“There!”
She automatically jerked back to her side of the road and then realized that Taggart hadn’t spotted an oncoming car but a monster. He had his camera already trained on the massive creature poised to attack.
“Oh! That’s where that went,” Jane said.
Truth was sinking in on Taggart. “That’s…not real, is it?”
“No, that’s a proper T-Rex. Saurus are more velociraptor in shape, although just about the same size. I think that’s from a miniature golf course that was like ten miles away. Yes, this is Sunset’s stuff. There’s Skull Mountain and Batman. I wonder where they found the pirate ship. Oh, God, they’ve got the dragon den statue from Sandcastle!”
“Pittsburghers love castles.”
“It’s an abandoned water park down on the Mon River. They couldn’t keep the water fairies out. And yes, we do; it’s part of the American dream.” She was going to drive past but realized that Nigel had pulled into the parking lot. “What are they doing?”
“Oh, we can’t pass this up.” Taggart motioned for her to go back. “It’s far too surreal. This is what we came to film. The real Pittsburgh.”
“This makes us look like redneck nutcases.” Jane backed up so she could pull in behind the production truck. Nigel and Hal were already out, gesturing at all the statues visible from the parking lot.
“We’ve got to get this, Jane!” Nigel cried as she and Taggart climbed out of her SUV.
“All right.” She waved to get them to keep Hal from chiming in. They only had a vague tip on the saurus and so far they hadn’t seen any sign of one. Certainly the cows seemed unconcerned and the fence hadn’t been breached. Most likely the putt-putt was as safe as any other place in Pittsburgh; which was to say, only somewhat harmless. “Set up so the T-Rex is in frame and you can do basic biology comparisons.” She turned to Taggart. “Keep an eye and ear open. I’ll be in the truck.”
She would have liked to put Chesty on guard duty, but he would only guard her. Elfhounds were very loyal to a very small set of people and she’d never been able to get him to include Hal into that unit.
Because she and Hal killed their show’s subjects every week, often with fire, they used the production truck to make sure they had good footage before fully engaging the creatures. After the actual fighting started, whatever they got, they got. They’d also learned that while a smoking body afterward rarely made great material, it was worse to come back the next day and discover that predators had found the corpse.
She flicked on screens and put in an earpiece to link her with Taggart and Nigel. “I’m set.”
Taggart had a perfect frame already. Nigel waited until Hal got a light reflector in place.
Nigel stood a moment in profile, looking up at the T-Rex looming over him and then turned toward the camera. “No more than this statue can capture the true essence of a dinosaur can our cameras convey the primal silence of this place. We’re standing in the heart of the displaced zone on a Saturday morning. At one time two million people lived in this area. A sunny day, like today, would have heralded thousands of lawnmowers growling to life. Cars coming and going to one of a dozen malls. And across the street, people would have been lining up to tee off. Cows graze there now. We haven’t seen another car for half an hour. All there is to be heard is the rustle of the wind through the trees.”
Hopefully just wind, Jane thought.
“This miniature golf place stands almost abandoned. Someone is keeping the grass trimmed. There’s clubs and a bucket of golf balls and a sign that reads ‘play at your own risk.’ Someone has added ‘be careful of the water trap on third hole.’ This place stands as a monument to what is quintessential Pittsburgh. The people of this city adapt and go on.”
Jane was impressed that Nigel had taken all that in the short period of time that they’d arrived. Judging by the torn earth around the dragon statue, the owners of the park had only recently looted the abandoned water park in Homestead and dragged it halfway across town. Apparently, there was enough interest in the putt-putt to improve it but not make it a viable business.
“This fellow is Earth’s Tyrannosaurus, or T-Rex. He was a theropod dinosaur, which means he’s bipedal, or walks on two legs. He’s been extinct for sixty-five million years. We are here today seeking something very much alive. The Elfhome saurus.
“This distant cousin is very much like this fellow here. The saurus grows to a massive forty feet in length from nose to tip of tail, and fourteen feet high at the hips.” Nigel raised his hand and demonstrated that if his knuckles were the dinosaur’s hips that the saurus would be considerably taller if it straightened up from its running stance. “This effectively doubles its reach. And unlike the T-Rex, the Elfhome saurus has very functional forelegs that can reach and grasp.”
Nigel lifted his right hand slightly.
“Done?” Taggart asked.
“Done,” Nigel said. “For now. I could talk for hours about the saurus but it would only be worth it if we catch one on film.”
“How was that, Jane?” Taggart asked.
She checked lighting and sound. “It was perfect.”
“I want to do the water trap.” Nigel pointed past Mario and the mushroom castle of the second hole. The moat of the castle extended out into a small pond with stepping stones out to an island that acted as the tee for the third hole. The cup lay somewhere on the shore beyond the larger-than-life Batman standing guard on the flat roof of an old-fashioned police station.
“What do you think is in there?” Taggart filmed the water trap on the third hole.
“The mind boggles.” Jane eyed the murky green water on her monitors. “The most dangerous things are in the river, not ponds.”
Hal pulled out his grab stick and gave the water an experimental stir.
“Hal!” Jane barked.
“I’m being careful.” For Hal, these were often famous last words.
“Just stay out of the water and keep back from the water’s edge,” she ordered.
“We could just throw a stick of dynamite in,” Hal said. “Just to be sure.”
“We don’t have any liability waivers signed, so no dynamite.”
Taggart gave a bark of surprised laughter. He was getting hauntingly beautiful shots at amazing speed. The nearly abandoned golf course in the early dawn light seemed luminous and yet achingly sad through his lens.
“Hush, you,” Jane grumbled, feeling mildly jealous. She wanted to be outside, filming too, but time didn’t allow for that.
The men carefully picked their way around the water trap to where rooftop Batman stoically guarded the cup.
Nigel reached up to pat the statue’s foot. “The stories you could tell.”
And hopefully they wouldn’t add any new interesting ones today.
Nigel leaned against the miniature police station and grinned with boyish glee. “It’s really starting to hit home. I’m on Elfhome. I was eight when Pittsburgh suddenly vanished from Earth. It was like Christmas. The first Startup was in the middle of the night and we woke to a changed world. I remember how all the television channels for days played endless footage of the forest that sprang up without warning where the city once stood. How completely and totally dumbfounded the world was on how to explain what had happened. And after the first few hours of the wall of trees, the stories of the strange and wondrous animals rampaging through the suburbs that remained on Earth. For me the most amazing were the two saurus that made it to the Monroeville Mall parking lot…”
Jane saw a movement in the background. Something big and black was charging down the hill behind the Batman statue. “Cow!”