Last Train to Pangea: Death by Dinosaur

by Robert Turnbull

  Sarge leaned against the wall and slowly slid into a sitting position.

  “Good God…how…how complete?”

  Wes gave him a grin “By the looks of this one crate…” he looked around the boxcar and the hanging racks of crates crammed above the vehicles and on each wall “I’d say it’s all complete…old shit by our 2014 standards, but…if we ever figure out a quick and easy way to manufacture aluminum, there’s enough here to give us a start.” He flipped through another series of sheets.

  “Jesus…there’s even specs on the thickness of the metals…” he slowly shook his head in disbelief “Do you realize what this stuff is…even if it’s outdated by 2014 standards?”

  Red smiled back “Gives us a start I’d guess, once we develop the technology to make electrical boards…” he laughed “and the components that go in them, like transistors.”

  Sarge snorted as he looked out at the pouring rain.

  “Yeah, great…once again we can start blowing ourselves up with bombs, and rockets, and missiles…oh my!”

  “Our ever apprehensive Sarge.” Wes chuckled.

  He looked at the two men and sighed “Yeah, yeah, I know, with one comes the other…” he sighed again, this time much louder as he turned back to watching the rain through the cracked door.

  “Gotta love fuckin’ technology. Find something useful and some asshole will find three things bad to do with it…like dinosaurs aren’t enough to deal with.”

  Red nodded “Sarge is right, since Pete retired and you took over the military and Sarge the city guard, we can control what gets out. I know Proff is semi-retired, but feels the same about things as we.”

  Wes nodded “But if we hold some back,” he waved a fist full of papers with mathematical formulas on them “then we may never find the person that might be out there that could make sense out of them…maybe improve upon them? No guys, this info has to be made available to all our people, our friends and future friends.”

  Red nodded “guess it’s a chance we’ll have to take in the name of progress.”

  Sarge nodded “Wes is right, someone might see something here and come up with something new and useful. If it’s bad, then we’ll have to deal with it when the time comes.”

  Wes held up one of the huge tarps and tossed a corner to Sarge and another to Red.

  “We’ll put this under guard until we can pack this all over to the science center Proff built to record all of Boulder’s achievements. There they can be copied and preserved.”

  “And distributed.” Red reminded Wes.

  A loud crack of thunder shook the boxcar and Wes nodded at the ground outside the door.

  “Let’s try to remember this thing is sitting on ground not wheels and this is only a small hill. This storm isn’t too bad, but…”

  Sarge sighed and grinned as he pulled his collar up around his neck “Right! …Sarge go get some men and a lot of tarps.” he jumped down the two foot step into the squishing mud.

  “Sarge go get some men, Sarge go get some tarps, Sarge do this, Sarge do that.” he sighed “Some shit…head of the city forces and chief flunky.”

  Red looked at the grinning Sarge “Well he could have said get some men…Marion.”

  As he vanished into the sheets of rain the last thing Red saw was Sarge’s middle finger.

  Chapter 36.

  The following five years flew by and Wes’s people were amazed how little they had changed physically. However their lives had drastically since day one.

  Bryce and John hadn’t been to Boulder in almost a year as the brothers figured out a way to become really useful…and important!

  Using their engineering degrees, they were constructing a massive ship created out of logs and wood that was nearly the size of Dai’s WWII aircraft carrier. Of course it wasn’t nearly as high, but its massive hull could take a ramming from the largest sea creatures and had long sharpened tree-sized poles protruding from all around the sides and decking to protect the crew when on deck. Dai’s men had kept their weaponry in top condition and with new ammunition, several canons had been strategically placed.

  It could carry tons and tons of materials and people, but was extremely slow even with the huge sails. The Indians were taught by the best yachtsman in Texas, and already had a second ship planned. Where there was water, it stood to reason, there should be settlements and the brothers had decided to find them.

  The somewhat greedy and self-professed genius that John had proclaimed himself, was quickly put in his place by the Indian joint tribal consul and removed from power. But he was allowed to keep the command of the nearly completed ship. Boulder agreed, that where there was water, there could be more civilizations and if the ships could withstand attacks by the denizens of the seas, that would be the safest way to go. Bryce would Captain the other ship upon completion.

  The brothers had finally found a place in Pangea.

  As exciting as exploring the world in a giant ship sounded, those that came with them, stayed in Boulder and had found homes and positions they truly loved. With weapons that Snake had created and new explosive devices that Luke kept coming up with, Boulder safely expanded beyond the walls and toward the series of natural boundaries that the mountainous cliffs to the west that protected most of the areas the Indians had settled in. Between the Indians and Boulder, the population had reached nearly fifteen thousand as far as anyone could guess.

  Technology had taken leaps and bounds with the information that Red had found in the old boxcar. Technology created from blueprints that wouldn’t exist for another two hundred million years. Granted they were far from ready to build space vehicles, but the technology behind them could be used to serve other purposes…and did.

  Wes walked into Proff’s office and plopped down into one of the easy chairs made from the finest raptor hides that Cassy had shown the tannery how to create.

  “Dammit Proff, I…we’re sure gonna miss you.”

  Proff smiled as he swung his chair around to look at Wes.

  “And I, you Wes. Oh, I’ll still work on inventing things from my new home in Tah’cho along the coast, but I don’t think my old friend Flying fox will let me put in the hours I do now.”

  Wes grinned “Well don’t get yourself pulled into the water by some three ton swimming whatever.”

  Proff grinned back “Fishing sure isn’t what I remembered it.” Wes could see something was eating at the professor, but before he could ask, Proff beat him to the punch.

  “Wes, I have to tell someone…and well, as you refused to take over my position, I’d just as soon not tell Lowell.”

  “Shoot.”

  “The portal Wes…well…I believe it was meant to send us back only a few hundred thousand years. Most of the dinos were gone, we think. Sure a few saber tooth, and the like…”

  “But?” Wes tried not to chuckle because he knew Proff was being eaten away by this secret, but he was so comical as he stuttered and stammered his way to get to this moment.

  “I think by dropping the actual power unit and controller into the portal when Dan tripped, set everything in motion. You see my friend, half the alien technology had been put into code already.” he sighed “When they found references of our work where ever they found it, they realized that we had the means to do actual porting…” he looked sheepishly at Wes “the thing is I know I would have never published it because Dan and I feared what would happen if someone misused it.”

  “So you never published? Then how…”

  “We filed papers to the University for grant monies. It had to be their records. You see I stated that I could teleport material and even plants if I had the power…” he smiled proudly “You see I did have the actual way to do it…we just…sort of embellished the results.”

  “You lied?”

  “Yes and no Wes. Did we teleport anything? …No. Could we?” Proff waved his hand around “Obviously. I just didn’t wait to decipher the alien language and they didn’t figure out that we’
d figure out their technology so quickly. I truly believe that they thought that we’d share with the world and that we’d decipher their message before building the device.”

  “Then how do you figure all this is your…uh…”

  “Fault?” Proff sighed and rested his arms on the large desk as he looked at Wes.

  “Because I realized that I had to have a focal point. I had to think of somewhere that couldn’t be interfered with by other humans…we being so curious and all, so I thought about prehistoric times and Pangea was perfect. If there were any humanoids we didn’t know of, I knew they couldn’t be smart enough to figure out what the anomaly was and try to tap into it. You see all they would have seen was the focal portal. When the devices fell through instead of me being able to move the portal where I wanted…or where the aliens had designed it to go, the device and the focal became one.”

  “And without guidance.”

  “Correct Wes.” he leaned back in his chair “Luckily the alien code took most of the control and the portal stayed more toward our times than those of our scaly friends out there.”

  “Relax professor, we’ve pretty much figured out most of that crap already.”

  “Not all Wes. Look that portal made some huge swings.”

  “Uh…exactly what do you mean huge swings?” Wes sat on the edge of his seat and eyed Proff suspiciously.

  “Wes…I don’t know, it’s all theory.” he looked at the ceiling as if he was looking right through it.

  “Remember that portal had un-limitless power for millennia…well at least as far as it was concerned. There’s no telling where it might have gone…other dimensions, other worlds.”

  “Other worlds!” Wes nearly fell out of his chair.

  “Oh don’t worry Wes, the chances of the portal finding life…remember it was designed to find sentient life, so don’t worry about some nasty bug finding its way to…”

  “The Banshees…maybe…are you saying that the…”

  “Possibly Wes. You know Blackwood first mentioned them, and once we got the rails all the way south to those settlements…well you’ve heard the stories, the descriptions. Christ Wes there is no one that wants to try to run tracks from the south through banshee country to Blackwood.”

  “Yeah, I know…” the room shook and Wes looked at the professor “Uh, another quake, we’d better…” Suddenly Wes’s chair flew up and to one side of the room as the entire building seemed to try to fling apart, and after nearly twenty seconds of violent shaking there was a dusty calm.

  Proff peeked out from under his huge, heavy desk and waved his hand frantically through the thick dust in an attempt to see if Wes had survived the falling timbers.

  “Well we’re still on the second floor.” he muttered between coughing and spitting “that’s good…I mean we aren’t in the basement.”

  Several men and women rushed in to help the two leaders and what windows weren’t already shattered, were flung open to dispel the dust.

  They were hurried out to the hall as a few light aftershocks made them stagger as they hurried along finally reaching the exterior of the City Hall.

  All around them most of the buildings seemed to have fared well, some not so well and were lying in heaps as people frantically dug as they looked for survivors.

  Proff looked sadly at the chaos and lamented.

  “And I thought we did so well in designing the structures.”

  For nearly an hour they scrambled to find people beneath the ruins. Bone tired Wes was assured that all were accounted for, dead or alive. He was physically spent and emotionally drained. Someone asked him how the walls held up and if they had suffered any damage.

  Wes was about to reply but one of his men rode up to him and as his near exhausted horse gasped for air, he ran up to Wes.

  “Sir…General…your house…your wife and child…”

  Wes grasped the soldier by both arms and stared at him barely able to speak.

  “Dead?” Wes’s knees felt as if they couldn’t hold him up. He and Missy had finally had a child of their own and moved out deeper into the peninsula to one of the smaller towns.

  “I’m not sure sir. I know they’re trapped but only two houses collapsed other than yours, so there are many around to help get them out.”

  Wes swung up onto the steed and headed to the small town he now called home. It was barely two miles away and more or less a farming suburb of Boulder.

  Frantically galloping past the vast crops of corn and wheat that separated the two cities, he now could see smoke rising from his small village.

  Into the town he sped and as the horse skidded to a stop on the stone roadway, Wes flew off the saddle and landed on his feet running.

  Just as he rounded the corner of the rubble there was a group of people kneeling around a woman lying on the grass…it was Missy!

  Wes began to stagger as his knees shook so bad he had to drag his toes to keep upright. Falling to his knees Missy opened her eyes and gave him a weak, dusty smile as he gently cradled her head.

  “Baby…look after…Cassy and…Jenny…” she coughed up blood as someone shouted that the horse drawn ambulance was coming up the street. Wes looked around to see Cassy standing there holding Missy’s three year old child Jenny…and she didn’t move. Cassy was trembling and crying loudly, something she never did…Wes knew he had lost his baby girl and Missy needn’t know at that moment.

  “Don’t worry my love…you just worry about getting…” Missy’s head fell off to one side and her eyes stared blankly at the dust filled sky…Wes had lost both. The strong leader tried to stand to go comfort Cassy. There was a strange sound in his ears, his vision grew dark and the world spun…

  **************************

  Nearly a week later, Wes’s eyes fluttered open, and then with a jerk he sat to find himself in a hospital bed. The lass he and Missy had adopted sitting in a chair beside his bed. She leapt to her feet and gently pushed him down.

  “Shhhh…it’s ok dad…it’s ok.”

  The quake, Missy…”

  Tears streamed down Cassy’s cheeks “We buried mom two days ago. I’m so sorry dad, this heat…we had to. We tried to wait…but…” she sobbed and blew her nose. “They had to turn people away there were so many that came. Finally they opened up two of the schools that mom helped to open.”

  Wes wiped the tears from his cheeks “Baby, I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you.” he sniffed “I must have passed out from the grief, it’s so unlike me to…”

  “What nearly die on us?” both turned to the door to see Sarge standing there.

  “You dumb son of a bitch, the doc told me you were on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion. I checked with your men…” he looked at Cassy “You know your dad has been working nearly twenty hours a day for the last month?”

  “WHAT?” she looked at Wes “You said you were staying in Boulder, you promised mom that you’d watch your hours.”

  Wes wiped more tears “And maybe if I would have been home…”

  Cassy burst into tears and threw herself onto Wes as they held each other tight and cried as Sarge walked over and grasped their arms with tears in his eyes.

  “Don’t blame yourself dad…I’m just glad I still have you.” She slid up onto the bed and Wes cradled her in his arms as they both cried.

  Sarge gave Wes a soft smile and waved. Wes nodded and mouthed the words ‘thank you’ and watched Sarge leave.

  Cassy eventually fell into a deep sleep and Wes knew that she probably had been there all the time with the exception of the funeral. He held her tightly, “I’m here now baby.” he cooed. Cassy was all he had now and he knew that someday soon she would go out and find someone to marry. Someone of her very own and once again he’d be alone, but for now Cassy needed him. Holding the woman he still thought of as a child he softly stroked her hair until he too slept.

  Chapter 37.

  Another year passed and slowly Wes and Cassy began to realize they were alive
and consequently had to live life again. Just as Wes had predicted, his ‘young-old’ daughter met someone and sparks seemed to fly; life once again seemed good for Cassy and Wes loved the fact that his daughter was once again happy.

  Just seeing the light back in her eyes was all Wes needed to get over his sorrow, but there was a strange nagging feeling running around in his head.

  ********************************

  Again time passed…

  Now two years after his wife’s death, Wes strolled toward the rail yards with Red. Red nodded toward the brand new engine in the distance.

  “Man, we are making leaps and bounds in developing steam engines. The engineers keep improving the steam engines from what you see here to hoists and cranes, to a crude prototype of a vehicle. With oil from the south, we are working on petroleum powered vehicles.” he smiled “Maybe someday even a diesel engine…or vehicles.”

  “Kinda useless in these plains.” Wes joked “No gas stations.”

  “Yeah, but who knows what that could develop into? Hell we have rails all the way south for nearly two hundred miles, all the Indian cities, and north to the Scandinavian settlements.”

  “I know Red, I know.” Wes grinned “And armored trains as now the Neos are wiped out in these areas, the Cro’s are attacking us and they are smarter than the Neos.”

  “Proff said they would eventually, if you remember back a few years ago. Seems they sense their ability to exist around here are driving them to see us as the enemy.”

  Wes nodded “Gee, maybe because we are?” he sighed softly “I mean we killed off most of them when we tried to make peace, and as careful as we were…Jesus Christ…we gave them the mumps! Christ we’re immune to damned near everything now…here, but other humanoids sure the hell aren’t.”

  “Only the primitive ones Wes. Proff said even the Conquistadores south of the Indian areas don’t get sick. Bryce and John found that much out…” he grinned “By the way, ran into John my last trip to Na’wa’tee. He said hi and introduced his new Spanish wife Maria. He told me that he’s begun trade routes even farther south into the unknown lands.”