by Steve Cole
Yawning, Adam crossed to the window. The stars were fading as the first peeps of sun warmed up New Mexico, slowly lifting the mountains’ shadows. Then he caught a sudden movement some way off, like a ripple on the air—as if something had just flitted across the sky at impossible speed. He stared hard into the brightening orange of daybreak, but didn’t see the movement again.
“Great,” Adam murmured. “Now I’m losing it.”
He’d started talking to himself a lot since Dad had gone. He’d spent the days gaming, cycling around the lonely industrial park and bugging his friends back in Edinburgh on Instant Messenger. At least they hadn’t totally forgotten him. And he’d gone to bed each night listening out for his father, hoping to catch the turn of the key and the front door squeaking open. But the night remained stubbornly silent, loaded with uneasy dreams.
Yesterday, for want of something better to do, he’d tried hanging out around Dad’s workplace here in the industrial park. But the team who’d used to joke around with him as their resident “test case” weren’t so friendly now. It turned out that their unit had been broken into a couple of days ago, with tons of gear nicked. And just the next day, Adam’s dad had told them he wouldn’t be coming back to work in the near future.
“Inventors don’t care about anyone,” railed one of Dad’s old team. “They live in a world of their own.”
At least he bothered to tell you, Adam had thought, instead of leaving you to work it out for yourselves. He could be dead for all I know.
Adam flung himself back onto his bed and switched the TV over to News 24 for some company. The Scottish anchorman was on in the mornings, which made Adam feel a little less homesick. Clearly not much had been happening in the world, as all the talk was of a film star couple breaking up and some rubbish about a giant monster spotted in a state park in southern Utah. Nothing exactly serious.
But what if something serious had happened to his dad?
Mr. Adlar had started off calling and mailing as he usually did when he was working away. Then, three days in, a single text message marked the end of all that: Can’t get away. Friends of mine will look in on you soon. Love, Dad.
Adam had been disappointed but not too worried; this wasn’t the first time Dad had become too caught up in his work to talk, feeling himself close to a big breakthrough. It was a pain, but if it led to a contract with these Ponil people back in Edinburgh . . .
He’d nursed the hopeful thought through days four and five, though Dad’s occasional texts had given little encouragement.
And then Dad’s promised friend had turned up—some guy with the stiff, solid bearing of a soldier or security man and the name Frankie Bateman. He was a large, powerfully built guy, formidable looking despite the beer gut hanging over his waistband. “I’m from Fort Ponil. Your dad asked me to look in on you.” Bateman’s thick mustache bristled above the confident smile, and his all-American voice was as deep as the dimple on his chin. “You know, see how you’re doing.”
“When’s Dad coming home?” Adam had asked.
“Real soon.” Bateman kept smiling.
“Can’t I come and visit?”
“We’re actually getting you security clearance right now. Shouldn’t take much longer.”
“Security clearance?” Adam frowned. “Sounds like the military.”
“Nothing like that, really.” Bateman pushed his way inside. “Meantime, your dad asked me to pick up some stuff for him. . . .”
The big man spent ages in Mr. Adlar’s room, but came out with nothing but a few clothes and a sour look. Then he brought in a stack of groceries from the car, and even unpacked it while Adam watched TV. “Don’t eat it all at once, y’hear?” Bateman held up Adam’s Nokia. “Oh, and nice cell phone by the way. . . . I’ve got my eye on one like this.”
“Yeah, it’s all right,” said Adam, though in truth it was nothing special. Bateman had put down the phone and left, promising to check in again in a couple of days.
That had been three days ago. “Chances are, big Frankie’s coming today,” Adam announced out loud. “And if he does, I’ll make him take me to Fort Ponil, security clearance or not. He can drop me in the street if he wants, but I’m going. . . .”
His words sounded stupidly small in the big apartment.
Suddenly, a tremor rattled the pile of dirty dishes in the sink. Weird, Adam thought. Even the biggest trucks turning into the industrial park didn’t normally shake the place like that.
He crossed to the cupboard to get out a bowl for cereal, and noticed his mobile phone on the counter.
One new message, it said, and the words jolted through Adam like fifty thousand volts. He grabbed the phone, saw his dad’s number, saw the text had been sent almost an hour ago. A mixture of relief and anger washed through him. “Nothing at all for ages, then you can’t even be bothered to call and—”
Just as he was about to access the message, the TV switched off. Adam frowned. His digital clock had blinked off too. Maybe the tremor had taken out the local power supply. “Freakin’ fabulous,” Adam muttered. “That’s really going to make things dull around here. . . .”
Then, as if laughing in his face, the tremor came again, much harder this time. It nearly knocked Adam off his feet. Was it an earthquake? Still holding the phone, he crossed quickly to the big picture window to check the street outside for damage. The apartment was two stories up, so if the building was about to collapse . . .
But as he approached the tinted glass, Adam heard a harsh squeal of brakes. A large, dark car had lurched to a stop outside the entrance to the complex, the same Cadillac that had taken his dad what seemed like a lifetime ago. Five men in suits scrambled out of the car like their butts were on fire.
One of them was Frankie Bateman. He wasn’t smiling now.
Bit early, isn’t it? thought Adam, his heart quickening as he watched Bateman gesture to the other men as though snapping out orders. And why bring so many friends? Uneasy now, he looked back at his phone, called up Dad’s message—
Suddenly the whole building lurched and he was thrown so hard against the window he cracked the pane. He dropped the phone. In a daze, he saw the men outside were pulling guns from their jackets and staring around wildly. They started firing into the air.
Adam caught a glimpse of something dark and hazy, a fleeting shadow on reality. Then, impossibly, with a crushing boom of metal, the big black car collapsed in on itself, as if something huge and invisible had slammed on the roof with colossal force. The men in suits fired into the air, looking terrified. Another snatch of shadow movement and the crushed car went flying, rolling over and over in a suicide spin. It smashed into the entrance to the industrial park, buckling the metal gates, the crash of the impact drowning out the gunfire.
Adam stared down at the sudden carnage, fixed to the spot with fright, trying to make sense of what was happening. What do those men think they’re they shooting at?
That same moment, the window shattered over him and the wall spat plaster at his face. Shards of glass fell from Adam’s body and crunched under his sneakers as he snatched up the phone and bolted, terrified, to the other side of the apartment. Whether they mean to or not, he thought, they’re shooting at me! He made to dial 911—but hitting the floorboards must’ve jogged the phone’s battery. It had switched itself off. “Come on,” he muttered, stabbing at the on button. With the window gone, everything was suddenly so much louder, like the world had turned up its volume control.
Even so, nothing prepared Adam for the roar.
It was like an express train thundering past. A wild, unearthly howl that sent vibrations hurtling through his bones. Total panic took hold. Get out. You’ve got to get away. But the madness down below was all happening outside the front doors; he’d never get out that way. . . .
Then Adam remembered the fire escape at the back of the building, an iron zigzag of steps and railings leading down to the ground. He stuffed the phone into his pocket, ran into his dad�
�s bedroom. It felt like his heart was crawling up his throat. Where was the key to the balcony doors? He fell upon the bedside table, yanked open the drawer and emptied it on the bed—just as the balcony exploded inward with a boom that nearly burst his eardrums. He threw himself down behind the bed as brick-shrapnel, glass and wood splinters slashed through the room. Moaning with fear, he yanked the blanket over his head like a shield to deflect the worst of the debris. This whole place is being demolished, he realized. And me with it, if I don’t get out. NOW.
The deadly rain subsided and Adam got back to his feet, shaking and staring. The whole rear wall had been wrenched away, the debris scattered across the street. The fire escape was a twisted relic left dangling like a broken paper chain. What earthquake had the power to do this?
Then, as the pale morning sun stared in at Adam like a startled eye, a chill jumped through him. That same smoky haze he’d spied before was rippling dead ahead, as if the air itself were flexing its muscles. Scraping, scrabbling sounds soon followed, the sound of something hard and heavy-duty gouging out the brickwork downstairs. The gunfire had stopped. Had the men run away or were they—
Suddenly, with a splintering crash, the bedroom floor started to give way beneath Adam’s feet as more of the story below was bashed away. Dad’s large pine dresser scraped across the sloping floorboards and went into free fall, thundering onto the asphalt twenty-two yards below. Adam ran for the door but too late. The floor tilted sharply and he lost his balance, tumbling headlong with the furniture toward the gaping hole in the wall and the sheer drop beyond.
3
SURVIVAL
Adam clawed at the wooden flooring, trying desperately to cling on. But a moment later, he found himself launched into empty space.
The realization screamed at him—A fall from this height could kill me.
In the same split second, Adam grabbed for the twisted remains of the fire escape. His fingers caught and closed around a rail. He gasped, body jerking in midair as he just barely stopped his fall.
The fire escape had been totaled, the last stretch of ladder completely torn away.
The same deafening roar as before bellowed out, this time from inside the building. Something was tearing through the ground floor, trashing everything. . . .
Adam’s fingers were already numb from holding his weight dead in the air. Terrified, he reached for the next rung down, caught hold of it and tried to swing himself across so he’d be closer to the ground. But the rung slipped from his grip and he dropped down the last several meters to the pavement. The impact shook through his body but he staggered up, too scared to linger, and ran to where his mountain bike stood chained. As the sound of more gunfire zinged through the air at the front of the building, Adam tore at the chain’s combination lock with trembling fingers until the catch jumped open. Then he chucked the chain away and swung himself onto the Iron Horse’s saddle.
As he started to pedal away, he saw another black Cadillac speeding toward him along the long, dusty road that bisected the rugged plains this side of the complex. He waved frantically, relief flooding through him. Whoever it was, maybe they could get him away from here.
The Caddy skidded in a wide circle in front of him as the driver expertly pulled a hand brake turn. As it stopped, a tall, blond man leaped out from the backseat. “That’s Adlar’s kid!” he hollered. “Must’ve got past Bateman.”
Another man, bald and burly, scrambled out from the passenger side. “They kind of have their hands full, wouldn’t you say?” The bald man smiled coldly. “So you’re Adam Adlar, right?”
“Right,” Adam answered with a fresh stab of unease. “Did—did my dad send you?”
“Sure,” sneered the first man, pulling out a hand-gun. “Him and the Easter Bunny.”
Adam stared in horror. What in the world was going on?
And then a thick black shadow swooped overhead. In a heartbeat, Adam saw the men’s hard faces twist in terror as they stared up at something above him. They hurled themselves to the ground—
A blink later, a cream-colored convertible dropped from the sky. It landed upside down with a deafening smack on the rear of the black car, crushing it. The windows of both vehicles exploded as the impact sent the Cadillac careening across the road, almost crushing the bald, burly man as he rolled aside to get away.
With a sick feeling, Adam recognized the convertible at once. It was his dad’s rental car, an extravagant indulgence, left parked in the underground garage. So how could it have come flying over the top of the building like a tossed stone . . . ?
A grating, bone-shaking rumble started up. Adam spun back around to find the entire apartment complex starting to collapse. “No way,” he breathed, too shaken to feel much other than a horrified fascination. Then he caught movement, realized that the first man was scrambling back up with his gun—
Jerking to life, Adam stood up on the pedals and powered away.
“Get back here, kid!” the man screamed.
Adam ignored him, clicking upward through ten gears in half as many seconds. Half deafened by the cacophony of falling concrete, he pushed himself faster, shooting out from behind the crumbling corner of the block. He glimpsed Bateman and a friend running for the hills, while the other suited man lay sprawled over the remains of the Caddy. Adam didn’t stop. Broken bricks chased him across the road as his home, his whole world, came crashing down around him. But fear had numbed him and all he could think about was to keep on pedaling. Approaching the entrance to the industrial park, he swerved neatly and tightly through the gap in the battered gates, and only then did he risk a backward glance.
A split second later, Adam gripped the brakes, jamming the wheels, almost hurling himself over the handlebars.
What. Is. THAT—?
A cloud of thick white dust shrouded the space where the apartment building once stood. But the powder seemed to be settling impossibly in midair to reveal the hideous outline of a monster standing astride the debris, as big as a bus. Adam glimpsed what could have been a thick, snaking tail, a ridged back, a huge reptilian head. Then the dust was shaken away with a bestial roar that nearly burst his eardrums and all suggestion of a monster seemed to vanish.
In blind panic, Adam pedaled away with a strength he never knew he possessed, his tires singing over the tarmac. He remembered that so-called news story: Giant monster spotted in southern Utah. Suddenly it didn’t seem so crazy anymore.
He hung a reckless left turn at the first junction he came to, and then turned right, desperate to put cover and distance between him and the thing he had seen. Adam’s calf muscles knotted as he pushed the pedals faster. His breath scraped in his throat. But over the noise of his flight he could hear the heavy pounding of footsteps behind him.
It’s following.
Adam took another corner, leaning hard into the turn, chanced another look behind him. Nothing. But if the thing was invisible it could—
A blare of horns made Adam face front—to find a huge truck had pulled out from a junction just ahead of him. Adam knew he was going too fast to swerve aside or to stop in time. Instead, he threw himself from his saddle and dived underneath the trailer, between the two pairs of wheels. The jarring clang of his bike as it struck the undercarriage was an explosion in his ears. He landed heavily, crying out as he skidded across the asphalt.
For a second he lay dead still in shock. His body ached, burning in places like it was on fire, but he forced himself to scramble from beneath the truck and to his feet. The driver had thrown open the door, a big, burly, bearded guy looking anxious as he started out of the cab.
“No, don’t. Stay where you are, please!” Adam limped quickly around to the passenger side and threw open the door. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“We?” The truck driver stared at him. “What are you talking about—?”
“That!” Adam stabbed a finger at one of the huge wing mirrors, which showed a view of the intersection behind them. The ripple in the ai
r was turning darker, like a deepening, scaly scratch on the surface of reality. Again, Adam thought he could make out the outline of some hideous giant creature, but the faint form kept blurring into shapes that his mind couldn’t make sense of.
The color had drained from the trucker’s face as he slid back into his seat. “What is that thing?”
“Whatever it is, it’s tearing up the whole neighborhood.” Adam slammed the passenger door and belted up. “Please, get us out of here!”
From the way the trucker started whimpering, Adam guessed he’d got the message. Gunning the engine, the big man gripped the steering wheel and took the truck out onto the road. It accelerated away, but painfully slowly. Adam kept his eyes on the reflection, biting his lip as the weird, monstrous shadow creature pounded toward them. It was getting closer with every second. Any moment now it would catch up and then—
Suddenly a deeper note sounded in the bloodcurdling shriek—and whatever it was stopped coming. The sound of tearing metal carried down the empty street, and as the truck finally growled around the corner, Adam saw a massive chunk of corrugated iron sail through the air and land with a brutal crash.
The trucker crossed himself. “That looked like most of the factory roof.”
Adam nodded slowly. “What kind of factory?”
“Meatpacking plant.” The man’s eyes were flicking constantly between the road ahead and the wing mirrors. “A thousand tons of poultry shipping through every day.”
“Then if that thing could smell the raw meat . . .” Adam shook his head in a daze. “How about that—saved by dead chickens!” Somehow it didn’t seem any less improbable than the rest of this morning’s events.
“Where’d that roaring thing come from, anyway?” The trucker ran a sweaty hand through his hair. “Straight out of hell?”
Adam didn’t say so, but he couldn’t think of a more likely explanation.
4
MYSTERY
With a few miles stretching between the truck and the wreck of his rented home, Adam’s adrenaline levels began to ebb. That was bad news on the injury front—suddenly he could feel every burn, bruise and scratch tattooing his body. He realized he looked a state: his jeans were ripped and dirty, his forehead was badly grazed and his arms were blackened with blood and oil from the tarmac.