Naser tried to picture how the situation inside his car would appear to a cop, peering in through an open window.

Inside they would see an unconscious and anaemic looking female pterodactyl in a trench coat clutching a revolver. Her tourniqueted and bandaged leg suspended over the centre console, tethered by a strip of gauze to the rear vision mirror. Smears of blood all around her on the cream-coloured, cow-leather interior.

Beside her, a shirtless, bearded and unwashed bald human male with darting eyes like a cornered animal, one eye purple and swollen. His rib-lined torso covered in fading bruises. 

And Naser behind the wheel, an idiot who would have been better off if he had stayed in bed. Together they looked suspicious as hell. 

He stifled an involuntary laugh. It was too absurd.

“Get us out of here Naser! C’mon!” Cried Anon, grabbing Naser’s shoulder.

Naser tested the steering wheel and pedal. “I can’t, the controls are in remote override!”

They looked on in horror as Naser's smart car inexorably guided itself into a line of other automobiles queuing for police inspection. To their right Naser saw that the cops had set up a temporary base of operations in the parking lot of an abandoned mall, well lit by mobile light towers. Eager police officers climbed in and out of detained motor vehicles, former occupants zip-locked at the wrists and forced to lie face down on the weed infested gravel.

Naser’s Ptergeot jolted forward, in-sync with the queue. Ahead, a car pulled out from the front of the line and into the parking lot where cops stood ready with tasers and handcuffs.

“What are we going to do?” Anon squeaked.

Naser ripped through his doctor’s bag, thinking that maybe there was a sheet he could throw over the two in the back. It was a desperate, ridiculous thought. Of course there was no sheet in the bag, and simply draping a sheet over a problem doesn’t make it invisible.

“Christ, I think they’re cuffing everyone.” Anon muttered to himself as he peered out a window.

A growing sense of dreaded inevitability clawed at the pit of Naser’s stomach. 

He pulled a bandage roll from his bag and leaned around, over Fang’s outstretched leg. Taking her wrist, he wrapped the bandage around the gun and the hand that held it until it was completely concealed.

Maybe that will do it, he lied to himself. It was a small comfort, but he knew it would not make a difference, they would still be taken in no matter what they said or did.

The vehicle in front of them gently guided itself into the parking lot. He could see the dumbstruck faces of the passengers staring out at what awaited. That’s going to be us soon. Naser thought. Me and Anon will go to jail and Fang will get the death penalty.

Fang, strapped to a gurney, injected with potassium chloride.

Naser’s car rolled into position at the front of the line. It was their turn. He looked out at two cops standing by the front of his luxury sedan. A small female deinonychus holding a tablet and a large male baryonyx wielding a submachine gun. They both wore hard armour.

“Can they see us?” Whispered Anon, a sheen of sweat forming on his brow.

Naser shook his head slowly, not taking his eyes off the cops. “Mirrored windows.”

Naomi tried to talk him out of getting the mirrored windows option when he bought the car a few months ago. He was glad he got them now, not that it would make much difference.

The deinonychus inspected the registration plate of Naser's car and tapped away at her tablet. She said something to the baryonyx. He nodded. Together they stepped off the road and the deinonychus waved them through.

There was a soft double ping noise from the dashboard and the Ptergeot gently cruised through the police checkpoint and back out onto the open road.

***

They stared out the rear window as the flashing lights of the police checkpoint gradually faded from view.

“Why did they let us go?” Anon asked, beads of sweat leaving trails down the back of his bald head. “They had us and they let us go.”

“I-” Naser paused to try and collect his thoughts, “I don’t know.”

“They weren’t messing around,” Anon began to ramble, “did you see how many police there were? It was like an pissed off hornets nest! They probably have checkpoints set up on every road out of the city. If they caught us we would have been so screwed. Fang has that gun in her hand, what if she woke up and started shooting? They would have lit us up and we-”

“Anon." Naser cut through Anon's babble. "Did anyone see you and Fang?”

“Huh?” Anon's eyes focused on him, slack jawed.

"At that van when Fang, uh, when Fang liberated you. Did anyone see you?"

Anon looked at his hands as he fussed with the drawstring of his grease stained sweatpants. He shook his head.

"I don't think so. The van, the bodies, we set it all on fire. And that part of Little Troodon is a network dead zone, no signal out. No lights, no electricity. Nobody has lived there since the massacre. Nobody who would say anything, anyways."

Naser ruminated on that one. "If there was no network, how did you call me?"

Anon glanced at Fang. "We walked until we had a signal."

Naser gaped at Anon. "You walked?"

"Why do you think we were at a bus stop and not next to a burning wreckage?"

Naser imagined Fang limping along on Anon's shoulder for half a mile or more on an oozing leg haemorrhage, nothing to staunch the flow of blood but Anon's t-shirt. He dismissed the thought, no point dwelling on it now.

"How did she know you were in that specific police van? How did she even know its route ?"

"I don't know." Anon replied. "I just- I don't know." He peered out the window. "It's like a dream, you know? It just doesn't feel real. Both of you, back in my life again like this."

Naser knew exactly what he meant.

Anon continued, "I don't know why she did it or how she found me, but fuck I was glad to see her again."

Naser grunted. "Your freedom isn't worth her life."

Anon gazed down at his hands again. "My life isn't worth half as much." He muttered. He looked up at Naser. "Do you know what the government has been doing to humans?"

Naser squinted at Anon. "What are you even talking about?"

"C'mon, have you seen any humans around lately?"

Now that Naser thought about it, he realised he hadn't. Not in public or at his private practice in the city outskirts or at the Volcadera Base Hospital. Anon was the first skinnie he had seen in several years.

"No, but there aren't as many people in the world as there used to be…" Said Naser, his words trailing off.

"Two words;" announced Anon. He raised a finger for dramatic effect, "systematic"  then a second, "extinction."

Naser laughed derisively and waved a dismissive hand at Anon. "I don't have time for conspiracy theories." He scoffed.

"It's not some conspiracy theory!" Anon replied sharply, his hands curling into fists. "It's happening every day! Humans are kidnapped off the street and taken to forced labour camps where they're sterilised and put to work. The ones that can't work get processed into food for dino consumption!"

He's lost it, Naser thought, Anon is actually insane. He even looked like a stereotypical post-meteor skinnie hobo, the kind that appears on the news, unhinged by starvation.

For a moment he felt pity for Anon. He tried to put himself in his shoes and imagine the things Anon must have endured to survive the days of darkness that followed the meteor. The feeling didn't last. "Do you have any idea how crazy you sound right now? Why would they even do that?"

"I know how it sounds. Look, you remember that old dino-human war, the one where humans used chemical warfare? Well, the war technically never ended, they simply declared a ceasefire. After the meteor fell, the government quietly lifted that ceasefire. For the last five years the dino-supremacist government has waged a secret war on the human race with the intent of gradually reducing the human population down to zero. Thus the limited food sources are secured for dinokind and dinosaurs will become the sole rulers of Earth." Anon concluded. He looked at Naser, evidently expecting a response.

“I… See.” Naser said. That confirmed it, Anon's nuts. He entertained the idea of pulling the car over and leaving Anon by the side of the highway and saying a final good riddance to the weirdo. But then, Fang had taken a bullet in an attempt to help Anon. She had risked her life and not on impulse, it was clear that Fang’s rescue of Anon was premeditated. She knew where the van transporting Anon would travel and she did it in a place where she would have the least chance of being seen by a bystander or a surveillance camera. 

And the fire… Police officers wear live feed cameras and their vehicles are mounted with 360-degree camera systems that record to local storage as a measure against network drop-outs. The cops, the prisoner transport van, any recordings, all up in smoke.

And the police at the checkpoint. They were grabbing everyone, they had no idea who they were looking for.

Naser studied Anon. Fang had done all of that, prepared for it, to help this sorry mess of a human she had not talked to in years, if what Anon had said earlier was to be believed. His eyes lingered on Anon’s chest where the contour of each rib was clearly defined. It reminded him of his internship at the VBH and the endless line of malnourished people. He would be remiss in not bringing Anon back up to a healthy weight when he had the means to do so, maybe he’ll sane up a bit with food in his belly. More importantly, he would need Anon's assistance to get Fang out of the car and into a bed.

"Okay." Naser decided, he pressed his lips together and nodded slowly.

"Okay what?" Asked Anon.

"Okay I'm not going to boot you out of my car."

"How very kind of you." Anon retorted, leaning back into the rear passenger seat. He rested his chin on the palm of one scrawny hand and gazed out the passenger window.

***

The Ptergeot pulled into Naser's spacious garage, its door closing behind them. Automatic ceiling lights flickered to life.

Naser switched the motor off and swung the car door open. He clambered from the driver's chair. He called over his shoulder, "Anon, get the front seat out of the way and have Fang ready to be moved, I'll be right back."

Naser stumbled out of the garage and through the lobby, flicking light switches on as he went. He half-ran up a flight of stairs taking two steps a stride, shoulder knocking against framed family portraits that lined the wall. He wheeled a chair from Naomi's office and carried it back down the stairs, through the lobby and into the garage.

Anon had the front passenger seat down with Fang's bandaged leg resting on the back of it. He had his hands under her arms, straining to drag her on the seat towards the open car door. Fang's chest rose and fell in rapid, shallow breaths.

"Anon, you take this office chair. Keep it close, I'm going to pull Fang out of the car and seat her in it."

Anon stood behind the chair and held it by the backrest, anchoring it with his foot.

Naser leaned into the car and hooked his arms under Fang's. He was surprised at how light she felt, dragging her along the car seat. He pulled her body from the car and slumped her in the office chair, her legs half inside the vehicle. 

"Take her legs Anon, try and keep them straight. I'll drag the chair, we'll roll her to the guest bedroom."

Naser walked backwards out of the garage and into the lobby, tugging the chair along with him. 

Anon waddled after Naser, an ankle in each hand. He stopped dead and gawked at the lobby interior, his mouth hanging ajar, taking it all in.

"What?" Naser asked. "What is it?"

Anon swallowed. "Naser you have a no joke chandelier in your house. Holy shit this place is huge, it must have cost a fortune!"

Naser sighed in exasperation. "We don't have time for this, come on."

"What do you do for a living, Naser?" Anon asked, a hint of wonderment in his voice.

"I'm a surgeon."

"Oh." Said Anon, a dull look on his face. Then his face lit up, eyebrows shooting to the top of his brow. "Oooh!"

They wheeled Fang through the lobby, down a short corridor by the kitchen and into a large dark bedroom, her head lolling to one side. Naser switched on the light switch as he entered. A queen-sized bed with white satin sheets and an over abundance of pillows dominated the room, a large tv opposite. Above the headboard hung a portrait of Kanyesaurus in military regalia against a star-spangled backdrop. Anon eyed it with a look of abject disgust on his face.

"Don't say a word, Anon." Advised Naser, waving a cautionary finger. "I don't want to hear it. Put her legs up on the bed and then we'll see if that gun is still loaded. The last thing we need is for it to go off and take out one of her feet, or one of us." They spun Fang around in the chair and Anon rested her legs on the bed. Dark, dry blood dusted the pristine white sheets like red charcoal on a blank canvas. 

Naser carefully unwrapped the gauze from around the .44 Bulldog revolver, keeping its muzzle pointing in the other way. With the gun exposed, he could see Fang's index finger resting on the trigger. He pushed his thumb against the side latch and eased the cylinder open. He gave the gun a shake and five rounds tumbled into the palm of his hand.

He closed the cylinder and placed the unloaded gun on Fang's lap, her hand still tight around its grip. He inspected the bullets. Two spent, three live. Fang probably had a finger sitting on the trigger for a significant portion of the drive out of town.

He shivered. Don't think about it, Naser told himself. He slid the bullets into a hip pocket. He felt himself relax, just a little.

"Raise her arms up, we'll take off that coat." 

Anon raised Fang's arms by the wrists, revolver pointing at the ceiling. Naser tugged at her coat sleeves, pulling her coat from under her one tug at a time. It slipped over her wings, her arms flopping back down onto the armrests of the chair. Naser laid the heavy trench coat on the floor.

"Okay, now-" Naser said, stopping abruptly in mid-sentence. He stared at Fang's tattered wings. "Holy shit…" Murmured Anon.

Her wings were clipped, primary feathers cut clean and deep along the perpendicular. Half of her greater covert and secondary feathers were missing entirely, replaced by black, frayed ribbons. Folded in and pressed against the back of the office chair, her wings resembled barcodes. Naser felt like he was about to cry. He closed his eyes and gave his head a quick shake. "Let's get her out of the chair."

He lifted Fang from under her armpits, her skin cold and wet to touch, and placed her on the bed, taking care not to crush her black and white wings beneath her. Anon manoeuvred her legs to stay in line with her body. They rolled her onto her left side, into a recovery position. “Alright, get her right leg elevated.” Naser instructed as he strode towards the bedroom door. “Just lift it up and put some pillows under there. Cry out if anything happens.”

Down the hallway from the guest bedroom, Naser rooted through the cluttered shelves of a medical supply closet. He had let the closet fall into disorganisation around the time Naomi moved out with the kids. Without much thought or care he had heedlessly thrown into the closet anything that wasn’t used or no longer needed at his clinic. He regretted it now.

Taking inventory in his head, he checked each item off a mental checklist as he tossed them into a wire handbasket. Large-bore multi-lumen catheter, saline syringe, antiseptic wipes, blo-. Blood. He didn't keep blood, not at his house. Don't panic. A litre IV bag of almost expired polygeline, latex gloves, PVC tubing, IV stand and infusion pump- 

“Naser!” Anon called in a hoarse voice from down the hall, “Come quickly, it’s Fang!”

Naser lurched out of the closet and ran up the hallway, basket in one hand, IV stand pushed along before him with the other. His heart began to beat so hard that it hurt his chest. 

He stepped into the guest bedroom. Anon looked over at Naser, his face pale and eyes wide with fright, hand digging into Fang’s shoulder. She lay there, still and corpse-like, purple tongue hanging from her beak.

“She’s not breathing!”