“Who are your friends?” Marty asked.
“This is Nick Paulson, Ranger Wynooski, Dr. Gah, and a small sample of the U.S. Marine Corps,” Carson said.
Fanny greeted each as warmly as she did Carson the first time they met, leaving Carson a little jealous.
“Nick Paulson?” Fanny said, taking Paulson’s hand a second time and now holding it.
“Yeah, it’s him,” Carson said, stepping between them and breaking Fanny’s grip. “If it’s okay, I’d like to show them where I killed the velociraptors.”
Carson started Fanny and Marty back toward their house.
“We’ll go along,” Marty said. “You might need our help again.”
“We’ve got marines,” Carson said. “Besides, I got the velociraptors already. There’s no danger.”
“We killed one of them,” Fanny said.
“I meant we,” Carson said. “You haven’t seen any more, have you?”
“No,” the Millses said at the same time.
“I’ll just give them a walk-through, and then we’ll be on our way,” Carson said.
“They came in a helicopter!” Marty said. “We should at least give them lunch.”
“We’ll barbecue,” Fanny said.
“I’ll bring them to the house when we’re done,” Carson said. “You light the charcoal.”
“It’s a natural gas barbecue,” Marty said.
“Of course,” Carson said, shooing them toward the house.
Carson resisted patting Fanny on the fanny as she turned to go.
“They’re nice folks, but it’s best if the civilians stay out of the way,” Carson said to Paulson’s team.
“And just what branch of the service do the Dinosaur Wranglers belong to?” Ranger Wynooski asked, tapping the name embroidered into Carson’s shirt.
“This way,” Carson said, ignoring the obnoxious fat ranger.
Carson led them toward the dilapidated barn. Four marines accompanied them, wearing light combat gear and carrying M16s. Paulson, Gah, and Wynooski carried daypacks. Carson stopped by the spot where the Millses killed the second velociraptor.
“I got one of them right here,” Carson said.
Ranger Wynooski knelt, looking in the grass and sending up a cloud of flies with a wave of her hand.
“Quite a bit of blood. What did you shoot it with?”
“Shotgun,” Carson said.
“The carcass looked like you put it through a meat grinder,” Dr. Gah said.
“I shot it twice,” Carson said.
“Right,” Wynooski said. “Capturing it ever cross your mind? That’s what I would have done.”
“Rangers won’t answer calls this far from a preserve,” Carson said. “That’s why they called me.”
“We’d answer for velociraptors,” Wynooski said. “That’s for damn sure. And we wouldn’t have to blow them to bits with shotguns either.”
“I got the other one in here,” Carson said, leading them through the opening in the wall.
Inside, everything was as Carson had left it. The nest was gone, the hay spread around. Two marines accompanied Carson’s group into the barn.
“I shot it on the stairs and it fell down here,” Carson said.
Dr. Gah squatted, studying the dirt where the blood had soaked in. Ants covered the spot.
“Was the velociraptor coming down the stairs?” Paulson asked.
“No, going up,” Carson said.
“Was it in the barn when you came in?” Paulson asked.
“No … actually I’m not sure,” Carson said, thinking back. “When I first came through here, the barn looked empty. I was searching for the velociraptors when I heard the first one. It might have been hiding. Back in there, maybe.”
Carson pointed toward the collapsed end of the barn. The jumble of beams and boards created dark hollows.
Paulson pulled a flashlight from a side pocket of his backpack, peering into the crevices, systematically working along the back wall away from the opening to the far corner.
“I said I got them,” Carson said.
“They were male and female,” Paulson said. “They may have nested.”
Carson said nothing, concentrating on not looking guilty.
“This looks like it goes pretty far back,” Paulson said.
Dr. Gah knelt next to him, and then Wynooski knelt, who was surprisingly flexible for a woman of her size.
“It can’t go too far,” Wynooski said, “the wall ends right there. If it goes more than five feet, you’d be outside again.”
“I don’t see daylight,” Dr. Gah said.
“You come out in a shadow on the other side, that’s why,” Wynooski said.
“You know that, or you think that?” Dr. Gah asked.
“Has to be,” Wynooski said. “What else would explain it? Here, I’ll crawl in and show you.”
“Ma’am, don’t do that,” one of the marines said, stepping forward.
Lieutenant Sam Weller was in charge of the detail, their orders to protect Nick Paulson. Now Weller squatted next to Paulson.
“We’ll confirm it’s secure. Kelton, crawl in there and make sure there’s nothing hiding. Snead, check outside and see where it comes out.”
A marine barely old enough to shave came forward, getting ready to crawl through the opening.
“I can see from here it doesn’t go anywhere,” Kelton said.
Kelton started forward, ducking under a broken beam. Inching forward, rifle in his arms, he did not get far.
“It ends right here,” Kelton said, his voice strangely muffled. “It’s kind of funny. I can’t really touch the end, but I’m stuck.”
To Carson it looked like the marine had room to spare.
“All right, get out of there,” Weller said.
Snead came back from outside, reporting that he could not find an opening. With Kelton back out of the hole, Wynooski stood.
“I could have told you that went nowhere. That’s barely big enough for a velociraptor anyway.”
Wynooski wandered off, looking around the interior and then going up the stairs. A marine followed her. Gah and Paulson continued to stare into the opening. Gah had his own flashlight out now. Carson stayed with Paulson and Gah, preferring anyone’s company to Wynooski’s.
“What do you see?” Paulson asked.
“I can’t see anything past those boards there,” Gah said, using his flashlight like a pointer. “The light just kind of goes nowhere.”
Paulson crawled into the opening, holding his flashlight in one hand. He did an awkward three-point crawl, moving a little at a time. Lieutenant Weller watched without concern.
“It kind of widens out,” Paulson said in a muffled voice. “Is this a sewer pipe?”
Then Paulson disappeared into the dark.
“Where’d you go?” Gah asked, getting down on his knees and leaning in the opening.
Gah crawled into the hole, and soon he was gone too. Surprised, Lieutenant Weller squatted, using his own light to look inside.
“Dr. Paulson? Dr. Gah? Where are you?”
No answer. Carson looked but could not see anyone. Weller got down, crawling into the opening. His polished boots were still sticking out when he stopped. Then he backed out in a hurry.
“Something’s not right. They’re gone. They’re not in there.”
“Who’s not in where?” Wynooski asked, coming back down the stairs.
“Kelton, Sampson, stay here,” Weller ordered the other two marines. “Snead, come with me.”
Weller ran outside to check the perimeter. Wynooski knelt by Carson.
“What happened?” Wynooski asked.
“Dr. Paulson and Dr. Gah crawled in there and now there’s no sign of them.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Wynooski shone her light in the opening. “There must be a side passage.”
Wynooski crawled into the opening. Carson turned away as her large khaki-covered bottom rocked back and forth
and then disappeared like the others.
“I knew it,” Wynooski said, her muffled voice coming from the blackness.
“Knew what?” Carson asked, and then repeated it, shouting.
Wynooski was gone. Cursing, Carson crawled into the opening, not afraid of the dark, but of running into Wynooski’s big ass.
“I wouldn’t do that, sir,” Kelton said.
Kelton’s muffled voice sounded like it was coming from a long distance off and strangely low pitched. Carson paused, looked back, seeing Kelton saying something he could not hear. Small and distant, it was as if Carson were looking through the wrong side of a pair of binoculars. Kelton’s lips were silently voicing something. Carson crawled a few more feet, felt the surface change, and then felt his stomach flutter. Carson stopped crawling, but his forward motion continued. Then he was falling.
12
Strange Journey
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said, “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
—Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass
Unknown Time
Unknown Place
Carson tumbled down a rocky slope, shoulders, knees, elbows, and hands scraped and bruised as he flailed, trying to break his fall. Ranger Wynooski’s ample bottom finally stopped the tumble.
“Oof,” Wynooski said. “I knew you were going to do that.”
Quickly rolling away, Carson sat up on a spongy surface under a leafy canopy. Low on the horizon, the sun punched through holes in the canopy, the rays warm on Carson’s skin.
“Where the hell are we?” Carson asked, looking around.
The open farmland, paddocks, and house were gone. Instead they stood amongst tall, ugly palms, the ground clear except for patches of ferns, the spongy ground thick with decaying vegetation. The humid air smelled of decay, lacking the manure accent that characterized the Mills Ranch. Paulson and Gah stood a short distance away, by a palm tree in a patch of ferns nearly head high.
“We’re on the Mills Ranch,” Wynooski said with confidence. “Where else could we be?”
“But it was afternoon,” Carson said. “And what’s with all this?”
Carson indicated the leafy vegetation that looked more like the Everglades than a central Florida farm.
“Obviously, the Mills have a garden,” Wynooski said, now sounding a little uncertain.
Ignoring her, Carson moved closer to Paulson and Gah.
“What is this?” Carson asked.
“It’s a cycad,” Paulson said, showing Carson the leaf of the tree they were standing by, misunderstanding Carson’s question.
The leaf looked like a comb, with fine green teeth.
“Not the palm tree!” Carson said. “I’m talking about all of this!”
“It’s not a palm tree,” Dr. Gah said, arching thick black eyebrows.
“It’s a cycad,” Paulson repeated. “See, the fronds grow out of the top, then die off creating a layer, and then more grow out, and layer by layer it forms what looks like a tree.”
“Where are we?” Carson demanded, ignoring the lecture on the characteristics of cycads.
Paulson took Carson by the shoulders, looking him straight in the eye. “Mr. Wills, I am sure you know that the dinosaurs you captured had to come from somewhere. I believe that we have gone to where they come from.”
“He murdered them, he didn’t capture them,” Wynooski said, walking closer so she could butt in.
“What? But they come from thousands of years ago,” Carson stammered.
“Millions, actually,” Dr. Gah said, infuriatingly calm.
“At least sixty-five million years ago,” Paulson said. “Although we can’t be sure from the cycads, since they survived to the modern age.”
“What?” Carson said, using his standard reflexive response.
“The Dinosaur Wrangler isn’t an expert on dinosaurs!” Wynooski said, mocking Carson. “What a surprise.”
“It’s hard to explain,” Paulson said, “but ever since the Time Quilt that brought the dinosaurs to our present, we have been connected to the Cretaceous period. This is probably where your velociraptors came from.”
Carson looked around with new interest. “Velociraptors? Here?” Carson asked, now nervous.
“If this is the Cretaceous period,” Paulson said cautiously, “then yes. We would need to see some local fauna to confirm the era.”
“Screw that!” Carson said, eyes darting to movement when the slight breeze rustled leaves. “How do we get back?”
“The way we came, of course,” Wynooski said, jerking a thumb over her shoulder.
Carson looked back up the hill he had tumbled down. It was loose rock, and steep. Near the top was a dark depression.
“Let’s go,” Carson said, scrambling up the steep hill.
Carson’s efforts sent rocks and dirt tumbling down, the others backing out of the way of the small avalanche, waving away dust. Every time Carson made progress, he would find himself sliding back down. The opening remained maddeningly out of his reach.
“Give me a shove!” Carson yelled, wiping dirty sweat from his eyes.
“You’ll never get there that way,” Wynooski said, hands on her hips. “The way to do this is to find a way up there and then down that path to where we came out.”
Carson backed down the slope, studying the opening toward the top. He hated it, but Wynooski was right. There was a path from the top of the cliff down to the cave.
“Okay, let’s do that!” Carson said, starting left, and then seeing no path, turning right—no path either way. “Which way?” Carson asked.
Now everyone looked right and left.
“Left,” Paulson said finally.
“I was just going to say that,” Wynooski said, taking the lead.
Frustrated with how calm the others were, Carson fell in behind, eyes busy, expecting velociraptors at any second.
“Dr. Paulson?” Carson asked as they pushed through the vegetation. “Are you sure this is the past? That tree looks like an oak tree.”
“Angiosperms developed late in the Cretaceous period. There should be maples, oaks, and even walnut trees in this period,” Paulson said, his voice drifting off, staring at the tree that stood a short distance away.
“And if there are velociraptors, there will be other predators?” Carson asked.
“Yes,” Paulson said. “But you have to remember that like our own ecosystem, predators occupy the top of a food chain that is shaped like a pyramid. Most of Dinosauria are herbivores.”
“Yes, but I believe thirty-five percent of Cretaceous dinosaurs were carnivores,” Gah the gnome added, taking away the small bit of comfort Paulson had created.
“What?” Carson said.
“In this period, the pyramid has a flat top,” Gah said, as if it were an interesting bit of trivia. “That means that the flora and fauna supported a higher percentage of carnivores than is possible in our era. It’s probably because of the high oxygen content.”
Gah inhaled deeply several times.
“Notice how much energy you have,” Gah said. “This atmosphere has fifty percent more oxygen than our own. With that kind of oxygen content, even I could run a marathon. The oxygen is what made the enormous size of Cretaceous dinosaurs possible and bigger prey means more, and bigger, predators.”
“What?” Carson repeated, thinking of the implications.
“Calm down,” Paulson said, breathing a little faster as they began climbing up a gentle slope. “That number includes omnivores that eat everything and scavengers that eat carrion. Most of the rest of that number is made up of small predators like Troodon or Dromiceiominus.”
“Never heard of them,” Carson said. “How small is small?”
“Dromiceiominus was no
more than twelve feet long or so,” Paulson said.
“Walk faster,” Carson said.
Wynooski led them through a grove of the ugly palm trees and uphill past more familiar-looking trees—maybe maples. The hill was steep, but here the loose rock was patched together in places where vegetation had taken root. It was steep but climbable. Carson could see the crest of the hill and began looking to his right for a route back to the cave.
“Nick, look at this,” Gah said, squatting on the slope.
Paulson stopped, walking back down to where Gah knelt.
“Let’s go, let’s go,” Carson said. “Remember that little talk we just had about killer dinosaurs?”
“Killer dinosaurs,” Wynooski repeated. “I’m not familiar with that classification. Is that a system you professional dinosaur wranglers use?”
“Yeah, killer dinosaurs are in the class ‘run like hell.’”
The gnome and Paulson were still kneeling, looking at something. Carson walked over. They were examining a small patch of grass.
“Let’s keep moving,” Carson said.
“Mr. Wills, this is grass!” Gah said.
“Yeah, I know. I’ve got a yard full of it, and you can have all of it if you get yourself up that slope.”
“You don’t understand,” Gah said. “We believe we are in the Mesozoic era, but grass does not evolve until the Cenozoic era.”
“I thought we were in the Cretaceous era?” Nick said. “Are there T. rexes and raptors in the Mesozoic or Cenozoic eras?” Carson asked hopefully.
“The Cretaceous period is part of the Mesozoic era,” Gah said patiently. “Because of your velociraptors, and the cyads, we thought we were in the late epoch of the Cretaceous period in the Mesozoic era. The presence of well-developed grasses suggests at the very least the Paleocene epoch of the Tertiary period of the Cenozoic era. Grass is supposed to have evolved fifty-five million years ago, not earlier.”
“Not necessarily,” Paulson cut in. “There are some discoveries of fossilized grass in coprolites, and that placed grass evolution at sixty-five million years ago.”
“Coprolites?” Carson asked.
“Fossilized dinosaur shit,” Gah said to Carson. Then to Nick he said, “I thought the only nonvascular plants the coprolites contained were rice and bamboo.”
Dinosaur Thunder Page 8
