Flashback/The Dinosaur Apocalypse: The Final Trilogy of Stories

Chapter 8

Francis just shook his head. “I don’t know. Fear of whatever’s at the center of that labyrinth; which is why they’re gathering on it. Maybe even the fear that it will somehow affect their precious Flashback ...”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” blurted someone—some punk kid, I believe his name was Lonny. “So you’re saying there’s two conflicting forces—sort of like a football game—one of which is responsible for the Flashback, while the other is even now beckoning to us?” He laughed and slapped his hat against his hip. “Well, hell, man, sign me up with the Beckoner! Let’s do this!”

Laughter; laughter and riotous applause—which devolved into chaos—as Bella Ray threw up her arms and someone tossed torn paper (like confetti) and something parted the crowd like a float, like a tank. Something that turned out to be an armored dinosaur (an ankylosaurus) with a man walking beside it, a duo I knew to be the great Ank and Williams themselves—veterans of the Dinosaur War and the Bearers of the Hammer. The Legends of the North.

“That’s just precisely what he’s saying,” shouted Williams assuredly, authoritatively. “And he’s exactly right to do so—because that’s the situation.” He looked at Francis, who brought him the cordless microphone. “And it’s high time we accepted it; and started drawing up our plans. Because friends—fellow survivors, veterans of the Big One and all those who have come here because they heard Radio Free Montana, it’s all come down to this.”

The sun shone; the wind blew. (Most of Barley hadn’t even been aware that Ank and Will were back.)

“Okay, but ...” A middle-aged man with salt and pepper hair stepped out: Peter, the airline pilot. “It’s all come down to what, exactly?”

Williams just looked at him—as though the answer should be obvious. “Why, raising an army, of course. Building an armada. Dusting off the weapons from the Big One and getting to it; getting busy.”

“But that could take weeks, even months ...” —Sammy, former ne’er-do-well and worldly-wise veteran of the Dinosaur War, who had something in common with Williams: Sheila. “And where in the hell would we even go? We don’t have a destination.”

More shouts and upheaval, more chaos, more pandemonium —until Williams crouched and drew a spiral in the sand, tapped its center. “There. The Hollywood Hills. That’s where our maze is at—that’s the eye of the storm.”

Gasps and shocked utterances, muttering, disbelief.

He stood and addressed the crowd. “Listen: don’t ask me to explain all this because I can’t, okay? I mean, Ank might be able to do it but unfortunately only I can hear him—so you’re just going to have to take my word for it ... or not at all. All I know is that that is the source of the vision and that we need to go there like, now, this eve—meaning that an advance team should set out even while the main column is being raised.” He scanned the throng. “We’ll need warriors. Who among you will travel with me even tonight? Red? Satanta?”

“I travel alone,” said Satanta, standing amidst the crowd sans warpaint. “But I will prepare Blucifer immediately and meet you in the hills.”

“And I’ll oversee the armada,” said Red. “It’ll be just like when we defended against Szambelan.”

“I’m in,” said Travis. “Once a Marine, always a Marine. Semper fi.”

“I’m in, too,” said an albino girl that I knew only as Luna. “Because you’re going to need me on this one. I can just feel it.”

Williams thought about it and then nodded. And then he climbed up Ank’s tail and addressed everyone from the beast’s back:

“Hear me, hear me, men and woman of the free state of Montana! Know that—even as we’ve argued here today and debated over the vision and how best to respond to it, know that there have been still others—hundreds, even thousands—elsewhere, who have been doing the same thing; and that it is in that that we may take comfort, for we need not even face the labyrinth alone. But alas, also know this: which is that when one side is summoned—so must be the other; and work as if there is no time at all—for indeed, there may not be. And may God be with—”

But I was no longer there—no longer in the amphitheater at all—finding myself back on the beach in time for a sixth eye to open, to blink and clear the sleep from itself, to look on me like a mirror, like a speculum. To show me standing with three others before a great machine covered in tarps—a machine which had been mothballed, neglected, left out in the dust—a machine whose sleek front end could nonetheless be made out—and on whose silvery hull was printed a single word and number: Gargantua 01.

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“It came from close to here,” said Jamie, gravely. “I don’t know how I know that; I just do. It came from practically in our backyard.”

Nor did Hugo Eagleton—science-fiction author, rapscallion, and overall pain-in-the-a*s—disagree. “Which only reinforces what I’ve been saying; which is that—considering the threat level—we need to mobilize. Before whatever that wind represents is at our door.” He added: ‘The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.’ —JFK, when he wasn’t getting blown by Marilyn, 1962.”