Cretaceous Dawn

by Lisa M. Graziano

  “Plenty.”

  “Yes,” he said, “that’s what it was. Look.” He pointed to the underside of a thick branch, where the dried mud tubes of a wasp’s nest clung to the bark.

  “Dromaeosaurs I’ll face,” Yariko said, standing beside the boat. “But I draw the line at wasps.” She looked weary and unhappy.

  Dr. Shanker meant to solve the problem in his own blunt way: by smashing the nest with a stick.

  “Don’t do that!” Julian cried, just in time. “They’ll be all over us. Let’s find another tree. So much for dinosaur initials,” he said to Yariko, but she wasn’t in the mood for humor.

  They found another good tree forty feet away and a little back from the river. The sticks were again placed, and Dr. Shanker climbed down. “Your platform is ready,” he said. “I’m sleeping with Hilda. I want to keep guard over her—make sure she doesn’t run off by herself. There isn’t room up there for three of us anyway.”

  Julian lay down cautiously, not quite trusting the crude planks. There wasn’t much room; he tried not to be up against Yariko but there was no way around it. She lay with her back to him, her head resting on one arm and her tangled hair straggling over her face. The air was slightly cooler at their height above the mud, and the flies and the stench less bad; but Julian had trouble closing his eyes.

  The events of the morning were not easy to forget. The death had been gruesome beyond belief, with Frank’s strength of will being the final horror. He lay a long time trying to push it all away. He forced his mind to look ahead to their river journey.

  An idea came to him suddenly and he lifted his head to look at Yariko.

  “Are you asleep?” he whispered, almost soundlessly.

  “No,” she said, not opening her eyes. “Not yet. Be quiet.”

  “I thought of a name for the river.”

  “Mud River,” she said. “Death River.”

  “There’s a fossil bed from nearly this time and location: the Hell Creek Formation.”

  “Hell Creek?” she said. “That’s a good name. I like it.”

  Then a few minutes later she said, “I’m sorry, Julian. It was such a terrible day. Frank—and then those animals. There’s no hope, is there? We’re all going to die a horrible death, and it’ll be soon, too.”

  She was verbalizing Julian’s own emotions immediately after the dromaeosaur attack. He sighed, reaching a hand out to touch her arm. She turned quickly and he withdrew his hand.

  “I know,” he said. “That’s exactly what I was feeling, in the boat. I know we beat them off, but . . . but I don’t feel that way now. Hopeless, I mean. Yariko, I think we can make it. In trees during the day, on the river at night; and then, when we leave the river the terrain will be completely different, and much safer. At least, I think so.”

  Yariko was silent for a long time. Julian couldn’t tell if she believed him or not. He only partly believed himself, but he was trying. If they had no hope they might as well give up now.

  “It’s too late for Frank,” Yariko said.

  “What happens when we—when he died?” Julian asked, having a sudden thought. “Will he stay here or will he revert, and be found?”

  Yariko turned her head to look right at him. “How can he revert? He’s not in the right place. Now he’ll never be.” After a moment she turned back onto her side. “He knew he wouldn’t live long without being able to walk. He knew from the beginning he’d be killed before having time to heal, and he tried to teach us as much as he could so we’d survive.”

  “I know,” Julian said. “I understand.”

  “No, you don’t,” she said, and after a moment added, “You never tried to get to know him.”

  Julian closed his eyes wearily, feeling even worse, if that was possible.

  NINE

  Dinosaurs were not aquatic. However, a large variety of reptiles lived in fresh and salt water during the Cretaceous. These included plesiosaurs , ichthyosaurs, the monstrous mosasaurs, turtles (including one species that was as big as a small car), crocodilians, and champosaurs. In freshwater swamps and rivers, champosaurs in particular seem to have been common. These crocodile-like carnivores grew up to eight feet in length and had long, narrow snouts. The placement of the nostrils at the tip of the snout probably allowed the animal to float just below the surface, almost entirely unseen.

  —Julian Whitney, Lectures on Cretaceous Ecology

  1 September

  3:30 PM Local Time

  Three people stood in the doorway of the main room at the physics lab. Two, a rumpled-looking man and woman, were hesitant to enter, hanging back; the third, Sharon Earles, impatiently gestured them forward.

  Marla Ridzgy had just flown across three states on an hour’s notice, without a second thought. Forty-six, with short graying hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and smart city clothes, she struck Earles as a take-charge person. Claude Bowman was likely to find himself in the position of assistant under Ridzgy. He had a more hesitant manner; he was older, balding, with a pale wide face shaped like a pear, eyes that blinked too much, and a widening middle.

  Both scientists worked on the cutting edge of particle physics, and both had setups similar to this lab’s. Earles wanted to know what Shanker and Miyakara had been doing that morning, and what had caused the equipment to explode.

  Nothing had been touched, except that the body was replaced by a chalk outline and the blood on the floor was turning black. Earles was annoyed to see the blood; her physicists didn’t need to see it, after all, and it should have been cleaned up by now.

  “Please, don’t skip the vault,” she said, as her guests shuffled around wearing the special slippers and gloves she’d provided.

  “Yes. It’s just. . . .” Bowman gestured toward the blood-stained outline.

  “No help for it,” Earles said. “The man was cut clean in half. Only the lower half was here. The rest was gone.”

  Bowman looked startled and not a little horrified. “Oh well, that’s for the coroners, or forensics, or whoever they are. We’re interested in the equipment.”

  “Oh I’ll look, then.” Ridzgy approached the vault, being overly careful not to step on the dried blood. Holding her nose against the by now nonexistent smell, she stooped down and looked into the vault. “There’s less damage than I expected, from what you said,” she commented. “In fact the instruments are mostly intact. Burned circuits and broken dials—more of a wiring issue now than anything.” She stood and stepped back around the blood stain.

  “We’ll need to see the notebooks, of course, and everything on the computers,” Bowman told Earles. “Can we pack things up and take them? This may take some days, if not more.”

  Earles had no intention of so casually releasing the lab’s secrets, if there were any. “You may work here,” she said. “An officer will be stationed in the hallway, for your convenience. We have rooms arranged for you tonight, when you’re ready; tomorrow, we’ll talk about what you need to do. Please disturb nothing but the notebooks, and of course the computers.”

  “What do you think?” Bowman said, when Earles had left.

  Ridzgy shrugged. “No telling yet. If the vault wasn’t sealed during an experimental run, there could have been vibrations. But an explosion powerful enough to rip a person in half should have destroyed everything in there; yet it’s nearly intact.”

  Bowman stared at the half-person chalk outline. “But he wasn’t in the vault . . . or maybe half of him was thrown out by the force?” He went closer. The small round door was hooked open against the wall; he unhooked it and swung it shut, then open again. “Strange,” he said. “They told us the door was sealed shut and had to be pried open. Was it—”

  “Sucked in tight by a vacuum?” Ridzgy finished for him.

  Bowman sat down and looked at her. “Not an explosion: an implosion, inside the vault. A vacuum. Something set up a vacuum. How do you suck air out of a sealed ten-foot-cubed room and turn it into a vacuum?”

  Ridzgy was loo
king at an open notebook that lay beside the main computer. “There’s something funny about these programming notes,” she said, bending closer.

  Julian woke suddenly from a sound sleep. His hip ached from resting on a knobby branch, and he squirmed around trying to ease it while wondering what had woken him. The sun was low in the west, and the air was hot, close, and damp. There were no sounds at all.

  He rolled onto his back, vaguely worried about the total silence, and then he saw: he was alone.

  As he sat up the silence was broken by Yariko’s yell.

  He scrambled down from the platform, showering the ground with bits of bark and twig in his haste.

  Dr. Shanker had started up. “What is it? Who’s that?” He jumped up and grabbed a spear that was leaning against the tree beside him. “Hilda?”

  “It’s me,” Julian said. “Don’t stab me. Yariko’s in trouble. This way.” He dashed into the trees.

  He saw Hilda first: she was sitting near a clump of thorny bushes with her ears pricked forward and her tail slapping the ground, exactly as if she were waiting for a treat. He was reassured until he spotted Yariko, partly screened by the bushes.

  She had a look of shock on her face that made his heart race. Julian wanted to rush forward and pull her away from the danger, whatever it was; but his legs didn’t want to move. He could only stare back at her.

  “Yorko!” Dr. Shanker’s loud, practical voice made them both start. “Whitney! Don’t just stand there in the bushes. If something’s in there, get away from it.”

  Yariko shook her head and slowly came around the bush. Something hung from her hand; something smelly, and limp, like a dead animal.

  “What did you see? What are you holding?” Julian stepped closer.

  Yariko’s face was white. She extended her arm and said, in a very controlled voice, “It’s Frank’s holster.”

  “What?”

  Yariko held the limp black something up higher. “Hilda found it. I took it away from her when I saw what it was.”

  “What are you talking about? You’re dreaming. Drop that thing and get away from there.” Dr. Shanker was clearly annoyed; but his voice was not as steady as usual.

  “Yariko. . . .” Julian didn’t want to touch the filthy thing that he now saw must be a piece of animal skin; dinosaur or maybe reptile, he thought, from the absence of fur. Probably weeks old, black with rot. “It’s just a bit of animal skin. Something died and Hilda found it.”

  This distraught Yariko imagining things was very disturbing. But Julian could almost understand. There’d been no time, the day before, to take in Frank’s horrible death. It was still hard to believe; he still expected to hear Frank’s voice every moment. Yariko must have climbed down from the loft, half asleep, and coming upon Hilda chewing these ancient remains, immediately imagined something familiar that belonged to Frank. Her face was flushed now, her injured hand swollen; she might be feverish. No wonder she was so upset.

  “This is not animal skin,” Yariko said, still with that strained look and tight voice. “It’s part of a plastic holster made to look like leather. It’s Frank’s holster.”

  Julian was relieved when Hilda leaped up and snatched the thing out of Yariko’s hand. As the dog ran off joyfully with her prize he took Yariko’s arm and steered her back toward their tree.

  Dr. Shanker helped sit her down with her back against the tree, and they made her drink some water. Julian cleaned her injured hand and rebandaged it. It was red and hot, and Julian had a sudden fear that the infection was spreading, making her delirious. But Yariko didn’t seem to notice. After a few minutes she blinked up at him and then looked around her.

  “Are you awake now?” Dr. Shanker asked.

  Yariko scowled at him. “I’ve been awake for a while,” she said in her usual voice. “But . . . maybe I was seeing things. It couldn’t have been, could it? Of course not. How could Frank have gotten here? For a minute I thought, I imagined that he’d been following us.” She took a deep breath and looked at Julian. “I’m sorry I frightened you. Maybe I wasn’t quite awake. I was dreaming about him trying to follow us, trying to catch up. . . .” She closed her eyes and leaned back again.

  Julian shuddered. He’d been having the same dream, not surprisingly. It didn’t bear remembering. “You curl up here and sleep a bit more,” he said. “We’ll keep watch.”

  “I want to know what you were doing climbing down by yourself,” Dr. Shanker said. “Wandering off into the trees without telling anyone.”

  “I climbed down to get some water,” Yariko said. “I wanted to fill the turtle shell and try to get clean. I meant to be fast but then I saw Hilda with that thing.

  Dr. Shanker snorted. “Next time you get it into your head to take a bath, let one of us—preferably Whitney—know about it. None of us should go anywhere alone.”

  The afternoon was declining; a drizzle began as the light fell. They lit a fire with some trouble and once again dined on hot river water. Julian closed his eyes and tried to push off the hunger pangs. His stomach felt pinched and caved in. How long had it been, now? A day and a half? They’d munched on some raw roots, stringy and unpleasant, but hadn’t managed to find a solid meal since leaving the island.

  “We should catch something before we get too weak to hunt,” he said, remembering Frank’s advice.

  “What about fish?” Yariko looked more herself after her nap and a good scrubbing of her face in clean water. To Julian’s relief she seemed to have forgotten her strange imagining. He only hoped Shanker wouldn’t add this to his “rescue party” joke.

  “Need bait to catch a fish,” Dr. Shanker said. “Let’s get back in the boat. It’s going to be dark soon anyway.”

  They paddled in silence for while. The sun eventually went down although they didn’t see it leave; the world simply became black, and the drizzle became a light rain. Julian didn’t know what to think of the river. It had seemed the perfect means of travel; but they couldn’t catch the nocturnal mammals for food if they were out in the middle of the river every night. Now, if they could catch something larger and somehow preserve the meat. . . .

  From behind him Yariko whispered, “I hear something.” The jungle was silent, except for the hushed and vast background sound of a slight wind in the leaves.

  “A splash,” she said. “It was very close. You didn’t hear it?”

  “Some carnivore, I’m sure,” Dr. Shanker grunted.

  Julian put out his hand and rested it on the top of Hilda’s head. “She’s looking to the right,” he said. “Hilda. I think she heard it too.”

  Then they all heard the splash, and something wet smacked into Julian’s lap and was gone in an instant. There was a scuffle in the boat, and then Dr. Shanker hissed, “Let it go! Hilda! Let it go!”

  “What is it?” Yariko said.

  “I’ve got it by the leg,” he said. “Should we cook it for a snack? I’m hungry enough to try one, anyway.”

  “What is it?” Yariko repeated.

  “A frog, a big one,” he said with a laugh. “We could get a mouthful each out of it.”

  Even two days ago Julian would have gagged at the thought of frog; now he reached for it. “Let’s cook it,” he said. “It’ll be better than nothing.”

  “Wait—it’s going to escape. . . .” Dr. Shanker seemed to be scrabbling around again. “Let go! Hilda! Too late. She’s got it.”

  They could hear her crunching happily for the next several minutes, while they thought about their own hunger.

  “At least we can get clean,” Yariko said as the rain became even heavier. “And in the dark, too.” Julian didn’t know what that meant at first; then from behind him he heard the unmistakable sound of a zipper.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, rigidly facing straight ahead although it was impossible to see anything at all.

  “I’m taking a shower—a real one.” Now Yariko was pulling off her jeans. The boat jerked about as she tried to steer while getting undre
ssed. “You should do the same, you know. Spread your clothes out on the raft to get rinsed, and let the rain fall on you.”

  Foolishly, Julian felt himself blushing. Yariko was right, and he felt as eager as she to find some semblance of cleanliness. But undressing in the dark when she was right behind him, only three feet away . . . with nothing on . . . he pictured her kneeling by the steering oar and blushed again.

  “I’ll let the rain soak through,” Dr. Shanker said. “It works for Hilda, so it should work for me.”

  “It’s really lovely,” Yariko said, her voice sounding very close to Julian. “Warm and cool at the same time, and I can feel the mud sliding off.” The boat swerved suddenly. “Sorry—just putting my arms up for a moment. Ah.” Then she laughed. “I don’t hear any rustling of clothes from forward,” she said. “Come on, Jules. Don’t be childish.”

  Julian thought his feelings were anything but childish; but he gave in. He couldn’t have her thinking he was that shy. If it had been just him and Dr. Shanker, or any other woman, for that matter, he wouldn’t have hesitated an instant. He tried to make as little noise as possible.

  Yariko was right, he decided once his crusty jeans and reeking shirt were off. He heard her laugh again, and the subtle sound of skin rubbing on skin. He cupped his hands for water and then scrubbed at his bristly cheeks, his neck, his shoulders. It did feel glorious. The water trickled around his nose and dripped off his chin; it went under his arms and down his chest and back almost like a caress on his dry skin. He couldn’t believe such a simple thing could feel this good. It was sinfully, almost lustfully sensual.

  Something bumped his shoulder and he jumped back.

  “Sorry,” came Yariko’s voice, sounding startled. “I didn’t know I was so close.”

  “OK you two water babies, pool’s closed,” Dr. Shanker broke in. “We’re drifting downstream, losing ground. Time to paddle. In any case, I’m getting a little embarrassed. I can’t see what you’re doing in this pitch blackness.”