Cadillacs And Dinosaurs -

“Easy, girl,” Jack whispered to the Caddy, cutting the engine. He climbed onto the hood, balancing the harpoon gun on the roof. The Carnotaurus ’s head snapped up. A vertical pupil narrowed. It let out a guttural hiss that smelled of primordial swamp and petrochemicals.

Jack fired.

Jack dove back into the driver’s seat. The Caddy’s V8 roared to life, a sound the dinosaur had never heard but instinctively hated. He slammed the gas. The rear wheels spun, kicking up gravel, then caught. The Cadillac shot forward, straight at the charging monster. Cadillacs And Dinosaurs

He found the beast in a collapsed plaza, snout deep in the ruptured tanker, lapping up the last dregs of synthetic gasoline. Its hide was a mosaic of leathery brown and angry red. Twin horns jutted above its eyes. It was beautiful, in the way a hurricane is beautiful. “Easy, girl,” Jack whispered to the Caddy, cutting

“One hell of a tow bill, Mechanic,” Hannah said, nodding at the Caddy. The car’s side panel was dented, the paint scratched down to bare metal. A vertical pupil narrowed

Jack followed the trail into the rusting skeleton of the city. The skyscrapers leaned together, their windows long since shattered, vines and ferns bursting from every crevice. A humid, prehistoric stink hung in the air.

The sun over the wasted city of Venom was a bleached-white blister in the sky. Jack Tenrec squinted against it, one hand on the steering wheel of his ‘59 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, the other resting on the cold steel of a harpoon gun. The Caddy’s fins were scarred from shrikescale claws, its tail fins a promise of a forgotten era of chrome and excess. Now, it was just the fastest thing on two lanes of cracked asphalt.