Time Spike: Chapter Fifteen

    “Okay, Rod.” Andy slipped Hulbert’s camera phone into his pocket. He would have Edelman take a look at the pictures and then maybe they’d know what they were up against. “We’ll deal with Jurassic Park later. For now, let’s see if we can figure out what happened to our mystery man. His injuries weren’t caused by dinosaurs. Give it to me from the beginning. Don’t leave anything out.”

    “We weren’t out more than six hours and had taken down two large animals.” Rod looked at Jenny and smiled. “Marie got both of them. One buffalo or some sort, and something that’s probably a giant sloth. Marie’s amazing. The cooks are going to cuss her trying to figure out how to cook the stuff, but she’s the best I’ve ever been out with. She has a real gift. That woman…” He shook his head, never losing his grin.

    Andy smiled absently. “Good. Then what happened?”

    “We were on our way back and ran across evidence of a battle, or an animal attack. We went to check it out. While we were gone, Marie found him.” He motioned to the wounded man. “He was curled up inside a cave, moaning. Anyway, there he was, too weak to even stand. We got back just in time to stop an attack from some animal related to the cat family. I didn’t get any pictures of it before we boned it out. We probably shouldn’t have taken the hour a job like that takes, but I couldn’t let any of the meat go to waste. Too many of our people could wind up going hungry if we don’t have the right priorities.

    “Anyway, after we took care of the cat, we scoured the area looking for others, but didn’t find anyone. We backtracked about a mile, following what we believe was this guy’s trail. There were plenty of footprints—not his—but definitely human. After wasting what was left of daylight, we bedded down for the night, and then started home first thing this morning. With all the meat we were packing, and with him in such bad shape, the trip back took all day and part of the night.

    “You get a short distance from the prison and the world changes, Andy. It is nothing like home. And the plants and animals are nothing like home, although you do occasionally spot something familiar. We’ve got problems. And I don’t mean the routine problems of finding enough to eat and ways to keep warm. That world out there is our biggest problem, and we had better get to know it pretty damn fast. We’ll either know it, or it’ll bite us in the ass. It’ll kill us all.”

    “Can you find the spot you found him in?” Andy asked.

    Hulbert nodded. “I can also show you where those creatures in the pictures were.”

    “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

    Hulbert shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s probably too much for now. Once you get away from the prison, the forest floor in a lot of places is as clear and clean as a mall floor. When there is ground cover, it’s usually ferns of one kind or another. There are animals out there with infants the size of an elephant. There are insects the size of toy airplanes. And man, don’t even go near the water. I’ve seen some birds, a lot of reptiles, and a fair number of mammals. But the plants and animals don’t seem to mesh. It’s like everything has been tossed into a pot together, and the heat’s been turned up. It’s just sitting there. Simmering. Waiting.”

    “Thanks.” Andy Blacklock picked up the two-way sitting on the nurse’s desk. It was about two in the morning, but this couldn’t wait. Jeff Edelman had to be wakened and Lieutenant Joe Schuler needed to be relieved from duty so he could attend the meeting that was going to take place within the next hour. Andy silently cursed their bad luck. Brian Carmichael had been sent to the kitchen as soon as they arrived at the prison. He had shown up with three exotic animals and without a gag order. That meant the rumor mill would be in full swing by sunup. If they wanted to prevent a panic they needed to know what they were facing. They needed to know what Spielberg’s Monsters were, and they needed to know what and who their houseguest was. As for the other department heads, they would be told about another meeting, one that would take place about nine, right after breakfast.

    Andy stood next to the cot and watched the man struggling to get loose from the straps that held him to the table. Things were completely screwed up now. He had a prison full of felons he was trying to protect from themselves and from what ever it was outside the walls. He had around two hundred, over-worked, exhausted C.O.’s looking to him for answers. And now he had what? A war going on outside?

    Jenny was afraid the patient would try to pull the I.V. out of his arm so they had tied him down. The man’s eyes were glazed and feverish. His dark skin managed to look pale and flushed even to Andy’s untrained eye. The captain stared at the man’s face. Here was someone who could tell them what was happening outside the walls. And the someone was in bad shape and apparently couldn’t speak one word of English.

    “Is he going to make it?” the Captain asked Jenny.

    “I don’t know.”

    “Ka-nun-da-cla-ga. Ka-nun-da-cla-ga,” The man moaned. His voice was raspy and soft. almost inaudible.

    “Man, I wish I knew what he was saying.”

    Jenny nodded. “When I moved into my apartment in town, the landlady made a point of telling me the area receives visitors from all over the world. If he is one of the tourists he could be talking just about any language. Whatever it is, it’s not Spanish. I’m almost fluent in Portuguese and that’s close enough that I’d recognize Spanish if I heard it.”

    Andy shook his head. “No, you’re right. I took four years of Spanish in high school. That’s one I would recognize, even if I didn’t understand the exact words.”

    Jenny shrugged. “Well, what he’s saying doesn’t sound Arabic or Asian, either. That I would know. And I would bet he’s not American.”

    He looked at the man on the cot. “Why are you so sure he isn’t American?”

    The nurse waved a hand at her patient. “He’s somewhere around fifty, maybe older. And he was never given a smallpox vaccine. I checked his hips, arms and legs. Anyone that old, if they had been born in this country, would have been given the vaccination, unless their religion forbade it. Also, he’s had no dental work done. And believe me, he needs it. Those teeth have got to cause a lot of pain now and then. From that and the fact he doesn’t seem to speak English, I’d guess he was a new immigrant. And he had to come from a country that didn’t have a comprehensive health program. He might even be an illegal alien.” She raised a hand to stop Andy’s complaints. “I know; that’s not an accusation you want to make too readily, but look at him. He’s starving. He’s been beaten. But he’s not an addict. The damage to his nose is from the beating; the interior is not drug damaged. He has no track marks. His liver isn’t distended, and neither are his intestines.”

    “How does being beaten and starved make you an illegal alien?”

    “Andy, if someone starved you, beat you within an inch of your life, shot you, then left you for dead, you would go to the hospital. And you would press charges. You wouldn’t be hiding in a hole in the ground. The only people who don’t go to the police are those who can’t. And since most dealers are users, he probably had other reasons to steer clear of the authorities.”

    Andy looked at the man on the cot. “I guess you’re right. I would call the cops. But I don’t think this guy had a chance. And I don’t think it had anything to do with being afraid of the badge. My guess is, this happened after the Quiver.” He handed Hulbert the pan with the spent bullet. “He was shot with a matchlock, you said.”

    Hulbert nodded. “That’s what I figure. I can’t think of any other explanation for a bullet that big and that slow-moving. I’d bet he’s Indian. Probably pretty close to full blood.”

    Andy stared at Hulbert. “You’re talking Native American, not an India Indian.” He was wide-awake now.

    “Yeah, I am. And I’m thinking he’s extremely authentic. And I have a hunch he has enemies just as authentic as he is.”

    The captain stared at Hulbert, then at the man strapped to the examination table. “We can’t jump to any conclusions. That bullet could have come from a replica. Or maybe an antique.”

    Hulbert was shaking his head. “I thought of that. But not too many re-enactors play around with matchlocks. They’re usually interested in later historical periods. Then you have the guy’s clothes and all the things Jenny mentioned.”

    Andy pulled the clothes from the biohazard container, careful not to touch the blood. He turned them over and over in his hands, checking the seams and the buttons. “If these are part of a reenactment costume, they cost the guy a pretty penny. They’re the most authentic looking things I’ve ever seen.”

    “He doesn’t look rich enough to be into that type of fun,” Jenny said. “He looks like one of the homeless I used to care for when I worked on the coast.”

    Marie entered the room, carrying a tray of sandwiches. “And if that’s not a re-enactment costume, and if he wasn’t shot with a replica, where is the guy who did it?” Marie shrugged and then answered her own question. “We don’t know.”

    Now it was Jenny’s turn to look surprised. “Oh.” She looked at the man on the table and then at Andy. “It doesn’t matter if that stuff is real or fake. Does it? We have people out there. Real people. And they’re armed and shooting.”

    Hulbert shrugged. “Like I said, we’ve got problems. And if the animals are mixed up, jumbled up, the people are likely to be too.”

    Marie Keehn moved so she was standing next to Rod Hulbert. Her voice trembled slightly, “More than two thousand prisoners to feed and water, multi-ton dinosaurs to avoid, and to top it off, out of sync people using other out of sync people for punching bags and target practice. And we don’t know why.”

    Jenny hissed softly. The captain and the lieutenant both nodded, their faces grim.

    Jeff Edelman stared at the pictures on the camera phone for a while, and then shut the phone off. “I want the best artist in the prison to copy this onto paper. The same thing for the jewelry our visitor is wearing.” He looked at Hulbert. “The camera phone is a great way to record what’s going on in the field, at least until the batteries wear out.”

    “You’re right,” said Joe Schuler. “We’ll go through all the cars on the lot and through the lockers. We’ll gather up all the picture phones and have them placed in the armory. That way when we send people out for whatever reason, they can take one of the cameras with them. When they get back we can have the pictures transcribed to paper. If Hulbert had one in his car when the Quiver hit, I’m betting we’ll get a couple dozen of the things.”

    Hulbert nodded. “Andy, we might want to do a technology check. See who has what, and if it could be useful put it under lock and key.”

    “No, we don’t want to do that,” Andy said. “We don’t want to confiscate anything. That includes the picture phones. Ask what’s in everyone’s lockers and lunch buckets. Ask if people will donate their stuff, or loan it. But I don’t want anything commandeered.”

    “Nothing?” Edelman asked.

    “Nothing. Now, what can you tell me about Spielberg’s Monsters?”

    Edelman frowned. “The nick-name Jerry Bailey gave these animals is more appropriate than you realize. The two large bird-like creatures doing the attacking are called Utahraptors. They are the jumbo-sized relatives of the velociraptor. While the velociraptor weighs around fifty pounds, their larger cousins will tip the scales at eight hundred to a thousand pounds. An amateur, Bob Gaston, found the first of this species in 1992. This was the same year work was being done on Spielberg’s film, Jurassic Park. Spielberg hadn’t liked the idea of his meanest creature being such a lightweight, so he wanted to cheat and make them larger. The technicians working on the film, of course, did it Spielberg’s way. Bigger was better. Anyway, with the discovery of the Utahraptor, you would think the raptors in the movie would get a name change. It didn’t happen. They left the name of the beasts Velociraptor, but gave them the size of their Utahraptor cousins.”

    Hulbert shrugged. “Hollywood is not here. The animal killed by those things was not happy and neither were we. That was the scariest thing I ever saw in my life.”

    “I bet.” Jeff suppressed a yawn and then sighed. “Sorry, three hours a night, every night, it’s not enough sleep for anyone.” He yawned again, but this time didn’t try to fight it. “You have to look at the whole picture. That stegosaurus that used the prison wall for a scratching post a couple of nights back was from the Jurassic period. The Utahraptors on that picture phone was from one hundred and twenty million years back. The animal the raptors ate, the iguanodon, was from the early Cretaceous period, which was around one hundred and forty-five million years before the modern era. The T-rex in Spielberg’s movie was from the late Cretaceous period, around seventy million years ago.

    “I thought you said the tyrannosaurus was from the Jurassic period,” Jenny said.

    “No, the book and movie was called Jurassic Park because it sounded good. Most of the animals it depicted were actually from the Cretaceous period, the same timeframe we seem to be dealing with. Much of the plant life a few miles out from the prison is also from that time period, but not all of it. Too much of it is unfamiliar to me, and a lot of what I recognize, I can’t name. I can’t remember what it’s called.”

    “I don’t care about the name,” Joe said. “I just want to know what is happening. Are we going to be dealing with the animals from that movie? Velociraptors and Tyrannosaurus Rex?”

    “Well, Jurassic Park depicted a theme park populated with dinosaurs built from found DNA left over from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. The plants and animals inside the park were basically from the same period, but that doesn’t mean they coexisted. Very few species last eighty million years, which is the length of time the Cretaceous period lasted. Or even eight million years, for that matter. The only time we know for sure two species coexisted, is when we find them together. All else is guesses. Good guesses based on a lot of facts, but they are still a guess.

    Jeff walked over to the dry erase board and began sketching a time line. “Utahraptor was from approximately one hundred and twenty million years ago. They lasted about a million years, it’s estimated. The iguanodon was from about one hundred and forty million years ago. No one knows how long they were around. But if you looked at the picture closely enough, you’d see a couple of other creatures in the background. There was what I think is an ornithocheirus flying above the trees and near the water’s edge there was something that looked like a crocodile.”

    “Crocodiles lived one hundred and twenty million years ago?” Jenny was surprised.

    “Yes, they did. They’re one of only a handful of creatures with that type of longevity. I didn’t see one in the picture, but turtles are another group that has managed to live that long without a lot of changes.”

    “What’s an ornithocheirus?” Hulbert asked.

    “That was the creature flying above the trees.” He looked at their faces and sighed. “It’s a type of pterosaur. Also called pterodactyls.”

    “So, we’re one hundred and twenty million years in the past?” Andy asked.

    “That would be my guess.” His grin had very little humor in it. “Give or take maybe fifty million years, you understand.

     “Are you telling us we’re going to have to deal with brontosauruses and tyrannosauruses?” Joe Schuler asked.

    Jeff shrugged. “Brontosauruses, as such, no The brontosaurus was a combination mistake and scam. The man who found it, Othniel Charles Marsh, popped a head of a camarasaurus onto the body of an adult apatosaurus and called it a brontosaurus. The men who proved this, James McIntosh from Wesleyan University and David Berman from the Carnegie Museum, figured the wrong head was done on purpose. But they also figured Marsh didn’t know that the body was the adult version of a dinosaur Marsh found earlier. They believed Marsh assumed both skeletons were adults and were of different species. I guess we’ll never know for sure. The mistake and scam took place in 1879, and wasn’t discovered until 1970.”

    “Jeff, we don’t care what the creature is called, or what type of head it has. We just want to know what we have to deal with,” Andy said.

    “Yeah. But it’s important that you know that what you’ve been taught, or saw on television, may not be what you get.” Edelman frowned, looking worried. “We’re used to animals of a certain size, with a certain speed and strength. Predictable abilities. Predictable limitations. The animal we’re talking about, whatever you call it, is unpredictable because we’ve never dealt with it. It wasn’t a meat-eater, but who knows how placid or belligerent it was? And if it was—is—belligerent, then you’re dealing with a creature the length of a northern blue whale. It doesn’t weigh as much. It only weighs thirty tons, where the blue whale weighs about a hundred. But that doesn’t make it any less dangerous, if it develops a peeve at us.

    “As for a tyrannosaurus, it could be here. I just don’t know how likely it is. According to our limited fossil records, they didn’t show up until the end of the Cretaceous period. They could have coexisted with these other plants and animals, or they could have been separated by about sixty million years.”

    He grinned again, every bit as humorlessly. “I guess the one bright spot is that we probably aren’t near any seacoasts. The top marine predator nowadays is likely to be a mosasaur. That’s a giant seagoing lizard that was probably the most dangerous animal that ever swam the seas.”

    “So, you’re telling us Cretaceous Park just became real,” Marie Keehn whispered.

    No one else said anything.

    Jenny had gone back to the infirmary, Marie was asleep in the dorm set up for off-duty C.O’s, and Hulbert had taken Bailey and Carmichael to the armory. He wanted something a little more deadly the next trip out. Joe Schuler, Andy Blacklock and Jeff Edelman were alone in the conference room.

    “Okay, Jeff. Spill it. There was something you weren’t saying earlier. Say it now.”

    Edelman laughed. “You know, you say that like you think I should learn to talk up, but we both know you would rather I gave you bad news in private, or as close to it as I can manage.”

    The captain smiled. “Maybe. What is it?”

    “I’ve told you my theory; that somehow, we have been dragged back through time. Well, along the way, I think we picked up other times. So far, everything we’ve seen has been from the same geographical area, just different time frames.”

    Blacklock closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. Edelman had explained his theory of time travel to him. And if Edelman was right, then Hulbert was going to be righter than the man could possibly guess. They were going to have problems.

    If they had been dragged back in time to the Cretaceous period, and Edelman was right about others being dragged along, that meant any and all creatures that lived from then till the day the prison disappeared could be outside the walls waiting on them. Including people.

    “Edelman.”

    Andy and Jeff turned to look at Joe Schuler. “Yes, Lieutenant?”

    “If you’re right, we’re in even more trouble than that, aren’t we? That stegosaurus outside the wall three days ago was from the Jurassic period. That was even earlier than the Utahraptor and the Cretaceous Period.

    “Actually,” Jeff Edelman said quietly, “I was holding back. I didn’t want a panic.”

    “Holding back?” Captain Andy Blacklock asked.

    “Yeah. There was another critter, and since no one asked, I didn’t volunteer its origin. It was almost hidden in the trees. It was no more than ten feet long and wouldn’t weigh more than fifty pounds. But it had a mouthful of teeth that could do some real damage. The thing might have been a Coelophysis. And if it was, we are looking at a meat-eater from the Triassic period. That means, if my theory on what is happening is correct, we have the possibility of running into any creature that roamed the earth in the last two hundred and forty-five million years.”

    Hulbert glanced out the window then at his watch. He had less than an hour to shower and eat breakfast. Then it would be time for his meeting with the department heads. He gave a low groan. This meeting was not going to be pleasant.