The day had been going well, up to that point. Then my walkie chirped into life. “Base to Mason. Mason, you got your ears on?”

I checked my safety line was still securely clipped on.

“Come on, Mason! I know you’re still in range. Pick up.”

I double-checked the line, then finally pulled the walkie from my belt. “How about giving a guy a chance to breathe, before you start ragging on him to pick up? Mason here, and it better be god-damn important after that. I was on top of four, checking the feed lines. Over.”

“I’m getting screwy readings from the top field, Mason. I need you to get eyes on tanks one and two. Can’t tell exactly what it is. Take a full kit. Reckon you can make it there within the hour? Over.”

“Hold for two, base? I’m gonna take a look with the binoculars. Over.”

I clipped the walkie back to my belt and pulled my binoculars from around my neck. I had been about to do these checks next anyway. If they had waited a few more minutes, I would have been able to tell them exactly what the problem was. We always did visual checks on the top field when we were up on tanks three or four. As I started to adjust the zoom control, it became clear that I was wasting my time.

“Mason to base. No immediate eyeball from the top of four. If you give me ten minutes, I’ll try again from three. Wait, out.”

Phipps was the operator back at base control. He knew when to wait, but he had a funny sense of humour about giving me a hard time.

Eighty steps, ten sets of eight stairs. But I was flying down them. It was always faster going down, normally because by this point in the day I’d be due to head back to base to write up my daily report. Most of the ten minutes I’d asked Phipps to wait were spent walking up to the top of tank number three. Getting down was easy, there were two quick ways down.

The second method wasn’t exactly by the book though.

I was starting to breathe heavily by the time I reached the catwalk at the top of the tenth set of steps on tank number three. I took several deep breaths, trying to calm my heart rate. Then I looked through the binoculars again. Nothing but green from here too. Damn it. “Mason to base. No immediate eyeball from the top of three either, Phipps. I guess I’m going in. I’ll log back in before I reach blackout point. Mason out.”

The tanks weren’t considered to be a great height. You had to wear a safety line during inspections, but that was just down to bureaucracy and regulations. If those people had any clue what I was about to do next, they’d have had kittens. Dozens of them.

But now wasn’t the time to be worrying about people like that. There was a problem in the top field, and it needed to be inspected as fast as humanly possible.

By BASE jumping standards, the towers shouldn’t have even been possible. But I’d given them a once over on my first day on the job, and ever since I’d been determined to find out if a safe jump was even possible. I guess it looked like I was about to find out the hard or messy way.

I wore the chute all the time, I packed it myself, as every self-respecting jumper does. I had it more as a back-up plan, in the event my safety line ever failed. Today I was finally going to use it for its actual purpose. I walked to the centre of the catwalk that led out onto the inspection platform and slowly climbed over the waist-high barrier. I checked the safety line and finally unclipped it. Then I took the drogue chute into my right hand and jumped as far away from the catwalk as I could, throwing the drogue into the air behind me.

There’s a moment for BASE jumpers. It’s the most frightening fraction of a second, the time between jumping and chute deploying, so you don’t plummet to your death, or break most of the bones in your body. I call it the flumf.

It’s the sound of reassurance, the noise which means you’re going to live to jump another day. Flumf, the sound of air filling your chute. The sound of you failing to reach terminal velocity. Thank god and the baby Jesus for flumf.

Less than two seconds later I was braking, running onto the grass and already rotating my body to start gathering up my chute before it hit the ground too.

You aren’t supposed to pack a chute as you walk, but I didn’t have a choice or the time to spare. I wasn’t even walking either, I was more half-running to reach the truck as fast as possible. Two minutes. I’d have to either check or repack it later.

*     *     *
My foot was stuck to the floor the entire time until I saw the signs at the side of the dirt track we laughingly called a road. It was gradually getting worse by the day now, eroding in places; what little asphalt that did still exist was cracked where the grasses and shrubs had begun to reclaim nature’s domain. I quickly feathered the brakes a dozen times in succession, hitting the posted marker precisely.

Any further, the truck would be useless. Over a thousand pounds of inert metal, not something one average man would be able to push back across the blackout point.

“Mason to base. I’ve reached the blackout point. If you hear explosions, that’s just me doing a little deforestation. Someone let those damn trees grow too long, probably that asshole Mercer, I’d wager. If I don’t come back, be sure he fixes this mess himself. I’ll leave the walkie in the truck. You know who to call if I don’t make it, Phipps. Mason out.”

Phipps was thanking his lucky stars right now that I hadn’t let him interrupt me. I loaded the dynamite into my pack, then realised my mistake. I wasn’t going to be able to carry the repair pack and wear my chute too. What to do, leave it behind? Not an option; who knew what I might run into on the top field? We went there as infrequently as we had to. All kinds of weird stuff came through that rift.

Thankfully, most of it realised this side wasn’t exactly a greener kind of grass and went right back, or least it went back sooner, rather than later. Though in the past I had heard all kinds of roars and growls there that were most definitely not mountain lions or pumas.

I knew exactly what those sounded like, having heard them hundreds of times before. Then I smiled to myself. I could wear the chute and the repair pack too. It was just a matter of turning the chute the wrong way around so it was on my chest, not my back. Now I could sling the repair pack across my back and start the long hike up towards the top field.

Wait. Not so fast.

I slowly pushed just my head beyond the signpost denoting the start of the blackout point. Of course, it was raining over there. So I quickly pulled my head back again, wiping the water from my head and face. I went back to the truck and pulled my rain slicker from the cab, draping it across the repair pack. Wet dynamite was no use to anyone. Then I saw my hat, stashed under the passenger seat. So I went around to the other door and pulled it out, placing it onto my head. It didn’t matter if me or my chute got wet. The repair pack was the only important thing.

*     *     *
We found the blackout point five years ago, entirely by accident. Well, it wasn’t me, it was Mercer.

He’d been called out to inspect a leak on tank number one, so of course, he set off hell for leather, pedal totally to the metal and not sparing the horses. He had no clue why his engine suddenly stopped working, at what was then a seemingly random point on the track up to the top field. Obviously, he tried to get the thing going again; all of us knew enough to repair most of the vehicles we’ve got in the fleet.

To no avail, unfortunately for him.

So Mercer called for help, or at least he tried to. Because that’s when he found that not only did his truck no longer function, his lifeline, his walkie, was dead too.

All the technicians in the division knew from personal experience that the walkies had always worked up in the top field before. If anything on the plant was liable to break first, it almost always seemed to be in the top field. It was the highest point, exposed to the worst of the weather. That was generally where we spent most of our time, fixing leaks, replacing coolant lines, tightening cover plates.

Up until that day, the top field had been our bread and butter. Good overtime, thanks to the top field. But no, that asshole Mercer had to go and ruin it for everyone.

In hindsight, I guess that if it hadn’t been him that discovered the blackout point, it probably would have been me, and right now it would have been my name he’d have been cursing in my place. It wasn’t me who went down to rescue him though, I wasn’t even on shift that day, nor was I on call either. Not that it didn’t mean I wasn’t there that first day.

I ended up going to rescue the guys who were rescuing the rescuers.

I had heard Phipps over the walkie, just before I got there. “Don’t come flying down the road, Mason! Stop before the four-mile marker, and make god-damn sure that you do. Or they’ll be rescuing you too, man!” Jesus H Mulgrue. It had been serious if he’d been called from control to go save their miserable asses.

And now I was saving his miserable ass. Not that he hadn’t got me out of a ton of hard spots in the past.

As I rolled to a halt by the four-mile marker, Phipps was standing in the middle of the road, waving his arms above his head wildly, like some sort of crazy person. “Mason, do not go any further, man. There’s something just in front of you which kills engines and electrical devices stone dead. I need you to undo your winch cable. I’ll hook it up to my truck.”

I was about to say that I couldn’t even see his truck.

“I know, Mason. You can’t see the damn thing. Trust me, it’s just a few feet past the marker. I’ll undo my cable and hook up to Green. He can hook up to Mercer, and you can be the big hero who saved all our miserable asses, okay? They’ll owe you drinks forever. We all will. No more shitty duties for you, Mason!”

I was confused as all hell, but Phipps dragged that winch cable and as soon as he walked beyond the four-mile marker, he completely vanished. Like he went from being into non-existence. Only for about thirty seconds or so, I guess that was all the time it took him to hook the winch to the back of his truck. Because all of a sudden, there he was again, like he had just torn through matter.

Phipps could clearly see the look on my face and questions I wanted to ask. “Listen, Mason, don’t ask how it works, or what the hell it even is. Just accept that it’s there, and it’s stopping us getting back again under our own steam. Fire that winch up and start backing your truck the hell away from this sign.”

So, that was exactly what I did. I had never argued with Phipps before, and he had never given me a reason to doubt his word either. Phipps wasn’t one of those guys who liked to play pranks. If he said something invisible had a bunch of trucks inside it, it was true. I hadn’t backed up any more than a few feet before I could see Phipps’ truck simply materialising in front of mine. And when it got far enough, I saw him lean out of the window and give me a massive thumbs up. When his front bumper finally cleared the invisible barrier, Phipps was able to start his truck too.

So now it was both of us pulling.

Sure enough, mere minutes later I could see the familiar buckled tailgate which Green was so proud of, for all the wrong reasons. And finally Mercer and his truck, a few more minutes after that.

We painted a white line across the asphalt that day. Mercer still had to go up to the top field, lugging all his gear by hand. But at least we knew it was there now.

*     *     *
Even from that very first day there had been weird reports. Odd creatures sighted, things that couldn’t possibly be. But then again, an invisible barrier which stopped engines and electrical devices couldn’t possibly exist either, unless it was some classified government experiment run amok.

As I hiked through the pouring rain, I knew I had to keep moving up the road, no matter what. I hadn’t bothered slinging the shotgun across my shoulder too; I knew that the beasts around these parts wouldn’t even be mildly bothered by it. I’d loaded more than triple my desired amount of dynamite though. Better to be safe than sorry!

As the hill began to grow steeper, the original road dwindled to a footpath. It was hard to believe that we had ever driven diggers and loaders up here, once upon a time, what felt like a million years or so ago. Now I had to watch my footing on every step; the rocks were slimy, caked in some kind of green algae we’d never been able to identify, but the damn crap got everywhere! The number of times I’d had to syphon it from the various feed pipes leading to and from the tanks on the top field.

The rain had finally let up now, and the grass started to reach above my knees at this point. This was where things started feeling uncomfortable, with that sensation that anything could be hiding inside it. And it certainly wouldn’t be friendly. Going by the noises I’d heard before, it definitely wasn’t going to be friendly.

As I rounded the crest of the hill, I could see tank number one. And a tree, snaking up and around a quarter of its dome. I’d have to blast that off for sure, half a stick, by my best estimate. I cut in under the dome, planting half a stick of dynamite from my pack, then began walking backwards, paying out enough fuse wire to get a safe enough distance away to drop the tree and not get hit by any potential shrapnel from the blast, either.

I was at the southernmost caution sign when I saw it. Well, them. Dinosaurs!

Then a memory from a childhood book came to mind. Brachiosaurus.

At least I wasn’t in any immediate danger of being eaten by these enormous creatures. They only ate plants. Probably the same plants that were now beginning to overcome tanks one and two.

I had wound out a fuse that equated to about twenty minutes burn time and now I set it alight. Then I started sprinting for the tree at the side of tank number two. I set a fourteen-minute wire in the stick I left there, and then started up the stairs as quickly as I could, given the unsteady footing. God damn you, algae!

By the time I reached the top, I could just about make out my fuse by tank number one.

It wasn’t a loud explosion, but it was certainly enough of a shock-wave to spook the three brachiosaurs. I could feel the vibration of their feet as they lumbered away from the noise, immediately perceived as a danger to themselves and their child. For that was what they clearly were, a family group, father, mother, and child. The brachiosaurs moved so heavily, I barely even felt the second explosion below me. And I was standing directly above it.

I heard both the trees hitting the ground though. My quick and dirty placings had worked exactly as I’d hoped they would, detonating outwards, pushing the trees away from the superstructure. I wasn’t sure if it was the shockwaves of the explosions, but the air up here on the catwalks suddenly felt a great deal warmer than it ever had before. I couldn’t recall the ambient air currents being this hot when I’d done previous inspections. Then again, I’d never seen any dinosaurs mooching about the place before either.

We assumed it was some kind of temporal rift, at least those of us who watched too much sci-fi on television did. It felt a lot like an episode of Stargate, coming up here. I had only heard growls and roars before; now I had witnessed living creatures with my own eyes. And suddenly found myself wondering if Green or Mercer had ever seen anything like this and been too nervous or embarrassed to call it in to Phipps.

Not that it mattered right now. I had to check both the tanks and blast some trees from the perimeter, so we’d be able to do visual inspections without constantly having to come here in person.

I checked all the dials and gauges on tank two; everything looked okay. The numbers were slightly higher than normal, but nothing massively outside of acceptable safe limits. So I decided to set the dynamite around the tree line, then run my fuse wires back to the base of tank number one. I figured that overkill was the better option, having seen how quickly the trees had grown since our last inspection, so I strapped up a little over half my sticks around the bases of the tallest trees on the edge of the field. I knew there was enough power for each of those sticks to not only drop the trees they were strapped to, but at least three or four of the trees closest to them as well.

Happy with my set-up, I wandered back to tank number one, paying out the fuse wire as I went. I could no longer see the family of brachiosaurs now. I hoped they’d been scared enough to go back through the rift. If they had any sense, they’d return to somewhere familiar, a place they all felt safe. So I lit the fuse and started walking up the steps to the top of tank number one.

I’d almost completed the inspection when the first stick went off, followed by the cacophony of all the others, and the trees falling no more than a few hundred metres away from where I was standing.

The roar I heard immediately afterwards made all my hair stand on end. I figure that most people have seen Jurassic Park, so I don’t need to describe what a raptor looks like. Or even what fourteen raptors looked like. At least that was my rough count, and boy, were they pissed off!

I can only guess that they had been hunting in the treeline, near where I had planted half of my dynamite. And now I’d spooked a whole pack of them, out into the open. Where the only food source was currently standing no more than a few hundred metres away from them.

Yours truly, fresh meat.

Things I knew about raptors: They hunted in pairs, they moved fast, and they had razor-sharp talons, used for slashing prey. They were pretty smart too.

And now running towards the bottom of the stairs.

The actual stairs themselves did slow them down. Thank god for algae! The delay was only about eight seconds, which was all the time it took them to work out how to start climbing.

Then I was in a bad place, at the top of tank number one, with no way back down those stairs. What to do? What to do?

When my repair pack dug into my spine, I soon remembered. I was still wearing my chute! Admittedly, I had it on backwards, and I hadn’t exactly packed it under optimal conditions, but I had it. And I was going to have to trust it with my life or end up as dinner for a bunch of angry ravenous raptors. A pack. Or whatever the hell their collective name was.

Meat hungry bastards. Yes, that was probably it.

I quickly shucked off my pack, primed the rest of my dynamite, lit the shortest fuse I still had left, and tossed it over the side. Where it landed with a sickening thud. That attracted the attention of some of the Raptors, who were right on top of it, and about to slice it to ribbons when the remaining dynamite went off.

Never let it be said that raptors can’t fly. Well, exploded bits of them certainly can.

Not that it mattered. I only had about ten seconds left, nowhere near enough time to take my chute off and put it on correctly. Or even enough time to consider repacking it. I had to jump in the next few seconds and hope. Hope that my chute deployed and that I could toggle my way over the heads of the raptors who were still alive and majorly pissed off, down on the ground below me. Or hope it didn’t and that I broke my neck on impact. Because at least then I wouldn’t be alive to know how much trouble I was in.

I felt the hot gusts of air around the tower again. Could it be? Was something creating a kind of thermal updraft? Was this my way out? Then I heard the clanking of raptor claws on the catwalk. No time left for thinking. I jumped, tossing my drogue chute over my shoulder.

And goddamn it but if that thing didn’t open exactly as it was designed to. Being worn back to front, and it still functioned correctly. If there’s a God, I’ll thank him or her later. For the updraft of warm air that began to lift me too.

I wasn’t falling.

Physics said I should be, but apparently, God disagreed, so physics had to politely go and fuck itself.

I quickly located my braking toggles, using them to gain more altitude. I could steer now and started making my way back down the hill, towards the blackout point. I had no idea what it would do to a parachute, but with several raptors still chasing me on the ground, I had no other choice. I couldn’t hope to circle on uncertain thermals forever. I had to get the hell out of there while it was still feasible.

At least I know how the passage through the blackout point affects a parachute now. Luckily for me, it was not at all.

I knew exactly where my truck was parked. In fact, I landed a few steps in front of it. As fast as raptors are, I had ground effect in my favour, and twenty years of jumping experience too. They didn’t follow me. I assume seeing me suddenly disappear into thin air confused the merry hell out of their tiny minds. Whatever it did, it gave me long enough to gather up my chute, start the truck, and get the heck out of there.

*     *     *
We erected twelve-foot-high metal fence panels the next day, for ten miles in either direction. And they were completely flat on the back, so anything with claws would find them impossible to climb. Or at least that’s what I hope.

I’m not the next one scheduled to inspect the top field. Oh no. I’m off all shitty duties forever now!

“What’s with the retractable ladder, Mason?”

Mercer will find out soon enough, the asshole. Oh boy, will he find out!