God's Junk Drawer, page 27
A few more minutes and they were back on the trail a few yards past the dinosaur. The path through the brush was narrower on this side of the ankylosaurus. It watched them stagger out of the scrub but didn’t stop eating. Its feet shifted, scattering some dust.
Sam plucked at a few little spikes and thorns clinging to his clothes. “Do we need to worry about it charging us?”
Pyr flicked a pair of needles off her leg. “No. As long as they’re not scared, these ones will barely move. You can walk right up to them.”
Sam’s heart bounced again. “Can we?”
Noah shook his head. “It’s not why we’re here.”
“Oh, come on. It’s a dinosaur. Right there. A dinosaur she says we can get close to.”
“As long as you don’t move too fast,” Pyr added.
“Sam . . .”
“Two minutes. Just give me two minutes to look at the dinosaur.”
Noah pulled one of the sharp spines out of his sleeve. “Two minutes. And then we’re going on.”
Sam took a few slow steps back down the trail. The ankylosaurus turned one of its ink-black eyes to watch him approach but kept eating. Its mouth looked like a broad beak the size of a football and reminded him even more of a cockatoo. As he got closer, he even saw little flat quills lying against its skin, like thin feathers.
“Hey, big guy,” he said, still advancing slowly. “Or big girl. Whatever you are. Don’t need to be nervous.”
The beak opened, closed on a branch covered with little leaves, chomped through it. The eye facing Sam blinked. It munched the branch.
Sam was eight feet away. Six feet. Four. He could smell it, a scent like wet dust and bitter plants. If it swung its head around now, the beak would barely miss him.
“Look at you,” he whispered. “Look. At. You.”
The ankylosaurus blinked at him again. Then it shuffled its feet and stretched its head a little more to the side, baring its neck to him. No fear of him at all.
A bright red spot on its neck drew his attention. The shininess made him think it was a drop of blood, but it was the size of the dinosaur’s eye and too round. A drop that big would be running down its neck. Maybe a prehistoric tick, gorging itself on ankylosaurus blood? Morbid fascination made him lean in a little closer, trying to move slowly so as not to startle the . . .
“What the hell?”
The red circle was glossy plastic, ringed with a band of metal so thin it almost vanished in the disk’s shadow. Letters were molded into the disc, and a few flecks of white paint still hid in some of their corners. Sam read the text three times to make sure of what it said.
ank mkiii 23-f
property of
jurassicorp
23
JOSH
Josh got to the gate in time to see Noah, Sam, and Pyr vanish down a path along the evil corn. They hadn’t waited to see if he’d changed his mind about going with them. Granted, he’d told them last night he didn’t want to, and nothing had changed since then. He had zero interest in going out into dinosaur valley to be torn apart, eaten, or possibly both.
Still, it would’ve been nice to be asked.
The android was here, and the half-naked Egyptian warden, standing outside the gate with her back to Josh. He couldn’t tell if she was watching Noah and the others walk away or just . . . on watch. After a few moments he decided she was on duty, and clearly took it seriously. She stood like a statue.
“Good morning, Josh.” The android did a slight bow and waved its hand, twitching like a customer who’d enjoyed a little too much product for their own good.
“Hey.” He pointed after the departing trio. “Did they say anything before they left? Leave any messages for me?”
“If they did, they didn’t leave them with me. Can I help with anything else?”
“No, I think I’m . . . I’m good.”
The android hobbled off, its walking stick thumping on the ground, and Josh watched it go. He wondered what the android did all day. They’d called it the Timekeeper, but he guessed that was a bonus function. Noah had said it’d been like a nanny to him and his sister. Maybe it ran the town’s daycare or school or something.
Although . . .
Josh looked up each of the dirt roads leading away from the gate. People walked around, did little odd jobs, looked busy in a relaxed way. But all adults. No kids anywhere. Had he seen any kids in Roanoke? He tried to remember the crowd when they first arrived, and wandering through the village yesterday. Had there even been any teenagers?
Maybe the kids all started school early. Or had a lot of chores in their homes. Heck, the valley didn’t have any child labor laws. Maybe the kids were out in the fields or churning butter or something useful and quasi-medieval.
He turned back to the gate. The warden still had her back to him, and her bare shoulders and lats would put a lot of men he knew to shame. Then he heard a deep honk, a goose on steroids, followed by a burst of loud German words, if his high school memories were correct. He took a step forward, and another one, and now he stood next to the spectacularly muscled Egyptian warden and stared out at the fields.
The German farmer guy—Diedrich, like one of the men currently looking for Josh back in the future-slash-present—led a dinosaur across the field. It was a massive, squat thing. Eight or nine feet at the shoulder, and at least twenty feet long. All muscle, like a rhino with a crown of horns. More horns than the Dinobot he’d had as a kid.
The dinosaur had a leather harness wrapped around its shoulders and belly. A few long, rough ropes connected it to a plow that Josh would’ve generously described as “homemade.” The ropes had half a dozen knots in them. Snapped again and again, and tied back together every time. The Asian man, Dak Ho, held the plow’s handles, keeping it upright and traveling in the straightest line possible behind the big beast.
Diedrich whapped the dinosaur’s rump with his bamboo stick and spoke to it again. Demanding, then coaxing, then demanding again. It didn’t seem to notice his words, but Josh thought it was going right where Diedrich wanted. He’d either trained it well or knew a trick to guiding it.
The German man looked over, saw Josh and the warden at the gate, and gave a casual salute from his hat brim while giving the dinosaur affectionate pats with the other hand. Then he kicked his foot up into a loop on the harness, heaved, and pulled himself onto its back. He patted it again, called something back to Dak Ho, and then tapped the sides of the dinosaur’s leathery neck with his heels. It let out another deep, tuba-like honk, dropped what looked like seven or eight gallons of glistening dino manure, and lumbered forward.
Josh watched it drag the plow for a minute. Maybe two. The smell of fresh dino droppings wafted across the field and hit him in the face.
The warden finally turned her head to him and said . . . something. He didn’t understand the words, but the tone felt a lot like “Don’t you have anything better to do?”
He didn’t know how to answer her, so he wandered back into the village.
His stomach reminded him he still hadn’t eaten anything, so he found the main hall and a few warm things that could’ve been corn pitas. They smelled delicious, but part of that was hunger. He ate one there, took another one with him back outside, lamenting the fact that coffee beans apparently hadn’t ended up in the valley.
He wandered down the dirt path, tearing off chunks of his pita and stuffing them in his mouth. Still not a lot of people out and about. He could smell wood smoke, and tried to think of things people might need fire for on a warm day. Cooking? Blacksmithing? That probably needed more than wood-fire heat, and the blacksmith had left with Noah and Sam.
“Hello.”
He looked around and his brain stumbled over itself as his eyes settled on the curly-haired doctor in the patched Les Mis outfit. She had a rough basket with no handle, almost a woven bowl, with a collection of green plants in it. Spices? Weeds? Herbs?
After what he hoped wasn’t an awkwardly long time, he managed to say, “Hi.”
“Have you come to check on your friend as well?”
Her dark eyes made it tough to put things together in his head. The doctor. Gathering herbs. She had Olivia. And the doctor’s name was . . . was . . .
She seemed to understand his hesitation and held out her free hand. “We have not properly met. I am Madame Monique Cadieux.”
“Thank you. Joshua Redd. Josh.”
“Your other friend, Parker, visited a short while ago.”
“We’re not so much friends as . . . traveling companions. Friendly, but not besties, if you know what I mean.”
“I believe so.”
Josh decided checking on Olivia and getting to know some of the locals could be his “something better to do,” and said so in not as many words. Monique led him inside the house and to a small side room. She raised her little basket-bowl. “Let me set these down and I will answer your questions as best I can.”
In the little room, stretched out on the bed, Olivia looked . . . unconscious. Josh’s career had given him a good sense of the subtle differences between when people were asleep and when they were full-on unconscious. Little things. Sleeping people tended to breathe a little heavier, to wiggle themselves into more comfortable positions. They reacted to things, like noise or light.
With a minute of quick observation, Josh could see Olivia might be alive, but the lights were out upstairs. He’d stumbled across a client once who’d OD’d in their home and pretty much gone comatose. That’s what she was like. Except he couldn’t place an anonymous 911 call and slip away.
Monique returned. She brushed past Josh and did a quick exam, setting her fingers against Olivia’s wrist, neck, lips. “I wish I had better news, but your friend—your companion—is unchanged. Her pulse is weak but steady. Breathing is good but slightly irregular. I give her a trickle of broth three times a day, but that will only sustain her for so long.”
She gently stretched Olivia’s eyelid open to reveal a blank, staring eye. Her fingers slid the eye shut again, then snapped twice by each ear. Then Monique brought her other hand up and slapped them together hard, the clap loud and sudden enough to make Josh flinch.
“Nothing,” said Monique. “As I told Parker, it is amazing she survived even indirect contact with the glass obelisk. But we should be . . . realistic about her chances.”
Josh had been realistic about her chances since she and Logan had gotten zapped a few days ago. He tried to think of any other tricks he’d learned for dealing with unresponsive people, but most of them boiled down to a few little smacks and then letting someone else deal with it. “I’m sure you’re doing everything you can,” he said.
“You are kind to say so, but I know my knowledge has many gaps in it. Pyr and Theta have told me of the miraculous medicines of their time, and whenever someone is wounded here I cannot help but wonder if their injuries would be an inconvenience if I merely knew other techniques or methods.”
Josh stepped back out into the hall. “I thought . . . Noah told us people healed faster here. Something about the air or the water or something.”
She stood in the doorway, holding open the privacy curtain. “Oui. Wounds that should take months to heal are often gone in a week or two. And many people have arrived in the valley with afflictions that vanished after a short time. Our miller had a . . . personal infection when she arrived. It was gone in a month, even though the doctors of her time assured her it was incurable.” She looked back at Olivia before letting the curtain swing back into place. “But there is still injury here. And death.”
“So when someone gets bitten in half by a dinosaur . . .”
He’d meant it as a bit of a joke, but she didn’t smile. “Painful death, yes. Perhaps more painful, if the nature of this place stretches it out longer than it should be.”
“Pleasant thought.”
“Forgive me.” She waved him back down the hall toward the front of the building.
“Do . . . so a lot of people die here, then? From dinosaurs or cavemen or whatever.”
Monique gave him a weak smile, and in that brief moment Josh realized a full, happy smile from this woman would probably reduce most men to happily trembling idiots. Some women he knew, too. Not that she was secretly gorgeous in some teen rom-com way, with supermodel looks hidden behind thick glasses or a bad haircut. She just had a certain . . . well, je ne sais quoi that sparked in her eyes.
“I have seen plenty of death,” she said, jarring him out of his few heartbeats of infatuation. “Most of it back in the real world. My real world. But enough here.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So many people die in their first few days here. Killed by the Klaa or the animals. Whichever finds them first. Qiang believes a third of the people who end up here do not last a week. And several of the rest . . .” She pushed open the front door and they stepped outside into the sunlight. “You were fortunate to find us as soon as you did.”
“All thanks to Noah. He knew enough to keep us alive. Well, most of us. Some of us, I guess.”
She nodded politely. Gifted him with another smile that definitely would’ve left anyone weak-kneed, not just him. “I will make sure you and your companions know if there’s any change in Olivia’s condition. I read to her last night. I will try the same again tonight.” She stepped down toward her little herb garden.
“Thank you.” Josh was simultaneously struck with the desire to keep the conversation going and the stark realization he’d have absolutely nothing to do if it ended. “So you . . . you take care of all the medical needs here? Comatose people. Cuts. Bruises. Broken bones. All of it?”
“For such a savage land, there is not as much for me to do as you may think. It is the one blessing of living here. Or perhaps the curse. We all live long, healthy lives. Much better than most of us would’ve back home. But when we die . . . it is almost always sudden and violent.”
“So, for the most part just bandages, a few shots of brandy, maybe get to deliver a baby now and then?”
It earned him one more half smile before she stepped down to her little herb garden. So worth it. “How I wish we had good brandy. Or wine. Or Scots whiskey.”
“Beer, then? You must have beer. Didn’t the Egyptians invent it or something?”
She shook her head.
“Ahhh, I could’ve made a killing here.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
One of the little four-winged birds fluttered by and perched on the house across the road. It stared back at Josh. Squawked. Stretched out one of its wings and started to clean under it.
Monique turned her eyes to the plants. “And truth be told, I have only ever delivered one baby, and that was many years ago back in Rouen, before I found myself here. The midwife had been detained and the mother and child were not willing to wait.”
“You ended up here alone?”
“Oui, for the first few days. I thought I’d gone mad. Or perhaps died and ended up in some awful purgatory. Then Mr. Conner found me.”
Josh tried to review the names and faces he’d met so far in Roanoke. “Which one is he?”
“The warden with the white beard and the splattered-green clothes.”
“Oh! Emerson. Em.”
“Yes.”
“Did you, forgive me for asking, did you have a family? Back . . . there? Then?”
She nodded. “A husband. Chemin was the apothecary in name. In truth, we did everything together, shared the burdens of research and creation. It was why they made me the doctor when I arrived here.”
“You miss him?”
“Every day. My mind tells me he’s thought me long dead and moved on. My heart still hopes someday I’ll escape this place and be with him again. But such hopes are dangerous here. They drive men mad.”
“How long has it been? Since you . . . got here? Arrived?”
“Nine years.”
“Wow.”
“Oui. I was a young woman then. Now I’m almost thirty-three. All my youth wasted away in this place.”
Josh laughed. “You’re joking, right?”
“You mock me?”
“I mean, you’re not exactly an old maid. I’d guess half the guys here would be willing to keep your bed warm if you wanted.”
Her eyebrows went up, and half a dozen expressions flitted through her beautiful eyes. Shock. Scandal. A little bit of naughty happiness. A little bit of sadness. “I am a married woman, m’sieur.”
He backtracked. “Sorry. I just . . . it’s silly to think you’re old or undesirable. Not that you should be desired. In that way.”
“You flatter me, Mr. Redd.”
“Just Josh. Please. Wait.” His brain, already stumbling like a lovestruck teenager, caught on something and swung itself around. “Nine years?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’ve been here nine years and haven’t delivered a baby?”
She shook her head.
“Never?”
“M’sieur, please. None of us here are married. To each other.”
Josh looked at her. Thought of the well-muscled woman at the gate. “I may not know a lot of history, but I’ve got a really good grasp of human nature. I’m pretty sure there were people in eighteenth-century France who had sex even though they weren’t married. One or two of them might’ve even enjoyed it.”
Monique blushed, but he caught a little smile on her lips. “There have been several couplings here in my time. Some ongoing, some brief. I have been involved in none of them, of course.”
“Of course.”
“But it is a small village. Difficult to keep secrets. Or to not see things. Or hear them.”
He nodded. “And no babies? In nine years?”
“None. To the best of my knowledge, from everything Ross has told me, there has never been a child born here in the valley.”
“Never?”
The corners of her mouth dipped. “Never.”
“Do they . . . does something go wrong?” It wasn’t his area of expertise, but he racked his memory for medical terms. Clinical terms. “Do they miscarry? Are they stillborn?”
