Instinct

Junkyard Rex By Sam Knight[4]

WE ARE THE ABANDONED LANDS!

Hugh Sanchez, sitting at his kitchen table, shook his head at the newsfeed headline on the cracked screen of his NetTab. He didn’t need to read the article to know what it meant: there was no longer any hope of help coming from anywhere. The whole damned country had fallen apart, broken up by petty squabbles and stupidity. Some people were calling it the Social War because they thought it had all started on so-called social media, which, as far as Hugh was concerned, was nothing more than a modern-day propaganda machine. Hugh called it the Stupid War because people were stupid with a capital D for dumb. But the truth was, this was just the latest in a long string of different kinds of conflicts, both within what had been the States and without. He didn’t have a GED, and even he understood that.

Texas and California had declared themselves independent countries—like they hadn’t pretty much been that already—and a bunch of the East Coast states were calling themselves New America. And now some of the other states were calling themselves the North American Alliance or some other nonsense crap. But none of them were sending any kind of help to what was left of the central western states.

Why would they? Who had time for a bunch of empty prairie land decimated by a climate change-induced drought and infested with prehistoric creatures when there were lies to be told, wars to be fought, people to be killed, and money to be made?

Disgusted, Hugh tossed his NetTab down on the old Formica-topped table. He took a giant gulp of coffee, draining the stained mug down to dregs that hadn’t had time to cool, and got up to put it in the stainless-steel sink. He’d eat later. Maybe at lunchtime. He didn’t have the stomach for it now.

The Abandoned Lands sounded about right, he thought, picking up his straw cowboy hat and jamming it down over his thinning black hair. Kudos to whichever talking head had come up with that one. He kissed his fingertips and tapped them to the smiling faces in the photo hanging in the entryway where he could see it when he came in every night. His wife and two girls had been taken early in the wars by what was suspected to have been a man-made virus, before common folk even knew it was a war, back when things were just starting to get good and stupid.

He took a holstered .357 Magnum pistol from the shelf under their photo and clipped it to his belt, just behind his right hip, then he added a sheathed machete to his left side, adjusting the handle so it wouldn’t hit his hand as he walked. Opening the front door to an early morning, he squinted into the barely risen sun, knowing it was going to be another hot one today. They were all hot ones anymore.

Hugh stepped out onto the three wooden steps leading up to his trailer home’s door. He lifted a scuffed boot and stomped down hard on the peeling blue paint, sending dust billowing out around the ankles of his faded jeans. The hollow sound from the wooden box echoed out across the junkyard in front of him like a gunshot.

Nothing came running out from under his feet this time, and he grunted with satisfaction as he closed the door behind him. He couldn’t hope to get rid of all the little prehistoric bastards, but he’d finally managed to put a dent in them with rattraps.

Stepping down into the dust, he kicked the top of the steps with the toe of his boot, knocking them over, and looked down at the trap he’d put under there. The not-lizard it had caught was long dead with dried blood around its head. It had probably been caught minutes after he’d reset the trap last night. A couple of flies were crawling over the filmy eyes and buzzing around the black tongue lolling out between rows of tiny, razor-sharp teeth.

And it stunk.

The only thing he could compare the nasty little bastards to would be a long-necked, featherless roadrunner that thought it was a t-rex, worthless little arms and all. Except these arms didn’t end in hands; they came to a strange, one-claw point. And the only thing he could compare the stench of the reptilian vermin to was rotten chicken, which prevented him from even considering eating the nasty things.

Hugh did his best not to get a snootful of the stink as he dumped the sixteen-inch-long demonic critter out of the trap and into a plastic bucket.

He reset the trap with a piece of moldy chocolate granola bar from his pocket and put it back on the ground. As far as he could tell, it didn’t matter what the traps were baited with, or that they had been reused over a dozen times and were stained with blood, these stupid little nippers would try it. He righted the stairs, covering the trap, and picked up the bucket, heading into what had once been the greatest junkyard in eastern Wyoming.

Hugh’s grandfather, in a moment of brilliant inspiration, had bought a bunch of worthless land just outside the county landfill and set up shop as a junkyard, paying people for their scrap metal instead of charging them for it. It had worked out well, supporting the family for nearly seventy years. Until people stopped going to the dump. Until people had all but fled the country.

The Abandoned Lands.

That name fit well. Hugh nodded to himself as he checked the trap set between the twelve-foot-tall stacks of wooden pallets. He fished out another tiny dino or whatever it was, tossing it into the bucket on top of the other one and resetting the trap. Some folk, experts he supposed, but who the hell knew with all the bullshit on the Net, said the creatures weren’t really dinosaurs, that their DNA had been messed with for military experiments.

Hugh picked up the foul-smelling bucket and headed for the trap set up in the row of old washers, dryers, ovens, and refrigerators.

It didn’t matter if all of the weird things running around through Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, and Kansas were real dinosaurs, wooly mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, and thylacines or not: the bastards were dangerous, and they had spread quickly. Too quickly to keep them under control. Most people had fled the central western states over the last couple of years. Losing dogs and cats was one thing but losing kids was a different ballgame. Not to mention all the idiots who missed and shot other people instead.

Which had led to a new kind of lawlessness not seen since the Old West. And a failure of government and utilities. Food and water were scarce, gas and electricity even more so. And there was no help coming.

The Abandoned Lands.

Hugh couldn’t shake the name from his thoughts. It fit too well. So well, it made him wonder if he oughtn’t to have packed up and left long ago as well.

The trap inside the washing machine was empty for what Hugh thought was maybe only the second time ever. He didn’t know if that was good or bad. It was tougher to reach, but then, the little bastards seemed to eventually get everywhere.

When he finished his rounds, the bucket was full. Tails, tiny-clawed feet, and sharp snouts stuck up above the rim, and he couldn’t help but smell the stench now. He would have gagged, but he’d almost gotten used to it over the last couple of months, since the ankle-biters had finally taken down his dog, Junker, and started roaming the junkyard at will.

One of the little monsters was easy enough to deal with. Hugh could stomp a loner down with his boot if it didn’t move fast enough, and Junker had easily chased them off in ones and twos for nearly two years. Five or six of them, though, became a problem, as they were fearless in a pack. As near as he could tell it had taken over a dozen of them to take down Junker, who, judging by the body parts Hugh had found, had taken at least seven of them with him.

The idea of getting another dog had only briefly passed through Hugh’s mind. For starters, he didn’t know if there were any dogs within a three-hundred-mile radius anymore, and, even if there were, he didn’t think it would be fair to put another dog in that position. Not to mention the occasional ruined rattrap didn’t tear Hugh’s heart out the same way. The place had gotten awfully quiet and lonely after that, though.

Hugh reached the back end of the junkyard where the twelve-foot-high chain link fence sat atop a low ridge. His grandfather had always figured the drop-off was the hundred-year high-water line. Just inside the fence was a series of walls made up of stacks of crushed cars, extending a hundred yards in each direction. Hugh climbed a series of short wooden ramps leading up the piles of junked cars. Some cars were crushed into cubes, others pressed flat. A few had just been placed on top because his father had dreams of restoring them or thought they might be worth something someday.

Moving progressively higher until he was twenty feet up, Hugh walked to the edge and looked out over the fence. Across the dusty valley he could see the thin, winding line of trees following the near-dead river almost a mile away.

The rising sun was just hitting the low-lying trees, and the greenery was bright against the gray prairie. Hugh used to love this view, used to love to get out here first thing in the morning and sneak a cigarette and watch the sunrise before everyone else was up. He’d done it countless times as a boy, and then later, after he’d been caught and deemed old enough, with his father. But there were no more cigarettes now, no more father, and no more anyone else.

But there was the stench.

He swung the bucket out, tossing the contents over the fence, where they fell, slapping, and bouncing into the growing pile of rotting things below, startling other little nippers cannibalizing from the pile. At least eight of them, he thought. It was hard to tell. They were quick, darting into the shadows and blending in well. At least one squirmed its way deep into the pile of bodies like some kind of snake, disappearing impossibly fast, and Hugh wondered if they used those little toothpick-arms to pull themselves along somehow. That might explain where all the prairie dogs had gone.

The smell, already wafting up from the pile as the day warmed, would become a wall of stink, rising up like a tsunami when the heat of midday hit it, washing away the normal junkyard smells of old oil, rubber, and steel. Hugh needed to fire up the tractor and dig a hole and bury the mess again. He’d already done it four times since he’d lost Junker, moving the hole farther away from the junkyard each time as, even buried, it still seemed to attract more of the little demons.

But the more of them there were at the pile, the fewer there were in the junkyard.

He looked back out to the greenbelt in the distance, trying to find even half a moment of solace, of what had once been. But it wasn’t there.

Maybe he should leave. Maybe he, too, should abandon the Abandoned Lands.

After a moment, he spotted something moving slowly in the distant brush and trees. At first Hugh thought it was a man with a giant backpack, but he’d stood in those bushes, and they were head-high on a man. They were only waist-high on the dark figure slowly stalking through.

Hugh squinted, trying to see better. He’d heard stories and seen photos of all kinds of monsters in the last couple of years, but, other than the pre-historic demon-rats, he’d only ever seen a few small, not-a-triceratops things and a wooly mammoth move through here. Everything else he’d ever laid eyes on had been already captured or killed and brought into town when he was there getting supplies.

This didn’t look like any of them.

Twice as tall as a man, he was guessing, and maybe on two legs. But he couldn’t make out a head or tail as it moved through the trees and thickets. Until it turned sideways to him.

The hair on the back of his neck rose, and Hugh stared, stunned, convinced he wasn’t seeing what he thought he was. He wished he’d brought his binoculars or even his scoped rifle up with him, but he hadn’t done that in months. Game had become scarce; he hadn’t seen an antelope in over a year, and memories of hunting with his father haunted him if he sat up here too long.

But that did make him think of something.

He sat the bucket down and worked his way across the top of the pile of cars, toward the highest spot, the one his father had preferred. At the apex he found the red convertible his father had favored, had never had the heart to crush, thinking someday, when they had the extra money and time, they’d pull it down and fix it up. Memories of stargazing from the open top filled Hugh’s mind as he stepped down into the mess of rat nests, rotted cushion foam, and rusty springs that were all that remained of the seats. The first time he and his wife had kissed had been here.

Somehow that felt properly reflected in the way things were now, too.

He jabbed his finger at the rusted, once chrome-plated button that opened the glovebox, finally giving up and smacking at it with his palm to make it let go. The glovebox door fell open to reveal a small pair of binoculars with an ancient pack of cigarettes on top of them. He pulled them both out and sniffed at the pack of smokes, unable to guess how old they were. He shoved them into his shirt pocket anyway and lifted the binoculars to his face. A small, square, foil packet stuck to the bottom of them scratched at his fingers and made him want to both laugh and cry as he peeled it off and saw the ring-shape under the wrapping. He flipped the no-longer needed trash out over the fence like a tiny Frisbee and raised the binoculars to his eyes again.

It took him a moment to find the creature and another to bring it into focus.

Hugh’s jaw slowly gaped open as he stared through the lenses.

The creature’s long, stiff tail was now clearly visible, and though he couldn’t make them out individually, so were the six-inch, dagger-like teeth. When it turned, and he saw the tiny arms, there was no longer any doubt in his mind as to what it was.

He watched, fascinated, as the tyrannosaur haltingly picked its way through the trees and brush, occasionally stopping and cocking its head to the side like a robin looking for worms in a lawn. Hugh had no way of knowing if this was an actual rex or some other member of the family, but he knew it was big, and that they were rare. As soon as their existence had been confirmed, giant bounties had been placed on them by the government, for the protection of the people, and even bigger bounties had been offered by private citizens and companies.

The end result was the same. All, or apparently nearly all, had been wiped out.

Hugh tapped his wristphone to life and pulled up the camera, wishing he had the pocketphone with the better camera, but he hadn’t carried it, or needed it, for two years. He held the lens up to the eyepiece of the binocular and started recording, watching the screen and trying to keep the beast in frame. There was a good chance he could make some money off the video, or maybe even selling information on where a hunter could find the tyrannosaur. He’d once read about a man who’d made over a billion dollars on one by selling parts on the black market in China. Information on where to find another one had to be worth something.

Intently watching the tiny screen, pointing the binoculars at the distant creature, Hugh did something he hadn’t done on top of the car piles since he was a drunken teenager, thirty years ago: he lost his footing.

His boot slid forward on the slick, curved body of the convertible, and he windmilled his arms, leaning himself backward over the car, trying not to fall twenty feet onto the fence below. The binoculars flew from his hand, out somewhere into the junkyard behind him. Feeling his footing going out from underneath him, he lifted his knees to his chest, forcing himself to fall ass-first into the open well of the convertible, landing in the remains of the mangled seat, his shoulder slamming against the steering wheel.

The sound of the car horn blared out as pain shot through him, startling him, and it took Hugh a moment to overcome the shock enough to differentiate the two. He gasped, twisting to get himself off the steering wheel, and the noise finally stopped. His ears rang as he straightened out and tried to assess the damage to himself. He had a couple of sore spots, and a cut on his palm was bleeding pretty good for how small it was. It was probably from the rusty wireframe of the seat. At least it wasn’t a puncture wound. He’d have to make sure he cleaned it out well. The last thing he needed out here was to get Tetanus.

As he wiped his bloody hand on the leg of his jeans and caught his breath, his eyes fell upon the newest part of the old car, a fifteen-year-old cigarette lighter sticking out of the dashboard plug, and he started laughing. It was a novelty item that had no real reason for existing. His father had installed the silly solar-powered accessory years ago, and it had never occurred to Hugh that the tiny trickle charge it made could have possibly kept a car battery alive for all these years.

He pushed the lighter into the socket and fished in his shirt pocket for the old cigarettes. He pulled one out and sniffed it. It was too dried out to smell, but the thought of tobacco was there, and it made his mouth water. He licked the seam as though he’d rolled a fresh one and then stuck it between his lips. When the lighter popped, he took it from the dash and held the glowing end to the cigarette and puffed, making the desiccated tobacco crackle as it caught and burned.

The pungent smoke filled his mouth before he inhaled it. It was harsh and burned his throat and he nearly choked on it, but the memories of what once had been flowed through him and he smiled. He took another puff and raised the cigarette to the morning sky. “Here’s to you, Papi.” Hugh took a long drag and laid his head back, blowing the smoke up in a white column and, despite the pain, feeling…okay…for the first time in a long time.

A strange snuffling sound broke his reverie.

Hugh sat up and leaned over the side of the convertible to see two large golden eyes, set deep under thick and menacing brow ridges, not more than a foot down from his own face. They looked back, laser-focused upon him. The rex—and Hugh was sure that’s what it was now—was standing nearly straight up, easily towering over the twelve-foot fence and most of the lower stacks of cars.

Hugh swallowed, hard, but held still, his heart fluttering against his ribs like a moth trying to escape a screen door.

The monster inhaled deeply, nostrils opening wide, pulling in Hugh’s scent. It lifted its head farther back, giving him too good of a view of its wicked teeth, and Hugh tensed for it to roar and attack, slamming against his tower of cars to knock them, and him, over.

Instead, it sneezed.

Hugh jumped—throwing himself back—and watched in slow motion as blood and the cigarette flew from his hand and spattered across the rex’s snout, leaving dark, wet spots and sending up a shower of glowing sparks, making the monster blink in surprise.

Panic and thoughts of the creature having his scent literally in its nose spurred Hugh into movement, and he hopped out from the well of the car and raced back the way he’d come—the only way down the stacks of cars without jumping twenty feet.

Hugh could feel the rex pacing him, snorting and running right beside him at the fence line, and he feared being snatched out of the air with every stair-stepped block he dropped down. He flew past the plastic bucket and jumped wooden ramps, not daring to look back. When his boots hit the dirt, he found himself instinctively running for the trailer home, but some part of him realized it wouldn’t stop that beast. The thin metal sides would tear like paper under that thing’s massive jaws.

Changing direction, Hugh raced for the garage, wondering if dowsing himself in oil or gasoline would hide his scent. He knew his machete would be worthless, and the .357, even if the first three rounds hadn’t been loaded with varmint shots for the little nippers, would just piss that thing off.

The garage door, sensing his approach, opened just in time for him to duck and roll in under the big door. Spotting that the tractor still had the forklift attachment on, Hugh suddenly had the mad idea of impaling the creature upon the forks before it could get to him, and he swung himself up into the cab and started the motor in one smooth motion.

A black cloud of exhaust floated down in front of the cab, billowing through the morning sunlight streaming in through the garage door. Hugh drove the tractor forward, hoping to take the tyrannosaur on before it got clever and circled around him or something. He broke out into the yard at full speed, wishing the tractor moved faster, and squaring up toward the way he’d come while raising the forks to what he guessed would be chest high. He slammed the brakes and waited, listening for the monster to come plowing through the rows of scrap metal after him.

The tractor’s air conditioning kicked on and the motor dropped and then revved back up to compensate, vibrating the whole cab.

Hugh twisted his sweaty palms against the dirty rough spots of the otherwise smooth steering wheel. When he realized the radio was on, he jabbed a finger at the knob and turned it off, so he could listen for anything crashing around outside.

Though the motor rumbled, Hugh felt he was sitting in a dead silence. There was nothing moving outside the tractor. There was no sign the giant dinosaur was pursuing him.

He rolled the tractor forward, trying to get a better look through the rows of stacked cars. One of the little nippers, squawking like a scared blue jay, came running around the corner, looking more like a roadrunner than ever, and raced off toward the main gate.

Hugh tensed, waiting for the pursuer.

After a moment, when it didn’t show, he pushed the accelerator and crept forward more, turning the wheels slightly so he could see farther down the rows. At the end, just beyond the fence, the tyrannosaur was nosing at the rancid pile Hugh had dumped there.

Hugh watched for a moment, heart racing. The size and sheer lethality of the creature was hard to comprehend. And the scars it bore, long jagged white ones to smaller lumpy spots Hugh assumed were from being shot, covered the length of its body from snout to tail tip.

After what felt like forever, Hugh’s breathing calmed, and he put the forklift into reverse and slowly backed out of sight, hoping the rex would forget all about him and leave the area when it got done snacking on dead nippers.

Hugh slung the .30-06 rifle over his shoulder and adjusted the machete handle so it wouldn’t hit the stock. He kissed his fingers and touched them to his family’s photo. With a deep breath, he steeled himself and opened the front door into the morning sun.

He stood on the top of the wooden steps but couldn’t bring himself to stomp down on them. As near as he could tell, the tyrannosaur had wandered off yesterday morning after eating its fill, but Hugh hadn’t pushed too hard to find out. Instead, he’d spent the rest of the day sitting very quietly in the trailer and reading up on what was known about rexes.

There had only been eighteen of them confirmed to have existed—and killed. No one thought there were any more, and the occasional rumored sightings were disregarded as either exaggerations of what had become known as stalkers—man-sized troodonts, ambush predators, that walked on two legs and hunted in packs of two to five—or outright lies intended to bring hunters and money into dying towns. There weren’t even official government bounties offered on them anymore.

There was a hundred-million-dollar reward offered by a private company for anyone who could bring them a live Tyrannosaurus rex.

Hugh walked down the wooden steps, self-conscious of the noise he made for the first time in years. A hundred million was a lot, but it might as well have been a reward for flying to the moon with construction-paper wings for all the chance he had of taking that thing alive on his own. He didn’t want to take it on at all.

He drew his machete, not wanting to risk the sound of a gunshot, and lifted the wooden steps with the toe of his boot but didn’t let them fall over. Nothing came rushing out, so he quietly dropped it back down, tapped it with the side of his blade a couple of times and lifted it again.

Still nothing.

Kneeling and, against his better judgment, but not willing to make noise, Hugh lifted the steps with his hand and peeked under. The trap was undisturbed. He set the steps down and walked into the junkyard, listening to the crunch of gravel under his boots and wondering if it had always been so loud and what he’d been thinking about to not have noticed it in the past.

The trap at the pallets had caught another one. The giant mousetrap design seemed perfect for nabbing long-necked lizards as they reached in for a bite of food. He left it be and didn’t bother to check any of the others, instead heading toward the back of the junkyard where he’d left his bucket on top of the car stack yesterday. He sheathed his machete when he got there, flexing sore fingers that had been gripping it too tightly, and quietly began ascending.

At the top, he found his bucket. Next to it were a couple spots of blood he must have dropped from his hand as he’d run by. He’d cleaned and bandaged the wound yesterday but hadn’t thought to clean up the rest of the mess. What if the rex came back and ate the damned tractor because the cab smelled like his blood?

His chore list suddenly gained a new priority.

Hugh looked down to where he’d been dumping the buckets. The remnants of the pile were still hidden in the early morning shadows and hard to see. As far as he could tell, it had been nearly cleaned up, and the smell was gone but replaced by something a bit mustier and more pungent.

A crater-like depression in the dirt indicated a large amount of liquid had been dumped there, and Hugh hoped the rex hadn’t been marking its territory. The footprints all around the area reminded him of turkey prints—if the turkey had fat, size two-thousand feet.

Turkeys were something else Hugh hadn’t seen in a long time. The thought made him sad. He didn’t know where the pre-historic creatures had come from—military experiments, if the rumors were to be believed—but the effects, even beyond the people fleeing the country, were obvious.

Looking out to the river, he wondered if the rex was still out there, somewhere, hidden in the trees. How far away was that? A mile? And when Hugh had accidentally sounded the horn, it had made it to him in, what, less than a minute? And Hugh hadn’t heard a thing until it was damn-near sniffing his hair.

The thought chilled him.

Without the pile to keep them distracted elsewhere, and maybe because of the new smell outside the fence, the ankle-nippers were in the junkyard in force, and Hugh finally began setting the traps three times a day to try to keep the numbers down. He wasn’t sure what they were eating, if anything, that kept them coming here. Maybe they just liked the artificial shelter, as the mice, rats, and rabbits once had.

But mice, rats, and rabbits didn’t jump out and try to bite him as he worked to strip metals from the old machinery, and Hugh hated the little bastards. They’d gotten him a couple of times in the past, and their bites always seemed to get infected. Needless to say, finding a quiet corner to take a leak was a thing of the past.

His dump truck was almost full now, and he’d make a trip in another day or two to trade the copper wire, circuit boards, catalytic converters, and other miscellaneous precious metals and parts for supplies. More rattraps were on the top of his list, as well as some kind of perimeter security. The one he had now couldn’t tell a car from a cow, not that he’d seen either out here in nearly a year, but he wanted to know what he was dealing with before he went outside if the rex ever came back. It wouldn’t be cheap, but at this point sleep wasn’t exactly coming cheap either.

Between rampaging thoughts of the rex and wondering if it was just time to give up and pack up, Hugh felt lost.

He’d heard a new trading post had sprung up near Cheyenne, which would be twice as far, but it would be an easier drive, and supposedly it paid better because of the direct route to Denver down I-25, so he was considering trying that, though he was a bit worried about bandits and pissing off his established contacts in Rapid City. But if it paid well enough…maybe he would just keep right on driving afterward. Spend the night in Denver, and then, who knows. Maybe continue on to whatever the hell Texas was calling itself now. Or maybe Mexico. There weren’t any dinos in Mexico yet, as far as he knew.

Bucket full again, he made his third trip of the day to the top of the car wall and poured the floppy contents out into the growing pile. The late afternoon sun was brutal, and in his eyes, so his view of the river trees was limited, but he stared out at them anyway, knowing it was silly, knowing he would always look to see if the rex was there now, despite the fact a creature that large couldn’t possibly stay in one place and support itself on the meager hunting available in such a small area.

He sat the bucket down and fished into his shirt pocket for the ancient pack of cigarettes. There were only three left now, and a new pack was the third thing on his supplies list. He hadn’t expected to enjoy them so much after years of not smoking, but each one seemed to carry with it a bit of a memory, seemed to bring a tiny bit of peace to his soul that he hadn’t ever expected to feel again, and made him feel closer to his father.

Besides, he was pretty sure his chances of dying of old age out here were close to nothing.

He put the cigarette in his lips and the pack back into his pocket and walked the rest of the way up to the convertible and the folding lawn chair he’d set up over the ruined seat to watch the sunset last night. Stepping down into the car, he pushed in the lighter and waited for it to pop out before lighting his smoke and settling into the chair with the rifle across his lap.

After a couple of puffs, and blowing a smoke ring that broke apart in the still air, he assessed himself. And he didn’t like it. His calm serenity, his acceptance of what was, of having lost what had been, was gone. It had been replaced by a constant, nagging fear that the rex was going to tear through the side of his mobile home at any time in the middle of the night, looking for the chewy center.

Hugh hadn’t thought much about his own death up until now. After his family had died, he’d carried on as best he could, knowing they were watching him from above and that he’d be with them someday. So, he’d kept on doing what he thought was right: living his life and waiting for his time to be with them again. But now he was haunted by the thought that maybe it was time to go, time to leave the family legacy—what there was left of it—behind.

Between that and the rex… This was different from the quiet life he’d been living. This was like having been led to the gallows and waiting for some unseen person to show up and pull the lever at some random, unknown time.

As he sat there, his quiet fear turned into frustration and then anger, simmering in the sun until it boiled over. “Shit!” He picked up the rifle and slammed the butt against the steering wheel, cursing the horn that had lured the rex here. The horn sounded as he hit it, and hit it again, and a third time.

Rage spent, and feeling more stupid than angry now, Hugh laid the rifle back across his lap and took another drag off the smoke. He wasn’t normally prone to anger, let alone outbursts, and his ears burned with shame under his straw hat as he wondered what his wife, his daughters, would think of him now: an angry coward ready to quit.

The silence became oppressive. Even the flies seemed to have been chased off by his behavior.

He reached out to the dashboard and flipped open the old ashtray. Crushing the cigarette out in it, he dropped the butt on top of the other ancient butts, most smoked by his father, and felt the emptiness inside of him grow from being so close to something touched by one of his family, but still being so far, so impossibly far away from all of them. Tears welled in his eyes. He didn’t bother to wipe them away.

After they dried on his cheeks in the afternoon heat, he stood up, carefully holding the hilt of his machete so it wouldn’t catch on the arm of the chair, and climbed out of the convertible. He took two steps before he saw the rex feeding at the pile.

The sinewy muscles down its back rippled and moved like steel cables under its dappled hide as it nosed the pile and gingerly picked nippers up with its teeth. Hugh didn’t know much about anything when it came to dinos, but looking at all of the scars and the defined shapes of ribs on its sides, he figured this creature had been through hell and back and had come out malnourished

It raised its head slightly, still chewing, and glanced at him, as though it had known he was there all along, before it bent back to scoop up the last of the pile. When it had downed the small mouthful, it snuffled around the ground for a moment and then stood tall, meeting Hugh’s eyes.

Hugh held still, assuming that if he ran, the predatory instinct would kick in and it would chase him, just as dogs did.

The rex took one step closer, unblinkingly holding Hugh’s gaze with its golden eyes. Unlike the cold, black eyes of the nippers, the rex’s glittered with an intelligence Hugh hadn’t expected. It sniffed at him, snorted, and then turned to slowly amble away, not looking back.

“PRESS GANGS ROAM THE ABANDONED LANDS!” The NetTab headline had to be clickbait, but Hugh followed the link anyway as he sipped his coffee. If there were really press gangs, surely he’d have heard something about it when he’d been to Dino Town to trade goods yesterday.

The article was nothing but rumor and speculation about people who’d disappeared possibly being forced into the Texas Army. But people disappeared all the time, most just up and leaving, and Hugh regretted wasting his time reading it.

On the other hand, driving all the way to Dino Town, as the pop-up trading post was being called, had not been a waste of time. It had been a great success. The town had been there longer than he’d thought and was well established, which made him wonder if the traders in Rapid City intentionally never talked about it. Which made sense, as they were business competitors, of a sort.

He’d gotten nearly twice as much as he’d expected for his haul and had come back loaded with supplies. And a new security system.

It had been tempting to take the money and go, but the better earnings made him think twice. If he could pocket the extra money from four or five more trips, he’d have enough to establish himself somewhere instead of throwing his fate to the wind and hoping for the best. Not to mention he’d met a dino farmer—someone who was raising them and selling them—who was doing all right for himself. Well enough to make Hugh consider whether it would be feasible out here as well.

Though who the hell would buy nippers, which was all he had, he couldn’t begin to guess.

He closed the uninformative article and opened the new security app. Thirty small vids appeared on the NetTab screen at once, each too small to make out what they were showing, but each showing a different part of the junkyard, both inside and out. One vid flashed a yellow outline, and he tapped on it to expand it to fill the screen. It was a high view of the trailer home and the garage, taken from a camera he’d placed up on an old power pole. A little nipper, slowly walking out from behind the garage, had its outline highlighted as the AI tracked it and listed its size, estimated weight, speed, distance from Hugh, and, to Hugh’s surprise, its species: Parvicursor remotus.

Hugh tapped the name and a pop-up gave him information on what was known of the feeding and nesting habits, as well as its currently recognized range and a warning of danger if they were in a pack. It also asked if he wanted more information and if he wanted to report it or call for assistance.

A grin crept across Hugh’s face. His family had never been able to afford a household AI, and while this wasn’t really one of those, it was the closest he’d ever come. It made him feel affluent to have such a luxury, and he continued to watch as the AI tracked the nipper around the junkyard and then picked up and followed the motions of two more as they approached the junkyard fence line.

Sliding the app from the NetTab to his wristphone, Hugh marveled at how smoothly it placed him on the map of the junkyard and showed where the three nippers were in relation to him, still tracking their movements.

He took a deep breath and let it out, feeling tension go with it. He was going to walk out the front door without fearing for his life for the first time in nearly two weeks.

The pile of dead nippers was getting big enough Hugh was considering getting the tractor out. The size of the heap wasn’t the real problem though. The smell was starting to waft all the way to the house and, in the evenings, not having the windows open to cool the trailer home was not an option.

He sat the bucket down and looked out to the treeline, wondering if the rex was out there somewhere. An idea crossed his mind, and he worked his way up to the convertible. Taking a seat, and lighting a fresh cigarette from a new pack, he settled in and pulled up the security app on his wristphone.

Yellow dots, four of them now, slowly moved around the tiny map of the junkyard, but none were anywhere near his own blue dot at the edge of the screen.

Hugh took a long drag off the cigarette and then reached out and pushed the car horn button on the steering wheel three times. Chuckling at how quickly the yellow dots scattered, he folded his hands across the .30-06 resting in his lap and waited.

He hadn’t seen the rex since he’d installed the security system, and there was no reason for him to believe it was still anywhere nearby, but this was a win-win situation, he told himself. If it was still around, maybe it would clean up that mess for a third time. If it wasn’t, well, honestly, that would put him more at ease than the new security system had.

Finishing the cigarette while he waited, Hugh saw nothing out on the prairie, and nothing appeared on the wristphone screen.

Both relieved and disappointed, he got up and worked his way down the wall of cars. His wristphone beeped once and flashed to get his attention. One of the nippers was moving in a path, projected by the AI with a dotted yellow line, that would intersect his own, a blue dotted line, if he kept heading in the same direction.

He neared the bottom of the car wall, getting ready to head for the tractor, and he drew his machete anyway, oddly excited to have the cautionary information. Musing over the idea of using the app to hunt down the nipper, Hugh wiped sweat from his brow and decided it was too hot to play silly games. The traps seemed to get them all eventually, and it would be nice to not have the house stink tonight when he opened the windows to try to get a breeze moving through.

As he moved toward the garage, and the projected paths no longer crossed, the warning on the wristphone winked out. He sheathed the machete.

Thinking about resting in the air-conditioned tractor cab and cooling off for a few minutes after the job was done, he decided to grab a water bottle. Before he’d even changed directions to the trailer home, the wristphone alarm went off again, this time silently, but flashing and vibrating on its strongest setting. Hugh glanced at it. A giant, red exclamation mark inside of a triangle flashed on the screen. He tapped it and words quickly scrolled across. WARNING: REX NEARBY. SILENT MODE ENGAGED. QUICKLY AND QUIETLY SEEK SHELTER.

The words began to repeat, and Hugh, heart racing, quickly tapped the screen and pulled up the map. The rex wasn’t marked anywhere inside the junkyard. He pulled up the grid of tiny vids and found one flashing with another red exclamation mark. Expanding that, he spotted the rex, outlined in red by the AI, running toward the junkyard from a distant part of the greenbelt. Information, in text almost too small to read, followed it: TYRANNOSAURUS REX: 3.7M H X 12.2M L: EST. 6100.34KG: 34.3KMH: DISTANCE: 2.5KM (-).

CALL FOR HELP? repeatedly flashed in red at the bottom of the screen.

Hugh watched, shocked and amazed at the rate the rex was closing the distance to the junkyard. He’d read they couldn’t properly run because they were too large, but it moved fast enough it really didn’t matter what technical term its gait had.

Another red warning flashed across the screen: DISTANCE: 2.2KM (-). CALL FOR HELP?

Hugh hesitated. There wasn’t anyone out here to call for help, and he didn’t want to hurt the thing anyway. It wasn’t like it had been stalking him. He was the idiot who had called it in.

Just in case, he ran to the tractor, fired it up, and raised the forks to chest-high on the rex. He slowly pulled out of the garage until he could see down the aisles.

When the rex showed up at the pile, Hugh could have sworn it was wagging its tail.

The security system recordings of the rex were way beyond anything else Hugh had seen on the Net, and he was sure he could make a decent amount of money with them. The quality and resolution were good, and the rex stayed well in frame for long periods of time as it fed on the nipper pile.

Watching the vids through for the umpteenth time, Hugh became convinced that three things were not his imagination.

First, the rex had been wagging its tail. But it was not a friendly, excited thing, like a dog. It was a reflex, likely designed to distract other predators and protect the rex while it was feeding. This was evident at how much faster and wider the tail swung about when a couple of live nippers tried to sneak up to get bites out of the pile. Quick as they were, the rex still managed to snap one out of the air as it tried to leap to safety.

Second, the rex was definitely malnourished. Though he knew next to nothing about rexes, and there was little to be found about their health, other photos and vids he found did not show such prominent ribs. And, now that he wasn’t nose-to-nose with the beast, the vid showed him that its hipbones stuck out way too much for any healthy animal, no matter what it was.

As interesting as those things were, it was the third that bothered Hugh the most: the rex’s response to the cameras. It didn’t just know where they were, it seemed to know what they were.

Hugh watched the vids one more time, tracking how the rex had circled the junkyard and stopped to look directly into each perimeter camera—even the ones located highest up on the old power poles. Each time, the beast bowed its head low, scraped an enormous furrow into the earth with its right foot, and then looked back into the camera before moving on.

The whole thing gave Hugh the heebie-jeebies. Was it thanking him, or was it showing him it knew where his territory was, and he’d damned sure better stay inside it?

Hugh honked the car horn, lit a cigarette, and waited, looking out toward the trees. The pile of nippers below him was covered in a white, dusty coating of powdered vitamins. He’d purchased them from the dino farmer he’d met during his previous visit to Dino Town. He’d had to ask around a bit, but it hadn’t taken long to track the man down and get some well needed, if circuitously asked, advice.

The worst part had been the extra couple hours it had added to the drive in order to reach the farmer’s “dino ranch,” which had been on past the ruins of Laramie a bit. But that had worked out well in the end, as evidenced by the four-hundred pound protoceratops carcass lying on top of the nipper pile. Hugh had arrived just as the farmer had been about to bury it. Killed by a pack of stalkers before the ranch hands could get there, the ’ceratops was no longer fit for human consumption.

But it was perfect for Hugh’s needs.

When Hugh’s watch vibrated, he was surprised to find the rex coming in from the other side of the junkyard where there was nothing but prairie for miles on end. Tempted to get down and go watch remotely, or hide, he chided himself, Hugh instead took another drag off his cigarette and stood his ground, waiting.

It hadn’t been a hard decision to try to help the rex. Sure, he’d wrestled with the idea of money—and it was a possibility of a hell of a lot of money—but basic decency had won the argument even before he’d really given it a good thinking on. Hugh couldn’t, in good conscious, lead hunters to the creature. Judging by the scars, they’d found it several times before.

Nor could he ignore the fact that it didn’t seem well. Starving maybe. Something else wrong maybe. There probably wasn’t a whole lot he could do about any of that, but he could try.

The rex rounded the edge of the fence and immediately stopped, locking eyes with Hugh. Hugh could feel in his soul that he’d been seen. He wished he’d run back to the trailer to watch from the vidscreen when he’d had the chance, but it was too late now.

Cocking its head, the rex took a cautious step forward. Hugh slowly raised his cigarette and took a drag. After a moment the rex came slowly forward, sniffing at the air, moving more quickly as it neared the nipper pile with the ’ceratops on top of it. At the edge of the carrion pile, it sniffed at the white powder all over everything. It snorted, raised its head, and caught Hugh’s gaze again.

Hugh could feel the accusation in the piercing eyes. How a giant lizard monster could have feelings behind its eyes, he couldn’t say, but there it was.

“It’s vitamins,” Hugh said, feeling his shaky voice sounded puny and lost as it floated down from the top of the cars toward the imposing rex. “Good for you. You should eat it all.”

The rex held frozen for a moment, as if shocked Hugh had spoken to it, and Hugh wondered if anything ever intentionally made noises around a t-rex.

The rex snorted again, dropped its head, and slowly gouged a long furrow into the ground with its right foot before looking back up to meet Hugh’s eyes.

Hugh swallowed hard and nodded back.

The rex leaned over the pile and nosed the ’ceratops. Suddenly, with a quick snap of its massive jaws, the rex bit the calf-size ’ceratops in half and began to eat greedily.

Hugh, listening to the bones snap like twigs and thinking how stupid he’d been to allow the rex to get anywhere near him, quickly and quietly worked his way down the car wall and back to his trailer.

The NetTab, the vidscreen on the wall, and Hugh’s wristphone all flashed to life at the same time, blinking red warning symbols, filling the dark bedroom with flashing light and a buzzing warning tone. Hugh jerked upright in his bed, heart suddenly racing. He’d been dreading this moment for weeks, waiting for the rex to come skulking about in the middle of the night to rip open the trailer home and snatch him out of his bed, shaking him apart like dog with a ragdoll.

He’d been a fool tempting fate and feeding the monster, teaching it there was food to be found around the junkyard. He was out of bed, pulling on pants, and then grabbing for guns when the buzzing stopped and the screens all dimmed, nearly leaving him in the dark. A warning began scrolling across the screens. He stepped closer to read it. WARNING: FIREARMS DETECTED. MALICIOUS INTENT POSSIBLE. SILENT MODE/DARK MODE ENGAGED. QUICKLY AND QUIETLY SEEK SHELTER. CALL FOR HELP?

Hugh frowned and tapped the vidscreen to enlarge the camera feeds while avoiding the call for help button. Finding the vid feed outlined in red, he expanded it. If it weren’t for the AI’s glowing yellow outlines, he wouldn’t have realized the swirling mess he was looking at was two vehicles coming down the road with normal headlights off and several infrared spotlights sweeping back and forth like stiff, wooden legs on a giant spider. Rifle barrels, sticking out of the passenger windows, were outlined in red.

DISTANCE: 1.6 KM (-). CALL FOR HELP?

Ignoring the text, Hugh finished clipping the .357 and the machete to his belt before grabbing the .30-06. Feeling a bit calmer now that he knew it wasn’t the rex, he headed for the front door, grabbing a pair of night-vision binoculars off the shelf as he went by and out into the stifling heat of the still night.

Dino hunters were rare but not unheard of, though there hadn’t been any passing through here in a long time. Scavengers were rarer, as there wasn’t anything out here to take for miles and miles, but they were more dangerous, often willing to kill to take people’s property. He wasn’t worried about that, though. Scavengers rarely traveled at night, spotlights or no. It was too easy to miss the treasures of abandoned things in the dark and too easy to stumble upon a nest full of things with nasty teeth.

Hugh could hear the motors of the approaching vehicles in the distance. He broke into a jog, hoping to get up on top of the garage, where he could get a good look at them on the road as they went past. He was halfway to the garage when his wristphone vibrated. Glancing at it, he saw the warning that he was on an intercept course with a yellow dot; one of the nippers. He drew his machete and kept moving.

The map on the wristphone turned out to be very accurate. It zoomed in as he got closer to the yellow dot, enlarging the immediate area around him until his blue dot became recognizable as a human figure and the yellow dot looked like a skinny, long-tailed chicken.

Hugh slowed at the corner of the garage, where the little nipper had stopped moving, apparently waiting to see what was coming toward it instead of fleeing from the sound of his approach.

A lightning-fast shadow flashed out of the dark, lunging at Hugh. He barely saw it coming, despite knowing it was there, and swung the machete out at it. He felt it connect near his hand, almost at the pommel, knocking the little monster down. With a kick against Hugh’s boot, the nipper silently ran off into the night, vanishing somewhere around the old car crusher.

Hugh paused a second to take a deep breath and calm himself. Without the security system AI watching over him, he would have likely lost a finger that time. He’d never seen a nipper that aggressive singly, but then, he didn’t usually wander around at night.

Checking the wristphone and seeing that no more were near, he sheathed the machete and took a step forward, feeling his boot kick something and send it rolling.

He paused to look down and spotted the nipper’s severed head lying in the dust, its mouthful of nasty teeth gleaming in the dark and still opening and closing. Looking toward where the body had run off to, Hugh wondered how far it would get. Something to think about some other time, he chided himself and resumed his jog to the ladder.

The metal ladder, bolted to the outside wall of the garage, creaked and popped under his weight as he pulled himself up, trying not to let the rifle butt bang against the aluminum siding. The last thing he wanted was to make a bunch of noise and attract attention to himself. He couldn’t hear the motors of the vehicles anymore, which meant it was likely they had stopped nearby and would easily hear any loud noise he made.

Having been distracted by the nipper, he wasn’t exactly sure when he’d stopped hearing the motors, but he assumed they had to be close. Maybe even at the front gate.

He hadn’t seen anyone out here in months, and no casual passers-by in over a year. And with those guns and spotlights, the only thing Hugh could think of was that they were dino hunters and they’d somehow heard about the rex, although he didn’t know how. He hadn’t said anything about it to anyone and didn’t think there was anyone else around this area to have seen it. He was also pretty sure the AI wouldn’t have reported it unless he had called for help, but then, there were a lot of people who didn’t trust AIs.

Other than the rex, there was little reason for dino hunters to have stopped at his place, which added credence to the scavenger theory, which meant they might be more dangerous than he’d hoped. Unless they were stopping to ask him if he’d seen the rex.

Hugh shook off the worthless circular thoughts and pulled himself up onto the roof, staying on his belly, and crawling his way to the peak just in case anyone was watching the junkyard through infrareds and decided to take a pot-shot at something moving. Worse and stupider things had happened in the last few years. Especially out here in the Abandoned Lands.

He checked his wristphone again. Two red dots were now situated in a place Hugh knew seemed to be a blind spot when you drove up, and it made him wonder if they were trying not to be seen.

He lifted the night vision binoculars to his eyes and searched in the direction the map had showed them to be. All the infrared spotlights were off, which surprised him, but what surprised him more were the men, in leg irons, hopping down from the backs of what appeared to be large, armored trucks. Other men with rifles, looking and acting like prison guards, were helping as much as pushing the prisoners out of the trucks. When the captives—all nine of them—were lined up along the fence Hugh’s gut tightened in fear at the thought of what he was seeing happen.

A voice, one of the guards Hugh assumed, carried angrily, forcefully through the night, but Hugh couldn’t make out what was said. His wristphone gently vibrated, but he ignored it.

When the line of prisoners began fumbling at their pants and urinating on the fence, Hugh felt tension flow out of him. He didn’t know why he’d thought it was going to be a mass execution, but he had.

Turning his binoculars to the trucks, Hugh looked for any markings that might tell him who these people were, but he couldn’t find any.

More gruff words, and the prisoners began hurrying to finish and forming lines back into the trucks. One of the prisoners slipped off the tailgate and fell back to his knees. A guard cursed and slammed a rifle butt between the man’s shoulder blades, knocking him the rest of the way over. The cry of pain carried clearly through the night. When the man didn’t stand back up quickly enough, the guard kicked him in the ribs, sending him tumbling out of the way of the other prisoners.

Hugh’s wristphone vibrated again.

The guard’s voice was rough and his motions quick as another prisoner tried to intervene and got a rifle butt to the face for his trouble. Gesturing with his gun, the guard harried the others back on the truck. When they were all aboard, he turned back to the last two prisoners, the first of which had just gotten himself off the ground. The guard drew a pistol and Hugh’s night vision binoculars flashed white with too much light.

The report reached Hugh’s ears and the image returned just in time for Hugh to see the prisoner topple backward and lay still.

Hugh’s wristphone began vibrating wildly, but he ignored it. His heart was pounding even more violently. He’d never seen a man killed before. And that was in cold blood. Unprovoked. Without reason.

He didn’t know who these men were, but they certainly weren’t dino hunters or scavengers and, for all the terrible things he’d heard over the years, he didn’t think any prison guard or lawman would have done what he’d just seen. Not even out here in the Abandoned Lands.

Three other guards, coming running from around the sides of the trucks, guns ready at the sound of the shot, quickly converged on the shooter, who was shoving the remaining prisoner back into the truck. Angry and confused exclamations reached Hugh’s ears. The shooter put his pistol away and waved the others off, his replies too low to hear. One of the other guards, tensed with angry body language, stayed in the shooter’s face and angrily pointed back toward the body.

No, Hugh realized, he wasn’t pointing to the body. He was pointing to Hugh’s house.

Hugh lowered the binoculars from his eyes so he could look out over the whole area. He couldn’t see anything in the night, but his wristphone began vibrating in S.O.S code. He looked down at it.

DANGER: RESIDENTIAL BREACH DETECTED. GUNSHOT DETECTED. HOMICIDE SUSPECTED. MALICIOUS INTENT LIKELY. CALL FOR HELP?

Hugh tapped the screen to pull up the map and was shocked to see a red dot inside his trailer home. One of the men had invaded his home. He zoomed in until the dot looked like a man, and the man looked like he had a gun drawn and was going room to room, searching.

A sharp whistle caught Hugh’s attention and he looked back to the trucks. Unable to see them in the dark, he lifted the night vision binoculars up and was confused to find only a white screen. It only took a second for Hugh to realize someone had an infrared spotlight on him, but it was a second too long.

The bullet stuck his shoulder, knocking the binoculars from his hands and sending him falling back, sliding down the slick metal roof.

His right arm numb, Hugh desperately scrabbled with his left hand for something, anything to grab onto, but he kept sliding. A sudden, sharp blow to the back stopped him, snapping something on the rifle across his back and spinning him around at the top of the ladder, leaving him gasping as he caught the top rail and found himself hanging off the edge of the roof.

Running footsteps crunched gravel in the darkness, and Hugh knew he only had seconds until someone arrived.

He swung a foot until he found a ladder rung and then put his weight on it. When he tried to use his right hand, his arm moved, but it didn’t move right, didn’t have any strength, and he couldn’t control it. Using only his left, he went down the ladder two and three rungs at a time, heedless of the noise. His grip slipped and he fell the last six feet.

The footsteps were almost upon him.

Hugh sprinted deeper into the junkyard, away from the approaching footsteps, and into the darkness where he hoped their infrared spotlights didn’t reach. He dodged squat washing machines and pallets of alternators, running by memory more than actually being able to see, trying to figure out where to go, how to get away.

He couldn’t stay in the junkyard. Though he knew the layout, they had the advantage of numbers, time, and, in the dark, those infrared spotlights. Sooner or later, they would find him.

There were only two gates out of the junkyard, one near where the trucks had parked, and one on the other side of the yard, neither of which Hugh could reach without going back toward the men. That only left the fence. He would have to climb it and hope he could escape into the night before they realized where he’d gone.

Pressed up against an old shipping container he used for storing tools, he paused to tap his wristphone, pulled up the home app, and opened the garage door, hoping to buy a few minutes by making the men think he’d somehow gone in there.

CALL FOR HELP? flashed across the screen. HOMICIDE SUSPECTED. MALICIOUS INTENT LIKELY.

Hugh was tempted, but he had no idea who the AI would or even could call for help, and for all he knew, these men were supposed to be the new local help.

He closed the app and did his best to move silently and, he hoped, invisibly toward the fence, using the rattling sound of the opening garage door as cover. When the door silenced, Hugh could still hear people moving around, and some whispered voices somewhere behind him, but nothing sounded close.

Reaching the rows of stacked cars, he picked an aisle and headed down it, trying to make sure there were no straight lines of sight between him and where he thought the men were. He changed rows twice and then froze when his boot hit something, kicking it across the dirt with a scuffing sound.

He’d picked up all the loose odds and ends years ago, clearing the path so tires wouldn’t get punctured, so he was surprised to have kicked something in the dark. He leaned closer, trying to make it out. It was the binoculars he’d dropped from the convertible weeks ago.

They weren’t night vision, but they’d come in handy when he was trying to decide if it was safe to come back. He scooped them up with his good hand and hurried on.

The feeling was returning to his injured arm, and it hurt like hell. By the time he reached the fence, he was sure it wasn’t a major wound. The bullet seemed to have grazed him between his neck and his shoulder, which led him to believe whoever fired the bullet had been going for a headshot. But the wound was still enough to stop him from climbing the fence. He just couldn’t pull himself twelve feet up with only one arm.

Frustrated, hearing more voices and movement, he knew he had to get out. He was sure they’d figured out he wasn’t in the garage by now and were searching the junkyard. He was just as sure they’d kill him, if for no other reason than they knew he’d seen one of them kill a prisoner.

There weren’t any weak places in the fence to push through. He’d spent too much time fixing and patching it, which he now regretted for the first time. He would have to get over it somehow, and the only way other than climbing was to jump over from higher up.

He changed direction and headed for the ramps up to where he dumped the nipper bucket every morning. The wooden ramps creaked under his weight as he worked his way up, eyeballing the top of the fence in the dark as he got higher. He would have to jump out three feet and try to catch himself on it, and it would be a twelve-foot fall if he missed the fence, but he’d be over it and out into the night.

The junkyard floodlights came on, and Hugh froze midstride across a crushed car, nearly blinded. The men must have found the switch in the garage. Hugh hadn’t used them or even thought about them in forever; they took up too much of the battery reserve.

Shouts filled the air, followed by gunshots and Hugh reflexively crouched, expecting bullets. But the sounds were moving away from him.

He stayed low and climbed higher, watching for pursuit. He spotted men with rifles running back toward the trailer home, and then there were muzzle flashes from beyond, out where the trucks were parked. He heard the reports from the gunshots a moment later and searchlights, white ones this time, came on from the vehicles.

Prisoners, hobbled in their shackles, were trying to escape out into the prairie. A spotlight found one and stayed on him until a shot rang out and the man went down, shot in the back. The spotlight swung wide and searched for another. When the light found a prisoner, the hobbled man froze and threw his hands up into the air in surrender.

A bullet tore through his back before he could turn around.

Hugh grit his teeth, his soul becoming a black acid pit. He didn’t know who these men were, but they’d invaded his home and shot him first, and he couldn’t stand by and watch them murder any more people.

He unslung the .30-06 and brought it around to shoot. The scope was smashed, useless. Worse, it prevented him from sighting down the barrel. Holding the rifle between his knees, he tried to work the damaged scope off with his good hand.

Another gunshot rang out, and Hugh looked up to see the spotlight on another man who was already face down in the dirt.

Hugh slapped at the scope, trying to break it off, but it was solid. He gave up and raised the rifle, trying to see if he could even guess how to aim around it. Before he could find a target, a hissing sound flew by his head, quickly followed by the distant report of the shot. He spotted the man standing on the blue steps to the trailer pointing a rifle up at him. The muzzle flashed and Hugh threw himself down into the shadows cast by the wooden ramp.

A bullet cracked into the metal somewhere near him, sending a small shockwave through the crushed car. He couldn’t see the gunman anymore, but he couldn’t stay hidden here either. Another bullet hit. Voices shouted. Footsteps moved toward him.

Hugh looked out at the top of the fence, brightly lit in the flood lights. It was three feet away and, if he stood, it was at head height. He could make that. If he hadn’t been shot in the arm. If they didn’t already know where he was. If it weren’t lit up.

If it weren’t lit up.

Hugh turned to his wristphone, ignoring the suggestion to call for help, and opened the home app again. Another bullet hit. A voice, the words clear now, called out, “I’ve got him pinned down!”

Footfalls came quickly, closing in.

Hugh found the light controls and shut the floodlights off.

Even as the bright lights still faded, he jumped up and scrambled higher up the cars. Someone else’s feet hit the bottom wooden ramp, the sounds like pistol shots into Hugh’s heart. There was no way he was going to outrun them. Even if he jumped the fence, they’d still be right on top of him now.

But what if he didn’t jump the fence?

With a grunt of pain, Hugh tossed the worthless .30-06 out into the dark, as far out over the fence as he could. It landed with a satisfying thud and bounce, and the footfalls behind him stopped. Holding his breath, and trying not to make a sound, Hugh tossed the binoculars after the rifle. The sound of it hitting was quieter, but farther away.

“He jumped the fence!”

A metallic clanging filled the night, and, as Hugh’s eyes finally began to re-adjust to the dark, he spotted a man going over the top of the chain-link fence.

A small flashlight flickered on, and the man waved the beam back and forth until it landed on the rifle. “He went this way,” the man said quietly. “I need infrared over here.”

Hugh, crouched down and trying not to so much as breathe, assumed the man was speaking into a microphone.

After a moment, the man spoke again, saying “Roger that,” and then turned off his light and squatted down in the dirt.

Quick footsteps approached from within the junkyard and then stopped at what Hugh figured was the fence line. “You climb this, Ty-man?”

“Like a monkey. Hurry up, he’s got a lead on us by now.”

“Screw that. Ain’t climbin’ no fence.”

Clipping sounds filled the night.

“You takin’ the time to cut the damned fence, Junior?”

“You want help or not?”

The noises stopped and a second figure appeared outside the fence, walking toward the squatting man. “I can’t believe Sunflower shot that guy.”

“They don’t call him Mr. Happy for nothing.”

“Yeah, but there ain’t no way we’re headed back to Texas without a full load again. That’s gonna add another couple of days to find another conscript at least. By the way, what’s all the shootin’ back there? Family in the house?”

“You don’t want to know. Come on. Which way?”

The little light snapped on again and fell right on the binoculars. “I’d say that way, but it’s gonna be hard in the dark.”

“The others will be here in a minute.”

Hugh watched the two figures move out into the darkness of the night, following their tiny beam of light.

Another gunshot sounded from the other side of the junkyard.

Quietly moving farther up the pile, hoping to get as far away from where they were looking for him as possible, Hugh’s mind worked over the word he’d heard the man say: conscript.

He’d never heard that word before, but he’d read it. Recently. That story about a press gang apparently hadn’t been a load of shit after all. These men were kidnapping people to force them into the New Texas Army—and killing them at the drop of a hat instead.

The white spotlights in the distance seemed small and far away as they speared out from the trucks and into the darkness looking for another enslaved man to kill, but they felt like hot irons burning across Hugh’s soul. There was nothing he could do to help those men. There wasn’t even anything he could do to help himself.

He risked a glance at his wristphone to see if anyone was near him. The red dots were all outside of the junkyard. Two on this side and five on the other. Gray dots had appeared where men had died, six of them. Hugh didn’t know if that meant there were still three survivors, or if they had died outside the security system’s reach.

CALL FOR HELP? flashed across the screen.

Hugh wished he could. There wasn’t anyone out here. No one who would respond. And if someone actually did, it wouldn’t be for a day or two. Or three. Maybe they’d just come to see if there was anything to salvage for a couple of bucks. There wasn’t anyone to call.

He reached the convertible as that thought still echoed through his skull.

There was only one thing out here Hugh was capable of calling anymore.

He looked down at the steering wheel, barely visible in the gloom, and then back out to the spotlights searching for men in the prairie. There was a good chance he wouldn’t survive this night, but maybe he could help one of those last three men get away. And, if they did, maybe they could warn others that it hadn’t just been a click-bait story, that people had to be careful and protect themselves, protect their families from this new threat.

Hugh looked up to the sky and wondered what his own family would think of him now, and how long it would be until he saw them. Then he honked the horn three times.

The bullet shattered the convertible’s low windshield. Hugh dove down into the seat well, pushing the lawn chair out of the way. It had taken only a second or two for them to lock in on him, and he wondered if it was AI assisted sound targeting, something he’d read about. One of the many things AIs were considered unethical to use for.

He was still in darkness but assumed there was an infrared spotlight on him.

Another bullet hit, and he felt it shake the car. White spotlights found the car. Another bullet put a hole through the door at his feet and a shaft of light shone through and sent him scampering, curling up into a ball under the steering wheel. He had to get out of the car. Fumbling at the door latch with his good hand, he tugged and pushed, hoping to get it open without falling out.

Shouting, coming from the direction of the vehicles, grew louder, and he knew they’d be on him soon.

He tugged the latch again, fighting twenty years of disuse, and pushed his good shoulder into it. The door gave with a wretched creak of rusted metal that carried out into the night. Hugh found himself looking out over the fence toward a small bobbing light that was approaching quickly.

There was a flash next to the light and a moment later a bullet struck the car.

Trapped, Hugh drew his .357 and quickly fired the three varmint-shot rounds out toward the flashlight, knowing they wouldn’t have any effect from this distance but hoping it would at least make them slow.

The tiny light bobbed, and Hugh imagined he could see the two men dodging. He took the chance, dropped his pistol to the ground twenty feet below, and then rolled himself out of the convertible’s door even as more bullets hit the other side and more shafts of light appeared through the door.

Hanging from the edge of the foot well, Hugh said a silent prayer that he wouldn’t land on the fence or eviscerate himself on a jagged piece of crushed car, and he let go.

He landed on his feet, knees buckling under him, and rolling him into the fence. Cracks of bullets hitting above him made him flinch, and he twisted around in the three feet between the stack of cars and the fence, moving himself deeper into the shadows created by the spotlight spilling through gaps in the wall of cars.

His hand fell on the gun he’d dropped. He grabbed it and raised it up, steadying his weak arm with his good one. Grimacing with the effort, he aimed at the bobbing light out in the dark prairie and fired.

The return fire was near instantaneous, and the world around Hugh exploded into a hot spray of dirt, steel, and lead. Hugh covered his face with his elbow and folded down into the dirt.

The hail of bullets stopped with a distant scream. More shots were fired, but no bullets hit, and Hugh cautiously raised his eyes to look out through the fence.

The light was gone, and something moved in the darkness. Something big.

The roar of a motor pulled Hugh’s attention to the far end of the junkyard fence. One of the armored trucks, having circled the property, came into view, spotlights piercing the night, shining up the fence line, following the row of cars. It only took seconds for the light to find Hugh, huddled at the base of the wall.

He scrambled to his feet, ignoring whatever was wrong with his knee, and ran for all he was worth, trying to thread the needle between the sharp edges of crushed cars and the jagged spurs on the old chain-link fence snagging at his sleeves. A bullet hit in front of him, throwing metallic flecks that shone in the spotlight. Another hit behind him, feeling to him like it had narrowly missed his head. And the then spotlight left him.

Barreling full speed, he stumbled as the light moved out ahead of him and on to a tree trunk. Even as he irrationally thought there were no trees here, the light moved up to reveal the golden eyes of the rex.

Bright red blood covered its serrated, six-inch teeth and dripped from its jaw.

Hugh heard the truck slide to a stop in the loose dirt as the spotlight wavered and then found its way back to the behemoth.

“What the fuck!”

The voice was right in front of Hugh, right where the other gunman had cut through the fence, and Hugh dropped to the ground and pressed himself into the shadows.

Gunfire erupted from the truck.

The three men appearing from the break in the car wall, transfixed by the rex, never looked toward Hugh.

“Jesus Christ! Is that what I think it is?”

“Stop yapping, start shooting!”

The rex was already charging the armored truck when the men opened fire, shooting at its back, following it as it lowered its head, bellowed, and attacked the truck.

Hugh gripped his pistol and swallowed. He couldn’t let them kill the rex. He’d called it here. Raising the gun, he stepped out of the shadows. “Drop your weapons!”

One man turned and rolled his eyes at Hugh.

“Drop them!” Hugh yelled.

“Yeah, yeah,” the man said as the other two turned to see what was happening.

The first suddenly jerked his rifle up at Hugh and fired. Hugh shot back, throwing himself to the side, not knowing if he hit the man or not. He fired two more times as the men shot at him.

He felt a sledgehammer pound into him, and the earth shook under him, but he continued to shoot back until the magazine emptied.

One of the men vanished under a blur of motion as a giant foot came down upon him, shaking the earth again. A second disappeared into a dark maw of impossibly big teeth. The third turned man and fired twice up into the belly of the rex before another giant foot came down and ended him. The impact vibrated Hugh’s teeth.

Hugh gasped for air, unable to move, his body in shock. He knew he was shot, but he couldn’t tell where or how many times. And he didn’t want to know.

The rex stepped closer, dripping things off its foot, and brought its horrid, bloody face down to Hugh’s face. The smell of hot blood washed over Hugh and he gagged. The rex dropped its nose to the dirt and tilted its head to look Hugh in the eyes.

He met its gaze for a moment and then nodded. He closed his eyes and turned his face up to the heavens. It was finally time to be with his family again.

The rex nosed him, as it had the ’ceratops, and Hugh felt its wet breath dampen his shirt. A calm came over him and he relaxed his body and waited.

The rex took a deep breath…and sneezed.

Hugh opened his eyes. The darkness ahead of him was broken up by streaks of light from spotlights in the junkyard casting long shadows out into the darkness. The rex’s form dappled as it slowly passed through the light beams, and Hugh could see several trickles of blood from wounds on its flank before it silently vanished into the night.

Moving slowly himself, not wanting to know how badly he was hurt, not wanting to guess how long it would be until he bled out, Hugh fumbled at his shirt pocket and found his pack of cigarettes, crushed. He worked at it with the only hand that would move, the one that had been worthless earlier, and managed to put a broken cigarette in his mouth. He didn’t have anything to light it with, but that didn’t matter. It smelled good.

He raised his eyes to the night sky, to the billions of stars, and sighed. “Here’s to you, Papi.”

His wristphone vibrated, and he lifted his arm to look at the flickering, cracked screen.

TRAUMATIC INJURY DETECTED. PLEASE REMAIN CALM. CALLING FOR HELP.

Hugh silenced the notification on his new wristphone and picked up the new NetTab off the kitchen table. He tapped the screen to see the vid and was glad to see the approaching truck and trailer right on time.

Finishing his coffee, he put on his hat, kissed his fingers and touched them to the photo of his family, and adjusted the sling holding his right arm. He tucked his crutch under his left arm and stepped out of the trailer home to meet the truck as it pulled through the front gate. The truck stopped in a cloud of dust and the passenger window rolled down revealing a young boy.

“Where do they go?” the driver called.

Hugh pointed past the garage where he’d built a corral out of scrap metal posts, pipes, and I-beams.

The man waved to him, rolled the window up, and turned the truck around in the yard, expertly backing the livestock trailer up to the make-shift fence. The truck shuddered and went quiet, and the man and boy got out.

“Good morning, Mr. Sanchez,” the man called, putting on his hat. “Pleasure to see you again.”

“And you, Mr. Williams,” Hugh said, limping down the wooden steps. The men met in the middle of the yard and nodded to one another instead of shaking hands.

“This is my son, Roger,” Mr. Williams said.

“Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Sanchez.” The boy held out his hand and then shyly grinned as he looked at Hugh’s sling.

“And you, Roger.” Hugh grinned back at him.

“You’re looking good,” Mr. Williams said. “Healin’ up nicely.”

“Slower than I’d like but getting there.”

“And how’d that dino first-aid kit work for you?”

“That worked perfectly. The sedative took longer to work than I would have liked, but it other than that, the patch-up paste was perfect. I should get another one from you, just in case there are any future incidents.”

“Another one?” Mr. Williams laughed. “That should have been enough for a dozen dinos!”

“Well…” Hugh kicked at the dirt. “Maybe I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“We’re all learnin’ out here. It’s a different world.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

“Well. C’mon, son,” Mr. Williams put his hand on Roger’s shoulder. “Let’s unload Mr. Sanchez’s ’ceratopses.”

Hugh followed and watched as they herded four waddling, three-foot tall protoceratopses out of the trailer. The animals looked like miniature triceratopses, without the horns, and they grunted and hooted as they entered the corral.

“You really want four of these every week?” the boy asked.

“Well, we’ll see how it goes,” Hugh answered, “but yeah.”

“Must be some barbeque you’re gonna have!” Roger’s eyes were impossibly wide, and he nodded enthusiastically.

Hugh couldn’t help but enjoy the boy’s passion. “I’m hoping it works out. If it does, maybe I’ll be able to invite you guys someday.”

“That would be great!”

Hugh turned back to watch the protoceratopses exploring their new pen, hoping it would work out that he could have the boy come watch someday. He wondered how wide the boy’s eyes would get when he saw a rex coming out of the prairie to get its own private barbequed ’ceratops.

Probably not as wide as Hugh’s had gotten when, after he’d tracked the sedated rex back into the trees, waiting for it to fall asleep so he could patch its wounds, he’d found the nest and three eggs.

Something about the eggs, open and vulnerable in that giant nest, had finally settled Hugh’s soul. This land wasn’t abandoned. It was just going through a change in demographics.

And some of the new neighbors were a lot more worthwhile than others, willing to lend a hand when needed. It hadn’t taken Hugh long to decide to stick around and return the favor.

Sam Knight is the owner/publisher of Knight Writing Press and author of six children’s books, five short story collections, four novels, and over 75 stories, including three co-authored with Kevin J. Anderson. Though he has written in many cool worlds, such as Planet of the Apes, Wayward Pines, and Jeff Sturgeon’s Last Cities of Earth, among his family and friends he is, and probably always will be, best known for writing Chunky Monkey Pupu.

Once upon a time, Sam was known to quote books the way some people quote movies, but now he claims having a family has made him forgetful—as a survival adaptation.

To learn more, you can find him at samknight.com.