The Flashback Trilogy

Chapter 3

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We drove on in silence, Sam having killed the music (The Best of Randy Newman, as I recall), past the TCL Chinese Theatre—where a pack of raptors were picking over the corpse of a diplodocus calf—past the Capitol Records Building (whose round, spired roof was crowded with seagulls and pterodactyls), then left on N. Gower Street and up to Scenic Avenue—which would take us to Beachwood Drive and on to the Hollywoodland hills. That is, had its shoulders not been choked with cycads and its roadway blocked by a black allosaurus (we were all pretty much experts on dinosaurs now): which had simply lazed over in the middle of the asphalt as though it were sunning itself—its long, sinewy legs stretched luxuriously and its tail straight and unfurled, its great, blood-red crests glistening.

“Oh, for f**k’s sake,” I said—and brought us to a gradual halt.

I honked the horn—taking note of the dead triceratops in the reeds (which was partially eaten), as well as the allosaur’s obviously full belly—but there was no response.

“Just go, man,” said Lazaro. “It’ll move. And if it doesn’t, so what.”

“He’s right, Jamie,” said Sam. “I don’t think we have time for this.”

I put it in gear and inched forward—revving the engine even as I laid on the horn, moving to within a few feet of it.

Still it did not move—only twitched a little as though it were dreaming; maybe flicked its tail once slightly.

“Jesus, are you kidding me?” I was beginning to lose my patience. “Let’s go! It’s time to pick ‘em up and move ‘em out.”

I inched still closer—until one of the thing’s outstretched feet vanished beneath what passed for the hood. Then it did move, rearing its head and gnawing at the push bar—only gently, playfully, like a cat disrupted from a nap—before getting up suddenly and shuffling aside; at which I stepped on the gas and we lurched forward—turning wide as we passed through the intersection; rumbling up Beachwood like an out-of-control freight train; breaking off heavy branches like twigs.

I looked into my sideview mirror even as Sam did the same, saw the thing bounding after us like a leopard, like a wraith, gaining rapidly.

“What is it?” snapped Mr. Fantastic. “What’s going on?”

I glanced between it and the road, accelerating rapidly. “It’s chasing us. f**k. Better get up into the Crow’s Nest, Lazaro. Just don’t get trigger-happy; we’re gonna need the ammo. Nigel, I’m going to need you to—”

“It’d be best to just let it go,” said Mr. Fantastic. “I mean, what’s it going to do—bite through solid steel?” He put a hand on my shoulder, comfortingly, reassuringly. “Save the ammo, Jamie. It’ll give up before we get there.”

I looked around the cockpit: at the banks and banks of instrumentation, the suffocating array of dials and switches—before focusing on a glowing blue toggle; and flipped it. “I don’t know about you, Doctor ...” There was a thump-thump-thump as I turned to face him. “But where I’m from—they call that ‘borrowing trouble.’”

And then the smoke grenades had detonated and we were crashing through their clouds—at which I hit the brakes hard and hung an immediate left, skidding onto a side street, and whereupon we quickly circumnavigated the block to burst back onto Beachwood. Where we instantly realized—just before swinging north—that we could no longer see the street south of us; nor, for that matter, any evidence whatsoever of a pursuing allosaurus—black with red crests or otherwise.

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I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t already felt uneasy—even before we rounded the bend and saw the big pickups. Deronda Drive was that kind of road: the kind that started normally but then began to twist and turn, and to narrow, climbing all the while, so that the houses on both sides (some nearly palatial while others seemed little more than glorified hippie shacks) closed in all around us. Add to that the fact that we’d run out of places to turn back, and you can imagine how on edge we (already) were when we saw the crashed gate and the occupied vehicles beyond it.

Nor had those occupants taken long to train weapons on us—about 4 seconds, by my count—snapping them out through side windows and an open door even as the men in the payloads (one of which was equipped with a large-caliber machine g*n and the other some type of rocket launcher) did the same.

And then there we were, faced off like the Hatfields and the McCoys—only we weren’t ready—there beneath the sun in the Hollywoodland hills with the Santa Ana wind blowing and Gargantua idling and their blue and white Tucker flags fluttering, proclaiming “Keep America Great” and “No More Bullshit.” As though there was still somehow a recognizable government—a recognizable enemy; something they could project all their fear and loathing and frustration onto, just as before. As though nothing had changed since the Flashback at all.

I reached up for the targeting goggles slowly, knowing the new windows were tinted but not wanting to take any chances, but didn’t put them on. “Nobody get excited,” I said. “It’s just ... it’s just a precaution.”

“Oh, Jesus,” whispered Sam.

“No, he’s right,” said Mr. Fantastic. “Because—see that rocket launcher?” He pointed at the truck furthest back—a black Dodge Ram with pig ear exhaust stacks and a custom lift. “That, my friends, is what you call bad news. Now, I don’t pretend to know what that is, exactly, but what it reminds me of is the French MILAN ...” He got out of his seat and crouched in front of the windshield. “Okay. Yuh. See that dome just inside the barrel? That’s the warhead. Big, right? Nasty, right? That’s because it’s an anti-tank weapon.” He looked at Sam suddenly—to make his point, I guess. “It kills tanks, see. Stops them dead in their tracks. They’ve even been confirmed to have taken out a U.S.-supplied Abrams—that’s the main battle tank of the U.S. Army—in Iraq, in 2017, during their conflict with the Kurds.”