Last Train to Pangea: Death by Dinosaur

by Robert Turnbull

  The scroll said that they, the aliens had been working on the same thing. Of course Dan and I never published our findings or papers, but I guess enough of our colleagues knew of our work so there was some record of it.”

  Wes leaned forward in his chair and laid his arms on the table as he looked at the professor.

  “Let me get this straight professor…aliens sent a power source and equations to you from the future…” Wes looked around at his friends with that stoic look they had all become so familiar with. “Ok Proff, I’ll bite…why?” he grinned and with a chuckle added “and from when in the future?”

  Proff slowly sat back in his chair and looked them over.

  “Because they knew something that we didn’t, our solar system was heading into a black hole we didn’t know of. You see they had to fly around it and that’s how they found us…well our system and of course that of Alpha Centauri.”

  Cassy looked lost, so Wes added “Alpha Centauri is a star and is the closest solar system to Earth.”

  “Oh!” was all she said as she looked back to Proff.

  “They sent the power source back in time to me hoping that we could complete our work. The problem was that we got ahead of ourselves and rather mucked up the controls. You see we programmed the portal with much of the math we got from their texts without understanding exactly what it did…” he frowned “we were so stupid…and excited to see if it worked, we infused it with our math. Anyhow our world as we knew it was about to end, we had to do something...and quick. These beings couldn’t save mankind other than perhaps save a few to show we even existed.”

  Mary muttered softly “Exhibits in a zoo to show we existed…what a sad ending for mankind.”

  Proff nodded sadly “Guess that’s pretty much what they thought Mary. I’m guessing, but I think they hoped Dan and I would save us. The focus they had sent back to our past. I’m guessing, but I figure that they wanted to send us back far enough to give us a chance to evolve far enough by the time we find the black hole to leave our solar system.”

  Sarge flopped back in his chair and sputtered “Well, two hundred million fuckin’ years oughtta do that.”

  Proff nodded “I hope so.”

  “But professor,” Missy asked “I don’t recall that any artifacts of humans were ever found from this or other ages up to…” she looked puzzled “so we fail?”

  Proff smiled “Not necessarily Missy. You see once the first modern man arrived, it forever changed the time line we knew. The portal and our math programmed it to seek out living things. The aliens assumed that we could complete the formula and get the portal working and port them to the focus. Once working the entire portal project would link the portal to the focus and start moving at a high rate of speed in our time. It would conform to whatever it needed to send us back to the focal. Herds of livestock, entire towns, ships, everything it could find. We were going to tell the world and prepare them for the new world they would arrive in. It was randomized as we never would have had the time to transport everyone.

  It wasn’t until I arrived here and worked on this, that I realized that we programmed the portal controls with my old data…the one with the error in it. Sure the alien code got things working, but my data caused the portal not to collect living beings from our time, but all times.

  The portal tried correcting back to modern times, but I think my formula kept confusing the program. To be honest I’m not sure how it actually functioned and it’s mostly theory.”

  “And the longer life?” Snake asked.

  Proff shrugged “Unknown,” he grinned “I don’t have all the answers, but I’m guessing it’s like I said…it has something to do with the time flux. The farther from your own time, the longer one lives, but I also suspect the amount of evolution man had achieved has something to do with it as well, I just don’t know.”

  Bryce looked at Proff.

  “So you never said when this orb came from…what year? Maybe mankind did get to…”

  “2019” everyone was stunned “I think the aliens knew even if they helped, only a few could be saved. I got the idea that their ship was more of an exploratory expedition and wasn’t large.”

  “So send us back in time to restart humanity.” Wes muttered.

  “Exactly Wes. It was rather sketchy as I carried all but one of the micro scrolls with me. The last one said something about in the last part of 2015 astronomers would notice Alpha Centauri starting to be pulled apart by the black hole. By 2016 the effects will be noticed on Earth…” he looked at the rest “but whatever was on the other scrolls, we’ll never know. I only worked on one at a time and left the others in my safe with the pictures we took of them.”

  “Maybe someone found the safe and figured out…” John started to say, but Wes interrupted.

  Wes nodded “If it was sent from 2019, then we have to assume we were pretty much out of time as a race…a world.”

  Proff nodded sadly “So you see my friends, I’ve kept this little secret for so many years. Of course most of those here today were born here, generations of them, but in the back of everyone’s minds, I think they hope that someday they will be able to return to the world they were told about. That’s why they work so hard.”

  Wes smiled strangely “Or maybe they work so hard because it’s in our nature…you know to survive? Other than those of us still alive from the times we came from, this is their life, what they know. Maybe they are just like we always have been, striving to make life better.”

  Sarge nodded “Sure Proff, we’ll keep your little secret if you want, but those people out there are working to survive, to make lives for themselves, that is what they do now.”

  “Perhaps you are right my friends, maybe someday someone stronger than I will have the courage to tell them.”

  Missy rose and walked over to the professor and hugged him.

  “Thanks for leveling with us.” she stepped back and smiled “It took courage to tell us what you did and we know that you’re trying to make this world better.” She looked at her love “And I agree with Sarge and Wes we have two hundred million years to get it right…this time.”

  Proff gave them a gratifying smile “Well, I will do my best to get us productive, but we lack so much.” he looked at Red “and your train once we dissemble it and take the measurements we need, will give us the long range transportation we so desperately need.”

  Red chuckled “Once we lay how many hundreds of thousands of miles of track?”

  Even the professor laughed and then added “This planet will go through some hard changes, our Pangea will break apart, and meteors will kill off the dinosaurs and maybe a lot of us.”

  Wes nodded “But now we know what will happen and mostly when.”

  Missy nodded as she put her arm around her love.

  “And we must leave records of all the disasters that we can recall…for future generations.”

  Proff smiled and pointed to a large book in a case.

  “Already done, it’s our present to future generations, lest we not forget.”

  Chapter 30.

  As it turned out the professor had the courage he thought he lacked and a small paper was sent out telling everything he knew and strangely it seemed people accepted it as if they had already accepted their fate. Even those on the carrier and Cyclops were mostly unfazed by the news. Some were shocked, but soon recovered and Wes figured that most had known in the back of their minds that this was the life they were destined to live.

  Red and Mary married and then he turned his attention toward building a rail road. Massive parties of ‘trackers’ as they called themselves, were sent out to lay tracks down to the southern areas where other civilization were known to be, or reported to exist by the known ones. The civilizations to the north, were too distant and dangerous to attempt to reach for the present.

  Cassy worked for weeks teaching her new friends ways to make the supple, shimmering raptor hide material. Every night she’d come home to
the house the second in command of the military had been given and have dinner with the two people that she thought of as her parents.

  Wes would tell them of how with the help of Sarge and his men, they were improving the defenses, arming the trains to survive in dinosaur country, and setting new out-bases large enough to defend against the Neos or any other attacker.

  The only ones Wes and Sarge worried about were those from Blackwood. All the bases they had set up and that existed were mainly put atop peaks of mesas or hills too steep for dinos to climb. Walls high enough to keep out Neos, but not catapults or slings of burning oil that attackers from Blackwood had used against them in the past. Sure there had been mostly peaceful times between the two cities. Boulder needed Blackwood’s oil, but it appeared that Blackwood just wanted Boulder.

  Now and again over the last hundred years Boulder and Blackwood had fought, made treaties, and broke them. Although it was usually Blackwood doing the breaking, Proff had admitted that early on Boulder had broken treaties and one time had do so, so horribly that no one wanted to talk about it. It was long before he got there, but all the same Blackwood never trusted Boulder again.

  The only saving grace was the fact that Boulder needed oil and Blackwood needed steel and the smelting capabilities for parts to their oil wells…so uneasy treaties were always reformed.

  Wes had been thinking real hard about asking Missy to be his wife as they had been living together for nearly a year now that he was given a house. Cassy had a room on the second story on one end of the small but ample house, Missy and Wes had another room to the other side, with the hall and bathroom in between. It looked like an old English cottage and for once since arriving things were looking great.

  Wes walked through the front door and saw Missy standing in the kitchen staring out the window. He silently walked into the kitchen, got to one knee and held out a shiny gold ring.

  “Missy I love you and would be honored if you would be my wife.”

  Missy sighed and kept staring out the window.

  “Baby? Did you hear me?” Wes asked.

  “Not now Wes…” Missy turned to see the ring and froze momentarily, but quickly recovered. “Cassy’s gone.”

  Wes arose “Baby, she stayed over at Greta’s last night, remember? She just probably went to work and…”

  Tears welled in Missy’s eyes and her voice trembled.

  “She never stayed at Greta’s, I asked. I walked over to the shop and she never showed up for work…” tears rolled down her cheeks “…oh baby, I’m so frightened.”

  Wes hugged his love and tried to calm her, but in his mind he knew this wasn’t like Cassy.

  “I’ll go talk to Loric, he was on duty as officer of the watch he can tell us if…well if…”

  “If anyone was injured?”

  Wes nodded “Yeah…injured.” They rushed out the door and over to the HQ for the city guard and as they burst through the door, the guard stood and handed Wes a letter.

  “I was going to bring this over once I got off duty sir. That cute little girl that lives with you all handed this to one of the guards yesterday morning. I just found it today and was going to give it to Loric, but he was called out to the southern boundaries.”

  Wes took the envelope and they walked outside as he silently read. He turned and looked at Missy and sighed, “Well honey, looks like the wedding is on hold.” Wes looked at the letter and read aloud…

  “I’m sorry Missy, and tell Wes that I hope he isn’t too mad at me for leaving. I was just a little country girl when I came here, but since then I’ve grown. I know our part of Pangea, and I overheard Wes and Sarge the other night.

  Missy, you’re like a mother to me, or like an older sister I always wished I had. Try to remember that. I have to go and talk to the people in Blackwood. Some know me, I know which ones to talk to and there are some other things I have to do as well. I will miss you both so very much.

  I love you both, Cassy.”

  Missy looked at Wes strangely “What on earth could the two of you have been talking about to cause her to go?”

  “Well Sarge and I were talking about how Proff’s code caused the portal to wander around in time instead of moving around our planet in our time to port people back here. Instead it ‘wobbled’ mostly our time’s side of the focus, and Sarge and I wondered how many more people might have been brought here.” Wes’s head slumped as something hit him.

  “Aw crap! Sarge said something about how someone ought to go to Blackwood from our party and try to make contact, to tell them all the professor told us, and try to make some sort of lasting peace now that we all have to try to better our lives…” he sighed “…now we know that we’re stuck here…and that we couldn’t run our rails east because of them. We were going to go and talk to them…” Wes sighed “…and like a fool I asked him if he thought we’d ever make it back. Christ! It was a joke…more or less.”

  “Apparently not to Cassy.” Missy muttered sadly as she looked off toward the wall.

  Sarge walked up “Hey guys, I heard Cassy took three horses out yesterday morning and by the sounds of it took an ass load of supplies.” he looked at the wall and then back to Wes and then Missy “Now I know that little gal and she sure the hell isn’t the type to run away from home, so I’d say she has some purpose…” Sarge grinned as he chuckled “And by the looks on your faces, I’d say that we’re goin’ after the lass.”

  “Sarge get the guys, pack horses, two horses per man, and supplies for about two weeks and meet me at the east stables.”

  “I’m going too!” Missy announced, but Wes ended that notion quickly.

  “You told me you never rode a horse in your life. I’m sorry baby, but you’d just slow us down.”

  “Uhhhh…” Sarge sputtered as both looked at him “You know we’d be slower, but a bit safer if we took a wagon and used the horses to scout. We can carry more, and…”

  “I’ll prepare two wagons and get some men from the garrison.” Kurt announced as the three nearly jumped out of their skins.

  “Didn’t mean to sneak up on you, but I heard about Cassy and knowing her from our trip, I know she didn’t run away and…”

  All three grinned “We’ve been through that already Kurt.” Wes smiled “Cassy knows the land better than all of us put together, she’ll be fine. Now when she gets to Blackwood that might be another story. Kurt, get the wagons and men. Sarge the rations and weapons…and don’t forget to ask Snake, he’s been working on some improvements.”

  Missy grinned and informed Wes that as they were taking wagons, she would now be joining them and Wes never did seem to win an argument with Missy, so he ceded.

  It didn’t even take an hour and everything was ready to go. Kurt’s people and his s had plenty of supplies and Snake had weapons ready. If the Dillos didn’t keep the dinos away, the newly installed turrets sure looked like they would.

  As Missy and Wes walked toward the wagons, and the twenty men that asked if they could join them waited, Wes’s jaw dropped.

  “Jesus Snake tell me that’s a 20mm cannon up there in that turret?”

  Snake grinned “Yeah, man you wouldn’t believe the workman here in Boulder. All the friggin’ machining was done by hand, but I could tear a 20mm down in my sleep. I sketched out the parts, showed them what did what, and they pretty much took it from there. Making the ammo was the hard part. Luke’s been showing them how to make a silver nitrate based gunpowder and explosive rounds. But most of the crap is limited and comes from across the southern prairies, so we use that shit sparingly.”

  Sarge nodded “Snake’s been training some of your men on the weapons and I’ve been doing what you hired me to do…train the men on everything else.”

  Missy gave them a slight smiled and pointed toward the wagons as Kurt nodded.

  “Ok guys…MOUNT UP!”

  The twenty men divided themselves between the two wagons as Missy, Wes, and Kurt climbed in the lead wagon and Snake and Sar
ge followed in the second. Fearing that their radio batteries would give out any day now, they did one quick radio check and turned them off, opting for hand signals except in an emergency…they still did not want to rely on Proff’s homemade batteries.

  The huge portcullis clanked open and the wagons entered the tunnel in the wall and soon appeared on the outside and headed into the steaming savannas of Pangea.

  As they started to move out onto the prairie, there was some flashing from the second wagon. Missy tapped Wes on the shoulder.

  “Baby I think Sarge is trying to signal us.”

  Wes paused as Missy watched his lips move ever so slightly…and then he broke out in a huge grin.

  “Aw it’s ok, Sarge just said that he felt like he was back in the days of the Wild West on a wagon train and wandered why we didn’t take the train as far as the Cyclops.” Wes laughed “And when he saw us change course to a more northerly direction he flashed.

  “Watch out for Indians…” he kept laughing “Then he signaled ‘scratch that’ Indians are friendly here, so watch out for dinosaurs.”

  “With the ‘stinkers’ pulling us? I don’t think we have to worry about dinos.”

  Wes chuckled “That’s what Sarge said… ‘Gotta love stinkers’ and I don’t think he was talking about farts.” That brought a round of laughs from the men and everyone settled in as the lookouts took up their positions.

  Chapter 31.

  Other than a quick brush with a few allosaurus and a distant flapper sighting, things had gone well the previous day…that was about to change…for the strange.

  A herd of triceratops joined the wagons and lazily meandered alongside of them for nearly three hours. Missy looked over at Wes who was sitting next to her on some of the supplies and watching the dinosaurs stroll off in the distance.

  “Beautiful day, big fluffy clouds, nice breeze to cool us off. But it’s strange that they aren’t run off by the stinkers.”