Dark Horses

Chapter 2

THE DAY WAS BRIGHT and clear; Marvin breathed in the crisp air of late May, sipped his tea and watched a party of climbers ascending an ice wall across the valley below his Swiss chalet. Two checks had arrived that day: a quarterly interest p*****t from the Zurich account, and a royalty check forwarded to him by his bank in Geneva. The machine had been used again, when and how he didn’t know or care about. The organization never told him about how it was used. He had certainly given them enough ideas on that subject when he sold the machine, and new ideas kept coming to him all the time, along with solutions to the various technical problems they assigned to him. He was now a consultant who made only occasional trips to Chicago, New York, Rome and Moscow when necessary.

The work kept his mind active and allowed him to mostly work at home, near Monica. He had finally discussed marriage with her the week before and she had smiled sweetly, a good sign. He knew what her answer would be, after a proper waiting period. They would be married in the elegant little church at the edge of the village overlooked by his chalet. There would be music from the seventeenth century organ he had donated to the church. He looked forward to their life together.

It was a good life, he thought. The bad times were rapidly fading memories, and he owed it all to his employers. It was not surprising that he was irritated by the occasional slanderous newspaper stories about them. Nothing could ever be proven, of course, because of all the missing bodies. People simply disappeared.

It was a fine organization to work for. All the families involved had been most generous in supporting his work, and treated him with respect.

And Melvin Funovits had become a very loyal employee.

A SURVIVOR’S GUIDE TO THE DINOSAUR APOCALYPSE

A tale from the Flashback/Dinosaur Apocalypse Cycle. First there was the Time-storm, which erased half the population. Then came the dinosaurs ...

by Wayne Kyle Spitzer

Each of us, I think, had to understand it on our own terms, the totality of the desolation, the speed at which the old world had fallen away. Each of us, I think, had something of an epiphany looking down at it.

For me, it was seeing the helicopter’s shadow slink wraith-like over the hulk-jammed freeways and overgrown downtown intersections, realizing that shadow was the only thing—the only human thing—moving in any direction. For Sam it may have been the aircraft carrier—the USS Nimitz, Roman had said—run aground between Pike Street Market and the big Ferris wheel (and presumably straight into the State Route 99 tunnel). Leastwise that’s what she was looking at as she gasped audibly and the helicopter swung north by north-east, over what would have been Belltown, toward the Space Needle.

“You gotta see this,” said Roman, his voice sounding generic, condensed, tinny over the headsets. “Anyone here ever seen an eagle’s nest? In the wild, I mean?”

Lazaro hmphed. “I’ve scaled a 200-foot Douglas fir and touched one. Does that count?”

Nigel sneered—you could actually hear it, even from the front. “Ya, mon. But only in your dreams.”

Roman nodded at Lazaro. “Yeah? Was it big?” He sounded jocular, condescending. “How big was it, you think?”

“I don’t know. About four feet,” said Lazaro. He seemed annoyed—even hurt. “What’s it matter?”

“I was just wondering how it compared to, say, that, at five o’clock.”

We all saw it at once as the helicopter leaned and I was pressed against Sam: a nest the size of one of those above-ground pools—the kind someone like Lazaro might have had before the Flashback—built up around the Needle’s radio tower and comprised of what appeared to be mud and fallen timber.

“Jesus, it’s everywhere,” whispered Sam, her face and chesnut-brown hair—which smelled of honeysuckle and gunpowder—reflected in the glass. “They—they’re blue, teal. Like robins’ eggs.” She shook her head pensively, meditatively. “I wouldn’t have thought that.”

“Where’s momma bird?” said Lazaro.

“That’s a good question,” muttered Roman. He made a complete circuit of the Needle before leaving its orbit completely and heading back in the direction we’d come. “Nor are we sticking around to find out.” He voice became suddenly focused. “Okay. I’m going to fly low between the buildings—because you can bet we’re being watched. So, don’t freak out. The idea is to shield our location from prying eyes for as long as possible—or at least until the chopper’s up and everyone is clear. Got it?”

Check. Downtown Seattle was not a safe place, especially in the business district, and not just because there were pterodactyls roosting in the skyscrapers. For one, it bordered on territory controlled by the Skidders, a ruthless gang which operated out of Doc Maynard’s Public House and Underground Tour in Pioneer Square. It also shared a border with New Beijing and a group called the Gang of Four. Neither, Roman had assured us, were to be trifled with, and both were known to make frequent excursions into the no-man’s land of the business district. Throw in roving packs of velociraptors, which were also territorial, or the occasional tyrannosaurid, or even an herbivore with the Flashback in its eyes, and you had a situation which needed to be gotten into and gotten out of quickly.

And quietly.

“Just stay in range,” I said, checking the switch of my walkie-talkie, making certain it was on. “Or it’ll be a shitshow all over again.”

It was a cheap remark—no one had been closer to Chives than Roman—and one I regretted immediately. “No,” he said, and crossed himself. “It won’t. Trust me. Anything bigger than an alley cat—you’re going to know it. We’ll get you inside, I promise.”

“It’s not getting inside I’m worried about. It’s getting out with what we came for.”

He looked at me with those damned earnest eyes—something I would have preferred he didn’t do, especially while thundering between skyscrapers—and smiled. “We’ll do that, too. Now lock and load, Jamie. All of you. We’re almost there.”

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