Then there was simply nothing to do except eat him. I got most of him as usual, though Utahraptor kept darting in around my ankles and snatching up choice bits, and from time to time Pteranodon would swoop in and grab a whorl of intestine. Ankylosaurus stood off to the side and watched. For a long time we'd taken him for an idiot, because he would always just squat there watching us divide up those duck-bills, munching stupidly on the erratic horsetail, never saying much. In retrospect, maybe he was just a taciturn sort. He must have worked out that we would very much like to eat him, if only we could locate some chink in his armor.

If only we had! For many days after Everett had become just another scat on our tracks, Utahraptor and Pteranodon and I trudged across that dead landscape eyeing Ankylosaurus, drooling down our chins as we imagined the unspeakably tender morsels that must lie nestled inside that armored shell. He must have been hungry too, and no doubt his morsels were getting less fat and tender by the day. From time to time we would encounter some sheltered hollow where unfamiliar green plants were poking their shoots through the black and gray debris, and we would encourage Ankylosaurus to stop, take his time, and eat all he wanted.

"No, really! We don't mind waiting for you!" He would always fix his tiny little side-mounted eyes on us and look at us balefully as he grazed. "How was your dinner, Anky?" we'd say, and he'd grumble something like, "Tastes like iridium as usual," and then we'd go another couple of days without exchanging a word.

One day we reached the edge of the sea. The salt water lapped up onto a lifeless beach strewn with the bones of extinct sea creatures, from tiny trilobites all the way up to plesiosaurs. Behind us was the desert we'd just crossed. To the south was a range of mountains that would have been impassable even if half of them hadn't been erupting volcanoes. And north of us we could see snow dusting the tops of the hills, and we all knew what that meant: If we went in that direction, we'd soon freeze to death.

So we were stuck there, the four of us, and though we didn't have mediatrons and cine aerostats in those days, we all pretty much knew what was up: We were the last four dinosaurs on earth. Pretty soon we would be three, and then two, and then one, and then none at all, and the only question left to settle was in what order we'd go. You might think this would be awful and depressing, but it wasn't really that bad; being dinosaurs, we didn't spend a lot of time pondering the imponderables, if you know what I mean, and in a way it was kind of fun waiting to see how it would all work out. There was a general assumption on all hands, I think, that Ankylosaurus would be the first to go, but Utah and I would have killed each other in an instant.

So we all kind of faced off on the beach there, Utahraptor and Ankylosaurus and I in a neat triangle with Pteranodon hovering overhead.

After we had been facing off there for some hours, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the banks to the north and south seemed to be moving, as if they were alive. Suddenly there was a thundering and rushing sound in the air all around us, and I couldn't help looking up, though I kept one sharp eye on Utahraptor. The world had been such a quiet and dead place for so long that we were startled by any noise or movement, and now it seemed that the air and ground had come alive once more, just as in the old days before the comet.

The noise in the air was caused by a great flock of teensy-tiny Pteranodons, though instead of smooth reptilian skin their wings were covered with oversize scales, and they had toothless, bony beaks instead of proper mouths. These miserable things– these airborne crumbs– were swarming all around Pteranodon, getting in his eyes, pecking at his wings, and it was all he could do to keep airborne.

As I mentioned, I was keeping one eye on Utahraptor as always, and to my surprise he suddenly turned away and ran up onto the north slope, with an eagerness that could be explained only by the availability of food. I followed him, naturally, but pulled up short. Something was wrong. The ground on the north slope was covered with a moving carpet that swarmed around Utahraptor's feet. Focusing my eyes, which frankly were not very good, I saw that this carpet actually consisted of thousands of tiny dinosaurs whose scales had grown very long and slender and numerous– in short, they were furry. I had been seeing these quadrupedal hors d'oeuvres dodging around under logs and rocks for the last few million years and always taken them for an especially ill-conceived mutation. But suddenly there were thousands of them, and this at a time when there were only four dinosaurs left in the whole world. And they seemed to be working together. They were so tiny that Utahraptor had no way to get them into his mouth, and whenever he stopped moving for an instant, they swarmed onto his legs and tail and nipped at his flesh. A plague of shrews. I was so confounded that I stopped in my tracks.

That was a mistake, for soon I felt a sensation in my legs and tail like millions of pinpricks. Turning around, I saw that the south slope was covered with ants, millions of them, and they had apparently decided to eat me. Meanwhile Ankylosaurus was bellowing and swinging his bony ball around without effect, for the ants were swarming on his body as well.

Well, before long the shrews and the ants and the birds started to run into each other and have skirmishes of their own, and so at that point they called a truce. The King of the Birds, the King of the Shrews, and the Queen of the Ants all got together on top of a rock to parley. In the meantime they left us dinosaurs alone, seeing that we were trapped in any case.

The situation struck me as unfair, so I approached the rock where these despicable micro-monarchs were chattering away, a mile a minute, and spoke: "Yo! Aren't you going to invite the King of the Reptiles?"

They looked at me like I was crazy.

"Reptiles are obsolete," said the King of the Shrews.

"Reptiles are just retarded birds," said the King of the Birds, "and so I am your King, thank you very much."

There's only zero of you," said the Queen of the Ants. In ant arithmetic, there are only two numbers: Zero, which means anything less than a million, and Some. "You can't cooperate, so even if you were King, the title would be meaningless."

"Besides," said the King of the Shrews, "the purpose of this summit conference is to decide which of our kingdoms shall eat which dinosaur, and we do not suppose that the King of the Dinosaurs, even if there were such a thing, would be able to participate constructively." Mammals always talked this way to show off their oversize brains– which were basically the same as ours, but burdened with a lot of useless extra business on top– useless, I should say, but darn tasty.

"But there are three kingdoms and four dinosaurs," I pointed out. Of course this was not true in ant arithmetic, so the Queen of the Ants immediately began to make a fuss. In the end I had to go over among the ants and crush them with my tail until I had killed a few million, which is the only way that you can get an ant to take you seriously.

"Surely three dinosaurs would be enough to give all of your subjects a square meal," I said. "May I suggest that the birds peck Pteranodon to the bone, the shrews tear Utahraptor limb from limb, and the ants feast on the corpse of Ankylosaurus?"

The three monarchs appeared to be considering this suggestion when Utahraptor sped up in a huff. "Excuse me, Your Royal Highnesses, but who appointed this fellow king? I am just as qualified to be king as he." In short order, Pteranodon and Ankylosaurus also laid claim to the throne. The King of the Shrews, the King of the Birds, and the Queen of the Ants told us all to shut up, and then conferred amongst themselves for a few minutes. Finally the King of the Shrews stepped forward. "We have reached a decision," he said. "Three dinosaurs will be eaten, and one, the King of the Reptiles, will be spared; all that remains is for one of you to demonstrate that you are superior to the other three and deserve to wear the crown."