Part 17 (2/2)

Glen moved from his spot at the window and crossed over to the table in the middle of the room. He picked up a book and opened it to a spot he knew by memory. ”I'm an amateur paleontologist, and my main interest is in prehistoric life forms. I've been reading and studying about it since I was a kid. Anyway, when Janice and Rick brought Bobby in earlier today and I had the chance to examine the claw Rick brought in yesterday, I had a hunch. A wild one, but a hunch nonetheless.”

”A hunch that the dinosaurs have come back to take over the world?” Jack asked. He grinned and Glen smiled back. It was nice to see that Jack's sense of humor had returned. It meant he was holding up, coping.

”No, not quite, ” Glen said. ”For one, it would be physiologically impossible for dinosaurs to come back to life. Our present eco-system wouldn't be able to provide for them. Second, because there is still no scientific method of regenerating dead tissues or cells, or even perfectly good cells or DNA preserved in tree sap.”

”Like what they did in Jura.s.sic Park?”

”Right. The whole idea of being able to clone DNA that closely matches that of dinosaurs with something like, say, a frog, is pretty far-fetched-not impossible, because in science anything can be possible if we make the right discoveries-but far-fetched nonetheless. What made that novel work was Michael Crichton's background as a scientist. With the knowledge of the science of cloning DNA and regenerating cells from their dormant stage, all it takes is the wide speculation and far-out ideas which he utilized in his novel. This is fine for fiction, but what makes this story so great is that until recently this was theoretically impossible. The reason is that until now, perfectly preserved dinosaur DNA has never been found one-hundred-percent perfectly preserved as described in Jura.s.sic Park.”

”Until now?” Jack was curious.

Glen smiled slightly. ”Yes, until now. About a year ago, dinosaur DNA was found preserved in tree sap that was one-hundred-percent perfectly preserved.”

Jack's eyes grew wide. ”No s.h.i.+t.”

”Yep. Of course, that whole deal about cloning DNA with a present day living organism to match the DNA of tissue millions of years old still can't be done. But in ten years? Five?” He shrugged. ”Who knows?”

”You think these things could be-”

”Not cloned.” Glen shook his head. ”No way. These babies have been with us for a long time. Take a look at this.”

He motioned to the book. Jack looked at the picture Glen was pointing to. The picture was a sketch of a Clicker, pretty much as he'd seen it along with the dozen or more that attacked Bobby at the beach. It was a crustacean with the upper body of a crab, with large, powerful pincers, black marble-like eyes that stood on stalks, and long protruding antenna. The back of the creature resembled a lobster, ending in a segmented tail that tapered into a stinger, very much like a scorpion. It had eight legs. It was very ugly.

The italicized name below it was Homarus Tyrannous.

Jack looked amazed. ”That's it. That's our culprit.”

Glen pulled the book back. ”This particular species began life about four hundred and thirty-eight million years ago in the Paleozoic era. There's evidence they survived till about the middle of the Mesozoic era. They predate man by about...” He stopped and chuckled. ”Well, by about four hundred and thirty six million years.”

Jack appeared to catch the humor in that, as well as the implications of what they were dealing with. ”Holy moly.”

”Basically they were an ancestor to our modern day crabs and lobsters, although the bit about the stinger is strange. Probably tells us a lot about where scorpions came from-scorpions originally did come from the ocean, you know.”

Jack shrugged. It was obvious he didn't know much about paleontology, but he appeared interested nonetheless.

”Anyway,” Glen continued, tapping the book with his index finger. ”Not much is known about this particular species, since fossils are scarce. It's believed that they survived the Jura.s.sic period and quite possibly the early Cenozoic period. The latest fossilized remains were dated some fifty million years B.C.”

”If that's the case then what the h.e.l.l are they doing here?” Jack asked. He hefted the rifle in his arms, taking a cautious peek out the window.

Glen raised a finger. ”That is where it gets interesting.” He walked over to a large wall-sized map of the world that he had tacked over a desk. He pointed at the area bridging the coast of Maine, up through the Canadian coast to Greenland. ”Fossil remains have been found in this region, but they've also been found on the sh.o.r.es of Iceland, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the South of France. Which lends believability to the theory that the land ma.s.ses that we now have were once joined together.”

Jack nodded. ”Okay. That makes sense.”

Glen continued. ”n.o.body really knows how or why the dinosaurs died off. Many theories abound and one of the more plausible ones is that a meteor struck the earth's surface. The resulting s.h.i.+fts in the earth's ozone layer, as a result, tipped the ecological scale. If the dinosaurs were used to living in a lush, humid area, a sudden s.h.i.+ft from that to an atmosphere that was cloudy, dark, and cold could have wiped them out. And remember that this change most likely occurred within a short period of time for the dinosaurs to have died off so suddenly. Like maybe...a few months time, probably more like a few days.”

”Yeah I read a book about that once,” Jack said, grinning slightly. ”It was a novel in which World War III happens and we're wiped out. Kaput. And it described the ecological changes as happening within the s.p.a.ce of days. One minute everything was normal, the next bombs were destroying everything, whipping up firestorms, hurricanes, the works. And it just sent everything in a huge tailspin. The sun was blotted out by thick clouds of nuclear s.h.i.+t, and things were all f.u.c.ked up for like, years. And it got real cold, freezing temperatures. That book scared the c.r.a.p out of me.”

”I can imagine. And we can a.s.sume something similar happened in this case with the dinosaurs. The resulting changes wiped out the dinosaurs; that much we know. Along with Allosauraus and Brontosauraus and T-Rex and thousands of other species, paleontologists have lumped Homarus Tyrannous as extinct. Why? Because none have been seen, and the only remains of them are the few fossils we've found. But they've survived, and they're still here.”

”How is that possible?”

”Two things.” He tapped the map again, indicating the area of the North Atlantic. ”This area millions of years ago was rich and fertile and lush and humid. The temperature was most likely very warm. I think paleontologists have only unearthed maybe two remains of our little friends here, and those were partial sh.e.l.ls. The rest were fragments imbedded in rock, but they were enough for us to piece together. That's considerably fewer than we've found of, say...Mamenchisaurus, of which we've only found one complete skeleton, and that's scarce indeed. Paleontologists have only found one complete T-Rex skeleton since that particular species' discovery in the 1920s. Anyway, the theory for this is probably because Homarus Tyrannous lived along the ocean floor, and this area”-he tapped along the North Atlantic-”is fairly deep and largely unexplored. It is also my theory that they probably only migrated inland for mating purposes.”

”If that's the case, wouldn't they have left fossilized remains on sh.o.r.e?”

”They have, in the areas I've indicated,” Glen said. ”But there hasn't been much. That can be explained by...what we're seeing today.”

Jack's features grew grim. ”The Dark Ones.”

Glen was taken aback by the description of the creatures, but it fit. He nodded, stroking his chin. ”Yes, the Dark Ones. Fitting, isn't it. And very Lovecraftian, too.”

”Do you think they're some...I don't know...prehistoric relic from our past?”

Glen shook his head. ”I've never come across anything fitting their description anywhere. Not even in folklore-” He stopped himself and held up his hand as if stopping himself. ”Except for today.” He darted over to the table where he plucked the chapbook he'd poured through earlier and flipped through it. ”There's an old legend in this area about the Lost Village-”

”Right!” Jack exclaimed. ”I've heard that one. Didn't that happen near Fort O'Brien?”

Glen nodded. ”Exactly. It was a little town where Fort O'Brien is now; in fact Fort O'Brien's main tourist attraction comes from the Lost Village.”

Jack appeared to be putting the pieces together. ”The Clickers came up to breed, as they probably always did, and were followed by the Dark Ones for food.”

”Just as they always did,” Glen picked up. ”They followed the Clickers inland much in the way Nile Monitor lizards follow female crocodiles in the hopes of eating their young. Which probably explains why we haven't found that many fossilized remains.”

”If the Dark Ones destroyed all of them, how were they able to breed?”

”Nature probably allowed a certain number to survive, just as she does with other animal species. Look at the example of crocodiles again; females lay as many as ninety eggs, but in the end only ten ultimately survive through their first few years. The rest are eaten in utero, or within a few weeks or months of hatching by other predators.”

Jack was nodding. He seemed to be taking this all in stride. ”So a select lucky few survive, do their thing, and scuttle back to sea. What the h.e.l.l is their breeding period then? Every ten million years?”

Glen had an answer for that, even though it was still unsubstantiated. ”They could breed yearly or bi-yearly. They could also breed less frequently than that. Every ten years, or fifteen. Every fifty. Every hundred. Cicadas go through a seventeen year gestation period. We can't really tell what the breeding period for these things is without study, but my guess is more like every hundred years. This could explain why we've never heard of them till now. They probably come ash.o.r.e on some remote area...” He pointed to portions of Canada and Greenland. ”Somewhere where they aren't seen by man.”

”If that's the case, what the h.e.l.l are they doing here now?”

Glen grinned. ”That's a matter of geology and astronomy. And I'm not an expert at either, but the position of the stars and constellations does have an effect on not only our lunar system, but our geological one as well. My guess is that every four hundred years there is a change in the earth's ocean currents, particularly those in the Atlantic. And they s.h.i.+ft in directions that they normally don't flow...”

”Thus bringing whatever might normally drift along their currents down to us,” Jack said. He shook his head, leaning the rifle against the wall under the window sill. ”What I don't get, though, is why we hadn't picked up on this before.”

”Oh, we have,” Glen said, holding up the chapbook. ”Only four hundred or so years ago, the only human population in this area were American Indians who witnessed this excursion over the last few thousand years. They traded the tale orally from generation to generation, and I'm sure that in 1605 when the Lost Village incident happened, those Indians that were here knew the tale only as something of an urban legend. An urban legend that was very true.”

”And the Lost Village was comprised of settlers, right?”

”Exactly. European settlers wouldn't have known about the legend since they'd just settled on these sh.o.r.es. They were, as they now say, in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

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