Many times, Andy had pulled in at the coast on his voyage, but for the most part, he’d slept in the boat and dropped a homemade anchor of a rock tied to a length of vine to keep him in place. He’d just covered himself over in the sail and prayed he got to see the next morning.
He knew that the ocean was fraught with danger, but sleeping in the jungle meant finding shelter, like a cave, and then barricading himself in, or up a tall tree, or burying himself in mud, as he had heard Ben Cartwright had done. None of the options were as easy, or any lower risk, than just lying down in a gently rocking boat, and hoping for the best.
Andy was a paleontologist, and one thing he knew from his fossil bed excavations was that at river mouths and broad estuaries like this one, where fresh and salt water mixed and where the environment was warm, calm, and teeming with life, big things lived.
The beasts came here to lay eggs, rear young, and to hunt. If he stayed in the center of the river, he’d probably be safe, or at least safer, from attack from the shore. But in the river center was where it was deepest, and here there were also aquatic creatures that hunted. Big creatures.
Andy continued to wait and watch. Impatience got you dead, real quick. His food had run out, and his drinking water was down to about a single tepid inch in a gourd. He desperately needed more supplies.
Andy’s tools comprised of a spear, a slingshot, and something that looked like a deformed tennis racket that he used as a net. It was amazing how many small sea creatures came all the way up to the boat to investigate — close enough for him to simply scoop them out.
“Hello there.” Andy saw a small herd, or maybe flock, of a dozen or so bipedal creatures tentatively come down to the water. They were bird-like in their movements and slate grey with black-banded tails held out stiffly behind them. He bet they were lightning fast, and he marveled at the way they took turns darting down, drinking quickly, and then darting back, while a few stayed with heads high in the air, looking one way then the other.
But speed and lookouts didn’t help when you can’t see below the water. And he was right — the attack came fast. The torpedo launched itself from the river with blinding speed and brutal power.
“Yep.” Andy watched, transfixed. “Someone is home.”
The creature was about 10 feet in length, and looked like a cross between an alligator and a seal. He rattled off some suspects. “Uberasuchus, definitely a mosasauroid, and maybe even a form of Pannoniasaurus—bloody beautiful.”
The tiny pterosaur climbed higher on his leg and looked over the gunwale.
“Gluck.”
“Yeah, sure, but are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Andy grinned. “I think for us, that was a good thing.”
Andy knew that the upside of seeing the attack was though the predator might have been big enough to attack Andy if it had the chance, it wasn’t big enough to take on his boat. Added to that, it had just fed.
“We can do this.”
He lifted the paddle and gently stroked in toward the mouth of the estuary. The water depth shallowed quickly as they passed over a sandbar, and looking over the side, he saw silver bony fish darting back and forth in the lukewarm water.
On the bottom, a five-foot, leathery-looking disc glided over the sand. The primitive stingray was mottled like a parlor rug, and had more of a shark-like tail, not the whip-like ones of modern times. Andy knew they were another ancient species of cartilaginous fish that’d been around for 200 million years, or rather, 100 million more than now.
Once over the sandbar, the water deepened again, and Andy moved away from the river mouth center where the water was becoming a dark green. The estuary was over 100 feet across and quickly narrowed to about 50 further in where the river began.
He gently paddled to within 10 feet of the bank where he could see the bottom — far enough away from the shore to hopefully dissuade larger land-based predators from lumbering after him, and close enough that if he did get attacked by an aquatic carnivore, he had a chance of making it off the water.
Looking over the side, he saw that the silt was striped with mollusk tracks, some of them quite wide. If he got the opportunity, he’d grab some as they’d be a couple of mouthfuls of great protein.
There were also a few nautiloids hovering mid-water for a moment or two, before they all turned in the same direction to zoom away when he approached. He’d tried eating them before but found they exuded something cloyingly sweet that tainted their flesh.
Ripples ahead made him stroke a little harder, and just below the surface, several foot-long fish were heading toward the bank. Andy gave the boat one more powerful stroke, letting them glide, and then grabbed his net. He lunged, scooping back toward him.
“Yes.” He netted one, bringing it into the boat where its muscular body flipped and shivered, making a sound like drumming against the wood. Andy put his foot on it to quiet it, and Gluck immediately set upon it.
“Hey, wait up there, little buddy.” He pushed the pterosaur away, and it glared and opened its bony-looking wings in annoyance but then stayed close so it could keep its beady eyes on the fish.
Andy took his foot off it and tipped it out of the vine net where it flopped to the boat bottom.
“Whoa, weird. What are you?”
The thing was grey, but without scales, sort of like a catfish, and had what could have been bristles all along its streamlined body. No obvious gills, and a flattened head. But the weirdest thing was that its flippers appeared strong, and they ended in tiny-clawed toes.
“Rudimentary limbs? Synapsid? Therapsid?” It was the name given to the earliest of creatures that began to transition to mammals. “Don’t remember you from the fossil record.” He knew though that thousands upon thousands of species just never became fossilized due to being in the wrong place, were the wrong composition, or were just too damn rare to begin with.
It flipped one last time, and he put a foot back on it to keep it still. “I wonder what you’ll become in another 100 million years?” He chuckled. “I mean, what would you have become?”
Gluck waddled forward and pecked at it again.
“I know, right, it’s amazing, but formally out of the evolutionary gene pool. Because today, it’s dinner.”
“Hungry.” Gluck pecked harder.
“I know you didn’t just say that.” Andy pushed the small pterosaur back a step, but it bustled forward. “Okay, okay.” Andy set to cutting up the strange creature, some for his companion, some for himself, and some left to dry in the sun.
CHAPTER 02
Montgomery wasn’t a big town by anyone’s standards; in fact, only 621 people at last count. It was sparse, friendly, and close to the National Park and beautiful Lake Conroe. Summers were hot and humid, the winters mild. Many say it’s more subtropical than true Texan weather.
No one could really remember when the first cats and dogs went missing. But it might have been around the time of the blackout. It only occurred for a few seconds, and not everyone even saw it, but straight after, everyone learned that any pet left outside at night never came home in the morning. Bears and mountain lions were suspected, action demanded, and hunters were dispatched.
Then, they caught something.
The three hunters stood around their kill. It was laid out in front of them, and though a few people held phone cameras loosely in their hands, no one took pictures as they all simply stared in silence, brows drawn together in confusion.