Dinosaur Rain

It's a mystery up above

Photo by Nate DeWaele on Unsplash

Nature extinguished the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago by choosing a rock that weighed as much as a mountain and hurling it toward the Earth with the strength of gods. 

The dinosaurs burned to ash and floated to the sky, where they remained as microscopic flecks, forever part of the rivers of wind high in the stratosphere. When the sun warmed the atmosphere, the dinosaur ashes rose, and where the air was cold, they sank, but regardless, the ash always remained far, far up in the sky. So small were the ashes that sunlight passed through this ancient detritus as if it didn’t exist at all. 

Over the eons, the dinosaur ashes circled the Earth seven billion times, their path undisturbed and unnoticed. 

Some would later say it was because of the thousands of airplanes that disturbed the sky or the advent of space tourism. Some would shrug their shoulders and sigh, “It’s a mystery of nature,” while others would turn to sacred texts for an explanation. 

Joseph Willow was the first to see the dinosaur rain. 

He had been harvesting corn on his farm outside of Ames, Iowa, when rain fell. Joseph looked up, the sun in his eyes. He reflexively squinted, bringing the Tyrannosaurus Rex, Velociraptors, and Megalosaurus inside raindrops into sharp focus, the drops magnifying the monsters inside. He thought it was peculiar and improbable that he could see tiny prehistoric creatures riding the raindrops. 

He ran inside to tell his wife, Charlotte. She said, “It’s just a trick of the light, Joe. Plus, I think you could use an ice tea before you faint from dehydration.” 

Joseph nodded and leaned back in the big chair in their living room, enjoying the clinks and clanks of ice and spoon coming from the kitchen. He kissed Charlotte’s cheek as she handed him the ice tea. He held the glass against the back of his neck for a minute and then drank the tea in one fell swoop.

But a trick of the light it was not. Three days later, giant carnivores rose from his field. And from everywhere the rain fell. Ravenous monsters grew from wheat, corn, barley, and soy fields, but they also came out of the earth wherever there was soil, from New York City’s Central Park to the Serengeti. 

Francois Garnier had just finished asking his girlfriend, “Will you marry me?” when a Baryonyx snapped his head off at an outdoor cafe in Paris’ Eighth Arrondissement. 

A fifty-five-foot long Spinosaurus snatched Satoshi Mori off the Ferris wheel in Yokohama, Japan, and then ate his wife. 

A herd of Velociraptors turned Rome’s Via del Corso into a street of screams, and swarms of Pterodactyls transformed London into a city of blood. 

Creatures that history erased dominated the world again. 

Tanks, infantry, helicopters, fighter jets, navy vessels, and all the weapons at humanity’s disposal waged war against the invaders from antediluvian times. As powerful as they were, the dinosaurs were no match for the lethality of modern weapons and didn’t stand a chance against the strategies of modern armies.

General Michael Rolfe, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, slouched in the chair facing the President. He, along with the twenty-six other souls who’d spent the past three weeks locked one hundred feet below the White House, had been kept awake by terror and special pills designed for the nation’s leaders. Gone was the general’s plank-straight back, his crisp consonants, his always-alert gaze. The President, too, walked the edge of collapse.

“The report from topside?” the President asked. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.” Rolfe wasted no energy with “Sir” or “Mr. President.” He rubbed his eyes. “We beat them. They’re gone.”

“All?”

“Some we saved for study. A few are roaming, but our soldiers and drones will get them, too. What’s left is no threat.”

“They came from the rain?”

“Yes.”

The President glanced around the room. 

A few military officers and civilians dozed on cots that lined the walls. Others stared blankly at monitors. 

“From the rain.” His voice trailed off into a whisper. “From the rain.”

“Our brightest minds are already on it.”

“Thank you, Mike, from a grateful nation.”

“Thank America’s soldiers, the world’s soldiers. We lost many good men and women, but we won the war.”

“I think it’s time to get some sleep.” The President reached to loosen his tie, but he had removed it weeks ago.

“Sleep sounds good.”

As Chelsie Hall gripped the door leading into WMXQ-TV in Cleveland, Ohio, a snowflake landed on her nose. She had just ended a two-year relationship, and even though she initiated the breakup, her eyes misted. Her first thought was that the wet she felt on her nose was a tear, but when a second and third flake fell, she looked to the sky. 

Her water-filled eyes magnified the funnel of swirling white above her, temporarily giving her telescopic ability, which she mistook for distorted vision. After all, how could tiny, mythical gargoyles be sitting atop snowflakes?

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If you enjoyed Dinosaur Rain, I think you’ll also like my story, How to Slay a Monster, about which readers have said, "Awesome story," "This is a very good twist on an old tale. Fun to read,” and "Delightful!"