Dinosaur Thunder (16 page)

“Thank you, thank you,” Jacob repeated. “My children were born here. They don’t know what the real world is like.”

With Crazy in the lead, hacking at anything in reach with his machete, they followed the pair, passing through thinning ranks of cycads that were twenty and thirty feet tall.

“We’re going the wrong way,” Carson grumbled as they walked.

The sun was past the zenith and the day warm but not unbearable. Jacob and Crazy’s clothes were ragged, Crazy’s pants cut off at the knees, and Jacob wearing his long. Crazy wore crude leather sandals and Jacob tattered running shoes that looked like they would fall apart at any moment. Crazy was cocoa colored, although not African-American, just deeply tanned. Jacob’s face was nearly as dark, but glimpses through rips in his clothes showed much lighter skin. Both men had old scars and fresh cuts and bruises. Both looked like they worked and lived a hard outdoor life.

Nick the scientist was fascinated by the world he was walking through. Bits and pieces of it had turned up in his present, but this was more than just a sample; this was a functioning ecosystem. Much of the flora and fauna displaced to the modern age had died, simply because of being displaced into incompatible latitudes. What could be saved was on preserves, most of these in southern climates, although cooler regions like the U.S. Pacific Northwest supported a preserve. Here, in the Cretaceous past, Nick could experience a fully functioning ecosystem and see species that did not make it to the present.

Nick was also a realist and understood the danger. There was no guarantee they could return to the present, and the present held everything he was familiar with and everything he loved. Elizabeth was there. He had almost lost Elizabeth before, and that taught him how much he loved her. He only hoped he could get back before she knew he was gone.

They walked for hours, Gah limiting their pace because of his twisted ankle. Carson was impatient, but attentive too, stopping at one point and retrieving a broken limb, then directing Crazy to use the machete to shave it into a walking stick. Gah made better time after that, Carson’s impatience diminishing proportionally. They stopped briefly for rests, all of them hungry but no one with food. Eventually they came to a stream, stopping for water.

“Who knows what nasty little buggies are swimming in this,” Carson said between drinks.

“Obviously it’s fine,” Wynooski said, indicating Jacob and Crazy. “They drink it and they’re alive.”

“Yeah, we can drink it,” Jacob said. “But there used to be a lot more of us.”

Carson spit out his last mouthful.

The sun was getting low when they broke into a long open valley.

“We need to get to the other side,” Jacob said. “It’s dangerous to be in the open, but it would take us another day to work our way around.”

“Nothing but a machete and a rifle-shaped club for weapons,” Carson said. “I vote for the long way.”

“We would have to spend an extra night in the forest,” Jacob said.

“I vote we cross,” Carson said.

The others agreed with Carson’s second vote, and they left the tree line, heading into the low growth of the valley. Picking the shortest path across, they walked quickly, eyes busy, everyone alert. Crazy took the lead again, and Jacob took the rear, carrying his empty rifle like it was loaded. Everyone kept their eyes on the setting sun, calculating their chances of reaching the far side before dark. The sun was low when they approached a large mound in the valley.

“What’s that?” Crazy said, pointing with his machete.

Nick looked to see something climbing the mound. Then it reached the top, the sun creating a silhouetted figure. It was a person on a horse.

“A Cretaceous horse?” Gah said, shielding his eyes.

“It’s a cowboy,” Carson said.

“What’s a cowboy?” Crazy asked.

19

Gathering Storm

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

—Calvin Coolidge

Present Time
Orlando, Florida

John Roberts stepped through shattered glass that once was the front wall of the theater. Based on reports, the dinosaur herd, the
T. rex,
and the police officer had stampeded through the front glass, down a hall, and through the back wall into the green room, and then disappeared. The green room was just a small back room with high windows, looking out through security wire. That room was filled with wreckage, but no dinosaurs, no police officer, and no horse. What interested John was the back wall of the room. Most of it was plastered with concert posters, as were the other intact walls in the room. The top layer of posters was for groups called Twisted Gerbil and Poppa’s Kum. The lead singer in Twisted Gerbil was shown biting the head off a gerbil, blood running down his chin. Three men and two women dressed in S & M leather and chains played penis-shaped guitars in the Poppa’s Kum posters. Posters were layered over posters, a decade’s history of performances. However, there was something different about the back wall.

Staring, John found it hard to focus on the posters. His eyes struggling to focus, the wall briefly became clear and then blurry again. Detail and definition were elusive, the poster-covered wall was solid looking but difficult to see. Gingerly, John touched the wall. The concrete blocks under the posters felt spongy.

John stepped back, still having trouble fixing his focus on the wall. Police had searched inside and out of the theater, but no one could find any dinosaurs or their missing officer. That was especially strange, but there was also weirdness to the wall, just like the passage under the back wall of the Millses’ barn. John concluded that like the space where Nick had disappeared, the passage in time had opened and then closed again—although not completely closed. As in the Millses’ barn, the more time John spent near the wall, the stranger he felt.

“You feel anything?” John asked the man next to him.

“Yeah, like a fool,” Mike Stott said. “I can’t find a herd of dinosaurs in an empty theater.”

Nearly a foot shorter than John, Mike was thick, from his short, broad neck to his tree-trunk legs. Thick lips, cone-shaped head shaved free of hair, Mike resembled a bullet. Mike was John’s second in command in the loose structure of the Field Operations unit of the Office of Strategic Science.

“You don’t feel nauseated or light-headed?”

“Light-headed? You mean lightbulb-headed?” Mike said, rubbing his scalp. “Is that a bald joke?”

“Never mind,” John said.

They returned through the wreckage to the outside, to find anxious cops waiting. The injured Mounted Patrol officer was in surgery, the injured concertgoers dispersed to emergency rooms. Identifying the young woman who was eaten would be difficult until the men who were with her contacted the police to report her missing. John dodged a dozen questions until his phone rang. It was Elizabeth.

“What happened in Orlando?” Elizabeth Hawthorne asked.

“Give me a break, Elizabeth,” John said. “I just got here.”

“They’re showing it on the news, John,” Elizabeth said. “They said there was a tyrannosaur running through the streets and that it ate a couple of people, a horse, and a policeman.”

“I can’t confirm any of that,” John said.

“I can see you,” Elizabeth said.

John and Mike looked up at a television news helicopter with a big number
2
painted on it, hovering high above. John waved.

“Is this connected to what happened to Nick?”

It had been a month since Nick disappeared, Elizabeth calling daily for an update. Hesitating, John fumbled for an answer.

“It is, isn’t it?” Elizabeth said, answering her own question.

“I’ll be in Washington tonight,” John said. “I’m going to go through Nick’s files again in the morning. The president has named me acting director of the OSS. I’ll have a new level of security clearance. There might be something there I haven’t had access to before now.”

“I’ll meet you at his office,” Elizabeth said.

“I can handle it,” John said.

“I’m coming,” Elizabeth stated firmly.

John gave up, agreeing to meet at Nick’s office at nine. The Office of Security Science was located between the Office of Unified Communication and the Department of Small and Local Business Development. Down the block were the Office of Victim Services and the Pretrial Services Agency. John had no idea of what any of the other agencies did, but then he doubted any of the hundreds of government employees on the block understood what the Office of Security Science did.

Elizabeth was waiting outside. John took her through security and to the third floor. Kaylee Kemper was waiting. Barely five feet tall, Kaylee exuded energy, never completely still, some body part always in motion. Now, her brown eyes were busy, looking John and Elizabeth over. Relaxing near Kaylee was impossible since she radiated tension like enriched uranium. Short brown hair, a pixie face, and delicate hands gave her a childlike persona, although the forty-year-old face had the age-appropriate lines and wrinkles around the mouth and eyes.

“I’ve been named acting director,” John said, deciding on a preemptive strike.

“So I was told,” Kaylee said coldly. “Until you find Dr. Paulson. You do want to find him, Acting Director?”

John ignored Kaylee’s jab.

“Hello, Ms. Hawthorne,” Kaylee said politely.

Kaylee was fiercely loyal to Nick Paulson, and like a dog whose longtime master finally married, Kaylee never attached to John, the newcomer. Kaylee also blamed John for Nick’s disappearance, since John was the field operative, and felt Nick had been doing John’s job. John’s elevation to director further strained their relationship.

“I’m so glad you came to help,” Kaylee said to Elizabeth. “Dr. Paulson has never been out of the office this long without contacting me.”

“I’m worried too,” Elizabeth said. “We’re going to do everything we can to find him.”

“It’s about time someone did something,” Kaylee said, glaring at John.

“Is his office unlocked?” John asked.

“Of course,” Kaylee said with a chill. “I’ll lock the door when you leave.”

“I’ll need a key,” John said.

“You’re moving into Dr. Paulson’s office?” Kaylee said, scowling. “He’s missing, not dead.”

“I’ll be working from my office, but I don’t want to ask you to open the door every time I need to get inside.”

“I don’t mind,” Kaylee said, dismissing John’s request for a key.

After a hug from Elizabeth and another cold glare at John, Nick’s administrative assistant left them at Nick’s office door.

“She doesn’t like you,” Elizabeth said.

“She won’t be happy until Nick is back and I’m the one who has disappeared,” John said.

Nick’s office was semi-neat. The desktop was cluttered, but the bookshelves that covered every available wall space were neat, and ordered by topic. Nick’s computer sat on the short arm of Nick’s
L
-shaped desk. John sat in Nick’s executive chair, rolling to the keyboard and starting up the computer. Elizabeth leafed through the papers on the desk. With his elevation to director, John would have access to all security levels. Previously, John had had access to virtually all Nick’s files, since he knew Nick’s password, but he hoped there was still something he had missed.

“Nick really needs another password,” John said.

“Is it still Elizabeth thirteen?” Elizabeth asked.

“Elizabeth fifteen,” John said. “The IT fascists force us to change passwords twice a year, so Nick just changes the number.”

Pushing papers aside, Elizabeth found yellow sticky notes stuck to the desk. “These are interesting,” Elizabeth said. “These say ‘Visitor,’ ‘velociraptor,’ ‘Ocala Preserve,’ ‘carcasses’ with a big question mark next to it, and then this one says ‘jet.’”

“Yeah, I told you about that,” John said, looking at time stamps on Nick’s files. “That’s what took Nick to Florida. Some guy showed up at the Ocala Preserve with two dead velociraptors.”

“One of those private dinosaur managers,” Elizabeth said.

“Yeah. He disappeared with Nick through the back wall of a barn. When I crawled in the hole, I could feel some sort of time distortion. To me it felt like seconds had passed, but the marines told me it was minutes. Whatever the conditions were that allowed Nick to get through have changed.”

“Take me there,” Elizabeth said.

“There’s no point,” John said. “Nobody has been able to get through that hole in the wall since Nick.”

“So how does it connect to what happened in Orlando?”

“Same kind of weirdness. A tyrannosaur and a herd of dinosaurs popped out of nowhere and disappeared back to wherever they came from. Believe it or not, they seemed to have come right out of a wall. It had the same kind of weird properties as the hole on the farm where Nick was investigating.”

“Time distortion?” Elizabeth asked.

“Something,” John said. “Being there made me sick to my stomach. Elizabeth, I am about to show you what Nick was looking at just before he left for Florida. I’m breaking federal law, so my professional life is in your hands. Swear you won’t share this.”

“I used to be chief of staff to a president,” said Elizabeth.

“Swear,” John said.

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” Elizabeth said.

John clicked on the file, and the video loop of the moon dinosaur ran.

“Where is that?” Elizabeth asked, leaning over John, pressing against his back and head.

“The moon,” John said.

“What? The pyramid on the moon blew up. I was there.”

“This is the wreckage,” John said. “The dinosaur is still there, even now. Before the astronauts left, they set up a camera. It sends secure data bursts every six hours. This tyrannosaur is still on the moon, still stuck like this.”