Primordia 3: The Lost World—Re-Evolution

CHAPTER 39

Andy had scaled to the top of a tree and lifted his head above the hair-like fronds to stare up at the plateau.

Even though he had lived, or rather, survived, for 10 years in this time, and seen creatures living that were long just fossilized bones in a museum, it still amazed him when he saw evidence of time passing — the monolithic flat-topped mountain, or tepui, was only just beginning to have the surrounding jungle weathered down around it. Over the millions and millions of years to come, the jungle would sink, while the harder granite ‘plug’ would erode more slowly, making it seem to rise like an island into the sky. But now, it was just a slightly raised area in a vast primordial world.

Rain had started to fall an hour or so back, but that was nothing compared to what was happening over the plateau — surrounding it was a curtain of rain, almost like a shield. It reminded him of some sort of titan’s shower stall with the splash curtain pulled around it. Overhead, the clouds were boiling and turning slowly like they were being stirred, and the constant sheets of rain made it indistinct.

Andy grinned. “Behold the return of the great God, Primordia,” he whispered.

Andy looked up, but there was nothing to see above, as the clouds were too thick. But he knew they wouldn’t be for much longer. Soon, when the vortex stabilized, the maelstrom would dissolve and sunshine would rule on the plateau once again.

He smiled, wondering if someone was already on their way coming to look for him. He wondered when they arrived, what would it look like? Would they beam down and materialize from the future like they did in a Star Trek teleporter?

His grin widened, remembering that it wasn’t that special, and in fact, it had been as simple as walking through a gossamer sheet, that had made him feel slightly flippy in the stomach for a second or two, and then he was there.

As he watched, the cloud started to drop, creating a misted atmosphere on the plateau. It would still be dripping with humidity but he knew now that at its center, the cloudbank would break and rise.

The oily curtain remained, but beams of light began to shine down like beacons. Andy eased back down in his treetop perch and watched for another few moments. His hand was half-mutilated, his skin was covered in scars, and his body that was once slightly pudgy was now whip thin and nothing but stringy, sunburned muscle. Hell, even his teeth hurt, not from any sort of sugary diet, but from having to, at times, eat food that was bordering on being tougher than boot leather.

He opened his bag to let the small flying reptile out. Gluck immediately set to hopping around and chasing down bugs for a quick meal.

“Save some for me.” He grinned and then turned about, looking back along the valley. Things hooted, squealed, and screamed out of a green world. Things that looked like thick tree trunks rose from the green ocean and at their top were explosions of spiky leaves. Medium-sized pterosaurs glided from tree to tree, some chasing insects as long as his arm that glittered on membrane wings.

There were other massive trees that climbed into the clouds, some primitive pines, gingkoes, and redwoods, with smoke-like mist curling in and around the canopies, and he knew below them the forest highways created by eons-old animal tracks would also be shrouded in mist — perfect for an ambush, he knew from experience.

Andy cupped his fingers into a box and brought them to his lips. He filled his lungs with the humid scent-rich air of the Late Cretaceous and blew long and carefully into his hands. It produced a long mournful bellow that traveled along the valley floor.

He finished and waited. Sure enough, heads the size of small cars lifted on tree-trunk-thick necks from the endless green, and as he hoped, responded. They called back to him, the sauropods, the largest creatures to have ever lived on land. 120 feet from nose to tail and around 80 tons, the creatures were walking mountains.

Andy blew into his cupped hands again, and once again, they responded. But this time, they looked toward him. He waved. What would they make of a tiny creature like me? he wondered. He was nothing to them, a bug, an anomaly out of place and out of time. And where mankind ruled for a few thousand years, these things ruled for many millions.

He smiled as he watched them, and his chest swelled and eyes watered. This was his land, and his alone. And it was as magnificent as he imagined and hoped it to be.

He turned back toward the plateau. Right now as the comet Primordia was overhead, everything was thrown into chaos — the atmosphere, the weather, the magnetic orientation of the Earth, and even time and space itself, as a portal or doorway to another reality was thrown open.

He had a little over 24 hours. And at the end of that period, when the comet pulled away and the time distortion ended, the two realities went back to being ordered once again, the two worlds separated by a distance so vast it was hard to even comprehend.

He remembered that Ben Cartwright had seen himself as being marooned here in the Late Cretaceous. But Andy never saw it that way. If his sister came to find him and try to take him home, what would he do or say to her?

He smiled; she couldn’t take him home, because this was his home now, wasn’t it?

Andy was torn. He had so much more to do and see in this world. It had taken him a decade, but he learned how to survive in this place. He peeked over the edge of the tree canopy, looking at the growth below him.

He made a plan: she would try and convince him to come with her. But instead, he would convince her to stay here with him. He had so much to show her. She’d love it.

He looked down from his perch — there were broad and fleshy leaves, bulbous hanging fruits, and a mad tangle of vines, some with hooked barbs that tore at the flesh, cycads, and tongue-like ferns. And on the trunks of those titanic trees, there were brilliant red and orange fungi, like flatbread growing out from their bark, and their lower branches had what looked like strings of green pearls hanging from them.

It was a wonderland, except in among that wildness there were the predators — big or small, they all spelled death for a soft-bodied mammal. But he knew how to avoid them. He had something the other creatures didn’t: a giant brain.

He looked back once again at the plateau — there was another reason to go no further, turn around, and just head back into the jungle. Up on that plateau were monsters, but not just massive two-legged theropods, or flying reptiles the size of airplanes, or waterways filled with carnivores that made sharks and alligators seem like goldfish.

Andy felt the tremble in his stomach at the memory — the monstrous snakes known as Titanoboa were creatures that were like some sort of elemental force. The entire plateau was where they thrived, and it was like a pit of vipers on a monstrous scale.

“Gluck.” The tiny reptile hopped up on his leg, obviously now having had his fill of insects and fruit. “Don’t go there, Andy.”

Andy smiled flatly. “I don’t really want to go.”

“Gluck.” It cocked its pointed head. “And Helen?”

He sighed. “I know if there’s a chance my sister is going to be there, then I should at least meet her. After all, it’d be rude not to, if she’s just come a few thousand miles and 100 million years to see me.” He pulled at his lip. “Be also good to get some supplies. Even a new knife would do.”

He looked down at his emaciated frame. He was covered in scars, missing a couple of fingers, his skin covered in dirt and a deep tan, and he bet his long hair was filled with twigs, seeds, and all manner of debris. Andy smiled; he was a prehistoric Robinson Crusoe. Yeah, he needed some supplies. But that was all.

“Gluck.” The tiny flying reptile turned one suspicious eye on him.

“Don’t worry, I won’t leave you. I’m not going anywhere.”

Gluck climbed up his leg, and then used his sharp beak to open the bag and burrow in. Andy grinned.

“What, so I’m a kangaroo with a pouch now?”

He looked in at the tiny bird-like thing.

“We’ll just take a look, a quick one.” He went to close the bag but paused. “And no snoring in there — silence is the key up where we’re going.”

Andy began to ease down the tree and felt more vulnerable every foot of the way.

CHAPTER 40

Still several hundred feet from the top of the plateau, Ben was the first to find and then enter the cave mouth. There had been several caves he had bypassed, but what attracted him to this one was it had dappled light falling at its rear.

As he scrambled in, he stayed pressed in tight to one side, gun up, as the others came in behind him. He motioned to his eyes and then to the cave interior, and Chess and the mercs, plus Drake spread out. Ben waved Helen and Nicolás in behind him.

He sniffed — there was no smell of the acrid ammonia that he remembered from the previous massive snake pits he had encountered up here, so he hoped it was a place they weren’t using for nesting.

“Clear,” Drake said, and the word was repeated along the line by the mercenaries.

Ben kept his gun at the ready and eased in toward the bars of light being thrown down into the cave. When further in, he took one last glance about then tilted his head to follow the beams up to the cave ceiling. He couldn’t see the sky, but at about 100 feet above them, the cave ceiling curved away to a shelf, and he bet that was the start of a chute that led to the surface.

He squinted, and then pulled his small scope which he held to his eye — it looked weird, oily, as though underwater. There was definitely some sort of hanging layer of distortion in front of the cave shelf mouth, like two different liquid densities, one upon the other.

Ben knew what it was — during the comet’s apparition, it threw open a doorway, and either grabbed the top of the plateau, sending it back in time, or it allowed the distant past to be brought forward to now. But though the area that the anomaly covered was the entire mountaintop, it only penetrated down 100 feet or so. Anything below that wasn’t affected.

They’d need to pass through this veil that indicated the doorway between one time and the next.

Drake appeared at his side and nudged his arm. “Looks like our ride — and we’ve all got tickets.”

“Yep, so up we go,” Ben replied as he fixed another rope to the caving dart, aimed, and fired toward the jutting lip of the rock shelf over 100 feet above them. The dart sped away, taking the rope with it, and embedded with an audible clunk into the hard stone about six feet from the opening. He tested it once, before attaching it to his power winch.

Ben turned to his friend. “Looks like the fun’s about to start.”

Drake grinned and saluted. “After you.”

Ben nodded, hit the retraction button, and he lifted off. He sailed upward as the group watched from below. He took it a little slow, cautious of every nook and cranny that could be used for an ambush, and then in a couple of minutes, he was at the ceiling.

Ben hung there for a moment, just looking along the rock shelf. There was definitely light streaming in from a good-sized opening. Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be any of the football-sized packages that were the monstrous snake droppings.

He looked down at all the upturned faces. “Looks okay. I’m going in.” He kicked off the wall and swung the rope to the right, picking up momentum, and then swinging back to the left, and when at full extension, reaching out to grab a horn of rock. There were good hand and foot holds, and he was able to disengage the rope and clamber up onto the lip of rock.

Below him, Drake grabbed Ben’s rope and attached it to his winch and started to come up behind him. The others assembled, waiting their turn.

Ben entered the cave, and then passed through the oily distortion layer. He got the familiar weird sensation in his gut, as if he was falling, and he became slightly dizzy for a few seconds. Sand grain-sized particles hung in the air as if there was no gravity, and there was also the absence of sound — he felt like he was between time and space for a moment, and he pushed on, feeling the dense air acting like a liquid, sucking at his body and slowing him down. But then he passed through it into the new cave.

He felt his senses rush back in at him, as though he was waking from a deep sleep and as the light grew stronger, he slowed, becoming more cautious. Ben now crouch-walked holding his gun before him; the cave wasn’t huge, but more than big enough for human beings. The problem was, he knew that the massive snakes didn’t need much room, just enough to get their heads in and then it was all over for anything in front of them.

The air was moving now, rising up and gently pulling past him. He didn’t like it as it meant his scent preceded him, and he didn’t get the return favor — anything outside the cave would know he was coming long before he could hear or smell it.

In another few minutes, the cave angled slightly upward, and Ben climbed a narrow chimney all the way to the top, and then the light exploded before him, and with it came all the sights, sounds, and smells of the primordial world.

Ben felt both sick to the stomach and entranced. “Pellucidar is but a realm of your imagination,” he whispered, the words of an author long gone. Edgar Rice Burroughs was a writer similar to Arthur Conan Doyle in that they both wrote of fantastic places, people, and animals, and in doing so, displayed magnificent imaginations.

But Burroughs’ strange world, Pellucidar, was at the center of the Earth, and given he personally had proven that Conan Doyle’s Lost World on the plateau was real, would someone one day find that hidden place far beneath the dark ice and snow of the Antarctic? He did wonder.

Ben rested on his forearms. “Nice to see you again. Do you mind if I just visit for a while?” He half smiled. “I don’t want any trouble this time.”

He then heard Drake talking softly to the mercs as Helen slid in beside him. Nicolás crawled up next to her, and the three of them stared out.

“See anything?” she asked.

“Nothing yet. And that’s the way I want it to stay.” Ben put the telescopic scope of his gun to his eye and moved it along the foliage. “Nope, nothing.”

“We should scan some more,” she said.

“Yeah, we should. We should scan a lot. But we need to balance caution with haste. We need to be out there, find your bother, get back, and then all get the hell out of here before the doorway closes. I am not, repeat not, staying in this place again.” He meant it.

“I get it.” She looked out at the jungle. “It’s been 10 years; we might not even recognize him.”

Ben chuckled. “Here’s a tip; if we see another human and it’s not one of us, odds are it’s going to be your brother.”

“Oh yeah.” She grinned back.

Drake and the mercs finally belly-slid up to them.

“Holy shit.” Shawna’s mouth dropped open. “That is one weird-ass jungle.”

Drake grunted. “You have no idea.”

Through the curtains of mist that swirled through the underbrush, there were huge tree trunks, rod straight, and growing 150 feet into the air. At their top, just becoming visible now that the mist had fully fallen, were pompom type bunches of fronds. At their base were heavy-leafed palms with massive tongue-like leaves, a dozen feet long and five across, and ropey vines tangled everything.

There were flowers, enormous fruits or seed pods, some with dangerous-looking spines, and also fungi as toadstools or in ragged shapes like torn bread.

“It’s like the Garden of Eden,” Shawna whispered.

“Yeah.” Chess snorted. “Complete with the devil snake, according to these jokers.”

“I can smell it,” Buster said. “Stinks like shit out there.”

“Because that’s probably what it is,” Helen replied. “Dinosaur shit.”

“Look.” Chess pointed with one fingerless gloved hand.

Something the size of a brush turkey sped past the cave mouth, paused to stand so still that it looked like it had become frozen as it seemed to be listening for a moment, before it unlocked and then sprinted on.

“Did you see that?” Chess continued to point. “That was a… ”

“Yeah, yeah, we know,” Drake said and turned to Ben. “What do you want to do, boss?”

Ben slid forward so his elbows were on the lip of the cave mouth. He stuck his head out and looked left, right, then craned his neck to look above them.

They were about six feet up from the ground, and vines were hanging across their cave mouth, partially obscuring them. Helen was right, they should do a lot more watching and waiting, but they were on the clock. There didn’t seem to be anything close by, so he guessed it was as good as they were going to get.

“We mark our position, and then we head out. Follow me, stay quiet, low, and in tight.”

Ben eased out and dropped to the ground. He held a hand up and just crouched for a moment. He turned his head slowly, and then looked up above them. There was a rocky hill behind them, mostly covered in plants, and even from where he was only a few feet in front, it was hard to make out the hole he had just climbed out of.

He waved them out, and one after the other, the men and women jumped lightly to the ground. The mercs and Drake had their guns up and all pointed out at the jungle.

Helen also leapt down followed by Nicolás. The young man just gawped as he turned slowly.

“This is not real,” he breathed and fumbled for a camera, but cursed when he saw it was dead. He turned to Helen. “How can this be real?”

“We told you. You just didn’t want to believe us,” she said. “This world is our world. But it’s from about 100 million years ago. Somehow, the comet that is passing overhead distorts time, opens a portal to long ago, and right here, on this tabletop mountain, we get a little slice of the Late Cretaceous period.”

Nicolás continued to stare. “This is where those giant bat-birds came from.”

“Yes; pterosaurs,” Helen said softly.

“Hey.” Drake nudged Nicolás back to attentiveness. “And I’m betting there’s something else you didn’t believe us about this place… it’s the most damned dangerous one on Earth.”

Nicolás nodded, his eyes blinking. He turned back to the jungle as Shawna looked over her shoulder.

“Buster was right: it stinks.”

Helen pulled out a small scope and held it to her eye, shifting it to thermal, and turning slowly. “Rotting vegetation, sap and plant resin, early flowers, and one extra thing — lots and lots of dino-poop.”

“Big shits mean big assholes,” Chess said. “Stay in tight, people.” Keeping his eyes on the wall of jungle, he moved in closer to Ben. “Which way, Cartwright?”

Ben turned to the female paleontologist. “Helen?”

The woman looked up, sighting the sun for a moment. “Even as a kid, he wanted to see what America was like in the past.” She held out an arm. “So I’m betting he went up north, and if he came back, it would have been coming from that way.”

“Then let’s meet him halfway,” Ben said. “Francis, take us out.”

The big man grunted, kept his gun tucked under his arm, and went to move off into the jungle.

“Wait,” Helen hissed.

Francis turned.

“Some of the creatures here, the snakes, Titanoboa, also use the trees. Make sure you stay aware of what’s above you.”

“Those tinyboas; that’s them big snakes you mentioned?” Francis’ voice was deep but untroubled.

“Titanoboa, but yeah.” She nodded. “Be careful.”

“And the dinosaurs.” Shawna grinned. “They can fly as well.”

“Francis, also big damn spiders, just like you hate, right, Drake?” Chess chuckled.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Drake sighed.

“Oh man, this is getting better by the minute.” Francis shook his head. “Hope I live to get that big paycheck.”

He turned back, scanned the tree canopy for a moment, and then led them in.

CHAPTER 41

Barry Ryebeck pushed the mower around his large grass backyard for 20 minutes before stopping, grabbing the brow of his cap, and lifting it to wipe his streaming brow with a forearm. It was hot, damned hot, and the Nevada summer was going to be a bitch as always.

His home in Humboldt County was a good 3,000 square feet with a few orange trees, camellias for color, and plenty of flat ground for his magnificent emerald-green grass. It was Kentucky Bluegrass Supreme, and was soft, thick, and a pleasure to walk on in bare feet. Everyone commented on it. It made him feel as proud as a rooster.

He took a moment to inhale the sweet smell of fresh cut grass, and then jammed his cap back on and was about to check his progress when the lights went out.

“Huh?”

As soon as he noticed it, it was all over and the sun shone hotly once again on his upturned face. He blinked, turning one way then the other.

Musta been my imagination, he thought and straightened his cap and looked back to his work. He was pretty much done, with just some tidy up to go around the trees, and along the hedge line — he’d tackle that one first.

Barry pushed the mower along the hedge line, coming to a hole in the hedge at ground level that was roughly the size of a hubcap. He pushed the mower on past, and then just as he was beyond it, something that felt like molten daggers stabbed his calf.

Barry screamed and went to the ground while the damn mower continued on without him. He turned over, gripping his leg, and just caught sight of two black stick-like things repositioning themselves just at the hole opening in the hedge.

As he grimaced, confused, he felt the spreading coldness work its way up his leg to his groin. And then begin to rise higher.

“Help me!” he shouted but his words were weak as already his chest was succumbing to the spreading numbness.

Then he remembered. “Ah damnit.” It was Meso season. He should have known better — those big bastards, the Mesothelae, were the world’s largest and heaviest spiders. They lived in burrows, and a big one could get to be two feet across and weigh 40 pounds.

Barry began to take short breaths, as it was getting hard to breathe. He turned his stiffening neck and saw it then, the Meso, as it eased further out of the hole in the hedge. Just as he thought, it was a big sucker, and had been in its burrow, lined with silk, just waiting for an ambush.

The spider came out slowly and in the sunlight, its skin looked like polished plastic. The eyes, two big central ones and many smaller ones surrounding them, were glossy black buttons devoid of soul, but Barry knew every damn one of them was focused right on him.

Below those eyes was where the shit got crazy — the two chelicerae, the things that housed the fangs, were an angry red, and those twin curved daggers were as long as his big fingers.

“Shit, shith, thithhh,” Barry whispered as the numbness spread to his face. He lay back then on his magnificent grass, and it felt like a soft, sweet-smelling pillow. “I gith thup.”

Barry didn’t feel the spider’s first touch, as he was totally numb now. And thankfully, he didn’t feel when it began to drain him of his body fluids. He just felt dumb for not remembering sooner.

CHAPTER 42

Drake tried to look everywhere at once. Ten years ago, he escaped this hellish place with his life and little else. He promised then to never return — he groaned for a moment — but now, here he was.

Out front, Ben had taken over the lead, and next was Helen. He never stopped thinking about her, and when things went well for him or he ran into trouble, it was always her he wanted to talk to. Guess I’m still hooked, and her coming was probably why he was really here. I’m dumb like that, he thought and snorted softly.

Ben paused to look again up at the jungle canopy. Sunlight filtered down, but it was shredded into thin bars by the thick leaf cover. At their feet, mud pulled at their boots, and roots thick as Drake’s thighs lifted from the slime to plunge back down like the muscular tentacles of a massive mud-slick octopus.

Drake turned slowly. The jungle in this place was like being on another planet. He was no botanist, so nearly everything was unidentifiable. But here, nothing was even recognizable — large fronds like green dining tables hung over scrambling plants that shot out curling hair-like strings to cling to the stalks of hardier plants to lift themselves higher. Large flowering growths that smelled like old gym socks bloomed open, and fungus of all shapes, sizes, and colors fed on rotting logs, each other, and in one case, the skeleton of some gargantuan fallen beast.

“What’s the hold-up?” Chess asked from the rear.

“Stinks like shit in here,” Shawna repeated for the 10th time as her mouth turned down. “And worse than that dino-poop.”

“It’s the swamp methane,” Chess replied. “I thought you liked that stuff. That biker boyfriend of yours reeks of it.”

She returned a short hoarse laugh. “I dumped that ass-wipe long back. Got my eye on something younger and prettier now.” She turned and winked at Nicolás who blushed and looked away quickly.

Ben turned with his teeth bared and waved them to quietness. Shawna continued to guffaw, and Drake knew it’d be impossible to close them down completely. And it would stay like that until they saw something that freaked them out, or one of them got dead—education the hard way, he thought grimly.

“Hey.” Francis walked a few paces across a small, shallow pond. “Looky here.”

“Whatta you got, big guy?” Chess tried to see around him but Francis’ shoulders were like a wall of muscle.

“Got the biggest, ugliest frog I ever seen.” He half turned and chuckled. “It’s all head.”

“Lemme see! I love frogs.” Buster began to slosh toward him.

“Slow down,” Helen said, also moving toward Francis.

“Ah, goddamnit.” Ben looked to Drake, and then nodded to the mercs.

Drake knew what he meant—they were his buddies, so do something about them. He followed.

Francis pulled a long blade from a scabbard on his belt and crouched. “This thing is massive.” He began to hold it out.

As Drake approached, he could make out what was capturing Francis’ attention. There was some sort of frog or toad that looked like an upturned brown and green bucket. On each side of its head over its eyes were horn-like protrusions, and a pair of large glassy eyes was fixed on Francis… and the guy was right, it seemed to be all freaking head.

“Is it alive?” Shawna asked.

“Let’s see.” Francis reached forward with the blade.

Helen moved quickly. “Don’t… ”

She went to grab at Francis’ shoulder. But just as she lunged, the toad opened its mouth and sprayed Francis’ hand and arm with something that immediately pitted his clothing and the acrid smell of it stung the eyes.

Francis dropped his knife and recoiled. “What the hell?”

“Fuck you.” Buster kicked out, landing a boot into the center of the amphibian that sent it flying into the bushes with a soft thud.

“It’s burning.” Francis’ normal baritone had gone up a few octaves.

“Put it in the water, quickly,” Helen said.

The man did as he was told and grimaced. He lifted it, and Helen came in closer. Her hands hovered just over his arm. The glove he wore and his tough jungle-proof sleeve was all abraded, and the dark flesh on his arm underneath was red raw.

“Interesting,” Helen said as she craned forward.

“You think?” Francis shot back. “That damn thing just spat acid at me.”

“That looked like a Beelzebufo ampinga… otherwise known as the devil frog. And it’s interesting because their fossils have only ever been found in Madagascar from the Cretaceous Period. But we always thought they might have existed here.” She looked up. “And now I know they do.”

“So damn happy for you,” Francis grimaced.

She opened her canteen and let more fresh water run over his wounds. “You’ll need to dress that.”

Francis nodded. “It still burns.”

Helen looked to where the giant frog had been. “Yeah, hydrochloric acid — because it has such a large mouth, it eats big prey whole. I guess it needs a strong acid in its gut to break them down quickly. Never knew they could spit it.”

“Lemme guess, and now you know that too.” Francis’ brow furrowed.

She smiled up at him and nodded. “Their closest living relative lives right here in South America. This is proof that these things crossed over land bridges.”

“Fuck it.” Francis half turned to look over his shoulder. “Buster, shoot that damn thing.”

“It’s already gone, buddy.” He lifted his gun. “But I’ll shoot the next one.”

“Is it bleeding?” Ben asked from their rear.

“Not now,” Helen said.

“Does it smell like raw flesh?” Ben pressed.

Helen sniffed, and then Francis. Francis shook his head, but Helen just looked at him.

Ben grunted. “Like the lady said, bathe it, and then bind it, thickly. Many of the things in here hunt by scent.” He turned to look at the man. “And you just made yourself very interesting to them.”

Francis stood. “Hey, listen, man… ”

“Shut up.” Ben shot back and looked along each of their faces. “You touch nothing in here. This is no jungle you’ve ever been in. You wise up right now, ‘cause I don’t give a shit if you get yourself killed. But if you put me and mine at risk, I’ll kill you all myself.” He glared. “Clear?”

Chess held up his hand. “Be cool, asshole, we get it.”

Drake doubted it.

Ben worried about Emma and Zach with every step he took. The world was changing, animals were changing, and people were changing and even disappearing. New animals were emerging like some sort of conjuring trick, and everyone just seemed to remember them as though they’d always been there and suddenly recalled the oddities.

The landscape was altering, and he wondered what would happen if they failed to find Andy. What would they be heading back to? It was telling that when they’d last flown into Caracas 10 years ago, the city had a population of two million people. Now it was little more than a town with no airport, no buildings over two stories, and a few thousand people living behind a high wall.

Ben didn’t know whether the jungle consumed them, or if the town just never got a chance to exist as they knew it.

Please don’t let that happen to Ohio, he silently prayed. Or anywhere back home.

His thoughts stayed with home. Emma was the smartest and toughest woman he had ever known, and he had confidence she could deal with anything. But knowing that just didn’t make him feel any better about being here while she was back there.

His lips flattened as he thought about it — back there? Did he mean back there in America? Or back there, 100 million years in the future. It didn’t matter; it was just a long, long way away.

They’d been trekking for three hours now, and he’d stop soon for a break. He’d already laid down the rules: you have something to eat, you bury the wrappers. You take a piss or shit, you dig a hole first, and cover it over — the deeper the better — and you better be damned quick. The smell of fresh feces was something he had learned the hard way that brought the predators running.

If anyone ever wondered why dogs look at you real strange when they’re taking a dump, it’s because they know for that few seconds they’re hunched over, they’re vulnerable. And they’re looking to you, their pack leader, to check you have their back.

As Ben marched, he tried to recall any landmarks from his previous time here, but couldn’t. Though he knew the lake and caves were at the interior, the fact was he left this plateau as soon as he was stranded in this time. It was the only place he found that the Titanoboa lived.

He looked up — the sun was just past its zenith. The snakes were more active at night, and they still had a few more daylight hours yet.

His one hope was that they saw the creatures before the creatures saw them — it at least would give them a fighting chance. That was the reason the mercs were with them — more sets of eyes to watch out and bodies trained to react quickly. He looked over his shoulder at the group coming up behind him. Drake nodded to him, and he returned the gesture. Thank God for having a few people here he could trust with his life.

Ben’s objectives were simple: first prize, they found Andy and everyone went home. He doubted they’d win that medal, but there were levels of achievement underneath that. So, second prize was Andy must be brought back or stopped. With rifle or sidearm, Ben was a crack shot, and Drake was even better; one way or the other, Andy must not be allowed to have any more effect on this time zone.

Ben led them through the damp and claustrophobic jungle. The mists that were still curling around the hairy tree trunks and through the broad palm fronds were now beginning to settle and drip like rain, soaking them all in a warm and oily moisture.

Ben was first to break out into the small and unusual clearing, and as the team filed out, Helen came and grabbed at his elbow.

“This isn’t natural,” she whispered.

Ben nodded slowly. “You’re right; been scratched out of the jungle.” He half turned. “Eyes out, everyone.”

The clearing was roughly 50 feet across, and around its edge, plant debris was piled there that had long rotted down. Something had scraped everything away from the center. There were mounds every few feet that were about a foot high and a yard around.

“Snakes?” Ben asked.

“I don’t think so,” Helen still whispered.

“Eggs,” Chess said as he used the toe of his boot to dig into one of the mounds. He succeeded in crushing some of the oval spheres, and the fluid made the spill glisten in the muted light.

Nicolás leaned forward. “I once saw an ostrich egg; they look like this.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Chess crushed another of the eggs with his boot.

“Stop doing that,” Helen hissed.

Something moved within the glutinous fluid, and she moved closer.

“Are they edible?” Buster said, and also began to uncover another mound.

“Gross.” Shawna blew air through her lips and held her gun up. “Looks like an ugly baby bird.”

Helen crouched beside the egg clutch and used her knife to peel open more of the shell fragments. She stared.

“What is it?” Ben asked.

“A bird,” Shawna insisted.

“Bird? I wish it were. This is something far more dangerous.” Helen got to her feet and turned slowly, scanning the surrounding brush. “I think they’re Troodon, otherwise known as wounding tooth theropods. Yeah, Shawna, they’re like birds, but only in that they’re covered in hair-like proto-feathers. But they have jagged teeth, stand about three-to-four feet tall when fully grown and probably weigh in at about 100 pounds apiece. They were one of the few dinosaur species that developed an angled digit like opposable thumbs — only other species to do that were apes and humans.”

“So they’re big turkeys with sharp teeth that can also thumb a ride if they need to,” Shawna sneered, and Buster laughed and bumped fists with her.

“Real funny,” Helen said. “These turkeys eat meat and hunt in packs. They also had the largest brain size per-ratio of any dinosaur. They were damned smart. If they didn’t go extinct, who knows where they might have ended up in the evolutionary pecking order.” She turned to Ben. “We need to get out of here.”

“Let’s go. This way.” Ben began to lead them out.

“Are you brain dead?” Drake seethed.

Ben turned at the sound of Drake’s voice. He saw his friend was glaring at Shawna who was crouching over the nest with one of the eggs in her hand.

“What? Just wanted a souvenir.”

“Well, it isn’t going to be a freaking dinosaur egg, so put it down.” Drake jabbed a finger at her. “Now.”

“Lighten up.” Buster shook his head. “Look around, there’s tons of them here.”

Drake’s jaw jutted. Shawna grinned back at him, but slowly her face began to drop. “Oops, sorry, mama.”

Ben saw that the female merc wasn’t actually looking at Drake, but just over the man’s shoulder. He eased his head around, and then squinted in at the jungle. It was almost invisible in among the foliage, but there was a head sticking from between two fronds. The eyes were large and front facing, and though the face looked heavily boned, he could see black and white down-like feathers covering the crest and neck.

“We got company.”

Ben gripped his weapon, and though the thing was totally motionless, the unblinking gaze was unsettling. Worse was the way the mouth curved at the back and made it look like it was wearing a cruel smile.

Helen spoke with barely any movement of her lips. “It. Won’t. Be. Alone.”

Nicolás nodded to the wall of jungle. “It isn’t; there’s another one in there.”

Ben looked to where he had planned to exit the small clearing and noticed in the dark, green tunnel another set of ruby red eyes peering out. “They’re all around us.”

Chess lifted his gun, racking in standard shells. “Say the word and I’ll make a hole.”

“Let’s try and back out first.” Ben cradled his gun in his hands now, the muzzle pointed at the foliage.

“Like I thought: Troodon. Try and keep facing them,” Helen whispered. “They’ll prefer to attack their prey from behind.”

The group eased backward, one step, two, and then came the wet crunch from behind them.

“Ah, shit.” Buster had planted one of his size 13 boots on an egg mound.

That must have been the last straw, as the herd, pack, or flock of Troodon burst from the foliage with a hiss like airbrakes being engaged. They were fast, and though the gunfire of multiple weapons in the hands of experienced shooters struck home, for every creature they took down, more were disgorged from the jungle.

Ben marveled at their strategy; they usually came in pairs, darting and jinking, and some moved back and forth in front of them, while their pack-mates came at them from the sides. It was a co-ordinated attack, and Ben could see their intelligence at work.

Francis cursed as his shots went wild, and Ben turned to see one of the Troodon hanging onto his already wounded arm. It was bicycling its legs against him, and red stripes appeared on his thigh as long claws on its center toes ripped through his tough jungle clothing.

The huge man then grabbed it by the neck and swung it like a club to the ground twice before flinging its broken body into the jungle.

Shawna changed up her rounds to jam powerful Raufoss into her M82 rifle and the explosive booms were near deafening in the enclosed clearing as she punched big tunnels out into the jungle with each discharge. But for every Troodon she hit, she missed twice.

“Standard rounds,” Ben yelled.

Shawna’s teeth were bared and she aimed again, just as one of the bird-like creatures flew from behind to land on her shoulders. Its backward-curving teeth went for her neck, and its talons stuck like twin daggers into the meat of her back. She screamed her agony, one arm going for the thing and the other waving her gun.

Francis held his damaged arm in close to his body, and simply swung his other arm, massive fist clenched at the beasts’ heads, knocking them over like ten-pins.

Then the big man looked up, meeting Ben’s eyes, and they widened as Ben could see what was coming a mile away. Just as the thing on Shawna’s back flexed again, digging its talons in even deeper, her muscles automatically spasmed and then contracted — including her hand that was still wrapped around the M82’s trigger.

“No… ” Ben sprinted and dived, taking the huge Francis around the waist, knocking him down.

Shawna’s gun discharged, wildly, but unfortunately for the large form of Buster who was next in line and busy clubbing one of the beasts, it was aimed directly at him. Worse, Shawna still had her explosive rounds packed in.

One minute, the 6-foot 3-inch man was upright, and then next, the Raufoss round took him between the shoulder blades.

Buster’s top half disappeared in a flash of blood, bone, and gore as his head, neck, and most of his chest was sprayed all over the jungle. Weirdly, he stayed standing for a second or two, and even took a staggering step, before the headless body crumpled to the ground.

“Fuck!” Chess yelled, and then turned to rack and pump shots into the jungle. But as fast as it started, it was over, and the small clearing was filled with smoke, misted blood, and leaf debris that rained down like confetti.

Shawna groaned and rolled over. There were long stripes of blood on her neck and back.

“What happened?” She shook her head and groaned.

“You just fucking killed—”

“Shut it!” Ben yelled and helped Francis up.

“Oh fuck, man; that coulda been me.” Francis stared at the shredded remains of his colleague, then to Ben. “You saved my life.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He slapped his upper arm. “In this place, I’m sure you’ll get a chance to return the favor.”

“We must hurry.” Helen kept her eyes on the wall of jungle. “The big hunters will be here soon.”

“Right; we get the hell out of here, patch ourselves up, and keep going. Now move it.”

Drake dragged Shawna to her feet. She moaned loudly and tried to see over her shoulder.

“Where’s Buster?” She winced as Drake grabbed her arm.

“Gone,” he replied, dragging her after Ben.

“Spread all over the jungle,” Chess spat.

“Aww, those goddamn lizard turkeys,” she replied.

“Yeah, them.” Drake carried her out of the clearing, with the group all hurrying to follow Ben.

CHAPTER 43

The home of gods and monsters, Andy whispered as he stared, both horrified and transfixed — the monstrous snake had wrapped itself completely around the body of a juvenile Ankylosaurus. The powerful herbivore dinosaur was only about 12 feet long, and as an adult would grow to twice that, but it was still larger and more powerful than a full-grown rhino.

The snake began to compress as the dinosaur bleated like a lamb. It struggled, but it wasn’t going anywhere. Andy shook his head and blew air softly from between his lips in awe as he heard the first crack of its heavily armored body.

Unbelievable, he mouthed.

The Ankylosaurus was almost completely covered in massive knobs and oval plates of bone, known as osteoderms or scutes, which were also common on crocodiles. And on these beasts they were so thick and dense they would have been like iron plating.

To add to their defensive kit were two rows of spikes along its body. Additionally, its head was long and low, with prominent horns projecting back and to the sides and shelf-like plates protecting its eyes.

Finally, there was the club on the end of the bony tail that whipped back and forth now, but only managed to kick up dirt.

The snake’s titanic coils compressed some more, and there came popping and cracking all along the body. The Titanoboa kept its head clear, its gaze dispassionate, as its body squeezed the life from its prey.

The pulverizing served two purposes; the first was to suffocate the creature and the second was to compress the thing down to near pulp. Most of the bony plates would be indigestible, but they’d be excreted along with the skull and bone fragments later.

There came more tightening of the coils, and the bleating became hoarse gasps. And then the mouth hung open, and Andy gaped as what looked like some of the Ankylosaurus’ stomach was pressed up and out of its windpipe. At last, an eye popped free, before it finally stopped moving.

The snake would continue to compress, and sure enough, it sensed the battle was over and moved its mouth around to the front of the plant-eater. The maw opened, showing rows of tusk-like backward-curving teeth, as it began to push the head and shoulders into its mouth.

It would take almost an hour to swallow, but it had time, and up here, there were few predators who would take on a fully-grown Titanoboa.

Andy exhaled, feeling scared shitless but exulted. He was a paleontologist, like his sister, and also like her, he specialized in this very creature. But where they had studied bone fragments, he had now seen several specimens alive, and they were more formidable, frightening, and admirable than he ever expected.

He smiled almost dreamily; he knew more about the creature than any person living, now, or in the far distant future. He knew they kept their nests underground, and also weren’t solitary, as they preferred to live in communal habitats. They had all the sensory skills of the large modern snakes like anacondas and boas, plus they were a size that made them the most feared creature on the plateau.

There were still answers to some questions that evaded him — why did they congregate up here? It might just be that there was an abundance of prey, or the micro-climate was ideal, or even that the ancient tepui being riddled with caves was perfect for their nesting sites.

But the biggest and most perplexing question of all was: why did they go extinct? He’d heard all the theories, and even postulated some himself, and they ranged from climate change, to competitive tension from other species for food, to disease, and even a theory that something evolved that preyed just on them and wiped them out.

But he didn’t buy any of it — other large snake species survived, and this monster had all their advantages and many more of its own.

Why aren’t you with us today? he breathed. What happened? Andy backed away slowly, glad that the monstrous thing was feeding and not hunting. Otherwise, it’d be him being pushed into that giant mouth right now.

He gave it one last look. I need to know, and I’ll find out, he thought as he vanished into the jungle.

CHAPTER 44

Ben held up a fist and his team froze. He then carefully waved everyone down, and the group eased into the dripping ferns, or any places of concealment they could find. No one said a word; they just waited, all eyes on Ben.

His soldier’s intuition made the hair on his neck prickle. He didn’t need to know that they were being watched; he had felt that for hours now.

After several minutes, Drake crept up beside him. “What have you got?”

Ben looked along the jungle, and then above, and spoke while keeping his eyes on the jungle. “Nothing… and that’s what worries me.” He turned slowly again. “Listen.”

The raucous noise of the jungle had ceased — there were no chirrups, buzzes, or clicks of insects. Nor any squeals and squeaks of tiny animals, or even the thud as clumsy, leathery-winged pterosaurs slammed into tree canopies overhead.

It wasn’t quite total silence as there was the constant drip of moisture in the humidity-laden jungle. But there should have been more.

“Yeah, nothing. You think we got company?” Drake asked, now also scanning the foliage.

“I think something’s out there, watching us,” Ben said and turned to wave Helen up. He then signaled to Chess, pointed at his eyes, and then to the jungle on either side.

Chess nodded and motioned to Francis and Shawna to spread a little into the jungle, where they’d do a quick reconnoiter. Nicolás simply stayed hunkered down with wide eyes.

“That doesn’t look right.” The path or animal tracks they had been following ended at a wall of vines and Ben squinted toward it. “Eyes out while I take a look.”

He eased to his feet and walked carefully toward the end of the track. Oddly, it seemed firm like packed earth or stone beneath his boots, and he pulled his gun in tight to his shoulder.

He used his peripheral vision to track the foliage beside and above him, as he closed in on the unnatural looking wall of green. When he was a few feet from it, he paused and eased his gun barrel forward to part the hanging green drapes. He half smiled.

“Hello again.”

He waved Drake and Helen up to his position. As they approached, he half turned.

“Found an old friend.”

Behind the wall of vines was a stone idol, roughly human-shaped but with the head of a snake. Its lower half was covered in gnarled roots, and the pitted nature of the stone hinted at eons of weathering.

“Look.” Ben pointed with his barrel to the idol’s feet. There were smaller carvings of people, many dismembered or without heads. “Still feeding the snake Gods, I see.”

“This looks far older than the previous ruins we encountered,” Drake said. “What do you think, Helen?”

“Well, humans have lived here ever since they crossed the Bering land bridge around 15,000 years ago.” She scoffed softly. “I mean, from modern times that is. This looks definitely pre-Columbian, and the weathering on this hard stone could make it easily 5,000 to 7,000 years old.”

Drake snorted. “Gotta give these guys full marks for persistence. They kept coming, kept trying to establish outposts or temples, and they kept getting massacred.”

Helen reached out to rub a hand over the degraded snout and fangs. “Well, they regarded this place as the home of Gods and monsters, so they believed that ascending here every 10 years meant they were bringing themselves closer to their Heaven… and their Gods.”

She looked down and wiped aside some of the greenery they stood on. “There is, was, a pathway here.” She scraped some more, and then looked up. “How long did it last this time before their hungry Gods turned into the monsters they feared?”

“Hey, check this out.” Drake had moved to the side and pulled away some monstrous-sized palm fronds. There were steps leading down to a dark passageway that was about six feet around. He sniffed and held his gun up. “Bad news.”

Ben and Helen did the same.

“Yeah, I think we’ve found a nest,” Helen said.

“The natives built it, and the snakes took it over. Just like last time.” Ben turned to see the mercenaries appear out of the jungle. He lifted a finger to his lips and then motioned toward the foliage. “Let’s get out of here.”

The group silently vanished into the dark wetness of the primordial jungle.

From deep inside the lower chambers of the dark cavern, a leviathan Titanoboa’s tongue flicked out to taste the air. Its glass-like eyes were unblinking in the near total darkness, but it saw well with nocturnal, motion sensitive, and also thermal vision.

The fallen magnificence of the room it nested in was lost on its reptilian brain, and the magnificent columns, carvings, and glyphs telling stories of mighty empires that once lived were no more than the rock they were once carved from.

From outside, it detected the tiny exhalations of the creatures at the tunnel entrance, and though it had never sensed them before, an inherited memory was triggered and it became excited by the sweetness of their warm breaths.

It began to slide forward and from beneath it came the sound of crunching as bone fragments, some age-browned and some still with traces of marrow, were pulverized beneath its 5,000-pound body.

At the tunnel entrance, it paused for a moment to taste the air again. It was able to determine the small herd’s number, their size, and the direction they had taken.

The monstrous snake poured forth from the cavern like a green and brown-scaled river, only just fitting through the opening.

It knew its hunting territory and knew what was up ahead. It took to the trees to follow the small herd of biped animals.

CHAPTER 45

The night passed slowly. Emma got very little sleep and when morning finally came, her eyes were dry and crusted and she was still exhausted. She had kept her arms wrapped around her son, who thankfully slept easy.

And why wouldn’t he? she asked of herself. To him, nothing that was going on was abnormal, or even some sort of new normal. To him, it was just the facts of life of everyday living, and always had been.

The thing about the future was it always became the present. But now, the past was also becoming the present. For her and Ben, they were cursed with the sensation of actually registering the changes. They knew that tomorrow would be vastly different to today. But as the re-evolutions occurred, it was as if people’s consciousness, memories, and experiences were the last thing to be altered — like a computer program updating but only in batches and saving the most complex until last.

She carefully eased her arm out from under her son. The light was still on in the basement and she saw that the space that had once been for storage, with a few bottles of Ben’s father’s and grandfather’s wine, old furniture, packed books, and broken toys, was now something so completely different. It was as if it belonged to someone else — there were kitted-out rooms, a kitchen, and well-stocked pantry, and it was spotless, as well as fortified.

It was an entire other house down here, and obviously where they were supposed to sleep now that above ground was too dangerous because of the freaking giant vampire bats that had evolved.

“They can have the night, and we can have the day,” Zach had said about them. We’ve surrendered half our world already, and never even got a chance to fight, she thought.

She stood and walked from one table to the next, looking at maps, a radio, computer equipment, and even a gun and ammunition rack. It was exactly how she imagined some of the doomsday preppers probably lived — except doomsday was real and it was like an approaching storm that was creeping up on them faster every day.

She opened up the computer and also flicked on a bank of external cameras from their upstairs. She saw that inside the house was a mess; that’s what happens, she guessed, when you “forget” to lock doors and pull down the external window shutters; the monsters got in, real monsters. She then flicked to external view and saw the morning light shining down on a mist that snaked through the massive banyan-type forest outside. It looked almost mystical.

A few antlered animals browsed on the dew-covered lawn and seemed more interested in the grass than potential predators—must be safe now, she thought.

Yesterday evening, she had planned to visit her neighbors, Frank and Allie. Now she wanted to speak to them more than ever. She’d have to play dumb, but at least she thought she might learn something that could keep them safe.

Right at this moment, as a parent, she felt she was well out of the loop when it came to defending her family. How could she protect Zach from this world’s dangers, if she didn’t even know what to look out for herself?

“Morning, Mom.” Zach sat up and rubbed his face and eyes. “What time is it?”

“Breakfast time.” She smiled. “Eggs over easy?”

He nodded. “And do the thick toast.”

“You got it.” She headed to the pantry. “I’m going over to Frank and Allie’s later. Do you want to come or do you just want to hang out here?”

“Hang out here if that’s okay,” he replied.

“Will you… be alright by yourself?” She turned to him.

“Sure, why not?” He stood and headed to their bathroom.

“Yeah, why not?” she repeated. She wanted to keep Zach with her, but right now, here was safe, and out there she had no idea what was or wasn’t.

On the way out, she grabbed a holster off a rack with a 9mm handgun already in it and threw it around her waist.

After breakfast and a few hours later, Emma was driving toward her neighbor’s property, but now along a rutted dirt track that she knew was once a fully paved road only a week ago.

Looking out from her windows, she saw what had once been open fields, gently rolling hills, and a few stands of emerald green trees were now like iridescent mountains of gargantuan trees that were punctuated by dark arboreal caves tunneling through them, just like the one she was traveling along now.

Luckily for her, the sky was clear and the sun shone brightly, otherwise, it’d be like night-time underneath the heavy canopies.

She grunted as she hit another pothole — the dirt surface was uneven, pocked and rutted, and in some cases so overgrown; it looked more like a horse trail than a road. It took her nearly two hours to traverse the winding track where it used to only take her a third of that.

At last, Emma came out of the trees and saw Frank and Allie’s friendly little cottage on the hill, and in seconds more, pulled up out front. She stepped out of her car and saw that overhead there looked to be crows or some sort of large birds circling the property.

Oddly, Frank and Allie’s front door was ajar, something she would never think to do now, and given these guys should be more aware of risk than she, it seemed jarring. Perhaps the daytime was safer than she expected and more normal than she gave it credit for.

They can have the night, and we get the day, she remembered.

“Frank? Allie?” She called and walked up the last few dozen feet to the house.

She knocked on the doorframe, and then called again. But there was nothing but silence from inside. She tugged on the partially open screen door that squealed on rusted springs. The heavy wooden door was already pushed right back against the wall, so she stepped inside.

She tried again. “Hey, Frank?” She waited with her head tilted, but after several seconds of empty silence, she decided to head on in.

Wait, she thought. There were sounds — the babble of people talking.

“Frank?” She moved lightly but quickly along the hallway, checked the living room, and found her voices — the television set was on, playing softly.

Emma then checked a small library-sitting room at the front of the house — empty as well. She continued toward the back where she knew the kitchen was.

Entering, she saw that the table was set for dinner, and there were bowls of stone-cold potatoes, carrots, and something green that had dried out and curled. There was also a frying pan with two cooked steaks sitting in it that had been pushed aside, and thankfully, the element had been turned off. Something happened to distract them while they were cooking — enough to stop what they were doing, but perhaps not urgent enough to forget about the heating.

That might be good, she hoped, but warning alarms were still going off in her head.

There was one last place to look, and she saw that the door was cracked open — their pantry. She and Ben had been to Frank and Allie’s for dinner many times, and she had seen the inside of their fair-sized pantry room before. But entering now, she saw that it had changed and was now exactly like their own fortified room — except it was swung wide, and more worrying, there were shotgun shells scattered on the floor.

“Please God, no.” Her hands instinctively went to her hip, drawing the gun and holding it in a two-handed grip with the muzzle pointed down.

“Frank?” Her voice was softer now as caution and a little fear sharpened her senses.

She crab-walked to the back door. It was bolted up and down with several heavy-duty locking mechanisms — no one came in or went out of here in a hurry. There was a heavy diamond-shaped glass panel at head height and she looked out through it. The backyard was empty, and the only movement came from a couple more of the black birds shooting overhead and heading out front.

Crows again, she thought. And then, carrion eaters.

She quickly checked the upper-level rooms and found they were empty. The beds were still made, and thankfully, there was no sign of any sort of struggle. Looking out from one of the upstairs windows, she could see in the distance that the black birds dotted one of the far fields, and there was a tangled lump of them squabbling at its center… squabbling over some thing.

Her stomach sank and she rushed downstairs, shouldering open the screen door, and quickly crossing the field.

She began to run, her stomach knotting as she could see the large glossy birds worrying something at their center. It took her several minutes to close in and even up close the bodies, wings, and thick plumage of the birds made it impossible to yet make out what was in there at the core of the tangle.

“Heyaa!” she yelled and waved her arms. “Go-on, get.”

The birds turned her way, but then continued to squabble and climb over each other to get at their prize. “Oh, piss off!” she yelled even louder, and then finally drew her gun and fired it into the air.

Its effect was immediate as the birds exploded up and away, revealing what had attracted them and what they had been fighting over. She slowed and then stopped a dozen feet out.

She didn’t need to go any closer to see it had once been two people. The bodies had been obliterated and the bones scattered. Even the skulls were separated from the top of their spines. Shreds of flesh still clung to the bones and tattered gore-stained fabric also hung like wet streamers from the ribs and hips.

“Oh God.” She put the back of her arm over her face, as even though the cool of the morning had contained most of the odors of the kill, she didn’t want to inhale anything up close.

Emma turned about, looking to the forest line, but there was nothing ominous crouching there. She walked in a large loop around the bodies. There were no tracks — whatever attacked them came from overhead, she bet. She looked back to the massive trees, wondering, were hidden in among those mighty boughs the bat-like creatures, roosting now, perhaps sated after their bloody feast? And did they catch Frank and Allie out in the open?

She often wondered about the “remembering,” as Zach put it. When the re-evolution changes flashed through them, it seemed everyone else rapidly had their brains rewired as though it had always been like that.

But she knew it wasn’t. It was fine to think that’s the way the world now worked, but what happened if they were caught out when one or more of the lethal changes occurred? When the way the world worked, safely, one day, suddenly became another way the world worked that was deadly?

Emma remembered the scattered shotgun shells in the pantry and her imagination started to fill in the blanks — she saw Frank being far out in his field as the sun was going down. Then the re-evolution wave change washed over them and re-ordered everything, and suddenly the elderly man was a long way from home when the vampire bats attacked.

She saw Allie, hearing Frank’s distressed calls, rushing to the pantry and fumbling for the gun, hurriedly packing in a few shells and dropping the rest. She would have charged out into the field, knowing it was probably suicide to do so but going anyway. She’d have done the same for Ben.

Emma looked again at the mutilated remains. What happened if Ben was successful? Would all of these changes be reversed, or would there be no more changes from then on? She knew that because Andy had been there that he would have already affected the timeline in some way. But if he had lived on for another few years or even decades, then the changes would be continuing and getting more significant.

She knew from personal experience that the passage of time could make tiny things, big things. So a small ripple in a pond that continues to occur will eventually erode the shoreline. Perhaps this is what Ben and his team could stop before it gets real bad.

“Bad?” she scoffed, disheartened. “It’s already real bad.”

Emma looked back at the obliterated bodies. “I’m so sorry, Frank and Allie.” Her brows rose slightly. “Will you come back from the dead if Ben is successful? And if you do, will I, or you, even know that you were dead once?” she wondered.

She looked up at the huge trees. “And are the vampires now things that have gone from our dark fairy tales to reality now destined to stay that way forever?”

She dropped her gun hand and sighed, closing her eyes for a moment. We truly are in a nightmare, she thought.

Emma started to trudge back to the car. She’d call the sheriff’s office, as there was nothing she could do here.

As she walked through the sunlit field, crickets chirruped and cicadas zummed all around her. The sunshine was warm on her shoulders, and for a moment, it felt like it was the same sane world she had always known.

Then the sun went out.

She froze as the tingling washed over her from toes to scalp. Seconds passed and then even more seconds, and she knew why — the more complex and significant the changes, the more nature needed time to reset.

When everything blinked back into focus, it seemed the same, but she knew that was just wishful thinking. Something had changed, something big. She suddenly had a terrible thought.

“Zach,” she gasped, and then started to run.

CHAPTER 46

Ben pulled a boot from the sucking mud with a wet fart-like blurt. Every step here was the same, and the next footstep the ooze separated around it as he sunk again to the ankle, and then held on tight when he pulled it out.

The same noises were coming from behind him, with the occasional curse from Francis, Chess, and Shawna. Drake eased up beside his left shoulder.

“We sound like a herd of elephants.”

“Yep; a herd of elephants with gas.” Ben looked around. “I don’t remember this bog being here. And I’m sure I traveled through this area before.”

“Ten years ago; things change. Maybe last time it was some sort of dry season,” Drake said.

“Yeah maybe. But if I had known, I’d have skirted it. Don’t like swamps.” He looked up at the canopy cover overhead. There was almost no light coming down on them, and at the ground, or rather, water level, there was moss, algae, and slime upon slime. He’d been in jungles that had swamps and bogs as miasmic as this before, and they were places that rotted the flesh inside your boots, had water-borne parasites and diseases, and sucked the energy from your bones as quickly as they did the state of mind. Bottom line: they were shit places to be stuck in.

“We need to be out of here,” Helen whispered.

“No kidding,” Ben replied.

She squelched up to his right shoulder. “I know, I know. But seeing that frog a while back got me thinking about these swamps.”

Ben glanced at her, waiting.

She looked around warily. “The dinosaurs filled every eco-niche on the planet for many tens of millions of years. After them of course came the mammals and birds.” Helen seemed to be gathering her thoughts. “And before them, the very early life on the planet was crustacean and bony fish. But there was another biological group that is overlooked because of the dinosaurs, and they flourished in the primordial swamps — the amphibians.”

Ben grunted. “I’m guessing you’re about to tell me that the hell-frog we encountered isn’t the worst thing that could be in here.”

“Not by a million miles,” she responded.

The bog was becoming deeper by the step. The slime was still on the bottom and algae on the surface, but now it came to just below their knees.

“Okay, give it to me.” Ben sighed. “What should we look out for?”

Drake sloshed up next to them as Helen cast a glance around. “In this part of the world?” She bobbed her head. “The last holdouts of the Eryops; a six-foot amphibian with a bear trap for a mouth.”

“Six feet?” Drake snorted. “A tadpole.”

Helen scowled at him. “Or we might run into the last of the Metoposaurus species. A 10-foot salamander with interlocking razor teeth.”

“We can deal with those too,” Drake said and winked at her.

“Only if you see them coming.” Helen turned back to Ben. “Also, we might have the misfortune to run into a Mastodonsaurus. They grew to about 15 feet. That thing was like a slimy tank with row after row of teeth like a great white shark.”

“Okay, we’ll avoid that one,” Drake scoffed and then faced Ben. “Hey, how did you survive in this hell for 10 years?”

Ben half turned to his friend. “Pro tip number one, stay out of the damn swamps.”

“Ugh.” Helen sank into a hole to her groin. “Could have been worse. Down in Australia and Antarctica was something called a Koolasuchus; that amphibian grew to about 20 feet and was basically all shovel-shaped head and mouth.”

“Lucky Aussies,” Ben said.

Ben held up a hand and the group halted. Light beams waved out over the reeking water where a heavy green mist curled around moss-covered tree trunks, roots lifting like tentacles from the bog, and interspersed with bubbles of methane popping to the surface.

“Getting too deep,” Ben said.

“Gotta be coming to an end soon. Place isn’t that big,” Drake said.

“We’re at a disadvantage and our blind spots are getting bigger every inch that water rises.” Ben put a scope to his eye and turned it slowly. “We give it another 10 minutes, and if it doesn’t begin to shallow out, we back up and go around. Okay?”

“We’ll lose a lot of time,” Helen protested, but then: “And I agree with you 100 percent.”

A large bubble of gas rose beside them and then popped with a shitty vegetable smell. “Nice,” Drake said and waved it away.

“Okay, stay tight. Chess, bring up the rear. Francis and Shawna, take the left and right flank. And everyone keep your eyes open, we may pick up some interested critters along the way.” Ben shook his head. “And Shawna, carry your own damn gear.”

Nicolás seemed to be now carrying some of Shawna’s pack.

“I don’t mind.” The kid shrugged.

“Whatever.” Ben turned away. “Let’s go.”

Just a hundred feet out to their right side, bubbles of methane came to the surface and popped. Some were Alka-Seltzer size and others were the size of tennis balls.

In an area devoid of trees, two large bubbles came to the surface, close together, and instead of popping, they blinked open. More of the creature surfaced, hanging in the water like a smooth-skinned crocodile, its mud-colored skin almost invisible in the murky, brackish water.

It watched the line of upright animals passing by it. They were just too large to swallow whole, which was its favorite attack method based on a mouth three feet across in a wedge-shaped head. But it also had the strength to attack larger prey and drag them under. It only needed to hold them down for a short while and then the water did the rest.

It would then wedge them in among the twisted stilt-like roots of the swamp trees, and wait for the warmth and bacteria to soften the flesh enough for it to be pulled from the bones.

The Mastodonsaurus’ short, strong legs and a thick paddle-like tail propelled it forward as it plotted an intercept course to set up an ambush.

Shawna dropped back to walk beside Chess. “This is fucked up.” She grimaced as she took a hand off her gun to touch the back of her neck that was still heavily bandaged after the attack.

“You got that right,” Chess said, letting his eyes move over the putrid water. Drake had told him to watch the trees as well, but he knew if there was going to be an ambush in here, it’d come from below the surface. He’d been in alligator-infested swamps before and he knew how they operated — get in close then finish their final run at you from under the water.

Nicolás plodded along just in front of them, and Chess was happy for the young Venezuelan to act as their stalking horse.

“Can’t see shit in here,” Shawna complained.

“Sure can’t.” She was right; the mist hung over the water’s surface like a veil of gauze. Added to that, the water was the color of dirty coffee. And it was further obscured by bubbles and ripples, and other signs of things coming and going below the surface.

That asshole Ben Cartwright was leading them into deeper and deeper water. Bad for them, but real good for any predators lurking about.

Shawna sloshed closer. “I say we back out. Head home. We’ve got hundred grand each in the bank. Good enough.”

Chess kept his eyes on the water as he spoke. “But I want a million. This is my retirement package.” He grinned. “Only reason I’m here.”

“Yeah, well, ask Buster whether $100,000 would have been enough.” She sneered. “A dead millionaire is just dead.”

He nodded. “I hear you, babe. But give it a few more hours. We’re nearly done here.” He turned. “Remember, we find this asshole or not, we get outta here and we’re rich. And it’s all over in another half day. You can suck it up for that long.”

“Yeah, I guess,” she agreed. “But we gotta keep these guys alive as well.”

He laughed, hoarsely. “Only the money man, Cartwright.”

“Ri-iiight.” She visibly cheered at the thought.

“And anyone else that gets to go bye bye, well that just adds a little more pressure to go home.” Chess slowed down and put a hand out, also slowing Shawna. “So let’s let these suckers get a little ahead.” He winked at her. “Bait.”

“Ahh, now I get it.” She grinned. “And the more I get it, the more I like it.”

Chess slowed them down even more as he caught sight of something. “Head’s up.”

The group was now a few dozen paces ahead of them, with Nicolás just on half that.

Then the attack came.

The surge of water was followed by a scream and then Helen went under.

Ben began to turn just as from the corner of his eye he noticed the V-shaped water movement. Even before he finished turning, the thing was launching itself from the water — all he had time to see was a massive mouth gaping open and snapping closed around Helen’s waist. There was a short scream, more like a squeak, as she was quickly taken under.

From behind him, Nicolás also shouted his shock and fear in Spanish. Immediately, Ben saw the water moving again, this time in a lumped wave as the thing tried to get back to whatever den it lived in, but now taking Helen with it.

Drake and Francis dived, and Ben raised his gun, but knew that with Helen in its mouth and Drake now also below the surface somewhere, if he didn’t have a clear target, he couldn’t dare fire a single round.

He spun, yelling at the other two mercenaries at his rear, who just stood watching. “Get the fuck after them.”

Francis came to the surface, shook the mud and grit from his eyes, and looked about. He then dived back under.

Ben surged after the beast himself, but the going was slow as the water was at waist level now. Ben just prayed that the predator was territorial and big enough to keep others away. The amount of noise they were making would have attracted anything else for half a mile.

“No shot!” Ben yelled and tried to run harder just as there came an explosion of water up ahead. The creature breached and Helen was still in its mouth, battering against the slimy, shovel-shaped head. But now Drake had both hands gripped around its paddle-like tail.

The huge form of Francis came back up again gasping for air, but he had swum underwater in the wrong direction.

Nicolás, who was closer, surged forward and dived then, grabbing Drake’s ankles, and the combined weight obviously created enough drag to cause the creature to spit the woman out and turn on Drake. Ben didn’t need a second invitation, and as soon as Helen came free, he fired.

Before the massive amphibian had a chance to get its jaws around Drake, it had lifted itself out of the water, and then Ben’s high-powered shell entered the wide-open mouth, punching the glistening head back and blowing a fist-sized hole out the top of its skull.

The shot echoed out over the brackish water and the massive beast rolled on its back, its stout legs bicycling and large taloned feet clutching at the air like webbed hands.

Drake pushed it aside and raced to where Helen grimaced in the muddy water. He pulled her to him and wiped hair from her pain-wracked face. Ben charged closer and quickly turned to the mercs.

“Keep a look out.”

He then helped Drake lift Helen up out of the water and onto some exposed roots.

She held her chest and breathed in and out rapidly through clenched teeth. She threw an arm out around Drake’s neck.

“Thank you.”

“I just thank God you’re safe. I’m going to take a look, okay?” He lifted her rapidly reddening shirt.

Drake turned to Nicolás who was streaked in mud and his brown eyes, blinking probably in surprise at his own bravery. He slapped the young man on the shoulder.

“Thanks, buddy.”

Nicolás smiled weakly. “I feel sick.”

“Makes two of us.” Drake went back to pulling Helen’s shirt away.

Helen let him and looked away. “Is it bad?”

Drake looked over the wounds and pressed various places on the ribs. She exhaled loudly when he did.

“I don’t think you’ve got broken ribs. That’s good. But there’s a lot of lacerated skin in here.” He turned to Ben. “We need to get to dry land, clean this up, ASAP.”

“I heard that.” He turned. “Chess, you and Francis get ahead, double time. Find us some dry land or a place out of this damned hellhole.”

“You got it.” The pair waded ahead.

Ben then turned to Shawna. “Keep your eyes open. And don’t shoot anyone.”

In another hour, they finally managed to find the end of the swamp and Drake and Nicolás carried Helen up onto a dry bank.

“Keep watch,” Ben ordered the mercenaries.

The female merc’s jaws ground together for a second, but the three did as they were asked.

Drake opened her shirt, and Helen sucked in air. The lacerations were mainly in two half-moons on both sides of her body where the thing had grabbed hold of her.

“Take it off,” Ben asked.

“Huh?” Helen frowned through her pain.

“The shirt; its soaked in blood and I need to try and rinse it out.” He held out his hand.

“Oh.” She let Drake help her peel out of the red and brown-streaked top, and Drake then tossed it to Ben.

He went to the bank, took one last look out at the water, and then dipped it in, rinsing and wringing it several times to flush it out. It came out covered in fine silt, but at least much of the blood odor would be gone.

Ben dunked it one last time and held it out. He began to brush the slime from it and saw the wriggling creatures dotting it — they looked like tiny crustaceans, like isopods, and he hoped that they weren’t some sort of parasite, as there was no doubt they’d be in Helen’s wounds.

Give us a break, will you? he whispered. He shook the shirt hard, flicking them away.

When he got back, he saw that Drake was wiping out the wounds and squeezing iodine into them. Helen sucked air in and out quickly, as it must have stung like a bitch and probably felt like she was being seared.

“You do know that you’re the only person alive today who was bitten by a prehistoric salamander?” Ben half smiled as he handed her the cleaned shirt.

She started to chuckle, but then pressed a hand to her ribs. “Helen, meet Mr. Mastodonsaurus, and vice versa.” She reached out a hand to Drake. “Did I thank you for not letting me be the only person in history who was taken away to be eaten by a prehistoric salamander?”

He smiled as he worked on her. “Buy me a drink when we get home.”

She squeezed his arm. “You said that last time. Next thing I knew, you had me in bed.”

He shrugged. “What can I say, I’m pretty charming like that.”

Ben cleared his throat. “Nothing like being attacked by a monster to reignite the flame of love.” He looked above them. There was a small break in the tree canopy overhead. “Well, what do you know?” He could just make out the small eyebrow-like streak directly above them. “Primordia,” he whispered. “It’ll probably be at its closest point now.”

“Yep.” Drake followed his eyes. “And that means, it’ll be heading away soon.”

“Yeah.” Ben opened his pack and took out a squat pistol. He cracked it open and loaded a stout brass plug into it. He then aimed for the hole in the branches above them and fired. The plug streaked away and then high above them it exploded in a red star that began to settle slowly toward the earth.

“Time to let our prodigal son know we’re here.” He lowered his arm.

“Come on, Andy,” Helen breathed as she sat up. “Come home, little brother.”

The red flower bloomed high over his head. It seemed so strange, so incongruous, that something so modern could be appearing over a prehistoric jungle. Over his prehistoric jungle.

“Oh wow.” Andy smiled as he said the words. “She came.”

“Gluck.”

He shook his head. “Oh, you told me so, did you?”

Andy tried to plot where the flare had risen. Not that far, he guessed.

As the small red star fell back to Earth, the pale blue sky was left unmarked save for a small eyebrow streak just up and to the left. He continued to stare at the streak that was like a single artist’s brushstroke that seemed to hang there, locked in place. But he knew that the celestial body would be moving at hundreds of miles per second.

“That’s my sister’s ride — she just got dropped off.” He peeked into his bag. “You’ll like her.”

“I know I will; will she like me?”

“Of course she’ll like you.” He grinned and shut the bag.

Before he ventured further, he found a small area of mushy ground and took a few moments to lather on some more mud. He carefully coated every inch of his body, paying attention to his groin and under his arms and anywhere else that his scent was strongest. Though humans didn’t have scent glands, bacteria combined with sweat gave them a distinctive pungent odor. It was this odor that predators homed in on.

He faced the thick jungle, aiming himself toward where he suspected the flare was fired from, and then began to burrow in. He moved through hanging vines and under huge spiked cycad fronds, and also past rice-bubble-spotted tree trunks.

Up on the plateau, the climate was slightly cooler than in the valleys, but it was still damp and humid. It would have been easier going out in the clearings, but the chance of being spotted and run down was too great for the small benefit of drawing some clean air.

Andy estimated he had about a half mile to cover. Any normal place, it’d take him less than an hour. Here, it’d be more like 3 or 4 times that.

His lips moved silently as he burrowed on: “Silence is the key, silence is the key.” And then: “Because the bad things live up here.”

He got down on all fours to slither through a tunnel in the brush, and then slowed. Maybe the bad things are us, he thought, and felt like he’d been struck by a thunderbolt. We’re the bad things.

He crawled on for several more minutes before this time freezing as another thunderbolt struck him.

The Titanoboa fossils were only ever found deep in caves and mines of South America. And he had never encountered them once in his travels anywhere except here.

What if they were more rare than anyone really knew? What if these were the total breeding population that ever existed? What if these were the last?

And then: How many have we killed?

CHAPTER 47

The pair of three-fingered hands slowly pulled the foliage aside to watch the line of bipeds pass by. The pack leader knew they were clumsy, loud, and soft. But they had stingers that sounded like thunder and killed in a blink.

The Troodon pack leader made clicking sounds, and guttural coughs and squeaks, telegraphing the information to its pack. More heads poked through the green wall to watch.

Their hunting party was 20-strong, and they needed meat. They were always successful on their hunts and had many animals to choose from on the plateau. But this day, they had chosen to target the bipeds for another reason — revenge.

Their brood nests had been decimated just as the hatchlings were due to commence. Blood would be had, as well as meat.

The pack leader saw how the line of bipeds was strung out, and how they seemed to tend to the injured member of their group. It decided on a strategy and then pulled back to organize their attack.

Drake, Ben, and Helen led them out. Ben tried to watch everywhere at once as the jungle was thickening and turning into pathways that were more like green tunnels that bored through a near impenetrable green tangle.

Drake helped Helen who was full of painkillers and wrapped in bandages but was so far managing okay. Ben hated that there were blood spots on her shirt and it told him that her wounds were still leaking — open wounds meant blood and that meant the smell of a wounded animal wafting through the jungle to any hungry predators.

Chess and Francis were just behind a few paces back, and then came Shawna and Nicolás, who was once again carrying much of the blonde merc’s pack. He didn’t care anymore, and frankly, right now he’d prefer one of the mercs to be hands-free rather than the kid.

Ben held up a hand and the team halted. A few moments back, the jungle had fallen silent and Ben half turned, pointed to his eyes, and then to the foliage. Every single one of them looked from one side to the other and then also overhead.

Ben looked for odd shapes, eyes, or anything unusual, but he knew that the things that hunted in this primordial place had evolved millions of years of natural camouflaging abilities that rendered them near invisible.

“You think we got company?” Drake whispered.

“Yep, and the jungle thinks so too,” Ben replied.

“Can’t see a damn thing,” Chess hissed. “You’ve stopped us in a freaking kill-box, Cartwright — walls all around. Keep moving until we find some open space.”

Ben turned to the pathway ahead. They’d been moving along some sort of animal track, but it was impossible to know if it opened out further along, and in fact, to him it looked to close in even more just up ahead of them.

“Captain Cartwright?” Francis’ deep voice sounded apprehensive and the big man was looking above them. “You think it might be those tinyboa monsters?”

“Don’t know,” Ben said. “But something is out there.”

“There’s nothing.” Chess eased forward, held the muzzle of his gun out, and used it to part the curtain of hanging vines in front of them. At about waist level, hanging just inside the dark green hole he had just opened, he exposed a boxy head with ruby red eyes and a weird grin full of needle teeth.

“Jesus.” He dropped the vines and went to aim his weapon as the jungle exploded around them.

“Troodon!” Helen yelled.

One of the small dinosaurs flew from the jungle to land on Chess’ front. Even though the big man was more than twice as heavy as the 100-pound creature, it knocked him backward. Other Troodon swarmed from the jungle walls, and a small group broke away and headed straight for Helen.

Perhaps it was the smell of blood, or due to her being a smaller target, but in the blink of an eye, they’d knocked her down and began to drag her away.

Drake lifted his gun and blew a hole in one of them, as the remaining few dragged the woman down the path. Drake sprinted after them, firing as he went.

Ben and Francis set off after them as well, as their world became filled with clicks, squeaks, and hissing, as well as yells of furious human beings and the blasts of shotguns.

Strangely, no Troodon followed them, and as Ben, Drake, and Francis closed in on Helen, and just as Ben raised his gun to fire, the creatures dragging the woman dropped her, peeled off left and right, and immediately vanished.

Drake was first to Helen who lay flat for a moment, her clothing shredded where they hung onto her. From well back now, they still heard Chess yelling, the booms of shotgun blasts and the hellish squeals of the Troodon making for a madhouse cacophony.

“Keep watch,” Ben said to the towering Francis, who immediately swung to scan the jungle while keeping his gun in tight at his shoulder. Ben knelt beside Drake and Helen. “How is she?”

“She’s okay.” Helen groaned and sat up. “I hate this damned place.” She grimaced as she pulled her tattered shirt closed and then checked a wound on her upper arm.

Drake quickly set to patching her up as the sounds from behind them gradually began to fade away.

“Let’s get back,” Ben said, trying to see back down the track.

He and Drake helped Helen along as Francis gave them cover. In just a few minutes, they rejoined a very bloody and battered Chess, plus Shawna breathing hard, bleeding from multiple wounds and looking like she just fell out of a moving car. Dead Troodon littered the ground everywhere. Ben counted about 10.

Shawna stared. “Hey.” Her brows knitted. “Where the fuck is Nicky?”

“What?” Ben spun to her. “He was here.”

“Ah, bullshit, man. I thought he went with you,” the brawny woman said.

“For fuck’s sake.” Ben ran a hand up through his hair. “Spread out.”

“They took him?” Shawna said softly. “They took my little Nicky?” She turned slowly and it told Ben they had no idea even which way they’d taken him.

Nicolás skidded and slid as he was dragged through the jungle. He felt like he had nails driven into his flesh as talons dug into his skin and leathery hands gripped him by the arms, clothing, hair, and legs.

He looked up, and one of them turned to stare down at him — large front-facing red eyes that belonged on the devil itself, set in an intelligent pebbled face that had black and white downy feathers starting at the neck. It grinned at him with blood covering its lips, and he couldn’t tell whether it looked more like a large bird or a lizard.

The two creatures continued to stare at each other, and Nicolás could see that between its eyes was a distinctive v-pattern of scales or horns that gave it a heavy-browed look and also made it seem like it was scowling at him.

But there was clear intelligence there, and he wondered if he might be able to communicate. He bounced as he was dragged over a rock, and it caused a talon to dig painfully deep in his arm.

“Stop!”

He tried to pull away and writhed hard, trying to at least slow them down a little.

“Stop, please.”

They were traveling so fast, he knew his friends would never be able to keep up, and soon, they’d never even be able to find him. What would happen then? he wondered.

As if in response, a set of jaws like a bear trap lunged at the side of his face and ripped his left ear completely away. The pain was excruciating and he didn’t need to look to know that his ear was greedily gobbled down.

He knew then what would happen to him.

“Please, no,” he begged insanely.

The things, the Troodon, Helen had called them, clicked and squealed excitedly to each other, and he was aware they were communicating.

They then burst through into a clearing, and Nicolás immediately recognized where he was — there were obliterated egg nests, fragments of shell, and glistening yolk everywhere.

“I didn’t do this,” he pleaded.

The Troodon pack started to nip at him, but a sound like a barking cough from one of them caused them to stop. He was then held as the largest creature leaned in close to sniff at him, especially where the blood ran down from the side of his mutilated face.

“It wasn’t me.”

He began to cry, as what he assumed was their pack leader brought its face even closer to his. It sniffed him, and the red eyes never blinked as they looked deep into his own eyes and began to examine him. It lifted one scaly, demonic-looking hand that had three fingers and another that acted like a thumb and hooked it into his shirtfront. It peeled downward, ripping it open and exposing his chest and stomach.

“I have food bars.” Nicolás began to urinate from fear and the smell seemed to excite the pack even more. He threw his head back. “Help.” He gulped air, feeling he was going to be sick. “He-eeelp!”

It was hopeless, he knew it, and he finally lowered his head. “I’m sorry.”

The pack leader darted in, its jaws snapping, and it took the tip of his nose. The other creatures took it as a sign and also began to nip and pick at him, taking fingers, small chunks of meat from his shoulders, chest, and other parts of his body.

They worked on him for many minutes, killing him slowly as they ate him alive. Their revenge was as sweet as his flesh.

Ben and his team moved as fast as they dared. Though the Troodon were formidable adversaries when hunting in packs, there were other huge predators that would obliterate them if they caught the tiny band of humans off guard.

All Ben could hope was that seeing the jungle was so dense and tightly tangled here, it would have made it difficult for larger predators to enter or at least chase them down.

At first, the signs of Nicolás being dragged were clear, but they became fainter and fainter, and then they vanished altogether. After another 20 minutes, Ben held up his hand.

“Stop.”

They piled up around him, guns pointed out at the mad, green tangle. It wasn’t silent anymore, as the living, breathing sounds of the jungle had restarted all around them. He knew then they’d lost the trail.

“He’s gone,” Chess said.

“Aw, shit.” Shawna’s mouth turned down hard.

“Quiet.” Ben tilted his head, listening. He thought he heard a scream, but he couldn’t be sure. He waited, but it wasn’t repeated. Then he heard nothing. Chess was right: the kid was gone.

“They knew what they were doing,” Drake said. “Going after Helen was only meant to draw us away; to distract us. They’d probably targeted Nicolás all along.”

“He was the only one that didn’t carry a weapon,” Shawna said.

They turned to look at her. Shit, she’s right, Ben thought. He turned to Helen. “Could they be that smart?”

Helen was still bent over, flushed and breathing hard. But after a moment, she looked up at him from under her brows. “An hour ago, I would have said no. But now… ” she shrugged.

Ben nodded and exhaled, feeling his anger build. He bared his teeth and kicked at a clod, sending it into the underbrush. “This fucking place.” He looked up. “We should never have let him come with us.”

“Yeah, well, that’s on you, Cartwright.” Chess’ lip curled. “The kid was as good as dead the moment you let him tag along.”

“No, he was always going to come with or without us,” Helen said. “It’s not his fault.”

“Bullshit. There’s a hundred ways you coulda stopped him from coming.” He pointed one large blunt finger at Ben’s chest. “Ask the kid’s corpse if he would have rather had a busted jaw or be eaten alive.”

Ben’s jaw jutted and he went to move in on Chess, but the mercenary just angled the barrel of his gun a little. “Uh uh, let’s not get dumb now, big fella.”

“Leave it.” Drake grabbed Ben’s shoulder. “Now’s not the time.” He turned his head slowly. “C’mon, we should move.”

Ben knew Drake was right. Much as he wanted to stomp Chess flat, right now he needed the asshole. “Yeah.” He looked out at the walls of the steaming jungle. “Sorry, Nicolás. I just hope… I just hope it was quick.”

Shawna stayed for a moment longer, one side of her mouth pulled up a little. “The nice ones always disappear.” She sighed. “Goodbye, Nicky.” She then followed them into the green.

Ben and the group trekked slowly, wary now of every shadow, broken twig, or swaying branch in the jungle. It was wearing them down and fatigue was turning the group on each other, and instead of remaining on high alert, they spent more time bitching at one another.

They needed a break, and soon. So it was with relief that they finally found a more open space in the jungle that was between two boulders on one side, tree trunks the size of redwoods on the other, and a thick green canopy overhead, with some good-sized holes in the branches above to let in a few columns of light.

In the absence of a cave, it was dry, defensible, and there was no sign of any predators. Chess had climbed to the top of one of the boulders and had his scope to his eye and moved it along the foliage.

Ben waited at the bottom and was heartened to see the mercenary taking his time, checking even the overhead canopy. “What’ve you got?”

Chess grinned as he stared. “You won’t fucking believe it.” He pulled the scope from his eyes. “A space ship.”

“A what?” Drake turned.

“Yeah, yeah, there, look.” He pointed up into the huge Banyan tree.

Ben spun and sure enough, looking like some sort of massive overgrown hanging fruit, was a space capsule.

It was about 15 feet up from the ground and still hooked up by parachute cables. Vines had snaked all over and around it.

Ben walked toward it and stood below looking up at it. “I’m pretty sure it’s popped open. Looks old, 50 years at least.” He tilted his head and walked a little further to one side. “I think it’s one of ours.”

Searching the ground underneath the capsule, he found the helmet and shook mud and plant matter from it. He wiped a sleeve over the forehead plate.

“Gordon,” he said, reading the stenciled name.

“Red Gordon?” Drake crossed to him and took the helmet. He shook his head. “I’ll be damned.” He looked up at the hanging module. “He was a fearless test pilot in the late 50s. But he vanished while attempting to be the first man to orbit the Earth.”

Drake held the helmet up and wiped more debris from it. “According to official records, they believed his rocket exploded on re-entry somewhere over South America. His loss set us back several years in the space race.”

Helen grimaced from the pain of her wounds and hobbled a little closer. “Do you… do you think he survived the crash?”

Ben looked up at the open capsule. “Yeah, I think he survived the crash and got out.” He looked around. “But how long after that, who knows.”

“The Bermuda Triangle.” Drake snorted softly. “I remember you telling me about that World War II Corsair fighter that had crashed here. Anything that’s unlucky enough to be caught in the magnetic distortion effects as Primordia is passing over ends up coming down here. And then vanishes from our modern world, just like in the Bermuda Triangle.”

“Yeah, I think this place solves a lot of mysteries,” Ben said. “Because no one is ever going to find these lost souls, no matter how long and hard they look.”

Drake crouched to place the helmet on the ground and laid one hand on top of it. “Rest in peace, Red.”

Ben turned to Chess, still perched up high. “Anything else?”

Chess quickly took a last look with his scope. “Nope. All clear.” He lowered his hand. “Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.”

“Okay, let’s take 20,” Ben said. The team exhaled with relief and started to drop packs, finding places to kick back.

Ben watched as their small group spread out a little. Drake smiled and spoke softly to Helen as he re-checked her wounds. Shawna seemed a little lost and sat with her head bowed and elbows resting on her knees, and big Francis patrolled the perimeter. Chess stayed atop the rock sprawled out and watching over all of them.

Ben paced, looking from the wall of the jungle to the canopy overhead. Experience, and his gut, told him there was no safe place at all in this world. There were some places that afforded shelter or security, but only for a while. And that “while” only lasted until you were found.

He looked up again and through one of the holes in the tree canopy: from this angle, he couldn’t see the streak of Primordia and only spotted a few of the bat-like creatures that flapped awkwardly from branch to branch. But they weren’t bats at all, as the mammals wouldn’t evolve for millions of years yet.

Beside him, there was a small shrub with simple bell-like flowers, and within them a few insects that looked like flies moved from flower bell to flower bell. He’d seen them before, and after his time in the primordial jungle, he had researched them when he got home — he had learned they were primitive bees, and he remembered Helen telling him that insects had been around longer than most other creatures on earth, but bees evolved around the Cretaceous in response to the flowering plants.

If you build it, they will come. He smiled as he continued to watch the tiny bees. Who came first? he wondered. You for the flowers, or the flowers for you?

Ben sighed. Evolution was crafty. It watched and then acted — if something was beneficial to the survival of a species then it was grabbed, amplified, and replicated. And if it wasn’t, well, nature was also brutally fast in her rejection.

Unless something intervened to accelerate or hinder that rejection, he thought, and continued to watch the bees. These tiny creatures had proved to be enormously important to the modern world, and for all he knew, this very hive was one of the keystone species. If it was wiped out when it was supposed to survive, then potentially everything changes.

He continued to stare. A small change today can change our tomorrow. A small change 100 million years ago can change everything, he thought.

Can’t let that happen, he resolved and slowly stood. “Because that’s why we’re here,” he said to the small bees.

Chess watched the group from upon high. Time was moving on, and frankly, he couldn’t give a shit whether they found this Andy guy or not. Either way, he got paid.

Shitty luck about Buster and the kid, but he was damned sure it wasn’t going to happen to him.

His lips turned up in a cruel smile. If he had to take bets on who would be next, he’d give short odds to it being the wounded woman, Helen. He bet by now she must smell like fresh meat with all those cuts all over her body. It was the reason he never walked too close to her.

Chess rubbed his chin, watching them. Or maybe it’d be Francis, or even Drake or Ben, as all three of them seemed willing to jump into the fire if they felt it was needed. Heroes die first, ladies and gentlemen. He grinned down at them.

His eyes settled on Ben. He’d love to see that asshole buy it. And if he didn’t think it would cause him a problem getting his money, he’d gut him when no one was looking and leave him to bleed out in this godforsaken shit hole.

Just a little longer, he thought. You can hold it in until then, Chessy Boy.

Chess then carefully reached into a pocket and pulled out a small string bag of tobacco. Papers and a few striking matches were also tucked inside. He kept an eye on Drake and Ben Cartwright as he bet they’d blow a gasket if they saw him lighting up.

He snorted. He did say light ‘em if you got ‘em, and no one complained, so…

He rolled the small cigarette, twisted the edges, and stuck it in his mouth. By the time they smelled it, if they smelled it, he’d have stubbed it out — just a couple of red-hot draws, and he’d be all good.

He lit the match between his thumb and fingernail and held it to the end. It glowed orange, and he sucked in the sweet smoke. He let it drift out from between his lips.

“Ah-hhh.”

He dragged on the slim cigarette again, hard, taking the smoke in deep and feeling the burn all the way down to the bottom of his lungs. He hissed the smoke out, trying to spread it, and then pinched off the glowing tip and flicked it away — no mess, no trouble, and no one was the wiser.

That was better, he thought, and drew the string tight on the tobacco bag, then began swinging it around his finger. Chess sniffed — the smoke had already dissipated, but… he lifted his chin to sniff again. There was something new, something that smelled a little like cat’s piss.

His brows came together and he first sniffed under one of his arms. Then he turned. The small bag of tobacco stopped spinning in his finger as he stared into the face of the devil himself. Right behind him hung a four-foot-wide diamond-shaped head, with two large glassy eyes on each side. The scales were a mix of brown and green and looked like heavy armor plating, but it was impossible to tell exactly how big it was, as the snake trailed away into the trees well beyond his vision.

“Gah.” His brain tried to initiate a call for help, but his tongue and lips refused to translate it into anything coherent as cold fear short-circuited his lower face.

Those eyes; they hypnotized him, held him frozen as the monster stared deep inside him to the bottom of his soul. The tiny bag fell from his hand.

Then it struck.

Ben sniffed, smelling the cigarette smoke. That asshole, he thought as his anger began to rise. He turned to where Chess had been perched, about to tear the guy a new one for smoking, but saw that the rock he had been on was now empty.

“Hey.” He turned about. “Shawna, where’d Chess go?”

The female merc lifted her head from her reverie and looked quickly up at the rock perch and then shrugged. “Probably takin’ a leak.”

“Jesus wept.” Ben seethed. Nobody, but nobody, was supposed to be going anywhere by themselves without telling anyone.

“Ben.”

He turned. Helen was now back on her feet and standing with Drake. She waved him closer.

“That smell,” she said, and her face was bleached of color.

“Yeah, that asshole Chess was probably smoking. Might be okay, as the smell of burning shouldn’t… ”

“No, no, not that,” Helen said. She sniffed again. “Like the smell of the reptile room.”

Just the woman saying it made Ben’s heart rate kick up a notch. “Oh shit.” He spun, gun up. “Heads up, people, I think we got company.” Ben backed up.

“Wazzup?” Shawna, sensing the alert, leapt to her feet and also pulled her rifle from over her shoulder.

Francis planted trunk-like legs and swept his gun barrel over the foliage. “I got nothin’ here.”

“Holy fuck, in the trees.” Shawna’s eyes were so wide they threatened to pop the eyeballs from her head.

Ben looked to where she was pointing, and at first saw nothing but thick leaves, branches, and the wider tree canopy, so effectively had the monster concealed itself.

It was the jungle boots that he found first. Just up and to the left, a massive snake hung in the boughs of the tree. Sticking from its maw were two legs, and horrifyingly, they watched the legs kick, showing their owner was still alive. Then, the peristaltic motions of its throat drew them down into the gullet. Ben didn’t need to be a genius to know whose legs they were.

“There’s another one,” Drake said from behind him.

Sure enough, staying still as a statue, another snake hung in the trees. Its weight even caused the titanic boughs to bend downward. If they could spot two, how many more were there? Ben wondered.

It was too late for Chess, but he’d be damned if they’d lose anyone else. Fight or die, it was all they had. He racked his gun.

“Take ‘em down.”

Gunfire erupted from rifles, shotguns, and even Helen’s handgun. Then came the thunderous booms as Drake and Ben had now racked in the explosive Raufoss rounds. Helen had her teeth gritted, held her handgun in a two-handed grip, and fired continually up into the trees.

The explosive rounds blew out bucket-sized chunks of scales and flesh, and the snakes went wild. The one that had just devoured Chess vomited, and the man’s body was ejected to the ground before them.

“Aw, fuck me.” Shawna’s face twisted in horror as she glanced at it.

Chess’ body was now about eight feet long, and nothing but a red and brown twisted mess of crushed flesh and pulverized bone. If the boots weren’t intact, it might have been hard to even recognize it as once being a human being.

Drake fired, racked, and fired again, and the crack shot scored only once on the now thrashing monster. Leaves rained down on them like a ticker-tape parade.

“Yeah!” Shawna yelled. “Come git some!” She also pumped and fired over and over.

“Stop.”

The voice was unfamiliar.

“Please, just, stop.” The bedraggled skeleton ran into the center of their camp and pushed Drake’s gun up and away from its target.

“Andy?” Helen’s mouth dropped open. “Andy?”

Helen immediately dropped her gun hand, and Ben and Drake ceased firing, but Francis and Shawna kept punching out rounds at anything that moved in the upper canopy.

“Just please stop, now.” He held his hands together as if he was begging.

“Andy.” Helen smiled through her pain. “We came… ”

She went to cross to him, but Ben held out an arm. “Why?” Ben scowled and kept his gun pointed at the thrashing monsters. “Why not kill them?”

“Why the fuck? They killed Chess.” Shawna blasted again.

“Stop!” Helen shouted. “Hear him out.”

“Hold fire!” Ben yelled. “For now.”

Francis ceased firing, and then Shawna did, but took the time to reload.

“Andy’s going to tell us why. Right, Andy?” Ben said and stared hard at the giant snakes one last time.

One of them hung in the trees with huge holes in its body, and both of them leaked fluid that rained to the ground. The other Titanoboa withdrew, but wasn’t in a much better state.

Andy watched it withdraw back into the massive trees, and then exhaled and shook his head. Ben dragged his gaze away to face Andy.

“Welcome back, son.”

“Ben.” Andy turned. “Drake.” He then faced his sister and smiled weakly. “Helen, I knew you’d come. I missed you so much.” He went to her.

She hobbled to meet him and hugged his skin-and-bones frame. He returned the hug and she grimaced.

“Oof.” She held him at arm’s length. “You look like hell.”

“No worse than he did.” Andy nodded at Ben.

“Bullshit.” Drake grinned.

“This toothless old bag of bones is Andy Martin?” Shawna blew air through pressed lips. “You can keep that diet.”

“You don’t seem that surprised to see me,” Andy said.

“We knew you’d be alive. We’ve felt it,” Drake said. “You must have got lucky.”

“Pfft.” Andy waved it away. “Ben survived by using his Special Forces survival skills and a lot of luck. But I survived because I know dinosaurs and their environment. No luck involved for me, just scientific deductive reasoning.”

“Modest as always.” Helen smiled. She then looked into his straggly bearded face. “So why not kill the snakes?”

Andy turned to look at the single bleeding corpse of the snake hanging limp now in the tree. “That was a full-grown male. The other one was a female of breeding age; it’ll probably die of its wounds as well.” He sighed. “I think it’s already too late.”

“Too late for what?” Ben asked.

“We could never work out why they went extinct. After all, other large snakes survived, their prey survived, and they could even tolerate cooler climates.” Andy gave Helen a crooked smile. “We did it, we small group of arrogant humans. We killed them off. Us, right here… and maybe 10 years ago as well.”

Andy looked up at the mutilated corpse in the tree again that now seemed deflated. “This plateau was where they lived and survived, and for all we know, those two were the last breeding pair.”

Drake grunted. “I’m not sorry to see those things canceled out of history.”

“Yeah, who gives a fuck?” Shawna snorted. “Nature boy just wants to let them eat us.” She pointed at the disgusting mass of pulp that used to be Chess. “Tell that to my buddy there.”

Andy shook his head. “It’s too late anyway. What’s done is done.”

“We’re not too sure about that. We’ve just got to make sure that no more things are changed.” Ben nodded toward the female merc first. “That’s Shawna, over there, and the big guy is Francis. The rest you know.”

Francis nodded and Shawna just stared.

“You came back to see me.” Andy grinned. “And I came to see you. I really missed you, sis. I’ve got so much to tell you, and if you let me, so much more to show you.”

“Yeah, we came to see you. But here’s the thing, Andy.” Ben cradled his gun. “Every time we came back, we changed something. You said that we killed off the snakes, but we think there’s a lot more than that. Somehow you being here, and something you’ve done, are doing, or will do, are making catastrophic changes to the future.”

“What? I don’t believe that.” Andy shook his head, but his forehead creased, as he seemed to think on it.

“True, son,” Drake said evenly. “We need to bring you home. Stop the re-evolution effects. Stop what’s happening.”

Andy frowned. “What’s happening? What are you talking about?”

“Things are changing, Andy,” Helen said. “Creatures that shouldn’t be in our timeline are appearing. And others are vanishing.”

“It’s bad, real bad,” Drake said.

Andy shook his head. “I only came to see Helen. But that’s all. Anyway, time is set in stone; it’s all too late. Don’t you see? What has happened has already happened… 100 million years ago.”

“Not from now it’s not,” Ben said. “You need to come home.”

“This is my home now.” Andy raised his voice and pointed at the ground.

“Gluck.”

“And his home too.” Andy opened his bag, and then grinned into it. “He thinks I’m his dad.” He lifted free the tiny pterosaur, and let it perch on his shoulder. “It’s our home.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Shawna shook her head. “He’s even got a dino-parrot.”

“No, Andy, nothing is yet set in stone,” Ben said. “We don’t know if you live for another week, a year, 10 years, or how many. But you do something or some things that alter our future world. It’s going insane back there. We’ve all seen it.”

“Me?” Andy narrowed his eyes, and then pointed to the dead snake in the tree. “Are you blind? Look at that; it’s already way too late.”

“Please, Andy, you have to come.” Helen’s voice was small. “You have to.”

Andy rubbed both hands up through long straggly hair. “Then maybe I was wrong. Time is changeable.” His eyes shimmered with tears, but his vision seemed turned inward. “Maybe time is like a road with a million invisible intersections, and our travels along it are influenced by events, choice, and luck.” He took a few steps toward the snake and stared at the carcass as he spoke. “Some of the roads run parallel and others diverge greatly. If we were to go back and choose another, then our lives, and perhaps millions of others, would be vastly different.” He turned back. “I don’t care; what’s done is done. I’m not going with you.”

Ben sighed and looked up at the break in the canopy over their heads. The eyebrow streak was moving away to the west now, and the rain had started to fall again. A wind was whipping up all around them. Time was running out, and they needed to be gone in a few hours.

“I disagree.” He looked back to Andy, and let his eyes flick to Drake. Ben had no doubt his friend knew exactly what was at stake. “But that all doesn’t matter anymore.” Ben shook his head slowly. “I came back here, left my wife and kid, dragged these poor souls with me, put these lives at risk, even damned lost lives, just to be here and bring you home.” His gaze was level. “Or to stop you.”

Shawna raised her gun. “Fuck him. Take him back or take him down.”

“Don’t you dare.” Helen looked about to run at her, but instead her eyes went wide.

“Shut up, Shawna.” Ben turned to her. “Let me deal… ”

“Huh?” Ben spun one way then the other, but she was gone. Her gun lay on the ground, but the female mercenary was nowhere to be seen.

“Fuck, no, no, no.” Drake pointed. “Did you see…?”

“Where’d she go?” Andy frowned.

Helen held her hands out to her brother. She still held her gun. “Please, please, Andy, do you see now? The changes are accelerating, and moving up the species to the more complex and sophisticated organisms. It’s reached us now — human beings. We’re disappearing, changing; we must hurry.”

Helen stepped toward him, but Andy just stepped back. “You know more than anyone else what happens when you weaken or remove the top animals in the species dynamic — something else rises to take its place.”

“Shawna doesn’t exist anymore, Andy,” Ben said evenly, as he gently drew his handgun. “Because in this new timeline, she never existed in the first place.”

“This is a trick.” Andy folded his arms. “And it won’t work.”

“Who’s Shawna?” Francis tilted his head. “What’s a trick?”

“Only we can see it; those who originally came back into the distortion zone. No one else.” Helen held her head. “It’s still happening; so we didn’t change anything.”

“Then stay here with me.” Andy took a few steps toward her. “Don’t go back. If the world is crap back there, then stay here with me in paradise.”

“Paradise? Are you insane?” Drake’s jaw jutted as he glared at the bedraggled young man. “We might all cease to exist; the entire human race. And you-fucking-too.”

“And that’s a bad thing?” Andy’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe not.”

“You idiot; that means Helen too. Eventually, it’ll get to all of us.” Drake glared.

Helen sighed and looked down at the ground. “You have to come. Have to.” She looked up. “We don’t have a choice; you don’t have a choice.”

“What?” Andy’s brows knitted together. “What does that mean?”

“It means we didn’t come all this way to take no for an answer,” Drake said flatly. “You’re coming with us, son. One way or the other, you’re not staying.”

“You can’t make me.” Andy began to back up.

Ben brought his gun around. “There’s too much at stake, Andy. I don’t want to kill you, but I’ll sure as hell cripple you if you try and run.”

Andy turned. “Helen?”

She remained stony-faced.

“Gluck, gluck, gluck.” The small pterosaur was becoming agitated on his shoulder.

Andy reached up to pat it. “It’s okay, they won’t hurt me.” He then grabbed it and it let him tuck it into his bag. He brought his hands together. “Please stay, Helen.” Andy was right in front of her now.

Ben and Drake closed in behind him, and Francis also edged in tighter.

Andy glanced over his shoulder at the three men, and then turned back to his sister. “Please, Helen; I have so much to show you. So much left to do and see — the birth of continents, inland seas populated by wondrous creatures, and valleys that sprout dinosaur necks rising three stories into the sky. You’ll love it here; it truly is a paradise.”

“No, it’s not, Andy,” she said softly. “And you having so much left to do is what we’re worried about.”

Andy shot out a hand and ripped the gun from her fingers.

“No.” Helen lunged at him, but he pushed her away. He turned and aimed at Ben’s chest.

“Please don’t make me do this, Ben.” He continued to back up.

Drake lifted his gun, but Ben waved it down. “I know, kid, everything seems mixed up. But we can make this right.” Ben held out his hand. “Come home. With your sister.”

Andy glanced up. Above them, the clouds swirled and began to boil. Wind whipped the branches all around them.

“I could make you all stay, you know. It’d be easy; just keep you from climbing down for another few hours.” He grinned, showing a few missing teeth.

The huge form of Francis loomed in from the side, and Ben continued to walk forward, hand out. “Won’t work; I know you won’t shoot anyone.”

Andy still had the gun up, and the barrel wobbled. He backed up another step. “Will if I have to. Just wound you.”

He took another step back, his heel jammed against a log, and Andy fell backward.

Ben and Drake lunged.

The gun discharged, and Francis dived.

The bullet took the big mercenary square in the chest, and when he hit the ground, he stayed down. Andy’s face was one of alarm and horror, and Helen screamed.

Ben rushed to the big mercenary and lifted his head. “Stay calm, I got you.” He looked down at the wound. It bubbled and popped — into the lungs, a sucking wound as they called it. Survivable, but not when you’re in the heart of the Amazon jungle, Ben thought depressingly.

“You’ll be fine,” Ben said.

Francis chuckled wetly. “You’re a good guy, Ben Cartwright. But a crap liar.” He grimaced and there was blood on his teeth. “I know a bad hit when I feel one.” He looked up. “And I’m a long way from home.”

Francis’ eyes became unfocused. “A long way from home… ”

As Ben held him, he became blurry and indistinct, like he was in an old photograph, and then he simply wasn’t there. Ben was left cradling thin air.

Ben looked to Drake, whose shoulders slumped. He slowly got to his feet and turned to Andy. The young man stared back, his mouth hanging open as he looked from Ben to Helen, and then to Drake.

“I didn’t do that.” He shook his head. “I didn’t do that.” He turned and began to run.

CHAPTER 48

Comet P/2018-YG874, designate name Primordia, was pulling away from the third planet to the sun to continue on its eternal elliptical voyage around our solar system.

The magnetic presence that had dragged at the planet’s surface, caused chaotic weather conditions, and created a distortion in time and space, was lessening in intensity by the seconds, and in just a few more hours would vanish completely.

The clock was ticking down, and soon there would be another 10 years of calm over the mountaintops of the Venezuelan Amazon jungle.

CHAPTER 49

“Predictive position plotting now gives us a 99.9999 % chance of collision.” Jim Henson stared into the viewing piece of the 12.5-inch Newtonian reflector. The massive steel tube was pitted with rust spots on the outside but inside the highly polished glass lenses and mirrors, plus large view aperture, still gave the man crisp images of the solar system, and the astral events as they were unfolding.

Andy Gallagher’s hands were a blur over his keyboard. “All cameras online, and NASA, Alma, Arecibo, and just about every other observatory in a prime observational sphere are watching.” He looked up at his friend. “This is big.”

“Landfall impact?” Henson turned.

“Possible, but unlikely.” Gallagher watched his screen, but his hands fidgeted like a schoolboy before an exam.

Henson shook his head. “What happens when a baseball hits a bowling ball — when both are basically chunks of iron moving at hundreds of feet per second?”

“Sparks — celestial sparks.” Gallagher giggled. “But seriously, two outcomes are suggested: one, we have a pinball effect. Both are deflected and follow alternate paths. Two: one or both are destroyed.”

“And right in our solar system.” Henson grabbed his oversized cup of coke and sucked on the straw. He burped and went back to his computer. “Hang onto your hats, boys and girls, this is going to be the biggest show in town.”

CHAPTER 50

Ben and Drake threw caution to the wind and went hard after Andy. They leapt across fungi-laden logs, skirted weird, hairy tree trunks, and dodged a herd of small, grazing herbivore dinosaurs with barrel-like bodies and squashed beaks that made them look like flat-faced parrots.

“The guy’s a fucking gazelle,” Drake puffed as they pursued Andy deeper into the jungle.

Rain pelted down and Ben held up a hand, slowed, and then stopped. Drake came in beside him, and while Ben looked down at the mud, he kept his back to his friend so he could keep watch on the undergrowth.

Ben looked up and squinted into the downpour. “Still going fast; that way. Can’t let him get away now.” He took off again.

In another second, the pair broke out into a clearing.

“Ah, shit.” The first thing Drake saw was what looked like a bunch of kangaroos crossing the open space 100 yards further down from them. But then the pack swung toward them and immediately became excited by the pair of bipeds running across the clearing. Frills opened at their necks, tiny arms opened wide, showing rudimentary feathers hanging underneath, and then the six-foot-tall theropods opened jaws lined with needle teeth and hissed loudly enough to carry over the downpour. They charged.

“No fucking time for this.” Drake shouldered his Barrett M82 rifle. He’d already switched chambers to the high-explosive Raufoss rounds. They were well beyond worrying about noise now, and he pointed the barrel at the approaching pack and fired again and again.

Bodies literally exploded in orange and red bursts that were a mix of blood, bone, and incendiary pyrotechnics.

Some of the creatures were packed in so tight to each other, that as one was hit, the ones beside it were also mutilated and blown over from the blasts. In seconds, panic consumed the pack of predators and they scattered in the foliage.

“Fuck you too!” Drake yelled after them.

The pair entered the thick jungle, and once again, Ben paused to check the tracks. He shook his head.

“This guy must have the luck of the Irish. When I was stuck in this damn hellhole, I used to crawl around on my belly covered in mud.” He looked up. “But Andy just barrels along like he owns the place.”

Drake grunted. “The shitty thing about luck is, it eventually runs out.”

Ben nodded and hunkered down as the wind started to howl with hurricane intensity. He looked up briefly and grimaced.

“Time’s running out. He can’t be too far ahead now.” Ben got to his feet and sucked in a deep breath. “I’m getting too old for this.”

Drake looked over his shoulder for a moment. “Well, one way or the other, we’re on the last lap. So let’s make it count.”

“I heard that,” Ben said and began to run again.

Helen stayed standing under the foliage for many minutes as the rain pelted down, throwing up mud to her knees. She was alone; there were no people, and no bodies, as they had been consumed by a re-evolution timeline that was taking them all back one at a time.

Evolution seemed free now to try different things with its creations — take some back, replace others, and insert entire new lines of work. It might mean that old models got updated, upgraded, or in some cases, downgraded.

Just thinking about it scared the shit out of her because she knew it would take them too soon. Perhaps it would pause, stop, or maybe reverse if Andy was brought back with them. Or maybe it was all too late.

Helen walked carefully forward to look up at the huge body of the snake hanging in the tree. Even standing so close and looking directly at it, her mind found it hard to believe the thing had been real and alive.

She’d spent her career studying its fossil evidence, but seeing it animated was both as magnificent as it was horrible. Was Andy right? she wondered. Were they, Ben, Drake, Helen, and Emma, somehow responsible for taking a creature out of the evolutionary stream before its time?

Each year, in modern times, dozens of species went extinct, so this was just another. Just another taken out when it shouldn’t have been taken out; so maybe it was true. But we killed a legend, she thought.

She grabbed at her stomach. “Oh no,” she whispered as she felt the weird sensation wash through her as another distortion wave passed over her.

Everything went black and stayed black. She screamed but no sound came and when it was finally over, she held her hands out like a tightrope walker for a few moments to get her balance.

Helen moaned and then rubbed her face — it felt strange.

She pulled her hands away to look at them, and saw they were tiny, pudgy, and small, like a fat baby’s hands. She felt her face again, and noticed her chin felt smaller and weaker, and was now slightly receding.

What’s happening? she wondered and sank down in the drizzle, praying that Ben and Drake came back with Andy, or just that they came back at all.

“Don’t leave me here. Not like this,” she murmured as she sat, tiny and lonely, in the oily warm torrential rain.

CHAPTER 51

Emma sprinted back to where she had left her car, but then detoured up to Frank and Allie’s house — they had a spare shotgun and she knew where it was. If she got attacked, she wanted all the firepower she could get her hands on.

Bursting inside, she saw that the television set was still playing softly and as she went to pass by the living room, the first distortion wave washed over her. Emma went to her knees and tried to focus on the screen, and just before everything went dark, she saw images of a city, buildings, traffic, pedestrians, and other displays of normalcy that she tried to hang onto.

The blackout came and went, and when she blinked it away, she opened her eyes to see the images on the television had changed — it was the same cityscape, but it looked to be consumed by tangled vines, huge trees, with things like monstrous bats flying overhead.

“Oh God, no,” she panted. “It’s caught up to us… all of us.”

The next blackout forced her down onto all fours, and it seemed to last for an eternity. This time when she opened her eyes, she was ill, and finally when her vision cleared, she felt grass under her hands and knees. She wasn’t in Frank and Allie’s house anymore — because it wasn’t there.

“What the… ?”

She stared at the empty hilltop for a few seconds more and then got unsteadily to her feet. She looked around — perhaps she had somehow wandered around in a daze, like a sleepwalker, and was now on another hill.

No, that was impossible — the track was still there, and the shape of the hill looked right, but there was nothing else, not even a sign that a house had ever been there in the past. She looked along the dirt track — it was a good two miles to her property. Emma knew she had no choice. She began to run.

She checked her watch; it was still only midday—good—the goddamn freak bats weren’t due to be out and about for ages yet. But it had been hours since the last blackout, and every time one occurred, something changed. And the changes were getting bigger, more extreme. At first, it was as if little edits were being done to their world’s story. But the latest changes weren’t just edits, big or small; instead, they were full rewrites.

She powered on, her athletic frame easily eating up the miles. She began to speak to herself as she ran, moving it into a chant: Zach will be fine, Zach will be fine, she whispered over and over.

She managed to calm herself with the positive thoughts. And then everything dropped into an empty void of blackness.

And stayed black. And empty. And silent.

Emma felt like she was falling, or floating, as there was no sensation of ground, no up or down, cold or warmth, or even if she was even breathing or not. Her stomach flipped and just as she was about to scream her panic, the light returned. And with it came her senses.

That’s when the smell hit her — human waste, blood, body odor, and something else she found familiar but couldn’t quite place.

Emma got slowly to her feet and found she was dressed in some sort of rag. People milled around, but they were like no people she had ever seen in her life. They were short, overweight, and had small heads and receding chins. Some turned to look at her with vacant, cow-like eyes.

“What’s happening?”

Emma backed up as one of them bumped into her, and it felt soft and flabby. She turned about. The green field she had been in, the one she was just running across, was now covered in muck, surrounded with a wire fence, and she was trapped inside with all these strange people.

In front of her, one of the men or women, she couldn’t really tell them apart, started to urinate. She backed up as it just let it splash to the ground and onto its feet to add to the fetid mess. It didn’t seem to mind, and none of the others even noticed.

“What the hell is happening?” She turned about, and then from the far side was the sound of an engine, and she pushed the dumb brutes out of her way and headed toward the sound. “Move it.”

But there were hundreds of them in here with her, and when she finally got to the fence where the sound of machinery was coming from, she wrapped her fingers around the links and stared. Some of the people were being herded up a ramp and into a large building, and now that she was closer, she could make out the distinct sounds of metallic thumps, saws working, and grinders.

Emma moved along the fence, pulling and pushing the soft, chubby people out of the way so she could see around the other side.

She wished she didn’t.

There was another ramp out the back, and this one was a conveyor belt-type thing, and coming down it to be loaded, were sides of meat.

“No, no, no.” Her fingers unhooked from the wire mesh as she backed away. Now she recognized the odor — blood, meat, offal, and the hot smell of a bone saw — an abattoir.

Loading the meat and helping herd the dumb brutes were groups of people in green coats and helmets.

She squinted for a moment and then raised an arm.

“Hey!”

She licked her dry lips. They’d soon see she was in here by mistake.

“Hey you — where am I?”

They turned to face her.

Emma’s mouth closed so hard her teeth clacked together.

They weren’t people. They weren’t even human. They were lizards, with pebbly skin, red lidless eyes, and snouts. She squinted and saw between their eyes a distinctive v-pattern of larger scales, like a brow, but it made the things look like they were scowling at her.

Emma backed away, putting her hands to her face. “Oh, Zach?”

She felt it then, her face; it was round, the chin weak and receding. Tears ran down her cheeks. She lifted a hand to her face and saw the stubby and soft little fingers.

Then she knew — the last black out, the big one, was a major rewrite — the final re-evolution. They, the human race, had lost it all. Some other creatures had now risen to the top, and they were little more than cattle to be farmed and harvested.

She began to cry, and she knew she was carrying the greatest curse of all — she had retained her mind. She knew what they’d done, and she knew what was coming.

We did this, she thought. We threw it all away.

She looked up, her vision swimming.

“Curse you, Primordia.”

When she looked back down, she saw the lizard creatures were at the fence now and staring in at her, their faces registering naked interest.

She knew then she needed to keep her mouth shut. After all, cows don’t speak. She tried to back into the crowd of brutes, but the lizards followed her with their large, red eyes. There were hurried conversations and then a few broke off to head toward the cage gate.

In a minute, they were unlocking a gate and the crowd around her started to become agitated. The human cattle-people started to grunt and harrumph, snorting and whining rather than talking.

The reptiles coming in had picked up long poles with u-shapes at their end — either cattle prods or capture sticks.

Emma backed further away, bumping into one after the other of the docile remnants of humanity. Their near-naked bodies pressed in around her, with their stink and their oily sweat, and their grunting, snorting, and animal utterances.

I’m in hell, she thought, as the capture stick caught her by the neck. They forced her down into the muck and brought a lead.

It was then she slipped mercifully away into unconsciousness.

CHAPTER 52

Ben wiped his face as the rain beat down on them, heavy, blood-warm, and slick. Wind also bent the palm fronds back and made tracking the kid difficult.

“Can’t let him get away,” Ben said. “Too much at stake.” He pulled his revolver. “First prize, we take him down wounded. Second prize, we just take him down full stop.”

Drake pulled his gun. “Spread.” He charged out to the left.

Ben nodded and did the same to the right. Both big men chased down the wiry Andy who skipped lightly through, around, and over the jungle debris. But Andy was increasing his lead, as his smaller, slimmer body was able to maneuver through the tangled jungle far faster than the two broad men in their bulky equipment-laden clothing.

Just as Ben was going to prop and fire a few rounds to try and wing the kid, something exploded out of the jungle from Andy’s side. Ben already knew from experience that this wasn’t a place to run blindly through the jungle — noise, scent, and especially movement attracted predators.

“Down,” he hissed to Drake as he dived to the side.

The theropod was about 10 feet tall and had a large, pebbled head that seemed all bone, with a mouth full of finger-length, curving teeth. But what would have caused the most damage to Andy was that it leapt and landed on his skinny body, about 800 pounds, with massive feet extended and displaying scythe-like claws on each center toe.

Drake and Ben both came up from their concealment and fired several rounds with their handguns. But their revolvers were inefficient and were just irritants to the beast whose hide would have been like toughened leather.

Andy screamed and his bag fell to the side. From within it, a small squawking creature came out, flapping wings, one deformed, and immediately tried to peck at one of the large feet that held down its lifelong friend.

Ben quickly changed up his weapon’s tech and pulled from over his shoulder the big .50-Cal, Barrett M82. He aimed and fired. Immediately, half the creature’s head blew apart in an explosion of blood, bone, and gore, and it fell like a tree trunk.

The men rushed over, with Drake keeping watch as Ben tended to the severely damaged young man.

Andy coughed blood, and the tiny flying reptile hopped onto his chest and tried to nuzzle into the crook of his neck.

Andy gently laid a hand on his small friend. “I fucked up.” He coughed more blood.

Ben kept pressure on the largest of the wounds in his upper chest, but it pumped and bubbled blood, and he knew it had to have damaged his lungs and heart. They didn’t have the kit to mend him, or the place, or the time.

“You’ll be fine,” he lied.

Andy grimaced. “I can’t die yet.” He groaned and reached out for the tiny flying reptile and scooped it into the crook of his arm. “There’s so much I want to do and see.” He coughed, and his lips became glossy red like he wore garish lipstick.

Drake looked at the sky and then over his shoulder. “Ben, gotta go. Our ride is starting to pull away.”

“Leave me; it’s okay.” Andy tried to lift his head. “I’m sorry. Please tell Helen, I’m sorry. I only wanted her to see what I’ve seen.”

“We will,” Ben said softly.

Andy laid his head back and stared up at the boiling sky above him. “I’ve seen the birth of continents, and the rise of new oceans. I’ve seen monsters from history walking and swimming. And I’ve seen things that we never even knew existed.” He screwed his eyes shut for a moment, either in pain or regret. “I love this place. It’s fitting I die here.” He laughed wetly and turned his head to Ben. “Told you I was staying.”

“We were never meant to be here in the first place,” Ben said.

“I know, and I finally learned the truth,” Andy grimaced. “We shouldn’t be here because we’re the real monsters.” He reached out to grab Ben’s arm. “Leave me. Go home to your family while you still can. Save yourselves and save Helen; hurry.”

“We’ve got time,” Ben said.

Drake shook his head, but Ben ignored him. Andy shuddered, but seemed to gather himself. He lifted himself, groaning as he did.

“Promise me one thing.”

Ben nodded and waited.

“The only friend I had in this world.” He reached for the tiny pterodon and handed it to Ben. “His name is Gluck. Look after him.”

“I can’t.” Ben shook his head.

“Please, Ben. Just because I die, doesn’t mean he has to as well. At least save him.” Andy clung on tight to Ben. “Please, he’s my only friend.”

“Ah, shit.” Ben nodded. “Okay.”

“Thank you.” Andy kept his eyes on Ben’s as he relaxed, and let out a long breath that emptied his lungs. They never refilled.

“Is it over?” Drake asked.

“I hope so.” Ben reached out to close Andy’s eyes. He then grabbed his mesh bag and tried to push the small reptile into it. But it bit him.

“Gluck.”

“Gluck you too.” He pushed it in and tied the bag closed.

“Time to go, big guy,” Drake said.

Ben checked his watch. They now had mere hours. “Double time; we’ve got the tail of a comet to catch.”

Drake was first to find Helen, sitting out in the rain as though daring, or wanting, an attack. She wouldn’t look at him at first, and when he crouched in front of her and grabbed her shoulders, she looked up and he was taken aback by her appearance.

Ben crouched beside him and then lifted her chin.

“It’s come for us,” she said sadly.

“Oh God.” He turned to Drake and shook his head. “We didn’t change anything.”

Helen looked up and began to laugh, in a small child-like voice. “Maybe we did and maybe we didn’t. It’s got millions of years to ripple forward to us before we’ll really know.”

Drake helped her to her feet and hugged her tight. He needed to close his eyes to slits as it was like being in the middle of a maelstrom. Above them, the boiling sky swirled purple and black like an angry bruise on the heavens.

Ben grabbed at his arm and yelled back at him. “We gotta go, now!”

Drake grabbed Helen’s hand in his and he felt how weirdly soft and tiny it was now. He said a silent prayer that she was right and there was still a chance things would be corrected now that Andy had been stopped. If not, then they’d all either vanish from existence, or he and Ben would soon suffer the same fate as Helen.

Ben, Drake, and Helen moved quickly through the underbrush back to where they believed was their tiny cave that would lead them to their drop lines.

Helen was quiet, not asking, and perhaps not wanting to know what happened to her brother. Drake hated that a small part of her thought that he and Ben had been responsible for his death, even though she knew it was necessary to stop him at all costs.

Drake looked up as he ran; the clouds were still purple-black, but tearing open in the center to permit a halo of sky to be seen. He saw out to their right hemisphere he could just make out the eyebrow streak of the comet departing through the whipping tree canopy. Oddly, there was another streak that was almost touching it.

Were there always two comets? he wondered. He put his head down and sprinted on.

In another hour, they began to recognize some of the outcrops on a rocky hill, and then minutes later located the marked crevice that they had slid from only 22 hours before.

Thunder boomed, coming from all around them, and the purple clouds turned like a witch’s cauldron above them now. The tiny circle of clear sky had vanished, and with it the last vision of Primordia.

Ben checked his watch. “Eleven minutes!” he shouted over the maelstrom, and then pointed. “Drake, in first.”

Without a second thought, Drake leapt in and scrambled further inside. He switched on his flashlight and attached it to his gun barrel — he knew he wasn’t ordered in at front to be the first to escape, but to ensure that nothing inside was waiting to make a meal out of them. He quickly scanned the interior.

“Clear!” he shouted back.

Immediately, Ben and Helen followed him in. The trio belly-crawled to where the chute was that would lead them to the lower cave and then out onto the plateau’s cliff wall.

Around them, the air was becoming thick and oily like they had submerged into some sort of liquid. Drake knew what it was — the distortion layer. They needed to be below it before the comet’s effects were fully undone, or when they emerged, they’d be stuck in the Late Cretaceous, instead of being back home.

Drake moved fast, and then found their ledge. There were several ropes waiting and he grabbed at them, hauling them in and waiting for Helen and Ben to catch up.

The oily layer was making Drake feel dizzy and nauseous, but he swallowed it down. They had mere minutes now, and he needed to focus. He handed Helen one of the ropes and she reached out to grab it but missed, with her movements slow and confused.

Ben took another of the ropes and reached out for her.

“I got her,” Drake said. He quickly used his belt to create a harness, and then wrapped a stout arm around her.

“Okay?” Ben asked.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Drake said and jumped off, belaying down the elasticized rope, but faster than he wanted with the added weight of Helen.

Ben came down, trying to keep up. They had over 100 feet to drop to the cave floor, and at about halfway there came a massive crack of thunder, and it felt like they suffered an electric shock.

Everything went black and Drake felt himself falling in space.

CHAPTER 53

“Bingo.” Henson jumped to his feet. “Outta the park.” He held both fists up and grinned through his straggly beard.

The cameras were focused on the southwestern quadrant of the sky and recorded the collision event. The smaller asteroid struck the comet — both were rebounded away, like billiard balls, just as both the astronomers hoped.

However, the celestial impact was like fireworks on an astral scale, and it lit up the night-time Amazon jungle like it was noonday. The locals reported hearing thunder from a cloudless sky, but no one could verify it.

Gallagher damped down his enthusiasm and rubbed his face — something was off. The thing was, it was already well after the impact. They had been watching like hawks, but somehow they’d missed the actual intersection event. He remembered watching the impact drawing close, but then everything went black in his mind, as if he was somewhere else for a while. But now they were back.

“That’s it,” Henson said, folding his arms and turning in his seat with a huge grin plastered across his face. “We’ll probably never see them again.”

Gallagher nodded. “Like you said, probably. Neither was destroyed by the collision. Primordia’s path was certainly disrupted, but we won’t know what its new cyclical orbit is going to be for many years yet, or at least until it stabilizes. For all we know, it’ll come back in 10 years, or every 100 years, or maybe even every single year. And maybe next time it’ll come closest to New York, or London, or… ” He turned and lowered his glasses, “… Texas.”

Henson put his hands together and looked skyward. “If you’re up there, Superman, please make it happen over Texas.” He laughed and then turned to his friend. “Nah, Primordia has been visiting us every 10 years like clockwork for who knows how many millions of years.” He shrugged. “Like I said before, everyone’s luck eventually runs out.”

“Well, not us.” Henson sat back. “At least they both spun off away from our planet, so I’m calling it as dodging a bullet. No one is reporting any debris falling to Earth so the impact and ensuing fragment disbursement all occurred well away from us.”

“Sad, I guess.” Henson sighed and turned to his aged and now very gray fellow astronomer. “It always came closest to the Venezuelan jungle. I wonder if they’ll miss it, or even notice.”

“No one knows, no one cares.” Gallagher turned in his chair, shifting his bulk. “After all, my friend, life is like a box of chocolates.”

“Oh, shut up.” Henson went back to reading his comic.