Flashback/The Dinosaur Apocalypse: The Final Trilogy of Stories

Chapter 3

Copyright © 2022 Wayne Kyle Spitzer. All Rights Reserved. Published by Hobb’s End Books, a division of ACME Sprockets & Visions. Cover design Copyright © 2022 Wayne Kyle Spitzer. Please direct all inquiries to: HobbsEndBooks@yahoo.com

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Author’s Note

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These are stories of the Flashback, the time-storm that vanished most the world’s population and returned the world to primordia, and thus are all connected. They are not, however, told in a linear fashion, but rather hop around the timeline at will (as is appropriate, perhaps, for a world in which time has been scrambled). Therefore, a certain nimbleness on the reader’s part is assumed. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed writing them.

—WKS

The dream had been brief but had lasted an eternity. It had also been beautiful—what with its yellow brick paths and sunlight filtered through green, verdant hedges (even as the wind buffeted the yews—for there was a storm coming). Above all, though, it had been a puzzle, a conundrum—a paradox I’d been unable to resolve (and yet that demanded to be resolved); an enigma that had caused me to awaken fitfully, spasmodically, and in turn wake Lisa.

“Hey, are you all right?” She rolled to face me in the RV’s inadequate over-cab bedroom and felt my forehead. “You’re burning up.”

I stared at the ceiling. “I had a dream. I—I was in a labyrinth. You know, one of those hedge mazes—like in The Shining, only round. And I needed to get out of there because there was a storm coming. I mean, I couldn’t see it, but I could hear it; I could feel it—rumbling like an approaching army, stirring the leaves of the yews. And I don’t mean just any storm but the kind that could—that would—kill us all when it arrived, just wipe us from the earth. And I knew that the only thing I could do to prevent that—since I couldn’t find my way out of the labyrinth—was, was ... What’s wrong?”

“The only thing you could do to prevent that was to find whatever—whoever—was at the center of the maze. I know.” We stared at each other as the ocean breathed. “Because I had the same dream.” She shuddered, delicately, noticeably. “We had the same dream.” She looked as though she might suddenly vomit. “How is that possible, Nick?”

I glanced at Puck, who was lying by the door. “It was almost like—like a cry for help. I mean; is it just me, or did you get that sense, too?” I watched as the shepherd mutt’s paws twitched, as though he were running in some dream, and he whoofed slightly. “And also—also that I was walking in someone else’s footsteps; sort of following their lead, like the visions I get when the eyes—”

“Please, don’t—”

“It needs to be said. It needs to be said; and discarded. Because this wasn’t the eyes. No, this was more like, like something in the atmosphere itself. Something on the wind. Like a broadcast ...” I fingered the golden whistle around my neck. “Like an SOS.”

She snuggled up close and I breathed her in. Breathed in her hair, which she’d washed in the ocean. Breathed in her closeness—which was revivifying. “You should have let them die,” she said, “When you had the chance. Every last one of them.”

I looked at my left hand, which bore only scars. “We pretty much did do that; wouldn’t you say? That heat-resistant glove starved them out. No light, no oxygen. As for the right,” I held up my other hand—the one we’d wrapped in gauze bandages. “There’s not even any stains. They’re, like, completely dormant.”

“And they can stay that way, as far as I’m concerned.” She shook her head. “No; I never did buy that whole ‘fated purpose’ spiel. I mean, I get why you might want to believe that; I really do—why you might even need to believe that. But the fact is—”

“The fact is, that was no mere dream, and I think we both know it. Call it what you want: a vision, a fancy, a premonition—either way, it was trying to tell us something. And I think we owe it to ourselves to try and figure out what that something might—”

“Jesus, gods, he’s thinking about it.”

“Look, I don’t like it anymore than—”

She jerked away abruptly. “Don’t you, Nick? Are you sure? Because it seems to me that those—things, are all you think about. Seriously: what’s it going to take? I mean, for you to realize they’re not, like, your drinking buddies. That they don’t necessarily have your best interests at heart. You in a body bag?”