Sue Alive! -- original fiction and images by

On an overcast summer day, Annison Greyhawk and his classmates come by bus to see the new star attraction of the Chicago Field Museum: the reconstructed skeletal remains of a dinosaur named Sue. The children gather in the museum's huge atrium to hear a lecture by the renowned paleontologist and fossil hunter, Professor Theodore Digsby. Sue leans over the crowd, skull cocked menacingly, as if to say, "Lunch!"

After the lecture the children are restless; they chase each other about snapping their jaws and screaming, "I'm a T-Rex" ... "No, I am!" … Teachers round up the excited youngsters and head off to see other exhibits: The Mammals of Africa, Man Eating Lions of Tsavo, Mummies of Egypt, Totem Poles of the Northwest Coast Indians, a Pawnee Earth Lodge, Life over Time and much more. The curious school children are amazed and delighted by all that they see.

Finally, their wanderings lead to an exhibit called "Sounds from the Vault," a collection of rare and exotic instruments from around the world. Digital interfaces allow visitors to revive the sounds lost for so long in the museum's catacombs. Most of the children dash gleefully from station to station, intent on noisemaking, but Annison is drawn to one percussion device of peculiar design. He begins to tap the instrument's pair of electronic touch pads. A beat evolves, softly and slowly at first, then faster and increasing in volume. Is it chance, or some ancestral memory that guides the boy's hands? The music of the other children fades as their attentions are drawn to the hypnotic sounds coming from Annison's drum. Professor Digsby, on tour with several museum officials, enters the room as the music grows louder.

Outside a storm brews. Thunder claps accompany the primal beat. A flash of lightning, glimpsed through the windows, pierces the darkened sky with a thousand probing fingers, followed by a tremendous crack that echoes through the great halls. Normally a shy boy, Annison seems oblivious to all the attention he is receiving. The music rising to a crescendo, he begins a chant taught to him by his paternal grandfather of Sioux ancestry. Sound pulsates from the ancient instrument, reverberating through the chamber, pushing subsonic harmonic waves throughout the structure of the massive stone edifice.

As more thunder rumbles, fresh faces gather in the main hall to gawk at Sue. A little girl plays at the limestone base of the deceased bird-lizard while her mother reads a multitude of informational plaques. Lightning flashes through the skylight three stories above, permeating the vast atrium with brilliant light. The little girl tugs at the hem of her mother's dress.

"It's only thunder, sweetie."

The girl tugs more firmly. "Mommy, look! The dinosaur has skin!"

"No Honey, those are bones," says the mother patiently.

"No Mommy, look!"

The woman turns her head in the direction of a massive clawed foot. A bubbling ooze is rising quickly up to the ankle, leaving behind scaly gleaming flesh!

The mother and child stare in disbelief, transfixed by the swift metamorphosis. Other museum-goers turn their heads. They stand gaping, arms slack at their sides, paralyzed by the miracle unfolding before their eyes. The newly formed flesh, stretched tautly over muscle and sinew, although greenish gray overall, is strikingly accented with striations of yellow radiating from the bony spine. As the last bit of flesh materializes around hideous grinning jaws, eyelids snap upward, revealing glowing yellow orbs punctuated by jet black slits.

The gigantic body, tilted forward in a running pose, lurches upright. The massive maw lets out a tremendous high-pitched bellow which shatters windows and bounces off the skyscrapers on Michigan Avenue half a mile away. Finally the crowd snaps out of its trance and screams, charging for the exits in utter panic. Sue awakens from her aeon-old slumber to the sights, sounds, and smells of small unfamiliar creatures scurrying for cover. She steps down from her pedestal, pacing back and forth for a moment in confusion. Instinct directs her to leave this great bright cave and return to more familiar terrain.

Meanwhile, the children led by Professor Digsby rush to a balcony overlooking the pandemonium. Terror-stricken museum visitors flood the aisles and hurtle gates, falling over one another in their rush to escape. A security guard breaks free of the crowd and into a clearing over which the bewildered monster looms. The guard raises his pistol and fires several times. The .32 caliber weapon is like a pellet gun to a pit bull. Sue coils back in surprise, then her head springs forward, snakelike, and snaps up the foolishly brave security guard with razor sharp teeth. She shakes her still-kicking prey vigorously in the air, then chomps several times and swallows the shredded morsel whole.

Having acquired a taste for human, Sue follows the last of the frantic crowd as it bursts from the museum. She thrusts her head through a pair of tall bronze doors, but her torso is too large for the opening. With a lunge she snaps the slender door jambs like twigs, and steps out onto the Ionic-columned portico in front of the museum. Her Cretaceous mind struggles to understand our Holocene world. To the east lies a vast body of water. Strange shimmering mountains rise in the west. Her last memory is of floundering in a swirling flood, so Sue heads west.

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