Chapter Five
Dinosaurs!
150 Million Years Ago
Zack and Alice had to watch carefully where they stepped, as they scrambled down the hill. So, for a long time, they didn't see much of anything besides rocks and ferns, insects and the occasional small lizard darting for cover.
At the bottom of the hill Zack stopped and threw himself down on the ground next to a thick mottled brown tree trunk. Alice lay down on the mossy turf beside him and blew out a long breath.
"I'm tired!" she said.
Zack just nodded. He thought he was too tired even to speak.
He rested for a moment, looking around at the new world he had walked into. Familiar shapes wheeled high in the blue sky, turning lazy circles. It took Zack a moment to identify them as something other than 'Flyers'. He was very fond of that animated movie, The Land Before Time, but it did make it harder to remember the right names for things. What would Alice call them? Pteranodons, that was it. They were like dinosaurs, weren't they?
The river had changed course, widening into a lake at the bottom of the valley. The ground at the head of the lake was sandy, and there were a number of large creatures down there. Some were lying stretched out in the sand, others grazed peacefully at the side of the lake. One coming up the bank was confronted by another and both stood on their hind legs and made honking noises at each other. Zack discovered he wasn't too tired to talk after all.
"Liss, are THOSE real dinosaurs?"
She sat up to look where he was pointing, "Yes! Those are probably hadrosaurs. There were more of them than any other kind of dinosaur on the earth."
"Duck-bills," said Zack. He knew about dinosaurs, and he was about to add that those duck-bills (a better name than 'hadrosaurs' he thought) probably had a bunch of eggs down there. But just at that moment the tree trunk under whose shade they were resting, suddenly lifted itself up and came down with an earth shaking thump on the other side of them.
Both children screamed, and a head as large as a small car came swinging down from the sky to stare quizzically at them.
"Oh!" said Zack. "It's a Long-neck!"
Alice scrambled to her feet, "It's so big, I thought its leg was a TREE." She laughed excitedly. "Maybe it's a Seismosaurus! The biggest dinosaur ever!" The head tilted to stare at her mildly.
Zack reached out a hand towards the head and it drew back, gentle reproof in its eyes. Then suddenly the Seismosaurus glanced towards the woods and before either child could move the head had disappeared back into the sky and the ground was shaking again as the prehistoric giant moved off down the slope with surprising speed.
A moment later three long-legged dinosaurs, not much taller than the children, burst from behind the trees and dashed past them, down towards the lake, scattering smaller lizard creatures and bugs on every side. And directly behind them with a crashing roar something burst out of the forest. Alice never had a chance to get much more than a confused image of many teeth and a huge gaping mouth, because at that moment Zack grabbed her hand and pulled so hard that she stumbled after him and whatever it was disappeared, left behind in time along with all the other dinosaurs.
They had to run then, because with every step they took the lake at the bottom of the valley swelled and the water came closer to the trees. There was a blinding flash of light that seemed to shoot across the clear sky, vanishing over the horizon, and immediately afterwards thick dirty grey clouds blocked out the sun. It was so dark they could hardly see where they were going and Alice held onto the back of Zack's shirt. Then the clouds lightened a little, and it began to snow. Zack and Alice scrambled back up the hill which had suddenly become bare and sandy and hard to climb. They stopped right at the top, panting and covered with dirt, and looked back to find themselves standing once more on the edge of a sea. The snow had stopped but a chilly wind blew foam off of the ocean and the children felt damp and cold. They could smell salt in the air. Scrubby, thick stemmed grass grew in clumps near the edge of the water, and the trees of the forest seemed smaller and less tangled.
"What was THAT?" asked Alice in astonishment.
"It was a big mean dinosaur," said Zack. "A Sharp-tooth."
"No, I mean that light!"
"Lightning?"
"Out of a blue sky? I don't think so! You know what I think?" She didn't wait for Zack to answer, "I think that might have been the meteorite that hit the earth and made all the dinosaurs die."
Zack remembered a joke, "What do you call a meteor when it misses the earth? A meteor-wrong!"
But Alice wasn't listening, "And the meteor hitting the earth made all the dirt fly up into the sky. The sky was filled with dust-clouds, which blocked out the sun. Without any sun the plants all died and the dinosaurs couldn't get enough to eat." She shivered in her t-shirt. "And also it got cold and dinosaurs can't live in the cold."
"I'm cold, too," said Zack, miserably.
"Right," agreed Alice. "The dinosaurs are all gone. We walked all the way through all three dinosaur eras, the Triassic, the Jurassic and then we ran all the way through the Cretaceous without seeing anything at all! We should go back and..." Alice stopped at the look on Zack's face. His bottom lip was sticking out and he looked decidedly unimpressed with the idea of going back to find more dinosaurs. "Well... actually, maybe if we keep going we'll get to see the first mammals."
"I just want to go home," said Zack, tiredly.