Their GPS lost its signal roughly three hours after they left town.

"It's only picking up one satellite," Nick grumbled, hitting it with his palm and then tossing it aside in favor of the map.

"Welcome to the middle of nowhere," AJ had said.

That was at least an hour ago.

AJ grunted as the Jeep hit something, a rock probably, and the large cooler slid across the seat, pushing AJ into the door. He shoved the cooler back toward the other side of the car, and held it there. As he adjusted to give himself more space he accidentally kicked the back of the seat in front of him.

"Hey," Nick said, his voice a little muffled. He craned his neck to look back at AJ, the map he held crinkling in his palms. "Get your knees out of my back."

"Move your seat forward," AJ countered.

"I have long legs," Nick sniffed. "I need more room than you do."

"I have no room," AJ pointed out as Kevin hit another rock in the road and the cooler threatened to flatten AJ for the sixth time since they'd left the motel that morning. AJ caught it before it pressed him into the door again, but he wasn't able to catch the bag of rock hammers that rested on top. They fell to the floor, just barely missing his foot. "Fuck, Kev."

"Sorry," Kevin said, leaning over the steering wheel so that his face was close to the windshield. "Nick, where are we on the map?"

Nick turned back around to face the front and leaned over the map spread across his lap. "Um," he said. "It looks like the site should be right over this next rise." He pointed ahead of them and Kevin nodded. AJ turned to look out the window.

The desert stretched around them on either side, hard and unyielding. The sun illuminated the dust that billowed up from the road behind them. Road. A term AJ used loosely in this instance. More like following a few old tire tracks in a sea of gravel and dry shrubs. The Jeep bounced on the rough terrain and AJ's forehead smacked against the window.

"Shit," He grumbled. He'd had the window open for awhile, but that had been earlier, before the need for the air conditioner (which barely worked) had become undeniable, and anyway, sand kept flying into his eyes, even with his sunglasses on.

The Jeep slowed to a stop and Kevin leaned even further over the steering wheel.

"Hm," he said, and AJ could practically hear his frown.

"Hm?" AJ asked. "Hm, what?" The landscape on this side of the rise looked exactly like that from before.

"This isn't right," Nick said, his finger running along the map.

"There should be a hill over there," Kevin said, pointing to the east. "Is that what you remember?"

"That's what it looked like in the aerial photos," Nick agreed. AJ hadn't looked at the aerial photographs. He hated stereoscopes. Made him go cross-eyed, so when Kevin looked to him for confirmation he just shrugged.

"This isn't it?" he asked.

"No," Kevin said. "It can't be."

"Nick read the map wrong?"

Nick pushed his glasses up on his nose and then flipped AJ off.

"You sure it's not upside down?" AJ persisted, reaching around and trying to grab the map from Nick's lap.

Nick swatted at him and held the map out of reach. "It's not upside down, acritarch."

Ooh. Pulling out the paleontology insults. AJ wasn't even going to bother to ask what it meant. Probably some kind of weird plankton or single celled million year old critter or something, and AJ just didn't care that much. Besides, Kevin wasn't even chuckling, so it couldn't have been that good anyway.

"So what do we do now?" AJ asked instead.

"We go back to that fork. The one that wasn't exactly clear in the directions and we take the other road," Kevin said, hitting the gas and turning the Jeep abruptly so that the cooler once again threatened to knock AJ right out of the car. "You got that fork on the map, Nick?"

"Yep," Nick said, and AJ went back to staring out the window as the Jeep made its way back over the rise.

**

"Okay," Kevin sighed. "This isn't good."

"Well," Nick reasoned. "Maybe this is it. Maybe the photos were deceiving. Or just wrong."

"Maybe," Kevin agreed, opening his door and getting out of the Jeep. AJ watched him stretch in the sun before taking a few steps from the car and staring out at the horizon.

"You think the photos are wrong?" AJ asked Nick.

Nick shrugged. "The survey could have sent the wrong ones or something by mistake, right?"

"Sure," AJ agreed, and moved to get out of the Jeep as well.

The sun was high in the sky now and the heat was oppressive outside of the Jeep. "Whew," AJ said, shaking out his legs to work out the kinks. Nick got out and began to stretch next to him, then crouched down in the shade provided by the Jeep, his back leaning against the passenger side door. He poked at the stones surrounding him, sometimes picking one up before tossing it aside.

AJ walked in circles, anything to keep moving after sitting in that cramped space.

Kevin slapped his hands against the car and then opened the back door, rummaging through the junk they'd brought with them.

"Oh," Nick said, suddenly, looking at one of the stones he'd picked up.

"What is it?" Kevin asked, hauling the cooler out of the backseat and dropping it onto the ground. He pulled the map from the front and set it on top of the cooler.

"This isn't the right spot," Nick said, and tossed the stone to Kevin.

Kevin caught it and turned it over in his palm, frowning. "Shit," he said.

"What?" AJ asked, coming to stand beside Kevin. Kevin handed him the stone and AJ looked it over, the honeycomb pattern still visible despite the obviously weathered surface. "Coral?" he asked.

"Rugose coral," Nick nodded. "Went extinct at the end of the Paleozoic. We're in the wrong era."

"Great," AJ said, tossing the coral over his shoulder. Kevin's beasts didn't even show up on the scene for several million years. The fossil bounced off the hood of the Jeep and landed somewhere on the other side. "What now?"

"Just let me look at the map for a minute," Kevin said, sitting on the ground beside the cooler.

"So the directions are just wrong then?" AJ asked, kicking at the tires of the Jeep. "How'd you manage that?"

Kevin sighed. "The guy that I talked to didn't speak much English, okay? We went over them twice but I must have misunderstood. Just give me a minute to think."

"Great," AJ said again, walking over to where Nick was rummaging through the trunk of the Jeep, pulling out bread and peanut butter.

"Sandwich?" Nick asked, holding up the jar of peanut butter.

"When is Brian getting here?"

"Few days," Nick said. "The camera guy shows up a day or two after that. At least I think that's what Kev said." It would be at least a week before the actual camera crew arrived, but the network wanted to send at least one camera to follow them around during the initial stages of the dig, which was why Kevin had decided to come out a few days earlier than he'd originally intended. It was starting to look like that had been an excellent call. The last thing they needed was a television audience knowing that they couldn't read a map, or get proper directions. Kevin must be embarrassed enough without a camera guy following their every move.

Nick handed AJ a peanut butter sandwich. "Thanks," AJ said, taking it from Nick.

He leaned against the back of the Jeep and took a bite of the sandwich, watched Kevin hunched over their map, cursing under his breath. Nick brought Kevin and sandwich a then came back to stand beside AJ.

"We're going to have to tone down the language with the cameras here," AJ noted.

"Shit, yeah," Nick nodded and then grinned, the sun shining off the lenses of his wire framed glasses. He pulled his baseball cap from where it was stuffed in the waistband of his jeans and slid it over his hair before taking another bite of his sandwich.

"We should probably get it all out before then. Make it a little easier on ourselves," AJ noted.

"Fucking right, we should," Nick said, stifling a giggle through a mouth full of peanut butter.

"Asshole," AJ said, and Nick knocked into his side in retaliation, grabbing for AJ's sandwich. AJ pushed him away and shoved the remainder of the sandwich into his mouth before Nick could grab it.

"Okay," Kevin said, standing up and point at the map. "I'm pretty sure we should be over here," Kevin said.

"Pretty sure?"

"Almost positive," Kevin corrected. He walked back toward the Jeep, still looking at the map and leaving Nick and AJ to return the cooler to the backseat.

"Fucker," AJ snorted, picking up one side of the cooler and waiting for Nick to grab the other end.

**

"Fuck," Kevin said, kicking at the ground until he'd created a nice little cloud of dust. "Fuck."

"Three strikes - " AJ started, but Kevin cut him off with another "fuck."

"What now?" Nick asked, looking at his watch.

They were in a shallow asymmetrical valley, the walls sloping up on either side of them. The valley floor was broad and barren, just a few dry looking shrubs sticking out here and there. Even from the Jeep AJ could see bedrock outcrops on the valley's edges. The eastern side, the steeper of the two slopes, appeared stepped in some spots due to differential erosion. To AJ, it looked more promising than the last two times they'd stopped the Jeep. There was no hill in sight though. Not the kind that Kevin was looking for anyway. Not the kind that the photos had indicated.

"It's getting dark," Nick pointed out, probably trying to jump start Kevin into action.

Kevin swore one more time and then sighed. "I don't want to get us lost," he said.

AJ held his tongue.

"So then what's the plan?" Nick asked. "Stay here until morning?"

"And then what?" AJ asked.

"Start over tomorrow," Kevin said, pulling open the trunk of the Jeep and grabbing the large tent. "There's not much else we can do at this point."

They'd left most of their equipment back at the motel, but they'd brought plenty of food and water, and Kevin's large tent because Kevin had planned for them to stay at the site that night anyway just to become familiar with the surroundings.

"Fucking sucks," Nick said, coming up beside AJ after the tent was set up. AJ slung his pack over his shoulder and grabbed two sleeping bags.

"Fucking right it does," he agreed, tossing a bag to Nick.

**

"Okay," AJ said, shoving at Nick. "Move the fuck over." He'd had to deal with that damn cooler all day, he wasn't playing that game with Nick as well.

"I'm freezing," Nick protested, moving his sleeping bag even closer to AJ. AJ tried to move his further away, but he couldn't go far without ending up on top of Kevin. Nick shifted around some more. "Also, there's a rock or something over there. It was sticking into my back."

"I don't care," AJ said. "Go cozy up to someone else. I'm not your fucking stuffed animal."

"Well than switch spots with me," Nick suggested. "Give me the middle of the tent."

"And sleep on the rock? I don't think so," AJ said.

"Well then give Kevin the middle. Kevin's comfortable with his sexuality. He'll share his body heat, right Kev?"

"No thanks," Kevin grumbled. He'd said little since they'd begun setting up camp and Nick and AJ had pretty much left him alone. Kevin didn't like to screw up and he'd spent an entire day doing just that.

"I'm comfortable with my sexuality," AJ protested. "Why don't you go sleep in the car or something?"

"Yeah, okay," Nick said, but didn't move. "I can't believe we had to trade Brian in for you. Why are you here again?"

"I'm Kevin's field assistant, dipshit. I'm here because he's paying me."

"Jesus," Kevin said, flipping around in his sleeping bag to face away from them. "Will you two just go to sleep? We're getting up with the sun tomorrow."

Great, AJ thought, but then, the sooner they found the damn site, the sooner they could go back to town and spend a day or two in the motel's pool while they waited for Brian's plane to arrive. AJ had yet to actually meet Brian, but he'd heard enough about the former owner of his office space to last him a lifetime.

Nick pushed closer to AJ until AJ had his back up against Kevin's. He shoved at Nick a little, but Nick just grunted and didn't budge, and AJ had to admit that he was much warmer than he had been moments before.

"Fuck it," he grunted. "Good night."

Nick laughed, and AJ shoved him once more just out of principle, before settling into his sleeping bag and shutting his eyes.

**

Kevin had the map spread on the hood of the Jeep when AJ stumbled out of the tent, still pulling on his boots. AJ couldn't even guess how long Kevin had been up, but judging by the frown on his face it had been awhile.

"Morning," AJ said, coming up to stand beside Kevin.

"Hey," Kevin said.

"So what's the agenda?"

Kevin sighed. "We're going to have to head back to the university, talk to my contact again. Figure out where we went wrong, I guess. We have to be in town to meet up with Brian and Howie day after tomorrow and then we have another day before the first camera guy arrives. So three days to figure this fucking mess out."

"Plenty of time," AJ said, rubbing Kevin's shoulder.

"Who makes a fucking documentary based on a PhD candidate and a bunch of fumbling graduate students anyway? They should be fucking following Jack Horner around or something."

"You know what you're doing," AJ said. And he did. Kevin always knew what he was doing, even when they poked at him and joked around saying otherwise. "It'll be fine. It'll be great, Kev."

"Maybe," Kevin said. "I'm going to go wake Nick. We've gotta get going."

AJ nodded. "I'm gonna take a piss."

They headed off in opposite directions, Kevin back toward the tent and AJ toward a patch of dead looking brush. AJ tripped over a large cobble, cursing, and kept moving toward the brush at the base of the western slope. The valley floor was littered with debris from further up slope and AJ, still at least slightly asleep, tripped once more before stopping to relieve himself.

Nick stumbled over to stand beside him as he was zipping his jeans back up.

"Hey," Nick said, his hair a tangle of blond, sticking out every which way. "My fucking back is killing me."

"Cool," AJ said. "You're riding with the cooler today."

"Fuck you too," Nick said, but he was smiling now, and AJ decided to let him piss in peace.

Kevin was disassembling the tent and AJ started heading over to help, but he didn't get far before he stumbled over another loose cobble. He glanced down at it and was about to keep going when something caught his eyes. AJ wasn't a bone guy, he wasn't a sedimentary guy at all. Lava flows were AJ's thing, but he'd spent enough time around Nick and Kevin, remembered enough about freshman biology, and had enough common sense to recognize a large vertebrae when he saw one.

"Hey, Nick," AJ said, glancing back toward Nick. "Come take a look at this."

"What is it?" Nick asked, coming up beside AJ after a moment, wiping his hands on the back of his jeans.

AJ pointed toward the cobble he'd tripped on.

"Whoa," Nick said, knocking it a little with the toe of his boot. "We should probably get Kevin over here."

AJ called for him, and after a bit of convincing, Kevin dropped the tent poles and headed in their direction.

"Yeah?" he asked. "I really want to get going."

"You should see this first," Nick said, pointing to the vertebrae. "AJ chose the bathroom and tripped over this on the way. Looks like this guy had a pretty big back."

Kevin reached for it and then paused, his hand hovering over the fossil. He turned to look up at AJ. "You didn't piss on it, did you?"

"Nope," AJ said, hooking a thumb back over his shoulder toward the bushes where he'd relieved himself moments before.

Kevin picked up the large vertebrae, turning it over in his hands. He ran his fingers along it and then peered up the valley. "It must have come loose from somewhere up slope," he said. "Maybe that bedrock exposure there?" He pointed to some exposed beds.

"Think there's more of it up there?" Nick asked.

"Good chance," Kevin said, smiling at them.

"So what does this mean?" AJ asked.

"Means we've got a new site," Kevin said, setting the vertebrae down. He poked at some of the surrounding talus, kicking aside the loose stone.

"What about the old site?" AJ asked, frowning.

"We don't know where the old site is," Nick pointed out.

"But you don't want to find it anymore?" AJ asked Kevin, following him along the floor of the valley.

"Why bother when we've already got a lead right here?" AJ nodded and then wondered why he'd argued the point in the first place. If they were done traipsing about the desert blindly, that was more than fine with him.

Kevin began walking up the slope.

"Just out of curiosity," AJ started again after a moment had passed, "How did you choose the first site?"

"Internet search," Kevin said, absently. Squatting to examine a small piece of limestone.

"Internet search?"

"Yeah," Kevin said. "There were some stories online. A few locals claimed they'd found some strange looking stuff somewhere out here. Tracked them down, talked to the geologists at the local university, and that was that."

"Oh," AJ said, nodding. "So this is it now, then."

"Sure is," Kevin grinned and cuffed AJ's shoulder. "Let's check this out, and the other side over there," Kevin pointed across the flat expanse of the valley floor to the gentle slope on the opposite side, "and then get our butts back to the motel. I recall you mentioning something about a pool?"

"Fuck, yeah," AJ said, pushing his baseball cap down further on his forehead and following Nick and Kevin up the slope.