Sean E. Britten

All There in the (Monster) Manual are stories based on creatures from the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. Over 2022 I released a different story fitting the theme every single week and I’ve now expanded to Dungeons & Dragons’ Monsters of the Multiverse and even the Pathfinder Bestiary. Could be fantasy, science fiction, horror, or something else entirely! Check them out on the main page of the website.

This Week’s Inspiration: Tyrannosaurus Rex

Where are they? When are they? After seeing a flash of purple light, Cody and Jashanna find themselves on a stretch of road that no longer leads anywhere in either direction. And the woods surrounding them are now home to several ancient predators from out of time, leaving their food truck as their only refuge.

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Purple light flared and filled the sky, illuminating the ranks of tightly packed trees squeezing both sides of the road. There were no storm clouds, no rain, but it looked like lightning. Cody braced for thunder but no thunder came. The light faded and their surroundings plunged into darkness. The road disappeared, trees disappeared, and Cody found herself struck blind.

“Whoa!”

The headlamps had gone out, Cody realised a heartbeat later. It wasn’t that she’d gone blind, just that there were no headlamps, no streetlights, and the road was very, very dark. After a couple of seconds, her eyes adjusted to the pale moonlight enough to make out the contours of the road. However, the steering had gone limp in her hands. The truck’s engine had died as well, the radio, mumbling in the background, cut out. Powerless, slowing but not fast enough, the food truck slewed into blackness. She wrestled with the wheel for a moment before realising it had locked up and then stomped the brakes. Heavy as the truck was, it slammed to a stop. Behind them, in the kitchen, something slipped and let out a crash.

In the passenger seat, Jashanna, Cody’s only employee, had been sitting with her feet propped on the dashboard. The sudden deceleration threw her around in a jumble of limbs. One elbow slammed the window beside her.

“What the frick?” Jashanna said.

“Sorry, sorry, the truck just died,” Cody said.

“So did my phone, I think?” Jashanna jabbed the power button for her device.

Cody released the brake for a moment and felt the truck start to roll so she hurried to pull the parking brake. Something rattled again in the kitchen. Without thinking, she reached for the key in the ignition and turned it. The truck failed to make any kind of noise, it didn’t even cough. Cody wrestled with the gearstick and tried again to no avail.

“Did you see that purple light?” Cody asked.

“No, what? I was looking at my phone.”

“I think it killed the truck.”

In the moonlight filtering through the windshield, Jashanna was just a series of angles and curves. Cody could make out the frizz of dark hair surrounding her head but not her actual face. She fiddled with a small rectangle, her phone.

“My phone’s dead too, it won’t turn on,” she said.

Cody fished out her phone as well, trying the power button. “Mine too.”

“What’s going on, Cody?”

“I don’t know, could it be, like, an EMP?”

“A what?”

“Electric Magnetic Pulse, or something like that. It’s like, when a bomb goes off, a nuclear bomb, it makes this burst that knocks out all kinds of electronics.”

“Electromagnetic pulse, yeah, I’ve heard of that before, but a nuclear bomb? You think a nuclear bomb went off?”

“No, no, I don’t think so, there was just light and no sound. I didn’t see, like, a mushroom cloud or anything. Maybe it was, like, a solar flare? I’ve heard they can do that too.”

“A solar flare in the middle of the night?”

“I don’t know if that really matters, right? I mean, we could be freaking out for nothing here, it could be nothing! Shit, we’re basically parked in the middle of the road. Can you look in the dashbox, please? There’s a flashlight in there, I think.”

Jashanna rooted around in the glovebox. After a few moments, a small but powerful LED light came to life in her hands. Her face, starkly illuminated, looked frightened.

“This works, I guess?” Jashanna said.

“Here.” Cody reached over and took the flashlight. “I’ll get out and have a look.”

“Are you sure?”

“I mean, yeah? What else are we going to do?”

“I don’t know, it’s just freaking spooky out there.”

Before going outside, Cody turned and used the flashlight to check the food truck’s kitchen. A narrow passage between the seats led into the truck’s interior. Workbenches and equipment lined both sides of the kitchen including a deep fryer and chest freezer. There didn’t appear to be any damage, just some metal bowls and utensils that had fallen to the floor when she braked. Opening the driver’s door, she scanned the surrounding woods. Dark, nothing but trees as far as the eye could see on both sides. It almost felt claustrophobic. Overhead, the moon and a sweep of stars beamed. Leaving the music festival where they’d been working all afternoon and evening, Cody thought she would take a backroad to avoid traffic. It worked, they hadn’t seen another single vehicle since turning off the main road, but there were no streetlights, no houses, nor any other signs of civilisation.

Turning her light on the truck, Cody looked for any damage to the exterior. It was impossible to say what that purple light might have done. Sixteen feet long, her food truck was covered in brightly coloured menus and advertising. A small rainbow flag flew above the cabin. ‘THE FRY GUY’ was emblazoned down the side of the truck along with her mascot, a squat cartoon man with a grinning french fry for a head.

People sometimes asked Cody who the Fry Guy was if she owned the truck. Even with her shaved head and slim build, she wasn’t typically mistaken for someone who identified as anything other than a woman. She liked to joke that the Fry Guy was the character on the side of the truck and she was merely His prophet here on Earth, bringing His word and His crispy treats to the people. After pouring her savings into the truck and its equipment, she had built a whole menu around nothing but fries after all. Straight cut, waffle, sweet potato fries, poutine, cheese and bacon fries, fries smothered in mac and cheese, and other exotic combinations. She’d only been operating for a few months so far but had been relieved by her early success. At the reggae festival they’d worked today, they’d sold out all their supplies of potato products. The last thing she needed now was someone still in a working vehicle to race out of the darkness and ram into the back of her truck.

Holding herself, Jashanna rounded the truck and joined Cody at the back doors. Her eyes searched the surrounding woods. The two of them were well suited to working in the tight confines of the food truck together. Both were tall but slim, lean. They wore matching t-shirts of Cody’s own design with ‘The Fry Guy’ and their french fry-headed mascot on the chest. Cody wore chef pants and kitchen shoes while Jashanna stuck to jeans and sneakers but both of them were dotted in splotches of yellow fry grease.

“Can you hear that?” Jashanna asked.

“Hear what?” Cody listened and only heard a low whistle of wind through the trees.

“Nothing.”

“Very cryptic, very helpful, thank you.”

“I just mean, no people, no traffic, nothing.”

“We are in the middle of nowhere, but can you listen out for any other cars coming this way please?”

Cody pulled open the rear doors of the truck, finding herself looking at the benches and equipment from below. A fire extinguisher was clipped to the nearby bench. Tossing back the non-slip mat, Cody revealed a metal hatch inset in the floor. Inside was a spare tyre, a tool chest full of tools she didn’t know how to use, another flashlight, and a breakdown kit specifically for large vehicles. She flipped open the breakdown kit. Inside was a stack of triangular breakdown markers, reflective to catch the light of oncoming headlights, and ten red glow sticks.

Walking back from the truck, Cody carefully set the reflective markers on the road to block their lane. Snapped and shaken, the glow sticks began to bloom with a wan, red light and she tossed them into the road. She went around to the front of the truck and cast a couple into the road there as well. Jashanna followed and Cody handed her the second flashlight.

“What now?” Jashanna asked.

“Is your phone working yet?”

Jashanna checked. “No, still off.”

“I guess we wait here until somebody comes along, and we ask if they can make a call for us?”

Jashanna looked unhappy and Cody couldn’t blame her. She was meant to be dropping her off at home before heading to sleep herself. Both of them were tired and sore from a full day on their feet, prepping and cooking and selling. The smell of stale grease hung over them. Jashanna wrung out a knot of her springy hair as if wishing she could wash it.

“I’ll walk up ahead, see if I can see something. Maybe there’s a turnoff up there?” Cody said. “You stay with the truck.”

“Are you serious? I don’t want to get murdered out here.”

“You’re not going to get murdered.”

“Oh, you know that, do you? You know there’s no murderers hanging around these particular creepy-ass woods?”

“Well, what are the chances there’d be two of us?” Cody grinned. “Lock yourself inside, keep the flashlight, I’ll be back soon.”

“No way, I’m coming with you,” Jashanna said. “I don’t want you to get murdered either.”

Leaving the truck surrounded by reflective markers and glow sticks, like some kind of protective circle, the two of them continued forward in the direction they’d been travelling when the engine died. Their flashlights swept over the trees. Cody realised they were walking right down the middle of the road and guided Jashanna off to one side. If someone came tearing down the dark country road they would probably wipe the two of them out if they weren’t careful. There wasn’t a lot of space to walk or to park on the sides.

“Follow the yellow brick road, right?” Cody said.

Jashanna gave her a weak smile. The Wizard of Oz was one of the first things the two of them bonded over when she and Cody were feeling each other out and the movie had become something of a running gag for the two of them.

Remembering the purple light, Cody looked up and scanned the sky. Nothing looked out of place. If that light was the cause of their truck and phones dying, maybe it could have knocked out the vehicles and phones of everyone else in the area. Maybe they’d at least find some company up and around the bend.

Cody and Jashanna had only been walking for about a minute when the beams of their flashlights bounced back. Ahead, more trees filled the road. Cody looked around in confusion.

“What is this?” Jashanna said, slowly turning in place.

Abruptly, the road just ended. In front of them, and to both sides, there was nothing but trees. No signs, no fences, the asphalt seemed to melt into the woods. One could almost believe the road had been abandoned and the trees had broken through the surface but if anything the plants ahead of them looked even larger and more mature than those growing to either side. A thick, piney smell filled the air. Around their roots, the asphalt looked unbroken. Shining her light between the trees, she could see the road kept going beyond the first trees for several feet but then petered into the soil.

“We could have run straight into these trees,” Cody said. “If they’d been here before.”

“Before what?” Jashanna asked.

“Uh, I mean, we must have taken a wrong turn. This is a dead end, obviously, but I’m not sure where the turn was.”

The pine smell was almost overpowering. And there was something else in the air, something animal. It made Cody feel unsettled. Taking Jashanna by the arm, she started back toward the truck.

“I thought you knew where you were going?” Jashanna said.

“I thought I did too? I’m sorry, I don’t know how this happened. I’m really confused.”

“That’s okay, sorry.”

Almost compulsively, the two of them checked their phones again to see if they would work. Neither did. When they got back to the truck, Cody tried the keys in the ignition once more but couldn’t get a response from the engine either. Outside, the cherry glows of the glow sticks looked like campfire embers. Cody checked the kitchen again. Picking up the bowls and utensils on the floor, she set them on one of the counters and looked over the equipment.

“The fridge and freezer are working,” Cody said. “And the deep fryer still has its power light on.”

“Why are they working when the truck isn’t?” Jashanna said. “Why are the flashlights still working?”

“I don’t know, the appliances run off the gas generator, it’s a separate battery. Maybe there’s less electronics involved? They’re simpler, or they were shielded by the truck? Same with the flashlights. Do you want something to drink?”

“Drink? I guess so. I don’t like this, Cody, something is really wrong here!”

Cody thought about it for a moment. “Do you want me to try walking back the way we came? Maybe I missed a turnoff or something.”

“I’ll come with you again, I don’t want you going off alone.”

Together, both carrying flashlights, the two of them left the truck and started back along the road. Reflective markers caught the LEDs, and the glow sticks looked rosy, but apart from those and the moonlight there were no sources of illumination. Dark woods closed tight around them and Jashanna shivered even though the night remained mild.

A strange sound stopped both of them in their tracks. Something between a low rumble and a birdlike musical note that came from the trees. It wasn’t loud so much as powerful, sustained, and Cody thought she could feel it in her chest like the vibrations from a powerful motor.

“What the heck was that?” Jashanna said.

“I’m not sure, an owl?”

“It sounded like a really big owl, Cody!”

“Well, it didn’t sound like a serial killer, so there’s that?”

“Is it a bear? What if it’s a bear?”

“There’s no bears around here! I don’t think so, anyway. I’m pretty sure.”

Cody and Jashanna swept their flashlights across the woods as they kept walking. Nothing showed itself but Cody felt watched. They’d strayed too far into the middle of the road again, she realised, but she didn’t want to move any closer to the trees. That sound came again, softer.

“It sounds further away,” Cody said. “Whatever it is, it’s going away.”

“Going away, or is something else answering?” Jashanna whispered. “Oh, what the heck is this?”

Cody stared in shock. The road they followed came to another dead end, exactly the same as the section in front of the food truck. Trees cut across the road as if growing through the asphalt. She could see signs of the road petering out between the trees before ending.

“Did we turn somewhere?” Jashanna looked around, more confused than scared. “How did we get here?”

“It’s the same,” Cody said. “It’s the same in both directions. The road just ends with these trees like they’ve been teleported here or something.”

Cody painted her flashlight beam up and down the trees. They were taller and more solid than their cousins growing alongside the road. That pine smell filled her nostrils. There was something almost primaeval about them. The kind of trees you only found deep, deep in the forest, never touched by an axe or a chainsaw. Those that hadn’t spent their whole lives sucking on car fumes and instead grew in clean soil drinking crisp, clear air. She felt deeply rattled. Clinging to rationality, she twisted and turned to look for an explanation.

“What do you mean teleported?” Jashanna said.

“I mean, look around, there’s not that much road here!” Cody said. “We couldn’t have just turned onto it, there is no turn! That purple light, maybe it teleported them here somehow. Or it teleported us to them!”

“What if we, what if we try to walk through them? Or we just walk off in a random direction from the side of the road?”

“Oh, no, I’ve seen that movie! We walk off the side and then we just wind up finding ourselves coming back at it from the other side.”

“What movie?”

“I don’t know! That sounds like a movie thing, right?”

That noise again. This time, Cody was sure she felt it in her chest. Like the vibrations got themselves trapped and bounced around her ribs for a few seconds before escaping. Yet as bassy as the sound was, it swung up at the end with a musical trill. Searching for several more moments, Cody’s eyes were drawn to a strangely shaped crater in the dirt near where the road met the trees.

“What is that?” Cody said.

The shallow pit was smeared and indistinct but shaped like an arrow. It forked from its deepest section into three distinct points. Cody and Jashanna studied it for several seconds, playing their flashlights across it.

“Let’s, uh, let’s get back to the truck,” Cody said.

Cody and Jashanna backed away, keeping their eyes on the trees. Together, they hurried back to the Fry Guy truck, moving briskly but not running as if afraid to draw too much attention.

“Are we just not going to talk about that?” Jashanna said.

“About what?”

“That was a footprint, Cody. That was a dinosaur footprint.”

“Nah, no, no way. It couldn’t be.”

“Cody, are you messing with me?”

“Messing with you, how?”

“Is this, like, some kind of stupid prank show you signed us up for? And right now there’s a bunch of cameras and some, like, total D-list actor, waiting in the woods to jump out at us?”

“Of course not! No, I would never do that, I would never frighten you just for some stupid prank show.”

“Who said I’m frightened?”

“Well, shit, I am.”

Something moved in the woods. With a crack, one of the treetops shook. Cody raised her flashlight and saw a huge, dark shape moving between the trees. A pair of eyes caught the light for a fleeting moment, like a couple of lit cigarettes flaring to life, and then disappeared again.

“Go back to the truck,” Cody said, voice low. “Go, run!”

Breaking into a sprint, the two of them raced back to the trunk. Cody’s loosely fitting kitchen shoes slapped against the asphalt. Behind them, more trees shook and that birdlike rumble came again. Cody glanced over her shoulder and couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The tip of a long, scaly snout emerged from between the trees. A slash of a mouth fell open to reveal fangs as long and sharp as kitchen knives. The gleam of hawk-like eyes caught the light again and turned orange. And then all the rest, bursting from the trees, a long, low slung, tremendously heavy but somehow sleek and sinuous body. It supported itself on two powerfully muscled legs ending in birdlike feet with splayed and taloned toes that matched the giant footprint they’d seen.

“Run!” Cody yelled.

The creature, dinosaur, made a noise somewhere between a bark and the cry of a hawk. To her horror, Cody saw trees shaking on both sides of the road. Two more giant lizards exploded from the woods, mouths open, lunging at the pair of them. Jashanna screamed. Reaching the truck, the two of them split up and ran to their separate doors.

Cody heard the wet snap of jaws only inches behind her. Grabbing the door handle, she yanked it open and leapt inside. She pulled the door closed a split-second before the nearest dinosaur slammed against her side of the truck. The impact ripped away the side mirror and sent a crack radiating through the window. The whole truck swayed sideways. Across from her, Jashanna hurled herself into the truck’s cabin and slammed the door behind her as well. Her pursuer’s head smacked against the window and turned it into a haze of cracks but the glass held.

“What the fuck?” Cody shouted.

Another blow hammered the back of the food truck and dented the metal. The bowls and utensils that Cody had picked up earlier scattered again, rattling around in the kitchen. The truck rocked on its wheels as two of the dinosaurs circled around in front.

With Jashanna’s question about a prank show in mind, Cody remembered videos she’d seen of pranksters wearing dinosaur costumes to scare their victims. Maybe it really was all some insane, elaborate, impossible prank. Seeing the dinosaurs through the windshield though, caught in the beam of her flashlight, she knew that wasn’t the case. Each creature was roughly the same length as the food truck. At the shoulder, they’d probably be level with the top of her head while their own heads were raised a little higher than that. Their backs and sides were covered in shags of what looked like rudimentary feathers. They were almost tiger-striped, a dusky orange colour with bands of pale grey rather than black over dark brown scales. Their forward-heavy bodies were supported on flexing, powerful, birdlike legs and balanced by their tails. Hanging from their chests, they had small arms with claws turned inward. Their heads were shaped like bullets, thick brows protecting their eyes, lips pulled back from rows of curved fangs. They moved like animals, with liquid grace and obvious strength, not at all like people in costumes. Although similar, she could tell at a glance that the patterns of their feathers and scales were not identical. Facing the light, the pupils of the nearest dinosaur shrunk to pinpricks. She could even smell them through the glass, a dusty, sharpish, not entirely unpleasant smell. They regarded Cody and Jashanna through the windshield as if unsure about what they were looking at. Cody realised they were watching the beam of her flashlight and quickly turned it off, plunging the truck into darkness.

“What are they?” Cody said.

“Dinosaurs,” Jashanna replied, her tone weirdly level. “Tyrannosaurs.”

Having calmed down after the initial attack, one of the tyrannosauruses approached the windshield. A snort from its nostrils misted the glass. Cody shrunk in her seat.

“Shouldn’t they be bigger?” Cody hissed. “I thought T. rexes were bigger than this? Although, they are pretty big. Are they young ones?”

“T. rex is the most famous one, and the biggest one, I think,” Jashanna said. “But Tyrannosaurus is, like, a whole type of dinosaur, a genus or a species name or whatever. They’re like dogs, or penguins. Like, you’ve got different kinds of penguins, right? Big ones, and little ones, but they’re all penguins. The shape of them, the two fingers on each hand, they’re tyrannosaurs, tyrannosauruses? They’re that.”

“How do you know that?”

“Museum, I went to, like, a tyrannosaurus exhibition with a girlfriend.”

“Penguins?”

“I guess, yeah, penguins.”

“This is insane, right?”

“Of course this is insane. Where did these things come from?”

Cody’s eyesight adjusted to the moonlight, sitting in the vehicle’s cabin with both flashlights turned off. All three tyrannosauruses orbited the food truck and occasionally nudged it. One of them nuzzled Jashanna’s door. Another raked its open mouth over the frame on Cody’s side of the truck. The rainbow flag Cody had mounted above the door broke loose. She saw it staring through the window with the flag dangling from its teeth for a moment before fluttering to the ground.

“Homophobic fucking dinosaur,” Cody muttered.

“They’re testing us, trying to figure us out,” Jashanna said. “They saw us go inside but they don’t know what the truck is.”

“It smells like food, the whole truck always smells like grease and salt,” Cody said. “Maybe we should feed them?”

“Feed them what? Aren’t we out of food?”

“We’re out of fries but we have some other stuff. Toppings, meat.”

Not wanting to attract attention, Cody eased herself out of her seat and moved back between the seats. She wasn’t sure if it was true that T. rexs’ vision was based on movement. She didn’t want to count on it but she didn’t want to take any chances either. Jashanna stayed where she was, paralysed, pressing herself deep into her chair as one of the dinosaurs hovered right outside her window.

The kitchen was dark. When Cody opened the refrigerator, its light flooded into the aisle and looked very bright. Cody staggered, afraid of the light attracting attention, and nearly tripped over some of the bowls on the floor. She reached inside and grabbed a bulging bag of shredded chicken before slapping the door closed again. Next, she turned to the chest freezer beside it. She felt around inside and found a couple of frosty packages of uncooked bacon.

One of the dinosaurs nudged the food truck, hard, like an impatient customer. Cody stumbled back to the front. She shoved what she’d collected to Jashanna.

“Look, I’ve got food,” Cody whispered. “We could feed them.”

Jashanna shrugged. “Okay, I guess?”

The three tyrannosauruses appeared to be getting impatient. They circled the truck in greater agitation and nosed it with their snouts but they hadn’t attacked the windows yet. They didn’t appear to fully open their mouths to make those rumbling vocalisations, the sound coming from the throat instead, but Cody could feel them reverberating through the skin of the truck.

“Okay, okay.”

Cody navigated the dark kitchen with her packages of food. She could feel the movement of the dinosaurs outside and wondered how much they weighed. Maybe somewhere in the range of two thousand pounds a piece. Not movie monsters, like T. rex in those Jurassic Park movies, but more than big enough and dangerous enough individually or as a trio. Cautiously, she opened one of the two back doors and made sure none of them were lurking directly outside.

“Hey, hey! Food!” Cody said.

Ripping open one of the packs of bacon, Cody lobbed it underhanded further down the road. The plastic packaging tore free and the small slab of folded, semi-frozen bacon flew past the glow sticks on the ground, trailing bits of silvery frost. One of the tyrannosauruses rounded the truck in time to see it smack the asphalt and moved to investigate. Feathery quills rippled down its back. Drawn by Cody’s shout, the other two weren’t far behind. She pulled open a second packet of bacon and tossed it in another direction. The shredded chicken was kept in a simple ziplock bag. She pulled it open and tossed it in front of the third tyrannosaurus while the others investigated the bacon. Bits of chicken spilled from the bag.

“That’s your great-great, times a thousand, ancestor,” Cody said. “Enjoy.”

The first tyrannosaurus sniffed the frozen bacon. Shrinking back inside the food truck, Cody closed the door most of the way and peered through the gap. The tyrannosaurus snatched the bacon in its jaws. It didn’t seem to mind the cold as it straightened, tossing its head back with birdlike movements. Hooked fangs shredded the uncooked pig and it gulped down the whole hunk in one swallow. Across the road, the second tyrannosaurus did the same. The one with the bag of chicken shook its head and ripped the baggie to shreds. Bits of chicken sprayed everywhere. The dinosaur’s thick tongue drew some of the meat into its mouth. Their heads were shorter and broader than Cody would have pictured based on most depictions of a T. rex, or maybe that was their individual species. She felt oddly fascinated. Here were several examples of a long-extinct animal, millions of years dead but here living, breathing, eating. Even if she put all that aside, their size and strangeness and easy power was captivating.

Making one of those low vocalisations, the first tyrannosaurus swung on Cody. With her perched in the back of the food truck, hunched down a little, the two of them were practically eye to eye. It lunged at her suddenly, jaws parted. Cody yelped and threw herself backward, pulling the door with her. The dinosaur crashed into the door a moment later. Metal buckled, and Cody heard something snap. For a second, she thought the door was going to tear free and she’d be completely exposed. The hinges and the handle held, for the moment. Angry, birdlike noises echoed from the outside.

Cody staggered to her feet and made her way back to the front of the truck. The vehicle rocked on its wheels. To one side of the kitchen was the window where they would sell to customers, covered by a metal hatch. With a hollow bang, the metal dimpled.

“You know why people don’t feed bears, right?” Jashanna said. “Because they learn to associate humans with food.”

“If it was a bad idea to feed them, why didn’t you say something?” Cody half-shouted.

“Because there’s dinosaurs outside, Cody! I don’t know, I wasn’t really thinking!”

Two of the tyrannosauruses appeared back in front of the truck, striped coats rippling in the moonlight. One of them threw the side of their head into the windshield, cracking it, and Jashanna screamed. Shooting out of her seat, she joined Cody in the entrance to the kitchen.

“I’m sorry,” Jashanna said. “I’m freaking out! What the heck is going on?”

“Do you remember anything from the museum that might make them go away?” Cody asked.

“Like what? Weakness to silver? How to talk to them?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t even know there were other kinds of T. rex!”

“I didn’t really learn anything except what their skeletons look like.”

The tyrannosauruses crashed into the truck. Each roughly as long as the truck itself, each as heavy as full grown bison. One got to either side of the truck and rocked it. The cover over the serving window buckled and bent. The third dinosaur tried to negotiate the windshield. Jaws wide, they experimented with whether they could simply bite through it. Teeth scratched the glass and their hot breath misted. In the low moonlight, it gave Cody and Jashanna a pretty good look at the creature’s hooked fangs and waiting gullet. Fortunately, it couldn’t actually find a good purchase to break the glass. The two of them hunkered down in the kitchen as if trying to make themselves as small as possible.

“Where did these things come from?” Jashanna said.

“Maybe the question is more like, where are we?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, the trees at either end of the road that cut us off. That purple light, maybe it picked us up, like, us, the truck, and a big chunk of the road and woods, and maybe it threw us all back in time?”

Jashanna looked scared. “If that’s true, how do we get home?”

Something crashed against the rear doors. The hatch covering the serving window bowed and developed another dent. Cody, with all the money and work she’d poured into the truck, felt her stomach plunge. Meanwhile, the tyrannosaurus prowled around in front of the truck. It hadn’t given up on getting through the windshield and kept testing the glass.

“I don’t know, but I don’t think we can stay here,” Cody said. “Sooner or later, they’re going to get inside.”

“Where would we go?”

“Into the woods, I guess? Find out where we are and see if we can find more people?”

“That’s crazy! Those things are bigger and faster and stronger than we are, they could track us through the woods easy!”

“You’re right, you’re right.” Cody winced as the hatch cover banged again. “But we’d better be ready to fight back if they get in here.”

“Fight back?”

“Sure, I’ll take the two on the right, you take the one on the left.” Cody smiled weakly and aped the Cowardly Lion. “Put ‘em up, put ‘em up! I’ll fight you both together, I’ll fight you with one paw tied behind my back!”

Cody and Jashanna scrounged around the back of the truck for things they could use to defend themselves. The vehicle kept rocking and reverberating with the cries of the dinosaurs. Cody went first to the compartment in the floor where the spare tyre and tools were stored. Pulling open the tool box, she removed a hammer, screwdrivers, and a couple of wrenches. None of them looked like they’d be all that useful against one of the looming tyrannosauruses. From within the same space, Jashanna removed an X-shaped lug wrench, the two crossed arms each more than a foot long.

Cody retrieved the fire extinguisher clipped to the bench near the rear doors. The yellow band around the top of its body denoted it as a wet chemical fire extinguisher, best for kitchens. It might work as a distraction. Given the amount of fries they typically cooked, the kitchen had a double-sided deep fryer filled with vegetable oil. Two wire baskets hung above the mouth of the fryer. Beneath its metal lid, the oil had cooled since they left the music festival but remained warm and sluggishly began to bubble once Cody turned the fryer on again. Clearly the LPG generator hooked to the equipment, simple but hardy, remained in operation even after the truck’s electronics had died.

“You going to cook them something this time?” Jashanna joked weakly.

“Maybe we can use the hot oil to drive them off?” Cody said. “We could splash them with it?”

“What if we try to make them sick?”

“How would we do that?”

“There’s still some bacon and stuff, right? And you’ve got a bunch of cleaning chemicals. What if we shoved some chemicals into the food and fed it to them?”

“That’s a good idea, yeah! If we can make it work.”

Cody fetched the last two packets of bacon from the chest freezer. After unwrapping them from their plastic, she set them on the prep bench and went to the cabinet where she kept the cleaning chemicals. All of them were industrial, corrosive, and toxic, and she didn’t know what might work best. She also didn’t know how to pack the chemicals into the bacon until Jashanna produced a box of plastic gloves. Like some kind of mad scientist, she tipped three different poisons into three of the five-fingered makeshift baggies. Knotting their openings closed, she then wrapped all three in layers of thawing bacon.

“Do we just want to do it now?” Jashanna asked.

“I don’t know, what do we do when they get sick?”

“Hopefully they get sick and just-, just go away.”

Cody carried one of their bacon-wrapped poison pills to the front of the truck. Dinosaur drool covered the windshield. Waiting until the nearest tyrannosaurus moved back, she cracked the driver’s door open and lobbed the bacon overhand. It flew past the dinosaur’s shoulder, into the darkness, and the creature jerked around to watch it. It turned and followed the bacon ball past the glow sticks. Cody couldn’t tell if it ate the whole thing or just sniffed at it. The ball may have splattered apart in the landing.

“Did it work?” Jashanna hissed.

“I’m not sure,” Cody said.

Having heard one of the doors click open and closed, a second dinosaur came to investigate. It might represent an opportunity, Cody thought. Picking up a second bacon ball, she crossed to the rear of the kitchen. Easing open one of the doors, she could feel the third tyrannosaurus lurking nearby but couldn’t see it.

“Hey!” Cody barked.

Cody tossed the bacon ball lightly away from the truck. It landed softly on the road, managing to stay in one piece. She was shocked by the suddenness with which the tyrannosaurus appeared. In the blink of an eye, the giant, feathered lizard was simply there, alongside the truck. She shrunk back inside but fortunately it was more interested in the bacon than in her. Dipping, it sniffed at the bacon but didn’t appear to sense the chemicals or the rubber glove. Seizing the ball with its teeth, it did the exact same thing as last time and tossed its head back to gulp the poisoned food. Cody felt surprisingly sorry to see the plan work. The animals were so magnificent and strange, and she couldn’t really know if they’d been tossed forward in time or she and Jashanna had been thrown back. If they hadn’t been such an obvious threat, she would never want to harm them.

With a short and sinuous jog, head lowered, the third tyrannosaurus appeared as well. Its eyes gleamed in the pale light, fixed on Cody.

“Shit, the third ball! Get me the third one!” Cody said.

Jashanna passed the third ball of bacon to Cody. She lobbed it quickly to the ground in front of the third tyrannosaurus. It landed at the creature’s taloned feet with a splat.

Looking unsure, the third tyrannosaurus backed up so it could take a sniff at the offering. Like a dog or a cat sensing a heartworm pill in its dinner, it appeared innately suspicious. Snuffling, it found something that it didn’t like, the smell of the chemicals or the rubber glove, and straightened again. Its eyes blazed.

“Shit!”

Cody threw herself backward into Jashanna as the tyrannosaurus launched itself at the doorway. She tried to pull the door closed but failed. The dinosaur crashed against the doors and one of them bounced open. The tyrannosaurus attacked the bouncing door, seizing it in its jaws. Hinges screamed as it worked its head from side to side, teeth crumpling the metal. With a couple of snaps, like guns going off, the hinges broke. The dinosaur pulled the door free and tossed it to the asphalt.

Both Cody and Jashanna screamed, falling on top of one another as they backed away. Something hit the front of the truck as well. The first tyrannosaurus renewed its attacks with a frenzy, possibly upset about the poison pill Cody had fed it or maybe just matching the energy of its sibling. It swung the side of its head into the driver’s side window with such force that the glass imploded. Loud, angry squawks echoed through the empty frame.

Cody looked around at the weapons they’d desperately gathered. The deep fryer had heated to cooking temperature and was bubbling furiously. Along with the metal bowls there were some rectangular containers that would typically go in a bain-marie. Cody tossed one into a basket and then dropped it into the deep fryer.

“Take the fire extinguisher!” Cody said.

The tyrannosaurus at the back of the truck started forcing its way inside. It was as long as the truck but its narrow build could fit, barely, inside the kitchen. Cody and Jashanna retreated toward the cabin but the tyrannosaurus at the front jammed its whole head and neck through the broken window frame there, snapping at them. Both screamed.

Cody grabbed some of the tools she’d left on the prep bench. She stuck a couple of screwdrivers and a wrench into the waistband of her loosely fitting chef pants. On impulse, she picked up the hammer and threw it at the tyrannosaurus at the back of the truck. The tool bounced off the end of the dinosaur’s nose then clattered against the wall. Momentarily hurt, the dinosaur drew back but then renewed its attack with fresh, hissing fury. Quills stood up along the top of its head. Beside it, the remaining rear door buckled and broke. It swung open, giving the tyrannosaurus easy access to the kitchen.

With a hollow bang, the last tyrannosaurus attacked the cover of the serving window again. Cody didn’t think the truck could take much more. The predatory dinosaurs were forcing their way inside from all angles and soon the two of them would be trapped.

“Get ready to run!” Cody said.

Cody loathed to abandon her truck. The truck had meant independence, being her own boss, making her own schedule and her own way in life, and without it she would be financially crippled. She didn’t know if her insurance would cover dinosaur attack. But she wasn’t a captain willing to go down with her ship, The Fry Guy would have to fend for himself.

Behind them, the tyrannosaurus at the driver’s side window threw itself against the door and folded it inward. Jashanna fumbled with a zip tie on the handle of the fire extinguisher. The tyrannosaurus at the rear of the truck filled the kitchen. Caution, more than anything, kept it from storming forward and ripping apart the two humans. Cody flung herself forward, hands wrapping around the handle of one of the deep fryer baskets. The basket came up dripping with hot oil, the bain-marie container inside the basket filled to the brim. Trying to avoid getting splashed, she turned and hurled it at the dinosaur.

Boiling oil coated the side of the tyrannosaurus’ face, scalding its scaly skin and melting some of the feathers on top of its head. The dinosaur screamed. Crashing against the side of the doorway, it threw itself backward. Oil splashed the walls and benches. Droplets caught both of Cody’s arms and seared the skin, as well as patterning the front of her t-shirt, but she’d received worse burns many, many times in her years of working in kitchens and was so amped up on adrenaline that she barely felt them. The dinosaur retreated, shaking its head, and Cody led Jashanna forward. She kept the basket pointed out in front of her like a weapon.

“Come on!”

Cody and Jashanna leapt out of the truck and circled to the right. At the front of the truck, the other tyrannosaurus still had its head stuffed through the driver’s side window. It jerked back, smashing against the frame. The hinges broke and the dinosaur pulled away wearing the entire door like a collar. It tried to shake it off, useless arms wheeling against its chest.

“Eat this, sucker!” Jashanna yelled.

With a war cry, Jashanna lanced forward with the wet chemical fire extinguisher. She held the flared nozzle upright and wrung the trigger. A soapy spray fanned out of the nozzle with great force and caught the dinosaur flush in the face. The creature staggered back, moaning in confusion. White foam covered its face, getting in its mouth and eyes, running off its jawline like dishwater.

Jashanna kept the burst going for several seconds. The tyrannosaurus lurched toward the trees, managing to shake off Cody’s busted door. It kept flailing its head. The extinguisher foam appeared to have worked better than Cody hoped, the soapy liquid blinding the dinosaur temporarily.

“Great work, let’s go!”

The tyrannosaurus Cody had hit with hot oil fell to the ground, trying to scrape its face on the asphalt. Before they could run for the trees, however, the last, uninjured dinosaur rounded the truck. Harsh, birdlike barks came from its throat. Cody couldn’t tell if it was mad about what happened to its siblings or it had reassessed them as a threat. She threw the wire basket at the creature. Some hot oil clung to the basket but it bounced harmlessly off the animal’s striped side without leaving a mark.

Jashanna led forward with the fire extinguisher again. As she depressed the handle though, Cody could see the spray was already losing power. It splattered the side of the dinosaur’s head but failed to catch it in the eyes. The creature drew back, offended but unhurt.

“Oh, no, no,” Cody said.

Jashanna turned the fire extinguisher around in her hands. Still using it like a weapon, she swung the cylinder with all her strength and hit the tyrannosaurus in the snout. It bounced off with a hollow bong. Jashanna fumbled and dropped it. It hit the road and rolled toward the dinosaur’s feet as she stared at the creature, paralysed.

Before the tyrannosaurus could attack, a distracted look crossed its face. The smell of the chemical spray dripping off its face seemed to trigger something. Suddenly, the creature retched. A horrible, wet noise, like rotten fruit being torn apart in a garbage disposal, gurgled out of its open mouth. Cody wondered what was happening and remembered this dinosaur was the only one of the trio they’d seen actually eat one of the poisoned bacon balls. The rubber glove must have broken open in its stomach and whatever chemicals she’d used were going into effect.

The tyrannosaurus threw its head from side to side, distressed. Retching again, it threw up a smatter of uncooked bacon and shreds of rubber. Cody grabbed Jashanna by the arm.

“Let’s go!”

The other two dinosaurs may have been recovering, Cody couldn’t be sure. The one Jashanna had gotten in the eyes appeared to still be blinded. The other one, that Cody got with the hot oil, however, was on its feet and shaking off the pain. Cody and Jashanna darted into the woods, escaping in a random direction.

The world beneath the trees was much darker as branches blocked out the moon. Cody and Jashanna stumbled over rocks and roots. Both had their flashlights with them but they were afraid to use them with the dinosaurs still so close. Cody was also still carrying some of the red glow sticks from the truck’s emergency box, she realised. Jashanna remained armed with the X-shaped lug wrench while Cody kept a couple of screwdrivers and a wrench. The weight of the tools tugged at the waistband of her loose pants and she was forced to remove them and carry them as she walked.

“Back there, did you really say, eat this, sucker, before you hit it with the fire extinguisher?” Cody said.

The heat of Jashanna’s cheeks almost lit the cool air. “It seemed like something to say.”

“Oh, no, it was very cool. You were so badass back there, really amazing!”

“You really think so?”

“You know, I’m not sure where we are and if we’re going to make it. But, I just want to say I think you’re amazing in lots of ways.”

“Really?”

“I’ve been trying to feel you out, I wasn’t sure how you might feel about, you know, me.”

“I feel like I’ve been dropping hints.”

“I swear I didn’t hire you just because I wanted to get to know you like that. But every day when I get to see you, and spend time with you, it just brightens up my whole day. I think you’re just, like, a really special person.”

“I feel the same way about you! I really do, I promise.”

The two of them reached out and briefly grabbed one another’s hand. Fumbling through the dark woods, there wasn’t time for anything else. They negotiated their way to a patch of open moonlight. The ground felt uneven. Cody noticed that piney smell in the air again. The trees looked taller, thicker, and more primaeval. She wondered if that meant they’d passed out of the section of woods torn from the present and launched into the distant past. If it meant they were pushing further and further out into a world filled with strange animals and dangerous predators like the tyrannosauruses.

Cody didn’t have long to reflect. From the woods behind them came a rippling growl, curving at the end into a musical trill. One of the tyrannosauruses had recovered and was after them, maybe more than one. Looking at Jashanna in the pale moonlight, she could tell from her wide eyes that she’d heard it too.

“This way,” Jashanna said.

Jashanna led them up a mostly bare slope, rocks crumbling underfoot. The loose stones might give the dinosaur trouble, and they would have the higher ground. Glancing over her shoulder though, Cody saw a huge, birdlike shape following them from the trees. Its head lowered and it moved in swift, darting motions.

“It’s coming!” Cody whispered.

They hurried up the slope but were as clumsy and helpless as bumbling ducklings compared to the ancient predator hunting them. Taloned feet swiftly crossed the loose rocks. Cody felt the tools in her hands but knew they were useless as well. Suddenly, she remembered the glow sticks in her pocket.

“Hey, hey!” Cody shouted.

Cody turned, pulling out a couple of glow sticks and snapping them in her hands. Shaking the sticks, she made them glow before throwing them as hard as she could toward the woods. Eyes gleaming, the dinosaur followed the trail of the cherry red cylinders. After only a moment of hesitation, however, it fixed its attention back on the two young women and kept coming.

“You should go, run!” Cody said.

“I’m not leaving you!”

Cody and Jashanna scrambled toward higher ground with the tyrannosaurus trailing them effortlessly. Striped feathers rippled down its back and sides, tail held out like a rudder. As it got closer, Cody could see it was the tyrannosaurus she’d hit with the deep fryer oil. Half the feathers on the left side of its head were melted and wilted, and boils covered its scales. It looked like it wanted payback.

Desperate, Cody took another glow stick in one hand and knotted a screwdriver in the other. Maybe, maybe, if she could just distract it for a moment, she could get one good strike at the animal’s throat. As the dinosaur gained on them, she cracked the glow stick and raised it over her head.

“Hey! Hey!”

The tyrannosaurus hesitated, less than a body length away, looming. Its head tracked the motion of the glow stick from side to side, moving like a snake. Once she was sure she had its attention, she tossed the glow stick to one side. In the same moment, she launched and tried to bury the screwdriver in the side of the dinosaur’s neck like a prison shiv.

With whiplash speed, the dinosaur jerked away. Cody felt scales roughly brush her arm. Jaws opened and snapped shut inches from her face. Wheeling backward, she dropped the screwdriver. The creature came at her again, jaws open.

Jashanna lanced forward with her wrench. As the dinosaur swung toward Cody, she jammed the cross-shaped tool into its open mouth. The crisscrossed arms of the wrench caught, wedging the upper and lower jaws open. Jashanna snatched her hand back in case her plan didn’t work. She and Cody crashed backward, staggering uphill.

Hissing, the tyrannosaurus thrashed its head from side to side. Drool began to spray as it failed to dislodge the tool. Cody and Jashanna sprinted up the hill and the dinosaur let them go. Cody began to feel bad for it. Given time, she imagined the creature might get the tool loose but they needed to be far, far away when that happened.

Cody and Jashanna reached the top of the slope and looked back. No longer moving with the same easy grace, the dinosaur stalked to the bottom of the hill. Clearly it had decided the humans were more trouble than they were worth. Lug wrench jammed between its fangs, it disappeared between the trees in the direction it had come.

“Thank you, oh my Sappho, you saved me,” Cody said.

“Where do we go now?”

“I don’t know, we keep moving until we find out where we are.”

“When we are.”

“Yeah, maybe that too.”

Throughout the night, Cody and Jashanna kept moving and then resting when it seemed safe. They slept, briefly, in the fork of a tree curled in each other’s arms. While they didn’t come across any more dinosaurs even from high ground Cody couldn’t spot any artificial light or signs of humanity, which worried her deeply.

As the grey light of dawn filtered across the sky, Cody and Jashanna staggered from the woods into an open meadow. Thick grass rose to their shins. Cody looked around, worried that they were too exposed. That was until a familiar noise, animal but familiar, roused her from her half-awake state.

Several large, black and white animals hefted their barrel bodies onto their hooved feet to meet the dawn. Mooing echoed across the meadow. Those nearest to them regarded the humans with incurious brown eyes.

“I don’t think they had cows back in the late Cretaceous!” Jashanna laughed, and then grabbed Cody and kissed her.

“We didn’t go back!” Cody said, after the two of them broke away. “We can go home!”

“There’s no place like home.”

In the distance, Cody saw what must have been the roof of a farmhouse. She checked her phone but found it still wouldn’t turn on so they continued toward the house instead. They climbed through the dewy grass of a small hill surrounded by cows. What they saw as they reached the top, however, shocked them both into silence.

Across the farm was the farmhouse they’d seen the roof of, but half of the house appeared to have been neatly carved away. A clean division split the house down the middle and a stretch of swampy marsh sat where logic dictated the other half of the building should have been. Water wandered through the house’s yard and cut through a barn as well before angling out toward the road. Something massive and covered in a shag of brown feathers with a beak like a duck wallowed in the swamp.

From the hilltop, the dawn gave Cody and Jashanna a clear view for miles into the nearest township. The same bizarre disaster seemed to have befallen there as well. Strands of ancient trees tore across the landscape, through buildings and roads, cutting them to pieces like flows of lava or an encroaching glacier. Between the farm and town, a herd of tremendously sized creatures, at least two dozen of them with tree trunk legs and tall, thick, magnificent necks, blundered heedlessly across the patchwork landscape, crushing abandoned cars underfoot.

“Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” Cody said.

======

Sean: For those of you guessing at home, the pack of tyrannosaurids attacking the food truck were intended to be Lythronax or Gore King. A couple of years ago, I was lucky enough to get along to the ‘Tyrannosaurs – Meet the Family’ touring exhibition at the Australian Museum in Sydney. Actually it was one of those situations where I really wanted to go and see it but I put it off and put it off, only to realise on a Thursday that it was closing that weekend and all the tickets for Saturday and Sunday were sold out. In fact the very last available tickets were that night. I was discouraged but my wife insisted we go that night and make a date of it and I’m really grateful that we did. Terrific exhibition, the tyrannosaurus rex skeleton really expressed the power and size of the animal and I was very taken with other members of the tyrannosaurid family on display, especially the lythronax.

I’ll admit I’ve been a bit mentally drained over the last few weeks. Our cat had a spot on his nose that turned out to be cancerous, not surprising as he was a street cat before we adopted him, and he had to go in for more scans and more surgery, and then MORE surgery when the stitches from the first one popped. He’s alright and cancer-free now, and there was a real moment over the past weekend where a scab fell off and all of a sudden the area looked so, so much better, that just seemed like such an instant relief! Finally been able to concentrate on some other things around the house which have been needing work and I’m hoping next week, when I’ve got some time off work, I’ll have more mental space for writing.

Keep your eyes on the website, stories can come without warning! You can find me on Facebook and Twitter, Reddit, and, if you want to see the cat, the best place is on Instagram. Thanks for reading!