Landing
THE WRONG 33
By Keith Trimm
Dr. Anteros materialized inside the trunk of a massive conifer tree and died instantly.
Crew-woman Angela O’Neil materialized in the muddy shallows of a nearby river. Her displaced molecular structure instantly absorbed the surrounding water straight into her tissue, ballooning her legs up to a monstrous, fluid-filled size. The explosive agony was too much for her brain to handle. Unable to ambulate, she rolled heavily into the deeper currents and drowned within seconds.
So far, the highly anticipated corporate time-travel excursion had been a total, catastrophic disaster. Out of the entire expeditionary force, only three people had managed to arrive without rematerializing inside a solid granite boulder or at the bottom of a lake.
“Is everyone alright?” Commander Tack yelled, wiping a layer of temporal static from his face shield.
Susan Bowman coughed, waving away a cloud of strange, thick humidity. “I’m fine!” she screamed back.
Crewman Jones stumbled out from a dense thicket of ferns, heading directly toward the commander. “What the fuck happened?” Jones asked, his voice cracking with pure panic. “We weren’t supposed to materialize anywhere close to a place like this!”
“Don’t ask me,” Tack replied, checking his dead wrist-monitor. “They hired me to keep you idiots alive. I don’t program the goddamn quantum computers.”
Jones looked around, his chest heaving as he stared at the oppressive wall of green jungle. “Where the hell are we? This looks nothing like what was on the promotional video logs back at headquarters.”
“Someone fucked up, and now we are entirely on our own,” Tack said, his voice dropping into a flat, professional monotone. “Don’t bother trying to figure out what happened. Figure out how to survive.”
“It would help immensely if I knew exactly when and where I was,” Jones barked, kicking a prehistoric fern.
“Look around, kid. What do you see?” Tack asked.
“I see giant conifers towering overhead,” Jones said, shielding his eyes against a harsh, unfamiliar sun. “Huge vines. Dense undergrowth. It’s just a wall of bush.”
“Anything else?” Tack pressed. “Do you see that pterosaur flying above us?”
Jones shaded his eyes, squinting up through a gap in the ancient canopy. A creature with a twenty-foot leather wingspan and a jagged beak glided effortlessly across the sky.
“Holy buckets of shit,” Jones whispered, his face draining of color. “We’re trapped in a Jurassic Park movie!”
“He isn’t a dinosaur, he’s a reptile,” Tack corrected dryly.
“We went too far back in time!” Jones yelled, turning on Tack with wide eyes. “We were supposed to find Jesus, not dinosaurs!”
“Well, we may need Jesus anyway,” Tack replied, checking his boots. “Right now, we are basically an buffet line, and we need to find shelter fast.”
“But how will we get back?” Bowman spoke up, her fingers gripping her jumpsuit.
“There is no going back,” Tack replied without a hint of sympathy. “The extraction sensors were calibrated for 33 B.C., not the Cretaceous period. The home base has no way to track our energy signature anymore. We are off the grid.”
Jones looked over his shoulder toward a nearby outcrop. “Where is Anderson?”
“He’s part of that rock over there,” Tack replied, pointing a gloved finger toward a jagged stone wall where Anderson’s bloody, fused remains hung like a horrific macabre statue.
“Oh, my God!” Jones gagged, covering his mouth. “Can this get any worse?”
“Yes,” Tack said, doing a quick head count. “I don’t see Hanson, do you?”
Jones spun around, scanning the immediate riverbank. “I don’t see her.”
“Well, that leaves the three of us,” Tack replied, clapping his hands together to break the tension. “We need to find shelter. Every minute we spend exposed out here puts us further in danger. From dehydration, to toxic insect bites, to whatever apex predator is lurking around the corner.”
Jones gestured wildly around the barren bank. “We are on a riverbank, Commander! I don’t see a hotel anywhere.”
Bowman stepped between them, her jaw set. “We need weapons. Shelter can come later.”
“I disagree,” Tack replied. “We have no fresh water, and I, for one, am not drinking out of that disgusting river. We need to find shelter and find it fast. Then we can look for clean water.”
“Do what you want, Commander,” Bowman replied, turning her back on him. “I’m going to arm myself. We have no idea what creatures lurk out here in the jungle, and I am not going to be anyone’s lunch.”
“Go on then, split up the group,” Tack said, waving her off. “Less for me to keep track of.”
Suddenly, a low, guttural growl echoed from the opposite side of the wide river. The muddy ground beneath their boots shivered, a subtle vibration echoing through the soil with rhythmic, heavy thuds.
Bowman froze, her hand hovering over a thick, broken branch on the ground. “Are you sure you don’t want a weapon?” she asked, her voice dropping an octave.
“Whatever that thing is, it has to cross a wide river to get to us,” Tack replied, completely unbothered. “I’m not worried.”
“There is no shelter anywhere around here!” Jones barked, his panic spiking again. “It’s all jungle, a rushing river, and a little bit of flat mud on the banks. We are sitting ducks!”
“Next best thing is to shelter in place,” Tack said. “We will build a camp right here. If we start a fire, the predators will stay away. It’s our only chance to survive the night.”
Jones frowned, crossing his arms. “Were you a Boy Scout? Because I don’t know how to start a fire without a lighter.”
“As a matter of fact, I was a Boy Scout,” Tack said with a grim smile. “Starting a fire isn’t that hard if you have the right materials.”
“Fine,” Jones muttered. “I’ll go get some wood.”
“Don’t get eaten,” Tack replied. “We actually need you.”
“I won’t,” Jones replied, shaking his head as he melted into the treeline.
Bowman watched him go, then turned back to Tack. “What about food?”
“We can live up to thirty days without food,” Tack replied, picking up a sharp stone to test its edge. “Water is our immediate issue. At this point, we don’t have a way to boil it anyway. No fire, no container.”
“How long can we live without water?” Bowman asked.
“Three days. Maybe four if we’re lucky and stay out of the direct sun,” Tack said.
“What happens if we just drink the water straight out of the river?” Bowman asked, eyeing the murky current.
“Severe, explosive diarrhea,” Tack said flatly. “Followed by rapid, fatal dehydration. You’ll die faster than if you didn’t drink at all.”
Across the water, the low growling grew noticeably louder. The prehistoric trees on the opposite bank began to shiver and snap, their branches shaking violently with the heavy footsteps of a monster gaining ground.
“Why is that getting louder?” Bowman asked, her eyes glued to the moving foliage across the river.
“It smells us,” Tack said.
“But we just arrived!” Bowman argued. “We’ve been here for five minutes!”
“Go ask it how its sense of smell works and get back to me,” Tack replied.
Jones suddenly burst back through the bushes, panting heavily. He dropped an armful of thick, bright green branches and a pile of wet, verdant grass at Tack’s feet.
Tack stared down at the pile, then looked up at Jones with an expression of pure disbelief. “What the hell am I supposed to do with that?” Tack asked. “That’s green wood.”
Jones wiped sweat from his forehead. “Sorry, you didn’t say what kind of wood to get.”
“Go back and get dead, dry, and brown wood,” Tack barked, pointing back toward the brush. “Do I need to draw you a picture, kid?”
“Fuck you, asshole!” Jones snapped, throwing his hands in the air as he stormed back into the jungle.
Bowman watched Jones disappear, then shook her head at the commander. “You didn’t have to be so hard on him.”
“We have about a ten percent chance of living until tomorrow morning,” Tack said, his voice entirely devoid of emotion. “I think I was more than appropriate with the boy.”
“Ten percent?” Bowman scoffed. “I give us closer to fifty.”
“Either way, they aren’t good odds,” Tack replied. “Are you keeping tabs on our visitor across the river?”
Bowman listened closely, but the crashing had stopped. “I haven’t heard anything in a while. Is that good or bad news?”
Tack lowered his voice, his eyes scanning the dark, murky surface of the water. “He’s sneaking up on us. What do you think?”
“How does a multi-ton dinosaur sneak up on anything?” Bowman hissed, gripping her broken branch tightly.
“He’s alive, and from what I can tell from the impact noise, he’s fairly large,” Tack whispered, his eyes locking onto a massive, silent ripple moving steadily across the deep river toward their bank. “Which means he has mastered the skill of sneaking up on prey. Keep your eyes out for anything out of the ordinary. And remember, he will stink like rotten, sun-baked flesh. That will be your first clue.”
A sudden, warm gust of wind blew across the bank, carrying with it the sickening, heavy stench of decay.
Tack slowly raised his sharp stone. “Speak of the devil.”
