Still by Nicholas Driscoll.
Click here to read from the beginning.
Before I could even react, without a word Warbell lunged forward and scooped the kid into his mouth. Inn the delirium of the moment I yelled at the old lizard and pounded on his leg, all a panic that he was trying to eat the boy, but Warb gave me a look that stopped me in my tracks. In that one glance there was something that shocked me to silence, a fierceness and earnestness that nearly stopped my heart. Warbell held the boy tenderly with his head out so that the kid could breathe, then grabbed me with his two-fingered hands, and in the next moment we were running full speed down the street.
Final Pumpkin is not a very large city, and the traffic is usually not very busy, though many people were on the commute to their work at that time, and none of them were expecting to see a rampaging dinosaur during their morning routine. Warbell’s incredibly long legs pounded and cracked the pavement as he picked up speed and dodged cars. Most of the drivers didn’t even have the presence of mind to hit their horns. I had the presence of mind to yell and scream, though, as my feet bounced and grazed the blacktop at upwards of twenty miles an hour.
“What are you doing?” I bellowed. “Where are we going?”
And despite the very logical nature of my questions, of course Warbell did not answer. Probably because he had a dying kid in his mouth. Instead, he picked up speed, hurdling a sedan, sideswiping an SUV, then crouching into the next turn, my footwear burning against the concrete.
“Yeow!” I said with some emotion, using a few other additional choice words which I won’t repeat here.
We shot through a red light, and I wondered if it really counted as a traffic violation since Warbell isn’t really an automobile. The police seemed to think so as a patrol car pulled out behind us and started flashing and howling. By this time I realized where we were going, though, and a thrill shot up my (already much too-thrilled) spine.
“It’s pedestrian right of way, coppers!” I shouted.
In any case, Warbell didn’t stop. Instead, he took a detour through an alleyway, startling some workers on their way to the dumpster and stumbling over a garbage bin. Several stray cats shrieked and scampered away, fur flared, tails pointing skyward accusingly. Warbell just continued to barrel forward, but the police car had to detour around as the bin had blocked the alley.
As we came out the other side, Warbell crossed the street in one long stretching stride, then half-hopped over a row of shrubs into the Final Pumpkin General Hospital parking lot, where he then made a beeline (or perhaps a “t-line”?) for the emergency room entrance, the hoot of the sirens like exclamation points as we reached out destination.
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