by Alex Scarrow
CHAPTER 74
65 million years BC, jungle
Becks emerged from the surrounding sphere of undulating air, and dropped the last few inches with a soft thud of boots on hard mud.
Crouched, ready for action, her eyes panned across the fire-lit clearing: a dancing, flickering impression of hell. The creatures had converged in the centre of the area, picking through the shelters, the palisade, watching the campfire hungrily consuming the last of the branches that had been stacked on it.
A knot of them were gathered around the space where, only a minute ago, the return window had opened. They were examining the ground, a cluster of low ferns nearby, their heads cocked with confusion and bewilderment like curious crows studying road kill.
None of them had yet noticed her standing there.
She had a thirty-round ammo clip, and in the blink of an eye had organized the order in which she was going to drop the targets: larger male creatures first.
The first rapidly fired half-dozen shots echoed across the clearing like so many dried and brittle branches snapping, and five out of six of her targets dropped like leather sacks of bone and meat. The one she’d missed had bobbed unpredictably, the shot skimming across the top of his head.
The other creatures froze where they were, uncertain as to what the rapid cracks of gunfire actually meant.
Becks took advantage of the moment of stillness and confusion and selected another six targets, all the larger males again. But this time the muzzle flash of her gun had attracted their attention and they began to bound towards her. She killed four and wounded another, before their short-lived charge faltered. They drew up a dozen yards away and fanned out, snapping and snarling.
Beyond them she could see the others, females and cubs being herded away from harm by a large male. She recognized it as the pack’s leader, a claw from one of its four digits missing on its left arm. It was holding one of their spears, waving it around and using it to prod and cajole the pack away into the darkness.
[Assessment: primary target]
The pack leader, the alpha male… logic and observation dictated that that particular creature was the one who’d been learning from them; the shrewd one, the clever one whose genes and unique acquired knowledge were going to pass onwards to its offspring. In only a few nanoseconds of silicon-based analysis, she realized that the one creature she had to be absolutely certain of killing was the one with the missing claw. She was striding forward like an automaton as she fired another rapid succession of single shots, killing half of the creatures bobbing and snarling in front of her; those still standing turned and fled. The noise and the muzzle flash were as startling to them as the sudden inexplicable death it seemed to deal out. The entire pack was in motion now, scattering like birds startled by a handclap. But her eyes remained on the back of the alpha male. She swung the assault rifle towards it, aimed and fired.
The shot spun the creature off its feet.
CHAPTER 75
2001, New York
Maddy looked over at Cartwright. He was with the two children and Sal, standing beside the half-raised shutter entrance, staring out at the jungle and eagerly waiting to see the spectacular sight of a new reality arriving from a distant past. Sal was doing a great job keeping them all over there, telling them all about time ripples and waves and her job as an observer.
‘You understand what you’ve got to do?’ she asked Liam quietly.
He nodded. ‘But are you sure it’s the right date?’
‘Well, I hope so. He said your fossilized message was discovered on that day. I presume he’s not lying. I’ve got the Glen Rose National Park entered in as the location. I’m sure he mentioned a river called the Paluxy River… so that’s what I’ve put in. And you’re looking for the two boys that found it.’
‘Boys? How old?’
‘I don’t know… You know, boys.’ She shrugged. ‘ Boy age, I guess.’
Liam glanced furtively over her shoulder at the others. ‘Well, then, what do they look like?’
She ran her hand tiredly through her frizzy hair. ‘Jeez… How the hell am I supposed to know!’ she muttered irritably, then immediately felt guilty and angry with herself. She looked at Liam… his bloodshot eye, the streak of white hair… and felt like a snappy cow. ‘I’m sorry,’ she sighed. ‘I guess they’ll look all excited and very pleased with themselves. OK?’
She turned towards the desk. ‘Bob, are we ready for a portal?’
› Affirmative. There is sufficient charge for this displacement.
‘OK.’ She nodded. ‘All right.’ She looked at Liam’s face again, pale like the other two, but not as bad. No nosebleeds, no apparent nausea or any other apparent haemorrhaging. ‘You sure you’re OK to go, Liam?’
He nodded. ‘I’m fine, so I am. Tired, I could sleep for a year, but I’m all right.’
Why not go in his place, Maddy? Look at him… look at the damage that last portal did to him. And now you’re sending him through again! She stilled that guilty voice in her head quickly; she needed to be right here, coordinating Becks’s and Liam’s bring-backs. It was all going to be rather tricky.
She wanted to tell him what she knew, what Foster had told her. She wanted to tell him so that at least he could decide for himself if it was worth it, killing himself slowly, one corruption at a time.
‘Shall we?’ he said.
She pressed a digital watch into his hand. ‘Six hours,’ she said softly, then glanced at the chalk circle and the concrete already gouged out of the floor in the middle. Liam understood. He had six hours back in 1941 and then she’d open the return window. He casually ambled across the floor towards the circle as Maddy silently initiated the countdown sequence. The machinery began to hum — there was no way to avoid that — and the ceiling light flickered and dimmed.
She was hoping Cartwright would be too engrossed in listening to Sal and watching for the time wave to immediately notice something was going on, but the wily old man spun round and looked back into the arch. ‘What’s going on?’
Liam stepped smartly into the chalk circle just as a sphere of air began to twitch and fidget around him.
‘What’s happ- Hang on, what’s…?’ His eyes widened. ‘Where the HELL IS HE GOING?’
Maddy ignored him. Cartwright reached into his jacket pocket.
‘No! Don’t shoot!’ shouted Maddy, realizing what he was going to do. ‘Please!’
Cartwright pulled out his pistol, straightened his arm and aimed. ‘STOP IT, NOW!’
‘I can’t! Please… I can’t stop it. Don’t sh-’
He fired a single shot at Liam just as the sphere wobbled and collapsed in on itself with a puff.
1941, Somervell County, Texas
At the very same moment that Liam landed on a riverbank of pebbles something whistled past his ear and off into the sky.
‘Jay-zusss!’ He ducked and then looked around, wondering what the hell that was. He saw nothing, just a narrow river, rolling sedately along a shallow creek of sandy-coloured rock, small and mean-looking yew trees and arid tufts of sun-bleached grass that hissed softly alongside the soothing gurgle of water.
Perhaps a bird? A bee? A fly?
It could have been. A fast one, though.
His mind turned to more pressing matters — which way to go? He had no idea, no idea at all, other than to look out for a pair of boys. He looked at the digital watch, Maddy’s. She’d set a countdown on it: five hours and fifty-nine minutes.
‘Right,’ he muttered to himself, ‘where do I start?’
A midday sun beat down on his head as he stood there, unsure which way to turn. He decided, before walking anywhere, that he was going to mark the window location with a small cairn of rocks: a dozen fist-sized worn and rounded rocks stacked in a small pyramid. Big enough so that he wasn’t going to walk right on past and miss it.
Then, caught on a lazy midday breeze that had the nearby yew trees stirring and hissing, he heard the faint call of a vo
ice and what sounded like a splash of water.
That way… downstream. He set off, walking along the riverbank, shingle and pebbles clattering underfoot. For a moment he recalled an image of that huge sweeping bay and the calm prehistoric green sea spreading out to an infinite horizon on his right.
It was here. Right here, an incredible tropical sea.
Quite a breathtaking notion, that… in the vast dimensions of geological time, even seas and oceans, just like any other living creature, had lifespans that came and went.
He heard voices again, echoing up the creek. The sound of children playing, larking about.
CHAPTER 76
65 million years BC, jungle
Becks followed the spatters of dark blood into the jungle. By moonlight the streaks of blood were black and glistened wetly. The trail didn’t lead too far into the jungle, fortunately. If it had, she suspected she’d have been unable to follow it; the moonlight was beginning to fail her, blocked by the drooping leaves from the canopy trees above.
She heard them before she saw them: the rattling breath of one snorting like a winded buffalo and a chorus of mewling voices that sounded like a pitiful choir of simpering children. Her eyes picked them out. The creature she’d managed to hit was curled up on the jungle floor. Around it an array of the smaller creatures, females and cubs, all pawed and stroked the wounded one, as if somehow that would magically heal their pack leader.
She stepped forward until she was looking directly down at the creature with the broken claw. The pack, perhaps twenty of them here, became quiet; a forest of yellow eyes that glowed with soft fluorescence and narrowed with fear looked up at her.
‘… Help… me…’ The facsimile of a human voice came from one of the females. Becks recognized it as an attempt to duplicate the cries of the human called Keisha.
A part of her computer mind calmly informed her that a mission parameter remained outstanding, and could not be successfully flagged as completed until, at the very least, the wounded creature was confirmed dead.
But another part of her mind, a very much smaller part, a part that contributed thoughts as foggy sensations rather than runtime commands, spoke to her.
Just like me.
She remembered being born, released from growth amid a cascading soup of warm liquid, lying like this creature, curled like a foetus on a hard floor; feeling bewildered, frightened, confused. An animal mind of sensations, feelings… but no words.
She squatted down to get a closer look at the creature. The wound was in the middle of the creature’s narrow chest, and from the pulsing of ink-black blood down its olive skin, was almost certainly going to prove to be fatal.
‘You will die,’ she announced coldly. And then realized talking to them was illogical and pointless — these wild things were no more intelligent than monkeys. But, on the other hand, it felt like another way of processing, filtering her own thoughts… giving words to that part of her mind that wasn’t high-density silicon wafer.
‘I am here to kill you,’ she said. ‘This is a mission requirement.’
The yellow eyes studied her silently. Perhaps those eyes were trying to communicate something, pleading for mercy.
She stood up again and changed the clip in the assault rifle for a fresh one. The mission voice had no time for such an irrational sentiment and gently cajoled her to proceed with the task.
Complete Mission
Terminate alpha male of species
Terminate remaining hominids (optional)
Retrieve all evidence of human habitation
‘I am… sorry,’ she said. She cocked her head, curious. There’d been a strange effect on her voice. It had fluttered ever so slightly. It had actually made her sound more convincingly human; she’d sounded almost indistinguishable from the school students she and Liam had spent the last fourteen days in the jungle with. Those three words really had sounded so very human. For a moment she was almost tempted to say them once again. Instead, she raised the rifle swiftly to her shoulder, her bandaged finger slipped on to the trigger and beneath the dressing the recently vat-grown muscle tissue tightened and pulled. A shot rang out. Her finger muscles released and pulled again
… and again… and again.
By the time the last of the creatures flopped lifelessly across the body of Broken Claw, the clip was empty and the barrel warm.
The jungle was still, every nocturnal species stunned into silence by the rapid crack of gunfire. For a few moments she listened to the shifting breeze, the muted rumble of the nearby river.
‘I am… sorry,’ she said again, and realized this time her voice sounded flat and emotionless, as it always did.
She turned on her heels and headed back towards the remains of their abandoned camp.
2001, New York
‘Where did you send him?’ barked Cartwright, swinging the aim of his gun on to Maddy.
‘I… I j-just sent him back… to help Becks kill the — ’
‘You’re lying!’ he snapped.
‘Honestly I — ’
He fired a shot past her head. Behind her one of the computer monitors exploded amid a shower of sparks and granules of glass.
‘Really,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t advise lying, young lady. I can put a bullet through your stomach right now… and believe me when I say that’s one of the most painful ways to go. Slow and very, very painful.’ He took a dozen steps towards her. ‘Now, I’ll try again… where did you send him?’
Maddy swallowed nervously, her eyes on the gun. ‘I… just… I…’
‘Maddy!’ yelped Sal. ‘Something’s coming!’
Cartwright stopped where he was. ‘What’s that?’ he shouted back over his shoulder, keeping his eyes firmly on the older girl.
‘Did you feel it? A tremor?’
‘No,’ he replied, his eyes and aim still on Maddy. ‘I didn’t feel anything.’
‘I felt something,’ said Edward.
‘Oh my God… the jungle’s changed,’ said Laura. ‘Something different. I don’t know what. Something — ’
Sal nodded. ‘The settlement’s gone. It’s an early ripple… the big change will follow.’
Cartwright cursed. He desperately wanted to see this. ‘You!’ he snapped at Maddy, waving his gun, ‘over there by the entrance. NOW!’
Maddy nodded meekly and hurried across the archway to join the others standing in the entrance and looking out at the jungle. Cartwright joined them, keeping a cautious few yards’ distance and holding his gun on them as he watched the evening jungle. ‘What happens next?’
‘The big wave,’ said Sal. ‘You’ll feel dizzy just as it…’ She looked at him, her eyes round. ‘Do you feel it now?’
His eyes widened. ‘My God, yes! Like an earth tremor!’
On the horizon the orange stain of dusk was blotted out by what appeared to be a rolling bank of raincloud, a storm front rushing in from the Atlantic at an impossible speed.
‘What is that?’ he gasped.
‘The wave?’ whispered Edward.
Maddy nodded. ‘Another reality.’
It crossed over the island beyond the broad river and amid a churning soup of thick, shimmering air, realities mixed and became fleeting impossibilities. Amid the churning reality soup they saw the winking flickering outline of tall buildings warping and twisting and Maddy thought she saw for a fleeting moment a swarm of creatures in the sky like gargoyles, dragons — a possible reality, a possible species that in this correcting reality had no place, existing for a mere heartbeat, then erased.
Then the wave was over the river and upon them.
The archway flexed and warped around them, the ground beneath their feet momentarily dropping away, becoming void.
Then, just like that, they were staring at a brick wall, ten feet opposite, across a cobbled stone backstreet. The rolled-up tarpaulin with Forby’s corpse inside, that they’d placed just outside the entrance, was gone. Instead he was standing to one side of the entrance, talking
in hushed tones with two other armed men. A spotlight flickered across the backstreet as overhead they heard the whup-whup-whup of a circling helicopter.
Cartwright’s jaw hung slack and open, his gun arm lowered down to his side. ‘This… is… incredible.’
‘Isn’t it?’ said Maddy.
Forby looked up from his conversation. ‘Whuh? Oh, sir?’ He looked perplexed, as did the other two men. ‘I uh… didn’t hear the door opening. You OK, sir?’
Cartwright’s face was still immobile, still frozen with incredulity.
‘Sir? Everything OK?’
He looked at his man. ‘Uh? Yes… yes, just fine.’ Alive once more. A faint smile of relief stretched across his thin lips. ‘Good to er… it’s good to see you again, Forby.’
Forby frowned and nodded. ‘Sir?’ Then he noticed Edward and Laura. ‘Who are these?’
Cartwright shook his head, gathering his confused wits. ‘I’ll… I’ll explain later.’ He turned to Maddy and the others. ‘Inside, you lot. Let’s close this door.’
Forby stepped forward but Cartwright waved him back. ‘You best stay outside for now, Forby, all right?’
He flicked his gun at Laura. ‘Close the shutter.’
She began to crank the handle, but Sal stepped in and pressed the green button. ‘It’s OK, we’ve got power now.’ The shutters clattered down as a small motor beside the door whined.
The old man took a moment to compose himself, to try to make sense of what he’d seen, and what he may yet see before the night was through. The shutters clattered down and the whining motor was silent.
‘All right,’ he said presently. ‘All right, so this means your friend and the cloned girl… they’ve been successful. They’ve killed those freaks in the past. So that means no reptile hominids.’ He nodded as he talked. ‘All right… I get that. I understand that.’
‘Cartwright,’ interrupted Maddy.
‘And… and Forby’s alive now, because… because…’ His eyes narrowed as he tried to make sense of things. ‘Because what happened… didn’t happen. No reptile monsters means he couldn’t have been attacked. But then that’s just crazy… that doesn’t make any… I mean