Primordial Chapter 5
Title: Primordial
Author: Aquaseamage
Pairing: None
Genre: Action/Adventure/ Humor
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Takes place during “On Stranger Tides” so spoiler warning
Summary: AU for both OST and JP.
Disclaimer: The characters are not mine. They belong to Disney and Amblin/Universal. This is just for fun.
“Did it occur to you, Missy, that ye be in the past?”
“The past?” Lex asked as she shut down her laptop to save the battery.
“Aye. It be 1750.” Barbossa stated.
Tim laughed. “Maybe the jokes on you, Captain.”
Barbossa narrowed his eyes and turned to look at the young boy. “What do ye mean?”
“Dinosaurs didn’t live in 1750. They lived millions of years ago, in the Jurassic or the Triassic. Either we’re on Grandpa’s island or else we all went back in time, back before man existed…” Tim climbed up onto the dead dinosaur, examining it. “Grandpa says he brands all of his dinosaurs, on their hips, but I don’t see any mark on this one.”
“Oh, that’s just great!” Lex moaned in distress as she zippered her watertight laptop bag closed. Then her eyes grew wide. “I bet Grandpa will send Dr. Grant to find us! We just have to stay alive until then. He’s a dinosaur expert.”
Not caring for the idea that they may be stuck millions of years in the past, Barbossa turned to Jack. “What did ye do to us, Jack, getting us stuck millions of years in the past?”
“Who, me?” Jack widened his dark eyes and tried to look very innocent. “Yer the one that insisted on going to the fountain, Barbossa. I was telling ye I had a bad feeling about it….but I suppose it explains the mermaids. What we need now, Barbossa, is a plan. Night will be a coming soon enough and it’s best we find a secure place before that.”
“And how will be be finding a place like that, Jack? It be naught but jungle, unless ye care for sleeping in a tree…”
Jack shrugged. “I’ve slept worse places.”
Theo bent and stuck his arm into the dead dinosaur’s mouth, pulling out his sword. Repeating the process, he retrieved Andrew’s sword and handed it to him. He didn’t exactly care for the idea of sleeping in a tree, but had to admit it sounded a lot safer than being on the ground at night. His eyes flickered over the dead dinosaur, frowning at its massive size. “Exactly how big do these things get?”
“In height?” Tim asked as he leaped off of the dead animal and back onto the ground. “Well, the tyrannosaur rex is about twenty feet tall…”
“Twenty feet tall!” Andrew exclaimed, clearly horrified by the very idea.
“Yeah! We were on the tour and almost at the tyrannosaur paddock and this stupid storm came, so it got cancelled. But I really want to see one. It will be awesome!”
Jack frowned at the young boy. “You need to straighten out yer priorities. If it’s anything like this here beasty, you don’t want to see one, mate. It’ll eat you, probably just be a snack for the critter.”
“But everybody loves T-rex!” Tim insisted. “That’s where Grandpa will make his next million! People will pay any amount to see one.”
The four adults stared at Tim, totally shocked.
“Why would anyone pay money to see something that will eat them?” Andrew asked, confused. “That just doesn’t make sense.”
“Because there’s supposed to be fences between you and the dinosaur that way it can’t eat you but you can see it in its natural habitat.” Tim thought back on the tour and scowled unhappily. “But then, we didn’t see any dinosaurs on the tour, just stupid plants!”
“Why don’t we head for the coast, mate, and get off t his here island?” Jack suggested as he eyed a nearby tree he thought looked climbable for a person of his considerable skills. “I’ll shimmy up this here tree to the very top and see where we are. Perhaps I’ll get lucky enough to spy the coast and then we can forget all about this here Garden of Death and ol’ Blackbeard.”
“Are ye forgetting, Jack, we don’t have a ship.” Barbossa pointed out. “And I’m not going out in these mermaid infested waters in just longboats. In case ye don’t know, our ship was sunk by them fish-women and most of the crew devoured.”
“Well, maybe you don’t have a ship but I do!” Jack grinned.
“Where do you have a ship?” Barbossa demanded to know. “Unless you mean the Revenge?”
“Nay, I mean this one that I pilfered on Blackbeard without him knowing.” Jack reached into the fabric bag that he had the chalices in and pulled out a bottle. He held it carefully in his hands, showing it to Barbossa, Theo and Andrew. “It be the Pearl, miniature like. Blackbeard did some voodoo on her as ye can see, but the four of us can sail her easily enough.”
“Give me my ship, Jack.” Barbossa held out his hands, his blue eyes gleaming as he took in the tossing waves and black sails within the curved glass.
“No! She be mine!” Jack hugged the bottle to his chest.
“The Pearl’s mine!” Barbossa said sternly.
“No, she’s mine!”
“I gave up me leg for her! I deserve the ship, Jack, and you know it.”
“But I died with her before, got eaten by a kraken!”
Andrew and Theo exchanged glances, unsure what to think of this arguing over a ship in a bottle. Finally Andrew spoke up. “But if you got ate by a kraken, how can you be standing here talking to us?”
“Oh, we brought him back from the dead…” Barbossa explained as if that really answered the question, which it did not in Andrew’s mind.
“Do you know how to do that?” Theo asked, curious. He hadn’t realized that pirates knew that sort of thing. The Navy certainly didn’t. Or were they lying?
“Of course we do, mate.” Jack replied as he carefully put the bottle back into his bag. “It be a simple enough thing to do if ye know how. It’s what that green flash it about out at sea. Each time ye spy one it means someone came back from the other side to live again. The real secret is this: up is down.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Andrew stated, still confused.
“That’s what I thought, too, until I figured…” Jack started to say before a loud explosion cut him off. The birds up in the canopy all took flight at once, fleeing with loud squawks of protest as a few stray feathers floated down. The pirate turned to face the way they had come, as the noise had come from that direction. “Sounds like gunpowder…”
“Do you think it’s Blackbeard?” Barbossa asked Jack.
“Doubt it. He doesn’t know where the cave is, although I suppose he could have found it on his own…” Jack turned to study a nearby tree, leaning backward to eye the upper parts of it better. “I will climb this here tree and see what I can see.”
Jack shimmied up the tree with ease, like a monkey. Within minutes he was at the top and carefully looked back towards the cliff they had jumped off of. In the distance he could see a twisting column of black smoke rising on the air, proof someone had blown up a few casks of gunpowder. Then he saw a tiny figure appear at the edge of the cliff and Jack reached into his pocket for his bit of mirror. Pulling it out, he flashed a message at the person hoping he would get a reply. He did and more messages flashed up and back. Satisfied, Jack then turned around on his tedious perch and looked about in all directions. Satisfied that he now knew the layout of the surrounding area, he climbed back down.
“Well, Jack, what did ye learn? Ye certainly were up there long enough.” Barbossa demanded to know as soon as the other pirate stepped onto the ground.
“It seems, Barbossa, that we need to go back to the river.” Jack said mysteriously as he started to walk in that direction.
Barbossa started after him, leaning on his crutch. “And why are we doing that?”
“Because my loyal and steadfast first mate, Mr. Gibbs, is bringing the rest of yer men. It seems the beasties only got a few of them and I fear we very narrowly avoiding being on the menu ourselves…most of them were still in the cave it seems during the attack.”
“That’s a bit of luck…” Barbossa commented as he followed Jack back to the river. “But it also means we’ll make more noise as we travel and that might attract those creatures.”
They reached the riverbank, Tim and Lex following the adults, to see Mr. Gibbs sloshing up out of the river towards them. He carried a big coil of rope on his shoulder, water dripping off of it and his clothes. Behind him and still in the river was a large bunch of Barbossa’s navy men, many of them officers wearing the powdered wigs. Almost all of them carried supplies of one sort or another. Mr. Gibbs went right up to Jack. “The Spanish left all of these fine things in the cave and I thought it a shame to just leave it sitting there.”
“Good man!” Jack patted Gibbs on his shoulder, approving of the thievery. “We could use supplies.”
“We heard the screaming and then one poor fellow fell back into the cave missing parts. After that no one else wanted to go in and there was squabbling as to who was in command and what should be done, so I took control of the lot. We heard the Spanish coming then and fled just in time, hiding in the jungle nearby. They went in and a short time later, they came running out shrieking like woman, their leader with that fancy feather hat running the fastest. My Spanish is a bit rusty but I think he was screaming something about dragons. That’s when I knew you’d been right and that there were beasts guarding the Fountain. So I employed the maneuver we used on the kraken, modified a bit. We took a cask of the gunpowder the Spanish had abandoned and stuffed it in the poor fellow’s uniform, attacked that to a banner…waved it around and soon something took the bait. It wasn’t exactly easy, as we had to wave it without getting sucked through that portal ourselves but we managed.” Mr. Gibbs frowned, his dark eyes fearful. “What are those things, Jack? They look darn right ugly and vicious! And the teeth and claws on them, ewww….it’s enough to send shivers down me back!”
“They be dinosaurs, Mr. Gibbs, a type of dinosaur.” Jack simply replied.
“Now listen up the lot of ye.” Barbossa addressed his men. “This be a highly dangerous area and as we travel yer to be silent. There’s predators about and the more noise ye be making, the more we’ll attract. Is that understood?”
The men looked at their captain with wide eyes filled with fear, as they had already seen the remains of at least one velociraptor that the trap had blown apart. What they had seen, that horrible scaled head with snake-like eyes and the large mouth full of sharp teeth, it was worse than the mermaids. The fear of reptiles was a deeply ingrained fear left over from their ancient ancestors and nothing brought that fear to the surface like a velociraptor. “Aye.”
“Yer pistols won’t be much good against these things, as the hides are tough. And the loud retort of firing the gun will be like ringing a dinner bell. They’re fast, deadly and they get big, very big. We be aiming to avoid them if we can.” Barbossa stared each man in the eye to be certain they were paying attention. “Don’t dawdle. Any man who falls behind gets left behind.”
With the frightening dinosaurs wondering about, Barbossa was sure they would stick together; still, he was sure the warning would work well. Pirates were better suited for this type of thing than the by-the-book Royal Navy. They would either learn to adapt to the situation at hand or die. It was impossible for him to personally watch each man.
Spying that Hector was done addressing the crew and had turned his back on them, he inched closer. “Barbossa, ye’ll be glad to know I spied a building of sorts from the top of that tree. Perhaps we can reach it before nightfall.”
“Lead the way, Jack.” Barbossa waved his hand to indicate Jack should go first as he had an idea of where the building was. Jack started walking into the jungle and Barbossa followed, leaning heavily on his strong wooden crutch. The two children followed him, Lex wiping sweat off of her forehead. Groves and Gillette was right behind them.
“We’re moving out.” Gillette ordered the rest of the men, trying to make his voice loud enough so they could hear but hopefully not loud enough to attract any nearby predators. It was a fine line to walk.
Jack moved through the jungle easily, his keen eyes picking out the best path naturally. He also kept his ears open for the slightest sounds, which wasn’t exactly easy with all of the noise their large party was now making. Some were gasping from the unaccustomed heat and humidity, as this place seemed a lot hotter now than it had before they had entered the cave. He could practically feel the water hanging in the air around them. And although the men were trying to be quiet, he could still hear their footfalls and the noise of them pushing foliage out of their way. At least they were not talking. They continued their trek for about an hour and then Jack paused, as he had finally reached the clearing he had seen from on top of the tree. He stopped just inside the tree line and peered out cautiously.
Barbossa joined him as did Groves and Mr. Gibbs.
“What the devil is that?” Mr. Gibbs asked, his face scrunched up in confusion.
The oddest building they had ever seen stood in the center of the large clearing. It was steel gray, squat and ugly. Its sides rose up at angles, sort of like a flat-topped pyramid but an extremely short one. A smear of bright red was above the door but it was too far away to see if it was blood or something else. The structure was partly covered on one side by climbing vines and tropical foliage, which gave it an abandoned air, as if it had been a long time since someone had been there. But even odder was the object that surrounded the building: a towering fence that stretched up into the sky at an impossible height, thick metal poles spaced evenly apart. Small blue and red lanterns were hung at the very top of the fence, with part of the fence curving towards them at an angle.
“A building of some sort…” Jack informed his first officer. “We be dealing with a time flow thingy, Mr. Gibbs. The children are from the future and we be in the past…”
Mr. Gibbs looked shocked. “The past?”
“Aye. Apparently millions of years in the past at that.”
Mr. Gibbs just gawked at him, open-mouthed, the numbers too large for him to even comprehend.
Barbossa turned to Groves. “Go bring me the girl.”
Theo did as he was bid. Tim and Lex were seated on a log, exhausted from the long trek in the heat while Gillette kept an eye on them as well as the men. He went up to her. “Captain Barbossa wants to see you.”
Lex sighed but stood up and followed him to where the others stood at the edge of the clearing. The foliage was thinner here and her eyes grew wide as she sighted the gray steel building and the towering fence. “It’s a dinosaur proof bunker!”
“So your grandpa built that, did he?” Barbossa asked, pleased that he now knew what the odd building actually was.
“But…” Lex scanned the area she could see around the outside of the fence, which pretty much was overgrown grass. “Where’s the road? Surely there must have been a road that goes in and out. And if the electricity is on…”
“I don’t like it, mate.” Jack stated as he eyed the tall grass between them and the fence. “Anything could be hiding in that grass….”
“The road might be overgrown by grass.” Barbossa suggested as he eyed the windswept tangle of grass and weeds before them. “Besides, Jack, we don’t have much choice now do we? The sun’s position says it’s already late and the shadows are growing longer. Before we know it the sky will be turning red with sunset and then it’ll get dark. I, for one, don’t want to be out here in the dark.”
Lex bit her lip, unsure how they could tell if the electricity was turned on. It should be on, of course, but maybe it wasn’t? Was there a gate? She recalled when she and Tim arrived on Isla Nublar there had been a gate with an attendant that had opened it and closed it for them. Or maybe there had never been a road, maybe people walked in and out? But surely that was too dangerous… Nor was she sure exactly where they were, if it was Islar Nublar or in the past somewhere. She just didn’t believe that time travel was possible. It was too much like fantasy. “If we toss something at the fence, what happens should tell us if the electricity is on or off. If it’s on, then we can’t touch the fence at all. And there must be a gate somewhere…”
Barbossa watched the tall grass for several long minutes, looking for the slightest clue that something might be hiding in it. As much as he hated to admit it, but Jack could very well be right. He could picture those first dinosaurs they had encountered, the very nasty ones, lying about in the grass as a trap. It’s what lions did, wasn’t it? And those things had been smart.
He would have to be smarter.
Barbossa grinned evilly. It’s a good thing he was a Pirate Lord.
TBC...
Author: Aquaseamage
Pairing: None
Genre: Action/Adventure/ Humor
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Takes place during “On Stranger Tides” so spoiler warning
Summary: AU for both OST and JP.
Disclaimer: The characters are not mine. They belong to Disney and Amblin/Universal. This is just for fun.
“Did it occur to you, Missy, that ye be in the past?”
“The past?” Lex asked as she shut down her laptop to save the battery.
“Aye. It be 1750.” Barbossa stated.
Tim laughed. “Maybe the jokes on you, Captain.”
Barbossa narrowed his eyes and turned to look at the young boy. “What do ye mean?”
“Dinosaurs didn’t live in 1750. They lived millions of years ago, in the Jurassic or the Triassic. Either we’re on Grandpa’s island or else we all went back in time, back before man existed…” Tim climbed up onto the dead dinosaur, examining it. “Grandpa says he brands all of his dinosaurs, on their hips, but I don’t see any mark on this one.”
“Oh, that’s just great!” Lex moaned in distress as she zippered her watertight laptop bag closed. Then her eyes grew wide. “I bet Grandpa will send Dr. Grant to find us! We just have to stay alive until then. He’s a dinosaur expert.”
Not caring for the idea that they may be stuck millions of years in the past, Barbossa turned to Jack. “What did ye do to us, Jack, getting us stuck millions of years in the past?”
“Who, me?” Jack widened his dark eyes and tried to look very innocent. “Yer the one that insisted on going to the fountain, Barbossa. I was telling ye I had a bad feeling about it….but I suppose it explains the mermaids. What we need now, Barbossa, is a plan. Night will be a coming soon enough and it’s best we find a secure place before that.”
“And how will be be finding a place like that, Jack? It be naught but jungle, unless ye care for sleeping in a tree…”
Jack shrugged. “I’ve slept worse places.”
Theo bent and stuck his arm into the dead dinosaur’s mouth, pulling out his sword. Repeating the process, he retrieved Andrew’s sword and handed it to him. He didn’t exactly care for the idea of sleeping in a tree, but had to admit it sounded a lot safer than being on the ground at night. His eyes flickered over the dead dinosaur, frowning at its massive size. “Exactly how big do these things get?”
“In height?” Tim asked as he leaped off of the dead animal and back onto the ground. “Well, the tyrannosaur rex is about twenty feet tall…”
“Twenty feet tall!” Andrew exclaimed, clearly horrified by the very idea.
“Yeah! We were on the tour and almost at the tyrannosaur paddock and this stupid storm came, so it got cancelled. But I really want to see one. It will be awesome!”
Jack frowned at the young boy. “You need to straighten out yer priorities. If it’s anything like this here beasty, you don’t want to see one, mate. It’ll eat you, probably just be a snack for the critter.”
“But everybody loves T-rex!” Tim insisted. “That’s where Grandpa will make his next million! People will pay any amount to see one.”
The four adults stared at Tim, totally shocked.
“Why would anyone pay money to see something that will eat them?” Andrew asked, confused. “That just doesn’t make sense.”
“Because there’s supposed to be fences between you and the dinosaur that way it can’t eat you but you can see it in its natural habitat.” Tim thought back on the tour and scowled unhappily. “But then, we didn’t see any dinosaurs on the tour, just stupid plants!”
“Why don’t we head for the coast, mate, and get off t his here island?” Jack suggested as he eyed a nearby tree he thought looked climbable for a person of his considerable skills. “I’ll shimmy up this here tree to the very top and see where we are. Perhaps I’ll get lucky enough to spy the coast and then we can forget all about this here Garden of Death and ol’ Blackbeard.”
“Are ye forgetting, Jack, we don’t have a ship.” Barbossa pointed out. “And I’m not going out in these mermaid infested waters in just longboats. In case ye don’t know, our ship was sunk by them fish-women and most of the crew devoured.”
“Well, maybe you don’t have a ship but I do!” Jack grinned.
“Where do you have a ship?” Barbossa demanded to know. “Unless you mean the Revenge?”
“Nay, I mean this one that I pilfered on Blackbeard without him knowing.” Jack reached into the fabric bag that he had the chalices in and pulled out a bottle. He held it carefully in his hands, showing it to Barbossa, Theo and Andrew. “It be the Pearl, miniature like. Blackbeard did some voodoo on her as ye can see, but the four of us can sail her easily enough.”
“Give me my ship, Jack.” Barbossa held out his hands, his blue eyes gleaming as he took in the tossing waves and black sails within the curved glass.
“No! She be mine!” Jack hugged the bottle to his chest.
“The Pearl’s mine!” Barbossa said sternly.
“No, she’s mine!”
“I gave up me leg for her! I deserve the ship, Jack, and you know it.”
“But I died with her before, got eaten by a kraken!”
Andrew and Theo exchanged glances, unsure what to think of this arguing over a ship in a bottle. Finally Andrew spoke up. “But if you got ate by a kraken, how can you be standing here talking to us?”
“Oh, we brought him back from the dead…” Barbossa explained as if that really answered the question, which it did not in Andrew’s mind.
“Do you know how to do that?” Theo asked, curious. He hadn’t realized that pirates knew that sort of thing. The Navy certainly didn’t. Or were they lying?
“Of course we do, mate.” Jack replied as he carefully put the bottle back into his bag. “It be a simple enough thing to do if ye know how. It’s what that green flash it about out at sea. Each time ye spy one it means someone came back from the other side to live again. The real secret is this: up is down.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Andrew stated, still confused.
“That’s what I thought, too, until I figured…” Jack started to say before a loud explosion cut him off. The birds up in the canopy all took flight at once, fleeing with loud squawks of protest as a few stray feathers floated down. The pirate turned to face the way they had come, as the noise had come from that direction. “Sounds like gunpowder…”
“Do you think it’s Blackbeard?” Barbossa asked Jack.
“Doubt it. He doesn’t know where the cave is, although I suppose he could have found it on his own…” Jack turned to study a nearby tree, leaning backward to eye the upper parts of it better. “I will climb this here tree and see what I can see.”
Jack shimmied up the tree with ease, like a monkey. Within minutes he was at the top and carefully looked back towards the cliff they had jumped off of. In the distance he could see a twisting column of black smoke rising on the air, proof someone had blown up a few casks of gunpowder. Then he saw a tiny figure appear at the edge of the cliff and Jack reached into his pocket for his bit of mirror. Pulling it out, he flashed a message at the person hoping he would get a reply. He did and more messages flashed up and back. Satisfied, Jack then turned around on his tedious perch and looked about in all directions. Satisfied that he now knew the layout of the surrounding area, he climbed back down.
“Well, Jack, what did ye learn? Ye certainly were up there long enough.” Barbossa demanded to know as soon as the other pirate stepped onto the ground.
“It seems, Barbossa, that we need to go back to the river.” Jack said mysteriously as he started to walk in that direction.
Barbossa started after him, leaning on his crutch. “And why are we doing that?”
“Because my loyal and steadfast first mate, Mr. Gibbs, is bringing the rest of yer men. It seems the beasties only got a few of them and I fear we very narrowly avoiding being on the menu ourselves…most of them were still in the cave it seems during the attack.”
“That’s a bit of luck…” Barbossa commented as he followed Jack back to the river. “But it also means we’ll make more noise as we travel and that might attract those creatures.”
They reached the riverbank, Tim and Lex following the adults, to see Mr. Gibbs sloshing up out of the river towards them. He carried a big coil of rope on his shoulder, water dripping off of it and his clothes. Behind him and still in the river was a large bunch of Barbossa’s navy men, many of them officers wearing the powdered wigs. Almost all of them carried supplies of one sort or another. Mr. Gibbs went right up to Jack. “The Spanish left all of these fine things in the cave and I thought it a shame to just leave it sitting there.”
“Good man!” Jack patted Gibbs on his shoulder, approving of the thievery. “We could use supplies.”
“We heard the screaming and then one poor fellow fell back into the cave missing parts. After that no one else wanted to go in and there was squabbling as to who was in command and what should be done, so I took control of the lot. We heard the Spanish coming then and fled just in time, hiding in the jungle nearby. They went in and a short time later, they came running out shrieking like woman, their leader with that fancy feather hat running the fastest. My Spanish is a bit rusty but I think he was screaming something about dragons. That’s when I knew you’d been right and that there were beasts guarding the Fountain. So I employed the maneuver we used on the kraken, modified a bit. We took a cask of the gunpowder the Spanish had abandoned and stuffed it in the poor fellow’s uniform, attacked that to a banner…waved it around and soon something took the bait. It wasn’t exactly easy, as we had to wave it without getting sucked through that portal ourselves but we managed.” Mr. Gibbs frowned, his dark eyes fearful. “What are those things, Jack? They look darn right ugly and vicious! And the teeth and claws on them, ewww….it’s enough to send shivers down me back!”
“They be dinosaurs, Mr. Gibbs, a type of dinosaur.” Jack simply replied.
“Now listen up the lot of ye.” Barbossa addressed his men. “This be a highly dangerous area and as we travel yer to be silent. There’s predators about and the more noise ye be making, the more we’ll attract. Is that understood?”
The men looked at their captain with wide eyes filled with fear, as they had already seen the remains of at least one velociraptor that the trap had blown apart. What they had seen, that horrible scaled head with snake-like eyes and the large mouth full of sharp teeth, it was worse than the mermaids. The fear of reptiles was a deeply ingrained fear left over from their ancient ancestors and nothing brought that fear to the surface like a velociraptor. “Aye.”
“Yer pistols won’t be much good against these things, as the hides are tough. And the loud retort of firing the gun will be like ringing a dinner bell. They’re fast, deadly and they get big, very big. We be aiming to avoid them if we can.” Barbossa stared each man in the eye to be certain they were paying attention. “Don’t dawdle. Any man who falls behind gets left behind.”
With the frightening dinosaurs wondering about, Barbossa was sure they would stick together; still, he was sure the warning would work well. Pirates were better suited for this type of thing than the by-the-book Royal Navy. They would either learn to adapt to the situation at hand or die. It was impossible for him to personally watch each man.
Spying that Hector was done addressing the crew and had turned his back on them, he inched closer. “Barbossa, ye’ll be glad to know I spied a building of sorts from the top of that tree. Perhaps we can reach it before nightfall.”
“Lead the way, Jack.” Barbossa waved his hand to indicate Jack should go first as he had an idea of where the building was. Jack started walking into the jungle and Barbossa followed, leaning heavily on his strong wooden crutch. The two children followed him, Lex wiping sweat off of her forehead. Groves and Gillette was right behind them.
“We’re moving out.” Gillette ordered the rest of the men, trying to make his voice loud enough so they could hear but hopefully not loud enough to attract any nearby predators. It was a fine line to walk.
Jack moved through the jungle easily, his keen eyes picking out the best path naturally. He also kept his ears open for the slightest sounds, which wasn’t exactly easy with all of the noise their large party was now making. Some were gasping from the unaccustomed heat and humidity, as this place seemed a lot hotter now than it had before they had entered the cave. He could practically feel the water hanging in the air around them. And although the men were trying to be quiet, he could still hear their footfalls and the noise of them pushing foliage out of their way. At least they were not talking. They continued their trek for about an hour and then Jack paused, as he had finally reached the clearing he had seen from on top of the tree. He stopped just inside the tree line and peered out cautiously.
Barbossa joined him as did Groves and Mr. Gibbs.
“What the devil is that?” Mr. Gibbs asked, his face scrunched up in confusion.
The oddest building they had ever seen stood in the center of the large clearing. It was steel gray, squat and ugly. Its sides rose up at angles, sort of like a flat-topped pyramid but an extremely short one. A smear of bright red was above the door but it was too far away to see if it was blood or something else. The structure was partly covered on one side by climbing vines and tropical foliage, which gave it an abandoned air, as if it had been a long time since someone had been there. But even odder was the object that surrounded the building: a towering fence that stretched up into the sky at an impossible height, thick metal poles spaced evenly apart. Small blue and red lanterns were hung at the very top of the fence, with part of the fence curving towards them at an angle.
“A building of some sort…” Jack informed his first officer. “We be dealing with a time flow thingy, Mr. Gibbs. The children are from the future and we be in the past…”
Mr. Gibbs looked shocked. “The past?”
“Aye. Apparently millions of years in the past at that.”
Mr. Gibbs just gawked at him, open-mouthed, the numbers too large for him to even comprehend.
Barbossa turned to Groves. “Go bring me the girl.”
Theo did as he was bid. Tim and Lex were seated on a log, exhausted from the long trek in the heat while Gillette kept an eye on them as well as the men. He went up to her. “Captain Barbossa wants to see you.”
Lex sighed but stood up and followed him to where the others stood at the edge of the clearing. The foliage was thinner here and her eyes grew wide as she sighted the gray steel building and the towering fence. “It’s a dinosaur proof bunker!”
“So your grandpa built that, did he?” Barbossa asked, pleased that he now knew what the odd building actually was.
“But…” Lex scanned the area she could see around the outside of the fence, which pretty much was overgrown grass. “Where’s the road? Surely there must have been a road that goes in and out. And if the electricity is on…”
“I don’t like it, mate.” Jack stated as he eyed the tall grass between them and the fence. “Anything could be hiding in that grass….”
“The road might be overgrown by grass.” Barbossa suggested as he eyed the windswept tangle of grass and weeds before them. “Besides, Jack, we don’t have much choice now do we? The sun’s position says it’s already late and the shadows are growing longer. Before we know it the sky will be turning red with sunset and then it’ll get dark. I, for one, don’t want to be out here in the dark.”
Lex bit her lip, unsure how they could tell if the electricity was turned on. It should be on, of course, but maybe it wasn’t? Was there a gate? She recalled when she and Tim arrived on Isla Nublar there had been a gate with an attendant that had opened it and closed it for them. Or maybe there had never been a road, maybe people walked in and out? But surely that was too dangerous… Nor was she sure exactly where they were, if it was Islar Nublar or in the past somewhere. She just didn’t believe that time travel was possible. It was too much like fantasy. “If we toss something at the fence, what happens should tell us if the electricity is on or off. If it’s on, then we can’t touch the fence at all. And there must be a gate somewhere…”
Barbossa watched the tall grass for several long minutes, looking for the slightest clue that something might be hiding in it. As much as he hated to admit it, but Jack could very well be right. He could picture those first dinosaurs they had encountered, the very nasty ones, lying about in the grass as a trap. It’s what lions did, wasn’t it? And those things had been smart.
He would have to be smarter.
Barbossa grinned evilly. It’s a good thing he was a Pirate Lord.
TBC...