By me, with art by Sam Messerly.
Click here to read from the beginning.
After dropping that bomb on his audience, Warbell then gave some details about who to contact and how to help with his effort. However, the crowd was getting louder by that point. Some people had started yelling, asking questions. The commentators came on to try to restore some order to the broadcast, and the camera cut to a farther away shot of the audience and police jostling. Some in the audience sounded ecstatic and hopeful, some sounded angry, and increasingly the different voices were blending into a cacophony.
The commentators were eating it up.
“But Frank, who has a boxing match, and then announces a medical breakthrough? I mean, who does that?”
“Well, Jane, it’s hard to say. Maybe he wanted to end the broadcast with one last punch.”
In the background, I could hear Warbell boom out, “If there is anything you can do to help, you won’t just help me! You will help yourselves as well!”
Then, as I watched the crowd continue to bellow and holler and jostle, Warbell vanished. One moment he was there, standing behind the line of agitated policemen. The next, he was gone. The effect was immediate as the crowd fell back and began to scatter with confusion.
“Where did he go? Oh, gosh, where did he go?” said Frank the commentator.
“Is that dinosaur a ninja?” asked Jane.
“This isn’t funny, Jane,” said Frank. “What is going on?”
I blinked and shook my head, wondering if the whole thing was a stunt, or a dream. The whole situation with Warbell had been surreal from the start, and I am not sure that a vanishing tyrannosaurus was the weirdest thing yet (dinosaur massages or adjustable carnivore/herbivore techno-teeth kind of take the cake), but the neverending sequence of weird made me feel like I had fallen deep into of The Twilight Zone (or maybe even Ultra Q given the prevalence of large monsters).
My phone buzzed, and I picked it up. It was a message from Colander.
“Do you trust Warbell yet?”
I thumbed out a quick reply.
“What did Warbell do to earn my trust?”
And really, he hadn’t proved anything. Warbell made an announcement about supposedly doing research on the disappearing death virus, but I wasn’t sure what that meant. What did he mean that the Dino Kingdom of Peace and Forever (or whatever the heck it was called) had technology we didn’t have? Where was this kingdom anyway? What did Warbell think was the source of the virus, and why did he care? Was Warbell working alone, or with others? Maybe he had been talking with them in my garage?
Colander sent a reply.
“You should talk to him. He gives really good massages.”
Geez. Colander actually went to get a massage from that old lizard? I tossed my phone on the sofa and went to the kitchen to do some dishes and a few other chores around the house. Maybe fifteen minutes later, I heard a knock on my door.
The hairs on the back of my head stood up and my mouth went dry. I walked to my door and peaked out the peep hole. There was nothing there.
And then I saw it. Something floating in the dark evening light. It was hard to make out just what it was until it moved.
“It’s me,” it said. “Are you there, Wal?”
It was Warbell’s head, floating in the air.