Tyrannosaurus Wrecks

by Stuart Gibbs

  Fake Dr. Chen took one look at the police, then fled.

  Rick did the same thing. He tore past me in the parking lot.

  Tim and Jim Barksdale followed him, oblivious of the police. “You owe us for that cobra!” Tim yelled. “FunJungle wouldn’t have taken it if you hadn’t given us a lousy carrying case!”

  “No refunds!” Rick yelled back at them. “Under any circumstances!”

  The police were all climbing out of their cars, trying to make sense of what was going on. I spotted Officer Brewster, who looked bewildered, and Sheriff Esquivel, who seemed to realize that the situation was rapidly about to become a serious headache for him.

  Rick and fake Dr. Chen ran away from the police and into Jerk-ee’s.

  The goats and the llama followed them, probably recognizing Rick as the person who fed them.

  Tim and Jim went after Rick, still wanting their money, and the police followed them, figuring they ought to go after the criminals. It looked like the strangest parade of all time.

  Vance Jessup exited Snakes Alive, zipping up his jeans, having missed everything while he was in the bathroom. Then he spotted me and grew enraged. “You!” he yelled.

  So I ran too. I figured the safest thing to do would be to follow the police, who were all running toward Jerk-ee’s.

  With a screech of metal, a section of the damaged fence around the hyena enclosure collapsed.

  “Oh boy,” I sighed.

  The three hyenas bounded through the hole.

  The fossil thieves’ remaining getaway car pulled into the parking lot. My father was driving, with Mom and the Bonottos all crammed into it.

  J.J. McCracken’s pickup truck was right behind them. J.J. was driving, with Summer in the passenger seat.

  All of them jumped out at once. I didn’t have time to explain to anyone what was going on. Pursued by Vance, I ran through the brand-new hole in the front entrance of Jerk-ee’s.

  The sight that greeted us was enough to make even Vance stop and gawk in surprise.

  The superstore was two football fields in length. In the distance, I could see aisle after aisle of every snack food imaginable—there was an entire section simply devoted to “gummy objects”—while the walls were lined with the glass doors of refrigerated cases displaying several hundred varieties of chilled drinks. However, the front of the store was devoted to Jerk-ee’s merchandise, almost all of which featured the company mascot, a sentient piece of beef jerky named, obviously enough, Jerk-ee. As mascots went, he wasn’t very cute; personally, the first time I had seen him, I thought it was supposed to be a piece of poop with eyes. But for some reason, people adored him, and his likeness was slapped on everything from T-shirts to beer mugs to dish towels. The smuggler’s truck had crashed into an enormous bin full of Jerk-ee plush toys, sending them flying. They now lay like tiny disaster victims all through the store.

  The driver’s side door of the truck hung open, but the smuggler was gone.

  The back of the truck was still open, and dozens of tubs with rare reptiles in them had tumbled over. Thanks to the wreck, many tubs had come open, freeing their captives. Some of those reptiles had stayed put, but many had fled for their freedom, dispersing into the store, causing a great panic among the customers.

  To my relief, none of the escapees appeared to be venomous snakes. However, nearly a dozen were monitor lizards, which weren’t dangerous but could be quite scary: They looked like wingless dragons, were up to two feet long, and moved really fast. Terrified customers ran screaming down the aisles as the monitors scampered after them.

  A few small children seemed excited about the presence of the goats from the petting zoo—until the hyenas bounded into the superstore. I didn’t think the hyenas would be a threat to the humans, as they were well fed and probably didn’t even know how to hunt, given that Rick hand-delivered chicken to them every day. But the customers were understandably frightened. Parents grabbed their children and clambered atop the many racks of snack foods while the hyenas gamboled past. The goats fled too, bleating in fear.

  However, the thing I was really concerned about was the Komodo dragon.

  The Komodo is the biggest lizard in the world, a type of monitor that can grow as large as an alligator. They are extremely endangered, only living on one small island in Indonesia. Somehow, the smuggler had managed to get ahold of one. I spotted it lumbering past a Doritos promotion, looking like something that had shown up straight out of the Jurassic age. It wasn’t full grown, but it was big enough to be dangerous. I knew that Komodos could move surprisingly fast, and although goats weren’t their natural prey, they did eat them. At Komodo National Park, the rangers lured the lizards into view of visitors by catapulting goat carcasses to them. The giant lizard in the store had smelled the fugitive goats from the petting zoo and was on the hunt.

  The store’s public address system, which usually said things like, “Today’s Jerk-ee’s special is two MegaDogs for three dollars,” was now saying, “All customers, be advised that we have a minor invasion of wild animals. Please take cover in our clean and spacious restrooms while our staff attends to this issue.”

  Despite the announcement, the staff didn’t appear to be taking care of anything. Most of the Jerk-ee’s employees I saw were running in fear from the animals, often shoving elderly women and small children out of their way. Although one cashier was trying to shoo a water monitor out of the aerosol cheese aisle with a mop.

  Meanwhile, Sheriff Esquivel and his police officers weren’t handling things much better. Given that the main job of this force was doling out speeding tickets, the presence of multiple crises at once appeared to be overwhelming them. No one seemed to know what to deal with first.

  I started toward Officer Brewster, hoping to enlist her help wrangling the Komodo, when I was suddenly tackled from behind. Vance Jessup had blindsided me. We smashed into a rack full of Jerk-ee’s T-shirts and crashed to the floor.

  I scrambled to get away, but Vance pinioned me and cocked a fist back. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” he said.

  “Touch him and you’re dead,” a voice behind him warned.

  Vance looked back to see Summer standing over him. She was holding a green tree python in her hands. Green tree pythons aren’t big or venomous, so they’re not dangerous to humans, but Summer had already witnessed Vance’s serious fear of snakes. “This is a Vietnamese poison viper,” she said. “It’s ten times deadlier than that snake you saw the other day. One bite from it will kill you instantly.”

  Vance rolled off of me and raised his hands. “I’m only joking around with him,” he lied.

  Summer held the snake out toward Vance and said, “Sic him.”

  Vance screamed like a kindergartner and ran for his life. He tore back through the store and was out the door so fast, he would have left gold-medal-winning sprinters in his dust.

  “Thanks,” I told Summer, getting back to my feet.

  “Help!” fake Dr. Chen shrieked from nearby. “Someone please help me!”

  “There’s never a dull moment with you, is there?” Summer asked me.

  We ran past a few aisles of cheap Jerk-ee’s souvenirs to find fake Dr. Chen surrounded by hyenas in the beef jerky department.

  There was a thirty-foot-long glass case of the type in which other markets would have displayed fresh meat and poultry, but this store’s case was full of jerky. Any animal that you could farm-raise had been filleted, dried, and seasoned: cattle, turkeys, deer, elk, pigs, boars, ostriches, impala, springbok, and dozens of others. Fake Dr. Chen was perched atop the case right above the bohemian garlic turkey jerky, while the three hyenas stood on their hind legs with their front paws against the glass, drooling hungrily. Pools of slobber had formed on the floor.

  I was certain the hyenas were interested in the jerky, but fake Dr. Chen believed they were drooling over her. “Help!” she yelled to us. “They’re trying to eat me!”

  “Stay right there!” I warned her
as we rushed past. “We’ll go get help! It shouldn’t be more than a half hour!”

  “A half hour?!” fake Dr. Chen wailed. “What am I supposed to do for a half hour?”

  “Don’t make any sudden movements!” Summer warned. “Or they’ll rip your guts out!”

  Fake Dr. Chen whimpered in fear and did her best to remain still.

  Summer and I ran on, leaving the beef jerky area and entering the hunting supply section. Here you could get shooting targets, duck blinds, decoys, and almost every possible article of clothing in camouflage, from jackets to pants to onesies, in case you wanted to take your newborn baby hunting. And while there were no guns, Jerk-ee’s had a large array of hunting knives and archery equipment.

  As Summer and I passed, someone armed with a machete lunged out from behind the knife counter.

  Summer and I screamed and leaped several feet backward, only to discover that it was Tim Barksdale. He had swiped a whole bunch of camo gear and was dressed for battle. “Sorry!” he said sheepishly. “I thought you were one of them big old freaky lizards!”

  “We’re quite obviously humans!” I yelled.

  Jim emerged from behind the counter as well, where he had been lying in wait with a bowie knife. He was also dressed in stolen camouflage and had painted his face as well. This might have made sense if he had been trying to hide in the forest, but inside the store, he stuck out like a sore thumb. “We’re just being on guard, is all. This place is crawling with wild animals.”

  “The most dangerous thing in this store right now is both of you,” Summer told them. “And why are you even wearing camouflage? You’re indoors!”

  Jim thought that over, then said, “We’re camouflaged as houseplants.”

  Tim spotted a large tree monitor running past the beer coolers. “Lizard at twelve o’clock!” he cried, and whipped the machete at it. He missed the monitor by a mile. The machete shattered one of the refrigerator doors and mortally wounded a case of Budweiser.

  “It’s getting away!” Jim yelled. He and Tim grabbed more weapons and raced after it.

  “Leave it alone!” I yelled. “These animals are harmless!”

  The Barksdales were too wrapped up in the thrill of the chase to listen to me, though. They probably wouldn’t have listened to anyone…

  Except for the one person who began speaking over the public address system.

  “Everyone who is holding a weapon, this is J.J. McCracken, and I have a message for you.” His voice was instantly recognizable, and it boomed throughout the store. The Barksdales paused to listen. “The animals in this store might look scary, but they are not a threat. So please put down your weapons and leave them alone.”

  The Barksdales looked at each other, still wary about doing this.

  “Fine,” J.J. said. “I’ll pay you a hundred bucks not to hurt anything.”

  That worked. The Barksdales immediately dropped their weapons.

  “All right!” Tim exclaimed. “We’re rich!”

  There was still one more major problem to deal with.

  The police had cornered Rick and the smuggler in the center of the store, next to an array of fourteen separate ICEE machines.

  The police all had their guns out, but Rick had taken a hostage.

  It was a cobra. Rick was holding it directly behind the head so it couldn’t bite him, with the casual style of someone who did this all the time. The cobra wasn’t happy. It was hissing and writhing, whipping its tail about angrily.

  Rick held a hunting knife by the cobra’s neck. “This is an endangered cobra!” Rick announced to the crowd. “But I will kill it if you don’t let me go!”

  “Us,” the smuggler corrected. He was staring at the police, goggle-eyed, as though trying to fathom how any of this could have happened. “You’ll kill it if they don’t let us go.”

  “Right,” Rick said. “I want you all to lower your guns and kick them over to me. Then Bill and I are gonna walk out of here nice and easy and drive away.”

  The police looked to Sheriff Esquivel, unsure whether they should even care about the snake. Esquivel didn’t seem to think so. “You’re not going anywhere,” he told Rick and the smuggler.

  “Don’t test me!” Rick warned, pressing the knife against the snake’s skin. “I’ll kill it!”

  “So what?” Esquivel asked. “It’s one less snake in the world.”

  “Wait!” Mom yelled, running up with Dad and the Bonottos. “That cobra really is endangered!”

  “Don’t care,” Esquivel said coldly.

  There was a frightened bleat behind us. A goat came racing up the pretzel aisle, pursued by the Komodo dragon. We all leaped out of the way, but Rick didn’t move fast enough. As the Komodo scuttled past, it knocked Rick’s legs out from under him with a sweep of its powerful tail. Rick landed flat on his back, letting go of the angry cobra, which promptly bit him in the hand.

  Rick screamed, more out of fear than pain.

  “That’s bad,” Dad observed. “I’ll be right back.” He raced off toward the hunting supplies.

  Mom quickly dialed 911 for an ambulance.

  The cobra slithered away. The police fired after it, though it made it to the safety of a bin of Cheetos without being wounded.

  The smuggler saw his chance to escape, and ran.

  He was coming toward Summer and me. There was an ICEE machine close by. I considered throwing a cup of frozen slush into the criminal’s eyes and blinding him the way that Xavier had done with the Smoothie of Justice a few days before.

  But then I realized it would be much easier to just trip him.

  So I stuck out my leg.

  Summer had the exact same idea. We caught him in both legs at almost the same time. The smuggler went down hard, whacked his head on the floor, and passed out with a groan.

  Officer Brewster handcuffed him anyhow.

  Sheriff Esquivel and the other police weren’t so quick to cuff Rick, as Rick’s life was in severe danger, but then Dad came running back with a snake bite kit he’d found in the emergency hunting supplies.

  Dad had handled snake bites before, and he dealt with Rick’s quickly and professionally, although Rick still needed to go to the hospital just to be safe.

  “By the way,” Sage told Sheriff Esquivel, once we were sure Rick would survive, “the stolen dinosaur skull is in a truck out in the parking lot. Teddy here recovered it. And the woman who stole it is over in the beef jerky aisle, surrounded by hyenas. So any time you’d like to apologize to my parents for being a jerk and suggesting they were making the whole thing up, I’m sure they’d love to hear it.”

  “Also,” I added, “all the other thieves are stranded on a country road about eight miles from here. If they haven’t found a ride, they might still be out there. I can give you directions.”

  “That’d be nice,” Sheriff Esquivel said, chastened. He took the directions from me, but he didn’t apologize to the Bonottos.

  My parents, Sage and his family, Summer, and I headed toward the front of the store. By now, several Snakes Alive employees had arrived on the scene and were dealing with the escaped animals. One team was wrangling the hyenas so that fake Dr. Chen could be apprehended by the police. Another team had captured the Komodo dragon, which they insisted was a legitimate delivery for Snakes Alive, although the same couldn’t be said for the other animals. Lamar, the guy who had shown off the albino python to Summer and me the day before, was helping round up the monitors and venomous snakes, but warned that it might take days to find them all. The goats and the llama had been left alone for the moment, as they didn’t pose much danger to anyone. The goats were happily gorging themselves on gummy objects.

  At the front of the store, the police had stretched yellow plastic crime tape across the entrance, which was bad news for anyone who wanted to buy hunting supplies or desperately needed a clean restroom. (Snakes Alive was insisting that people had to pay full admission to use theirs.) A crowd had gathered in the parking lot. With every
thing else that was going on, no one was paying any attention to the banged-up U-Haul.

  Tommy Lopez slipped under the crime tape with his fellow Fish and Wildlife agents. “I hear you’ve already done our job for us,” he said to me, then looked over the remains of Jerk-ee’s. “In your usual, subtle way.”

  “This wouldn’t have happened if you’d been on time,” I teased.

  “Thanks. We’ll handle things from here.” Tommy headed into the store.

  “Watch out for the hyenas,” Summer warned.

  Tommy laughed, thinking she was joking. “Sure thing,” he said.

  Sage was looking at the U-Haul. “Since our paleontologist is a fake,” he asked, “does anyone know what we’re supposed to do with Minerva?”

  “Leave that to me,” J.J. McCracken said confidently, emerging from the wreckage of Jerk-ee’s. “I know exactly where she should go.”

  Epilogue THE BASEMENT OF BONES

  A week later, I found myself standing in a laboratory next to the femur of an Argentinosaurus. The lab belonged to the University of Texas’s paleontology department, which was housed in an unassuming brick building at the rear of the J. J. Pickle Research Campus. The lab was where fossils were cleaned, inspected, and prepared after being brought in from the field. The Argentinosaurus was one of the largest animals that had ever lived, as long as three school buses and weighing seventy-seven tons. Its femur was as tall as I was. It stood on end by the laboratory entrance, held in a metal brace, the way a piece of sculpture might have been mounted in a normal office. Everyone who worked in the lab seemed to have forgotten it was even there.

  The lab workers were all far more interested in the skull of Minerva, which now sat smack in the middle of the room. Everyone was carefully removing the remaining plaster from the skull under the watchful eye of the real Dr. Ellen Chen, who had flown back from Mongolia to oversee the project. Even though she had been excited about the theropod she was excavating in Asia, it paled in comparison to finding a tyrannosaur in her own state.