“Allyn is down,” I say. “Ruby, where are we?”
“I’ve located one of them, in the Tick Tock,” it says. “But I still don’t know what’s wrong with the cameras.”
“Nik, do what you can on your end.” Then I turn to the old man and point to an expensive-looking pair of noise-canceling headphones sitting on top of the towel cabinet. “These yours?”
He nods, so I pick them up and crack them in half. He doesn’t protest and it serves to make me feel a tiny bit better. I pat Allyn on the good arm. “You okay, chief?”
He nods. “Go get ’em.”
I check the gun to make sure it’s loaded. Pat my pocket, full of the zip ties. And realize that I have nothing to contain the last two but my wits. Can I shoot one in the leg? Is suffering pain or is suffering death? Why do Buddhists always have to be so fucking obtuse?
I step into the hallway, ears on alert, and check in with Ruby. “Still in the Tick Tock?”
“Toward the bar.”
“Anyone up there?”
“Not that I can see and…oh, it sees me.”
There’s a stretch of silence. “And?”
“It’s…curious, for sure. I’m trying to distract it. Moving back and forth to see if it’ll follow me.”
A plan knits together in my head. “If you can get into the kitchen and find something it wants to eat but stay out of its reach, you can keep it distracted long enough that maybe, I don’t know…”
“The freezer,” Ruby says. “If we can lure it inside we can lock the door.”
“That’s brilliant,” I say, moving toward the ramp that’ll take me up to the next level. “Finally pulling your weight.”
“In fairness it’s from the classic Steven Spielberg movie Jurassic Park…”
“You could have just said nothing,” I tell Ruby, “and I would have been impressed. How high can these things jump?”
“Roughly ten to twelve feet.”
“Then get in the kitchen, latch onto something tasty, and be thankful we have high ceilings.”
“One problem. I lack the dexterity to open the freezer door.”
“Yeah, that’s why you’re going to distract it, dummy. I’ll get the door.”
“That does not sound like a smart plan.”
“Then come up with a better one. Until such time, this is it.”
Ruby cuts off and I move up the ramp, listening for the sound of anything that might tip off an approaching raptor. I’m hoping the one in the basement stays fixated on what’s down there.
As I approach the glass doors of the restaurant I say, “Getting close. Cutting off contact. Keep an eye on me and make sure I can loop around to the freezer.”
“I found a pork loin,” Ruby says.
When I peek my head around the corner I see Ruby floating about twenty feet in the air, a raptor a tiny bit smaller than the last one—this one with more orange in its feathers than red—scrambling onto a table to grab the chunk of pink meat dangling from Ruby’s chassis. And the first thing I think is: how am I going to clean raw pork off of that thing?
Another not-right-now problem.
I creep through the doors, sticking close to the far wall. Ruby locks on me and backs up, creating a wide berth. Still don’t feel good, and I keep the gun out, wondering how quickly I’m going to have to go back on my moral stand.
Wondering also, do these things hear very well?
Which doesn’t matter, because I’m being so careful sticking against the wall that I nudge a chair, and the metal leg screeches so loud, the sound rips right up my spine. I duck behind the hostess table as I hear something crash behind me.
Then silence.
I hold my breath.
The light changes, and the space fills with the blaring sound of “Walk Like an Egyptian” and movement and clatter and plates and bodies.
Then, just like that, it’s gone.
Is someone really playing the Bangles right now?
I lean out and the raptor is looking around in confusion.
I’m about to ask Ruby what’s going on, when it happens again, but this time I see it. The restaurant is suddenly filled with that party from earlier today, with the guests ready for their trip to Egypt. Kolten, Warwick, and Drucker are just about to take their seats.
The raptor lunges for an old woman in a cream-colored robe, but then the scene is over, all of it gone. Back to a quiet restaurant. Just it, me, and Ruby.
God, couldn’t they have been listening to a better song?
Also, why the hell can the dinosaur see it too?
That helps me right now, but doesn’t bode well for pretty much anything else.
Worse is, in a couple of minutes I’m going to come crashing through those doors to save Kolten. I think about the test pilot who visited himself as a kid and had a brain aneurysm. Would this count as crossing my own timeline?
The cacophony returns, and this one seems to be going on a little longer, so I risk getting up and moving toward the kitchen. It won’t be too far to get there. I stick to the tables, keep low, an eye on the raptor, which is snapping its jaws but not sinking into any of the people around it. As soon as I hear the music stop, I throw myself to the floor.
This is like the shittiest game of musical chairs ever.
And as soon as the music starts again I’m back on my feet, weaving through people who aren’t really there. Closer to the bar, where, as soon as I get behind it, I’ll be out of sight.
Of both the dinosaur and, hopefully, myself.
The ghost party resumes, filling my head with that damn piece of shit song.
So close to the bar. Twenty feet. Ten.
Five.
I drop behind a table as the music stops, and I expect the room to be empty save Ruby and the dinosaur, which I can just make out from my vantage point, through the chair legs. But there’s more movement, from the kitchen.
Something peeking around the side of the bar.
It reveals itself slowly, and it takes me a second to register.
The little girl.
Damn it. The dinosaur is straying from Ruby a bit, moving closer toward us, and if it sees the kid then it will probably abandon that pork loin for a more accessible snack. I wave to her, trying to get her to move back into the kitchen, but she just stares at me. She’s crouched down, looking at me through thick strands of dark hair. Through them, I can just make out her eyes, where they catch the light. She is so scared.
The music starts again. The kid ducks away, and I use the cacophony as a chance to move forward, try to get the girl someplace safe in the kitchen while I handle the dinosaur, but even though the musical interludes have gotten longer, I am relying too much on that, because I’m still on my feet when the music stops, and when I drop I knock against a chair that squeals across the floor.
The raptor snaps its head around, making direct eye contact with me. Its talons strike the floor. Then it rears back and the clack-clack-clack of it calling out to me echoes through the room.
I’m sorry, Mena. My love.
I tried. This one little thing, I tried. But if it gets through me it might get the kid next. I want to strangle her right now but I’m not about to let her get eaten.