Drake and Ben both came up from their concealment and fired several rounds with their handguns. But their revolvers were inefficient and were just irritants to the beast whose hide would have been like toughened leather.
Andy screamed and his bag fell to the side. From within it, a small squawking creature came out, flapping wings, one deformed, and immediately tried to peck at one of the large feet that held down its lifelong friend.
Ben quickly changed up his weapon’s tech and pulled from over his shoulder the big .50-Cal, Barrett M82. He aimed and fired. Immediately, half the creature’s head blew apart in an explosion of blood, bone, and gore, and it fell like a tree trunk.
The men rushed over, with Drake keeping watch as Ben tended to the severely damaged young man.
Andy coughed blood, and the tiny flying reptile hopped onto his chest and tried to nuzzle into the crook of his neck.
Andy gently laid a hand on his small friend. “I fucked up.” He coughed more blood.
Ben kept pressure on the largest of the wounds in his upper chest, but it pumped and bubbled blood, and he knew it had to have damaged his lungs and heart. They didn’t have the kit to mend him, or the place, or the time.
“You’ll be fine,” he lied.
Andy grimaced. “I can’t die yet.” He groaned and reached out for the tiny flying reptile and scooped it into the crook of his arm. “There’s so much I want to do and see.” He coughed, and his lips became glossy red like he wore garish lipstick.
Drake looked at the sky and then over his shoulder. “Ben, gotta go. Our ride is starting to pull away.”
“Leave me; it’s okay.” Andy tried to lift his head. “I’m sorry. Please tell Helen, I’m sorry. I only wanted her to see what I’ve seen.”
“We will,” Ben said softly.
Andy laid his head back and stared up at the boiling sky above him. “I’ve seen the birth of continents, and the rise of new oceans. I’ve seen monsters from history walking and swimming. And I’ve seen things that we never even knew existed.” He screwed his eyes shut for a moment, either in pain or regret. “I love this place. It’s fitting I die here.” He laughed wetly and turned his head to Ben. “Told you I was staying.”
“We were never meant to be here in the first place,” Ben said.
“I know, and I finally learned the truth,” Andy grimaced. “We shouldn’t be here because we’re the real monsters.” He reached out to grab Ben’s arm. “Leave me. Go home to your family while you still can. Save yourselves and save Helen; hurry.”
“We’ve got time,” Ben said.
Drake shook his head, but Ben ignored him. Andy shuddered, but seemed to gather himself. He lifted himself, groaning as he did.
“Promise me one thing.”
Ben nodded and waited.
“The only friend I had in this world.” He reached for the tiny pterodon and handed it to Ben. “His name is Gluck. Look after him.”
“I can’t.” Ben shook his head.
“Please, Ben. Just because I die, doesn’t mean he has to as well. At least save him.” Andy clung on tight to Ben. “Please, he’s my only friend.”
“Ah, shit.” Ben nodded. “Okay.”
“Thank you.” Andy kept his eyes on Ben’s as he relaxed, and let out a long breath that emptied his lungs. They never refilled.
“Is it over?” Drake asked.
“I hope so.” Ben reached out to close Andy’s eyes. He then grabbed his mesh bag and tried to push the small reptile into it. But it bit him.
“Gluck.”
“Gluck you too.” He pushed it in and tied the bag closed.
“Time to go, big guy,” Drake said.
Ben checked his watch. They now had mere hours. “Double time; we’ve got the tail of a comet to catch.”
Drake was first to find Helen, sitting out in the rain as though daring, or wanting, an attack. She wouldn’t look at him at first, and when he crouched in front of her and grabbed her shoulders, she looked up and he was taken aback by her appearance.
Ben crouched beside him and then lifted her chin.
“It’s come for us,” she said sadly.
“Oh God.” He turned to Drake and shook his head. “We didn’t change anything.”
Helen looked up and began to laugh, in a small child-like voice. “Maybe we did and maybe we didn’t. It’s got millions of years to ripple forward to us before we’ll really know.”
Drake helped her to her feet and hugged her tight. He needed to close his eyes to slits as it was like being in the middle of a maelstrom. Above them, the boiling sky swirled purple and black like an angry bruise on the heavens.
Ben grabbed at his arm and yelled back at him. “We gotta go, now!”
Drake grabbed Helen’s hand in his and he felt how weirdly soft and tiny it was now. He said a silent prayer that she was right and there was still a chance things would be corrected now that Andy had been stopped. If not, then they’d all either vanish from existence, or he and Ben would soon suffer the same fate as Helen.
Ben, Drake, and Helen moved quickly through the underbrush back to where they believed was their tiny cave that would lead them to their drop lines.
Helen was quiet, not asking, and perhaps not wanting to know what happened to her brother. Drake hated that a small part of her thought that he and Ben had been responsible for his death, even though she knew it was necessary to stop him at all costs.
Drake looked up as he ran; the clouds were still purple-black, but tearing open in the center to permit a halo of sky to be seen. He saw out to their right hemisphere he could just make out the eyebrow streak of the comet departing through the whipping tree canopy. Oddly, there was another streak that was almost touching it.
Were there always two comets? he wondered. He put his head down and sprinted on.
In another hour, they began to recognize some of the outcrops on a rocky hill, and then minutes later located the marked crevice that they had slid from only 22 hours before.
Thunder boomed, coming from all around them, and the purple clouds turned like a witch’s cauldron above them now. The tiny circle of clear sky had vanished, and with it the last vision of Primordia.
Ben checked his watch. “Eleven minutes!” he shouted over the maelstrom, and then pointed. “Drake, in first.”
Without a second thought, Drake leapt in and scrambled further inside. He switched on his flashlight and attached it to his gun barrel — he knew he wasn’t ordered in at front to be the first to escape, but to ensure that nothing inside was waiting to make a meal out of them. He quickly scanned the interior.
“Clear!” he shouted back.
Immediately, Ben and Helen followed him in. The trio belly-crawled to where the chute was that would lead them to the lower cave and then out onto the plateau’s cliff wall.
Around them, the air was becoming thick and oily like they had submerged into some sort of liquid. Drake knew what it was — the distortion layer. They needed to be below it before the comet’s effects were fully undone, or when they emerged, they’d be stuck in the Late Cretaceous, instead of being back home.
Drake moved fast, and then found their ledge. There were several ropes waiting and he grabbed at them, hauling them in and waiting for Helen and Ben to catch up.
The oily layer was making Drake feel dizzy and nauseous, but he swallowed it down. They had mere minutes now, and he needed to focus. He handed Helen one of the ropes and she reached out to grab it but missed, with her movements slow and confused.
Ben took another of the ropes and reached out for her.
“I got her,” Drake said. He quickly used his belt to create a harness, and then wrapped a stout arm around her.