Updated Saturday 10 May, 2008 12:19 PM | Headlines | Discussion Forum | International Edition

Home Page

Announcements 

Alternate Histories

International Edition

List of Updates

Want to join?

Join Writer Development Section

Writer Development Member Section

Join Club ChangerS

Discussion Forum

Editorial

Chris Comments

Book Reviews

Blog

Letters To The Editor

FAQ

Links Page

Terms and Conditions

Resources

Donations

Alternate Histories

International Edition

Poster Page

Multiverse War

Second Chance

Outside Context Problem

Disunited States

Alison Brooks

Fiction

Essays

Other Stuff

Authors

Thanks

To Our

Friends

@

Alternate

History

dot Com

Chapter 14

It is in periods of apparent disaster, during the sufferings of whole generations, that the greatest improvement in human character has been effected. - Sir Archibald Alison

**

“So—wait—your dad and mom were getting divorced?” asked Sion.

“Yeah. Oh—they didn’t think I knew but I could tell. All the late night yelling when they thought I was sleeping or playing X-Box or whatever. And the more they yelled, the more games they bought me and the more they wanted me to stay in my room when they wanted to have a ‘talk’ with each other.” Jay shrugged his shoulders.

“But I’m confused—why are you in Mississippi?”

“Mom’s idea.” said Jay, rolling his eyes. “Saw it on some stupid dumb-ass TV show—the one with that fat black woman who won’t stop talking. Some doctor was on her show—Doctor Bob or Fred or Phil or something like that—and was talking about family problems. Some crap about how ‘families need to do vacations and stuff like that with each other to be happy’ or something. So dad and mom got a few weeks off work and they decided that a road trip to ‘see America’ would be fun.”

Jay indicated his opinion of this idea by rolling his eyes again.

Jay paused as he walked around yet another fallen tree lying on the road. For the last 20 minutes or so, just as he and Sion began walking on the highway, they had been forced to do an obstacle course to avoid all kinds of debris and various puddles of water on the road.

Jay had no clue what had happened to the road but Sion had the idea that some kind of …what did Sion call it?....tsunami?...yeah…tsunami…must have come out from the forest to their right and washed away a big chunk of the forest before draining away.

“So what happened” asked Sion as he passed a bottle of fruit juice to Jay.

Jay looked at the juice bottle with mild disgust at first but shrugged his shoulders and took a sip before handing it back to Sion.

“I really needed to pee. I mean…really, really needed to pee. Dad had gotten lost. Again. And they started arguing again about whose job was it to make sure the GPS was working and whose turn was it to drive and why they were behind schedule and all kinds of crap like that. And I really needed to pee. Took me five freaking minutes to convince dad to stop. I practically ran to that tree.”

Jay paused as he walked around a small pool of water. Sion noticed that floating in the pool was a dead fish. It looked a lot like a minnow—almost exactly like those blacktailed shiners he sometimes caught when he went fishing in the creek, in fact ---except that this was a minnow that was almost three feet long and had 2 inch long fangs.

A saber-toothed minnow? thought Sion.

Jay barely glanced at the fish—if he saw it at all.

“So I finally finished peeing and was turning around to go back to the car when there was this big freaking light show and clap of thunder! When I opened my eyes the car, my mom and dad , and the whole goddamn—“

“—language—“ Sion reminded Jay-- for the third time since they met.

“—the whole…effing…forest was gone!”

“Where did this happen?”

“On this highway in fact. We were driving west and were a few miles outside this hick town called Sledge or something.”

Sion nodded his head. Sledge was about five miles south of Crenshaw, along highway 3. It had even less people than Crenshaw.

“So everything west of where the car was parked was all different and freaky. I heard all kinds of weird noises coming from the weird forest so I figured—the hell—“

“—language—“ said Sion automatically for the fourth time.

“—the heck with that!”, said Jay, rolling his eyes. “So I ran. But I was such an idiot that instead of staying on the road I ran into the woods. Got totally lost. You know—you people really should do something about all these little dirt roads around here that actually don’t go anywhere! And then I thought I heard someone and walked into that clearing and that’s when I saw that Pachysnuffigus or whatever you call it.”

Jay leaped over a fallen telephone pole and kept walking. Sion followed him a moment later.

The two of them suddenly stopped.

The road ahead was clear and debris-free. It was completely intact, with no signs at all of being hit by a tidal wave.

“Well—about fu—“ Jay noticed Sion giving him another Look “--uh—freaking time already! How much further do we have to walk to get to this firestation anyway?”

“Fire Tower Road should be just around the next bend.”

Jay paused.

“You people actually have a road named Fire Tower Road?” he asked incredulously.

“Oh yeah. The first road we passed back there was called Pumping Station Road, by the way. It was where the station was located before they moved it.”

Jay shook his head.

“Surprised you people don’t have an Elvis Presley Road” he muttered sarcastically.

“Actually we do—Presley Road is about 3 miles west of here near—“

“Forget I asked!”

They continued walking.

Ten minutes later they got to the firestation—only to find it completely empty.

There had been people there—clothes were strewn all over the place, a half-eaten peanut butter sandwich was on the table, the radio was left turned on. It was as if the people there just up and left in a hurry.

“Oh terrific! All this way and there’s nobody here!” screamed Jay.

“It’s a firestation Jay! All volunteers and with only one truck. They and the truck are gone so it means that they ran off to some emergency—and I bet there’s been a lot of those tonight!”

“So what do we do?”

“We stay here. There must be a few more sandwiches in the fridge. And we’ve got a phone and radio. When they come back they can help us.”

“And what if they don’t come back?”

Sion didn’t have an answer for that.

They found a dozen sandwiches plus a few bags of chips and chocolate bars. The two of them wolfed down two sandwiches each along with some milk they found in the now powerless fridge. Sion put the rest of the food into his knapsack—just in case.

When they flipped through the radio stations, they got nothing but static. Not a single station was on the air—not even those two stations in Memphis that played that really horrible music or that one in Senatobia run by that preacher.

Ok—he didn’t care for the music those two stations in Memphis played—there were many, many others to choose from—but those two were loud. Daddy used to complain he could hear those two ‘hip-hop’ stations all the way south to just before Clarksdale and here he was not even 60 miles from Memphis and—nothing.

That confused Sion.

And that preacher was always on at night. Not even Hurricane Katrina got him to shut up. And now even he was quiet.

That really scared Sion.

Whatever had happened didn’t just affect Crenshaw or Sledge—it had affected nearly all of northern Mississippi and western Tennessee. It almost certainly affected some parts of the border states as well—usually they were able to pick up that station from West Helena just across the border in Arkansas but not now.

Sion shook his head. He had to check up on something first….

He went over to the phone and dialled 911.

There was a loud beep and then a computerized female voice came on.

Click.

Redial.

Click.

Redial.

Click.

Redial.

Click.

Redial.

Sion hung up the phone and just stood there, deep in thought.

“Sion—what the hell—uh—heck is going on?”

“I think I have an idea but first I need to call someone.”

He picked up the phone and dialled a number— his Aunt Rose in Baton Rouge.

If I get through, I promise that I’ll pay the firemen the long distance bill out of my own pocket thought Sion.

His heart sank when he heard that female computerized voice say -

Sion hung up the phone and sat down.

“Sion?”

Sion shook his head and glanced up at Jay.

“Sion—what’s going on?”

“Whatever has happened—it didn’t just happen here, Jay. I…I think it must have hit a lot of places. A lot.”

“The whole state?”

Sion shook his head.

“I think it hit at least three or four states—maybe even more. None of the radio stations are working and the phone lines are messed up.”

Jay stood there, his mouth wordlessly opening and closing. Finally he was able to form a sentence.

“You think it may have affected up north too—in Boston?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

“So what do we do?!”

“I am in no mood to keep walking around out there in the dark. We’ve got a place to stay, food, water—everything. I say we stay here for the night and we’ll think about what we’ll do next tomorrow morning.”

“Ok. Just one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Just what the heck is going on here? You said you had an idea.”

“Promise you won’t laugh?”

“I promise.”

“Temporal Transmigration.”

It took Jay a full minute before he could stop laughing.

“You said you wouldn’t laugh.”

Jay wiped a tear from his eye, his breath coming in gasps.

“I’m sorry. It’s just…temporal transmi…transmithingie?! Where the hell…heck…did you hear that?”

“From one of my dad’s science fiction books.”

“Science fiction? What…like aliens and stuff like that?”

“Yes.”

“So what does temporal…uh…-“

“—transmigration—“

“—yeah, yeah-=-whatever—mean?”

“Time travel basically. Parts of the country in our time exchanged places with the dinosaur’s time. Some of the dinosaurs came along for the ride.”

Sion noticed Jay giving him a funny look.

“Come on—we saw an actual dinosaur! Both of us noticed all the weird trees and stuff! Even the tsunami that washed away the road makes sense.”

“How you figure that?”

“Nearly the whole state was under water back during the dinosaur’s time. “ Sion blinked, as if he suddenly remembered something. “Gosh—I really hope no mosasaurs came through.”

“Mosa-whatsis?”

“Big sea serpent-like things with flippers and big teeth.”

“Uh—how the heck do you know all this stuff?”

“Told you—dad bought me all kinds of dinosaur books.”

“So—wait—this means that our parents are now…65 million years in the past?!”

“I guess so….”

“How do we get them back?!?”

Sion shrugged his shoulders.

“Don’t know.”

“I…I…want them back…”

“Me too…”

The two of them found some pillows and blankets in a closet and spent the night sleeping on some semi-comfortable couches in one of the rooms.

Despite all the walking he had done, Sion had trouble falling asleep.

He was worried about a lot of things. About his parents. About his Aunt. About what had happened to the volunteer firemen. About what had happened to the whole state. About what was happening everywhere else.

He and Jay were now on the own. And if things were as bad as he thought they were—he and Jay would have to be on their own for a while. They had enough food and water for a day or two—maybe three if they were really careful and didn’t care how much their stomachs grumbled.

Pleasant Grove was just a short walk away. He and Jay could get there in half an hour with a bit of luck. But it was a tiny place. If Jay thought Sledge was a ‘hick town’, he would faint if he saw Pleasant Grove. It had one building that acted as the gas station, general store and diner—all at the same time. The only people who lived in Pleasant Grove were those people who worked at that building and their families. Even if they survived—were they in any position to help them?

Sardis was a better place to go to. It had four or five times the number of people there than in Crenshaw—and it was right on the intersection of highways 315, 51 and 55. From there, just by following the highways, they could go—well, pretty much anywhere in the state. Even if the same thing happened there as what had happened to Crenshaw or Sledge, by sticking to the main highways they were bound to see a police car or something sooner or later. If things were as bad as he thought they were, then the National Guard or the Army or whatever would be called out sooner or later—and of course, they’ll be using the main highways to go everywhere.

There was only one problem.

Sardis was a good ten mile walk from where they were now. Even if they left first thing in the morning, they wouldn’t get there until mid-afternoon.

How many more dinosaurs will they meet in that time? And how many of them will be meat-eaters? And what will they do if Sardis was…gone? Would they be able to find some food? And how long until they can find help? All they had as a weapon was his rifle—and while Sion was sure he could kill some squirrels or something with it, he wasn’t in a hurry to find out what it could do against a dinosaur—even a small one.

Stay at the firestation? Yeah—they could do that—but they’ll still run out of food sooner or later and those firemen still have not returned and the phones were still messed up. They still will have to leave the place to find help eventually.

Sion nodded his head.

Sion nodded his head and rolled over and went to sleep.

Just before he drifted off to sleep, he heard a faint sound.

It was Jay---silently sobbing into his pillow in his sleep.

The two of them ate a sandwich and drank the last of the milk before it could go bad.

Literally five minutes after walking out of the firestation, they saw—coming down the highway from the east—a pick-up truck.

The pick-up truck pulled to a stop next to them.

There were about 6 or 7 men in the truck—two in the front, the rest in the back. Some of the men wore hunting clothes; others wore what looked like militia clothes.

All of them were carrying rifles.

The driver rolled down his window and spoke to Sion and Jay.

“Damn! You two boys okay?”

The two of them nodded back.

“You boys been here all night?”

“Yes. I walked all the way from Crenshaw. My friend here walked from Sledge.”

“Did Crenshaw and Sledge…disappear?”

Sion nodded his head.

“Yes. We’re just on our way to Pleasant Grove now.”

The men in the truck exchanged glances with each other. The driver looked terrified for a second and then tried his best to hide it.

“Uh—you boys really don’t want to go there. Trust us on this. We just drove through it a few minutes ago.”

“Are the people there all right?”

The driver exchanged a glance with his friend in the passenger seat. His friend looked a bit…queasy. Like he was going to throw up very soon.

“Uh—no. They’re not all right. They’re…they’re…uh….” The driver stopped talking for a few seconds, swallowed hard and then started talking again. “Look, kids---just get in the truck and we’ll take you to Senatobia. Since Crenshaw and Sledge are gone, there’s no point in us going any further.”

Sion hesitated for a moment. On the one hand, he wasn’t supposed to accept rides from strangers. But on the other hand—this wasn’t a normal time.

Just then—he heard a sound.

Like very loud and deep growling.

The men in the truck turned around—back in the direction they came from.

Standing on the road and looking at them with a look that can only be described as ‘curiosity’—was a…

For the second time in 12 hours, Sion’s jaw nearly dropped to the ground.

Standing about a hundred feet away from them---was a Tyrannosaurus. It was dark green with a lighter green underbelly and even from here, Sion could tell that the skin was covered in all kinds of weird pebbly warts and bumps.

It was nearly 30 feet long.

It just stood there, staring at them—like it had never seen a person before and no idea what to do.

And that’s when the men in the truck did something---something really, really stupid….

They pulled up their guns and started shooting at the dinosaur.

The tyrannosaurus screamed and reared up. What looked like small rivulets of blood could already be seen, the red color showing up against its green skin. It screamed again…

…and then charged at them….

Later on, Sion would swear that he had no memory of what he did but Jay would equally swear that he remembered every single second of what happened next.

He remembered Sion turning to him—who stood there unmoving like a statue, too scared to move—and literally turning him around and kicking him in the direction of the forest and screaming ‘RUN!’ at the top of his voice. Like he was on automatic, Jay ran into the woods, the tree branches and bushes seemingly reaching out to him like arms -- trying to grab him and slow him down. He ignored them and plunged on through.

The only clear memory Sion had of the whole event was something that he would very much rather forget for the rest of his life. He remembered suddenly finding himself running towards the woods, his rifle slung over his shoulder and his backpack bouncing up and down and smacking into his butt everytime he took a step. When he reached the woods, something—he never knew what—made him turn around.

He saw something that nearly froze his blood.

The tyrannosaurus had reached the pickup and flipped it over on its side. The two men in the cab were trapped in it, screaming and trying to get out. The men who were standing in the back were scattered on the road. Two or three weren’t moving. One was rolling on the ground screaming, his left leg bleeding and twisted at an impossible angle. And one was…

…was trying to stand up, a rifle in his arms…

The tyrannosaurus bent down with its jaws wide open and…

Sion closed his eyes.

Part of him wanted to do something...anything…to help the men.

But what could he do?

All he had was a squirrel rifle—and one that he only started learning how to use a day ago.

He was just a kid.

He was alone.

And there was an actual tyrannosaurus just 30 feet behind him!

He wanted to do something useful but there was nothing useful he could do!

So he did the only thing he could do.

He ran….

On to Chapter 15

Please Comment In The Discussion Forum