the ghost dinosaurs were easily herded, and would follow each other straight out of whatever American metropolis they were clogging up, Whitman Case found himself a new job: Ramrodding herds of ghost dinosaurs out to the open desert. They couldn't starve there because they were already dead.
Case, Aguilar and their fellow drovers rapidly became the experts who observed all the twists first. if a 'dine laid down a mound of shit, it remained real after the ghost phased out, having eliminated the remnants of digested intake millions of years old at long last. Academics were eager to dive into the dinosaur poop and analyze. If the 'dines laid eggs while corporeal, and those eggs got fertilized by other corporeated 'dines, the hatchlings did not fade out, ever. That wrinkle didn't seem to worry the companies that budgeted the drives too much just yet. It had only happened once or twice. Case had seen baby carnivores try to attack ghosts. Plant eaters munched on ocatilla stalks and prickly pear. The dinosaur equivalent of hoof and mouth, or rabies, could not lumber ghosts. The drovers guided them out past the dunes, where they congregated in broad valleys.
Or would, Case thought, if Shack the mojo would undent his buns and give them the blessing to press on with the drive for two more days of travel time. Then they could dump this herd in with the other 'dines and buzz home for the usual kinds of relief, another thing that had not changed much for anyone of a droving bent.
It had been that Seward fella, way back when, who had come up with the idea of having psychics predict fair or foul for the drives, since ghosts were involved. To put it simply, these dinosaurs were part-time ghosts, and the psychics started out as part-timers, too. Since Seward had suggested the idea to the government, he was appointed to sift applicants and weed out the phonies, in accordance with his former profession. He remained an occult debunker until his death, but after the dinosaur thing his heart just was not in his work so deeply.
Another Camel kissed Case's bootheel; Aguilar declined his offer of a smoke. Night was on in the desert and Jonas had a huge mesquite blaze crackling in a pit full of yesterday's embers. The drovers chowed down and tried to talk of things other than 'dines–lovers, the past, derring-do. Cars.
Ernesto Cocoberra trundled forth from his camper, a rotund, pasha-shaped man, small of stature, bright of eye, aware that his metaphysical dictates were preventing the drive from moving on, but good-natured enough that the drovers resented only the news, and not the Shack. He spoke their language without talking down or bullshitting them. It was inevitable that someone at dinner ask The Question, and tonight it looked like it was Case's turn.
Before Case could get whole words past his lips, though, Shack held up an oracle-like finger and said, "We're there already, Whit."
Aguilar made an arrgh noise, having none of this. "Aw, shit, Shack, we ain't moved nearly three weeks now. We ain't anywhere already. We're nowhere, is where we are."
You had to ask the question, Case knew. It was like a game. "Okay, Shack. But where are we?"
"Sedalia."
"Oh, great. What the fuck's that mean?"
"Quiet," Case said to Aguilar, who was pretty impatient for a guy who waxed so mystical a half hour previously. "What's Sedalia, Shack?"
"Crow, Whit–didn't you never watch no Rawhide on TV?"
Blank looks all around. Maybe the triple negative had them reeling. "Oh, yeah." Jonas scraped his dish over the fire. "Clint Eastwood. Some other actor who died."
"Man versus cow," said Shack. "A whole series about a cattle drive." Somebody sang rollin' rollin' rollin' sotto voce until Shack continued.
"Sedalia was the town they were driving the cattle to. Show was on the air seven years … and that goldanged cattle drive just went on and on, all seven years, and it never got to Sedalia." He folded his arms, a buddha in his certitude, making pronouncements in the firelight.
"That's TV for you," Jonas grumped. "Makes its own timeframe."
"Wait–are you saying we're never going to get clear of this drive?" It was Bridges, the one who had been singing a second before. He was the youngest guy on the drive, full of sperm and not the right age to hear absolutes. "You're not saying that, man." He pitched a crumpled cigarette pack over his shoulder and Jonas glared at him.
"Aguilar had himself a vision up there on the Stirrup today," said Shack. "Why don't you share it with us?"
Aguilar hemmed and hawed and scuffed and blushed and finally cut the crap and told what he knew.
"I suggest y'all keep an eye peeled for that green and black Brontosaurus," concluded Shack. "It has to be an omen. If one of us spots it, then perhaps I could make an intelligent forecast for the drive … since I don't enjoy warming my ass out here for days on end any more than you guys do. I want to get back to Reno so I can do some serious gambling, goddammit."
The air displacement of a materializing 'dine nearly blew down the campfire. It was a big guy, a full-grown Trachedon, mud-colored with bright orange speckles like Day-Glo paint and a smell that reminded Case of the blowback from a sewage treatment plant. Most of the drovers hit the deck. Bridges did not. Bridges had not been on the June drive, the one where a Stegosaurus had untethered a volcanic fart into the campfire and nearly flash-fried them all in a flaming cloud of primeval methane.
The T
rachedon saw them and made distance.
"You're right," Aguilar said to Case, looking up with dirt in his teeth. "I wish they wouldn't come in so close, either."
All through the night the dinosaurs came and went. Incoming, they sizzled with the sound of ripping cloth or the tearing of dry jerky. They roared and hooted and keened in the darkness of the valley, as prowls begun eons ago were resumed in the residual heat that leached toward the stars from desert dirt. Then they de-rezzed with a carbonated, fizzy noise, blurring, breaking up and fading out.
Near dawn, just as the snaggletoothed horizon grew bloodshot, Case shucked his sleeping bag and ambled over to his terrain bike to catch a smoke and work the sleepy seeds out of his eyes. When it came to the reasons men and a few women chose to embark on dinosaur drives, you usually never winnowed talk down to details. In that respect, the job was like Foreign Legion service. Case was able to keep most of his personal narrative tight to the vest. Each drover thought their reasons the most tragic or romantic–by god, it could be like one endless, over-dumb country & western ballad–except that everyone was too chicken to actually match for best.
Case held the draughts of good gray smoke deep. It perked his nerves and glands, and gradually, restored his definition of humanity.
