by Eddie Patin
The woods came alive with animal sounds.
Jason could feel the big branch under his butt and was aware of the other branches he’d become familiar with within the distance of his hands and feet. Still, he suddenly felt disoriented; acutely aware that he was stuck high up in a tree in the utter darkness of night without any manmade light other than his own. Afraid that he might become dizzy and fall, Jason carefully slipped a hand into a pocket and pulled out the LED flashlight he always carried.
"Don’t use it all night," he said to himself. He didn't have any extra batteries. He’d have to save the light for emergencies only in case—
A suddenly thump down below startled Jason and he shined the light down to the ground. It had been a while since he checked on the mini-rexes. Were they still there? Or had they gone home to their family glade or cave or wherever they slept on the other side of the valley?
In the white spot of his light, Jason saw the ground move, and he realized that he was shining the LED at one of the monsters’ backs. He could make out the shapes of its soft feathers...
"Damn," he said, adrenaline stirring lightly around in him. He looked around the branches of his tree with the meager light. It was so dark!
If those bastards stayed down there all night, Jason might fall out of the tree or something trying to sleep up there and they’d get him for sure...
Jason jumped again when he heard a long cascading trill come from somewhere down on the ground. One of the mini-rexes let out a low rumble in response that made Jason’s body buzz. There were chirps and rustling bushes all around down there, and the sound of rapid footsteps darted past from all over.
There must be a bunch of raptors of down there in the dark, he thought.
Shrugging out of his backpack carefully in the pitch black branches, Jason felt around in the main compartment until his hand found the big roll of paracord that he always kept in there. Shining his light at the rope, the man figured that the coil was somewhere between 100 and 150 feet of black cord, looped carefully for storage. Jason loved paracord. He used the stuff for all sorts of purposes, from rigging together his walking gear like his homemade phone pouch and coffee cup sling, to the laces on his hiking boots, to the necklace around his neck that he made just for fun. Whenever he needed to connect one thing to another thing in a way that wouldn’t break, while keeping said thing nice and portable, he used paracord.
Now, amidst the many dinosaur noises that played out on the pitch black forest floor, Jason held his flashlight in his mouth and started using his long coil of paracord to tie his body to the tree, trying to ignore the dread that steadily grew inside him...
Chapter 14
After frightful dreams of howling creatures trying to eat him, Jason woke.
In one moment, there was nothing but black numbness and a soup of fear and feelings of falling, then Jason’s eyes and ears opened to the crisp sounds of morning.
The air was warm and wet, and Jason’s head immediately started pounding; probably from dehydration. Jason was clutching the rough trunk of the big pine tree that he spent the night in, and his long coil of black paracord was wrapped around him and the nearby branches like a spider web, cinched down with knots here and there.
"Ugh..." he groaned, his mouth dry. He was thirsty as hell.
Before doing anything else, Jason reached for his phone even though he knew that it wouldn't do any good. He turned off Airplane mode, opened YouTube, then stared at the screen that reminded him of no connectivity for a long time, trying not to cry.
This wasn't real, was it? Why was he in a tree? He should have been waking up in his bed back home, sweaty and in a tangle of blankets. Any moment now, he'd wake up a second time, then crawl out of bed and shamble over to the bathroom to piss and splash water on his face. He'd head to the kitchen, make some coffee, feed his cat, eat some toast, then go on a walk...
With his eyes closed, Jason waited. He waited to hear a car driving by through his window. He waited to hear its tires hiss through the slush on Kestrel Drive. He tried to imagine lying in bed, and tried to feel little Zelda's curled up form against the back of his knees...
He felt scratchy bark behind his knees instead, then felt his legs stiff and painful.
The wind blew through the trees, and various bird calls sounded and repeated in the woods down below.
Jason sighed and felt around himself. He tested his bad knee, which twinged, but it wasn’t as agonizing as it was the night before. Strange, he thought. Being that hard on his knee—running and climbing trees and such—should lay him out for a week with constant, throbbing pain. Jason didn’t think much of it; it probably had to do with all of the adrenaline. He felt for his gun where it should be sitting in his in-the-waistband holster. He was relieved to feel that it was still there. Touching the raptor bite on his leg, Jason winced at the sting. He'd have to look at it soon, but he wouldn’t be able to pull his pants down enough to see his naked thigh until he could get out of this damned tree.
"Probably not that bad," he muttered with dry lips. "That little shit’s teeth mostly got caught up in my pants..."
Jason suddenly remembered the horror of yesterday with a gasp and frantically looked down to the forest floor, searching for the three monstrous mini-rexes.
They were gone.
"Or..." he muttered to himself. "They're not right at the bottom of the tree..."
There was some chirping down below, and Jason heard rustling in leaves, but there were no sounds hinting at anything big moving around.
Just little things, he thought. Little dinosaurs and flying creatures chasing bugs and smaller dinos...
Something far away let out a dull, deep bleat, and Jason stared toward the valley, unable to see through the branches. His heartbeat quickened for a minute, pulsing in his ears. Then he calmed and sighed. Whatever that thing was, it didn't sound like a meat-eater.
Jason gathered together long, black rope, wiping all of bits of tree bark off of it, then neatly coiled it up again to return to his backpack. He made sure that his flashlight was in his pocket instead of in some nook or cranny that he might have stashed it into in the dark and forgot about. His light was in the right place.
Standing tall on the big branch, braced against the tree trunk, Jason peed, watching the dark yellow stream arc all the way to the ground.
Damn, he thought. Definitely dehydrated.
Then, after spending several minutes waiting and listening, ignoring his hungry stomach, Jason started the long and painful climb back down. Branches and bark scratched at him and his muscles ached. His back, legs, and shoulders were all stiff like frozen meat. It wasn’t long before his right knee was in agony again as he forced it to perform the exact motion that it couldn’t really do ever since the accident. Jason tried as hard as he could to avoid putting weight on his right leg.
The descent was slow-going, but eventually, Jason made it down. He did pause around ten feet off of the ground and took a few minutes to carefully scan and listen to the surrounding forest—he had to make sure that the mini-rexes were really gone. However, the only beasts Jason saw on the forest floor were tiny raptors and similar small dinosaurs exploring and chasing each other until he set his boot down in the dirt. Then they all scattered into the underbrush.
When the man stood on solid ground again, he stretched, cracking several joints, then picked up his cane, which spent the night on the ground. It was still where he had dropped it.
Jason's stomach growled.
"Damn. Hungry," he muttered, looking up into the trees and taking in the forest around him. Jason had a really strong idea about which direction would lead to the valley, and he could almost perfectly see the crazy, frantic path he had run yesterday fleeing the family of carnivores.
Taking a sip of water from his pack, Jason started to the east where the bright swath of sunshine glowed through the trees.
Will anyone even notice I’m missing? he wondered.
Maybe Ben would try to call
him eventually; perhaps invite him out for a beer. Plus, he was supposed to be back to work on Tuesday, but what would they do, really? The movie theater would call him a few times wondering where he was after his shift started without him. Maybe his manager would call and fire him the next day?
Would anyone go looking for him?
Amanda would probably call to let Jason know that they made it to Portland okay, but if he didn't answer, she'd just leave a voicemail and that would be that...
"Shit," Jason said, pausing to pull out his phone again. He turned off Airplane mode and let it search for a network for a little while, but it wasn’t finding anything. "Of course not," he said. "There are no cell towers back in the freaking Cretaceous period!" He turned his phone totally off and stashed it deep into his backpack. Last night was when Amanda and Tom should have arrived in Portland—they would have been pulling up to their new house sometime around when Jason was scrambling up a tree trying to avoid being eaten by big, ravenous tyrannosaurs.
When Jason approached the tree line, he moved slowly and tried to stay as low as he could without his knee hurting too much. This time, he didn’t step out into the light. Instead, he looked out over the huge valley from the shadows of the trees...
It was morning in dinosaur valley and a variety of beasts moved around down there. There was the herd of strange ceratopsians, lumbering around as big as ambulances, slowly feeding without worry among the tall grasses. Their wide and colorful crests waved back and forth as they sought out food with their stout beaks. At the far tree line, the herd of duckbills stood barely in the sun, grazing like a herd of elk. Jason scanned the horizons and dark places for the three mini-rexes. He finally saw them in the distant south which gave the man a cold burst of fright. But the mini-rexes were far away—much farther than when he spotted them yesterday—and they were busy gathered around the dead body of one of those big, horned ceratopsians.
The mini-rexes clawed at the corpse with their hind feet, ripping at the huge, fallen body and pulling shreds of flesh away. They dug their snouts into the body cavities they opened and ate ravenously. Even from this distance, Jason could see the small and feathered forms of raptors hovering around the site like hyenas roaming around the edge of a lion pride’s kill.
Feeling relatively safe for the moment—at least as much as he could in such a crazy world—Jason looked up the valley to the north. His eyes landed on the glittering blue water of Lake Granby. At least, he thought of it as Lake Granby. This place was a lot like Ridgeview, but perhaps how his hometown would exist millions of years back in time. In fact, that concept didn't make sense, because back during dinosaur times, the continents and land masses were completely different. There was no way Ridgeview would be recognizable if he really was back in time. The whole world of green around Jason moved with occasional wind, and for a moment, the man thought that he saw movement in the trees toward the lake—a dark, upright form...
"Probably a cannibal," he said with a twinge of fear. The memory of those primitives devouring their dead friend was still fresh in Jason’s mind. The scene played for him again in his head.
Looking to the east, Jason considered the ridge. If he was in the equivalent area of the south side of town—which also meant south of his own home as it would be just behind the wyvern’s cave—then that meant that Jason might find water ... up ahead. Back in Ridgeview, behind his house and on the other side of the main hiking trail, if Jason were to cross the trees there and head toward the ridge, he’d find Doe Creek, a mountain stream that meandered through the town and ran along the ridge until continuing to the south.
Was there a prehistoric version of Doe Creek on the other side of the valley, up through the trees?
If the creek wasn't there, he’d have to head north to the lake to get water.
Either way, Jason would have to cross that wide valley and head toward the ridge. If he stayed on the west side of the valley, he’d have to pass by the wyvern’s cave again as well as that place where the cannibals traded meat for fire on the rocky slab out front. There was no way he’d go through the wyvern's area if he could help it...
Jason peered down at the valley and the beasts around it.
It was a wide, open space full of thick grasses, clusters of bushes and flowers, and occasional marshy spots teeming with cattails. The grass was waist-high in many areas. If Jason ran across the valley—even if he tried to sneak across—he’d be totally exposed.
He could also see creatures rustling around down there—probably miniature raptors—and he was acutely aware that this valley was a feeding ground for the bigger predators, too...
"So..." he said quietly, casting his eyes back to the mini-rexes feasting in the distance. "I’ve got to get across the valley and get more water from the creek..."
Then what? he thought. Play ‘Minecraft’ in the dino world? Build a hut and hunt down some food? Then make a farm and keep scaling up the technology tree? Should he start mining for iron ore?
"What else am I gonna do?" he countered. Live or die. "Step one: find water. Step two: build a shelter. Step three: find food..."
Find a way home, he thought.
"Step four," Jason added. "Figure out how the hell I got here and figure out a way to get back to my own time...?"
Jason took a sip from his water and was disappointed to realize that it was getting hard to pull from. He reached up to the strap in between his shoulders and bounced the bag up and down a few times. The weight of it told him that his water was getting low...
"So first, we have to—"
A fast moving shadow shut Jason up suddenly, big and dark and flashing over the sunny grass in front of him. It was like the shadow of a passing plane—Jason had seen that two of three times in his life.
He gasped and looked up.
It was either a big flying dinosaur gliding by low in the sky, or it was...
Jason saw the shadow of the wyvern continue swooping down the valley, then it slowed to beat its powerful wings in a hover—Jason could hear the leathery creaking from where stood—and it climbed higher, making its way to where the dead ceratopsian was being eaten by the mini-rexes.
The silhouette of the dragon-like creature circled over the scene and Jason marveled at the broad wings and long tail that curved gracefully in its trajectory. He saw the tuft of spines at the end of its tail and could barely make out the jagged shapes of the ridges and spikes that ran along its back. Its wicked horns and other sharp shapes around its head and neck looked dangerous as hell as the monster looked down.
The wyvern screeched—a piercing, unnatural sound that had something more in its tone than the animal noises the dinosaurs made; something more monstrous. The beast’s cry made Jason’s skin crawl and he felt fear bubbling up in his guts...
Jason realized that the wyvern must have been the biggest bully on the block, because when it cried out, circling above the carcass and predators below, the three mini-rexes immediately looked up at it in the sky and backed away. One of the larger tyrannosaurs took one last bite out of the dead ceratopsian, then the three of them quickly sauntered away, heading to the forest on their west side.
Jason dimly recognized that the mini-rexes were now in the same forest that he was, though a little further south...
Once the mini-rexes had fled the scene, just as brave raptors darted in, advancing on the abandoned corpse, the wyvern screeched again. The wail delivered a quick jolt of adrenaline to Jason’s system. Then the apex predator slowed almost to a hovering stop high in the air and—with its claws stretched out before it—the wyvern dove down...
Chapter 15
Hurt, hungry, and half-exhausted from spending the night in a tree, Jason stood crouched just inside the tree line, looking out over the expansive valley full of dinosaurs.
He watched the wyvern.
The area’s apex predator crouched on top of the dead ceratopsian, clutching it like a bat. The writhing beast balanced on the clawed knuckles of its great, leathery wi
ngs and tore into the carcass with its long, powerful neck twisting as it pulled at the meat.
Jason stood far away, but he had no illusions of safety. The moment he decided to step out into the sunlight, he knew that he’d be visible to all predators roaming around nearby. It had happened the day before after all, and the same thing could happen again if he wasn’t very careful. If Jason hadn't had such a head-start on those three monstrous mini-rexes when they spotted him yesterday, he would have been ripped apart somewhere in the forest behind him.
Thinking back on the eight-foot-tall tyrannosaur brutes, a chill ran up Jason’s sweating back as remembered that those three monsters were somewhere in the same forest he was; roaming around somewhere to the south...
With every procrastinating moment the man waited and watched at the tree line—afraid to cross the valley—he was risking the possibility that the mini-rexes would wander close to him.
Jason cast a quick, terrified glance back behind him, scouring the thick, dark woods. Small dinosaurs hunted and competed for food again in the underbrush and low branches; tiny raptors and other tiny, bipedal scavengers and predators of all colorations. They scampered and fluttered around chasing bugs and each other. Jason saw more of those strange bird-looking dinosaurs with what seemed like four wings, most of which were glossy and black. They looked like crows with an extra set of feathery limbs.
Scanning the green foliage for the dark brown feathers of the mini-rexes to the south, Jason also kept an eye out for larger raptors, but the coast was clear ... for now.
The man looked back down into the valley and spent another minute watching the wyvern devour its stolen carcass. Little raptors darted around the scene like hyenas, hoping and waiting for tiny windows of time where they could dart in and seize some scraps. Whenever one or two raptors rushed in too close, the wyvern reared back and shouted at the bandits with a barking roar. Sometimes the serpentine beast belched out gouts of flame at the scavengers, puffs of fire that drifted away randomly before dissipating.
