by Greig Beck
“Oh no.” He suddenly jerked forward and dragged his bag around in front of him, quickly untying it and searching for his little friend. It was a wet jumble inside, and he remembered the bag filling and slowing him down. Anything could have been flushed out.
A tiny sneeze and a head shake. “Gluck.”
Andy let out a relieved chuckle.
The little pterosaur blinked up at him. “Thanks a lot.”
“Don’t ask, buddy; you don’t want to know.” He lifted the flying reptile from the bag and gently laid it on the trunk’s surface in front of him. Gluck hopped in a circle and then stared out over the tree trunk’s side at the water.
“Yep.” Andy did the same. “We’re on the bus.” He watched as the shoreline hurried past. He must have been traveling at a good 10 miles per hour by now, and he could see the landscape of late morning, with all its marvelous creatures hunting, killing, fleeing, or dying in their primitive and brutal world.
As the cliffs gave way to more open landscape, he saw a Triceratops with a huge bony crest and three horns, two massive ones up top each easily six feet long, and astoundingly, the colors were magnificent, in brown, brick red, and some green. One pawed at the ground like a bull and snorted, and must have weighed as much as a school bus.
Andy lifted his hands in a box shape and brought them to his eye. “Click.” He lowered his hands. “Just one photo, that’s all I want.” He sighed as he continued to watch the show.
There were also herds of hadrosaurs, with sail-crested heads. “Corythosaurus.” He said, and then: “No, bigger, maybe even Hypacrosaurus.”
He straightened when he spotted the box-like head peeking between some trees. “Look out,” he whispered and pointed. The carnosaur burst free, and the herd of hadrosaurs panicked. But the massive predator’s hugely muscled legs pounded down on the ground, going from 0 to 30 miles per hour in a blink, and then caught a medium-sized hadrosaur, holding it with a foot, and bringing its six-foot jaws down on a long neck. Even from where he sat, Andy could hear the vertebrae crack from the thousands of pounds per square inch bite pressure.
“Wow,” he mouthed. “That’s the photo I want.”
It all suddenly made him remember why he was here—he could be killed, horribly, any second. But this world at this time was magnificent in its ability to terrify, but it was also so beautiful that it made his heart leap in his chest.
“Ouch.” Something jabbed his leg. He lifted his bag and saw one of the sharp crab legs was protruding through his bag. His stomach rumbled, reminding him it had been many hours since he last ate.
He drew the bag between his legs and fished out the first of the crabs. They had a huge disc-like head, long spindly legs, and a whip-like tail that contained next to no meat.
“It’s not your lucky day.” He broke the legs off and the tail and placed the pieces on the log before him. It took him several more minutes to tease out the meat from the legs using the hard spiky tail like a spear, and he shared some with his ever-hungry small friend—the meat was raw, cold, salty from the ocean, and damned magnificent.
Finished with the legs, he began to bash the crab’s head on the hard wood, finally cracking it along the seam and opening it up like a lid. Inside were gill fans, mushy-looking gray organs, and some muscle-meat near the leg-joints. He teased that out first, and then ate most of everything, handing over the really unidentifiable stuff to Gluck.
Finished, he quickly tossed the remains of his meal over the side, as he knew what dead crustacean was like when it was left in the sun for while—it became so pungent it attracted predators from miles away.
Andy licked his fingers and tossed the last shell over the side. His hands were sticky and smelled already. He rose to a crouch.
“Wait there, buddy.”
He climbed down, staying within his tree root cage toward the water, and leaning down, dipped his hands in to rub them together. He was about to turn away when he chanced to look deeper and there, sure enough, was a long gray shape that dived below the log.
“Ah, not you again.”
It seemed his friend from before hadn’t quite given up and was following him down the coast. Andy was about five feet up from the water and his tree was quite stable. Barring hitting surf, he should stay high and dry and out of trouble.
He clambered back up to his root nest and stood to crane his neck and look out at what was ahead—there were no more spits or white-water areas that might have indicated a reef, bank, or even shallow water.
His only problem was the coast seemed to be receding, and he was heading straight. Slowly but surely, he had gone from being 50 feet from the shoreline to now about 150, and the water here was impenetrably dark.
For now, I’m okay, he thought as the tide was still on run-out and was taking him with it along the coast. He was moving fast and guessed he must have crossed many dozens of miles. Trying to trek through the jungle would have taken him days to do what he’d done in a matter of hours.
There came a wet hissing sound like a soda bottle being opened and Andy looked down at the water to see the mosasaur surface. It exhaled through its snout, blowing water and air upward, and then sucked in another huge breath. Its nasal flaps closed over the snout holes and back down it went. But not before it turned one enormous and very human-like eye on him for a second or two just to make sure he was still there.
Mosasaurs were marine reptiles, but they breathed air just like sea turtles. Over the millions of years they existed, they had evolved enormous, long lungs and could stay down for an hour. It meant they were excellent ambush predators, waiting down deep and then coming up fast to catch something unaware on the surface.
Andy exhaled and looked back down southward. How long would it track him? Possibly in the next few hours, they’d reach the tide’s peak low point, and then there’d be a period of calm before the tide started to run back in. At that point, he was planning to leave his makeshift cruise liner. The danger was he now found himself a good 200 feet from the shore.
He looked down and saw the shadow pass underneath his tree trunk again.
Well, that’s just great, he whispered. I only just made 50 feet, how am I ever going to make 200? He looked back over his shoulder; did it now mean he was stuck and going to have to ride the tree back up the coast again? Would the massive sequoia finally beach itself, or would it eventually be washed out to sea where he’d slowly starve or die of dehydration?
“Gluck.” The small flying reptile found a few extra shreds of drying crab in amongst the bark and pecked them up and ate them. Andy smiled down at it.
“Don’t worry, little guy, I’m never going to eat you.”
It hopped up on his leg and sat down. The tiny pterosaurs weighed next to nothing; a combination of having a small frame and hollow bones just like a bird.
“Besides, there’s no meat on you.” Andy stroked its head. It was a warm, leathery feeling, with a few bristles on its hide, perhaps early forms of feathers. It was like touching a warm, plucked chicken.
“I wish you could fly…for your sake.” He leaned back into his tree root chair. But I’m glad you can’t, he thought. Because if Gluck was ever able to fly away, I’d be left alone.
Andy started to hum a tune, and then broke into a song. It made him feel good, but homesick. The weird thing was, he needed to hear a voice, any voice, even his own. Deep down, he knew Gluck talking to him was really his mind so craving interaction, it had created one for him.
We humans are weird, he thought. We all want to be left alone, until we really are. Then we all want to be with someone.
He sat in the Cretaceous sunshine and let his mind wander as he sailed ever onward. What would he do when, if, he saw Helen again? His eyes watered.
“I miss you, sis.”
He sniffed, still trying to decide his future. There was a place up in North America were there was an explosion of evolution around the time of the Late Cretaceous Period, right about now, that led to all manner of new
forms.
Why did new species come out of there? What was so special about that place? He desperately wanted to see it, and maybe he could talk Helen into staying and coming and seeing it with him. He bet she’d like it.
Andy immediately brightened. Hey, maybe that was why she was coming. She missed him, and she wanted to do what he did—explore. He grinned. This might turn out to be a really cool idea after all.
Andy looked down and saw the long, shiny, but clearly reptilian body come to the surface, roll, stare, and then sink back down. He suddenly knew what it reminded him of—a massive Komodo dragon lizard, with a smooth body, and flippers where its legs should be.
“I wish you’d just fuck off.” He sat back and tried to ignore his nemesis. It was still hours until the tide turned. I still got time. He hoped.
*****
Andy had been right about the different hues of seawater representing different currents. The massive continents of Appalachia and Laramidia were in the middle of a massive ocean-wide northern hemisphere current that came up along its external coasts, and was drawn in the northern opening to then return to the southern hemisphere via the inland sea, exiting down where Florida would be one day.
While the tides moved in and out along the coastal areas, the current further out was a constant southward drift. And that was where the mosasaur had bumped his tree trunk.
Andy didn’t yet know it, but for him, there would be no tide change. His trip was one-way and would take him all the way out into the depths of the prehistoric ocean.
*****
Another hour sailed by, and Andy’s tree trunk ride was veering even further away from the coastline. He was hungry but didn’t want to eat his last crab just yet.
From time to time, he had been lowering his bag into the water to keep the crustacean fresh. And so far, every time he’d done it, there had been nothing down there but deep blue ocean.
He dared to hope that the water hunter had finally given up. He eased back in amongst his nest of wild roots. Without the constant presence of the mosasaur, he thankfully only had one problem to worry about now—getting to dry land.
Gluck busied himself further down the log, finding something interesting in among the rotting scales of bark. It cheered him a little to think that at least he seemed to be finding something to eat.
He turned to watch the land pass by. He was now a good 500 feet from the shoreline now, and he bet he had traveled hundreds of miles. As there was no coastline on the other side, he couldn’t be sure if he was now heading out into the open ocean or was still traveling down along the edge of Appalachia. But the key thing was, he was still heading down the coast.
He sat forward. Why? Why was he still heading down the coast? Then it hit him—the tide never changed. He got to his knees, making the small pterosaur raise its head in alarm.
“Hey, we should have been going the other way by now. Or at least becalmed as we hit mid-tide.”
He put a hand over his eyes and squinted in at the shoreline. There they were, those stripes of different colored water, the lanes, and as he watched, they passed by mounds of floating debris, fast. No, that wasn’t right. They were going one way, and the debris in closer was going the other.
“Oh, shit no, we must be in some sort of sea current.”
Andy continued to watch for a while, and then he guessed it didn’t matter. The basic fact was, they were still going the way he wanted, but his priority was he needed to be closer to the shore or he would eventually starve, or in the next storm be tipped into the water where there was death in a hundred massive forms lurking below.
Andy squinted at his tree trunk. He needed something—maybe a makeshift paddle, or rudder, so he could at least steer his log, even if it was just a little. He carefully got to his feet, making sure to hold onto a lengthy root. Further down the tree were long branches, some still with the remnants of dried leaves. Perhaps if he could break one off, he could use it.
He walked carefully along the log and came to the first—it was about 15 feet high before it broke off, and as thick around as his waist. He’d need an axe to chop through it. Further down, there were smaller ones, but that was where the end of the mighty tree got thinner, and therefore its buoyancy was reduced—and that meant the entire log was lower in the water.
“Oh boy,” he whispered.
The sea around him was deep blue, and shafts of light vanished into it for perhaps a few dozen feet. Below that, it turned to ink. But he knew from below, up here in the sunshine he stood out clearly even from the depths. That meant anything down there could see him long before he got to see it.
Andy braced his feet and stared at the spray of branches. There were a couple of longer ones that were thinner half way up, and maybe he could at least snap them off.
The log bobbed in the dark blue water and seemed to be stationary even though he knew they were drifting fast now in some sort of sea current. He looked from the water to the branches again and mentally calculated how much time it would take to get there, snap one off, and then scurry back.
“Seconds,” he whispered.
“Gluck.”
The small flying reptile was watching him keenly, and it didn’t look happy. Andy took a few steps.
“Please don’t do it.”
There was no doubt that the pterosaur was calling him back.
“Yeah, I hear you.” He blew air through his lips. “But I’ll be greased lightning, I promise.”
He widened his stance, getting ready to run toward his target branch. In his mind, he saw it all in slow motion—him darting forward, snapping the limb off, and being back before anything was the wiser.
“You’ll never make it. Ple-eeease don’t, Andy!”
“Shush.” He turned and put a finger to his lips. “Just keep a lookout for me okay, little buddy?” He drew in a breath and felt the knot of nervousness in his empty belly.
“Ready, set… go.” He sprinted forward.
The log surface was sun-dried and traction was good. He only had to travel about 15 feet to the first large branch, dodge around it, and then run another 10 feet or so to his destination branch.
At the first massive limb, he slowed, turned his back to it, and edged around it. He slipped a little as the curve of the log was closer to the waterline, meaning it had become a little more waterlogged and greasy.
But just as he came back up to the top, the creature exploded from the water. Andy screamed and stumbled back to the top, but way too fast. He went over the other side.
In seconds, he was spluttering on the surface and looking up at the top of the branch some four feet above him and too high and steep to climb. Up there, the mosasaur hung, having come right up out of the water to get at him. Its massive seal-like body writhed and thrashed as it looked to either roll back into the water or keep going to get to Andy over the top.
Andy gave up the idea of trying to climb back up here and swam to the root ball at the rear. The predator curled its body and with a thunderous splash, flipped back into the water on the other side, making the massive log bob up and down half a dozen feet in the water
Now, it and Andy were both in the monster’s domain. But fear gave him energy and he was in among the roots in seconds. He didn’t stop as he then clambered back up into his root cockpit, cutting and grazing himself in his haste.
“Fuck.” He lay back, breathing hard. The small pterosaur hopped up onto his leg and actually pecked his thigh.
“Ouch.”
He looked down at the tiny creature as it turned one tiny red eye on him. Andy continued to suck in deep breaths as his heart raced in his chest.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, you told me so.”
Andy pushed the wet hair back off his face and looked about. The land seemed even further away. “This might not have been a good idea after all.”
Andy turned toward the branches, knowing now that getting one was an option that was never going to materialize. He needed another plan, he needed somethin
g, anything, and even a little luck would do.
He continued to stare at the branches. “You know what they say? Necessity is the mother of invention.” He looked down at the small flying reptile. “So, all I need is a chainsaw, 50 feet of soft rope, and an outboard motor, and we’d be outta here, little buddy.”
He smiled, sighed, and then rested his forearms on his knees. In the distance, there was a smudge on the horizon, and the hint of a cool breeze kicked up to gently ruffle the surface of the sea.
He groaned, knowing exactly what that could mean. “Not good. Very not good.” He rubbed both hands up through his long hair and leant back. “I need to think about this while I’ve still got a little bit of time.” His adrenaline had now leaked from his body, leaving him bone tired and feeling a little sick.
Andy tilted his head back and closed gritty eyes; the sun was warm and dappled on his face as it worked its way through the root canopy and into his skin.
After another moment, he dozed.
CHAPTER 29
Halifax River Mouth, Dayton Beach—present time
Re-Evolution: 025
Gil stood at the river mouth where the warm water was shallow and there was about another dozen feet to go before the deeper water of the channel drop off. It was just coming on dawn, and he was first out, pegging out the best fishing spot.
Even though there was still a slight chill in the dawn air, he was in his new trout fishing pants and warm as toast. He hummed softly as thoughts of his struggling hardware business were far, far away.
Where he fished, the river emptied out into the ocean, and the tidal flats were just flooding as the tide came in again. The sprats shot across the surface, and soon, the bigger species like sheepshead, snook, and sea trout would follow them in as the water deepened. He might even snag a lemon shark, which always made for a good tale back home.
He had his net at his waist, and even though the water came to just above his knees, he felt now that the sun was coming up he could probably work his way a little closer to the channel.
Gil knew he could stick to fishing shallow and was sure to pick up a flounder or two, but he thought they were a bastard to eat—every time he flipped one over on his plate, he ended up with a shirt front covered in lemon and butter. Tasty though.