Bones of all shapes and sizes littered the plain, which stretched out in all directions and was several miles wide. Giant ribcages, skulls, and piles of bleached white bones of all shapes and sizes marked the area as a graveyard, a place where prehistoric beasts came to die.
“Boneyard,” Svet said.
“Yes,” Enyo said. “I’ve seen other places like this, but not as big.”
The vastness of the graveyard was an awesome sight. Hawk estimated that the skeletons of thousands of dinosaurs covered the clearing. It was a paleontologist’s dream, a viewfinder into the past that could occupy teams of scientists for their entire careers.
Hawk called a halt and they made camp within the tree break. Svet got a fire going and Hawk and Enyo foraged. There wasn’t much green stuff, but there was plenty of jerky and water, so the travelers ate their fill and decided to rest the remainder of the day and continue on the next morning. Hawk hoped to cross the boneyard in full daylight, and hide within the carcasses of the dead inhabitants of this gone world.
“What you make of this?” Svet asked.
“There have been many species that went to a specific place to die,” Hawk said. “I think that’s what this is.”
A flock of pterosaurs circled in the distance, most likely waiting to descend on a dying beast. The insects were thick, but no big dinosaurs appeared. On some level the graveyard might be safe because the animals respected the location in some primitive way.
Night came on and the light beacon was clear to see as it cut a path to the stars, a pulsing column of light piercing the darkness and sending out a deep glow that pervaded the land like fog. The ringing chorus of the night symphony was so loud it was hard to talk around the camp fire so they didn’t try. Enyo went to bed and Svet sat staring back the way they’d come, her mind still with Max at the temple.
Hawk wandered into the field of bones, marveling at the size of some of the ribcages that were forty feet high, the thin rib bones arced together into a curved backbone made of vertebrae five feet across.
He had no torch. The boneyard was illuminated by a quarter moon and starlight, and long shadows stretched across the primordial landscape. Hawk imagined the beasts that came to the plain to die, the lives they’d led and how in the end they’d somehow known, by some instinct or internal clock, that they had to come to this place. The resting place of their mothers and fathers, so they too could rest. There was something romantic about the idea, and Hawk realized it wasn’t all that different from how humans did things. What was a graveyard of tombstones if not a gathering place for the dead?
The next morning, they broke camp at first light and headed out across the bone-filled plain. It was hot and humid, and the savannah baked. Here and there flesh still clung to bones, and the smell of rot and decay made Hawk gag.
The boneyard was a museum of sorts. They saw stegosaurus, tyrannosaurus, the large skull of a triceratops, its largest head spike six feet long. The feeling of death and despair hung over the entire area like a shroud.
Svet appeared more dejected than ever. She didn’t speak, and walked with her head down, staring at the ground. She tripped every few seconds and Hawk was afraid she was going to fall. She looked like she might cry at any moment, a sea of emotions simmering just below a boil. That broke Hawk’s heart. Svet had been one of the strongest people he knew, and now she’d become broken and lost, her spirit gone with those she loved.
This was to be expected, Hawk knew, but it was disheartening. He’d tried hard to keep the party’s spirits up. Keep them focused on the path ahead, not the path behind, but as the days wore on and hope fled, and their former lives receded further into the distance, the idea of having no reason to continue slowly took hold and all the old arguments were raised anew.
“Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.”
A shadow fell over the party and Hawk looked up to see Smaug descending toward them, giant wings open, mouth of razer teeth gleaming in the sunlight.
“Govnó,” Svet said.
“This thing just won’t give up,” Hawk said. “It’s like it knew we’d come here.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Enyo said. “How could that be?”
“The thing has been on our ass since the mountains. There are pterosaur skeletons here, so...” Hawk said.
“It watches for us. Waiting til we come into the open,” Svet said. She pulled the Ash 12 from her shoulder. It had two bullets left.
“Take cover there,” Hawk said. He pointed toward a medium sized ribcage that wasn’t missing any bones. It was the only cover Hawk could find. Most of the skeletons were broken apart, and provided little protection.
Svet went down as she ran, and Enyo helped her up. The party ran hard, the shadow overhead growing.
“Screeeeee. Screeeeeeeeeeeeee.”
Hawk looked back to see that Svet had stopped running. She stood her ground as the pterosaur advanced, raising the Ash 12 and sighting the weapon on the beast as it came right at her.
“Noooooooo,” Hawk yelled. He ran toward Svet, his flight forgotten.
The Russian was as still as stone, the Ash 12 trained on the dragon’s head. The beast was three hundred yards out and Svet still hadn’t blinked.
“Screeeeeeeeeeeeee. Scree—”
The Ash 12 erupted, two fast shots. Svet dropped the empty gun and sprinted full tilt at Hawk.
Smaug crashed into a large tyrannosaur skeleton, and the sound of cracking bones filled the plain. The dragon didn’t move and laid still where it landed.
The Earth shuddered, and the vibration continued as if a stampede rumbled through the jungle.
Hawk stopped running and so did Svet, but Enyo didn’t even slow up. The astronaut and cosmonaut stood in stunned silence for a few seconds, then Hawk said, “How the hell did you do that?”
Closer inspection of Smaug’s corpse revealed that Svet placed bullets in each of Smaug’s eyes, blowing out the back of the pterosaur’s skull. Hawk felt sorry for the beast. They had invaded his home, and the great flying reptile was only doing what millions of years of evolution had trained him to do; protect his kids. What scared Hawk was the realization that he wasn’t very different from the beast.
A block of ice shifted in Hawk’s stomach. Killing Smaug had been necessary, so why did he feel like he’d betrayed a worthy adversary with unfair play? He had. Guns had no place in this time, with these creatures, but without this advantage Hawk didn’t know how things would have gone.
They left the pterosaur where it lay, blood leaking from its massive head. The irony wasn’t lost on Hawk that Smaug had ended up in the boneyard, even if that hadn’t been his intention.
The sun burned, the day dragged on, and the time travelers left the boneyard behind. They didn’t say any words, or prayers, but Hawk made the sign of the cross and mumbled some bullshit about peace.
Now they had no guns, and Hawk knew that would mean their death. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but soon. They’d been lucky, but the luck had been Vladimir shipping guns to the International Space Station, something that under normal circumstances would be deemed a major breach of international relations. In this case, it had bought them life. How long that life would be remained to be seen.
34
The ground vibrated and the jungle vegetation at the clearing’s edge swayed and shook. Two stegosaurs ran onto the boneyard, a massive tyrannosaurs rex on their tails. The thirty-foot T-Rex lunged forward on its powerful hind legs, its large dark eyes blazing, mouth snapping at the stegosaurs as they trundled through ribcages and past piles of broken bones.
Hawk dropped to the ground and rolled under a large breast bone that lay askew atop a massive femur that had once belonged to a beast so large Hawk couldn’t picture it in his mind. He lay with his nose in the dirt, the ground trembling beneath him, dust obscuring his view. His heart pounded, every cut and scrape he had stung and throbbed, and he was cold, despite sweat dripping down his face into his eyes.
The battle with Smaug
had brought out the big boys and another tyrannosaur broke free of the forest, trees cracking, its loud roar bringing the first T-Rex to a halt. The two beasts eyed each other. The newcomer, whose skin was oddly black as if the beast had been burned, screamed with a fury that froze the other dinosaurs, but not for long.
No longer interested in the stegosaurs, the T-Rex’s squared off, circling each other, looking for weakness and coiling to strike.
“Good time to go, nyet?” Svet said. She’d appeared next to him under the white slab of bone.
“I suppose it is,” Hawk said. “Where is…”
Enyo crawled through the bones fifteen feet from them, but the Chinese astronaut didn’t see them.
“Enyo,” Hawk said, but Enyo didn’t hear him. He kept crawling away from the battle that was seconds from getting underway.
The black T-Rex had enough of the dance. It opened its mouth and wailed again, its teeth the size of swords, its massive jaws big enough to crush a car. The animals lunged at each other as if their fight had been choreographed. The clash sent both fighters to the ground, and the massive beasts rolled and clawed at one another, jaws snapping.
Hawk and Svet crawled after Enyo, and when they saw him get up and run, they did the same. Behind them the sounds of the T-Rex battle filled the world. The ground shook under the weight of the giant beasts, and to the south the stegosaurs disappeared into the jungle.
When the companions reached the forest on the opposite side of the boneyard the party collapsed with exhaustion. In their haste to get out of the open and off the plain they’d run the entire way, giving it all they had. Hawk was shaken and weak, weeks of malnutrition and lack of sleep taking its toll on his forty-plus-year-old body.
They watched the battle unfold on the boneyard, but it didn’t last long. The black T-Rex tired out its smaller opponent, and the yellow-striped beast fled before it was killed. The dust settled on the plain, the buzz of insects returned, and Hawk let out an exasperated sigh of relief.
The party spent the night at the edge of the boneyard and pressed on the next morning. The forest wasn’t as thick as the prior section of jungle, and the scent of sulfur pervaded the air. They’d left the volcano behind, but as Pangaea continued to break apart there would be all types of unpredictable seismic activity as the continents continued to form. Hawk hoped the ground didn’t literally disappear beneath his feet.
Ten more days they walked. Wake, eat, drink, walk, drink, eat, sleep, repeat. The party no longer spoke. What was there left to say? Soon they’d arrive at the beacon and their quest would be over. What then? Hawk trembled at the thought. They’d gotten through the last several months because they had a goal, something to get them off the rack each day.
Svet was a shell of her former self, and Enyo had turned inward. Hawk wished the man would talk like he used to. The constant struggle to survive, to find meaning in everyday menial tasks, was difficult, and Hawk didn’t think he could keep up appearances much longer. When he gave up, would they?
Night fell and a deep glow filled the edges of the forest, creating a pale dusk that wasn’t quite light, but not darkness either. On the horizon the glow filled the world and the pulsating pillar of light shot into the deep black sky.
They were close. It was a matter of days now, maybe hours.
Hawk lay on his bed of leaves and stared up into the illuminated night sky. Fear filled him. Fear of the unknown. Fear that the beacon wasn’t a beacon at all. That is was nothing. A trick of the eye or an odd feature of the landscape. What did it matter anyway? Even if the light was a beacon, what did that really mean for them? Most likely nothing.
After dinner the next day Hawk said, “We have plenty of light. You want to continue on for a bit?”
As if the Gods had heard the question, they answered with a resounding no. The sky opened up, and rain fell in a torrent. Hawk and friends huddled beneath a conifer tree protected by its thick branches and dense leaves. Thunder cracked, and the pounding rain leaked across the dry ground at their feet.
When the rain ended it was well after midnight and the party needed some rest, so they spent a damp night trying to sleep on wet leaves. The rain had brought out every bug and critter, and they slithered and crawled around and over the travelers as they tried to sleep. After an hour, Hawk gave up and took a walk.
The glow in the west had grown. They were no more than twenty miles from the light, and it dominated the land. Like an elevator to Heaven, the strobing white light pierced the night like a sword, fraying and fading as it rose.
Mist hung over the forest as the damp vegetation warmed. The fog was thick as smoke, and it snaked through the trees, around the fern leaves, and into every gap and crevasse. Hawk lit a torch with the lighter, but it didn’t help much. Everything beyond ten feet was obscured in a damp white haze.
“Hey.”
Hawk jumped.
“Sorry,” Svet said. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“Me either.”
She handed him a bamboo cup filled with clear water.
“Thanks.” Hawk sat on a fallen tree and sipped his water.
“Why you no bartend anymore?” Svet said. “I miss my martini.”
Hawk chuckled. “I don’t know. Just didn’t seem right to have fun and make-believe when…”
“When we’re going to die?” she said.
Hawk said nothing. Svet nailed it on the head. What did they have to live for? Each other? That had gotten thin as paper.
“Maybe we won’t,” she said. “We not know what lies ahead. No idea, so why you take the worst road? The road that leads to misery and death. Why not take a better road?”
“Because I can’t find the entrance ramp, and the road doesn’t lead home.”
“Build new road,” Svet said.
Hawk harrumphed.
Back at camp, Enyo let loose with a loud snore, then he fell silent. The night dragged on, and the astronaut and cosmonaut stared into the light, and waited for the oncoming day.
The following night the beacon was so bright it lit the surrounding area like a klieg light. Every crack was illuminated with a pale white light that had no warmth, and brought no peace. The light strobed in a random pattern that made the party’s movements look erratic and slow.
The forest thinned, and the tower of light stood at the center of a clearing. The ground was hardpan, and not a single creeper or weed marred its surface. It reminded Hawk of the area around the markers.
The light source was a round polyhedron shaped crystal structure the size of a small house. Light streamed from each flat surface, the crystal painting the area in a throbbing rainbow of colors. The crew approached with caution. Hawk’s heart pounded in his chest and he was short of breath. There was nothing natural about the polyhedron crystal. It had been placed here.
The beacon sat on a platform of reflective metal that went into the ground like a foundation. When they got close, Hawk had to shield his eyes because the light was too bright. A foot-wide trench circled the foundation, and Enyo sighed as he examined it.
“What is it?” Hawk said.
“Looks like an isolation platform. They’re used for scientific equipment and designed to remain stable and separate from surrounding vibrations,” Enyo said.
“Whoever put this here knew there might be upheavals in the land and went to extreme length to keep the structure stable?” Hawk said.
“It would appear so,” Enyo said.
Closer inspection of the giant crystal revealed a small opal colored stone at its center. The stone shined brightly, and the crystal structure around it refracted and magnified the light.
“Looks like the petroglyph monument you found,” Svet said. The Russian stared at the crystal with awe, eyes the size of quarters.
Beep. Beep.
“What’s that?” Hawk asked.
Beep. Beep. Beep. The faint beeping sound persisted, and Hawk and his companions split up and headed around the beacon in search of the noise.
&n
bsp; A keypad with strange symbols on the buttons was set in a stainless-steel frame and mounted on the far side of the crystal. There was a small monitoring screen filled with odd symbols, and a red light that blinked in rhythm with the light.
“What the shit do you make of this?” Hawk said. The light beacon towered over them, bathing the group in colored light. A low hum came from the crystal, as if some machinery quietly toiled within. The pillar of light rose into the sky and disappeared into darkness. A long black pole, like a lightning rod, protruded from the top of the crystal. To Hawk it looked like an antenna.
Svet sighed but didn’t answer.
Enyo said, “Sure seems like some kind of transmitting device. The antenna on top tells us that. The keypad is more of a mystery. I wish I knew what the symbols meant.”
“I no recognize any of them from the temple,” Svet said.
“No. I don’t think they’re connected, not directly anyway,” Hawk said.
“You base this on?” Enyo said.
“I base it on I didn’t see a single polyhedron in the temple. Not one, so unless whoever placed the beacon meant to confuse any who found their work, I can’t see how the same race built both things.”
Hawk turned away from the beacon. His eyes couldn’t take the light any longer. The opal stone inside the crystal pulsed and changed color, and strengthened, then dimmed, as if a power drain was restored.
“We made it,” Svet said.
“Now what?” Enyo said.
“Now we try and sleep and take a better look at this thing in the morning. We may have missed important details,” Hawk said. The strong light created deep shadows, and Hawk’s night vision was shot from the bright light.
With great reluctance the companions backed away from the light beacon, transfixed by the rainbow of color that pulsed and invaded the sky. Hawk needed to think and process everything he’d seen. It was clear another race had visited and possibly lived on Earth millions of years in the past and might return. What that meant for him and his friends, he didn’t know, but tomorrow was another day, and in that, at least, he had faith.
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