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"What's it doing, Mick?"
Mick the Mick had no idea. The dinosaur nosed the furry thing back and forth, back and forth. Like playing with a toy. Then it gently picked up proto-Sal and flung it across the jungle, toward Willie. It landed at his friend's feet.
"I think it wants to play, Mick." Willie picked up the limp animal. "Hey, you see this mouse thing? Looks like that butcher from Ma
"Throw it, Willie!"
Willie cocked his arm back, aiming at Mick.
"To the dinosaur, you moron!"
"Oh. Fetch, boy!"
Willie tossed proto-Sal, and the T. rex snatched it right out of the air, crunching on it like popcorn.
"He can catch, Mick! Let's throw him something else."
Mick the Mick sca
"Throw it to me, Mick! We'll play monkey in the middle!"
The 'saur stuck out its queen-size-bed tongue for a lick, and the flower chomped down on it. This sent the T. rex into a screeching, stomping, spitting fit, crushing the flower beneath gigantic talons. Then it sniffed out a similar flower and gave that one a lick.
"Now's our chance to get away, Willie. Willie!" Before Mick the Mick could stop him, Willie yelled, "Catch!" and chucked a fallen tree branch at the dinosaur. It smacked against the T. rex's head with a painful-sounding thud. The T. rex locked eyes on them and roared.
"He don't want to play no more, Mick. I don't, neither." They ran. The thunder lizard lunged after them and gained quickly—no surprise, what with it being able to cover a dozen of their steps with only one of it own.
As Mick the Mick whipped through the jungle, overwhelmed with bladder-squeezing panic, he tried to force lucidity and make his very last thought something profound and revelatory. Instead, all he could think of was that Brady Bunch episode in Hawaii when Greg found the cursed tiki idol.
Not a brilliant last thought, but everyone had to admit that was one of the show's best episodes. "Mick! It's not following us anymore!" Mick the Mick chanced an over-the-shoulder look and indeed the T. rex had once again abandoned pursuit. It simply stood there, staring off into the jungle, as if in deep thought. Then it dropped to the ground like it had been shot, the impact a sound of thunder.
Had some caveman killed the dinosaur? Or perhaps some rich hunter from the future on some kind of prehistoric hunting expedition? Or Nate the Nose, who had come back in time to get his money?
But another look at the Tyra
"I wish I could do that," Willie said. "But he'd probably bite me."
After a good thirty seconds, the T. rex sighed loudly, balletically leapt to its feet, and became distracted by one of those dragonfly things, wandering off after it.
This T. rex was begi
Which gave Mick the Mick a great idea. An idea that would save their asses and make them even richer than Action Comics #1.
"Look for an egg, Willie."
"An egg, Mick? You hungry? I'm kinda hungry, too. I like my eggs su
"Dinosaur eggs, Willie. If we bring one back with us, we can grow a dinosaur. Just like that movie."
"Which one?"
"The one where they grew the dinosaurs."
"The Merchant of Venice?"
"Just find an egg, Willie."
"I get it, Mick. We grow a dinosaur, and we can feed it Nate the Nose so he won't kill us—"
"Shaddup and search for a damn nest."
"I'm searching, Mick. Hey! Look!"
"You find one?"
"I found one of those pink flowers that smell like fish and look like—"
Willie screamed. Mick the Mick glanced over and saw his lifelong friend was playing tug of war with one of those toothy prehistoric flowers, using a long red rope.
No. Not a red rope. Those were Willie's intestines.
"Help me, Mick!"
Without thinking, Mick the Mick reached out a hand and grabbed Willie's duodenum. He squeezed, tight as he could, and Willie farted.
"It hurts, Mick! Being disemboweled hurts!"
A bone-shaking roar from behind them. The T. rex had lost interest in the dragonflies and was sniffing at the newly spilled blood, his sofa-size head only a few meters away and getting closer. Mick the Mick could smell its breath, reeking of rotten meat and bad oral hygiene and dooky.
No, the dooky was all Willie. Pouring out like brown shaving cream. Willie's face contorted in pain.
"I think I need a doctor, Mick. Use your cell phone. Call nine-one-one."
Mick the Mick released his friend's i
"Look, the dinosaur is back," Willie groaned. "Check out the size of his epiglottis, Mick. Like a big punching bag."
The book. It was their only chance. Mick the Mick raised the Really, Really, Really Old Ones and flipped open to the same page that had brought them here. Maybe if he read the passage again, it would take them back to their time. Or if he read a little earlier, maybe they could go back to before Nana made the cake, and prevent this incredibly stupid chain of events.
"I think my kidney just fell out." Willie held something red and squishy in his cupped hands. "It still hurts from when you punched me."
Mick the Mick concentrated. Concentrated as hard as he could, blotting out Willie and the T. rex and everything in this horrible prehistoric world except the words on the page.
"It looks like a kidney bean. Is that why they call them kidneys, Mick? Because they look like beans? I like beans."
Mick the Mick's hands shook, and his vision swam,
and all the vowels on the page looked exactly the same and the consonants looked like pretzel sticks, but he began to read aloud.
"Is this my liver, Mick? And what's this thing? I should put all this stuff back in." Willie dropped to his knees and began scooping up guts and twigs and rocks and shoving everything into the gaping hole in his belly.
The T. rex lowered its mouth, about to swallow them both at once.
Sweat soaked his face and stung his eyes, and the hair still left on Mick the Mick's comb-over started to curl from the T. rex's breath as its jaws began to close, but he finished the passage, reading better and faster and harder than a homeschooled foreign kid who won spelling bees. Nothing happened.
The fabric of reality didn't vibrate. The ground didn't dissolve. There was a familiar pbbbbth sound, but it was from Mick stepping on Willie's colon.
Willie flopped sideways and sprawled out onto his back, limbs akimbo, looking like he took a bath in lasagna. Mick the Mick ducked down next to him, narrowly escaping the snap of the dinosaur's bite. The Tyra