Sometimes I fantasize about sitting my animal and human cousins down at a great round table and asking, “Why can’t we all just get along?”
—Star Koslowski
FOX VALLEY, ALASKA
Baranov ran toward the screams, barely checking side corridors and doorways. Now there was gunfire. Racing down the corridor, the double doors ahead, he skirted the bodies on the floor and crashed through. The dinosaurs were attacking a group of people by the exit. Two dinosaurs were holding victims to the ground, tearing them apart, other people were running or crawling away. A man by the wall raised a pistol and fired. One of the people fell. They were killing each other.
Fast walking, Baranov came on confidently, switching the M-16 to full automatic. The closest dinosaur sensed the threat, lowered its head, straightened its tail, then pushed off of the body it was standing on and charged.
Baranov knew the animal’s leaping ability and didn’t wait for it to get in jumping range. Ignoring the danger to the bystanders, he opened fire. His aim was good, most of the bullets impacting chest high. The dinosaur made it three more steps, before going into a face-first skid.
The remaining dinosaur ran for the pyramid. Baranov brought the rifle around, held his fire when a civilian got between him and the beast, then opened fire when he had a clear shot. The animal was fast and his shots missed, the dinosaur disappearing into the black interior. Baranov ran to the pyramid, flattening against the wall, listening. Nothing. Now he peeked around the comer. The interior was dimly lit. There was a corridor that led straight into the interior, and then turned a brief way in. There was a blood trail on the floor.
Baranov debated whether to go after the beast. He and his brothers had killed more of his men than Muslim terrorists. Looking back at the survivors, he saw the one who had shot one of his own people aiming at Baranov.
“Drop the gun!” Baranov yelled. “Everyone drop your guns.”
Three people dropped weapons but not the man by the wall. Baranov fired a shot that ricocheted off the concrete next to his head. He dropped the pistol. He was a dark-haired man with one pant leg cut off, his leg bandaged. The others were now gathering around him. Baranov ordered them all to sit against the wall. Two others were dead or dying. Inside the exit doors Baranov found two more bodies. One was his man, Ivan Mortikov. He swore again. He had served with Mortikov’s father.
Now Baranov ordered the remaining men and women to get up and march to the back. Every head turned toward the man with one pant leg when he did, identifying him as the leader. Baranov pointed his rifle at the man, who looked at his watch.
“Get up or I will shoot you!” Baranov ordered.
A man and a woman helped the leader up.
“Down the corridor!”
Again all heads turned to the leader. That would be Vince Walters, Baranov remembered. Walters hesitated, looking at his watch again.
“We have to get out of here!” Walters said.
Baranov switched his rifle to semi-automatic, lifted it to his shoulder and took aim at the man’s head.
“Why must we get out of here? The dinosaurs are dead or gone.”
“It’s not the dinosaurs.”
Walters refused to volunteer more.
“Tell him,” said a man helping to support Walters.
He was a burly man with thick, hairy arms, thin brown hair, and gray eyes.
“Tell him, Vince! Before it’s too late.”
Walters pushed away those helping him stand, grimacing
as he pulled himself to his full height. Again he looked at his watch.
“We have to get out of here because there are three nuclear devices set to detonate in eighteen minutes. We can still get a safe distance away.”
“What is the yield of the weapons?” Baranov demanded.
“Twenty megatons each,” Walters said proudly.
“Then we’re all dead. Even on the snow machines you could not get a safe distance away.”
“But we can,” Walters argued. “Straight down the valley to the lake. There are airplanes waiting. We’ll be miles away before they detonate.”
“You are an idiot,” Baranov said, shaking his head. “You would need to be one hundred kilometers away to be safe from such an explosion.”
Baranov had exaggerated. If the detonation had been air-burst, they would need to be one hundred kilometers away, but here in this valley, the explosion would be contained, and probably channeled toward the lake. With the mountainous terrain, it might be possible to be within twenty kilometers and survive. However, they had no chance of getting even that far, without abandoning everyone else.
Walters and his people were quiet at first and then began arguing and finger pointing. Baranov pulled out his radio and called his men.
“Karl, turn around. There is going to be a sixty-megaton detonation in seventeen minutes.”
“Please repeat,” Karl radioed back.
“There is going to be a sixty-megaton detonation in seventeen minutes.”
“What about you?”
“No options.”
“I understand.”
Baranov turned his radio off.
“We can make it if we go now,” Walters pleaded.
“What about the others here? Some are injured. We would have to retrieve them, get them dressed for the weather, and help them outside. Is there enough room for everyone on the
snow machines out there? What about in your aircraft? Will they carry everyone here? If not, who would be left behind? The innocent? Perhaps you, since you are responsible for the bombs? Can you do all of that and get far enough away in fifteen minutes?”
“Yes, we would have to leave some behind, but there is more at stake here than you know. The detonations are just a stepping stone to something bigger, something world changing.”
Again, Walters looked at his watch.
“It’s now or never,” Walters said.
“Never,” Baranov said.
Now Walters was furious, red-faced, sputtering.
“You have no right to keep us here. We’re leaving.”
Walters stepped toward the exit, feigning courage but watching Baranov’s rifle. Baranov fired a round into the wall in front of him. Walters gave a satisfying yelp, slapping his arm where a bullet fragment had stung him.
“Vince,” Baranov said in a mocking tone, “the host does not leave the party before it has started.”
Walters’s bravado was gone now, those who looked to him for leadership were lost, wavering, or confused.
“We couldn’t make it now, anyway, Vince,” the large man said. “But you did a good thing. The world will be a new Eden, just like you promised.”
Walters ignored him.
“Remember, there is a chance we can survive. The government may have kept it a secret.”
“Shut up!” Walters snarled.
Baranov marched them back down the corridor, conscious of the pyramid opening. He took them to the dormitory room, lining them up against the wall.
“I regret to inform you that the nuclear devices will detonate in eight minutes.”
“Can’t we get away?” a young woman asked.
“No. It will be a sixty-megaton detonation. You could not get far enough away to survive.”
There was general gloom.
“Perhaps the way to survive is to stay where we are,” Kawabata said.
“Then you believe we will be transported?” Phat asked.
The others were listening now.
“I am confident in the theory, not in Dr. Walters’s calculations.”
Walters was glaring now, his ego pricked.
“While Dr. Walters is a serviceable manager, he is not a theoretician.”
“Shut up, you old miser,” Walters spat. “We’re minutes away from the most momentous event in human history and you don’t have any idea of what is going on. Yet, you sit there and insult my abilities? It was right under your nose, you myopic fool, and you never saw it. But I saw it! I saw the potential.”
“You saw what Dr. Welling pointed out to you,” Kawabata said. “Who actually made the theoretical leap, Dr. Walters? Dr. Welling? Dr. Whitey? In all the years we have worked together the only skill you have excelled at is taking credit for other people’s work.”
Walters started to get to his feet, wincing when he did. Baranov pointed his rifle at him and Walters slid back down the wall.
“If you are so superior, then tell me, Toru, what is going to happen next?”
“Three converging time waves will open a hole in time and this facility will be swept up in it,” Kawabata said.
“Is that all you have deduced?” Walters mocked. “Can’t you tell us where we will go? Can’t you tell us what time period we will be displaced to? I can.”
“We will be displaced ten years into the past,” Elizabeth Hawthorne said.
Walters’s people said nothing, while Dr. Kawabata’s group gasped.
“And we will travel to the moon,” Hawthorne finished.
Now Walters sagged, his ego fully deflated.
“And I know something else,” Hawthorne continued. “Even if we survive the displacement, we will not live for long. I know this because this is the building that appeared on the moon when the first time displacement occurred, and no one has traveled to the moon to visit the structure since it was discovered. When they do, they will find our bodies because there is no way we can survive in a vacuum.”
“Three minutes,” Baranov said.
No one spoke, each coming to terms with certain death.
“Is this the safest place to be when it happens?” Phat asked finally.
“It’s as good as any,” Dr. Whitey said. “I’m sorry about this, Phat. We wanted to get everyone out of the building but we couldn’t work it out.”
“My wife and children?” Phat said.
“I know. I’m sorry,” Dr. Whitey said.
Elizabeth Hawthorne struggled to her feet, and went to an end table next to a bunk. There was a cup holding a variety of pens and pencils. She pulled out a black permanent marker and then wrote in big letters on the wall “ELIZABETH HAWTHORNE WAS HERE.”
“In case this doesn’t work as expected,” Elizabeth said, sitting back down. “I want someone some day to know what happened to me.”
“If Dr. Walters’s calculations are wrong, nothing will be left,” Phat said.
“Let us hope that Dr. Welling did the calculations,” Kawabata said.
“One minute,” Baranov said. “Everyone sit with their back to a wall.”
Those who were standing found a place to sit. Leo, who was still guarding the door, sat in the doorframe, rifle in his lap. The room was still, the tension palpable. Someone whispered a prayer. Most were silently counting down, but Baranov knew his timing was just an estimate. As it was, the fusion bombs detonated forty seconds earlier than expected.