Dinosaur Breakout (2 page)

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D
aniel lay on something damp and smooth.
He grabbed a handful and held it above his face. Wet silt! Some peculiar things circled high in the air above him like giant pelicans. Slowly, he eased himself up on his elbow, conscious of his throbbing head. He was on a muddy beach of some sort, right next to a large body of water that stretched as far as he could see. Reeds in the shallows swayed gently in the warm breeze. That’s when he noticed large indentations scattered all over the mud at the water’s edge. He sat up and gasped. Giant footprints! And he was lying in one!

Behind him, a dense wooded area echoed with odd screeching sounds. Although it looked like a normal forest at first glance, when he studied it, he recognized pines, yews, and magnolia trees with huge blossoms. There also seemed to be sycamores and ferns, and some kind of berry bushes.

At the edge of the shore, what looked like a
Cimolopteryx
preened itself. A prehistoric shorebird – how could that be? The knock on the head must have altered his thoughts somehow. Maybe he was unconscious and dreaming?

Daniel closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
Cautiously, he opened them again, but the view hadn’t changed. A loud screech came from directly overhead. He became aware of his heart thumping loudly in his chest like the steady beat of the drum in a marching band.

Gently he touched the sore spot on the back of his head and felt something sticky. When he looked at his fingers, he found blood. This was too real! Daniel willed himself to wake up. He pinched his arms and legs. Nothing changed. He was still on the muddy beach, amid numerous large, weirdly shaped footprints.

He heard a droning sound, growing louder, and a giant dragonfly drifted into view. Its iridescent yellowish wings spanned over half a metre, sprouting from a brilliant blue abdomen attached to a bright green thorax. It hovered for a few seconds, staring at him with beady dark eyes, then disappeared into the trees. Daniel gaped in disbelief.

Moments later, Daniel noticed subtle rustling movements approaching him. A small mammal, like nothing he’d ever seen before, emerged from the underbrush and sniffed the air in his direction. His wound! He had to wash away the blood and stop the flow so it wouldn’t attract predators. Regardless of where he was, he was sure animals were all the same and that some species could smell fresh blood from a long distance away. Already he’d begun to attract attention.

He climbed out of the huge three-toed footprint and slid over to the water’s edge, carefully easing his backpack onto the ground. Keeping a sharp lookout, he rummaged around until he found his
Receptaculites
fossil wrapped in an old cloth. He carried his special find with him everywhere.

The “taculite,” as he called it, had criss-cross markings on it like a ripe sunflower or a plastic netted bag around onions in the grocery store. This “sunflower coral” dated from 450 million years earlier. Daniel carefully removed the fossil and slipped it into his pocket. Then he dunked the cloth in water, and washed his wound with trembling fingers.

By the time he was finished, his dark hair was washed clear of blood. He held the cloth tightly over the gash at the back of his head, and replaced his backpack. He had been joined on the shore by a large turtle with a metre-long reddish brown shell and dark green paddle-like feet. Small, greenish grey, fast-moving lizards scurried across the wet ground, chasing peculiar-looking insects.

Where was he? And why couldn’t he wake up or shake these weird illusions? If he didn’t know better, he’d think he was in some sort of prehistoric time. Suddenly, realization dawned on him. What if he really had flipped into another time?

Instinctively, he knew that somehow he’d entered prehistoric time and he was in grave danger. This was no dream. Nor was it his wild imaginings. He wasn’t sure about what time period he was in or what kind of danger he was facing. But he knew he had to hide quickly before something noticed him as easy prey out in the open. Then somehow he had to find a way home.

Keeping watch for anything that moved in his direction, he crab-walked stealthily towards the trees and several large clumps of tall, fernlike plants called cycads. He made awkward progress, propelling himself with one hand, while he pressed the cloth to his head to prevent further bleeding. He avoided strange-looking insects, flicking them away with small sticks or a thrust of his foot. Oversized butterflies and peculiar bees flitted among the colourful flowers carpeting the ground on the edge of the forest.

CRACK!! CRACK!!

A series of huge splintering sounds sent him dashing headlong into the nearest clump of fern. He rolled himself into a ball and shook for a few moments as he tried to regain his regular breathing pattern. He heard little squawking noises nearby. Peering about in the expansive fronds, he wondered what else was in there with him. Then he spotted a nest with eggs twice the size of goose eggs and two very new slimy green hatchlings of some sort, struggling for their voices. Yikes! Good thing the mother wasn’t home. He had to get out of here!

Down on his knees, he peered cautiously out of the fern, but ducked back in at the sound of another crash of branches breaking and the loud cracking of something moving his way. An
Edmontosaurus
clumped through the trees, tall as an elephant, seeming to be in a hurry. Several small cat-sized animals scurried into the foliage, instantly skirting Daniel in surprise when they saw him.

Moments after the
Edmontosaurus
passed by, there were loud thumping and crunching sounds, then a vicious snapping. The ground shook with giant tremors and a
Tyrannosaurus rex
lumbered into view. Daniel cowered and made himself as small as he could as it approached. By the time the giant lizard reached him, all he could see were its heavily muscled legs and the broad-based scaly tail. If Daniel stood up, he’d only come halfway to its knees.

As the massive head with vicious yellow eyes and huge serrated teeth scoured the area, Daniel shrunk tighter against the innermost base of the fern. He held his breath until he thought he’d burst. The
T. rex
seemed to hang around forever. Its huge head nosed at a patch of ferns as it cleared a path, searching for its next meal. Daniel hoped it wasn’t going to be him! If the
T. rex
grabbed him in its jaws, one crunching snap and he’d be gone. He prayed it couldn’t smell his blood.
T. rexes
were known to be carrion eaters, and although Daniel wasn’t dead yet, the fresh blood might be all this one needed to trigger its hunger.

Another booming crash sounded to the right. The
Tyrannosaurus rex
raised its scaled head and sniffed in a loud, snorting breath. Its eyes bulged and widened in fierce anticipation. Suddenly, it let out a thundering roar, as if warning off competitors.

Thwack!!! Its huge tale swung past Daniel’s hiding place and crunched into some small trees as it headed after the
Edmontosaurus.
Huge clawed back feet crushed everything underneath as it moved along on its muscular tree stumplike back legs. The ground trembled. As it passed, Daniel looked up and saw an old healed scar along its leathery back. Maybe it was from a claw wound during a fight?

The
T. rex
left small trees uprooted and large patches of ground disturbed where its claws penetrated the earth. Small mammals followed in its wake, snatching at tiny insectlike creatures that lay injured or dead on the ground along a wide swath cut by the clawed feet and flicking tail of the hungry
T. rex.

There was no time to lose. Daniel had to find a safe hiding place. He could hear the squawking in the nest beside him intensify and the mother was surely nearby. He wasn’t going to wait around to find out what kind of dinosaur or other reptile would make a meal of him. But where could he go? And which way was safe?

Just then something large plunged towards the bracken and into the nest beside him, protesting loudly. Daniel leaped out of the fern. Running in a crouched position, he scoured the skies and the ground, hoping that nothing saw him as he headed for a clump of small bushes. Back towards the beach, he saw several long-necked thescelosaurs,
turning away from the water. At the horrific sounds of the
T. rex,
they lifted their heads and bleated a shrill, eerie warning that echoed throughout the forest. Then they disappeared into the trees.

With caution, yet as fast as he dared, Daniel separated the branches and peered inside the bushes. Then, sure nothing was nesting or living there for the moment, he crept inside, as close to the centre as he could go, and sat on the ground. He took big gulps of air to quiet the thumping in his chest. He’d never been so scared in all his life! His whole body shook. Seeing a
T. rex
skeleton was one thing, but seeing a live one in the gruesome, grey, knobbly flesh was horrifying!

He thought then about “Scotty,” the skeleton of a
T. rex
found near Eastend. He’d seen the dig where it’d been retrieved. Could he have just seen Scotty in the flesh? How could he tell? There didn’t seem to be any way of distinguishing them. All he knew was that they were dreadful in real life!

When his hands quit shaking, he removed the cloth from his head and checked his wound. Good, it had stopped bleeding. Quietly, he unzipped his backpack and pulled a bottle of water out. He rinsed the rag, and tied it around his head tightly so that the cut wasn’t exposed and wouldn’t bleed again. Then he took a good long drink of the refreshing water. Abruptly he stopped drinking. How long was the water going to have to last? Worried now, he screwed the lid on tight and tucked the bottle away.

As he bent to check the contents of his backpack, a giant scorpion appeared on the ground beside him. He jumped aside and kicked it away with his foot. He scoured the area quickly, and then settled down again, looking nervously about the underbrush.

Good thing he’d brought plenty of water and food. Originally he’d expected to spend the day at his hideout, sorting through his belongings and checking for other fossils. With that in mind, his mother had helped him prepare lunch, making sure he had three bottles of water and a couple of ham-and-cheese sandwiches. How long would he be holed up in these scratchy ferns? How long would the food have to last?

Luckily, he’d also thrown in a bag of potato chips and some granola bars, besides his regular stash of chocolate bars, and some beef jerky for Dactyl. Mrs. Lindstrom, his best friend Jed’s mom, had tucked in a huge piece of her special chocolate zucchini cake. She had dropped in for morning coffee to discuss the menus for the summer tourists, and brought a sample of her latest recipe experiment. He thought of it hungrily, but decided not to attract any more attention to himself until he got his bearings in this strange world of freaky sounds and unusual animals.

He pawed through his backpack to refresh his memory of other things he’d brought that might prove to be useful. Mentally he checked off the items: a freshly recharged flashlight – good for nighttime, if he had to stay that long. The matches were only good if he felt safe enough to use them without danger of attracting some prehistoric beast. Or maybe he could use a fire to scare them away! The dinosaur handbook would come in handy for identification, if he had time to do any research. His hooded fleece jacket was a definite bonus, but he wasn’t sure how useful his compass would be, because he didn’t have a clue which direction was home. And, since there didn’t seem to be any rocks, his rock hammer wouldn’t be useful in the normal way. These things were all he had to survive with. His other gear was at the hideout. Wherever that might be now!

Back in his own time, his secret cave was only a few hundred yards and several hills away from Ole Pederson’s property, where Roxanne, the almost complete
Edmontosaurus
skeleton, with a fossilized nest of eggs, had been found. This special find had resulted in a small paleontological museum being set up in their hometown of Climax, with Pederson as the chief curator and local expert. The dinosaur dig operation had grown out of that as a way for Daniel’s family to keep their farm viable. Daniel had never been more thrilled in his life.

A small rustling nearby quieted these happy thoughts, reminding him of his predicament. What was out there now? He tried to recall all the creatures associated with the later Cretaceous Period, for that was the time he’d identified by the flowering trees, insects, and other creatures he’d seen. He was reasonably sure he had to have travelled back about 65 to 67 million years, as the mega-vertebrates like the
T. rex
and
Triceratops
were only known to exist then. And even if most of his memory hadn’t shut down in shock, no one knew for sure which ones were dangerous to humans. He’d just assume they all were and avoid them as best he could while he figured out how to get home. Being alone without another human being, listening to the eerily strange sounds echoing through the dense, marshy forest, spooked him.

Even worse was the fact that no one was expecting him back until later in the evening. He was known for being gone for hours. They wouldn’t even come looking for him until after dark. And when they did, how could they figure out what had happened to him? Daniel shuddered.