Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 2, May 2013 by et al. Mike Resnick Page B

Filltree squatted down to get a closer look at the box, running his hands over the strained material. He decided that the damage inflicted was not sufficient to be worrisome; the carry cage would hold together for one more day. And one more day was all he needed.
    He headed upstairs to bed, smiling to himself. It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless. The knowledge that he’d be paying for it for months to come didn’t detract from the satisfaction he took in knowing that he’d finally held the line on something. Today, Rexy; tomorrow, the soy-burger.
    He was awakened by screaming—unfamiliar and agonized. Something was crashing through the kitchen. He heard the clattering of utensils. Joyce was sitting up in bed beside him, screaming herself, and clawing at his arm. “Do something!” she cried.
    “Stay here!” he demanded. “See to Jill!” Wearing only his silk boxers, and carrying a cracked hockey stick as his weapon, he went charging down the stairs. The screaming was getting worse.
    A male voice was raging, “Goddammit! Get it off of me! Help! Help! Anyone!” This was followed by the sound of someone battering at something with something. High-pitched shrieks of reptilian rage punctuated the blows.
    Filltree burst through the kitchen door to see a man rolling back and forth across the floor—a youngish-looking man, skinny and dirty, in bloody T-shirt and blue jeans. Rexy had his mouth firmly attached to the burglar’s right arm. He hung on with ferocious determination, even as the intruder swung and battered the creature at the floor, the walls, the stove. Again and again. The screaming went on and on. Filltree didn’t know whether to strike at the burglar or at the dinosaur. The man had been bitten severely on both legs, and across his stomach as well. A ragged strip of flesh hung open. His shirt was soaked with blood. Gobbets of red were flying everywhere; the kitchen was spattered like an explosion.
    The man saw Filltree then. “Get your goddamn dinosaur off of me!” he demanded angrily, as if it were Filltree’s fault that he had been attacked.
    That decided Filltree. He began striking the man with the hockey stick, battering him ineffectively about the head and shoulders. That didn’t work—he couldn’t get in close enough. He grabbed a frying pan and whanged the hapless robber sideways across the forehead. The man grunted in surprise, then slumped to the floor with a groan, no longer able to defend himself against Rexy’s predacious assault. The tyrant-lizard began feeding. He ripped off a long strip of flesh from the fallen robber’s arm. The man tried to resist, he flailed weakly, but he had neither strength nor consciousness. The dinosaur was undeterred. Rexy fed unchecked.
    Behind him, Joyce was screaming. Jill was shrieking, “Do something! Daddy, he’s hurting Rexy!”
    Filltree’s humanity reasserted itself then. He had to stop the beast before it killed the hapless man; but he couldn’t get to the net. It was still in the service porch—and he couldn’t get past Rex. The creature hissed and spit at him. It lashed its tail angrily, as if daring Filltree to make the attempt. As if saying, “This kill is mine!”
    Filltree held out the frying pan in front of him, swinging it back and forth like a shield. The small tyrant-king followed it with its baleful black eyes. Still roaring its defiance, it snapped and bit at the frying pan. Its teeth slid helplessly off the shining metal surface. Filltree whacked the creature hard. It blinked, stunned. He swung the frying pan again and, reflexively, the dinosaur stepped back; but as the utensil swept past, it stepped right back in, biting and snapping. Filltree recognized the behavior. The beast was acting as if it were in a fight with another predator over its kill.
    Filltree swung harder and more directly, this time not to drive the creature back, but to actually hit it and hurt it badly. Rexy leapt backward, shrieking in fury.