The Complete Flashback Saga

Chapter 3-1

XI | SpinosaurIT LUMBERED INTO THE snow-swept parking lot like an oversized crocodile—the gigantic, rounded sail on its back swaying mightily back and forth. Its eyes were red and its flesh a dark gray, and its two-story-tall sail was the colors of blood and night all mottled. The tyrannosaur reared back, hissing and barring its ugly teeth.

“Jesus, Omar!” shouted one of The Dusty Moths.

“Oh, my God ...” Savanna gasped.

From beneath the mountain of bikers, the cashier's muffled voice called out: “What the hell is going on?”

Those that could do so watched in awe as the bristling rex and the four-legged newcomer circled each other cautiously. They watched as the monsters' shadows waltzed darkly across the snow, feigning and posturing and rattling sabers—like dancing duelists. They watched as the saurians circled the trooper's corpse; once, twice ... threatening but maintaining a wide berth.

Then the sail-backed lizard pivoted suddenly and thundered across the asphalt in a red and black blur, like a giant Gila monster. It was charging for the policeman's mangled carcass.

The rex intercepted it in only two quick strides, loosing its massive jaws on the scavenger’s spiny sail. It bit forward and down, like an earth-mover scooping up dirt, and came away with a bleeding chunk of flesh—which hung from the sides of its mouth like turkey jowls. The sail-back howled and lurched away, passing the corpse by completely.

And then an odd thing occurred. Instead of pursuing its nemesis and pressing the assault, the tyrannosaur retreated to the far side of the lot. And waited.

The wounded sail-back staggered around the farthest pump island and paused. Peering between the REGULAR and the UNLEADED, it regarded the rex with beady red eyes.

Its magnificent sail hovered high above the canopy, floating in the snowy darkness like the mottled wing of some giant moth. There was a ragged wedge taken out of its center—which looked awful but bled only mildly, as the web of flesh between a person’s thumb and forefinger will do if scraped or torn in some way.

The tyrannosaur seemed perplexed by this. It shifted uneasily and sniffed at the air, then paced about nervously in a tight circle.

Savanna thought: That’s how the wicked bastard works—it bleeds ‘em to death. It swoops in like a stealth fighter and tears a hole in their side, then just steps back and watches the ship go down.

But the spiny-lizard did not go down. By going for its sail, the rex had merely inflicted a flesh wound—and a weak one at that.

The tyrannosaur c****d its head, curiously. Savanna shivered. It was thinking. Learning.

What if it learned glass? she wondered. Learned how it hid prey by masking its scent? Learned how it broke away when nudged with a snout? What then?

The tyrannosaur sprung forward and Savanna's heart skipped a beat. The startled sail-back shifted suddenly and shuffled back several steps  but the rex was almost there. Unable to retreat in time, the monster lumbered out from behind the island and rushed at its attacker, charging in low.

A second later its jaws snapped closed around the rex' s lower-leg, even as the tyrannosaur struck at its side. Then they were bound up in b****y tooth and punctured flesh, and the red blood sparkled darkly as the carnosaurs whirled around and around in the neon light of the Ozark station.

“Je-e-esus Christ, " one of the bikers drawled.

Their claws scraped over the snowy asphalt; causing ice to c***k, snow to billow, and dirty gray sludge to explode up like hockey-flack. Finally, forced to hop and skid along on only one uncertain foot, the tyrannosaur fell. Again, the entire length of window shuddered with the impact. Laying on its side, the downed rex snapped at the spiny saurian's neck awkwardly. The quadruped released its leg instantly and shuffled back. Its long, thrashing tail brushed against the gas-pumps—once, twice, a third time.

“s**t, man ...!” Omar shouted. “They're gonna knock the damn pumps over!”

The biker nearest the bottom of the pile wound his hand up in the cashier's hair. “Where's the turn-off?”

The black man grunted beneath all the weight. "There’s one behind the counter, right next to ...” He hesitated.

The biker bounced his head on the floor. “Talk, dammit!”

“There's three buttons right next to each other, see?” the clerk managed. “Colored red, white and blue. The pump shut-off’s the white one in the middle.”

“Somebody ...!” the biker called.

The hoodlum at the top leapt off the pile, and scrambled for the counter. And just like that—the radio came back on. Clear as fiber optics compared to the noise of the last few hours, it rang out amidst the c*****e with the sound of heated debate:

“... ships full of little green men, is that what you 're saying?”

“I’m simply saying, the unidentified lights originated in those areas affected by weather disturbances—”

“And the disturbances began after the Troy Harper verdict, hence some kind of extra-terrestrial involvement in both—am I warm, caller?” Laughter in the control room.

“Sir, there is—”

The biker slapped a hand on the Formica and hurtled his legs over, knocking the radio from the counter. It smashed against the floor and fell silent.

Savanna was pale-faced, chilled by the content of the broadcast. Little green men ... she thought, recalling her dream. How about little gray men with long knife-like fingers? Little gray men who prefer forests filled with dinosaurs to riot-torn cities? How about that?

The biker behind the counter was wired. His eyes darted from left to right frantically, then discovered a row of plastic switches just beneath the Lotto dispenser. He stabbed at the middle button with a dirty finger, leaving its smooth surface marred with oil.

Then he saw the blur of a tail in the corner of his eye and there was a crash! And a crash! And a crash-crash-crash-crash! He looked outside to find all their bikes tumbled over like dominoes.

Savanna screamed and stumbled away from the window.

The warring dinosaurs were scuttling toward the glass, their cracked, scaly hides looming larger and larger as the thrashing tails and scrambling legs drew closer.

XII | TurnaboutTHE TYRANNOSAUR WAS up and on the offensive again, driving the surprised sail-back helplessly against the building. The spinosaur's tail and hind-quarters smashed into the window. Glass pitched inward in a jangling shower of shards, raining down on the mound of bikers. Metal framing moaned and bent and splintered wood tumbled to the floor. The sail-back's tail swished through the rubble.

A clawed hoof hit the deck only inches from the clerk's head, and the gust of its impact was like a hairdryer blowing in his face. He felt the tiles c***k and swell beneath him as the great foot twisted, then its yellowed claws and callused pads were gone into a blur.

The sail-back squealed, its tail whipping about the room like a writhing, sentient tentacle knocking over racks of chips and candy bars, sweeping shelves clear of motor oil and transmission fluid, crushing coolers.

And though she couldn't be certain amidst all that noise, Savanna thought she heard a helicopter. She caught but the hint of a sound, a hovering thump-thump-thump ...  And then it was gone, lost among the howling of the saurians and the tumbling of shelves.

Omar stood frozen, his jaw agape, as he watched the two titans make hay of the storefront. The sail-back's tail swung perilously close, and suddenly something hard and bony struck him in the mouth. He felt his lip split open like a turnip, then the warm gushing of blood.

He’d managed to swallow a tooth or three before realizing Roger had elbowed him, and the g*n was no longer in his hands. His eyes swam back into focus in time to see Roger snatching it up from the floor.

Savanna and Clara fled the area, the former bolting frantically for the arcade, the latter disappearing into the rest room, slamming the door behind her. Everyone else stayed where they were, having other obligations to tend to. Most of them watched hypnotized as the war of the flesh-eaters raged on unabated.

It seemed to go on forever. Fifteen minutes blew by like sidewalk litter, maybe twenty.

At last the threshing carnosaurs moved the battle away from the building, and cold gusts of snow blew in through the wreckage to spiral about everyone's feet.

They were all struggling to catch their breath when the first hint of sirens whispered along the wind. The cashier heard it and lifted his head, only to have it slammed back down by the biker on top of him. Savanna heard it also, and she stirred hopefully in her little nook between videogames, where she’d huddled fearfully a moment before.

The bikers began mumbling among themselves nervously. At last one of them called: “You hear that, Omar?”

But it was Roger's voice which rang out from the back. “Omar's been compromised, sucker. Release the clerk ... now.”

The biker behind the counter whirled around to face him. Roger had the g*n trained on Omar's head. There was a wooden squeak as Clara Bonner emerged from the bathroom, closing the flap of her purse.

Savanna stood up and moved toward the center of the room. “Roger?”

Clara moved to take her arm, her shiny black shoes clacking across the tile.

“Hey, what's going on?” the cashier demanded.

“You heard me ...” Roger shouted to the bikers. “Let him up!”

Slowly, the four bikers climbed off the clerk and stood.

“Now get behind the counter—all of you!”

The Dusty Moths fidgeted and milled about hesitantly. The clerk stood up and dusted himself off. He looked to the bikers, rubbing his head.

“White button's the alarm, homies,” he said. “Ain't none of you had a job?”

The Moths took a unified step toward him.

“Move, goddammit!” Roger's voice had become cracked and husky.

“Belay that order!” Omar commanded. "There's only one of him ... and six of us.”

He rolled his dark, stupid eyes toward Roger. “And I used four of the six bullets in that g*n on a cheap wench in Seattle.” He smiled a b****y smile and his teeth winked at Roger like broken tombstones. Then he lunged for the pistol.

Roger fired twice, wasting crucial time to aim for his legs and so spare his life. It was an automatic reflex, like pulling a punch—he simply wasn't a murderer.

And he simply wasn't ambidextrous. Redirecting the g*n and then absorbing its kick had overwhelmed his wobbly left arm’s capabilities. And as a consequence he missed his attacker once entirely.

The second bullet, however, punched through leather and flesh and deep into the muscle of Omar's right leg, where it ricocheted twice and blasted out the back, leaving an exit hole the size of a cereal bowl.

Omar fell and the other bikers all rushed forward. The sirens sounded very close as the room erupted into violence.

The cashier was the first to react—jumping the group of bikers from behind and throwing punches randomly. Savanna rushed to the cooler first, then managed to squeeze into the fray and smash a bottle of mineral water over the nearest biker's head. The man grunted and fell to the floor, and she loomed over him with the bottle's broken neck still in her grip. She was about to kick him in the face when a glint of steel caught the corner of her eye—and the biker behind the counter howled in pain.

She spun around to find herself looking at the back of his coat, and The Dusty Moths logo inscribed there. Peering over his shoulder, she saw Clara leaning across the far side of the Formica. The big woman scowled sardonically, and the biker’s head lolled around to face Savanna ... revealing a shining needle embedded in egg-yolk.

His eye. She'd poked it out.

Savanna screamed as yellow puss bubbled up around the syringe and ran down his cheek like pale snot. Then someone brushed past her, and she whirled to find Omar stumbling for the motorcycles.

He fell to his knees in front of his own and twisted around to face the store. His face was racked in pain, as if many fishhooks had snared the same flesh and were all being reeled in from different directions. His broken, b****y mouth opened up like a gaping wound, and he yelled hoarsely: “Come on you sorry idiots!”

The bikers began to withdraw from the store.

“Come o-o-o-on!” he repeated, while trying to lift his bike from the jumble of metal. The blood pumped from his leg profusely, winding away down the snowy asphalt.

Behind him, the now blood-streaked spinosaur snatched up the cop's body by the skull. But the rex's blurred head flashed down out of nowhere and its slime-hung jaws closed around the spino's neck—smashing it to the ground.