Once again, by Nicholas Driscoll.
Excellent art by Sam Messerly. You can see more here.
Click here to read from the beginning.
There was some confusion at the hospital in response to our arrival. Some nurses thought that Warbell had injured the kid (his name was Murdock Gargle), and they started calling the police. But as the nurses were in mid-call, the police arrived, having been alerted to shenanigans due to a dinosaur chaotically dashing through the streets. After some chaos in which I found myself defending the dinosaur for once, the police let us off with a warning… not least of all because Warbell had managed to keep Murdock stable and safe in his mouth, his tongue acting as a stabilizing instrument protecting Murdock from injuring himself as the dinosaur bounded through the city.
Warbell couldn’t come into the hospital, and definitely couldn’t hang out in the waiting room, so the old lizard was once again left to stand in the parking lot twiddling his nonexistent thumbs. After some discussion with the doctors and police inside (I got to whip out my official dinosaur ambassador card a few times, which I’ll admit is a bit of a thrill), I walked outside to check on Warb.
“The kid is stable so far,” I said. “Looks like he will be hunky-dory.”
“I don’t know that expression,” Warb said. “So he will be okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You really acted fast back there. I barely knew what was happening and I was suddenly in the air, carried away by dinosaur claws.”
“What happened?” Warbell asked, that same intense look in his eyes that I saw in the Six Degrees of Bacon parking lot. “How did the kid get hurt?”
I sighed and scratched an itch on my nonexistent leg, then took a deep breath.
“Well, they can’t really tell me about the details, can they?” I said. “I am not related to the kid.”
Suddenly we heard an ambulance siren blurt to life and keen down the road. We watched it go in silence.
“Looks like today is a bad day,” I said. “Several emergencies.”
“Was he shot?” asked Warb. “By one of your people’s guns?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Did you hear a gunshot? I didn’t. Even a silencer makes a sound. I heard nothing. And no sniper is going to shoot a fast-food worker. The stuff he cooks would probably kill him anyway, so there’s not much reason to accelerate the process I suppose.”
Warbell turned his head towards the hospital, that fiery stare burning at the concrete walls as if by squinting hard enough he might be able to see inside.
“Why do you care so much anyway?” I asked. “It’s not like you even know the kid, right?”
Warbell didn’t look at me. I shifted my feet uneasily. A nurse walked by, coming off her smoke break (gosh, why do so many nurses smoke?), and suddenly Warbell stepped in her way, eyes flashing.
“You will tell me what happened to the boy!” Warbell commanded, voice thundering loud enough to set off a car alarm. “You will let me know every detail, for I am your king and you must do what I tell you!”