The deep jungle always worried him, and he much preferred the water where he could see what was coming — at least above the surface. Just looking at the tangle of green madness made him feel claustrophobic and nervous as hell.
One upside is at least I’ll be able to forage on the way, he thought. He knew he wasn’t eating enough plant material, and it didn’t take long on a meat diet to develop things like scurvy and rickets, with the associated bleeding gums and then tooth drop.
Down beside the boat, some sort of mollusk was gliding along the bottom, and he reached over to grab it. It was the size of his fist, and immediately the foot extended from the shell like a long blue tongue. He leaned out again to rip up some leaves and rolled the large aquatic snail inside to keep it fresh, and then added it to his bag for a later meal.
He peeked in. “No fighting, you two.”
“Gluck.” Gluck glared.
“I know it smells funny; and you don’t?” He grinned and closed the bag.
Andy often wondered about whether anything he was doing now would make a difference in the future. Before he came, he had done some homework on the subject, and he’d read many theoreticians who said, yes it would, and many more who disagreed and stated that the future was immutable, and anything he did was destined to have happened anyway.
Perhaps without him, the future wouldn’t have been as he remembered it. The bottom line was, the time paradox was unknowable.
Andy took one last look back toward the body of water, and then stepped out of his boat. He stood for a moment, turning slowly until a broad smile split his face.
“I christen thee, America.”
He entered the jungle.
CHAPTER 08
Helen Martin carefully dusted the nub of long mineralized bones. Though there was only an outline of the skull showing, her experienced paleontological eye had already guessed it was going to be significant, and her excitement grew with every wipe of her brush.
It was from the Triceratops species and it was different — it had front-facing horns, unlike anything else they’d discovered here. And the head was big — six feet long and abnormally crested.
She paused to look at her surroundings: sand, clay, dunes, shelves of hard rock, and a few hardy plants.
The Elmo site was a veritable gold mine for dinosaur fossils, and especially Allosaurus skeletons. They were big theropods, with massive, boxy heads filled with tusk-like teeth. Finding a new Allosaurus skeleton was cool, but finding something even more rare was 100 times cooler.
She turned her head to sneeze, the dryness and dust tickling her nose, but in a good way. Though the area she and her team worked was dry now, in the late Cretaceous period, it was a lush swamp bordering an inland sea, filled with a variety of huge plant-eaters, and hunting them, the carnivores.
At that time period, there was an elevated sea level that split North America in two. The western landmass was called Laramidia and included what is now the west coast of Canada and the United States. To the east was the equally large Appalachia, the mountainous island landmass.
Helen wiped her brow and rested on her haunches. Her specialty had been prehistoric snakes, especially the Titanoboa, but for some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to even look at that species anymore.
Maybe it was the fact that she had nearly been killed by one herself, and also had seen people crushed and eaten alive by the creatures. It had taken her years to get over the physical and psychological trauma she had suffered. Adding to her pain was the knowledge that her little brother, Andy, was still back there.
Her eyes glistened as she stared down at the nubs of bone showing. Maybe one day I’ll dig him up, she thought, and then laughed. But there was little humor in it. Her nose tickled again, but this time it was from melancholy memories.
She hated that she was alone now. After they survived their ordeal, she and Drake had dated for a few years, but then drifted apart. She guessed they both reminded each other of a horrible experience, and distance from anything that reminded them of those terrible events was the only way to truly heal the psychological wounds.
“Ooh.” Helen felt the tingle ripple through her belly and placed a hand on her stomach, just as the sunshine flicked off and then a few seconds later, back on. She blinked, wondering whether she had only imagined it.
She looked around, finding her two students helping on the dig and earning bonus credits for their final. Edward Ramirez and Elizabeth Shelley were both competent, fun, and she could count on them to be meticulous in everything they did. Neither of them looked up or seemed confused about what just happened, so it must have been her imagination, or maybe even dehydration.
Helen uncapped her water bottle and sipped, letting her eyes travel over the dig site. There seemed more greenery now, or maybe she just hadn’t noticed it before.
To her far left, Edward worked on a wall of shale-like material with an overhang of some sort of bush dangling over him. It was a great spot he’d found, as he had access to the fossil layers and a natural canopy against the harsh sunshine.
She watched him for a moment more and saw that the bush over him had what looked like large cherries in amongst its foliage — strange, as out here, most things struggled to survive in the dryness and nutrient-poor soil, so fruit was a luxury most plants couldn’t afford to produce.
She was about to turn away, but then noticed one of the cherries, a particularly large and red one, seemed to be lowered down closer to the young man. In a few seconds, it was mere inches above him, and then to her amazement, it exploded in a puff of what looked like powder or gas.
Edward eased to the ground as though resting.
What the hell? She straightened, a frown creasing her forehead.
“Edward,” she said loudly enough for the young man to hear. One side of her mouth quirked up in bewilderment, but in the next second, her confused smile fell away when she saw the tendrils drop from the bush above him.
“Hey!” Helen got to her feet.
Her other student, Elizabeth, turned.
“Hey!” Helen shouted again and quickly looked down at her tools, snatching up a small and sharp metal shovel. She saw the tendrils begin to gently wrap around the young man, and then once coiled, horrifyingly, his body began to be lifted from the ground.
Shit. She ran at him.
Edward was out cold, and Helen raised the shovel above her head, and then swung it forward like a machete, severing some of the thinner vines. But the thicker ones were elastic enough to resist her blows.
She went to snatch at the vine-tendrils but saw that they were covered in small, serrated thorns and these had already hooked themselves into Edward’s clothing and exposed flesh.
Elizabeth joined her with a small pick, and together they bashed, hacked, and chopped at the vines and bush until the combined attack proved too much for the plant and the young man rolled free. Elizabeth dropped her pick, grabbed the young man by the shoulders, and dragged him away.
Helen stood, staring in disbelief as her chest heaved. She saw that where the spots of Edward’s blood had dropped to the ground, tips of vines gently tapped on it as though like a cat lapping at a plate of cream.
She took a few cautious steps closer and then could just make out in amongst the plant roots there nestled bones — lizards, some birds, and even what might have been a coyote skull.