Rex

by Cody B. Stewart

  Bottom line: he hadn’t done his job. He let the fact that he was hunting a dinosaur distract him from his real job. But seriously, a freaking dinosaur! He still had trouble believing it. Still, dinosaur hunting wasn’t his job. Keeping tabs on this project was. And he had dropped the ball, big time.

  Time to pick it up.

  Brock put his ear to the door of Dr. Kruger’s lab. It sounded empty. He opened the door and slid in, scanning the room to verify no one was there. Brock didn’t like Kruger’s lab. There was a creepy coldness to it. Sterile. Empty of life. A total vacuum. It was unsettling to say the least.

  He sorted through a pile of papers on Kruger’s desk, looking for anything that would shed a little light on what was really happening in the compound. But all he found were basic reports and analysis spreadsheets. Nothing he hadn’t seen before. But the whistling he heard coming from the back room… That was certainly new.

  Brock had only been in Kruger’s lab a handful of times. He’d received the nickel tour when he’d first arrived. All of the reports were sent to him, and all of the briefings were conducted in the conference room upstairs. It was obvious to him that they didn’t want him spending too much time poking around down here.

  He had never seen the back room.

  He tiptoed toward the unassuming door, making sure not to let one of his heels touch the floor or his boots squeak on the tile. The tuneless whistling and intermittent muttering was unmistakable—the doctor was definitely in the house. It sounded like he was tinkering with something. The clanking and squeal of metal joints rang out underneath Kruger’s whistling and mumbling. Brock cracked the door as slowly and quietly as he could and peered inside.

  The room was more than just an extra workspace. Everything in there seemed to be focused on an entirely different project. Schematics for weapon systems Brock had never seen hung on one of the walls. Scale models of those weapons littered the table that Kruger was hunched over, his back to the door. Brock couldn’t see what he was working on, but the welder’s mask and torch he was using clearly meant he was building something.

  Thought he was just a biology nerd. Didn’t know he was an engineer. That wasn’t in his file.

  The welding torch lit up the room. Sparks leapt from the table like fireworks. Brock took advantage of the noise and snuck in, making sure to stay behind Kruger and out of sight. The fireworks stopped. Kruger lifted his tinted welding mask and examined his work, muttering and scratching his chin. “Yes, yes, yes,” he said, setting down the torch. “A tweak here and a mod there. Quite nice.” He lifted his project off the table so he could admire it from every angle. “He will be most pleased indeed.”

  Brock studied it over Kruger’s shoulder. Curiouser and curiouser. It looked like a robotic arm or something designed to fit over an arm, like a piece of an exosuit. Something from a science fiction movie. At the end of it where fingers would be on a normal arm, were long, claws that looked sharp enough to slice through concrete.

  One of the shiny claws caught Brock’s reflection. Kruger shrieked and spun instinctively, swinging the robot death arm in a wide arc.

  “Watch it!” Brock yelled as he leapt back just in time to keep his head from being lopped off his shoulders.

  The color drained from Kruger’s face. His lip quivered and his beady little eyes darted around like bouncy balls inside his skull. “Colonel Horne, I…I…I wasn’t expecting you. I…you shouldn’t be here.”

  Brock’s jaw clenched and his brow furrowed. “Oh? And why’s that?”

  Kruger instantly seemed to know he’d said something he shouldn’t have. He stumbled over himself trying to talk his way back in time to erase it. “Oh, no reason. This is just…it’s my…private workspace. I don’t usually welcome people into my private areas.” He tried to steer Brock toward the door with a hand on his shoulder, but Brock just shrugged it off.

  “I don’t care about your private areas, Kruger. You should absolutely keep those private.” He scanned the schematics on the wall and the models on the table. “But this stuff, I care about.”

  Kruger slid in between Brock and the table, doing his best to shield everything from Brock’s view. “This? This is nothing. Some side projects of mine. A hobby, really, is all it is.”

  Brock’s stare was like lasers straight into Kruger’s brain. The fidgety doctor tried to squirm out of the way, but Brock seemed to have him locked in some sort of tractor beam. “Designing weapons is a hobby?”

  The hole Kruger had dug himself got deeper and deeper. “No, of course not. Weapons design is not a suitable pastime. What I meant was—”

  Static suddenly filled the room, emanating from the intercom. It made Osborne sound like ghost. “Report to the briefing room. Immediately.”

  Kruger breathed a sigh of relief, probably figuring the interruption had ended the conversation. Not so. Brock yanked the robotic arm away from Kruger’s, who grasped after it like a child who’d just had his candy stolen.

  Brock dangled the arm, which looked disturbingly realistic. “Let’s go. Seems there’re some things I need to be briefed on.” He marched out of the workroom, through the lab, and along the echoing concrete hallways to the briefing room. Kruger chased after, sputtering incomprehensible word fragments from the language of someone who is in deep dog doo.

  Osborne and Ferguson were examining several reports laid out on the large conference table when Brock barged in. Ferguson shuffled the papers away into a red folder before Brock could see what they were.

  Probably some more hobbies I’m not supposed to know about, Brock figured.

  His frustration boiling inside his veins, Brock slammed the robotic arm down, stabbing the claws deep into the conference table. Ferguson jumped back, nearly tossing the red folder into the air and showering them all with secrets and lies.

  Osborne didn’t even flinch. “This is a very expensive table, paid for with taxpayer dollars.”

  Brock pointed at the robotic arm, then at Kruger. “What is this? And what is he doing in that secret lab of his?”

  Osborne crinkled his brow and looked to Kruger, seeking an answer to his unasked question. Kruger shrank under the weight of Osborne’s stare. “The workroom, sir,” Kruger muttered. “Attached to Lab One.” Osborne smirked, seemingly pleased with the answer.

  Brock’s blood threatened to boil out of his ears at the unspoken exchange of information. “Lab One? I thought there only was one lab.”

  Kruger apparently found the floor to be the most interesting thing in the world.

  Brock continued. “So, I take it I was wrong? If there’s a Lab One, then there’s at least a Lab Two.” Brock pointed to the robotic arm again. “And the room where I found this isn’t it?”

  Osborne didn’t move a muscle, only his vocal chords. “There’s a lot you don’t know, Colonel.”

  The tension in the room was so thick it could have choked a rhino. Brock pressed his knuckles into the conference table like he was trying to Hulk smash it. “Odd since you brought me here to keep the army informed.”

  The slow creek of Osborne’s chair rolling back as he stood was haunting, like the screech of a restless spirit. “You were brought here for exactly the opposite reason, Colonel. You were brought here to keep the army misinformed.”

  Brock reeled back, surprised by how easily Osborne revealed his lie. “About what exactly? I watched you grow a dinosaur. What else could you possibly be doing that you’d want hidden?”

  Osborne gestured to Sergeant Ferguson, who handed Osborne the red folder. Brock and Ferguson had served together. He’d thought they had joined this operation together. He’d also thought he could trust Ferguson. But, then again, he thought he’d known what his role in this operation was. Turned out, he didn’t know much at all. Osborne tossed the folder on the table. It slid to Brock, spilling its guts along the way. Before Brock could study any of the contents, Osborne gestured for him to follow as he exited the room.

  “So you’ve been lying to me since the
beginning?”

  “Yes.” Osborne casually replied as he marched on, his footsteps hardly making a sound. “Military Intelligence is always up our butts, trying to keep tabs on our work. So we decided to bring you in from the jump, let you know everything we wanted you to know.”

  Brock followed closely behind. “So why tell me now?”

  They passed Lab One and moved further into the compound, further underground. Finally, they stopped at a secure door covered with signs that read, CONFIDENTIAL. Osborne turned, looked Brock dead in the eyes. “Because, no matter how informed you were or weren’t, your name is still attached to this project. If it goes public and blows up in our faces, your military career is over. And, as I was trying to say before you stabbed my conference table, the project has gone public. Now we just need to stop the blowing up in our faces part.” He put his right eye up to a retinal scanner. A red light passed over it, then the door slid open. Osborne looked to Kruger, who had been lurking in the back, obviously hoping to go unnoticed. “Doctor, if you would.”

  “But, sir, that would mean compromising—”

  Osborne cut him off. “The project is already compromised, Doctor. If you hope to save it, you’ll tell Colonel Horne everything.”

  Kruger led them into Lab Two, his head low like that of a child who had been forced to share his toys. They walked past rows of glass jars with mangled little creatures inside, shelves of gelatinous models of dinosaurs in different stages of growth, surgical tables with trays of scalpels and syringes, and other mysterious things he couldn’t put a name on. Brock felt like he had stepped inside the lab of Dr. Frankenstein.

  Kruger stood in the middle of the room. “The goal of this operation was to resurrect organisms that have been extinct for millions of years.”

  The cold chill running up Brock’s spine made him impatient. “I’m aware of that.”

  “Because I wanted you to be.” Osborne’s frigid voice only made the chill worse. “Now shut up and listen.”

  Kruger smirked. “Your knowledge as to the scope of the operation is true. It’s just not the whole truth. We are indeed trying to recreate dinosaurs.” He pointed to a chart on the wall that detailed dozens of different species of dinosaur. “However, contrary to what you’ve been told, our goals have not been purely…scientific. We’ve been exploring practical applications.”

  The charts and models and robot death arms began to paint a bloody picture in Brock’s mind, but he asked anyway. “What practical applications?”

  A thin smile spread across Osborne’s bony face. “There’s a reason we didn’t bring back the triceratops.”

  Kruger continued. “Herbivores do not meet the criteria for our desired specimen.”

  The answer slashed its way through Brock’s mind, growling the answer, but he wanted to hear them say it. “Which was?”

  Osborne’s smile widened. “Simply put, we wanted killers.”

  And there it was. The thing that had been gnawing at the back of Brock’s neck since he’d started on this assignment. For some reason he hadn’t been able to put a finger on it—or perhaps he hadn’t wanted to—even though it had been right there, staring him in the face. The reality of the situation: when people like Osborne and Kruger started a science project, it always ended up turning into a weapon.

  Always.

  Pride shined on Kruger’s face. “We needed a species of dinosaur that was vicious, ferocious, and could be made to kill without mercy or remorse. The Tyrannosaurus rex is that species.”

  “This operation has always been about creating the ultimate weapon.” Osborne turned on a screen at the far end of the lab and scrolled through more schematics and pictures of potential “practical applications.” Brock had seen a lot during his time in the military, but those pictures made his guts bubble and twist.

  Kruger’s squeamishness seemed to have completely dissolved away. He didn’t stutter or stammer once as he detailed his greatest success. “There were, of course, some modifications. We couldn’t very well have a thirty-foot tall carnivorous dinosaur traveling in military caravans or set loose on the battlefield. For one they’d be much too big, thus presenting an easy target. And the amount of food it would take to sustain the creature would far exceed our budget. Essentially, we needed a more compact king of the dinosaurs.” He pointed to the red folder in Brock’s hand and gestured for him to open it. “If you’ll just flip to page twenty?”

  Brock opened the folder to a page detailing all the modifications. There were things like enhanced speed and strength. The creature’s height had been limited to ten feet, which it was projected to reach in only a few weeks thanks to an accelerated growth cycle. “How did you manage all this?”

  Kruger scoffed. “You’d need a 180 IQ to fully understand the process and extent of what I accomplished.”

  Brock grumbled through gritted teeth. “Dumb it down for me.”

  “Simply put—very simply put—I manipulated the DNA. I identified the genetic markers that we wished to modify and did so. In some cases, I wrote the genetic code myself and introduced it. It really was a stroke of genius. I began with a frog and—”

  “I get it,” Brock cut him off. “You tweaked its genes.”

  Dr. Kruger was obviously highly offended at the use of the word “tweak” to describe his extremely complicated scientific process, but chose not to argue the point.

  Brock flipped to the next page and saw the plans for all of the mechanical modifications to the creature. The robotic arm he’d taken from Kruger was just the beginning. There were schematics for leg fittings that would increase its jumping ability and speed even further, a micro-camera that mounted inside its head so operators could monitor its actions in the field, and… Brock’s eyes bulged. “Is that a jetpack?”

  Kruger giggled with delight. “That’s my favorite one.”

  “You want to put a jetpack on a genetically modified T-rex that’s been outfitted with stabby robot arms?”

  Kruger did a little hop—or maybe it was a really weird dance. “Isn’t it fantastic?”

  “Now you know what we’re dealing with,” Osborne said, staring at Brock with his steely eyes. “And what you’re hunting.”

  The delight faded from Kruger’s face. “Not that I wouldn’t love for it to be true, but we’ve only been operating under the assumption that the subject survived the storm.” He dared to level an accusatory stare at Brock. “We’ve yet to receive confirmation that the subject is, in fact, alive.”

  Osborne pointed his remote at the screen. A picture of a pimply teenage boy with a strangely prominent brow ridge popped up. “Here’s your confirmation.”

  Ferguson chuckled by the door. “That doesn’t look like a dinosaur.”

  “No, that is Edward Figley. Intel says he is a student at the same school as our person of interest, TJ Beaumont.”

  “Looks like he’s kind of a peckerhead,” Ferguson said.

  Osborne continued with his brief. “Intel suggests that he most definitely is. But that’s not why he’s important. This is.” He activated an audio file, a recording of what sounded like a 911 call.

  The kids on the other end were screaming over one another in an unintelligible mess of words. Hardly any of it made sense until one of the kids told the others to shut up and the others actually listened. “It was a robot or something,” he said through broken breaths. “A robot dinosaur. And it freaked out on me. That kid is insane. He built it and he told it to kill me. TJ Beaumont tried to kill me.”

  The audio clip stopped. Osborne shut off the monitor. “There have been several calls to Animal Control and the local police reporting a large reptile in town. A large reptile that walked on its hind legs.”

  Kruger almost did a backflip. “Phase Two was a success! Field trials worked! We have a living specimen!” Then he suddenly went still as a statue. “Oh dear.”

  For the first time, Osborne’s icy demeanor shifted. He showed a trace of worry. “What is it?”

  Kruger
paced the room, muttering to himself again. Then he stopped and said, “We created this thing to be a killing machine. I devised one way of controlling the creature. It is genetically predisposed to imprint on the first human it encounters after hatching. That person was meant to be its controller, its master. Which means…”

  “This killing machine you’ve created is being controlled by an eleven-year-old boy,” Brock finished his thought.

  “At least it’s being controlled by someone,” Kruger added. “If left on its own, it would likely have reverted to a feral state relatively quickly.”

  “Then saddle up,” Osborne said. “It’s time we end this.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The taste was still on his tongue. Tasted like metal—not dead metal like his chewing partner Godzilla back in TJ’s room. Blood. Living things blood. TJ’s blood. He hung his head and slumped. Biting felt so good. Blood was good too, but not good like… Friend.

  He missed the boy already. And his bed made of old socks and sneakers. Home. It was nice. Comfortable. It stank right. There was always plenty to eat, too. Not like here. So hungry. Need food! Rex set off at a sprint again, chasing after a smell, something squishy and delicious. Something alive.

  Kill, Rex thought as he ran through the forest, following the smells. So many smells. Rotting leaves. Rabbit poo. Beef jerky. Moldy stuff. Armpit… Meat.

  Food! Rex dug his claws into the ground and veered to the left, his tail whacking tree trunks sending nuts and leaves and other things thunking to the ground. The squishy thing skittered up a tree just ahead. It smelled warm, meaty, delicious. Food! He jumped at the tree, sank his claws into the trunk, flapped his tiny arms trying to grab on, but the squishy thing leapt through the air and disappeared into another tree. Rex left deep gouges in the bark as he slid to the ground. T-rex arms were no good for climbing. T-rex legs were good for running though. And there were plenty of other squishy things in the woods. He stood up and sprinted off so fast he was nothing more than a blur amongst the underbrush.