by Lou Cadle
A hundred yards off, she saw the silhouette of M.J. standing and looking out over the grassland. Light was reaching the ground now, and she could see that’s what it was, a savannah or prairie. She walked over to him. “What do you see?” she asked him.
“A watercourse, probably. See those trees over there? They’re in a line, so they’re probably along a stream.”
“Could be underground water.”
“We can still access it, I imagine. Just dig into the soil and let it seep up. Filter it with shirts.”
“I have a bandana.”
“Even better.”
“What do you see?”
“Not the Badlands, that’s for sure. I see lots of grass, a few bushes. The trees are mostly deciduous, but I can’t be sure from here what they are. There’s a stand of trees way over to the left there that are pretty tall. I assume they’re pines.”
“Pine nuts maybe. For food.”
“Could be.”
“What do we do next? Break up and try different directions, do you think?”
“Stick together,” he said. “Were it twelve adults, yeah, I’d send us out in east, west, north, south, have us walk until noon, come back, report.”
“Do you have any food?”
“A packet of Vitalyte.” It was a powdered drink mix with electrolytes. Search and rescue teams often carried it.
“I have a pemmican bar, I think.” She always kept a spare in her pack, just in case she got stuck someplace longer than planned. It was over 400 calories, almost a meal. One meal. For one person, not for twelve.
The sky continued to get lighter. On the horizon, she saw movement. “What’s that?” She pointed.
He peered into the distance. “Animals. Sheep, maybe. Grazing.”
“Then we should follow them. They must have a home.”
“They might be making for the water themselves. But yeah, let’s get going now. No idea how hot it will be later. It’s not that cold now.”
She went and told O’Brien the plan. It took several minutes to organize them, but finally all the kids were on their feet, boots tied, ready to walk. She noticed Dixie had on a windbreaker, probably from that kid Garreth. She still had some mascara smudges under her eyes. O’Brien assigned them buddies and told them to always know where their buddy was. “Keep the adults close, but just in case there’s an emergency, never leave your buddy.”
They followed M.J., who was already walking toward the trees. The grass was long and swept at her pant legs, leaving little seeds. She tried to brush them off, but the seeds were sticky, and when she glanced at all the grass ahead of them, she gave up on the effort.
From some of the kids, there were complaints about hunger and thirst. Water had been shared, and she gave up most of hers to the cause, holding aside a couple of inches if she needed to rinse a wound again. A few of the kids had some last bit of food, and that was carefully divided too. But it wasn’t enough. Luckily they had eaten lunch just before this—thing, whatever it was—had happened.
For about an hour they moved toward the watercourse. M.J. had been hiking his normal pace, so he was well ahead of the group. Ted came soon after him. They were spread out in a long line, and O’Brien was back with the stragglers, trying to speed them up. Hannah took a glance back to make sure no one was in any sort of distress, and then she lengthened her strides to catch up to Ted. Ahead, M.J. had stopped. He was staring at the sheep herd.
Ted and Hannah caught up to him a few minutes later. “Thanks for waiting.”
“Uhhh,” he said vaguely.
“M.J.?” she said.
“I.” He seemed to come to, and looked at her. “Yeah?”
“You see something?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, yes or no? What do you see?”
“That,” he said, pointing ahead to the herd. “Those aren’t sheep.”
“What are they then? Goats?” She shaded her eyes and looked.
“They’re oreodonts. They’ve been extinct for four million years.”
Chapter 9
“C’mon, M.J. This is a serious situation,” she said sternly.
He fumbled in his belt and took out a silver flask and took a pull from it.
“Is that booze?”
“Can I have some?” Ted asked.
“You may not,” Hannah said. “M.J., really. Tell me what’s going on.”
“I have to see some other animals, but I’m telling you, we’re not in today. We’re in before. Way before.” He took another drink.
“Stop drinking. I need you sober.” She narrowed her eyes. “Have you been drinking all morning?”
“First one of the day—or first three,” he said, taking a third pull and then capping his flask.
“M.J.!” She felt like slapping him. “For real. What are those animals?” She glanced over at them. They did seem kind of funny-shaped for sheep.
“Oreodonts. Mountain-molared ruminants. Cud-chewing artiodactyls. With little fangs, some of them.”
“M.J.,” she said in exasperation. “Be serious.”
“I am serious. Serious as death. Those there? Those are extinct grazing animals.” He was looking toward the watercourse. “And that tall animal there?”
She saw it, moseying alone toward the line of trees.
“That’s a Poebrotherium. A camel. Which narrows it down some. Thirty million years ago to thirty-eight million.”
“You’re saying we came back in time.”
“I suppose that’s what I’m saying. Because I can imagine a friend of mine dressing a few sheep up in oreodont clothes as a joke, but there must be a thousand in that herd. Look, it extends all the way over to that rise way over there.”
Ted said, “Do they bite?”
“The oreodonts, only grass. The camel? We don’t know, because only a few teeth have been found. Not a meat-eater, I suspect. Leaves or grass. But now…” And his eyes lit up. “We can know. All I have to do is follow it, and see what it eats!” He grinned at Hannah.
“This is not a field trip, M.J. And if what you’re saying is true—and it certainly can’t be—it’s a disaster, not an opportunity for research!”
He kept grinning at her.
She realized that she was going to have to be the adult here until he came down off his high. “M.J. What eats oreodonts and camels?”
His grin faded. “Right. Oh, boy. Right.”
Ted looked from one to the other, with a puzzled frown. “What does eat oreodonts and camels?”
“Oh, you know,” said M.J. “Entelodonts, Hyaenodons, dog packs, nimravids. Bear dogs.”
“What’s a bear dog? What’s an entio-whatever?”
“Entelodont,” said M.J. “‘-Dont’ always means ‘tooth.’ Oreodont—mountain tooth. Entelodont—complete or perfect tooth. Entelodonts are sometimes called....” He gave a sickly smile.
“What?” said Ted.
“Hell pigs.”
“Like giant pigs that hunt camels?”
“They’re not pigs, actually. They’re more like hippos or whales. But one thing we do know about them is yeah, they loved to eat camel.”
“Land whales that eat camels,” Ted said. “Are you shitting me?”
“Well, no,” said M.J., clearly puzzled. “Why would I sh— deceive you?”
“Okay, okay, let’s think, here,” said Hannah. “This can’t be right.”
“There was the thing—the doorway,” Ted reminded her.
Another two kids had come up by then. Laina and Jodi. They were the two heaviest of the girls, but it hadn’t slowed them down on the hike over the flat plain.
Ted looked back at them and said, “It was a time portal. The thing we went through.”
“Ha-ha,” said Jodi dryly.
“Ask him.” He pointed to M.J.
M.J. shrugged. “It seems like a real possibility.”
Hannah wanted to yell, or laugh, or sit on the ground and cover her head and say, “No, no, no, no.” But she couldn�
��t. Not with these minors depending on her. She had to be levelheaded. And practical. Time travel, new planet, parallel dimension, or whatever, they had to have the basics for survival. “Is it safe to go to the water?”
“Sure, it looks safe,” M.J. said.
“Because we need to drink. I’m thirsty. I bet everyone else is too.”
“I’m not sure how good the water will be. There might be parasites. Animal waste seeping into it.”
“It’s not killing the animals,” Laina pointed out. Jodi had run back to spread the news. Hannah could hear shouts, laughter, raised voices. Then they were all surrounding M.J., asking questions.
Bob O’Brien walked up last. He was about to say something, but the words died in his throat as he looked over at the animals. “Is that a camel?” he said.
“Yeah. Look at the subtle stripes down its legs,” said M.J. “Must be camouflage in the grass.”
“Camels?” said O’Brien. “Then it’s true?”
“Don’t camels have humps?” asked Rex.
M.J. said, “A recent development, probably in response to an ice age.”
O’Brien said, “This is impossible.”
“You can get used to the idea,” said Hannah. Because there they were, two species of animals no human eyes had ever seen before.
She let the kids pepper M.J. with questions and talk excitedly among themselves for another five minutes before she said, “Look, whatever has happened, we need water to survive the day. So can we keep hiking over to it?”
A few seconds later, Jodi said, “Eww, I think I just stepped in animal poop.”
“Oreodont doo,” said M.J., happily. “Only seen it as fossils. This is the first I’ve seen it fresh.”
Hannah snapped, “It’s the first anyone has seen of it. Ever.” She was exasperated with his happiness. Didn’t he know what a terrible—impossible—situation they were in? Not a gun among them, of course. Their only weapons were dental picks and rock hammers. They had no food, no way to preserve food, and gathering berries and tubers to eat—if there were any in this landscape—was risking death, because none of it would be familiar.
O’Brien said, “Hominids are still far in the future. Thirty million years away.” His voice was still faint, and she glanced back at him to make sure he wasn’t on the verge of a heart attack. The man was pushing sixty. In good physical shape, but still, she would keep an eye on him.
Half of the kids turned to him. “So there’s nobody but us here?”
“How do we get back?”
“Yeah, how do we get back?” others echoed.
Hannah and O’Brien exchanged glances. “We’ll figure that out later,” she said. “For now, we need water. One thing at a time, okay?” M.J. and Ted were already walking away. She let everyone else get ahead of her and turned around and walked backward for thirty seconds, memorizing the landscape. She could still see the dark splotch that was the cave’s entrance. If they were to get back home, it had to be the same way they got here. As soon as they’d drunk their fill, and explored the land a little, she wanted to go back there and check. If there was a shimmering curtain of light in the cave, maybe all they needed to do was step through it again, and they’d be back home.
She shook her head at the craziness of it all. Time travel. They’d walked through a time portal. She didn’t believe it. It was nonsensical. But her disbelief didn’t change a thing. Here she was, and there, ahead, were extinct animals, alive, grazing, and bending their necks to drink from a stream.
As they walked, M.J. went into lecture mode again, talking about the history of camels, the land bridges between modern-day (or should she say future day?) continents. It was keeping the kids from panicking.
For now.
Hannah pinched her arm as she walked. Ouch. No, that didn’t wake her up.
As they drew near to the oreodont herd, she expected them to scatter in a panic. To her amazement, they didn’t. They simply glanced at the group of humans and calmly walked away. They wanted to keep a distance, obviously, but it wasn’t the startled reaction of deer.
It was the reaction of animals who had never seen this other animal before. They didn’t know humans with rifles. They hadn’t learned any hard lessons about man being the most dangerous of animals. They sniffed, thought, “Hmm, something new; better keep them a leap away,” and went about their business.
A rifle with a thousand-yard capacity would have shocked them, she realized, overturned their whole worldview. In this world, nothing used tools. They’d know the fast runners among their predators and stay farther away from them. These two-legged things? Heck, how fast could they run anyway with only two legs?
Good question. How fast could she run? In a sprint, a hundred yards in twelve seconds, maybe, in these boots. Call it fourteen seconds. How fast could the oreodonts run? Could she catch one for dinner? Somehow, she thought not.
First order of business: water. Second? See if we can go back the way we came. Third order of business: set one team to make shelter, another team to get working on a fire, and another to gather rocks for defensive weapons.
There were hungry carnivores out there. Without a good defense, they’d be lucky to survive another night.
Chapter 10
The camel kept away from them too, even though it was on the other side of the water.
As they approached the bank, the kids began to rush down to the river.
“Wait,” called Hannah. “We don’t know if it’s safe to drink.”
“It looks okay,” said Dixie. “And I’m thirsty.”
“We should boil it first.” She wished she had her good water filter, but it was with her camping gear at home. That thing could turn sewage into drinkable water.
“Boil it in what?” asked Ted. “We don’t have a pan.”
“Good point,” she told him. She realized she had pegged him as “the jock” and therefore not as bright as some of the others, but he obviously was bright. And this practical intelligence was a good sign. She tried to think of a way to make the water safer to drink, but could not. “We need to go upstream of here, upstream of where the animals have been.” Closer to the source of a stream was always safer.
“This way, then,” said Claire, and she led the group upstream.
“I’m thirsty now,” said Dixie.
“We all are,” said O’Brien. “But Hannah is right. Upstream.”
Hannah set them a task to keep their minds off their thirst. “Look for animal dung. When you aren’t seeing any, that’s when it’s safer to drink.” She still worried she’d see an epidemic of diarrhea tomorrow anyway. But if they were back home tomorrow, there were drugs for that.
M.J. waited for her and let the others get ahead. “You’re pretty good at plants?”
“Pretty good.” She had put together a database for native plants at another of her jobs and had learned a good deal in the process.
“Is that one a nut tree?” He pointed ahead.
She reached the tree and pulled down a branch. She glanced at the bark on the trunk, the leaves, the green fruit. “Walnut, I think.” It was something of a comfort to see a tree that looked like one she knew.
“I thought so too. And there were some hackberries back a few hundred yards.”
“It’s June,” she said.
“What?”
“The fruit here. It’s June. The walnuts aren’t nuts yet, and the hackberries are green.”
“So whatever year it is, it’s the same time of year.”
“Or if we’re in the Southern Hemisphere, I suppose it’s December.”
Bob O’Brien had backtracked to them. “We’re in the Northern.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. The shadows tell us that.”
Of course. “So do you think we’re still where we were? Latitude and longitude?” she said.
“Probably.”
She had an urge to reach for the GPS again to check, then shook her head at herself. Satellites were invent
ions thirty million years off. “Anyway, the trees are good as a food source, but not for a few months. We need to keep our eye out for edible plants. Like cattails.”
O’Brien said, “No way of knowing if they were edible back then. Back now, rather.”
“I know. But they’re the ones to try first.” She sighed. “I guess we’re really here, aren’t we? In the past.”
“Yeah,” said M.J. “But think of the opportunity.”
“Think of the danger,” she said.
“Think of the kids,” said O’Brien.
“I am,” she said. “We need to catch up with them.”
The three of them hurried to catch up to the last of the group, Zach. He was stopping to pick a piece of grass, looking at it, then throwing it down and moving on.
O’Brien said to him, “What’re you up to?”
“Trying to figure out what’s different about this grass. I can’t see a thing different. It just looks like grass to me.”
M.J. said, “Lots of plants and animals haven’t changed much at all. They evolved into a successful form, and some of them stuck with it. At least until the world got cold for the first time. That hasn’t happened yet.”
Zach fell in with them, hiking quickly to catch up to the main part of the group. “When did it happen? It was warm enough last night to sleep without a blanket.”
“Well, we figure it’s June,” M.J. said. “But it was darned hot until the end of the Eocene. There’s a great exhibit back at the museum.”
Ted was furthest ahead. He yelled back, “I haven’t seen any animal droppings for a while.”
She called out, “Keep going, then. Another five hundred feet.” The ground was rising and the watercourse narrowing. It was flowing faster here. Probably coming from a natural spring somewhere ahead. They should find that, and if they couldn’t find a two-way door to the future, set up camp near the spring.