Fire and Water

by Simon Guerrier

Even Lester removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, mucking in with the grisly chores without a word of protest. He and Danny dragged the two dead lions through the hallway and out into the open, a hot and wearying job. Blood spattered Lester’s shirtfront and his trousers, but if he noticed, he didn’t say anything.

  Eventually, Sophie led them into the long kitchen and found them ice-cold beers. She had to root around for a bottle opener, but finally she found one. They drank in silence, exhausted. Danny had knocked back half the bottle before Sophie spoke again.

  “Danny,” she said — the first time that she’d used his name — “that was a dinosaur.” There was an accusing tone in her voice.

  He looked to Lester, who put his beer bottle down on the table.

  “We don’t know that,” he said smoothly, with the practice of a lifetime politico.

  “But it looked like one,” Danny said, playing the good cop again. “Have you seen anything like that before around here?”

  “Of course not,” Sophie said, shaking her head. “What kind of idiot do you take me for? It’s... I was going to say it isn’t possible. But it was here. It tried to kill us.”

  “It was cornered,” Danny said. They couldn’t pretend anything after Sophie had seen the creature — and after what it had done to her friends. “The lions have probably been on its trail for ages,” he continued. “It’s not like it was on their turf.”

  Sophie stared at him. “You’re blaming this on the lions?” she asked him incredulously.

  “No,” Danny said, surprised by her anger. “I’m just saying it was cornered.”

  “It killed three rangers. And then two lions. It would have happily trampled us. And it didn’t flinch when you shot a dart into it, either. It’s not some poor victim.”

  “That’s not what I meant —”

  “It’s an intruder,” Lester said firmly, taking control of the exchange. “It’s a threat to your game park and the precious species you have living here. It needs to be dealt with.”

  Danny started to add something, then thought better of it.

  Sophie drank back the last of her beer and then got to her feet. But she didn’t seem to want to go back to where the bodies lay.

  “We’ll go out after it at first light,” Lester said, suddenly playing the good cop. “Your colleagues will be here soon. Maybe you should call again...”

  She whirled on him.

  “They wouldn’t just desert me,” she told him. “If they’re not here there’s a reason.”

  “Sophie,” Danny said. “The creature could have attacked them, too.”

  “Maybe,” she conceded, “but we work shifts, some people will be at home.”

  “Then they need to be called in,” Lester insisted.

  “I know that!” Sophie snapped at him. “Ted will be calling them now. You guys don’t think we know how to run things here, do you?”

  Lester didn’t say anything.

  “We’re just trying to help,” Danny told her carefully.

  She glared at him again, but he held her gaze until her features softened.

  “Yeah,” she said. “But all this, you know? It’s hard. We should be doing something.”

  “What can we do?” Danny asked her. “We’re here to help.”

  Sophie looked from one to the other of them.

  “Really?” she said.

  “Really,” Danny told her. “Scouts’ honour. If I’d been a scout.”

  “All right,” she said, “there’s one thing we can do.”

  “This is madness,” Lester protested. He was dressed in borrowed khakis, a strange contrast to his usual immaculate suits.

  “Shouldn’t we at least wait till morning?” Danny asked. “At least then we’ll be able to see.”

  Sophie stepped down from the platform onto the coarse earth of the car park and turned back to face them. She had her own rifle in her hands, plus two others on her back and a savage hunting knife in a scabbard on her thigh.

  “Trail will be cold in the morning,” she told them gruffly. “The animals lay low in the sun — that’s why we haven’t been able to find them. We want to catch these things up, we have to go after them now.”

  She marched over to her SUV and slung the guns inside.

  “Come on,” she said. “You said you were here to help.”

  “Well —” Lester began.

  “All right,” Danny said, still keen to win her over. He jumped down from the platform and joined her at the car. “Didn’t have anything else to be doing anyway, and it’s not like I’m going to be able to sleep.”

  “Quinn, you’re not serious,” Lester said. “You know as well as I do —”

  “You can stay here if you want to,” Danny told him. “until Sophie’s mates turn up. But until then, you’ll be on your own.”

  Lester considered for half a second.

  “Fine,” he said angrily, climbing down from the platform. He glared at Danny, who had already got into the front passenger seat, and seethed as he climbed in the back. Sophie was already revving the engine as he slammed the door.

  “Okay,” she said, spinning the car back in a wide arc and then pushing it into first. “This thing leaves a wide wake behind it. Tracks and trampled bush. And both it and the lions were bleeding. So even you guys should see the trail.”

  “Now hang on just a moment —” Lester began.

  “Hey,” Danny told him. “We’re here to help.”

  Sophie put her foot down and they surged off into the night.

  NINE

  “All right,” Becker said into his earpiece. “See you in a moment.” He looked up at Abby and Connor. “Everyone’s ready downstream.” The way he said it made it sound like this had all been his idea.

  “Good,” Connor said impatiently. He felt that familiar tight knot in his stomach, a mix of terror and excitement. It would be good just to get moving again, after sitting in the rain. His clothes felt cold and heavy, sticking to his skin in all of the wrong places. He turned to Abby, playing it cool.

  “All set?”

  “You really think this is going to work?” she asked him, wide-eyed.

  “Hey! Of course it’s going to work. It’s always worked before, hasn’t it?”

  “Connor, we haven’t done this before.”

  “Yeah, but we’ve done loads of stuff like it.” He shrugged heroically — at least he hoped it looked that way. “We’re like professionals now. And the artificial pheromones in these cans give us our best shot.”

  “Like professionals,” Becker echoed, not looking up at them as he checked over the speedboat’s engine. “That bodes well.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” Connor told him. “We can manage by ourselves.”

  “Can we?” Abby asked.

  Connor turned to her. “Yeah. I think so.”

  “All the same,” Becker said, clicking the heavy plastic cover back into place, “I’d better come along, just to see how the experts do it.”

  “All right,” Connor conceded, not sure how much the man was joking. “So, you’re going to steer us round —”

  “Yeah,” Abby said. “He knows.”

  “Right,” Connor replied. “And Abby, you’re going to —”

  “I know that, too.”

  “Well then.” Connor said. He looked downstream towards the two giant Deinosuchus, still skulking in the dirty water. He might have imagined it, but the large male seemed to blink at him, as if he knew what was coming.

  “Um,” Connor said, not looking at his two compatriots. “Do you really think that this is going to work?’

  “Only one way to find out,” Becker answered, pulling hard on the starter. The engine let out a triumphant roar and the speedboat shot towards the giant crocodiles.

  Spray whipped at Connor’s face as they sped ever faster forward. He tried not to think about what terrible diseases the water might contain. Just his luck to survive the combined might of the Late Cretaceous only to be brought d
own by cholera. He glanced at Abby, poised beside him, the basket of deodorants resting on her knees. She flashed a quick smile at him, then returned her attention to the two giant crocodilians up ahead.

  They were right in the middle of the stream now, dashing across the water. The whole bottom of the boat buzzed with vibrations he could feel all through his body, even in his teeth.

  Ahead of them, the giant crocodiles stirred and broke apart from their strange embrace. They must have been able to feel the vibration of the boat speeding towards them and see the three small humans that sat aboard like so much fast food. Their fat, bulb-like snouts would give them a brilliant sense of smell because the nostrils were kept well apart. Connor had a sudden horror of how he might smell to the creatures: the crocodile equivalent of a burger and fries.

  The creatures were enormous. Just the head and shoulders of the male that reached out of the water were the height of a man. They moved slowly, deliberately, like nervous swimmers.

  As the boat swerved towards them, the male snapped his jaws right at Connor’s head. Connor fell back, letting out a squawk of horror, and would have been plucked from the boat had Becker not steered hard to the right. Instead, Connor got a lungful of the creature’s stale, meaty breath. He gagged, fighting back the reflex need to vomit.

  He reached for two cans of deodorant.

  “Think you need this, mate,” he told the Deinosuchus. And he sprayed two long bursts of deodorant out over the back of the boat.

  There came a strange croak from the dank water behind the male, and the female lurched around. Water crashed in all directions as she pushed off from what had probably been their nest. She let out a second terrible croak and began to paddle after the speedboat. Within moments she’d passed her fatter, slower mate, who struggled to keep up.

  “It’s working!” Abby cried, joining Connor with the spraying. His aerosols began to sputter. He shook them, sprayed again, but he’d already emptied the lot. For a moment he was going to drop them over the side of the boat into the water, all cool like Han Solo. But Abby wouldn’t approve of that so, feeling superior, Connor dropped the empty cans onto the buzzing floor of the boat. They rolled away from him as he reached for another two cans.

  “Careful where you’re pointing those things,” Becker snapped, knelt beneath their outstretched arms as he steered the boat deftly down the river. Connor had sort of been spraying him right in the face.

  “Sorry!”

  “I’m out!” Abby said, dropping her aerosols just as Connor had done, and reaching for two more.

  Connor’s arms ached at being out-stretched for so long. Becker didn’t dare pull too far ahead, or the deodorant spray would dissipate, and their targets would lose interest. But that didn’t seem to be a problem. The two crocodilians were having no trouble swimming in the speedboat’s wake. Meanwhile, the waves created by the boat and the creatures slammed into shops and buildings on both sides of the High Street.

  The female reached her fat-nosed, enormous head right out of the water to exclaim another croak.

  “I think she fancies me!” Connor said, and he laughed, dropping his empties and grabbing another pair.

  “It’s the Lynx effect!” Abby agreed, giggling.

  “Hang on!” Becker shouted, hauling on the rudder with all his weight. The boat twisted hard about to the right, hurling Connor and Abby to the left. Connor instinctively grabbed Abby’s sleeve, stopping her from falling overboard. The basket of deodorants bounced, smashing into the back of his hand and drawing blood.

  “Ow!” he said pointedly in Becker’s direction.

  “The route ahead was blocked,” Becker explained through gritted teeth, struggling to see past Abby and Connor.

  Looking over the back of the boat, Connor saw the Deinosuchus couple emerge from the right, fighting with the water to veer after them. He picked up another can and began spraying its contents. The stronger current swept past, carrying all sorts of rubbish to some unknown destination.

  “How much of a distance have we got on them?” Becker asked.

  “Maybe fifty metres,” Abby responded, retrieving her arm from Connor and grabbing for a can of her own.

  “Good,” Becker said, “because there’s a roundabout ahead.”

  Connor and Abby both turned, but too late. The speedboat slammed into a fast-moving river cutting across their path, left to right. Abby clutched onto Connor as they both fell forward, scattering the contents of the basket around the boat. Connor just had a moment to realise that they’d mixed up all their full aerosols with the empties, and then the front of the boat smacked hard into something.

  There was a horrifying crunch — possibly of Connor’s bones, he thought — and then a terrible silence but for the trickling water.

  Behind their prone, battered bodies, Connor heard Becker swear. He twisted round to see the soldier busy poking around at the engine. The speedboat had hit the central, concrete island of the junction and was drifting awkwardly backwards the wrong way around the roundabout.

  “Uh, guys?” Abby said, pointing a finger back towards the street from which they’d come, where two giant figures were streaking through the water towards them, thrilled at the sight of their suddenly helpless prey.

  “You’ve got to get it working!” Connor urged Becker.

  “Yeah,” Becker said. “I’d figured that out.” He swore again, unable to get his fingers at whatever bit had gone wrong. He pulled the pistol from the pouch at his thigh and fired warning shots to the side of each of the crocodiles. The bullets hit the water and the crocodiles didn’t even slow. Becker snorted, and smacked the speedboat’s engine with his gun.

  It puttered, and then roared back into life.

  He immediately clicked the casing back into place. Then he pushed the rudder hard away from him and the boat struggled to twist round in the current. The two crocodilians paddled easily into the water that was sloshing around the roundabout, and were quickly just a body-length away. The female took an agile stroke forward and could have bitten easily into the back of the craft. Instead she twisted round to kick back at the male, to keep him away from what she clearly regarded as her prey.

  “Right,” Becker said, with the boat more or less pointing the right way. He’d hardly let his pressure off the rudder, so when the current picked them up again, the engine stopped protesting, and they were suddenly gathering speed, lurching high above the water, skipping away from their huge pursuers.

  “Ha ha!” Connor laughed triumphantly, getting a mouthful of rain and spray.

  Becker weaved them neatly through the debris bobbing in the water. On their right they passed a sharp turning blocked off by the wreckage, and he steered them round. Connor had to admit that the man knew what he was doing. He just wouldn’t admit it very loudly.

  “We’re well ahead of them now,” he said.

  “We can’t get too far,” Abby reminded him, as she found a full can and began spraying again. “We want them to chase after us.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Connor said, reaching for the aerosols that were rolling around the floor. The first one he tried turned out to be empty, but soon he had a long trail of mist streaming out behind them. The female Deinosuchus reached her head high out of the water to inhale it, and let out a happy croak. Then she crashed back down, creating huge waves on either side of her, and kept on with her pursuit. Tagging behind her came the hapless male.

  “I really think she likes you,” Abby teased, nudging Connor in the ribs.

  “Yeah, well,” he said modestly, “it’s got to be the trousers. Girls love a man in stripes.”

  “Do they now?”

  “Oh, yeah. It’s well known.”

  “Um,” Becker said from the back of the speedboat. “We’re going to have a problem.”

  He nodded downstream. The road sloped ahead of them, and then levelled out just before it entered the wide and swollen river cutting across their path. Narrow islands poked out of the water all along the waterway, and
Connor couldn’t quite tell if they’d been there before, or had been created by the flood. This was where all of the debris was going, and as they looked ahead, every path was crowded with junk and rubbish. Once they entered the main channel, they would lose all their speed.

  More importantly, there were no soldiers waiting for them, which had kind of been the plan. If they could find somewhere safe to lead the creatures... Becker reached for his handheld anomaly detector but he needed to keep control of the boat’s rudder. Abby leant forward to help, tapping the keys with her nimble fingers. She shook her head.

  “I can’t get a signal on my earpiece either,” he said.

  “Think that’s a phone mast floating over there,” Abby said, pointing. “Looks like we’re on our own.”

  “They must have hit a snag,” Becker said.

  “Maybe if we took a turning?” Abby suggested.

  “It’s too shallow everywhere except for this main avenue,” Becker replied.

  Out of the main centre of Maidenhead, there was more surface area for the water to escape, so it wasn’t as deep and quick as on the High Street.

  “So what do we do?” she asked.

  Becker remained tight-lipped. He flicked at the overhanging comma of hair just above his eye.

  “Need a bit of faith,” he said. “My men will be here.”

  The slope of the hill was steep enough for the giant crocodiles to surf. They crested the waves and came down on their huge, thick bodies, so that it almost looked like they were enjoying themselves.

  Connor glanced round, desperate for anything that might help them. The aerosols in his hands were giving up the ghost. He was about to drop them when he had a better idea. Stretching his right arm out he brought it back quickly, like a cricket throw. The aerosol sailed up and over in a graceful arc towards the female Deinosuchus. He realised he’d misjudged the shot, that it was going to land too short. But the female ploughed forward, opened her enormous jaws and swallowed the thing whole.

  Abby stared at him.

  “We shoot it, and then it explodes,” Connor explained. “Just like at the end of Jaws.”

  “Connor!” Abby wailed. “That won’t do any good.”