There was a period about ten years ago when I was toying with the idea of writing a knock-off version of Jurassic Park just for funsies, but where the dinosaurs looked and behaved like actual animals rather than bloodthirsty monsters. I still like some of the ideas I had for it, but I don’t know if I’ll ever actually pick it up again.
They’d been sitting here for about fifteen minutes now, and Kevin was bored. There wasn’t much to do in the car, and he couldn’t get out and stretch his legs because of the rain. They were supposed to be back at the visitor center by now for dinner, but the tour cars had stopped when the power had gone out. Since they couldn’t move on their own, they were now stuck here for the time being.
Andrea, the tour guide, was in what would normally be the driver’s seat playing some sort of game on her phone, while Kevin’s little sister Lindsey leaned over her shoulder dispensing unsolicited advice. Gambini, the lawyer, was sitting in the front passenger seat staring out the window at the fence that ran along the edge of the road. Behind them sat the other car, with the paleontologists, Dr. Jones and Dr. Meyers. He wished he’d been allowed to ride back there with them. The tour guide was pretty, but he thought the cheerful act she put on was kind of annoying and she didn’t seem to actually know all that much about dinosaurs. Not only that, but Lindsey has getting on his nerves with her constant whining. He’d much rather be back there with the paleontologists, talking about dinosaurs. He wondered what they were talking about right now. Probably something interesting, he guessed.
“’Spared no expense’ my ass,” Rick Jones said into the mouth of his water bottle. After taking a swig, he continued grousing: “I’ll bet you anything the old man got these stupid things because he didn’t wanna shell out to have more gas shipped out here.”
“Well, at least they’re good for the environment,” said Preston Meyers.
“Preston, there’s no cameras here,” Jones said. “You can cut the bullshit.”
“What, I’m serious,” Meyers said.
Jones wanted to scream. He didn’t like Meyers. It wasn’t that the kid was a jerk or anything, he just rubbed him the wrong way. While they were both fairly well-known in the paleontological community, Meyers had managed to make a name for himself among the general public as well, hosting a variety of television documentaries on dinosaurs, regularly appearing on the children’s series Dinosaur Bus, and acting as a scientific consultant for the series The Lost World, which was a modernized, scientifically up-to-date take on the classic novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Jones had to admit that he’d done quite a lot in getting people interested in scientifically accurate dinosaurs, but something about the guy’s squeaky-clean, oh-so-perfect personality just got on his nerves. And now he was lecturing him on the environment? Ugh. What next, a warning to always practice safe sex and look both ways before crossing the street?
Heh. Speaking of which, he sure wouldn’t mind practicing a little safe sex with that tour guide up in the first car. Or some unsafe sex. Any kind of sex, really. He glanced sideways at Meyers and considered mentioning that, try to engage a little Guy Talk. Probably better not, he decided. He’d probably get all indignant, say something like “Dude, she’s a person.” God people like him were boring. If this car didn’t get moving again soon, Jones was going to strangle himself with his seatbelt.
Yep, Kevin thought. They must be discussing all sort of interesting dinosaur things. Maybe they were debating what this park meant for the future of paleontology. He knew it wouldn’t put them out of a job, but it would change the way everyone would look at dinosaurs forever. Even Kevin, who had grown up in the wake of the so-called Dinosaur Renaissance, had been blown away by just how strange the dinosaurs his grandfather had cloned were. He’d been expecting feathers on some species, but he’d never imagined how widespread they would be. Even the baby sauropods were fuzzy! Lindsey had complained, said fuzzy dinosaurs were lame, but Kevin thought it was amazing.
“There, get that! Get it! You’re gonna-…come on, get it!” Lindsey was practically jumping up and down, pointing at Andrea’s phone.
“I know what I’m doing!” Andrea said, moving her phone so Lindsey didn’t hit the touchscreen. “Quit backseat playing.”
“Well you suck at this,” Lindsey said.
“I’m on level thirty!”
“I bet I could do better.”
“Yeah, the last kid I let play on my phone tried to flush it down a toilet,” Andrea said. “Not gonna happen.”
“Awww,” Lindsey moaned. She was seven, and still getting used to the realization that the world didn’t exist to bend to her every whim.
Suddenly the lawyer spoke up. “Um, Miss Reed?” he said, pointing out the window. “What’s that?”
They all looked up where he was pointing. “Oh,” Andrea said. “The big guy finally decided to show up.”
Kevin had been disappointed to hear his grandfather’s park didn’t have a T. rex, but from where he sat the animal that had appeared on the other side of the fence looked just as impressive. It wasn’t quite as famous as Tyrannosaurus, but its large, pointed head and the thick, hump-like sail running down along the length of its back made it no less recognizable to him. “Acrocanthosaurus,” he said.
“That’s right” Andrea said with a smile, and Kevin tried not to blush. As the others watched, she reached over for the walkie-talkie on the dashboard. “Excuse me gentlemen,” she said to the other car, “but if you’ll look to your right, you should be able to see our Acrocanthosaurus.”
“We’re not in any danger, are we?” Gambini asked. “I mean, with the power out…”
“Oh no, we should be fine,” Andrea said. “The dinosaurs all learn pretty fast not to touch the fences, and even if they do get out we’re way too small to interest something that big.”
“Whoa,” Lindsey said quietly.
The dinosaur looked almost like a wall with legs. In the intermittent flashes of lightning Kevin could see it was covered with a short coat of hair-like feathers, almost like a lion. In the dark it was hard to tell what color it was, but he thought he saw a reticulated pattern decorating its sides. Probably to break up its outline when hunting in forests, he thought. As he watched the animal emerged from the trees and looked past the fence at them. It came closer and, just as Andrea had said, stopped short of the fence.
“It’s a monster,” Gambini said. “If something like that got loose…”
Andrea shrugged. “I don’t imagine it’d be any harder to bring down than a big elephant,” she said.
“It’s getting awful close,” Gambini said. The dinosaur was sniffing at the fence now, its snout almost touching the thick wire.
“Huh,” Andrea said.
The Acrocanthosaurus touched the fence tentatively with its snout, pulling its head back as if expecting a shock. When none came, it grew bolder and bit down on the wire, softly at first. Testing it.
“Well that can’t be good,” Andrea said, before they all turned towards the sound of a car door opening.
“Screw this, I’m outta here!” Gambini said, as he jumped out of the car and ran. Andrea shouted something at him that she probably shouldn’t have said in front of children, but he ignored her.
“Where’s he going?!” Lindsey demanded to know. “He left us!”
“That dickless little…!” Andrea muttered under her breath as she crawled over the passenger seat to pull the door shut. Kevin wasn’t paying attention to any of that, though. His attention was fixed on the dinosaur. It was gnawing on the wire now, tugging at it with its thick, powerful neck. As he watched, the entire fence shook. Then the Acrocanthosaurus stepped back and butted the fence with its head, bending it out. It was trying to get free!
“Ah, shit,” Andrea said, and then, with a guilty glance at Lindsey and Kevin, “Er, crap. Okay, let’s all get in the middle of the car now, come on…” They were already in the back seat, so she was just joining them there, really. As she directed them to lie down on the floor between the front and back seats, she got on the radio to the other car again. “Um, Dr. Meyers, Dr. Jones, if you haven’t noticed by now the Acrocanthosaurus seems to be trying to escape. It’s never tried to attack anyone before, but just in case I suggest you both stay low and try not to draw any attention to yourselves.” Both kids’ heads popped up to watch the dinosaur, and she pushed them back down. And then, with the twanging sound of breaking wires and the screech of bending metal, the Acrocanthosaurus was free and stepping out onto the road between the two cars.
Kevin wanted desperately to look, but he couldn’t see anything from his spot on the floor of the car. Andrea was crouched on the seat above him, apparently preparing to shield him and his sister with her body should the dinosaur attack. He heard her make a hissing sound, and turned to see her pushing Lindsey’s head back down as she tried to crawl up to see. Then Lindsey’s eyes grew wide and she ducked back down, just before the whole car shook as something heavy bumped against it. Kevin risked a look out the window, and saw the slab-sided body of the Acrocanthosaurus right outside.
“Don’t move,” Andrea said, her voice starting to tremble. The car shook again, harder this time, and then they heard a shout outside, coming from the other car. Andrea’s eyes grew wide, and the dinosaur disappeared from the window. Andrea got up to look over the back of the seat towards the other car, and without thinking Kevin and Lindsey did too. Standing outside in the rain, shouting and waving a flare, was Preston Meyers. And heading right for him was the Acrocanthosaurus.
“Amazing,” Meyers had said as the Acrocanthosaurus stepped out onto the road.
“Yeah,” Jones said, his face pale. “It’s a real beauty.” He sounded sarcastic. They were both slouched down into their seats, peering over the dash at the animal. It stood there a moment, sniffing at the road and turning its giant head in the rain, before going to investigate the first tour car.
“We should do something,” Meyers said as the dinosaur circled the car and prodded it with its snout.
“Do what,” Jones asked. “She said it’s never attacked anyone before, remember?”
Meyers shook his head doubtfully. “Something that big could hurt someone pretty bad just by accident.”
Jones shook his head. “Don’t you think these cars would have been designed to survive this sort of thing?” But Meyers wasn’t paying attention. He’d gotten out of his seat to dig around in the back, and came up with two signal flares.
“Here,” he said, and handed one to Jones. He started to ask what he was supposed to do with it, but Meyers was already stepping out onto the road. Jones watched in disbelief as Meyers lit the flare, shouted, and waved it in the air. The Acrocanthosaurus turned, watched him curiously, and started to approach.
“Have you lost your mind?!” Jones shouted at him.
“Come on” Meyers said, “We gotta draw it away from the kids!” And then he was running. Jones watched him go, then turned to watch the dinosaur follow him. There was no way in hell he was going out there. After the dinosaur had passed, Jones reached over and shut the car door.
Kevin, Lindsey, and Andrea all watched in horror as the Acrocanthosaurus caught up with Meyers and knocked him to the ground. It seemed to sniff at him for a moment before tossing him up in the air, but as a flash of lightning illuminated what was spinning in midair they saw it was only his upper half. Kevin felt his stomach heave as Andrea tried to cover his eyes. By the time he got her hand off his face the Acrocanthosaurus had lost interest, and was moving off down the road.
Tyrant King Press