The land of the dead - 01
Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to the Impossible Pictures™.
-2-
The jaws of the future predator clumped shut on Ryan's neck, its hot breath penetrated his nostrils... and Captain Ryan suddenly found himself lying on a bunk bed in a tree house. It wasn't the most comfortable bunk bed, but neither was it the worst one that he had ever lain in.
"Well, this is new," he muttered to himself. "Usually I woke up anywhere else but here... and where's here?"
Carefully, Ryan stood up and looked around. His neck didn't hurt, and if his legs hadn't felt wobbly, Ryan could easily say that his supposed death by a future predator had been just a bad dream.
Or maybe it was? What indications there were that this wasn't some prank by Nick Cutter and others? Maybe he had just imagined it all instead? Slowly, he got onto his feet this time for sure and opened one of the doors. A small kitchen appeared before his gaze, composed of crudely made furniture – a table, a short bench to sit at, a small cupboard, and nothing else.
Now curious rather than wary, Ryan moved to the cupboard and opened it. Inside lay several packets of trail-mix and parcels of something, wrapped in paper. The trail-mix was modern, the paper...felt anything but. For the sake of an experiment, Ryan opened one of the parcels – it contained strips of either pemmican or jerky.
"Hmm," Ryan chewed on a piece. It wasn't badly made, actually, and was able to stave-off some of his hunger. Feeling fortified, he continued the tour.
Besides the bedroom, where Ryan found himself initially, there were only three other rooms, and one of them was locked. Since Ryan was unable to find the key, he decided not to force his way in (it was rude and uncalled-for), but check the other places.
The room to Ryan's left resembled a storage closet, complete with crudely-made shelves. It contained some tools – some modern, some self-made – and some clothing. Most of the clothing could be either male or female, but the undergarments were definitely female...
"Well, if this isn't a clue, I don't know what is," Ryan said thoughtfully, as he left the impromptu closet and went to check out the last room. Only it wasn't a room, not really. Essentially, it was a doorway, except that here the doorway was carved into the floor, complete with a rope ladder lying not far from it...and a small winged reptile was sitting on it as well.
"Aha!" exclaimed Ryan. "That's a clue!" He sidled around the opening in the floor, and looked out of the tree house's windows for the first time since he awoke.
A huge head of a leaf-eating dinosaur, with large, chisel-like teeth and horse-like eyes stared back at him. The head, incidentally, was dwarfed by the long neck and longer body and tail to which it was joined.
And far below the treetop grazing dinosaur, several smaller reptiles were feeding as well in the giant's shadow, seemingly unperturbed by their size difference with their neighbour.
"Well!" Ryan could only say, seeing how the small pterosaur flew back out of the hole in the floor and onto the body of the giant herbivore. "Now I think that I have an idea as to where can I be. But first..." he climbed out of the window as well and onto a nearby branch. It was thick and heavy, and was able to endure Ryan's weight without too much ado. Consequently, he was able to climb up and out of the foliage's shadow and look around.
An ocean of sunlight greeted his senses, an ocean of sunlight – and a sea of greenery that stretched from one horizon to another and no sign of human activity at all.
"Yeah," Ryan exhaled. "I'm in the Jurassic or whenever. Now, what am I to do?"
...It will be quite a long amount of time before Ryan would receive some sort of an answer to his question, and it would be quite a surprise as well.
To be continued...
