Chapter 20- escape

"Anybody hungry?" Pulling a pie of one of the metal shelves, after everything had ceased going through. Apparently the anomaly could only attract light pieces of metal rather than large ones, meaning its power relied on something else.

"Oh my God. We've got to get rid of them. The meat will act like bait." Helen yelled trying to rush forward as Ryan and another soldier grabbed her. Helen grabbed Ryan's tac vest as Nick ran towards the fridge.

"Unless you want your men to be breakfast, I suggest you do something." She told him, he looked at his soldiers for a brief moment, before nodding and rushing forward to help the professor move the selves and boxes of pies.

"Okay, clear them out." Ryan told his men.

Take this." Nick said as he passed a large trolley to Stephen.

This was the chance Helen was waiting for, Avery saw as she looked back quickly before grabbing her arm and pulling both of them through the anomaly, the shock of the suddenly pull restraining her from stopping. But the sudden change of concrete to a grassy hill caused Avery to stumble and trip. She got up quickly and had a brief chance to look around, they were in some sort of long grassy field with a dozen or more anomalies shimmering around them, before she was yanked forward again through another anomaly.

When she had finally shaken off her shock and wretched her hand away from her mother she noticed they were in the middle of a forest, with trees she had never seen before. Some looked similar to conifers, but were larger than the ones she had seen in her time. "Where have you taken me?" She asked accusingly, turning to face Helen.

"The carboniferous period, somewhere between 359 and 299 million years ago." Helen said leaning against a tall tree. "There's another anomaly to the south of here, hopefully its still open."

"Hopefully." Avery said. "I'm not going anywhere with you. Take me home."

"Soon. But first I wanted to talk." Helen said walking away. Not wanting to be left alone in a place she didn't know or understand Avery followed after Helen.

After about an hour of walking Avery got tired of the quite between them. "How long 'till we reach the anomaly?"

"Not far now." Helen replied without looking back, leaving them in silence again. The forest seemed to stretch for miles, and from what she remembered, the forest of the carboniferous would cover almost every inch of the earth, apart from the vast oceans and lakes that dotted the land.

Avery saw something move beside her and turned to look for it, fearing it was another arthropleura, like the one that bit Stephen about a week ago. A black spider waited on a tree branch above her, fangs clicking. She flinched as it jumped towards her but it was plucked out of the air before it could reach her by a giant dragonfly. A meganeura. A several feet long Dragonfly with a 65 cm wingspan.

She watched in slight fear, and amazement, as it landed on a large rock on the edge of a small muddy pond. It started to consume the spider while it struggled in its grasp, but it could not get its inch long fangs into the Dragonfly. The dragonfly itself was an iridescent green-blue depending on the light as it moved. It wings were clear, with thick dried black veins creating a mosaic pattern on each of its four wings.

"Cool, huh?" Helen said standing beside her, hands holding tight onto her backpack. Avery should have guest by her demands to be allowed her bag that Helen would escape, as well as the others. Particularly her father. He could be so daft when it came to women, even now he was oblivious to Claudia's feeling for him. But she understood him as well. His wife, her mother, whom they had thought dead for 8 years, had suddenly appeared at the same time as the anomalies. It was enough to distract anyone from possible love interests.

"Yeah. Let's get going. I want to go home." Avery said turning away from the prehistoric scene.

They walked on in silence for a few more minutes before a flash of lightning and the loud clap of thunder sounded high above, then the rain fell, heavy and thick leaving her soaked in seconds. "Come on we have to speed up." Helen yelled over the rolling thunder. "The high concentration of oxygen in the air will cause a forest fire if lightning hits anything."

After that they sprinted through the forest, dodging trees and jumping over fallen logs. Avery thought it was exhilarating, apart from the threat hanging above their heads. She was blinded for a second as a bright spark struck the tree beside her. The tree bark splintered sending charred pieces flying towards her. Moments later the tree caught fire, which quickly spread through the close-packed trees.

Helen broke into a sprint as the trees blazed around her, Avery at her heels. The air filled with smoke, clogging her lungs and eyes with the thick heavy air. She coughed and spluttered, half blind, as she raced behind the loud thumping of her mother's boots, or was that her heart?

She felt the heat as the flames licked at her skin, burning pieces of her clothes, when suddenly the ground gave in beneath them and they fell into deep water. Instincts kicking in after the initial shock of the cold water she kicked as hard as she could until her head broke the surface of the water.

Helen broke beside her and Avery swam after her as she headed towards the shoreline. She dragged herself onto a beach made out of brown and shades of grey pebbles. She laid on her back, just outside the reach of the water, and took in great lungful's of air, trying to clear her lungs of the heavy smoke. She coughed heavily and sat up staring at her mother.

Did Helen only ever bring danger and trouble now that she was back?