Free Dinosaur Lake 3: Infestation by Kathryn Meyer Griffith Page A

Again no one answered and she felt a jab
of concern. She hoped they were okay. After what she’d gone through, she had an
uneasy feeling perhaps they, too, had had a run in with something dinosaur. Dropping
the cell into her purse, she’d try to reach them again later. Her nerves were
still jangled, her stomach upset from the hostile encounter.
    Zeke didn’t answer the door right away and, worried,
she was about to get out the extra key he’d given her and let herself in, when
he opened the door.
    “Zeke,” she said, balancing the bags of stuff in
her arms, “you look dreadful.”
    “Thanks, nice to see you, too,” the old man griped
as he stood out of the way to let her in.
    Inside, he followed her, stumbling slightly, to the
kitchen where she put the groceries away. “Sit down,” she told him. “Before you
fall down.”
    Zeke slumped in a chair and watched her stuffing
items in his cabinets. She noticed the kitchen needed a good cleaning. There
was dust over everything. Dirty dishes in the sink. Overflowing trash can in
the corner. She’d tidy things up before she left. She knew she’d be telling
Zeke about the random dinosaur ambush but wasn’t sure when to broach the
subject or how. Zeke, slow moving and thinking, didn’t seem himself.
    She couldn’t get over how frail her friend looked.
Like a twig could knock him over. His eyes tired and his face slack. He’d lost
more weight and his clothes hung on him. His expression bland. Life, she
thought. He was tired of life. She could almost sympathize.
    “How’s your back?” she asked.
    “Same as usual. Old. It creaks and groans when I
make it carry my body from one place to another. Lately,” his voice as feeble
as he looked, “it doesn’t always want to carry me anywhere. Spend half my time
lounging around in bed like some lazy lay-about or something. Since I let you
in, it’s been behaving.” His brave smile was heartbreaking.
    “Have you been to the doctor yet?” It felt odd
asking him something she’d been asking herself so often lately. Kind of ironic.
    “Sure. Many times. He says I’m decrepitly old and
not to take out a long term loan on anything.”
     “Is there something you should be telling me?’
    “No.” He sighed. “Nothing I want to tell you.”
    “Zeke–” Frustrating man. Of course, most men were.
    “Ann, mind your elders now and stop pestering me
about things I don’t want to talk about. Not now anyway. I’ll let you know
when.
    “So,” he pried, changing the subject, “you going to
let me in on what’s going on now in the park? You said you would. I’ve been
dying of curiosity. Don’t make an old man wait like this. Bad for my heart.”
    “Your heart is the strongest thing about you, old
man.”
    “Well?”
    Here goes. And, without preamble, she disclosed
everything. The dinosaurs spotted in the lake, the cat-craving dinosaur in the
woods behind their house and the herd of them that had attacked her as she
exited the park. What it might all mean.
    “I couldn’t believe it when they jumped on the car,
tried to get at me like that. And there were so many of them,” she murmured
softly after she’d made them cups of coffee, and settled in a chair next to him.
“Vicious little boogers.
    “For a while there I was terrified they’d get in.
Get me. Or follow me from the park.”
    “But they didn’t.”
    “No,” she said, “as far as I could see, they
didn’t.”
    “You say Henry’s shut down the lake area and now
the park again?”
    “He had to.”
    “Where’s all this going to end,” Zeke brooded out
loud. His eyes went to the window above the sink. A tiny gray squirrel was
sitting there peering in at them. Tiny paws hugged close to its chest. Cute
petite face with begging eyes. Big fat fluffy tail, bigger than the squirrel
itself. Probably one of Zeke’s little yard squirrels. So tame, he’d told her,
they ate out of his hand sometimes. Some even came to the window to beg. This
must be one of