by Geoff Jones
Hank, twenty years Tim’s senior, pulled ahead and passed him by. Tim remembered the old joke about outrunning a bear in the woods. You don’t need to outrun the dinosaur, he thought. You only need to outrun the slowest guy in the group. Right now, Tim was the slowest guy.
Ahead, the forest grew brighter as the trees grew thinner, exposing another clearing. The ground sloped down and away to the left. As Tim ran through the last few trees, he saw a rock wall on the right side of the clearing. Above the cliff, the forest sloped up and away.
Al shouted, “Here, here!” He wove around a jumble of boulders where the cliff first began. The whole clearing looked as if giant hands had grabbed the ground and pulled up on one side while pressing down on the other side at the same time. Al, Lisa, William, and Morgan raced up the slope on the right.
Below them, Callie and Hank had already passed the split where the cliff began. They saw the others up above and veered toward the wall. It rose up only ten feet high where they met it. William stopped and reached down to help them scramble up. Using their hands to climb, they quickly reached the top and continued forward along the cliff’s edge.
If the Tyrannosaurus takes the high path, then what? Tim thought. There was ample room along the top of the cliff for the dinosaur. Tim stayed to the left, on the lower ground. He passed the spot where Callie and Hank climbed up, hoping the tyrannosaur would follow him. The wall grew taller and steeper next to him as he ran.
He looked back to see the dinosaur enter the clearing behind him. Tim tried to speed up, but couldn’t. His legs burned. He picked a spot along the cliff about twenty feet high and ran up the scree of loose rocks at the base. He hit the wall and began to climb. In seconds he was halfway up.
“Tim! Hurry! Hurry!” William shouted from above. Tim found a diagonal ledge that allowed him to scramble a bit higher. “HURRY!”
The snorting of the dinosaur behind him grew louder. Tim’s lungs ached. The top was just out of reach and there was nothing he could grab, no way to get any leverage on the smooth rock surface.
William appeared above, reaching down. “I gotcha boy, jump!” He looked at Tim, glanced off beyond him, and then looked back. “JUMP NOW!”
It was a one shot deal. He could jump and he could easily reach William’s hand, but if the man did not hold onto him, there was no way he could keep from sliding back down the wall.
He pushed off and reached, his right hand grabbing William’s wrist just as William clasped his own. Tim waited for the Tyrannosaurus to bite his legs and pull him back down.
William held tight and hoisted him up over the top of the cliff. Tim rolled away from the edge and lay on the ground.
Panting, Tim swung around and looked back, face to face with the largest predator to ever walk the Earth.
[ 18 ]
Al couldn’t stop smiling. They were safe. The tyrannosaur was only a few feet away, but it could not reach them. “Look at him!”
The tyrannosaur stood in the clearing below, its face even with the edge of the cliff. It clawed at the rocky ground with its feet, but couldn’t get enough traction to move any closer. The seven-ton dinosaur sidestepped back and forth along the base of the cliff. It bobbed its head rhythmically as it moved.
“Take this!” Al picked up a stout branch and poked it in the creature’s face, trying to get at its eye. He laughed gleefully.
“You’re pissing it off,” Callie warned. “Leave it alone.” She gripped her arms across her chest. Tears ran down her face.
The tyrannosaur turned its head sideways and closed its jaws on the branch. Al released it a split second before being pulled forward. Callie yelped, but Al only laughed again.
Morgan giggled and slapped Al on the back. “Hah! Just look at that fucker!”
Al nodded. The adrenaline rush from the chase through the woods had pumped him up. We can survive this, he realized. Their situation did not have to be a death sentence. The cliff itself showed promise. If they could find a cave or a tall rock formation, they could have permanent shelter.
The tyrannosaur’s head looked bald, a pale, yellowish pink. The end of its muzzle was covered with mud. Downy grey-green fluff grew on its hide, starting at its thick neck and continuing across its body to the end of its tail. Its eyes were large black globes with no discernible pupils. Its nostrils flared as it breathed.
The dinosaur snapped at the group again, scraping its chin on the edge of the cliff. Al noticed bits of pink flesh caught between its teeth and suddenly remembered. Beth. She had finally begun to take notice of him and now she was gone. Don’t be foolish, Al thought. Don’t be cocky either. It’s not like you’re going to hook up with more than one girl all of a sudden. Beth had always been cold to him back home, anyway. He knew he should focus on… “Lisa!” Al turned to look for her.
Lisa sat trembling against a tree trunk, a few yards back from the drop-off. She pressed her fists tightly against her temples. “Oh my God, Lisa!” He ran to her and put his arms around her. She buried her face in his chest and wailed. Al held her tightly and said “I know, I know,” over and over again.
William pulled Tim to his feet and held onto his hand for a moment. Tim broke free and wrapped both arms around the tall man. “Thank you.”
“Hey, you might’a made all the difference there, staying down at the bottom. If that thing had taken the uphill track, we’d still be running. Besides, I owed you one.”
“It could still get up here, you know,” Callie pointed out. The tyrannosaur could simply walk back to the beginning of the cliff, make a u-turn, and come right up after them.
“He’s not smart enough to figure that out,” Morgan said. “Are you, you dumbass?”
Hank pulled his phone from his pocket and took a picture. “Smile, you son of a bitch.” The tyrannosaur snarled at the flash.
Al tried to pull Lisa to her feet, but she felt like dead weight. He leaned back to get a better look at her. The bottom of her foot was bright red. “Lisa’s hurt.”
Callie and Hank came over. Callie’s face was still wet. “Christ, Lisa, I’m so sorry.” Lisa sobbed harder.
Al held up Lisa’s foot so that Callie could get a look. Lisa had landed on a pointed rock or a branch or something during their run through the jungle. Blood oozed from a dime-sized hole in the center of her arch.
The tyrannosaur dropped away and turned its head. Hank jumped up and fanned his arms wildly. “Oh no, you don’t.” The movement reignited the creature’s attention. It lurched back in their direction, scrambling against the base of the cliff with its massive feet. Hank hollered and danced around. The tyrannosaur stretched its thick neck to reach for him. It flexed the black claws on its pale yellow arms, like the talons of a hawk reaching for prey.
Al snickered. “Looks like Captain Angry is happy for a change.”
Callie looked over at her fiancé. “That’s how he gets when he’s watching the Broncos.” She tugged at Al’s sleeve. “Help me tear this off.”
Al extended his right arm and together they ripped off the sleeve of his dress shirt. Callie folded the cloth flat and wrapped it around Lisa’s foot. She tied the ends together like oversize shoelaces. “That’ll have to do for now. Is everyone else okay?
William scanned the group. “Helen! She’s still back at the building.”
“That’s not all,” Tim said. “I think there was someone else back there.”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw a woman on the roof. Or upstairs, really, I guess. Right before this thing chased us away.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t Helen?”
“This woman was on the second floor, up above the café. Helen had trouble climbing in and out on the ground floor. Besides, the woman I saw, she looked younger.”
Al studied Tim’s long, tan face. “We were in the café the whole time. If there was really someone upstairs, why didn’t she call for help?”
Tim shrugged. “I’m just telling you what I saw.”
Al leane
d in close to Lisa. “Come on, you gotta get up now.” He helped her to her feet. Her sobs turned into quiet gasps.
“Well, we have to get back to the café,” William said. “We can’t leave Helen by herself, and if there is someone else there, they might know something about all this.”
“That’s suicide,” Al said. He walked Lisa forward. She hopped along, clinging to Al and holding her shoeless foot off the ground. The tyrannosaur snapped at the group. Lisa flinched. Al pulled her close and turned to the others. “Going back down to the river means going back to where this guy can reach us. Back to a spot where two people have died already. I say we follow this cliff. If we can find a cave that’s out of reach, we’ll be safe.”
He looked around. The cliff curved away in the distance as far as he could see. Jagged rocks jutted from the edge here and there.
“It does make sense to go on a little farther,” Tim said. “And the farther we lure him from the river, the better. But we gotta get back to that café. What if the building suddenly goes home while we’re not there?”
Al shook his head. “If you want to die, that sounds great. This thing showed up after all that noise we made with the pots and pans. So we know it has good hearing. Then, it went straight to Patricia’s remains, even though it practically had Frank there in its mouth.”
“Hank,” said Hank. He stopped taunting the tyrannosaur and began paying attention to the debate.
Al went on. “Despite the fact that it had him. So its sense of smell is spot-on too. And most importantly, it knows now that the river is a place it can find food.”
Morgan took on the job of distracting the dinosaur. He clucked like a chicken and strutted back and forth, flapping his arms.
“Hey, what’s that?” Callie pointed. “Is that water?” She gazed over the tops of the trees that grew on the opposite side of the clearing below.
Al shielded his eyes from the sun, which shone directly on his face from straight ahead. He saw pink light on a few thin clouds in the distance. Finally, in between the lowest sections of the canopy, he saw sparkling glints on the horizon.
“That sure is water,” William exclaimed. “That looks like the ocean.”
“Ocean?” Hank stammered. “What the hell does that mean? Are we not even in Colorado any more?”
“There was an inland sea here,” William said. “The heartland of America was covered with water at one point in time. This point in time.”
Tim wandered further down the cliff, craning his head for a better view. The tyrannosaur followed along below him, enticed by a single individual breaking from the pack.
Al marveled at the side view of the creature. Its neck looked too big for its body, like the neck of a hyena. The downy tufts growing on its back and flanks were thicker, matted, and ragged.
Lisa looked up at Al. “So what happens if we do find a cave? We had food and water back at the café.”
“We hunker down until that monster loses interest and wanders off.” Al pointed over at the tyrannosaur, which continued to follow Tim along the cliff. “The important thing is to keep you safe. Once we’re sure the coast is clear, some of us can go back for supplies. And for Helen.”
Hank shook his head. “And just leave her alone until then? I don’t think so.”
Al answered carefully and slowly. “We have to find a stronghold. Some kind of high ground. Like this, but protected on all sides. Once we find that, we can send someone back for her. We’ve been away for less than half an hour. She’s fine. Besides, Tim says she isn’t alone.”
“All the more reason to go back there,” Hank said.
“Hey, it’s coming back.” Morgan pointed. The tyrannosaur was following Tim back to the group.
“I’ve got a better idea,” Tim said when he reached the others. “I say we kill this dinosaur.”
[ 19 ]
“You’ve got my attention,” William said. He was glad for another option. This group argued more than his teenage sons.
Tim waved them further down the cliff. “Come this way.” He walked near the edge, where he could get a good view of the clearing. The tyrannosaur followed along below.
William sucked in a sharp breath. “Easy son. Don’t get so close.” William stayed back from the drop off, along with everyone else.
Tim looked over his shoulder. “I work as a carpenter, framing houses mostly. I’m up on half-built rooftops all day. This is nothing.”
He stopped the group at an outcropping that split off from the cliff face. A finger of rock the size of a car stuck straight up, with a four-foot wide crevice between it and the cliff. It looked like a chunk of ice ready to calve off from the end of a glacier.
“We lure him over here and then apply a little leverage to that boulder,” Tim proposed.
The luring part did not seem to be an issue. The tyrannosaur stood below the fractured rock, sniffing around. William imagined the boulder falling onto the dinosaur and breaking its leg or possibly killing it outright.
Morgan tittered. “Now you’re talking. I want to find out what T-rex tastes like!”
“I’m betting chicken,” said Hank.
Tim walked away from the cliff. “Let me find a branch or something we can use.” He disappeared into the woods.
The tyrannosaur tested the wall below in search of a foothold. The cliff here was taller and the dinosaur’s head no longer reached the top. The clearing widened a bit, giving the creature more room to pace around. Any time it started to wander off, Morgan drew it back with his clucking chicken imitation. He laughed and occasionally threw softball-sized rocks at its head. The dinosaur snapped at the air each time it was hit, like a dog biting at a bee.
William looked down at the tyrannosaur. Before they became teenagers too cool for the zoo, William’s sons had loved the raised walkway above the giraffe exhibit. They always made him purchase a bag of “giraffe biscuits,” which looked suspiciously like wheat crackers. The giraffes’ massive heads came right over the railing and their long purple tongues took the biscuits from the boys’ hands. As William looked down at the tyrannosaur below, he thought of the giraffe exhibit. This was terrifying, but it was also awesome. I don’t care how old you boys are, you would love this. At the same time, he was glad they weren’t there.
Tim returned, dragging a fallen sapling about eighteen feet long and as thick as his calf. “Come on. Let’s give this a shot.”
The group gathered around and together they extended the tree over the edge. They fed it into the crevice between the outcropping and the cliff face. Tim moved to the front and carefully positioned the far end of the trunk against the boulder, as low as possible. The tyrannosaur snapped at dangling branches. It stripped off dead leaves that hung from the sides but it could not reach the trunk itself.
Tim braced the midpoint against the edge of the cliff. The other end rose into the air, creating a perfect lever. Everyone moved alongside to grab hold of it, with the tallest, Al and William, in the back. William counted to three and they all pulled down.
Instead of prying off the rock, the sapling simply bent to the ground in a wide arc.
The tyrannosaur snapped at the crevice, trying to get at the branches inside, but could not fit its mouth into the gap between the cliff and the jutting boulder.
“Let’s try a battering ram,” Tim suggested. They brought the tree back up and positioned it straight out, this time against the high part of the boulder. William counted again and they all heaved forward.
The rock shifted slightly on their third stroke. On the fourth heave, the tree trunk bowed out to the side, pushing Al close to the edge. The tyrannosaur snapped in his direction. He screamed, exciting it even more. The inside of its mouth was an ugly blank white.
“Pull!” Al shouted, still holding onto the tree. The others yanked the tree back, tugging Al away from the edge.
“This tree is worthless,” he spat. “It’s going to get us killed.” He shoved it over the cliff. The dinosaur bent and sniffed it in
the clearing below.
“It moved,” Tim said. “That rock moved a little. We can still kill this bastard. There’s got to be a way.”
“There’s a way,” Hank said. “If one of us got down in that crevice, there should be enough leverage to push it loose.”
William looked over the edge and then at Hank. “Are you volunteering?”
Callie took him by the arm. “Hank, no.”
“Don’t worry, babe. I would, but my rotator cuff isn’t up to it. But Tim could manage. He climbs around on half-finished rooftops all day, right?”
Tim chewed absently on his lip and nodded slowly. He looked to William. “What do you think?”
William looked over the edge. The thought of climbing down the cliff wall made his stomach tumble. But the tyrannosaur’s mouth clearly could not fit in the crevice. Tim would be safe as long as he stayed in the gap. William wanted the creature to die. It had killed Beth and there was no way to know how long it would stick around. He looked up at Tim. “Can you do it?”
Tim nodded.
“I think it’s worth a shot.”
Tim turned and sat down on the edge of the cliff with his feet dangling into the crevice. Twisting around, he anchored his hands in a crack and reached below with one leg.
Morgan squirmed away. “Whoa, dude. That’s insane.”
The dinosaur scrambled forward and mouthed the crevice with renewed interest, but its oversized jaws could not fit into the gap.
Tim stretched with his other leg, touching the boulder behind him. The distance was too far to get any real leverage. “I’ve got to get lower.” Tim walked himself down into the crevice with his hands on the cliff and his feet on the jutting rock behind him. As the gap narrowed, the going seemed to become easier.
“Tim, you don’t have to do this,” Lisa called. “We can figure out something else.”
“He’s already down there,” Hank said. “Let him try.”
“Yeah, but how is he going to get back up?”
