A Best of the Flashback Almanac

The Return-3

I’d barely had time to investigate when I heard him shout, “Hooper! Get out here!”

I looked up from the newspaper I’d picked off the rack—a paper with the headline, DAYS OF DELICATE TERROR: Disappearances, Weird Weather Rock Nation—and tried to triangulate him.

“Outside the Great Clips! Hurry up!”

I folded the paper and took it with me, exiting the building through the jammed-open front doors, and saw him crouched over the asphalt in the corner of the L-shaped shopping center, beneath the Great Clips’ cornice. “What is it?” I said. “What did you find?”

He stood and indicated the sidewalk.

I stared at the pavement, which was webbed with roots and lichen, and saw a single shoe lying on its side—a Nike Lebron, which had been stained maroon like the surrounding concrete. More, there was something sticking out of it—two somethings, I realized, broken and brownish-yellow—tibia and fibula bones, obviously, snapped in two midways up their shafts, crawling with maggots and flies.

I used the newspaper to wave away the insects. “Jesus,” I said. “What in the hell happened here?”

I scanned the scene, which looked like someone had spilled a 5-gallon bucket of maroon paint (and then flailed around in it), saw an impression the size of a pizza pan in the dried blood. “What the hell is that?”

I glared at Maldano but the bearded astronaut only stared back at me.

I knelt over the impression, or rather the impressions, for there were other, smaller ones next to it—three, to be exact—and studied the configuration.

“This is a—”

“A print, that’s right,” said Maldano. “Further, I’ll characterize it. Or at least what it isn’t. It isn’t the print of anything that was walking the earth when we left.” He added, “It’s not that of a bear, for example.”

He knelt beside me and indicated the larger impression. “Yuh, see, this would have been left by the lowermost extremity of the metatarsals, the foot bones that connect directly to the tibia and fibula—locked together, for strength.” He indicated the smaller ones. “And these, these are the phalanges, or toe bones—see how they’re splayed to support the animal’s weight? That’s because this was a big creature, 7-8 tons, at least. Other than that, they’re not so different from our own; here’s the proximal phalanx, which is connected to the metatarsal, and the middle phalanx, and the distal phalanx. Or at least that’s where they would have been beneath the flesh, which is what left the impress—”

“Stop it,” I snapped, and stood abruptly. “Just ... Look. What are you saying?”

“I’m saying this was left by a member of the theropoda clade of the Saurischia order, division Carnosauria.” He looked up at me as though it should be obvious. “Whose family was probably—”

I grabbed him by a system umbilical and yanked him to his feet, began shaking him like a ragdoll. “Talk sense, damn you! What are you saying? That whoever that shoe belonged to was attacked by a—by a—”

I paused, trying to get a hold of myself, as his face hovered mere inches from my own. At last I released him and quickly stepped back, breathing heavily, repulsed by my own behavior.

“I—Jesus, I’m sorry. It’s just ... it’s just that none of this makes any—”

That’s when I saw her: like a ghost, or an ashen specter, just staring at me through the glass, through the Great Clips’ window, not close to it but much further back, crouched by one of the chairs. That’s when I saw her (and she saw me): standing abruptly, stumbling over a broom, regaining her balance in time to bolt for the back door and to disappear into the dark.

“Follow me,” I said, rushing to the door, yanking it open. “Hurry!”

Alas, it isn’t easy, running in a spacesuit, even if they have been streamlined considerably since Apollo and the shuttle program. The truth of it is that by the time I burst from the building and back into the blinding sun she was already halfway across the lot—and nearing a stand of trees. Indeed, if not for what happened next, I would have surely lost her there; but the bird had other ideas.

The bird. The thing from the sky.

Even now I have a hard time believing it—that such a thing could have ever existed in the first place, much less come to exist again. But the truth of my eyes was undeniable as it swooped in out of nowhere and attacked the girl: its great wings beating furiously as it pecked and stabbed at her with its beak (itself the size of a small kayak) and tore at her with its talons, its eyes flashing malevolently as it attempted to spirit her away but was frustrated repeatedly by her kicking and flailing. And yet it did rise—with her still in its hold—and I sprinted toward them: leaping and grabbing her by the ankles even as the bird lifted us both; absorbing the brunt of the impact when it finally loosened its grip, covering and protecting her as it hovered and pecked and squawked.

Until, finally, the attack had ended—more suddenly even than it had begun—and we were alone (in that moment before Maldano hurried to check on us), at which point I looked at the girl and she looked back—smiling, crying, bleeding profusely—and knew her to be the most beautiful thing on Earth.

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