Last Train to Pangea: Death by Dinosaur

by Robert Turnbull

  “It must be harvested before there’s too much dirt and dust in it.” Kurt informed them.

  There were miles of track already laid, but not secured, and by the time their group got to the train the work crews were out of sight. More teams of Dillos passed by headed for the end of the line as teams returning to get more track passed in the opposite direction.

  On the engine stood the two brothers, on the gondola stood Cassy with her huge rifle, and Sarge’s men covering the workers. Wes waved and was happy that they had reached the train quickly.

  As they neared the engine Bryce waved and shouted for them to come to him.

  “Glad to see you all made it. Luckily the wind was blowing in our direction and we heard shots. Our guys hurried up and John seemed to think that doing the tracks like we had was taking too long and started anchoring every third tie as long as they made sure both the front and back of the tracks are well anchored so it won’t derail. The Boulder blacksmiths made up some steel braces to hold the ends of the tracks to the next in line, drive a stake through them and they’ll hold as the train passes. Once you’re over and onto the next stretch of track, the stakes can be pulled, and it can be pulled to the very front of the line.”

  Red nodded “I’ve been checking; just anchor every fifth one while we’re on flat hard soil. I can’t go very fast anyhow.”

  One of Boulder’s foremen walked over and shook their hands as they dismounted.

  “We’re going to keep the engine back here until we get nearly all the track moved and anchored. We’ll proceed with the last of the work crews.” Wes looked worried and it showed. The foreman smiled “Ok, what?”

  “Well Hans, if those Neos decide to hit us again, I’m thinking that perhaps we should get up a full head of steam and move along the track, keeping mid-way at least. This way if there is an attack, we can move the weapons to where they are needed.”

  Red nodded in agreement “But we dare not go beyond where you’ve made the track secure.”

  The foreman nodded in agreement and upon finding that the crews had piled on some good dried wood to use until the coal completely dried out, Red was elated.

  “Man, we’re great now. We can used some of the damp coal once we get a good fire raging in the tinderbox, the moisture will give us more steam.”

  There was a shout as three more teams of Dillos passed. For the first time Wes and his friends noticed the work teams. Each team of six Dillos were attached to yokes and a center tongue with three Dillos to each side. Perched near the front of the tongue sat a driver in a chair that sat higher than the tallest Dillo. He steered the first team, the rest simply followed.

  “Last sections of track…” the man on the last Dillo grinned as he cupped his hand over his mouth again “Don’t back up…less than fifty feet of track left behind you!” As the team passed they saw the front of the rails had been put upon a large steel sled that kept the tracks from ‘digging in’ and several heavy cables had been wired to the tracks on either side.

  “They all follow the drag tracks of the team in front. We have men that clear the rocks and brush to the roots so the ties won’t snag.” Kurt motioned to the huge steel sled “Plus that thing will move anything that was missed.”

  Wes and Red were stunned, giving the travel time with the Dillos, the hundreds of men and women had moved nearly twenty-six miles of railroad track in less than a week.

  Bryce chuckled to his brother “Hey John, we need to start up a stinker business.”

  From behind them there was a loud crack of the 50-90 and a raptor slammed into the ground a quarter mile away to the west. Cassy stooped and smiled at the men.

  “Looks like the dinos are returning to this prairie, I would suggest you all get your asses in the train and get us moving.

  The foreman smiled back and pointed to the few hundred workers moving along side of the train. “The little lady is right, get moving as soon as you have steam. You’re sittin’ on the track we want to move.”

  Red and Wes nodded as they climbed into the engine’s cab. They had piled the wood that had been cut from the top of the cliffs that Wes had met Cassy on, onto the top of the gondola and in the passenger car. Several men and women now stood by to pass wood forward to the cab when needed.

  The two men looked over the engine and deemed it ready to fire up. Within a half hour they had enough steam to move slowly and did so, so the crews could get ready to dissemble the track as they moved. Red couldn’t go too fast as the sections had not been rewelded, but heavily anchored onto the soil, he didn’t want to chance a derailment, so slow it was.

  The foreman had told them things would move a bit more quickly now that the sections of track had been cut and with their lack of modern tools, cutting the sections of track had been the major time consuming chore.

  Red inched the train forward to the first cut section and jumped out to run ahead as Wes handled the throttle. He watched as the train rolled over the neatly cut sections…and they never budged. The same applied for the next three sections of track. Every time Red ran ahead and watched as the engine rolled over the connections. Every time the foremen was right there with Red. Finally after the fifth connection he laughed as he patted the panting Red on his back.

  “You gonna drive that train of yours, or ya gonna run all the way back to Boulder?”

  Red stopped and grinned sheepishly at Hans “Ok, I’m happy.” and with that he grasped the handrail on the engine and swung up onto the stairs to the cab and the chuckling Wes.

  Wes laughed “Damn Red, thought you were going to run all the way back to…”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s what Hans said.”

  As they reached the first track joint there was already a team of Dillos ready to be hooked up to the track and men and women standing along the tracks to pull the anchoring spikes. As soon as the caboose passed the workers, they went to work pulling spikes. The next stretch of track and the one they left was nearly ready to be towed…the guys were amazed by the efficiency of the crews. It had been decades since they had laid track, yet it looked as if they had been doing it all along.

  They rolled along trying to guess how far along they were between the front and rear of the line. Now and then they had to stop as the crews pounded long anchors into the soil and more track was brought up from behind.

  Hans was right about things going faster now they no longer had to cut the track. Using their heavy sledge hammers, the crews simply hit the anchors several times sideways and the wooden heads snapped off and the tracks chained off and dragged to the front of the line.

  All the time the train moved, there was a steady procession of Dillos dragging track they had left behind. To the east side of the train wagons with new stakes and relief crews rode, to the west, the Dillos dragged track sections. There was so much dust Wes prayed the outrider could see anything coming, because anyone on the train could not.

  Hours passed, and soon most of the day. The setting sun filled the sky with brilliant colors and hues, but no one was lulled into complacency. The work crews made camp around the length of the train, the Dillos, wagons, and guards formed a perimeter and the camp was secured as best as it could be.

  Campfires were set ablaze and those from Boulder seemed at ease, but not Sarge or his men that watched from the top of the train. Night vision goggles ever searching the skies and prairie as a golden moon rose. The moon was at this point in time nearly twice the size of the ‘modern’ moon of 2014 as it was closer to the Earth and seemed even more beautiful. Cord told them it had not established the more distant orbit that they were so used to.

  Most everyone settled in after a dinner of roasted Compsognathus that unfortunately happened to be passing near. The wagons had some caged ones like modern man would keep chickens, but wild ones meant not having to send to Boulder for more supplies.

  Red and Mary walked hand and hand around the inside perimeter as Red explained to Mary that Proff had told them that the moon had an elliptical orbit that
correlated with the summers, and that’s why it seemed so big.

  Sarge was glad the moon was so bright, even those lookouts without the night vision could see anything that moved. Watch was easy…too easy! Within a few hours Cord screamed from the top of the caboose…

  “NEOS! HUNDREDS OF THEM! Christ they’re pouring out of the prairie to our northwest”

  The camp became alive with men and women scurrying about. The one thing Boulder did not have were rapid firing rifles. Sarge and his men had given the gunsmiths of Boulder some of their ammo and it had been duplicated, but they had also given them one of their M-16’s. Now Sarge wished they had that one extra automatic weapon. The bullets had been made, the rifle, not so much and now they were one short.

  They had no way of contacting the carrier, nor could the Japanese fly at night without some sort of information as to where to fly. That and due to the fact that they had discovered the hard way that some species of pterodactyls also flew at night. They had lost four aircraft before they knew what had happened and now only in emergencies they flew at night…however how would they get word to the carrier. The work crews were now on their own.

  As the alarm resonated throughout the encampment the Dillos were moved together as Neos were not bothered by the beasts and would drive them off if they could. Kurt had explained that while not very intelligent, the Neos were not lacking in cunning. Their basic instincts had kept them going long enough to evolve into the Cro-Magnon at some point in evolution, or Cros as humans now called them. Now both species had been tossed together here in Pangea. Luckily the Cros didn’t get along with the Neos either.

  Sarge had been busy and now his teachings paid off as he and Cassy with her Sharps, opened up on the Neos at nearly a mile away. Of course as many as there were, the two sharpshooters didn’t have to aim at a specific target at that distance and they began to fall. Sarge’s armor piercing rounds slammed through several targets at a time and soon the Neos halted their run toward the train in puzzlement.

  Stunned and frightened the Neos packed together and were obviously at a loss as more fell. There seemed to be several of them that came to the front and started screaming in some long forgotten guttural sounds to little avail.

  Wes climbed up to the caboose where Sarge and Cassy had made their stand.

  “That seemed to toss a wrench into their plans.” Sarge grinned in the moonlight “Looks like some sort of sub-leaders that are trying to goad them on.

  Cassy laughed “And the rest aren’t listening.” Now about three quarters of a mile away Cassy made a soft frustrated grunt and the men looked toward the horde.

  “That big one is the leader.” Cassy muttered as she looked through her night vision goggles.

  “Old man told me they fight for the right to be pack leader. I’m guessing that when they decided to form that horde one pack leader was chosen to lead them all. Sort of a General that my real life daddy told me about led troops in the Civil War.”

  “Well that’s one big pack.” Sarge grunted back never taking his eyes off the horde as he sighted through his huge scope that also had night vision capabilities.

  “Looks like that big one is trying to get the other leaders to…”

  There was a loud blast from Cassy’s Sharps that caused both men to jump, but as they looked to where Cassy was aiming they saw the large, hairy male frozen in place with a huge gaping hole in his chest. The leader still locked in death, fell face forward with a thud and the Neo scouts toward the front, turned and ran back to him...and then burst through the horde and headed back toward the hills as fast as they could go. They were quickly outrun by the pack leaders and that in turn caused rampant panic as the rest followed suit.

  The two men turned to look at the petite teen as she looked up from her rifle.

  “What? I told you that had to be the General. Neos don’t do squat without a leader, so I eradicated the leader…simple.” She pulled off her goggles and smiled at the guys.

  “Jesus, I would have thought that one of you would have thought to do that much, at least Sarge here.” She hefted her rifle over her shoulder and headed toward the ladder at the front of the caboose. She stopped and looked back at the two men.

  “By the way, if the old man was right, it takes a good week to choose a new leader, can’t imagine how long it will take for them to choose a new General.”

  From below a voice rang out.

  “Not too long!”

  Everyone spun to see the horde moving rapidly back in the direction of the train. Cassy and Sarge quickly set up firing positions once again, but before they could fire the first shot, there were strange hollow plunks from below and behind. Sarge and Wes looked at each other in puzzled glances as Sarge muttered to Wes “You know I remember that sound.”

  Out on the darkened prairie huge explosions erupted that blasted the horde in pieces. Some explosions slammed into the horde, while others exploded overhead and rained down shrapnel on the hairy victims. Bodies of Neanderthals flew in the air, while others slammed into others as the horde swung westerly to avoid the fiery explosions…the creatures had figured out the range and were running well out of their range.

  Sarge looked at Wes “Mortars?”

  They looked back to near the engine to see four mortars that had been set up and were firing at the horde to keep them at bay.

  Kurt shouted up from below…

  “We have a limited supply of mortar rounds, the professor thought it might be wise to bring them along.” He glanced out at the horde that had now swung to the northwest of the hills their group had been attacked on days before.

  “They were scared by the killing at night and the loss of their leader…” he looked back to the three on top of the caboose “Why the hell did they come back?”

  Cassy looked back as she pulled her goggles back over her eyes and screamed.

  “ALLIES!” All eyes turned to the plains to see a pack of huge dark shapes running fast after the Neo horde…it was a herd of allosaurus snapping and chomping at the stragglers. Whatever the ‘Allies’ as Cassy called them didn’t stomp on, or chomp down on, were slammed by their huge tails. Roars and screams filled the night air.

  The young lass sat with her legs dangling off the caboose as she watched the carnage as it unfolded. It was as if the allosaurus herd was more intent upon killing the Neos, than eating them. She chuckled softly.

  “Boy oh boy, did those guys piss the Allies off or what.”

  Kurt nodded up from below.

  “Yeah, we’ve heard from the Indians that they heard of incidences where Neos and Cro’s had tried thinning out the dinos by destroying their nests and an entire village was wiped out in return. Seem the dinos are a bit more family oriented than what the books tell us.”

  Those that had binoculars or telescopes watched as the allosaurus herd chased the Neos out of sight and by the amount of bodies left behind, it appeared that it would be quite some time before they had to worry about Neos again.

  Wes shrugged and turned back toward the campfires.

  “Well guys, looks like that’s all the entertainment for tonight.” He sat and reached for the coffee pot “but let’s keep an extra eye out just in case, those bastards sure seem to have taken quite a dislike to us.”

  Cassy sat next to Wes and laughed “Not as much as those fuckin’ Allies…” and then winced as she felt Wes’s glare. Without looking at him she swallowed hard and then grinned.

  “Tell ya what new daddy, if you stop swearing…I’ll stop.”

  There was silence from Wes and those behind and listening to it all covered their mouths to keep from laughing.

  Slowly Cassy looked at Wes…

  “Ok Wes, I know…we don’t make deals. I agreed to listen if I was going to stay with you all.” She sighed and got to her feet, she smiled sweetly at him.

  “But if you think that I’m gonna wash my mouth out with soap…you can kiss my ass!” and with that she burst into a run. Wes jumped to his feet and head
ed after the sassy lass to the roar of laughter.

  Chapter 24.

  Another day and the train reached the river the party had crossed on their way to find Boulder. Surprisingly there was a very wide bridge that had been built that could accommodate not just the train, but the teams of Dillos that dragged the tons of steel and wood across to the other side to be laid. All around the bridge were spikes of steel and hardwood that covered the bridge in and around the water, their points glistening in the sunlight; no dino would be rubbing up against this bridge and it was obviously strong enough to hold several if they walked across it. Floods would have to be massive to even budge the giant trees that had been used for support columns and in this spot in the river there was plenty of height off the water.

  “Boulder came and started this bridge the day we decided to go after your train.” Kurt informed them “This is one of the few high river crossings we knew we had to use because of the floods like the one you ran into. Damned things empty into this river.”

  Huge wooden beams had been created that allowed the tracks to be recessed into the bridge so the beasts and rails being dragged over the previously laid track prevented damage and now the train had to wait for the last of the sections to be dragged across.

  Hans, the man in charge of the work crews had told them all but the section that sat upon the bridge would remain in place with hopes of someday taking the track east from this bridge to Blackwood.

  Wes and Sarge however were impatient to move on, but Hans insisted that the train merely cross the bridge and wait on the other side for the crews to finish up. Neither were satisfied that the more Pangaean experienced Hans told them the Neos never came past the river, nor were they in danger of the large predators coming around because of the Dillos, they wanted to move on. A few days passed and the last of the crews behind them crossed and vanished into the distance ahead of them.