The sun had just started to breach the horizon. No matter, the cave was in sight from his vantage point. It was time to find a comfortable tree to spend the night.
Gerald looked around, and there were a minimal amount of trees suitable for climbing—most had lower branches still some 20 feet above the ground.
Something bustled in the tall grass, rolling through it like a bowling ball. At first Gerald froze—afraid if he moved he’d be detected, or if he didn’t move in the right direction—he’d end up in the same boat.
Just as he picked a direction to scamper, an odd-looking beast broke into a narrow clearing, heading slightly away from him. That was a relief! The animal wasn’t coming after him.
The creature was around 3 feet long and most resembled a modern pig, but the body had skin more like a hippo or elephant. In fact, its face looked more like an elephant except with much smaller ears and a short snout. One thing for sure, the animal was in a hurry.
It only took a moment for Gerald to discover why. Coming fast in his direction, two bodies near 8 feet in height cut through the foliage. As soon as the two spotted Gerald, their pursuit of the small animal ended.
“Holy shit.” Any cherished musing he had earlier of a caring and benevolent God vanished.
Two dinosaurs looking like larger cousins to the previous batch of cave lizards stared curiously at Gerald. They, too, were bipedal, with legs that looked strong, and a tail nearly as long as the length of body and neck. Their heads turned from side to side, with eyes like obsidian marbles peering intently. In a way they almost looked cartoonish because of the false smile the sharp exposed teeth formed across the mouth. The bellies were matte white and the skin had marks in a bronze and tan pattern much like a copperhead snake.
The curiosity of the dinosaurs was the only thing keeping Gerald alive for the moment. In a Disney movie it would be a perfect time for the creatures to break out in a joyful song and dance. But as seconds quickly passed, it was beginning to look more like a scene from Jurassic Park. Where the Velociraptors show up for fun and games and end up staying for dinner.
Gerald may have fallen from the frying pan into the fire, but with nothing left to lose, he wasn’t going down without a fight. He raised his arms in a wide arc, and yelled, “Hah!” He didn’t stick around to see if his aggressive act was enough to scare the beasts away. A tree several yards ahead had branches within his reach, and Gerald never remembered reading anywhere that dinosaurs had the ability to climb.
The race was on.
He dashed toward the tree—pushing past the pain in his knee, his elbows chugging like the main rod connected to the wheels of a steam locomotive. Tall grasses slapped against his body, impeding his flight to safety. Gerald gave it all he had; he sucked in and heaved out air in his lungs.
As if pissed that the prey dared attempt an escape, the two creatures’ uttered reptilian cries several syllables long. Each had its own distinct tone, lacing threatening hisses between ferocious warnings.
The dinosaurs hadn’t hesitated for long. Gerald heard each clawed foot strike the earth and tear through the grass behind him. They were gaining—fast.
He stepped to the side to avoid a tree whose branches were too tall for him reach. It was as if he could feel the creatures’ hot breaths on the back of his neck.
A broken tree branch on the ground nearly five feet long looked promising as a weapon. Gerald stooped and picked it up, and then turned to make a final stand.
Out of wild fear and pure luck, he jabbed it toward the nearest dinosaur and struck it in the face—and in one of its eyes.
It stopped cold in its tracks and let out an enraged yell. The other stopped as well, clawing at the air and jutting its head back and forth, as if waiting for the proper moment to strike.
It wasn’t much of a defense, but it was all he had. There was no way he could win a fight, and he knew better than to believe the intruders would eventually tire and go away. The million-dollar question: Could he hold up long enough to make it up a tree?
The unhurt dinosaur stepped away from his companion, drawing Gerald’s attention. It moved almost 180 degrees from the other, exposing his rear. This was not good. He slowly backed up, poking the stick toward the dinosaurs.
The injured creature got back into the game, snaking his head forward, and biting the air a few feet from Gerald’s head. He turned and poked the stick at it, and then hurriedly turned to the other side and jabbed at the other. But the dinosaur moved quickly and in close enough to bite the stick—tearing it from Gerald’s grasp. He raised his arm in a futile attempt to hold it back, but the creature wasted no time and bit Gerald up to the elbow of his right arm. The other attacked from behind, and as Gerald instinctually raised his other arm to ward off the foe, it bit his left forearm.
He was caught in the worst trap imaginable. Gerald pulled his right arm with all he had. He felt it loosen from the dino’s grip. But with the dinosaur’s teeth firmly embedded in the arm, skin and meat tore away, exposing bloody bone nearly to his wrist. Scalding fire from frayed nerves had him screaming uncontrollably.
The dinosaur biting the other arm pulled Gerald toward it in a tug-of-war match with its companion. The contest ended when it used a rapid jerk motion of its head and neck to snap the arm off at the elbow.
Gerald tumbled to the ground, blood spilling from the stump—splattering crimson on tall green grasses.
While one dinosaur devoured his left arm, the other mashed a three-clawed foot onto his chest. Thick nails gripped tightly while the dinosaur pulled its prize—the remaining part of his right arm—free from Gerald’s shoulder.
Shock had Gerald’s head buzzing. The time-forgotten creatures tore him apart like vultures scavenging carrion off the side of the road.
A foot caught him across the stomach, tearing a deep gash down to his thigh, catching intestines along the way, and pulling them outside the cavity. Then the attacker bit down on his leg, and the two dinosaurs divided the spoils of the hunt.
Gerald heard his mother’s soothing voice, felt her warm embrace, and died wearing a euphoric smile across his face.
Chapter 3
Alex Klasse sat at his kitchen table, with a phone receiver pressed to his ear. He shifted his weight to the other ass cheek, wishing he had a landline in the living room where he could sit on a comfortable couch cushion and not a wooden ladderback chair. If he’d been allowed to use his cellphone, he could have given the interview from any room in his house—anyplace, anywhere actually.
But, noooooo. Art Corey, the host of the late night radio show Shore to Shore, U.S.A., demanded landlines—for reception’s sake. During the next break, Alex decided he would get up and get a pillow to sit on.
He’d get up now while Art interviewed the famous remote viewer Fred Danes, but was afraid Art might ask Danes about Klasse’s work, something Art had indicated to Alex he might do, and Alex didn’t want to miss that. But, noooooo, not one question about him and his work.
So far, Danes was on one of his prophetic, or perhaps better said, pathetic, diatribes of doom and gloom. Something about a new comet being discovered next year named Rubin-Sagan heading for Earth.
The interview droned on in Alex’s ear:
“So, Fred. You’re saying the comet won’t actually hit the Earth, but fragments of it will peel off and become a meteor shower. How large of a shower are we talking about? Enough to become a planet killer or turn us back to the Stone Age?”
“The shower will be small enough that it does little damage to the Earth. But before you find any comfort in that, the meteors harbor bacteria harmful to plant life. Art, I’m talking all plant life. Every green thing on this planet will become infected…and die.”
“Unbelievable. Crops? Trees? Grass? Everything we need to survive?”
“Yes. And it’s not by some random chance. The bacteria has been engineered by aliens to kill us. Man has become a blight to this planet, and they want to wipe us out as a race before we infect th
e rest of the universe.”
“Is there any chance we can avoid this? Any way we can prepare ourselves to save our planet from dying?”
Damn, Art sounds really upset, Alex thought. And for a moment he felt his heart plunge into his gut at the thought that something like this would actually happen.
“No, Art. There’s nothing we can do. We’re all dead. Kaput. Nada. Game over.”
“Well. I…that’s such a terrible thought, I don’t know what to say.”
“There is nothing to say, Art. It’s time to bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.”
“We’re, uh, we’re coming to the bottom of the hour. Thanks, Fred, for your time.”
“You’re welcome, Art. Until next time,” Fred said, and ended the call.
Art shifted the tone and cadence in his voice as he continued, “Friends, I’d like to introduce a new sponsor to Shore to Shore, Just Cut Flowers. Just Cut Flowers is your online source for the freshest flowers available. Flowers can brighten anyone’s day, and you don’t need a special occasion to order. Just Cut Flowers, it’s just what you need to give today. Call—”
Better call now before the alien bacteria kills them all. Alex laughed at the thought while he un-assed himself from the chair, and then headed for the bathroom. The break would last a good seven minutes.
What a crock of shit. Why did Art Corey have nut-jobs like this on his show? It couldn’t be good for business. Why buy fucking flowers today when the Earth dies tomorrow? He unzipped his fly and let the accumulation of a half pot of coffee stream into the toilet. Why buy anything if it all ends soon? What difference would it make? We’re all going to die. Fuck it and everything else too.
Alex was not the loyalist of listeners to Shore to Shore, but it was the leading radio talk show not afraid to step outside of accepted science. As a zoologist, his chosen profession, he’d have no reason to be invited on this show. But as a Cryptozoologist, his passion, it was a shoe made to custom fit.
Finishing his business, he zipped up, washed his hands, grabbed a couch pillow out of the living room, poured a cup of coffee, and sat back down at the table, pillow now cushioning his behind.
He put the phone receiver to his ear, and as he lifted the cup of coffee to his lips, a voice spoke.
“Mr. Klasse? You’re on in sixty seconds,” the show producer said.
“Thank you. I’m ready.” The cup went back up for one quick taste before the interview began. This was it, show time. Now that the interview was here, his heart beat faster. That’s the kind of man Alex was, a situation wasn’t real until it became real. He didn’t worry about future matters like some, who even made upcoming events worse by stressing out over them. Butterflies bumped his stomach’s insides as Art’s voice came over the phone.
“Welcome back to Shore to Shore. Our next guest, Alex Klasse, is an author and a professor of zoology at the Southwood University in Sarasota, Florida. Mr. Klasse is also known as one of the foremost experts in Cryptozoology. His interest in Cryptozoology ignited at the young age of ten when he saw what he believed to be a Skunk Ape in the Florida Everglades while on a hunting trip with his uncle. Mr. Klasse, good morning.”
“A good morning to you, Art. And please, just call me Alex.”
“Alex, before we dive into you latest book, Cryptids in Your Backyard, I wanted to get your thoughts of the pterodactyl photos printed in The International Enquire. Is it possible that dinosaurs still exist on Earth today?”
“I don’t want to distract from your question, Art, but I would like to point out a pterodactyl is not a dinosaur. A pterodactyl is a genus of pterosaur with only one known species. Pterosaurs were winged flying reptiles.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that.”
“Well, popular culture has the tendency to throw all prehistoric animals in the same bowl and call them dinosaurs. The subject is a bit complicated, but fascinating, and perhaps we can do a show on that one day. Getting back to the photos of the pterosaur, you’d have to agree anything appearing in International Enquire deserves extra scrutiny.”
“That it would. But the publication has proved itself to be reputable, too.”
“It has. So, when I first learned of the story and viewed the photos, I immediately thought it was some CGI pulled off by a movie studio. I found some high-resolution images on the internet and ran them through graphic software on my computer. Long story short, I stepped away at the end of the day believing the percentage for them being genuine was higher than them being a fake.”
“Fascinating.”
Alex gently cleared his throat. “Yes, the caveat is whoever sent those images in to the Enquirer is unknown, as well as when and where they were taken.”
“If you learned of the location would you go there?”
Alex laughed. “Yes, if somebody’d fund me. Of course, there’d be so many others getting in on the action we’d be stepping on one another.”
“No doubt. Now, tell us a little something about the new book.”
Alex grabbed a furtive sip of coffee, settled into the chair, and continued the two-hour interview.
Chapter 4
Natasha Kamdar had most of her bags packed and waiting just inside her apartment door, ready to grab and run. The expedition would go out any day now, the final arrangements nearly complete. She was told to pack clothing of sturdy construction, something comfortable with fashion not in mind.
The climate varied in the remote location by as much as 100 degrees. This was because the vast area in Patagonia, South America, had mountains surrounding every side—essentially walling it off from the rest of the world. The area did contain one semi-active volcano, but because no human had ever ventured in for studies, nothing was known about it. Without the invention of satellites, no one would even know the volcano was there.
The mountains were cold and icy. But the Earth’s molten magma so close to the land’s surface heated the hundreds of miles of square acres hidden by the high mountain ranges. The heat rose from the land and mixed with the frigid, moist air high above, essentially shrouding the vast area in shielding mist.
I can’t believe this is really happening, she thought as she lifted a 20-pound bag of rice and stacked it on top of another. It was Saturday morning at Sarasota Second Harvest Food Bank. Natasha and her crew had less than an hour remaining on their shift. Afterward, she had planned to do some last minute shopping. There were a few feminine products she didn’t want to run short of—who knew if something would delay the return home? Three weeks was a long time anyway. There were just some modern amenities she wanted an ample supply of.
Is there something to this story? Do dinosaurs still live hidden somewhere on the Earth? There was only one way to find out, and that was for someone to go and explore firsthand. At least one corporation believed there was truth in the story. When Professor Klasse told her a rep from Ace Corporation called after his appearance on the radio show Shore to Shore and claimed to know where the pterosaur photos had been taken, and the corporation wanted to fund the expedition with him in the lead, she thought it was all bullshit concocted by some nut who listened to that late night garbage. But when the check arrived at the university in the form of a grant, she quickly changed her mind. Money talks and bullshit walks. Natasha smiled to herself. The phrase had become one of her father’s favorites after learning the meaning of the regional adage. Born and raised in Jaipur, India, the American common language presented many barriers to his understanding of formal English. She still didn’t think her father understood what it meant for a bride to get cold feet before her wedding.
Natasha lifted another bag of rice off the dwindling pile on the pallet and heaved it up over her head.
“Let me get that for you.”
Smooth hands with slim fingers reached from behind and lifted the bag from her grasp. Matt King had jumped to her aid—again. She appreciated the concern, but being a woman wasn’t a handicap, and she could have handled the bag just fine.
“Thanks, but
I could have done that on my own.” She had to choose her words properly, holding back a less respectful response. After all, Matt was an associate professor in zoology at the university, working with and in place of Professor Klasse sometimes. He was her teacher as well as the friend he tried to present himself to be. And with graduate school starting next year, she needed a certain space between them in their relationship. Not that there was anything unseemly about Matt, his personality, or his looks. He was in his early thirties and boyishly handsome. Natasha didn’t want to give Matt the wrong idea, and she didn’t want to make a certain someone jealous.
“I know, but I was right here, and I didn’t want you to strain yourself.” Matt placed the bag on top of the others, patting it smooth to receive the next one.
“You can help me over here with the fifty pound sacks of flour.” Logan Sandler held a sack waist high, using his right hip to help push it up onto the shelf on the opposite wall.
Logan wasn’t the tallest guy in the world, reaching a bit over 5’5”, but he never let his stature dictate limitations in life. Natasha had never met such a focused person.
Sweat moistened Logan’s brow, curling the sandy-blond hair across his forehead more than normal.
“What, afraid you’re going to ruin your manicure? Looks like you’re managing just fine,” Matt said as he reached over and picked up the last bag of rice from the pallet.
“Oh, I’m more than capable. I just thought you might want put in a harder workout. You know, bulk up those scrawny biceps. I take every opportunity to keep myself fit. Walk instead of drive. Take stairs instead of the elevator, and at least two times a week go to clubs and dance my ass off.”
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