Authors: Geoff Jones
“No shit!” said Morgan. “It totally worked that
Triceratops. Poor guy. Triceratops is my favorite, you know.”
Hank responded without looking back.
“We’re going to help the old woman. She needs us. You keep searching for your Fort Knox as long as you want.”
Callie gave his hand a squeeze. “What about the rest of them?” she asked quietly. “
We shouldn’t split up.” Hank stopped and they both looked back.
“There’s also the woman on the second floor,” Tim said.
Al rolled his head around, looking at the canopy above. “If she even exists. Are you sure you didn’t imagine her?”
“I saw something.
”
William turned
to Al. “We need to get back to Helen. And we all need to stay together.”
Lisa pulled Al close and looked up at him. “I want to get back to my store. If something else shows up, I won’t be able to run very fast.”
“How is your foot?” Callie asked.
“It hurts.”
So far,
Lisa had limped along without complaining. As a runner, Callie had experienced blisters that felt like gaping holes on the bottom of her feet. When she actually looked at them, they were always smaller than she expected and only skin deep. Lisa had an actual hole. Callie had seen muscle fibers inside the wound when wrapping it up.
Al took a deep breath and looked around
, swinging his head from one person to the next. Callie thought he looked like a cornered animal. “Okay,” he said.
Hank gave a snort through his nose and they all started up again. Callie took his arm. “Thank you for the whistle,” she said quietly. “Back by the river. I thought I was a goner.”
Hank pulled his lips wide. He made the shape of a smile, but he wasn’t smiling. “I thought I was a goner too. We gotta be careful, babe. After what happened to that girl, we gotta really look out for each other. We should make some ground rules when we get back to the river. For all of us.”
“Like what?” Morgan asked. Callie guessed that Morgan was not a big fan of rules.
“Like how far away from the building people should go. Maybe some kind of watch duty. And we clearly should not make any more loud noises.”
“Loud noises did chase away those duck-bill dinosaurs,” William pointed out.
Hank nodded. “But it was obviously a mistake to assume that trick would work with the other kinds. The noise brought that T-rex right to us.”
Morgan had been picking at the dried blood on his face. He flicked a scab off into the air. “You said it, man. Beth was practically
asking to be eaten.”
“Beth
said that nobody should go off alone. We all agreed. And where was she? Right at the edge of the woods by herself. If we’re going to come up with rules, we have to stick to them.”
Callie put her hand over her face. She could see where this was going. She was used to Hank’s matter-of-fact pronouncements. For him, it was simply about learning from mistakes. He didn’t
realize how it made him sound sometimes.
Morgan nodded. “Yeah. It’s a good thing, too. We’re all a
lot safer now that she’s gone.” Morgan reached up to scratch the back of his head. “Wait. I think I’m mistaken. I think maybe you’re actually an old jackass for suggesting that what happened to Beth was her own fault.”
Hank puffed air out his nostrils. “I’m trying, Morgan, to come up with ideas to keep us alive.” His voice rose as he spoke.
“No. I’m still mistaken. You’re not an old jackass. You’re a shit-brained, girly-pants-wearing son of a bitch.”
Hank stopped walking and yelled, “I don’t have to take this from you, you goddamn punk!”
“Punk?” Morgan blurted. “Is that the best you can do?”
William stood with his arms crossed. “Hank? What were you saying about making loud noises?”
Hank pressed his lips together and tromped off in front of the group. Callie followed a few steps behind, hoping he would calm down on his own. Most of the time, people looked to him for leadership. If he were wearing one of his nine-hundred dollar suits today instead of his silly jogging outfit, he would probably be in charge here.
The group walked on. Morgan finally broke the silence. “So that was a dog back there, right? A real, normal dog? Please tell me I wasn’t high.”
William chuckled. “Never mind the dinosaurs. You see a brown mutt and that’s what makes you think you’re high?”
“Maybe Beth
was right,” Lisa said. It was the first time she had spoken the girl’s name since she died. “Maybe what happened to us happened all over. Maybe the dog came from another group somewhere.”
“
No, no, wait a minute,” Morgan said. “I think I saw that dog before. Was it on the sidewalk earlier?”
Hank clenched his fists and spoke in a low voice to Callie.
“He’s the quintessential unreliable witness. Half of my job is keeping assholes like him off the witness stand.”
Callie unfolded one of the fists and laced her fingers between his. She gave him a look that said,
let it go
. If Hank stayed angry, he would not be able to think straight. He nodded, understanding. She felt a rush from their simple exchange. It amazed her that two people could understand each other so well.
“Hey, listen,”
Tim said. The sound of rushing water came through the trees. They caught a few glimpses of the river ahead. Turning to the right, they followed it downstream. Soon they arrived at the clearing.
William stopped the group at the tree line. The café was still there, sitting on the edge of the river. They saw no dinosaurs on either side. A thin grey wisp rose from Helen’s fire.
Callie studied the jagged walls above the café, looking for Tim’s mystery woman, but she saw no signs of life. Three dark shapes circled in the sky high above. “Are those buzzards?”
“Pterodactyls maybe,” said William. “Come on. The coast is clear.”
Halfway across the mudflat, they were greeted with a bark. The dog ran to meet them, wagging his tail.
Helen
stood on the sidewalk. One hand held onto a parking meter and the other formed a fist on her hip. “So, can I expect you people to abandon me again at the next sign of trouble?”
Callie climbed up and gave
her a hug. “I am so sorry. We had to run. Are you ok?” Helen accepted the embrace and the attention, which Callie assumed was all she really wanted.
“I’m fine,” Helen said. “I hid inside until this dog showed up.
His name is Buddy. It says so right on his tags.” She seemed to have endured her isolation without incident.
Buddy’s short coat showed a dozen shades of brown. His
fur faded to a sandy tan color around his face and thin muzzle. His ears flopped asymmetrically.
William kneeled and rubbed the
mutt’s shoulders. “Hey Buddy. I was going to name you ‘Rex’.”
Helen
had removed the remains of the leash from his collar. “I fed him milk and a croissant.” Buddy wagged his tail spastically as everyone took turns petting him.
Lisa asked, “
Do you know where he came from?” She sat on the edge of the sidewalk and held her injured foot.
Helen
nodded. “I’m afraid so. He went right to that woman’s hand out on the sidewalk. He sniffed it and he started whimpering.” She looked down. “I feel so terrible. I kicked the hand into the river. He sounded like he was crying and I just could not bear it.”
“Why is he wet?” Morgan asked, smelling his fingers.
Helen wiped her eyes. “He jumped in and fetched the hand. He brought it right back to me. I had to kick it into the river a second time, and then hold him until it floated away.”
Hank put the pieces together. “So
that woman was walking down the street with him when all this happened. He must have run off when we first arrived.”
“
That’s right!” Morgan said. “The lady was walking a dog. I remember that now.”
“That means there isn’t another group here,” Lisa said. “We’re all alone.”
Helen turned to the group. “What about you all? Tell me what happened.”
Callie looked at the others, wondering where to start, and realized that Tim
was gone. Before she could ask about him, he appeared around the back corner of the building.
“Hey everyone. You’ll want to get over here.
I found the woman upstairs.”
The woman lay in a pile of rubble with both legs pinned under a slab of concrete. A chunk of iron beam lay next to her. Blood on the beam matched the ugly black stain on her lab coat.
Her eyes were dull and Callie thought the woman was dead until she saw her blink. Fresh tears streamed down her cheeks.
“Do you have any painkillers?”
she asked.
Tim had led the group to the back corner of the building, where jagged beams of rebar stuck out
from the wall, forming a makeshift ladder. Everyone except Helen and Buddy had climbed up and crowded around. Fallen walls and broken equipment filled most of the space. It felt more like a rooftop patio than a room. The broken remains of the exterior walls rose less than two feet in most places.
The corner directly above the café’s back hallway had collapsed, which explained the rubble blocking Lisa’s storage closet and bathroom. The edge of the wall hanging out over the river had dropped away as well, directly above the spot where Lisa had fallen in.
Callie knelt and began to examine the woman. “How bad are you hurt?”
She grimaced. “I don’t think it could be much worse.” She pulled up the side of her shirt.
Callie fought off a gag reflex.
This is why I’m in psychiatry and not a practicing physician.
She forced herself to take slow,
deep breaths. The right side of the woman’s torso had been peeled open. She had apparently pulled it closed again. Blood congealed along the edges. Vulgar blue bruises ran across her belly and jagged ridges under the skin could only be broken ribs. Red stains darkened one cup of her bra. Callie focused on the woman’s face to try to calm down, but what she saw there hurt just as much to look at. Row after row of tear streaks ran from her eyes.
“That’s sick,” Morgan said, loudly enough for the woman to hear.
“You’re an asshole,” Hank said.
“But look at her. How is she even –”
“Morgan!” barked Callie. “Climb back down and get the aspirin bottle from Helen’s purse. Now.”
Morgan left for his errand.
The woman looked up. “Was that a T-rex?” Her voice trembled, barely above a whisper.
“Sure was,” William answ
ered. He took the woman’s hand.
She
managed a thin smile. “That’s pretty cool.” Each word came slowly, dragged out with a terrible effort.
The others
all stood back, Callie noticed, horrified and unsure how to respond. The woman’s eyes were sunken and she smelled of urine and something else foul and rotten.
That’s the contents of her stomach, exposed to outside air,
Callie thought. She stood for a moment to get away from the smell.
Hank sometimes told her about courtroom photos
of dead bodies. Some of the descriptions were gristly. This was worse. Courtroom photos did not include the fetid odor rising from this woman’s belly.
“We got to get this off you,” William said, gesturing at the slab of concrete pinning her legs. He turned to the others. “Listen up. See if you can find something we can use as a lever.” They all climbed over the collapsed walls and tumbled equipment. “Be careful,” William added.
Morgan returned with
the aspirin. “Hey Hank, catch.” He tossed the bottle across the room, keeping his distance from the dying woman.
Hank unscrewed the cap and passed the bottle to Callie. “Didn’t you say earlier that aspirin is bad for clotting?”
Callie nodded slowly. “I just want to help her with the pain right now.” She raised her eyebrows, hoping Hank could read her mind.
It doesn’t matter if her blood clots
. The woman under the concrete slab was not going to get better and all they could do was ease her suffering.
She hoped
he could tell what she was thinking. He was seventeen years older with an ex-wife and three children. Callie never believed in soul mates, or fate, or even true love, but she had never met anyone who understood her the way he did. Sometimes it felt like they could read each other’s minds.
Hank seemed to get it. “Come on, Morgan, let’s see what we can find up here. Maybe there are some spare clothes.” Callie smiled. She knew that he was sick of his t-shirt and running shorts. Hank always felt more comfortable
in a suit and tie.
Callie knelt by the woman with a handful of aspirin and a plastic water bottle.
“Just give me a small sip,” the woman said. Callie dribbled water onto her lips and tongue. “Shit, that’s good.”
“There’s plenty.”