I was about to pour out the last canister and fill it with gasoline when Linda yelped from the other side of the station (she’d gotten rex piss all over herself and gone to get paper towels); calling out, terror-stricken, “Chris! Get over here!”
I put down the can and listened: to the dinging of the gas pump as it filled the Cuda’s tank and clicked, finishing; to the soft patter of rain on cycads and palm fronds.
Nothing. No snarling of velociraptors as they closed in on us across the garbage-strewn lot. No titter of Compies as they scurried and stalked through the moist, dank underbrush.
It was the nothing that bothered me.
“What is it?” I said—unfastening my holster, sliding out the Glock. But there was no response.
And then I ‘got over there’—raising the g*n even as I saw the rapto
