Free Jurassic Dead by David Sakmyster, Rick Chesler Page A

it. Only a thousand times more powerful than what he'd experienced in the little bottle.
    “Why don't you keep crawling until you plop yourself out of its ass?” Xander suggested. “Maybe you could write a paper about it in all your spare time now.”
    A round of raucous laughter ensued. Marcus was offended but at least Xander wasn't ordering him to leave. He could put up with the indignity—and the smell—in order to get a look at this magnificent specimen. He slid out from the animal's putrefied insides, ignoring Xander as he walked toward the T. rex's head.
    Marcus' eyes drank in the details of the reptilian skin, its intricate scales, how they overlapped...It didn't look right, though, if a dinosaur's skin was supposed to look like the skin of today's reptiles that is. A layer of slimy, yellowish mucous oozed from between the scales. Here and there an actual bubble of the stuff cropped up like a thin membrane and popped. He supposed it must be due to the moisture still there from thawing and the sudden change in environment after so much time in the lake. The skin in general, when viewed up close, was riddled with tears, slashes, gouges, and the occasional bullet hole—although the hide was so tough in several places, he could still see the flattened bullet lodged only an inch or so down.
    He gave the entire body another look. In short, though, this was a messy, smelly corpse, not the pristine specimen he'd dreamed about finding one day. Still, a T. rex was a T. rex .
    Now he continued the visual inspection, concerned that at any moment, Xander would enforce the full terms of his recent deal and banish him from this area altogether, maybe even confine him to his quarters until they hit shore. He needed to make the most of this, and wished he had the freedom to take his time—and take pictures. He reached the partially open mouth, where two other drill-team men stood, marveling at the sheer immensity of the jaws and the impressive rows of five-inch long curved teeth that were bone white , not the dark or black color of the fossilized ones Marcus was used to working with.
    He sucked in a breath and held it as he stared into the mouth, his eyes agog with trance-like wonder while the specimen’s were closed.
    Hello, Tyrannosaurus rex!
    Marcus tentatively reached over and laid his hand on the snout, just behind the nostrils.
    I'm touching…hell, petting… a T. rex! He flashed on his life with the extinct reptiles up to now—receiving a pop-up book of dinosaurs as a five-year-old boy for Christmas, watching the movie Jurassic Park as a teen, digging up his first T. rex fossil in North Dakota as an undergraduate biology major, earning his PhD in Paleontology with a thesis entitled, Reflections on the Obligate Scavenging Hypothesis for Tyrannosaurus rex...
    Moreover, here he was feeling the actual skin of a remarkably preserved T. rex .
    “Dr. Ramirez,” Xander called, “kindly keep your fucking hands off the merchandise.”
    “Just think of this sexy beast like a stripper,” one of the crewmen added, “look but don't touch!”
    “Unless you spring for the VIP room…” Another began.
    Marcus could not hide the look of irritation that took over his features. Keeping his hand on the dinosaur snout, he turned his head toward Xander, about to lay into him for whatever that would be worth, knowing it would lead to repercussions for him and his son, but he didn’t care. He still burned with the indignation and the injustice. This was his find, his glory, his moment. His whole entire life, in fact, came down to this monumental discovery. He had given up so much—his family, his wife’s health, his own for that matter. It had all been for this and the hell with it all, he wasn’t going to let this asshole, or any other, take it from him.
    The action that happened next was so unexpected, so otherworldly that it caught everyone by surprise, especially Marcus. The T. rex's eye opened , revealing a black, moist orb