In Situ (14 page)

“Shit! She’s gaining consciousness! Let’s have everyone out of the room except the anesthesiologists please,” Pete Wilson said as calmly as he could, his heart racing.

Pete had been lucky.
Despite the terrible and unfortunate accident in the desert, he had not been killed and his team had been miraculously able to save one of the twelve specimen they had originally taken out of the Utah site. The prize they had been left with was the only remaining evidence of what everyone had thought at the time to be a perfectly preserved, never seen before, specimen of a sentient pre-K-T dinosaur. But “perfectly preserved” were hardly the words to describe what was now happening in the lab.

*

Pete had finally been able to breathe a sigh of relief when the helicopter they had called for after the accident had safely reached the base and the sarcophagus had been transferred into secure cold storage. He had given everyone on his team only eight hours to rest before they would begin to examine the specimen in detail. After he had seen the medics, Pete took a hot shower in his quarters and fell instantly asleep. Then, what seemed to be only a second later, he awoke to his alarm blaring and his head throbbing from the ten sutures it had taken to close the wound he had suffered in the wreck.

An hour later
, he and his team started the slow process of thawing and exhuming the specimen. The top layer of the sarcophagus had been like cutting the stone that encased it, some kind of ambergris or near relative that was two to three inches thick. The second layer had been the big surprise. They had expected the entire block to be frozen solid, but the minute they had broken away a large enough section of the amber, they discovered some sort of goo about the consistency of jello. It was as if the creature had been purposefully packed in it the minute after death. Whatever the material was, its freezing point was well below 0 Celsius. Someone had thoughtfully called for a shop vacuum. Then, five hours and three fifty gallon trash bins later, they were looking at a complete dinosaur from the late Cretaceous.

Everyone’s heart rate had increased.
Bones, skin, perhaps even internal organs. As Pete suspected, this was going to go down as one of the most significant finds ever in the world of paleontology. Scratch that. It was one of the most significant finds in all human history, period! Pete was confident that he and his associates would be writing enough material over the next few years to fill a library. The fact that the information would probably all be classified was only mildly disturbing. Those were the rules of the game when you worked for a top secret organization, and he had long ago surrendered to the idea. Pete was also enough of a realist to know that, had it not been for the governmental construction of the Utah ARC, it was very unlikely that anyone would have ever made such a discovery. After all, they had been working at minus 1,000 feet or so from the surface for god’s sake. Then, of course, there had been the accident. Now, none of that seemed to matter.

The specimen was removed from its ancient stone capsule and placed on a rolling table then transferred to a large and very well equipped autopsy room.
Pictures were taken, and various measurements. The creature would have stood about 6 feet 8 inches and weighed 311 pounds. Some distant relative of the theropods was the immediate theory. It definitely had walked upright. They determined that it was probably an adolescent female. The creature had no apparent tail of any kind—another first—but the greatest mystery was that it appeared to be partially clad in some sort of reptile skin.

One of the younger doctors, a clown by the name of Phillips, had posed for a shot with a stethoscope.
When he placed it on the chest of the creature, his face had immediately gone from jovial to serious. He had paused long enough to cause the team member who was taking the photographs to admonish him.

“Come on Phillips, very funny, quit messing around
, and let me get some more shots without you in the damn picture!”

Phillips had ignored the remark.
“Ah, Dr. Wilson, I think you better…,” he said as he carefully but quickly moved away from the dinosaur and thrust his scope out to Pete. “I know it’s impossible, and you must think I am kidding, but….”

Pete looked Phillips in the eye.
There was something unnerving about the way he had looked back. “OK, Phillips,” Pete finally said, “I’ll bite just so you can have a good laugh. You probably all deserve it.” Pete took the scope over to the specimen, placed the instrument in his ears and then, as nonchalantly as he could, he placed the flat part on the dinosaur’s chest and listened. Nothing. Phillips gave an expectant look his way as if to encourage him, but Pete was just about to give up when he heard it—a heartbeat deep and distant—at nine second intervals. He caught five or six of them before his hands shook and he dropped the stethoscope from his ears. “That is impossible,” was all he could say.

The next minutes were a blur of activity.
They rushed the dinosaur from the autopsy room to the largest operating room in the building and placed her on a table that was equipped with thick leather restraints. Pete immediately called in every doctor, veterinarian, and animal expert on base and basically ordered every test it was possible to do without cutting the creature open. They cinched the dinosaur down and started a heart monitor along with an EEG to report brain activity, and watched in awe as the brain functions increased steadily along with the heart rate.

Pete was concerned
about the consequences of the creature regaining consciousness and the shock it might send her into when she suddenly realized her new circumstances. He had seen animals often go into shock when they had recovered from anesthesia in different surroundings. Reluctantly, he had ordered an IV and prepared to have anesthesiologists ready to sedate if necessary.

Pete was just as
worried that any kind of drug might kill his specimen, especially any kind of anesthesia. How were they to know what kind of dosage or even if it would work? One of the other doctors had a lot of experience with gators, and another with primates, but his was only mildly comforting to Pete. Talk about famous, he had thought. How about being responsible for killing the one and only specimen of a living dinosaur ever known by overdosing it with tranquilizers?

He
instructed everyone to leave the room except his two anesthesiologists, and ordered the doors secured. No telling what might happen. There was a glass gallery just above them, so the rest of the team could still see what was going on.

*

Now the beast was actually regaining consciousness—65 million years after it should have died!
It was utterly and completely impossible. “This is impossible, right?” Pete kept asking to no one in particular as he closely watched the monitors. No one bothered to answer until the beast began to move.

“Be careful Doc,” one of the anesthesiologists cautioned, obviously scared to death.
One of the creature’s fingers twitched and Pete was standing very close to the table.

The Arzat was almost certain she must be in another world.
There were strange sounds all around her and a multitude of very unfamiliar and unpleasant smells that she had never experienced before. And never in her life had she been surrounded with so much pure light. Before she even opened her eyes she could sense that it would be blinding to do so. She instinctively attempted to pull her hand up to cover her face, but her arm would not move.

Perhaps she was still dreaming, she thought.
She had certainly felt like she had been dreaming for a very long time. Nothing had happened in the dreams that she could specifically recall-movement, travel, alien voices, and the ever present cold-but all of the images were vague. The only thing she could remember clearly was one of the female Arzats handing her something foul to drink. She felt as if she were stuck in a white cloud, the kind that emerged in the bright sunlight just before a storm.

She tried to move again
, but her left arm, both her feet, and her legs were mysteriously pinned down. She started to panic. Gradually, she opened her eyes. At first she could see nothing, the brightness of her surroundings blurred everything. She blinked a few times and, as her pupils naturally dialed down to impossibly narrow slits, she was surprised to see a weird creature staring at her, so close to her face that she could have reached out and grabbed it were she not constrained. She hissed and snarled instinctively. The creature, whatever it was, seemed equally surprised and immediately took a couple of steps back. There were other similar creatures in the room as well, but she was not sure of their numbers. She could not really see them, but she could sense them. She was surrounded.

Where were her parents?
Where was she? The Arzat tried desperately to move again. As her eyes became better focused, she attempted to see what was holding her, but she had difficulty lifting her head. It too was strapped down somehow. She strained to look down her body, and was further upset to see that there were all kinds of things attached to her skin, as if she were in a giant spider’s web. She was still weak, but the anger and fear that welled up inside her took over. She started to twist from side to side with the enormous force of all of her muscles, her eyes focused on the creature at her side. The animal’s own eyes widened, and she could see a strange white space around its pupils that was even more disturbing. It began crying out in some sort of incoherent high pitched babbling. She took no satisfaction at all from the fact that it seemed as frightened as she was. The only thing on her mind was breaking free.

“Doctor?” one of the anesthesiologists asked Pete in a very concerned tone
. It was clear that he was anxious to get the order to sedate.

Pete didn’t immediately answer
. He was too mesmerized by what was happening. The creature twisted and pulled with every bit of her strength and finally snapped the leather that had been holding her right arm and took a swipe at him.

“O
K,” Pete said as calmly as possible, thinking that he had waited too long. He backed away from the table. “OK. Let’s see if we can slow her down some.” The dinosaur was just about to completely break out of the restraints, Pete could see that. In a second, he and the two other doctors were going to be stuck in a room with this thing that was not only gigantic but pissed. The three men watched as one of them carefully fed drugs into the IV.

The Arzat was still struggling to free her other hand when her body suddenly began feeling heavy.
The sensation was very similar to the one she experienced when her mother and the other females had administered the drugs in the cave. She attempted in vain to get any part of her body to work but it was impossible, and she felt herself quickly drifting back to sleep.

Pete and the other doctors watched the
heart and brain-activity monitors carefully to be sure that the anesthesia was not negatively impacting the creature before they could all breathe freely again. “What do you think John?” he finally asked the doctor that had put the dinosaur under.

“I gave her just about the same dose as I would have given a full grown gorilla.
Might keep her down for an hour or so, but I wouldn’t know for sure Doc. I would guess shorter than longer,” the anesthesiologist answered, still trying to recover from the scene he had just witnessed.

They all continued to look at the EKG and the
other monitors. Pete had been terrified to drug the creature—afraid there might be some negative reaction. Any kind of anesthesia was always dangerous, and they still hadn’t done a full blood analysis. The doctors were shooting in the dark. Pete knew that he was going to need to act very quickly now. He didn’t dare risk another dose.

“Hey
, Ron,” Pete asked the officer in charge of the area, “can you come in here please?” Ron was another old friend of Pete’s who had been working with him for many years. Ron had stationed himself just outside the operating room and had already given orders to clear everyone out of the entire section if necessary. He could see that this creature would rip the place apart if it ever got going, far worse than any angry full-grown gorilla. Unbeknownst to Pete, Ron had also stationed marksmen with high-powered rifles close by just in case.

“Yes
, Doctor.”

“Is this room strong enough to contain this thing when she comes to?”

“I am not sure Pete, but probably not.”

“Well we can’t keep doping her without killing her.
I would like to let her regain consciousness without restraints, somewhere safe where we could still monitor her.”

“We have a few rooms much better for that
, my friend—basically padded cells with one way observation glass. They’re in the primate compound.”

“Let’s get her moved.”

Mot gave a light kick to Senior one more time just to be sure he was completely dead, then did the same to Junior as Alex looked on. She appeared to be in some sort of trance. Mot took the time to study the long metal objects that the men had held like hunting sticks. He was particularly interested in the one that had made the great sound. His ears were still ringing. After what he had seen so far, he could only imagine how effective such a thing might be. Mot resolved to thoroughly question Alex about the weapons and their use, but he could sense that now was not the time.

The men were both dead all right.
Mot was proud of himself—they had been a very clean kills-but he was still a bit confused by Alex’s reaction. Clearly, the human males had planned to kill her in a most unpleasant way, yet Alex seemed somewhat bothered that they had been eliminated. Mot was still very hungry, and as far as he was concerned, although the males smelled terrible, if he could convince Alex to fire up that cooking contraption again, he might just gut both of these humans and have quite a nice supper. When Mot looked at Alex, he decided against asking her.

Mot was
trying to be patient, but he sensed that this place was still very dangerous. “Alex? What are we going to do?” he finally asked.

From the moment they had escaped the caves, Alex had been most concerned with protecting Mot.
It was bad luck for the men that Alex really hadn’t been alone, and bad luck for Mot as far as keeping his existence under wraps. The dead men just created a potential trail that might be followed.

“We need to bury them
, Mot, and get rid of them,” Alex finally said, snapping out of her shock. “I think there is a shovel somewhere in the back of the truck.” Alex turned to go see if she could find one-sure that Mot would have no idea what she was talking about. Now we’ve gone and killed someone, she thought as she rummaged around. She found it interesting that she felt very little remorse about the dead men. Alex was sure that had the tables been turned, it would have been she who was now face down in the Utah desert. She shivered and returned to the bodies.

“O
K, Mot, we are going to have to dig a very large hole.” She handed Mot the shovel and then turned to survey the area. “Not here though. Let’s do it over there,” Alex said as she pointed to another spot about fifty feet away. She didn’t want to have to drag the bodies very far, but she also did not want them to be buried right in the middle of things. They would be harder to find in the place she had chosen.

“Just one last thing.”
Alex bent down over the men and reached in Senior’s pockets, producing a wallet and half a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes. “Pall Malls? Who smokes those anymore?” she said absently. She tapped one out of the pack and fired it up, and then flipped open the wallet. Anthony Albert Bradley, Blackhawk Boulevard, Mount Pleasant, Utah.

Alex had absolutely no
idea where Mount Pleasant was. Probably some small, hell-and-gone place out in the middle of the state, she thought. It didn’t matter, the picture on the license looked nothing like Senior, not by a couple of decades. Senior had obviously stolen it, and Alex shivered when she thought about what might have become of the real owner. She went through Junior’s pockets, as well, but there was nothing in them but a wad of cash. She shoved the bills in her front pocket, aware that she no longer had a wallet of her own. They might need the money along the way.

“O
K, Mot, let’s bury these guys,” she said, standing back up. “What do Arzats do? Do you bury the dead?” she asked, flicking the cigarette away.

“No, we burn them,” said Mot, looking curiously at the tool Alex had just given him.

“That is a very common practice with humans, too,” Alex said as she headed for the place she had indicated before. Mot followed.

“Let me see that thing,”
Alex said, pointing at the shovel. Mot handed it back to her, and she began digging in a spot that looked to be mostly sand. “Ever used one of these, Mot?” Alex said, her breath already becoming strained after just a couple of throws.

Mot shook his head.
“No, Alex, but I think I understand.”

“Good,” Alex said, handing the shovel back to Mot.
We need the hole to be at least three or four feet deep if you can get it there.

“Alex, what are ‘feet’?”

“Oh, I keep forgetting.” How would Mot know what “feet” were? Alex held her hand to her waist. “Three feet, OK? While you dig, I’m going to go get the truck ready to get out of here.”

Mot was amazed by the tool
. It was a heavy-duty, folding spade, an Army surplus job, virtually indestructible, but to Mot, the biggest news was that the blade was made of very hard metal. In Mot’s world, bronze had just been discovered and it was very soft by comparison. He began to dig. Although there were many rocks in the soil, the material moved easily enough and-much to Mot’s astonishment-the tool did not bend or break. Some of the bigger rocks he just grabbed and threw out of the hole.

Alex went b
ack to the truck and finally retrieved her spare key from under the hood. She looked over and was surprised to see that Mot had already carved a hole that looked almost big enough to hold the two men. He was standing up to his thigh with a large mound of debris piling up. It would have taken her all day to do what Mot had accomplished in less than ten minutes. She looked around again and made a mental note to someday go and get her motorcycle back from Tom and Batter.

Alex packed up anything else that was still on the desert floor and jammed it in to the truck bed.
She wanted to be sure that once they pulled out, there would be nothing left of her camp. When she was certain she had thoroughly cleared the area, she went back to see about Junior and Senior.

The morning sun was already heating up the desert
, and flies were beginning to swarm the bodies. She shivered, knelt down beside Junior, and began to tug his body by the feet in the direction of Mot and the hole he was digging. Junior was not easy—he was probably 200 pounds of dead weight. Alex did have the advantage of sliding him over sand, but he was face down. She tried to roll him by pulling hard on his left arm, and eventually she got him to topple over. Then she grabbed his boots and tugged again.

Alex knew in her heart that the
se were bad men, and that it was very likely they had hurt people many times before without getting caught. It was probably a good thing that they would no longer be able to harm anyone. Still, she hoped that there wasn’t a wife or kids at home somewhere that expected either of these two to show up. “Cuz that ain’t gonna happen, my friend,” she said aloud to Junior, still disgusted, struggling to pull him through the dirt.

Alex
had only been able to budge Junior about ten feet before she finally called Mot for help. He easily picked up both men, one in each hand, and walked them over to the hole and dumped them in, as if he were taking out the trash. As hungry as Mot was, the two had already passed smelling good to him and he was ready to be done with them. Once they were in the hole, he looked at Alex. “OK?” he asked, indicating the shovel.

“One last thing,” Alex said as she tossed the shotguns in with the bodies.

“What are those Alex?” Mot asked, very interested.

“What did you hunt with?”

“A long sharp stick, with a metal tip,” Mot exaggerated.

“Well, those weapons are like that
, but better. I will explain later. Now, let’s cover them up.”

In another few minutes
, there was virtually no sign of Mot’s hole or the dead men. Alex and Mot had carefully camouflaged their makeshift grave, and Mot had added his own final touch by rolling a boulder the size of a small car over the top. The day was swiftly approaching noon. Alex looked to the sky and noted the time. “Let’s get out of here.”