PART I: DISCOVERIES

DIARY ENTRY #76

I have come to realize that the monsters cannot see us when we’re still, and so they must locate us in other ways. Perhaps they can smell us: They come for our flesh when we leave our safe haven. Only fire seems to turn them away. They’ve taken many of our group. So few of my new friends remain. I have grown stronger, I realize, as my own end approaches. It is,

I think, the recognition that every human faces: you will die. Many have

no idea how or when, but my fate has become clear to me over the past several days.

Tonight, as dusk descended, I stoked the fire alone before I took cover inside our shelter. It’s crucial that the fire burns until dawn, and so I built it large with the slow-burning wood we’d gathered over the previous days. Some have died or gone missing during the days when we were out gathering water or the wood to fuel the fire that protects us at night. Yet, tomorrow we must gather more.

As the fire grows, I hear one of the monsters roar. I know I will live, at least, to see the sun rise in the morning. But I now believe that I will die before I should in an inexplicable time and place. No rescuers will ever come for us. After all, several weeks have passed. If any saviors were able to reach us, surely they would have come already. We have been gone for far too long for any of them to consider they can still rescue us. They must now view us as a recovery mission, should they even know we’re missing.

As much as I struggle against it, I also try to make my peace with this unimaginable reality. But isn’t that what every person faces, every day, no matter where they are? The only difference is that I can think of nothing else. And so I continue to record every thought and event, no matter how insane. I have lost the ability to tell which is more crazy: my thoughts or the events I have witnessed.

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Chapter One

Desert Dig1

Andrea Alejandro took her 30-minute break from the main dig site. Rather than return to the shelter at the central campsite to rest and have a cool beverage, she trekked farther from the dig site, blinking against the hundred-degree heat in central Nevada. She followed the ancient deposit of earth, newly exposed after the spring’s enor- mous desert flood. None of the other paleontologists or graduate students had made time to look at the rest of this strata. They’d arrived three days before, and all their efforts had gone into estab- lishing the camp and beginning the dig. But Andrea was as curious about what remained buried as she was about what they had al- ready discovered.

Even though she still owed a revision of her dissertation to her committee, Andrea had taken this post-doc position in the worst possible environment. It was an exciting opportunity to excavate creatures from a period long before humans existed. It was also an- other way to work with her mentor, Professor Susan Lavey, who’d been called to the site to lead the team in exhuming the bones of the prehistoric beast. The femur of what appeared to be a juvenileTyrannosaurus rex had been exposed by the erosion from the atyp- ical rain and flooding. And it was also a way to distance herself

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from Megan, who had ended their three-year relationship to marry a man just as Andrea had finished her coursework.

A month before, a local rancher had reported finding a large bone revealed by the spring’s torrential floods. Ah, the blessings and curses of climate change, Andrea thought. Treasures of the past had been revealed as the contemporary habitat suffered its trau- mas. Perhaps the Earth was shifting into another era unbeknownst to those living in the present. Andrea believed that the planet was at the end of an epoch or another mass extinction: on the cusp of something new that was nearly impossible for any human to bear witness to in real time.

While the rest of the crew worked on the primary site, Andrea was drawn to a pile of rocks and rubble unearthed about a quar- ter-mile away. The sedimentary rock indicated this was a strata of equal age, probably contemporary with the Cretaceous period, which had ended about 65 million years before. One of the rocks, chalkier than the others, called her attention.

She began to dust and pick at it. The brow of a skull began to emerge. To all appearances it was a human being, no more than 5,000 years old. Andrea paused for a moment to consider this, her heart racing, before she resumed digging. A few minutes later the ridge and eye sockets were conclusive. The more Andrea brushed, the more modern the skull appeared. She could tell the skull was female because of the relative thinness of the bones and the sharp ridges under the eye sockets. Andrea could almost envision the woman’s face.

While it was impossible to explain, Andrea had already begun to speculate how a modern woman could be buried in more than 65 million years of Cretaceous detritus.

2

“I found the remains of a contemporary woman,” Andrea called to Professor Susan Lavey as she rushed into the campsite. “She’s buried in the Cretaceous strata we’re excavating. You have to come see her right away!”

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The tenured paleontologist wasn’t surprised to hear one of her favorite students say something that others might find a bit un- hinged. Susan wished that Andrea understood the art of discretion a little better. This particular failing had been a factor in under- mining her advisee’s ability to complete her degree, the professor believed.

Dr. Lavey followed Andrea, wondering why the younger woman, swathed in a shapeless flannel shirt, didn’t seem to feel the heat the way the rest of them did.

Dr. Craig Iverson, a young professor newly assigned to the dig site, took note of Andrea’s boisterous return. He came from another university, brought in for his expertise in juvenile dinosaurs, and the funding team had required that he be included. Uninvited, Craig trailed after Susan and Andrea as they walked toward the new find. Susan was not generally suspicious of people, but she was concerned about Craig’s angle. She knew he had an agenda that differed from all of the others assigned to this site, but she didn’t know what it was. Yet.

“Here she is,” Andrea said dropping to her knees.

Susan looked at the bones that were entrenched in earth that appeared not to have been otherwise disturbed for eons.

“She’s modern,” Andrea said. “And from what I can see sheappears to be fully subsumed in ancient clay. Something very strange happened here.”

“I can’t disagree,” Susan said, contemplating.

“The earth is obviously ancient. Which makes your conclusion impossible.” Craig Iverson towered above Andrea, and Susan noted that the athletic man had positioned himself so that his shadowdidn’t protect the younger woman from the sun’s intense heat. Andrea’s compact form, solid but small, remained focused. She didn’t turn her broad heart-shaped face toward her accuser.

Susan placed a hand on Andrea to prevent the eruption of anger she could feel bubbling within the younger woman. “I’d say you’re both correct. This appears to be a modern woman buried in ancient earth. And that is, of course, impossible, based on what we know to date.”

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“Well, what do we do about that?” Andrea asked, her anger tem- porarily quelled by her professor’s support.

“We have to consider it,” Susan said.

“Facts before conclusions,” Craig added. “Always.”

“I stated the facts, and I didn’t draw any conclusion other than

to say it was strange,” Andrea said.

“You’re ABD, right?” the male professor commented, shorthand

for a student who had finished her coursework but whose written work had not been approved by her committee. Craig was not ask- ing a question, but making an accusation. He was calling Andrea out for her committee’s request to rewrite or turn to another topic before she would be granted her PhD.

Dr. Lavey tightened her grip on Andrea’s forearm, willing the young woman to silence. The senior professor believed that Andrea would finish her dissertation after they completed their work at this site. “I’m Andrea’s committee chair,” Susan said, looking up at Dr. Craig Iverson.

“Yes, I read that in the briefing.”

“What briefing?” Susan asked. “I don’t believe any of the rest of us were offered a ‘briefing.’” She watched a fleeting look of panic cross Craig’s smug, handsome face. He wasn’t shy about using his physical attributes to attract the attention of the female undergrad interns. He wore cargo shorts and a tight tank top, typically the uni- form of the male undergraduates Dr. Lavey tended to dislike most.

“I was just given a rundown on all the personnel,” Craig said, “because I come from a different university.” He turned and began to walk back to the campsite.

Andrea reached out and gave her supervisor’s hand a slight squeeze of thanks, but Susan didn’t respond to it. “I understand,” Susan called after Craig, as evenly as possible. “Otherwise you would be at a disadvantage.” Now, she knew it was important to make Craig think her a friend because she was sure he was an enemy.

***

As the group of three returned to the main dig, they heard a growing

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hubbub. Two of the undergraduates had just begun to unearth what appeared to be the tail section of a commercial airliner buried in the same strata of ancient earth several yards from the first dig.

3

Bruce Ackland pulled into his parking space a few minutes early for work. This allowed him to flash his security badge and enter the building precisely at 7:45 a.m. He both prided himself on his punctuality and found it a hopeless indication of a long life poorly lived. He also hated to enter the building early, giving more of hislife than he already had to his infernal occupation: Bruce was a Senior Air Crash Investigation Officer at the National Transportation Safety Board, headquartered in Washington, D.C.

At his desk several minutes later, Bruce leaned back in his ergo- nomic seat. He scratched his ungroomed beard and then pushed his fingers under his glasses and rubbed his eyes, willing himself to become more alert. He’d just completed the ten-day investigation of a small private aircraft that had somehow managed to get tangled in power lines, killing the pilot and his two passengers.

Now that this investigation was finalized, Bruce leaned forward, beginning to take stock of his unopened email. He knew his inbox was full of reports that he needed to fill out to close the file on this case and a multitude of other mindless tasks.

Bruce had spent his life figuring out how people had died. Often, he wondered, what was the purpose if you couldn’t save them? Others pointed out that this work was important, leading to greater airplane safety in the future. But the crash investigator felt as though he was little more than an undertaker putting together a funeral rather than a scientist discovering important secrets for the survival of others.

The problem, his late wife Thelma used to tell him, was that Bruce was very good at his job. He’d had a long career in determin- ing the reasons and excuses why planes and helicopters landed in “unscheduled” ways.

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His young co-worker appeared in his doorway. Samir Glaver had been hired only two years before, and he was still eager to please the powers that be. Bruce had lost all motivation for this Sisyphean task more than twenty years before.

“Glad you made it back,” Samir greeted him.

“One day I won’t,” Bruce said gruffly. “I’ll be the guy on the plane.” It was a ritual that they played out at the end of nearly every

investigation, a bow to the Gods of the Air who knew much more about why airplanes crashed than they ever would. It had started as a joke, but now it had been endowed with a certain ritual of importance, a replacement for the Stations of the Cross from the religion Bruce had given up years ago.

“I had a really unusual call yesterday.” Samir sounded far too excited for Bruce’s taste this early on a Wednesday morning.

“Surprise me, please,” Bruce said. “I don’t think I can bear another lake-landing-and-dredging event.”

“I can do that. You’re not gonna believe this one,” Samir assured him. “I haven’t told anyone else. I wanted you to know first.”

As much as Bruce liked Samir, he did find the young man’s en- thusiasm both morbid and annoying. Bruce considered that he’d somehow become an old guy who wanted to scream, “get off my lawn!” at his excited co-worker. Jesus, Thelma had been right about him, he was an annoying old fart. She’d maintained that up until her end, despite her obvious love for him.

“A team of paleontologists working in central Nevada uncov- ered what seems to be a large piece of the tail from a commercial airplane. It doesn’t correspond to any missing flight, and it has no identifying markings,” Samir said.

“Okay, that’s a good one, I gotta admit. Did Westwood put you up to this?” Bruce asked, a little unsettled by such an implausible claim. “No, it’s real, I swear! It seems that they uncovered it while they were digging up dinosaur bones exposed during a flood.” The smaller, younger guy twitched with nervous energy, his face expectant. Samir

pulled printed photos out of a folder.

Bruce felt the muscles in his face change into a heretofore-unknown

expression, his brows and cheeks clenching in an unfamiliar way.

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“That’s not possible. How can there be a tail section of an airliner we don’t know about lying next to the bones of a dinosaur from millions of years ago?”

Samir shrugged. “I dunno, boss, but they say there is, and pale- ontologists know about these things. They sent these photos, and they want us to come check it out.”

Samir tried to show him the printouts of the photos, but Bruce waved them away. “Is it in the same type of earth or is it just ‘next’ to the bones?”

“The paleontologist I spoke to assured me that the plane tail was in ancient earth, and they were puzzled by it, too.”

“So why do we both need to go check it out?”

“Because I don’t have the experience to identify a piece from an aircraft without any identifying markers.”

Bruce couldn’t help himself. “So if you’re of no value, then why do you need to accompany me?”

“Because of your attitude, boss. You’re going to hate every minute of this one. And you have an obvious confirmation bias.”

Bruce paused, considering this. “Central Nevada?” he asked. “It’s miserable there this time of year, isn’t it?”

“You’ll hardly notice the difference,” Samir retorted. “You’re miserable everywhere you go.”

Bruce began to chuckle in spite of himself. “Get the fuck out of my office.”

After some negotiations with the upper brass, withholding the unusual pieces of information that the plane contained no airline markings and it was buried in ancient earth with dinosaur bones, Bruce was able to convince the head of his department, Jeff Westwood, that both he and Samir were needed at this apparent crash site. God help him, Bruce knew he couldn’t face this one alone. And it was time for young Samir to learn the level of suffering this job required.

***

Bruce and Samir boarded a flight to Las Vegas early the next morning. The plane they were on hadn’t crashed so far: Bruce looked out the

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passenger window as they began to descend into cloudless, turbulent sky, preparing to land at McCarran. Would it be that much worse, he wondered, if this plane went down before the investigation began? The odds of a commercial aircraft crashing had grown considerably longer since he had begun his career. Nevertheless, his fears had increased. After all, many of the flights he encountered were crashes,most of the others being flights to those crash sites. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a flight to a vacation site.

The information his department had provided over the past decades had led to improved manufacturing standards, drastically reducing mechanical failures. Jesus, he thought, I’ve worked my whole life to make myself obsolete.

Nevertheless, Bruce knew his job was secure. While planes rarely failed, those at the controls often did. The senior crash investigator gripped his armrests as the plane descended. He’d never bought a lottery ticket because he lived in fear of defying the odds. No matter how much he strived to make flying safer, he had always believed he would die on a plane.

Still, Bruce couldn’t help but take a moment to savor the irony of who would be sent to investigate the tragedy of this death.

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