'START'

  So, it seemed like he had only to press it—

  Before Luca could move, the old man reappeared from the side. Behind them, a group of men in the park vests, with black pants and boots standing next to the walls, looked at them with some curiosity, a hint of expectation. But for what? The old man, ignorant or indifferent at this, leaned on the frame, peering at him with unreadable eyes.

  “Ready?” he asked, as if it were really a question. His gaze lingered on Luca for a moment longer than necessary before he added, almost casually, “You’re young, so you should now that nowadays people love adrenaline.” He tapped the side of his temple knowingly and gave him a look.

  Luca nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Go, go,” the man said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Don’t be late, or there’ll be trouble for all of us.” With that, he turned and walked toward the handful of employees gathered nearby.

  As Luca glanced around the bus, at the empty seats, he knew the ‘visitors’ wouldn’t be the same as the ones he’d seen earlier. But it didn’t matter. A job was a job.

  He pressed the button, a fain sense of electricity under his finger.

  With a low hum, the bus came to life —vibrations rippled through the floorboards and up into his seat. The click of the door and the windows was followed by the movement of the vehicle on its own. It eased out of its spot and slowly glided along a half—hidden road leading westward. The automatic system was thorough, so Luca sat back and took the opportunity to study his surroundings more carefully.

  The front was quite normal, excepting for the control screen. Now, two vivid words had appeared: STOP and, most interesting, SHIELD. The latter had an icon of a white bar beneath it, seemingly halted in the middle of a full charge. The manual, of course, had mentioned nothing about this and what could do mean.

  Luca didn’t know who had been responsible of filling the details, but he hoped never to meet them. There was little he liked less than incompetency.

  Amidst his thoughts, the murmurs began.

  At first, they were faint, barely audible over the soft background noise of the bus. But soon, they grew louder—a cacophony of murmurs and laughter, overlapping voices that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Luca turned his head, after catching movement out of the corner of his eye, and stared.

  People were materializing in the seats.

  Out of thin air.

  They appeared slowly, their forms flickering like static on an old television screen before solidifying into translucent shapes. Men, women, children—all dressed in casual tourist attire, their faces frozen in expressions of excitement or mild boredom. They chatted amongst themselves, oblivious to Luca’s presence —or simply choosing not to pay attention at him.

  Sadly, he couldn't do the same. Something was wrong with them. Not only it was the feeling, a stronger dissonance than the ones he’d seen before, those wandering the park, but they looked different too. Perhaps it was the dark stains on their clothes, or the way their forms flickered, torn between two points— like 'life' and 'dead' — along the same baseline —'already in the Beyond'—.

  As he watched them, two messages blinked into existence in the corner of Luca’s vision:

  An hour.

  The sun was sinking toward the horizon, and at night, the predators that had been resting during the day would wake up. Hungry, surely. And which of them would like the intrusion into their territories? The T. Rex would love it. The Carnotaurus? It would throw a party.

  As the bus rolled forward, Luca sighed, noticing they were approaching the fences of the first enclosure. The Spinosaurus’s. Towering bars and dense, prehistoric foliage loomed in the still present daylight. He couldn’t hear the rustle of the leaves or the chirps of any bird from his current position, but he knew that somewhere within that cage, its inhabitant stirred.

  Everything would be undoubtedly easier if he could simply use the shield the whole trip. But nah, that would take off all the diversion, right? Those adrenaline-addict wannabes (those dead adrenaline—addict wannabes) preferred to give a shot at the matter of being eaten.

  This shield was part of the performance. One he had to dominate —parcially at least— if he wanted no only to came back in a piece but to leave early.

  On the (almost) good, shiny side of the coin, although this job could be a visit in a Jurassic park –ha!— it had its perks. He didn’t recall the last time he had the chances of working less hour without getting his pay docked (and fired). In truth, this should be only work where making less hours would increase the salary. They should put it as the job’s highlighting.

  A deep growl cut through the vegetation, easily reaching him, as they approached more and more the enclosure. It was followed by an excited cheer courtesy of the ‘audience’. But as nothing more happened, and the bus continued moving slowly forward, something started to –stir? It was a faint, insidious energy that slithered through the bus like crispy smoke. It pressed against his skin.

  Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw that the ‘visitors’ seemed to be caught on its second ‘form’, and their vacant eyes had started to look at him. If this was not enough, the uneasy silence was also a good sign of that something had to be done.

  [Satisfaction: Diminishing]

  Ha. They were getting bored, right?

  As the massive doors of the enclosure creaked open ahead, barely wide enough for the bus to pass through, Luca reached for a small microphone from the glove box, and tried it out, pressing the small button. When it made a faint ‘bip’, he started to talk.

  “Testing, testing —do you hear me? If you can hear me, please say ‘yes.’”

  The spectral figures, who had been silent instants ago, responded in a chorus of enthusiastic affirmations. “Yes!” they chimed, as if nothing unusual were occurring around them. But their impression had started to turn back to the ‘cleaner’ version, which was everything he needed to know he was in right path.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Good. He did remember well, then.

  “Perfect! A pleasure to have all of you here today. I’m your guide, Mithras, and I’ll be taking you on a journey you won’t soon forget.” He paused, breathing carefully, letting the words hang in the air. His tone was the same he had used during that seven months as Chummy, the Magician’s assistant. “Now, you’ve probably heard about our first friend we’ll be visiting —one of the four kings. He’s a bit spiky, but everyone loves him!”

  The sound of rushing water grew louder as the bus emerged beside a riverbank. The scene might have been made a great postal to send home –a peaceful expanse of translucent water framed by lush vegetation. But this wasn’t tranquility; it was the calm of a depredator’s territory.

  One hand hovered over the STOP option while the other rested firmly on the silver bracelet wrapped around his wrist. Luca waited, looking at the water, and continued speaking, sharing a snipped he had got from the museum. “Our friend here is the fruit of years of research, and some of use of creativity license. Because Primal Dream’s founder, Dr. Johnson, wished to offer only to best to his visitants, he recovered the fragments of DNA from the three different exemplars discovered in the last five years.”

  The bus reached halfway along the river, and he pressed the ‘button’, halting the bus.

  “However, this fusion ended bringing unexpected results.”

  As in clue, a colossal figure erupted from the river, less than fifty meters from the bus. Water cascaded off its imposing crest, slipping through its sleek scarlet, black scales, and a gaping maw with rows of crocodile teeth. The sheer size of the creature was more than imposing –but the audience, this ghostly audience, standing only a couple of meters of distance from the predator didn’t scream in fear.

  No.

  They were so fucking elated, their faces luminescent with morbid fascination. It was a crazy look that made them seem so alive. Beyond nuts, but alive.

  Luca had no reason to celebrate as he pressed the button to capture the image.

  And then:

  Ups and downs. Luca frowned, pondering if the window between him and his target could be the problem. His eyes started darting around, a dangerous idea already forming on his mind, and then focused on the end of the bus.

  The Spinosaurus wasn’t done with such a demonstration. With earth-shaking steps, it stumped toward the bus, its golden eyes locking onto the vehicle with predatory intensity. The ground trembled beneath its weight, each step reverberating through the chassis like a small tremor, and Luca could imagine it crushing the vehicle with one of its pawns.

  “As you can see, our friend is really big and strong, “Luca continued, his finger hovering over the SHIELD button, now glinting in green, the bar beneath it fully charged. But damn if it was slow! Alright, he thought, and then stretched his other hand towards the small button next to the windows. With a hiss, the glass slid open.

  As the Spinosaurus appeared at the back of bus and opened its maw, yellowish and conic teeth in high quality, a wave of stinking breath barreled into the bus. Luca pressed his bracelet at the same time than the dinosaur reached the bus, and then the other important button –SHIELD. Two things happened then, at the same time; first, the messages–

  –and the shield. An electric teal dome materialized out of thin air, crackling with energy as it repelled the dinosaur’s advance. The Spinosaurus halted, its massive head snapping at the barrier with a ferocity that screamed older grievances.

  A counter appeared on the screen: 7 Seconds.

  Ah? Luca frowned. What a joke.

  A new button blinked in the screen: CONTINUE.

  The Spinosaurus roared again, its deafening cry shaking the very air around them. Luca didn’t hesitate and pressed down on the button, propelling the bus forward just as the creature lunged. The Spinosaurus stopped itself before it could clash against the shield but its ferocious mouth was wide open, eyes red.

  “Oh, it seems like our friend is a bit cranky today,” he kept going, counting the seconds.

  Slower than a snail, Luca thought when the bus started to move around. It felt like it had been designed in purpose to prolong the encounter rather than escape it. Which only left him with a sole sentence: to hell with that psycho!

  If they didn’t hurry up, the shield would—!

  With a flicker, the teal translucent cover faded away, leaving the bus in the good graces of some god. Which wasn’t a good metaphor considering that the only god he believed was the one that didn’t exist.

  Behind them, the Spinosaurus let out another guttural roar.

  The visitants, at least, seemed quite content. Even if their Satisfaction didn’t work for the shield on this enclosure it was nice seeing they appreciate his efforts to come home early.

  How kind. The Spinosaurus didn’t seem interested enough on them to go on with the chase. Turning around, it slipped in the water, leaving visible only the top of its crest. The sunlight made its black scales glint like silver, and, well —it couldn’t be denied that it had its own kind of beauty.

  A dangerous, primal kind of beauty.

  As the bus moved steadily onward, leaving the riverbank —and the predator — behind, Luca let out a soft sigh. But it hadn’t finished yet.

  “Well, it’s been a quick visit to our friend. Why don’t we say goodbye to him?” He paused for an instant. “Goodbye Malik!”

  The whole audience burst in a maniac chorus, “Malik! Malik! Malik!”

  There you go, thought Luca, a hint of satisfaction, leaning back in the seat. The exit stood forward, and it slid open without hesitation, leaving them out on the road again. As the bus stepped in the pavement, messages popped up.

  Luca’s lips twitched involuntarily at the absurdity of it all. Tough? Sure, they could survive to a little dino kiss. But it was like a typical breaking out situationship but reversed: the problem was him, who was still flesh and bone, not them. And there was no way in which he would change this fact, thank you.

  How went that poem...? 'He had to tasks to complete and thousands to pay before he slept'... something like that, right?

  As the text faded, his eyes turned at his surroundings —the road stretched ahead, the outline of the next enclosure not so far from there.

  Orkoraptors, right?

  'The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

  But I have promises to keep

  And miles to go before I sleep.'