No Road Out

by M. J. Konkel

  Nova rubbed his nose against Joe’s leg. Joe scratched Nova's head. “What's with the dog?”

  “He was in the house where I stayed last night. It appears he was either abandoned or lost, but he has a tag that says Nova on it. He has sort of taken to me.”

  While they were reuniting, Rob, Mike and Allen were down below investigating. Mike came back a few minutes later looking for a crow bar and a longer knife than his pocketknife.

  “Do you still have the Bowie knife on you, Joe?

  “No. Damn! I left it back at the school.”

  “I have a knife,” Karen offered, pulling out the butcher's knife from the backpack. She knew there was a reason she brought it.

  After Mike disappeared over the edge of the road, Karen suggested, “We should probably get the truck turned around in case we need to leave in a hurry.”

  Joe agreed, they got in and did a U-turn. While Karen was heaving her backpack into the back, Joe reached for a bag.

  “Here's a sandwich. You must be starving.” Joe passed the second steak sandwich which he had not eaten.

  “Thanks. I could eat a dinosaur.”

  “Done that already,” Joe replied. “You will probably get a chance at too. Since they tried to eat you and me, I think turnabout is fair play. Besides, we will need meat if we are stuck here any length of time, and there are plenty of them here. I saw huge herds of them when I was up in that balloon.”

  Karen tore the sandwich in half and saved half for Sheriff Burser, although her stomach was telling her to just devour the whole thing. Nova watched her. She looked at Nova and took the steak out of her half of the sandwich and gave it to Nova. She ate the bread and cheese that was left.

  Another twenty minutes passed before Allen called out, “We got him out! Joe, can you come down here?”

  Joe left his shotgun with Karen. Joe looked back at her just before he disappeared over the edge of the road. He appeared not to want to leave her alone and out of his sight, but he was obviously needed below, and they needed to make haste.

  “Keep it down.” Karen shouted back in a hushed tone. She shook her head. If there are any dinosaurs hunting nearby, they surely heard all the commotion.

  Ten minutes later, the four of them appeared, climbing over the edge and onto the road carrying the sheriff. He was a big guy and they were all puffing from carry him. They set him down on the road and Mike went to back up the truck closer while Rob and Allen went back over the edge. They came back a minute later, carrying their guns, an extra shotgun and some other gear that came from the sheriff's car, and they tossed it all into the back of the truck. The four guys then got the sheriff up to the tailgate of the truck and were starting to slide him into the bed when they froze.

  “Did you feel that?” Joe asked quietly. Several “Aha's” were whispered from around him. Nova gave a low growl. They all felt a light thud of a giant's step. “Let's get out of here.” Joe did not need to suggest it twice. He and Rob each had an arm of the sheriff and Allen had his legs as they pulled him into the bed of the truck, and Joe, Rob and Karen hopped in behind. Meanwhile, Mike jumped into the driver's seat and started the truck's engine. Allen grabbed the passenger side door and pulled himself into the seat with the truck already starting to move, and Nova raced and jumped into the bed of the truck with Karen and the guys. They could now hear the thuds as the dinosaur was coming fast. As the truck started moving away, Karen stared in horror as she saw the giant beast approaching, displaying huge sword-like teeth. However, it stopped short of the fire as they sped away.”

  “Did we just see what I think we saw?” asked Rob.

  “I think so,” answered Joe.

  Karen added, “Yeah! It looks like our big bad Freddie is afraid of fire.”

  “Freddie?” Joe and Rob chimed in unison, looking at her.

  “I will explain later, but it's what I named that dino. He caused me a lot of trouble back there.”

  “His brothers caused me trouble on the other side of the river,” Joe replied. “I am still surprised that he was stopped by that small fire back there. It had almost died out, and he could have stomped on it and easily put it out.”

  “Now that I think about it, it makes a lot of sense,” said Karen.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well with the higher oxygen level ...”

  “What?” Joe asked in surprise.

  Karen explained why she thought that the oxygen level was slightly elevated. “So, it makes sense that fires are more dangerous here and dinosaurs have learned or have genetically adapted to have a great fear of fire.”

  “Maybe we can use their fear of fire as a defense,” Rob suggested.

  Joe shifted position to make more room for Nova who was between him and Karen. “I was thinking the same thing. We need to warn everyone else about this though. Especially, those that still have cigarettes. They could easily start a fire and we probably wouldn't be able to put it out once it started.”

  “I am still surprised that it got so close and we could barely feel it coming,” commented Joe.

  “It was the same way the first time I met Freddie,” said Karen. “It came out of the woods no more than a couple of hundred feet from me and I didn’t feel or hear it at all. We probably only felt it back there because of the hard surface of the road.”

  “They apparently have some stealth capability when they are hunting,” said Joe. “We will have to warn everyone about that too.”

  They arrived back at the school safely and the news quickly spread that the sheriff and the town's only doctor had returned. Karen and Joe went to see James and Robbie first. The kids were both asleep already, but Karen made sure their blankets were nicely tucked in around them and then gave each of them a kiss on the forehead. Robbie rolled over and opened his eyes.

  “Mommy!” he exclaimed. “You're back!”

  “Of course, honey. I will always be here for you. But you get back to sleep. I need to go back upstairs to take care of a man who is hurt, but I will be back after that. Okay?”

  “Okay, Mommy. I was worried about you. Dad didn't say anything, but I thought maybe something was wrong with you. I'm so glad you're back.”

  “I had trouble getting back here and I was worried about you too. But get some sleep now. Okay? Good night. I love you.”

  “Okay. I love you too, Mommy.”

  Karen and Joe both left the locker room area and went in different directions.

  Karen went to a room that was formerly used as the custodian’s office, a room without a window, to examine Sheriff Burser more thoroughly under bright lights powered by a generator. He was hoisted up onto an examining table that used to be in the school nurse's office. Karen had tried examining the sheriff in the truck, but it was too bumpy in the moving vehicle and, besides, she only had a flashlight at that time. She had been right about the ribs. She told the sheriff that without X-rays she could easily miss a hairline fracture, but she thought that his ribs were only bruised, although badly. Fractured or bruised, there was not much she could do about the ribs anyway other than to tell him to take it easy on them. If only bruised, they would heal faster than if broken though. Both legs were definitely fractured, and the left one needed to be reset. Officer Rodgers and Alice Pearson, who ran the pharmacy, volunteered to walk the four blocks over to the pharmacy at the SuperGreen Supermarket to pick up some Vicodin while Karen tended to the sheriff's other injuries. He had a fracture in his left little finger that she missed earlier. She splinted up his right leg and the finger. After the Vicodin arrived, she reset his left leg and splinted it up. Even with the Vicodin, she knew that it had to hurt immensely when she did the resetting, but the sheriff only winced and didn't complain once.

  *****

  Joe went over to the library in the school and, using a flashlight, he found the books he wanted. One was an astronomy field guide and the others were about dinosaurs. He looked over a couple of the star charts in the field guide until he felt he could remember the
exact shapes of quite a few of the constellations. He went and found Rob. Rob was with some teenagers that were in the school’s photography club. They had downloaded all the photos from the balloon trip and were starting to look through them, zooming in on parts that looked interesting. Joe dragged Rob off and they found an inside ladder to the roof and went up, carrying along the astronomy field guide and a flashlight.

  About an hour later Joe and Rob came back down the ladder and were heading down the main hallway when Karen and Sheriff Burser, carried on an improvised stretcher by a couple of the high school football players, came out of the converted medical center. The hallway down towards the gymnasium was lined with people, most holding drinks in their hands. People raised their beer bottles, cans, and wine glasses. Cheers arose as they walked through.

  “What's this party about?” Joe shouted over the noise to Mike and Allen who were nearby.

  “It's to celebrate that Karen and the sheriff are back safe with us. It has lifted a lot of people's spirits to see them rescued,” Mike explained as he handed each of them a bottle of warm beer.

  “We're glad to be back too,” Karen responded, taking the offered bottle and then turning towards the sheriff. “No alcohol for you though until you are off the medication.”

  Everybody was partying in the hallway or in the gymnasium so that young kids and the elderly could sleep down below. There were tables set out with all manner of food and drink, mostly made from fresh produce or meats, foods that were going to spoil soon anyway, if not used or preserved. More was still coming off grills. Karen loaded up a plate; she was starving. CD players, running on batteries, played music quietly in several areas. Country in one place, old rock from the 80's and 90's and contemporary rock in several places and rap in still another. Candles, Coleman lanterns and garden lights gave enough light for people to see by. Joe marveled at how fast they threw it all together. It was amazing what they could accomplish when they all had the same goal and spirit.

  Karen explained where she had spent the previous night to Alice Pearson who then pointed out to her the neighbors of that house. Karen went over and introduced herself.

  “Hi! We're the Markers. I'm June, and this is my husband Danny,” a short dark-haired woman answered, nodding toward a tall thin man. Both appeared to be somewhere in their late twenties. “Yeah, we own the house just down the road from Andjewsky's place where you stayed last night.”

  “Do you know where they are now? Are they here somewhere?” asked Joe.

  “No, they're not here anymore. They are living over in Madison. I think one of them got a new job over there, and I guess they haven't had time to put their old house on the market yet.”

  “There was a dog left in the house,” said Karen.

  “A dog? I am pretty sure that they took their dog with them. A beagle, I think,” said Danny.

  “This is a golden retriever.”

  “That is definitely not their dog,” said Danny.

  “Definitely not theirs,” June agreed. The origins of Nova remained a mystery.

  Joe noticed that the party, in addition to raising morale, was good for people spreading news and ideas - and rumors. One imaginative speculation that Joe heard being passed was that maybe they had all been sent to the past to be witnesses for the end of the dinosaurs – a huge comet or asteroid was about to slam into the earth. Who sent them? Maybe aliens or maybe it was God.

  Joe grabbed a pan, and he started banging on it with a large metal spoon until he had the attention of most of those around him. “I have an announcement to make.” There were whoops and cheers before the noise level dropped. “I am sorry, but I was wrong about one thing I said here in the gym earlier. We have not, in fact, gone back millions of years into the past as I had previously stated.”

  Someone shouted, “What about all the dinosaurs then?”

  The crowd started to buzz, and Joe raised his hands, one still holding a bottle. “If you will let me, I will explain. I was bothered when I realized this afternoon that the Mississippi River and this valley did not date back to the age of the dinosaurs. The river basin that we know really is only about 10,000 years old, formed at the end of the last ice age. Not millions of years ago. Yet when Rob and I were up in a balloon today we saw hills and bluffs and a river valley that looked pretty much like the one we were used to, except for the missing towns and cities of course.”

  “Coincidence?” someone close by suggested.

  “That’s what I thought, but there is more. An hour ago, Rob and I were up on the roof looking at the stars. The star constellations that we know are all there. If we were thrown into the past they should be altered from what we are used to.”

  “What do you mean?” someone asked.

  “Stars move relative to each other in space over time. Even over a couple of thousand years the constellations would look very different. If we went 65 million years or more into the past, we wouldn't be able to recognize any constellation. Yet all the stars appear to be right where they should be – just as they were before all the dinos suddenly appeared. Wherever we are, we have not gone back millions of years in time.”

  “But it was you who said in the meeting just this morning that we went into the past,” someone else pointed out.

  “I know, but I was wrong. We are still in the twenty-first century or thereabouts in time.”

  “We could still be back on our home Earth then,” someone suggested.

  “Except that my wife, Karen, figured out the air is different. There is a little more oxygen here.”

  “Where are we then?” Someone else asked.

  “I am not sure, but I am guessing we are in some type of alternate universe or maybe it is the rest of the world that went backward in time by 65 million years and the dinosaur world came forward in time. I don't know,” Joe admitted. “But we are definitely not millions of years in the past like I thought yesterday.”

  “How could that be?” someone asked.

  “Aliens!” someone else shouted.

  “God is punishing us!” someone else yelled.

  “For what?” a woman challenged.

  “For our sins.”

  “What about my one-year old daughter? Is she being punished for her sins?” the woman answered.

  “No, she is being tested.”

  “I still think it is the aliens,” said someone from the crowd.

  “There was a guy that checked into the inn that said that he was a physicist professor. Maybe, he can tell us where we are,” suggested Ron Lasgaard.

  “There is a physicist here in Brown's Station?” Joe was surprised. Joe was also surprised to see Ron at the party. He never showed up at social events. Joe guessed it must have been the free food.

  Ron explained, “Yeah. That's what the man said he was. He said something about meeting some other egghead in the Cities, I think. His car is still at the inn, so he still has to be here somewhere.”

  Joe went to ask Jerry if they could go with Ron and check out the inn. Joe warned that the physicist professor might be in trouble.

  The hallway buzzed with conversation by then. Joe caught sight of Roger Zanzi who worked, or rather used to work, for the Corp of Engineers and went to discuss an important matter with him.

  *****

  Meanwhile, Karen tried to enjoy a glass of white wine while answering people's questions and concerns about various minor maladies. One older woman was experiencing pain in her shoulder ever since the storm and wondered what it meant. It usually only hurt when she held her arm up a certain way. A middle-aged man wanted to know whether it was possible for her to get him some Viagra pills since he couldn't contact his regular physician. And then there was Dan Turnbow, who complained, between bites on a brat, that he was having problems with his bowel movements. All the while Karen was aware that she had been on her throbbing ankle too long and should have it elevated.

  Karen was relieved when Joe came to rescue her. They said good night to a few people and headed down to
the area where the Spechrights had their mattresses set out.

  Hanna Brenner was in a space just before theirs. Hanna propped herself up as they approached, and she said, “Hi! I am glad to see you are safe.”

  “Thanks! I'm glad to be back.”

  Joe's dad had found a queen-sized mattress to replace the smaller mattress that was in its spot a couple hours prior when they had stopped down to check on the kids. It wouldn't have mattered that night; Karen and Joe slept very close to each other all night. Before they went to sleep, Joe whispered into her ear, “Hannah's husband is still gone. He went for a fishing trip Thursday, the day of the storm, and left her at home with their two little girls.”

  “That’s awful!” She felt sorry for Hannah and wished there was something she could do.

  “Seeing you come back has given her hope, but I am afraid that it is probably a false hope.”

  “You don't think Jacob could still be out there?”

  “He was heading far to the south, Arkansas I heard. I don't think that there is much chance that he is here on the same world as us. But who knows for sure?”

  It wasn’t very long before Jerry came, whispering Karen's name. “I hate to wake you up, Karen. But can you come take a look at the physicist guy? We found him in his room just staring at the wall. He doesn't seem to be responding to anything.”

  She said softly to Joe who had awoken, “I have to go.”

  “I’m going too.”

  “You should probably get some sleep, and I'll be back in not too long.”

  “No, I feel a need to be there too. I don’t think that I could sleep anyway. Besides, you could use some help walking.”

  As Joe tagged along, Karen had Jerry and Al Tentis, who had also gone with Jerry, put the man into the make-shift medical center. Ron Lasgaard disappeared right after they got back. They found out from the man's driver's license that his name was Alfred Rundcutt and he was 63 years old. Karen looked at him. He had long, thick, wavy, gray hair that was rather unkempt and receded in the front. Below his exposed large shiny forehead were two open eyes that just stared straight up at the ceiling, not even blinking. Nothing she said or did, including snapping her fingers and lightly slapping his cheek, changed the continuous stare. She couldn't identify any obvious physical problem with him, although she really wished she could do a CT or MRI scan on him. Psychiatric disorders were not her specialty, so she decided that she would read what she had available before treating him with the benzodiazepine anti-psychotic drug that she was leaning towards giving him for treatment of catatonic stupor. She also wished she had a colleague she could discuss the oddities of the case with, but none were around.