Wes nodded thoughtfully “It’s a possibility. I’m hoping by then we’ll have figured out another course of action, but for now I say ‘burn the grasses’.” he gave them a half smile “Of course we need to do that without getting burnt up ourselves.”
Sarge moved to the seats behind where Wes was looking out of the window.
“So how do we keep that from happening?”
“The tankers Sarge. First Red and one of Sarge’s men will go back up into the engine.” He grinned at Sarge “I saw the cases you all were carrying on board. So unless you all are a string quartet, I’d guess you’re armed.”
Sarge and his men chuckled “Well Texas is a great state to do some long distant shooting.”
“Ok, so your man gets his ‘violin’ and keeps an eye on Red’s back while he’s driving this thing. Same in the rear in the caboose. You and the last two, in here with our less than competent passengers.” He glanced at the rich brothers and the partying sisters.
“I’m going out and when the train begins to move, I’ll open one of the discharge valves on the diesel tank. Diesel fuel does not evaporate as quickly as gasoline.
Anyhow, once opened, I’ll jump back on the tanker car as it passes and keep an eye on the flow.” he looked back out the window “Shouldn’t have to open it a lot…the grass looks to be pretty dry.” he looked at Red “Keep about a twenty mile an hour roll so we don’t outrun the fuel…but fast enough to outrun the fire.”
Red nodded, but looked puzzled “Fire?”
Wes grinned “Once we get down the tracks a bit, I’ll toss one of those flares you have in the engine cab to ignite the fuel.”
Sarge straightened in his seat and laughed “Holy crap! The man’s a genius!” he rolled sideways and joined Wes looking out the window.
“A wall of flames…brilliant. Even if the predators attack the four-legged critters out there, the one thing they’d fear more than being eaten is being consumed by fire.”
He slapped Wes on the back “Excellent!”
Wes nodded “I don’t want to kill them though. It looks like that grass out there is just dry enough to burn with some help to start it going. As we walked back here to the passenger car, it came up to our hips, so I’m guessing we should have a wall of fire twenty plus miles long and at least thirty feet high. It should burn at an angle from where we start and work its way down to the other end of the tracks. The dinos should have plenty of time to run to the other side of the prairie or south past where we saw the rexes.” he looked back at the worried looks form the rest.
“Oh, no…not here where the tracks are. Sure this grass will burn under them where the tracks packed it down, but not enough to catch the rail ties. As we move along the flames we set, they shouldn’t get much higher than four or five feet, but as they burn outward away from the tracks…” he looked out the window once again wistfully.
“I sure hope they’re tall enough to see the flames before…” he didn’t finish, the rest knew what he was thinking…but Wes finished his thought.
“I’ve…seen men…burn.” he sighed deeply “I do not care to see anything else burn alive.” As he turned to face the rest Wes saw the two sisters with tears on their cheeks and gave them a strange look.
Missy gave him a feeble smile “Your voice…the look on your face as you spoke…it must have been horrible…whatever you saw.”
Sarge got up and walked down the aisle and as he passed the two women he muttered.
“And Lt. was the one who pulled the trigger…and that was six years ago and I remember it like it was yesterday.” He nodded at his men and they all headed to get their weapons. He stopped and looked at his men.
“No shooting unless there is no other options. Other than ‘Betty’, I doubt if these bullets will do little more than piss the big ones off. If need be, aim for the eyes or soft mucus membrane of the mouth or nose.”
“Betty?” Red asked.
Sarge looked at Red and grinned “Betty is my gal! Damned finest .50 caliber ten shot automatic in the world. Even have a few depleted uranium, armor piercing rounds left, the rest just standard run of the mill .50 cal. ammo.”
Wes nodded “Standard .50 cal.” he laughed “Yeah I always carry standard .50 cal. ammo around in my hip pocket.” he chuckled and gave Sarge a knowing wink “Use ‘em wisely Sarge, the skulls of those dinos out there are like armor.”
One of Sarge’s men chuckled as he passed “Not to worry boss, anything Sarge shoots out of that ‘lil’ sweetie will penetrate any skull you see…” about that time a triceratops walked by the car at about fifteen feet and as it passed the soldier of fortune slowly turned back to Sarge and the rest…“Well…maybe not that.”
Wes motioned for everyone to freeze and with hardly a glance, the triceratops moved on back to join the rest. When everyone relaxed a bit Wes looked at Red.
“When you get the steam up to what you need to roll…how about giving a few loud blasts of that shrill whistle of yours to get them started in the right direction.” he sighed loudly “I know which way the wind is blowing now, but who knows once the fire gets raging.”
Red nodded “Ok, everyone to their positions. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
As everyone began to move Bryce snorted what everyone was thinking.
“Out of here…to where?”
Chapter 5.
Everyone got to their positions to not only watch, but to be ready to act on Wes’s orders, as their new leader headed along the cars to the tankers. The biggest fear seemed to be what would happen when they reached the end of the line where they had run into the rexes, but Wes assured them, he’d shut off the valve a mile before reaching the end. The flames would catch up to them at some point. He and Red had worked out a plan that when the flames neared the train’s caboose, Red would throw the train in reverse and drive back through the flames while they were still low and once through, there would be nothing but smoke and burnt prairie.
Somewhat more at ease everyone took their positions. As it turned out Sarge was also a train buff and knew the old tanker cars usually had discharge hoses stowed away under the tanker car where the valves and sight gauge was. As Wes pulled out the hose and attached it to the discharge valve, Sarge pulled out his machete and walked over to the bluff face and cut down a sapling wedging it into the framework of the tanker and using tools and wire in the caboose secured the eight foot sapling. As Sarge did his work, Wes attached the hose to the sapling with more wire and as the hose discharge end dangled about four feet off the ground and eight feet from the train, the two men nodded at one another with satisfied looks.
Sarge ran back to the caboose with the rest of the flares while Wes tied himself off to the top of the tanker, climbed back down to a point just over the valves and calmly told Red to begin to move the train.
Once the train reached a speed that Wes judged to be about five miles an hour, he tightened his safety rope and with feet tightly wrapped about a vertical strut, leaned outward and down to the valve; it didn’t budge. Cursing under his breath, he let go with the hand he was steadying himself with and grasped the valve knob with both hands…and with a loud groan, it began to turn.
Carefully watching the flow, Wes set it to pour out without gushing. As his rope strained he managed to pull himself back to the frame that the tank sat on, keyed his mike, to tell Sarge to throw one of his flares and that he’d keep his one flare for a worst case scenario.
Within seconds Wes watched the red flare tumble through the air and with a loud ‘whoosh’ the slower burning diesel fuel flashed into a growing wall of flame.
Wes adjusted his position into more of a sitting one, with his legs dangling through the frame and just under the tank so he could lean backward and adjust the flow, or even cut it off if the flames got too close. It took two adjustments, with his head barely a foot off the ground to get it adjusted just right.
Each time he lowered himself, he was assaulted by the tall grasses that had not been packed do
wn when the tracks appeared. Finally he was feeling good about the flame movement and looked out over the burning prairie.
“Come on guys, get over those hills.” he muttered to himself as he watched the wide variety of dinosaurs scampering over the hills and the ones closer to the burning grasses, stampeding in the same direction. Unless they died of a heart attack, he was sure all would make it.
As the train proceeded, it was the same all along the stretch to the end as dinosaurs of all kinds ran.
“Hey guys? You know sitting out here enjoying the view, one thing has occurred to me, and to be honest, it’s fuckin’ buggin’ the hell outta me.”
“What’s that Wes?” Red asked.
“Well, about all I know about dinosaurs is what I’ve seen in the movies, but if those things were allosaurus… allosaurus and rexes didn’t exist in the same ages. Hell, half the dinos I see out here…well…I saw a herd of those things with sails on their backs, I thought those things came about the time when dinos had come out of the water, you know with the long necked things that fed on trees and underwater plants. Seems like rexes and the like came millions of years later.”
“Maybe they came through the portal like we did Wes.” Red replied.
Bryce spoke into Sam’s radio “I think Wes and Red has a valid points men. It could mean that if they came though, and we came through…what the heck else came through, in between those times.”
“Not now.” Red shouted quickly “End of the line is getting close Wes.”
“Roger that Red.” And Wes bent backward and grasped the valve as he twisted around to turn it off. He watched the end of the hose and saw the last trickle of fuel and grinned, his plan seemed to be working. He twisted back around and as if he was in the gym doing sit-ups, he raised himself upward and grasped onto the vertical tank brace…just as a tree stump shot by and ripped off the sapling.
The tree whizzed past him by barely a foot and as the hose was ripped free of the sapling it snapped back around and as Wes laid along the frame, the hose slammed into the tank inches over his body and then continued to flop along the ground helter-skelter as it hit various objects along the way and Wes knew he had to get away from his position.
He began to climb the tank’s superstructure, but halted once he heard Red hit the brakes and with a quick glance down saw the hose merely bumping along behind the train still attached to the valve. He grabbed his radio as he looked back at the approaching wall of flames.
“I have to detach this hose before we reverse.” he shouted as he quickly untied himself from the tanker and jumped to the ground.
The flames out in the prairie were a good thirty feet closer to the tracks, but back as far as he could see they had reached at least one hundred feet and billowing black smoke filled the air. Closer to them were the five to eight foot flames and they were quickly getting closer as they followed the fuel trail.
He bent down and grabbed the loose end of the hose and twisted it back toward the tanker car and shoved it into the place where he had anchored his feet. A look over his shoulder told him if he didn’t get inside, he’d get burnt…horribly!
“GO…GO…GO!” he screamed over the radio and heard the engine protest the rapid reversal. As Wes reached for the handrail of the passenger car his feet got caught up in tall grass and he tumbled to the ground. As he rolled and sprang to his feel he saw the front handrail pass and knew there was the gondola that had no way for him to get up on to it.
He ran as fast as he could go to pace himself to the train and with one final leap, caught the handrail to the engine’s stairs and as he desperately hung on with both hands, while still running at top speed, a hand reached down, grasped his belt, and pulled him up onto the stairs leading up to the engine’s cab…Red had caught him.
He looked up at Red who was grinning, but the grin vanished as he grabbed Wes by his collar and pulled him the rest of the way up the stairs and behind the cab wall and shouted as they both flattened on the floor in the now seemingly far too small space.
“Gonna get hot in here.” Red shouted over the roar of the engine, the flames outside, and steam boiler.”
“Ya think?” Wes shouted back before burying his face into his folded arms.
They were both right, and just as it seemed as if they were about to burst into flames, the terrifying red glow turned to a soft orange, and then sunlight burst into the cab. Their throats ached from burning smoke and the high temperatures had made them feel like they were over hot coals. The clouds of dark black smoke drifted away from them as the winds changed and now were replaced by blue sky and the warmth from the sun.
The two men sat there and looked at each other and grinned.
“Could have been done a bit smoother.” Wes grinned again and then jumped up as Red took to regaining control of the speeding train.
He slowed it down, and reversed it back toward the tall tree at the end of the line. Once nearing the last few hundred yards, he brought it to a complete stop and blew off the extra steam as they watched the wall of flame slowly move toward the south and west leaving only burnt prairie behind. Again he blew off the rest of the steam.
“Hey, we might need that.” Wes teased as he nodded to the large trees in front of them.
“Fire’s too low to reach the branches and thanks to the wind looks like the brush to our left was spared as well. Red looked to the ten to twenty yards of four to six foot brush between the tracks and the bluffs and nodded as Wes continued “Might be water in there somewhere, I thought I saw a glimmer of sun light reflecting…think we can get the engine up and running soon?”
“Not today.” Red replied “I think that damned dino as you call them, collapsed one of the control piping on the outside of the engine.” he leaned through the left window “Yup!” he looked to Wes “I wondered why I didn’t have full control and the pressure was so high, looks like that bastard’s hard head flattened two of the pipes out, and broke the pressure bleed completely off. I’ll just keep enough steam in case we need it to scare off something that wanders by…” he looked at the crushed piping he swore and reached over to blow off the rest of the steam and kill the boiler flame by stopping the automatic coal feed from the coal and water gondola. “Forget the steam idea, we’re done for now.”
He pulled out his radio and snorted…
“Ok folks, end of the line…and I mean that literally. So keep a lookout; Wes and I will see if we can fix what that two legged mother broke.” he sighed and keyed the radio again “Jack, bring those damned tools.”
Wes held Red’s hand on the key and leaned into the radio.
“Sarge, you and your guys have security.”
The reply came back quickly “Betty will keep an eye on us all.” The men climbed up near the top of the large gondola to look back to the end of the train to the caboose.
The old caboose had a square cupola that was raised so the conductors of old could look out over the entire train or the surroundings through any of its four windows that faced in each direction. Sarge had crawled on top of that and was scanning in all directions.
“Uh, Sarge…maybe you shouldn’t sit on the roof?” Wes reminded him “Remember we did see some of those flying reptiles…or whatever they were.”
No sooner had Wes finished another of his men climbed up behind him and began scanning the sky. Wes chuckled and keyed his radio.
“Should have known, sorry.”
Sarge replied with a double key of his radio which meant he copied and understood. Wes looked at Red who had a puzzled look on his face, so Wes told him what he knew.
“Back in Afghanistan, Sarge was known for being a loner. Only man authorized to go out on missions solo. Depending upon who you asked, he’s had one to two hundred kills. Now and then he’d tag along with a patrol to be the recon guy and boy did that lighten that squad’s spirits. If Sarge was along it quadrupled your chance of coming back alive.” Wes checked on Jack’s progress as he dashed close to the train with a toolbox and a
canvas bag of stuff they might need.
“Old Sarge always had a rep for being so well aware of everything too many guys began to drop their guard on patrols, so Sarge stopped guiding the occasional patrol.
On one special mission HQ sent Sarge along against his protests. Nearly a full company died because the night guards stopped paying attention with him as their watchdog. Sarge walked into the encampment and reported back that he found two guards sleeping just as the first enemy bullets struck.
He took two, one in the leg, the other in the side, but somehow he managed to get every surviving soldier out of there alive. Not to mention that even wounded, he carried one badly wounded man over a mile until they were out of harm’s way.”
Holy shit!” Jack muttered as he climbed into the cab.
Wes grinned slightly “That’s just part of it. For six days the enemy chased their guys, and for six day Sarge killed the enemy. Most of the guys were wounded and had to be helped, so Sarge found a cave he knew of, hid them, and went out on his own for help.” he nodded toward the rear of the train.
“That guy back there walked and crawled for two more days to a remote base camp, had a medic patch him up, and with the bullets still in him, escorted a rescue party back to the cave…saved the lot. They were ferried out by chopper, but Sarge stayed and led two companies back to the camp. On the way the report said Sarge had killed forty-seven enemy at least a dozen of them in hand to hand…and mind you that was with two bullets still in him.
They sent the relief guys back by chopper and Sarge and two others hoofed it out. From what the Captain told me once they got to the cave where the wounded were supposed to be airlifted out, bad weather had set in, so they came back the way Sarge had gone for help…twenty more bodies were found. That ornery old fuck had cut his way through half the enemy in the region and left them baking in the sun face down…scared the bejesus out of them because they can’t meet Allah. Not sure how true that part is, but it was something about their religion.”
Last Train to Pangea: Death by Dinosaur Page 3