by David Boyle
Screeches sounded, a winged tornado swirling skyward past the canoes.
Mark got to his feet. “Sorry about screwing up your investigations. And if it makes you feel any better, the folks you’ve sent earlier did a bang-up job keeping their visits secret. You’re the first… well, alien anyone has ever captured.”
“Indeed.”
“And I’d like to talk more, but I think it’s time we checked on Moe and Curly.” Mark motioned to Charlie before hurrying away.
Bull looked to Tony, then the ropes on the alien’s feet. “You okay with him?”
“His name is Wheajo. And yes, we’ll be fine.”
Charlie turned and started running. “Bennett… wait up!”
The flock was regrouping, wings locking in place as individuals began circling high overhead. They were half again as large as an eagle, with big boxy wings, a short tail, and a long droopy neck.
“They’re buzzards, aren’t they?” Charlie said, thudding along the beach.
Mark slowed on nearing the boats and ditched his wide brimmed hat. “The wings and flight feathers need some work, but they are close. Another few million years, and who knows, maybe they’ll get there.”
They piled into the canes, following the trail of freshly broken vegetation. There were twigs and leaves wrapped or twisted around the stalks, every inch of the stuff with a sharp edge or a splinter waiting to happen. “This is worse than goin’ across the grain in a corn field,” Charlie grumbled, clawing through the tangle. “Better be worth it is all I can say.”
“Is tougher than I thought it’d be,” Mark huffed, high-stepping, sweeping the canes aside. “Guess we’ll find out when we get there.” As hard going as it was, breaking trail had to have been worse. Mark yelled ahead. “Prentler… McClure…?”
“Over here!” came the muted reply. “And you’re just the guy we need. You’ve really got to see this!”
“Yeah well, it’d help if we knew where you were,” Charlie shouted.
“Just stay on track. You can’t be more than….” Ron’s voice trailed off.
“This way,” Mark said, studying the jumble, a faint rustle sounding in the distance. “I think I see them. Yeah, over there…. Isn’t that a T-shirt?”
Charlie stuck an arm out. “Hold up a sec. Listen.” There was a beat to what sounded like crunching, his instincts on alert as he peered about the canes.
“That what I think it is?” said a voice, and a second later. “Holy shit! You see that?”
“I see it, I see it!” said another, a burst of frantic scuffling sounding when the explorers started running, Charlie gawking as a snarl blistered the canes.
“I knew it!” he squalled, spinning in a panic and jerking Mark nearly off his feet. “Come on, we gotta get outta here!” Charlie crashed toward the river, Mark waving when he spotted Ron, shoulder down, the rifle across his chest.
“Don’t stand there you idiot! Move! The bastard’s right behind us!”
“But where’s…?” Mark heard the canes before he saw movement.
Hayden burst into view. “Don’t wait for me! Go!”
Tony felt the Tripper float free, his eyes popping when he glimpsed an enormous back above the canes, Charlie charging clear a second later. “Leave whatever you’re doing, Wheajo! Mark and Hayden can take care of that.”
Wheajo hobbled over and clambered aboard, Tony frantic to get the Tripper pointed in the right direction, an eternity passing before Ron, then Mark, and finally Hayden raced free of the bramble. Tony climbed in and grabbed his paddle. “Faster, McClure! Hurry!”
Charlie was already past the shallows when Ron pulled up and slipped the rifle alongside the raft. “We got everything?” he panted, checking nearby as a roar bellowed from the canes.
Tony reached out. “Does it matter?”
Ron ran the Tripper across the shallows. “I hope not,” he said, and jumped in, he and Tony stoking away as Mark and Hayden swarmed the Discovery.
The canoe bottomed out when Hayden took his seat, Mark then shoving at the bow while his partner stabbed the sand with his paddle, the crash of snapping reeds growing ever louder. “Almost there!” Hayden said, the Discovery starting to wobble as their pursuer burst snarling onto the beach.
“Get outta there!” Charlie shouted from the river.
The water grew dark where the bottom fell away. “Now, Bennett! Get in already!” Mark gave a final shove, and a step later slumped neck-deep into the water. The dinosaur lashed its tail, snarling, then dropped its head and lumbered along the beach.
Mark hung on, kicking. “Paddle, man! Paddle!”
“Idiots.” Ron went to his knees and traded his paddle for the rifle. “Get this thing pointed downriver!”
Tony switched sides, digging; Charlie screaming at Prentler to hurry while the dinosaur plodded alongshore, belly swaying. The size of the thing and the fact that it was there at all was stunning, the animal blurring every notion Tony had ever had regarding fright and amazement. He noticed, too, that Prentler was still backpaddling… and that Bennett wasn’t even in the boat! “Oh my God….”
“Hold it steady if you’re not going to paddle!” Ron swung the rifle… Kablam! Sand kicked at the animal’s feet, the report booming along the river. The dinosaur hadn’t flinched, the spent cartridge barely in the water when Ron fired again. The dinosaur snarled, the big head turning as the animal shortened its stride. Hayden stroked the Discovery across his line of fire, Ron twisted half-around, waiting… Kablam! The dinosaur snarled around and nipped at its tail.
“That got his attention!” Charlie shouted. “Good going, McClure!”
The cartridge hit the water. “Good my ass. I barely nicked him!” Tony got the boat turned to where Ron was able to shoulder the rifle. “We’re good here, Tony. Hold it right where we are.” His finger settled on the trigger, his sights following while the dinosaur chased its tail.
The thing's belly was hugely distended, a load that without which it would invariably been faster. As it was, just walking seemed an effort, a low gurgle burbling in its throat when it stopped to survey the now deserted shoreline. Big? Yeah. Agitated? Yeah, that too. But with the shoreline back to normal, even that was subsiding. Ron let down and latched the safety, then watched in amazement as the biggest animal he’d ever seen outside of a cage turned and plodded slowly into the canes.
6
Charlie slumped across his paddle. Seeing birds the size of airplanes had shown him they were in trouble, but until now he hadn’t known how much. There weren’t going to be any roads ahead. Or bridges, or cities. Or people either, or any kind of rescue. It was them, and nobody else. The five of them on a river where monsters lay primed to pounce from behind every tree and bush.
The thoughts swirled across the wasteland of his fears, the flames quickly spreading.
“Jesus guys, we really need to find a way outta here.”
“First things first,” Hayden said, bumping the Discovery alongside the Tripper. “Hang tight, Bennett. We’ll have you out of there in a second.”
Mark thunked his head against the hull, breathing hard. “That thing as big as it sounded?”
“And then some,” Hayden said, waving Charlie over. “You need to give us a hand steadying the boats.”
Tony patted his pocket, then unclipped the dry bag with his camera from the thwart. “That was way too close for my blood,” he said, a shaky hand searching inside for his cigarettes. “If I were you, I’d try running a little faster next time.”
Mark got himself to the other side of the canoe. “Actually, I was thinking about avoiding the situation altogether.”
“Any thoughts on what that thing was?” Ron asked, minutes later.
Mark raked the hair off his forehead and reseated his hat. “Not a clue. When the world’s crashing around you is not a good time to investigate.”
“A wise decision,” the alien remarked.
“Nobody’s talking to you. And considering you’re the reason we’r
e here in the first place, I’d shut the fuck up if I were you.” Ron looked to Charlie. “And in case we need to go to racing mode, how about we put him in your boat?”
“In here? You gotta be kiddin’. How about yours, Bennett? That thing can carry more shit than either of these two.”
“Which it already is,” Hayden pointed out. “We add him, and we’ll be as overloaded as you are.”
Tony plucked the cigarette from his lips. “Come on fellas, this can’t be that hard. We shift stuff around, we can do this. And unless you guys are enamored with where you are, I’m thinking Mark and Wheajo can go in Charlie's boat, and Charlie can take Mark’s place in his.”
Mark did some mental gymnastics. “I’m willing if you are. Hell, me and Wheajo together can’t weigh what you do. We shuffle the beer around, and some of the dump bags, we can end up with about the same load in each boat.”
Charlie wasn’t thrilled, but knew that no matter how they did it, they had to do some major rearranging. Then too, if he had to paddle tandem, better with someone who knew what they were doing. “I guess that’ll work.”
They bungee corded the canoes together, and while Ron kept them centered on the river divvied up a pair of knapsacks, a couple of cases of beer, and the case with Charlie’s compound. Wheajo crawled onto the front seat of the Grumman, the dump bags at the bow transferred to the Tripper. The last part the trickiest, Ron and Hayden held the canoes steady while Mark and Charlie switched boats and positions, the canoes allowed to go their separate ways once they were settled.
Bland and unruffled, the river carried straight for nearly a mile before turning west, its shorelines deserted save the birds flitting occasionally from one side to the other. “You okay there?” Hayden asked.
“It’s definitely got a different feel than mine. But yeah, I can manage.” Mark freed the spare paddle and tapped Wheajo with it. “This is yours. The little end is the one you hold.”
Ron chuckled, stroking away. Pleased at how little the added load affected the Tripper’s responsiveness, he was glad too to not be staring at the alien anymore. He twisted around and stared upriver. “Too bad that bastard showed up when he did,” he said, the vultures back to circling the canes. “I really wanted to get a better look at the thing.”
“That’s quite alright. I had an excellent look, thank you very much.”
“Not that thing. The other thing.”
Tony frowned.
“The vultures were feeding on a dinosaur,” Hayden explained. “The shoulder and ribs mostly, and part of the neck. I’d never been that close to anything that big before, and then this other guy jumps up and starts bitching, and he’s even bigger!”
“Wasn’t all that ripe, so it couldn’t have been too old,” Ron said.
“Had a long nose. Bumps around the back of its head. Wasn’t colored like anything I’ve ever seen. Green almost, with a stripe along the side. Can’t be sure, part of the tail was missing, but I’d guess the thing at like twenty feet.” Hayden looked to Mark. “Any guesses?”
“I’d have to see the head, and even then I probably wouldn’t recognize it. For all the plant eaters we know about, there are probably at least that many we don’t.” Wheajo was fiddling with the paddle, trying to mimic the others while at the same time taking in every word. Mark smiled faintly, then added: “You do realize… and maybe you don’t. Around here the thing you’re describing and the bastard that tried to eat us are about average.”
“Sorry, Bennett, but he wasn’t trying to eat us. It was that kill of his he was worried about. We got lucky is all.”
“Lucky? How’d ya figure?”
“You have to have seen pictures of lions after a meal. Think about our friend and how much faster he’d have been if he hadn’t just eaten.”
Charlie sat back, blinking. “Fuck….”
The rifle was a Remington Model 700 BDL bolt action 30-06 with a four-shot magazine that at the moment was loaded with 180 grain soft points. Ron had refinished the stock last year: stripped it down to bare walnut and re-checkered the grip and forearm, then applied multiple coats of linseed oil until it glowed with loving attention. Bedded and blued—black to the uneducated—with the proper loads the old Remington could spit lead carrying twenty-nine hundred foot-pounds of energy. “You think if I’d have hit the bastard solid I would have killed it?”
Mark frowned irritably. “Now I’m a prophet? How the hell should I know?”
Normally Mark wouldn’t have minded being the resident dinosaur expert, not that he had any professional schooling. He simply tried to keep current on the latest findings. A hobby more than anything, and then just one of many, he’d occasionally been able to liven a conversation with an obscure fact about one or the other of the old reptiles, and more than once used what he’d learned to win a pie at Trivial Pursuit. A pittance at best, here that knowledge had survival value.
Dinosaurs didn’t live in books anymore. Here they were real. And if the books were wrong, he’d be wrong too. And Mark hated the implications.
“Sorry McClure. I shouldn’t have snapped like that. But your guess is as good as mine. Better really. Hell, you’re the firearms expert.”
Something about the palms ahead caught Hayden’s attention, though it wasn’t until after he’d wiped his glasses clean that he realized what it was. Since they’d arrived he’d noticed that shrubs often grew at the base of the palms along the river—here the shrubs had been stripped absolutely clean. The signs were unnerving. “What do we do about camp?”
Ron shaded his eyes. The sun was a good fifteen degrees off vertical, the skies streaked with high cirrus. “I’m thinking we got maybe five or six hours of daylight. Let’s pick it up some and see what we can find.”
Needing no further encouragement, they hurried downriver, blades flashing in the light of an unrelenting Cretaceous sun.
Keeping up was a lost cause, and until Wheajo got the hang of paddling, Mark had no choice but to work hard and hopefully not fall too far behind. The trees above the bank provided a cool and inviting respite, but until he knew for sure whether dinosaurs moved in the heat of the day, Mark felt safest holding to river center where he’d have time to react if another dinosaur made an appearance.
The canes thinned as the shoreline rose, an open savanna replacing the marshland and stretching east into the distance. In places undercut and varying from six to eight feet in height, the banks were partially immunized to the ravages of the river by an array of spaghetti-like roots. A dark band in the mud showed that the river had recently been higher, and just downstream were two sizable sections of bank that had collapsed. Storm damage probably.
Mark switched sides. “You need to keep the shaft more vertical, Wheajo. Otherwise I have to keep correcting.” The paddle was long for the alien’s arms. Still, the little shit was trying. “That’s better….”
The shape perhaps. Or the color of the soil. Something about the break kept drawing Mark’s attention. The lack of shoreline debris seemed curious, especially when compared to the lumps and bumps so prevalent elsewhere. Then too, there was no disruption to the current. No changes in direction. No ripples. And to scour the bottom so completely required a river at flood stage. Yet the amount of water that implied had somehow left the slopes before and after untouched. But how?
The complexities of fluid dynamics would forever remain a mystery, but with the likelihood they’d be calling the river home for the foreseeable future, Mark was beginning to wonder just how radically the river changed level when he noticed that the breaks in the shorelines were opposite one another.
Symmetric collapses? Not likely, and he didn’t believe in coincidence. The breaks were looking more like low water crossings common to farm country. Except here there weren’t any tractors, or farms for that matter.
“A major thoroughfare,” Wheajo observed shortly.
Mark let out a whistle. “You can say that again.”
Steep and abrupt before and after, both banks had be
en trampled into depressions nearly thirty yards wide. Deepest near the waterline and fading up the slope, three and four-toed tracks covered every inch of the slopes, the recent obliterating the old. A handful of boulders bulged from the compacted soil, their surfaces polished by the feet of hundreds if not thousands of animals.
The banks were too high to see whether the trail fanned out or simply kept going, and whether there were dinosaurs nearby. Mark followed the trail into the water, staring overboard as softened craters slipped beneath the canoe, slender ghosts darting from the boat’s rippling shadow. “How about we fire up the boilers, Wheajo?” Mark said, quickening his pace. “The farther away we get from here the better I’ll like it.”
“Indeed. As shall I.”
The first turn was a solid half mile downriver. A ten minute sprint, maybe less. And after they’d put the dinosaur crossing behind them, then what? Another crossing? A lake maybe? A junction with another river? Hell, even Lewis and Clark knew more about where they were and where they were going than he did. Bears, bison, and Lakota Sioux had, according to record, made life more than a little interesting. Then again, Messrs. L&C had a whole lot of firepower and a small army of folks whose whole life had been a struggle. Incredible people who’d beaten incredible odds, yet whose most formidable adversary, the plains grizzly, could end up a snack for many of the animals that prowled the world in which they were now stranded.
Staying alive, at least for the present, was a matter of not being discovered. Keep a low profile, try to blend in, and maybe, just maybe they’d live to see another sunrise.
The high banks and scattered trees were a step in the right direction. A dinosaur, even one twenty feet tall, would have to be standing within a hundred yards or less to see into the river. Birds had been shown conclusively to see in color, and if the latest speculations about bird ancestry were true, dinosaurs most likely could too. Either way, the canoe would hopefully be viewed as nothing more threatening than a log if spotted, the deciders then being sound and movement. Fish splashed, logs clunked, even rocks could gurgle in a river setting—all sounds that dinosaurs, like deer, would simply ignore. But talk too loud, or cough, or scrape a paddle along the gunnel and every animal within earshot would take notice. What happened thereafter was a matter of who was doing the listening. And this was neither the time nor place to find out.
