No Other Story (12 page)

“Congratulations, Sullivan,” said Ethan. “Having children is the best thing that you can ever hope to do. Trust me on that one.” Ethan punctuated his statement by scruffing up Simon's hair and applying an affectionate squeeze to the back of Jason's neck. Then, something suddenly occurred to him.

“Hey,” he said. “Why are you using your real names?”

“We don't have time to explain,” explained Catherine. “We'll tell you later. Right now, we've got to stay ahead of that volcano.”

Ethan looked back and saw the swell of fiery lava creeping its way across the landscape. While striving to outpace the encroaching flow of oozing molten rock, Ethan's
children tried to fill him in on everything else that he'd missed, including the unfortunate news that, in the future, Plexiwave had taken over the entire world. Ethan was shocked, fascinated, and had many questions, but they would go unanswered for now because just then Pinky stopped, lowered her head, and emitted one of her trademark growls, this one more intense than any they had ever heard before.

Of the many subjects children are taught in school, the most important are said to be the Three Rs, which are: reading, riting, and rithmetic. As you may have noticed, rspelling did not make the list.

Of these so-called Three Rs, I believe that writing is by far the most challenging. Seriously, when was the last time you heard about someone suffering from mathematician's cramp? Or reader's block?

“I've been staring at the bookshelf for hours and I can't think of anything to read!”

In addition to being the most difficult of the three Rs, it is also, in my expert opinion, the most important. We humans have been writing ever since we first figured out how to scratch images onto a rock. Several gazillion years later, paper was invented by the Chinese as a means of helping to decrease the size of fortune cookies, which, up to that point, were slightly larger than an adult yak.

This is just one of the many reasons that paper beats rock. And though it's true that scissors
beat paper, try writing something with a pair of scissors sometime.

Putting words to paper and doing it well beats everything, though I must caution you that it can also lead to a great deal of anguish, particularly if you are writing a story about actual living people, like the one you are reading now.

Because this book is strictly nonfiction, as the author I can only record what has actually happened, regardless of how much I would love to add a character who is part wombat and shoots laser beams from his snout.

And, being that I am strictly bound by the facts, I cannot guarantee a happy ending. Will the Cheesemans get out of Some Times alive, and will they ever have the opportunity to save Olivia's life? The short answer is, I don't know. And the long answer is, I really, really don't know. At all. For real. Seriously. Dude.

So I strongly advise you to stick with me, buckle up, and hope for the best.

I believe it was Will Rogers who once said, “Everyone is ignorant, only on different subjects,” which may prompt some of you to say, “Who the heck is Will Rogers?”

To the best of my knowledge, he was a guy who said stuff. And, though what he's saying here is more or less correct, it is my opinion that we should all be striving to avoid wallowing in ignorance, partly because there are so many preferable things in which to wallow; mud, self-pity, butterscotch pudding.

Besides, it is a scientific fact that too much ignorance, just like too much butterscotch pudding, can kill you. Ways to reduce your personal level of ignorance and, thus, increase your intelligence include: reading, considering other viewpoints, and investing in a psychic dog able to warn you when you are in danger of being eaten by a hungry T. rex.

Yes, there she stood, a mere hundred feet away, in all her bucktoothed glory: Trixie, the Tyrannosaurus rex, now missing the blindfold and several of those snarly teeth,
which could be found embedded in the trunks of certain pine trees not too far away. Cloaked in a layer of white ash, she looked like a ghost, and Simon thought she might very well be one. Maybe, he thought, she had fallen off a cliff while blindfolded and had now returned from beyond the grave, seeking revenge. Or perhaps she was just seeking lunch, plain and simple. Whatever she was in search of, and for whatever reason, the fact remained that the Cheesemans and their friends had to figure out a way to prevent the ghastly beast from attaining its goal.

“Okay, now
that
I do remember,” said Mr. Cheeseman, staring at the familiar prehistoric face. “I'll never forget those teeth as long as I live.”

“Which may not be too much longer if we don't think of something fast,” said Jason.

“But there's nothing we can do,” Professor Boxley said with a quiver. “There's a volcano behind us and a dinosaur in front. We're doomed.”

Jason thought that if the professor had been right every time he'd pronounced them doomed, they'd be dead ten times over by now. Still, this situation looked much more hopeless than any of the other predicaments in which they had found themselves, and he feared that this time the professor may have been right.

Gurda grunted several times, which seemed to irritate Sullivan. “Please, Gurda,” he said. “This is no time for jokes.” Stig offered a few excited grunts of his own, to which Sullivan responded, “Yes, you're right. That's exactly what we'll do.”

“What? What will we do?” asked Simon.

“Tell us,” said Steve.

“Be patient,” said Gravy-Face Roy.

Sullivan said nothing, but simply stepped off the wagon, first making sure it was pointed directly toward the prehistoric dentist's worst nightmare known as Trixie. She snarled, growled, and clawed at the ground, preparing to charge.

“All right,” said Sullivan. “I don't know how much time this will buy us, so when I give the word, run like mad.”

Sullivan gave the dog an affectionate pat on the head and said, “Okay, boy. You know what to do.” He hit the remote control, and Rufus raced toward Trixie. Then Sullivan gave the word and they all ran like mad, except for Gurda and Stig, who ran more like chimpanzees, their arms swinging side to side, their heads bobbing back and forth as they struggled to keep pace with the humans, who were much better suited to running.

The dinosaur's presence forced them to take a diagonal course away from the spreading lava, allowing it to creep up on them more quickly. Also slowing them down was the absence of Rufus, which left Sullivan to pull the large wagon himself.

Let me just say that those who complain about being between a rock and hard place should try being between a sea of bubbling molten rock and a hard-headed Tyrannosaurus rex sometime and see how they like it.

Ethan and the others choked their way across the landscape as Rufus barked his way toward the baffled dinosaur,
who was not so completely baffled that she was unable to raise a foot and flatten the mechanical dog with one powerful stomp. Just like that, Rufus, Sullivan's loyal companion, was nothing more than a pile of scrap metal.

Sullivan's plan had bought them time, but only about thirty seconds of it. Deciding, by way of a few quick sniffs, that a mechanical dog was not a culinary delicacy, Trixie tipped her enormous skull forward and gave chase.

Jason led the group with Catherine right behind him, while Sullivan, Professor Boxley, and the two Neanderthals worked to keep up.

Because Jason was ahead of the pack, he was also the first to slam on the brakes and skid to a sudden halt. When the others caught up to him, they soon saw why he had so abruptly stopped running away from the man-eating beast. He stopped because if he had continued, he would have plunged to his death over the side of a cliff. And not just any cliff.

“You've got to be kidding me,” said Catherine, throwing her hands in the air. “The Grand Canyon?”

“Wow,” said Gravy-Face Roy. “I've always wanted to see the Grand Canyon.”

As if being chased by a hungry bucktoothed dinosaur while trying to avoid being swallowed up by a lake of lava weren't enough, they now had to contend with the fact that they were standing at the edge of a rather large hole in the ground—a hole commonly known as the Grand Canyon.

They whirled about on their heels in time to see Trixie lumbering toward them. Her mangled grill seemed to be
sporting a smile. It was not a friendly smile, but more the kind you might see on the face of a child seconds before he devours a plate of cookies he's been instructed to stay away from. Her beady eyes moved back and forth as if she were deciding which of them to eat first.

“Dad, what do we do?” Jason said, his gaze alternating between Trixie and the Grand Canyon. (An excellent name for a rock band, incidentally.)

Ethan knew exactly what to do, but he wasn't about to share his plans with anyone because he was certain that if he did, they would only try to stop him. “I love you guys,” he said to his kids. “Do whatever you must to stay alive. And if you ever see your mother again, tell her I love her too.”

“Dad?” said Jason, fearful of his father's intentions.

Then Ethan worked his face into a grimace of anger and did the inexplicable. He charged toward the hungry dinosaur.

“Nooo!” shouted Catherine, but it was too late. Ethan was just seconds away from a long drop down the food chain, and his horrified children could do nothing but stand and watch.

Trixie widened her jaws in anticipation. Saliva dripping to the ground made a muddy paste of the fallen ash. And then, just as Ethan was about to find himself mixed, blended, and frappéd with that very saliva, Trixie suddenly lifted her head high into the air and let out a horrible wail. This was not the sound of an angry dinosaur; this was the sound of an injured one.

Jason was the first to notice it; an arrow with half its length buried in the beast's left thigh. But it was the other end of the arrow that proved most interesting. The colors and design of the fletching, those feathers attached to the end that help stabilize an arrow's flight, looked very familiar. Then, with a
whoosh
and a
smack
, another very familiar-looking arrow pierced the animal's throat.

“Look,” said Simon. “It's Big.”

“I know it's big,” said Catherine. “Tell me something I don't know.”

“No, it's Big. Right over there.”

Sure enough, standing just a stone's throw away was Big, the smallish girl who had stolen Jason's heart in the year 1668. Standing next to her was Digs. To Jason, it seemed like a dream. When he left Big behind, he hoped that one day he would be able to travel back in time and see her again. Never in a million years did he expect to see her here in Some Times, and certainly not just hours after saying good-bye.

Everyone watched as Big reloaded the bow and drew it back. A third arrow ripped through the air and into the T. rex's exposed abdomen. Trixie staggered and stumbled, and Ethan hoped that if she was to give in to gravity she would do it somewhere away from him. But she did not fall. Instead, she swayed left, then right, then turned and hobbled away, disappearing behind a curtain of white ash, bellowing the entire way.

The animal that had caused an entire troop of American Colonial soldiers and a large band of marauding Vikings to
go running for their lives had been humbled and sent on its way by a fifteen-year-old girl with a homemade bow and a handful of arrows.

Ethan breathed the biggest sigh of relief he had ever breathed before. The adrenaline rush of having been that close to being eaten alive made him dizzy, and he chose to sit down before he fell over. Catherine and Simon rushed to his side. Jason looked at his father, then at Big.

“Go ahead,” Ethan said with a smile. “Go ahead.”

This was all Jason needed to hear. He sprinted toward Big, and Pinky ran along beside him. He wrapped the girl up in his arms, her braided ponytails taking flight as the blue baseball cap he had given her fell to the dusty ground.

“I was afraid I'd never see you again,” said Jason, still not entirely certain that the girl standing before him was real and not just a product of his imagination. After all, how would she have gotten here from where he had left her in the forest outside a small Danish town in 1668? Then again, if he was dreaming, then Pinky must have been having the same dream, for she was busy chasing Digs, the two playfully darting back and forth.

“I was afraid of that as well,” said Big with that soft, cautious smile of hers. “It has been so long.”

“It sure has,” said Jason. “The longest twelve hours of my life.”

“Twelve hours?” Big looked utterly confused. “It's been five months and a day since I last saw you.”

“That doesn't make sense,” said Jason, and it certainly
didn't. Then he remembered exactly where he was and how nothing in Some Times made any sense at all. “I don't understand it, but I'm sure glad you're here. But how? How did you get here?”