From the shallow cave, under the glow of moonlight, Sam watched the seelo emerge from the tree line. The carnivorous dinosaur, which reminded him of a miniature T. rex, ventured onto the rocky expanse, its sharp claws clacking as it went, rain pouring down around it.
The deadly creature looked directly at Sam. Over the rain, the clack-clack-clack of more claws called out in the night. Sam heard the other seelo before he saw it, but soon, it emerged from the forest and came to stand beside the first. They stared at Sam, a Triassic jury of two deciding his fate.
The first took a step forward, as if a decision had been made.
Sam figured he looked weak to them. Half dead. Easy prey.
Maybe he was. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to fight.
He dropped the stick and crawled forward, out of the small cave.
The seelos advanced.
Rain poured down, drops bouncing on the white stone like balls of hail.
Shock and awe. That was his only chance. He was weak. That was the truth. But he had one advantage they didn’t: his mind.
Sam gripped a loose rock by the cave entrance and hurled it at the two seelos. Both their heads snapped around.
He picked up another stone and launched it, this time connecting with the closest dinosaur’s head. It reeled back, screeching, and wheeled around, racing into the dark forest, the other chasing after it.
Sam exhaled and dropped to the ground like a balloon deflating.
He gathered a few stones and stacked them by the cave entrance. He smiled at his little stockpile of missiles, ready to fight the Pangean war he had started.
He kept the stick in his hand, but he couldn’t watch the woods any longer. The pattering of the rain soon lulled him to sleep.
*
The morning light poured into the cave like an invading army.
Sam covered his eyes with his arm and tried to go back to sleep.
The hunger finally made him move. It was a hunger like he had never known, an ache deep down inside that felt more like sickness, as though his own body was eating itself.
He crawled to the mouth of the cave and stopped at the stack of stones. In the indentions in the dirt where they had been, small worms were writhing in the baking sun, snaking their way under nearby rocks to escape.
Sam’s stomach rumbled.
His mouth watered.
So this is what it’s come to, eh?
He turned over one of the rocks, revealing three larger earthworms. They were brown and gray and as he watched them, wondering if he was actually capable of eating them, they began inching way.
Sam picked one up, brushed off the dirt caked on it and dropped it in his mouth. He was that hungry.
The worm was slimy and earthy. His first instinct was to gag. He certainly couldn’t chew it. He swallowed it down and winced and forced himself to pick up the next one, and the next.
There, under the morning sun, near the mouth of the cave, he broke his fast on a Triassic earthworm buffet. It was probably the grossest thing Sam had ever done. It was also, strangely, the most fulfilling meal of his entire life.
The worms brought strength. And he was going to use it.
He needed water. And fire.
In the forest, he drank rainwater from the fern leaves until he had washed the earthy taste out of his mouth and filled his belly. With each step, he watched for the seelos, careful not to make any noise as he gathered sticks for his fire.
Soon, he had a pile of kindling and fuel near the small cave. In his mind’s eye, he saw a blazing inferno. Around it, he imagined a stack of stones and a flat, thin rock on top, a fish lying on it, grilling in the heat of the crackling fire. The thought made his mouth water even more. He had seen two other types of seed ferns in the forest that morning—one with large fleshy pods hanging down. But the memory of yesterday’s food poisoning made his stomach turn at the thought of trying other plants.
He wanted meat.
But first, he needed a fire. For protection.
He ventured deeper into the forest, the stick held at the ready. Up ahead, he found what he had been looking for. The white bones of a rib cage rose through the ferns like ivory swords buried at the hilt.
He pushed the green fern fronds back and caught sight of the skeleton’s skull. Sam looked around and spotted the end of the tail. The beast had been at least thirty-five feet long and maybe twice as tall as him.
At the skull, he brushed away the dirt and inspected the teeth. Unfortunately, they were blunted. This was an omnivore. Probably a Melanorosaurus, based on the books Daniele had drilled into him.
Sam was about to turn away when a thought occurred to him. He examined the skull a little closer. The top was flat and about as wide as his chest, with enclosed sides. He smiled. Nature tests you. And nature provides.
Sam lifted the skull away and stopped when he saw the earthworms writhing where it had been. His Triassic seafood grill wouldn’t be a reality for a while. And he was hungry from scavenging in the woods.
He squatted and ate his fill, marveling at how the slimy worms no longer triggered his gag reflex.
At his camp (which is how he now thought of the small cave and soon-to-be fire), he set the upper part of the skull on top of a pile of rocks. He lined the inside with layers of thick fern leaves, covering the openings and using clean rocks to make sure the leaves were firmly joined together.
When he was done, Sam sat back and smiled at it. A dinosaur skull rain barrel. By nightfall—if it rained again in the afternoon—the small reservoir would be full of water, and Sam could drink from it, staying by his camp instead of venturing back into the woods to drink from the velvety fern leaves. That might save his life.
On his next trip to the woods, he found what he had been searching for the first time: the skeleton of a carnivore. He snapped off a sharp tooth and brought it back to camp. He grabbed a stick of wood and ran the tooth up and down it, sawing away. Tiny slivers of wood peeled off, some as thin as human hairs. They would do. He placed them atop the twigs and dry leaves in the pile of tinder.
He then used the tooth to sharpen his self-defense stick. When he was done, he inspected the small spear. It would do. He carried it into the woods and found another stick and sharpened it (for a backup).
Finally, he turned his focus to the fire. He carved a deep groove in a piece of flat softwood, then sharpened another stick and began plowing up and down the groove, creating friction and shearing off thin layers of wood.
The friction and heat ignited the hairs of wood above and soon, smoke rose from the tinder pile. Sam leaned forward, eager to see flames sprout up. He blew gently, but the smoke drifted away and the fire died.
He had been too eager.
Total rookie move.
He sat back on his haunches and exhaled. At the end of the piece of flat wood, he repacked the tinder, careful to ensure the fine wood fibers were at the end of the groove.
Then he began plowing again.
As he rowed back and forth, he thought: that’s life. You push and pull and sometimes things catch fire and sometimes they don’t. You keep going: that’s the key.
Soon, smoke rose again.
But still he plowed. He wanted to be sure this time. The flames needed to be strong before he gave them oxygen. When he smelled the fire and saw the first flames rising, he leaned down and blew and fueled it. The fire licked the twigs and ignited them and burned into the sticks steepled above it.
He had made a fire.
He sat back, watching the growing flames. It was a representation of so many things he had taken for granted in his old life. Before, fire was always a click away. Here, it was a struggle. And probably the key to his survival.
To survive, he needed to take the fire with him. That was easier said than done.
He needed a torch. The ideal torch would have a slow-burning fuel. Tree sap, pitch, oil, or animal fat were best. All were problematic. Specifically, they were hard to come by.
The best fuel options available to him at the moment were moss, wood, and leaves. They wouldn’t burn long. And if the torch itself was wooden, it would burn down to his hand.
A thought occurred to him. A prehistoric innovation.
He returned to the Melanorosaurus skeleton, gripped one of the long rib bones, and leaned back until it cracked and broke free. As he suspected, it was hollow inside. It was also just the right size to be stuffed with a piece of hardwood wrapped in moss. And that’s what he did.
He held the torch over the fire, lit it, and hoisted it up.
In one hand, he held a spear. In the other, a dinosaur bone torch. He hadn’t mastered this land, but he felt safer than he had since the night Nora had died. The thought of her brought a sharp pain to his soul. He wasn’t ready to think about her. But his mind wanted to, like it was trying to lick a wound that was still raw.
Would that cut ever heal? Probably not.
That hurt reminded him of his wife. She had also been taken from him. Sam had watched her wither away. In a way, it had broken him. Irreparably.
Nora had a similar hurt, from the loss of her husband. She and Sam had that in common. Wounds that wouldn’t heal. And they shared the bond of the secret of Absolom. And, as they had discovered, an attraction to each other. In a way, she had brought Sam back to life, awakened something inside of him. Just when he thought they were ready to take the next step, she was gone, torn out of his life.
If he dwelled on the things that had happened to him, if he kept feeling sorry for himself, he knew it would drown him, just as the sea had wanted to. As in the water, here on land, he needed to swim, to propel himself forward, toward the shore, toward the future. The past pulled at him like the depths of the ocean, the abyss, but he resisted. He was going to fight. For Adeline. For Ryan. For his friends. And lastly, for himself.
With the torch in one hand, he reached into his pockets and emptied them. He threw the sickening green pods across the white rocks and put small pebbles in their place. If he lost the torch and spear, they would be his last line of defense. The small rocks wouldn’t hurt the large reptiles here. But, as he had learned last night, they would scare them. They had never seen prey (or a predator) who could hurl rocks at them. Something new represented danger. Something to flee. Thanks to evolution, they were programmed to avoid uncertainty.
He glanced up at the sun. It was low in the sky. Sam figured it was probably two in the afternoon. Plenty of day left. And much to do.
He knew he needed food. Something hardier than Triassic earthworms. He wouldn’t find it in the forest behind him—unless he was ready to fell a seelo. He wasn’t.
Ahead lay unexplored territory, and within it, the prospect of easier prey. Perhaps a mammal he could eat. Or fish in a pond or a stream.
He had the fire now, and that gave him the option to cook larger animals.
Yet the prospect scared him. Ahead was new, unknown territory. That was the way of the world: even slowly starving, we cling to the lands we know instead of striking out into the unknown. But he had to now.
With his pockets full of stones, a spear in one hand, a torch in the other, Sam marched across the rocky expanse to the far tree line and stepped into the unexplored forest.
Under the canopy, the world turned dark. Around him, he heard animals scurrying. This thicket was alive, and the animals here were on the move. Why?
Sam realized the answer then. It was the smoke. That was rare in the Triassic. It probably heralded the beginning of a forest fire. Animals in this time had evolved to recognize the smell, to fear it, to run from it. That was going to be a problem for his hunting expedition. But it was also keeping him safe.
The terrain rose for a while, then turned downward before inclining again. Soon, the ground grew rockier, and finally the forest gave way to a ridge, where the trees were gone and stone covered the ground. At the top of a tall rock outcropping, Sam got his first glimpse of the world around him.
Ahead lay hills covered in dense forest, like what lay behind him. They cascaded down into a desert that stretched out as far as Sam could see. Turning back, he realized that the forest he had been hiking through was but a small strip between a massive sea of water on one side and a sea of sand on the other.
The desert ahead was barren except for narrow shadows that looked like stripes. Sam didn’t understand where they came from, but there were hundreds of them. He wasn’t about to trek down there to find out what they were.
To the right of the desert lay a swamp that flowed to the horizon, probably to the ocean. The low-lying land was likely a mix of saltwater from the sea and freshwater from the rain that pooled in the desert and washed away toward the coast.
Sam turned and surveyed the ridgeline. Another peak rose to his right. It didn’t have a pointed top. It was blunted, like a mountain that had been sawed off. In the center, there was an indentation. It was a volcano.
Sam eyed the volcano like a dragon he had caught by the tail. A dangerous thing that could go off at any moment and burn him and the entire world to a crisp. But for now, it was asleep.
In the volcano’s shadow, Sam spotted a small pond (or what looked like a small pond from where he stood). A stream flowed away from it, into the forest. He imagined that it eventually snaked its way to the sea. Another branch from the pond flowed toward the desert.
Sam glanced at the sun, mentally estimating the time and distance to the pond. He could make it there and back before nightfall. At least, he thought he could. If he couldn’t, the torch would be his salvation in the dark forest. But it was burning down. He needed to resupply it.
Using the torch, he lit a small fire on the ground. Carefully, he extinguished the torch, emptied the bone, and packed it again. He lit the reconstituted torch, extinguished the fire on the ground, and set off toward the stream.
When he reached it, he built another fire on the bank and waded into the water, holding the spear up. There were indeed fish here. They were long and fast and looked absolutely delicious.
Sam stabbed down with the spear. Time after time, he missed. They were too fast.
He even bent and put his hands in the water and waited and tried to grab one. He was hungry enough to rip its head off. He imaged himself skewering it with a stick, holding it over the fire, and ripping strips of meat off and feasting on it.
The thought made his mouth water.
The sun set on that dream.
When it disappeared over the tree line, he stormed out of the creek, picked up the torch, and began hiking back to his camp.
When he reached it, he found the fire nearly dead, only a rubble of embers smoldering.
He covered the dying fire with twigs and branches from the forest and feasted from the stream that he knew: earthworms from beneath the stones near his camp. He would run out of those at some point, but tomorrow was another day. Today, he had made a lot of progress. He had woken at death’s door and would lay his head down with food in his belly and a fire burning before him. That was progress, such as it was in the Triassic.
Soon, it became clear that the fire wouldn’t survive the night. The rain extinguished it, the sheets smothering it like a blanket.
That sucked. Sam should have thought of that. But what could he do? The light monsoon was a late afternoon tradition on this part of Pangea.
He made a note to gather some dry wood in the cave to start again tomorrow. That was the key to survival—doing better tomorrow than you did today. Getting up every day and improving.
When the smoke of the fire was gone, and the moonlight bathed the rock expanse, night was complete, and with it came the thoughts of what he had left behind. The first memory was of hugging Adeline in that incarceration room. He wondered where she was now. Had she given up on him yet? It didn’t matter. He would either die here or make it home. Losing his ability to see her and Ryan made him realize how much he missed them. For a moment, he was back in that Absolom chamber, staring through the glass, seeing them peering out at him.
In that moment, his world had been ripped apart in more ways than one.
But now, here in the past, a different set of eyes stared at Sam. They belonged to an old man. He stood at the tree line, in the rain, his long hair stringy and gray, his beard thick and matted. A wide scar ran down the left side of his face. He smiled, revealing crooked, broken teeth. He wore the same tank top as Sam—the kind issued by the Absolom departure facility.
The other prisoner had finally found him.
Sam’s heart beat faster. He gripped the stick.
The man stepped forward, into the clearing. His ratty tank top was stained with blood. He had killed before. Sam studied the man, the gleam in his eyes, the smile on his lips, and knew, with almost certainty, that he was here to kill again.