Borrowed Time

by Greg Leitich Smith

  “Paddle!” I said, as soon as we were away from the bank. Together, nicely synchronous, we started making headway.

  About halfway across, scanning upriver, I spotted a head with a V-shaped wake behind it. It was a Deinosuchus, a smallish one, maybe only about seven or eight feet long. But it was heading toward us.

  “Move!” I shouted, pointing. Instantly, Mildred plunged her paddle into the water and we picked up the pace, though not nearly as fast as I would’ve liked. I kept an eye on the alligator. We still had time, I thought, as both the alligator and the shore got closer.

  When we were maybe a raft’s length from the riverbank, the Deinosuchus was only about twenty feet from us and disappeared from view.

  “Jump!” I shouted. As soon as I said it, Mildred sprang up and toward the bank.

  I raised my paddle up, readied as a spear. At the same instant, the alligator launched itself from the water. I thrust the paddle forward, striking the upturned jaw of the alligator and turning it aside, even as it ripped the paddle from my hand. As the Deinosuchus thrashed with the paddle, I jumped to my feet and leaped toward the riverbank, falling half in the water.

  I scrambled up the bank, pulled by Mildred, as the raft drifted away in the struggle. Finally, I was on dry land, on my side, legs readied to kick out. I caught a glimpse of Mildred swinging her paddle, and the alligator was gone.

  As I lay there, relieved not to be food for a prehistoric reptile, of all things, Mildred stood over me. “Well, then. Shall we proceed?”

  After a few minutes to recover and take a drink of water, we headed off, walking along the bank for another hour or two before we reached the sea. The forest of redwoods gave way to a marshy beach. The gleaming white sand was marred only by seaweed at tide level and piles of dung from sauropod dinosaurs, their birdbath-size footprints crisscrossing the sand. We stayed close to the forest because we didn’t want to be out in the open if a T. rex or its smaller cousin, Nanotyrannus, lumbered along.

  We came upon the stranded steamboat late in the afternoon, its once-white hull now flaking away.

  “I recognize it,” Mildred said. “My father has photographs of himself on it with Mad Jack before their falling-out. It’s called Mary Anne.”

  We picked up the pace, almost running along the beach to reach the boat. It lay half buried in the sand, on an angle, a large hole in its hull exposing the lower deck, where the mechanical workings of the boat resided.

  “Hello!” I shouted, then flinched as a pair of Quetzalcoatlus swooped low over us, then flew away.

  “I’ve seen them eat beasts the size of large dogs,” Mildred said.

  “I shuddered, and when the pterosaurs were safely on their way, I picked up a piece of driftwood and struck the hull a couple of times, not because I expected anyone to be there, but because last time, there had been an oviraptorosaur inside.

  I didn’t hear anything from within the boat, so I circled around, then peered into the hole. Nothing. I climbed up onto the deck. Back in its day, the launch had had a small cabin cockpit in the rear. Up front, there was an opening in the deck that exposed the steam engine. A now-rusted smokestack rose about ten feet above the deck.

  Next to the smokestack stood a box about the size of a microwave oven. I lifted the lid. Inside was a prototype large-scale Recall Device. From what I understood, it had been an early model to see if large objects—like the boat—could be moved through time and space. But it was unwieldy, so Mad Jack designed the hand-held baseball-size ones. The maze of wires and conduits underneath the control panel interface glowed green, a promising sign.

  I pulled a handwritten note out of the box. One I’d left behind the last time we’d come. It was addressed to Emma, telling her that we were there, that we’d rescue her. I handed it to Mildred. “See?”

  She read it without comment while I peered into the workings of the Recall Device.

  “Looks like it should still work,” I murmured.

  “Good,” Mildred said.

  Something in her tone made me look over at her.

  The last thing I saw was a piece of driftwood coming at my head.

  Chapter

  XXIII

  Nate

  “PETRA!” BRADY YELLED TOWARD THE SHORE. “We need to get everything off the boat!”

  Her startled face appeared at the edge of the bank.

  “Stay there!” Brady said. “And catch!”

  Nate was already opening the compartments and pulling the supplies onto the deck, ignoring the pain in his leg. He tossed up cans of peas and beans while Brady threw the tackle box. Past Petra, not at Petra.

  Before they finished, the boat had settled to the bottom of the river, with just the windshield peeking above the water.

  Glumly, they gathered everything they could and put it in a pile by the fire.

  Sunrise came while Nate was on watch. They’d kept the fire going for around three hours, but there was no sign of Max and Mildred.

  Brady lay sleeping on his back next to Nate, while Petra was asleep on her side by the fire, her bow and the quiver of arrows beside her. Aki rested behind her neck.

  Nate stood and stretched, wincing as stabs of pain shot through his leg. At his movement, Aki got up and began hunting in the ferns. Nate tried to track him, but the dromaeosaur almost immediately disappeared from view and Nate didn’t want to follow.

  Instead, he limped over to stand at the river’s edge. He didn’t see any gators, but on the other side was a flock of things that looked like ostriches, but with long reptile tails and arms instead of wings. They were about the size of ostriches too, but had blue and red feathers on their bodies and green necks. They milled about in the shallows, clucking and drinking from the river.

  Nate nudged his brother awake with his foot. Brady blinked and groaned but then stared where Nate pointed.

  “Ornithomimids,” Brady said. “Ostrich mimics.” Then he did a double take. “And they do have feathers!”

  As he began talking about what an earth-shattering discovery this was for paleontology and our understanding of dinosaur and bird evolution, Nate tossed another log onto the campfire and they woke Petra.

  The first thing they did was try to make breakfast, but they soon realized they’d left the can opener on the boat. So, leaving his shoes and socks on the riverbank, Brady climbed down to the boat to fetch the opener from the cockpit.

  “Any way we can get the boat out of the water?” Petra asked.

  “If we could repair the leak and had a bilge pump, maybe,” Brady said. He lifted the motor to check again where the Deinosuchus had attacked. “There’s a hole.”

  At the base of the stern, right behind the motor, the gator had punctured the boat, creating a hole about the size of a dime that had slowly filled the boat with water. Maybe back home they could’ve hauled it back up on its trailer and repaired it, but here, for now, the boat was a goner.

  After a meal of peas and potatoes, they headed out, leaving behind most of the cans (too heavy and awkward to carry) but bringing the tackle box with its hooks and line.

  “You know,” Brady said as he hefted the box, “fishing is so much easier with dynamite.”

  “Next time I’m at the Piggly Wiggly I’ll be sure to pick some up,” Petra said in the same tone.

  “Oh, shut up,” Nate told them both.

  Chapter

  XXIV

  Max

  I AWOKE TO A SHARP PAIN IN MY HAND AND A WORSE ONE IN MY HEAD. I felt the bump above my ear and groaned, swearing at myself for having let my guard down around Mildred. At least when I brought my hand down to check, there wasn’t any blood. Rolling over onto my side, I wiped sand off my face and then froze when something screeched in my ear.

  As my vision cleared and I blinked more sand out of my eyes, I got a good look at the creature that had pecked my hand and was making the really annoying sound. It was an oviraptorosaur: bipedal, feathered, with a beak like a parrot’s and a weird crest like a rooster’s. Its mar
kings were like a parrot’s too, green on the body with red highlights on the feathered arms. It was about five feet tall and sort of proportioned like an emu. There were three more behind it.

  To my left, where the steamboat should’ve been, was a large damp hole in the sand. Hermit crabs, I guessed, and snails that had been living under the hull were emerging or trying to bury themselves. Three of the oviraptorosaurs were pouncing, jabbing at the crabs with their beaks, cracking shells or swallowing their prey whole.

  Paleontologists had suspected their diet might have included invertebrates. I would’ve been happy that what I was seeing confirmed that theory, except for the pounding in my head and the fact that the absence of the boat meant I was really, truly trapped here alone.

  Resisting the urge to throw up, I sat, leaning one hand—the unpecked one—on my backpack. The oviraptorosaur in front of me screeched again, then lowered its head and spread its wings. Raising my arms, I let out the Tarzan yell, which Uncle Nate had taught me how to do when I was five.

  This spooked all four of them. They dashed off about ten feet and then turned around. All of them were in the same challenge position now: heads lowered, wings outstretched.

  “Really, guys,” I said, “I am in no mood.”

  The lead oviraptorosaur gave a quizzical squawk but otherwise didn’t react.

  Then I realized Mildred had left me my backpack.

  For a moment, I sat there, then opened it up on the smooth sand. Out of the corner of my eye, without turning my head, I noticed the oviraptorosaurs had apparently decided I wasn’t a threat and had gone back to digging for crabs.

  I pulled out the first-aid kit to grab an aspirin. As I unzipped the pouch, the USB flash drive fell out onto the sand.

  “All right, why did you give me this?” I murmured.

  It couldn’t have been an accident, but Uncle Nate and Kyle had to have known I didn’t have anything to plug it into or play it on. Mad Jack Pierson hadn’t left anything useful either, since his equipment was mostly vacuum tubes and cogs and sprockets. There wasn’t anything here, except . . .

  “Yes!” I jumped to my feet and then swayed, dizzy. But I was okay enough to let out a whoop, holding the flash drive tightly in my fist. “A late-model Volkswagen Beetle with a USB accessory port and built-in dashboard entertainment and navigation system!” I let out another whoop despite the fact that the last one had made my head hurt.

  In response, the oviraptorosaurs chirped and then fled completely.

  I didn’t care. I had a way home. At least, the potential for one. I had to make it up the river to the car and hope its electrical system still functioned.

  But at least now I had a chance.

  I grabbed my backpack, hoisted it over my shoulders, and headed inland.

  It didn’t take me long to get back to the river, and I followed it into the redwood forest. I was basically retracing the route I had taken with Petra and Emma in the VW the first time we’d come here. I hoped that I’d be able to spot the bass boat and get a ride from Petra and my uncles.

  It wasn’t a good sign, though, that they weren’t here. I tried not to think of the many things that could have happened to them. That could still happen to them. Or me.

  I hiked up the river for a few hours until I came upon a shallow creek that was crowded by mossy rocks and logs, with ferns and horsetails growing close to the water’s edge. The creek was about six feet wide and no more than six inches deep. Splashing through the water, I went about thirty feet upstream to get clear of where the water from the creek mixed with the river. Then my way was blocked by a rotting, moss-covered redwood—about four feet in diameter—that lay across the creek, a couple of feet above the level of the water.

  I took a break, sitting on another log half-buried in the bank, refilling my canteen and cooling off.

  After a few minutes, I heard an odd snuffling noise, like a pig with a head cold. I stood, trying to figure out where it was coming from. Then I saw a creature coming into view, emerging from the forest along the creek about halfway between me and the river.

  It was an Ankylosaurus. Or maybe a Euoplocephalus. It was about five feet tall and at least as wide, with an armored trapezoidal head held close to the ground, spikes along its side and armor plates over its back. A huge club at the end of its tail was swinging from side to side.

  They were herbivores, but the creature’s beak looked like it could just as easily tear flesh. Slowly, so as not to spook it, I stepped along the fallen redwood trunk, intending to cross the creek and go around the ankylosaur.

  But it saw me and bleated, swinging its tail club so that it thudded into a tree beside it. I froze as the dinosaur took a ponderous step toward me. And then another.

  I dived to the ground—into the creek, actually—and rolled under the redwood log. I could hear the animal’s bleat above my splashing of the water, but I made it to the other side of the fallen trunk without the creature charging me. I rose, dripping, watching the ankylosaur from the relative safety of my side of the log. Then, satisfied the dinosaur wasn’t going to try to come after me, I turned and saw, about fifteen feet away, watching me watching the ankylosaur, a pair of Nanotyrannus. Like Tyrannosaurus rex, only smaller—about six feet high at the hip—and with a lighter build. I dived back under the log and scrambled across the creek beneath it. At the edge, I glanced to my right and saw that the Nanotyrannus had gotten closer, but they seemed more interested in the ankylosaur than me.

  The armored dinosaur hadn’t moved, so I crawled out from beneath the trunk, sprang onto dry ground, and ran without looking back.

  I was still running, heading away from the dinosaurs and sort of parallel to the river, when I rounded a redwood and collided with someone.

  Brady.

  He went down like he’d been hit in the head with a baseball bat, and I tumbled on top of him. Nate and Petra were there too, just beyond. For a moment, we all froze.

  “Sorry,” I muttered to Brady as I stood and reached out a hand.

  Before he answered, Petra squealed and embraced me in a hug. Which was nice.

  “I am so glad to see you!” she said, smiling and kissing me on the cheek. Which was also nice. Then she stepped back. “I’m so glad I don’t have to tell Kyle and your sister you’re dead.” Which was less nice.

  “Never mind me,” Brady said. “Yes, I’m okay.”

  Nate and I helped him to his feet and he made a show of dusting himself off.

  Nate asked, “Where’s Mildred?”

  I grimaced. “She clubbed me, then stole the steamboat.”

  “Stole the steamboat,” Brady repeated, glancing up.

  “So she took the only Recall Device?” Petra asked, eyes widening. “What now?”

  “I have an idea,” I said, reaching into my backpack to pull out the first-aid pouch.

  “The USB drive!” Petra exclaimed. “The VW!”

  “I know!” I said. “There’s got to be something on this we can use to get home. It’s the only explanation that makes sense!”

  “So, back the way we came?” Nate asked with a sigh.

  “The walk’ll do you good,” his brother told him.

  We made it to the VW by midafternoon.

  The Bug was dented and the glass was shattered, but its front end—which meant its engine—was sticking mostly out of the water. I climbed down to look, while the others remained on the top of the bank. It was late enough in the afternoon that the interior was completely shadowed and it was hard to see. Even though I knew it was ludicrous, I tried not to think about my nightmare of plunging into an abyss. This car had already fallen. There was nothing to worry about, I told myself. Except, of course, the possibility that the car wouldn’t start.

  Thankfully Kyle had left the key in the ignition, so we wouldn’t need to hotwire it or anything. I didn’t need the engine to work, just the electrical system. Since it had been only a few days since we’d left it here, the battery should still be good. Of course, that assume
d only a few days had gone by in this time period, too.

  I turned the key so that the accessories would trigger. Instantly, the dashboard lights went on and the video screen lit up.

  “Yes!” I shouted up to the others. “It works!”

  I pulled the flash drive out of my pocket as the car shifted slightly. When I looked up, Brady was balanced on the outside of the car, peering in through the side window.

  “Hi, Brady,” I said.

  “This,” he replied, “I had to see.”

  I had a brief moment of concern about what was on the drive and whether he should see his brother’s future self, but then I decided it was more important that we get out of there. I plugged the USB drive into the port. At first, there was nothing. Then a video appeared on the monitor. And out of the speakers came track 7 from the soundtrack to the movie Jurassic Park, “Welcome to Jurassic Park.”

  “This is much better than Knight Rider,” Brady said.

  Kyle’s face appeared.

  “It’s my brother,” I murmured, for Brady’s benefit, and then to the screen: “What have you been doing in England?”

  “Hello, baby brother,” Kyle said. “From what Uncle Nate says, you lost your Recall Device and you’re going to need a little help getting home.

  “It turns out that Nate and Brady also lost a Recall Device. Very careless of you all, by the way. But theirs is still back there in the Cretaceous and you’re going to have to go fetch it.”

  “It’s at the bottom of a swamp!” Brady interjected.

  “Theirs,” video Kyle continued, “is at the bottom of a lake. So here’s the thing. You’re going to use the canoe from the dogtrot to get out there. The problem is that visibility is poor and you don’t have GPS to find the thing. So you’re going to have to triangulate.”