by Dan Abnett
She looked at Hemple and held out her arms. He pulled out a combat knife and sliced her cuffs away. Helen rubbed her wrists, and then diligently picked up the cut strips of plastic and put them in her pocket to take with her.
“Which way?” he asked.
Helen pointed.
“About three kilometres in that direction,” she said.
The landscape was lunar. Dunes of grey, volcanic sand filled the spaces between dry crags and long run-offs of loose scree. Gnarled, dead trees, like pieces of driftwood, clawed up out of the barren soil. In the distance, through a smear of heat-haze, Jenny could see glowering mountains. One of them was an active volcano, flaring sooty smoke up in a great, black stain against the blue.
They set off at a good march, raising thin grey dust from their boots. Jenny quickly felt the promised burn of sunlight on her skin, and the raw, cold air began to make her lungs ache. She was annoyed to find Helen Cutter so fit that she was in danger of leaving the alpha team boys behind.
“Not far now,” Helen announced, leading the way up a steep escarpment of flaking black rock. Mason and Redfern raised their eyebrows at each other as they followed her up.
She came to a standstill at the top of the scarp.
“Ah,” she said, and Jenny noted surprise in her voice.
“What?” she called. “What’s the matter?”
Hemple stuck out a hand and helped her to clamber up onto the top of the scarp. She saw the next anomaly immediately. It was about half a kilometre ahead of them in the middle of a huge field of grey volcanic scree.
But they were no longer alone. Between them and the anomaly, several hundred large sailback reptiles were basking like giant iguanas on the dusty dunes.
THIRTY-SEVEN
“Damn,” Helen said.
“They don’t look very friendly,” Jenny observed. She couldn’t believe how many of the creatures she was looking at. It was like a colony of sea lions, densely packed along a rocky beach.
“Dimetrodons,” Helen said. “Predators, and as such not the friendliest creatures in this particular era. It’s just our luck they’ve decided to take the sun here.”
The reptiles ranged in size, but generally they were as massive as large alligators and every bit as unfriendly. Their heads were heavy and deep, with blunt snouts and very powerful jaws. Many of the creatures were bask-ing with their jaws wide open to reveal the extent of their jagged dentition.
A huge, semi-circular fan of skin, supported by elongated spines, rose from the back of each reptile. The creatures were a mottled grey-green colour, but their sails were tipped with streaks of russet and yellow.
None of them was moving. The wind made some of the sails nod gently. Occasionally, one of the creatures would open or close its mouth, or rise up off its belly and take a few steps forward to a new position. Every single one of the hundreds of reptiles in view was facing in the same direction.
“They’re side-on to the sun,” Jenny noted.
“It’s fairly early in the day,” Helen responded, “and they’re coldblooded. They’ve come up here to bask and warm up. The sails are regulators. They increase their body area by about fifty percent.”
“They’re catching some rays,” Redfern said.
“Precisely,” Helen agreed.
“We need to get through that anomaly, don’t we?” Jenny said, gesturing.
Helen nodded. “Yes. It’s the only way.”
“Well, I don’t really see these chaps letting it happen without wanting to eat us,” Hemple said. “And they would eat us, wouldn’t they?”
“Oh yes,” Helen concured, “like a shot. But I think we’re okay. It’s early, as I said. They’re still in a state of torpor. They’re sluggish. If we don’t make too much of a fuss about it, I think we can pick our way over to the anomaly before they get too interested in us.”
“Oh, that sounds like a brilliant plan that’s bound to go wrong,” Jenny said.
“We don’t seem to have much of an option,” Hemple pointed out, though he sounded unsure. “Are you sure this will work?”
“I’ve done it before,” Helen said mildly. “But we have to do it now, while they’re still more interested in getting warm than their next meal. Right now, they won’t feel much like moving.”
“Why don’t you show us how it’s done?” Jenny suggested.
Without any hesitation, Helen turned and started to walk into the colony of sailbacks. One or two spun their heads slightly as she moved between them. Hemple nodded to Jenny and the members of alpha team, and started to follow her.
They threaded their way between the Dimetrodons, edging between open snouts and slack tails, their boots crunching on the loose grey scree. Sails nodded in the wind, and some of the creatures were making hissing sounds in their throats.
Jenny could smell them. It was a dry, dusty scent mixed with a bad smell of decay that emanated from their huge, wide-open, pink mouths. Some of the creatures had terrible scars on their snouts and necks, evidence of brawling and sparring, possibly as part of dominance contests or mating rituals. Jenny really didn’t like the look of all the teeth she could see. Pairs of eyes, like glittering honey marbles, seemed to follow her as she gingerly made her way through the host.
If they wake up now, she thought, and decide they’re hungry, we’re stuffed.
THIRTY-EIGHT
“This is your hole in time?” Bulov asked. There didn’t seem to be as much scorn in his voice any more.
“Yes,” Cutter replied.
“How do you...” Suvova began. “How do you go through?”
“You just walk,” Cutter said. “Look, Professor, I’ve never seen an anomaly this big before. It’s not a standard form at all. I’m learning as much as you are.”
“We go through,” Koshkin announced.
“Yes,” Cutter agreed. “I think that would be the best thing to do.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for dawn?” Bulov asked, tentatively. He glanced up at the dark and the rain. Sheet lightning continued to murmur and flash around the edges of the vast anomaly form.
“No need,” Cutter said.
“We go now,” Koshkin stated. “We’ll bring the tanks down here and —”
“No, no, no,” Cutter interjected, stepping forward. “You’re not taking armoured vehicles into the past.”
“I’ll do what I want,” Koshkin retorted.
“There are strong magnetics at work,” Cutter said. “Can’t you feel the tug on your buttons? On your weapon? You do not want to be bringing large metal objects anywhere near this thing, especially not ones with magazines full of high explosives and electromagnetically sensitive firing systems.”
Koshkin stared at Cutter for a moment, and then shrugged and nodded.
“Very well,” he said.
“And if you’re going to bring any of your men with you,” Cutter added, “you need to warn them. The experience could freak them out.”
Koshkin quickly decided to go through with the scientific group, and take just a couple of men for protection. The others would remain on the Tunguska side of the anomaly.
“Let’s move,” he instructed.
Pelted by the cold rain, the scientific group crunched forward across the impact site and into the curious half-light of the anomaly effect.
It was suddenly warmer. Abby could smell a strong scent of wildflowers.
They stepped through...
... and entered a balmy summer afternoon. The air was humid, and it was about fifteen degrees warmer.
A great rift valley lay ahead of them. Swathes of temperate woodland covered the landscape, and Abby could see the distant glitter of a river or a coastal inlet. There was an abundance of brightly coloured flowering plants, and the summer air was thick with pollenating insects.
In the far distance, rising out of the lush green woods, craggy hills became snow-shouldered mountains. The sky was banded with white clouds, and its dark blue was beginning to flush a darker pink.
Bulov opened and closed his mouth several times, and then sat down on a boulder, gazing into the sky. The two soldiers stopped in their tracks and stared in disbelief.
Koshkin looked at Cutter and Abby. He seemed almost angry.
“Please don’t ask me if this is some kind of trick,” Cutter said. “I’ve been honest with you from the word go. I told you this is what you could expect.”
“This is... the past?” Koshkin asked, but the anger seemed to go out of him.
“Yes,” Cutter said, taking it in for himself.
“The landscape and the flora,” Suvova said, “they are certainly contiguous with the fauna we’ve encountered. This is the Cretaceous, isn’t it?”
Cutter nodded.
“The endless summer,” he said. He shielded his eyes with his hand and looked towards the sunlit mountains. Far away, bird-shapes that were not birds were turning slowly and majestically on the thermals.
Abby wandered ahead a little way.
Cutter went to join her. In the dappled shade under nearby trees, an adult Ankylosaurus and its calf were grazing. By lamplight in the Siberian night, the Ankylosaurus that had lumbered through their camp had seemed to be black and white, but in the softness of the afternoon sun, they could see the creatures to be cream and yellow on their legs and underside, with dark, almost chocolate-brown colouration on their domed backs. Where the yellow and brown-black patches mingled, the hide looked like the skin of an overripe banana.
“Did you notice?” Abby asked quietly.
“Notice what?” Cutter answered.
She turned and looked back at the glimmering arch of the anomaly. Koshkin, Suvova, Bulov and the soldiers were milling about in front of it. The anomaly was far less visible in the strong sunlight than it had been in the inky Siberian night, but it was still plainly much larger than usual.
“Look at the ground,” she said.
Cutter did as she suggested. When they’d stepped through the anomaly, they’d all been too busy looking at the landscape around them and the bright, beautiful splendour of the world. Now he noticed something else: a broad area of earth around the anomaly was scorched and mangled, too, matching the impact area on the other side.
“The damage isn’t as considerable on this side,” she said, “but it’s definitely the same. Whatever hit Tunguska, hit here too. I mean, it hit exactly on top of the anomaly. How is that possible?”
Cutter looked up at the sky. It was going a deep rose colour as the sun began to set. Little blemishes of white cloud speckled the air.
“I don’t know. I suppose the question is: which sky did it fall out of? This one, or ours?”
Before Abby could respond to this ominous remark, a deep and utterly chilling roar echoed through the woodland. It seemed to come from quite a distance away, but that didn’t diminish its effect.
“What was that?” she asked.
“That was a good reason not to hang around here much longer,” Cutter replied quickly. They hurried back towards the others. Suvova and the rest had heard the roar, too.
“We’ll go back now, I think,” Cutter said.
Koshkin nodded.
But it wasn’t going to be as easy as that. The silvery shimmer of light had softly and silently faded away.
The anomaly was gone.
THIRTY-NINE
They almost made it.
They were so close to the anomaly, Jenny could feel its magnetic buzz. She could also feel the roasting burn of the sun on her shoulders, and knew that it was rapidly warming the swaying forest of sails.
They almost made it.
One of the basking sailbacks let out a long, pneumatic hiss, like a kettle coming to the boil, and lunged with the ambush speed of a salt-water crocodile. Its sudden motion and astonishing agility made Jenny shriek.
The cry uttered by Jenkins was equally involuntary, but it was triggered by excruciating pain, rather than surprise.
The massive jaws of the four metre-long Dimetrodon had closed around his right knee. He slammed down onto his back as if a rug had been snatched out from under his feet. Jenny heard bone crunch and grind.
“Go!” Hemple yelled. “Go for the anomaly! Go!”
Helen needed no encouragement. She began to sprint the last of the distance through the field of basking sailbacks. Mason and Garney went after her. Redfern grabbed Jenny’s arm and started to run with her towards the glittering hole.
“Get them through!” Hemple shouted. He and Murdoch had turned back for Jenkins. The man was still howling in agony.
Other sailbacks were starting to stir. A chorus of squealing hisses began.
“We can’t leave them!” Jenny exclaimed. Redfern was almost dragging her along.
“Please, miss,” he replied, “just move.”
Hemple ran to where the sailback was dragging Jenkins backwards across the scree. Jenkins was writhing and flailing, trying to reach his sidearm. He’d lost his submachine gun when the creature tackled him.
Another sailback swung its heavy head around to menace Hemple. It snapped at him. Hemple clicked off his weapon’s safe toggle and sprayed the sailback with bullets. It thrashed away from him violently, its body and tail jerking in fierce convulsions. Hemple had to jump back to avoid the whipping, spasming tail.
Murdoch had reached Jenkins. He pulled his MP53 up to his shoulder and fired two controlled bursts into the back and spine of the big Dimetrodon. The bullets did serious damage. Blood splashed, and the sail partly collapsed like a broken paper fan.
“Get it off me! Get it off!” Jenkins yelled.
The sailback that had seized him was dead, but its jaws had locked shut. Murdoch and Hemple fought to pry them off his leg.
There was a general motion all around them.
The sea of sails was stirring.
Redfern had got Jenny to the anomaly. Helen and the others had already gone through. Jenny looked back and saw the army of reptiles waking up.
Hemple and his men were never going to make it.
“We’ve got to do something!” she yelled at Redfern.
He looked at her blankly.
“Any ideas?” he asked.
Hemple and Murdoch had got Jenkins free. His knee was a terrible mess. They hauled him up between them and started to carry him towards the anomaly.
Sailbacks were closing in on them from all sides. Animated now, the reptiles were scrambling and slithering over and around one another to get at the men, crawling over backs and legs and tails. Reptilian heads butted. Jaws snapped and nipped at each other. One Dimetrodon locked its teeth around the front of a rival’s sail.
Looking over his shoulder, Hemple saw that the hungry carnivores had already begun to tear into the bodies of the two reptiles he and Murdoch had shot. But that wouldn’t distract them all. He struggled with his weapon, one-handed, and opened fire at some of the monsters lunging and flopping into their path.
He mortally wounded at least three more, and the sailback host fell on their twitching, shuddering bodies in an eager and bloody feeding frenzy.
Several large sailbacks went for Jenny. Redfern grabbed her, and shoved her through the anomaly. She heard gunfire. She fell as she went through, and sprawled on the ground on the other side. She was suddenly in a warmer, lusher place, where the sun was giving a softer heat. There was grass under her hands and knees.
She looked back at the anomaly she’d tumbled through, and saw Hemple and Murdoch dragging Jenkins out of its mirrorball flicker.
Then she realised it wasn’t the only anomaly she could see.
Redfern helped her to her feet. He seemed rather bashful.
“I’m sorry about shoving you, miss,” he said.
“It’s okay,” Jenny said. “That was rather close.”
Helen was standing nearby, with Mason and Garney. Hemple and Murdoch were kneeling on the ground
beside Jenkins.
The Dimetrodons didn’t seem to be inclined to follow them. Once their prey had disappeared, they may have simply lost interest.
“How is he?” Jenny asked. She kept getting glimpses of his ugly wound between Hemple and Murdoch as they worked, and it wasn’t something that she really wanted to look at.
“The bite force will have crushed his knee,” Helen said, matter-of-factly. “It may have punctured a major artery. It’s not a good wound.”
“We’re pretty experienced in battlefield trauma, ma’am,” Mason told her. Hemple was cutting away the leg of Jenkins’s fatigues, and Murdoch was unpacking sterile field dressing packs for swift application.
Helen shrugged.
“What?” Jenny asked her.
“The issue isn’t really the bite-force damage. That’s bad enough. That’ll hospitalise you. But a Dimetrodon’s mouth is full of microbes and bacteria. It’s pretty grim, actually.” She looked at Jenny intently. “It won’t be the wound that kills him, it will be the infection.”
“Nothing’s going to kill him,” Jenny growled.
Helen shrugged again and looked away.
They waited while Hemple and Murdoch got the wound cleaned and dressed. Hemple shot Jenkins with a high-dose painkiller from a disposable injector. It calmed his groans and yelps.
Jenny took stock of their surroundings. They were standing on a broad, grassy plain that swept away to the horizon in a gently undulating series of broad ridges. It was like a piece of American prairie, or Asiatic steppe, or even a wilder part of Salisbury Plain. The sky was blue, and busy with healthy white clouds. A trace of mumbling thunderstorms were chasing along the horizon.
Hundreds of anomalies glittered in the air around them. They were lined up across the rolling grasslands, almost evenly spaced, as if they had been propagated. Jenny felt as if she was standing in an orchard of the things.