Dinosauria: Part I – A Memory of Time



a novel  by

J. Rock

Smashwords Edition




This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Copyright 2011 by J. Rock

Cover illustration by Austin Alander
All other art/graphics by J. Rock

Contact the author: dinosauria@hotmail.ca

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.


Special thanks go out to Austin Alander, who read my mind’s eye when he designed the cover.

And for Jamie, forever.




Contents

Prelude: The Accident

Part I: A Memory of Time
1. After the Extinction
2. The Night Terror Virus
3. Flats
4. Je T’adore
5. Calgary
6. Cassé-Horlage
7. The Egg

A Note from the Author




Prelude: The Accident


Jack incessantly turned the dial, trying to find something decent, annoying his Dad.
“Will you please just pick something already?” Martin said.
“But there’s nothing good on,” Jack whined. “I wanna hear something good before my lesson.”
“Well if there’s nothing good then just turn it off, okay?” But Jack hadn’t heard him; he found what he was looking for. The dry, scratchy drawl of Kurt Cobain echoed through the speakers of the Pathfinder and Jack, turning it up, sang along to “Come as You Are”.
They were cruising east down the Trans Canada Highway leaving Banff, Alberta–a small ski resort town nestled in a valley of the Rocky Mountains. The sun shone brilliantly in a white and blue swirled sky, and the Rockies dominated the rear-view of the Pathfinder like rows of smashed out teeth. A torrid river ran through a glacial valley to their left, draining off the melted snow of the winter so nearly passed. 
Martin smiled as his son got into the song. Who knew that Jack would love music so much? After struggling to find him an appropriate extracurricular, they finally had. Martin had wanted his son to play hockey of course; after all, he had played in various leagues himself until he was eighteen. And when Jennifer had been pregnant with both Jack, and his older brother James, Martin couldn’t help but dream of having a son play in the NHL.
James, now twenty and seven years Jack’s senior, had done pretty well in his time, but he was grown now and serving in the armed forces; Jack on the other hand, just wasn’t much of an athlete, and Martin couldn’t help the disappointment he felt. He pushed it for a few seasons though, forcing Jack to try, to Jennifer’s chagrin and Jack’s protests, but in the end there had been a huge fight and Jack had ended up resenting him. So finally he had asked his son what he wanted to do–which is probably what he should have done in the first place. 
“You need to do something after school,” Martin had said. Jack was playing with a pair of dinosaur toys in front of the TV. “Television, Nintendo, and dinosaurs don’t cut it. If you don’t like sports then what do you like?” Martin knew his son had a penchant for dinosaurs, but there weren’t any after school programs that catered to such an interest. Besides, what good would dinosaurs do him anyway? There wasn’t much future in that. 
Certainly not a professional sports career.
Jack had paused, seeming to think about it, but Martin had an idea he was feinting. 
“Well,” Jack had said slowly, “I saw this older kid at school, he was playing a guitar...”
Martin had raised his eyebrows in surprise. Guitar? Now that was something he had not anticipated; but the more he thought about it, the more he liked it. He had always been a music fan himself. Not of that new grunge crap on the radio nowadays, but the classics–Zeppelin, Sabbath, Cream, Hendrix–now that was music. He didn’t exactly approve of the songs of that dope-head Cobain that his son loved so much, but then he had heard Jack playing a coherent song for the first time only a week after his first guitar lesson, and was willing to forget all about it. 
The song was Sunshine of Your Love.
“Where did you hear that one?” Martin had asked. He didn’t think his son knew any classics.
“Older kids at school, they showed me,” Jack had said, “pretty sweet, huh?”
“Yeah bud, that one’s a classic.”
“Did you know that Eric Clapton got the idea for it after going to a Jimi Hendrix concert?”
“Wow, no I didn’t. That’s pretty cool, son.” Martin was genuinely amazed.
“Maybe someday we can go to a concert, huh Dad?”
“Maybe,” Martin had replied, and he smiled. That day had been only five months ago, and by now Jack was getting good; really good in fact, and only ten years old. His son had found a niche and Martin was proud. 
Coming back to the present, he said, “So what are you gonna be learning today, son?”
“Well, last time Frank told me to work on the solo from Sunshine of Your Love. He thinks I’m ready to start soloing.”
“Cool,” Martin replied. 
“But I’m not that good yet. I heard this song the other day called Freebird–”
“By Lynyrd Skynyrd!” Martin interrupted then blushed foolishly. “Sorry, go on.”
“And the solo is just amazing. I want to learn that!”
Martin couldn’t remember the solo from Freebird. It had been a while since he’d heard it. “Well just practice son, and you’ll get it eventually.”
“I hope so,” Jack said.
Jack’s guitar teacher, Frank, lived in Canmore, about a twenty minute drive east of Banff and they had been driving for nearly ten. Martin glanced at the speedometer and saw he was going the limit. He set the cruise control and they rolled along, listening to Nirvana in silence for a few moments, until a large black semi truck and trailer began passing the Pathfinder on the left, just as the road began to gently grade upward through a mountain pass. 
Martin cursed. 
He hated these big trucks–the drivers were crazy–always passing at insane speeds on hills or whenever they could–all for just a few extra seconds off their delivery schedule. He tapped the brakes lightly to let the truck get by before the passing lane ended at the top of the hill. As the trailer came by his window he saw stenciled in bold black letters on the side:
Royal Tyrell Museum, Badlands, Alberta.
Dinosaurs, again, Martin thought, recalling Jack’s love for them. He was surprised Jack didn’t say something. He turned to his son. 
“So, pretty interesting day at school huh?” 
Jack’s eyes widened. “It sure was! That earthquake was insane! The whole school was shaking and Mrs. Tamblyn told us to get under our desks. It was scary and cool all at the same time!” 
Cool was not the word Martin would have chosen, but scary? Yeah. 
An earthquake. 
In the confusion it had caused at Jack's school, Jack had ended up missing his bus to Canmore, which he usually took to his guitar lessons. Jennifer, his wife and a teacher at the school, had called Martin to tell him what had happened–that everyone was okay, but Jack needed a ride as things were still in disarray and she’d be staying long to help out. Martin, a Park Warden in Banff, had been on the road at the time of the quake, patrolling the Trans-Canada Highway for stray wildlife in his Pathfinder. He had quickly gone back to town and picked Jack up. 
Martin had heard of earthquakes in the Rockies before, but usually small ones, and generally not in populated areas. This one wasn’t incredibly violent by any means, merely cracking a few foundations and knocking loose objects from walls, but something about it left Martin disturbed. In his forty one years of life, he had never heard of a quake in Banff itself, and he’d lived there twenty three of those years. There was a first time for everything he supposed, but something about it just didn’t sit right with him. And he supposed that was becasuse something funny had happened during the quake–something he had not yet been able to reconcile. Just before the quake, when he had been driving, something at the wildlife fence that lined the highway caught his eye. It could have almost been a shadow, except that it had seemed to leap over the barrier–an eight foot tall fence–and into the trees. What it was, he had no idea, so he pulled over and just stared into the spot where he thought he saw it, moving over to the passenger side of the vehicle. 
He waited five minutes. 
That was when the whole world began to shake and he instinctively took cover on the seat of the Pathfinder. Looking up from where he was, Martin could see a bald patch of rock in the side of a forested hill, leading up to where the mountain proper began with a near vertical scarp. The world was shaking with varying degrees of ferocity and so his vision blurred, but Martin swore he saw a dark figure, dashing across the rock patch and leap up the cliff face...
 “I think a lot of kids were scared,” Jack said, bringing him back, “but I wasn’t. I stayed calm the whole time.”
“Wow, that’s great son, I’m proud of you,” Martin said. He was distracted, still thinking about the quake. 
And the dark figure. 
In the stress of the quake he must have imagined it. No one could leap fifty feet straight up. But then again, he thought he had also seen something before the quake. How could he have imagined that? Something about this just wasn’t right, but he couldn’t put his finger on it, something– 
“DAD, LOOK OUT!”
 Martin had been in a daze and was not paying attention to the road. He quickly focused to see that the transport truck and trailer that had passed them earlier was careening wildly on the road ahead. 
It tipped over. 
In a screaming fit of twisting metal, the trailer slid sideways on the highway, shooting sparks up like a fireworks display. Martin slammed on the brakes but knew they were too close. He cranked the wheel to the left as hard as he could and the front passenger side of the Pathfinder struck the underside of the trailer, the whole vehicle skimming sideways, jamming into it. The impact gave the trailer extra momentum and it continued to slide, dragging Martin and Jack with it. Martin looked over to see his son slouched down in his seat, blood gushing from a wound on his forehead.
Jack wasn’t wearing his seat belt. 
Damn it Jack! He thought as panic set in. He reached over the unconscious form, trying to get the belt on, but the Pathfinder rocked profusely, making the task impossible. Sparks and metal showered him hotly through a broken window and Martin found himself praying for absolution.
With a tumultuous screech, they ground to a stop.
Thank god...
Martin breathed a sigh of relief and turned his attention to his son. Jack was bleeding but he was still breathing. It was all over... 
The last thing Martin Pennywise heard was the blasting horn of a transport truck. 
The second last thing he saw was the shadow of said truck, bearing down on top of them, striking the overturned trailer and the Pathfinder in a confused explosion of metal, flesh and screams.
The last thing he saw was his son, Jack Pennywise, as he was ejected out of his seat and through the windshield. 


TWO
The world was black. He couldn’t see anything in it. 
It had to be empty. 
There was no light, but it smelled like smoke–acrid burning smoke. It made his lungs blaze and his eyes run. His head pounded fiercely. He rolled onto his side and felt broken glass crunching beneath him, poking him. Something dripped into his mouth and it had a weird coppery taste. He spit it out, but it kept dripping back in. He brought his hand up to his face and felt it slick with a warm, sticky fluid. He moved his fingers along the bridge of his nose, between his eyes, up his forehead until he felt pain and the ragged edge of a hole in his flesh and he knew without a doubt that the liquid was his own blood. He felt around him, trying to get his bearings; the smoke was thick and he still could not see. 
He felt something beside him, hard, yet light and almost hollow. He grasped onto it, not knowing what it was, and so he crawled, away from that smoke, and the world slowly grew lighter. He could now see white pieces scattered all around him, like warped snowflakes, and he looked at the object in his hand.
It was a tooth. 
He knew it was a tooth because he had seen one before just like it, six inches long and pointed. 
It was a dinosaur tooth.
He threw it away in confusion and dismay, not knowing what to make of it. He forced himself up on his feet but quickly fell back down on his butt, feeling dizzy, and so cradled his knees into his chest, not knowing what to do. His head hurt but otherwise he seemed fine. 
What had happened? Where was Dad? He couldn’t remember. He turned on the spot and he saw a huge skull, six feet long, with huge openings for eyes, brain, and nostrils. 
A tyrannosaurus skull. 
Many teeth were missing from its mouth. He stared at the skull, confused. 
Where had it come from? 
After a few minutes the smoke around the skull began to shimmer...and then it parted. A figure approached him–dark, shrouded. The shroud hid most of its face, but something about it seemed familiar. He felt like he’d known this figure all his life. They just stared at each other until the man started to laugh, uncontrollably almost, and then, in a grizzled voice that sounded long and tired, he said, “This is how it all started Jack. Amazing isn’t it?” He paused, staring at Jack, perhaps waiting for a reply. “You won’t remember this in twenty years anyway, but...this is how it started. I just had to know. I couldn’t remember it myself. All this time, and I couldn’t remember this one thing.”
Jack said nothing, only stared. The man smiled one more time and then vanished into the smoke. 
Jack rubbed his temples.
He was getting a headache.




PART I: A MEMORY OF TIME

It’s always snowing, Inside my head,
I’m burning thoughts, They drown instead,
–Vox Populi




1. After The Extinction


The lizard took flight into the jungle and Dr. Crane pursued. 
The jungle was lush and green on all sides of the well worn game trail that Crane followed; a beaten dirt path intermingled with exposed trees roots, like the backs of giant ancient worms, frozen in the soil. Visibility was limited to a few feet on either side of the path as the skinny palm-like trees of the jungle were interspersed with thick ferns and full stunted bushes that covered the ground effectively. 
Palm-like is an apt way to describe them, Crane thought, because these aren’t exactly palm trees. What I recognize as palms won’t exist for at least another sixty million years. The thought gave him chills. The same chills he’d been having since arriving here sixteen hours ago. 
Where did that little bugger go?
It was foggy. Thick spider-like tendrils of moisture were coalescing in the air, and as he pursued, Dr. Crane caught glimpses of the lizard’s tail, or what he thought was the tail, fleeing before him in the mist. 
The lizard wasn’t really a lizard at all but a dinosaur–a dromaeosaur–he suspected, but which species exactly he was still unsure. At any rate, this was one of the last dinosaurs to exist before that final extinction took the lives of every single last thunder lizard. Being a paleontologist, the circumstances surrounding that extinction had been Crane’s life pursuit. The ultimate vindication–the final truth of that pursuit–was only feet from him now, fleeing into the jungle.
Crane didn’t think the dromae was actually fleeing–more toying with him–running away with its arm feathers outstretched and then waiting for him to catch up. It’s using its feathers for speed and balance! he thought excitedly, already formulating a research paper in his mind. A colorful fan of feathers stretched from the dromae’s forearm to just past its elbow. A second fan came off the end of its tail. Crane suspected the dromae was toying with him because it was a juvenile–more playful and less deadly than a full blown adult–which, depending on the species, would likely run about six feet tall with a long pointed snout, razor sharp teeth, and feet that ended in a six inch dagger that could slice through flesh like a bullet through butter. Being a youngster, this dromae was not deadly, but Crane still moved with caution. It could still be trouble. 
He coughed into his sleeve and failed to notice the splotch of blood left behind. The others will wonder where I’ve gone...but I will NOT miss this chance. And as if to reassure himself of that fact, Crane quickly patted the back pocket of his jeans and felt the hard cylinder of the dart pistol he carried there. 
He huffed and puffed now, his pot belly rising and falling with the exertion, and he briefly lamented allowing his body to get so soft. In his prime, he had been in excellent shape. In his late twenties, when fresh out of the University of Alberta and a budding paleontologist, Crane spent an average sixteen hour day of excavation in the Badlands effortlessly scaling mesas and buttes. When he became a professor at his alma mater at forty, he inevitably focused on exercising his academic mind, rather than his physical body. That kind of thing he left up to Jack now. 
Jack, I could use your help right now. The validation of all our work is at hand. All those hours researching, all those days digging, we may have finally come to the truth at last. 
He huffed harder than ever, and cursed how out of shape he was; it was no wonder women didn’t find him attractive anymore. In his twenties, women often compared him to a young Sean Connery; a veritable double-oh-seven. Crane always smiled at these compliments, but these days they were fewer and further between. Just like the women in his life. These days, paleontology was his mistress, as Crane knew she forever would be. Part of him had always wondered what it would be like to have a blue-collar job, one where he didn’t bring his work home with him and he spent his evenings with a wife and possible children, vegging on the couch and laughing along to old reruns of Seinfeld. 
But that dream had died before it was even born. Crane’s love of all creatures ancient was bred at an early age when his mother took him to see a movie at the old Aladdin in downtown Calgary–Planet of the Dinosaurs it was called. Crane could recall the plot vividly, even to this day: a group of space faring astronauts, led by the audacious Captain Lee Norsythe, crash landed on an unknown, but earth-like planet. The group finds no trace of civilization, only blood-thirsty dinosaurs. Immediately, their priorities switch from trying to find a way back home, to simply trying to stay alive. Crane’s young eyes found the dinosaurs petrifying, yet irresistible. Indeed, Crane whittled away many a childhood afternoon as the formidable Captain Norsythe, battling ancient prehistoric beasts and coming to the aid of the gorgeous Derna Lee, fellow astronaut and damsel in distress, kidnapped by a colossal primeval lizard.
It was love at first sight. 
Up ahead, the dromaeosaur barked at Crane noisily, bringing him out of his reverie. He pushed on. Something on the foliage to the right caught his attention–a splash of red. A broad fern bobbed up and down in the windless morning, like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. 
There was blood on it. 
Crane scoffed: The damn lasers must have done their work after all. 
Reassured, Crane again patted the pistol in his rear pocket, making sure it was real, and not just another apparition in the morning’s mist. 
The dromae was bleeding; it might not have much time left. 


TWO
16 hours earlier... 
There was a blaze of white hot heat and a blinding red light, the jungle seeming to morph into a desert at high noon. As the light dissipated, an Egg could be seen, sitting in the jungle in the place where the light originated. The ground and vegetation surrounding the Egg was charcoaled. The Egg, if size were disregarded, was just the apotheosis of an Egg, but one hundred times the size, and gleaming of metal sheen, reflecting the landscape around it. The Egg made no noise and did nothing but radiate heat. There was no sign of what this thing was, or where it had come from.
The Egg began to crack.
A vertical line appeared at the crown and travelled straight down along the curved metallic surface. Another line started down on the opposite side. Then two more at right angles to the first, followed by two more bisectors until the entire Egg was dissected into eight equal parts. There was a snapping of equalizing pressure, like the sound of an open hand making contact with bare flesh, as the segments of the Egg split at the top and folded downward to the ground. 
Dr. Jonathan Crane stepped out onto the shore of the great Western Interior Seaway. Sunlight, more intense than when he had entered the Egg, assaulted his every sense as he took in the scene. Aqua blue water stretched from horizon to horizon along the beach that he stood on. Various islands dotted the sea. Dense, lush palm vegetation dominated the landscape and grew close to the water at intervals. He could not see the other side of the sea, but knew that if he could over the intervening hundreds of miles, he would see either Northwestern Ontario, or northern Minnesota–or, at least how they had been–65 million years in the past. Where he stood now would one day be the Alberta badlands, a hot bed for dinosaur skeletons and the landscape where he had developed his passion. The feeling was almost nostalgic, and Crane could hardly believe it–the time machine had worked. He was breathing heavily, nearly hyperventilating. 
There were twelve of them all told, including Crane, and Crane knew them all personally except for the three military men–Johnson, Newman, and Harper. He had had little contact with the military men before the expedition, though Crane knew they weren’t actually in the military any longer. He turned to face the rest of the group and all at once everyone seemed to be doing something. 
Jason Vedder, his younger brother by ten years, was using a complicated looking instrument attached to the Egg’s main computer. The Egg had twelve bucket seats, arranged in a circle around a central computer console containing the machine’s necessary technology. In front of each seat was a helmet which occupants wore as a monitoring device during each time trip, distributing necessary sedatives. Everything about the Egg was compact and vital, something that never ceased to amaze Crane. Twenty years ago, this technology would have taken up an entire warehouse.  
Nearby, Andie Lee Vibert was taking samples of water from the sea. Dr. Tempelman–their resident psychologist–was with the military men, who seemed unfazed by the whole experience; they were unpacking equipment and paid little attention to their surroundings. 
Crane heard Corporal Johnson address his soldiers: “We need to establish a perimeter immediately. We don’t really know what we might be up against here. Security should be our first priority.” There were murmurs of assent and at once Privates Newman and Harper began assembling equipment on several tripods. Crane was still breathing heavy. He bent forward and put his hands on his knees and focused on what his brother was saying to someone else.
“The Shellscreen shorted out, that’s why we couldn’t see anything when we landed. If you ask me, you took a hell of a risk opening the Egg without knowing where we were.”
“A minor detail,” Scott Bon replied while attempting to get a video camera working. “Jason, this is our twelfth successful trip. We always know approximately where we will come out now, and since the Egg creates a quantum field around it, anything that might have been in the way would be vaporized instantly. There was little risk in opening the Egg.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it. The risk this time was not in the landing, but in the time period. We’ve never been back this far before, and we just don’t know enough about how these animals will behave when...” He broke off, noticing Crane out of the corner of his eye. 
He abandoned the argument with Bon, going over to him. “You all right bro? Don’t let Tempelman see you if you don’t want a three hour psychological overhaul.”
Crane laughed. “Yeah, I’m good. Just needed a second. It’s so overwhelming–this place, the time machine, all of it. My life’s work could be summed up in this place. We really could discover how they died out couldn’t we?” Vedder simply grinned but said nothing. “When are we exactly? Did we hit the right time?”
“Yep. We’re sixty-five million years before we left, give or take. We don’t know any precise dates this far back, but judging from the atmospheric and soil sample analysis I just took, Iridium levels are still very high, so I figure we’re anywhere from a hundred to two hundred fifty years after the asteroid collision at the Yucatan.”
“After?!” Crane said bewildered. “You mean it already happened? But, on the way down...we saw...” He looked like he was starting to panic. Vedder knew better. Crane was excited.
“We saw dinosaurs,” Vedder finished for him. Vedder knew that the widely held belief was that the dinosaurs had died out as a result of an asteroid impact at Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. He also knew that his brother did not hold entirely to that theory, and that was why he was here: to find out for sure.
“You did it,” Crane said. “I can’t believe it, but you did it. Dad would be proud, Jason.”
Vedder blushed. “Believe me, you’re not the first one to feel this way. You should’ve seen the look on President Bush’s face when we told him who really shot Kennedy. It was priceless.”
Crane gave his brother a disapproving look. “Yes, and then that tech guy Chezick told me that by doing so you also prevented the assassination from happening.”
Vedder’s eyes bulged. “Yeah we did, but in another timeline! Not ours. Fuck Chezick! The guy’s nuts, ask Tempelman! Jon we went over this before. The way we do things, the method we travel, paradoxes can’t happen. We’ve proven it, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember” Crane replied, “but then again I haven’t witnessed as many paradoxes as you have.”
“Jon, they’re not paradoxes. The Universe has a tendency to right itself. We as human beings, in our infinite egotism, think that we actually might have the power to destroy the universe–but we don’t. It’s causality–you can’t change history. Whatever happened, happened.”
“But at what cost?” Crane replied, one eyebrow raised.
There was a momentary silence between the brothers; Jason absently rubbed at his right temple, as if he were getting a headache. 
Their silence was broken by the sound of gunfire.


THREE
The trail of blood went off the path into the jungle and Crane followed it. At first the drops were small and splotchy on the foliage, like a Jackson Pollock painting, but as Crane went deeper, the drops got bigger. The fog was still thick but luckily the drops were not spread far between leaves and Crane could find them with little difficulty. 
He pressed on.
There was a muffled sound up ahead–like a violent sneeze–and indeed one minute later, as Crane approached the trunk of a rather large tree with white bark and sparse dying branches, he confirmed that is just what he had heard: a large red splotch was plastered on the tree bark about three feet off the ground–head height for the dinosaur. It was bleeding from the mouth and nose. 
Lasers definitely clipped his snout, poor bastard. A vial of blood, that’s all Miss Vibert needs.
He continued up a sloping path littered with dead leaves and palm fronds. A few small mammals scurried away in the underbrush as his feet stomped along, and the sounds were starting to make him paranoid. In the fog, he didn’t know whether he was hearing the dinosaur, or other animals in the jungle. 
He hadn’t seen a drop of blood for almost two minutes now, but he continued on in the direction he thought he heard the dinosaur go. The jungle was getting thicker, and combined with the fog, he could hardly see a foot in front of him. If this kept up, soon he would be groping blindly with arms outstretched, trying to find a way out. Crane stopped for a moment and contemplated giving up, perhaps even calling out for help. He heard a twig snap, followed by a muffled snort. He held his breath. 
Where did that come from? 
He whirled on the spot, trying desperately to see into the whiteness that enveloped him. The fog danced and swirled from his movement and his eyes played tricks on him in the shadows.
The attack came from behind. 
Crane was struck by something that knocked him flat on his stomach, knocking the wind right out of him and giving him a face full of dirt and leaves. There was a snarl and he felt searing pain as something dug into the flesh on his back–claws. Next there was hot breath on the back of his neck as his attacker bent its head over his. Something dripped onto his exposed skin, but it was too hot to be water. He turned his head sideways and more fluid dripped onto his cheeks, his nose, and into his mouth. Crane spat out on the ground and saw blood. Until now he hadn’t been sure if it was his dinosaur that had attacked him–now he had confirmation. Although it felt heavy, this dinosaur was a juvenile and inexperienced in the ways of the kill–which is probably why he was still alive. 
Crane slowly reached into his back pocket and simultaneously twisted his whole body around, swinging upward with the butt of the pistol, striking the dinosaur across the lower jaw. The creature shrieked in surprise and pain as it rolled away from him into the fog. There was a final yip and Crane heard the dinosaur escape into the brush. Invigorated and pumping with adrenaline, Crane sprang to his feet and charged after it. Foliage and branches scraped and scratched at his exposed skin as he tore through the jungle, in some cases drawing blood. The fog was unrelenting; for all Crane knew, he was headed for the edge of a cliff. But the attack had left him bewildered and angry. 
Now it was personal. Now the dromae would pay in blood. 
Anger was one of Crane’s weaknesses. He was not quick to it, but when it arose, irrational thought invaded him like a disease, and vengeance was the only cure–a dark aspect of his personality that he had kept mostly in check, but had also paid for bitterly in his life. 
He was paying for it now. 
It was the reason he was here…


FOUR
“I just don’t buy it,” Paquette berated Crane. “How could one little bug wipe out all the dinosaurs? You’d think some would be immune. What about all the fossil evidence that suggests a meteoric impact?”
Crane had been writing on the dry board at the head of the room–a university lecture hall with stadium style seating–and the object of Crane’s present irritation, a student named Joshua Paquette, was seated right in the first row. “You didn’t let me finish Mr. Paquette,” Crane said. “Did I say the dinosaurs went extinct from disease?” 
Paquette looked berated but unperturbed. “Well no, but–”
“Good. Glad we cleared that up. Can we go on?”
Paquette said nothing. It was the last week of classes of the year and Paquette had been riding Crane from day one. Occasionally, he offered fruitful discussion for debate, but mostly, he liked to argue. 
The kid should be in law school.
“As I was saying, some of you may be surprised to learn that disease was just as much a factor in the downfall of the dinosaurs as anything else you may have heard. Recent evidence suggests–”
“What about dust?” 
Crane snapped his gaze back on Paquette who sat smirking in his seat. Twice now the little shit had interrupted him. He sighed audibly. “What about it Mr. Paquette?”
“The force of a meteoric impact could have, most likely did, spew thousands of tons of debris into the air, and may have also caused volcanic eruptions which could have added to the mix, blocking out the sun for a few years, and killing all the plants and, in turn, all other living things.”
Crane sighed and thought: Here we go.
“Okay, Mr. Paquette. Let’s look at the evidence presented by recent core samples of the Chichxulub crater analyzed by Gerta Keller of Princeton. They show that the dinosaurs died out three hundred thousand years after the Yucatan event. In addition Dr. Robert Bakker, in his research, concluded that such a catastrophic impact would not only have killed the dinosaurs, but frogs and most mammals as well, and yet they survived the extinction. Mammals, Mr. Paquette, took over when the dinosaurs died out. How did they survive?”
Paquette paused to think. “I’ve read they could have survived underground, hibernated or something. Most mammals were small at the time.”
“So were dinosaurs. Many were the size of a chicken or even smaller. Why didn’t they survive? It was most likely a decade or more before the dust completely settled and Earth began to recover from impact winter. If everything died out, what did these mammals eat, Mr. Paquette? Obviously this event did not kill everything. It was only the catalyst in a chain of events leading to the dinosaur’s demise.” 
A hand shot up at the back of the class. It belonged to a young lady of Asian descent whose name Crane could not quite recall. Crane nodded to her, “Yes dear.”
“So does that mean the small dinosaurs could have survived in the same way that mammals did while the big ones were killed off?”
Crane grinned. “Excellent question young lady. You’ve given me a launching pad to prove my point here.” He paused, taking a breath. “The answer is no. Not all the big ones died. After the initial impact, the Earth was thrown into the throes of what is known as an impact winter, which is similar to a nuclear winter in that, as Mr. Paquette tried to point out, the climate would be changed on a massive scale due to particles in the air blocking out the sun.” There were snickers at the mention of Paquette’s name. Paquette blushed. “But nature as you should well know is nothing if not adaptable, and the dinosaurs who survived the impact did just that.” He turned full bodied towards his students. “Can anybody tell me what a population who has survived an environmental catastrophe typically does?” A hand belonging to a dark haired youth shot up to Crane’s right. “You,” Crane said.
“Well typically…” the young man paused, rethinking. “Are we talking a human population or an animal population?”
“Either or,” Crane said.
“Okay, well typically, humans will either rebuild, or move on. Animals do not have the ability to rebuild like we do, so they will generally move on. I guess it depends on the level of devastation done to their homes.”
“Correct,” Crane said. “And I think a meteor impact qualifies as massive devastation, so I think it would be safe to assume that the dinosaurs and mammals likely moved on. Am I right?” There were murmurs and nods from the group. “Okay. So now we have a mass group of creatures all moving on together to new, unspoiled habitats, many of whom had never been in contact with one another before...” The class gasped at this revelation from Crane. They all seemed to get it at once. 
The young man spoke up. “It’s like when the Europeans conquered the New World, isn’t it? They brought over diseases with them the Natives had never before encountered, and the Natives were devastated!” There was now a palpable air of excitement in the room, and Crane just smiled and nodded. He looked at Paquette who was firing daggers at Crane with his eyes. 
Paquette knew he had lost all ground here. But that didn’t stop him from trying to get it back: “Well if it was a disease, then why weren’t the mammals affected?”
This caught Crane off guard and got his temperature rising. He was not used to having his ideas questioned by a student–especially a student with so much more to learn like this little punk. 
Crane rebutted: “Because dinosaurs are not mammals, Mr. Paquette. They are more akin to birds as you should already know, and a good ninety percent of the birds at the time went extinct with the dinosaurs. You could argue that since birds, dinosaurs, and mammals all evolved from early reptiles that they should have all been affected, but really, that’s like asking why does AIDS affect humans and not monkeys? It’s a huge question, and one we may never know the answer to.”
By now the class was alight with muttered conversation, mostly whisperers berating Paquette’s idiocy. Paquette reached down under his desk and brought a book out from his backpack. He tossed it at Crane’s feet as he stood up. Crane recognized it immediately without having to read the title: After the Extinction by Dr. Jonathan Crane.
Paquette exploded. “I can’t believe I paid money to sit here and listen to this bullshit! I haven’t learned a thing all semester!” Shocked gasps came from the crowd. Crane stared at the book and frowned. “I’m done with this class. I’ve got better things to do than to sit here and listen to a quack!” 
Paquette quickly gathered his things and started for the door. Crane was still staring at his book on the floor, his face getting redder by the second. The anger was taking over. In a flash he stooped down and scooped the book up, raising his arm to fire it at the departing Paquette. The entire class gasped. 
Someone grabbed his arm in mid launch. “Stop Dr. Crane, he’s not worth it.” 
It was Jack. 
By this time, Paquette had turned in the doorway and saw what had happened, a smirk on his face. “What are you looking at you little pissant?” Crane bellowed. It was shocking hearing the expletive come from the normally demure professor’s mouth. 
“An old man about to go extinct,” Paquette replied arrogantly.
Jack grabbed the book and launched. It struck Paquette in the nose, red fluid flowing immediately. Paquette dropped to his knees. Jack casually walked over to him and kicked him in the gut. Paquette doubled over. “Get the fuck out,” he said expressionlessly. Paquette stumbled to his feet and leered out the door. Jack turned back into the room; Dr. Crane was leaning on his arms, face against the dry board, already contemplating his resignation. The entire class was on its feet.
“Everybody leave, now!” Jack demanded. And they did. He turned to Crane. “Jon, he had that coming man. He’s been riding you all semester.”
Crane turned his face gratefully toward his teaching assistant, his eyes already glazed with tears. “I’m finished,” Crane said.
A voice issued from the top of the auditorium. “Well done, Jonathan. I always thought it wise for a teacher to have a bodyguard in this day and age, what with school shootings and all.”
A tall man of average build came down the steps towards them. He wore dark framed glasses, bootcut jeans, and a polo shirt. His dark hair was streaked with blonde. He looked like he had just walked out of an Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue. 
“Jason?” Crane replied. “What in hell are you doing here?”


FIVE
Crane crashed through ferns and darted between palms. There was blood everywhere–the dromae was dying. He burst through an opening between palms and at that moment the sun broke through the overhanging clouds. Within a minute, it had burned away most of the fog like a heavy rain will erode a sandy hillside. Tendrils of mist still clung low to the ground but now Crane could see. He was at the edge of a large clearing, filled with grass about three feet high and surrounded by palms and ferns on all sides. A shallow beaten path through the grass lay directly before him. The dromae’s head bobbed above it, like a submarine periscope above water. It was fifteen feet away, moving slowly and laboriously. The tip of its snout was perfectly sheared off, blood seeping from the wound. 
Crane held the pistol in both hands and looked down the sight, not at all sure he was capable of even using the weapon. He lined up the notched “V” near the butt of the barrel with the protrusion at the other end and moved the sighting over the dromae’s head.
He squeezed the trigger.


SIX
The shot came from the jungle behind them. 
Crane looked at his brother, who was getting something out the Egg. Vedder whirled around. The military men and Bon were nowhere to be seen, but all the others were still on the beach. There was a game trail a few feet away, and Vedder darted for it, yelling for everybody to stay where they were. Crane followed. The trail was a very well-beaten dirt path leading up a forested slope–the result of many animals travelling to and from the beach. After a minute of hectic dashing, they stopped on the trail.
“They must be around here somewhere,” Vedder said, slightly out of breath. “That shot sounded close to camp.”
“They could be anywhere,” Crane replied. 
“Shhh!” Vedder said suddenly. “Shut up and listen for a sec.”
The only sound was the heavy breathing of the two brothers, mixed with the swaying of palm fronds and the buzzing of insects. The foliage was thick all around them and only a few errant rays of sunlight managed to pierce the canopy overhead, illuminating motes of dust on the air. 
Another shot rang out and the trunk of a tree directly behind Crane exploded in a hail of sawdust and woodchips, just above his head. They hit the ground just as there was an otherworldly shriek. Something green flashed over their heads and disappeared into the bush on the other side of the path. Crane felt the whoosh of air as it flapped passed. It was not big. A few moments later, there was the crashing of heavy movement in the brush and Scott Bon, Corporal Johnson, and Privates Newman and Harper all appeared on the trail. 
“Jesus you could’ve been killed!” Bon exclaimed. “Most people, when they hear the sound of gunfire, they tend to go in the opposite direction, Jason.”
“Sorry for thinking maybe you were in trouble,” Vedder rebutted.
“Okay, okay. Everybody alright?” Johnson intervened.
“Something jumped over us on the trail,” Crane said.
“Yeah,” Harper said, “and that something bit me. Some kinda lizard–but it had feathers, real colorful ones. Never seen anything like it.” Harper’s hand was wrapped in a white rag that was slowly turning red. He held it up. 
“You should really treat that when we get back to the beach,” Vedder said. “Clean it good. Who knows what dinosaurs carried? It was a dinosaur right?”
They all turned to Crane. “Well, I didn’t exactly get a good look at it, but yeah, it was a dinosaur. Probably a dromaeosaur. Judging from the size, I’d say it was a juvenile, but I can’t be sure. Dromae’s came in many sizes. And feathers! There has been plenty of fossil evidence to suggest it but–”
Vedder cut him off. “What were you guys doing in there anyway?” He nodded to the jungle off the trail.
Johnson gestured to Private Newman, and Newman said: “Establishing a perimeter, sir. Defense. If you will follow me, sir.” Newman turned and marched straight back into the bush. Vedder and Crane looked questioningly at each other but followed without a word. They walked for about a minute through dense tropical forest until they came to a very small clearing, about twelve feet in diameter. In the centre of the clearing was a tall metal pole on a tripod, with a series of tiny matte black boxes mounted on it at intervals. Protruding from the side of the boxes was a small lens. A collapsible keyboard was linked to the bottom of the pole. The legs of the tripod were speared into the ground, providing anchor points.
“This is where we were working,” Harper said, “when the little bastard came out of the bush over there,” he pointed to a gap in the foliage. “Walked right up to me. Was the damndest thing.”
“It had never encountered a human before,” Crane said. “It had no reason to fear you.”
“It didn’t,” Harper said, “’cause I held out my hand and the damn thing bit me!”
“You held out your hand?” Crane said.
Bon cut in: “It was my fault. I wanted some footage.” He held up the video camera he had been fiddling with. “So I got Harper to try and call the thing over.”
Crane said: “Great, well at least we can review the footage and be sure of the species.”
Bon shook his head. “By the time I had the camera ready, it was all over, the thing was fleeing.”
“Shit,” Crane said.
“When the thing bit me,” Harper said, “I yelled and it made for the bush, so I pulled my sidearm and fired. The thing was clearly dangerous, plus I thought we could test it for disease or something.” They all looked at Harper’s now holstered sidearm, which had a dark smear on the butt. “I obviously missed and so took off after it. I fired one more time and nearly killed you Dr. Crane. Jesus, I hope that little bastard didn’t have rabies or something.”
Vedder cut in. “I highly doubt that it did. And in any case, disease between human beings and lizards are rarely communicable.”
“Dinosaurs aren’t lizards,” Crane said.


SEVEN
As they came out of the jungle and regrouped on the trail, Crane thought about what he had just seen. It was a pretty good system, all in all. Sixteen tripods, set up in a rectangular perimeter around their camp, roughly half the size of a football field, four lasers between each tripod, creating a kind of fence eight feet high. They had tested the system and when the lasers had come on, Crane had heard foliage and trees falling all around the perimeter as the lasers sliced through them. He didn’t see any way something could get through without being sliced and diced. Johnson said they would use the system mainly at night. It seemed foolproof.
They started to make their way back down the trail. 
A bird chirped. 
Chirrrrup... 
Crane turned toward the source of the sound. About fifty feet away, standing on the trail looking directly at them, was the dromaeosaur. Crane tried desperately to determine the species, but at such a distance he could not. It was small, about three feet tall. Gotta be a juvenile, he thought.
Johnson put a finger to his lips and withdrew his sidearm. Newman did the same. Harper stayed back with the others, unable to be effective with his injured hand. The two men approached slowly and cautiously, until they were about twenty feet away, then Johnson took to one knee and prepared to fire. The dromae ran, feathers streaming behind it.
Cursing, the two men pursued up a steepening slope. Crane and Vedder made to move, but Harper stopped them. “Not yet,” he said.
The men disappeared up the trail, leaving muddy tracks in the crushed leaves and soil. The others waited for the sound of gunfire but there was no sound at all. The silence was maddening. The jungle seemed to be on the verge of a held breath, ready to let it blow at any second. Crane fidgeted on the spot. Then they heard Johnson yelling from the top of the trail: “I think you’d better come and take a look at this.”


EIGHT
Crane lay in his tent and stared at the ceiling, the day’s events constantly recycling in his mind. We have found the answer! He looked at his watch. We’ve been here sixteen hours and we may have already done it–we know how they died out! 
He kept recalling what he had seen when he and Jason came up the trail and over the ridge when Johnson called them. It was unbelievable and terrifying all at once. Immediately he had wanted to get back to the future, so to speak. What he saw in that valley answered millions of years worth of questions in one glance. There were dinosaurs down there–hundreds of them–and they were dying. They all appeared to bleed freely from every available orifice. Only one thing could have affected so many individuals so widely–disease. And it was a terrible disease, seeming to drive the dinosaurs mad, screaming, biting, and thrashing at each other. Dinosaurs that had no business hanging out together were assembled in loose packs, hunting the sickest ones. 
The dinosaurs truly were in their last throes. 
It was a sad scene, but Crane was able to at least take something positive from it–he was right. His disease theory had been proven, right then and there. He couldn’t wait to publish his findings. He would be famous. They were going back to the valley tomorrow to do more research. 
He felt like a child on Christmas Eve.
He couldn’t help his excitement despite the fact that Harper may be dying. He heard a cough from one of the other tents. 
Harper... 
It had started that evening on their way back to camp from the valley. First he was coughing a little, attributing it to allergies, then he started coughing more...and a little blood came up with it. The man was sick, and they all knew it. Miss Vibert had taken some blood samples and said she would run some tests, but without proper lab equipment, there was only so much she could do. She said they needed to catch the dinosaur–the one that bit Harper. It was the only animal they had seen that wasn’t sick–it had given Harper the disease and yet wasn’t sick itself. 
It was immune. 
She needed a sample of its blood, and not just for Harper’s sake: whatever Harper has, it could be catching. 
They needed that dromaeosaur.
Most of the dozen CH crew had wanted to go home, and who could blame them? There was a big fight about it, but Bon and the military men forbade it. If there was an issue of disease here, they needed to catch that dinosaur before they went anywhere near the future. They would all be put under quarantine anyway, but if this disease proved fatal, they weren’t leaving without a possible cure. 
After that, Bon had suggested they turn in for the night. In the morning they would return to the valley. As soon as they got that dino, they could all leave.
Another cough issued from the nearby tent.
Crane thought he felt fine, but he couldn’t help a feeling of uneasiness that had been growing in his mind since they had arrived. No, uneasiness wasn’t the right word. It was wrongness. Something about this whole situation felt wrong to him, and it was growing in his mind and sometimes Crane thought that feeling would manifest itself physically, almost as pain... 
He sighed and tried to relax. It was dark, and there was nothing they could do until morning anyway. We have to find that dinosaur, he thought as he drifted off to sleep, the perimeter lasers surrounding their camp, bathing him in a blue glow. 
Crane dreamed of dromaeosaurs, picking and scavenging across a bloody landscape... 


NINE
Crane arose from a restless sleep to feel his throat clogged with phlegm. He immediately unzipped his tent, leaning out the front, cleared his esophagus and spat the resulting concoction onto the ground. He was horrified to see red mixed in with the clearish green-yellow fluid.
“You too, eh?” a voice issued to his right.
Crane looked up and saw Tempelman, the psychiatrist, sitting in a folding chair by the fire pit. He was poking the bones of last night’s fire with a charred stick, attempting to wrestle a coal out of the ashes.
The phrase struck a note of horror in Crane, and he said: “You mean...”
“Yeah, I think we all got it. Almost everyone is showing symptoms. Only a matter of time before we all do.”
“But I feel fine–”
“Doc,” Tempelman interrupted him.
“Yeah?” Crane said.
“Your nose is bleeding.”


TEN
The whole rest of that day, the military men went to look for the lizard. No one was allowed near the valley. Crane was disappointed but saw the sense in it, especially if he was sick. He coughed up blood all day. By the time the military men came back, it was dark and they had nothing to report. They had followed the trail of some Deinonychus’ for several hours before catching them up; all but one was dead. The lone survivor, a female, was alert when they approached but did not seem to care. It moved erratically and fled into the jungle. When they found it again, it had disemboweled itself. Johnson questioned Crane about this behavior and Miss Vibert was the one who answered.
“I think it’s the disease,” she said. “It must affect the brain, perhaps causing swelling and bleeding, leading to disorientation or even insanity in its victims. It’s not unheard of.” Her nose began to hemorrhage.
“Vibert, you’re bleeding,” Vedder said. “Come on.” He led her to the Egg where the medical supplies were kept.
“We need to find that dinosaur,” Crane said. 
They all turned in shortly after that. Most of them went to sleep with cotton balls wadded up their nostrils, and Crane was no exception. He lay on his back with his head slightly tilted on his pillow. Once in a while he felt a drop of blood from his nasal cavity fall into his mouth. The taste was metal and coppery. 
He drifted off to sleep, thinking of dinosaurs.
He dreamed of feathers, flapping above his head.


ELEVEN
Crane awoke with a start. It was still dark but he thought he heard a bird chirp. Or was it a dream? He listened intently. Nothing. He lay back down.
Chirrrrrup... 
Crane bolted out of his sleeping bag and quickly unzipped the front flap of his tent. Thick fog billowed in from the beach and he couldn’t see a thing.
Chirrrrrup... 
The sound came from the fire pit area. 
Crane quickly turned back into the tent and reached for the dart pistol next to his sleeping bag. Johnson had given one to each of them before turning in for the night, after a quick and dirty lesson on its use.
Chirrrrrup... 
Crane crept cautiously out of the tent, the pistol in both hands, pointed at the source of the sound. The fog was maddening, visibility at about three feet. He continued his approach and a blurred outline began to form, bent over the remains of the fire.
Someone coughed.
The little dromaeosaur snapped its head up and immediately saw Crane. It darted down the beach, feathers flashing. Crane ran after it. As he passed the Egg, a blue haze began to form and then he remembered the lasers–they came into view seconds later. Crane saw the dromae’s footprints in the sand–they stopped at the fence...and continued on the other side. The only thing he could think of was that it had jumped. Had it really leapt eight feet in the air? And how did it know to do so? Crane was flabbergasted by this seeming show of intelligence.
Chirrrrrup... 
The dromae was definitely on the other side. 
Crane followed the fence until he got to one of the control tripods. Then he bent down and looked for the keypad. Newman had explained how to turn the fences off and on in case of emergency. Crane typed a simple command, and the blue lasers winked off. He quickly retraced his steps and found the dromae’s footprints next to a trail of blood. The lasers had got it.
Chirrrrrup... 
The sound was further away now but Crane darted after it. Since he had left his tent the world had gotten brighter with the approaching dawn, but the fog still insisted. 
Chirrrrrup... 
Crane turned and darted towards the sound, and he found himself on the game trail, running upslope and as he did, he realized that a dozen lives may depend on his actions right now. The cure for the disease. Grim as it was, the thought encouraged him.
The dromae took flight into the jungle, and Dr. Crane pursued.


TWELVE
Crane held the pistol in both hands and looked down the sight, not at all sure he was capable of even using the weapon. He lined up the notched “V” near the butt of the barrel with the protrusion at the other end and moved this sighting over the dromae’s head.
He squeezed the trigger.
There was a hiss of escaping gas from the gun’s CO2 cartridge.
Nothing happened for a moment, but then the dromae turned and hissed, darting directly back toward him. Did I miss? The dinosaur continued on straight towards him, running as fast as it could, but did not seem to be taking an attack posture; it was fleeing.
But why toward me? 
The dromae was only ten feet away now, and for the first time Crane could see it fully. 
He thought he knew the species. 
A bambiraptor. So you’re not a juvenile after all.
Five feet away.
Crane leapt to the side into the grass as the little bambiraptor darted on past like a bullet. He caught a glimpse of gleaming metal in its neck as it did, back down the way they had come.
I did get him! Why didn’t it work?
The earth suddenly shook with the thump of an impact tremor, followed closely by another a few seconds later. And then another. 
Crane looked toward the source of the sound but before he even saw its source, he knew instinctively what it was. 
There was a roar from the opposite side of the clearing, ear piercing. Blood curdling.
Crane saw a flourish of huge, multihued feathers as he got up and ran.




2. The Night Terror Virus


Jack Pennywise got ready to make the count, laughing hysterically. “Okay guys, you ready? One...two...three!” Jack burst into another fit of laughter as his good friends Ryan “Rhino” Knowles and Tyler Brown started manically pounding their T-bars into the ground. “Go! Go! Go!” Jack yelled wildly as the race progressed. There was a crowd of ten surrounding the two competitors, and they were cheering just as passionately, many of them having made bets on the outcome (of course, most of those bets were in favor of Rhino). Rhino and Tyler each had a T-bar pounder–a large metal tube closed off at one end and fitted with handles–and used them to pound the six foot long T-shaped steel bars into the ground surrounding a patch of dirt about ten foot square. There was a tarp pegged down over the centre of the dirt patch. The T-bars would be attached to plastic snow fencing to create a barrier around the tarp. 
Jack wanted his find protected at all costs. 
At first, he had kept the find a secret, after making the startling discovery earlier that day, but there were only fifteen students in camp, and news travelled fast. His mistake had been telling Tyler first, not Rhino. Rhino could keep a secret; Tyler leaked information like a fucking sieve. And so the secret got out, and Jack knew he had to shelter the site, so...
So why not make it interesting? 
Normally, Jack worked alone out here, having little patience for those who could potentially ruin his work but, not relishing the idea of pounding in all the T-bars himself, coerced Rhino and Tyler into a race. Jack would buy the winner’s beers for the night. 
Or so he said. 
Jack could gull Tyler into doing just about anything, and when he had suggested the T-bar “race” to him, Tyler agreed whole-heartedly with a: “Y-yeah? Should I? Well, maybe. Uh, okay!” 
Rhino had just smirked. That smirk had said: You’re such an ass. He knew the whole thing was a big joke. They liked Tyler, they truly did; he was just really, really gullible sometimes. Jack wasn’t even mad that the guy hadn’t kept his secret. It wasn’t that big a deal. Not really.
The crowd was gathered in a vast, flat section of desert in the Alberta badlands. Spires of mesas and buttes surrounded the valley on all sides, and the layered nature of the rocks striping the landscape gave it an alien quality that Jack never ceased to find beautiful. 
And of course, there were the skeletons.
All around them, the wastes were littered with the remains of hundreds of prehistoric creatures, for this desert had once been the floor of a great inland seaway, and many prehistoric animals that perished on the shore of that sea were eventually swept away. And so it was for this reason that Jack and the rest of Dr. Jonathan Crane’s paleontology grad students from the University of Alberta were working out here under a blazing July sun. The heat never really bothered Jack; dressed in a tight fitting rock t-shirt with the smiley face Nirvana logo plastered on the front, dirty torn jeans, tan work boots, and a cowboy hat, Jack looked more like a rockstar than a budding paleontologist. Despite this image, he had been at the top of his class every year of his undergraduate studies (notwithstanding getting kicked out in his first year and reaccepted the second), and so had caught the attention of Dr. Jonathan Crane, who had handpicked Jack as his teaching assistant the first year of Jack’s post-graduate studies. Jack was very lucky to have gotten that post at all, considering the reasons he got kicked out. 
That had been when James came back into his life. 
James the junkie, who had got his little brother hooked on the junk too. Natalie left him shortly after that, and Dr. Crane booted him from school. Six months later, James died, and things changed. Jack cleaned up, Natalie took him back, and Dr. Crane readmitted him into the program, which Jack fast-tracked to make up for his failed first year. And Jack was grateful for that. As he liked to say, he kept that part of his life tight to the vest–he shared it with no one except his very closest friends. Crane was one of those people. Rhino and Tyler were too. It had been a dark time in his life and–he was ashamed to admit–if it wasn’t for the death of his brother, he might still be living it. 
James saved him by dying.
But it wasn’t just his academic prowess that brought Jack to Crane’s attention; it was also his personality. Jack had an often odd sense of humor. Crane thought he was hilarious, and loved to reminisce with Jack about how they had met. It had been in Crane’s paleogeology course, and Crane had been talking about the discovery of the famous “Fighting Dinosaurs” skeletons in the Gobi Desert in 1971 where the remains of a velociraptor locked in mortal combat with a protoceratops was found. It is thought that during the battle, the animals were buried by a collapsing sand dune, killing them instantly and thus preserving the real life battle forever in layers of sand. During the discussion, Crane had mentioned that while velociraptors had been depicted in many movies and books as ultra-intelligent and over six feet tall, the reality was that velociraptor was usually less than a meter tall and probably about as smart as a dumb cat. At this point Crane saw a hand rise up in the middle of the lecture theatre. It belonged to a young man with dark shaggy hair and piercing blue eyes. He wore a t-shirt that read: Paleontologists know how to dig it, and sat next to a beautiful, raven haired young woman whom he would later find out was Natalie Cameron. 
“Yes?” Crane said. “You have a question?”
“So,” the young man said, “if raptors were dumber than cats, then we couldn’t exactly call them philoso-raptors could we?” The class burst into sporadic fits of laughter, but it took Crane a second to get the lame joke, and then, looking at the strange young man with the smirk on his face, Crane burst out laughing too, despite himself. 
Philosopher-velociraptor...ha, ha. 
“What’s your name young man?” Crane asked, still giggling. 
“Jack Pennywise, sir.”
“Good one Jack,” Crane said, “now let’s go on.”
Crane usually didn’t like to give in to such flights of foolishness, but throughout the rest of that semester, Jack contributed jokes as well as fruitful discussion that Crane admired, and a bond formed between them that could hardly be broken. Jack saw Crane as a mentor and father figure. Crane saw Jack as the son he wished he had. The pair had stayed up many nights together discussing dinosaurs or just life in general. Jack still felt guilty about the choice he had made the next semester. 
The choice his brother goaded him into... 
No. He couldn’t put any of it on James. He shook his head. 
He preferred not to think about it. 


TWO
The race was winding down now, and Jack should have felt elated, but all he felt was heavy: he hadn’t heard from Dr. Crane in over a month. He was getting worried. The last time they had spoken was the day of the incident with that little bastard Joshua Paquette. Of course the University had launched a full inquiry, but Crane had disappeared, and the inquiry had been put on hold indefinitely until he came back–or was found. Jack thought for sure the cops would be showing up at his door because he had assaulted Paquette, but it hadn’t happened, yet.
Jack reflected on how Crane’s brother had miraculously shown up that day. Jack didn’t know Crane had had a brother; he had never mentioned him once before and so Jack assumed they must have had a falling out at some point. The two had started talking right there in the classroom, but Jack didn’t know what about, for he got the feeling it was a private matter and stayed out of it. When they had finished, Crane had turned to Jack and said he would call him later, and disappeared. The next day, Jack was appointed to run the summer dig by the head of the paleontology department, Daniel McFall, until Crane returned or was replaced, or the inquiry was concluded. McFall had put special emphasis on “replaced” during that short conversation. Jack was shocked he was given the appointment at all, considering the circumstances. But really, who else was there? 
Where are you, Dr. Crane? 
Normally, Crane would have been the first person Jack would contact after making a discovery of the magnitude he did today, but since Dr. Crane was unavailable, Jack had called McFall. Jack didn’t know Dr. McFall very well, and McFall wasn’t a big fan of Jack’s–to him, Jack was just another version of Crane–but after hearing of Jack’s discovery, and confirming it was not some kind of joke, agreed to come out to the site first thing next morning. This brought him back to why he was out here. Jack turned his attention back to the race.
“Tyler! Tyler!” the crowd was chanting, half mocking and half supporting him. It would be funny to see Tyler beat Rhino, but it wasn’t going to happen; they were nearly done and Rhino had already pounded in almost twice as many bars as Tyler. Tyler was beginning to falter now, out of breath and stumbling. He could barely lift the pounder. Finally, Rhino slammed in the last bar and threw the pounder away with disdain, raising his arms in triumph. Tyler wanly dropped his to the ground and laughed at himself. At least you couldn’t get the guy down. Rhino turned to Tyler and grasped him in a bear hug.
“Nice try bud,” he said.
“Thanks,” Tyler said, smirking.
Jack stepped in, still laughing: “Alright, guys that was mint, but we need to get this snow fence up before dark. Then, it’s Miller time!” There were cheers from the crowd and, after the exchanging of bet monies, everyone set to work on the snow fence. They had it up in twenty minutes. As they all worked, Jack stood at the edge of a mesa and watched the sun going down on the painted horizon. In his hand he held his discovery, and pondered it mercilessly. The thing troubled him to no end. 
It couldn’t be a hoax. It just couldn’t. 
He had found it in sixty-five million year old bedrock, imbedded within a dromaeosaur skeleton. How could it be? 
Jack ran his fingers over the hard metal cylinder and put it back in his pocket.


THREE
“NIGHT TERROR STALKS ALBERTA”
Mysterious Disease Plagues Western Canada
Christopher Cornell, Canadian Associated Press

A series of bizarre traffic accidents, which resulted in seven deaths around Calgary three days ago, seems to have been the symptom of something much larger. It has now been confirmed by Calgary medical officials at the Foothills Medical Centre that at least three of the casualties have died not from injuries caused by the accidents, but a strange new disease that has been labeled The Night Terror Virus”, so named for the state the disease leaves victims in, often completely insane and screaming incoherently. The cause of death of the other fatalities is still unknown, pending autopsies. 
One medical official, who asked that we not use his name, has stated that: “NTV is a strange new sickness, one we know almost nothing about, but are working around the clock on courses of treatment. In the past three days, there have been fifty new cases reported and so far, the recovery rate is zero. We may have an epidemic on our hands.”
Dr. Jerry Benes, of Foothills Medical however was not so pessimistic. “I believe what we have here is a few isolated incidents of some new flu strain and once it is contained, we can isolate it and find a course of treatment,” Benes said yesterday. “So called new diseases of this nature are often just the flu, which mutates rapidly. It is only a matter of time.”
Early symptoms of the Night Terror Virus include headache, pale or pasty complexion, and bleeding from bodily orifices. Dementia sets in the more advanced stages. The disease seems not to discriminate based on age or gender; cases have been reported among all demographics. 
So far the disease has been confined to Calgary. Medical officials urge anyone exhibiting any of these symptoms to remain at home and call for an ambulance immediately. Do not use public transport. Containment of the disease is a top priority and although the disease has not yet reached epidemic status, officials have yet to declare a state of emergency. If a state of emergency were to be declared, Calgary would be under total quarantine…


“Ready to go Jack?” Rhino asked.
Jack was sitting on the battered tailgate of Rhino’s pickup in the makeshift parking lot of the dig site, and as he looked up from the newspaper, a strange grimace crossed his face. The box of the truck was littered with tools, bone fragments, and dust. Three chrome airstream trailers formed a rough u-shape at the end of the parking lot and was the so-called office of the dig. 
It was also the last place Jack had seen Natalie alive. 
One trailer contained computers, paper work, filing cabinets, and a small research library. Another was a makeshift lab, containing bone specimens that were either being inspected, studied, or “washed-up” in acidic baths that dissolved stone from bone. The last trailer was a cafeteria/hangout, containing a fridge, bathroom, washrooms, couches, and other amenities. Many students often crashed there after a long day in the wastes. 
“You okay bud?” Rhino said, snapping Jack out from a stupor. 
“Yeah man,” Jack said. “It’s just...did you hear about that disease?“
“The Night Terror Virus?” Rhino said almost cutting him off. “Yeah, man. Scary stuff, no?”
Jack nodded, “Let’s just say I won’t be heading into Calgary anytime soon.”


FOUR
“Y-y-you’re really not joking, are you Jack?”
Jack, Rhino, and Tyler were sitting at the end of a long and graffiti battered table in the Pump & Tap Tavern in the town of Drumheller, Alberta–the dinosaur capital of Canada–and the place of lodging for the majority of Dr. Crane’s students digging in the badlands. Rhino and Tyler had a place here; Jack however, had an old airstream trailer ten minutes from the dig site, preferring the solitude of the badlands to Drumheller. Their peers from the dig were also at the table, and they were animatedly discussing Jack’s find that day, and pondering its significance. 
No one had seen what it was up close because Jack said he didn’t want it contaminated, and he was being mum about the whole thing. All they knew was that he had found something modern in the prehistoric rock where he had been digging. Corruption of dig sites did happen, but Jack had been the only one at this particular site at the time and, given his reputation for being meticulous and thorough, if he found something, it wasn’t an error on his part. He must have found something genuine. 
“Yeah, you’re right Ty,” Jack said sarcastically, “it’s all a joke. I can’t wait to see the look on McFall’s face when he comes out here tomorrow!” Jack paused, grinning his idiot’s grin. Tyler just stared. “Man, if I was bullshitting, I’d be pretty stupid to take it that far, don’t you think?”
 “Y-yeah I guess,” Tyler said shrugging it off, “but still man, this is fucked! I-I mean, jeez. What the fuck could that thing be? Did you identify the skeleton?”
“Not conclusively no, but it’s definitely a dromaeosaur. The second toe of the exposed foot is functionally didactyl, so no questions there. It’s just the species that I’m not sure about."
Rhino, sitting beside them cut in: “I think it could be a juvenile velociraptor or deinonychus. I didn’t see any plumage imprints though, which is kind of disappointing.”
“Y-yeah, that is disappointing,” Tyler echoed.
“You’re kind of disappointing, Weinerboy,” Jack said sarcastically while putting Tyler in a friendly headlock.
“Shut up Jack, I told you not to call me that.” Tyler smirked and adjusted his glasses which went askew. He finally pulled away from Jack. “Do you, uh, have it with you?”
“How stupid do you think I am, Weinerboy?” Jack said, pointing to his pint of Kokanee. “I’m half greased. If I’d have brought it with me, I’d end up using it as a swizzle stick or something.” Rhino burst out laughing. Jack slipped a hand under the table, patting the front right pocket of his jeans. The hard metal cylinder was still there.
“Yeah o-o-okay, but seriously guys,” Tyler said cutting in, slightly annoyed, “what the hell is it?”
Rhino turned a snake-like grin at Jack but the expression on Jack’s face wiped it off. He knew this thing was troubling Jack, but he hadn’t really shown it until now.
“Okay,” Jack said, “leaning in. I’ll tell you what I think, but you have to keep this between us.”
Tyler said: “Of-of course Jack, whatever you say.” Rhino quickly nodded.
“Well, I’ve had a better look at this thing than anyone, and I said I didn’t want anyone else to touch it in case it got contaminated. But the truth is, I held it back because I think I know what this thing is and it scares the shit outta me.” Rhino and Tyler leaned forward, anticipating. “I’ve never actually seen anything like this before, not up close anyway, I’ve never seen or held a real one, but guys, I think it’s a–” There was a sudden outburst of cheering from down the table as a large LCD screen over the bar showed the Blue Jays score a run during the evening’s MLB game. 
Jack stared at his friends, unsure if they had heard him over the din. He was about to repeat himself when Rhino said, “Are you serious, Jack?” Jack nodded, his expression grave as stone.
Tyler said, “Jack that makes no sense. H-H-How could it possibly be? That would mean the animal had been...”
“Hunted,” Jack said. “Which raises a whole other problem.”
“What?” Rhino said, still trying to absorb this seemingly nonsensical train of conversation. Jack saw the large round muscles of his arms go tense as if he were flexing.
“Holy shit,” Tyler said, realizing the implications. “I-I-If this were to be true...this is huge!” Jack nodded, unsurprised that Tyler got it right away, given his love of science fiction.
“What?” Rhino said. “Guys, I still don’t–”
There was another outburst from the crowd in the bar but this time it was louder and impossible to ignore. Jack, Rhino, and Tyler all turned their heads toward the commotion. The Pump & Tap’s music man, DJ Bones, was up on the battered and weather beaten stage at the back of the pub with a dim spotlight shining on his plump, bearded, African features. Behind him, Jack could see an assortment of instruments. Jack knew where this was going and cursed the timing of it all. 
“Alright, everaybawdy!” DJ Bones exclaimed. “Welcome to anotha Fry-Day night at the Pump!” The crowd let out a shrill whistle. “It’s time to get this party pumpin’! Tonight is karaoke slash open mic night, and you know what that means...Jack!” 
Everybody in the bar began chanting Jack’s name, and all attention turned directly on Jack Pennywise. He cringed at the same time as his adrenaline started pumping. Normally, Jack relished karaoke nights when they came up once a week, but tonight was an exception. He wanted as little attention on him as possible. There was nothing he could do about it; the crowd wanted what it wanted–and he would have to give it to them. 
Jack gave Rhino and Tyler a final cockeyed glance and pushed himself up from the grimy table. He crossed the bar in ten long strides and leapt up on the stage where he quickly grabbed a battered old electric-acoustic from an equally battered guitar stand. He plugged into a nearby amp, shouldered the guitar strap and approached the mic. He gave the guitar a quick and dirty tuning while DJ Bones gave him a pat on the back and went back to his booth at the side of the stage. The crowd cheered. Jack swooned for a moment, the alcohol suddenly hitting him hard. 
He caught his bearings and finally spoke: “Hey guys, what’s up?” The crowd cheered. “This one’s a classic, I think you all know it. It’s called, Paleontologists Know How to Dig It.” There were some chuckles and mock boo’s from the crowd. Jack grinned. “Yeah, I know, that was lame. Anyways...” 
He began strumming a C-chord and the throng roared as he started singing “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” His crisp baritone reverberated off the walls pleasantly. As he broke out into the chorus, the entire bar joined in, and Jack felt that freedom he always did when up on stage like this. Music was therapeutic for him, and he loved to share it with others. 
As he finished the first chorus, Jack looked up towards the front entrance of the bar and saw someone he thought he recognized, but the man was partly shrouded in shadow. He looked to be well dressed. Jack didn’t have time to think as he entered the second verse, but he kept an eye on the man for the remainder of the song. 
As he finished out the final chorus, the whole bar erupted in cheers of applause. Jack looked to the front again, and saw the man raise a bottle to him, drain it and then slip out the main doors. He didn’t think twice; Jack deftly slipped the guitar off, back on its stand, and dashed through the gauntlet of applause and high-fives after the unknown watcher. Rhino and Tyler looked at each other questioningly as DJ Bones came back out on stage. “Jack Pennywise everaybawdy!” 
“Should we follow him?” Tyler asked Rhino.
Rhino shrugged, trying not to look worried, but making a bad job of it. 


FIVE
Jack burst out the grungy front doors into the warm darkness of an Alberta night in July. He was still a little buzzed, both from the alcohol and the performance, but his head was getting clearer by the minute. He didn’t see anybody. The Red Deer River gurgled somewhere nearby.
“You got some real talent there Jack,” a voice issued from behind him.
Jack whirled to see the silhouette of the man who had watched him. He was tall–probably six-two, the same as Jack’s height–was smoking a cigarette, and leaning up against Jack’s car. 
Jack went into a fury. “Get the fuck off my car, Mysterio.” Jack stood in a pool of dim light streaming down from a cracked and filthy street lamp which failed to illumine the man. “Step out here where I can see you.” The man was grinning. Although he couldn’t see his face, Jack knew he was grinning.
“Hey, I meant no harm,” the man said, “just trying to get your attention. She’s a beauty though,” the man gestured to the car. “Needs some work for sure, but she could be a real show stopper. What year is she? Sixty-eight?”
“Sixty-seven,” Jack said coolly. 
“Kinda looks like the Blue Lady.”
Jack snapped his head up in shock and disbelief. “You know about the Blue Lady?”
“What true Doors fan doesn’t?” the man said. “Jim Morrison once owned a blue Ford Mustang Shelby just like this one, the whereabouts of which today is unknown, and is one of the most sought after collector cars of all time, kinda like the Holy Grail of rockstar cars. It disappeared shortly after his death.”
Jack was surprised to hear all this from the stranger. Although he had never told anyone, he had painted the Shelby as a tribute to the Blue Lady. 
“Okay,” Jack said, “you’ve got my attention, now what do you want?” The man got up from his lean and stepped into the weak light. Jack saw a middle-aged man wearing designer glasses, clothing to match, and a well coiffed, frosted dye job. Jack had only seen the man once before in his life but he recognized him immediately. 
“Your Jon’s brother,” her said, unbelievingly. 
“I wondered if you would remember me,” Crane’s younger sibling replied. “We never actually formally met that day at the university.” He held out his hand. “I’m Dr. Jason Vedder.”
Jack was taken aback for a moment, and did not take Vedder’s hand right away. He expected this man to share the Crane name. He finally took the man’s hand.
“Confused about the name?” Vedder asked and Jack nodded. “Jon and I have the same father but were raised by our respective mothers. Although Jon is ten years older than I am...”
Jack cut him off, “Where is Dr. Crane? I haven’t heard from him in over a month.” 
Vedder gave Jack an impish look that Jack took to mean that he wasn’t going to get the whole truth; not yet anyway.
“That’s why I’m here Jack,” Vedder said. “I need your help.”
Jack locked eyes with Vedder and used his icy blues to pierce Vedder’s hazel pair. 
“Where’s Dr. Crane?” Jack said threateningly. 
“He’s fine Jack, he’s fine. As you know, he’s working for me. He never told you the nature of the work we were doing, did he?”
Jack shook his head, “I haven’t spoken to him since the day you showed up. You didn’t answer my question. Where is he? His hearing is coming up in a week, and his disappearance has all but guaranteed now that he will lose his job. Where the fuck is he?” Jack was getting belligerent; Crane was his mentor and friend. He was worried sick about him. Vedder didn’t reply, just looked uncomfortable. 
Jack sighed. “What kind of work do you do, Vedder?”
Vedder looked relieved at the change in subject. “Engineering mostly. Government projects and some industrial applications, most of it classified.”
“Classified?” Jack paused, considering. Something occurred to him, and if it weren’t for his wild imagination, probably wouldn’t have. “You develop weapons, don’t you? You developed this disease that’s going around. The Night Terror Virus.”
Vedder almost looked taken aback by the accusation but didn’t lose his cool. “Wow, I didn’t see that coming, but no Jack, nothing like that.” Vedder chuckled. “Wow, good imagination, but no. We don’t develop anything as insidious as that. We deal in something much more...fantastic.”
“Then what the fuck do you deal in, Vedder?” Jack began raising his voice. “And why would Jon want to work for an engineering firm? He’s a bloody paleontologist!” Vedder just stared at Jack for a moment and seemed like he wasn’t going to answer. Jack thought he would punch the guy out at any moment. 
Vedder finally spoke. “Cloning,” he said.
“What?” Jack said.
“We specialize in cloning.” He wasn’t telling the truth, and Jack knew it. “Jack, since I need your help I realize I’m in the more delicate position, but I need you to promise me that this conversation will not leave this parking lot.” He paused. “Can I trust you?”
Jack turned away from Vedder toward the bar. He just didn’t know what to make of this whole exchange. What it basically boiled down to was that Jack had absolutely no reason to trust this man, other than his claim that Dr. Crane needed his help. He didn’t say anything for a long time.
“Jack?” Vedder said, “Jon needs you. He asked for you specifically.”
“Dinosaurs can’t be cloned,” Jack said.
“What?” Vedder said confused.
“I’m not stupid Vedder,” Jack lurched. “You’re talking about cloning dinosaurs, and I for one know for a fact that it can’t be done. Jon and I have had this conversation loads of times. Jurassic Park can’t happen.”
Vedder was smiling, revealing an off-white toothy grin. He reached into his coat pocket. “I have something for you Jack,” he said, and pulled out a slim clear CD jewel case containing a disc. He handed it to Jack. Jack reluctantly took it and examined it. It was a recordable DVD. There was a phone number written in black marker on the label. 
“Watch it Jack,” Vedder said, “and I guarantee you’ll change your mind.”
Jack only stared at Vedder questioningly. “You still haven’t told me why you need my help. Why Dr. Crane needs me. Why didn’t he come here himself? Surely you must realize all this wouldn’t be necessary if Jon approached me in person. Why not have him call me at least?”
“Because he can’t Jack. There are no phones where he’s working, and he’s much too busy at any rate. Our work has now consumed his life fully, and I think he might even renounce paleontology altogether.” Vedder grinned again. “Just watch the DVD Jack, and I guarantee you’ll help us. Destroy the disc when you’re done.”
“Help you with what!” Jack yelled. “I still don’t know anything!”
Vedder finished his cigarette and flicked it to the asphalt. He held out his hand to Jack, obviously a parting gesture. Jack reluctantly took the smooth, hairless hand. It was not the hand you would expect of a scientist. It was not rough, dry or cracked from hours of field work, but rather well manicured, smooth, and without hair. He shaves his arm hair off. The guy was definitely vain. 
After a single pump of the handshake, Vedder unexpectedly pulled Jack in close to him. Jack didn’t know if he should expect a knife in the belly or a kiss on the cheek. But instead, all Vedder said was: “Just watch it Jack. My number’s on the disc.” Jack noticed a dark stain under Vedder’s nose, as if it had been bleeding recently...
Vedder turned and began walking out of the parking lot, away from the bar down the highway. Although pinpricks of starlight canvassed the sky, it wasn’t enough. The darkness swallowed Vedder whole and Jack lost sight of him. A snatch of a poem he remembered reading–he had no idea where–occurred to him then: 
My first thought was that he lied in every word...
Jack believed Vedder’s story no more than he believed in Santa Claus. 
He opened the door to the Blue Lady and tossed the disc onto the passenger seat. He took one last look towards the road but saw only black. He went back into the bar.


SIX
Jack didn’t know what to do. He had lost his father at twelve; Crane was all the family he had left, other than his mother that is, technically. As far as Jack was concerned, he had lost both his parents the day of the accident; the catastrophe that he had somehow survived completely unscathed–except for the hit he had taken on the head. Jack rubbed his scalp and felt the bump just inside his hairline that he had received thirteen years ago. 
The bump that sometimes gave him headaches. 
The aches always felt like they originated in that bump and fanned out to the rest of his skull. He supposed he should have felt fortunate to be ejected out the front windshield of a car and escape with only a bump on the noggin. But he didn’t. He didn’t feel guilt–not at first–that came later. James made sure of that, and their mother. But he still felt like he owed something. Like a debt, for his life.
Something had happened to him that day that he couldn’t remember; he was sure of it. Something important... something...
“Incredible, isn’t it?”
Jack whirled around on the spot, swearing he heard a voice. There stood Rhino in the door of the pub, staring at Jack confusedly. Jack gaped at him. 
“What did you say?” he said.
“I said it’s incredible, isn’t it? The stars I mean.” Rhino pointed upward with one bulky arm. “No matter how many times I see that big milky canvas up there, I get goose bumps.”
Jack didn’t say anything, only stared at Rhino, almost through him. Rhino felt a chill from Jack’s gaze. “You alright man?”
For a moment Jack seemed not to notice anything was said, but then he snapped out of it. “Yeah fine, why?”
“Everybody was wondering where you went. I told them that maybe you went out for a smoke, but they all know you don’t smoke so they sent me out here to find you. What happened? After the song you darted out the door like your ass was on fire and the water trough was outside. You’ve been out here for ten minutes. What’s going on?”
“Nothing man,” he said, “just needed some air, that’s all.”
“It’s that...thing you found, isn’t it?” 
Jack didn’t say anything at first, only smiled and clapped his pal on the shoulder. “Come on man,” Jack said, “I’m starting to sober up.” 
And they went back into the Pump and Tap.




3. Flats


Jack left the Pump half an hour later, after drowning in another three beers. His encounter with Vedder had left him feeling pissed off and empty. He didn’t trust Vedder as far as he could throw him, but what choice did he have? Dr. Crane was obviously in some sort of trouble, possibly even dead. And they either needed Jack to help Crane, or continue his work where he left off; whatever that was. If Crane was dead, Jack sure as hell would not be bullied by these people. He would bring Vedder to justice if even just one hair on Crane’s head was out of place when he found him. Jack did not forgive easily, and he had James to thank for that, but he didn’t have time to think about James. 
Not now.
Despite cheers from his friends for an encore performance, Jack stayed with Rhino at the bar, had ordered three Kokanee Gold’s each, and guzzled them. Rhino had then patted Jack on the shoulder and stumbled off to the little boy’s room. Jack just stood there with his back to the bar, staring intently into the crowded Pub and wracking his brain with everything he had just learned. Then, with a final pissed off groan, he flicked a twoonie onto the bar which Jake–the bartender–accepted gratefully, and stormed back off into the night. As he pushed on toward the door he took a last look over his shoulder and saw Tyler, still sitting at the table and staring straight at Jack, about a dozen empty beer bottles in front of him. Saying Tyler liked to drink was like saying that nympho’s loved sex. The look of worry on Tyler’s face sent a ping of regret floating up Jack’s spine, but it fleeted quickly. He went out.
Although he had sobered up considerably during his confrontation with Vedder, the three beers he had guzzled in the last thirty minutes sent him right back over the edge. He clumsily fumbled his keys out of his jeans pocket and stumbled over to the Blue Lady. Inserting the key into the door lock proved a challenge in his current state, and Jack scratched the paint around the keyhole more than once trying to do it. He finally felt the metal slide into the opening and turned the key but did not feel the familiar resistance when the door lock disengaged. Momentarily confused, Jack looked through the window at the plunger. It was all the way up, already open. He cursed, pulled the keys out, and opened the door. He must have forgotten to lock it when he threw that disc Vedder gave him on the seat. But then again, he never locked his doors; not out here. 
Fuck I’m wasted. 
Laughing to himself, he collapsed into the faded black leather driver’s seat and slammed the door shut. He managed to start the car without difficulty and, engaging the car in reverse, slammed the gas pedal to the floor and carved the wheel sharply as the car jetted backwards away from the bar, forcing the vehicle into a one-hundred and eighty degree spin and coming to a stop–his head however, did not. 
Whoa, just take it ease old girl, take it ease. 
He wasn’t sure what that meant and, laughing to himself again, put the car in drive and peeled out of the parking lot, down the deserted highway towards his trailer.
Maybe I’ll see that fuckhead Vedder on the way home, and give him a ride. Or maybe I’ll just give the Blue Lady a new hood ornament.
The anger rose up his throat again like projectile vomit and spewed out of his mouth in the form of curses and swearing. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been this mad. In fact, only James had had the ability to piss him off this much– a talent Jack’s brother had relished with much aplomb. 
As much as I hate you James, I love you twice as much. I feel like we’ve just been through another of our epic fights, even though you’re three hundred clicks away and six feet under. You cursed me just about as much as you saved me... 


TWO
“Jack, I swear to god, if you don’t give me that damn hypo, I’m gonna fucking kill you.” James rounded on Jack with the characteristic limp that always made Jack cringe. It wasn’t like it was his fault James was limping or anything, but James always had a knack for making Jack feel bad for everything that wasn’t his fault. “Jack, I mean it. I’ll fucking kill you, I swear.”
“No, Jamie,” Jack smiled nonchalantly. He knew James hated being called that. He gripped the syringe tightly behind his back as James tried to tower over him and make a lunge for it, deftly sidestepping. “Look at yourself man, you’re pathetic! You’re a fucking junkie!”
“Shut up, Jack! Mom’s right upstairs. You want her to know that I’m a doper? You want to do that to her after you already took Dad from her? You want to take me too?” Jack’s face screwed up into a fist of rage and hatred. So finally it comes out. He looked up the plywood basement stairs to the kitchen. He wished their mother would appear at the top of those stairs right now. God how he wished it. But Jennifer Pennywise was sleeping. When she wasn’t working, she was sleeping.
“Hey man, I never asked you to stay and take care of me. She did! I’m fucking fifteen, Jamie. I can take care of myself! If you wanna punish me for Dad, that’s fine, but don’t blame your drug problems on me. You’re your own fuck up in that department.”
“You little shit. You don’t even begin to know what I’ve been through. The pain. The pain I’m still in. You think I got this limp for show?” Jack had swallowed this bullshit before, had chewed it thoroughly; so much so that pieces of it were still stuck in his teeth. But not this time. Not ever again. This time he’d kick that shit and stick it to the wall.
“You’ve been fine for over a year, Jamie.” He held up the syringe. “You need this crap as much as I need a fucking hole in the head.” Despite their seven year age difference, Jack had sprouted up in the past twelve months, and now had almost half an inch on James. Not much–but at least now James couldn’t push him so easily. James still outweighed him by about fifty pounds though, and most of that was muscle. 
“I had to give up my career for you Jack. To come home and take care of you. Someone had to. I’m still on disability and the bills still need paying. You think Mom likes working two jobs and sleeping three hours a night?”
“That’s because she coddles you like a fucking baby! Your career in the Army ended when you took that piece of shrapnel in the Gulf. You’re fucking fine James, you should be the one working two jobs, but noooooo, James is Mommy’s precious fucking baby. He needs to stay home, get better and watch wittle bitty Jackie. Jackie, who everybody blames for the crash. Jackie who should have died instead of Dad.”
There was an awkward pause where neither spoke.
“Yeah,” James said coldly, “maybe you should have.”
Jack felt a knot in his stomach untie and slide through his body. He was on the verge of tears but he wouldn’t cry. He couldn’t. Not in front of this bastard. Incredibly, Jack smiled and held the hypo out in front of him, like a treat for the dog James to beg for. James made another of his clumsy leaps forward and Jack dodged him easily. As James wheeled about to take in Jack’s new position, Jack smiled again and swung. The tip of the needle imbedded into James’ back, just below the shoulder blade, punching through like a bullet through cardboard. Then, in one harsh movement, Jack twisted his wrist and snapped the tip off. James gave out a low grunt that Jack relished. He then dropped the cylinder of the hypo on the hard floor and stomped it with a well placed Nike, cloudy milk spilling out. 
James didn’t do anything for a whole minute–or what seemed a whole minute to Jack–only stared. He didn’t even reach for the needle tip in his back. He just stared. Then, with a swiftness that belied his handicap, he pulled a switchblade from out of his cargo pants pocket, popped the blade, and advanced on Jack. Jack may have had half an inch on his bro, but he had never felt smaller in his life than he did in that moment. 
With the knife held out in front of him like a blind man’s walking stick, James lunged for Jack’s midsection, crazed hate firing his normally demure blue eyes. Jack again dodged his brother, but not so easily this time. It seemed the anger and hatred swelling up in James had made his body forget his handicap–at least for the time being. Jack grabbed James’s knife hand and attempted to wrestle the weapon away. With muscles corded tightly, James wrenched from Jack in one strong pull and mercilessly elbowed him in the cheek. Jack saw stars flash out in front of his eyes, but he did not lose consciousness. Instead he just stumbled backwards and struck his back up against something hard: the wood framing of the unfinished basement wall. With his vision still momentarily clouded by nebulas of light, Jack felt a new pain, though now familiar to him since the crash. It started in the bump above his forehead, just inside the hairline, and slowly began to spread, encompassing his brain, cancelling out all other discomfort. Later in his life–much later in fact–Jack would come to associate that pain with the Geist, but he knew nothing of that now. Now he just focused on that pain and instantly his vision cleared... 
James was standing over him, a murderous look filling his eyes, along with a glaze of tears that began to wash down his cheeks. He still held the knife and looked prepared to use it.
“You took everything from me Jack,” James said. “First Dad, then Mom, and then my life, my career. If I didn’t take care of you, you’d be a starving crying baby, with no Mommy or Daddy to save you. And this is the thanks I get. You ungrateful little prick.” And he smiled. “Say hi to Dad for me.”
James plunged the knife.


THREE
Flashing lights, blue and red, swam before Jack’s eyes. He was confused about their source, until he looked up into the Blue Lady’s rear-view mirror. 
Shit. 
He knew he had to pull over, but first he wanted to determine just how drunk he still was. There might be a way out of this. How far was he from home? Jack forced all of his attention on the centre line of the dirty worn highway. It wavered and swayed before him and as hard as he tried to keep the Blue Lady on a parallel course with it, he drifted back and forth across the road. It was like being on the deck of a ship at sea. 
He was still hammered. Completely. 
Shit. 
He began to panic. If he got another DUI he was fucked, big time. Besides the huge fines and possible jail time he would incur, the Blue Lady would be impounded. He’d have to either hitchhike to work, or tent it at the dig site. Or bike. The thought made Jack laugh to himself. If worse came to worst, he could move his trailer to the dig site if he lost his privilege to drive. Except there was one problem with that: his trailer had four flat tires and replacing them wouldn’t be cheap; he wasn’t exactly on a paleontologist’s salary yet. The knot in his stomach moved to his throat as he slowly applied the brakes and began to pull over. The Blue Lady slowed and he began to cruise onto the highway’s soft shoulder. A headache came on. 
Not now. 
It was swift and brutal in its inception; in fact, Jack couldn’t ever remember a headache coming on this badly. It struck like a viper and quickly rose to a crescendo Jack could barely stand. White light flashed before his eyes and seemed to surround him like an aura... Suddenly there was a loud “POP!” and the Blue Lady was fishtailing all over. Jack fought desperately with the steering wheel as the swerves got worse. With a terrible finality, the car spun, one hundred eighty degrees off the road and into the desert. When his head cleared, he saw the flashing lights again, roughly fifty yards away. Dust swirled in those lights. The police cruiser had stopped on the highway in front of him. The car’s interior dome light was on and Jack saw the officer inside. His head was down; bent over something Jack could only assume was a ticket book. 
What the fuck just happened? 
He turned the car off, leaving the keys in the ignition, fumbled for the door handle, popped it open with a loud creak of unoiled hinges, and literally fell out of the car onto his side. He quickly snapped his head up. The officer was looking right at him. He reached for something in the cruiser. 
Probably the breathalyser...
Flat on his stomach in the Alberta desert, inhaling dust, Jack turned towards his Shelby Mustang and saw the tire on the rear driver’s side was flat, illuminated in alternating patches of blue and red coming from the police vehicle. He smiled. He pushed himself up off the ground and dashed to the trunk, pushing down on it to pop it open; a trick only he knew.
Time to change a tire. 


FOUR
Flashing lights, blue and red, swam before Jack’s eyes. He felt a prick, almost like a pinch in his lower abdomen, and it almost overwhelmed the pain in his head. Almost. But as the lower pinch got worse, so did the upper, the two seeming to fight for dominance over which would rule his attention. What exactly was that pinch from? Jack looked down and saw something he couldn’t quite reconcile: it was the hilt of a knife...a switchblade, he knew. But how did he know that? Why was it down there, in his belly? Confused, Jack looked up and stared James directly in the eyes. Pale blues to pale blues. James still had that murderous look in his, but there was something else there. What was it? Jack considered and then it came to him. 
Satisfaction. 
James was happy about what he had done. He had stabbed his little brother in the gut and was happy about it. He had his revenge for Dad. Dad had died. Jack had survived. He didn’t know why or how, but he had survived. And it wasn’t his fault. None of this was. James was wounded in the Gulf War, got hooked on pain meds, became a junkie, and it wasn’t Jack’s fault. Mom had to work as a school teacher and at the Banff Springs Hotel Spa in order to support her two sons in a very expensive town, but it wasn’t his fault. Dad had had life insurance, but Banff was expensive–so expensive–and Jennifer was too proud to take money from her parents. Too proud to sell this half million dollar home with the unfinished basement. Too proud to move to Calgary where living was cheaper. After all, teachers are grossly underpaid, and although the insurance hadn’t run out yet, Jennifer had to do something–it wouldn’t last forever. None of this would. She still didn’t make enough, not by a long shot. They would be out of this house in less than a year. Bank on it. 
And it wasn’t his fault. 
Suddenly Jack felt two pains at once, excruciating and blinding. He let out a scream that he was sure would break glass. He snapped back to reality and James was still lock-eyed with him. Fire burned in Jack, a fire that kindled in his head, and James must have seen it, for his gaze suddenly faltered from Jack’s and he looked uncertain, scared even. Jack continued his howl of pain and sudden brightness flared from his skull. It was a light so intense Jack thought it had to be a nuclear explosion. It burned his retinas and seared his scalp. And then, just as quickly as the light had come, it vanished...  
The next thing he remembered, he was seated on the basement floor with his back to the wall, his knees tucked up to his chest. James was on the other side of the room, a crumpled heap at the base of the clothes dryer. The door of the dryer was dented severely inward. 
Jack didn’t know what to make of this.
Groaning, he straggled to his feet, momentarily dizzy. His head was sore, but not bad; the headache was leaving. He looked at his hands, saw blood, and immediately remembered the knife. It was there, on the basement floor, right beside where Jack had been slouched against the wall, the blade slick with red. Panicking, Jack quickly reached down to the bottom of his t-shirt and found the hole. 
It had all happened. It was all real. James had stabbed him.
Gingerly, he laced his fingers through the hole in his shirt...and found nothing. Not even pain where the knife had entered his body. Jack quickly lifted his shirt and examined his skin. He couldn’t even find a red mark. It was just as it had been when he awoke that morning; smooth with a light coating of peach fuzz. Jack was flabbergasted. He heard a moan from across the room. James was coming around. 
Not knowing what to do, Jack quickly picked up the knife and the remains of the shattered hypodermic needle and slipped them into his cargos. Without looking back, he dashed up the basement stairs and burst out into the kitchen. He made his way down the hall and then up the stairs to the second floor. He fled into his room, locked the door, and hid the contents of his pocket under his mattress. He collapsed onto his bed and cradled his head. 
Maybe the headache wasn’t leaving after all. 
Laying there in that pathetic pose, Jack fell asleep, and dreamed.
He didn’t see James again for a long time. 


FIVE
The trunk was a complete mess: jumper cables, old boxes, CD’s, DVD’s, guitar strings, school textbooks and papers, empty beer and liquor bottles, even a few old bones; scraps that were unimportant finds but Jack meant to keep for reference–or something. He ploughed through the refuse, frantically searching for it. How much time did he have? Jack stopped and hazarded a peek around the edge of the trunk. The officer was out of the cruiser now but had ducked back in for something. 
Definitely the breathalyser. 
He focused back on the trunk. Where the fuck was it? He dove back in; it was dark, but he would know it when he felt it. His hands brushed paper, steel, bone. He grasped the tire iron and threw it on the ground. Might need that. The spare tire was in a compartment underneath all this junk but that hardly mattered. All he cared about was the... 
His hand clasped onto smooth glass, and smiling victoriously, Jack pulled it from the trunk.
“Sir,” said a firm and calm voice, “please step away from your vehicle with your hands raised.” Jack froze. The cop had snuck up on him. “Sir, I have pulled my sidearm. I don’t know what you are doing back there, but I am going to assume you are a threat. As I come around your vehicle, please show me your hands raised or I will have to do what is necessary.”
Jack said nothing. Didn’t know what to say. He heard the cop sigh and continue his cautious approach, sidearm and flashlight pointed at the car. Thinking quickly, Jack dropped down to his butt. He hoped to God this worked. 
The cop took ten more steps and could finally see behind the vehicle, but the suspect was not there. He gasped audibly and the flashlight beam fell. And there he found him. Jack was seated on the ground with his back to the bumper, knees tucked up to his chest and his hands down between them, clutching something the cop could not make out. 
It could be a gun. 
“Sir,” the cop said, “I need you to show me your hands. I will be administering a sobriety test, failing which you will be placed under arrest. Do you understand?”
For a moment Jack said nothing, just sat there, building up the balls to do this. 
Now or never... 
Jack said, “Boy officer, I’ll tell ya, that just scared the shit outta me. Going off the road I mean.” Jack looked up at the cop with icy blue eyes that conveyed genuine fright. Jack wanted him to think he was in shock after swerving off the road. “There’s a cliff,” he continued, “not another ten yards from here. I coulda went over.”
The cop relaxed a little and looked out beyond the car. He probably couldn’t see anything in the dark, but Jack was telling the truth. The cop lowered his sidearm but didn’t holster it. He still couldn’t see Jack’s hands.
“Well the important thing is that you are alive, sir. And despite what just happened, I am still going to have to administer a sobriety test.” He unclipped the breathalyser from his belt. “Do you understand, sir?”
Jack nodded. “Yeah, but I need something to just calm my nerves down first.” 
And Jack lifted up what was between his legs. At first the cop clearly didn’t register exactly what this crazy man was about to do, and by the time it was too late, any chance of a drunk driving arrest went wandering off into the desert, lost forever.


SIX
Jack lifted the bottle of vodka and smirked as it came into plain view of the blonde-haired, blue eyed man before him. This is gonna suck, he thought, and twisted the unopened cap off–the faint yet familiar sound of snapping aluminum tabs echoing into the night–and poured the contents down his throat. The vodka splashed hotly through his gullet, burned achingly. Jack had never been one for drinking straight booze, but desperate times called for desperate measures. He got down about three gulps before the officer slapped the bottle away, but it was already too late; if he wasn’t hammered before, he sure as hell was now.
“What the hell are you doing?” the officer said.
“I te-told you,” Jack said, slightly slurring now, “I ne-needed something to calm my nerves. I had an un-unopened bottle of vodka in the trunk, so-so I took a drink. And seeing as how you didn’t give me the breathalyser before I took that drink, ye-you can’t give it to me now. You can’t prove I was drinking drive.” The officer swayed before Jack’s blurring vision and he grinned stupidly.
“Sir,” the officer said, sounding irritated, “I saw you swerving all over the road before you went off.”
“Flat tire,” Jack said.
“What?”
“I said I gotta flat tire,” and he pointed drunkenly at the rear driver side of the car. “That’s why I was swerving.” With a sense of irritation the officer moved away to look for himself. He then looked at the front of the car with a puzzled look on his face. He began to circle the vehicle. 
What is he doing? 
The officer came around to Jack’s other side, his flashlight harsh in the dark. “Actually sir,” he said, “you’ve got four flat tires.”
Jack snapped his eyes up to the officer, uncomprehending. “What! Could you repeat that? Did you say four?”
“That’s right sir, you heard correctly. You’ve got four flat tires. I’m surprised you maintained as much control as you did.” The officer had a look of smug satisfaction on his face.
“Shit, that’s gonna cost me,” Jack said sheepishly.
“That’s right, sir. I may not be able to bust you for drunk driving, but any fine you would have gotten from me sure as shit ain’t more expensive than four new tires for a sixty-eight Shelby.” 
“Sixty-seven,” Jack said bitterly.
“Whatever. In any case sir, I can still throw you in the drunk tank for the night. You are intoxicated in a public space and have no means of getting home.”
Jack grinned. “Actually sir, this is private property, and I do.”
The officer glared at Jack, looking around. “Fine then, you’re intoxicated and trespassing on private property.”
Jack was beaming now. “Sir, surely I can’t be arrested for drinking on my own property?” The officer’s jaw dropped. He trained his flashlight and it splashed across silver. It was a chrome Airstream trailer, set on blocks in the dirt. A short driveway connected the highway to the trailer’s front door. The skin of the Airstream was pock marked and weathered, like an adult whose face was ravaged by acne as an adolescent. 
“This is your residence, sir?”
Jack was on his feet now, leaning against the trunk drunkenly. “Yes sir, it is. I’m a pe-paleontological student out in the badlands. This is my summer abode.”
For a wonder the officer actually laughed...and patted Jack on the back. “Okay sir, first I’m going to need to see some ID. Then you’re going to take me to your trailer and prove to me that it’s yours. If you can do that, then we’re done here.”
Jack gaped, not believing what he had just heard. “Uh, yes sir, my wallet’s just in the car.”
The cop nodded and Jack stumbled over to the open door of his car, leaned in, almost collapsing in the process, and came out holding a wallet and a CD case.
“What’s that?” 
“Oh, just some music I need to listen to,” Jack said, handing the officer his driver’s license. “I’m a musician in my spare time.”
When Jack had leaned into the car to get his wallet, Vedder’s disc was there, staring him in the face, taunting him, bringing back the night’s events like a flash flood and hitting him with grief for Dr. Crane. He couldn’t forget about Crane. He scooped the disc up with his wallet.
“Jack Pennywise. Okay Jack, show me your home.” Jack nodded and started toward the trailer, the officer following close.
When they got to the door, Jack fumbled with his keys before finally getting the right one in the lock and opening it up. Jack reached in, flicked a switch and light flooded the trailer. Jack could see from the look on the cop’s face that the trailer was not at all what he had expected. 
Everything was in a neat array, not a thing out of place. It was almost as if this were a trailer for sale in a showroom. Stepping into the Airstream, the cop found himself in the kitchen, with miniature versions of sink, stove, and refrigerator, all spotless and gleaming. To the right of the kitchen was a living/dining room with a foldable table for dining, upon which were piled many paleontological textbooks and notebooks, neatly stacked, as well as a laptop notebook that Jack had left on with no screensaver. The screen showed an open media player and a list of albums presumably stored on the hard drive. The list was incredible; everything was there, from CCR to Nirvana to Bach to Clapton. The bottom of the screen showed a song count: over ten thousand.
Next to the table was a small sofa that sat across from a small open concept cupboard that supported a twenty-six inch LCD screen atop a DVD player. The shelves beneath the TV sported a handsome collection of DVD movies and television shows: the Star Wars Trilogy, Lord of the Rings, Fight Club, Requiem for a Dream, Friends, the Simpsons, Family Guy, Seinfeld, and Lost. Jack moved through the kitchen towards the back of the trailer, flicking on a light in the small bedroom which reflected the rest of the trailer: immaculate, neat, and looking unlived in. The bed was a neatly made queen with a plain flat shelf above it which supported a small library of tattered paperbacks, many of which mirrored Jack’s movie collection: Lord of the Rings, Fight Club, Dune, Wheel of Time, Dark Tower, The Stand, The Golden Compass, the DaVinci Code, Jurassic Park and voluminous other volumes by Stephen King, Robert Jordan, Chuck Palahniuk, Frank Herbert, and Michael Crichton. To one side of the bed were two guitar stands, each holding up an instrument, one acoustic, and one electric. The electric was plugged into a small Peavey practice amp. The guitars were both Ibanez. 
The cop followed Jack into the room. When he got there he found Jack holding out a picture frame and apparently barely able to stand up under his own power, leaning hard against the bed. The cop took the frame, which was plain, black and wooden. The picture showed Jack clearly, standing next to a beautiful young lady with raven black hair and a vanilla complexion. Behind them was a panorama of the Rockies and the faint blocks of buildings in a valley far below. 
“Pretty girl,” the cop said. “Is this Sulphur Mountain?”
“Ye-Yeah,” Jack drunkenly replied, “I’m from Banff.”
“No kidding. Beautiful town, one of my favorites.”
“Well there you have it.”
“Huh?”
“Pe-proof. If this wasn’t my h-home, how would I get in, and how would I find a picture of me with my ex-girlfriend.”
“Oh, yeah right. Well I guess that’s...” The cop suddenly stopped and clutched his head. 
“Hey are you–” Jack stopped midsentence. “Shit dude, your ears.”
“What?”
“Their bleeding.” The cop stumbled slightly.
“Hey man,” Jack said, “you better get that checked out. There’s some bug goin’ around right now, Night Terror Virus, or something, and I think it’s serious. You better get checked. Do you need an ambulance?”
“No,” the cop said stubbornly. “I’ll be fine. But I better go. Take care, Mr. Pennywise.”
Jack saw the shimmering image of the officer fade out the door of his trailer and then collapsed onto his bed.
Jesus Christ, I haven’t been this drunk since high school. He laughed.
He rolled onto his side and there were his guitars, staring him in the face. Yeah, Jack thought, why not? It is Christmas, after all. Again laughing stupidly, Jack grabbed the Gio, his Ibanez electric, and flicked on the amp. Despite being greased beyond recognition and lying on his back, he immediately began hammering out the blues riff from Honky Tonk Women, singing/slurring loudly and extremely out of tune. It wasn’t long before he realized he couldn’t remember the words. “I need to hear the tune, I thinks.” 
Jack tossed the guitar roughly onto the bed, the strings whining through the amp in distorted protest and stumbled back to the front of the trailer. His laptop was still on the table, just as he had left it.
And beside it was Vedder’s disc.
“Now that’s interesting,” he said, “I forgot all about you.”
He put Honky Tonk Women–stored somewhere on his laptop–out of his mind and instead took Vedder’s disc out of its case and popped it into the nearby DVD player. He grabbed the TV remote after a couple of tries and plopped down on the floor in front of the display. When he finally turned the TV on, all he could see was a dark blurry image, then camera came into focus, which took care of the blur, but not the dark. The image was murky, like the bottom of a muddy pond, and Jack thought he could make out movement. 
“What the fuck is this shit?” Jack said.
Suddenly there were voices on the video, silent whispers.
“Hold it,” said an indistinct woman’s voice. There was something odd about the voice, but Jack couldn’t place it in his current state.
“Okay, get ready,” said another. 
Jack got the impression the camera was moving and then suddenly there was a glaring of white as a strong light was flicked on and the camera adjusted its iris accordingly. The view was all over the place, a violent blur of images, and then finally came to rest on the most bizarre and unbelievable scene Jack had ever witnessed in his life. His jaw dropped in shock. 
“No, it can’t be.”
Jack was beginning to feel lightheaded and dizzy, the images on the video flashing through his mind: a white room, bright lights, a cage, Vedder, feathers, blood... 
Jack suddenly felt very sick. 
“Dr. Crane, where are you?”
And with that, he finally passed out.




4. Je T’Adore


He was surrounded by fog. Or was it smoke? 
 Music played in the fog. Jack recognized the tune immediately: duh-duh, duh-duh-duh, duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh, duh-duh-duh. 
It was Iron Man. 
He felt a peculiar buzzing vibration in his right leg which was somehow familiar, but he immediately forgot that as the voice of Ozzy Osbourne came belting out of the fog towards him. He screamed. 
“What’s the matter Jack?” 
Jack whirled on the spot to look up at a dark, ominous figure, hooded and cloaked. Iron Man played on in the fog.
“I said, what’s the matter Jack?” the voice asked again.
“I know you,” Jack said.
The man laughed heartily. There was a woman with him–her hair was on fire. “Je t’adore,” she said. 
The man stopped laughing. “Of course you know me Jack! You’re on the path to God. How can you see what’s right in front of you, if you don’t open your eyes?”


Jack opened his eyes and a million things seemed to be happening at once. The bottoms of his feet hurt and his cell phone was ringing, and vibrating, in his front right jeans pocket, creating a peculiar buzzing tremor that travelled down his leg. The ringtone blared loudly in the quiet trailer; the tone was Iron Man. The song gave him a feeling of dread but he had no idea why. His head felt like it had been through a thickness planer. 
The phone continued to ring; in a few seconds his voicemail would pick up and it would stop. Stop Iron Man. For some reason the thought comforted him. But before he knew what he was doing, Jack reached into his pocket, pressed the green answer button on the phone’s keypad, and said hello. He half expected some monstrously demonic voice to respond.
“Jack?” a meek voice said instead. “Wh-where the heck are you?”
“Weinerboy, is that you?” Jack said bewildered.
“Jack, shut up. There’s no time. Where are you? McFall just arrived at the site.”
Tyler’s words resonated hollowly in Jack’s ears. McFall? Why would I care about McFall at the... 
“OH SHIT!” Jack exclaimed. 
“Oh God. J-J-Jack where are you?”
“Ty, you gotta stall them, do anything, just...I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Uh Jack, I don’t–” Tyler’s voice cut off as Jack snapped his phone shut and leapt to his feet in a panic. He needed to get to the dig site–and fast. But first he needed water. And aspirin. His head pounded with the regular familiarity of the morning after a night of heavy drinking, and his throat was parched. He quickly opened the fridge and grabbed a bottle of water, went into the bathroom, popped open a bottle of Tylenol, and then swallowed the pills and the water at a go. He checked himself in the mirror; he looked like shit but didn’t care. He had to get to the site. 
Jack realized he had very little recall of the events of the previous evening. He wasn’t even sure how he got home in one piece. He remembered playing some CCR at the Pump, remembered chasing after Vedder into the parking lot...and it kinda got hazy after that. He exited the bathroom and looked into his bedroom. His Ibanez was laying face down on the comforter and his amp was on. The picture of him and Natalie on Sulphur Mountain was also on the bed. The picture jarred something in his head.
I got pulled over last night didn’t I? But what happened? I didn’t get a DUI?
Before he could ponder the question any further, his cell rang once more, the riff from Iron Man blazing in the morning still, and vibrated against his leg. Oh god, Jack thought. He answered.
“Jack, it’s Rhino. Dude where the fuck are you? McFall’s just pulled up.” 
“I’m still at home,” Jack said. “I guess I passed out last night. I’m not even sure how I got here. Shit, I don’t even know if my car’s here. Hold on.”
As Jack dashed to the front door of the trailer, Rhino said: “Do you need me to come get you?” Jack pulled the latch and the door flung open on a warm desert breeze, slapping against the reflective metal skin of the trailer. A harsh bright sun beat down into Jack’s retinas from a pale blue sky, and then he saw her. The Blue Lady, the same pale blue as the sky, resting about fifty feet from the trailer and about another twenty five feet from the edge of a steep desert valley. Jack laughed to himself nervously, noticing the car’s close proximity to the edge. Shit, that would’ve really sucked.
“It’s okay man, my car is here. I’ll be there in fifteen. Stall McFall until then.”
“Will do bud,” and Rhino clicked off.
Jack turned back into the trailer to look for his keys. He always put them on the dining room table, but today they were not there. In Jack’s mind, that left only one other option.
“I left them in the ignition,” he said to himself, then patted his front right pocket and realized they were there, cursing his own stupidity. He pulled them out by the keychain–a Lego version of Boba Fett. He then dashed to the refrigerator, grabbed another bottle of water and made for the open doorway, leaping to the ground, grabbing the trailer’s door and slamming it shut all in one fluid motion. 
He didn’t notice the freeze-framed image on his television set as he left.
He dashed to the Blue Lady; the driver’s side door stood open and the interior was coated with a light film of desert dust that puffed into the air when Jack sat down, like hundreds of tiny rockets propelled into the stratosphere. He turned the key and the engine labored into life. He half expected it to be dead. Well, that solves one world issue, Jack thought. Gingerly he popped the clutch and shifted into first gear as he applied the gas. The Blue Lady lurched forward awkwardly then came to a dead halt. What the hell? This time he lead-footed the gas but the Mustang didn’t budge an inch. He got out of the car and what he saw defied all logic, but there it was. 
All four of his tires were flat. 
A lump that had started to grow in his throat since he was so rudely awoken only minutes earlier began to expand exponentially. 
How in the...? 
None of it made sense to him, but he didn’t care; he had to get to the site, immediately. He pulled his cell out of his pocket. He would have to call Rhino. Jack flipped the phone open and quickly browsed his contacts list to find Rhino. He pressed the green button to connect the call. Nothing happened. Jack took the phone away from his ear and saw the dreaded message displayed on the screen: No signal. 
FUCK! Not now...
Jack went berserk as his frustration mounted. He threw his phone into the sky and did not bother to see where it came down. Although convenient, cell phones were notoriously unreliable out here in the wastelands. The nearest tower in Drumheller was a relic. The lump exploded in his throat and Jack felt like he was suffocating. If he missed this, if he fucked this up, McFall could have him kicked out of school, and without Dr. Crane around to back him up, Jack was as good as fucked. He had to get there. Had to show McFall what he had found yesterday... He patted his jeans pocket, and the object was still there. Thank God.
He would run. He had no other option. It wouldn’t be pretty, but he would run. It would only take him about... 
Another idea popped into his head. Jack grinned. He would be late–nothing could stop that–but if the guys could stall McFall, even for just fifteen minutes, he would make it. Jack ran to the rear of his trailer and hit the dirt beside the rear axle. There was a ton of crap stored under there: boxes, equipment, cables–some plugged in–but Jack didn’t care. He wrestled it all out of the way to clear a path to what he wanted. 


TWO
“Hey Chunk, do the truffle shuffle for us!”
Tyler Brown stumbled down the hallway and away from the accusations. The bathroom was only twenty feet away, and inside he would find solace. Inside he would be alone. 
“C’mon Chunk, what kind of ice cream do I got here?”
As Tyler reached the lavatory door he cursed “The Goonies” and all those responsible for it. The ironic thing was it had been his absolute favorite movie as a kid. But now, at 15, Tyler was finding himself being compared to one of his beloved childhood heroes and loathing every second of it. A tear seeped from the corner of his eye as he burst through the door, unoiled hinges protesting but gleefully drowning out the voices and finally muting them altogether when it closed. 
The bathroom was without windows, but still conveyed the feel of an overcast, sunless day, devoid of life or color. The sharp odor of ammonia and pine-sol assaulted the nostrils upon entering. Tyler chose the stall furthest from the door and slammed it shut when he got inside. He quickly unshouldered his backpack and sat down on the toilet, face in his hands and sobbing uncontrollably. The fit lasted less than a minute and he felt a little better when it was over. Tyler cursed the body he was given by the DNA of his parents. It was their fault he was fat. They were fat too. Well, mom had been, before she died. 
Without any precognitive cue in his conscious brain, Tyler unzipped his pack and removed the mini bag of Doritos within. Cool Ranch, his favorite. He tore the bag open and as the aroma struck his nostrils he smiled and devoured the treat. When he was done he realized he felt the same. He was still fat, and would now probably get fatter. Cursing, he tossed the empty bag to the floor. Eating made him feel good, but when he was done he immediately regretted it. He felt like shit. He was sick of being Chunk. He was sick of being fat. He was sick of...sick...sick...
Sick?
The word struck him as something of a revelation and he was amazed he had never thought of it before. Tyler deftly got to his knees in the stall and leaned his head as if preparing to talk to the toilet. 
And then he shoved his fingers down his throat. 


Tyler Brown sucked in his minimal gut, and thought he was going insane. He was a worrier by nature, and this business with Jack had him wrapped up in knots. He needed a drink, badly. Jack was the closest thing he had to a friend out here, and Rhino; the other students out here seemed to tolerate him as a courtesy, but he had developed no real relationships. He knew they all thought he was a loser, and he knew they were right. Luckily, his love of dinosaurs had always prevailed. He wore the same jeans and a red Adidas t-shirt–one size too large–that attempted to cover up a slightly protruding belly, day in and day out. He was not fat by any means; not like his father, who’d had a barrel to rival an oil drum. He would never let himself get that bad, and whenever he suspected he might be slipping down that slope, he simply stopped eating. He had done it a good half dozen times in his life now: eating as little as possible and drinking liters of water–or straight liquor–every day until he felt better. Usually this process lasted no longer than a month, but in that short time he often lost as much as twenty pounds. Tyler had an eating disorder, but he didn’t really see it that way. He only didn’t eat when he wanted to lose weight, and once he achieved that, he ate again. He was too lazy to start exercising, and besides, Jack and Rhino would probably just make fun of him. 
Tyler’s stomach growled and he looked down at it through glasses that were always filthy. He paused often to polish them on his shirt, as he was doing now, worrying sick about Jack. It was the same worry and nervousness that led Tyler to often make mistakes on excavations. More than a few times he had either chiseled away too much bone from a fossilized specimen, or sometimes walked right over an excavation site without realizing it, daydreaming or just generally not paying attention. It was at these moments that Tyler wished he could retreat to the room he shared with Rhino in Drumheller and maybe get lost in the latest Xbox title or maybe one of the Lord of the Rings movies. But Jack always came to his aid, making light of the situation, and although he forever called Tyler names, he knew Jack meant nothing by it. Jack called everybody names.
Standing outside the twenty-eight foot silver streamlined specimen trailer, Tyler paced and looked over to the shiny gold Grand Cherokee that McFall had arrived in, now slick with dust, and felt nauseous. And it wasn’t just because McFall was here; it was who he had brought with him. McFall and his associates stood outside the Jeep, conversing with the many students who had greeted them on their arrival. It wasn’t everyday that they got visitors out in the badlands. McFall looked at Tyler, and Tyler wheezed. It was no secret that McFall held no love for Dr. Crane and therefore by association Jack–that was bad enough–but the other people McFall had brought with him were even worse. And already Tyler could see McFall looking around, wondering where Jack was. 
He had to keep McFall occupied.


THREE
Rhino exited the cafeteria trailer to see the gold colored Jeep Grand Cherokee that just pulled into the lot in front of the trailers. McFall and two other men got out of the vehicle. McFall was a tall, lean man–taller than Rhino’s six feet–with a surprisingly pudgy face and shortly cropped hair that was peppered with grey, laying flat and forward on his skull. McFall could have been a bouncer in his younger days, and indeed his professional reputation did not stray far from that description, for McFall was known for his completely no nonsense air and brutal course structures. He demanded no less than perfection from his students; if you were not good enough for him, he let you know it. In a good year, he would fail more than seventy percent of his students. Unlucky for them. Lucky for Rhino to have had Dr. Crane throughout his university career. 
Rhino shivered and spotted Tyler on the other side of the lot, staring at McFall. McFall however, preoccupied with a welcoming committee of students, did not notice either of them. Rhino crossed the lot to Tyler, who didn’t see the shadow that fell across him until its source broke his line of sight. 
“Hey Ty,” Rhino said. “You okay? I talked to Jack, he’s on his way.” Tyler never looked at him, only kept staring at the group by the Jeep. 
“Hey Weinerboy, wake up!”
Tyler finally snapped out of it. “D-D-Do you know who that is?” Tyler asked.
“Yeah dude, it’s McFall. You feelin’ okay?”
“No, not McFall. The young guy.”
“Yeah, what about him?”
“Dude, that’s Joshua Paquette.”
Rhino’s jaw dropped, and his face went pale. “What the fuck is that little weasel doing here?” he said.


FOUR
Dust crunched beneath under-inflated rubber tires, but Jack didn’t hear that. All he heard was the harsh wail of Bon Scott blasted into his ears through a pair of earbuds that protruded snakelike from an iPod tucked into his jeans pocket. By now, he was a sweaty, greasy, mess. He had been pedaling frantically for almost twenty-five minutes, and his goal was in sight. He topped a final rise in the undulating roadscape and saw the dig site splayed out below, looking like the scenery of a model train set; unreal in the morning glare. In front of the trailers Jack spotted a gold vehicle that had to be McFall’s. Jack’s throat was suddenly in his stomach but there was nothing for it now. All he could do was hope that Rhino and Ty were able to keep McFall distracted until he got there. Jack took up a standing position as he started coasting down the hill, pedaling hard toward the trailers.


FIVE
“Dr. McFall, please don’t go!” 
Rhino anxiously followed McFall back toward the trailers. They had been here for half an hour, at least (he didn’t have a watch on), but Rhino knew it had to be close to half an hour, and now McFall had had enough. 
“Mr. Knowles, clearly Jack Pennywise is not showing up this morning. And I was so looking forward to seeing this “find” he made. I guarantee he is sleeping off the night of boozing I heard you and your classmates had last night, without even a scrap of consideration for the important day you had ahead of yourselves. Very unprofessional. Mr. Pennywise is on the fast track to a fate similar to that of his beloved Dr. Crane.” Paquette smirked at that statement and Rhino gave him the glare of death. He could snap the skinny little fuck’s neck with a flick of his meaty fingers, but that wasn’t going to happen. McFall saw to that, and so did the other man that accompanied the two visitors. McFall had not introduced the man, and the man had said nothing the entire time, but Rhino felt the man exuded an air of authority and power that wasn’t to be questioned. He didn’t know why the man was here, but he knew it had to mean trouble. 
“He’ll be here sir, please, just give it a few more minutes.”
“I’ve given it more than a few already, Mr. Knowles. Jack’s time is up.” And with that McFall and his entourage turned and walked back toward their vehicle. 


SIX
Jack saw the Jeep turning around in the parking lot but did not let the panic sink in; he would have to cut them off. He pumped his legs harder than he had ever pumped before, his leg muscles relaxing and contracting in rhythmic time to his thrusts, burning with the effort. Sweat beaded and poured down his back in a fluid torrent, making his shirt sticky and wet. The Jeep came about and finished making the turn, and just as McFall straightened the vehicle out, Jack was there, ten feet from the grille, forcing McFall to apply the brakes. Through the slightly bluish tint of the windshield, Jack could have seen the look of shock and anger on McFall’s face; could have seen his jaw hit the floor with the surprise of his sudden appearance. He also could have seen the same reaction on the face of a man he didn’t know sitting in the back seat. 
But he didn’t see any of that. 
All he saw was Joshua-fucking-Paquette, riding shotgun, a look of seething hatred on his face. Jack returned the favor and his temper flared. With disdain, he threw his bike aside, walked up to the Jeep and slammed clenched fists down on the hood.
“What the fuck is he doing here?” he screamed.
Rhino and Tyler looked at each other and grimaced hard. 


SEVEN
Jack sat on the tailgate of Rhino’s pickup and stared down at the sheet of paper he held in his hands. His eyes skimmed the words but his brain failed to take them in. Instead, it constantly replayed the series of events that took place only hours before, causing that familiar lump to have grown from his throat to the pits of his stomach. Tyler and Rhino stood in front of him, both with their arms crossed and heads hung in silence. No one really seemed to know what to say. 
Tyler was the first to speak. “J-J-Jack, man, what can I say? That was j-j-just a total disaster. What can I...I mean...shit, McFall’s an asshole and Paquette’s a fuck. I can’t believe they’re doing this to you. B-but I mean, everyone in that class will vouch for you I’m sure. I mean, nobody likes Paquette, right?”
“Thanks Weiner,” Jack replied without lifting his head, “but do you really expect fifty people to lie for me? C’mon Ty, do the math. I assaulted Paquette. I’m kicked out of fucking school. Whether they like me or not, those people owe me nothing.” 
There was silence once again. Rhino grimaced at Tyler’s words although he had been thinking of saying something similar. He couldn’t think of anything else but kept looking down at the sheet of paper that Jack now held, which read at the top in bold, professional letters:
NOTICE OF CIVIL LAWSUIT.
He knew Jack was right. Like it or not, Paquette was suing Jack, and he was going to win. Over fifty people saw Jack launch a textbook that struck Paquette in the face, and then kick him in the gut. It was assault, plain as day, and Rhino was actually surprised Jack hadn’t been arrested for it. McFall had told Jack he was to vacate the dig site immediately, but Jack was definitely in no rush. Rhino finally thought of something to say: “You want a ride back to your place, dude?”
Jack’s reply was not what Rhino had expected: “Vedder,” he said.
“What?” Rhino said, taken aback. Tyler looked equally confused.
“This whole shitstorm. Vedder is in it somehow.”
“Jack, who the hell is Vedder?” Rhino said.
Jack finally looked up. “Last night, when I did my thing at the bar, I saw a man standing at the back who I thought I recognized. When I finished, he raised his beer to me and went out the door. I thought he wanted me to follow him, so I did.”
“Yeah, I saw you leave,” Tyler said.
“Yeah, well, turns out I did know the guy. His name is Jason Vedder, and he’s Dr. Crane’s brother.”
“I didn’t know Crane had a brother,” Rhino said.
Jack laughed briefly, “Neither did I. But I knew him because he showed up the day of the Paquette incident. He and Dr. Crane talked, but I don’t know what about. That was the last time I saw Crane. It’s weird. He showed up then, and he showed up yesterday, after I found the...thing.” Rhino and Tyler nodded. Jack paused briefly. “Anyway, I followed him out of the bar and he was waiting for me. Told me that Dr. Crane was working for him now but they needed my help.”
“With what?” Tyler asked.
Jack gave Tyler a sidelong look that might have told Tyler that he wasn’t going to get the whole truth, but Jack hoped his friend wouldn’t know that. 
“I don’t know,” Jack said. He didn’t know why he lied to his friends. He promised Vedder their conversation wouldn’t leave that parking lot at the bar, but he wasn’t honoring that promise right now. Not really. He was merely acting on instinct. 
“All I know,” Jack continued, “is that he said Dr. Crane needed my help. Then he shook my hand and gave me...” 
Jack trailed off. He gave me a disc. He had completely forgotten about it. 
He gave me a fucking disc. 
It had his phone number on it. Did I watch it? What did I do with it?
“He gave you what, Jack?” Rhino asked.
Jack snapped out of his thoughts. “Uh, he gave me his phone number.”
Rhino grinned. “So let’s call him.”




5. Calgary


The dusty hulk of the Blue Lady sat exactly where Jack had left her: on four flat tires. His attention however, was not focused on his beloved car at the moment.
“H-hey Jack, uh, what happened to your car?” Tyler asked. Jack made a disgruntled noise that told Tyler “don’t ask”. 
Jack got out of Rhino’s pickup and turned back toward his friends. “Alright guys, thanks for the ride.”
“No problem, Jack,” Rhino said.
“Like I said, I’ll find that number, I’ll call Vedder, then I’ll let you guys know what I’m gonna do. In all likelihood, I won’t know until tomorrow.”
“Alright bud, got it.” 
Jack turned and jogged up to his trailer. The front door was still wide open. Rhino and Tyler watched him disappear inside. Rhino considered staying for a moment, just to make sure Jack was okay. The whole ride over, Jack had been completely and uncharacteristically silent. Not that Rhino blamed him after everything that just happened. He knew the first thing Jack would do when he got into that trailer would be to find Vedder’s phone number. Jack had said he thought he left it on the dining room table but was not sure because he was pretty fucking drunk last night. It was not like Jack to misplace things, even while intoxicated.
He didn’t quite know what to make of all this stuff about Vedder, but to Rhino that didn’t really matter. If Jack believed something, Rhino believed it. Jack was one of the strongest people Rhino had ever known. Jack had been through hell in his life–traumatic losses in both child and adulthood that Rhino could not begin to comprehend. Especially Natalie. Rhino had known Jack when that had happened, had been there, and Rhino never saw his friend shed a tear. Jack just carried on, business as usual–other than his side trip to Venice of course–but that only lasted a day. A year ago all that had been, and Rhino had never seen his friend so much as frown or show a mite of sadness on his exterior. 
Shit. Has it really been that long?
He could hardly believe it. He knew that if he had been in Jack’s shoes, he would have been a mess for at least six months. Jack and Natalie were close, and considering the way she had gone... Rhino didn’t want to think about it. He turned his attention back on the trailer. Jack had disappeared inside, but the door hung open loosely like a broken appendage, flapping lightly in the wind. He saw no sign of his friend, but decided he wasn’t worried about him. There was something about Jack that was like biting through steel. He was tough. He’d been through worse, and he’d make it through this. 
Rhino put the truck in gear and began driving back to Drumheller. As they passed the dig site, Rhino marveled not for the first time that he was out here at all. He had never been one for academics. In fact, it was amazing he got into paleontology at all, considering his own sordid past. Just four years ago, if you’d asked him where he’d be now, Rhino would have said playing hockey for the U of A Golden Bears, not a paleontologist in training…and a former convict. Rhino had played hockey his whole life, having been turned onto it at an early age by his father and two older brothers. Ironically, it was hockey that almost ended his life as he knew it... 


TWO
The ice beneath Rhino’s skates sliced effortlessly as he made his way up the rink, the puck in tow. The spectators at Clare Drake Arena erupted as the University of Alberta Golden Bears’ right winger went in for the kill. He had little time to think in such a situation. He didn’t know who was behind him, but he only had seconds to make his move. As soon as he saw Reagan take that hit, he knew their last possible opportunity for scoring was in his hands. It was November 21st, 2003. They were playing the Lakehead University Thunderwolves, and these guys were playing some down and dirty hockey. The game was tied two all. Rhino had taken more than his fair share of hits this game, and the toll was beginning to tell on his aching back. That asshole Skinner on the Thunderwolves seemed out for his blood–not that he could blame him. He had taken Skinner out with a hip check the last time their teams had met. Now Skinner was looking to pay him back.
Not fucking likely. 
He studied the opposing goaltender–Cauthon was his name–intently as he came closer to scoring position. It was only about two months into the season and Rhino thought he knew the weaknesses of all the goalies he had played against this year. Cauthon’s was bottom gloveside; he was quite sure of that. And that’s where he would make his move. In one sweeping fluid motion, Rhino faked left, then right, then let fly. The puck stayed on the ice surface, just as he wanted, and with little to no spin; it looked like a rock skipping across water. Already Rhino knew he had made the right move: he saw Cauthon had had his glove hand prepared for an aerial assault and wasn’t ready for the low blow that was just delivered. Cauthon let himself fall sideways on his gloveside in an attempt to use his body to shield the oncoming puck from entering his domain; the puck skimmed Cauthon’s right shin pad, but was otherwise unhindered in its journey into the net. The buzzer went off even before Cauthon hit the ice. 
Rhino flung his arms upward in triumph as soon as the sweet sound of the buzzer entered his ears. He had just won the game. Elation overcame him and he turned on the ice to face the onrush of love from his teammates. 
It never came.
A sickening blow wrenched his gut as he was folded in half and hit the ice hard, coming to a sliding stop ten feet from the point of impact. There was tenderness in his back that exploded in an ecstasy of pain as his spine twisted and he thought he felt something pop in there. He didn’t have to look up to know who it was, or realize what had happened. 
Skinner. Motherfucker!
Rhino was on his feet before anyone could get over to help him. Already a number of his teammates were on Skinner, gloves off, punches flying. Something was grinding his spine to dust, but Rhino didn’t feel that. With graceful fury he skated over to the throng surrounding Skinner, and began ripping a hole to his adversary, body checking his own teammates in the process. Nothing would stop him. By the time he reached Skinner, his gloves and helmet were off. The first punch landed squarely on Skinner’s jaw. The second broke his nose. The third and fourth took place atop Skinner after he went down. The fifth broke his jaw. The sixth, seventh, and eighth shattered a few teeth. The ninth and tenth ruptured his left eyeball. The eleventh never happened; he was pulled off of Skinner’s limp form. 
The pain in his back reached a crescendo. He passed out. 
He awoke twelve hours later in hospital. His Mom and Dad and brothers were all there, eyes glazed wet with tears. His dad broke the news to him. 
His back was broken. 
Apparently, as best they could tell, when Skinner hit him, his spine had cracked a little. When he had attacked Skinner the movement made things worse, and finally when his teammates had roughly pulled him off of Skinner, the vertebra had broken completely. 
The good news was that he wasn’t paralyzed.
“What about Skinner?” Rhino had asked.
“ICU,” His father replied. 
“What?”
“Ryan, you almost killed him. He’s lucky to be still breathing.” Rhino only stared at his father, uncomprehending. “They’re pressing charges.” 
His father looked at him compassionately, a tear trickling down his face. “Criminal charges.” 


THREE
There was a harmonious chiming sound and a buzzing coming from Rhino’s right front pants pocket. The sensation caught him off guard and the pickup swerved slightly on the road. From beside him Tyler grabbed the wheel.
“Hold on, I got it,” Tyler said. “G-g-go ahead, answer it.”
Rhino let go of the wheel so that he could fish the phone out of his pocket. The fact that his pants were tight didn’t help the situation either–all pants fit him tight; he had tree trunks for legs. The call display on the front revealed who the caller was. 
“It’s Jack,” Rhino said, retaking control of the wheel from Tyler. 
He flipped the phone open. “Hey Jack, what’s...” Rhino went silent for almost a minute. Tyler knew something had to be up.
“Yeah, okay Jack,” he said finally. “We’re coming back now,” and he hung up the phone.
“What’s wrong?” Tyler asked.
“We’re going to Calgary,” Rhino replied.
“Oh God,” was Tyler’s response.


FOUR
When Jack saw the image that was frozen on his TV screen–the same image that had been there since the night before when he had passed out in a drunken stupor–his knees gave out and he collapsed to the floor. He knew Vedder’s number was written on the disc that contained this image, but there was no way he could take it out of the DVD player. 
Not yet. 
With a shaking right index finger, Jack leaned forward to press the back skip button on the DVD player to start the video over. Immediately the screen went dark, but not silent. There was the indistinct murmur of voices–someone said “hold it”, and then a light came on, brilliant and blinding. The camera was momentarily trained on the ground and was then brought up shakily to reveal the subject of Jack’s distress.
It was a dromaeosaur. 
The thing was huge, at least twenty meters long, and would be seven feet tall, had it been standing up. Jack decided that it was probably a utahraptor, judging by the size. The thick downy plumage that covered its entire body was amazing to behold. Paleontologists had long suspected that many dinosaurs had feathers; the fossil record supported the fact, but seeing it in the flesh, even through a video, gave Jack goose bumps. 
“Unbelievable.” 
The raptor was lying on its belly in the middle of a concrete room that was mostly empty, apparently asleep. The camera’s shaky point of view was through a window from outside the room. An intravenous drip ran into the creature’s long, bony arm, which is how, Jack suspected, they kept it asleep. 
Something didn’t look right about that arm. 
Something didn’t look right about the whole thing. He moved closer to the screen. It almost looked like the creature was bleeding from its nose, but the constant shake of the camera kept him from seeing true details. The camera seemed almost too unstable in fact–deliberately–as if they didn’t want him to see too much... 
“Okay, good enough,” someone whispered off-camera and the picture blurred and froze to the image that had been displayed on his TV since last night. Without hesitation Jack popped the disc from the player and memorized the number written on it in black Sharpie. He began patting down his pockets, looking for his phone. 
“Fuck, what did I do with–” and then he remembered that morning; he had thrown it into the desert when he couldn’t get a signal.
Christ, I’m an idiot.
He got up and jumped out the still open door of his trailer. Dust blew away from his well worn boots, as if the soles had a breath of their own, as he frantically jogged about the area behind the trailer where he thought his phone may have landed. He found it in less than a minute, caked in fine grime ten feet from the Blue Lady’s grille. He sighed at the now pathetic form of his car, gathering dust in the open badlands. This might be your final resting place old friend. He quickly wiped his phone off, saw that it was working fine–even had a signal, wonder of wonders–and dialed Vedder’s number. 
It was picked up on the first ring. 
“Yes”, a voice sounded on the other end. 
“Dr. Vedder?” Jack said.
“Jack! It’s about time you got back to me. I was beginning to doubt–”
“Listen,” Jack said, “what the fuck is going on here? I watched your disc. What do you really want?”
“Those are all valid questions Jack, but we really don’t have time for them at the moment. Forget the video. There’s been a change in plan.” He paused. “I’m in Calgary. I’m staying at the Econo Lodge Motel Village on Highway One. I need you to come here and meet me.”
“Whoa, wait,” Jack said. “What is this? Why can’t you come get me? I’m not going to Calgary, there’s that outbreak going on! The Night Terror Virus or whatever it’s called.”
“Believe me Jack, if I could get to you, I would, but you have to trust me that you have to come to me. Now it might take a while, traffic will be, uh, backed up because of the quarantine, but you should have no problem getting past it–”
“Quarantine! Shit, there’s no way I’m coming to Calgary. No fucking way!”
“Jack, you have no choice. Most of the city is dead, and the disease is spreading. We have reason to believe you may be immune to it.”
Jack’s mouth dropped open in genuine shock and he steadied himself on the Blue Lady so as not to fall over. “Vedder, what the hell are you talking about? How could you possibly think that I–”
“Jack, just please listen. People are dying and we need your help. That’s it. In my eyes, you have no choice here. Please. I need you. Jonathan needs you.” Jack didn’t say anything for a long time. Although he didn’t protest, he didn’t appreciate Vedder using Crane as leverage. But if it was true, and the disease was spreading, he and his friends might be dead anyway. What did he have to lose? 
“My car broke down last night. I’ll have to get a ride.”
“Okay Jack, whatever you have to do. Can you call someone?”
“Yeah,” Jack said.


FIVE
Two hours after they left Drumheller–at two in the afternoon in Rhino’s pickup–Jack Pennywise, Tyler Brown, and Ryan Knowles knew there was something seriously wrong with the world. They took Highway 9, south from Drumheller down to Highway 1, which passed through Calgary. They didn’t see much–not at first. The drive from Drumheller to Calgary is an alternating landscape of wide open, rolling farm fields and pock-marked holes, sedimentary striped canyons, and towering hoo-doos–and in between not much else. The only slightly populated area they passed was Beiseker, a tiny pissant village less than half the size of Drumheller, and the highway only skirted it, so they saw very little to ease their dreading minds. At one point they stopped at a gas station to fuel up. The place was abandoned and locked up tight. They saw no one. 
Tyler picked up a newspaper. “H-h-hey guys,” he shouted nervously. “You better check this out.” Jack and Rhino joined him at the front of the store. “It’s today’s,” he pointed to the front page and began to read aloud:

CALGARY UNDER QUARANTINE
“NTV may be headed east”

An outbreak of a mysterious disease many have dubbed The Night Terror Virus or the White Death, has led to a citywide quarantine of Calgary and some surrounding towns by the RCMP as of midnight last night. Movement to and from the city is strictly regulated, and the RCMP are advising anyone traveling around the Calgary area to comply with detours as marked on roads and highways. “Failure to do so will be met with immediate arrest,” an RCMP spokesman said this morning. Many are questioning the effectiveness of the quarantine as possible cases of NTV have been reported as far east as Thunder Bay, Ontario...

Tyler trailed off. “W-w-we can’t get into Calgary Jack. The RCMP will turn us away.”
Jack said, “If this disease is as serious as they’re saying, my getting to Calgary may be the only thing that can stop it.”
Rhino snapped his head up from the paper. “What the hell do you mean?”
“I’m not sure I believe it myself,” Jack said. “C’mon. I’ll tell you in the truck.”
They left the gas station.


SIX
Jack told his friends everything he knew about the situation; his conversations with Vedder, the video, and what he thought this whole thing was about. 
“It’s time travel. It’s gotta be. I found this dart in sixty-five million year old bedrock. How else could it get there?” Jack held up the small silver cylinder he had found buried with the dromaeosaur skeleton the day before. 
A tranquilizer dart. 
“Crane’s brother owns a company that invented time travel, and they went back to the time of dinosaurs–hence the need for Dr. Crane in the first place.” Jack paused to take a breath. “So they went back and shot a dinosaur with a dart gun, it died...and I found it.”
Jack’s friends stared at him vacantly. “Okay,” Rhino said. “But what does all that have to do with the Night Terror Virus? Why do they need you?”
“I’m not sure they do,” Jack said. “Curing NTV might be a red herring, just to get me to show up. I think they may have brought this disease from the past to the future, and they’re trying to cover their tracks. They know about the dart, and they don’t want it getting out what they did.”
“So we could be walking into a trap of some kind,” Rhino said.
“Yeah, shit!” Tyler agreed. “If-if all they want is that dart back, they might kill you once they get it!”
“Maybe,” Jack said. “But Vedder knows where Dr. Crane is, and I won’t rest ‘til I know he’s alright. Last I heard from Crane, he was working for Vedder. Crane wouldn’t let anything happen to me.”
“Jack,” Rhino said. “Something just isn’t right about this whole thing.”
“I know,” Jack replied. “But look around us. What have we got to lose?” 
He gestured out the truck windshield. Here and there they saw a car in the ditch, or in a long past head-on collision. A few bodies were slumped forward over steering wheels or in back seats. Jack had actually thought things would be worse. He didn’t know whether he was relieved or not. In an eerie echo of this last thought, Tyler said: “Jesus, I’ve never seen a dead body before. I uh, somehow thought things would be worse.”
“I don’t think we’ve seen anything yet,” Jack responded. “This could be the start of the end of the world.”


SEVEN
An hour later, they were shirking the shores of Chestermere Lake, and coming to the outskirts of Calgary. Things were getting progressively worse. They came to an RCMP roadblock–there were no officers present, their vehicles abandoned. Jack got out and moved one of the SUVs blocking the road, the keys still in the ignition. Rhino and Tyler looked on apprehensively from the truck. Jack came back with a shotgun in tow.
“Do you know how to use that?” Rhino asked.
“Let’s hope I don’t have to,” Jack replied.
Beyond the roadblock, cars and bodies littered the road in cruel twistings of metal and flesh. Compacts rear-ended into pickups; SUVs side-swiped by sedans; RV’s toppled on their sides. 
And then there were the bodies. 
There were not a lot of them, not enough compared to the number of vehicles they were seeing, but the trio was hard pressed to find a person who did not look like they had died of some horribly traumatic violence: a woman lay in the bed of a battered pickup with an axe in her back; an older looking gentleman held a chainsaw next to the ragged stump of what was his own leg; a young man lay on his back next to the road, a golf tee driven through one eye. Next to him lay the corpse of a business-type dressed for golfing, a three-wood clutched in his right hand. Almost all the bodies showed signs of having bled profusely from the face. They saw no one alive. More than once, Rhino had to put the truck into four by four and drive alongside the road rather than on it; the road being blocked either by vehicles, or bodies. 
Tyler rolled down the window and threw up. “G-g-guys,” he said, gasping for breath, “I don’t think I can do this. What are we doing here? We’re gonna end up like these people!”  
Jack put a comforting hand on his friend and said: “Want me to hold your hair back ‘til you’re done?”
“Shut up, Jack.” At that moment a trickle of blood escaped from Tyler’s nose. 
Rhino noticed it immediately, but did not realize why his friend had it. “Hey Ty, you got a nosebleed,” he said. Tyler wiped his forearm across his face, a dark red smear staining the dark brown hairs on his skin. He looked up at Rhino, but his expression seemed odd to Tyler. “What?” Rhino said.
“Y-y-you’re, uh, hmm. You’re eye, man. Jesus...”
Rhino looked at himself in the rear-view and saw that he was crying blood. 


EIGHT
Forty five minutes later, they entered the suburbs. Rolling grassy plains and glacial finger lakes gave way to massive human development. The housing units were separated from the Trans-Canada highway by eight foot chain link fencing that was interweaved with green plastic to mask the highway from view of the houses and hide the general ugliness of the chain link fencing. Bodies hung from the fences, as if to protest the aesthetic value of the plastic. Most were hung with nooses by the neck, heads bent at awkward angles, left to rot in the sun. Others were hung by arms, feet, and even tied spread eagle. Many were naked and showed other signs of violence done to them. There seemed to be no discrimination among age; old and young alike hung from those terrible gallows. There was still no sign of life anywhere, but there was the buzzing of a helicopter somewhere above.
“I think whatever happened here, we missed it,” Jack said, not without emotion. 
“Somehow that doesn’t comfort me,” Rhino said, blotting the blood from his eye with a tissue. Jack looked at his friend sorrowfully. The bleeding both Rhino and Tyler were experiencing was slowly getting worse, and yet he was perfectly fine. He began to wonder if what Vedder had said was true. 
Could I be immune? How? He shuddered.
As they got closer to Calgary, traffic snarls got worse. Rhino had to make more and more detours to get around parked or crashed cars, and Jack knew his friends must have been thinking the same thing he was: What if we come to a place where we can’t get past? They finally came to a cloverleaf where that fear was manifested…a hundredfold. 
A kilometer ahead, a column of smoke arose from a pile of smoldering, perverted metal that had once been vehicles, glass littered the road like horrible diamonds, and charred bodies were strewn about. 
Rhino brought the truck to a halt. They got out. “Jesus Jack,” he said. “What happened here?”
Jack didn’t say anything at first but surveyed the site. He noticed five identical black SUVs near the front of the throng. “I think it was a roadblock,” he replied. “See those SUVs? I think they’re RCMP.”
“Shit,” Rhino said. “They all rammed it. They just rammed it to get out and they blew themselves all to hell. Damn.”
“Can w-w-we, uh, get past this?” Tyler said.
Jack surveyed the surrounding area. A wall of housing lined the highway on both sides, and vehicles were smashed and burned all the way up to the fences. “Doesn’t look like it.”
“S-s-so what do we do? Take another road?”
“I guess we have to. Vedder said he was staying at the Econolodge on Highway One. We’re on Highway One. We gotta get around this somehow.”
Rhino suddenly spoke up, rising emotion in his voice. It was the first time he had shown his true distress at the situation. “Jack, how is Vedder even still alive? We’ve not seen a single living person since we left Drumheller. How could Vedder survive this?”
Jack was taken aback, but a reply came to him quickly. “I’ve told you everything I know. I don’t know. He knows something. Maybe he knows how to treat the disease but not cure it. I don’t fucking know.” He paused and looked at his friends gravely. “If you guys want out, that’s fine. I won’t blame you. But I’m going on–I have to. It’s a gut feeling.”
“No Jack, I’m with you,” Tyler replied after a slight pause.
“Me too,” Rhino said. “It looks like I’m doomed to join these people anyway,” and he wiped more blood from under his nose.
“Let’s go,” Jack said uncomfortably.
They got back in the truck and backtracked to a dirt side road that led in behind the housing. The road eventually backed on some open backyards and they were able to drive over one, around the house, and into the main street. They decided to cut through the avenues and cul-de-sacs until they thought they were far enough past the roadblock to cut back down onto the highway. 
And they couldn’t wait to get there. 
The violence they had experienced thus far had not escaped the suburbs; in fact it was worse. A man in a lawn chair was sunbathing in nothing but his underwear, the nozzle of a garden hose rammed into one ear, slimed in blood. A gray mixture was leaking from the resulting hole. The hose had been rammed into his head and then turned on, full blast. A woman lay in a pile of glass on her lawn below a shattered window two stories up; she had jumped out. A youth lay sprawled around a mangled bicycle pinned beneath a pickup truck. Every fire hydrant on the street was spewing water. Many lawns were parched and yellow, almost in mourning of their former caretakers. 
If Hell has suburbs, these are it, Jack thought. 
The streets were congested with stalled or crashed traffic, but Rhino was able to navigate them with some effort. They drove for twenty minutes before finally coming to the Edmonton Trail, a major road that would link them back up to the highway. 
If only it were that simple.
As they approached the intersection at the edge of the suburbs, Tyler could see already that it wasn’t going to go well. He could see the stalled traffic backed up like lemmings in a death march. His stomach rumbled; he hadn’t eaten since Drumheller, but he was used to going long periods without food. He rubbed his belly and was amazed that he could think about how fat he felt at a time like this. Rhino ground the truck to a halt and Tyler looked back up. The Edmonton trail was completely backed up as far as they could see in all directions. Tyler could see the main highway only a few hundred meters to their left, just as clogged. 
“W-what do we do now?” Tyler asked.
Jack grinned. It was creepy; how could Jack be grinning right now? 
“We walk,” Jack said, and the way he said it, Tyler knew he wasn’t joking. 
“No,” Rhino said, the other two looking at him quizzically. “I’ve got a better idea.”
And he turned the truck around and returned to the suburbs. 


NINE
Jack carved the handles to the left to narrowly dodge a protruding side view mirror. The shotgun he had found earlier was slung across his back by its attached strap. He found it amazing and somewhat hysterical that twice now in the past twenty four hours he had been reduced to using a bicycle for transportation. Not that there was anything wrong with bikes–it was just ironic, that’s all. Jack loved to bike. It was a love that was kindled early on in his childhood living in Banff. There were trails all over the Rockies, and as a kid Jack thought he knew ‘em all. He had actually become a pretty technically efficient rider, able to jump obstacles by pulling the entire bike off the ground and grind to a sliding halt on a dime when he landed. Nothing beat the rush of flying between a column of trees, splashing across a babbling stream, and coming to the edge of a bluff overlooking his hometown. He missed Banff. He hadn’t been there in years–not since James died. And his mother still lived there. He couldn’t go back while she was still there. He was tired of being blamed for all the deaths in his family.
And then there was Natalie. Jack hadn’t shed a tear for her; he had become too accustomed to people he loved dying. But the blame was still there–only with Natalie, he only blamed himself. If only he hadn’t gone to the Pump that night and stayed at the dig site to help her... 
He felt anger well up inside him and so decided to use it. He pushed the pedals of the Trek as hard as he could as he shifted into a higher gear and immediately the bike surged faster.
Rhino was about twenty seconds behind Jack, his handlebars getting slick with the blood that dribbled from his eye. He wasn’t in pain, but the bleeding wasn’t stopping. He held a reddening rag in one hand that he used to blot away the seepage. He tried keeping his mind off the blood by focusing completely on Jack, and so he cursed when his friend began to pedal faster and pull away recklessly. “Hey Jack!” he yelled. “Take it easy!” But Jack wasn’t listening. He watched as Jack finally wiped out, clipping a bumper and tumbling onto the hood of a sedan. 
Almost a minute behind Rhino, Tyler was bringing up the rear. It took some getting used to being on a bike again, but now that his muscles were stretched and warmed up, he was keeping decent progress with his friends. Of course it helped that the road was mostly flat. In fact, if it weren’t for the vehicles, this ride would be pretty damn easy. He kept his eyes on the road ahead and tried not to notice all the bodies in the metal tombs around him. 
Rhino pulled up beside Jack who lay on his stomach on the car’s now dented hood, staring down the vehicle’s lone occupant. He started to laugh. He didn’t know why he was laughing–maybe it was Jack’s foolishness, maybe it was his way of trying to deal with a stressful situation. He didn’t know. “Hey man, you okay?”
“This woman died on her phone,” Jack said.
Rhino looked inside the car and saw Jack was right. The woman was slick with blood after having bled to death, but her cell phone was still clutched in one hand. “Maybe she died trying to call for help,” Rhino said.
“Maybe,” Jack said. “Or maybe she couldn’t imagine living without it.”
“Jack...”
“Nothing, never mind. It’s just all this death. Makes you realize how really stupid and insignificant everything in our lives is. How all we cared about was the stuff that didn’t even matter.” Rhino stared at his friend, not knowing what to say. “Fuck it,” Jack said, getting up and back on his bike. “Let’s keep going.”
Tyler caught up to them and they set off again.


TEN
Twenty minutes later, the trio coasted their bikes into the parking lot of the Econolodge. It had actually been a shorter ride than Jack had anticipated; from the time they got on their bikes to now it had been pretty much a straight shot down the highway. He was thankful and relieved all at the same time. An awning overhung the front entrance of the hotel and they dropped their bikes beneath it as they headed through the front doors. Jack unslung the rifle from his back and held it in his right hand, pointed down, safety on. He had no intention of shooting Vedder, but he was definitely going to scare the shit out of him. He owed Vedder that much. 
They saw no one as they entered: no bodies. Jack was at a loss–he half expected Vedder to be waiting in the lobby for them like a child awaiting the arrival of Santa Claus. Where was he?
“Jack,” Rhino said. “He’s not here. What do we do?”
“M-maybe he’s in his room. Maybe he’s s-sleeping,” Tyler said, answering for Jack, his gaze wandering back to the outside of the hotel.
“I dunno,” Jack said. “I think we should wait for...” Tyler stormed out the front doors. Rhino and Jack looked at each other and followed suit.
“Hey, Ty!” Jack called. “Where are you –” Jack cut off in midsentence when he saw what Tyler was doing. Good call. Tyler had walked over to an abandoned compact in the parking lot; one door was left hanging open. Tyler quickly leaned in and began wailing on the horn. He blasted it for a good thirty seconds and stopped. It echoed off the surrounding buildings and for the first time Jack realized just how eerily silent the city was. It was creepy. Tyler waited a minute before wailing on the horn again. They waited another minute but no one came to them.
“Well I guess that’s it,” Jack said. “He’s really not here.” He paused. “It was a good idea though, Ty.”
Tyler smiled. “Y-yeah, I guess I was due.”
“So, what now?” Rhino asked.
But it wasn’t Jack or Tyler that answered Rhino’s question. All their attention had been trained on Tyler in the car and so they had not noticed the man who had come out of the hotel’s lobby with a pistol leveled at them. Tyler screamed. The man mumbled something that sounded like “drop it”. Turning around, Jack immediately complied. There was something in the man’s eyes that made Jack realize the guy was serious–this guy couldn’t be messed around with. It took him a second to place it, but Jack finally realized what that look was: insanity. The man was completely insane. There were large dark bags under his eyes, indicating that he hadn’t slept in days, and his hair was a greasy mess, his clothes stained, dirty, and torn in spots. Some of those stains looked like blood. There was a red stain covering the front of his face below the nose, as if his nose had been bleeding recently but not wiped away clean.
“Okay, take it easy,” Jack said, raising his hands. “We’re looking for a friend. He told us he’d be here. His name is Jason Vedder. Do you know him?”
The man seemed to flinch at the mention of Vedder’s name, and a new look replaced the insanity in his eyes: loathing. “Gat grawn!” the man said. 
“Jesus,” Jack said, looking to his friends. “What did he just say?” The man was now spearing the gun towards the ground. Oh shit, Jack thought: Get down. He gave his friends a look that said: Do it. They got on the ground. Immediately the man began to pat them down, searching their pockets. Jack clenched his teeth.
“Where’s Vedder?” he said angrily. 
“Jack . . .” Rhino said. “Shut up!”
The man got mad, pointing the pistol directly at Jack’s forehead. “Don’t say his name!” The man screamed, clear as day.
“Steven!” a voice issued from the parking lot entrance. “Drop that fucking weapon now!” Jack turned to see Jason Vedder approaching the group, a plastic bag from a nearby convenience store in one hand. “I step out for five minutes Steven and you pull a gun on the only living people we’ve seen in two days! You knew they were coming!”
“Day adda gun,” the man named Steven responded, sounding calm now. 
“As well they should,” Vedder replied. “You’ve seen for yourself what’s been happening. This city is a dangerous place–or was anyway. But I think now everyone is effectively dead.”
Steven lowered the pistol and slung it in his belt. Jack and his friends quickly got up. Jack stormed over to Vedder. Vedder outstretched his hand in gesture of a handshake. Jack had other ideas. “Jack, it’s so good to finally–” Vedder’s words were choked off as Jack’s fist connected with his jaw. Vedder staggered backward and held his now swelling face. Steven smiled where he stood by Tyler and Rhino and said: “Ha.” He then pulled out a cell phone and walked back to the hotel entrance.
“Where’s Dr. Crane?” Jack whip cracked, his fist balled for another go. “Just what the fuck is going on here? I came like you said, and it looks like you’re trapped in the city just like everyone else was.” He pointed to the congested highway behind them.
“Okay, okay, Jack,” Vedder said. “I understand you’ve been through a lot, but this isn’t the time for answers.”
Jack fumed. “Then just when the fuck is?”
“When we get to the mountains.”
“Huh?” 
 “The Rockies. That’s where my company HQ is–Cassé-Horlage. You’ll have all the answers you want when we get there.”
Jack was about to ask Vedder how he planned on getting them all there, but stopped, because at that moment he noticed something. “You’re not bleeding,” he said.
Vedder was taken aback by the sudden change in topic and quickly recomposed himself. “I was Jack, believe me. So was Steven over there, but we’ve found a way to slow it down. It’s not a cure, but it buys some time.”
Jack turned and looked at his friends who were still bleeding. “What is it? They need it.”
“It’s just a simple clotting agent. The Night Terror Virus causes profuse hemorrhaging in the blood vessels of its victims, mainly in the cranium. Our bodies naturally produce a protein called fibrin that aids in blood clotting. We’ve simply been giving ourselves specialized fibrin injections to slow the bleeding down.” Vedder paused to point to a red mark on his neck–an injection site. “Like I said, it’s not a cure. You are the only cure we know of Jack.”
Jack ignored the absurd claim. “Who’s we?” he said.
“Well,” Vedder replied, “pretty much everyone at CH”
“Do you have more of these injections?”
“Not here,” Vedder said. “Your friends will have to wait until we get to CH.”
“They could be dead by the time we get there!” Jack said, rising inflection in his voice. 
“Or go mad,” Rhino said, Tyler nodding in agreement.
“Jack,” Vedder said, reassuringly. “We’ll be there within the hour.”
“Huh?” Jack said. “In case you haven’t noticed, the roads are all jammed to shit.”
Vedder just smirked. A rhythmic thumping had been building in the background of their argument and Jack only noticed it now that they stopped talking. 
It was a helicopter. 
If they have a helicopter, why didn’t they come get us from Drumheller? The white and blue helicopter banked low over an adjacent building, a Mac’s convenience store, and slowly lowered itself into the mostly vacant lot of the hotel. The wind produced was strong and fierce. A bold red “CH” logo was emblazoned on the side of the craft.
Jack gave Vedder a stare that could cut steel and it didn’t go unnoticed. “I know what you’re thinking Jack,” Vedder said. “Why didn’t we pick you up from Drumheller?” He paused. “Well, quite simply, we had trouble finding a pilot–a sane and living pilot that is. They only called me an hour ago to tell me they found one. Up until now, I thought we’d be walking out of Calgary and then borrowing a car once the traffic wasn’t so bad. Most of the people trying to leave Calgary headed east when the disease hit, so the roads west are not as bad.” 
“Well thank God for that,” Jack said sarcastically over the din of the whirring helicopter.
“C’mon guys, let’s go,” Vedder said, walking to the chopper, Steven following suit.
Jack looked at his friends. Rhino was now bleeding from both eyes and stared at the chopper like it was going to kill him–he was scared of heights. Tyler had so much tissue wadded up his nostrils Jack couldn’t tell how bad his blood loss was. He walked over to them.
“J-Jack, I uh, really, really don’t like this,” Tyler said. Rhino nodded in agreement.
“What’s to like?” Jack said. “But you heard him, he can slow the disease down, and if I’m immune like he says, they can extract a cure from me. If I really am the cure, then they’re at my mercy. I won’t cooperate unless they tell me what I want to know. We’ll be fine. Trust me.” Tyler and Rhino only looked at him, hardly assuaged. 
They approached the helicopter together and climbed aboard. 


ELEVEN
As the chopper rose above the city, Jack could see the spires of downtown Calgary disappear below them. The Calgary tower, red and white, reached to the heavens like an artificial stalagmite in a metal cavern. Jack felt an immediate rush he thought everyone must feel during their first ride in a helicopter. Despite the circumstances, it felt good. To the west, the mountains were immediately visible. Somewhere that way was Cassé-Horlage, and Dr. Crane. He wondered if they would fly over Banff. He wondered if the Night Terror Virus had made it that far west. He then realized that was assuming the disease originated in Calgary. If it came from CH–like he suspected it did–then it likely spread from there. Jack swore under his breath. 
It was surprisingly quiet inside the chopper. Jack had expected it to be loud and they would be unable to talk without yelling, but this one had clearly been designed for transporting passengers–the seats were clean, light brown leather, the floor was carpeted, and a mini-fridge was even tucked neatly off in one corner. This was not a working-man’s chopper. Jack smiled despite himself. Rhino gripped his seat tightly, not daring to look out.
Vedder was seated next to Jack and leaned over to him. “You’re not bleeding, are you Jack?”
“No,” Jack said. “Not even a trickle.”
“Good,” Vedder said. “Excellent.” 
The chopper flew west.




6. Cassé-Horlage


Banff disappeared into the cloud cover behind them, but Jack didn’t see it. He never faltered his gaze from the opposite side of the chopper. Things obviously looked different from the air, but he would know his hometown even if he saw it from space. He didn’t want to look, didn’t want to know what became of the place he had loved so much growing up. Even after his father died and his mother and brother had bought him a lifetime pass on the guilt trip express, Banff had still been a place of solitude and peaceful tranquility for him. The mountains always seemed to swallow up all the old fears. But he hadn’t been back there, not since his mother, Jennifer Pennywise had remarried. That was almost five years ago. Has it really been that long?
“Bad memories?” Vedder said, speaking up from beside Jack. Jack gave him a questioning look. “Jonathan mentioned you were from Banff. You didn’t even give it a second glance. If it were my hometown, I’d be–”
“Yeah well, it’s not,” Jack said, cutting him off, not tearing his eyes from the window. 
“Okay, sorry,” Vedder said. “Just poking my nose where it doesn’t belong, that’s all.” He smiled but Jack still gazed outward. “Well,” Vedder continued, “you might be surprised to find out CH is pretty much a stone’s throw away from Banff.” Jack finally turned from the window and gave Vedder his attention. “Do you know where Settler’s Road is?” 
Jack thought to himself for a moment, then said: “Yeah, isn’t that in Kootenay? I thought it was closed off about five years ago after a landslide.”
“Yup, right on the BC-Alberta border, just a few passes over from Banff.”
“So you guys are in a National Park?” Jack said, unbelieving.
“No,” Vedder said, “just outside it. Scott Bon, the company founder and my partner, paid off the government after Settler’s Road was closed to keep it and other roads accessing the area closed and let him buy up some land in the valley. The only way in or out is by helicopter." 
“Okay, I remember now,” Jack said. “The Nipika mountain resort had to close. There was a big stink about how the government wasn’t gonna pay to reopen the road. There were lawsuits I think, but in the end it got swept under the rug, right?”
Vedder smiled and nodded. “Something like that,” he said. 
Jack gave him a questioning look. “What?” he said.
“You’ll see in about one minute,” Vedder said.
The helicopter burst low through clinging tendrils of mist into a deep mountain valley. Below them, the basin was the carpeted greenery of mid-summer broken only by the twisting meander of an old river. Jack knew you could tell how old a river was by how much it meandered; over a very long time, erosion caused corners in rivers to expand outward which resulted in the characteristic twisting associated with ancient rivers. Newer rivers tended to be fast, and fairly straight. 
“So is that the Kootenay River?” Jack asked, although he knew it was.
“Yup. And if you look ahead, you can see what became of the Nipika resort.”
Jack caught a glimpse of metal sheen in sunlight as they moved farther down the valley, and the reflection blocked his view. A few seconds later the chopper banked to the right and the reflection ceased. Jack and his friends were taken aback by what they saw: a pair of large domes, brushed chrome in color and looking like something out of a science fiction fantasy. The first dome resembled a gladiator’s helmet crossed with a night sky observatory. Several partitions branched off the main structure and a crescent shaped protrusion came off of its top. The second dome was much less striking but nonetheless impressive, being built closer to the ground, with a bank of windows striping the sides and an aluminum slatted roof. Even in the light of day, those windows were glowing blue. In front of the domes was a structure shaped like a “T” that had been tipped over onto one side. Along the resultant slope was a series of what Jack recognized as photovoltaic cells–solar panels. 
“The solar panels are only used to power the basic equipment in Cathedral and Arcade–lights, computers, etcetera. We use hydro to power the heavier systems we have here.” Vedder pointed to a shallow lake formed by a dam on the Kootenay River. Jack only shook his head. Vedder was going to all this trouble to explain these things and yet they still hadn’t the first clue of what exactly CH was. It was like explaining how a television worked to someone who had never seen one before.
“What’s Cathedral and Arcade?” Tyler asked sheepishly.
“Oh,” Vedder said. “Those are our names for the domes. We call the big one Cathedral and the smaller one Arcade.” Tyler looked at him blankly. “You ever read Logan’s Run?” Tyler shook his head. “It’s from that,” Vedder said, his tone suggesting that was all the explanation he would give. 
Jack however didn’t need an explanation. He had read the entire Logan trilogy, and the fact that they named the domes after places in a vastly dystopian, fictional sci-fi society did little to assuage the growing lump in his throat. 


TWO
The helicopter glided swiftly over Cathedral and Arcade, swooping down into an open field where Jack saw what remained of the buildings of the Nipika Mountain resort. The buildings were nothing special, particularly when considered next to the architectural behemoths that cast round, bulbous shadows over them, but to Jack they embodied everything that was the Rocky Mountains. They were a number of wooden cabins, built on a rustic template, but undeniably modern. They were designed to provide most of the comforts of home to guests, but dressed up to feel like the tourist was actually getting away from it all in a backwoods setting. Jack had seen a hundred other resorts like it in the Rockies. Well, not quite like it–not now. Now an eight foot cyclone fence enclosed the entire resort and continued around the domes, out of sight. Jack saw not a single gate anywhere in the fence.
Vedder wasn’t kidding about getting in by helicopter.
The cabins still appeared in pristine condition, and smoke billowed out of more than one chimney. Vedder noticed Jack examining the cabins. “Some of the CH staff stay in these cabins, preferring them over the sterile dormitories of Arcade,” he said. 
“Why would they light fires in the summer time?” Tyler asked.
“Probably for cooking Ty,” Jack said. 
“Oh,” Tyler said, suddenly feeling stupid.
“How many people are here?” Jack asked, trying to sound interested but really not caring. He decided he would be as amiable as he could, until he found Dr. Crane, alive and well. 
After that, well, there could be hell to pay. 
“When we are running at full capacity, our staff tops at about fifty–this includes janitorial staff, our scientists, cafeteria staff and researchers.”
 “And when you are running at full capacity,” Rhino spoke up for the first time in a while, “what the fuck exactly are you running!”
The helicopter touched down with a soft thud. Vedder completely ignored Rhino. “Good job, Ed,” Vedder said, getting up and patting the pilot on the shoulder. He then turned and opened the sliding door of the helicopter. The pounding din of the chopper blades powering down immediately filled the cabin, and Vedder was pushed violently out, landing face first on the lawn, Rhino atop him. Rhino picked Vedder up by the back of his collar and belt and, in a display of his true strength, flipped Vedder over on his back as if he were paper. 
“Rhino, no!” Jack screamed.
“Why the fuck are we here?” Rhino yelled, blood streaming from his eyes now in torrents. He wiped some of it away. “Did you do this?” He held a bloody hand out to Vedder. Vedder smirked. 
“If it were up to me, you and your nerdy friend wouldn’t be here at all. We don’t need you two. You’re just collateral.” Vedder glanced at Tyler climbing out of the chopper. Rhino pulled one foot back, ready to place squarely in Vedder’s gut. He was stopped by the feeling of cold hard steel on the back of his neck and a clicking noise he had heard a hundred times in movies: a gun being cocked. Jack was jumping out of the chopper now, coming to Rhino’s aid. Five armed men had circled the group, pistols drawn on the newcomers. All five of the men were bleeding from various orifices. 
“Drop your weapons immediately!” Jack said. “Vedder, what the fuck is this?”
“Unfortunately,” Vedder replied, “I knew it would come to this when you gentlemen found out you weren’t going to get the answers you wanted.” Jack glared at Vedder now with furious rage. “I just didn’t think it would happen this soon.”
“You pretentious fuck,” Jack said, balling his fists tightly. “You said you needed me. I won’t cooperate if this is how things are going to be. I won’t be prodded by the tip of a gun!”
“I’m afraid you have no choice Jack,” Vedder said with smug satisfaction. “We won’t help your friends until you help us. Got it?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Good. Take them to Cathedral.”
One of the armed men pointed his sidearm directly at Jack. Tyler was given the same treatment. “Start walking,” the man said. Jack hesitated for a moment and knew it was hopeless. 
“Where’s Dr. Crane?” Jack asked, but Vedder only nodded to the guards. Jack took a final glance at his friends and, under threat of death from the guards, began to march towards the largest dome. 


THREE
Jack slowly peeled his eyelids apart, sticky and gluey. A dull gray light penetrated his irises as they opened to the world and he saw a single fluorescent light, protected by a mesh cover in the steel colored ceiling. 
Where the fuck am I? 
Jack sat up–he was lying on a cot mattress. His head suddenly ached fiercely and the familiar fire that often radiated from the scar on his head exploded like a thousand hot needles on the inside of his skull. Jack buckled to his knees, holding his cranium until the pain passed. It took about ninety seconds before it dissipated even a little bit.
“Here,” a female voice issued from his right. “Take these, it’ll help.” Jack looked up into the Pacific blue eyes of the most beautiful woman he had seen in his life. Her hair was a cherry scarlet that glowed with alternating blonde stripes like a vanilla strawberry swirl. Her whipped cream cheeks were tinted with blooms of red, and the blossoms grew as a smile broke out on her face, revealing row after neat row of Chiclets. Her hand was held out in front of her, palm up, a pair of white pills floating on the milky skin. He’d never met this woman ever in his life, and yet she seemed… 
“Go on,” she said. “They’re just Tylenol.” There was something funny about her voice. It was almost like she was forcing down an accent, but it nevertheless jabbed through now and again. “Sorry about the injection they gave you, I told them it wasn’t necessary, but Jason, he can be a little...severe sometimes.” She urged her palm out further. “Go on, it’s alright now.”
“Fuck off,” Jack said. 
The smile that had previously lightened the girl’s face so beautifully moments ago melted away in a matter of seconds and was replaced by something Jack couldn’t have anticipated in a million years: deep, deep sadness. Tears began to trickle from the corners of her eyes and coursed a salty estuary down her face. This was when Jack noticed the girl wasn’t bleeding, but before he could question her about it, she threw herself upon him, wrapping her arms around his neck and sobbing uncontrollably. 
“Oh Jack,” she said. “Je t’adore.” 
The words seemed to resound and echo throughout Jack’s mind. 
Je t’adore? Where have I heard that before? 
Jack was familiar enough with French to know what the words meant (and that explained her accent too), but why did she just tell him she loved him? He was pretty sure that’s what it meant.
“What’s your name?” Jack asked her finally, and she pulled away reluctantly. 
“Andie,” she said. “Well, Andrea. But most people call me Andie. Andie Lee Vibert.”  
“Okay Andie,” Jack said. “Maybe you can help me. Do you think you can do that?” Andie wiped the moisture from her face on the striped sleeve of the purple cotton track hoodie she wore. Jack was undeniably attracted to her, and not just because of what she had said to him a few seconds ago. The attraction ran deep into him, and he felt like he was being pushed or guided by unseen hands toward her. The funny thing was, when Andie had told him she loved him (maybe she was nuts), Jack had to fight an insane compulsion to tell her he loved her back (maybe I’m nuts). 
Je t’adore... 
He pushed the train of thought out of his mind and reminded himself of the situation he was in. Maybe they had sent her in here as some sort of ploy, a way to get to him. He had no idea why they would, but Jack knew one thing for certain: he couldn’t trust her. 
“If Jason knew I was in here, he’d kill me,” she said. “But I just couldn’t...” She sobbed again. She began to pull herself towards him once more, and Jack anticipated another wet hug. It was a pretty big surprise when she lodged a soft, full kiss on his lips. Jack was flabbergasted, but only for a moment; then he was lost in the kiss. He couldn’t help it. They kissed and then she pulled away from him abruptly. Jack was sorry to see it end. It was his first kiss since Natalie…
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just couldn’t help it.”
“Uhhh, don’t be,” Jack replied, groggily and confused. “That was really good.” And he smiled. 
“You’re in a lot of trouble Jack,” Andie said.
“Tell me,” Jack quipped.
“I can’t. Not now. We’ve already taken some of your blood and have started preliminary testing, but so far we have no idea why you are immune to the Night Terror Virus. Until we figure that out, Jason needs you. After that...” She trailed off.
Jack grabbed her by the shoulders and looked like he was ready to shake her violently, but instead in a calm firm voice he said: “How did you know I was immune?”
“Not now Jack,” Andie said. “I have to go.” She pulled away from his embrace. It looked like it took all her force of will to do so; like pulling apart two powerful magnets. 
“Is it Dr. Crane?” Jack asked. “Did he somehow know I was immune? Is he here?”
Andie was at the door now, and for the first time Jack really noticed what the room looked like: a gray, sterile ten by twelve concrete space with no furnishings except for the cot, and the door. 
“I’ll be back,” Andie told him. “Rest for now Jack.” And she opened the door and slipped quietly out, leaving Jack on the floor dumbfounded.
“Je t’adore,” he muttered under his breath. 


FOUR
“Do you feel better?” Vedder asked Andie after she had left Jack’s room and they made their way up the hall. She gave him a look of pure loathing. “You’re lucky I even let you go in there. But I guess it doesn’t hurt to exploit your feelings for him in order to keep you in line.” He gave her a sharp smirk. 
“Go fuck yourself Jason,” she said. 
Vedder only shrugged. “You know Andie, maybe if you weren’t such a cheating whore, then maybe I would have deserved that. But you both got everything you had coming to you.”
“No,” Andie raged. “You were jealous and you never deserved me. None of this would be necessary if you hadn’t...” She trailed off.
“Yeah, yeah we’ve been through this. If I hadn’t left Jack behind then we wouldn’t have had to kidnap him now, blah, blah, blah. Did you stop to think that maybe if you hadn’t screwed around on me in the first place, that Jack would be standing here with us instead of in that room?”
“Left Jack behind! You son of a...” Andie hissed between her teeth. The door to the cafeteria opened on their right as they approached it and a man Andie very much did not want to see stepped into the hallway. Great. This is the last thing I need, she thought and quickly pushed past. Vedder had stopped to converse with the newcomer, not bothering with Andie as she stormed away. She caught a few snatches of their conversation as she went, but she didn’t need to hear what they were talking about to know what they were talking about. 
Jack.
Any guilt she had previously felt for her infidelity on Jason had melted completely away in the past few days. He had a right to be angry, sure, but he really shouldn’t have been surprised. He had stopped being good to her the moment she started working at CH, and had shown his true colors when he saw Jack climbing out of her tent the morning of the...incident…there was no other word for it. When he realized she and Jack were having an affair, he punished them for it, never thinking that maybe he deserved it.
She made her way down a few more windowless, white corridors, before coming to a set of stairs that took her up and outside of Arcade. The sun had disappeared behind the mountains, giving the jagged teeth of the Rockies the blazing look of a dragon’s mouth. The sun was setting and the longest day of her life was only just beginning. She knew she wouldn’t sleep this night. She would work steadily on Jack’s blood, covering every cubic gram of plasma and cells until she found the reason for Jack’s immunity. 
Andie crossed the shadow dappled valley floor, Arcade slipping behind, Cathedral rising before her. Her steps echoed hollowly across the tiled walkway between the domes. She saw no one else. Only half the original CH staff was still alive–the others were either mad from the disease or dead, the fibrin injections they had been treating themselves with finally failing and NTV dealing its final blow.
She wondered how much time she had left herself. 
Shortly after Steven Harper caught the disease in 65 million BC, they were all showing symptoms–all except Jack. As soon as they returned to the present, Andie had gotten to work studying the virus. That was difficult at first, being in quarantine, but Steven Harper, raging and insane, had escaped the CH compound and managed to make his way to Calgary by hitchhiking. The quarantine had to be effectively ended–the disease was exposed to the world and they needed to work on a cure. The disease had a one hundred percent mortality and contagion rate–everybody caught it, excepting Jack of course–and although she had discovered they could slow it down using fibrin injections, there still seemed to be no way to cure it. 
Or stop the insanity... 
The insanity was another problem.
Those who didn’t succumb to the disease right away went horribly, violently, mad. In some ways, the insanity was worse than what the disease did to its victims. She didn’t know why they went mad, but she had an idea: victims of the Night Terror Virus bled profusely inside their heads, shorting out normal processing and motor functions, causing insanity. And it was the worst kind of insanity–that’s why they called it the Night Terror Virus–victims screamed as if in the throes of actual night terrors. Andie had seen people she worked with for years suddenly gouge their own eyes out for an unknown fear; seen a friend douse themselves in gasoline and jump into a campfire; seen a colleague hang themselves from a steel girder in Arcade... 
She shivered again and turned her thoughts back to the disease itself, and not what it did to people. What do we know about it? She brooded. NTV was actually bacterial in nature, though the media called it a virus because the phrase “Night Terror Virus” was a lot catchier than “Night Terror Bacteria”. The disease resided in the bloodstream and tended to feed on the blood vessels, was highly contagious, and had not mutated in any way to render itself harmless. 
That was discouraging. 
Bacteria multiplied rapidly; they could go from one to a million in twenty four hours through binary fission: one microbe divided into two, two divided into four, four into eight, and so on. This massive scale of reproduction more often than not led to mutations that either helped the disease, or rendered it non-detrimental to humans. That was how penicillin resistant bacteria had developed. NTV had shown itself to be quite resistant to penicillin and other bactericidal and bacteriostatic drugs. 
Shitty. 
In addition, NTV appeared to be contagious no matter the source: airborne, epidermal contact, fluids, corpses. The tests all confirmed it. NTV was quite possibly the most resilient and invincible disease in history. 
The problem was that it was never meant for this history. 
NTV and humans missed each other by sixty-five million years...and I helped bring them together... 
The word “extinction” kept flashing through her mind like a bobber, pulled under water and then released to come rushing back up to the surface. A tear escaped her eyes. 
She came to the wide arching frosted glass doors of Cathedral and produced a security ID card from her pocket. Usually there was an armed guard standing at this entrance, but not today. 
Maybe not ever again. 
She slid her card through a magnetic card reader mounted to the door, and with a click, the lock released and she was allowed access to the building. There was no lobby or desk when one entered Cathedral, only a straight, metal hallway, like a square aluminum pop can, no doors or windows, and terminating in an elevator door. She crossed the hall in half a minute and stopped at the elevator. To the right of the elevator, mounted about five feet above the floor on the wall, was what looked like a round stereo speaker with a small LCD screen below it. Without hesitation Andie blew into the speaker. Nothing happened. She frowned and tried again. This time there was a whirring of machinery in the wall and the elevator door slid open. A message on the LCD read: Welcome Dr. Vibert. Andie entered the elevator and turned to the bank of buttons next to the now closing door. There were eight buttons, indicating eight levels, but Andie knew there were more. Cathedral had at least twelve levels. 
And on one of those levels, they were keeping the raptor. 
She had had nightmares about the raptor since she had gotten back. Its muzzle still stained with blood... 
Why was Jason even keeping it alive? He had talked about moving it. Maybe he already had…
Of the eight buttons, only three were illuminated–she only had access to three levels of the complex–Timelab, Chemlab, and Offices. She pushed the button for Chemlab and, imperceptibly, the elevator moved down, toward the bottom of Cathedral where her lab was housed. It would take almost a minute to get there. 
Jason had given her space on the Chemlab floor when she came to Cassé-Horlage. That had been in the early days of their courtship, over a year ago, and there had been a small uproar over her procurement of that valuable real estate. That was because CH’s primary research directive was concerned with aerospace and time travel applications. The other researchers questioned what a bacteriologist was doing at CH. Jason had tried to justify the whole thing with a flimsy excuse about paleomicrobiology: that Andie was there to study bacterial samples from past times. 
“It’s an emerging field, and CH is getting in on the forefront,” Jason had said. 
Andie knew that the study of past microbes gave scientists insights into the evolution of diseases and the conditions they thrived in. Jason had even mentioned something about wiping out diseases before they began, wiping out illness for good. It was a fantastic thought, and mostly bullshit, but whatever, the pay was unbelievable, and Jason loved her–he never said as much, not once–but Andie knew he did. After all, he had threatened to walk when the matter eventually went to Scott Bon. Everyone wanted Andie gone, she was a waste of CH resources, but Bon needed Jason, and Jason knew it, so Bon gave in, much to the chagrin of everyone else. Indeed, even a year later, Andie still got dirty looks and heard murmured cursing around her in the lab. She didn’t care. She didn’t need friends. She had always been a loner. 
And really, she had her mother to blame for that... 


FIVE
The water scalded her hands viciously, but Andie hardly felt it. The soap always dried out her skin, but Andie didn’t care–she had to wipe away every single solitary last microbe. If she didn’t–if her hands weren’t washed to Mama’s standards–she could expect to go hungry tonight. Or worse, she’d never be allowed outside to play. She scrubbed and scrubbed, her skin turning a lobster red and looking as if it were boiled. When she’d finally had enough, she elbowed the hot water faucet off. 
She hadn’t used the cold water. 
She grabbed a clean, unused white towel from the stack next to the sink and wiped her hands dry, thoroughly. She threw the towel immediately into a hamper. Towels were to be used only once.
She left the bathroom, walked the hall, and entered the living room. Mama sat in the easy chair that seemed more an extension of her body than a piece of furniture. Her copious love handles were supported by the chair’s arms, and Andie often marveled how that chair faired under such relentless strain, day in and out. She appeared to be asleep, which was not unusual, though Andie wondered how she did it with the TV’s volume cranked so goddamn loud. Some days Andie swore that if she heard “Come on Down!” from The Price is Right just one more time, she would poke her eardrums out with a toothpick. 
Well, if Mama was asleep then maybe she could sneak out without an inspection, out into a beautiful Montreal day. Andie crept cautiously to the front door, stepping with the practiced ease of someone who has done this before. Her hand was on the knob and...
“Laissez-moi vois,” Mama’s guttural voice issued from the chair. 
Shit, Andie thought, though she knew she shouldn’t. It was a bad word. She froze.
“Andrea,” Mama bellowed. “Laissez-moi vois.”
Andie turned and faced her mother but could not meet her gaze. Mama looked down on her with the same color eyes Andie had, framed by the same fire engine hair. Everything else Andie had gotten from her Papa, who had died of bacterial poisoning in undercooked food two years earlier, when she was eight. She couldn’t remember much about him from personal experience, but she had plenty of pictures. Mama had not been the same since. Andie was kept on a tight leash, allowed maybe an hour outside per day in the summer, which is why she dreaded summer so much. At school she got recess every couple of hours and played outside all she wished. 
Mama had put the fear of God into her about that though. 
Andie didn’t go anywhere without her hand sanitizer, and if Mama found out Andie had so much as tapped another child on the shoulder without washing her hands soon afterwards, she was really in for it. At first it all seemed crazy, washing up a dozen times a day, but after a while it started to make sense: you couldn’t get sick if you always washed the bugs away. And she didn’t want to get sick, like Papa had. 
Andie approached her mother, arms outstretched, palms up. Mama scrutinized her hands, like a house inspector looking for the tiniest of cracks in the foundation. Mama finally looked up and said, “Bon”, but she didn’t remove her gaze from Andie. Andie knew she hadn’t gotten off yet. 
“Vous semblez pale,” Mama intoned. 
Andie’s heart sank. 
I always look pale because you never let me outside, she thought. “Je me sens bien,” Andie replied, and it was true. She felt perfectly fine. 
“Laissez-moi vous sentez,” Mama said, reaching out for Andie’s forehead. Andie sighed and obeyed without question. She had learned not to argue with her mother. Mama reached out with one doughy hand and Andie felt the hot, soft flesh spread on her forehead.
“Vous êtes chaud,” Mama said, without even a tinge of genuine concern to her voice. But Andie didn’t notice. 
Was she feeling sick? 
Now that she came to think about it, maybe she was. She had wanted to go outside and play, but now, she really didn’t feel so good. Andie met her mother’s eyes.
“Andrea, vous êtes malade. Allez se couchant,” Mama said. Andie said not a word, just nodded and turned from her mother, making her way back down the hallway to her room. 
Before she got there she stopped at the bathroom and turned on the hot water. 


Andie looked at her watch impatiently. The elevator ride down to Chemlab seemed to be taking longer than usual. She knew it just seemed that way because she was so eager to get back to work on Jack’s blood, but her last encounter with Jason weighed on her heavily, and seemed to be making time stretch on to infinite. Despite all that had happened, she still had some feelings for him. It hadn’t been all bad after all. Some things just weren’t meant to work out... 


Andie shrugged her shoulders to bring her coat collar up and shield her face from the bitterness of the cold. Snowflakes the size and consistency of golf balls pummeled the exposed parts of her forehead. 
Remind me again why anyone would want to live in Toronto? 
For a moment she considered abandoning the trek across the U of T parking lot and returning to the warmth of her car, drive to her apartment and lie in bed all day, watching movies. She could call Professor Coull and tell him she was snowed into her parking lot, or something. He would understand; it happens all the time. Andie stopped and turned on the spot, but her car was gone, lost in a blowing blizzard fog. She sighed and started back towards the biology department building. 
At the edge of the parking lot she picked out what was likely the sidewalk; not that she could see it for all the snow, but a plethora of tracks marked it well enough. The sidewalk ran between the library and the University Center building, forming a concrete canyon and sheltering her from some of the wind and snow. Here the sidewalk could be made out beneath a thin sheaf of ice. Up until now, she had not seen another soul braving the cold as she was, but now she saw a man coming from the other end of the canyon. As they approached each other, Andie kept her head up and made eye contact. He smiled at her, despite the cold, and she smiled back. He was older, but good looking. He wore designer frames, his hair was styled and he wore an expensive looking Columbia winter jacket. 
Andie never took her eyes off him...voluntarily, that is. 
One second she was looking at the man, the next she was looking at the sky, flakes falling onto her face like dandruff.
 She was in pain. She sat up and the man was there.
“Are you alright?” he asked, suppressing a giggle. She tried to move and her right leg flared up in exquisite pain. She screamed. 
“I guess not,” the man said, removing a cellphone from his jacket. “I’ll call an ambulance.”
“No,” Andie said, surprising herself. “I mean, I’m alright. I’ll drive myself to the hospital.” The man gave her a quizzical look. Andie looked embarrassed. “I can’t afford it,” she said. “An ambulance ride I mean.” 
The man laughed heartily. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s on me.”
“No, no, I couldn’t…” Andie began, but the man was already speaking into his phone. He hung up. “They’ll be here in a couple minutes,” he said. 
Andie smiled ruefully. “Thanks. Listen, you don’t have to stay. I’ll be fine ‘til they get here. I hate to keep you from wherever you need to be.”
“I don’t have to be anywhere,” he said. “I just had a meeting with a friend and now I’m done. Besides, now I kinda feel responsible for you. Maybe I shouldn’t have smiled at you like that.” Andie blushed. “Couldn’t help it though. When I see a pretty girl, I tend to smile.” 
She went a deeper shade of red. “I’m Andie,” she said.
“Good to meet you Andie. I’m Jason. Jason Vedder.” And he smiled. 
Jason ended up following the ambulance to the hospital in his vehicle and waited with Andie the entire six hours she was there. He even offered to call any family she needed to inform, but she only asked that he call Dr. Coull and tell him what had happened. Andie had no family–her mother had died two years earlier of a heart attack. School was her life at the moment. The only other thing Andie asked him for was a bottle of hand sanitizer, as she had seemingly lost hers when she fell. He drove her home and they spent the night together, making love–which was pretty damn awkward with a cast on–and spent as much time together as possible over the next weeks. 
Jason turned out to be one smart, impressive guy. He was an aerospace engineer. He owned his own engineering firm and built the first suborbital civilian space plane, winning the ten million dollar Ansari X-Prize in 2004 by launching a non-government funded craft into space twice within two weeks. He was a millionaire–not that that was important to Andie, but it was nice, and he now partnered in a new company that at the time Andie had never heard of–Cassé-Horlage–owned and operated by Scott Bon, a U of T physics professor. Jason had been meeting with Bon the day Andie fell into his arms.
Six months later, Andie was hopelessly in love with Jason and he offered her a job at CH. She didn’t jump at it right away–she had a career planned after all–and well on her way to becoming a microbiologist. By the time she was thirteen, Andie had realized that there was something seriously wrong with her mother’s way of thinking. She noticed that nobody was afraid of germs the way she was. Nobody washed their hands the way she did. Yet she couldn’t stop. She thought of her father and immediately the old fears would return. She couldn’t seek help for it–not with her mother around–and Andie began to despise her for it. 
When she turned eighteen, the angst had built to a crescendo, and so she announced to her mother that she was leaving Montreal to study germs at the University of Toronto. The fight that followed was epic in every sense of the word, and in the end, Andie had left and never talked to her mother again. 
Not even before she died. 
Andie felt no regret. She was free...for the most part. Every once in a while though, she found herself washing her hands for just a little too long, or the water was just a little too hot... 
It was with great reluctance that Andie quit school and followed Jason Vedder to CH. Even before she had taken the job, she constantly questioned Jason about what exactly she would be doing, but he said he would take care of it. She didn’t even really know what was done at CH, other than aerospace applications. What could she possibly do there? She told Jason she still wanted to be a microbiologist and he said she would be. She believed him, and when it was finally revealed to her the true nature of Cassé-Horlage, she was elated: time travel! She would get to study past diseases! She was excited beyond recognition. 
Too bad things didn’t work out the way she had hoped. 
Andie didn’t even get to go on the first half dozen trips Jason and his team made in the Egg. Jason had said they had to work out a few more kinks before he would let her go, even though Andie knew they had perfected the technology long before she had ever gotten there. And so she waited. She voiced her dissatisfaction to Jason on numerous occasions, and each time he got more and more impatient with her. She continued to work in her lab, and got paid for it, but she wasn’t doing what she was promised. Finally, three months after she started at CH, Andie went on her first time trip. 
They went to November 22, 1963, Dallas, Texas. 
The day Kennedy was assassinated. 
Andie was told to basically stay out of the way while the rest of the crew discovered the truth behind that infamous murder. She had no opportunity to collect biological samples. Besides, who wanted to collect germs from 1963? Andie wanted to go back further, find older specimens. When they got back to the future, she voiced her displeasure to Jason, who all but ignored her–he was too busy selling the information they had just obtained. Andie was pissed. She and Jason fought, and Andie threatened to leave. Jason promised her a better trip next time, and she stayed.
Andie went on the next five trips and collected samples on only two of them. And the samples were nothing special. She fought with Jason some more. They hadn’t made love in over a month, and she was depressed. They didn’t talk for a week. Then one day Jason came to her in her lab and told her about their next trip. 
“We’re going back farther than we’ve ever been,” Jason had said. “This is your big opportunity, And.”
“Yeah?” Andie had said skeptically. “How far back?”
“Sixty-five million years,” Jason had said with a grin. Andie suddenly felt hopeful again, although she was growing to hate the man she loved. Jason went on to say that he was bringing in his brother–a paleontologist–and maybe one of his students too. 
Andie merely shrugged and turned back to her work. She wouldn’t be any more civil to him... 


The elevator gave a slight surge as it came to a stop and the doors slid open. Andie was reflected in the polished surface of the marble floor as she passed row after tidy row of stainless steel cupboards and tables, lined with assorted lab equipment, beakers, and instruments. There was only one person in the lab right now. Andie found her at the back, washing her hands at a sink. The image gave her the shivers. The woman turned her head at the sound of Andie’s approaching footfalls and shut off the water, reaching for some paper towel.
“Anything?” Andie asked hopefully.
“Not much,” the woman said in an eerily familiar voice. It always gave her the willies to hear this woman speak. “I’ll run you down on what I’ve got right now, but I think we’ll be here all night.”
“I was afraid of that,” Andie said regretfully. “Need a break?”
The woman threw out the paper towel she was drying her hands with and finally turned to Andie. They both seemed to startle for a moment. It was hard getting used to seeing yourself–let alone working with and having a conversation with yourself. 
She’s me, before this all happened. Me, before Jack.
Despite everything else, at least Jason had had enough foresight not to return to the original timeline: as she had learned, time travel created a parallel world to our own, a String World, an exact copy, right down to the atom. That way, if they did something to change the past, only the String World would be altered, not the original. It was like the Universe’s own insurance policy. 
They were in a String World right now.
The woman standing before her, whom everyone called Andrea to avoid confusion, was a copy. In this world, there was another copy of the original Jack too–who was now locked in a room in Arcade. After disposing of the original Jack in a fit of jealously, Jason Vedder realized their only chance of a cure for the disease was gone, and so had brought them here, to a String World, where Jack was still alive. 
Alive, and immune to the Night Terror Virus.
“Did you get to talk to Jack?” Andrea asked.
“Yeah,” Andie said, sadly.
“I don’t know what you see in him really,” Andrea said. 
“Hah,” Andie quipped, “you will...oh wait, I guess you won’t now.” They both laughed. “Go get something to eat. We’ll talk when you get back.”
“Thanks,” Andrea said, and left the lab.
Andie watched her go then burst into tears, though she was not sure why. After about a minute she stopped and wiped her eyes with a tissue. 
She sighed and washed her hands at the sink.


SIX
Tyler Brown shot up into a sitting position, panic imbuing every ounce of his consciousness. He felt a strong yet gentle hand on his shoulder and adrenaline surged through his body. He bounced up off the cot he had been lying on and backed himself into a corner of the gray, sterile room he had no recollection of entering. 
“Get away!” he half screamed, but when he saw who his would be assailant was, he immediately felt foolish. Rhino stood at the head of Tyler’s cot, a huge smirk on his square face. “Oh shit Rhino,” Tyler said sheepishly. “Y-you scared the shit outta me.”
“No shit,” Rhino said.
Tyler’s head exploded with pain now that the adrenaline subsided. This must be what a migraine feels like. 
“You got a headache too?” Rhino asked. Tyler looked up, realizing he had been rubbing his temples. He nodded. “Don’t worry, it goes away in about ten minutes. A side effect of the knockout drugs they gave us.”
“Ten minutes?” Tyler said confused. “How long have you been up?”
“About an hour. I tried to wake you a few times but you were out cold.”
Tyler looked around the room. “Where’s Jack?”
“I dunno. Maybe doing some tests on him. They gave us all those injections before they brought us here, so I don’t know.”
Tyler’s eyes suddenly widened, recalling being poked by a needle. He wiped his hands across his face, stunned. “We’re not bleeding!” he exclaimed. 
“Yeah,” Rhino said. “They must have given us some of those fibrin injections too. Guess we’ll see how long they last.”
Tyler nodded weakly. “Maybe they’ll have found the cure by then.” Rhino only shrugged. He didn’t mention that he doubted they would be walking out of here alive, whether a cure was found or not. 
A sound of commotion came from outside the room. Rhino jumped to the door. There was a wired safety-glass window set in the door, but it was painted over black from the outside. In the free time he had had before Tyler awoke, Rhino had examined every facet of the door. He found no conceivable way to break out, but he did notice a chip in the window paint; he could see out into a hallway, if only slightly. He pressed his eye close to the hole. To the left he could make out shadowy human shapes that looked like they were leaving a room next door. 
Maybe Jack’s in there?  He kept watching.
A man who Rhino immediately recognized as Vedder came into view, walking side by side with a beautiful red haired woman who appeared to be crying. They passed out of view in a few seconds and were gone. He could hear them arguing, but could make out nothing clearly through the door.
“Who is it?” Tyler asked worriedly. 
“Vedder and some chick, I don’t know who. She’s hot.”
“What are they doing?”
“Nothing,” Rhino said. “They just walked by.”
“Oh,” Tyler said, sounding disappointed.
Rhino sighed. Something about that woman bothered him. 
Why had she been crying? 
If Jack was in the room next door, and she was crying... 
A ball of ice crept into Rhino’s stomach. 
If they did something to Jack... 
“Wh-wh-what’s wrong?” Tyler asked.
Rhino didn’t answer, for another shadow entered his frame of view, coming again from the left. The figure that appeared was shorter and stockier than Vedder, but it was definitely a man. In fact, there was something familiar... 
“Holy shit!” Rhino cried out.
“What?” Tyler jumped from his cot.
“It’s Dr. Crane! I just saw him. He walked by!”
“Holy shit!” Tyler said. “He’s alive!”
Rhino broke out in an infectious grin. “He looked right at me. He saw me looking and...”
“What?” Tyler asked anxiously.
Rhino smiled. “He winked at me.”
Tyler sat back down on the cot, flabbergasted. “Maybe he’s gonna get us out of here.”
“Maybe,” Rhino agreed, suddenly hopeful. He waited a full thirty minutes before he finally stepped away from the door. Frustrated, he flopped down on his own cot next to Tyler’s. 
He looked around the room, and immediately memories of his darkest secret flooded back. Memories of being locked up in a room much like this one. Jack Pennywise was the only other person currently in his life who knew that secret, and although he liked Tyler immensely, it was not something he had ever shared with him. 
Tyler wasn’t much for keeping secrets. 
Tyler was talking, but Rhino didn’t hear him. He lay down on his cot in the cramped quarters of the room and the feeling was all too familiar to him. He closed his eyes...


Rhino opened his eyes to find that he was still in the cell. 
He had been dreaming he was gliding down the ice, stick in hand, cradling the puck on a breakaway. Well, it wasn’t really a breakaway; he was the only one on the ice, he and the goaltender. From centre ice the goalie had no face, but as Rhino approached a familiar visage began to form. 
Skinner. 
Rhino tried to stop, but couldn’t. It was as if the ice were moving beneath him instead of the other way around. He lifted his stick, let the puck escape. Surely he could stop if he didn’t have the puck. To his horror, Rhino saw the blade of his stick was gone, replaced by a razor-sharpened ice skate, curved and deadly. He couldn’t lower the stick. It was too late. Skinner was impaled, blood pouring from a fissure in his chest, blown backward through the net, coming to a stop against the boards and sticking there, like a human dart. 
Rhino turned to run, to get away, but they were on him already–the cops, his teammates, Skinner’s teammates, family, friends. They all grabbed him and they all took him away. Far, far away. 
That was when he woke up.
There was a stirring from above him and he heard a voice like gravel. “What time is it?”
Rhino looked to the shelf next to the bunks. “Six forty-five,” he replied. 
The bunk creaked. “Fuck,” Marc said. “Mornin’ seems to come faster and faster ev’ry day.” Rhino heard a familiar hollow banging reverberate through the wall from the cell next door. “Tank’s up,” Marc growled and banged on the wall in reply. Tank banged on the wall again, but this time it was in a definite pattern. “Got smokes?” the thumps said. 
Marc replied: “No”. 
It was a pretty ingenious way to communicate in Rhino’s opinion, and after Marc explained it to him on his first night in Drum, Rhino immediately had respect for his cellmate. Not that he wouldn’t show respect for someone who could teach him the ropes of prison life. He had been here a month already. He didn’t expect it to go by so quickly–only another five to go. Marc had not asked him what he was in for–and Rhino thought the man didn’t really care. But on his first night, Rhino broke down and Marc did something he did not expect: he comforted him. 
“In Drum,” Marc had said, “a man can do his own time.” His face was pitted with middle age, his black scraggly hair hanging limply down his back, and he had a thick, Native accent. “Tha Indian gang is tha Redd Alert, but tha RA are an easy clique to live with. We have respect and some old school values.” 
“So you’re RA, then?” Rhino asked sheepishly. 
“Born and raised,” Marc laughed. “There’s tha Aryan Resistance too. Same goes for them.” He paused to sigh. “Like I said, in Drum, a man can do his own time...and if you like drugs,” he laughed hysterically now, “you’ll love it here!”
Rhino hadn’t known what to say to that, and so was surprised to hear himself talk: “I’m in for assault. It was during a hockey game, the guy sucker-checked me and I lost it. He lost an eye.” Rhino began to weep again. 
“So you’re a hockey fan then?” Marc said whimsically. 
“Well, yeah,” Rhino said suddenly smiling. 
“Well, then I think we’ll get along just fine,” Marc grinned and Rhino returned the favor. 
Marc was a Native gang member. Rhino had had little to no experience with gangs of any kind and so had expected the worst. And it wasn’t like Rhino was a little guy either; he knew he could take down most of the guys in here one on one no problem–but he was still terrified. He supposed his view of prison had been skewed by movies and TV; he half anticipated Marc to stab him in his sleep for being white; but then again, Drum was a medium security prison and most offenders within were non-violent. 
Rhino and Marc got up and ready for the day ahead. At seven o’clock the cell doors slid open on their tracks and they stepped out onto the catwalk. Rhino looked to his right and there was Tank, a three-hundred pound bulk of a man, cloaked in tattoos from head to toe, many of which signified his allegiance to the Hell’s Angels. His nearly butt length hair hung down his back in a single braid and his pointed goatee nearly touched his chest, streaked with the occasional snowy hair. 
“Morning fellas,” Tank said in his usual cheerful demeanor. It always struck Rhino how such an intimidating looking man could make you feel like you were talking to Santa Claus, though he was sure Tank was perfectly capable of the things that crossed the mind when you looked at him. 
“Mornin’ Tank,” Rhino and Marc said respectively. 
“Marconius,” Tank grumbled, “think they’ll let us smoke when we get out there today?” Rhino grinned at Tank’s pet name for Marc.
“Yeah I think so,” Marc replied. “They have in the past.”
“Great, I’m dying for a dart. This new no smoking rule is bullshit.”
“Yeah,” Marc said in agreement. 
The “out there” that Tank had referred to was an outdoor work detail, and Rhino, Marc, and Tank had all gotten assigned to it. It would be good to get out of Drum, if only for an afternoon.
After breakfast, they were herded aboard the prison bus, and taken about five clicks down the highway. Rhino never thought he could feel happy about picking trash on the side of the highway, but it was a pleasant change from the rigid checkerboard pattern of prison life that, although Rhino had only experienced for a month, was in reality quite sick of. 
Marc was in the ditch ahead of him, singing the chorus to “Jailbreak” by ACDC–and way off key. He turned to look back at Rhino every now and again, cigarette hanging from his lower lip like a hot icicle. He had to be happy about that. Rhino didn’t smoke himself, but cigarettes were like currency in prison, so he still collected them where he could.
Rhino navigated his paper pick between some tall grasses to get at a Tim Horton’s coffee cup as traffic whizzed by on the highway, some buzzing their horns like annoying insects. Surprisingly he found himself grateful to have been sent to the Drumheller Correctional Institute; he knew nobody in Drumheller and so need not worry about a friend or relative driving by and seeing him–though his family was totally supportive of him when this whole mess began. Rhino’s father had gone so far as saying that Skinner had deserved it, but Rhino was nevertheless extremely ashamed. He told his family not to visit him during his time at Drum. 
Six months wasn’t that long. 
Thinking about his family started to get him upset and so Rhino changed his train of thought. He wondered what he would do when he got out. He would go back to school he supposed, but what was he going to take? Before all this happened, when he had been playing hockey for the Golden Bears, he had been in the kinesiology program with plans to go into sports medicine. 
He had no intention of going back down that path. 
To him it was cursed now; it had brought out the worst in him. He had never realized what a negative influence hockey had had on his life until he was in prison and had the time to think about it: he had been a chauvinistic, arrogant, cocky, asshole; he had treated women like shit; he looked down on people who weren’t athletes; he drank beer like a fish; and he regularly got into fights. 
That part of him was done. He just had to figure out where to start over. 
Rhino moved deeper into the grass and an image that he recognized from childhood reared out at him from the foliage. It was printed on a wrinkled and ripped glossy pamphlet that said: 
“Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleontology, Drumheller”
 Below those words, a fierce looking Tyrannosaurus Rex burst from the cover, its teeth bared in a snarling rictus. He picked it up.
“Whatcha got there Rhinoceros?” a voice issued from behind him. It was Marc. Rhino said nothing, just handed the pamphlet over. 
“Oh yeah, tha Royal Tyrell. That’s back tha way we came, about ten minutes. Was there when I was a kid.” He paused and gave Rhino a puzzled gaze. “You like dinosaurs?”
“I did,” Rhino replied. “When I was a kid.” 
Marc nodded, took another drag off his cigarette then smiled and turned back to pick more garbage. Rhino slipped the booklet into his pocket and got back to work too. That night he read the pamphlet cover to cover. It mostly talked about the museum and its exhibits, showing skeletons of complete prehistoric animals, but there was also one small section of text about palaeontology:

Fossils are the remains or traces of ancient plants and animals, and a paleontologist is a scientist who studies these remains. There are different branches of paleontology and a number of Canadian universities that offer paleontology programs, but remember: paleontology is not the same as archaeology, which is the study of past human life and cultures.

Rhino was definitely intrigued. 
He kept the leaflet tucked under his mattress and took it with him when he was released from Drum. It wasn’t until about a month later, at his parent’s house, when he went through his stuff from prison again that he “rediscovered” it. It had always been in the back of his mind since he found it, but now that he had a new life ahead of him, it lodged itself in the forefront. He read it again and did a little internet research. 
The next fall he was enrolled in the University of Alberta’s paleontology program, where he met Dr. Jonathan Crane, his roommate Tyler Brown, and Jack Pennywise, who became his best friends. Jack became the only person outside his family that Rhino had confided in about his past. Of course this was after Jack had confided his own sordid past to Rhino and Tyler. 
Rhino couldn’t say exactly why he told Jack about his time in jail and not Tyler; he supposed that Jack had been through more in his life and could perhaps relate better. And there was the old excuse that Tyler couldn’t keep a secret, but really, that had only happened once. 
Maybe he owed Tyler the truth. They were best friends, weren’t they?


SEVEN
“Rhino, dude, wake up!” 
Rhino’s eyes snapped open like bottle rockets. Tyler was standing over him, his face a study in genuine shock and terror. “What is it?” 
“It-it’s Jack,” Tyler resounded. “Th-they just took him...down the hall!”
“What!” Rhino said, his heart jumping to his throat. “Who took him?”
“Vedder,” Tyler said, the anger hard in his voice. “And some guards. Took him by gunpoint.”
“Son of a bitch,” Rhino said, contemplating the worst.
“R-R-Rhino, man, er uh, if they took Jack away like that. I mean, why would they have to? Th-they got his blood already, right?”
“Yeah, I assume so. We’ve been here,”–he paused to look at his watch– “shit, twenty four hours already. They must’ve gotten what they need from him by now.” 
“Then uh, that uh, means they don’t need us anymore, right?” 
Rhino had been expecting this scenario. He was already trying to think of a way to get them out. 
“Don’t worry Ty, we’ll figure this out,” Rhino said in his most reassuring voice. “Even if I have to take down all those fucking guards myself, we won’t go down without a fight.” His fists were clenched hard at his sides, knuckles turning white. And as if in response to this, there was a knock at the cell door, followed by the jangling of keys in the lock. 
“Oh shit!” Tyler said, backing into a corner. Rhino raised the fists he had made, ready to fight for their lives. Fists were no match for guns, but he had to try. The door swung wide and the person who stood there was ironically the last Rhino had ever expected to see.
“Dr. Crane?” Tyler said awkwardly. 
Jonathan Crane entered the room, waving them back with one frantic hand. “Hey guys,” he said, sounding out of breath. “We haven’t got much time.”
Rhino turned and grinned at a beaming Tyler. 
Suddenly another man followed Crane into the room and shut the door. The sight of him nearly gave Rhino a heart attack. 
“Holy shit,” he said. 
“So good to see you again Ryan,” the man said. 


EIGHT
Andie held the eyedropper above the Petri dish and slowly lowered it. She squeezed evenly and deliberately, the tiniest of drops of blood slapping into the bacterial stew of Night Terror in the dish. She and Andrea turned to look at the LCD screen projecting the contents of the dish, the image produced by an electron microscope. The reaction was immediate: the bacteria died. 
“How is this even possible?” Andrea asked, her face equally confused and terrified. 
Andie looked at herself and only shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, neither of us are true experts here but...hold on.” Andie moved another dish below the microscope and lowered the eyedropper. She had done this kind of work before, but it had been done within the confines of a biohazard suit. There were suits available for them to use, but it would be pointless; they were already infected. She slowly lowered the dropper until it was millimeters above the surface, but did not let any blood fall. They watched the screen. The reaction was less immediate, but the result was eventually the same: the bacteria died. 
“What the fuck?” Andrea quailed, mouth agape. 
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Andie said, equally flabbergasted, “but the proof is here. It seems that just being near Jack’s blood kills the disease.” She paused to let it sink in. “But it would probably take longer than a serum synthesized directly from it.” 
Andrea nodded and said: “Besides, if we’re going to cure everyone, we very well can’t bring all the sick people to Jack.” They smiled, looked each other in the eye, then laughed. They threw arms about each other. They cried.
“We did it,” Andie said, her heart pumping vigorously. “I don’t know how–we didn’t really do anything–but we fucking did it!”
Andrea laughed. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
“Alright,” Andie said, pulling away from herself. “We better get on this right away. Let’s start producing that serum.” 
It was still disconcerting to see herself as other people saw her. You go through your whole life looking through the same set of eyes but you can never truly turn them on yourself. Mirrors and videos only showed you a reflection. It was actually pretty damned cool. Andie never doubted she was beautiful– it was the one part of her heritage she was proud of–but seeing that beauty in the flesh only raised her self esteem. It was a nice feeling. 
“I’ll call Jason and tell him the news,” Andrea said, already walking to a phone mounted on a nearby wall. 
“Good idea,” Andie said, although she wasn’t entirely sure it was. She was afraid. What would Jason do now that they had a cure? Would he let Jack and his friends go? She didn’t think so, but a plan had been forming since Jack was taken prisoner. 
There was another phone in her office. 
Well, Andrea’s office. 
Andie crossed to the front of the lab, pulled her key ring from her pocket with a jingle, opened the door, and entered, closing the door. She saw Andrea on the lab phone, oblivious. Her hands were shaking now but she managed to rest the handset from its cradle. 
She dialed Dr. Crane. 


NINE
Tyler stood with his mouth agape, looking from one man to the other. 
They were the same man. 
How was it possible? Cloning? His head shook with the ramifications. Two Dr. Cranes!
The Dr. Crane that had let himself into the room stepped beside his twin and the men were virtually indistinguishable. If it weren’t for the fact that they wore different clothing, there would be no telling them apart. One wore a blue and green striped polo, the other a plaid shirt. 
Indistinguishable? No, maybe not. 
The first Crane looked older somehow, though not physically. It was in his eyes; those eyes looked more careworn, as if they had seen more of a cruel world than his “brother”. 
“How?” It was all Tyler could manage to get out of his still hanging maw. 
“Listen, Tyler, Ryan, we haven’t got a lot of time here,” the first Crane said, “but it will take them a few minutes to get Jack down to Arcade. Andie will call me, and then we can get you out of here.” He held up a cellphone.
“Who the fuck is Andie?” Rhino piped up, half mad. “Dr. Crane, please, tell us what’s going on. What happened to Jack?”
The first Crane gave his counterpart a sidelong glance. The second Crane nodded. “They’re going to get rid of Jack–and then you two.” Tyler’s heart leaped out of his throat like a frog on coals. “I’ll tell you what I can until Andie calls.” Rhino and Tyler sat down on one cot, eyes fixed raptly on Crane. 
“My younger brother, Jason Vedder, invented time travel,” Crane began. Tyler nodded, and looked at Rhino. He knew they were both thinking the same thing: Jack was right. “Jason and his company, Cassé-Horlage, have been traveling through time for about a year now, discovering the answers to age old questions and selling the information for money. Lots of money.” Crane looked uncomfortable. Tyler muttered a curse. 
“I know what you’re thinking,” Crane went on, “Back to the Future, right?” He paused. “Don’t worry, you can’t go back in time and stop your parents from ever meeting or something like that. In real life it doesn’t work that way.”
“R-r-really?” Tyler chimed in. “Like, there’s uh, no danger from paradoxes or whatever?” Time travel was a subject that interested him greatly, having read countless books on the subject. 
“More or less,” Crane replied. “I’ll go into the details another time.” He paused and considered. “However, that’s not to say time travel is without its consequences.” 
Tyler was completely elated. Real time travel! He was no longer scared; he was too thrilled to be scared. 
“Anyway,” Crane went on, “Jason had been planning a trip back further than they had ever gone before–millions of years–but he needed an expert. Jason and I hadn’t talked in years, but using his technology, he found out I was going to be fired over that whole Paquette incident, and so enlisted my help. I had nothing else going for me, so I agreed.” He paused to catch his breath. He was talking a mile a minute. “This is where things get a little sticky.” 
“B-b-believe me Dr. Crane,” Tyler said, “we were, uh, way beyond sticky way before now.” 
Crane nodded. “About a week after I started here, I called Jack.” 
Rhino’s eyes popped. “Jack said he hadn’t heard from you after the Paquette incident! You disappeared!”
Crane smirked. “He hadn’t. Don’t worry this will all make sense in the end...I hope.” Rhino only nodded, and Crane went on. “I felt guilty about leaving Jack when I left school. After all, he had assaulted Paquette on my behalf and would likely end up going to jail for it.” 
Tyler perked up. “Yeah, that actually is going to happen,” he said. “Jack got a visit from Paquette and his lawyer today, er, yesterday I mean.”
Crane frowned and nodded. “I was afraid of that. But anyway, I called up Jack and he came out here to work with me–hold on Ryan, sit down! I told you this will make sense in the end.” Rhino had shot up from his seat, but quickly reseated himself. “Okay, so Jack came out here and we went back. There were twelve of us, including Jack, sixty-five million years. Around the time the dinosaurs went extinct.” Tyler was getting more excited by the second, visibly bouncing now on the spot. 
“And yes, before you ask, we found out why they went extinct. I won’t keep you in suspense about that. To get to the point: no, a meteor did not completely kill them off, and yes, a disease did.”
Rhino was back on his feet again, slapping Crane on the back, momentarily forgetting where they were. “I knew it!” he exclaimed. “Congratulations Dr. Crane! I never doubted you. Not for a second.” Tyler was beaming too. 
The smile quickly melted from Crane’s visage–he wasn’t done. “The disease...” He paused, as if not ready to strike the hammer. He inhaled. “The disease that killed the dinosaurs...was the Night Terror Virus.”
“W-we know Dr. Crane,” Tyler said suddenly. 
Crane was visibly shocked. “What?”
“After talking to your brother, Jason, and finding that dart, Jack figured it out and told us.”
“What dart?” Crane asked, his eyebrows raised.
“Oh, uh, w-w-well Jack found a dart in the uh, neck of a juvenile dromaeosaur at the dig site. It w-wasn’t a hoax or a contamination. Jack figured that somebody somehow shot it, uh, you know, in the past.” 
“Son of a bitch,” Crane said, smirking. “Small world.”
“What?” Tyler asked confused.
“I shot that dinosaur,” Crane revealed. Rhino and Tyler’s faces were masks of disbelief. “Never mind,” Crane said. “The point is, we went to the past, and we got sick. All of us. Everyone except Jack. It seemed he was immune.” Crane stopped, looking like he was ready to tear up. For a moment, Tyler wasn’t sure if his former professor could go on. 
“Something happened,” Crane said. “We were attacked at our camp by a utahraptor, and we had to get out of there, quick. Jack didn’t make it.”
“What?” Tyler said, not comprehending.
“Jack was...left behind. He didn’t make it.”
“Dr. Crane,” Rhino bellowed now, “this doesn’t make any goddamned–”
“Yeah,” Dr. Crane said, “I know. Please, just let me finish.” Rhino nodded and settled back on his cot. “As you can see, we had a dilemma. We were infected with an unknown disease, and the only person with an immunity was dead. We didn’t know what we were up against, but thankfully Jason was on the ball. If I have to give him credit for anything, he was right on the ball.”
“What do you mean?” Tyler said. 
“Well, instead of bringing us back to the time we left, the present, which is what is usually done, Jason brought us back here, to CH, a month before we originally left–when Jack was still alive.” Crane paused to let that sink in. He could have mentioned String Worlds, but he didn’t want to confuse his students any more than they already were.
“Holy shit,” Rhino said. “You mean you came back to...well...now!” 
Crane nodded. “There’s a little more to it than that, but yes. You see, with time travel, if you always return to the exact time you left, you negate any...complications.” Crane turned to his twin. “Like running into yourself. That way, it’s as if you never left. Jason knew the only way to get Jack back was to go to a time where he still existed. He was hoping to arrive around the time when Jack was already here, at CH. But during the raptor attack, the time machine was damaged. When we got back, it was earlier. Jack was still with you guys at the dig site, discovering my dart, apparently.” A tear trickled down a rough hewn cheek. 
“My brother wanted me to call Jack and get him here, like I had originally, but I refused. We had already gotten Jack killed once. I wanted no part in it again. I had tampered enough with history. I accepted the fate I brought on myself. That was when Jason took matters into his own hands.”
“Wait a minute,” Tyler said. “S-so you guys, uh, got back to here, now, infected with NTV, but didn’t you uh, you know, quarantine yourselves or something. I’d think you’d be a bit more responsible Dr. Crane.” 
Everyone looked shocked at what just came from Tyler, not the least of all Tyler himself, but Crane straightened up and they prepared for the explanation. 
“The entire compound went into quarantine immediately, however there was a complication. Steven Harper escaped.”
“Harper?” Rhino chirped. “You mean that crazy fuck that came in with us from Calgary? He was with your brother. He pulled a gun on us.”
Crane slouched. “Yeah, he got out, with the help of his, uh, time twin.” Crane now looked at his own time twin. “When we got back from the past, Harper was exhibiting violent behavior, so we put him into the cell next to this one–although you weren’t here yet. Harper’s twin somehow got into that room, I guess he wanted to help...himself, and the infected Harper murdered him. He made it look like the body was asleep on his cot. No one checked on him for almost eight hours, not with all the other pressing matters to attend to. By that time, Harper had cut the perimeter fences and hiked out to the highway. He was in Calgary a few hours later.” 
Crane sighed. “My brother went after him, and was actually shocked to find Harper alive, in Calgary. He had somehow survived that long without medicine, although he had irreparable brain damage. He was like a zombie when Jason found him. He’s back in the cell next door.” Rhino and Tyler locked eyes fretfully. 
“That was just before the city wide quarantine. Jason then made a quick detour to Drumheller, and had his meeting with Jack outside the Pump. When he got back to Calgary, the quarantine came into effect and he was effectively trapped. The next day, Jack called him, and you guys know the rest.”
“That brings us to the present,” Crane said. “About two hours ago, Andie Vibert, a microbiologist working here, extracted a cure from Jack’s blood. They don’t need you guys anymore. With a sample of Jack’s blood, Jason can duplicate as much as he needs. Scott Bon–Jason’s partner–is a genius and the resources available to CH are limitless. They’re going to cover up this whole thing and Jason and Scott are going to come out looking like the heroes that cured the incurable disease.”
Rhino said, “But what about you Dr. Crane? And everyone else at CH? Won’t they be a liability as well?”
“No,” Crane said flatly. “Not when we go back to our own timeline–the original timeline.” He had a guilty look on his face now. Another hammer blow was about to be struck. “As I said before, as long as you return to the exact same time you left, nothing will have changed in your own time. We very well couldn’t go back to our own time while we were sick...we had to cure ourselves first, so things would be normal when we returned to our own time.”
“H-hold on,” Tyler intoned. “Dr. Crane, that makes no sense. If you uh, go back to your time, which is the future of now, NTV will still exist. You will have the same problem, only a month further down the line...”
Crane grimaced. “It’s like I told you Tyler, I can’t explain it very well. I’m not an expert. My time is not the future of this timeline. This world is just a parallel world to my own, a copy, created by time travel. They call it a String World. As long as I return to my own timeline, to the exact time I left, nothing will have changed.”
Rhino shot up again from his seat. “So then where does that leave us?” he growled. “You’re going to go back to your world and leave us here with the mess you created?” His fists were clenched again.
“Ryan, there’s nothing I can do about that. I have to return to my own time eventually. I can’t describe it, but it feels wrong to be here. Over time, it may destroy me. There’s more to it than that,” his eyes shifted warily, “but you could no more come with me than I could stay here.” Crane breathed heavily. 
The other version of Crane now spoke up for the first time. “Ryan I will be staying here too. This is my time...our time. I cannot escape it either. When this is all over, I will find you guys. It will be alright.” The look on his face convinced Rhino it would be anything but. 
 “Like I said,” the first Crane came in again, “time travel is not without consequence. I am sorry. All I can do is try to get you guys out of here, after being cured.” 
“You son of a bitch,” Rhino glowered. He looked ready to raise his fists, he would boil over at any minute, the uncomfortable silence in the room was deafening.
Crane’s cellphone rang. 
The ringtone blared loudly in the confined space and reverberated off the walls. Crane answered it. Tyler could almost make out a voice, tiny and electronic sounding but undeniably female on the other end. 
“Okay,” Crane said, “we’ll be down there in about ten.” He hung up. “Time to go,” he said. 
The other Crane opened the door and peered out into the hallway, making sure the coast was clear. He turned his head back and nodded. They entered the hall and started toward the end. It was a long corridor. Tyler glanced at the closed door next to their former prison. 
Harper’s cell. 
He almost felt bad leaving the man there, but it was too late for him. Harper was insane.
“So what about Jack?” Tyler asked as they moved briskly.
“We’re going to meet Andrea at the lab–she’s going to cure you two. Then we’re going to go get him,” Crane said.
“Where is he?” Rhino grumbled.
“Arcade. They’re taking him to the Egg. Hopefully Andie can stall them long enough...”  
“What’s the Egg?” Tyler asked.
“The time machine,” Crane said. 
Rhino suddenly stopped dead in his tracks. “Wait!” he blared. “What are they planning on doing to Jack?” 




7. The Egg


There was a sharp, hollow bang at the door and Jack Pennywise awoke with a start. He heard keys fumbling in the lock and a few seconds later the door swung open. Vedder stood there, flanked by four guards, exuding menace, a pistol gripped in one hand. He looked disheveled and tired. 
“Alright Jackie, time to go,” he said arrogantly, waving Jack along with the gun. Jack looked up at Vedder, anger and loathing oozing from every pore. 
If we were alone here you motherfucker... 
He had been locked up for nearly twenty-four hours without any contact from anyone–other than that strange encounter with the red haired girl. No news, no food, no water, and he was exhausted; he suspected it must have been from all the blood they took from him. He didn’t remember the blood taking, they had knocked him out before that, but a bandage and a puncture wound on both arms told him what had happened. 
Jack didn’t move, just stared up at Vedder defiantly. Andie’s words echoed ominously through Jack’s mind: “So far we have no idea why you are immune. Until we figure that out, Jason needs you. After that...”
Did they finally find a cure? Is that why Vedder was here? They must have. Vedder wouldn’t be here personally if they were merely going to take more blood. An icy lump crept into Jack’s throat. 
This was it. What did he have to lose?
Jack leapt to his feet with surprising agility. Before he even realized Jack had gotten up, Vedder felt a fist smack his jaw tightly, reeling him backward. The force of the punch pulled Jack forward and at the same time a wave of dizziness overcame him; he had been caught lying down when they arrived and, coupled with his lack of blood, his brain was not at one hundred percent. He fell forward to his knees. Vedder had stumbled backward against the wall, but quickly recovered, looming once more over Jack. 
“You’re quick Jack, I’ll give you that,” Vedder said, the satisfaction heavy in his voice. “But I’m better.” 
Vedder brought the butt of his pistol crashing down on Jack’s skull. Pain radiated in his head, but not just from the point of impact–this hurt was familiar. It was almost welcome in this alien place. 
It came from his scar. 
Jack blacked out.


TWO
Tyler shored himself up for the pinch, as the beautiful woman named Andrea plunged the stainless steel pin-spike of the needle into the crook of his right arm, the serum in the syringe flowing into his blood. He didn’t expect it, but the reaction was immediate. 
He felt better. 
He hadn’t openly bled since having been given that fibrin injection when they were taken prisoner, but bruises had started to form in random areas of his body–he had been bleeding internally. Andrea pulled the needle free and quickly dabbed the puncture with a cotton ball. She let Tyler hold it there himself. 
“Th-th-this came from Jack’s blood?” Tyler asked. Andrea nodded to him. “S-s-so uh, why was Jack immune?” He smiled at her. Andrea was quite possibly the prettiest woman Tyler had been given an injection by. 
“I don’t know,” Andrea said truthfully, her accent poking through slightly. “Somehow, some property of his blood completely kills the disease, almost irradiates it. Luckily, Jack has an o-negative blood type, universal. That means anybody could be given a vaccine synthesized of his blood.”
“Well that’s damn lucky,” Tyler said whimsically. 
“More like a suspicious convenience,” Rhino spoke up from behind them, tossing his cotton ball into a nearby garbage can, examining his own puncture wound. 
“What do you mean?” Tyler asked.
Rhino hesitated. “I dunno,” he said. “It’s just weird. First, Jack is completely immune to a disease that no one else is, and second, he’s a universal cure for it! It’s just fucking weird is all.” 
“I-I guess,” Tyler said, turning his attention back on Andrea. “Thanks,” he said. 
“It’s the least I could do,” she smiled. It looked forced. “Just trying to make up for what I’ve done...or what I’m going to do...oy!” She sounded frustrated.
“Oh,” Tyler said. “So you’re uh, from this timeline then?”
“Yeah,” she replied. “The other me–future me–we call her Andie, is in Arcade now, trying to stall whatever they’re gonna do to Jack.” She paused. “I don’t know what she sees in him, but she’s in love with him.” 
Tyler nearly choked. “Wh-what? Really?”
“Yeah,” she replied. “Apparently I was supposed to fall in love with him too, like she did.” She laughed. “I guess you’ll have to do.” She pierced Tyler with an icy blue stare. Tyler gulped. She laughed again. “Relax. I was just making a joke.” 
Tyler turned to look at Rhino. He was grinning from ear to ear. “Uhhh, oh,” Tyler said. “F-f-funny.” 
“Ready?” a familiar baritone drifted down to them from the other end of the lab. It was Dr. Crane. He and his twin were organizing the weapons they had managed to get a hold of–two handguns and a taser–found locked in a Cathedral security booth, now abandoned. Crane guessed there were only four security personnel left alive in the whole complex, and those men were with his brother. Crane said, “We’ve been going over it, and we think there are only a handful of people left alive from the original CH staff: my brother Jason, Scott Bon, a few guards, and those two lab techs–Lisa Cho and Diane Patrick. Oh, and Harper, but he’s locked up. These are the people standing between us and Jack.”
“What about that helicopter pilot?” Rhino asked, remembering the ride in from Calgary.
“Gone,” Crane said, matter of factly. “Sneaked off in the chopper about two hours after he brought you guys here. Jason was pissed but the guy would be dead by now anyway.” 
Rhino sighed. “Okay. What about the other ‘twins’. If there are two of you, Dr. Crane, then there is two of everyone else who was on that original trip through time.”
Crane looked taken aback but never faltered. “You’re right, Ryan. Vedder and Bon each have a living time twin, but I suspect they may be readying the other Egg for our departure back to our own time.” Rhino nodded, realizing that just as there were now two Cranes here, there had to be two time machines. 
Crane continued reluctantly. “Everyone else from the original trip is now either dead or was left behind.” 
 “Where is the other Egg?” Rhino asked expectantly.
“It’s right where we left it–in the field behind Cathedral. There was no sense moving it to Arcade where the other Egg is housed when we were planning to leave again in a couple days. Moving the Egg is no small feat.” Rhino nodded and Crane handed one of the pistols to him. “I know for a fact you owned one of these at one time. You told me at school. We were talking about hunting, right?”
Rhino smiled. “Good memory, Dr. Crane.” He took the pistol. Crane held on to the other and his twin held the taser. Tyler felt suddenly naked without a weapon, but he didn’t think he could convince everyone that he actually did have some firearms experience.
“Alright,” Crane said, “here’s the plan. Jason had planned to get rid of you guys by sending you each back in time to God knows when. It’s cruel but he’s not a murderer. And as ruthless as he acts and as big as he talks, he at least does not have that in him–he couldn’t live with that blood on his hands.” Crane paused to take a breath, his belly shaking with each breath. “We are going to enter Arcade from a tunnel. The stairs will take us up into what we call the Carton. It’s basically a big hangar where they store the time machine and launch it. We will enter the Carton from behind the Egg. We’ll keep all our weapons trained on it. We will not threaten any people. A threat to the Egg will be enough for Jason to listen to us. We’ll get Jack from him, then we’ll get out of here. I’ll take you guys to the fence where Harper escaped. My twin here will stay at the Egg, keeping a gun on it, and make sure we’re not followed. You guys should have a good half hour head start should Jason decide to go after you, but I doubt he will. He’s only got four guys. You should be able to make it to the highway in an hour. There, I know you will find transportation of some sort.” Rhino flashed back to all those stalled cars lined up on the roads in Calgary. He shivered. 
“You guys will have to lay low for a few months, until Jason disperses his miracle cure to the world and things are quote-unquote normal. After that you can do as you will. You could try taking Jason down, go public or whatnot, but I would advise against it. If you make things personal, he’ll get back at you. And I guarantee it won’t be pleasant.” Crane sighed. “I would just try to get back to an ordinary life.” He looked at Rhino and Tyler longingly. “I am truly sorry fellas. Really, I am.” He was staring off into space. “Let’s go.”
“One sec,” Andrea said, rushing back to a desk where a backpack sat among a jumble of beakers. She slipped it on.
“What’s in there?” Rhino asked suspiciously.
“All the shots of the cure I have left–two of them. We might be able to use it as a bargaining chip against Jason. He still has a sample of Jack’s blood, which he can use to make it himself, but it would cost him time.” Rhino nodded.
Crane ushered them through a door semi-hidden behind a myriad of desks and equipment. Tyler got the feeling this tunnel entrance rarely got used. Motion sensing lights flicked on one at a time, revealing the tunnel’s smoothed concrete walls. Here and there, a door peppered the length. Tyler couldn’t see the other end.
They started to run.


THREE
Blackness, but not empty. 
There were voices.
“Andie, it’s probably better this way anyway. He’ll have no idea what happened.”
There was a familiar sobbing followed by a flood of curses. 
“He deserves to be conscious when you send him back, Jason. You owe him that, especially after you killed him once already!”
Jack’s eyes snapped wide open. He was half surprised his eyelids didn’t make a loud smacking sound when they hit the tops of their sockets. He had been slowly regaining consciousness. There was nothing at first, just dark, and the dull pain from his head. As he came around more and more, the pain increased with it. He began to make out voices, fuzzy and indistinct, but getting clearer. His vision slowly focused but he couldn’t reconcile what he was seeing. There were shapes towering over him, impossibly tall and lanky. One of those shapes came down to him and Jack’s nose was immediately filled with the familiar scent of vanilla and coconut. 
It was Andie. 
He had only smelled her once, back in that cell, but once was enough. He thought he’d be able to identify her by scent for the rest of his life. Something wet dropped onto his face, warm and pleasant. He had an idea what it was. 
Jack’s vision cleared. 
Two cool spheres of Polynesia Pacific blue filled his sight, each flanked by reddening whites that were glossy with tears. Andie looked down upon him with the deepest longing and sadness Jack had ever seen. 
And love. 
He had seen love for him like this in only one other pair of eyes in his life, and those belonged to Natalie Marie Cameron. But Natalie was gone. Long gone. Somehow Natalie’s eyes seemed to be looking on him from another woman–a woman whom he had never met before in his life–and yet she loved him. Jack craned his head upward and kissed her deeply. He was gone immediately into a fugue of ice cream vanilla and coconuts. The kiss was great, at first, but somehow it felt...wrong...like he wasn’t meant to kiss her...but someone like her. 
It made absolutely no sense whatsoever. 
Andie was roughly pulled from Jack, and Vedder filled the space once occupied by her eyes. 
“Welcome back, Jack. We had been discussing whether to wake you up or not, but I guess it doesn’t matter now.” Vedder kicked Jack in the ribs. Andie cried out in protest. “Get up.” 
The anger in Jack welled up like a volcano, ready to explode from the top of his head at any moment. He stumbled to his feet, the dizziness dissipating with the rising hatred inside him. Andie came to him and tried to put one of his arms around her shoulders to support him, but Jack pushed her away. He focused everything on Vedder. For a moment Jack thought his vision must still be doubled, for two Vedders stood flanked by four guards, each with a pistol aimed at him. He blinked repeatedly but the other Vedder wouldn’t disappear. 
He looked away.
They were in a large dome-like hangar building, and the word “Arcade” came to him through the fog of memory. This place was called Arcade. He had seen it from the outside. 
Behind the two Vedders and their guards, a soft light from the ceiling bathed a large, strange metallic object. A central column, covered with complicated looking dials, screens and controls was surrounded by a dozen bucket seats. Protruding from the headrest of each seat was what Jack could only describe as virtual reality helmets that covered the wearer’s eyes with a view screen of sorts. A number of curving metal triangles radiated out from the central platform so that if one were to look on the strange machine from above, it would resemble a sun. Jack realized that these metal pieces could fold up and enclose the entire thing and that the closed structure would resemble an Egg. He shivered and oddly found himself wondering what it would be like to get caught between those pieces as they folded up. For some reason he could picture it well, could almost feel the pinch... 
“I bet you’re wondering what that is, aren’t you Jack?” One of the Vedders’ sinister voices brought Jack’s focus back on his adversary. He had been staring at that machine... 
“Well you’re going to find out in about sixty seconds my friend.” A Vedder motioned to the guards and they advanced on Jack. Jack instinctively backed away, only to be pushed from behind. Jack turned and two men and two women stood there. One man had his hands on Jack’s shoulders and Jack quickly twisted away.
“Jack,” the man smiled and held out a hand. “Scott Bon. I own CH.” Jack extended his own hand then quickly pulled it away when Bon went for it. He gave Bon the finger. Bon frowned. 
The other man beside him spoke up. “I have to say Jack, I liked your other self better. He wasn’t so rude.” Jack focused now on the other man. Somehow he spoke in Bon’s voice. 
Because he is Bon. 
There were two Bons. Two Vedders and two Bons. Holy shit.
Bon was medium built, Italian, with close cropped dark hair, peppered with grey streaks. The guy had to be middle aged but somehow didn’t look it. His eyes were severe and betrayed an inner ruthlessness to all those who gazed into them. 
The man was dangerous. 
The two women standing with the two Bons said nothing, but at least they weren’t twins. One was a semi-attractive blonde, while the other was a shorter Asian. The pair looked uncomfortable with what was happening, but Jack could see they would not betray Bon to help. Other than Andie, Jack was on his own. 
“What do you mean my other self?” Jack asked severely, turning where he stood to make sure he wasn’t ambushed without notice. One of the Bons gave a Vedder a deep look and that Vedder nodded. 
Bon spoke: “That machine you were admiring Jack, is a time machine. We call it the Egg.” Bon’s voice was tinny. He wasn’t getting any satisfaction from this situation like Vedder was; he was coldly indifferent. “You used to work for us, or I should say, another version of you did. You were pretty sharp.” He paused to let the information sink in. “You came back with us, sixty-five million years. We saw dinosaurs, but they made us sick, all of us. Except you. Somehow you were immune...” He trailed off for a moment. 
“We were attacked. A dinosaur came into our camp and you were killed.” Jack’s heart stopped. I was killed? That thought about being crushed between the Egg’s metal pieces came to him again. He didn’t know why. “We needed you because you were immune, but you were gone. So instead of returning to the time that we left, we travelled to a time when you were still alive, before we left–which explains why you are seeing two versions of myself, and Jason over there. You are the Jack we came here for. You cured us, and we thank you for that, but we can’t let you go. I’m sorry, but you are a liability.” Bon gestured to the time machine.
“Now Jack, we don’t want to kill you–a body would be evidence–so instead we are going to...send you somewhere. After that, your fate will be in your own hands.” He turned his stare to the guards. “Go ahead.” 
A pudgy brunette woman Jack hadn’t noticed previously stepped out from behind the Egg. The woman strode over to a computer console near the Egg and started punching buttons. A humming whir emitted from the time machine. One of the Vedder’s approached Jack and roughly grabbed him. Jack swung at him but Vedder ducked it easily. He had been anticipating it.
“Not this time Jack,” Vedder sneered. “There’s nothing for it. Either you die here, or you get in the machine. It’s your choice.” 
“Either way I’m dead,” Jack said defiantly. 
The other Vedder moved to Andie, grabbed her, and pulled her towards the Egg. Jack froze. 
“You get in,” the other Vedder said, “or she does. And we won’t send her somewhere nice. Maybe we’ll send her to the last ice age, or maybe to when the Earth was still a cooling ball of lava...” 
Jack looked Andie in the eyes and saw that insane love there, shrouded in tears. She was visibly shaking. Jack thought he could love her, but not her. The thought ground into his mind: She’s not the right one... 
“Alright,” Jack said. “I’ll do it. Let Andie go.” Vedder grinned and released her. She rushed over to him. They embraced in what was simultaneously the longest and shortest kiss of his life. He pulled away from her.  
“Je t’adore,” he said, though he wasn’t sure he meant it.
Andie burst out in tears and Jack got into the Egg.


FOUR
The bucket seats of the Egg were pretty damn comfortable, but Jack hardly noticed. He sat unrestrained, ready to accept what lay before him. The pudgy brunette woman administered Jack with an injection; she told him it was to loosen the mind. The human brain had difficulty accepting time travel and so travelers are given a drug whose effects were similar to that of an opiate. The traveler is put in a state of extreme relaxation and euphoria but without the side effects of similar drugs. It was really a synthesized form of heroine, non-addictive, and lasting for only a few minutes. Jack was almost ready to resist again at the sight of that needle; memories of James, his brother, came flooding back to him in flashes. Surprisingly, Jack welcomed the familiar torrent of a fix. It had been a long time since he used, but you never forgot the feeling. It was with you, no matter how long you stayed clean. He smiled.
One of the virtual reality helmets was lowered onto his head. At first he could see nothing and then the Cassé-Horlage logo flashed before his eyes. Jack felt hot breath on his neck and Vedder’s voice suddenly filled his right ear. 
“Thanks for the memories Jack. I’ll be sure to give your friends Ryan and Tyler your new address so they can write you from wherever we send them.” Jack’s heart dropped. Rhino and Tyler. He had completely forgotten about them. Of course they were doomed to the same fate as he was, and it was already too late to stop it. The hatred surged. The pain in his head had dulled considerably since it had started, but now it flared up again, stronger than ever. “I doubt you’ll live long enough to get any mail where you’re going anyway. By the way, I was the one that killed you the first time.” Vedder laughed and Jack growled. The pain was now maddening. 
Vedder stepped out of the Egg. 
Just as it closed, Jack screamed.


FIVE
There was a flash of light and Jack was in a hallway. It was dark but somehow not. He couldn’t put his finger on it. On his right, doors. They stretched on for miles in both directions. On his left, nothing. There was only darkness on that side of the hall, a void. 
Jack trembled. 
He started to walk, trying every door he came to. They were all locked. In the cracks beneath some, there was light. Behind others, he could hear muffled sounds, impossible to make out. 
Some of the doors had labels. 
One said: Dallas1963CE. 
Another said: Wiltshire2452BCE. 
Roswell1947CE. 
RapaNui1514CE. 
Dinosauria65MBCE. 
Jack stopped at that one. 
Dinosauria. 
Now why did that seem so interesting? He looked down and tried the knob. Nothing. He looked back up. 
Now the door said Jack. 
That was his name: Jack Patrick Pennywise. 
He was about to go somewhere and die and his friends soon after him. Flashes of his life went through his mind as he thought of his friends. The pain in his head had reached a crescendo. He screamed and he cried, falling to his knees. He reached up and opened the door. 
A terrible light flooded over him, called out to him, but he would not enter. Instead, Jack swallowed up that light, took it into his head, and then he let it out. 
And it was good.


SIX
Dr. Crane counted to three, pushed the door open, and they all rushed in. Immediately Tyler’s senses were assaulted. His ears buzzed with a bizarre noise that bordered on eardrum shattering; his nose was filled with the burning smell of ozone; he felt heat from every corner of the room; his eyes were half blinded by the most brilliant light he had ever seen. The light seemed to be coming from a large metal Egg in the middle of the hangar-like dome. The light dissipated momentarily and Tyler could see better. Everything seemed to have slowed down, like time suddenly ceased to have influence. He could make out the Egg. 
No, wait. He could see through it. 
The basic shape of the Egg was still there, but somehow it seemed to be made of glowing, floating particles, and he could look between them. The light issued from in and around those particles, and Tyler could see Jack. He was in a fetal position, upside down, floating within the light of the Egg. Bathing in it. 
The light was coming from Jack. 
At first he thought it was the light of the time machine but now he could see the light really was coming from Jack. Jack’s eyes were closed, but they opened when Tyler focused on them. Jack looked at him and he smiled. Tyler smiled back. 
Jack exploded.


SEVEN
The whole world seemed to be quivering and Steven Harper lay under his cot for shelter. If the roof came down, he didn’t plan on being under it. Not in this shitty little cell. What a way to wake up. He had been having the most wonderful dream about killing that fucking dinosaur... 
The shaking stopped. Harper waited, sure that another tremor was about to strike, but it never did. He coughed and blood splattered onto the floor under his face. Then he licked it. He didn’t know why. 
The cell seemed lighter somehow. He crawled out from beneath the cot and half the room was gone. There was no debris, no bricks, no dust. It was just gone. He hadn’t even been aware of it happening. A perfect bore through Cathedral. The blue sky of morning dawned brilliantly through one end. He smiled and hoped he wasn’t hallucinating again–when Vedder had moved him here last night, he thought it had been a dream for the longest time.
He could see cross-sections of the three floors above him, cut out in the same way. It was as if a giant hole-punch had snapped through the building and left a seamless fissure. It was the same beneath him; he could see down. He could see...
The dinosaur.
He couldn’t believe it. This was his chance. He would kill it. It was there, three stories below on the ground floor. Through a slice in the floor, Harper could make it out. It was awake and clearly agitated, darting back and forth across its room, feathers flashing, waving that severed stump of one arm. It had lost that arm when the Egg had closed on it. Harper remembered that now. The beast’s appendage had been pinned and so was pulled through time with them. No one knew how it had survived. 
It shouldn’t have. 
Harper climbed down, the clean carve out of the building revealing cinderblocks and piping that allowed for excellent footholds. He made it there with ease. He was above it now, looking down through that clean tear. He could squeeze through it easily.
The utahraptor looked up at him, and suddenly he didn’t want to kill it anymore.


EIGHT
A cool breeze lighted his face while the warmth of the rising sun heated it. Jack didn’t know how or why, but he was outside. He opened his eyes. The sky was a cerulean ceiling streaked with the occasional tattered cloud that disappeared from view behind jagged mountain spires. He sat up. There were others there; they seemed to be coming around as well. Hadn’t this been a building a few minutes ago? All there was now was a shallow black crater. Jack ran his hands over the surface of it and it felt like smooth glass. Like obsidian. The last thing he remembered was getting into the Egg and then there was light. Hard, terrible light. But right now, it didn’t seem to matter, he just felt so goddamned good. What happened? Did the Egg somehow backfire?
“Ow, my head,” Jack heard someone say. Other voices were beginning to drift towards him.
“Oh my god! What happened to Arcade!”
“Dr. Crane!” It was Tyler’s voice Jack recognized and he turned and looked where it came from. Across the bowl, Tyler was there, along with Rhino. They were stooped over what looked like half a man. 
Half a man? 
It didn’t look right but there it was: half of a dead Dr. Crane, sticking out of the glass. His bottom half fused with the crater. His eyes were open but glazed; his head lopped sideways limply. 
No!
“Dr. Crane!” Jack was up and rushing over to him.
“I’m sorry Jack,” Tyler was saying. “I guess he was the last one through the door and...”
Jack was on his knees beside Crane, mourning the closest thing he had to a father since his own had passed twelve years earlier. 
“Jack,” a familiar voice issued from behind him. Jack turned and there was Dr. Crane, standing above him, whole and vital. Jack threw up. “I’m sorry Jack,” Crane said. “This is all my fault. I never should have gotten you involved.”
Jack stood up when he finished retching and embraced Crane hard, emotionally. He then pushed himself away and punched Crane in the jaw. Crane stumbled back. “I deserved that,” he said sheepishly.
“Yeah,” Jack said smiling. Crane smiled back and they embraced again. Rhino and Tyler were patting them on the back.
There was a scream from across the crater. 
Jack saw people everywhere: Vedders, Bons, others. There were two Andies and one of them was screaming and pointing. A man had come to the lip of the crater nearest Cathedral. He was bleeding through a gaping rip in his chest but he was grinning. 
It was Harper.
“Holy shit,” Rhino said.
Harper collapsed at the edge. “Here is my life,” he screamed quite hysterically, “I give it to you!”
The utahraptor leaped over Harper and down into the crater. There were screams of terror and agony. Jack saw blood. The raptor was tearing flesh from bone. The dinosaur was missing an arm; one appendage ended in a scabbed stump that was now bleeding from the action it was being put through. Jack didn’t have time to consider it. Everyone was running. People were pulling themselves up the slippery sides of the crater. Jack watched as a man, one of the guards, slid back down to the waiting jaws of the raptor. He turned away from the screams. 
“Come on!” he yelled to Crane, Rhino, and Tyler. He saw that two versions of Andie had joined them as well. Christ, does everybody here have a god damn twin?
Jack had on good hiking boots, and so easily clambered up the black glass. Once at the top he turned to help the others. Tyler and Rhino made it up on their own as well, but Crane and the Andies had trouble. Jack had to reach down with Rhino holding his legs. When they were safe, Jack looked across the crater. The raptor was feasting on one of the Bons.
“Oh, god!” Andie exclaimed remorsefully.
“Look!” Crane said, pointing across the crater. The other, living Bon was there, waving them over. He was with the two Vedders, the two lab tech women from Arcade, one of the guards, and Harper. The guard had Harper propped up against him. Without a word, they all rushed to the other side of the bowl. Jack kept his eyes on the raptor, which had moved on to another of the guards. 
“We have to get inside Cathedral,” Bon said as they ran up. “There’s weapons inside.”
They all muttered in agreement and started across the lawn. Jack now noticed the gaping bore shot through Cathedral and gasped. Through the hole he could see the Rockies. The top of one peak was sheared clean off in a half circle. Whatever had happened, it had blasted its way through Arcade, through that mountain, and up into space. 
What would have the power to do that? Was it the Egg? 
There was a shriek, otherworldly and terrifying from inside the crater. Still running, every one of them looked back. The raptor was at the lip of the bowl, screeching in bloody triumph. Drying blood covered its brutal visage. It lashed after them.
 Jack heard a dozen different screams emit from a dozen different people, including himself. Cathedral was a mere hundred meters away–the hundred meter dash of their lives. At that moment, Jack thought he could outrun any Olympic athlete. The Andies were near him and so he grabbed their hands, not caring which it was that loved him, and surged them on. The front entrance of Cathedral was nothing but a hole. Once inside they would have to find a secure room. 
Fifty meters. 
Jack could see the main foyer and a hallway leading off of it into the heart of Cathedral.
Twenty meters. 
The impact tremors of the sprinting animal behind them could be felt through their legs. It was getting closer. Jack looked back. Harper was at the rear of the group, helped along by that security guy–Goodwin was his name, judging by the security badge he wore. He had to give the guard credit for trying; too bad he hadn’t known Harper was a brain dead zombie. He wanted to yell back for him to leave Harper, to distract the raptor, but the Andies gripped him tightly. They wouldn’t let him stop even for a millisecond. Jack pushed on.
Ten meters. 
There were doors in the main hallway. They would have to take refuge behind one of them.
Five meters. 
There was a thud followed by a yell. Jack turned back again and the raptor was there. Astonishingly it had pushed Harper and the guard aside, and leapt into the air. Those powerful limbs propelled it, ten feet. It sailed over the group, arm and tail feathers outstretched like a terrible gliding bird. It landed in the middle of the fleeing cluster just as they reached the threshold of Cathedral and crushed one Jason Vedder beneath its gleaming black talons, just feet in front of Jack who nearly ran headlong into it. The creature’s great momentum seemed a surprise even to it, for after landing on the screaming Vedder, it continued to roll forward, pulling Vedder with it, tumbling and sliding into the main foyer of Cathedral, screeching all the way, knocking some people down with flailing limbs and tail.
Instinctively the procession halted; their way into the building was blocked by the flailing, bloody dinosaur. Jack stooped to help up the blonde lab tech woman, who had been blown over. Bon was already gathering the rest up. “Quick! Around the building! We’ll go in the back!” 
They ran as one, reflected in the mirroring surface of the Cathedral edifice as they made their way. Jack looked back every few seconds, expecting to see their pursuer, but it had not started back after them, yet. They reached the back doors. Bon had a swipe card out and began frantically swiping it across a scanner at the side of a pair of beautiful frosted glass doors. Nothing happened.
“Shit!” Bon exclaimed. “Power’s out. That explosion must have–”
“Break the fucking glass!” Rhino cut him off. He kicked one door with a heavily muscled leg.
“Bullet proof,” Bon said exasperatedly. “We’re not getting in this way.”
There were panicked murmurs from the group which escalated seconds later. A ghostly shriek floated to them from around the building. Bon pointed directly away from the building. 
“The Egg! It’s our last chance!” 
It was there on the lawn, about fifty meters away–the other Egg that had brought the Night Terror Virus into this time. In the panic to reach the back door, Jack hadn’t noticed it sitting there. It was wide open, the central computer column and twelve surrounding bucket seats clearly visible, waiting for the return journey back to its own time. 
They ran to it. 
Jack vaulted over the back of one chair, pulling both Andies after him. He looked back toward Cathedral. The bore through the building exited near the domed roof, impossibly clean. The raptor rounded the side of the building into view, sprinting towards them with jaws wide. 
Bon was at the column, punching commands on a touch screen. The Egg started to close up. They were now all inside. Jack stood, unable to sit until he knew the Egg would close in time. They could do nothing but wait.
“How long does it take for this fucking thing to close?” Jack yelled at Bon. Bon was still tapping the screen.
“Twenty seconds...usually. But it was damaged coming back on our last trip. It might take a little longer...”
“Fuck,” Jack said and he wasn’t the only one. “We’re not gonna...you know...time travel are we?”
“No,” Bon said. “The machine is still programmed for our last trip into the past. It would take time to set it for a safer destination. We’ll just wait it out in here for a while and weigh our options. Time travel may become our only choice, but we should be perfectly safe in here for now.”
The group hardly seemed replete. The shell was now folding up into their line of sight. Many had to move to see what was happening. The raptor was close now, maybe twenty seconds away. 
“Everyone should sit down!” Bon yelled. “Just in case the machine tips. Buckle up.” Jack and the others still standing quickly sat and found their seatbelts. Bon followed suit. Harper was slouched in one seat, passed out where the guard had dropped him. No one thought to do up his seatbelt.
The Egg closed. 
For a moment they were shrouded in darkness, the lights of the column the only source of illumination, then strings of what reminded Jack of Christmas lights switched on in lines along the inner surface of the shell. The Egg was rocked by a hard thud, dull and hollow. Jack felt it tip upward slightly on one side and then come back down easily. Everyone was visibly tense but there seemed to be little panicking. They really were safe in here. They sat in silence for at least a minute, with nothing happening. No more assaults on the Egg.
“Do you think he gave up?” Tyler asked from Jack’s right. 
“We’ll know in a second,” Bon said, leaning out of his seat to tap the screen once again. “I’ll turn on the Outlook.”
Before the uninitiated among the group could ask what that was, the inner surface of the Egg began to melt away, coalescing into nothingness, revealing the world around them–revealing the raptor, sailing through the air and crashing against the Egg. It truly seemed as though it would get to them easily now, but the raptor slammed up against what looked like nothing, putting its full weight behind the assault. The Egg went over.
Jack felt the pressure against his waist and shoulder as the seatbelt tightened, holding him in place against gravity. He was halfway up the wall now. The raptor was clawing insanely at the Egg, blood streaking on an invisible surface.
Someone fell from their seat.
With a sickening thud, Harper’s skull connected hard with the central column and lay limply across it. Immediately a regular beeping sound began to emit from the device. 
“Oh no, no, no!” Bon quailed. He leaned forward again and tried to move Harper. “I need help!” he yelled. Rhino was next to Bon and reached out as well, trying to move the man over. Jack sat helplessly from where he was. There was nothing he could do from here.
They managed to ease the two hundred pound man off the touch screen, careful not to let him fall onto someone below. Jack saw numbers on that screen...
5...4...3...2...
“Shit!” It was Bon again. At once he punched something on the screen and Jack felt a pinch in the back of his neck. He thought something had bit him, and then the euphoria took over, dream-like. The synthesized heroine. He watched Bon put on one of those helmets and wondered if he should do the same. But then there was radiance, nothing but light, and the world around them disappeared within it. 
Around them were stars, nothing but stars, and the Earth below. Jack could look between his feet and see the Great Lakes. There was a sensation, like spinning, and seconds later the light was gone and they were on a beach. Waves lapping at a sandy coastline, lush palms and ferns forested the edges. 
It had to be a dream. Had to be. 
Jack closed his eyes to make the dream go away.


NINE
“Jack...Jack...wake up...” 
Jack opened his eyes and there was Andie standing over him, wide eyed and stunning. 
“How long have I...”
“Only a few minutes. White Tar doesn’t last long.”
“White Tar?”
“Oh, that’s what we call the drug. It’s just a nickname.”
Jack felt himself more lucid by the second and found he was disappointed. The rush was over. He almost wanted it back...
He stood up and stretched. His body felt like it had been asleep for days. A few of the others had already come around and were congregated outside the Egg: the other Andie, Dr. Crane, Bon, those two lab women. Rhino and Tyler were still seated, as was Vedder and the security guard. Harper was propped up in a seat, unconscious. On both sides of the Egg, the beach stretched to the horizon. Jack looked at Andie as she picked up a small backpack from one seat and slipped it on. He thought about asking her what was in it, but decided it probably didn’t matter.
“So I guess we went back in time,” he said to her.
“Yeah,” she said. “The only thing is, Scott is not entirely sure just when we are. The machine was still set to 65 million BC–our last trip–but we could be before that time or after. A lot of the Egg’s functions shorted when that...thing knocked us over.”
“Utahraptor,” Jack said.
“Huh?”
“It was a utahraptor.” Andie stared at him blankly. “Never mind.”
“Anyway,” Andie went on, “we don’t know when exactly we are, but Scott’s working on getting us back.”
Jack looked incredulous. “He can get us back right?”
“Oh yeah, Scott’s a genius. He says it should take less than an hour.”
“Great,” Jack said. “It was the weirdest thing. When we started going...or coming...here, I thought, well, I must have imagined that we were in space, floating above the Earth.”
Andie smiled. “You weren’t imagining. We were in space.” Jack’s jaw dropped. “When the Egg goes through time, it creates a wormhole, or maybe even a black hole. If we were to do that on Earth, there’s no telling what could get sucked in, so we teleport into space using that wormhole, before it gets too big. Plus, going back this far, the Earth changes over time, especially millions of years. The place where CH is in the present, could be underwater or a volcano or something in the past, so the Egg has to navigate to a safe landing spot. The entire process is nearly instantaneous, but usually we have those blast helmets on and don’t even notice.” 
“Right, those helmets. When you’re boyfriend put me in here I had one of those on. I saw a hallway, with doors and dates written on them.”
Andie ignored the “boyfriend” jab with a frown. She said, “All that’s just a virtual way of using the machine. During a few initial trial runs of the Egg, they found navigating through time to be difficult. So, Scott came up with the hallway simulation to make it easier. Dates are set in the computer and show up as doors. Before that, they kept missing the times they wanted to get to by hours or sometimes years, kinda like driving too fast and missing the driveway. Sometimes you reached your stop, sometimes you blew it completely by.”
Jack just nodded, pretending he understood. This was all way beyond anything he thought was possible. Yawning, he stretched and stood up. Andie followed him out onto the soft white beach sand. He looked around and suddenly it struck him: He was standing on the shore of the Great North American Inland Sea.
He beamed. 
“I know how you feel,” a voice issued to Jack. He turned and there was Dr. Crane. 
“Dr. Crane,” Jack said. “This place...I mean...most of the skeletons we’ve uncovered were found at the bottom of what was once this very sea...it’s fucked up!”
“Not the words I would use, but yeah, I guess it is kind of fucked up.” 
They looked at each other and laughed. Rhino and Tyler, both looking groggy and disheveled, joined them. 
“Apparently Bon and Vedder will have us out of here in an hour,” Rhino said, looking back. Jack looked too and there was Vedder, next to Bon, animatedly discussing something or other. 
“Yeah, I guess we got some time to kill,” Jack said. “If we didn’t need them, I’d probably fill it by beating them both to death.” An uncomfortable silence descended on the group, but no one protested Jack’s words.
Tyler spoke up unexpectedly: “S-s-so how ‘bout you uh, explain why time travel cannot create a paradox, Dr. Crane.” 
Crane was obviously offset for a moment. “I guess I could. Alright, hold on a second.” 
Crane left them and walked up to the edge of the forest. He came back thirty seconds later with a meter long stick. He drew a straight line in the sand.
“Okay,” he said. “Everything I tell you here is theory. None of it is proven conclusively, okay?” He pointed at the line he drew. “This line is time and we are here.” He added an X to the right side of the line:

“With me so far?” 
They all nodded.
“Good. Okay. So, when we travel back in time,” he drew an arc going from the X to a point back on the line, and then drew a parallel line skewing off from the first, “in essence, we are not in the past of our world, but a parallel one.” He drew arrows to show the flow of time:

“This world is in every way an exact copy of ours, created by time travel. Jason suspects the reason for this is kind of like the Universe’s way of protecting itself: it creates a copy of itself, so that the original cannot be affected by a paradox.” There were murmurs from the group.
Tyler came in: “So does that mean that the parallel world could be destroyed or affected by a paradox?”
“Good question,” Crane said, “but no. If that were to occur, the same thing happens, another parallel world is created.” He drew another line off the parallel world:

“Holy shit,” Tyler said. 
“Yeah,” Crane agreed. “It’s a little mind-bending. In theory, you could keep traveling through time within the parallel worlds and change an unlimited myriad of things and therefore create an unlimited myriad of worlds. No paradox could ever destroy the Universe.”
“Oh my god,” Jack said.
“So you see,” Crane continued, “you could keep trying to change the universe, or even try to destroy it, but the universe would not allow it. The original timeline will always exist.”
“But how do you get back to the original timeline?” Tyler asked worriedly.
“Ah,” Crane was now beaming, “there is a really good question.” He shored himself up theatrically. “When the Egg creates a wormhole, that wormhole becomes permanent. The Egg shrinks it down to a near molecular level so that it becomes insignificant, but it is always there, waiting to be reopened and bring us back to our own time. As long as we, in essence, hold onto that wormhole, what we call a “tether”, and return to the exact time that we left in our own world, down to the nanosecond, it’s as if we never left, and therefore nothing changes.” Crane drew a line from the second parallel world back to the original X:

“Does that make sense?” he finished.
Tyler nodded, but Jack and Rhino looked a little lost. “It’s a lot to take in,” Jack said. He smiled at his former professor and patted him on the shoulder. “I’ve missed you Dr. Crane.”
“Me too, son,” Crane said. “Me too.” 
There was an awkward silence.
“How did I die?” Jack said suddenly. 
Crane looked like he wanted to vomit. “What?!”
“I know your brother killed me,” Jack said bluntly, looking over at Vedder. The anger he felt for that man held no bounds, but he would keep it in check until this was all over. “I want to know how it happened.” 
Tyler, Rhino, and Andie all looked uneasy. Crane just sighed. “I suppose you deserve the truth, Jack.” 
Crane told the story.
He told them about arriving in the past–65 million BC, about Harper getting bit by a dinosaur and infected with NTV, about the valley of sick dinosaurs. He told them how everyone got sick except for Jack, and how they were searching for the dromaeosaur that bit Harper. He told them how he found that dinosaur on the beach outside his tent in the middle of the night, and the chase that ensued. He followed the little dinosaur up a game trail, through the foggy jungle, and out into a big clearing. He shot the dromaeosaur in the clearing, and it fled, but he didn’t have time to chase it. 
He told them how he ran back toward the beach as a massive utahraptor entered the clearing, and what happened after... 


TEN
Jack Pennywise was awakened by an otherworldly shriek that pierced the morning air. Andie shot up beside him. 
“What the hell was that?” she said. There was another shriek and the sound of someone yelling. It sounded like Crane. Without a word the pair quickly slipped their clothes on. Jack stuck his head out the tent. Dr. Crane was running down the beach toward them, waving his arms and yelling. Jack was about to go greet him when the shriek sounded again, and a huge shape burst out of the jungle, nearly flying, landing next to Crane and sending him sprawling. The next thing he heard was gunfire. He turned back to Andie. 
“You get to the Egg. I’ll make sure Jason doesn’t see me leave the tent,” Jack said. 
“What about you?” 
“I’ll be with you in a minute,” and he pulled a dart gun out from under his sleeping bag. “I have to make sure Dr. Crane makes it there too.” Andie gave Jack one last look, kissed him, unzipped the tent flap and disappeared into chaos. Jack followed her seconds later and could hardly believe what he saw when he emerged into a warm, fragrant morning. 
It was a utahraptor–had to be–the thing was huge–and it was feasting on somebody. The raptor was bent over a body, blood dripping from its massive jaws, eyes, and nostrils–it was sick with NTV. He heard a sickening crack as the victim’s skull collapsed. Jack looked away and noticed an automatic rifle about five feet from the body. It was Corporal Johnson. He felt a sudden lament for a man he hardly knew but still infinitely respected. 
“Jack! Help me!” The call came from his left and Jack looked down the beach to see Vedder knelt down over the lifeless form of Dr. Crane, face down in the sand, only twenty meters away. Dr. Crane! Jack’s heart leaped into his throat. He immediately dashed down the coast and fell to Vedder’s side. 
It never occurred to him that Vedder might have seen him leave Andie’s tent from here…
“C’mon,” Vedder said. “Help me get him to the Egg.”
“Jason! Jack!” The yell came from up the beach. “We’re leaving! You have to leave him behind! He’s gone!” 
It was Bon, and he and the others were already in the Egg, and it was closing. There was an ear piercing roar as the raptor finished with Johnson. It turned and looked directly at the Egg and its occupants as it began to close, the sheets of gleaming metal that made up its shell rising up into place. Vedder saw his predicament, and with one last lamenting look at his brother, dashed for the Egg. The dinosaur looked from the Egg to Vedder and back. 
It dashed for the Egg. 
In one bound it covered the ground from Johnson’s body to the time machine and crashed headlong into it, tipping it over onto its side. The dinosaur landed on top, sliding off, leaving a bloody trail. It fell on its back and seemed to be confused about what had happened to it. Vedder never faltered. He covered the final distance and hit the ground beside the upended Egg, squeezing himself inside. 
The Egg stopped closing. 
The machine was designed to stop if something was caught between closing pieces or if it was not sitting upright. It began to open again. Bon and the others were already buckled into their seats; four of them dangling from their harnesses up in the air. Bon typed in an emergency override command and the Egg began to close again.
“Are you insane?” Vedder yelled. “We can’t go back if the Egg isn’t fully sealed!”
“Who said anything about going back?” Bon replied. “I’m just trying to separate us from that thing!”
“You hit the emergency override button, not the manual override!”
With dawning horror Bon realized his mistake. The emergency override was designed to close the Egg in case of emergency and go directly back to the present. He should have used the manual override to control the Egg’s shell. There was no turning off the emergency override. 
Suddenly Jack was at the Egg, with Dr. Crane draped over his shoulders. Jack shouldered Crane into the opening in the shell. Vedder helped pull him inside and quickly buckled him into a seat. Jack was now attempting to squeeze himself into the closing metal. He had one shoulder inside, but was now beginning to feel the clutch. In a few more seconds, he would be crushed.
“Help me!” he called out to Vedder. Vedder turned from his unconscious brother, lying limp in his seat to see Jack almost all the way in but getting squeezed.
“Help him!” Andie yelled, but Vedder was frozen. 
A shadow fell across Jack and he screamed in pain and terror as the utahraptor sank its jaws into his right calf. He braced himself with his elbows against the closing walls and stopped himself being pulled out completely. 
“Jason!” Jack screamed, reaching out. Voices came at Vedder from above and below as the rest of the crew, strapped into their seats expressed their dismay. 
With an expression that might have been a genuine grimace, or an exclamation of hate, Jason Vedder stood up and with all his strength, kicked Jack Pennywise square in the chest. Caught off guard, Jack’s hold on the Egg gave out, and he was pulled from the opening, screaming. Seconds later, Jack was replaced by the utahraptors massive clawed hand, trying to tear its way into the time machine, but the Egg closed fully on it, crushing and pinning it. Vedder hardly noticed. “She’s mine Jack,” he said as he took a seat next to Andie without looking at her. She was screaming–but he hardly noticed that either as he put on his helmet. The Egg injected him with the drugs for the trip through time they were now forced to take.


Crane finished the story, wiping thick tears from his beard. “I’m sorry Jack, I truly am. Jason is a monster, I see that now. I just wish I had seen it sooner. None of this would have happened.”
Jack’s face was blank and impassive. He was in shock. It was a while before he finally said, “I gotta take a piss. I’ll be right back.” Crane’s face dropped. Tyler and Rhino just looked at each other.
“Uh, I gotta go too,” Andie said. “Mind some company?”
“Uh, sure,” Jack said awkwardly. Andie gave Crane, Rhino, and Tyler a meaningful stare. It said: just give him some time. 
She and Jack walked into the trees together.
“I’ll be over here,” Andie said disappearing behind a swath of ferns. “Then I need to talk to you, okay?”
“Okay,” Jack said. He went behind a palm tree, unzipped and let fly. It was a definite relief. He didn’t really feel like talking to Andie. The story he had just heard sent a chill to his very core. He couldn’t believe it. He had died because of Andie. His other self had stolen her from Vedder, and Vedder killed him for it. In some cultures, the act would have been considered justifiable. Jack hardly felt that way of course, but irrationally, he still felt guilty. And he hadn’t even done anything. No wonder Andie was all over him now. He genuinely felt sorry for her losing him, but there was something creepy about it too. She wasn’t even from his timeline. But, he supposed, if things hadn’t changed, he would’ve ended up with her anyway, with the version of her from his timeline…
Andrea...
The snapping of a stick broke the silence of the jungle and interrupted his train of thought. He stopped what he was doing and immediately zipped back up. 
“Andie,” he said, “is that you?”
“Did you say something Ja–” Andie’s voice was replaced by a scream. Jack dashed towards it and they nearly collided. 
“A raptor!” she screamed. “It snuck up on me.” 
“Let’s get ba–” Jack’s words were cut off by an otherworldly, blood freezing cry. The sound was similar to that of the utahraptor, but on a smaller scale. Whatever kind of raptor it was, it was not as large as the utah. The sound of crashing brush shot Jack’s adrenaline up. They ran back for the beach. The distance seemed farther than he remembered. The sounds of were getting closer...
Jack burst onto the beach with Andie in tow. With a shriek the raptor soared out of the trees, claws raised. It hit Andie in the back and came down on top of her. Jack turned and saw that it was a deinonychus–a three-meter long, feathered dromaeosaur. It was bleeding profusely from every orifice on its body. 
The Night Terror Virus. 
The deino was now clawing wildly at Andie’s backpack, brown and white feathers flying. Jack found himself frozen in fear. Rhino flew into Jack’s field of vision, bee-lining at the deino. If he hadn’t seen it himself Jack might not have believed it–but Rhino hip-checked the vicious dinosaur and sent it flying away from Andie. Andie’s pack tore open, spilling the contents–which included two large syringes–onto the sand. Rhino quickly helped Andie to her feet and ushered her toward the Egg. Knowing they were important, he picked up the syringes. The deino was back on its feet now, and began to bray in an odd cawing way toward the jungle. 
“My God,” Jack heard Crane say from somewhere behind him. He didn’t have time to question it. The deino lunged back at Rhino and knocked him down. Rhino began to stab it madly with the syringes and the raptor quickly backed off with a yelp. It repeated that odd cawing sound, and this time it was answered. Six more deino’s emerged from the jungle on both sides of the Egg, surrounding the travelers. All six of them were bleeding.
“Everyone get back in the Egg!” It was Bon. He and Vedder were waving them into the machine, but they seemed to be arguing. Rhino dropped the syringes on the sand and made for the Egg. 
Jack saw they were both empty… 
Jack, Andie, Tyler, Crane, and Rhino all piled in on one side, while Andrea, the two other women, and the lone remaining security guard piled in on the other. The Egg started to close.
“I’m telling you Scott,” Vedder said angrily, “we don’t know what will happen. We can’t close it.” 
He moved for the central computer but Bon pushed him back. “We’ve got no choice!” 
Vedder ducked down and reached under a seat. He pulled out a case. He opened it to reveal a set of three handguns. “We do now,” Vedder said, cocking one pistol.
“What’s going on?” Crane said gruffly. Through the closing pieces of Egg, Jack saw the raptors were closing in on them, but cautiously, unsure of this strange intrusion in their territory. 
“We took more damage during that last trip and the Egg wasn’t fully functional to begin with. We don’t know what might happen when it closes. If the emergency system is broken, it may try to send us back without our input. I say we stop it and scare these guys off.” He raised the gun.
“The emergency system is fine,” Bon interjected. “It’s the electromagnets I’m worried about. But closing the Egg won’t affect them.” Vedder was clearly in disagreement. “Jason,” Bon continued, “we don’t even know if that gun’ll scare them off. They’ve all got NTV. If they’re suffering dementia, the sound might not even faze them.” 
“Then we’ll shoot them–” Vedder cut off. The Egg was about half closed and the deinos had stopped in their tracks. With a unanimous screech they all hopped back into the forest.
“What the . . .” somebody said. 
The white beach sand was suddenly insanely bright with light and the air seemed to be shimmering and rippling around them. 
“Oh shit!” Vedder said. “Oh god, oh no!” The Egg began to vibrate uncontrollably. The light swallowed them, the Egg was almost closed. “Do you realize what’s happening?” Vedder yelled at Bon. 
Bon nodded. “We fucked up bad,” he replied. 
The Egg closed.
“What?” Jack asked profoundly. “What’s going on?”
But he never got an answer. The Egg was rocked by a shock wave that dented some of the shell inward. Jack was knocked onto the ground, but it wasn’t there anymore. Like before, the inside of the shell seemed to melt away, revealing the outside world, but there was no outside world–there was only light and a strange reflection: It was the Egg, and it was rushing towards itself, like being thrown at a mirror. 
 At the point of impact, Jack’s head exploded into a crescendo of memory in time. 




The End of Part I of Dinosauria






###

A Note from the Author

Dinosauria is J. Rock’s first novel. He lives and works in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. 
Dear Reader: I am currently halfway through the first draft of the second volume in the Dinosauria trilogy, which will be available in Fall 2012. I would like to thank you for your dedication to the first volume, and your patience until the second comes out. I hate to wait for the next installment in a beloved series just as much as you do, but writing is not my full time job–I wish it was. Perhaps someday–and with your help–it will be, but until then, here is a preview of the next volume. I have no doubt it will whet your appetite for more. 

In the name of Atreus,
J. Rock

Contact: dinosauria@hotmail.ca to join my mailing list and get updates on the next volume!