Dinosaur Drive

With the monsoon came a drowning flood.

The tropical rain fell in torrents, beating and drumming loudly against the corrugated rooftops with the sound of a thousand hammer blows. The steady deluge ran off the eaves in streaming waterfalls, their continuous cascades further adding to the already lake sized mud puddles.

This wasn’t just a dinging and pinging rain. This was biblical rain. It had been coming down like this for weeks, turning what had once been bone dry, brown grass into a soggy, green swimming hole today.

Standing out in that driving downpour and all its misery, four drenched men in dark slickers with matching dripping, broad-brimmed southwestern hats, huddled around the center of the compound with all eyes squinting upwards, peering intently right into the very source of the flood.

The sky they searched was a solid, stormy grey, blurred into one watery haze. They stood ankle-deep in the mush and mire of it as the wind whipped up yet another gust even harder than the last to drive the rain against their upturned faces like so much sleet. It ran off their hats and down their backs in rivulets while the raindrops ricocheted like bullets off the searchlights they manned. Yet not a man moved as they maintained their silent vigil.

They had been enduring this squalor for some time now. Once a platform of short, trimmed grass, the ranch’s landing pad was now as much mud as anything else around here. One man stood at each corner of the raised rectangle. Each had his landing light poised and ready, waiting to turn it on.

They waited. Eyes peering, shoulders hunched. Nothing but wind and water. Then—there!

One of them raised a hand against the pounding torrent. Into the wind wildly flapping their coats, he pointed towards a distant, dark, birdlike object against the threatening sky.

“I see it!” an old codger’s voice called out in recognition to the others in the downpour.

There was a clicking sound, more of a “chink” really, as he switched on his searchlight and tilted it back to aim it up at the clouds. The other three did the same; turning on the lights that they stood by, one by one, such that a battery of four beams now searched and illuminated the gloomy, overcast sky.

“Can anyone fly in weather like this?” One of the other men shouted above the din of their flapping gear.

“They say he can!” the older voice answered back. “They say he’s the best!”

“He’d have to be! Either that or he’s just plain loco to try!”

“Let’s bring him in, boys!”

There! There it was! They could all see it clearly now, flying overhead. It had found them even without them turning their lights on. Its black shape was slowly making its way towards them and descending. They peered up at its outline that resembled an approaching hawk or eagle with wings spread wide, steadily bucking the gale of the hurricane covered sky.

There was another rumbling blast of wind to buffet them, and the monsoon thumped down even harder. Yet all eyes remained vigilantly turned upward, ignoring the relentless tempest and torrent that now more than ever whipped at their gear.

“Give it up!” cried a third at what approached. “Ain’t nobody can land in this wind!”

“They say he can,” repeated the old codger, his voice rock steady.

“Who is they?!”

Whatever it was, it was still drawing nearer, gradually coming down closer, closer... getting bigger… and bigger still. Relentless water slashed down at forty-five-degree angles, the wind howling through the compound like a freight train.

The men braced against it, gripping their coats tight, boots sinking into the sucking mire. Above them, the descending craft—sleek, predatory—fought against the gale, buffeted but unyielding. As the distance narrowed, they could see by the reflection of their searchlights its color wasn’t black at all but a metallic bronze. It banked slightly, soundlessly, to circle back overhead, virtually rotating in midair like some great demon bird looking to land between their four searchlights as the rain continued to pelt down.

Most expertly handled, it held itself perfectly steady in midair against the violent wind without making a sound, its landing struts now extending downwards.

The drenching eased up some then, but not nearly enough. They could still hear splash of raindrops pinging not only off the surface of the mud puddles and metal roofs but even off the ship’s hull itself—as the now unmistakable, sleek and deadly design of a Klingon bird of prey settled down over them without so much as a whisper.

Dead quiet it was as it hovered just above them in the downpour.

And then a light came on from beneath the ship, pointed downwards at the ground, blazing bright, and all four men were running to get out of the way.