Displaced

By Edward T. Yeatts III

A Baltimore police officer awakens in his car, sitting atop a chunk of road in the middle of a cornfield. For the next several hours, he fights his way through strange creatures, meets up with odd companions and comes under siege by terrifying beasts.
Giant spheres of land dot the farm and great scoops of earth have been taken away. Animals that should not exist hunt the officer and his fellow survivors. Where is he? Where did these things come from? How can he get home? One man knows the answers but there's more he's not telling.
"Displaced" is an action-packed, sci-fi mystery that will keep you turning the page until the very end.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edward T. Yeatts III
• Release date: Dec 2, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465809049

Edward T. Yeatts III

Edward T. Yeatts III (call him "Trey") is a resident of Richmond, VA. He has been married since 1999 and a father since 2002. A lifelong fan of science fiction, various franchises of interest include "Star Trek," Star Wars," "Battlestar Galactica," "Lord of the Rings," "Dune," "Firefly" and quite a few more.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Wilson began to stir; his face nestled comfortably in the white pillow. He licked his lips once or twice and kept his eyes closed. His head was throbbing and he pulled himself erect. This is when he noticed the seat belt.

He was firmly strapped into his car and the pillows surrounded his entire body. By now, he opened his eyes and realized every airbag in the vehicle had deployed. He then noticed the dinging of his car. The Toyota was telling him the keys were in the ignition, but it wasn't running, even though it was still in gear. He turned the key back and then braced his hands on the wheel and tried to push himself level. It was difficult because the car was at a forty-five degree angle to the ground; its nose pointed down.

Wilson reached into his pocket and pulled out a small utility knife. With a quick flip, the blade extended and he punctured the bag in front of him and the ones along his left side by the door. He exhaled forcefully to avoid breathing in the excess gases and he swung the door open. It fell all the way forward and rocked the car slightly when it stopped. Wilson replaced the blade and put it back into his pocket. He leaned part of the way out of the car so he could reach into his back pocket and get his phone. When his fingers found the device and pulled it out, he opened his eyes and saw the road under his silver Toyota. It, too, was at a forty-five degree angle to the ground.

Wilson let go of the phone and placed one foot out onto the road and looked to the horizon. Crops surrounded him and tall trees stood a few hundred yards away.

What in the ... he mumbled while he emerged from the car and onto the upturned asphalt. Wilson steadied himself by holding the opened door, but he never took his eyes off the horizon. He looked back at his feet and saw the edge of the slanted road a few yards away to the left of the car. He looked toward the back and he saw that the road continued into the sky for about twenty yards before it simply broke off. In front of the crumpled hood there was crushed vegetation.

I was driving, he thought and took a step up the inclined hill. He pulled the car door nearly shut and then sidestepped his way to the ground just a few yards below. I was driving home from work and ... what? What happened?

He stepped onto the flattened plants and saw that the untouched crops around him were about waist high. Toward the tree line behind him, the crop was taller -- something different from what he was standing on. Corn? In front of him, the crops got shorter, until they met a narrow dirt road. He walked around the front of his car to the left side and noticed for the first time the barns, silos and a house about half a mile away.

Wilson took a few steps and he looked to the right. Beyond the mass of roadway and rock, beyond the crest of the dirt road, the faint outline of a city appeared. It was several miles away.

He said, to no one in particular, Baltimore? He was pretty certain it wasn't.

He walked further away from his car and around toward the back. Wilson looked at the length of road extending up into the air and saw another huge section of asphalt that had simply broken off behind it and collapsed onto the field due to gravity. He stepped backward through the crops and continued to process the images in his mind.

His car and a long stretch of road were at a forty-five degree angle. The car was impacted on the ground. Under the asphalt, large sections of dirt and rock were piled on the field. A portion of a sewage pipe poked out from the dirt several yards behind the car. Other smaller pipes dotted the section of dirt under the road. An uneasy feeling washed over Wilson. He circled the scene and he began to realize something more than a little disturbing.

The car. The road. The dirt, rock and pipes. It looked as though they had all been scooped out of the ground and then plopped onto this farm land. It's a bowl. It was unmistakable. The material under his car appeared partly spherical. The edges of the top layer with the road and parts of various front yards were circular. Portions of the road and dirt had collapsed, but the rounded nature of these objects -- foreign in this field -- was very apparent.

What happened to me?

Almost in response, he heard someone exhale loudly. Instinctively, Wilson crouched beneath the top of the crops and reached for his waist. His weapon wasn't there. He looked back to his car, but he feared it may be too far away. Wilson spun around slowly trying to peer through the vegetation and he saw nothing. Again, there was a loud exhale and then a deep rumble. It was obvious that it wasn't human, whatever it was.

Wilson stood up slowly and looked around. Nothing out of the ordinary -- except, of course, for the mound of road, dirt, rock and his car. Again, he heard the rumble and Wilson began to walk toward it. The sound was farther away than it seemed initially and before long, he was entering the taller corn crops. He parted the stalks in front of him as he walked. Just after another loud exhale, his feet squished into the ground.

Wilson looked down and saw that the field ahead of him was saturated with water. Behind him, dry as a bone. He stood there on the border of wet ground and dry ground and again tried to process what was around him. He blinked a few times, slowly, and then another deep rumble reminded him to press on. He continued to squish through the damp crops and he saw a partial clearing ahead. His feet sank slightly as he continued. Again, there was a loud exhale and Wilson emerged from the corn.

That's when he saw the whale.

Chapter 2

Wilson Daniels was a police officer. It wasn't nine o'clock yet, and he was called in on his day off to meet with Baltimore's deputy commissioner of operations. Something must be really wrong if you're a beat cop meeting with Deputy Commissioner Greg Lester. His leg was bouncing nervously while he sat in the small waiting area outside the office. Wilson was holding the large binder of notes and photos he had compiled over the last few months.

The deputy commissioner will see you now, the receptionist said from behind her desk.

Daniels stood and smoothed the front of his shirt with one hand, exhaled and opened the door. He walked right to the front of the desk and shook the offered hand of the commissioner.

Officer Daniels, nice to meet you.

And you, sir. Wilson was so nervous, his voice cracked a little.

Are those your notes? Lester pointed to the notebook.

Yes sir. Daniels immediately passed it over.

Lester opened it and slowly scanned each page and photo before flipping to the next. As he did, he spoke. How old are you?

Twenty-six, sir.

And you've been on the force for four years.

Wilson nodded, Yes sir.

Lester took a sip of coffee and kept flipping through the pages. I've heard about your ... extracurricular activities.

Daniels nodded slowly. He felt his skin tingle with nervousness. Yes sir. He cleared his throat and began to describe it. On my days off, I sometimes dress in dirty clothes and disguise myself as a dopefiend. Lester stopped looking in the book and watched Wilson. I then go to the few remaining open-air drug markets and watch the dealing operations. I take notes or pictures. Sometimes I even buy a bag or a vial of whatever they're dealing.

Lester's eyebrows lifted, And what do you do with these bags and vials?

I throw them away. I can't enter them into evidence without an arrest and it certainly isn't smart to hold onto them. Lester nodded his head. I just toss them in the sewers.

At a hundred bucks a pop?

Wilson grinned a little, I don't score too often for that very reason.

Lester nodded again and closed the binder. OK. So you've done this for the last two years, and every two weeks or so, you take copies of your notes and pictures to the bosses in narcotics, vice, robbery, homicide ...

Yes sir.

And what do they say?

They say, 'Thank you, but ...' They're too satisfied with the Kure, sir. Lester nodded. When it came out, it made sixty-eight percent of Baltimore's drug addicts go straight. But that still left nearly thirty thousand people with addictions. The biggest markets were closed, the main supply lines went down and the crack and heroin prices went up. There may be fewer violent crimes these days, ...

Almost fifty percent fewer, Lester interjected.

But the violent crimes we do have are more violent than they used to be. Daniels licked his lips and continued, The piles of open cases on the bosses' desks are lower than they were, but these are still crimes. I know it will take more effort and more manpower now that most of these operations have gone even further underground, but ...

Officer Daniels, do you know what happened this morning at seven AM?

Wilson glanced around the room, No, sir.

City Councilman Fred Taglione's housekeeper arrived at their house and found the councilman, his wife and their two kids bound, gagged and murdered. In the bathroom, she found a dopefiend with the rig still in his arm and his head in the clouds. He's up in homicide now spilling his guts.

Daniels nodded slowly. OK.

In short, officer, there's outrage. The brass was content with half as many violent crimes before, but now that there's a red ball here, they're not so content any more. When I spoke to the colonel over homicide and narcotics this morning, he mentioned your name.

Me?

Said you were a pain in the ass. But you know better than just about anyone who did what, when and where they did it. We're closing the drug markets, Daniels. And you're going to be one of the main guys kicking in the doors.

Four months later, Wilson was a department superstar. A hero even, according to the Baltimore Sun. The remaining supply lines were closed and the open-air drug markets were gone, for a time. He knew the ins and outs of the criminal underworld -- even the parts that didn't have anything to do with drugs. He knew the people on the streets and sitting on their front stoops. He knew the bosses in the department and even those in suits at City Hall. He had even come to understand the political processes at work in the city.

As Daniels knelt in a damp field staring at the quivering blowhole of a humpback whale, he realized that none of that had prepared him for this.

Chapter 3

He propped his left elbow on his left knee and he held the crown of his head with his right hand. The whale continued to inhale and exhale, pausing occasionally to grumble. Wilson knew that you have to keep a beached whale wet until you were able to get it back into the ocean. He didn't have to look around but he did anyway. Drag it where?, he thought. Water ... from where?

He couldn't help but look into the eye of the huge beast. It was somewhat cloudy and Wilson wasn't able to catch its gaze. He reached out to touch its skin, but another rumble made him step back and rethink it.

From the corner of his vision, he saw another whale's tail. It obviously belonged to a smaller animal and Wilson stepped in the slosh toward it. He quickly saw that it was only a portion of the tail; its severed end had been apparently cauterized.

He backed away from the tail and into the damp crops surrounding the scene. After another loud exhale from the dying beast, Daniels turned away and toward his car. A few squishy strides later, he was back on dry land.

Well, he said it softly, so no one else would hear him, but loud enough to be able to hear a voice. I could head to the farm house. Or I could see if she'll start, looking to the car, and then I could drive to the city. He turned toward the skyline miles away. Some smoke had appeared low in the sky a few hundred yards away, but he couldn't see anything more than that from his position.

A loud screech shattered the silence. Again, Wilson crouched and looked around. It sounded like a bird, but yet ... not quite. Another deeper screech told him the sounds were not close. Definitely not staying here.

He ran through the plants as quickly and quietly as he could toward the scoop of road and dirt that held his car. A few moments later, he was inside. He closed the door and pulled out his knife again. With several quick stabs, he had deflated the remaining airbags. Wilson replaced the blade and knife and then turned the key. The quiet hum of the electric engine surged and then decayed before the computer's voice intoned, Airbags have been deployed. Shall I contact 9-1-1?

Daniels rolled his eyes, No ... Yes! The computer had already accepted his first answer and began to ding about something else. He looked to the floorboard and saw the phone he dropped a short while ago. He grabbed it and as he about to say, 9-1-1, aloud, he saw the screen blinking at him, NO SERVICE.

Wilson leaned back in his seat. 'No service?' You'd have to be in Antarctica not to have service ... Again, he scanned the exterior as best as he could from inside the tilted car. The farm house and barn half a mile away; the city on the other side with smoke interrupting the view in that direction; crops all around with trees beyond; a dirt road ahead and to his right. The road appeared to head off toward the city so he made his decision.

Daniels glanced at the instrument panel and he noticed the CHECK ENGINE light. He looked to the hood, saw it was misshapen and partly crumpled, and said, No kidding.

He hit the accelerator once just to make sure he still had power. He did. He turned the wheel to the right and then began to creep off the road to the field below. The left corner of his front end began to dig into the ground. Wilson winced, turned the wheel further to the right and then quickly stomped on the pedal. The corner dug in a bit more, but then it pulled free when the first wheels were on the ground. The car bounced heavily once the last two were on the earth and Wilson drove toward the road. He tore through the taller crops while he quickly tried to remember where the whale was. After all, the last thing he wanted to do now was drive head-on into a whale.

Satisfied with his memory that the whale was in the other direction, he continued to plow through the crops until he was parallel with the road. A ditch kept him from getting right on it, but he saw there was a small break in it just yards away. Wilson slowed, turned the Toyota onto the dirt road and then sighed with relief. The city's skyline was ahead. A few moments later, he passed the area of the field that seemed to be on fire. He tried to look in that direction but all he could see was a plume of smoke. He looked forward again and noticed a 'thump' noise. It started slowly and got louder.

Oh, c'mon, he said as he glanced across the instrument panel. No gauges were illuminated, other than the CHECK ENGINE light. The car was riding a bit rougher than usual, but he thought it was doing well enough to get him to the city. The thumping got louder still, and just as he realized the sound wasn't coming from his car, a large, pale green tree trunk hit the right side.

The impact was enough to send the Toyota rolling across the narrow road and down a slight embankment into a grassy field on the opposite side. He wasn't strapped in and the airbags had already been deployed and then later sliced, so Wilson was thrown clear of the vehicle.

It rolled a few times, enough to shatter the glass and knock out the front windshield. Daniels quickly stood and felt blood running down his left cheek. He reached up and touched the small cut above his eye when he noticed the decay of the thumping sound. He remembered the tree trunk that hit his car, so he looked back to the road.

There, about fifty yards away and moving fast, a dinosaur was heading toward the city.

Chapter 4

Wilson said as well as he could with his mouth mostly agape, Brontosaurus?

Well, no. It was an Apatosaurus; in reality, there was no such beast named Brontosaurus. It was an error made more than a century prior that had persisted in the public consciousness to this day, when a stunned police officer stood bleeding on the side of a dirt road watching the animal rumble off toward a city.

It was pale green on the lower part of its body. Further up, the green became darker, and the skin was mottled with brown spots on the upper portion of its legs, sides, tail and neck. The spine along its seventy feet of length was fairly rigid, stretching out parallel to the ground and only swaying a bit as the beast trampled away. The head was looking left and right and the tip of the tail was flickering madly in every direction. Other than a couple of deep, almost unnatural-sounding bellows, the only sound to be heard was the thumping.

After the dinosaur disappeared over a crest in the road, Daniels wiped the blood off his face with the back of his hand. Before making another move, he scanned the horizon for anything else out of the ordinary. Nothing. He took three steps up the slight hill to the road and looked into the tree line where the Apatosaurus had emerged. A few trees were broken or damaged, but no other prehistoric animals seemed ready to lunge into the daylight.

Wilson shook his head a bit to get his bearings. He looked back to the field where he had first ... arrived and to the farm house beyond that. The house and barn were now about a mile away. He nodded his head slowly when he decided to go there after all.

Daniels glanced down at the overturned car and strode to its side. He leaned down and pulled