Free Z. Rex by Steve Cole

himself for the impact. But the next moment, hard pressure clamped down on his rib cage. His body jerked—and suddenly he was lifted upward in the rough grip of two massive claws. The sprawling shadow was above him, all but swamping the stars as its huge wings beat violently through the night.
    Adam felt sick with shock and relief. The killer dinosaur had just saved his life.
    Sure he saved you, a mocking voice said. He’s not taking you on this little trip for nothing.
    He’s got plans, and he needs you in one piece. For now.

    By the time dawn had begun to bleed away the blackness of night, Adam could spare no thoughts for the beauty or the wonder of the sunrise over the Adirondack mountains, only a searing sense of gratitude that the ordeal would soon be over for a few more hours.
    Zed touched down beside a fast-flowing creek that trailed through a rocky valley like so much black ribbon. He and Adam crashed out in the shelter of the sheer mountainside.
    Adam refilled the empty water bottles from the stream. He had never felt more exhausted. His ribs were bruised mud-black. Every movement hurt him and his muscles felt ready to peel away from his bones. And his thoughts kept jerking back to his free-fall flight. The way Zed had swooped down and snatched him from certain death.
    He glanced across at the dinosaur, who lay curled up on his side, his wings tightly folded under his bony back. “I thought I was dead last night,” Adam told him. “That was quite a move you pulled off.”
    Zed didn’t react, his breathing shallow, black eyes dull.
    “Guess I should say thanks, huh?” Adam screwed the cap onto one of the refilled bottles and snorted softly. “Yeah. Thanks to my dad. Thanks for dragging me into this whole stupid situation.” He shook his head miserably, flapped the stretched, grimy sleeves of the hazard-suit. “Oh, Dad—”
    “Dad,” Zed rasped suddenly. “W . . . X . . . Y . . . Z.”
    Adam looked at him warily. “What’s the alphabet got to do with anything?”
    The creature tried again. “Y . . . zed.”
    “Yeah. Dad changed the way he said it, thought I might get confused. Must’ve thought I was stupid.”
    Zed went on muttering in his hoarse sandpaper voice. “Y . . . Z.”
    Adam looked at his disheveled reflection in the water of the creek. “Why me ?” he whispered.

    To Adam, the flight from the Adirondacks to Newfoundland felt like the longest yet, through driving rain and gusting wind. The heavens decided to put on a light show, with toothy forks of lightning zigzagging past over the forests of Maine. Thunder ripped all around. The clouds were like giant, black timbers stacked in front of the stars.
    Adam had hurtled on through it all, hunched up on Zed’s back as those wings doggedly knifed at the rain-lashed night.
    Now here he was with dusk tugging down the shutters on the fourth day, perched on a desolate crag that stuck out from the churning Atlantic like a bad tooth, staring out to sea. The sun was finally shining, but Adam still felt cold, damp and rotten.
    Zed had hardly stirred all day, except to go shark fishing around noon. He had an unusual technique. First, he scraped a daggered claw along his muscular forearm. Then he plunged the bleeding flesh into the sea, and stood waiting, motionless and alert, for as long as it took.
    Adam shuddered to remember the sight of Zed snatching his arm from the sea with an enormous shark hanging from the end of it. It had flapped about in a frenzy, refusing to relinquish its scaly catch even as it vanished down inside Zed’s bulging throat like an olive sucked from a cocktail stick. A minute or so later, Zed spat out some bloody lumps back into the water—and so attracted more sharks.
    It was typical of the dinosaur’s strategies, Adam decided—intelligent, brutal and entirely successful.
    “My stomach’s grown a lot stronger since I met you,” Adam reflected, watching the resting goliath. He supposed that the fact he was able to