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The anomaly detector went off right at lunch, when the ARC was paused with half the staff out eating and half monitoring the anomaly detector for any incursions. Both Connor and Abby had groaned over their take-away curry especially when the anomaly proved to be not just outside of London, but on the far side of the country. But they nodded, packed their gear, and tried not to listen to Danny Quinn's worried muttering.
Five hours later, most of it on the M6, they were nearing the anomaly – somewhere in the middle of the Lake District. So they had to find the anomaly in the fading light, sort out anything that had come through, and avoid sightseers, ramblers, and locals while managing their new team leader.
The anomaly was strange this time. At first Connor thought it might have been a trick of the light, what with night approaching, but no, the bright crystalline whirl was muted, choked in grey dust that drifted on the breeze.
"It's not fungus again?" Connor asked, worried. He sincerely hoped not. Almost freezing to death while being attacked by a man-shaped fungus monster was one of the more vivid events of the past months. A return showing wasn't anything he wanted to try, especially since this anomaly was in the middle of a national park. Trying to decontaminate the area would be difficult, and bring the wrath of Health and Safety down on their heads, given what had happened last time they had to kill a fungus monster.
"I don't think so. We need a sample," Abby said.
That involved a long wooden pole, some double-sided sellotape, and forcible drafting one of Becker's squad – on the basis of the soldier having the longest arms in the group – to stick their makeshift sample collector into the fouled air around the anomaly.
"Connor, look at this," Abby said, from where she'd set up a field microscope and made a quick slide of their sample.
Connor looked through the eyepiece and saw – grey smudge. He blinked, then reached to adjust the focus. It resolved into black commas, bright and sharp, tiny obsidian knives.
"That's... glass dust?"
"I think so."
Danny shifted to look at them.
"So what's that mean, then?"
Connor looked at Abby. She frowned.
"There's a volcano on the other side, Danny. It's erupting."
They had locked the anomaly and posted a guard for the night, but the hoofprints indicated a lot of creatures had come through before they arrived, probably drawn by the fresher air on this side. The best they could do was set up a camp and start as soon as there was light.
So Connor was tramping along the water the next morning, trying to follow large split-hoofed tracks and even larger round footprints. It didn't help that Danny, for all his skill as an investigator and reader of people, didn't seem to know how to walk around outdoors.
Which was why they almost missed the rhinocerid in water until it bawled at them.
An enormous rectangular head emerged from the lake, followed by a barrel body. The animal coughed, and then started browsing on the overhanging tree branches.
"What the--?!" Danny yelped.
"Oi! It's a teloceras!" Connor squeaked in glee.
"Is that a ... what is it?"
"It's a rhinoceros, except it thinks it's a hippo! Look at it swimming!"
The animal wasn't swimming so much as floating along like a drifting rubber raft. A raft that pulled itself to the edge to the water and stood up – on very stumpy legs. Connor smiled; the teloceras looked like a beer barrel on a stand, it was so round and low-slung.
"So it's not dangerous?"
Connor frowned at Danny. "Of course, it's dangerous! It's a three ton animal!" He paused, and conceded, "But it isn't going to try to eat us, if that's what you're thinking. On account of it being an herbivore."
Abby called them as they watched the teleoceras waddled along the lake shore and directed them up walking trails to a site where things that were obviously not sheep were in a sheep meadow. With the sheep, who were baaing unhappily and sidling away from the strange grey-striped creatures eating their forage.
"They're ponies!" Connor said, and then grimaced, because that was just daft, wasn't it? Of course they were horses – of some sort, but not actually riding-horse horses, because the stripes and the extra toes, those were dead wrong, weren't they?
Abby turned her head to give him a look, her jaw set, then sighed.
"More like zebras," she said as she pulled her tranquilizer gun out, and its case too, with the extra darts.
"Zebras? Why zebras?" Connor wondered aloud. "Well, stripes, right, that's zebra, but these stripes aren't right for that. Going in the wrong direction for one." The stripes eeled down the animals backs, instead of around their bodies like zebra stripes would. It made the little horses look odd, like they'd been colored by a creative nursery class. Their small size and three-toed hooves just added to the oddness.
"That's true," Abby said, then turned to raise her voice to the soldiers behind them. "They're wild equids. Don't make the mistake of thinking they'll be tame like horses. These ones will spook much quicker. They'll kick and bite, too."
"How about we just lock the gate?" Danny suggested. "They're happy here for now, and we know where they are."
"Right," Connor turned to Abby. "We saw a teleoceras, at the lake."
"A teleoceras?"
"It's a rhinocerid – an aquatic one, like a hippo except it's a rhino, not a hippo," Connor said.
"Does it act like a hippo?" Abby asked.
"I think so?" Connor said. "It was in the water, and all."
"Oh no."
Danny rolled his eyes. "What now?"
"Hippos are dangerous." Abby said, and shot up over the style and down the path towards the lake.
They didn't make it to the lake. Instead they encountered the other half of the squad, one of who had a tiny animal cradled in his arms. It shivered and coughed in rough barks, but didn't struggle. It was brown with faint striping, a white belly, and cute little fangs jutting from its upper jaw. It was unmistakably a deer, from its soft doe-eyes to its tiny split hooves.
Abby drew up short in surprise, which let Connor and Danny catch up. She was really quite fast when she wanted to be.
"Here, Abby, I think this little bloke is sick," the squaddie offered up the small animal to Abby's inspection.
"Saber-toothed deer, isn't it?" Connor said as he tried to catch his breath.
"Saber-toothed deer?!" Danny repeated, sounding appalled.
"Shut it, you two!" Abby snapped. She had her head pressed against the little deer's chest
"What's wrong with him?"
"He's been breathing in volcanic dust, that's what's wrong! For days, maybe weeks, poor blighter."
"Ah... well, he's well out of it now," Danny tried.
Abby shook her head. "It's too late."
"Aw, no," murmured the squaddie. "Can't we do something for the little thing?"
Abby tilted her head. "We've got a carrier in the Range Rover. We can keep him there, make him comfortable, water, food, see if that helps."
The squaddie followed her off to the vehicles, murmuring to the deer as they went.
Danny turned to Connor again. "Saber-toothed deer?!"
"Sure. Moschidae – musk deer, they've all got fangs instead of antlers," Connor explained, helpfully illustrating the situation by miming fangs in front of his face. At Danny's stunned look, Connor said, "It's not always giganotosaurs and chameleon goblins from the future, mate."
Danny gave him an exasperated look and shook his head, heading back to camp.
They couldn't find the teleoceras again, even though they searched all day. Maybe it had swum across the lake and bedded down in some thicket, though Connor thought a three ton animal that looked like an ambulatory water tank should have been easy to find, even in a place the size of the Lake District. He had spotted some long-necked camels browsing the hedges, but decided he didn't want to chase after creatures that were built like giraffes – and probably kicked like them – by himself. He finally had to come in because stumbling about in the dark, even with torches, was not a good idea and not needed because they hadn't any sign of predators. Giant herbivores might be annoying, but they generally didn't try to eat people or pets; it wasn't worth wandering around at night for anything less than that.
He found Abby looking unhappy and determined when he arrived at their tents.
"What's wrong?"
Abby looked at him, and Connor went from confused to scared. Had someone been hurt? A predator they hadn't seen?
"I had to euthanize the deer."
"Oh." Connor sighed. "Oh! I'm sorry, Abby." He patted her shoulder, and changed to a hug when she sighed.
"He was too far gone. His lungs were full of ash," she murmured.
"You did what you could."
"I know, Connor." Abby straightened up. "We're not sending anything back through the anomaly."
"We're not?" Connor said doubtfully. They always tried to send creatures back through.
"No. They'll die from lung disease if we do."
"Right..." Connor stopped himself from pointing out that the creatures were millions of years out of time and would already be dead if they were on the right side of the anomaly. He didn't think it would make Abby feel any better. She hated it when she couldn't save an animal. Not being able to save any of the ones from this anomaly would make her miserable.
The morning brought a small disaster in the form of a sheepskin. Not a nicely tanned skin with its fleece still on, but a mess of blood and wool and crunched bones that Becker's soldiers found.
"A bear?" Abby suggested after looking at the sheep's remains.
Connor shook his head. "Beardog."
Danny gave him another one of those exasperated looks. "Beardog?"
"Aelurodon, probably. It was a big," Connor gestured with his hands, stretching his arms to indicate the length, "big carnivore."
"Why are you so sure?"
"Because I know what's on the other side of the anomaly!" Connor said.
"A volcano," Danny said, in the tone of someone who being patient even though it was trying.
"Ashfall!"
Abby and Danny *and* the squaddies stared at him.
"Of course, a volcano! But these," Connor indicated the creatures grazing in the distance, "these are known! We've got three kinds of horse, giraffe-camels, saber-toothed deer, teleoceras, and a volcano! It's Ashfall!"
"What is Ashfall?"
"Only one of the best lagerstätten in the world! It's like the Burgess Shale, or Solhofen, or the Rhynie chert. All these creatures, and the volcanic dust that killed them!" Connor pointed at the anomaly. "And it's on the other side."
"We're not going," Danny says.
"We're not sending the creatures back," Abby says.
They turned to stare at each other.
"We're not letting a predator that's eaten a sheep move up to people!" Danny growled.
"It's certain death on the other side! We're not sending anything back there!"
"Uhm," Connor said, which had them both glaring at him, not each other. Connor didn't think it was an improvement. "... the beardog will probably be fine. The fossil bed is almost entirely herbivores – the predators didn't breath in as much volcanic ash because they weren't trying to graze."
Abby frowned, but turned to Danny and said, "We get the beardog back through the anomaly, but the herbivores are staying here."
"Where are we going to put them?!" Danny snapped. "Prehistoric creatures running around the Lake District will be noticed."
Connor coughed loudly, "We could stash them with the mammoth..."
"The mammoth?"
"Connor, that's brilliant!" Abby smiled at him.
"It is, innit?"
"There's a mammoth?!" Danny asked.
"We've never been able to send it home. Its anomaly collapsed," Connor explained. "And Lester--"
"– Likes it! Brilliant! Anywhere that can hold a Columbian mammoth can hold a few teleoceras and ancient horses and camels!" Abby almost bounced in place, and punched Connor fondly on the arm.
They got a call from a soldier on the farthest end of their search pattern, and had to hike up yet another winding trail to find the beardog. It was lying in the boughs of a stout old tree, relaxed and almost sleepy from its meal of pilfered sheep.
"I didn't realize that it was so..." Connor gulped, looking at the massive predator as it climbed down the tree, "...big." It was enormous, somewhere between wolf and bear, with a stout tail, long legs, and a square jaw heavy with muscles to crunch through bones.
The beardog yawned after it was entirely on the ground, showing teeth wider than Connor's two fingers together.
"It's not as big as the gorgonopsid," Abby replied.
"Didn't know what I was getting into then, did I?"
Abby grinned, sudden and bright. "Nah, none of us did." She looked back at the beardog. "Oi, I've got an idea."
The idea involved offal from a butcher, foul and stinking, and them laying a blood trail of nasty bits all the way back to the anomaly. It worked, rather too well, because the beardog happily licked the gore off the ground and traced them back to the mutton bones Abby had baited the edge of the anomaly with.
It happily picked up the gory rib cage and sauntered through the unlocked anomaly, crunching though bones as it went.
"Well, that was clever."
"Wasn't it?" Abby smiled.
"So, how are we going to get them," Connor nodded to the teleoceras waddling along the lake shore, "into transports?"
Abby sighed. "No idea."
"None? We've aquatic rhinos wandering down to Lake Windermere!" Connor groaned.
"Oh, stuff it, Connor. I'll figure something. Rhinos are just a little bit outside my range. I'm a lizard girl--"
"You knew how to capture the mammoth!"
"Well, elephants, yeah, dead easy that is, they just want to be with their mates. Rhinos, that's dealing with a flighty, twitchy, aggressive tank with a nose bigger than its brain. And they don't LIKE anyone."
"Right. Right. Maybe we can… lay a trail of tasty root vegetables, or something."
FINIS