“What the hell is going on?” John said, watching Elizabeth rub shoulders with the vicious killers and then disappear.
25
Strangers in a Strange Land
A varying speed of light contradicts Einstein’s theory of relativity, and would undermine much of traditional physics. But some physicists believe it would elegantly explain puzzling cosmological phenomena.…
—Eugenie Samuel Reich
Sixty-five Million Years Ago
Unknown Place
Elizabeth, Jeanette, Sally, and the velociraptors tumbled down a rocky slope, finding themselves in an alien landscape. As in Florida, there were palm trees, ferns, and low-lying shrubs, but the landscape was more arid, the palm trees not really palm trees, the shrubs like nothing they had seen. It certainly was not the farmland around the Mills Ranch. Gone were the barn, the ranch house, and the old boarded-up house and every other sign of civilization. Years before, Elizabeth had traveled through a pyramid and emerged on the moon in a similar way, so she had expected the unexpected when she crawled into the hole. But this was a new experience for Jeanette, and she was bewildered.
“Is this what happened to Carson?” Jeanette asked, looking around wide-eyed. “Did he come here?”
“Probably,” Elizabeth said. “Let’s look for signs.”
Studying the ground, the women circled out from their landing point. Following their cue, Sally sniffed along behind Jeanette, the chicks spreading out, equidistant from one another, forming a perimeter.
“Here,” Jeanette said.
Elizabeth found her pointing at what could be a footprint.
“This has to be them,” Jeanette declared.
“I suppose so,” Elizabeth said, knowing something of the contortions time and space had been put through since the original Time Quilt.
Looking at the footprint from all angles, they decided on the direction it was going and started the same way. The chicks skipped about happily, sniffing, making their weird awking noises, turning their heads with quick jerks at every real and imagined movement and sound. Dense foliage made following the trail difficult, since the trail was not a path, only torn leaves, broken branches, and faint impressions in the soil. They stopped frequently, circling, making sure they were going the right direction. Elizabeth led with Jeanette right behind. Sally limped along at Jeanette’s heels, and the chicks fell into a line behind Sally. The chicks stayed close, and when the vegetation was particularly dense, the chicks tightened up, nose to tail.
Finding occasional footprints, mashed leaves, and broken leaf stems, they moved parallel to the hill they had tumbled down.
“Where do you think they were going?” Jeanette asked.
“No idea,” Elizabeth said. “Knowing Nick, he was probably chasing some prehistoric butterfly. What about Carson?”
“If he stayed here voluntarily, a lot of money changed hands.”
They paused for water, both sweating through their long-sleeved shirts. Jeanette wore shorts, but Elizabeth had long pants with zip-off legs. While it was hot, Elizabeth found she had a lot of energy, her breathing shallow and under control. When they stopped to drink and check Sally and Do, Elizabeth zipped off the legs of her pants and stowed them in her pack.
“Nice legs,” Jeanette said, watching Elizabeth pull off the bottom half of her pants’ legs.
“Used to be,” Elizabeth said. “A bit too much cellulite now.”
“No, they’re still nice,” Jeanette said seriously.
Elizabeth smiled, enjoying the compliment.
“I hope my legs look that good when I’m your age,” Jeanette said.
“Let’s go,” Elizabeth said, losing the good feeling.
Each woman carried a rifle, the pistol in Jeanette’s pack. At first Elizabeth carried the weapon at the ready, but soon put it across her shoulders, hooking her wrists on the weapon to rest her arms. Jeanette carried the rifle over her shoulder by the strap, frequently shifting it from side to side.
After a long hike, they drank more and Jeanette pulled the tail of her shirt out of her pants, unbuttoned the bottom, and then hiked her shirt up and tied it just below her bust. Just as hot, Elizabeth wanted to do the same but hesitated. Jeanette was a beautiful young woman with no body fat. Her belly was flat, her waist tiny, and her breasts large. Elizabeth felt like she was hiking with Jungle Barbie. Reluctantly, Elizabeth did the same to her shirt, and now they were walking with bare midriffs.
“This isn’t good,” Jeanette said after a time, squatting.
Elizabeth knelt next to her and instantly eight curious animals surrounded them. Do leaned against Elizabeth as he sniffed the ground in front of Jeanette. Elizabeth gave an involuntary shudder, Do briefly looking at her, then going back to his sniffing. While the velociraptors had trampled much of the footprints, Elizabeth could see the large three-toed track of a large predator.
“T. rex?” Jeanette asked.
“Maybe,” Elizabeth said. “Or something just as nasty.”
“Poor Carson,” Jeanette said.
“There’s no blood,” Elizabeth pointed out.
Looking hopeful, Jeanette stood, searching around, and then began following the trail again. Elizabeth and Sally fell in behind, but the velociraptors stayed, sniffing the predator tracks. Then Jeanette sang, “Do, Re, Me, Fa, So, La, Ti,” and the velociraptors came running, lining up and following like ducklings do the mama duck.
The trail was easy to follow now, since it was made by a dinosaur ten times the size of a human. They watched for branches where the humans had split off, but they found none for a long distance, and then the trail became confused. They circled, the chicks immediately sniffing the tracks of the predator, suddenly getting excited and awking loudly. Jeanette and Elizabeth found the chicks huddled in a circle around a few drops of dried blood.
“Oh no,” Jeanette said.
“Keep looking,” Elizabeth said. “That doesn’t tell the whole story.”
They found a diverging trail that was too small for the dinosaur and had renewed hope. They followed this trail now, thankful for every step where they did not find more blood. As they walked, they realized the trail changed at some point. Now there were cut branches lining the trail where before branches had been only broken or bent. Hesitating, they discussed whether they were following the right trail. Deciding to follow the trail until there was evidence they were on the wrong track, they moved on. It was wider now with a lot of cut branches, and they moved faster, eating as they walked, sipping from their bottles without slowing down. Eventually they came to a clearing, where they paused. The trail led into a valley devoid of trees. Leaving the protection of the trees unnerved them, and they stood, resting, thinking.
“I say we go,” Jeanette said after a time.
Elizabeth liked Jeanette, although they were very different. Jeanette exploited her body and looks, while Elizabeth tried to professionalize hers, refusing to be sexualized. Elizabeth could not know what forces had led Jeanette down her path, but she was an intelligent, courageous woman, and Elizabeth was beginning to think of her as a friend.
“We didn’t come this far to give up now,” Elizabeth said.
They plunged into the meadow, with the chicks trailing, heads down, nearly touching the tail of the chick ahead of them. The trail led directly toward a mound in the middle of the valley, Elizabeth thinking that they should climb it and look around. Then Elizabeth nearly crashed into Jeanette, who had stopped suddenly.
“I think we came to the wrong place,” Jeanette said softly.
Elizabeth stepped up beside her. Coming across the meadow were six figures, but they were not human. Wearing loincloths and leggings, the six carried spears and packs that were secured with leather straps that crisscrossed their chests. They were hairless, with copper-colored skin. The nose and chin merged together into a single facial feature. The eyes were huge, at least double the size of a human’s. Their feet were wrapped in leather strips, each of three toes wrapped
separately, large toe claws exposed. The hands were three-fingered, with short, curled claws.
The figures came on aggressively, shoulder to shoulder. Jeanette and Elizabeth readied their weapons, Elizabeth working a shell into the chamber, Jeanette cocking the semiautomatic rifle. Now the figures slowed, as if they had seen rifles before. Still they came on.
“Do, Re, Me, Fa, So, La, Ti,” Jeanette sang.
The velociraptors came from behind the women, fanning out, heads held high, studying the approaching creatures. Noses in the air, the velociraptors sniffed, then awked loudly and dropped into attack positions. The figures stopped, bringing their spears down, holding them with two hands and hunching. The creatures exchanged sounds that resembled Chinese, with a wide range of pitch. The exchange was animated, maybe even heated. The conversation ended, and one of the creatures on the left end separated, taking a curved path as if to flank the women.
“Do! Me!” Jeanette said sharply, the two velociraptors separating, stalking the creature.
The creature stopped, and moved slowly back to its companions. The velociraptors tracked him every step of the way, bodies low, eyes fixed on their target.
“Good Do!” Jeanette said. “Good Me.”
The creatures exchanged more unintelligible speech, and then slowly backed up, eyes on the velociraptors. Sally barked for good measure, although her tail was wagging.
“Good chicks,” Jeanette said.
“Good chicks,” Elizabeth echoed. “Very good chicks.”
26
Preacher Man
Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation. Four elements constitute it: economic provision, political organization, moral traditions and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. It begins where chaos and insecurity end. For when fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and man passes by natural impulse towards the understanding and embellishment of life.
—Will Durant
Sixty-five Million Years Ago
Unknown Place
The signs of ruined civilization were everywhere now. Crushed rusted cars poking from green clumps, the broken stump of a light pole, chunks of concrete and asphalt, broken glass, and neatly spaced mounds of rubble that had once been city blocks. Mother Nature had won this round, what had been a thriving city now unrecognizable.
“The church isn’t too far,” Jacob said. “Reverend’s father was the pastor. The way Reverend tells the story, he was a teenager when God punished the world. When the reverend and a couple of his friends found out that Portland was taken away, they went looking for it because that’s where their homes were. They didn’t know the land was full of dinosaurs when they started, and they almost got themselves eaten. But they persisted and finally Reverend found Portland. He said right after God’s punishment of the world, Portland was like a shimmering mirage. Reverend said that the city kind of came and went like it was here but then wasn’t really here.”
Nick thought about the moon dinosaur, trapped in some kind of inter-time. Portland might have experienced a transient version of what happened on the moon.
“Reverend left his friends to try and get to his home in Portland. Reverend says Portland was like a vision from God and he followed it. Even though the city was under God’s punishment, God was calling to Reverend to go with the sinners, and preach repentance. When Reverend found his way to his vision, he could see people in the city begging for his help, but no matter what he did, he could not get inside. Then he learned the lesson God was teaching him. It was not by the reverend’s power that he would get into the city, it was only through God that he could enter. Once Reverend realized that, and prayed to God to forgive him for his self-centeredness, there was a bright flash and he was in Portland.”
Nick knew the “flash” was likely the detonation of dozens of nuclear warheads ordered by President McIntyre. Acting with incomplete understanding, President McIntyre rashly ordered a nuclear strike on the Portland Time Quilt, believing it would reverse the quilting and bring back the missing cities, including a portion of Atlanta, where the First Lady had disappeared. Instead, the nuclear detonations froze the displaced time segments in place. The First Lady and millions of people around the world were never recovered. What Nick did not know until now was that Portland had survived that blast. There had been no fusion explosions in modern Oregon where Portland had been, and Portland made it into the past untouched, so the detonations either took place in another time line, or in inter-time, or quasi-time as some of the scientists on the PresNet called it.
“The reverend found his father, but his father was killed a short time later in a food riot. The church was running a feeding program, and a mob ransacked it. It got real bad for a while. It seems people get uncivilized real fast when times get tough. I was single back then and tried to get to my mom and dad, but they lived in Salem and there wasn’t any Salem any longer, just a dinosaur-infested forest. They turned the Rose Garden—Portland’s basketball arena—into a public shelter, and I lived there for a while but there were too many people and not enough food. I finally holed up with some friends in a basement on the north end of the city. I did some things to survive I’m not too proud of, but I never killed anyone. Things got bad, really bad.”
Nick let Jacob collect his thoughts. Everyone was walking close to Jacob, listening. Even Torino seemed interested, keeping close. Only Crazy Kramer was in a world of his own, walking out front, mumbling, slashing randomly with his machete.
“When we first jumped here, a lot of the buildings collapsed and many of the ones still standing just weren’t safe to live in. Electricity and water were gone. No phones, light, television, cell phones, or Internet. There was no way to find out what had happened to the rest of the world. Only Reverend claimed to know the truth, and as he told it, Portland was selected for God’s punishment.
“There was mass hysteria and a lot of suicides. It was so bad for a while that you couldn’t walk close to a tall building because someone might land on you. Eventually people banded together in groups to help each other survive. That helped some, but then groups started fighting other groups. I once saw a fight over canned food found in a basement. Fifty men and women went at it with bats, pipes and knives. It was the most horrible thing I’d seen. I’ve seen worse since. One side finally won, and they chased down the losers and beat them to death. That wasn’t the only time that happened, either.”
Jacob stopped, looking around, trying to make sense out of the fern-covered rubble.
“Crazy, that way!” he shouted, pointing.
Crazy Kramer had ranged ahead, and now came back a hundred yards, leading between a thick stand of modern-looking firs and a giant pile of bricks with a cycad growing out of the middle.
“There were five of us living together then in the basement of an old house. We kept the location secret and went out only at night, foraging through the houses in the neighborhood, looking for food. Even five years after it happened, you could still find canned and dried food if you looked hard enough. After eight years, if you could find it, it wasn’t any good.
“We were eating dogs, cats, rabbits, and rats when I first heard the reverend walking through the streets preaching. He told us that what happened was God’s punishment. It was the Tower of Babel all over again. My friends and I pretty much ignored him until the big fire burned us out. We waded into the river and survived by floating in the shallows. The heat was so bad, I had to keep dunking my head to keep from frying my brains. Even then I still got first-degree burns on my face. The fire jumped the river and pretty much destroyed anything you could live in except the reverend’s father’s church. That was another sign to the reverend. By then, the only place you could get food was from one of the big organized groups, and one religious nut or another ran all of them.”
Jacob paused, looking at the newcomers.
“I’m not offending anyone, am I?” Jacob asked, clearly worried.
“We’re not offended,” Nick assured him.
Relieved, Jacob continued his history. “The world was so topsy-turvy that it made even the craziest religion seem rational. Since I had heard the reverend preaching from our basement, I picked the devil I knew and joined up. I met my wife there, and the reverend let us marry. If it wasn’t for Leah and the girls, I’d find another basement and go it alone.”
“Take cover,” Crazy Kramer said in what passed for a hushed tone.
Everyone hid, Conyers leading Torino behind a lush mound, helping Gah off the horse. Nick peeked out to see two figures hurrying toward them, down the same path they had been walking. The man and a woman moved confidently but quickly.
“Betty! Lincoln!” Jacob called, stepping out and waving at them.
Startled, the two stopped, stared, and then ran to Jacob, taking turns hugging him.
Talking all at once, they greeted one another, praised God for their deliverance, and then started hugging and praising all over again when Crazy Kramer wandered up. The happy reunion ended abruptly when Nick and the others stepped out of hiding and Lincoln and Betty saw strangers for the first time in eight years.
“Betty and Lincoln Brown, meet Dr. Nick Paulson,” Jacob said.
“Oh, praise God,” Betty said, coming straight for Nick, arms wide. Then Conyers led Torino out of hiding, and Betty changed directions, forgetting about Nick’s hug, and walked straight to the horse, wrapping her arms around Torino’s neck.
“It’s a roan,” Betty said. “A Thoroughbred?”
“Yes. He had a short career on the track.”
“God bless you,” Betty said, still hugging Torino.
Lincoln finally pried her off Torino, and there were introductions all around. Frustrated, Carson took the lead, naming everyone in the group to speed things up.
Dinosaur Thunder Page 17
