by Paul Kearney
Cutter lowered the binos.
“Even if we did find that out, how would we prove it? I can see it now: a paper based on examinations of real, live specimens as opposed to deductions from the fossil record. We’d be laughed out of academia, Stephen.”
“Well, it’s not as if we get to tell the academic community anything about what we do, as it is,” Stephen replied. “We’re forced to live with the accumulation of knowledge for its own sake — there’ll be no Nobel Prizes for us, I’m afraid.”
“I wonder if they’d be good to eat,” Fox put in. Cutter stared at him. “What? I’m hungry. If we brought down one of those things, we’d feast like kings.”
“No eating the dinosaurs,” Cutter said, wagging a finger at the Sergeant. “It’s bad enough we’re here, without hunting the local wildlife to compound the issue.”
“Calum has a point, though,” Willoby said. “We’ve almost nothing in the way of food — enough for perhaps one more decent meal. And we have to keep our strength up somehow.”
Cutter gestured to the herd of massive animals in the distance.
“You want to just walk up to them and start taking potshots? We’ve no idea how they’d behave. They might stampede, or they might just stroll over to you and paste you into the ground with one foot.”
“Point made,” Willoby said. “Something smaller perhaps.”
“You show a soldier an entire, untouched new world, and all he can think about is his stomach,” Cutter said, shaking his head.
Willoby grinned. “Just think about it, Professor. Nice big juicy Iguanodon steaks, grilling over a fire.”
“That’s another thing. I’m not sure about lighting a fire either.”
“We’re low on ammo — we’ll need a fire for protection, especially at night. God knows what prowls these plains once the sun goes down.”
“True — it’s not known for certain if dinosaurs hunt at night or not.”
Stephen spoke up.
“The thing is, Nick, the fossil record is probably just a glimpse of some of the creatures that inhabit this era. There might be all sorts of species out there, big and small, that we’ve no idea about. And as for their be-haviour, it’s all conjecture on our part. I’m with Willoby on this one — we should light a fire tonight.”
Cutter subsided, frowning.
“Aye, well, maybe you’re right.”
The Irish pilot, Sean Brice, joined them in the crackling bracken. “There’s something on the far side of the trees I think you boys should take a look at.”
They marched to the southern edge of the copse. There were willows there, with drooping limbs dipping in the stream as it curved about the trees. Their foliage made a perfect hiding place from which they could stare out at the tall ferns of the plain beyond.
“Christ,” Willoby said.
Connor and Abby joined them, as wide-eyed as children.
“Look at that, Professor, coming down the hillside!” Connor exclaimed in a hoarse whisper.
Three large animals in a group, a kind of v-formation. They were theropods, standing on their hind legs, and they were making a beeline for the Iguanodon herd.
“What are they?” Brice asked under his breath, as if afraid the creatures would hear him.
“Some kind of Allosaurid, I think,” Cutter said. As he crouched there behind the screening limbs of the willows, he felt a stab of pure fear, a primitive reaction to the sight of a massive predator. It was followed by a kind of intellectual joy, as he stared closely at the animals and catalogued their appearance and behaviour.
“Looks like Tyrannosaurs,” Willoby said. “I’ve seen them in films.”
The three massive predators were loping easily across the plain less than a mile away, eating up the ground at the speed of a galloping horse. Even at this distance it was easy to see that they weren’t running flat out.
“No, T-rex was even larger,” Cutter murmured. “My God, I think they’re Neovenators — one of the largest European predators during the Early Cretaceous. Look at that huge skull.”
“Wow,” Connor whispered. “They must be nearly thirty-feet long.”
“You could loose off a hundred rounds at one of those,” Brice said, “and they wouldn’t turn a hair. Still feel like heading out on the hunt, Captain?”
Willoby whistled soundlessly.
“They have a marvellous sense of smell,” Cutter said. “Thank God we’re downwind and in these trees.”
“There they go,” Abby said. “Look at them run!”
The three creatures suddenly picked up speed and began moving across the plain at an astonishing pace, spreading out as they went. They leaned into the run, and their tails trailed straight out behind them.
The herd of Iguanodons finally realised what was bearing down on them and from their ranks there rose a loud chorus of hooting noises, like bass sirens. The herd moved along the plain, raising a vast cloud of dust, and then seemed to halt, the adult animals facing outwards to meet the threat.
The three predators disappeared into the dust cloud, and from within it there issued a horrific cacophony of bellows and roars. The cloud rose higher, and the herd broke, stampeding off to the north in a great, thundering mass.
The team, lying over a mile away, could feel the earth shake and shudder beneath them under the impact of all those hundreds of tons of rampaging flesh and bone. They lay awestruck, and watched the drama unfold until the dust travelled into the distance, up to the higher ground close to the sea.
Then, as quickly as it had begun, the carnage ended. Around them, the world grew quiet again, and there was just the wind travelling through the trees, and the sound of the stream gurgling to itself.
“We have to move,” Cutter said. “We can’t stay here.”
“What’s the problem?” Willoby asked.
“It looks like we’re smack dab in the middle of an apex predator’s hunting ground. If they kill today, then they’ll be lethargic for a while, digesting their meal. We should move out tonight, after dark, head for high ground.”
“Damn it, Cutter, is it really necessary?” Willoby asked.
“The Neovenators will investigate anything new that crops up in their hunting territory — if not to eat, then to make sure it doesn’t represent a threat, or a rival. Lions do the same. We can’t coexist with those animals, and they won’t let us. We shift camp tonight.”
“Let’s hope you’re wrong about one thing then,” Abby said with a weak grin. “And dinosaurs don’t hunt at night.”
As the sun went down, they packed up their meagre belongings again and prepared to set out. Before they did, Cutter had Connor check the anomaly detector. The light was red, and the screen was dark.
“Not a sausage, Professor,” Connor said, disappointed. “Do you want me to keep it on?”
“No, Connor. Save the battery.” By the time they had set up camp, they had trekked out of the range of the anomaly that had brought them into this world, so they wouldn’t confuse it with any other, new, phenomena. Now, as they set off again in the cool of the evening, it felt almost as though they were walking further away from home, further from the only sure link they had with their own time.
They left the campsite as they had found it, gathering up every scrap and tin on Cutter’s insistence, and set off across the darkening plain. Doody cut Stephen a stout staff, and he used it to lean on as he limped along in the midst of the party, hissing with pain as his cracked ribs opened and closed within his chest. Beside him, Brice walked holding his slung arm to protect it from the bumps and stumbles of the trail. The two had found a kind of fellowship in their injuries, for both were battling severe pain which could not be remedied. Doody’s medkit was stripped almost bare, and apart from a few aspirin and some dressings, there was nothing left.
It was as though the party was being stripped back to its essentials, leaving behind the trappings of civilisation.
They trekked in waist-deep ferns, feeling as if they were wading thro
ugh a pale sea towards land on a far horizon. The sun set in a breathtaking contusion of broken scarlet cloud, like the workings of some immense, dying factory on the edge of the world. Cutter stared at it.
“It’s beautiful,” Abby said.
“Looks to me like volcanic activity, out in the west. After Mount St Helens exploded in the US there were spectacular sunsets over half the hemisphere for months. All the ash in the air catches the light you see.”
“You’re a real romantic, Cutter,” Abby said.
As the light faded, so the stars came out. And what stars! Cutter stopped in his tracks to stare up at them, open-mouthed, and the rest followed suit. The entire sky was awash with constellations, the Milky Way a huge glittering highway of light. The moon wasn’t yet up, but the stars were so bright they made a light of their own.
“I’ve seen night skies before, in Norway, that would take your breath away,” Fox said. “But this is something else altogether.”
“I see the Great Bear,” Connor said. “At least I think I do, it doesn’t look quite right.”
“They’re not the stars we know,” Stephen said. “Some will die; some haven’t yet been born. A hundred million years hence, things will have changed. The universe is an evolving entity, still expanding.”
“In a few million years, an asteroid will fall to earth, in the Yucatan, and in the aftermath of its impact, this world we see around us will end,” Cutter said. “The K/T event. Geologically speaking, it’s just around the corner.”
“Always look on the bright...” Doody sang, and the rest of the party laughed. Even Cutter smiled.
“All right, children,” Willoby said, bringing his carbine into his shoulder. “Time to make some tracks. We’ve a fair hike ahead of us before dawn.”
It felt eerily exposed to be walking openly across that great plain of ferns, and they kept close together, moving at the pace of the slowest among them, which was Stephen. He did his best to maintain a good clip, but it was obvious he was in a lot of pain, and he leaned heavily on Doody’s staff, his teeth bared, and sweat gleaming cold on his brow in the starlight.
After half an hour or so, they came to the spot where the Iguanodons had been grazing. Here the ground was battered and torn up, and there were mounds of droppings several feet high, still steaming in the cool night air.
“Smells like horse poo. Not so bad really; I was expecting something really gross,” Abby said.
“Imagine the roses you could grow with that stuff,” McCann chuckled.
Willoby held up a hand.
“Sssh! Something up ahead.” In the quiet of the night they could distinctly hear the metallic click as he flicked off the safety catch of his rifle.
Cutter joined him. Willoby tapped his ear and then pointed ahead of them. There was a snuffling noise ahead in the trampled ferns, the crackle of broken stems.
They moved forward, and when they saw movement ahead, halted again.
There was something small and dark crouched ahead of them, rooting at the ground. It paused, and they saw the gleam of its eyes.
“Looks like a badger,” Willoby said, disbelievingly. “Cutter, close one eye.” Then he clicked on his rifle-torch for a second.
The animal snarled, caught in the bright, dazzling light. It backed away, and then turned and ran with a slow, lolloping gait into the darkness.
“That wasn’t a dinosaur,” Willoby whispered.
Cutter looked puzzled. He opened both eyes, his night vision preserved by Willoby’s warning. “It looks like an early mammal. I don’t think the remains of mammals have been discovered in this area at this time, but that’s not to say they didn’t exist — unless it’s not supposed to be here and has stumbled through another anomaly...”
“Is it dangerous?”
“To us? No. It won’t tackle anything our size. Good sign though, as it means there’s nothing bigger roaming about.”
They walked forward to see what the creature had been feeding on. It was the slimy carcass of a young Iguanodon, only some six-feet long.
“Looks like it was just being born when the Neovenators attacked,” Cutter said, bending down to touch the cold, torn up flesh of the creature. “There you are, Willoby; if you want meat to eat, it’s lying there.”
Willoby screwed up his face, but he pulled out his knife and cut away some of the creature’s flesh. He made no move to eat it, though — instead, he emptied one of the rucksacks and packed the meat inside it.
“It’d be like eating roadkill,” he explained. “I’m not quite hungry enough yet.”
“You’re a human being. That means you’re a scavenger. It’ll be millions of years before we can be considered predators ourselves.”
“I guess I’ll wait,” Willoby said. “At least this way, if the times comes, we’ll have something to fall back on. All right, bring up the others. We’re wasting time here.”
They continued on their way, skirting the site of the dead Iguanodon and making better time in the trampled swathe of earth that the passing of the creatures had left. The night was uncomfortably quiet. Occasionally they could hear hoots and growls off in the distance, but there were no nocturnal birds to be heard, no foxes barking, no owls. The environment seemed somehow more alien at night than it had during the day.
“I smell the sea,” Abby said as they trudged along.
The moon was up, three-quarters full, and even its white face was changed, the craters in different places.
“But what sea is it that you smell?” Connor asked. “My Cretaceous geography isn’t all it should be.”
“It’s the Atlantic, or will be,” Stephen said, hobbling along behind them. “Pangaea, the great landmass, has come apart and now the continents are becoming recognisable. Greenland and the UK are pretty much next-door neighbours, and there should be plenty of islands, too. The sea should be shallow still, not a proper ocean at all.”
“Just think, if you could only control the anomalies,” Connor said. “Slip into time or any place you wanted. Think of all the questions you could answer.”
“Who knows?” Stephen said. “Maybe we’ll figure it out some day. I know that Helen —” He stopped, catching himself.
Connor and Abby said nothing more, but looked at each other in the moonlight.
They reached the end of the plain some time towards dawn, and halted there to rest and take stock in the shadow of the hills. The ground rose before them, ascending in loose outcrops of dark stone and open slopes covered with conifers. They could smell pine resin in the air now, and there were pine needles underfoot. Nameless insects clicked and chirruped in the trees around them, but otherwise the night was silent, and the moon sailed like a silver galleon amid a sea of stars.
“Take away the monsters, and this would be a hell of a beautiful world,” Calum Fox said, sitting with his M-4 in his lap.
“The Brecons are about as wild as I like it to get,” Doody retorted. “Sarge, what do you think’s happening back at home. You reckon there’s a rescue team on the island yet?”
Fox nodded. “Bound to be, weather permitting. The Irish will be champing at the bit to get to their downed chopper. That’s about a quarter of their air force, right there.” Brice and McCann looked up and scowled at this, but said nothing.
Cutter and Connor stood a little apart from the rest. Connor had clicked on the anomaly detector and was sweeping it around in an arc.
“Nothing, Professor. Not a blink.”
“What’s the range of this thing, Connor?
“Only a few kilometres. Maybe even less. It’ll work better on the higher ground.”
“Why is that?”
Connor shrugged sheepishly. “I don’t know, it just does.”
Exasperated, Cutter said, “You built the damn thing!”
“I know Professor, but I tend to just have a feel for things. I put ‘em together and they work, but half the time they behave in ways I can’t entirely explain.”
“Connor, you may be the most
maddening genius I’ve ever known. Give it another sweep when we get to the hilltop. How’s the battery?”
“Ah, not so good. I don’t think it appreciated being dunked in the sea.”
“Terrific. Well, conserve it as much as you can. Without that damned contraption, our chances of stumbling across another anomaly don’t look so hot.”
They set off again. The sky had begun to pale in the east, turning a delicate eggshell green at the horizon. Dawn wasn’t far off.
Cutter estimated that they had covered some fifteen kilometres. They were climbing up a steep, rocky, wooded slope now, and their progress had slowed dramatically in the darkness under the trees. They encountered loose rocks and tree stumps and fallen branches which were hard to navigate in the dark, and Stephen had to be helped along, with Connor on one side of him and Abby on the other. His breath had become a rearing rattle in his throat.
McCann was on point. They saw him raise a hand and make a fist up ahead. At once, they all sank down to the ground, breathing hard.
Cutter and Willoby moved forward and joined him.
“What the hell is that?” the Irishman whispered, pointing.
They were near the top of the ridge now, and the slope had levelled out. The trees were thicker here, and there were waist-high ferns carpeting the floor of the wood. They were wet with dew, and so the entire team were soaked to the waist. But up ahead there was a more open space, and glints of the setting moon were lancing into it. There was a huge mound there, with what looked like broken branches sticking up out of it. But the mound smelled strongly of dung and warm animals of some sort; and it was moving. They could hear the quiet susurration of huge lungs breathing in and out.
“Go left,” Cutter murmured. “Go around them.”
“What are they?” McCann asked. “Meat-eaters?”
“No, they’re a kind of Ankylosaur, I believe. Armoured dinosaurs — see those spikes. It’s a family group. If we wake them up, they’ll charge us to protect the young. We have to be quiet.”
“No shit,” Willoby whispered. “Lead on Cutter. McCann, go back down the line and clue everyone in — no noise, no talking.”
