The Dinosaur Four (25 page)

“How far do
you think we are from the café?” Callie asked.

“Less than an hour, I think.
But there’s really no way to be sure. If we stay in the ravine and keep quiet, they might leave us alone.”

“Might?” Al
said.

“Yes,” William replied. “And I’m not going to argue about it. Let’s do it.”

Callie nodded. She looked around and then walked up the slope to enter the gulch.

Tim took the time machine from
Morgan. “I’ll carry it for a bit now, if you don’t mind.”

“No problemo.” Morgan started up behind Callie.

“You just had a turn, right before Morgan,” Al said. “Why don’t you let me take it?” The shortcut up the ravine meant they might make it to the café before the timer went off. He would never convince Lisa to stay behind with him. But if he carried the device, he might find the opportunity to accidentally drop it somewhere near the top. With a little luck, it would roll all the way down the hill.

Tim shook his head. “I got it.” He turned and started up
the ravine.

“Have it your way.” Al said.
“I’m just trying to help.”

William
and Buddy followed Tim. The dog walked close to the delivery man, its tail still tucked between its legs.

Al
thought back to their discussion about returning to the café. He tried to imagine meeting himself. It seemed ludicrous. He wondered how the people in the café would react when duplicate versions of themselves suddenly showed up and started yelling at them to clear out.
There won’t be duplicates of all
of us
, Al thought. Hank, Beth, and Patricia would be missing. He wondered what the original Hank, Beth and Patricia would think about that.

Al used the
shovel as a walking stick as he climbed. The sides of the ravine slowly closed in and rose to the height of his shoulders. Loose rocks filled the cleft and he had to step carefully to avoid tripping.

As they
hiked up the gully, the walls on their sides rose and fell, sometimes hiding them entirely, and sometimes dropping low enough for them to see out. The herd was spread out on this part of the hill and the animals seemed to take no notice of them. The afternoon sun shone down on their faces from directly ahead.

Every so often,
Buddy let out a low whimper. William murmured quiet reassurances. Any time Buddy tried to move past him, William whispered, “
Heel,
” and the dog dropped back. Fortunately, Al realized, Buddy could not see out of the gully at all. Hundreds of Triceratops covered the hillside around them in every direction except for straight ahead and straight behind.

At the first
game crossing, Callie crouched by a large rock. She raised her hand behind her and patted the air downward, signaling the others to stop. A few feet ahead, the gulch had been trampled flat where it was intersected by a trail that crossed the hillside along the contour of the slope.

Al craned his neck. Three small
Triceratops nibbled on spiky succulents to the right, about forty feet away. The distance felt safe, but he remembered how deceptively fast the duck-billed dinosaur had moved.

On the left, a
larger Triceratops marched along the game trail straight toward the ravine. Al hunkered back down, trying to hide.

William squatted above him in the crevice with one hand on Buddy’s collar. While the
Triceratops crossed above, William used his other hand to stroke the dog’s muzzle. He looked ready to squeeze it shut if Buddy began to bark.

The animal passing above them was not as large as the one that had battled the tyrannosaur under the cliff, but it shook the ground as it walked and small pebbles rolled into the gully. For a moment it blocked out the sun.
Any one of these animals has enough meat on it to feed us for months
, Al thought. The dinosaur wandered over by the trio of adolescents and nibbled on the same spiky plants. Its body blocked their view of the ravine.

William exhaled after the animal passed and gave Buddy a gentle pat on the head.
Callie rose from behind the rock and climbed upward. The four animals grazing off to the right ignored her. Morgan, Tim, William, and Al followed one at a time.

They continued to climb
. Halfway up the hillside, they passed the second game crossing without incident. None of the animals were close to the second crossing, so they just continued onward and upward, stepping around massive footprints in the dirt.

The ravine cut deeper into the hillside
as they climbed. Soon they were in a channel that rose well over their heads on either side. “This ain’t so bad,” Morgan said. A moment later, a Triceratops skidded to a stop on the wall above. Dirt slid down onto Morgan as the animal backed up a step to keep from falling in. Its neck frill changed color, flaring from a dull brown to a deep rusty red. The creature bleated at Morgan, a stuttery, neighing noise that sounded angry.

Morgan yelped and dropped to the ground with his hands over his head.

Al watched from further down the gully, frozen. He thought once again that Morgan was the biggest idiot he had ever met. If the Triceratops were to fall into the ravine, it would slide down on all of them, like a piston plunging through a valve.

The animal turned and looked slowly from one person to the next. It pawed the ground
and a chunk of dirt broke free, creating a small avalanche on the side of the ravine. The Triceratops stepped back. It would become trapped and injured if it fell in, Al realized. He hoped the animal realized this as well.

“
Just keep walking,” William ordered in a low voice behind Morgan. He held Buddy in his arms with one hand firmly clamped on the dog’s muzzle.

Morgan
rose and stepped forward. The Triceratops snorted and turned its massive head to track his movement up the gully. Morgan stumbled in the loose dirt as he watched the beast above him. The animal snorted.

“Don’t watch it. Just watch your feet, Morgan.”
The back of William’s neck was soaked with sweat. Morgan got to his feet and continued. William started up after him, and soon he was directly under the Triceratops. He stopped watching it and followed his own advice, looking down at the ground ahead of him. Buddy’s eyes locked on the dinosaur above and he let out a continuous whimper-whine, but William passed uneventfully.

Al brought up the rear. The
Triceratops watched him but still did not move from its spot up on the lip of the gully. Al stopped and looked at it. Pale green drool dripped from its beaked mouth. Al continued up the slope. When he turned to look back, the creature had ambled out of sight.

Ahead, William called quietly. “Hey Morgan, are they still your favorite?”

Morgan flipped him a middle finger without looking back.

Morgan
crouched behind Callie just below the third and final crossing. He pictured hundreds of animals marching back and forth, wearing down the sides of the ravine. He wondered if the rainy season would come and wash their path away.

On the right, just beyond the third game crossing, stood the great splintered
tree trunk. The remaining shards of wood looked like a charred, grasping hand, reaching toward the sky.

The upper tributaries of the
ravine dissipated in a series of smaller cracks that branched out in several directions beyond the tree. Morgan pointed at the largest of the cracks and whispered, “That won’t provide much cover.”

Callie
leaned out and craned her neck. Beyond the tree, the hill flattened and the woods grew close. “The forest isn’t far, though. We could make it there in two minutes, easy. Faster if we run.”

“Don’t you think running
will attract their attention?” Morgan said loudly.

“Shhh!” Callie whacked him on the chest. She shuffled backwards into the ravine, forcing Morgan to back up behind her. “
You
are going to attract their attention.”

Five
Triceratops stood off to the right, huddled in a circle and facing one another as if carrying on a conversation. One raised its head and sniffed.

“How close do you think those guys are?” Callie whispered.

William rose up slightly and peered over the edge. “It’s hard to tell. They are so huge, I can’t get a sense of scale. Maybe two hundred feet?”

He looked over to the left side
. Morgan followed his gaze. In that direction the nearest animal was at least three times as far away.

“What’s the plan?” Tim whisper-shouted from below them, further down the gully.

“It’s not like we have any choices here,” Al muttered. He stood and shouldered past the others.

“Be my guest, bro,” Morgan said as he fell onto his ass.

Al crouch-walked quickly over the crossing. When he entered the largest crevice on the far side, he slowed down again. Little more than a gutter, the walls only rose as high as Al’s waist. He stopped next to the lightning tree. It shielded him from the view of the Triceratops quintet on the right. Al leaned on the shovel and glanced back, as if to say,
What are you waiting for?

Callie bega
n forward across the game trail. Morgan scrambled to his feet and followed close behind. Ahead, Al turned and continued onward.

Piece of cake,
Morgan thought. The phrase quickly turned to
piece of ass.
He liked climbing up the hill behind Callie. The view of her tight running shorts kept him moving, like a carrot on a stick. Normally, he would have mentioned this, just for the reaction, but the girl had lost her man today. Morgan’s father killed himself shortly after Morgan turned sixteen. You don’t mess with someone when they’re facing that kind of hurt, Morgan knew. You just don’t do it.

He stopped next to the blackened tree trunk, just as Al had moments earlier and pulled out his last cigarette.
The ground no longer sloped. It would be easy going from here on out.

Morgan rolled the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger.
He could buy all the smokes he wanted once they got back. He looked down the hill to check on William and Tim, mostly to make sure Tim still had that time machine. The view caught his breath. Thousands of Triceratops dotted the hillside below them. Some wandered back and forth. Many huddled together, facing each other in small groups. A hint of the river sparkled off to the side.

Morgan smiled. They really were his favorite, dumb jokes aside. They were like giant jousting machines. He flicked open his metal lighter, lit the smoke, and flicked it shut with a metallic
shink
. Morgan drew in a long drag.

On the hillside above,
Callie froze. She stood halfway between the lightning tree and the edge of the forest, completely exposed. At the top of the hill, the gully had faded down to nothing. She turned and glared back at him.

T
he largest animal broke away from the circle of five and sauntered over to investigate the strange noise and the smell of smoke. At the edge of the forest, Al disappeared into the cover of the trees.

“It’s all good,” Morgan whispered
. He dropped to one knee in the middle of the ravine and froze. “Just hold still.”

“It is not all good
,
”
Callie mouthed back at Morgan. She looked angry.

The animal marched directly toward her.
She was out in the open and the Triceratops showed no sign of stopping.

Callie turned toward the trees and
sprinted across the flat ground. Her fluorescent green running shirt, which made her stand out to drivers along the streets of Denver, caught the attention of the Triceratops. It picked up its pace, loping along like a rhinoceros.

She’s not going to make it,
Morgan realized. It would be close, but the Triceratops was too fast and the jungle might not slow it down. Morgan examined the giant blackened tree trunk standing nearby. It was fifteen feet wide, with jagged fragments that rose twice that far into the sky.

“
HEY!” Morgan shouted. He stepped into view and raised both arms. “Hey you horny cockface!”

The
Triceratops wheeled in a great arc toward Morgan.

He laughed out loud, a maniacal titter, and ran
back to the stump. Within seconds, he was behind the tree, completely out of the dinosaur’s line of sight.

On the hillside above, Callie
slipped into the woods.

In the ravine, just below the third crossing, William and Tim crouched together against the side wall. Tim put down the football and wedged it against a rock to prevent it from rolling back down the gully.

The Triceratops stopped close to the tree, unable to see Morgan. It sniffed for a moment and
sidestepped a quarter of the way around. Morgan matched its motion, keeping himself on the opposite side of the tree. He giggled.

The
dinosaur stopped and circled back in the other direction. Morgan shifted as well, until he was directly below the tree, standing on the game trail.