Riders on the Storm

Chapter 7

Something blotted out the view through the window and his eyes darted back to it. There was nothing there now but a faint sheen, like a buffed, black fender in twilight. He threw wide the covers and sat up.

He took three steps and fell. His head swam dizzily, and he wavered on his hands (his hand, rather) and knees. Was he still in shock?

His thoughts swirled. The dream ... Savanna ... she’d been screaming ... the smell of shampoo—could a real scream have carried over into his dream? Where was she and what the hell was going on? The window ... something blocking the window ... start there ...

Suddenly, amazingly, his sneakers were shuffling across the floor and he was reaching for the lamp switch. Its brassy tip kissed his fingertips and he twisted—click!

Something blinked, constricted, and he suddenly realized there was a tremendous eye staring through the window. He caught just the briefest glimpse of a vertical black ellipse dividing a yellow halo, like a giant cat’s eye reflected in headlights. Snow drifted lazily down past its stare and clung to the membrane of its iris like lint. It blinked again. Then the lamp’s bulb blew and the room fell dark, and he could see only snow and the faint glow of a light outside.

VII | Rex

Roger emerged from the back room to find himself inside the Ozark station. He stood at the rear of the store and blinked, feeling like a zombie. His flesh was pale and bluish, his hair wild. The bright of the room made his eyeballs throb.

He saw a group of people clustered at the window in the front, about ten individuals, all turned away from him. His wife was not among them. Two of the people wore the brown tunics of cashiers. Two others stood arm in arm, a short fat chick and a skinny guy in a cowboy hat. Of the remaining six, Roger saw only long hair and black leather, and recalled the roaring procession of Harleys which had passed his 4x4 on the interstate. Bikers, he supposed, though he couldn’t quite make out the inscription on their jackets. ‘The Dusty’ something.

Roger walked forward.

Everyone was muttering amongst themselves:

“s**t, man—it’s as big as a house!”

“Gods, what a monster.”

“The thing could weigh two tons.”

“It’s called a mass hallucination. It’s happened before ...”

Moments later, peering between the shoulders of two grunting bikers, Roger saw his totaled 4x4 sitting askew in the snow. He had no idea how it had gotten that way. A shadow fell across its cab. Something big appeared at the edge of his vision, he shifted his gaze ... And felt his blood run cold.

The thing was gray-green, with black stripes. It measured at least forty feet from its long, deep snout to the tip of its tail (which was held high and rigid as a lance), and walked on two powerful hind-legs, knees and ankles flexed like a bird. Its neck curved in an S down from the razor-toothed head to its upper body, which lay nearly horizontal, and its tiny forelimbs gripped at dead air with forked claws. A bony ridge ran up the middle of its snout, like a racing stripe. The ridge was blood red. The animal itself, give or take a genus, was a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Bowed low, it crept past the window, padding stealthily for Roger’s wrecked 4x4. Stalking it. The muscular neck dipped gracefully to the snowy asphalt (like a swan on steroids), and the rex squeezed its snout beneath the truck, causing the left tires to raise off the ground. It worked its massive jaws in shadow. From beneath the vehicle, a stain of dark blood spread creeping through the snow.

Knock-knock-knock!

Somebody was rapping on the glass.

“Who the hell ...?” one of the cashiers barked, leaning back and staring down the line.

The tyrannosaur lifted its great head, swinging it toward the window, and the 4x4’s tires slammed back down. Everyone gasped.

“Nobody move!” the cashier shouted.

The rex stared at them, its dark eyes glinting under horny brows, its deep snout tapered like a wolf’s. Its jaw dropped to reveal rows of worn daggers.

The clerk murmured to himself: “Easy ... that’s a boy, nothing in here,” and to the others: “I think we’re okay. He can see us, but he can’t smell us. We’re just part of the scenery ...”

The rex turned away at last, stooping to chew blindly at its elusive prize again.

The red stain in the snow grew larger.

Roger held up his stump and looked at it. My god, he thought. I’m part of the food-chain ...

Then his eyes rolled back in his skull, and he fell.

“Roger!” Savanna shrieked, and rushed to where he lay. The cashier and the Bonners followed close behind her.

The bikers laughed raucously. “Had you going there, didn’t I?” said one, elbowing a partner.

Roy Bonner stopped in his tracks, and pointed his finger at the man. “You could’ve gotten us all killed!” he snapped.

The biker turned to face him, his face deeply tanned, his beard mangy, his expression cold. He sized Roy up and said: “I don’t think so ... Tex.”

Roy Bonner glowered at him. Clara pulled him away by his arm.

The biker laughed and turned away, reflected light running across the gold letters at his back. They sparkled one by one and spelled: T-h-e D-u-s-t-y M-o-t-h-s.

Savanna lifted Roger’s head and cradled it in her arms; he’d hit his forehead and lacerated the skin on one of the plastic-coated tables.

“It’s just not my day,” he said, looking up at her forlornly.

She leaned down and kissed him next to his new wound. “Understatement, honey. Can you stand?”

He nodded, and Savanna and the clerk helped him up. Then, at Roger’s urging, the two stepped back. He wavered, but motioned them away when they moved to assist him. “It’s all right,” he insisted. “I got it.”

“How do you feel?” Savanna asked.

“Thirsty ... come to think of it,” he said.

“I’ll get you some water.”

She returned a moment later with an Ozark Super Tanker cup in hand. She tilted it against his lips and he drank greedily. “Easy,” she said.

He swallowed a few more times. She took the cup away before he was finished. “Let’s see how you handle that before drinking any more, okay?”

She sat the cup on a nearby stamp machine.

Roger groaned. His head pounded. He lifted his right arm to rub it, but the sling rustled and he stopped. He rubbed with his left instead. “Any luck with the radio?” he asked.

Savanna and the clerk shook their heads.

“Phone?”

They shook their heads.

He dropped his arm to his side. “Right ...” He glanced toward the bikers and back. “We wait, then. Question is for how long?”

“That all depends on the ...” The clerk looked toward the windows. “Hell, if it looks like a thing and walks like a thing, it must be that thing. The rex.”

He stepped over to the double-glass doors and peered outside. The two couples stepped up beside him, and the five of them watched as the gigantic saurian pranced back from the 4x4, obviously agitated. It threw back its head and bellowed like a lion. A flock of small birds erupted from the row of newly-planted trees opposite the parking lot.

The clerk shook his head. “I don’t get it, man. What’s under your truck that he wants so bad?”

“It’s called a velociraptor,” Savanna told him. “It’s a type of dinosaur.” She tried not to think about her dream as she continued: “We hit the thing on our way in and it latched onto the undercarriage. The rex must smell its blood.”

The man stared at her, bewildered. Roger stirred against the glass. “Look,”

The rex was pacing back and forth in a semicircle, padding around the 4x4 with quick, restless strides. Its hip-bones shifted stealthily beneath the folds of its flesh as it moved. It stopped and swung low its head. Again, it wedged its massive jaws between the white asphalt and the Toyota's underbelly.

Except this time it jerked its snout upward. The muscles of its thick neck rippled and constricted, swimming beneath the flesh like taut steel chords—and the snow-covered 4x4 tumbled over with a crash. Metal groaned, shrieked, and collided with asphalt. Shatterproof glass crumpled and gave way. The tyrannosaur's jaws closed around the velociraptor's torso.

The big rex began backing away from the overturned vehicle. Even from inside the building, Roger and the others heard the wet, ripping sound of the animal's carcass being stripped from the undercarriage. It sounded like a Velcro wallet being opened very slowly. The tyrannosaur dropped its prize in the snow, pinning it there instinctively with its tri-clawed foot.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Roy Bonner muttered.

The dinosaur dipped its head and began feeding.

“Jesus, gods ...!” Roy turned away from the window and his giant belt buckle brushed against Savanna’s hip.

There had been a time, not so long ago, when she would have turned away also, shuddering with revulsion. But not now, and perhaps not ever again. The scene outside sickened her, but it was hardly shocking when compared to the memory of her husband being eaten alive in front of her. Twice, now. Once in the real world, once in her vision.

Vision? No, she corrected, dream. It hadn't been a vision.

The room was silent.

Those remaining watched as the giant tyrannosaur devoured its prey. They watched with an involuntary reverence, like primitives awed by some terrible wilder-god. On some level, even the dullest of them knew why. The animal being eaten was a surrogate for those inside: a sacrifice.

And then the rex paused and its jaws became still. It stood poised, frozen. Roger, Savanna, and the clerk inched closer to the glass, watching. The beast had c****d its head, as if listening to opossums rustling in the grass. It sniffed at the air gingerly, its great head poking left to right, right to left, like a bird.

“Oh s**t,” the cashier said ominously. “It can smell us.”

“No,” replied Roger. “It heard something.”

Savanna took his left hand in her own and pointed. “My God, Roger ... there's somebody coming.”

VIII | Omar

Even before the snow-speckled cones of light appeared from the direction of the off-ramp, the tyrannosaurus rex had sensed something approaching. Swiftly it snatched up its cold, meager prize and moved to conceal itself in the distant trees, covering the snow-blown length of the parking lot in just a few sinewy strides.

Then its dark eyes floated in the white-spotted blackness above those trees, out there beyond the lights of the gas station, and the beast was all but invisible as the Washington state patrol car swung into the lot.

The cruiser moved slowly at first, creeping past the pump island, crossing the lot as if in slow-motion, and then its red and blue lights began flashing, and it swept up to within a dozen yards of the overturned 4x4 and stopped.

“Jesus, we got to warn him ...” Roger pushed against the door.

“No!”

The authoritative decree had issued out of the biker’s camp. Roger turned around to find one of them pointing a pistol at him. Savanna gasped. Nobody moved.

“Back away from the door,” the biker ordered, his eyes glaring from his tanned face like a rabid animal's.

Roger stared at the man, uncomprehending.

“Goddamn it—do it!” the biker shouted. It was the voice of a wild-man; saw-edged and uncontained, incapable of bluffing. Raw.

“Easy, Omar ...” urged one of the gunman's peers.

“Roger, honey,” Savanna stammered helplessly. “Please God do what he says.”

So much for her new convictions. Dinosaurs were one thing. A crazy, drunken man with a gun was something else entirely.