I don't own Walking With Dinosaurs. All Rights reserve to BBC
Earth: 66 million years ago
It's been six months since a catastrophic asteroid struck the Earth and during the events fallowing the impact. A destructive shockwave kills anything in it's path, large-scale earthquakes strike everywhere on the planet, fallowed by mega tsunamis crashing against coastlines, and by far the most devastating is the global firestorm caused by the falling ejecta from the massive impact.
Many creatures, including the dinosaurs have died during the first day that signaled the end of an era. But for the creatures who have just managed to survive that terrible day, it's a more slow, painful death as with the massive debris of smoke, volcanic ash, and smut blocking out the sun. The entire food chain is broken: first it's plants that have all wilted away due to the lack of sunlight, fallowed by the herbivores who have nothing left to eat, this leaves only the carnivores to still be walking along the land.
At first it was a buffet for with so many weak prey around. Predators took advantage of this sudden opportunity to take down any prey, until they've eaten their fill. It served them well for a couple of months. However it came with a heavy price for when the last of the corpses had the last of their meat bitten off, the carnivores found themselves loosing their own food supply, leaving themselves as the only option of food for much larger carnivores.
In an area that will one day become the famous Hell Creek formation. The land is vastly different from what it once was; it's nothing but a barren wasteland with rotting tree stumps, a dark sky, and a feet of snow dumped from the current impact winter. There's also skeletons of various dinosaurs littered about and fungi, which is only the thing that's growing in this wasteland.
Only a few dinosaurs are still alive around here, mostly troodons and a young male tyrannosaurus. The tyrannosaur; who's about four years of age with brown feathers covering his upper body that he would eventually loose once fully grown, the only feathers that would stay in adulthood would be on the neck and head. It's thanks to these feathers that he's still warm in this bone chilling cold as he wandered about the land that was once his territory.
He's in desperate need of food as he hasn't eaten in weeks, which is taking it's serious toll on the apex predator's body as his rips and other parts of its skeleton is showing. He stops on top of a hill with his feet digging into the snow as he looked around for anything that will satisfy his deep hunger. He spots a few troodons running by, which would serve greatly for his hunger, but they are too fast and he is too weak to even run and with no cover to hide him, he can't even stage an ambush.
The troodons disappear from the sight, leaving the starving tyrannosaur to go off in search of other kinds of food. However despite his hunger, it's not the only thing that hurts for on the right side of his face, there's a bad burnt mark around his eye. He had received this injury during the raging wild fires that ravaged the land. Despite the injury occuring months ago, it still hurts and only adds to his misery.
The local watering hole. A place that was once a haven full of life with herds of dinosaurs that were once hunted by our tyrannosaur that now stood near the lake's edge. Sniffing the ground for any kind of scent that may lead him to a potential food source, but all he found is the skull of a triceratops that slightly poked out from the snow.
Sniffing it with his powerful nostrils, he blows off a bit of snow from one of the horns before lifting his head back up and looked around at what was once the watering hole. He could just remember the lush trees and tall vegetation for him to hide in whenever he was hunting. Tyrannosaurs were ambush hunters, they creep up as close to their chosen prey as much as possible before going in for the attack. For juveniles such as him, he can afford to run a few distances unlike the much larger adults, who must get right up to their prey before lunging in for the throat.
His usual prey at the time were: ornithomimus, pachycephalosaurus, young edmontosaurus, and the occasional pterosaur if he was lucky. He wasn't large or strong enough to take on a triceratops yet, so he always preferred to give the large horn dinosaurs a wide berth of space when on a hunt.
But now standing in this desolate place with the skull of the triceratops near him. All the tyrannosaur could do now is press his foot down on the frozen lake, breaking a section of ice which now allows him to drink from the ice cold water. It wasn't food or helping him in his weaken state, but it did give him some substance.
Raising his head up with some water dripping off his chin, he stares out across the lake to the towering volcano in the distance as it pumped out a large column of ash into the dark sky.
Releasing a puff of air the tyrannosaur finally turns around and leaves the area.
He only wandered a few feet away from the watering hole, when he comes to a slow stop near a large tree stump and lays on his belly with his head raised up. A few months ago this spot had been his favorite place to rest for it was once a large tree that would shade him during very hot days, especially after when he ate a large meal.
In fact; he could just remember the last time he was resting. It was during the day of the devastating impact.
Back then it was a warm spring day. Butterflies along with other insects that pollinated, flew around from flower to flower as other types of bugs flew around the Cretaceous forest with some getting snatched up by birds. One fly; attracted by the scent of blood buzzes around with other flies near the tyrannosaur's blood stained teeth.
Being slightly annoyed by the constant buzzing along with the occasional fly going into his nose. He raises up his head and shook it a bit to get rid of some of the flies that immediately went back to buzzing around his mouth.
Now that he has his head up, he looks around a bit for any danger as adult tyrannosaurs are known to prey on younger ones on a few occasions. Not sensing anything, he looks forward and lays his eyes upon the plains up ahead, where herds of edmontosaurus and triceratops are grazing on the ferns or other ground based plants. A few members from both herds glanced over in his direction just in case he is going to make a move before going back to feasting.
Having recently eaten, he has no need to hunt and simply rests his head back down. He just shuts his eyes when a bright light emerges from the south, alerting all animals as they all stopped on what they were doing in order to stare at the strange light, until it slowly faded away in silence.
Once it was gone, the animals go back to their business that for only a couple precious minutes; everything was normal as it always was. The ground soon started to shake violently causing all sorts of panic as animals cried out or tried to run as they were knocked off their feet while several trees fell, right along with several rock slides from the distant cliffs.
The tyrannosaur could barely get up from the amount of intense shaking as several small tree branches crashed down on him. Meanwhile up in the sky; flocks of terrified pterosaurs fly in the skies in order to get away from the shaking ground.
Near the end of the shaking a couple minutes later, the temperature had suddenly risen very severely. It was so hot that fires sparked and quickly spread throughout the land within a matter of seconds causing even more panic with the animals who all scattered to get away from the rising flames. Being able to stand up now. The tyrannosaur's instincts tell him to head for a cool place to not only get away from the fires, but also the temperature that only grew even hotter within every second.
Rushing away as fast as he can, he does his best to avoid the fires that has already killed a good number of animals, if not for the fires, the hot temperatures got the young, weak, and the sick. After awhile of running through this hell, he reaches the edge of the burning forest when he suddenly got struck in the face by a falling burning branch.
The blow knocks him off his feet, he skids to a stop on his side, where he lets out a painful cry from the severe burn he received. Very slowly getting back up on his feet, he stumbles a bit, but then continues on running all the way into a cave. Once there the cool temperatures within the cave allowed him to hold out as the horrifying apocalypse outside continues to unfold.
He has no idea on what was happening, but surly this will all be over soon and everything will go back to its usual business. Just as it always had throughout his life.
Still laying down on what was once his resting spot, he continues to look out to the wasteland. On his right side; three troodons tear into his flesh in joy as this meal will last them for a couple of weeks. It won't safe them however as once they're gone, they'll be the last non-avian dinosaurs to be roaming around in the Hell Creek formation.
Having died of starvation, this tyrannosaur leaves behind a world who's seeing the end of one long era, while near his mouth two mammals are seeing the dawn of a new one.