Cretaceous Dawn

One of the most productive fossil beds of the Maastrichtian is the Hell Creek Formation in Montana. But even here, the fossil record is incomplete. The fauna we know best are the shelled animals, because of their excellent preservation. The areas we know best are seashores, swamps, and rivers, because the sediment was more likely to cover up and preserve biological remains.

Chief Sharon Earles was pacing behind her desk again. “We have no leads,” she said. “Not one lead on those missing people.”

“What is it with the Cremora?” Agent Kayn was spinning himself in Earles’ chair, his legs stretched out to keep his feet off the floor, watching in bemusement as Hann took half a cup of the chunky powder before adding coffee.

Hann nodded and sipped the gooey liquid. “No doughnuts either,” he said sadly. “How about that student’s story?”

Earles shrugged. “Beetles. Top secret experiments. All well and good, if that’s what he thinks; but I’m interested in the conditions at the time of the explosion, not in how exciting their findings were.”

“I can’t,” Earles said. “He’s not licensed to handle that equipment alone. He’ll have to wait for the arrival of those two other physicists I contacted.”

The phone on Earles’ desk rang. It did so every few minutes, but so far little real information had come in. “Sharon Earles speaking.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece and whispered, “Sergeant Moore, from Roscoe.” This sounded more hopeful.

“We’ll be there in half an hour. Please touch nothing. Thank you.” Earles hung up and looked at her companions for a moment. She wasn’t quite sure how to present this development; it wasn’t good, nor was it conclusive. And if true, it would negate her own growing suspicions.

“Not exactly.” Earles watched her officer carefully as she spoke. “They found a body at a gas station. Male, dressed as a security guard, so far unidentified.” She hesitated, but decided to leave it at that.

Sergeant Moore met them at the gas station. Several police cars were parked any which way among the dirty pumps and a small crowd of onlookers stood to one side, kept back by a young woman in uniform.

“It’s not a pretty sight,” Moore told them after the introductions. “He was killed within the hour, we think . . . in a rather chilling way. Can’t think who could have done such a thing, or why. Never seen anything quite like it.” He led them around the cinderblock building to a weedy lot full of old tires and broken glass. “Strange the way he just appeared, too. Nobody heard anything or saw anyone acting suspicious. Employee just came out for a smoke and . . . there it was, just like that. Gave the attendant the fright of his life.”

Her first impression was of blood, everywhere, pooled around old bottles, spattered on tufts of weeds. It had a sharp, disturbing smell that made her want to back away. Then she saw the body. It was sitting up, leaning back against an enormous tire. One eye was wide as if in shock; the other wasn’t there. A chunk of the face and head was missing from one side. The waxen features on the intact side were spattered with blood and looked inhuman, unrecognizable..

“Had his brains blown out,” Moore said, in the tone of voice one might use to comment on the weather. “Lovely day today” could easily be the next thing out of his mouth, Earles thought.

Hann suddenly appeared from around the gas station; he had lagged behind, unnoticed. Now he stopped a good ten feet away.

Earles sighed. She was glad this wasn’t their missing security guard; glad for Hann. But that made it just another false lead, and time was moving on.

Julian looked at the shore. At first he saw only vegetation: branches and vines, tangled and mingled up with the undergrowth, shot with ferns and enormous tree roots that straggled into the water. Then he saw a face peering out of the jungle: a long naked snout, brownish-green and blending superbly with the background. The forward-facing, stereoscopic eyes of a predator glared at him.

“All creatures swim,” he said in a low voice. “Almost all. But I can’t see it taking the risk. It would have no chance in the water against a crocodile or a mosasaur.”

“I can’t quite see enough of the body. A small theropod—a carnivorous dinosaur. Too big for Troodon, I think.”

One of the animals pushed the twigs aside with a clawed hand and stepped to the water’s edge, one foot settling in the shallow mud. It cocked its head and stared at the boat. It stood about the height of a human, and may have weighed a hundred and fifty pounds. The S-curved neck gave it the alarming air of a snake about to strike. Julian saw the enormous claw on the inner toe, curving upward, jutting above the mud.

Julian nodded, still clutching his paddle. “Like lions and cheetahs. They hunt different prey and keep clear of each other’s territory. Although we haven’t seen the real lions yet: T. rex.”

“Good thing Hilda’s looking the other way,” Dr. Shanker said. “Let’s get out of here before she spots them.”

One of the dromaeosaurs opened its mouth and made a noise, a rapid clicking in its throat, like a low growl. At the sound Hilda started up and turned; when she saw the creatures she unceremoniously scrambled over Julian, knocking the paddle from his hand, and all but leaped off the side of the boat in her eagerness to get closer.

Julian turned his back and picked up his paddle. But as soon as they began to pull away he heard a frightful scream behind him, like a human in agony. There was a splash, and he jerked around to see what had happened. The creatures had leaped into the water, not just one, but three, swimming toward the boat.

Julian dug his paddle in harder, nodding to Dr. Shanker. “Paddle. We should be faster than they are.” He couldn’t help looking back over his shoulder.

They swam with their heads up and their long bodies and tails submerged just beneath the surface, stretched out behind them. He watched their three-clawed hands scooping at the water and their big hind legs treading; they made astonishing speed. The tail, he noted, simply trailed behind, being essentially a stiff balancing device, not very flexible. The dromaeosauridae in particular had bony rods, ossified tendons, running along the back end of the tail to stiffen it. Good thing, he thought: they’d move a lot faster if they could scull.

All these intriguing thoughts went through Julian’s mind in the first few seconds, while the boat seemed to be pulling away from the animals. But once the dromaeosaurs reached deeper water where they could tread more easily they began to put on alarming speed. With real paddles and a well-made boat, the picture might have looked different; but even paddling as frantically as they could there was no chance of outpacing them. Julian kept turning to look back as he knelt and each time the animals were closer.

“Don’t turn around,” Yariko finally snapped. “I’ll tell you what they’re doing. You just paddle.” She was steering into the current now, leaning hard on the long oar to compensate for Dr. Shanker’s more powerful strokes against Julian’s weaker ones.

Hilda, who had been keeping up a steady growl, now burst into a barking frenzy. She looked like she was about to launch herself into the water and attack them, in which case she would certainly have been killed. Finally Yariko had to let go of the steering oar and throw her arms around Hilda’s neck to hold her back, and the boat began to yaw, swinging right and then left with the uneven paddling.

“We can’t do it,” Dr. Shanker said, tossing his paddle into the middle of the raft. “Grab a weapon. Let the Goddamn dog go and grab a weapon! She can take care of herself!”

The boat swung to and the creatures closed in on it broadside. Hilda stood on the edge snarling and barking, then dashed from one end to the other, precariously jolting them around.

Julian took up one of Yariko’s stone-headed spears and prepared to stab at anything that came near. But even as his heart pounded, some part of him was still fascinated by the creatures’ behavior. They paused just out of reach, and one of the three circled around to the other side of the boat. They were clearly used to attacking large animals in the water and followed a highly effective, coordinated strategy. Maybe they took the boat to be a peculiar variant of a hadrosaur or some other dull-witted herbivorous dinosaur.

They all attacked at once, screaming so frightfully that Hilda stopped barking and tumbled backward into the boat. Dr. Shanker grabbed the makeshift stone axe to fend off the creature on his side while Julian watched in terrified fascination; it was all he could do to turn his back on the fight and face his own attackers. He imagined Dr. Shanker overcome, and the creature silently clambering onto the boat behind him.

Then the other two came forward, their long jaws open showing jagged teeth, and there was no time for imagining the worst. Yariko jabbed an arrow at one of them: the slender shaft suddenly sprouted from its shoulder, flapping about as the creature swam. It seemed to have no effect at all.

Julian thrust his spear with all his strength into the face of the nearest animal. He could tell by feel that he had struck flesh; but the animal wriggled aside. Three claws like grappling hooks caught the side of the boat. The animal was trying to climb onto the raft the same way that a human would, grasping the rim with its hand. It raised its head over the edge and screamed, jaws gaping, blasting the rotten smell of its breath.

It was streaming with water, and Julian could see a gash on the side of its neck where the spear had hit. Blood ran into the water. But the animal didn’t seem to feel anything.

Suddenly it lunged upward to snap at Julian’s face. He started back instinctively but the ragged jaws and putrid stench kept advancing, coming closer to his face. He fell over on his back and saw the head draw back and then dart forward with terrifying speed on the snake-like neck. With a yell, Julian rolled and found himself sitting upright; he was still clutching the spear, and with both hands he brought it straight down on the head, pushing with all his might.

The point struck the flat top of the skull in the center and drove the animal’s head downward. Julian could feel the hardness of bone and he wanted to pierce its skull and brain, pin it against the bottom of the boat, but the animal wriggled free with a violent twist that tilted the raft and threw Julian over on his side. The spear slipped away and he caught himself with his head dangling over the side and his face almost in the water.

He struggled to regain his balance, expecting any second to feel teeth around the back of his neck. But when he sat up and looked, the animal was thrashing madly in the water, without coordination. The concussion had been fatal.

Julian slowly became aware of the others again. Hilda was cringing in the center of the raft. The animal that had attacked Dr. Shanker now lay still in the water, its head gently turning and twisting in the wavelets, connected to the neck by a few shreds of muscle and skin. Only Yariko was still fighting; she was holding the splintered shaft of an arrow, stabbing at the animal’s open mouth. The broken end of the arrow was bloody, and both of her hands were red as if she had dipped them in a container of blood.

Julian’s spear was floating in the water just beyond reach. He had a wild thought of lunging for it but instead he threw himself on Yariko and pulled her back, away from the dromaeosaur. They tumbled over as the raft pitched, landing on their backs, Julian still grasping Yariko by the shoulders. She looked back at the dromaeosaur and struggled to sit up.

But Dr. Shanker was already there with the axe. The animal seemed to realize that it was outnumbered; it backed away, hissing, teeth and gums red with its own blood. It swam for shore, the spear still flapping against its shoulder.

Yariko pulled free of Julian’s grip. They watched the defeated animal drag itself out of the water and vanish into the foliage.

Julian felt no exhilaration or even relief as the animal disappeared into the trees. He felt an immobilizing hopelessness. They could never survive a thousand miles of this. They would not have survived this attack had they not been in the river; and most of their journey would be on foot.

After a long moment of silence Yariko spoke quietly. “I’ve been bitten.” She held out her bloody hand: the creature had snapped at her and raked the skin from her palm. The wound was still oozing blood, and one gash was quite long and went down to the bone.

There was little to be done except to bind it securely with a handkerchief. At first she didn’t seem to feel any pain, and as Julian awkwardly tied up the bandage she even joked about their brave and fierce dog who had hidden from the fight. But when she reached for the paddle to steer again, her face changed.

“You should lie down,” Julian told her. But she only gave him a quizzical look, and he realized that there was nothing for her to do, one way or the other, but keep going on as before. In this world, one did not lie down after an injury.

“Whitney,” Dr. Shanker said, interrupting suddenly. “What do you think?” Julian looked up. Shanker was holding up the neck of one of the dead dromaeosaurs, and the nearly severed head flopped about, leaving great wet blotches of blood in the hair on his forearm.

They slowly paddled away from the floating corpses, trying to keep to the middle of the stream. Yariko insisted on steering even though she looked quite pale and sick. She held the paddle with one hand and her wrist, since the other hand was too tender.

“Whitney,” Dr. Shanker said, after quietly paddling for a time, “you keep telling us that dinosaurs are diurnal, mostly, and the little mammals are nocturnal. Why don’t we take the hint?”

“Why not? I know there’re nasty things running around like dromaeosaurs, but can’t we climb a tree and sleep until dusk? We’d make better time on the river if we weren’t being attacked. And we need to make time: there’s a thousand miles to go in less than seven weeks.”

Julian scanned the shore doubtfully. He wasn’t too keen on climbing out of the boat only to face another pack of dromaeosaurs. The woods seemed populated with the tall cypress, but the downward sweep of their branches made them a bad choice for sleeping in.

He was about to express disagreement when he saw some other trees up ahead: the sycamore-like trees familiar to them from their island, and clumps of shrubs that looked like small maples. The wide, multipronged leaves were unmistakable, although the plant was otherwise nondescript, nothing like its far-distant offspring. From this unlikely swamp plant, Acerites multiformis as Julian knew it from the fossil record, came the familiar sugar maple.

“All right,” he said at last. “We should boil some water to clean Yariko’s hand, anyhow. We can stay near the river and get in the boat if anything comes along.”

They pulled cautiously to the shore. All was silent and still. “I miss the sound of birds,” Yariko said as they stepped out into the stinking mud. “Even insects, crickets. There’s nothing singing. It’s unsettling.”

There was nothing to eat, and nothing they could do about it. Nobody relished the idea of charging into the undergrowth with a sharpened stick, looking for a small mammal to kill. They would have to sleep hungry, but at least they could drink their fill of boiled water if they could start a fire. Dr. Shanker got to work immediately.

Julian helped Yariko to sit on the end of a log half buried in the mud. She was obviously making an effort to be cheerful but it was equally clear that her hand hurt a great deal.

“That turtle shell really comes in handy,” she commented after Julian filled it with water and put it over the fire, trying not to smother the flames completely. “I’ll have to get one for my kitchen. I wonder if they come in different sizes.”

But Julian couldn’t laugh. He suddenly realized they had more to fear than carnivore attacks. Infection from a small injury would kill them as surely as would being torn open by Troodon.

The afternoon was well begun when they doused the fire, drank the remaining still-warm water, and munched distastefully on a few shriveled roots they’d brought from the island.

Dr. Shanker made a dry nest between two protruding roots of the nearest “sycamore,” an ancient, gnarled tree of tremendous girth, and lined it with dead leaves. At his signal Hilda curled up into the space.

“Don’t make noise,” he told her, exactly as if she were a person who could understand him. “Lie quiet and let the predators pass you by.” Then he scrambled up into the lower branches of the tree, with the help of Yariko’s Julian’s back. “Pass up some sticks from the boat,” he called down. “There’s a good spot here to make a small platform.”

With his finger, Julian traced some lines etched into the bark, a little above his head. “Reminds me of kids carving their initials in trees,” he said. “You come upon them sometimes in the woods, in ancient oaks and maples that used to stand at the edge of a field. Carved with a knife, all distorted after decades of growth.”

“What, you think dinosaurs carve their initials in trees?” Yariko said impatiently, and thrust a stick into his hand.

Julian handed the stick up to Dr. Shanker. “It just looked like something at first,” he said, feeling foolish. “But wouldn’t it be interesting if dinosaurs sharpened their claws on trees? No Cretaceous mammal could have reached that high on the trunk.”

As Julian handed up the final piece, Dr. Shanker suddenly asked, “Whitney, are there bees here? In the Late Cretaceous?”

“It’s not known if they go back so far,” Julian replied, pausing with the stick in his hand. “Flowering plants are only just now spreading over the world, and there’s some debate over whether bees are secondary to flowers. They don’t start showing up in sediment and amber until the Tertiary.”

“Yes,” he said, “that’s what it was. Look.” He pointed to the underside of a thick branch, where the dried mud tubes of a wasp’s nest clung to the bark.

“Dromaeosaurs I’ll face,” Yariko said, standing beside the boat. “But I draw the line at wasps.” She looked weary and unhappy.

“Don’t do that!” Julian cried, just in time. “They’ll be all over us. Let’s find another tree. So much for dinosaur initials,” he said to Yariko, but she wasn’t in the mood for humor.

They found another good tree forty feet away and a little back from the river. The sticks were again placed, and Dr. Shanker climbed down. “Your platform is ready,” he said. “I’m sleeping with Hilda. I want to keep guard over her—make sure she doesn’t run off by herself. There isn’t room up there for three of us anyway.”

Julian lay down cautiously, not quite trusting the crude planks. There wasn’t much room; he tried not to be up against Yariko but there was no way around it. She lay with her back to him, her head resting on one arm and her tangled hair straggling over her face. The air was slightly cooler at their height above the mud, and the flies and the stench less bad; but Julian had trouble closing his eyes.

The events of the morning were not easy to forget. The death had been gruesome beyond belief, with Frank’s strength of will being the final horror. He lay a long time trying to push it all away. He forced his mind to look ahead to their river journey.

Then a few minutes later she said, “I’m sorry, Julian. It was such a terrible day. Frank—and then those animals. There’s no hope, is there? We’re all going to die a horrible death, and it’ll be soon, too.”

She was verbalizing Julian’s own emotions immediately after the dromaeosaur attack. He sighed, reaching a hand out to touch her arm. She turned quickly and he withdrew his hand.

“I know,” he said. “That’s exactly what I was feeling, in the boat. I know we beat them off, but . . . but I don’t feel that way now. Hopeless, I mean. Yariko, I think we can make it. In trees during the day, on the river at night; and then, when we leave the river the terrain will be completely different, and much safer. At least, I think so.”

Yariko was silent for a long time. Julian couldn’t tell if she believed him or not. He only partly believed himself, but he was trying. If they had no hope they might as well give up now.

“What happens when we—when he died?” Julian asked, having a sudden thought. “Will he stay here or will he revert, and be found?”

Yariko turned her head to look right at him. “How can he revert? He’s not in the right place. Now he’ll never be.” After a moment she turned back onto her side. “He knew he wouldn’t live long without being able to walk. He knew from the beginning he’d be killed before having time to heal, and he tried to teach us as much as he could so we’d survive.”