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.