No Other Story (4 page)

Chip nearly leaped out of his frozen pants when he saw the dinosaur's head just feet away, its teeth like jagged, twisted stalactites, dripping with saliva. It roared again, and the force knocked Chip backward and temporarily straightened his curly black hair.

“It's okay,” said Penny. “He's stuck in the snow. He can't hurt us now.”

“Yes,” the professor muttered. “But this is Some Times. For all we know, spring could be just minutes away. Then what?”

“Then we'd better get out of here before he thaws out,” said Chip. “Where's Dad?”

“I don't know,” said Teddy. “But here's his shoe.” Sure enough, not more than a couple of feet from where Teddy sat in the snow was a size ten-and-a-half brown shoe, belonging to none other than Ethan Cheeseman. But when Teddy crawled over and tried to lift the shoe, it wouldn't budge. This was most likely due to the fact that Mr. Cheeseman was still in it. Teddy pulled harder on the shoe and off it came, revealing a sock-covered foot. This is one
instance in which being up to one's ankles in snow was far more serious than it sounded.

Penny let out a panicky gasp and she and the others immediately sprang into action, clawing frantically at the snow, digging downward.

“Come on, faster!” Chip ordered.

As the humans quickened their pace, Pinky joined the efforts. She had learned much about digging back in the year 1668 from Digs, who was Big's pet fox and an expert hole digger. Pinky now put her newfound knowledge to good use, using her front paws to shovel the snow rapidly between her hind legs just as she had watched the little brown fox do.

When they had dug down to Mr. Cheeseman's waist (or up to his waist, depending on how you look at), Chip and the professor each took a leg and dragged Ethan back to the surface. They placed him on his back, and the children made way for Professor Boxley. Though he was not a medical doctor, the professor knew a great deal more than the rest of them about human physiology. With a trembling hand, he first checked Mr. Cheeseman's pulse, and found it to be slow.
Very
slow.

“How is he?” asked Penny doubtfully, for she had never seen her father looking so lifeless and with such a bluish tint about him. There was a large lump over his left eye where he had collided with something on the way down the hill. The bump left Ethan's eye swollen nearly shut and his battered face scarcely recognizable.

“He's taken quite a blow to the head,” said the professor.
“I suspect a concussion and the onset of hypothermia. We've got to get him back up the hill to where it's warm.”

It wasn't until then that they realized just how far the avalanche had taken them down the hillside. Looking up, they saw that the journey back to summer would be a long, steep, and slippery climb. Meanwhile, the T. rex continued to roar, each time releasing enough hot breath to melt a little more of the snow that, so far, had held it captive and rendered it harmless; except to their eardrums, which took a pounding whenever the creature opened its cavernous, bucktoothed mouth.

The professor was shaky with exhaustion and fear, so Chip and Penny took their unconscious father beneath his arms and attempted to pull him to an upright position. Despite having a rather severe sweet tooth and a fondness for doughnuts, ice cream, and cake of all kinds, Mr. Cheeseman was not a large man. In fact, he was very much on the thin side. Still, for a fourteen-year-old boy and a twelve-year-old girl, lugging him up a steep, snowy hill would be no easy task, and, indeed, might very well prove impossible.

Their hands were purple. Their fingers were stiff and responded with stubbornness to the task before them. Chip realized he was shivering involuntarily, his bottom molars clacking against the top. Penny's teeth were also chattering, and between the two of them, their mouths sounded like a smattering of applause. Finally, with a little help from Teddy and the professor, Chip and Penny managed to pull their father to something close to a standing position.

They took their first wobbly step as the T. rex bellowed again, melting enough snow so that now its relatively tiny arms were free to claw at the air. At this rate, in no time those very same arms would be free to claw at anything and everything, including Mr. Cheeseman and his children.

“Hurry!” Chip instructed.

“Quit yelling at me,” said Penny through half-frozen lips. “I'm trying, but he's too heavy.” Penny's feet slipped out from under her and she folded to the ground. Chip, left to bear the full weight of his father, also slipped, and the three of them now lay in a crumpled mess at the bottom of the hill. Chip stood up and brushed the snow from his jeans. A few tears of frustration escaped Penny's eyes as she cradled her father's head, keeping it off the frozen ground. She could feel herself begin to crack under the stress of this terrible situation.

“Would you please shut up?” she pleaded with the T. rex. “Leave us alone!”

Ignoring Penny's plea, it roared again, melting yet more snow with its fiery exhaust. Pinky barked furiously, though in this instance, the Cheeseman clan certainly didn't need a psychic dog to tell them that danger was looming, as it was looming so ridiculously close to them and with such absurdly wild teeth. Another blast of hot air shot out from the beast's angry mouth, and the tops of its legs were now visible.

“Okay, change of plans,” said Chip, not knowing exactly what change he intended to implement. He stood for a
moment, trying to think of what his father might do in this situation. He looked up the hill, then back at the winter wonderland spread out across the valley floor, covered with snow and populated with frosted pine trees. “We're going that way.”

Penny seemed perplexed by the very idea of such a thing. “But the professor said that if we don't get Dad out of the cold …”

“I heard what the professor said,” Chip retorted. “But it's going to take us at least a half hour to get Dad up that hill, if we can do it at all. And in another ten minutes that thing is going to be free from the snow and hot on our trail again.”

Penny was not one to back down when she felt she was right. “What difference does it make if he eats us when we're halfway up the hill or halfway across the valley? At least if we go up, we've a chance to save Dad's life.”

“I hate to be the voice of doom and gloom,” said the professor, who actually very much enjoyed being the voice of doom and gloom. “But it seems there's no place we can go to be safe from those teeth.”

“I know a place,” said Teddy.

“I'm sure you do,” said Chip. “But for right now, could you please be quiet? We're trying to think here.”

“But there is one place can go where he won't be able to eat us,” insisted Teddy, who, like his sister, was not willing to be bossed around when their very lives were at stake.

Chip exhaled sharply and glared at his younger brother. “He's thirty feet tall. Even if we could get to those trees
over there and manage to climb up one of them, he'd eat us right off the branches like corn on the cob. Now listen up, everybody. We've got to put our heads together and try to think of something …”

Without warning, Teddy took a running start and leaped onto Chip's back, wrapping his arms around his brother's neck.

“Hey!” Chip called out. “What do you think you're doing? This is no time for clowning around.”

“Bite me,” said Teddy.

“That's crass,” snapped Penny. “Now get down from there.”

“I'm serious,” Teddy insisted. “Try to bite me.”

Chip thought for a moment and realized that, indeed, Teddy was not being crass, but quite literal. He turned his head side to side as far as it would go each way. “No way,” he said.

Teddy dropped to the ground. “Why not?”

“You want us to climb onto the back of a Tyrannosaurus rex? Are you crazy? What do we do after that? Stay there until he gets so old that his teeth fall out?”

“No,” said Teddy. “You just stay there long enough to blindfold him.”

“Blindfold him?” said Professor Boxley. “Interesting.”

“Isn't it?” Teddy agreed.

“He can't bite us if he can't see us,” said Gravy-Face Roy.

“I hate to say it,” said Penny, “but it kind of sort of makes a little bit of sense. I think.”

Chip looked back at the T. rex, then up at the steep hill, then out across the valley, then down at his father, stretched out on the snow, unconscious. “Okay,” he said finally. “We'll give it a shot.”

The next thing to do was to try to find something that could be fashioned into a blindfold big enough for an animal roughly the size of a convenience store. Quickly, Chip shed his jacket. “Okay, everybody. Coats off.”

“But I'm cold,” Teddy protested.

“I hear it's quite warm inside the esophagus of a T. rex,” said Penny as she and the professor each removed their jackets and handed them to Chip.

Teddy relented and slipped off his jacket. “I wish I had two sock puppets,” he muttered while hopping in place and blowing hot air into his bare right fist. “One for each hand.”

Chip's frostbitten fingers made the job difficult, but he managed to tie the four jackets together at the sleeves. That was the easy part. The T. rex was becoming more ambulant with each passing second and with each burst of hot air it spat out. Climbing onto its back and remaining there long enough to complete the job would be the hard part. Chip circled around behind the T. rex, took a deep breath, and hoped it would not be one of his last.

“Be careful,” said Penny. Chip said nothing, but turned to Penny with an incredulous look. Penny shrugged. “What? I'm just saying.”

Chip managed a brief smile, realizing that his sister was only voicing her concern for his safety. And, with that, he
proceeded to do something he never in his life thought he'd find himself doing. He climbed up the scaly backside of a hungry dinosaur and reminded himself that this was one battle he would have to win.

Always remember: quitters never win—but if both sides quit, it's a tie.

Take a moment to imagine how utterly boring a rodeo would be if bulls enjoyed being ridden by men in funny hats with sharp things on their boots. It's likely that few would pay for the privilege of watching a perfectly contented bull saunter around with a grown man on its back. I imagine it would be every bit as exciting as watching someone pushing a shopping cart. Depending on where you buy your groceries, it is highly unlikely that you will ever see anyone pushing a shopping cart while yelling “Yee haw!” regardless of how good the sale on paper towels might be.

However, the point is moot, because the fact is that no untamed animal will tolerate having a person sitting on its back. This includes bulls, horses, whales, Chihuahuas, and extinct animals such as the Tyrannosaurus rex upon which Chip was currently climbing.

The dinosaur's enormous head swung side to side as it tried in vain to sink its snarled, murderous teeth into its uninvited guest. Chip fought to stay aboard its back. Were he to fall, it could mean a very quick end to him and the
others. Chip's hands trembled with cold and fear as the T. rex let go with another nerve-racking bellow, melting more snow and making it even more mobile than before.

Chip's first attempt at slinging the homemade blindfold across the eyes of the great lizard met with futility, as did his second and third. Each time he let go with one hand, the scaly ogre nearly tossed him to the ground, and he was forced to abandon his efforts in order to focus on staying alive.

“Come on, Chip. You can do it,” Teddy cheered.

“You're the man,” Gravy-Face Roy chimed in.

Penny was too nervous to cheer and instead just dug her teeth into her bottom lip and held her breath. Professor Boxley tugged anxiously on his mustache, so hard that before he realized it he had pulled out a good portion of the right half by the roots, leaving an odd-looking bald spot on his upper lip. If something happened to Chip, how would he explain to Ethan, his friend and former student, that he had let his son engage in such a dangerous scheme? He should have volunteered for the mission, but didn't for one simple reason: he was scared to death.

Chip was breathing heavily, his face red with exertion and fear. Once more he swung the jackets up over the dinosaur's face, and this time he managed to catch the other end of them. All that was left to do was to tie a knot around the writhing giant's head, rendering the beast sufficiently sightless. Chip had learned to tie many different types of knots while sailing aboard a stolen pirate ship back in 1668, but there wasn't time for anything fancy just now. A simple
granny knot would have to suffice. Fighting against the violent gyrations of the T. rex as well as the numbness in his fingers, he doubled the knot for some added insurance, then quickly slid down the dinosaur's back, landing silently in the powdery snow.