Into Thin Air: Omnibus Edition Parts 1 - 3

by Mark R Silgram

“I’ve done my best to patch up the people who survived the attack, Lieutenant Ripley, but to be honest we’re fighting a losing battle with those things. You guys better have a plan.”

  “Are you a doctor?”

  “I went to medical school until I was kicked out for smoking weed,” Milton said, before raising his rifle and starting to blast away at a Pterodactyl that was heading straight for them.

  “Hold your fire, Lieutenant Alphonsoe,” Charlotte said, holding up the egg. “We’re going to try to end this peacefully.”

  “With respect, ma’am, have you lost your mind?”

  The Pterodactyl was so close now that Taylor could feel the flap of its wings. But instead of tearing into them it just circled overhead.

  “Pterodactyls usually eat fish, and this one only started attacking us when we stole its offspring,” Charlotte said, having to shout. “Here, you can have your baby back,” she said, gently placing the egg on the ground and backing away. “There will be no more killing from now on. This camp will be built on a foundation of peace and co-operation.” She was addressing the prehistoric bird but the words were meant for everyone.

  With that she laid her rifle on the ground and ushered everyone to do the same. The Pterodactyl took one look at them and then flew down and fucked off with the egg in its beak.

  A party was well underway as Taylor sat on his own with only his thoughts for company, the sea lapping at his toes. It didn’t seem right now, abandoning them. The bad guy may have rode off with his tail between his legs, but he would be back with his posse in tow, and when he did blood would be spilt in a big way. He felt a duty to protect them. His airmen could’ve landed miles away, and with no means to track them down it could take years to find them. He was alone in a strange world with dangerous animals that were at the top of the food chain.

  “Can I join you?” Charlotte said, passing him a beer. “I just wanted to say thank you for what you did back there. Someone needed to stand up to the little prick.”

  “I don’t like being lied to, Charlotte. What kind of secrets are you keeping that would let nothing more than a child run your camp like it was the Wild West?”

  “That’s a story for another day.”

  “And that business with the egg. Are you a mother, Charlotte?”

  “I used to be,” Charlotte said, looking out at the sea. “But she died and it was my fault.”

  Hever Castle, Kent 2007

  DING DING DING DING. The best man was about to make a speech as he tapped his champagne glass with a knife. Charlotte felt exhausted and was afraid that if she did any more smiling she’d end up looking like shop dummy. It was fucking hard work being a bride. The wedding dress she had picked out with her mum many months ago looked beautiful at the time but was hardly practical and she couldn’t wait to get the damn thing off. Not that her hubby would mind: all he’d be thinking of was a fuck later on. But she was pregnant so he’d have to wait. She felt so hot that when the day was over she’d look like a bleeding roast chicken.

  She couldn’t complain; there were worst places to getting married than Hever Castle. Built in the thirteenth century from 1462 to 1539, it was the seat of the Boleyn family. Anne Boleyn, who was the queen consort of Henry VIII, had spent her childhood here and the spectacular gardens had won numerous awards over the years. Now they were now seated in the Tudor Suite Dining Hall, which was shrouded in oak panelling and had a stunning fireplace.

  She was about to fall asleep when the best man hammered once again on his champagne glass and asked for people’s attention. He then rabbited on for about half an hour about how great her husband was, until finally he got to her, a little footnote in comparison. Next it was her dad’s turn to do a speech. It was full of embarrassing teases and he turned a potty incident when she was three into a nuclear warhead which he launched at them without warning. Then, finally, it was her husband’s turn.

  “I first met Charlotte in primary school. She was crying because she had wet herself so I offered her a handkerchief. We both loved dinosaurs and every lunchtime we’d play the dinosaur game,” he said, and blushed as the guests laughed loudly. “But it wasn’t until university that we fell in love, and the day we both received our paleontology degree I asked her to marry me and she said yes. It was the happiest day of my life.”

  He wandered over to her with something behind his back. “So I’d like to give you this back.” He handed her a plastic T-Rex. “It’s the same the one I hid from you when we were six. It doesn’t seem fair to hang on to it now that we’re married.” More laughter erupted.

  “And now I’d like you all to raise a glass and toast my best friend and beautiful wife, Charlotte.”

  Somehow she made it to the road. After buying a packet of fags and lighting one up she felt the relief almost instantly. She was still in her wedding dress but minus her shoes and soaked to the skin with rain as she flagged down a black cab.

  “Do you mind if I smoke?” she asked the taxi driver, her hands trembling with shock and anger.

  “I’m not supposed to let you smoke, but you look like you could do with it so go ahead. Where do you want to go?”

  “Anywhere, as long as it’s far away from this place. It’s my first cig in six months and I need it after catching my husband, Richard, snogging the best man. Found them fucking in the wedding car, a white vintage nineteen thirty-eight Rolls Royce Phantom Limousine. It was me who chose it, so we could do just that – but he beat me to it, with the best man of all fucking people.”

  “Ouch.” The taxi driver winced. “But you know some things happen for a reason.”

  “Oh yeah, and what reason would that be?”

  “Come and join the Royal Navy with me.”

  “I don’t think I’m in the condition to do that,” Charlotte said, patting her bump with a forced laugh. “I don’t even know your name.”

  “It’s Milton, Milton Alphonsoe. And you are?”

  “Charlotte Anne Ripley.”

  The Cretaceous Period

  112 days ago…

  Milton panned his iPhone camera out of the window of the convoy support vehicle, which looked similar to a large green furniture van with blue flashing lights on the roof. Also in the vehicle were Lieutenant Charlotte Ripley and her father, Mountain Leader Henry Ripley. They were out looking for supplies and the terrain wasn’t ideal for the sort of vehicle they were in, but then again they hadn’t expected to find themselves trapped in Dinosaur World, as they had nicknamed it. They were each equipped with pistols and assault rifles; not that the weapons would do much good against a massive fucking dinosaur, but they felt reassured carrying them. They were traversing a valley filled with lush forests of long-needled conifers and ginkgoes. Horse-tails, ferns and mosses flourished around the lake edges.

  “Lieutenant Alphonsoe, what the fuck are you doing?” Mountain Leader Henry Ripley said as they stopped by the lake to fill up water canisters.

  “Filming the dinosaurs, sir, for Stephen Spielberg. When we get home I’m going to earn a fucking shit-load of money producing films for him.”

  “Wouldn’t that cause a time paradox?” Charlotte Ripley said, drinking from a water bottle.

  “Not sure, man, but who cares? Once we get home we’re going to be famous.”

  “Okay, people, fun’s over. Stay alert,” Henry Ripley said as he took the safety off his gun. “Camp Lucy is relying on us to bring back food and water.”

  “Camp Lucy?” Charlotte said, filling another canister as beads of sweat glistened on her forehead.

  “I nicknamed our camp after the first ape to walk upright. Thought it might be fitting given where we are.”

  “I thought Lucy was a chimp, sir, not an ape,” Charlotte said.

  “The only Lucy I know gave the best blow jobs in my college,” Milton said with a snigger, making a crude sucking sound.

  Without warning, Charlotte punched him to the ground, dived on top of him and started raining down blows, before Henry pulled her off
him.

  “That’s enough, you two. We’re fighting for our lives here and I don’t need you two acting like school kids on a day out.”

  “Sorry, sir,” they both said, dusting themselves down and looking a bit sheepish.

  It came at them at the speed of lightning and tore into Henry’s chest with a fourteen-inch claw. Charlotte screamed and drew down on it and blasted a full mag into its body. The creature shrieked with pain and blood oozed out of its wound as it dropped to the ground.

  “Dad…” Charlotte said, rushing to her father’s aid.

  “What the fuck is that thing?” Milton said, grabbing a medical kit from the van.

  “It’s a Utahraptor,” Charlotte said, relieved to find her father was wearing Kevlar body armour. “And we’d better get moving because more will be on their way.”

  Sure enough a whole pack started running towards them.

  “Quickly, get into the van,” Henry Ripley said.

  They all piled in and Henry floored the accelerator just as one of them jumped onto the roof and another came crashing through the windscreen. Shots were fired and the van became decorated with dinosaur blood as they careered through the valley as more poured over a hill, heading straight for them. Struggling to outrun them, the battered van smashed into a tree.

  “Is everyone all right?” Henry shouted above the shrieking of Utahraptors as they hungrily began to rip into the van like it was a tin of beans they’d just bought at Tesco’s.

  Amongst the bloodthirsty chaos Henry saw that Charlotte was dead, a claw had ripped open her chest. He fought to get over to her body as Milton tried in vain to stop the dinosaurs pouring in through the windows.

  A series of rapid shots echoed throughout the valley as a man came running towards them, blasting the monsters two-handed, Arnie-style, with Uzis. “Run to the trees!” the man shouted as a stream of bullets hit anything that moved. “Quickly! I can’t hold them for long.”

  Milton and Henry grabbed Charlotte’s body and legged it. When they were clear of the van their rescuer threw a grenade at it and joined them a few seconds later as the van blew up, wiping out the last of the Utahraptors in a huge fireball that shot up into the prehistoric sky.

  When he recognised their saviour, Henry sent Charlotte’s ex-husband, Richard, flying into a river of mud with a punch.

  “We don’t have much time,” Richard said, spitting blood with his face caked in mud.

  “What do you mean? She’s fucking dead, man,” Milton said, helping him to his feet.

  “Yes, but we might be able to bring her back.”

  “How?” Henry said.

  “Time runs at different speeds depending on where you go in this world,” Donald explained, pointing to his withered face with a hand that was skeletal. “How d’you think I got like this? Look at me: I’m a monster, a cross between Victor Meldrew and He-Man’s nemesis Skeletor.”

  “How did you get here, man?”

  “The same way you all did, by accident.”

  They carried Charlotte’s body to what looked like a tear in the fabric of reality with bright light spilling out of it. Upon instructions from Richard they placed Charlotte’s body inside it for a few minutes before pulling her out kicking and screaming in pain. Richard grabbed hold of her but she bit into his face and slashed at his arms with her nails in a desperate bid to return to the tear.

  “Quick we need to plug up that tear,” Richard said feeling Charlotte slipping from his grasp. Henry plugged up the tear with his body and they could only watch in horror as he aged rapidly, his hair fell out in clumps and within seconds he was nothing more than skeleton. Charlotte collapsed next to her father’s smoking skeleton and sobbed.

  Chapter 4

  Charles Taylor woke up to the smell of freshly washed clothes and for a split second he thought he was home, until Charlotte draped her arm over his bare chest. Trying not to wake her, he got dressed and wandered out of her tent to be greeted by the most gorgeous sunrise he had ever seen. The air smelt pure and enriched with so much oxygen he thought about bottling it and taking it home. After yesterday’s drama he could finally see why Charlotte and her people had chosen to settle here and put up with the occasional threat of being eaten by a dinosaur or two. Then an alarming thought occurred to him: were they altering human evolution simply by being here? And what had brought them here in the first place? But he didn’t have time to ponder those questions because Milton came running over and slapped him on the back.

  “You’re a fast mover, man.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh come on, I thought men of your time usually married a girl before slipping her one,” Milton said, playfully punching him in the chest.

  “Nothing happened, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Taylor said, raising an eyebrow. “I just didn’t fancy getting eaten by a dinosaur while I slept on the beach, so Charlotte offered me her tent.”

  “Yeah right, and I guess she just forgot to mention the watchtowers. She likes you, man.”

  “Watchtowers?”

  “Yeah, man, look up there,” Milton said, pointing to a wooden watchtower upon which a solitary marine was watching them through the sights of a sniper rifle.

  “We have four of these bad boys, man. Well, three now that Troy’s fucked off. Any fucking dinosaur dares step foot on our beach and we zap it.”

  “But surely a single bullet won’t be enough to stop one?”

  “Not the bigger dinosaurs, no. But when the little shitty-arse ones you see in Jurassic Park come calling we end up having Velociraptor sandwiches morning, noon and night. It’s worse than turkey, man.”

  Taylor didn’t know what the hell he was going on about, but before he could ask there came a flash of bright light that temporary blinded them, followed by a boom in the sky louder than a thunderclap. Looking up, he saw a flying saucer spinning out of control before crashing in the distance.

  “What the fuck, man…” Milton said, before running into Charlotte’s tent.

  Charlotte stood in just her bra and knickers as Milton showed her footage from what he called his iPhone before reeling off a list of conspiracy theories.

  “Okay, okay,” Charlotte said, holding her hands up in exasperation. “We’ll tool up and go and search for it. Now can I get dressed gentlemen?”

  They headed to the armory having recruited a couple of guys – or “red shirts” as Milton liked to call them, explaining that they were the extra characters in Star Trek who were always killed first.

  “Here, man,” Milton said, tossing Charles Taylor a gun. “L9A1 semi-automatic pistol nine millimetre.”

  “And what are you going to have?” Charles Taylor said with a raised eyebrow.

  “An 85A2 assault rifle light support weapon carbine 5.56 X forty-five millimetre,” Milton said, taking it off the rack.

  The two red shirts also got a nine-millimetre pistol each, while Charlotte also chose an assault rifle. After each of them slipped on a backpack, they headed out into the jungle in search of the flying saucer.

  The Savoy Hotel, London 2009

  Troy blew smoke rings into the air before passing the Churchill cigar to Richard as they both lay naked on the bed, gleaming with sweat after having sex. He might have been sixteen years old but he knew how love felt. Richard made his spine tingle, and every time Troy looked into his perfect bright green eyes it was though they could communicate telepathically, neither one saying a word to each other but knowing instantly how they both felt. They had even started finishing each other’s sentences. How could love be so right and yet so complicated? Richard was his history teacher, and although Troy worried about him losing his job he couldn’t stand the thought of being without him. It was Richard who had got Troy a job at the Natural History Museum, and even though he felt a little embarrassed about wearing a dinosaur costume as he directed people around the dinosaur exhibition, he felt he could do anything as long as Donald was in his life.

  “While we we
re having sex I found a lump in your testicles. Why didn’t you tell me you have cancer?” Troy said, unable to look at Richard.

  “I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d get upset and start to worry,” Richard said, getting dressed.

  “Can’t you have treatment?”

  “The doctors caught it too late and it’s started to spread.”

  “How long have you got?”

  “The doctors have given me six months. A year at best.”

  Troy buried his head in Richard’s chest. He had finally found the love of his life, someone who truly understood him, only to have it dashed by nature’s whim. “Is there anything we can do?”

  “There’s an experimental treatment in America, but it’s way too expensive. So let’s enjoy the time we have together,” Richard said with a warm smile. “Now why don’t you cheer me up and put on your costume.”

  “Kinky bastard,” Troy said with a forced laugh, taking out the T-Rex dinosaur costume he wore for work, and they both started laughing.

  Troy wasn’t laughing now as he was being chased by a Triceratops. He could hear it grunting right behind him and every now and then it would try its luck with its horns. Troy thought of himself as fit back home; he did weights, drank protein shakes and went to the gym. But even he had his limits and he couldn’t keep running forever.

  That’s when he saw Charles Taylor’s plane dangling in the trees, so he headed for it. When the stupid Triceratops charged at him, Troy leapt out of the way just in time, causing the dinosaur to smack into a tree at full speed, knocking it over and sparking a chain reaction of trees falling like dominoes, eventually causing the plane to fall onto the Triceratops, crushing it to death.

  “Somebody help me, please…” Troy heard a man shout as he was admiring his handiwork. He ran over to help only to find Richard sinking into a tar pit.