by Rachel Ford
“Yeah, me too.”
The morning was already heating up when they left their shelter. They had to shield their eyes from the glare of the sun and squint as they surveyed the rock formations.
They were a series of large, interconnected outcroppings, some reaching as high as forty meters. Their faces were fairly smooth, without many apparent hand or footholds. None of them looked very promising, but Nancy settled on one of the taller stones. Alfred bit his tongue, squashing the urge to pour cold water on her plan with his fears that they’d never reach the top alive.
So, they climbed. It was slow going, and he was sore before long. Alfred kept himself thin and would, at a glance, have appeared reasonably fit. But the fact was, this was less a product of good habits like exercise and healthy eating than a combination of the dumb genetic luck that equipped him with a hardworking metabolism and a propensity to get so enwrapped in work he would forget meals.
He hadn’t been to the gym in – well, since his college days. He didn’t particularly like heights, so he’d never attempted the rock wall when he was there. And the extent of his upper body workouts these last fifteen years or so was shifting the occasional piece of office equipment or juggling a latte and an overstuffed briefcase.
The climb, then, proved arduous. Heaving himself to and fro was bad enough, but the lack of footholds he’d observed earlier only complicated matters. It meant hanging there by his fingertips and on his toes, every muscle tensed so he wouldn’t lose his balance, while Nancy tried to find a safe path up. It meant more than once retracing the painstakingly slow route they’d already found when they hit a roadblock, trying to locate an alternate means of ascendancy. His biceps and triceps began to shiver. His deltoids ached, and he felt quivering in the trapezius muscles along his back.
He wondered how long he could keep this up before his strength gave out, and he plunged to a grim death on the rocks below. “Hey Nancy,” he called.
“What’s up?” she said, grunting as she hoisted herself onto a little ledge. She reached down to offer him a hand as he neared the spot.
“I was thinking. If something happens to me-”
“Don’t think like that,” she said. “We’re going to figure this out.”
He managed a half-hearted, “Oh, I know.” Then, finding his footing on the ledge beside her, he resumed his point. “But, if something does happen to me, don’t let my body go to waste.”
She wrinkled her nose. “What?”
“I mean, cook me first. I shouldn’t have any pathogens or anything, but who knows what I might have picked up in the oasis. Or here.”
“Are you saying…cannibalism?”
He nodded. It was an ugly word, but this wasn’t the time to be sentimental. Meat was meat.
She physically recoiled. “That’s awful. Don’t say shit like that, Alfred. It’s not funny.”
“I’m not saying kill me for food, Nance.” He held her gaze. “And I’m not kidding. If I die, that’s one hundred and eighty pounds of fresh meat.” He frowned. “Well, less, actually, because you have to subtract the skeleton and inedible parts.” He shook his head to brush this aside; it wasn’t the point. “Anyway, it’s a lot of meat. It should hold you over until you find something better.”
Chapter Ten
Inexplicably, Alfred’s suggestion had only annoyed Nancy. When he’d pointed out that even his bones could be useful to her – early humanoids fashioned bones into weapons and tools – she’d grown further annoyed.
His efforts to extract a reason for her recalcitrance were met with resistance, too. “I’m not going to talk about it, period. I am not having this conversation.”
Still, he hoped that the idea, once planted, would take root. The more he ached, the worse his blistered feet and torn muscles felt, the more he sensed that he would be of little use to Nancy in life; he could only trust that in death he might achieve what he could not in life.
Like a good wine, his mood was complex – and just a little nutty. There was a hint of melancholy, with strong undertones of melodrama, and an aftertaste of guilt. Somewhere in the mix, his brain would sprinkle high notes of chivalrous intent fermented by self-imposed expectations that he’d decidedly failed to meet. The overall flavor profile was bleakness.
They’d reached another outcropping, this one large enough for them both to rest upon, when Nancy said, “Hey! What’s that?”
“What’s what?” He glanced up. He’d been too busy contemplating his life choices to take in their surroundings.
“I saw a flash. Of something.”
“A flash?”
“Yeah, like a reflection, or – I don’t know what.”
“Where?” His curiosity was sufficiently piqued to push himself onto his aching feet.
She joined him and pointed out a section of forest perhaps a mile out. There was a thin, threadlike break in the otherwise steady line of trees. He realized it was the same path they’d been following the day before, snaking back to their point of origin and heading…well, he didn’t know where.
“That’s the road, I think,” she said.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“Which means,” she was continuing, “there’s something out there. Or someone.”
The former seemed more likely to him than the latter. “I doubt there’s anyone else left out here, Nance,” he said quietly. “In our world, humans are the apex predator. Out here? We don’t have claws, or sharp teeth, or protective hides. We don’t have the heft or any other natural advantages the species that adapted for life here have. We’re not even big enough to be a significant food source. We’re the hors d'oeuvres on the Cretaceous menu.”
She blinked in the face of this speech, and he felt a little guilty for making it. Still, he didn’t think it was right to let her linger under false hopes. That just meant postponing the inevitable acceptance of their situation. “Well, thanks for that, Mr. Cheerful,” she said in a minute.
She was, he realized, being sarcastic. So he said he nothing.
“But that doesn’t change the fact that I saw something out there.”
He frowned. “That’s true.”
“And if it isn’t human, what the hell is it?”
His frown deepened. “Good question.”
They watched in silence for a few minutes, hoping the glint might reappear. It didn’t, though. “Well,” Nancy said, “I guess we should keep moving.”
He nodded reluctantly. Their current vantage allowed them to see in one direction only. They were high enough to overlook portions of the forest. It seemed to stretch for miles. But there were plains beyond, and more rock formations. They were largely obscured by the trees, though. At a higher altitude, they’d be able to see not only more of what lay in this direction, but also the rest of their surroundings.
Nancy turned back to the rockface, but froze suddenly. “Do you hear that?”
He threw a worried glance around, listening for the flapping of wings. The monster – that toothy pterosaur they’d seen the day before – had instantly popped into mind, and he assumed that’s what she heard.
But the day was silent, with the quiet whisper of a breeze the only sound he could detect. “Hear what?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. It sounded like – you’ll think this is crazy – but it sounded like an engine. You know, a vehicle engine.”
He did think it was crazy. He was more tactful in his answer than in his thoughts, though. “It’s just…pattern recognition, Nancy. Probably some kind of animal or something. And your brain wants it to be…”
She nodded. “I know. You’re right. It doesn’t make sense. But damn, it sounded like a truck, Alfred.”
He felt renewed guilt at that. She was clearly having a hard time accepting their fate. Jumping about in time was probably more than their evolved primate brains could really handle. Time, for the human species, had always been linear. It was understandable that she’d have trouble adjusting. “We should keep going,” he s
aid. “It’s getting awfully-”
He stopped suddenly, his observation about the temperature lost. “I hear it too!”
Nancy hadn’t been mistaken. She’d heard an engine, alright. In fact, she’d heard three of them. “My God,” Alfred was laughing almost hysterically. “We’re not the only humans here.”
A trio of vehicles had rolled into sight, headed toward the base of the rock formation upon which he and Nancy were currently perched.
“They must have seen us,” he was continuing. “They must have come looking for us.”
“How did they know we were here?” she frowned. “It’s been six years since anyone came through – according to the computer, anyway.”
He was too excited to consider the complexities of their situation, though. There were other people here, and that was enough. But these were people with armored vehicles – and that was more. It meant that they had a fighting chance. It meant that the apex predators of this world were going to meet the apex predators of his world – at their finest.
It meant he wouldn’t be an appetizer for the first hungry dinosaur who felt like a snack.
The vehicles, meanwhile, continued their approach. They were squat and armored, with strange, all-terrain wheels and a host of mechanical appendages bolted onto the side. He caught the glint of solar panels near the rear, too.
If a Mars rover and Humvee had a love child, this, he thought, is what it would look like. Not usually what he would have considered a pretty sight, but, in the moment, he felt he’d never seen anything quite as beautiful.
“Come on,” he said, “let’s go down to meet them.”
“Alfred, wait,” Nancy said. “Remember who these guys are.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, they’re Futureprise’s people. They have to be.”
He nodded. “Yes. I doubt anyone else has people here, in this specific time and place.”
“They’re the people we came to put behind bars, remember?”
His brow creased in thought. She had a point. Tax cheats were despicable life forms, and he’d devoted his professional life to introducing them to justice. But, on the other hand, this was the Cretaceous period. There was no tax code and no Internal Revenue Service. Heck, there were no other people. “I think we’ll have to overlook their tax fraud,” he decided. “In the interests of self-preservation.”
“Tax fraud? Alfred, I’m not talking about the tax fraud. Don’t you remember all the creatures in cages? The experiments? We don’t know what they were doing. We don’t know what they’re still doing.”
That was a better point, and he didn’t have any way to introduce the kind of happy moral ambiguities that would have let him ignore it as he’d done with the first objection. “Dammit,” he said. “You’re right.”
“I think we need to be careful.”
“Yes. But they’ve already spotted us. And we don’t have any other option. We’ve got almost no food or water, no weapons or tools, and no idea where we are.”
She considered this, then nodded. “You’re right.”
“So we meet them?”
She loosed a worried breath. “I don’t think we have a choice.”
Chapter Eleven
By time they reached the foot of the natural stone monument, the vehicles had arrived. They were parked in a half circle, all facing inward; all facing them. More ominously, no one had stepped out or called to them. The rovers just sat there, idling, their occupants hidden behind tinted windows.
He exchanged glances with Nancy. “Uh…should we say hello?”
“How?”
He didn’t feel like knocking on the glass, so he shrugged. “I don’t know. Yell?” She didn’t have a better suggestion, so he took it upon himself to test the approach. “Hello? Anyone there?”
“You don’t think they’re automated, do you? Like some kind of drone or something?” she wondered.
That was something he didn’t want to consider. It was one thing to be trapped millions of years in the past with a bunch of tax cheats. But spending the rest of his life on a planet inhabited by dinosaurs and robots? Death was probably preferable.
A hiss of hydraulics from the center vehicle drew his attention, though. Three men and a woman stepped out. They were moving quickly, in a coordinated fashion. They were, Alfred saw, all wearing body armor; and all armed.
He felt Nancy closer than she had been, and he wasn’t immediately sure if she had moved or if he had. It took half a second to realize they’d stepped toward one another in unison, as if driven by some kind of instinct.
It certainly hadn’t been rational thought, on his part at least. The sight of those hulking forms, of the tactical rifles they carried, seemed to turn his mind into jelly. His mind, and his knees; they were quivering with fear. His hands, meanwhile, had shot up over his head in surrender.
“Who are you?” Nancy called, and her voice trembled a little. “We’re not looking for trouble.”
The other two vehicles opened, and a single occupant emerged from each. Both were male, both attired and armed the same as the first four. A middle-aged man, one of the first group, stepped forward. “Identify yourselves.”
“My name is Nancy Abbot,” she said. “I’m with the Internal Revenue Service. Who are you?”
“Internal Revenue Service?” The man’s face scrunched in an expression of disbelief. He turned to Alfred. “And what about you?”
He felt a little silly with his hands over his head, so he lowered them and tried to project an air of gravity as he answered, “Alfred Favero. Senior Analyst with the IRS.”
Several of the soldiers exchanged glances. “IRS? I don’t believe it. Stranded here for six years, and tax collectors are the first people we see?”
“Excuse me,” Nancy said, “but who are you? And why are you pointing guns at us?”
The self-appointed spokesman of the group turned his attention back to her. “I’m Sergeant Radcliff, Miss Abbot. And they’re not pointed at you. They’re for our protection. And yours too.”
“That’s a relief,” Alfred said dryly. “Because it looks like we’re about to be carted off to a dark site.”
He wasn’t far from the truth. The soldiers were an escort, and not a particularly talkative one. They referred to their destination simply by the codename, “base.” Alfred and Nancy, they said, had to come with them, back to base. As to the whys, Radcliff wouldn’t say.
He and Nancy were packed into one of the vehicles, and Radcliff returned to the lead rover.
“What’s going on?” Nancy asked again as the doors closed. “Why all the secrecy?”
The broad-shouldered young man in the driver’s seat glanced back at them from the rearview mirror. “Sorry, ma’am. It’s, uh, standard protocol,” he answered.
“Protocol? Are you military? Or with Futureprise security?”
He seemed surprised by the question. “Futureprise.”
“Why does Futureprise need a base in the past?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not authorized to talk about it. Those are questions for the boss.”
They were underway now, and Alfred could see the terrain passing them by. Despite the rugged interior, the ride was unexpectedly smooth.
“The boss? You mean, David Garrity?”
The driver nodded.
“He’s here, then?”
Flushing, their loose-lipped chauffeur mumbled, “I can’t really say any more.”
She nodded, but in a minute spoke again. “He’s not going to, like, kill us or something, is he?”
Alfred was watching her, and she was watching the driver. She seemed satisfied by his expression, as he answered, “Kill you? God, no. Nothing like that. It’s just…they’ve got to be careful. But – David will tell you about that. But you’re not in danger.”
Her posture relaxed a little. “Well, I’m glad of that, then.”
The rover rolled over the rocky open ground, and now turned onto the path they
’d been following the day before. Their speed picked up, and they bounced now and again as they hit a bump.
Alfred didn’t particularly care. It wasn’t the most comfortable seating, but compared to the conditions he’d been living in lately? It was practically heaven-sent. So he sat back and turned his mind to the scenery.
They were passing the same type of forest they’d traveled through yesterday. The familiar tropical-esque trees, with their broad leaves and bright colors, whipped past the rover windows.
A thought, suddenly, came to him. “Hey,” he said to the driver, “do you have some kind of big, bird-like dinosaur around here? With a long beak and a lot of teeth?”
“Oh yeah,” Nancy said. “We saw one yesterday. Brown body with a yellow and red beak?”
“Feilongus, maybe?” he said. “There’s a nest of ‘em not far from here. Apparently, they weren’t supposed to be here at all. On this continent, I mean.”
“Apparently?” she asked.
“That’s what David says. I don’t know much about them, myself. But he’s the expert.”
“Are they dangerous?”
“I wouldn’t pick a fight with them. They eat fish, mostly. But they could kill a person, if they had a mind to.”
They traveled in silence for a few more minutes, and then the vehicles began to slow. “Well,” their driver said, “here we are: back at base.”
Alfred strained his neck to catch a glimpse through one of the front windows; and when he did, he felt his jaw slacken. “Base” was a veritable bunker, a kind of concrete fortress with a heavy metal door that was drawing open to admit them. It stood two or three stories high, and was wide – very wide. He wondered how many people there actually were inside. Futureprise, he thought, could be storing an army or two in there.
Nancy whistled. “Holy shit. You guys really do have a base here.”
“Yes ma’am.”
The rovers rolled into a brightly lit concrete interior. It looked like a hanger bay to Alfred. At least, it looked what hanger bays looked like on television. He didn’t have any real-life reference. But it matched very nicely with the scenes he’d caught on various shows, from the drab gray floor to the military vehicles lining it. It helped that there were aircraft here too, as well as a number of the type of land craft he was in. They were remarkably similar in design, save for the addition of wings. A compact ride, he thought. There were turrets mounted on them, too. Those caught his eye.