“Jack.”
I know I’m dreaming again when I hear Pop’s voice.
“Jack, wake up, son.”
It’s so hot in the dream. Like a sauna. It’s agonizing.
“Jack, it’s me, your father. Wake up, son!”
I feel my body being shaken. My eyes flutter open and the large, dark silhouette of a man stands over me, the blazing sun forming a corona around him.
“Pop?” I ask. My voice sounds terrible—as brittle as a frozen twig.
“Quick, son. Let’s get you into the shade.”
Pop lifts me and carries me under the canopy of a nearby tree. Santa wipes the water of my melting scalp from my eyes and I see that he has stripped down to only his boots and underclothes.
He’s filthy. His silvery hair and beard are full and unkempt. He’s also quite a few pounds lighter than when I last saw him.
“You’ve lost weight,” I say, my voice a whisper.
“And you will, too, unless we get you out of here soon.” He hugs me to his chest. “Oh, son! It is so good to see you.”
“Where are we?” I ask. “How can the sun be out when it’s still Christmas Eve?”
“It’s still Christmas Eve in the time you came from. If I had to guess, I’d say we’re currently sometime around the end of the Cretaceous Period. It’s where Father Time and his cronies dumped me, and now you, for safe keeping.”
I think about the elevator in City Hall, the one that runs from the big bang up to present day, and realize exactly how Pop and I got here.
“Oh, son, you wouldn’t believe the things I’ve had to endure!”
“You and me both—”
Pop gestures for me to fall silent. I do so and try to listen. But it’s too hard. Too hard to do anything but lie here.
Great Ak, it’s hot!
Pop perks up beside me.
“Pop, what is—?”
Again, I fall silent at his urging. Then I feel it. The ground shaking beneath our feet every few seconds. The tremors are small, but growing steadily. They remind me of the Cottontail’s thumping, only magnified a hundred fold!
“We’ve got to get out of here!” Pop says.
He jerks me to my feet and throws my arm over his shoulder. He trots deeper into the rain forest surrounding us, more or less dragging me along. We pass around trees, deadfall, and bubbling pits of what will one day millennia hence be petroleum.
“What, Pop? What’s the—?”
I see the gigantic head of a tyrannosaurus rex drop below the forest canopy to sniff the ground. Pop dives behind a fallen tree, pulling me along with him.
“Okay, son,” he whispers. “He only smells me. You’re just water as far as he’s concerned. I’ll run to the left and draw him away from you.”
“No way, Pop!” I whisper.
“It’s not open to discussion, son.”
“If you take off, I’m going to yell at the top of my lungs to make sure he has a thirst quencher in me before he gets you as the main course.”
“You wouldn’t!”
I struggle to do it, but I grin back at him. It’s answer enough.
Pop scowls, looking as mean as a jolly fat Santa Claus can, which isn’t very much.
“It’s only a matter of time before the dinosaur finds us. What are we going to do?”
“We’ll beat him to the punch. Look, I’ve got an idea. See if you can get us back to one of those tar pits we passed.”
He nods and lifts me to my feet. We both glance back at the T-Rex. It’s still sniffing the ground, but closer now.
Too close.
We stumble along, circling back in the direction we came, the T-Rex doing likewise. At last, we reach a clearing overflowing with bubbling pits of goo.
“There,” I say, nodding to a large pit on our right. “That one looks big enough. Take us over—”
My words are drowned out in the tooth-rattling roar of the T-Rex. We look back and see the dinosaur crashing through the forest toward us, its enormous, razor-sharp jaws spread wide.
“He’s spotted us!” I say. “Quick, get us to the other side!”
Pop moves as fast as I’ve ever seen. In seconds flat, we reach the opposite side of the pit.
“Lower me down!” I plead. “Hurry!”
I stretch my hand out above the tar pit, reaching out to the tiny droplets of moisture hanging in the air. Pop realizes what I’m doing and protests.
“No, son! You’re too weak! It will kill you!”
I ignore him and concentrate, praying I can do this before the T-Rex gets close enough to be spooked by it. A thin sheet of ice forms beneath my hand and begins to snake out over the pit.
“Come on!” I say.
The T-Rex grows larger and larger within my field of vision.
“You can do this! Come on!”
The dinosaur’s roar thunders in my ears.
The ice finishes covering the entire pit just as the T-Rex bursts through into the clearing. I collapse, rolling over onto my back so that I see an up-side-down version of the beast as it gallops toward us. It dodges around several pits and I begin to worry my plan won’t work.
“Come on, you big, stupid thing, come on!”
I shouldn’t have worried. Instead of noticing the ice cover and slowing down, the T-Rex charges straight for us. The ice cracks with its first step and the dinosaur tumbles face-first into the bubbling ooze.
“Yeah!” I shout.
I slam my fist on the ground in triumph as the T-Rex sinks below the surface. I turn, exuberant, to face Pop. My smile drops when I see the tears rolling down his rosy cheeks.
“He was going to eat us, Pop.” I say.
“I know,” he says wiping his face. “I know. But he was just an animal, doing what he was born to do. He didn’t know any better.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re—” agony shoots through my body.
I look down and see I’m only an ice shaving of my normal frosty self. That last little stunt with the ice cover did me in.
I’m melting.
Fast!
Pop takes me in his arms.
“If only I had a little bit of the Pole here—a little bit of home grown magic. I could get us out of here lickity-split.”
I try to speak, but my mouth is only able to form a single world. “Pocket.”
Pop nods. He releases me and reaches into my cloak pocket. A smile lights up his bearded face along with the bit of aurora borealis as he pulls it out.
“If it’s one thing I know,” Pop says as he lays a finger to the side of his nose with his free hand, “It’s how to make an exit!”
I hear the ding of an elevator and then a rectangular hole opens in space before us. On the other side is the box-shaped interior of the City Hall time-evator.
He drags me inside.
“What floor?” He asks.
A smug grin covers my face.
“There,” I say, pointing to one of the buttons. “the last Ice Age!”