Petra gasped.
“Yeah.” I shook my head. “He led a group of kids from St. Alphonsus Elementary School out from the upper deck and down the stairs and was going back up to get some more folks out of one of the skyboxes when the whole side of the stadium fell over.”
Until now, it had only really been a story.
“I’m sorry,” Petra said.
“Thanks,” I replied. I let out a breath. “I didn’t actually know him, though. Until now, he’s always been just a name and a bunch of photos.”
Petra stared across the fire, to where Brady and Nate were asleep. “But why is it creeping you out?”
I glanced over, watching the shadows from the flames play over her profile. “Because in our time, Brady’s dead!”
Petra gave the fish carcass a little nudge with a stick. Aki pounced. “But in our time, so’s Mildred. Probably. And so was your Great-Grandfather Samuel, too.”
“I know,” I answered. “But they’re supposed to be! Brady’s . . . Brady is Nate’s age and should be living his life now. Then. Whatever.”
“Are you thinking of telling him?”
“Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Would you want to know?” Petra asked.
I took a deep breath. “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. And if I do tell him, what if that changes everything? What if he never saves those kids?”
“What if your telling him is what saves those kids?”
Chapter
XIII
Nate
TO NATE, THE NIGHT FELT ODD.
He wasn’t sure what to make of any of the three strangers. Mildred he could sort of understand, although her wanting vengeance for the death of her father seemed either a bit old- fashioned or a bit insane. Nate couldn’t imagine going to these lengths to avenge his own father’s death, although part of that might have been because his leg throbbed through the night, even though he’d taken most of the aspirin.
He could definitely see Brady doing it, though.
They had made sure to keep Mildred away from Petra’s bow and arrows and anything else that was pointy or sharp.
“She might decide to throw rocks or stuff at you, though,” Brady had told Max. “Or push you in the lake. You can swim, right?”
Max didn’t look amused.
Petra seemed solid enough and had survival skills that could be useful. And the baby dromaeosaur thing was either adorable or deeply disturbing. From what Brady said, the creatures could grow bigger than turkey vultures and were a lot deadlier.
Then there was Max himself, who seemed kind of like a know-it-all and a little freaked out around Brady. Nate didn’t think his brother realized that, though, possibly because he and Max were bonding over the whole dinosaur thing. Also, Max was Nate and Brady’s nephew and Ernie’s son and Nate didn’t really need to know that. Maybe time travel was a bad idea after all.
And this plan of Max’s seemed completely insane. The chances that they could salvage something that worked from a wrecked boat seemed really, really remote. And he wasn’t convinced Max had a real idea of how the thing worked. Forget ending up in a particularly bad time of history when they didn’t have plumbing or antibiotics. They could materialize inside a wall.
And, yes, Nate was slightly feverish and it was hot out.
The air was thick, although not quite as bad as it was during the day. Loud insects seemed to surround them. Occasionally, there were calls from deep in the forest across the lake, like nothing Nate had ever heard before. Hooting and screeching, sure, but from no animal he could identify.
Later, toward the middle of the night, he and Brady sat talking on the charred surface of the dock, legs dangling just above the water.
“What do you think?” Brady asked. He’d nudged Nate awake
when it was time for their watch. The others were snoring softly.
“We can never tell Ernie about this,” Nate replied, gesturing to where Max was sleeping.
Brady nodded. “She’ll probably like him, though. She’ll have to if she’s his mother.”
“You don’t?”
“He seems a little . . . edgy around me.”
“Yeah,” Nate answered. “I noticed that too.”
At dawn, Nate was awakened by the screaming of birds and who knows what else. Brady said that songbirds hadn’t evolved yet, and Max added that it was probably the theropod dinosaurs, the pterosaurs, and possibly something called Icthyornis.
The girls still seemed asleep on their side of the camp.
Nate’s leg felt tender to the touch and the skin was tight and warm. The bites still seemed to be oozing. They were clearly infected, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about it right then.
He was determined not to complain but groaned when he realized there was no more aspirin.
“Here,” Max said, his voice low when he realized what Nate was upset about. He pulled a red pouch from his backpack and tossed it toward Nate. “There should be some painkillers in there.”
When Nate opened the first-aid pouch, a small object fell out, about the size and shape of a package of PEZ. He swallowed a couple aspirins before picking it up. The end pulled off like a pen cap to reveal a metal connector of some kind. Written in black marker on the side was the word NICE.
“What is this?” he asked, holding it up.
“It’s called a USB flash drive,” Max answered, eyebrows raised. “I didn’t pack it, though.”
“Then who did?” Brady put in.
“My brother . . . or uncle.” Max reached to take the gadget and the pouch from Nate.
“A drive?” Nate asked, still not really understanding. “You mean, like a floppy disk drive?”
“Yeah, but with a lot bigger capacity.” Max tossed it up and caught it in his hand a couple of times, frowning in concentration.
“How much bigger?”
“At least a gigabyte,” Max answered, still frowning.
“What?” Nate exclaimed. “On that?” That was like a supercomputer level of memory.
“Uh-huh.”
“So did you bring a computer?” Brady put in.
“No,” Max replied. “That’s what’s weird. I brought one last time, but I don’t have it now . . . He did say, ‘Play nice,’ though. Which means it must be important.”
“Who?” Nate asked.
“You,” Max replied.
“So why would Kyle or your Uncle Nate send this with you if you don’t have anything to play it on?” Brady asked.
“Maybe they’ll send something,” Petra said as she emerged from behind the quilt.
“You heard?” Max asked.
“It’s a blanket,” she answered, “not a brick wall.”
“Fascinating as this is, if we can’t do anything with that . . . whatever it is, perhaps we should get moving,” Mildred put in.
At that, Max zipped the drive back into the first-aid pouch and returned it to his backpack.
They decided to leave the canoe at the island because towing it with the bass boat would have been too complicated. Brady and Max hauled it out of the water and placed it upside down on logs next to the charred remains of the cabin itself. The two did one last search around the island while Petra and Mildred hunted Aki. That is, they watched while Aki hunted in the mud for crabs and worms and such.
In the embers of the fire, they cooked the turtle Brady had caught, then pried off its shell and had it for breakfast with a can of creamed corn and another of red beans. After that, they were off. Nate took the driver’s seat and Mildred went up front to the fishing chair, back in her safari garb and pith helmet. Petra sat cross-legged beside her, while Brady took the rear fishing seat and Max sat next to Nate.
Ahead of them, a trio of big Quetzalcoatlus landed and began wading through the water like giant storks.
The boat still had three-quarters of a tank of gas. Nate wasn’t sure how far they were going, so he kept the boat at a relatively sedate pace. Not so slow as to not leave a wake, but not ex
actly winning any speed records.
He took them away from the island and toward the river. It wasn’t all that wide—it kind of reminded Nate of the Colorado River as it ran through Bastrop. Maybe about a hundred yards across, but more winding.
As they entered the mouth of the river, the pterosaurs took off, alarmed by the sound of the motor. To Nate, they really were amazing. He would’ve enjoyed watching them more if he had been certain of a way back home and if his leg wasn’t still hurting.
It hadn’t really cooled off during the night and was already getting steamier.
Chapter
XIV
Max
I WATCHED AS THE QUETZALCOATLUS TOOK OFF and then circled around and flew inland. There was just something absolutely incredible about a creature that big that could fly.
To our right, on the far side of the river, a flock of wading birds, like herons, strutted amid a growth of horsetails. I kept an eye out on the left for Triceratops.
Behind me, now in the fishing seat, Brady craned his neck, trying to take in everything. Nate didn’t seem to be all that interested in where we were, but his leg looked really ugly—purple and swollen—and had to be hurting. We needed to make it home soon. The infection could kill him just as easily as a tyrannosaur.
I hadn’t actually slept all that well last night, a combination of damp clothes and the fact that I didn’t want Mildred to lop off my head with a machete or anything. This morning, as we made breakfast, she kept giving me the evil eye.
“So,” Brady asked, “anyone ever try to kill you before?”
I stared. “What do you think?”
He shrugged. “For all I know, y’all are living in some hellishly radioactive, postapocalyptic place where gasoline is the most valuable commodity in the world.”
“Yes,” I told him. “That’s exactly what the future is like.” I was tempted to say that we were also fighting a battle against a race of sentient machines, but decided that even letting him know what the future wasn’t wasn’t a good idea. Although there was a lot he was already picking up. Like the fact that his sister would have three kids.
“Have the Cubs won a World Series lately?” Brady asked next.
I tried to figure out if he was serious. “You’re a Cubs fan?”
“No,” Nate put in, “but Ernie’s idiot boyfriend, Jacob Takahashi, is.” He shrugged. “He’s from Chicago.”
I tried not to change my expression at Nate’s mentioning my father. Or the fact that Nate didn’t like him.
But Nate saw me react. “You know the name.”
“I can’t tell you,” I said.
“About the Cubs, or Jacob Takahashi?” Brady said.
“Either.”
Chapter
XV
Nate
THE RIVER WAS FLOWING FAST ENOUGH THAT NATE DIDN’T REALLY have to keep the throttle all that high. Just enough so they had power to steer around rocks.
Max had moved to sit on the deck in front of the cockpit, while Brady was in a seat next to his brother. Petra and Mildred were still up front, playing with Aki and keeping a lookout for whatever was ahead.
On the left, the riverbank varied between three and ten feet high, concave with exposed sand and rock and tree roots. Above was a forest of redwoods and ferns. On the right, the riverbank was lower and the trees weren’t as big. Most resembled modern oaks and magnolias, though there were still some redwoods. On each side, ferns and palmettos and cycads formed the undergrowth.
As the boat came around a bend in the river, ahead of them, on the high bank to the left, stood a huge row of dinosaurs, about a hundred yards long, pawing at the ground, looking like they were trying to decide if they wanted to jump in. From the noise—sort of like mooing, but with loud screeches mixed in—it seemed to be a huge herd. They were four-legged, dark brown with green stripes and lighter underbellies. Nate guessed they ranged from around twenty to thirty feet long. Their heads looked sort of like those of horses, but with wide, flat mouths.
“That’s incredible!” Max murmured. “Proof of migratory behavior—”
“Here be dragons,” Brady said.
“What?” Nate asked.
But before Brady answered, Max did. “Supposedly ancient map makers would inscribe ‘Here be dragons’ on areas they didn’t actually know about.”
Brady gave Max an indulgent glance but didn’t otherwise respond.
These were pretty tame-looking dragons, Nate thought. Granted, they were impressively large, but they didn’t have great big fangs or incisors or anything, and they didn’t breathe fire.
“Umm,” he said, just to be sure, “these dinosaurs don’t breathe fire, do they?”
“Of course not,” Brady said, his attention back on the herd gathered on the riverbank.
Max cleared his throat. “Well—”
“They breathe fire?” Brady exclaimed, now staring at their nephew.
Max squirmed. “Technically, we don’t actually know. Because, you know, we only have bones for the most part, and soft tissue in a few cases, but not all the organs and—”
“I want a dragon,” Petra said, while Mildred snorted in a not altogether ladylike fashion.
“You have a dragon,” Brady pointed out.
“So, what are they?” Nate asked.
“Hadrosaurs of some kind,” Brady said. “They’re sort of the cows of the Cretaceous.”
“Probably Kritosaurus,” Max said.
Nate stared at the gathered herd and adjusted the throttle to hold position. “If they want to cross the river, what are they waiting for?”
“Those!” Petra said, pointing at a series of huge shapes low in the river. “And over there!”
In the water, farther down on a sandbar in the middle of the river, were alligators, but bigger than any Nate had ever seen. Or heard of. Maybe forty feet long, they were at least twice the length of the bass boat.
“Deinosuchus!” Brady and Max said at the same time.
At that moment, the first of the hadrosaurs jumped into the water.
“Nate, get us out of here!” Max shouted, just as the boat lurched from a blow underneath and Nate was thrown back into his seat in the cockpit.
Nate glanced over the side and saw a huge scaly green shape shoot out from under the boat, thumping the aluminum hull as it scraped by.
Finally, when the creature’s head was much farther away than it properly should’ve been, the boat settled.
On his knees at the bow, Brady yelled, “Nate! We need warp speed now or we’re all dead!”
If Nate punched it, it would be like running into a wall. He glanced behind. That was blocked too. “There are too many of them!”
By then, the wall of hadrosaurs on shore had broken as one after another jumped into the river, a steady stream of dinosaurs. Nate tried to keep the boat steady, looking out for a clear path, even as the gators attacked the Kritosaurus. One of the giant reptiles would latch on to a leg and pull the entire hadrosaur under, twisting in a frenzy of white water, tearing off chunks of flesh.
Even as Nate maneuvered the boat around one and then another, in no time they were surrounded by a steady flow of hadrosaurs, Deinosuchus in their midst, picking them off one after another. The bass boat bobbed as the gators jostled it from underneath and the Kritosaurus struck its sides.
“This may take a while to get through.” Max crouched at the front of the boat, right behind the trolling motor, glancing from one side of the river to the other. Petra stood, leaning against the fishing seat, holding on with one hand, the other holding the bow, an arrow nocked loosely. Only a handful of the first hadrosaurs had made it across. The rest of the herd was pouring into the water, though.
As the boat held steady in the middle of the river, another gator approached. It knocked into the side of the boat, then passed by, so the group got a close-up of the armor on its back along the entire length of the hull. Then it dived after a carcass.
As the boat was being battered about
, Petra knelt, one hand on the fishing seat. The others hung on as best they could. It was like being on a particularly scary thrill ride, only it wasn’t a ride.
“We have to get out of here!” Petra said.
Nate sat behind the wheel, hand on the throttle. “Give me a heading!”
“Left!” Max shouted as they headed directly toward a pair of giant gators.
“That’s ‘port,’” Brady corrected.
“Now straight,” Max yelled. Nate steered the boat between a pair of hadrosaurs, passing directly in front of a third. The giant herbivore ignored them and just kept swimming straight ahead. A moment later, they were out of its path and had dodged another gator.
Within minutes, though, they bobbed from the impact of another Deinosuchus. Then a Kritosaurus rammed the side of the boat, deflecting it from its course and into the path of another dino. For a moment, the front of the boat tilted downward as the creature rested its four-foot-long head on the bow, crushing the trolling motor. The bass boat slowed and turned, the giant herbivore dragging it along.
“Get it off!” Nate yelled, and tried to reverse to pull free. But with gators and hadrosaurs all around, there wasn’t any room to maneuver.
“How?” Max yelled. Sitting, he braced himself and kicked out at the Kritosaurus’s head.
Water sloshed over the front of the boat as the weight of the creature bore it down.
“Use the machete—” Mildred began.
Then the hadrosaur’s flank was struck by a gator. Instantly, the boat bobbed back up and surged backwards.
“Other way!” Brady shouted. The path ahead was now clear.
Nate punched it.
That’s when there was a surge from underneath, and the back of the boat rose, the propeller grinding in open air. Before Nate could react, the bass boat tipped over onto its port side.
When it righted itself, water cascading off the deck, Petra was clinging to the support of the front fishing chair and Brady was braced in the seat behind Nate.
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