When
Sanjay Mann got into the business 3 years
ago, he never really expected it to actually succeed as a sustainable venture:
As far as he saw it at the time, striking out as a P.I. basically just
constituted a relatively painless way to continue ignoring the perilously
impending call of real life for another couple of months. At least so far,
though, he’s always managed to sneak that one last job just when it seems he’s
on the brink, contenting himself with the usual P.I. fodder a limited pool of
competition affords him, and the fact
that, at least most days, the work is as tolerable as any job. And while he may
concede that the cavalier over-specificity of his self-appointed title as the “Dinosaur
Detective,” a nod to his first case and his idea of a bad joke, sees him his
fair share of curious drunk college students, he’s also found it has the benefit
of peaking potential clients’ interest enough to push them through the door.
When
Officer Sofia Fortuna comes knocking one brisk autumn evening with a cagey
mystery of an assignment, though, it might also get him a lot more than he bargained
for...
Sanjay Mann, P.I.
Dinosaur
Detective
A
typically fantastical original Thom Swanson romp
Chapter 1
The
buzzer rang angrily, grating through the scattering ghosts of my undisturbed
evening.
Disadvantage
of living upstairs from your office I suppose.
For
probably a proper minute I seriously considered not answering. I was kinda
sorta buzzed already, from the pre-gaming I was kinda sorta doing before my
kinda sorta friends bailed on our kinda sorta plans, and I kinda sorta just
went with it.
Guess
it’s just that kinda sorta evening.
On
the other hand, I don’t really have posted hours as such. Think I even have
something to that effect on the plaque—
“Hours:
Damned if I care, try your luck.”
—Or
some such similarly arrogant bullshit begetting someone of my apathetic
disposition, less three years of soul extinguishing experience and a proper
appreciation for plaque-minters’ thoughts on character count.
Kinda
sad when you don’t even remember what your own damn plaque says.
I
just know the big typeset for sure at this point—
“Sanjay
Mann, P.I.
DINOSAUR
DETECTIVE.”
Again,
sense of humour: Probably not the best way to compensate for a complete lack of
any kind of business acumen…
The
buzzer went again, pulling a heavy sigh from the rattling depths of my chest. I
justified sinking another couple of seconds of contemplation swilling the last
dregs of my beer. As I downed it, I was hit with the strongest urge yet to
ignore the intrusion, but as you also might infer from that insight on my sign,
I’m not really in a position to be turning away work right now.
Not
that I ever am, come to that.
The
name alone will probably tip you to the fact that I’d never really expected
this to actually work as a serious venture.
It
was a nod to my first case. Would’ve been pretty shortly after I finally
realized academia really wasn’t my strong suit, dropping out of college a third
of the way through my junior year, much to my dear mother’s dismay, proper
Indian parent that she is.
I’d
managed to get a gig doing security while I “figured things out,” mainly, I
think, on the merits of my size coupled with a years-perfected impersonation of
my old man’s best stony military demeanor.
So
this company had us on the door for this gala at the university museum, where
some Doctor had just found the biggest/oldest/most-complete/whateverest skull
of one of those obscure early dinosaurs you’ve never heard of or cared about,
and it was apparently a big deal in the more learned circles of the place. Not
really much a gig from a security standpoint; more helping over-indulged rich
patrons into their waiting town cars than knocking skulls together, but for
16.50 an hour with no experience I wasn’t complaining.
Anyways,
long story short, I guess the fossil was nicked at some point and everyone lost
their shit.
I
remember the cops were convinced it was some kind of professional job.
Apparently the bone was stupidly valuable, being the
biggest/oldest/most-complete/whateverest game-changer-of-a-big-deal that it
was, and there were rumors of some letter from the doctor bloke’s arch rival.
Plus everyone seemed super impressed by “all the extra security” the museum had
hired for the event.
As
a significant percentage of that “extra security,” I readily pointed out that
the gig was sold more as courteous porter than sunglass-and-earpieced gauntlet,
so we weren’t exactly patting people down and deflecting fossil-thieving ninjas
in the shadows, but ultimately I reckon the cops of this town just weren’t
equipped to handle something on this scale.
And
between you and me, they’d probably seen one too many heist movies than
entirely benefitted the case to boot.
So
the official beat was already sitting ill with me, and it was looking like my
reputation in security was shaping up to be pretty muddy, making me extra
conscious of things like references and paychecks, when I catch wind that a
couple of the university donors from the event were putting together a reward
for information about the thing.
So
I played on some of my own suspicions, no doubt helped in forming with my
oh-so-recent estrangement from the college scene, and in due order managed to
track the bone to the mantle of one of the local frat houses.
Whether
that would’ve been that is anybody’s guess, but when I went to collect, the
dean was unwarrantedly enthralled; kept raving over my “prodigious skill,” or
what I liked to think of as “basic application of common sense.”
Kept
using that word too, “prodigious”: That’s one of those words that’s fine in
writing, but is impossible to pull off in actual conversation.
Anyways,
I’ve got this guy waxing poetic about how I should be a detective and all the
business he’d refer me—which turned out to be complete bullshit as it happens;
in hindsight I realize it’d take a special kind of fuck-up to actually have any
kind of business to refer a PI—but somewhere in the spiel the whole “dinosaur”
alliteration occurred to me, at which point I reckon I had to commit just for
the sake of the bit.
Plus
I had that check in my pocket and this harebrained idea seemed as legitimate an
excuse as any to ignore the perilously impending call of real life for another
month or two, so I cashed in a couple of my old man’s contacts to help fast
track a license and set up shop.
Like
I said, I never expected it to succeed as a sustainable endeavor. I’ve
certainly never held any ambitions towards investigative vocations, but most
days the work is as tolerable as any job, and while I’m pretty sure I’d never
be confused as a successful business, at least so far I’ve always managed to
sneak that one last minute job right when it seems I’m on the brink.
It
probably helps to be in a small enough community that I have a pretty limited
pool of competition, too.
Generally,
then, I mostly just catch the usual P.I. fare—cheating boyfriends, one-offs
freelancing for some of the smaller law firms, and more recently this
generation’s notion of “missed connections,” which can always be interesting,
depending on how tolerant Mommy and Daddy’s checkbook is.
Once
I’d realized I was actually garnering enough traction to maintain at least a
semblance of momentum, I admit to being a bit bemused that this traffic seemed undeterred by my self-destructively
cavalier jest at specificity, and while I do concede that a statistically
significant portion of my callers end up being curious drunk uni students,
sharing a college town with the country’s leading school for Paleontology has
the added perk that the name has actually landed me half a handful of genuinely
dinosaur related cases.
Nothing
as glamorous as the biggest/oldest/most-complete/whateverest whatooyacallit
skull, of course, but at the end of the day, I’ve found, if nothing else,
christening yourself the “Dinosaur Detective” often piques potential clients’
interest enough to push them through the door.
Which
brings us back to tonight’s buzzer, whose most recent echoes still rang through
my fleeting reminiscences.
Steeling
my determination, I hopefully lobbed my empty toward the recycling from the
stairs, missing noisily by several unforgiving feet, and wrenched the door open
far more gruffly than I anticipated.
I
don’t think I had any expectations for who I would find on the other side, but
I was still surprised to meet the face of a lady cop, quickly flashing from its
doubtful glance up toward the characteristic tinkle back to a standardly
shielded façade.
I’ve
always been a bit at odds with that term, “Lady Cop.” My experience, a cop is a
cop is a cop; gender doesn’t really figure into it.
But
still, it’s the kind of diction I always feel people in my profession are by definition
obliged to use, and, anyways, it wouldn’t do for you to think I’m gonna be
running around with some mustachioed, doughnut-shoveling, mall-cop-of-a
stereotype here.
In
fact, I should describe her. I noticed that in a book I read recently; the author
went into pointedly specific detail with all their characterizations, and it
struck me that after you surpass a certain level of reading you tend not to get
those explicit descriptions as much.
Plus
she’s pretty damned atypical as far as blues go, and if I’m going to make a big
deal about putting the right picture in your mind, I might as well do it
properly.
She
was young, probably only my age, and actually pretty small for the job,
slenderly filling out the lower end of average, but with that characteristically
squared academy stance to compensate. The rigid discipline of the effort was
especially poignant, clearly born of a familiar resigned appetence to prove
herself, the far set brown eyes lazering out a permanent dare to try something.
Though the uniform didn’t give away much in the way of figure, you could tell
she took the job seriously, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if she
could lift as much as I could.
With
the weight gap, I’ve got enough tricks up my sleeve, I could probably take her,
but it definitely wouldn’t be a fight I’d look to readily get into.
In
of itself, the whole “tough as nails” comportance is common enough I suppose,
even with the smaller stature, but that’s where any normality ends.
Her
hair, naturally a sandy brown, judging from the sharp eyebrows, was dyed bright
blue, pulled back into a short ponytail low beneath the cap, with several
loosened strands waving past her ears. Similarly, her broad, largish freckled
nose was pierced with a small gemmed stud I’m surprised she could get away
with, and the sleeves of her shirt were rolled into neat coils just above the
elbow despite the seasonal bite.
Speculating
on the purchase of these small rebellions, I looked past the hard professional
air she wore to mask the round face’s natural soft innocence, and I could catch
just a glimpse of a playful exuberance the job hadn’t quite yet managed to
suppress.
I
corroborated this impression with the observation that her small, slim lips
kept quivering minusculy upwards at the corners before being reminded to
flatten back to the unyielding pursed line evidently foreign to them, and made
a mental note filing this snippet in my extensive catalog of tells.
And
hell, while we’re on describing, I should do myself too.
I
recon I got a bit too much of my old man’s Anglo-Saxon to really qualify as
“dark”—I generally fall somewhere between white and vaguely ethnic—but at six
two I’m “tall” enough, and I can usually pull of “handsome” if pressed, now
I’ve grown into myself a bit.
I
should probably take better care of myself, and I’ve never really had the
discipline to work out properly, so I’ve got a few too many pockets of padding
to qualify for a properly athletic body, but I keep pretty active and throw my
stubborn strength around enough that I have pretty good muscle definition.
Couple that with my exceptionally broad shoulders and burly barrel chest and I
usually give the impression I’m a lot bigger than I actually am. Or so I’ve
gathered.
I've
always had a kind of sentimental impression that my features were roughly
carved. Heavy dark eyebrows anchor my flakey, hazel eyes and sturdy, expressive
nose. The stanch chin is kept well in proportion with the thick, bowed lips and
unconditionally cloaked in some degree of scraggly beard that invariably starts
to wisp down my neck to mingle with the unruly curls of chest hair I’ve
resigned myself to, no matter how much effort I put into maintaining it.
My
hair is a dark espresso that can often pass for black, unless I spend too much
time in the sun on the beach, where it will bleach all the way to a milky red,
and with it, I don’t even try. I leave it instead to grow to a shaggy length
that would send my old man into conniptions if he could see it, and it falls
into sharp pointed shelves that make me look like—at least according to one
ex-girlfriend—a “walking Christmas tree.”
I’ve
never put too much stock in my appearance, either, so the ruffled plaid shirt,
stained jeans, and scuffed boots I wore were pretty typical fare.
Needless
to say, we cut a pretty stark picture, oppositely framed in my doorway.
It
was clear the cop was a bit put off by my unkempt entrance, and I could see now
she was already ill at ease, almost imperceptibly shifting her weight from foot
to foot, and continually stopping herself from looking over her shoulder, as
betrayed by the stiffening bulges in her neck muscles.
To
her credit though, she quickly recovered, reasserting the professional command
as she introduced herself, “Um, Good evening. I’m Officer Sofia Fortuna. Are
you the dinosaur guy?”
That
last bit sort of spilled out, and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck
bristle slightly with it. So it was one of these visits.
“That’s
what it says on the plaque,” I said, gesturing. A rehearsed line at this point.
I
could see her grappling with indecision, eyes flashing over me in the slightest
of glances, and actually looking out over her shoulder for something in the
distance I couldn’t see, before finally making up her mind and leaning in
towards me with a new hushed edge in her words.
“Look,
we’ve got a situation. It’s out of our depth; something in your specialty,” she
said meaningful.
Now
this was a surprise. Definitely not something you get every day.
Properly
intrigued now, I turned on my mental windshield wipers to clear the narcotic
haze from those parts of my brain trying to parse the meaning from her coy reticence.
I
stared at her for a good couple seconds from behind my resolved mask, kept up
purely out of professional habit rather than for any particular benefit of the
case at hand, wondering silently what the police could possibly want with a
private detective, and what it had do with some gag about dinosaurs.
“Yeah,
sure. Alright,” I said finally, rolling my jaw calculatedly, “Why don’t you
step in then.”
I
gestured in towards the office, but she made no move to follow.
“Actually,
it’s really very urgent,” she said, with another of those little hops, “Like,
feet on the ground? Maybe if you followed me to the…um…”
She
trailed off with a small gulp, and it was almost enough to break my poker face.
I
managed to keep it up for another measured beat, though, mind racing for her
hidden meaning as I carefully scrutinized her. I’ve found it cultivates the
right brooding impression to keep the clients on edge a bit with the ball in
your court.
“Fine.
Lead the way,” I said curtly, then, grabbing my favorite long leather coat from
its hook, swinging it over my shoulders in a single practiced gesture, and made
to lock the door behind us.
She
didn’t move though, rather trying to look past me into the office, and opening
her mouth uncertainly.
“Don’t
you need…have any equipment?” she asked hesitantly, leaning in closer yet and
dropping her voice almost to a whisper, “You know, weapons? Or...”
Now
let me tell you, that is a properly weird thing to hear coming from a cop, and
I felt an unbidden frown pull down the corners of my mouth.
My
mind flashed dubiously to my “piece,” and I briefly toyed with the notion that
this was some kind of convoluted bust. I guess it’s pretty obvious I’d have a
gun registered, my line of work. That’s what I’d figured too, when I got it as
I was starting out, before quickly realizing that practically speaking, it
basically just amounted to an expensive toy that wasn’t really worth the upkeep
in day to day operations. Damn fun to fire off though.
On
balance, I decided to resist the urge to offer up my papers.
“I
mean, I can dig up my nine, but I’m really not sure I even have any bullets,” I
said instead, “And I’d take any odds you’re a better shot than me.”
I’d
meant it almost as a joke, but you wouldn’t guess it from looking at her. Any
attempt to hide the doubt that had been plaguing her had now been abandoned,
her face instead dissolving into a look of shock that bordered on horror.
I
watched her mouth “a nine millimeter?” slightly, before managing to splutter,
“But, this situation…I don’t know that you…I mean, don’t you have
anything…bigger?”
That
right there should have been a red flag, but just at that moment I caught sight
of my axe sitting in the umbrella stand and all caution flew to the wind with
the picture of the idea.
Of
course, I don’t normally keep an axe by the door. I feel the need just to
clarify that. I was just chopping firewood for old Mrs. Robinson next door a
couple days back and hadn’t had a chance to put it away yet. Again, just to
clarify about Mrs. Robinson, there’s nothing going on there, in case you were
thinking that was some kind of weird allusion; I swear that’s honestly her
name: I just like to feel helpful, and to promote the kind of community I’m
always thinking we’re lacking here stateside where ever I can. Plus she has
excellent taste in beer...
So
I’ve got this axe sitting right there, and Fortuna’s set me up so perfectly
with that whole “something bigger” bit, you can’t even fault me for going with
it on this one.
“Ah,
you want bigger. Right-o, sure thing,” I said hefting the axe into view showily
and again making to shut the door.
“Mr.
Mann,” she said, nostrils flaring slightly, “This is serious. We don’t have
time to—”
“Who
say’s I’m not being serious,” I said, completely deadpan, “Trust me. I am the
expert after all.”
I
cracked a malicious flash of a smile at that, muscling forward and literally
shutting the door on the matter.
For
a beat, I was sure she’d protest again, her mouth hanging open slightly and
eyebrows crossly furrowed, but I could tell I’d shaken her with the
incontrovertible seriousness of that “expert” line: I’m a very good liar
afterall.
Then
the unmistakable sounds of commotion began to waft their way through the
guarding boughs of the autumning trees lining the streets, and it seemed to
settle the matter.
With
a consiliatory grunt, Fortuna pulled her eyes finally from their inquisitive
probing of my now shielded office, and motioned for me to follow the brisk pace
she charted toward the town center.
I
was again surprised to see that she wasn’t with a car or bike, evidently on
foot patrol, which meant whatever it was had to be close. I could distinguish
the sirens now too, peeling out of the layered ruckus still largely held at bay
by the town’s sleepy atmospheric inertia. There were a lot of them, couple of
dozen I should think in the least: I hadn’t had sirens like that since the
stint we lived in Paris.
Whatever
this was, it was significant, and I started to remember my misgivings about
Fortuna’s cageyness.
As
if sensing this hesitation, she began to speak, somewhat haltingly from ahead
of me.
“So,
do you need like a briefing or something? I might not be the most the qualified
with,” she hazarded a quick glance back at me with another of those judging,
micro-second onceovers, “this stuff, but…” she trailed off again.
“Won’t be necessary,” I heard my
mouth grunt, evidently forgetting the concern just voiced by that small part of
my brain not given over to snarkiness, “I generally like to do my own recon a
bit myself first thing anyways. Don’t really trust other people’s take on
things without getting my own input in, if I can help it. No offense.”
It was true. Plus I have this bad
habit where if someone says or implies I can’t do something or need help with
it, I take it as a challenge, and I’m really bad at turning down challenges.
Suffice it to say, any reservations
I’d had about going into this ever approaching melee blind had been momentarily
placated with the convoluted notion that it was somehow my idea, and Fortuna
for her part seemed guiltily relieved to be able to continue avoiding breaching
that murky hang-up out loud.
She did offer a final, “Just, its…big.
Even by your standards, I’m sure,” doing nothing for the nervous flutters
linking my stomach to that small overridden voice.
She didn’t give them a chance to
stake a claim, though, turning back toward her tacit objective.
Apart from that glance, she’d been
focused determinedly ahead, not even turning to speak, but rather pushing an
ever more anxious pace as the impending clamor began to sharpen, finally
reaching that skipping-halfstep powerwalk for several strides before committing
to a full jog.
I followed suit wordlessly, my
longer legs quickly proving to be nowhere near as effective an equalizer for
her practiced rhythm as I might have hoped.
I tried not to dwell on this as the
blocks mounted and inevitably began to tell their toll. That’s the thing about
cardio: Doesn’t matter what kind of shape somebody looks like they’re in—get
their heart pumping a bit and you can pretty quickly sort out who’s serious and
who’s not.
Fortuna was pretty oblivious to my
lagging plight, the visible intent focus on our fast approaching destination
blocking out anything else, and I tried to put off reminding her of my all but
forgotten presence as long as possible.
I’m hardly at my most flattering
when running, and already my breathes were reduced to sharp ragged gasps and my
initial suave, rolling gate had slipped and loosened to the point of complete
collapse. The axe, maybe a cute joke back at the office, was definitely seeming
a less advisable hindrance now as it bounced sloppy at my side, doing
everything in its inanimate power to trip me from the ever loosening, sweaty
grip I wielded over it…
Plus
stopping to ask if we could slow up a bit definitely qualified as a concession
of weakness.
Too
much longer, though, and I physically would have no choice. We must have been
closer to a mile out than half by this point, which is pretty well my limit in
the best of times.
I
was probably on my fourth or fifth “Just do it already. Stop her. Do it now”’s,
had the words halfway out my mouth if not for the searing oxygen I was
desperately trying to suck in, when I realized I’d blown right past her,
catching my bearings to see I’d stumbled clear into the middle of a deserted
Main Street.
Forcing
a tactical impulse to recover, I looked up for why Fortuna had stopped, and for
a second I fumbled my sluggish thoughts trying to make sense of the image of
her huddling for cover at the mouth of the alley I’d erupted from.
Then
I felt as much as heard a low, sensational rumble, and felt the bottom melt out
of the world as I turned, dread and realization dawning on me at last.
Suddenly
it all made sense; Fortuna’s coy difficulty finding words for anything, all the
evasive references to “my specialty” and “equipment”…
Standing
in front of me, as little as fifteen meters away, was a fully grown
Tyrannosaurs Rex.
*****
Chapter 2
One
thing was for sure, Fortuna was right when she said it was “big.” Even with the
new insight into her actual implications, that qualifier was, if anything, an
understatement.
The
Rex was, quite simply, massive, a comfortable four car lengths nose to tail,
and layered with stocky ripples of hard muscle that were constantly ashimmer
with charged energy and unassailable power, leaving little doubt that despite
her confounding girth she was easily capable of realizing speeds you’d expect
to see in normal applications of that “car lengths” unit.
As
it was, She was currently moving with slow, fluid motions, swaying Her head
from side to side to keep me in view of Her sidelong eyes, the motion carrying
down Her body in a quiet, mesmerizing wave through to the flicking tip of the
thin balancing tail as She lowered Her head toward street level, breathing in
the scent of my slipstream in deep, deliberate snuffs. Her stomach and sides
were armored in a thick, leathery forest green plate that tapered in downy,
speckled-brown stripes moving up Her torso to the rattling plumage bristling
from Her neck down Her back. The camouflaging effect combined with the
bewitching motions to mingle in the hot clouds of exhalation seeping upwards
from the open, wet, sabre-studded maw to join the cloying ammonia musk visibly
misting off of Her in the impressionable evening chill to complete her
ethereal, hypnotic presence.
I
didn’t immediately register with the pumping rushing in my ears, but as I
marshaled my reeling senses I realized She was emitting a low, pulsating cooing
from Her chest, that now quickened as She overcame the surprise of my entrance,
taking a tentative, seismic step forward with a soft, curious chorus of popping
bugles rolling up her throat.
You
could tell She was interested in me, but not in a Hollywood,
go-to-the-ends-of-the-earth-risking-life-and-limb-for-that-last-human-mcnugget
kind of way, so much as the inquisitive wariness of having a strange, small,
squishy creature burst into your path in an unknown, overwhelming environment,
reeking of foreign pheromones, wheezing uncontrollably, and otherwise giving
every indication it was on death’s door.
Realizing
this, I forced myself to pull together, clipping back my breathing as much as
my furiously jumping heart would allow, and squaring my defeated posture into
stitch-aggravating shape.
I
was pretty sure I wasn’t in immediate danger at this point. The Rex was still
hanging back cautiously, and She was far enough away yet, I reckon I had the
agility on Her to dive away if She changed Her mind on that stance.
That
being said, I’d garnered enough oxygen back by this point that every fiber of
my self-conscious was now quickly shifting its interest from protesting our
uncharacteristic exertion to the imploring reflex to turn and run. It stood to
reason, I acknowledged, oddly detached; no matter what end of the stick Fortuna
had gotten back at the office, I was definitely not equipped for whatever kind
of hellish situation this actually was, the mere thought of the silhouette I
cut squared off against this impossible primal force armed with naught but my
already-battered wits and some stupid axe, as nausea-inducing as it was
laughable.
I
was a bit too taxed to fully escape the Rex’s enthralling dominance, though,
before another train of thought muscled its way through to contention, largely
comprising the imagined figment of a bus of hypothetical orphans stalled
conveniently around the corner.
That’s
another problem I have; I’m actually rather more given to the whole stupid
chivalrous, protector shtick than I’m entirely comfortable copping to, and
chances to exercise a bit of proper heroism are actually remarkably hard to
come by in today’s society. Sure, in this exact scenario with no one
immediately around, there’d probably be a pretty convincing argument to be made
that I’d be working primarily for the benefit of my own ego, but, crafty son of
a bitch that it is, it came back ready
with the counter that if I did duck out now, only to find out there was bus of
actual orphans later, I’d never be able to let myself live it down.
All
that to say, in the grand scheme of things, I actually tend to think of myself
as generally pretty expendable, and at least I can more or less take care of
myself in a “feet on the ground” situation. So, while I certainly wasn’t
qualified to handle A GIANT FUCKING DINOSAUR, I’d be damned if anyone else for
the last 65 million years really was either. Barring, of course, some
conspiratorially astronomical blanket pulled over the eyes of pretty well the
entire populous obscuring my knowledge of this elite class of dinosaur
wranglers.
I
tried not to picture a giant white sheet draped ceremoniously over an
unmistakable, flexing theropodian silhouette.
Temporarily
shelfing that troubling reflection, I made a decision and reluctantly flipped
the manual override on the “flight” half of my adrenal instincts, starting
instead to fire through everything I knew about Tyrannosaurs Rex.
I’ve
got this theory, closest thing I have to any kind of business model or life
philosophy: Know your opponent.
Sounds
pretty straightforward when you dumb it down to that level of catchiness, but
frankly I’m amazed the extent to which people seem oblivious or willfully
ignorant this basic kernel: You throw them any little bit of conflict and all
rationally is the first casualty thrown out the window. Shit just gets all
persecuted and self-centered, and their adversary is trivialized.
Which
is pretty much the stupidest thing you can do. Throw punches blindly, and
you’re bound to get some busted knuckles.
I
try to make a point about doing things differently, guess that’s why I’m at
least not complete shit as a PI. The most important thing is sussing out the other
guy. Figure out who he is and what makes him tick; where he’s coming from and
what he’s trying to get from it. What kinda context and motivations is he
bringing into this?
Figure
that out, and you’ve got him, before you even go in. You play the man: It
doesn’t matter if it’s a drunken fist fight, or a philandering partner.
Or
a Tyrannosaurus Fucking Rex.
I’m
hardly an expert, but I’ll admit to an appropriate appetite for those things
terrible and lizard-y, and I’ve picked
up enough tidbits through my paleontologically-baiting title to be getting on
with.
I
was fairly confident saying, then, that despite Hollywood’s panderingly
theatrical insistence, She was almost certainly an opportunistic hunter. She
might take some stabs at bigger game, if it was obvious enough, and could
certainly handle Herself in a fight if it came down to it, but probably got by
more regularly on cred: Bully your way to the top of the scavengers line, and
don’t waste the calories it’d take to nab that lone, elusive, person-sized
mammal.
As
long as I didn’t walk into Her unsuspecting jaws, then, it shouldn’t take too
much to convince Her I was more trouble than I was worth.
A
“herd” of defenseless humans would be an entirely different matter though, and
I somehow suspected the university powers that be would fail to see a couple of
“weak or straggling” students picked of the edge of the crowd as acceptable
links lost to the food chain.
When
you frame it that way, it’s pretty obvious what I had to do.
A
vague notion was rattling its way through the back of my knowledge base that
the Rex lived predominantly in plains and swamps, and the chorus of car alarms
haunting Her path through the town seemed to support the notion that the
narrow, tree lined residential streets would serve to funnel Her toward the
most open route She could find.
That
is Main Street.
As
in, now She’d found it, She could either turn, and follow it straight into the
open snack bar that is campus, or She could keep coming toward me and the
all-but-deserted-for-the-day industrial district.
Another
grinding step in my direction seemed to drive the point home.
She
clearly was put out by the unfamiliarity, largely engrossed in feeling it out,
so assuming that a century or two of scrupulous study weren’t completely off
base, I was actually in with a better shot than I might normally expect.
“Try
telling that to Godzilla over there,” snapped my common sense irritably, but I
quickly suppressed it, as it seemed was fast becoming habit, consciously
channeling the energy to a plan instead.
Wasn’t
much of one to be fair, but I figured I basically just had to make sure She
stayed in curiosity mode: Toe that fine line between keeping Her occupied and
getting eaten, and we should theoretically be able to walk right out of here.
Just so long as I didn’t do something stupid to make Her feel threatened and
revert into fight mode, it might even work…
And
so it was that I did my best possible Steve Irwin, waving my arms about in
front of me in time to Her slow rhythm, and taking a decisive step backwards at
the precise moment two of the new charger patrol cars bounced into the street
behind us, fishtailing sideways as the drivers momentarily forgot the road with
the sudden realization of the Rex.
The
rear car caught the first sharply in the back fender, and the resultant
lurching crunch shattered the mesmerized stillness, the cutting siren wailing
and harsh strobic lights surging into aggravating focus through the cracks.
My
body seemed to catch on to the implication of this development before my mind
had fully caught up, jumping forward with a sharp shout trying desperately to
keep Her attention, but it was already too late.
The
riders in the first car were out and shielded behind their doors, pistols
trained and firing, and those from the second quickly joined after reversing to
a less prone position in the alley.
The
Rex pivoted to face the assault, arching Her tail and neck up toward Her center
of mass to complete the motion with a curdling, snapping swiftness. She landed
the maneuver planting Herself low and opening Her jaw wide in a menacing
display of Her teeth, spittle and pungent mist propelled from Her gullet with
powerfully threatening gnucking barks She roared out at them.
She
continued to play up the display from a cautious distance, bristling the
feathers at Her neck into an intimidating mane, and running Her bellows through
disturbingly alien tonal range as She bobbed Her torso up and down, stamping
Her feet with enough chaotic force to thankfully dispel my reflexive reaction
to run up and start hacking at Her legs with the ax.
There
wasn’t any use engaging in the fight now it had been determined; there was only
one way that would end, and the odds weren’t coming back in mankind’s favor.
Brute force was out: if I was going to have any hope in this now, I’d have to
out play Her.
Chapter 3
I
allowed myself another brooding beat, before finally trumping my natural
inclination and turning my back on the fight and screaming metal corresponding
to the Rex’s first offensive lunge. Taking the first few lethargic strides of a
light canter, I frantically threw my eyes around the dark street for
inspiration.
I’d
almost forgotten about Fortuna with all the excitement, and my shot nerves
returned an embarrassing shock when she flitted up to my side, far more quickly
and lightly than any normal person had any right to.
I
just had a quick view of her pale face before I pulled ahead, her falling
instep beside me, but it was enough to see the word “plan” forming on her
ponderous lips, so I quickly preempted her, letting my usual placeholder anger
swell to mask my own floundering indecision.
“Can’t
you call those dickwits off before they completely fuck everything?” I snapped
irritably, with a thumb back toward what I tried not to think was left of the
patrolmen.
I
didn’t wait for her to respond, continuing more thinking out loud than for her
actual benefit, “Tyrannosaurs had a reasonably large brain, probably fairly
evolved for a dinosaur, but She’s still gonna be running pretty primal
programming. Plus She’s obviously built to stand, fight, and win when push
comes to shove, so you now your boys have triggered survival mode, we’re pretty
well fucked.
“So
million dollar question: you’re basically the Cretaceous version of a tank,
what trumps survival on your scale of priorities? The obvious answer would be
sex, but I somehow doubt you guys have got a full size Rex suit lying around,
and even if you did, I’m not volunteering to—”
I
trailed of as I saw it, and it finally all came to me.
There’s
an actually-pretty-sizable meat packing plant buried in the middle of the
industrial district, and I recognized their logo on the small box truck parked
half a block away.
An
inspired burst of speed saw us close enough to note the padlock barring the
back, but it was pretty small and had seen better days, so painlessly yielded
to a pair of well-placed blows from the back of the ax, landed in quick
succession before Fortuna even had a chance to protest.
I
popped the latch, and any further argument was instantly washed away with a
familiar overpowering wave of iron and damp collapsing out on us.
“Bingo,”
I muttered softly, taking quick stock of the various boxes and contained
miscellanea before jogging lightly toward the driver’s seat, Fortuna wordlessly
peeling around the other side.
The
axe was poised to follow the suit of the lock with the window, but at the last
second I caught the top sliver of a glare from Fortuna peeking over through the
windows, the reproachful eyebrows pausing me long enough for her to grab the
door handle and prove the cab unlocked.
I
grunted conciliatorily as I followed her up, wedging myself under the dash
before I could catch the full brunt of her condescending, and she gracefully
conceded her victory, limiting any response to the amusedly pursed lips,
skewing over to the side of her face.
Now
a good car jack could hotwire an old truck like this in under a minute; I
didn’t have any of my stuff, but I reckoned I could still do pretty well for
matching that time, properly motivated as I was. Even then, I was still worried
if it’d be enough, or if we’d already irrevocably lost the Rex’s attention.
I’d
already gruffly torn away the dash cover and was taking stock of the newly
exposed wires I had to work with, when a sharp jangling made me look up to see
Fortuna triumphantly shaking a set of keys pulled from the sun visor.
From
her haughty expression, you could tell I wasn’t going to get away scot free on
this one, but then she caught sight of my expression, her face paling to match
my look of dread and realization, because when I’d looked up, a set of taunting
keys wasn’t the only thing I’d seen.
I’d
also caught a brown and green flash in the rearview, bearing down on us over
the trademark “Objects in the mirror” bit.
Hardly
thinking, I shot a hand upward, grabbing the keys and fist that held them in
one go, mashing both into the ignition and turning as I brought my elbow down
to bear on the clutch.
Fortuna
couldn’t have seen Her coming, but she was smart enough to figure out what was
going on, and kept the torque on to engage the starter as I dropped my other
hand to gun the gas, popping the clutch to send us peeling forward not an
instant too late.
We
jumped the curb simultaneously with the jarring impact of the Rex slicing at
the side of the truck with Her teeth, and the combined force was nearly enough
to tip us over.
Fortuna
was on it though, jerking the wheel from the passenger’s seat sharply enough to
get all four wheels back on the ground, and I could feel us careening around
the sidewalk as she struggled to regain control.
I
kept the pressure on the gas, figuring a bit of fancy wheel work was well worth
the alternative, managing the shift to second as I pulled myself up toward a
proper seated position.
I
got as far as to get my eyes above the windshield, catching the first glimpse
of our trajectory just in time to see us angling straight for an old sedan as
we corrected back towards the road. I barely had time to even register the
impending collision, and my face slammed into the horn forcefully in time with
the blow.
We’d
caught the car squarely in the back axel, though, and the truck had the
momentum to carry us through. Another second or two, and I was able to shake
the cartoon birds from their orbit around my head and swallow the taste of
blood in my mouth, properly hoisting myself into the driver’s seat and pointedly
making the sullen shift to third as I steered into the clear road ahead.
A
quick roll of the tongue reassured me all my teeth were still in place, but a
hot splash on my arm told me the wet sinus pressure was my nose bleeding as
well, and I wiped it gingerly on the back of my sleeve, not needing a mirror to
know I was making a proper horror show of my face.
I
hazarded the glance regardless, and was able to at least sate the jolting
nerves ignited by the suddenness of the contact, with the confirmation that the
Rex was well behind us.
“Not
sure how fast these things run,” I admitted once the shock had worn off enough
to let the silence brood into awkward contention, “That was a quick turnaround,
though, I want to get a bit of distance on Her before we get stuck with it that
close again.”
Fortuna
stared ponderously out the window, and the pause made up its ground, humming
along to the engine with enough vengeance that I was sure she was too shaken to
rise to the conversation, and made my peace with the silence.
But
then she spoke, suddenly breaking its hold with a hard confidence that caught
me off guard.
“Her?”
I
didn’t immediately track, still slowed in my own ruminations, but she clarified
before I had to ask.
“You
said ‘Her,’ it’s a female?”
It
was still distant, and I could recognize her compartmentalizing the shock and
rawness of the situation behind the forced nonchalance of the query.
“Don’t
know,” I offered, more softly probably than I’d been up to this point,
continuing the lethargic pace of the conversation.
“So
then why’d you say ‘Her’?” she asked, seizing on the lower stakes of the
banter.
It
was my turn to pause, then, revving down the red lining turmoil of my
subconscious to consider my response.
“A
proper Freudian would probably say it was indicative of my fucked up
relationship with my folks informing my perception of gender roles and
identities,” I let that hang, “but really it’s because of Jurassic Park.”
My
humor’s probably optimistically off colour in the best of times, and could tell
it was out of place in the high-strung, trip-wire tension of the cab. As it
was, I was fast becoming uncomfortable with that personal of an insight hanging
in the fizzling space left by the conversation.
I
made a show of checking the mirror again, and was dissatisfied to see how far
back our pursuer had fallen.
“I’m
worried She’s going to lose interest,” I said, casually rolling down the
window, “Do you know the plant this truck is from.”
She
didn’t answer right away, but I took confirmation from the slow glimpse of
recognition as she parsed out the information.
“Great,”
I said, casually slipping the axe to my hand poised outside the car, and
shifting my frame in my seat, “Take the wheel, I’m going to lay some bread
crumbs.”
Chapter 4
It’s
actually a fair sight to see a guy my size haul himself through a car window,
but I’m surprisingly practiced at dumb shit like that. Trick is to get
your center of gravity up over the roof, after that it’s just a matter of
dragging your fat ass up after you. That said, there was a dicey moment with
the corresponding jerk as Fortuna grabbed the wheel, but I was able to torque
myself back up and complete my hop to the cab roof with a definitive push.
I
felt a swatting at my feet as they disappeared out the window, along with some
undistinguishable admonition from Fortuna below, but I successfully ignored it,
posing for a minute on the roof as I collected myself.
It
had dropped a couple of degrees since we started out, or at least I was more
aware of the autumnal chill juxtaposed to the heat of exercersion fogging up
the tightness of the cab, and I was content to sit and adjust as the night
washed over me.
The
cold felt good needling into my face and exposed skin with the speed of the
car: There was something about the raw physicality of it that was centering
after the monumental-impossibility-of-a-mindfuck this evening had turned out to
be, and even if I still wasn’t much more able to process any of it, I could
feel my mind clearing.
My
nose had slowed, too, but was still bleeding, several red drops whisking away
to disappear into the dark behind us. It was starting to smart now my senses
had had a chance to catch up to me, and I ran my facial muscles through their
paces trying to get a feel for it.
Was
possible it wasn’t even broken. Maybe…
On
that thought, I decided I’d treated myself to enough pissing about, and made to
make my way down the roof.
Turning,
I got a good look at the damage She had caused, and honestly, I’d be lying if I
said it wasn’t at least slightly alarming given the brevity of the contact. I
was careful, therefore, to steer well clear of the jagged slashes of twisted
metal spiking up around the corner of the roof as I slid down to the back,
keeping low with as much contact as I could get to maintain my friction against
the dewy momentum of air rushing over us.
It
seemed the rear doors have must have swung shut in one of our dicey maneuvers
or another, but with the axe extended I had the reach on the latch to get it
back open in a couple of fishing attempts. Luckily the hit had been in the
center of the box, so the frame wasn’t too twisted for the doors to swing open,
and a length of straightaway gave me the window to grab the back ledge and drop
myself in, swinging forward with enough momentum to send me pin-balling around
the cargo.
Once
I’d composed myself enough from that landing to get my
jumpy-truck-suspension-legs, I was finally at a vantage to observe the rex
properly for the first time, and I took maybe a full minute just to study her.
She
could actually put on a fair pace in a straight bearing; nothing approaching
Hollywood’s red-lining, flat-out car chase speed, of course, but enough you
would probably be in trouble on foot. The corners, though, were a different
matter: It seemed balancing Her bi-pedal stance cost a lot of momentum at each
sharp direction change, making a for a distinct hit to Her agility at speed
It
was definitely something we might be able to use in ultimately setting up a
trap—granted I had no idea how as of yet—but in our immediate baiting capacity
it was going to be increasingly more problematic as we began to weave into the
circuitous fabric of the district toward our destination, and it informed my
strategy in implementing the next stage of my “plan.”
Again,
pretty loose definition of the term, but to be fair still wasn’t exactly rocket
science. You might say I was a bit inspired by the finally-abating drops from
my nose dotting my path wherever I went a-là Family Circus, but the gist was
basically I figured if we were supposedly playing an injured bit of prey, we
should look the part. Now, I was actually pretty pleased with Her stamina in
keeping up so far, all things considered, but in the mindset of appealing to a
scavenger, I figured we could make our Hansel and Gretel game a bit more
enticing.
I
was aiming for “dino-sized” drops of blood, which is basically to say I’d grab
a box of meat, chop at it a bit with the axe to get the juices flowing, chuck
it out the back, and repeat ever hundred meters or so, concentrating my efforts
around the bends. I was aiming for enough to keep Her interested, but not so
interest that she’d cut Her losses and stop for the snack. It appeared to be
working. Or at least as far as I could tell…
At
any rate, it paced out damn near prefect, and I went ahead and dumped the last
couple boxes as we rounded the last bend coming up to the plant, leaving just a
pair of plastic drums containing a soup of indistinguishable blood and innards
I didn’t want to think too much about for fear of being put off sausages for
life. Which was just as well, I had plans for them.
We’d
been gaining steadily on the Rex pretty well the whole trip, and there were a
series of sharp turns in quick succession leading onto the street, so I didn’t
have eyes on her anymore, but I was happy for a bit of leeway to actually get
into the plant, so contented myself with the still audible signs of pursuit
that my trail was performing as intended.
On
my first attempts with the tough plastic barrels, the axe just skipped off, so
I reverted to the time-honoured fall back of brunt ‘n’ elbow grease to tip them
into the back. Bit messier to be sure, but at least it served as a
gag-inducingly odiferous proof of concept that the truck should make an ample
mark for the olfactorially-inclined without my continued baiting. And suffice
it say, I needed a shower after all this anyways…
That
pleasant task complete, I planted myself on the driver’s side door, swinging
out into the view of Fortuna’s mirror and flashing the hand signal for “brake”
as we came up toward the plant gates.
I
let her slow to ten or fifteen miles per hour, then tossed the axe ahead of us
to free up my hands, dropping the six feet to the pavement to land in a tight
barrel roll.
I
pulled it off pretty well, successfully transferring my momentum into the
finishing hop to my feet, but in hindsight it was maybe not the best idea after
a recent head/face injury, and I staggered for a couple paces as I regained my
equilibrium, scooping up the axe as I angled back for the truck.
Fortuna
must have stood on the brakes when I dropped, the back wheels fishtailing to a
stop as I rounded on it.
“ARE
YOU FUCKING CRAZY?” she yelled, sticking her head out the window to preempt me.
“Very
possibly,” I replied nonchalantly before she could go off anymore, doing my
best to shrug off my retreating dizziness, but betrayed by the fact the rush
had started my nose off again, “Try being a kid growing up on an army base in
Africa; you pull stunts like that for fun.”
Shifting
tracks, I continued, trying to reinstate some semblance of authority, “Anyways,
Love, I was thinking; You take the truck on ahead and lead Her around the
block, while I see if I can’t get this gate open?”
“’Fi’,”
she corrected, once again taking me aback, “Friends call me ‘Fi.’”
“Random
business acquaintances usually call me some variation of ‘Mann’,” I offered in
response, somewhat miffed this is what we were spending our hard-won lead on.
She
didn’t take it well: We were definitely going have to work on this humour
thing.
“Sanjay,”
I amended, “To say I have friends may be stretch, but you can call me Sanjay.”
It
was a real bonding moment. Needless to say, then, there followed an extremely
awkward beat, as the introduction hung unresolved and I was painfully aware of
the lost seconds slipping away, but somehow unable to move the conversation
forward. Finally, Fortuna took the initiative to extend an uncomfortably-angled
hand out the window, and I dubiously wiped the meat-slop and nose-blood from my
own to complete the shake.
“So
what do you say, Fi?” I said, sealing the gesture, “Hopefully those barrels I
loosed back there are pungent enough to keep Her on you, but I’d still say you
could let her get pretty close, if you were comfortable with it; give me a
chance to see what we’re working with in there…”
“I
don’t know, Sanjay,” she said uncertainly, “Couldn’t we just ram the gates?”
I
gave a humourless laugh, “They really do have you lot watching too many action
movies, don’t they? This isn’t your grandma’s chain link fence: It’s proper
industrial grade. Granted a clunker this size probably could make it through you
get it going fast enough, but that sorta thing doesn’t exactly come off so
cleanly in real life…”
“If
you say so,” she conceded, still sounding unconvinced, but swayed with a crash
not far in the distance, “So, I guess, god-speed, or whatever?”
That
one got a genuine laugh from me, “God-speed, or whatever.”
I swear I caught her smiling slightly as she
drove off.
Chapter 5
Back
on my own, I got to it pretty quickly. The padlock on the gates was a couple
categories and a league above the affair from the truck, so there wasn’t much
hope of me getting through it with much less than blow torch, but that didn’t
bother me too much at this stage.
I
tossed the axe over the fence before me and spread my jacket along the barbed
wire, letting the razor edges scar the leather rather than my flesh and
organs as I pushed off, locking my
elbows at the top to lift myself over
This
was probably the diciest part of the entire affair. Afterall, the whole point
of the plan was that meat packing plant would present a pretty enticing target
for the Rex, so I was definitely a bit nervous She’d get side tracked now we’d
brought so close and come on in before I could get the party started. I’d been
pleased to see some of the slop splashing out the back as the truck peeled off,
though, leaving a dripping trail just as effective as my more intentional
efforts.
Not
to mention, another of those Tyrannosaurs tidbits I’ve apparently amassed: You
know a those stats about sharks being able to smell a drop of blood a mile
away, or something equally ridiculous? Supposedly the Rex’s sniffer was orders
of magnitude stronger than that.
Ok,
so maybe that’s an exaggeration, but even so, if I could still smell the stuff,
She must be going apeshit.
…Or
it might be I was just catching the scent of my own inundated clothes. Either
way, I sunk back behind the fence doing my damnedest to blend into the shadows.
In
the end I needn’t have worried. Between that sappy Sesame Street shit with
Fortuna and the fence, it was only a matter of seconds before the Rex rounded
the corner and came charging by, dead set on the invisible path of the truck,
going strong as ever as far as I could tell.
So, in others words, I’d
successfully bought myself some time, and now it was really on as I made use of
it.
A line of windows off to the side of
the main warehouse betrayed the plant offices, and I figured that was probably
a fair bet of where to start. Plus I needed some way in, after all, and I was
inclined to say we’d already wasted too much time to play around with something
as unreliable as lock picking…
I
gotta say: Axes man. I don’t know why we’re not more about these things: Hardly
even had to break step…
Almost
instantly a sharp, splitting siren melded in with the breaking glass, but it
didn’t take too much to tune it out, and I happened to have it the police force
was rather better occupied this evening. Plus I think I was safe in saying the
best case scenario meant this whole night was pretty much already a write off
for the plant's insurance anyways, and with a bit of luck the noise would
serve to further lure the Rex in once Fortuna had played goose long enough to
bring our chase to fruition.
It
was probably too much to hope for to have some blatant peg board of keys
hanging labeled on the wall once I’d picked enough of the bigger shards out of
the way to hop through to the dimly lit space beyond, so I wasn’t too
disappointed when it wasn’t that easy. As it was, I was already starting to
reconsider the simplistic bait and switch of just “getting Her to the plant”
and calling it quits: An animal that size, the fence really wasn’t going to
pose much of an impediment.
No,
if this “trap” was going to be worth its effort, we really needed to get Her
inside, where the veritable smorgas inherent in operations would hopefully
couple with the whole “four walls and a roof” solidity enough to occupy
Her while we worked out something a bit
more permanent.
I
devoted a couple seconds rooting through the desk for something to spring the
gate, therefore, but when it ultimately proved a fruitless effort, I headed for
the plant floor rather than wasting more time right now on something that might
not even be a sure thing.
If everything went well, I’d only
need a bit extra time afterall, and Fortuna was smart. I had full confidence in
her to take care of herself; I’m sure she could figure something out to buy us
a bit more slack.
Even if she was a cop…
Even if she was a cop…
I added a bit more urgency to my
step.
There was a helpfully obvious button
paired to each of the rolling overhead bay doors, and I selected one that would
afford a good shot to the gate, punching at the switch to get the gears started
turning as I ran past.
I ramped up my momentum leading into
it, taking the clamorously protesting metal stairs three at time and rounding
toward the belt at nearly full speed, bodily tackling the nearest carcass to
tear it handily from its hook.
I’d hit it hard enough that it was
just a quick heave to throw it over the railing, landing in my new target zone
with a disturbing splat. I wasted no time with a second, manually lifting and
dragging it over to follow suit.
It
was a bit slower, but my adrenaline kept pace for me to repeat the process
another half dozen times, till I was satisfied I had a large enough pile of
meat in my “kill” to be properly incentivizing.
Now
it was just time for my pièce de résistance. If you thought those barrels were
effective, this was really going to blow the doors off.
Best
guess in the brief seconds I had eyes on it running up here, was it was some
sort of settling tank: Sits at the end of the draining troughs following the
meat’s track through the conveyor and lets the nastier bits of effluent sink
down out of the way as the less exciting liquids are skimmed off the top.
Should make for a damn pretty cherry on top my rex sundae, in other words…
There
was a forklift on the main floor, parked in the back by a section of tall
shelves, and I didn’t waste time backtracking, opting instead to keep running
straight toward it, vaulting over the railing onto the mast once I was close
enough to make the jump, before climbing down into the seat as it stopped
swaying.
The
controls were familiar enough, and I brought it around full speed, haphazardly
skewering the tank as I slammed into it, thick, pungent ooze seeping out past
the forks. It easily lifted free of the works with the benefit of heavy
machinery, and I was slightly more careful as I maneuvered it into position
over my macabre pile, trying to avoid the spew from the tank painting the
machinery at every step.
I
poised for the drop, when I heard the undeniable peeling of someone leaning on
a horn floating in out of the mist, resonating its way eerily into contention
over the trill of the security siren.
Shit.
I was out of time. And the gates were still shut.
I
left the lift in position, running out to see if I could wave Fortuna around
again while I did a more thorough search of the offices.
You
gotta hand it to the kid; you tell her to let the Rex get close, she really
takes it to heart.
Chapter 6
An
airy fog had started to roll in since we set off, and I saw the conic swaths of
the headlights first, slicing jaggedly through the night heralding their
return.
A
second later the truck exploded into view around the corner, tires screaming
and suspension pushed to the very edge of tipping as Fortuna slammed it around
into the home stretch. And then, of course, came the real show stopper, my
precognition evidently not enough to prevent a momentarily flash of goosebumped
paralysis as the stretching, yearning bite-personified bolted into focus after
it, lingering no more than a meter behind the back of the roof.
The
truck gained back a bit as Fortuna gunned into the final run, clearly pushing
the accelerator through floor, eking out every last drop of pull the engine had
to offer in the race against sinewy muscle and flesh.
I
could see the determination in her face as she waved frantically for me to
steer clear, bracing as they closed in on the gap, still accelerating.
I
was helpless to do anything but watch in enthralled dismay as grill met
reinforced metal, everything blurring to slow motion as the cab and gate
crumpled into each other, the whole front end of the truck lifting into the air
with the sudden transfer of momentum.
It
seemed to hang suspended for a still heartbeat, as the hinges and bolts finally
gave up the fight, pitching the contorted mass forward at a precarious angle,
before the furious, unadulterated mass of dinosaur slammed into it from behind.
The tangible force rammed the truck over the brink, pushing it through the
fence onto its side to skid a further ten meters along the pavement like it
weighed no more than so much cardboard.
The
Rex became entangled slightly in the fence in the sudden opening, giving me a
fraction of a second to process everything that had just happened and figure
out what to do jumping off from it.
Of
course, that derelict hero streak I mentioned earlier was really digging in its
claim now, seizing on the guilty notion that it was pretty much my fault
Fortuna was now pinned in a situation a hell of a lot closer to the literal,
gallant damsel-in-distress scenario than I ever thought I’d find myself as a
realistic self-respecting member of the twenty-first century, and it was hard to
focus on anything more objectively rational than the primal urge to run out
there, crack the cab open, and drag her out of there like some kind of
big-budget action hero.
With
a snarl of breath, I recalled the ill-advisedness of direct confrontation, though,
forcing myself to think smart and get back into the mindset of a Tyrannosaurs
Rex.
I’d
put in enough damned work convincing the thing the truck was prey, after all, I
could hardly kick myself now when She went about acting like she’d just made
her kill.
I
quickly cued up a mental picture of a Rex standing over some fallen dinosaur,
the bloody-jawed image of the tyrant lizard king, overlaying it onto the modern
carnage of the plant and everything I had to work with, and slowly cracked a
deranged grin to myself.
I
could still make the trap work, get the Rex into the plant, and away from
Fortuna and the truck. How do you pull an apex scavenger away from its kill?
What
I needed, was a challenger.
Chapter 7
I
picked up a lot questionable skills growing up around my old man’s buddies, but
one of the most objectively useful has to be the art of the wolf-whistle.
Now,
I stuck two fingers in my mouth, and gave one of the loudest, longest piercing
shrills of my life, looking the Rex dead in the eye as She pulled herself free
from the twisting remains of fence.
I
doubt She could register intent coming from something so foreign as a human
face, but none-the-less I packed as much menace into the look as I safely could
without burning my eyeballs out of their sockets, and the glare hung charged
between us in the echoing hollow left as the whistle faded off, until some
unspoken drop of the hat broke the tension, the Rex ducking toward the truck in
time to me diving off toward my pile where I’d left the forklift.
I
immediately dropped the tank with a booming crash, unleashing an assailing,
inconstruable wall that slammed into every one of my senses just as forcibly as
the physical wave of surge spilling out into the crevasses of the pile and my
unprotected cab alike.
I
was already to the door when the full force of the gag reflex hit me, but my
stomach fortunately proved strong enough for me to shake it off, as I steered
wildly into the stretch of paved no-man’s land to confront the Rex.
As
I’d hoped, the percussive impact of the tank falling had caught Her attention,
and She was already looking up as I brought the lift to a sliding halt a bit
out of reach, giving another splitting whistle.
It
seemed She may have already discovered the disappointment of the truck’s inner
emptiness, too, so I was fortunate enough to have Her full attention as I
jimmied the boom up and down, remembering Her challenging display with the
police cars, and doing my best to emulate it within the limits of the lift’s
mechanics.
Whether
She understood the concession in those terms I can’t say for sure, but it was
clear the Forklift was having the desired impression: I hazarded a quick dart
toward Her before pulling back several sharp meters, and She followed as surely
as if I had Her on a lead.
In
the seconds I was gone, She’d spun the truck around as She peeled into the back
cargo bay, so I couldn’t see into the cab anymore, but I kept it in the corner
of my eye as repeated the backtracking gesture, decisively leading the Rex on
my retreat toward the plant. It seemed a long time, but finally I was relieved
to see a pair of hands extend out of the upward facing window as a haggard but
determined looking Fortuna pulled herself from the wreck.
One
of her legs seemed to be messed up, held out at a telling angle, but she didn’t
let it slow her down, hardly hesitating to make the heavy jump to the ground
below. I let out a final, triumphant whistle, before determining I had the Rex
close enough now, spinning in through the door and beelining for the pile.
I
came around on the far side of it, so that the carcasses were between me and
Her, lowering the boom into the thick of the meat to make sure the tank wasn’t
blocking anything, and splashing the forks about enough that it was clear this
is what we were talking about.
I
could tell I had her now. As She bore down into the room, I slowly backed away
from my figurative red X, stopping 5 meters away and raising the carriage to a
moderate height I hoped would convey non-threatening inquisitiveness.
I
held my breath as She slowly paced forward, doing that unnerving waving-head
thing to keep me in Her sight. Finally she stopped directly over the pile, and
I could hear my heart drumming in my ribcage as everything froze into Her consideration
of the moment: It seemed impossibly slow.
This
was the closest we had been, by a long shot, and I could practically feel Her
breath, seemingly the only stirring of the unmoving air. Finally, she cocked
Her head sideways, pointing one beady eye directly toward the simmering mass
for a beat, before dipping Her jaw slightly down toward it.
That
was all I needed.
I
finally exhaled, lowering the boom almost to the floor in concession and
reversing, slowly at first, but picking up speed as the distance between us
gained.
I
didn’t immediately notice how narrowed in my focus had become in the tension,
and I was hardly watching where I was going as I pushed into full speed, still
only concerned with getting away from those teeth.
I
was clumsy backing in amongst the tight rows of shelves in the back, and
ricocheted hard between two of them as I let up off the accelerator far too
late, splitting a shelf on one side to send a landslide of heavy boxes raining
down on me.
Even
I can’t take 25 kilos directly to the (now-definitely broken) nose unfazed, and
I lost a couple of seconds to the flashing cycles through white and black of
cerebral-degauss before my vision began to tunnel back into watery clarity.
I
remember noticing several fleeting, inconsequential oddities in my immediate
bubble before turning my attention outward and immediately realizing something
was wrong in some still functioning back corner of my mind.
It
took me much longer to identify what, however, that little red flag was, as I
struggled to train my vision to the space ahead. I was having trouble focusing
my eyes on one spot, and was momentarily distracted with the comical impression
that the panning jumping of the scene was the film slipping on the projection
of my universe, before I realized what was off as I finally registered a green
and brown silhouette looming swimmily out of the cross-eyed blur of night
toward me.
That
brought me back into the game pretty quickly, as I sat back upright, trying to
figure out why She hadn’t stopped at the “carcass.”
She
was doing the waving thing with Her head again too. Why did that bother me so
much?
I
pushed it from my mind, desperately fighting back distractions and pain, toying
with the idea it had been the sound of my less-than-graceful braking “strategy”
that had pulled Her away, when it finally hit me—The swaying head bothered me,
because Tyrannosaurs Rex, like humans or birds of prey, had binocular vision:
This dinosaur’s eyes, however, were spaced off to the side of its head for the
less precise, further reaching panoramic peripheries of pigeons or deer. Hence
the swaying, perhaps to widen the overlap and hack some added depth out of the
monocular set up in a zeroed in scenario like this.
The
realization prompted a memory, much deeper than the causal college and business
tidbits I’d been drawing from in my profile, of a rare recreational trip in my
childhood to a natural history museum, and a pair of enrapturing sculls
illustrating a subtle distinction.
Gulping
at my suddenly dry mouth, I looked critically at what I had taken for granted
before: the side-looking eyes; the narrow, streamlined skull; longer arms than
you would expect; three fingers, instead of two…
This
wasn’t a Tyrannosaurs Rex; this was Giganotosaurs.
Chapter 8
The
difference, in many respects, was inconsequential for our intents and purposes:
We had, after all, been generally pretty successful in our premises in baiting
Her here. One little hiccup, however, which it seemed may not skip over the
transgression, regarded my slapdash strategy of introducing the “challenger.”
A
last ditch effort to be sure, but even in my split second cobbling of the plan,
I had been playing it to the scavenger Rex; Giganotosaurs, however, was a
hunter. I didn’t know how discerning Her olfactory acuity was in tracking, but
if you thought about it, the only fresh blood She’d smelled tonight was mine.
And to drive the point home, my nose sure was pissing the stuff out now, like
some demonic fire hydrant.
More
importantly, She had 30 million years less evolution than I’d been banking on,
with a drastically smaller brain. Tyrannosaurs, by all accounts, was highly
sophisticated, able to prioritize stimuli, and I’d intentionally painted a
familiar situation to that mentality, establishing myself as some smaller
competitor, and bowing to Her dominance when She’d pushed in to take over the
kill. Roll that same interaction back to Giganoto, and you had a very different
story. We’re talking banana sized brain here—for an animal the size of a bus.
She was going to be much more one track.
And
I’d just pulled out all the stops in setting that track to “Challenger Fight
mode.”
From
the looks of it, I’d done a pretty damn good job too…
I
recognized the whole stamping and bobbing routine from Her “fight” with the
cops earlier, and I could tell from the increased speed and tone of Her bugles
that She was nearing the end of Her caution, already lowering Her center of
mass and increasing Her speed toward me as she made to charge.
Chapter 9
I’ve
nearly died scores of times. Some misses were a hell of a lot closer than
others, but suffice it to say it’s not exactly a new feeling for me. My usually
response when I realize I’ve gotten myself into some situation idiotic enough
to be boned is pretty undistinguishable from anger, giving me an extra spurt of
resolve to stop wussing out and power through it.
This
time I didn’t get that. Maybe it was because I’d been through so much already
this evening that my adrenal gland was completely tapped. Or maybe it was just
that this time, I knew, deep down, I really was fucked.
The
lift had come to rest grinding up against the undamaged shelf, and the cascade
from the opposite was pressing in from the other side, pinning me in place, and
literally boxing me into the cage, so I really had nowhere to go.
I
watched the final seconds as She committed, opening Her jaw and rushing in past
the point of no return. I wasn’t treated to my life flashing before my eyes, or
some wash of inner peace, or any of the other usual stereotypes either. I
stared down the impending gullet and thought…nothing. The only thing going
through my head was that spinning wheel over a frozen, unformulated away
message to the gist of “That’s all folks.”
*****
It
took me a pretty long time to realize it hadn’t played out like it inevitably
ought to have.
I
noticed the ringing in my ears first: which is weird; in retrospect I have no
recollection of ever hearing the explosion of the shell going off—just its
aftermath.
Sometime
after that, I finally registered the impossible hole, giving me a view clear
through the suddenly lifeless body of the dinosaur within spitting distance
from my face.
Maybe
it’s physically impossible that it would have timed out like this, but I swear
I first saw the tank through that hole, for a split instant, like some kind of
fucked up doughnut. Then She crumpled, and got a full view to the small hoard
of soldiers running into position on the flanks of the machine, its smoking
barrel trained directly at me.
Shit.
I
guess I should just be glad someone’s first reaction when they get an off-hours
phone call telling them there’s a “situation” and to bring their “equipment”
isn’t to take the piss…
*****
Chapter 10
Everything was pretty chaotic
afterwards, and it mostly just blended into one big indistinguishable blur. As
well as the fucking army apparently, there was what must have been close to the
entire police force, milling about uncertainly in the lot once they’d cordoned
off the site. Others came soon enough, several government agencies quickly
represented, and a small contingent of reporters eventually fringing the
periphery. Last to arrive were a pair of
helicopters, interminably circling the area.
No saying to whom they owed their
alliance, but I bet there were at least a couple higher-ups in the loop
somewhere tonight who were pissing themselves with relief that we’d managed to
get Her indoors out of the public eye.
I’d gotten scoped up pretty early by
a paramedic, so didn’t get a chance to confer at all with Fortuna, but I had view
of her in another ambulance across the way from the truck where the paramedic
planted me down. She looked alright, everything considered, the bad leg propped
awry in some of their kit, but that seeming to be the worst of it.
She saw my watching, and pulled a
cartoonish face at me in reaction to the medics’ attentions.
I chuckled a bit, and was sure to
return a few grimaces of my own in the windows of respite from my own
caretaker’s efforts.
He hit the big notes first off,
evidently appeasing himself with the age old presidential-flashlight tests that
I hadn’t suffered too much brain damage, and largely shooed away from my other
maladies.
My own knee was a bit screwy from
sitting ten minutes under an avalanche of frozen meat, and heavens knew I had
more than an evening’s worth of cuts and bruises, but I like to think I know my
body pretty well, and didn’t seem like anything a couple of aspirin and good
week’s sleep wouldn’t take care of.
I did let him at my nose though,
even my stubborn machoism having to concede it was well beyond my honed
policies of medical negligence. I braced myself as he set it, this time ready
for the seconds lost driving through the pain of it.
“Man, your some tough stuff, aren’t
you,” he joked, “Hardly even blinked at that!”
I grunted some non-verbal response,
noticing, as I recollected my vision, that Fortuna was now blocked from my view
by a confused throng of foreboding officials. I let him finish bandaging up my
face in silence—real silence I noticed suddenly; someone must have finally
managed to shut the siren off—and then, after some final insisting I didn’t
need him poking about with anything else, gladly jumped on his suggestion that
he needed to go confer with the other team.
It took a couple more assurances I’d
stay put to finally get him to bugger off, but at last he left, and, after
serval seconds wait to confirm he’d made it far enough into the throng to be
lost, I wasted no time in jumping up, figuring I’d probably be happiest if
availed myself of the bureaucratic confusion to slip out unnoticed.
I didn’t feel too bad about ditching
just then; something this unprecedentedly fucked up would certainly take
another couple hours for them to get figured out enough to go about with things
as mundane as debriefing, and Fortuna knew where to find me.
As I’m sure they would.
I started off away from the crowd,
remembering at the last minute the axe left inside the office window, and was
pleased to see the spectacle of the dinosaur’s body was apparently still
maintaining adequate attention that the side wing was out of the way enough to
allow me a free shot for the detour. I scooped it up surreptitiously, smiling
as I tested it to be the perfect height for an impromptu cane, limping toward
the outside world. I made for a nice deserted corner of the complex to be sure
I lost the reporters, hopping back over the fence in what felt like an ironically
low key bookend to culminate the evening.
As I hobbled through the deserted
side streets back toward my apartment, I was struck for a long time with a
complete, hollow loss for how to process any of what had just transpired. As
the blocks ticked by, it felt like my mind was rebooting, “Recovering from an
unexpected shut down: Checking device systems—21% complete.
Perhaps predictably, anger, my root
kernel apparently, was one of the first things to return.
“For fucks sake! A fucking dinosaur!
A DINOSAUR!” I actually shouted aloud into the unhearing night, “Fuck.”
It was short lived, though, and a
second later I stopped in the middle of the street as a fit of racking laughter
came over me, crescendoing into the silence before choking off abruptly in
something almost bordering on a dry sob.
I really was getting too old for
this. Not even twenty seven, and already I was genuinely saying that.
A fucking dinosaur though! I think
you should be qualified to do a bit of that kind of bitching after showing down
a TYRANNOSAUR FUCKING REX. Alright, not tyrannosaur: won’t be making that
mistake again any time soon.
In all seriousness though, maybe it
was time I gave up the ghost and turned in the keys. I’d given it a good shot;
damn fair sight better, even, than I think anyone would have expected, least of
all me.
And cheap pun of a name or no, I
hardly signed on for fucking dinosaurs! I passed a happy couple of minutes
thinking of everything I could do with the burden of the business in the
rearview. Maybe I could follow after my old man and become a mercenary: Had to
be better than dinosaurs!
That’s when you know I’ve really
exhausted a tantrum, when I start throwing my old man any kind of legitimacy.
I let any sentience tapper off
there, just basking in the contented delirium for a while, relishing the numb
repetition of pain from my knee with every truncated stride and the blissful
wash of nipping, winter cold claiming the night.
Half mile of that I was finally
ready to come back to the sense of old habits. Could hardly judge the
profession on one off night, after all…
I distinguished the switch with a
heavy sigh.
Guess I’ll have to look up Fi about where to send my
bill.
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