by Greig Beck
Emma nodded. “Okay, I feel a bit better now.”
“Me too,” Ben said. “Considering we only want to be there for a single day, if we were going anywhere else, I’d say you’ve gone well over the top. But we all know what we’re going to be up against, so well done.”
“I just hope your friends do as well. Chess and…who?” Emma half smiled.
“Chess, Francis, Shawna, Buster, and… Balls.” Drake grinned. “And by the way, Balls is a woman.”
“Of course she is,” Emma said with a smile. “Tell me about them.”
Drake rubbed his chin theatrically. “Well, Chess is sort of their leader. He’s a big S.O.B., but Ben already established the chain of command with him.” He winked at Ben.
“I can imagine.” Emma rolled her eyes at Ben who just shrugged as Drake went on.
“Shawna is blonde, busted nose, and used to be a bail bond hunter. She’s tough as nails and knows every curse word known to mankind, and a few she’s made up. Francis is a big guy, real big, and ex-MMA. He doesn’t say much but he’s a coffee-colored mountain and good with a gun, knife, and his fists. Even Ben would have trouble with this guy. Next up is Buster; he used to do some freelance work in South America consulting to the drug agencies. Apparently got caught and tortured, so is still a bit twitchy.”
“A problem?” Ben asked.
“Nah, bit of high blood pressure and plenty of scars inside and out, but he’s all good now.” Drake shrugged. “He’ll keep his end up.”
“And Balls?” Emma grinned.
“She’s a tough little one, and a fighter. Smart as a whip, totally fearless, and a crack shot. She’s also probably the brains of the group.”
“And you fired her?” Emma asked.
“Yeah, like I said, she likes to fight, but a little too much.” Drake’s mouth turned down momentarily.
“Quite a team you’ve pulled together,” Emma said.
Ben nodded at Drake. “They’re friends of his.” He chuckled. “Oh yeah, he didn’t just fire her, he fired all of them. So I expect employee loyalty will be off the charts.”
“And that’s why you pay them the money only when they get home,” Drake replied.
“Yeah.” Emma’s mouth set in a line. “Just make sure you come home; everything else is secondary. Drake, you tell them that if Ben doesn’t return, as far as I’m concerned, they can all go to hell.”
“That’s the plan,” Ben said. He grabbed his friend’s shoulder and pulled him close so he could feign whispering into his ear. “I’m sure she means both of us.”
“Yeah, right.” Drake checked his watch. “Okay, we’re done here. I’m gonna pack all this up and send it on ahead. It’s five weeks until Primordia passes over and our doorway opens. We set off Monday morning.” He held out his hand to Emma. “You two have a nice weekend and I’ll see you when we get back.”
She grabbed it and pulled him close into a hug. “Take care of yourself, and take care of Ben…for me.”
He nodded. “Seems to be a full-time job these days.” He turned to Ben. “Monday morning, big guy, we’ve got a date… 100 million years in the past. See you at the airport.”
CHAPTER 20
“At the very edge of the world, I beheld where time began.”
Edge of the Western Interior Sea, 100 Million Years Ago
Andy woke and came to his senses almost immediately as he had trained himself to do. He had found a hiding space beneath a huge tree that might have been some creature’s burrow that looked as if it hadn’t come home for a while—one trip out too many, he surmised.
He and Gluck had moved in and set to barricading themselves in for the night. Morning sunlight just peeked through the cage bars of roots as it had peeked over the horizon.
The tiny flying reptile had wedged itself under his arm as though hiding and was delighted he had finally woken.
“Morning, Daffy.”
“Gluck.” It angled its head, turning one eye on him. Andy grinned down at it.
“Say: thuffering thukotash.”
“Gluck.”
Andy grinned. “Thuffering…”
“Gluck.”
“Thukotash.”
“Gluck.”
“Thuffering thukotash.”
“Gluck, gluck.”
“I think you’ve finally got it, little buddy.” He rubbed its head, and Gluck climbed up on his thigh, flapping its leathery wings and pulling on the hairs on his leg.
“Hungry.”
“You’re always hungry.” Andy found the last bits of his dried meat and shared it with the animal. Gluck gobbled it down and then went to climb higher on him, as if trying to get under his arm.
“That’s all I got, but big day ahead. Got another sea to check out. We’re here just in time, ‘cause in another dozen million years, it’ll be gone. Blink of an eye, really.” He chuckled.
“Many legs.” Gluck burrowed under his arm.
“Huh?” Andy tried to push Gluck off, but the tiny pterosaur stayed put, and when he went to lift him, he felt it shiver. Andy knew it wasn’t from cold as it was already about 80 degrees and humid, so even hairless, featherless reptiles were in their comfort zone. Gluck started to make tiny noises almost like a mewling whine.
“What’s the matter with you?” he whispered.
He looked around, but there seemed nothing inside to worry them, and he began to wonder whether there was a threat outside their root cave. He looked down at Gluck, who was staring back up, but not at him, at a place just over his head.
Andy slowly lifted his gaze.
“Oh, shit.”
On the roof of their cave was a spider the size of a dinner plate. It was muscular, its body was shiny black like polished plastic, and finger-thick legs covered in hair were spread wide.
Multiple eyes were like drops of oil, and he knew it was watching them. Normally, Andy would just give it space, as small ones like this rarely contemplated attacking something the size of Andy, but a few pounds of skinny pterosaur would have been perfect for it.
No wonder the little guy was trying to get under Andy’s arm, as the spider might have been stalking him for a while.
“Okay, okay, everyone just stay calm.”
While keeping his eyes on the spider, he quickly set to packing up and once done, to unblocking their tree root cave. The spider rotated on the roof so it could continue to track them, and without even being asked, Gluck climbed inside Andy’s bag.
“Good thinking—out of sight, out of stomach.”
He kept one hand on the bag top to keep it closed and then carefully peeked out through the last logs he’d set up. He had to stay that way for many minutes, just letting his eyes run over the jungle floor, then in and around the fronds, stems, and branches. And finally, up above them.
He’d found that morning was a good time to move around—many of the larger daytime predators hadn’t yet roused, and the night shift of carnivores had clocked off.
“All clear… I hope.”
Andy pulled the last of the logs out of the way. He lifted them and placed them to the side, gently, quietly, trying to use all his senses to detect whether anything had taken an interest in his tiny corner of the jungle.
So far, he heard something small in the tree canopy overhead and the patter of morning dew as it dropped from the large pad like leaves to the detritus on the jungle floor.
He took one last look at the spider, which had now crept down from the ceiling to where he and Gluck had slept, perhaps hoping to find traces of the pterosaur.
“Thanks for letting us stay.” Andy saluted it. “Just glad you guys never made it to our time.”
Then he was out, with his life’s belongings packed up, as well as the only friend he had in the world safe inside his bag.
He set off, away from the sun to the west where he knew the inland sea would be, and also following his nose. Andy was excited, curious as all hell, and working hard to slow his impatience. He smiled, thinking that when
he was a paleontology student, if anyone had said to him that one day he’d actually see living, breathing Cretaceous Period dinosaurs, he’d have told them to kick the drugs.
Now, he wasn’t just seeing them, he was living among them, and about to cross off one of his ultimate bucket list objectives. He sniffed again, inhaling the brine. His excitement started to peak.
Andy eased through the jungle, darted forward, and then hid. He watched for movement, and when he felt safe, he repeated the entire process over again, and then all over again, and again. It took him two full hours to move through only a thousand feet of jungle, but by then, he began to hear the sound of water against rocks.
Andy got down on his belly. He flipped his bag over onto his back and crawled. In another few minutes, he came to the very edge of the vegetation line and saw the sparkling blue before him. He stood, easing upright beside a tree trunk, and stared out over the vast expanse of water.
“Yes. Oh yes.”
He slowly slid down the trunk to sit cross-legged and partially hidden under some strappy fronds. He felt a little discombobulated knowing that he was the first, and only, human being to ever see this place. And no one ever would again, because by the time man evolved, this vast sea would be long, long gone.
Andy sighed. “At the very edge of the world, I beheld where time began.” He peeked down into his bag. “Do you know who said that?” He looked back out at the sea. “I did, Andy Wilson, just then.”
It was hard to picture, but one day if there even was a cliff top here and he stood on its edge, he would be looking out over an Alabama or maybe Mississippi landscape.
Gazing out over the endless expanse of sparkling water, he noticed it seemed to be in lanes. Perhaps depending on depth? he wondered. In close to the shore, it was a lighter blue, and a little further out, it became a darker blue lane, and then a few hundred feet out further again, it looked to be the blue-black of significant deepness. He frowned, perplexed, as he looked along the different hues, knowing that this inland sea wasn’t all that deep.
“Maybe it’s some sort of tidal or continental current movement,” he guessed.
Andy peered over the edge. The cliff was a few hundred feet high and where he was ended at deep water. The sound he heard was the surf crashing against its face. It was clear, clean, and he knew it would be warm. While he watched, a surge wave came about a thousand feet out from him. Something big had sped forward and attacked something else below the surface.
He waited for another moment and saw the huge back of the beast lump the water and then dive deeper. As it vanished, he saw there was no scythe or flipper tail, but instead a long, flattened oar with distinctive scutes along its top that were like teeth but were actually bony external plates overlaid with horn. It immediately told him it was one of the mighty sea reptiles, like the massive Tylosaurus that grew to 50 feet in length. But this one had looked even bigger, and around this area lived the T-rex of the ocean, the monstrous Hainosaurus.
Andy stared, willing it back to the surface, and it didn’t disappoint him. It surged back up, shaking its head like a dog just below the surface. The creatures had a distinctive long snake-like body, and in fact, they were thought to be related to real snakes. And with their expanding jaws, they ate other animals whole, including other mosasaurs.
As it sank, the sea surface was stained red—whatever it had charged at, it had caught.
Andy exhaled; he’d seen a few of the giant sea reptiles on his sea voyage, but luckily, they didn’t think he was interesting enough to investigate, or worse, eat.
He got down and crawled along the cliff edge for a few hundred feet to an area below that wasn’t under water, and once again went all the way to the very edge of the cliff to lean over. First thing he noticed was the discoloration marks against the cliff’s rocky surface at about 50 feet up from the current waterline.
“Ha, the sea level was once higher,” he said softly. “So it’s already in retreat.”
Down below him now was a plain of exposed mud, and he could see what looked like some sort of crustaceans making foot-wide tracks in the silt as they came out of the water, fossicked in a random pattern, and then headed back into the sea. They looked like some sort of king crab with their rounded bodies, like flattened helmets and long stiff tails sticking out the back.
Andy looked back and forth, trying to find a way down; other than being curious to investigate a few caves at the cliff base, those crabs would make an easy-to-catch meal. He crawled along the lip a little more.
As he shuffled along, he thought he heard a cracking sound like an old board being bent back. He froze and listened for several moments, but it wasn’t repeated so he continued to worm along, looking for a pathway down.
Puffs of dust blew up around him, and the creaking was back, louder than before.
“Oh crap.” He froze again as the entire cliff edge began to crumble. Right in front of him, clods of earth and then rocks began to fall off and tumble in space for a while before smacking into the glistening mud hundreds of feet below.
Popping and more puffs of dust were now coming from behind him as well. Andy tried to edge back but it seemed just the additional pressure from using his hands on the cliff edge was enough to destabilize the lip.
There was a crack like a gunshot and then a table-sized chunk of rock and soil began to slide free—with Andy on it.
“Shi-iit!” he screamed and threw his arms out wide to try and hang on as the entire section he was laying on fell away. His bag was up-ended, and he threw a hand down to slap it shut, just catching it before Gluck fell out, but not in time to save his heavier calendar stone that fell away into space.
The slab of rock hung down at a 45-degree angle but didn’t break off and Andy hung there, closing his eyes to pray for a few seconds. After another moment, he gently pushed the tiny flying reptile further back in the bag and opened his eyes.
I’m still here, he thought. Hundreds of feet below him, he heard the booming smack and ensuing echoes as large rocks hit the mud. Gotta go, he urged and began to use his fingertips and toes to carefully crawl inch after inch up to the firm ground.
After his long years in this place, his body was all stringy muscle and zero excess fat, so he managed to pull himself up without too much strain. He slid himself back up off the hanging rock and then rolled on his back right on the new cliff edge, breathing hard, and after a few moments, he built the courage to look back down.
Way down below, there was no sign of his calendar stone, but the silt beach was littered with debris and impact craters. He could imagine the super hard stone smacking down into the silt, and then something landing on top of it, burying it forever.
After another moment to give his heart rate a chance to return to normal, he crept back to the tree line and then with his back braced against a huge trunk, he was able to relax.
“What a day,” he whispered, as the sunlight was only just now beginning to strengthen. “And it’s only just begun.”
CHAPTER 21
Montgomery County, Alabama, the fossil beds—today
Janine and her husband, Hank, were amateur fossil hunters, and twice yearly they saved enough to spend a week down at the Montgomery fossil beds. Though the entire area’s geology was comprised of Cretaceous Period fossil-bearing stone, she and Hank knew a few places that the others didn’t.
A hundred million years ago, this many-miles-wide dusty plain was under water, and when the seas finally pulled back, it left behind a wealth of bones.
“Got something,” Hank said.
“Me too,” she replied.
Both worked about 20 feet apart, and Hank lifted his head. “What have you got?”
“You first.” She grinned.
Hank pointed with his soft brush. “Tylosaur tooth—big guy. Must have been a 50-footer at least.”
“Wow,” she replied, impressed. Carnivore teeth were highly prized as both personal specimens and also in demand at sales. “Not sure what I’v
e got yet. Might not even be a fossil.”
She was carefully excavating what looked like a foot-long rod of a different type of stone embedded in the matrix. It seemed to be ancient slate, which wasn’t usual for this area, and she was beginning to wonder if it had been washed in from somewhere else when the matrix around the specimen crumbled away, half the rod popping free.
She carefully lifted the piece and turned it over—there were hundreds of marks on it that seemed all in rows and didn’t look natural at all. That’s weird, she thought, but none so much as the markings at the top of the stone.
“Well, what have you got?” Hank called.
“Um…hold on.” She quickly dug out the other half of the stone and lifted it, dusted it off, and then turned it over. She carefully brought the second piece together with the first—they fit like a jigsaw. Janine looked at the markings.
“Andy.”
She stared hard, her brain not comprehending what she was seeing. She knew the rock here was Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous—100 million years old if it was a day.
She frowned down at the stone, but there was no mistaking it: the word “Andy” was scratched into the top.
“Well?” Hank stopped digging and while on his knees, he straightened, obviously interested in his wife’s sudden silence and concentration.
Impossible, she thought. And then: ludicrous. Janine began to shake her head. “Nothing; must just be some site contamination.” She let the two halves of the stone drop to the dirt.
CHAPTER 22
Rocky River, Ohio—last night
Sunday evening and their final night together, Ben and Emma, plus an animated Zach, headed into town for a meal at Bearden’s at Rocky River. It had been Zach’s favorite ever since he was old enough to sit up in one of the long booths.
Not only did they have a cool car stuck on the front of their cottage-style diner—with working headlights—but they also served his all-time, ever-lovin’ favorite meal: the Peanutburger—a steak burger, with the works, and all topped with melted peanut butter.