by catt dahman
“Someone built a walled garden? Does this make sense?” Scott asked.
“Not in the least,” Tom said as he ate an avocado, relishing the soft flesh of the fruit.
“Everything makes some sense once you get all the information. People once thought dinosaurs were giants. They were, and we learned they lived on earth, and then, I started to say died off. I guess they didn’t go extinct in some places or even in all times. We don’t understand that, but understanding doesn’t make anything more or less real,” Alex said.
“You’re so brainy,” Joy said. “You always did like reading and studying, but I had fun in college.”
Mattie rolled her eyes and said, “Which is more helpful now? Knowledge or that fun you had?”
“Mattie…” Tom began.
Alex interrupted, “Tell you what, Tom, you get me some fish, shellfish, and shrimp, and I’ll make camp and cook you a dinner that Joe would be shamed by. Trust me. Leave Joy to help me. We’ll make Joe green with envy when we tell him.”
Tom laughed and said, “Okay. Deal. You can tell Joe and get him pissed off, but I won’t complain a bit over this.”
For the next few hours, they brought back food: fish, shellfish, and an unlucky trio of compys. Alex and Joy picked, cleaned, and cooked dinner.
With a big grin, Alex served shrimp cooked with coconut over something odd that he told them was quinoa.
“I’ve never heard of quinoa,” Mattie said.
Alex was pleased to find he could teach them about it, explaining it was common in South America and very unremarkable. He told them, “It’s good because it’s new to you, and you can cook it as a porridge, too. Breakfast.”
There was a salad of palms, raw kale, cashews, and lemongrass that was dressed with fresh orange juice and shallots. Alex enjoyed having to explain what each dish was, and while each contained ordinary foods, having so much food and of such a fresh variety was a rare occurrence for the survivors
“Kale?” Scott frowned, “Isn’t that a health food? I don’t know about health foods…”
Mattie smiled and said, “You may not know about them, but you sure did eat a lot of salad. Hey, it’s good for you, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t good in general. I always told my son that.”
Scott nodded. He didn’t want Mattie to become depressed again. “Don’t tell Joe, but this is great.” He tried to get back on topic.
“It’s a breeze to cook, too,” Joy said.
She served several fish that were stuffed with hot peppers, oysters, fennel, and garlic and served with taro roots, somewhat like potatoes.
“This was easy to make. It’s only fancy because we don’t have all this back at the Connie Louise.”
When everyone was full, Alex produced an ugly, stinky melon that all of them recoiled from. He laughed and cut it open and talked them into trying bites. “Trust me,” he said. Even though it smelled terrible, the taste was fresh, sweet and tart, and creamy. It was delicious, and Alex said it was a durian melon.
“Amazing,” Scott said as he ate a piece of the melon.
“We could have cooked four or five times this much in combinations with other things we found that we didn’t even use. I also found ginger root,” said Alex.
“You have to be kidding,” Tom told Alex.
“Nope. It’s literally an old garden of nuts, herbs, trees, fruits, and vegetables. Breakfast is going to be cantaloupe, coconut, and banana oatmeal, actually quinoa. Then, we will fry some fish; there you go, hearty and fresh.”
“You can’t live on all this good stuff, right? It’s like we found a garden of ice cream,” Harold asked.
“No, that’s totally wrong,” Alex said,
“you could live on all of this.”
Joy nodded and said, “You just got more vitamins and healthy stuff at this meal than we’ve had for weeks.”
“Who did this?” Scott indicated the garden with his arms.
“You’re the curious one, Scott. Figure it out by tomorrow so we know.”
Scott could only grin at Alex and belch. He laughed, and it was one of the few real laughs he had experienced since the nightmares began on the island. “Food has made me feel crazy-happy. I guess the healthy stuff does work.”
They stayed by the fire and close to the crack between the boulders and were unbothered, giving them some deep, undisturbed sleep. Each felt the effects of a vitamin-fuelled meal and a restful sleep, things they had craved.
In the morning after another good meal, Scott climbed the highest boulder and followed the rocks a while, looking over the land and sea.
After a while, he climbed down and explored a section of beach that interested him, yet, he was still unbothered by creatures. What he found both explained some things, added more mysteries, and at one point terrified him, but he appreciated all of it as reality.
At one point, he felt it was foolish to go onto a section of the beach alone, but he did, venturing far from the boulders and finding himself unhappy with his discovery, but also satisfied that he had necessary information.
“We thought something got you,” Alex frowned as Scott returned. “You can’t go off alone like that.”
“Sorry, nothing got me, but something got the people who planted your garden.”
“All of them? Do you think?” Joy asked.
“I think so or maybe some died later, but I know who it was, though I can’t explain it. Stu would love this: what I found.”
Alex was in lower spirits than the night before even though the dinner was delicious and varied again. Something troubled him, and Scott could see it was something they all knew and were mulling over. It was part of the reason Alex was so upset, and what caused Scott to venture out alone.
Scott looked at the rest and said, “What’s up?”
Mattie breathed deeply, “It’s crazy because we know those poor sailors washed up from their ship that went down right off the beach where we live. Cyclops. While we gathered food, we explored, too. We found things…”
“Things?”
Alex took over and told him, “We found personal things and items from the Cyclops, Scott. I know we saw the remains of the shipwreck, and we saw the ocean toss bodies out a few week ago, but somehow, those sailors from Cyclops were also here, just like Littleton’s boat being in two places five years apart.”
Mattie said, “What we found is older, though. On our beach was a newer wreck as if the ship went down right then and not a long time ago.”
Scott didn’t argue or look shocked. Silently nodding as he listened, he asked, “Would you say this garden was planted almost a hundred years ago? Is it that old?”
“I think so. The fennel and ginger…the original plants look that old. They were cut back a lot, but haven’t been cut again for…” Alex said, looking confused.
“Twenty years?” asked Scott.
“Yeah. Okay, what did you find?” Joy asked Scott.
“Three things. Some of these boulders were moved by manpower: ropes and logs and many, many, men working. Most were here already, but to get set up like this in a sort of boulder-fence means they had help. I mean someone moved these boulders, and it wasn’t giants,” said Scott.
“Okay, no giants,” Alex agreed.
“Second, way, way over there, mostly on the beach but in the water some is a gigantic ship. It’s rusted badly and in rough shape. It’s about a hundred years old, and I was able to read the name only slightly through the rust.”
“Cyclops,” said Alex.
“It sure is. Back in the first part of the twentieth century, just as you and Stu said, the ship vanished from out there and crashed here,” Scott explained. “It crashed where we live on the beach, and it crashed here on this beach. Where we live, the ship went down off the shore, and only bodies and debris washed up. Here, the entire ship crashed onto the shoreline.”
“This makes no sense,” Joy whispered.
Scott agreed but said he felt they were getting closer to answers. “Neither
did Littleton’s boat. I think we might have more mysteries before we understand the one we have now. There’s something huge going on here, and I’m not sure our minds are capable of understanding anything.”
“Like infinity. Humans try, but we can’t really get the magnitude of infinity,” Alex said.
“They lived here, didn’t they, Scott?” Joy asked.
“Yes, and I think they lived here a long time. On the other side of the wreck, there is a horrible, pitiful pile of human bones and I think there was a fight with some dinosaurs there on the beach. There are dino bones, but I can’t tell them apart except these are big and they had pointed teeth.”
“All those men,” Alex said softly.
“They were here and they died. This garden didn’t save them from predators, and then, a hundred years later, in a storm, Cyclops and men aboard it crashed again, but on our end of the island. The time we saw, the ship broke apart and sank, and no one survived.”
Alex closed one eye and warded off a headache. He wanted a drink of the whiskey they brought but held himself back. Once they are dead, the ship, boar, or plane can come back again, maybe in a year, or five, or ten. They’ve gone at least twice, right?”
Scott nodded.
“Jada once told me something strange. She said she had de je vu, and felt as if she had been there before and had nightmares about dinosaurs,” Alex said.
“Benny has had them, but Amy said she doesn’t, and Littleton said he never did, but he said he had a nightmare about drowning,” Scott told them. “You’re thinking that they have a hidden memory of their deaths?”
Alex shrugged.
“I found two things I sure didn’t like: a footprint in the mud and a lone feather.” Scott brought out a brown feather that was tipped with an iridescent bright blue. “Big Brown is in the area, or has been recently.”
“Following us?” asked Mattie.
“I don’t know. It can’t be very old, though.” Scott told Mattie.
“I hate that shitty-saur,” Joy said, making everyone smile.
“At least we know now and won’t be surprised,” Alex said.
They spent a total of three nights in the garden, picking and packing up the fresh food.
They became determined that they might even push for everyone to move there because it was safer. Several acres in size, it had fresh water and gardens, and was protected from predators by the boulders. It would be far better as a camp if they moved what they could and managed to get everything inside.
They needed an engineer; Littleton was in a related field and could be helpful, Alex thought and then told everyone else. He liked the idea of moving their camp. “Just like Eden, we can have all this food, and while there will be a reptile or two here, at least it won’t be a big one trying to eat us.”
Back on the beach, they saw the places Scott had already found and moved along, always wondering what they would find at the next turn.
The next surprise could be wonderful, or a nightmare, as it was most often.
Chapter 16:Exploration
They walked during the day and slept at night, always on guard and lonesome for the safe, garden of food.
One afternoon, they found a small herd of long-necked dinosaurs wading and swimming in the ocean’s waves. The babies surfed in the water and then rolled on the sand when they landed on the shoreline. Alex said he had never seen anything like them but suspected they were a very small version of a brachiosaur.
“Benny was right in saying the island couldn’t support many of the real giants. It’s a very small version, but unlike any we know.”
“Kind of like the island makes up different kinds of dinosaurs?” Joy asked.
“No, not at all. Fossils are very amazing, but a creature doesn’t die and drop and then make a fossil, see. The conditions have got to be right. I imagine there are hundreds of different types of dinosaurs that archeologists have never found evidence of,” Alex said. “It doesn’t surprise me at all to find some we never even imagined.”
“Shhh. Don’t scare them away,” Mattie warned. “Be quiet.”
The adults were no longer than twelve feet from nose to tail. Mattie enjoyed watching them and thought they were like funny cows. She asked if they could corral them and raise them like cattle.
Her question left Scott speechless.
“They’d draw predators,” Alex said. “Besides, who would kill such funny looking, sweet-faced, goofy creatures? They don’t give milk. Nah. Let’s leave them alone, okay?”
His answer to what would kill them was in the jungle, watching the mini-brachs. A pack of strange bird-like dinosaurs chittered, peeked, and ducked at the edge of the jungle. Their eyes were large and were about thigh-high to the men, but looked more like birds than anything except for their sharp teeth and sharp claws on the forelimbs and hind legs.
Greenish yellow feathers covered them, almost making them seem to have fat wings, but their forelegs were far more dexterous than mere wings would be. Plumage of yellow and green topped the crests on their heads, making them almost comical in appearance.
“They keep watching. They want to attack but aren’t sure what we are. What are they?” Tom asked.
“Bird-a-saurs?” asked Harold.
Alex shook his head at Harold and said, “Velociraptors.”
“Oh, shit. I thought those things were much bigger, but they’re lethal, right?” Harold was afraid and watched the creatures more carefully. “Aren’t those the worst dinos of all?”
“It would be like tangling with a bobcat if one of them gets you, but no, the movies were way off. They seem about normal size, but actually, these are big for true velociraptors. See the feathers? The movies didn’t get that right, either.”
“Are they dangerous, Alex? So far, you’ve given a movie review,” Scott said dryly. He was amused.
“Well, they’re somewhat fast, but are nothing compared to troodons or Utahraptors. I think they’re fairly stupid, too, but they could take down a mini-brach if they wanted to and probably will.”
A pair of the velociraptors stalked down the sand quietly, snorting softly to see what their prey would do and what reactions they’d get. Alex lunged forward with his spear and poked one of the creatures in its wing, drawing blood and causing the animal to squeal angrily as it backpedaled.
The others snapped their heads forward and hissed.
“Don’t back down. Stay aggressive,” Alex suggested. He thought they could be scared away.
“I’m scared,” Joy screamed. “They’re all over the place. Damnit, Alex, do something.”
“Don’t show your fear. If they sense or smell fear, they may attack, and there are enough in the pack to hurt or kill one of us easily. They’ll try to separate us, and once we are isolated, we will be food.
Stay together, and keep moving. If they get close, stab them,” added Scott as he stabbed with his spear, hitting none of the animals, but forcing them to back away again.
Tom was able to stab another one in its chest, causing the rest of the pack to snap and bite at the wounded beast. Once the velociraptors were distracted, the humans scurried by and moved down the beach. Shortly, they were out of sight of the little monsters and when the velociraptors didn’t follow, the humans relaxed.
Whatever happened to the small brachiosaurs and the velociraptors, no one knew, but the group wasn’t concerned; at least they were safe and free to keep moving. Mattie was disappointed that there was no sign of her son, but also glad they didn’t find his body.
“Cindy didn’t mention the garden of boulders or anything this way. That tells me they were more inland,” Scott said.
“Then, why are we here? We should be looking inland,” Harold argued.
“I never said we were going to track those kids. I said I was coming this way. You said you would look for Jody,” Scott scowled. “I said if we found them, we’d deal with them in some way. I never planned to do anything but look around.”
Mattie and Har
old traded glances but didn’t argue.
The next day, they found what Scott had been curious about weeks before. There was a deep swath from the beach to the jungle where trees were broken away or knocked down as if a giant had pushed them away. They saw what had shocked and scared them almost two weeks before during one of the big storms.
A big black crater ruined the green lushness. Broken trees lined it, and most were singed black. In the center covering a half mile in each direction were burned metal beams, shapeless, charred lumps, ashes from burned trees, disturbed soil, and the few remains of a once-grand, once-enormous jetliner.
This was where the airplane crashed and burned for days after the violent storm. While the debris was far too blackened and broken up to identify the remains of the plane, there was enough left to be sure that the airplane was modern.
Scott thought it was possible that the plane was from a time the survivors had not yet reached. It might be several years in the future, a crash that had not happened in their time.
“That kind of thinking hurts my head,” Joy complained. “I liked it better when the past was really the past.”
“Me, too,” Tom said, “and the plane was probably loaded with passengers.”
Harold said something that was unnecessary but appropriate, “I know that no one survived that, but at least they didn’t suffer long.”
Chapter 17: Misery
The sand was a smaller strip in this area and was littered with rocks and old timbers, twisted metal, and junk that had been washed ashore. It was an ugly beach because of all the trash, some of it very old but some fresh. A few bleached bones were buried by the sand and licked by the tides as water rose and fell.
For a full two weeks, they hid in a cave they found in the cliffs above the beach. The cliffs were filled with caves, some small and some very large, but they camped in one that was roomy and easily defended.