Dinosaur Thunder
Authors: James F. David
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Looking back through the dedications in my other books, it is easy to see the biggest change that has taken place in my life—my family keeps growing. Gale continues to be my primary reader, although I know I can always call on Abby, who reads at warp speed, or Drew, who devours books just as fast. Now that Katie is back from Arizona, it will be easier to impose on her, and soon Bethany and Mark will have time to read Dad’s stuff. Until my granddaughter, Adelaide, learns to read, or James, my grandson, I’ll have to settle for reading to them.
This book is dedicated to my constantly growing and changing family, which provides all the characters, relationships, conflicts, dialogue, happiness, frustration, and hope that a writer needs.
Contents
1.
Moon
3.
To Live and Die in Neverland
4.
Visitors
6.
Hatching
7.
Raid
9.
Brood
10.
Feast
11.
Time Tunnel
13.
Elizabeth
14.
Family
15.
Strangers
16.
John Roberts
17.
Patrol
18.
The Lost
20.
Big Chicks
21.
Confidential
22.
The Big One
24.
Quasi-Time
25.
Strangers in a Strange Land
26.
Preacher Man
28.
Rescue Team
29.
The Reverend
30.
President
31.
New World
33.
Marines
34.
Delivery
36.
Unfrozen
37.
Safari
38.
Attack
39.
Pickup
40.
Reunion
41.
In Orbit
42.
Column
44.
Siege
45.
Monitoring
46.
Panic
47.
Obstacle
48.
Cousins
50.
Escape
51.
Closing Time
52.
Exit
53.
Distortion
54.
Bolide
55.
Demolition
56.
Inferno
Prologue
It has been eighteen years since the planet was swept by time waves, intermixing the Cretaceous and modern periods. In that disaster, whole cities disappeared, never to be seen again. Millions of people were displaced in time, their homes and businesses gone with them and replaced with dinosaur-infested forests. Some called it God’s punishment, but the investigation of the disaster eventually linked the catastrophe to the testing of nuclear fusion weapons in the fifties and sixties.
To detonate a fusion bomb, the heat and pressure of a fission explosion is used to fuse hydrogen atoms, to produce helium atoms, resulting in the release of massive amounts of energy. The resulting thermonuclear explosion sends out several destructive waves, including electromagnetic, blast, and thermal. Unknown at the time of fusion testing was the existence of a fourth wave: a ripple in time and space. While a single time wave was insufficient to cause more than localized time effects, the convergence of several time waves accounted for the worldwide disruption of the space–time continuum.
As civilizations have done for centuries following catastrophe, people adapted to the losses, rebuilding their homes, their highways, and the railroads. Power grids were restored, and holes in the data networks filled. Cities sprouted in and around the chunks of Cretaceous wilderness. Economies boomed as unemployment dropped to record lows and resources poured into urban renewal. As civilization recovered, the most difficult problem was what to do with the dinosaurs.
Some countries exterminated their dinosaurs. Other dinosaurs died naturally, unable to adapt to the climate they found themselves in. Still other countries, like the United States, rounded up dinosaurs, confining them to preserves. Special rangers were recruited and trained, and given responsibility for dinosaur management. Quickly, the people of the world adjusted to cohabiting with the prehistoric animals, and then became fascinated with them. Dinosaur preserves became popular tourist attractions.
Then, ten years after the Time Quilt, as the popular press dubbed the disaster, a group of ecoterrorists infiltrated a secret government project hidden in Alaska. Scientists at the Fox Valley site had created a special pyramid to gather orgonic energy, the same energy used by the Egyptians to help preserve their pharaohs. These researchers had discovered that the pyramid form focused orgonic energy, and by lining a pyramid with a high-tech material, the Fox Valley scientists created a highly efficient capacitor capable of storing orgonic energy. Not widely known at the time was that orgonic energy also influenced the time ripples and could be used to manipulate them.
Taking control of the Fox Valley site, ecoterrorists simultaneously detonated three nuclear weapons, sending the facility back in time ten years, and to the moon. Those three symmetrical and simultaneous explosions also created connections through time and space between the Fox Valley pyramid, the Fox Valley pyramid transported to the moon, and a newly discovered pyramid in the Yucatán. By using the orgonic energy stored in the Fox Valley pyramid, the ecoterrorists were able to manipulate the time waves still rippling across the planet, planning to create a massive new Time Quilt that would shred space–time, jumbling past and present and destroying modern civilization. If successful, the planet would return to a primitive state, where animals would once again thrive. Fortunately, Nick Paulson and his team thwarted their plan, and all three pyramid sites were destroyed.
The public was told the nuclear explosions were terrorist attacks, the attack on the time line classified. Next to the Time Quilt, the terrorist attack paled in comparison, and gradually the public settled once again into complacency, unaware of the damage done to space–time.
1
Moon
You look at that photo on my website, and then you tell me there wasn’t an explosion on the moon. You’ve got to start listening to me, America! Wake up! The government blew up a secret alien base on the moon, and it’s time we-the-people know why.
—Cat Bellow, host of
Radio Rebel
Present time
Flamsteed crater
The moon
“We are approaching the debris field now,” Mike Watson said, his message relayed from his PLSS suit to the lunar lander to the orbiting lunar shuttle and then on to Earth.
As mission commander, Watson led the way, the rest of his crew fanned out behind him. Mission Specialist Sarasa Chandra trailed on his left, Mission Specialist Rick Maven on his right. They used the gentle hopping motion perfected by Apollo crews. In one-sixth gravity, walking quickly became bounding, so planned bounding was more efficient.
Watson checked the radiation reading in his heads-up display. He ignored the UV radiation; his suit could handle routine lunar exposure. What concerned Watson was the particle radiation. The team’s specially insulated PLSS suits would protect them for a time, but Watson kept an eye on the rems. He and his wife wanted more children, and wanted them to have all the usual body parts.
They passed random bits of man-made debris—strips of metal, chunks of rubber, pieces of concrete, the brass knob of a door handle. They came to a larger object—a refrigerator. Dented and half buried, it stuck up out of the regolith like modern art. The door was partially ajar. Watson did not bother to look inside. According to the intelligence briefing, the last residents of the structure ahead had eaten everything. Watson snapped a picture and moved on.
“Over here, sir,” Chandra said.
Watson stopped, turning his shoulders to turn his helmet toward Chandra. She was holding up a long bone.
“It’s a human leg bone,” Chandra said. “It’s been picked clean.”
“Photograph it and leave it,” Watson said.
They kept moving toward the deep shadow of the crater wall, where the structure hid.
“Sir, this might be what we came for,” Maven said.
Again, Watson stopped, turning his shoulders and head. Maven was holding a jagged piece of black material. Watson walked to Maven, Chandra following. They formed a small circle so they could make eye contact. Maven held what looked like a thin piece of black plastic with a dull surface. About a foot long, and eight inches at the widest point, it resembled a piece of ice broken from the surface of a pond. Maven tapped it, knocking off a bit of dust. Taking the material, Watson turned it on its side, seeing that it was made up of a dozen thin layers.
“It’s light,” Watson said, passing it to Chandra.
Chandra held the material close to her faceplate, studying the layers through two sunscreens.
“This is it,” Chandra announced. “This is what they spent a billion dollars to get.”
“Well, that was easy,” Maven said. “And we have rems to spare.” Maven tapped his faceplate where the radiation readings would show on his side.
“That’s half the mission,” Watson said. “Collect more samples as we go.”
Maven put the sample in a bag, labeled it, and then followed the others. They spread out again with Watson in the lead. The regolith was soft, Watson sinking an inch with each bounce, sending up a small puff of dust. When they came to an edge of the rim shadow, Maven stopped them again.
“This just gets weirder and weirder,” Maven said.
Maven had angled away and was now twenty yards to the right. He was standing by a large object, his lunar boot resting on top. With a shove, he tipped the object over.
“It’s a snowmobile,” Maven said. “I don’t remember this in the mission briefing.”
“They told us to expect the unexpected,” Chandra said.
“They tell you that kind of stuff, but you never really believe them,” Maven said. “Until now. A snowmobile on the moon?” Maven mumbled as he resumed hopping.
Watson checked his display. The rems were increasing, but well within the safe zone.
Entering the shadow, they took a dozen bounds before one of the sun shields lifted, allowing them to see farther into the shadow. Now Watson could see the objective. What had once been the most famous building on the moon—and the only building—was now nothing more than two vertical walls marking one corner. They moved forward, Watson’s eyes on the radiation meter. Then he found a body.
“Chandra! Maven!” Watson called, coming to a stop.
His crew hopped over, closing ranks around the body. Any clothing and hair had been burned away. The genitalia was male, the body mummified through the combination of vacuum and UV radiation. Chandra photographed the body. Maven took samples of the regolith around the corpse, storing them in plastic bags. When they were finished, they continued toward the ruins.