Right Hook Entry: Bear Country

    The  Exchange announced itself with a distant clap of thunder.  It came ten minutes early according to Bret Harding's watch.  At 12:02 he was hacking away at the weed-covered ground less than ten feet inside the stakes that marked off the area slated to go into Bear Country.  The sun was beating down from the cloudless sky.  His hands burned from wielding the shovel.  A trickle of sweat ran down into his eyes and made them sting.  When he looked up he could still see the empty strip-mall parking lot along the side of highway 252 on the outskirts of Rockport, Illinois.  Several thousand other hastily drafted civilians hacked away at the weeds with him, in two lines hopefully just inside and just outside the circle of the Exchange zone.
    Marines with rifles ready stood at intervals inside the line Bret was working on.  A mixture of Marines and state police stood behind the civilians hacking out the other line, on the edge of the territory slated to stay behind. A stream of trucks rumbled up and unloaded their cargoes of civilian workers, equipment, and more Marines.
    At 12:03 Bret heard the clap of thunder and looked at the June sky.  The sun stood directly overhead.  Surrounding it, the sky was now clear in a perfect but off-center circle of blue stretching halfway to the horizon.  Outside that circle, dark gray clouds moved quickly, ominously.
The perfection of the circle lasted for no more than a couple of seconds, then air from the two timelines mixed. Bret felt cool wind and droplets of rain in his face.
      The strip mall disappeared, replaced by a long, low hill covered with prairie grass and groves of trees.  Most of the stakes marking the boundary of the Exchange area disappeared too.  Bret  took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then muttered, “They guessed wrong by ten minutes and by a good three feet.”
    He stopped digging for a second, enjoying the breeze.  That earned him a glare from a short, barrel-shaped female Marine standing guard behind him.  She said, “Widen it another foot, then get your sorry soft-handed carcass out of the way.”
    Bret looked at his hands, then down at his gray dress pants and white shirt, now stained with sweat and dirt.  “Hey, I’m a biology teacher, not a farmer.”  He started digging again, keeping a wary eye on Bear Country.  He glanced back at the Marine.  “Think you can handle ice age animals on steroids?”
    The Marine grunted.  “If it moves, I shoot it.”
    “And if it keeps moving?”
    The Marine didn’t say anything.
    “Can you shoot a bug, or a bat smaller than a grasshopper, or a virus?  That’s what they’re really afraid of.  If the animals over here get loose back in the world and start breeding—”