by Sarah Dreher
Damn. She froze, holding her breath, expecting to hear the thundering, earth-shaking pounding of gigantic animal feet.
The jungle was silent. Except for the soft “plop” of molten lava, the drip of water.
To her left the trees seemed to clear a little. Stoner hesitated. She really was afraid to get lost in here. Getting lost in here could mean ending up a little puddle of subterranean oil for the Superpowers to fight over. But she had to find the way out. Of all the places they could have ended up, this was about the worst.
And where was Callie Rose? Had she somehow taken a different turn and entered a different world? Anything was possible. If they were separated now...
What if she did get lost? What if something happened to break the configuration, all five of them moving together? What if that meant they’d be stuck here forever?
Still, if she remembered rightly, there should be a way out just up ahead.
Remember rightly? She’d been on this ride exactly once. There was no way she’d be able to find the exit, the track the cars had ridden on. Besides, there might not be a track. Maybe not even a path.
Stoner took herself in hand. It had worked back in the Land. They had followed the right sequence of events and exhibits, and it had taken them… here.
“Here” not exactly being the vacation capitol of the modern world.
“Here” being the one, the only, the original Forest Primeval.
If they could make it through here, it would put them just a little bit closer to Spaceship Earth. Which was where, she knew now, they would find a way out of this. Because Spaceship Earth was where Callie Rose had called her from, and she was linked somehow to Callie Rose. No, not just “somehow.” They were linked through the Door, or Gateway or whatever it was. In Callie Rose’s case, she suspected the door was the Door through which she had to pass to move on.
But what about me? What does it want from me? What does it mean to me?
And why am I so afraid of it?
* * *
“Well, smart boy,” Millicent Tunes said as they stood in front of the door to the holding room. “Now what do we do?”
There was only one thing to do. Grab one of them as a hostage, and play “Let’s Make a Deal” with the fuzz.
One thing he knew for certain. He wasn’t going to let that phony-baloney Millicent Tunes decide which one. This time he was calling the shots, and if she didn’t like it he’d leave her behind to rot with the rest of them.
It was quiet in there. Too quiet. Quieter than quiet. It wasn’t that he expected them to be yelling and pounding on the door—they weren’t that stupid. But they should be talking, or rustling around or something.
They couldn’t have gotten out. He tried the door. It was still locked. Besides, the only way out of here went past the tunnel entrance, and they’d have seen them.
Maybe they’d heard them coming. Tunes’ high heels made enough noise to wake the dead. High heels down here. Good God, the woman was an asshole. Too bad he hadn’t realized it before, he wouldn’t be in this mess, would he? Yeah, yeah, spilt milk.
They might be dead. But there was plenty of air. And Tunes had only fired once. No way it could have gotten them all—unless you believed in “magic bullets” the way those Government turkeys said President Kennedy was killed. And the rest of the country swallowed it. Gobble, gobble.
“Any time you have your thoughts collected...” said Millicent Tunes, sarcasm with an overtone of scorn.
“Shut up!” he snapped. But it had decided him. He had to get rid of Tunes. Two down. What the hell? Grab a hostage, blow the rest of them away, and head for South America.
Which one did he want? He wished he’d gotten a better look at them all together. See who was dressed the best, who might be worth the most in a deal. From what he could recall, none of them stood out. Except the one he knew. That woman had class, he could tell it a mile off. Besides, she was fun.
He reached for the door knob.
* * *
Ed was just finishing up chewing out one of the young security guards he’d caught drinking on duty when the walkie went off.
“We found the entrance,” George said. “We’re going in.”
“Get out of my sight,” he snarled at the kid cowering in front of him. “Turn in your gear on the way out.”
“But...” The kid said.
Ed showed him the back of his head and pushed the ‘All Channels’ button on his walkie. “I want back-up,” he barked. “Mexico pavilion. All available personnel.”
He made a dash for his car.
* * *
There was a breeze creeping through the undergrowth. It rustled the fronds of the giant ferns, and made a whispering sound.
“Stooooo-ney! Stoooo-ney!”
She looked around. “Callie Rose?”
She turned to her left and saw her, perched on a gigantic root and grinning from ear to ear.
“I’m glad to see you,” Stoner said.
“Me, too.” Callie Rose looked out over the jungle. “Ain’t this place neat?”
“I’m not sure. Have you seen any animals?”
“Couple. They’re real shy, though.” She giggled. “They got little baby horses here, no bigger’n our old red tick hound.”
“Eohippus,” Stoner suggested.“How about the larger ones?”
“Yeah, some real monsters. Big and scaly, and one real ugly one with kind of a fan down his back. They don’t bother me if I don’t bother them. I don’t think they see real good.”
Stoner hoped that was true. Because, if the way out was the way she suspected, they were going to have to pass right under the noses of a brontosaurus family. Thrilling and funny when you were safely tucked into a motorized vehicle and they were clearly a family of Audio-Animatronics. But in this other world, where illusion and reality had traded places, those cute lizards could crush you just being careless.
“Lookit that,” Callie Rose shouted, and clapped her hands with pleasure.
A dragonfly as big as an eagle hovered just above the tops of the ferns. Its green body glowed like neon in the mist. Its fluttering wings sent droplets of mist flying through the air like driven rain.
“I never saw a thing so pretty in my life,” Callie Rose said, her voice hushed with awe.
After all they had been through, and all they still had to face, Callie Rose could freeze time right here and be enchanted with this moment. Stoner wondered if she’d even been able to do that, when she was younger. Had there been times, when she was a child, that she had been able to lose herself in a golden moment?
“You look all sad,” Callie Rose said.
Stoner smiled at the genuineness of her concern. “I was just thinking of my childhood,” she said. “I used to worry all the time.”
“Shoot, I never worried. Probably how come I had that baby and got myself killed.” She slipped down from the root.
Stoner held out a hand to steady her. “Do you have any idea how we get out of here? I’ve been through before, but only on the ride.”
“You mean that path through the trees?”
“Is there a path?”
Callie Rose nodded. “It’s kinda scary, though. Once I seen spooks on it.”
“Spooks?”
“Lots of ’em. Maybe a hundred or more. Sittin’ real still and movin’ along in great big church pews.” She laughed. “Sounds like I’m really crazy, don’t it?”
No, it didn’t. What Callie Rose had seen had been tourists on the Universe of Energy ride. Maybe the curtain between this world and the other was thinner in places. Maybe there were spots all over Walt Disney World— or even the entire planet—where that barrier was thin. Maybe it was so thin in places that you could pass back and forth if you knew how.
Maybe the Welsh shop in the Great Britain pavilion was one of those places.
Maybe Spaceship Earth was one of those places. Maybe that was why she felt they could get back to themselves if they could get back there.
“Sure,” the girl said.
“Is it awful, like that basement we came through?”
“Animals are kinda ugly. Other than that it’s okay.”
They started back to where she’d left the others. The mist was brightening, turning into a white glare. This must have been how it looked when the sun was high, back in prehistoric times. The cloud cover never lifting, water falling and evaporating and falling again. Everything dripping and glistening and running.
Deep in the jungle an animal roared, shaking the ground. Something shrieked overhead. The earth felt soft and unstable underfoot, as if there were pockets of quicksand everywhere.
“Look,” Callie Rose said, pointing to a large mound of brilliant green vegetation. “We got that back home. Call it Trembling Earth.”
“Why is that?” Stoner asked.
“I’ll show you.” The girl scampered over to the emerald hillock and stepped on it carefully. It quivered as if it were suspended in Jell-o. She bounced up and down on it. “C’mon, try it. It’s fun.”
“No, thanks,” Stoner said. “I’ve reached my limit of fun for the day.”
Callie Rose took one last bounce and trotted back to her side. “How come you’re always so serious?”
Stoner shrugged. “I guess I’m just like that. And the things that have been happening… well, they frighten me.”
“Yeah, like your friend dyin’ and all.”
“Things like that, yes.”
They walked along quietly. Callie Rose was thoughtful. “Bein’ dead can’t be so bad,” she said after a while. “I’m dead, an’ I don’t mind it much.”
“It’s being separated that bothers me, I guess.”
“Yeah, that’d be bad, bein’ apart from someone you love. Know what I miss the most? The way my Ma used to smell when she’d been baking. Kinda brown sugary and spicy.” She pulled a blade of grass and split it with a fingernail. “But it’d get stale real fast. What are we supposed to do with Forever?”
“I don’t know,” Stoner said. “I don’t even know what to do with Now.”
They had reached the edge of the jungle. Aunt Hermione and Marylou were waiting. They had put the bundle that was Gwen under a fern where it couldn’t be seen from above.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Marylou said, “but while you were gone we were attacked by monster birds.”
“I seen those things before,” Callie Rose said. “They got wings like tents.”
“You weren’t hurt, were you?” Stoner asked.
“Just frightened,” Aunt Hermione said. “They really were terrible. Pteranodons, I believe.”
Stoner hesitated. “Uh…Gwen?”
“No change.”
The news could have been worse. It could have been a lot better. “Listen,” she said, “Callie Rose believes she knows the way out of here. I think we should go as fast as we can. But we have to be quiet. There are animals in there.”
She picked up one side of the blanket. Marylou picked up the other side. Callie ran on ahead. They started down a path leading deeper into the jungle.
* * *
“Hey,” Frenchie said. He seemed reluctant to leave the pool of light under the street lamp. “You guys really think this is such a good idea? I mean, maybe we ought to wait for back-up.”
“There isn’t time,” George said. “It’s coming down now.”
“What if they have guns?”
“We’ll have to chance it.”
“Nope,” Tom put in. “No way. There’s nothing in my contract about guns. I don’t even have a permit.”
“If something happens to us, our insurance isn’t going to cover it,” Frenchie said.
George started to argue, then stopped. She wasn’t going to beg. She knew these guys only too well—or guys like them. They liked the glamour of working at WDW, and how it would look on their resumés. But work? Forget it. Especially if it involved danger of any kind. They’d finish their stints here and get a good starting job in some resort or hotel, and five years from now they’d be lucky if they could get hired as a night clerk at the Bide-a-Wee motel.
“Suit yourself,” she said, and turned away to help Stape haul up the cover to the tunnel.
* * *
There they were, big as life and bigger. The brontosaurus family. Grazing away on swamp leaves, as placid and gentle as sheep.
The trouble was, they were very, very large, with heads that seemed suspended in the tree tops, and bodies the size of… probably small houses, but in her current state of anxiety they looked to her like football stadiums. The sound of their chewing drowned all other noises. It was like a thousand cows, all ripping up grass at the same time.
Marylou leaned over to her. “This is very impressive,” she said in a low voice.
Stoner nodded. “I’m impressed.”
The air was warm and thick with moisture and the smell of rotting vegetation. If it hadn’t been for the odor, she might have begun to see things from Marylou’s point of view. There really was a feeling of unreality about it. It made her think of old, not-very-good movies about cave men. But the odor spoiled it. The odor was all too real. And unpleasant. And the closer they came to the brontos, the more the air was permeated with the essence of Dinosaur Manure.
“Isn’t it fascinating?” Aunt Hermione whispered, dropping back to talk with them. “I’d love to see what this fertilizer could do for container gardens.”
Stoner sensed a shifting in the animals’ attention. Their crunching and munching and grinding had slowed almost to a standstill. She glanced up. One of the adults was looking their way, head cocked to one side in a curious manner. She touched Aunt Hermione and signaled for them to stop.
Marylou looked up and gasped.
The bronto cocked its head farther to the side and eyeballed her.
Stoner had heard that dinosaurs had poor eyesight. Though how anyone could tell that millions of years after the fact was beyond her. But Callie Rose had thought so, too. If it was true, they’d do well to remain very still and hope to fade into the scenery. One thing for sure, they didn’t have much of a chance of outrunning them. They could go flat out, and the brontos would be on them in a single step.
“I don’t like this,” Marylou whispered.
“Welcome to the club,” Stoner whispered back.
“Are you sure this is a dream?”
“I’m sure it’s not a dream.”
Marylou shuddered. “I was coming around to that. I wish I hadn’t.” She gazed up into the brontosaurus’ eye. “We’re in deep doo-doo, aren’t we?”
“I think we are.”
The animal lowered its head toward them, still apparently curious. A hank of alga hung loosely in its mouth and dripped water and saliva onto their heads.
“This is really disgusting,” Marylou mumbled.
“Quiet!” Stoner whispered. “Don’t move.” The bronto pulled its neck back and tucked its chin, as if to try to get a better look from a distance. More water cascaded down onto them.
Its mate noticed that it had stopped eating, and craned its head forward to see what there was of interest to see. The two giants made low chuckling noises, as if discussing what they should do. Apparently, they decided they had been seeing things, and turned back to their browsing.
Stoner heaved a sigh of relief and picked up her side of the blanket.
Marylou was still staring up at the creatures, her part of the stretcher resting on the ground.
The unevenness of the blanket rolled Gwen onto her side. She groaned loudly.
“Oh, shit,” Stoner said as the brontosaurus’ heads shot up.
The animals didn’t wait to consider the situation this time. They came for them.
Marylou grabbed for the blanket. Stoner looked around wildly for somewhere to hide. She saw a cave up ahead. It would hold them, and the opening was too small for the brontos’ heads to fit through.
If they didn’t go on a rampage and tear it apart...
There was only one problem. The entrance to the cave was being watched over by a large, spine-backed lizard that resembled a hyperthyroid iguana. At best, the dimetrodon was merely basking in the pale sunlight. At worst, it was guarding a nest in the cave.
There really wasn’t much point in worrying about it. They weren’t going to make it, anyway. The brontos were on top of them, so close Stoner could smell the compost-y odor of their breath. The nearest creature opened its mouth. She saw its hard-edged teeth, like a double row of yellow tree stumps, flecked with wads of chewed grass.
“Get back, you dumb old lizard!” She heard Callie Rose shout.
Stoner looked around.
The girl was hurling rocks at the dinosaurs. There was no way she could hurt or frighten them, but she was distracting them.
This time Marylou was with her when she grabbed up the blanket and ran.
* * *
George motioned to Stape to close the cover of the tunnel entrance quietly. She could hear voices ahead, angry voices. A man and a woman arguing. Behind her and above, the wail of sirens in the far distance. A lot of long minutes were going to pass before Ed got here with the Cavalry. Meanwhile, she hoped the sirens weren’t going to give them away.
Carefully, she peered down the long hallway. Through the gray gloom she could see them, the man and the woman, standing in front of a door. The man drew a gun and reached for the door knob.
* * *
She couldn’t believe they’d made it. Across the path, between the trees, past the dimetrodon—which turned out to be sleeping, after all—and through the cave entrance. Brontosaurus apparently was a slow and lumbering sort of beast whose brain didn’t process with the speed of light. Kind of like Newfoundland Retrievers. You could almost see them think.
They also seemed to be afraid of the dimetrodon, which roused itself and stood and raised its spiny fan. It showed its teeth and hissed. Like cows, the brontos decided it would be more interesting and less energy-consuming to return to their grazing.
