5

Running is harder than I’d hoped. My left side still feels numb and weak. My feet skid on discarded rubble. I fear I look like I’m creating my own Olympic event—half hopping, half limping.

I hug the left-hand wall, desperate to avoid the T-Rex’s gaze. It thrashes back and forth, dominating the central aisle. Kayla thumps it desultorily on its head. It roars, spraying her with prehistoric phlegm. The grenade is a solid weight in my hand.

“Its mouth! Open its mouth!” I scream at Kayla. I don’t know how else to phrase the absurd request.

Kayla turns slowly, arches an eyebrow. The T-Rex lunges, jaws snapping. She sidesteps casually.

“Its mouth,” I yell. “Open!”

Kayla gives a heavy shrug.

“Please!” I’m close enough that I don’t want to get any closer. I can smell its breath, foul as a charnel house.

The T-Rex lunges again. Kayla sidesteps again. The gaping mouth of the T-Rex whistles by her. Toward me. Knife blade teeth lancing at my head.

I try not to close my eyes. I hurl the grenade at the beast’s tonsils. It bounces off one tooth, drops into the wide red maw.

Without much seeming care, Kayla slams an elbow into the T-Rex’s jaw. The mouth shuts very suddenly and very fast. Instead of the T-Rex’s teeth scouring my flesh from my bone, its nose thuds into my chest, sitting me down on my arse. The roar turns to a choking cough.

For a moment I think the grenade is going to come out the other way, coughed back at me in a fiery ball of death. And then, as the T-Rex rears backwards, I see a tiny flash of silver disappear down its throat.

It worked.

It actually bloody worked.

I’m so stunned I actually sit there and stare before remembering to scramble for cover.

The explosion rips through the room. Through the guts of the dinosaur. The rib cage distends, bursts through the rotten skin. Vertebrae, claws, bone shards embed themselves in the walls, a mess of reptilian shrapnel. The creature’s head barrels over the pile of splinters I’m pretending is cover. Its teeth slash the air one final time.

I stay there, waiting to be certain. Waiting to make sure the Grim Reaper has left the building. Eventually I uncurl, my ears ringing. The back of my jacket has been flayed, but I’m remarkably whole, just a few grazes along my back. Smoke billows through the room.

“Oh! My! God!” It’s the young girl with two pistols and enormous headphones. She paws them down around her neck, still holding the guns. Two platinum-blond pigtails bounce as she skips forward, almost prancing through the massive pool of blood that’s spreading across the room.

“You guys!” She stares at me, at Shaw, at Clyde, at Kayla. “You are so freaking awesome!”

To be honest, I am not entirely upset with that response. Modesty be damned. That looked pretty cool.

The job’s not done though. Shaw walks past the girl, heading toward the stairs. Clyde and I head after her, drawn warily into her wake, pistol out. Kayla stands watching us walk.

The blond girl dances after us. “I mean, did you guys see that?” she says. “With the grenade! And its head! I mean holy Jesus, I have never seen anything close to being half that cool. Not even on TV.” She pauses, thinks. “You guys should totally be on TV.” She nods to herself. “You would be massive.”

I wonder if I can get this girl to be a character witness at my next performance review.

We’re at the foot of the stairs. Shaw signals with her gun for me to go wide. I start edging along the wall and Shaw starts edging up the stairs. Clyde stands and watches us.

“Batteries?” Shaw says to him.

He gives an embarrassed shrug—proving that such a thing is possible—and slips two AAs under the lip of his mask.

She pauses at the top of the stairs, in line with the wall, not yet visible to anyone crouched behind it. I see her take two quick breaths.

I realize I really do not want to see her get shot. That I would be very upset. More than if it was Clyde, and despite the brevity of our association I’d already count Clyde among my best friends. And I realize that maybe I’m not so sorry about the joke about being decent in bed. Not as sorry as I ought to be anyway.

Shaw holds up three fingers, then two, then—

I move before she finishes the countdown. There is no way I’m going to let this wizard cow put holes in Felicity Shaw. I vault the wall. It’s not a maneuver that’s going to win me an Olympic gold, but I keep my gun arm free. I sweep the pistol along the length of the raised platform.

I point it at nothing. At no one.

“Shit!” Shaw, snapping around the corner, curses at the empty platform. She scans back and forth. There’s just one door. One route away from here, easily taken in the confusion. Shaw points to it. We start running.

The door flies open onto a corridor. More display cases line the walls. The stocky woman stands beside one. She has bad skin, bad teeth, and a bad perm. She looks a little like my mother. Admittedly my mother’s left jaw, shoulder, arm, and side aren’t encased in metal, but it’s still a little embarrassing that she’s the one who’s been handing us our arses so tidily.

The woman raises a hand. Sheets of steel shift with an electronic hiss. Engines whine. She extends the hand protruding from the metal arm. A ring of LEDs shine blue and bright around her wrist. With a quick movement she smashes a glass case. She grabs something large and silver—a sizable chunk of metal or mineral—off a velvet board.

“Put it down,” I say.

Shaw points her pistol. I mirror her movements.

The woman starts shouting, defiant. But I don’t start understanding. The language sounds familiar, though. Something eastern European? Russian perhaps?

Shaw cocks the hammer on her pistol. “He said put it down, you Russian bitch.”

So, definitely Russian then.

The woman laughs at us.

“I’m warning you,” Shaw says, but perhaps not loud enough to expect to be heard.

Lightning arcs out of the wall. Shaw yells, fires. But she’s not as fast as the Russian woman. The bullet whips through a white electric blur, slams into the wall. The corridor is abruptly empty.

Another electric blue-white light flashes from through an archway to the right.

“Fuck!” Shaw yells.

I’m already running past her. I skid at the archway, bunch my knees ready to put on another spurt of speed—

It’s a little dead-end room, an alcove with dreams of grandeur. It holds a great carved rock, a few spotlights, some poorly chosen wallpaper. And no Russians at all.

Shaw joins me, pistol still pointing. She thrusts it at empty space. We stare at each other. There was nowhere for the Russian to go and she’s totally gone.