

Impatient
motorists on Lakeshore Drive curse and honk their horns as traffic grinds
to a halt at Roosevelt Avenue. Suddenly the cause of the gridlock jaywalks
across the intersection like a Chicago native, paying no heed to the red
light at the opposite side. The sheer wall of cliffs jutting up from the
west side of Michigan Avenue diverts the befuddled T- Rex northward. Horrified
pedestrians stop in their tracks, then bolt in all directions. Tires screech
and metal crunches in rear-end collisions as incredulous drivers slam
on their brakes and abandon their smashed vehicles in the middle of the
street.
The pair of bronze lions standing guard in front of the Art Institute watch indifferently as a cordon of police officers and squad cars forms at the end of Adams Street. When the beast comes within one hundred feet, Sergeant O'Brady gives the order to open fire. A dozen guns discharge and fire at will thereafter. Sue rears back in agony as a wave of bullets pierce her coarse hide. With a bloodcurdling roar she attacks, covering the thirty odd yards in three lighting quick strides. Her ferocious gaping maw descends, snatching an officer out of the ranks. A jerk of her mighty neck, and the man hurls through the air and squashes against the terra cotta cladding at the second floor of the Santa Fe Building. With a savage kick, she overturns a squad car and slams it to the pavement, crushing two cops. The remainder of the force loses heart and scatters in disarray.
The enraged predator hotly pursues several officers up Adams. She bends low, foul breath on the necks of her prey, as they scuttle under the elevated railway that loops downtown. Just then her attention is drawn upward by gleaming screeching metal as the Orange Line pulls to a stop at Wabash and Adams.
A
commuter looks up from his Chicago Sun-Times to see a gigantic beastly
face looking quizzically through his window. Hysterical cries fill the
car as other riders notice the ghastly sight. Sue probes forward, squashing
her moist snout against the window. She strikes! Glass explodes inward.
A businessman is thrown across the car. The jaws snap at the window, but
it's too small. In frustration, Sue topples the car sideways onto the
center of the platform, where its tremendous weight and momentum snaps
the aged timber and steel girders. Pulling the rest of the train down
with it, the car plummets concussively to the earth. Sue leaps clear of
the mayhem, barely dodging the deadly shards that fly from the wreckage.
Office workers abandon their cubicles to stare down in amazement from a thousand windows as the monster passes below. Sue's great thrashing tail shatters storefronts as she stalks through canyons of brick and steel. Another hastily assembled police blockade forces her to veer north on Clark Street. From this point on, reports vary wildly as to the path and proceedings of the resurrected dinosaur. Generally, her route zigzags northward. One unreliable account places her as far west as Logan Square, but a few sightings have been documented and confirmed.
It is known that she stops at the State of Illinois Building. Inexplicably she assaults the building's exterior, smashing flimsy blue and orange wall panels, and also pulverizes the sculpture in the public courtyard, prompting some to later call her "a critic as well as a carnivore." Pausing to sniff the giant frog perched atop the Rain Forest Café, she mistakes it for more familiar prey, and takes a bite out of the fiberglass amphibian, then spits the inedible hunk onto the sidewalk.
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Text
and Images Copyright © 2001 Doug Boldt
Production Copyright © The Site of Big Shoulders
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