Before you can get out another word, it whips its red-crested head back and forth, its toothless beak agape, gulping air as it deals the Land Rover a blow with its one good wing. Your vehicle shudders and settles at a steeper pitch.
At the same time, quick-witted Brett reaches around behind the seat for the rifle he stashed there. He loads it and tries to open his door but something is blocking it. Uttering a second shriek of desperation, the pterosaur whacks the passenger side of the Land Rover hard. Your vehicle lurches to the side before coming to rest.
Brett pushes on his door again. No luck. He hands you the gun with a brief "Aim for the eye, and be super careful."
You hesitate. The pterosaur deals the Land Rover a third blow.
"You got this, Ana Cruz."
Gripping the rifle, you practically crawl out of the Land Rover, keeping down. The injured pterosaur watches you intently, cannily, despite its obvious pain. It pants, giving you a face full of foul breath. Its one good wing convulses.
You switch off the safety, raise the rifle to your shoulder, and aim. The distance makes for a challenging shot. To compensate, you wait until the great beak pauses between shrieks. It's nerve-racking, like nothing you've ever had to do or even envisioned doing before.
You miss it, but not by much. The pterosaur moans and raises its free wing once more. Brett clambers out the driver's door. You hand him the rifle, and he finishes the job with a single well-placed shot through that big black eye. The pterosaur's body spasms. That impossibly long neck arcs back. Its wing drops. Those stilt-like legs pitch to one side. With a last cry of pain, the great flier crashes to the ground and lies still.
You let out a long breath as your adrenaline rush ebbs. Now that this is over and done with, a bunch of competing thoughts and feelings mill around inside your head, each one trying to outshout the rest. There is one that you keep coming back to, that resonates the most with you:
Attaining time travel, like many technological advances, entails considerable risk. These risks are outweighed many times over by the improvements to our lives that can be achieved. You didn't set out to deliberately destroy the pterosaur, and you couldn't have predicted its death.
"Hey, look at this." Brett's gone to the front of the Land Rover and is staring at something. You circle around to join him, only to be brought up short.
Before the right front tire, blocking the passenger door, lies a second prehistoric flier. It has the same sword-like beak as the first one, though it's considerably smaller and lacks a head crest. Dark blood from one of its crumpled wings has gushed onto the bumper, and spatters glisten across one mustard-yellow fender.
You gape at its closed eyes and inert form as silence descends, wishing you could redo your arrival. If only it were possible.
The laws of temporal physics dictate that you can never revisit any time and place you've ever been before, including anywhere you've ever lived. You get just one shot at existing in any given set of space-time coordinates. No paradoxes allowed. No coming back here five minutes before today's arrival. Or five days or five years, for that matter, with the intent to stay here until today. Setting the time machine to do so will produce a slew of blinking red lights and error codes. Here's the great irony of actual time travel: it permits no do-overs, no Groundhog Day.
Not one but two. How horrible! If only you could have done something to prevent this.
"Ana Cruz, look out!" Brett shouts.
You whirl around as the pterosaur springs up and lunges for you, wing claws extended.
Yikes! You leap to one side. Who knew it could play dead? Or was it merely stunned?
Ouch! One claw rakes your arm. You tear out of there, putting the Land Rover between yourself and your attacker. Blood droplets seep between your fingers as you clutch your injured arm. Thankfully, it isn't anything more than a flesh wound. You'll ask Brett to treat your injury later.
Meanwhile, Brett's not one to let his best friend get attacked without doing something about it. He backs off and drops to one knee, finishing off the pterosaur with one precisely placed shot that echoes from the cliffs rising on the far side of the adjacent lake.
Time to Regroup
It takes some effort, with you and Brett working together, to drag the carcass of the smaller pterosaur out of the way of the Land Rover so that you'll be able to drive off. The dead flier must be a couple hundred pounds, and those floppy leatherlike wings are cumbersome to maneuver.
While you do so, you say, "Today has given me a lot to sort through. It isn't like I'm at a zoo where I can safely admire the sheer size of those fliers. I…wasn't at all prepared for their strength and speed, or their cunning, their unpredictability."
"Plus their incredible reach. Shooting them is a whole different ballgame than that rattler last year."
"I think you're right," you say.
You have to wonder how you'll react if thrown into another crisis. Brett deserves to be able to count on you.
Next, you commence a more careful inspection of your vehicle. Thankfully, nothing looks damaged.
"Hmm," says Brett, eyeing branches and detritus heaped in an arcing mound surrounding the area. "I get it. The Way Way Wayback Machine landed in the middle of their nest."
You look around more closely and realize your best friend is right. The nest is ridiculous, almost as big as your friend's small apartment. Well, that makes sense, as the larger flier must have been twice your height, with a twenty-foot wingspan. A dozen yards from the nest, a shallow stream feeds the lake. The shoreline is passable for some way. Tall pines march up the hillside. A breeze brings the crisp, woodsy scent of the forest to your nostrils, which is a refreshing change from the odor of the nest. The sun shines high over the lake, turning its waters silver. Though you left at midnight, the laws of temporal physics require you to arrive at midday.
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