Day of the Predator tr-2

by Alex Scarrow

  …’

  If anything at all…

  ‘But,’ she continued, ‘if a whole bunch of secret service types turn up, we’re not going to achieve much standing there with one gun between us, are we? I’m sure they’ll come prepared, if you know what I mean?’

  ‘I guess so,’ muttered Sal, her head drooping down to the table, a fold of her dark hair flopping over darker eyes. ‘How come you’re so calm about this?’

  Calm, am I? But then she realized she actually did feel calm… No, not calm… resigned… resigned to whatever history was rolling up through the aeons to meet them in a few minutes when the archway’s bubble reset. She’d figured this out yesterday while she was out there anxiously looking for Foster; there really was nothing much they could do other than wait and react to whatever turned up. Wait. That’s it. Wait until a ripple or a time wave arrived, or, as she hoped, a message. Then, and only then, could they do anything at all useful.

  ‘I’m calm, Sal… because, I dunno, because it’s not in our hands now. Because we have to just wait and see. No point worrying about what’s out of our hands.’

  That sounded lame. But it was all she had right now.

  ‘But, if it’s bad guys, Maddy… if it’s bad guys who want to get their hands on the time machine, what are we going to do? We can’t just let them.’

  ‘I’ve got that covered.’

  ‘How?’

  Maddy smiled. There was something she’d managed to get right. ‘I’ve instructed Bob to lock down the computer system if he hears me say a codeword out loud.’

  ‘Right.’ Sal nodded, silent for a moment. ‘But… but won’t they have computer experts who could hack their way in and, I dunno, deactivate that command or something?’

  ‘Maybe, eventually. That kind of hacking takes a lot of time. And they won’t have enough time to do that.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he’s under orders to trash absolutely everything if he doesn’t hear from me again.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘If he doesn’t get a second password from me within six hours, he’s under instructions to go completely mad and wipe the hard drives clean and send a power surge through the displacement machinery’s circuits and fry them. There’ll be nothing left but frazzled silicon and garbage-filled drives if they try anything funny with us, Sal.’

  Sal nodded, regarding Maddy with renewed respect. ‘Oh jahulla, that’s clever, Maddy.’

  Maddy shrugged. ‘I saw it in a film once. It worked in that — don’t see why it shouldn’t work for us.’

  ‘You’re a good planner,’ said Sal. ‘I know you think you’re a bit rubbish, and I know you blame yourself for the explosion… but I don’t know anyone else who could have picked up all that you have so quickly.’ She glanced away from Maddy, self-conscious, flicking her fringe behind one ear. ‘I’m just saying, that’s all… you’re pretty good at this.’

  ‘Thanks, Sal.’

  They watched another minute vanish on the clock.

  ‘We’ll see soon enough. If it’s bad guys out there and they really want to get their grubby paws on our tech, then they’re going to need us, aren’t they?’ Maddy took a deep breath, feeling the tickling sensation of growing anxiety claw its way up her spine as the clock flickered to 11.47 p.m. ‘And they’re freakin’ well going to have to be real nice about it too.’

  CHAPTER 47

  65 million years BC, jungle

  Broken Claw cradled the organ in his hands, still, cold and lifeless now; its colour had drained from a vibrant red to a dull purple as the sun slowly sank in the sky. Now the sky was dark, a half moon bathing the dark jungle with a quicksilver light.

  He stood where the new creatures had been just hours ago. Evidence of their presence was everywhere in the form of footprints in the soil, droplets of dried blood on the rocks and boulders and the smell, their unique smell of fear thick on every surface. They had waited here for a while. And they had been so very frightened.

  The new creatures fear us.

  And yet Broken Claw had been so certain up until now that it was his pack that needed to be afraid of them. The others were looking at him, waiting for him. He looked down at the organ in his hand, all that remained of his pack-mate, the mother of many of the young males before him. She would have led them all if Broken Claw was to die before her. The wisdom of age was more than enough to make up for her smaller frame… and no young buck would have challenged her. Unlike the other simple-minded animals in these lands with their crude pack hierarchies that relied on the brute strength of an alpha male, Broken Claw’s extended family understood the power of wisdom.

  But now she was dead. Her slim neck had been almost completely severed and she’d had a wound through the chest cavity that would almost certainly have been fatal anyway.

  They had returned to the ledge to find her body still warm, but her life gone. And so they’d consumed her, torn the flesh from her bones in ragged strips — skin, muscle tissue, organs — all of her stripped down to bloodied bones. None of her to be wasted. She was loved too much to leave her flesh for smaller scavengers to gnaw at.

  Her heart was his, though, and his alone.

  Broken Claw had cradled it now for hours, unwilling to let go of the last thing of her. But now was the time. Now, as he stared down through the dark night to the cove far below and the flickering orange flower on the beach surrounded by those pale creatures.

  His serrated teeth tore a chunk from the purple organ and he vowed as he chewed on the fibrous tissue that every last one of those new creatures would die. He would be sure to stare closely into their eyes as his claws dug deep into their chests and pulled the pumping source of their life out.

  The others began to wail and mew softly, young males grieving at the loss of their mother, as Broken Claw placed the rest of the organ in his mouth and bade farewell to his lifelong partner. He turned to the others and silenced them with a soft bark.

  We do not need to fear new creatures.

  The others understood this too.

  They are as plant-eaters, harmless without their sticks-that-catch.

  And they were careless, foolish creatures that often placed these lethal tools on the ground and walked away from them, unaware that without them their clawless hands and small, even, white teeth made them as vulnerable as freshly born cubs.

  Broken Claw watched their distant movements on the beach, illuminated by the yellow flower. Of course they all had to die to avenge her… but also to be sure his kind were the only intelligent pack hunters in these lands. To allow these pale things a chance to breed and increase their number would be foolish.

  He opened his mouth and his black tongue curled and twisted as he softly tried to reproduce again the strange sound the short fat creature with ginger hair and those strange eyes had made. Broken Claw’s throat gargled and whinnied, and his tongue shaped the sound into something that sounded, to his recollection, to be a very passable facsimile.

  ‘ Aye… ammmm… Fanck… leeeennn…’

  CHAPTER 48

  65 million years BC, jungle

  The morning sun was already warm on his back and shoulders as Liam poked at the smouldering remains of their campfire with his spear, carefully probing the flaking ash remains of branches for what he was looking for.

  ‘Do be careful,’ said Jasmine, standing beside him. ‘They’re brittle when they’re still hot.’

  ‘All right,’ he said, going about it more carefully. Presently, the blunt end of thick bamboo cane hit something hard: a dull thunk.

  ‘I got one.’ He carefully pushed the ash out of the way and traced a rough rectangle outline, something approximating the size of a brick. ‘It looks like it survived the cooking without cracking.’

  Using a fistful of waxy fern leaves as an oven glove he reached down and pulled it out, then quickly dropped it on the soft sand. ‘Ouch! Still bleedin’ hot!’ He squatted down beside it, gingerly wiping ash away from the rust-coloured surfa
ce of fire-cooked clay. The fine lines of letters and numbers were clogged with ash. The others gathered round and stared down at the small oblong tablet lying on the beach.

  ‘My God, look! It totally worked!’ uttered Laura.

  The lettering was there to see, clear, unmistakable.

  ‘Of course it did,’ replied Jasmine. ‘I know what I’m talking about. Me and my mom make ceramic jewellery all the time. We sell it on eBay.’

  Liam leaned over and blew at it, the ash fluttering out of the inscribed lines and curls of his handwriting in little clouds.

  Take this to Archway 9, Wythe Street, Brooklyn, New York on Monday 10 September 2001.

  Message: -89-1-9/54-1-5/76-1-2/23-3-5/17-8-4/7-?3–7/5-8-3/12-6-9/2 3-8-1/3-1-1/56-9-2/12-5-8/67-?8–3/92-6-7/112-8-3/234-6-1/45-7-3/30-6-2 /34-8-?3/41-5-6/99-7-1/2-6-9/127-8-1/128-7-3/259-1-5/2-?7–1/69-1-5/142-66. Key is ‘Magic’.

  Whitmore was reading it over Liam’s shoulder. ‘You think that book code of yours is going to work? I mean, I don’t know what book you’ve used but I know every book has different editions. You know that, don’t you? And the page layouts and numbers change from edition to edition. Are you using some kind of internal agency manual or something?’

  Becks answered. ‘It will work. My duplicate AI is working from the same database.’

  ‘Magic?’ said Juan. ‘Is that some kinda clue for which book it is?’

  Liam nodded. He looked at Becks. ‘Do you think Bob will understand that clue?’

  She pursed her lips and shrugged — yet another teenage gesture she seemed to have picked up in the last fortnight from the students. ‘I am unable to give you an accurate answer to that question, Liam.’

  ‘Well, put it this way… would you get it?’

  Her eyelids flickered. ‘I have thirty-one thousand listings in my database against the word “magic”.’

  ‘Ah, Jay-zus,’ muttered Liam, frustrated. ‘Maybe we should have put more thought into the clue there. Maybe that one word on its own isn’t going to be enough for Bob to — ’

  ‘Saleena Vikram will understand,’ said Becks. She looked at Liam. ‘As “Bob” I discussed the book with her.’

  Liam snorted. ‘You’re kidding me? You can actually discuss literature?’

  ‘I told her I very much enjoyed the magic in Harry Potter.’

  Whitmore stood up straight and put his hands on his hips. ‘This is a joke, right? You’re not seriously telling me your super-secret-ultimate-time-police agency uses a kids’ book as a code key?’

  Liam and Becks both looked up at him and nodded.

  ‘Jesus!’ Whitmore shook his head. ‘What kind of a Mickey Mouse outfit are you?’

  ‘Mickey Mouse?’

  Liam waved at Becks to be silent. ‘It’s what works, Mr Whitmore!’ he replied, surprised with himself at how angry he sounded. ‘It’s what works… that’s what counts!’

  Whitmore was a little taken aback by Liam’s uncharacteristic outburst. ‘Well, it’s just… it just seems so, I don’t know, a bit…’

  ‘Amateur,’ chimed in Franklyn. ‘We were thinking you guys had some sort of already-organized code system. You know? Like proper secret-agent types do?’

  ‘Yeah… don’t mean to be dissin’ you guys an’ all,’ said Juan, ‘but it does look like you makin’ this stuff up as you go along.’

  ‘Look,’ said Liam. ‘I’ll not lie to you… I’m quite new to this time-travel thing myself. And this is certainly the first time I’ve gone back to dinosaur times. So, I suppose if it looks to you like me and Becks are not working from some… from some sort of manual, well

  … you’d be right.’ He stood up, brushing ash from his hands. ‘But I’ll tell you this much for nothing: the agency has saved you many times over. And the thing is each time it does that for you, each time it’s saved history and the world around you… well, it’s happened. And you all go on with your lives happily never knowing how close it’s all come to disaster.’

  Liam pressed his lips together. ‘Me and Becks here have saved you once before.’ He half smiled. ‘A certain Hitler chap who won a war instead of losing it. Now that was a fine bleedin’ mess, so it was. But we managed to fix it up again. So will you not give us some credit here? We’re not completely useless, all right?’

  ‘What about your agency?’ asked Kelly. ‘Who are they?’

  Liam was about to answer when Becks grabbed his arm to stop him.

  ‘Lemme guess,’ said Kelly sarcastically, ‘ classified data.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Liam, ‘that’s how it is. We return you to 2015, then the less you know about us, the better. But I’ll tell you this, though… they’re organized and they’ve got the best technology out there; computers and… and “robots” like Becks and oh… loads of other stuff. So, look — ’ he smiled — ‘you’re in good hands.’

  They looked at him with an unreadable mixture of expressions.

  Come on, Liam… be decisive.

  ‘Right, then, enough prattling like old fishwives. We have a job to do, so we have. These tablets, Franklyn? Mr Whitmore? Where exactly do you suggest we go and place them?’

  They both looked at each other, an exchange of absentminded gestures — Franklyn pushing his cracked glasses up his nose, Whitmore scratching at his scruffy beard — and a muttered exchange of ideas.

  Finally Franklyn turned to them. ‘I suggest we embed a couple in the beach. Dig a hole, deep… as deep as you can. And the rest — ’ he turned and nodded towards a nearby thicket of bamboos and reeds — ‘that freshwater stream. There’s silt banks and a bunch of marsh either side of it. I’m pretty sure that’s how they describe the fossil bed in Dinosaur Valley, that it was once… marshy.’

  Liam looked at Jasmine. ‘And these clay tablets will last sixty-five million years?’

  She shook her head. ‘Uh, well, no… I never said they’d last that long.’

  Franklyn shook his head. ‘You really don’t know a great deal about fossils, Liam, do you?’

  Liam hunched his shoulders. ‘Nope, Franklyn, I don’t. But you do. So why don’t you tell me how this works, then?’

  Franklyn sighed. ‘They’ll most likely break up long before there are even monkeys on planet Earth, let alone Homo sapiens. But the impression they leave behind — like a cast or a mould on the sand — on the silt, which eventually will become a layer of sedimentary rock, that’s the fossil.’ He offered Liam a patient if somewhat patronizing smile. ‘Not those tablets. They’ll be long gone dust.’

  Liam nodded thoughtfully. ‘All right, then. So now I know… strikes me that it makes no real difference — there’s still something left behind that a person can read, right?’

  Franklyn nodded.

  ‘Good, so best we get started. The sooner we’re done, the sooner we can leave.’ He turned to address them all. ‘I don’t know about you but come sundown I’d rather be camping out on that big, very wide beach than down here.’

  ‘With those things out there?’ said Whitmore, looking up the jungle slopes surrounding them. ‘Sure… getting out of here sounds good to me.’

  CHAPTER 49

  2001, New York

  ‘Three minutes to go,’ said Sal.

  ‘Three minutes,’ Maddy echoed. They could both hear the machinery below the desk beginning to hum noisily as it sucked energy greedily from their mains feed. Not for the first time, Maddy wondered who paid the electricity bill for their archway. It had to be astronomical, the amount they used.

  She smiled at her dumbness. Yes, of course, no one paid any bills. As far as the world outside was concerned, as far as their neighbour — the car mechanic in the archway near the top of their little backstreet — were concerned, this archway normally sat vacant with a ripped and graffiti-covered sign pasted on the roller shutter outside offering three thousand square feet of commercial floor space at a reasonable rate.

  Except of course, for a Monday and Tuesday in September when, to anybody who bothered to notice, it woul
d appear three young squatters had decided to move in, only to vanish again on the Wednesday.

  ‘Oh,’ said Sal, ‘I forgot… I saw a funny thing the other day.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah, in a shop nearby. A junk shop. Well, not funny really. Just a coincidence.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A uniform, a steward’s uniform… from the Titanic. Just exactly like Liam’s.’ Sal shook her head. ‘Isn’t that weird?’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘The lady in the shop said it wasn’t a real one, though. Just a costume from a play. But, still, kind of funny. I suppose I could buy it for Liam as a spare.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s in no big hurry to go back to the Titanic, you know? Given what he’d have to face.’

  Sal’s smile quickly faded. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I suppose he wouldn’t

  … none of us, really.’

  The numbers on the clock flickered and changed. Two minutes left.

  Maddy really could have done with Foster sitting right here beside them. Calm, relaxed, with a reassuring half-cocked smile on his old wrinkly face. Skin that looked like weathered parchment, skin that looked like it had seen way too much sun -

  … I wouldn’t mind feeling the sun on my face…

  Foster’s last words. He’d said that the morning he’d taken her out for coffee to say goodbye.

  ‘Sun on my face,’ she uttered under her breath.

  Sal cocked an eyebrow. ‘Uh?’

  … I guess I wouldn’t mind feeling the sun on my face whilst I enjoy a decent hot dog…

  That’s exactly what he’d said, wasn’t it? One of the last things he’d said. That’s what he fancied doing with whatever time he had left to live. Sun and a decent hot dog. With all these skyscrapers, she knew there was only one place you could count on un-obscured sunlight in Manhattan, sun… and, yes, hot dog vendors a-plenty. One place and one place only.

  ‘I think I just figured out where Foster’s gone,’ she uttered.