A Dinosaur is a Man's Best Friend 7


Book Description

"It's okay," he said, softly, gently. "I know you belong to him. Like I said, we just got—carried away. That's all." She lay against his chest in silence for what seemed a long time. "I don't know who I belong to anymore," she said. And soon she slept and dreamed once again—in which she found herself making love to her husband in the shitty trailer house in Anchor Rock … which morphed into the ramshackle house in Lonepine and Will; which bled into the tent with Sammy and the vision … a vision to which she returned, lost, wandering, until she found the man in the dirty bandana. Until they, too, were making love, or a perversion of it, and she knew not in truth who she even was anymore, but sensed that she had become not just a woman but a focusing point, an epitome, a river of menstrual blood as dark as it was unpredictable—the mother and whore to the entire world.




A Dinosaur is a Man's Best Friend 4


Book Description

“You’re worried about him, aren’t you?” Williams didn’t turn around. “Yeah. I guess I am.” He exhaled cigar smoke. “It’s not like him to be so …” “Morose?” “Yeah. I guess that’s it. You know, he’s been at that pond almost since we got here … just drinking and staring … completely oblivious. Remember how I told you that neither of us could recall our previous lives? Well, maybe he’s recalling …” He paused, struggling to find the right words. “A different state of being. A different incarnation. I think he was a man once. A man who lived for a very long time.” “A lonely man, then …” “Yes. Sort of a last man standing. And I think when we met … he rediscovered something he’d been missing for a long time.” “Friendship. Someone to talk to,” she said. “More than that. A reason to live. I—I’ve felt it myself. All those weeks, months, spent walking alone. I told you about Tanelorn. Well that was what we called our reason to live … our reason for putting one foot in front of the other. Because without that …” “‘Gazelle Theory,’” she said. “What?” She laughed a little. “Something my husband used to say. It means, ‘move or die.’” He laughed a little himself. “That’s good. ‘Move or die.’ Whether it’s a physical death or an emotional one.” He stared at Ank in the gloaming before another hand touched him, this time Luna. “Is Ank all right?”







A Dinosaur is a Man's Best Friend 6


Book Description

Williams stared at him for what seemed a long time before finally appearing to relent. "Okay," he said at last, and shrugged. "We'll try to build a raft …" "Now you're talking!" said Sammy. He shot a sidelong glance at Sheila. "He's talking now, am I right?" Sheila began to nod and smile in a flood of relief. And then a gunshot rang out and everyone jumped—and when the smoke had cleared Williams was standing with his rifle raised, although he lowered it quickly to prevent further alarm. Sammy, meanwhile, lifted his wildly trembling gun hand and merely looked at it, for Williams had shot the weapon clean from his grasp. "I'm sorry, too," said Williams. "Now here's what I want you to do …"




A Dinosaur is a Man's Best Friend 9


Book Description

They both felt it at the same time, even as the train lurched forward and the cars jolted thunderously—a tremor in the very fabric of things, like a ripple in a foam of potentiality which contained in it the threads of all their possible futures. Something, somewhere, had just happened—something directly related to their current endeavor of delivering the bomb to Barley and detonating it amidst the Enemy. communicated Ank, still smarting from his struggle to climb onto the flatcar with the added weight of the weapon. “You felt it too? Like one door closed and another had opened, but with disastrous consequences, for us all …” Williams looked at him, rattled and bewildered. “Ank, how could we know that?” “Ank, don’t.” Williams leaned forward until they were almost nose to nose. “Our friendly engineer, in case you haven’t noticed, is clearly insane!” And then Williams was leaning over the side using one of Ank’s spikes for a handhold while simultaneously yelling at the engineer, who poked his head out the engine’s side window, his long, gray hair flying, and shouted, “You want speed, you got it, ha-ha! The world, she’s a comin’ back, yesiree!” He sounded the horn suddenly and Williams covered an ear, even as his hat blew off and fluttered away behind them. “The New World Special is back in service—and it’s taking its passengers to the Promised Land! Ha-ha!”




A Dinosaur is a Man's Best Friend (A Serialized Novel), Part Two: "Into the Badlands"


Book Description

"You talk to yourself a lot, don't you?" said Luna. Williams looked at her and finally smiled in spite of himself. "Or it just may be that he's really talking to me, and you just can't hear it." He tweaked her nose. "Yet. Either way, you need to eat something and get some sleep. We all do. We've got a big day ahead of us tomorrow." "Why a big day?" "Ank, camping gear," he said, and the dinosaur folded his front legs with a groan. "Because we're going to head out for Barley's in the morning." He loosed his bedroll from the supplies strapped to Ank's back and tossed it to her. "The place where the sounds on your radio come from. We've—we're searching for something. A place we call Tanelorn. And we think that might be it." "Tanelorn," she repeated. "What's that?" Williams rested his arms on the bundles of supplies, thinking about it. "I don't know, exactly. I reckon it's just a place someone feels drawn to … even if they don't know why. A place where the homeless can find a home, maybe." He looked at the lights in the sky, the Alien Borealis, as Ank called it, and wondered. "But it may be that it's something else—a kind of Omega Point. A place where all the colors of the spectrum meet, like a prism. And become focused into a single, burning light. Maybe that's what people mean when they talk about the power and the glory." He tugged on a rope, releasing a waterfall of pots and pans. "Meh. It's just something to keep us going." "Like a magnifying glass," she said, ignoring his last statement. He paused, thinking about it. "Like a magnifying glass," he agreed. Then he added, "Now, what'll it be? Beans or beans?"




A Dinosaur is a Man's Best Friend 8


Book Description

She focused on her breathing, trying indeed not to hyperventilate, but feeling as though her heart might punch through her chest at any moment. The spot where he had touched her seemed to burn and freeze at the same time. “You don’t remember … do you?” His brown eyes suddenly twinkled and he shook his head. “No? You don’t remember calling on me in the depths of those first awful nights, when you were at your most exposed, when you were at your most vulnerable?” He stroked her long, brown hair with an almost impossible gentleness; it was as though a cool-warm breeze rifled it rather than his fingers. “When it was just you and the boy … alone, scared. Cold. Hungry?” She began to shake her head almost violently, her breathing and heart rate accelerating once again. “Oh, yes,” he said, squinting, smiling. “You did. All the world did. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. You called on many during that time, in those hours and days and weeks after the Flashback—you wouldn’t have been aware of it. And you cursed the One who had brought it upon you … who had taken your husband and your daughter; who had taken so many husbands and daughters. It’s okay. We—we don’t judge. Not like them,” He looked at the hazy sky and the alien-colored lights, at the sun itself which was a white disk in the smoke. “Not like Him.”







New York Magazine


Book Description

New York magazine was born in 1968 after a run as an insert of the New York Herald Tribune and quickly made a place for itself as the trusted resource for readers across the country. With award-winning writing and photography covering everything from politics and food to theater and fashion, the magazine's consistent mission has been to reflect back to its audience the energy and excitement of the city itself, while celebrating New York as both a place and an idea.