Becca came face to face with the half-naked figure of a man that resembled Aleksi Ponomarenko, the same bastard who’d set the disastrous chain of events into motion that had landed her here. If he hadn’t taken a joyride in the backup helicopter, the kids would have been evacuated before the tidal wave had hit Big Yellow and all hell broke loose. If he hadn’t gone rogue, Reece wouldn’t have had to rescue the children, the starjet wouldn’t have crashed and there would have been no nuclear explosion. If the man before her hadn’t screwed everyone, she’d probably be safely at home on modern-day Earth.
“Can you see meeeeee!” The man shrieked, holding out his hands before collapsing to his knees and sobbing. “I can hear them, but I don’t understand. I don’t know what they want. Are you one of them?”
“Aleksi?”
“Am I real?” The man asked again, sucking in sharp shuddering sobs. “Are we dead?”
“Aleksi, is that you?”
“I was attacked by monster with legs like octopus. It ripped my skull like tin. I can’t see. Had to use skin spray on wound. Is this real? Please, can you see me?” Aleksi moaned. “Please, am I real?”
“Oh, my God,” Becca breathed, looking the man up and down. The portion of brain below the section of his skull that had been torn off pulsed below the synthetic skin, which stretched down across his left eye, which must have also been cleaved out. Her heart filled with sympathy. The poor guy had been alone here for weeks, with horrific injuries. It must have been terrifying. “Aleksi,” she said, dashing to the man. “It’s okay. I’m here now. I can help. It’s okay, you’re alive. This is real. You’re alive and I’m going to help you. You’re safe now, okay?”
Aleksi screamed as she touched his shoulder. He looked down then clasped her hand and examined it feverishly, up close to his remaining eye.
“You are real,” he said, crying and kissing her hand. “It is miracle. You’ve come to save me?”
“Yes, to save us both. Have you called anyone yet, did you fire up the starcom uplink?”
“I tried, but I don’t see so good. I don’t understand the world anymore. I’m so confused. My head, it hurts.”
“I know. It’s okay. Let’s get you to bed. I’ll make us some food. Are there beds?”
Aleksi pointed to one of the doors which she helped him through. Inside were three bunkbeds and some lockers. She laid Aleksi on one of the lower bunks and tore a blanket from the bunk above, which she used to cover the trembling man.
“It’s okay, Aleksi,” she said, squeezing his hand. “We’re going home. I promise, you won’t be alone anymore.”
Becca made her way to the door and stopped as Aleksi called her name.
“Can you really see me?” He croaked.
“Yes, I can see you. Let me get you some food. You’re safe now. Just relax.”
Becca quickly checked out her new home. The radiation meters on the walls, similar to the ones throughout the Jura base to monitor potential leaks from the buried nuclear power cell, showed they were in the clear. There was no trace of radiation.
“That’s one less thing to worry about. Thank fudge for that. No fallout.”
She discovered a shower room and an extraordinarily well stocked storeroom, with everything from fresh overalls, to sheets, bleach, toothbrushes and mountains of food. They definitely weren’t going to starve.
“That’s amazing,” she said, turning on and off the tap, tickling the running water with her fingers. She couldn’t help but laugh. “I never thought something so simple could be so incredible. We never stop to realize how lucky we are at home. We never do. Why are people so desperate to be angry when we have so much?”
She boiled a kettle and made up two servings of Ramen noodles, which she took to Aleksi, who ate like a man who’d been shipwrecked on a deserted island for weeks without a proper feed. When he was finished, he wiped his beard, curled into the foetal position and covered himself with his blanket.
“I’m gonna work out how to use the comms system, to call home,” Becca said. “Don’t worry anymore. You rest, I got this. They’ll come back for us, you’ll see.”
“There is no home. The world is dead and the Gods are killing the godless.”
“No,” Becca said, shaking her head, wondering whether her dalliance with madness had painted an equally wretched portrait. “The world is alive and we’re going home. No one’s dying. Not on my watch.”
“Are you a god killer?” Aleski asked feverishly, his one eye wild and wide.
“If needs be, then yeah, if that’s what it’s gonna take to get home, I’ll kill ‘em all.”
After some tinkering, Becca managed to pull up the starcom interface. The lights circling the webcam above the monitor brightened and an image of herself hovered on the screen. There appeared to be basic communication options, a photo icon and a video attachment icon above a text box. She was fairly confident the video and text functionality didn’t work, but nevertheless, typed a quick message explaining that Aleksi and herself had survived.
After a few minutes of pondering the best way to send a visual message, she figured the solution. She headed to the storeroom and tore a section of cardboard from one of the MRE boxes, then dug a piece of charcoal from the tread of her boots, which she used to scrawl a quick message. She held the card in front of the webcam, snapped a picture and hit send.
The message was simple, but to the point. She could send more detailed messages over the coming days, but this was good enough to begin with. It simply read, STILL ALIVE…
Dead Alive
T im Skinner had seen two people die during his sixty odd years on the planet. The first had been on a flight to Sri Lanka, when a late middle-aged man on the seat behind him had suffered a heart attack. When the stroke had hit the man’s wife had screamed ‘FACE! FACE!’ with such pure terror and panic it would haunt Tim for the rest of his days. Tim had watched in horror as the man’s contorting face slowly relaxed and he slipped away, the light in his eyes fading like the filament in an old flashbulb.
The second had been both devastating and magical. It had been as he’d cradled his ailing elderly mother’s hand at Kagoshima Central Hospital in Japan, surrounded by friends and family. She’d been smiling in her final moments, and gazing fondly at the gathering of loved ones. The atmosphere had been surprisingly happy. There had been jokes and laughter. People who hadn’t seen each other in years had been gladly reminiscing, hugging and asking themselves why they didn’t catch up more often and promising to do better. The whole occasion had seemed more of a celebration than a mourning. Indeed, they’d gathered to celebrate and bid farewell to a luminous woman whose foundational legacy of love and support still bonded the people in that room to this very day.
When his mother passed, with a lilting sigh as delicate as a leaf kissing a millpond, Tim had seen the light in her smiling eyes fade. He’d felt as though he was gazing down a tunnel, watching her life-light journey to the realm beyond, like he was watching an intrepid explorer venture down an ethereal passage in a cosmic temple, holding a blazing torch aloft. Eventually, as with the man on the plane, the light in his mother’s eyes went out and she was gone.
Tim knew more about the life-light in people’s eyes than most, which is why his current concern was intensifying. He’d only been in the hotel room a few moments and it was obvious something was desperately wrong. The man before him appeared both dead and alive. There was no light in his eyes, not even a dim flicker. Tim had never seen anything like it. The man was like a zombie or an android that resembled the friend he once knew, the once impressive leader so many had admired. It was as though a dim artificial intelligence had taken root behind his eyes.
The basketball court inside the Baller Suite at the Bellagio Casino Hotel, Las Vegas, was lined with hundreds of empty bottles of tequila and Jack Daniels. There were also crunched beer cans and a mangled Les Paul guitar embedded in a Marshall amp, below a guitar shaped dent in the wood-panelled wall.
“
I should’ve… I heard it was bad, but…” Tim breathed, shaking his head. “What are you doing to yourself, man?”
Swaying on the spot, Reece swigged tequila directly from the bottle. Liquor dribbled through his shabby beard, spindled with gray hairs. The liquid trickled down his chest and joined a mixture of liquor and food stains across his loosely tied bathrobe. The basketball he was clumsily bouncing escaped. Reece grunted and staggered forwards. He swatted at the ball haplessly before tipping forwards and skidding through the bottles lining the court, knocking them like skittles with his face.
“S’okay, I’m alright. I did it. I’m jus’… jus’ showing… I can… s’my ball and I call it. C’m’ere ball, come on, you know s’time for play time. We play the game of basketball. His name Tim. Yes‘s Timmy time.”
Reece clutched the ball, staggered to his feet and aimed at the basket with one eye closed, his head teetering on his shoulders, tequila leaking from the upturned bottle at his bare feet.
“What the hell, what have you done to yourself?” Tim said.
“Tha’s not how friends say. Shhhh,” Reece said to the empty bottles beside him, pressing a finger to his lips. “Don’t tell him ‘bout us. Is our ssecret. A secret most secret of all the secrets that were ever sssecret.” Reece spun round and hurled the ball towards the hoop. It brushed the net below the rim, bounced off the wall and skittered across the court. “Damn net’s too high again. I tell them, but they don’t listen. Summon the net heightificationisssts. I demand a ruling. Foul ball!”
“Are you even in there anymore, Reece?”
“There is no Reece, only Zuul,” Reece said, drooling and baring his teeth.
“Jeez, you’re a state. I’ll get you some water, just…”
“No water! NO! Jus’ leave me alone,” Reece slurred, hanging his head and searching the floor for more alcohol. “I jus’ wan’be alonesome.”
“I’ve come because it’s important. I can’t explain here. You have to trust me. You have to come with me. There’s no time to waste. Please, trust me, Reece. Trust me as a friend.”
“Time’sss like… the butterflies on the leaf…” Reece said, tickling the air with his fingers, “leaves of the wind who… uh… make it different when you stand on their wings… I think the wings effect over time… or something, you know that thing?”
“STOP!” Tim shouted, charging at Reece as he stooped to pick up the tequila bottle. He grabbed the man by the collar of his bathrobe and hauled him up. “This is important. There’s life at stake. Stop being so bloody pathetic! Get a grip. You need to trust me. Coming here has already exposed too much. We didn’t have to come, but Mr Yamamoto insisted.”
“Nori?”
“Yes, Nori. He needs you. He doesn’t have long left. Look, I can’t talk in public. Governments across the world are monitoring everything we do. The U.S. confiscated the stargo-jet. It’s locked in a hangar at Area 51, China’s locked down the Jurassic Earth Starport Resort, Japan’s frozen pretty much all of Nori’s assets. Countries across the world are following suit after the Jurassic incident. That fifty million dollars he gave each of you who survived, for reparations, it’s almost everything he had left in liquid assets, but this isn’t… it… you just gotta come with me. You gotta trust me. Pull yourself together and get some clothes on. Come on.”
“The government’s frozen Nori?” Reece said, looking confused. “So’s like Han Solo?”
“Whatever, okay, I’ll play, like Han Solo and you and me are gonna save him, okay? Please, Reece, soon everything’s gonna be taken and it’ll be too late. Global governments are taking everything. It’s a total smash and grab. They’re pretending it’s for safety reasons, but everyone knows they all want the technology. They want Jurassic Earth for themselves, probably for the resources, but that’s… I… … it’s bigger than all that. You need to trust me. Please trust me… You gotta…”
“NO!” Reece shouted, shoving Tim back. “Shut up your face hole!”
“Reece, get a grip. Nori’s dying and he needs to see you before the end. He’s dying, you get that? He needs you to come. Please come, please!”
“Becca,” Reece said, sagging to the floor cross-legged. He rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “Please leave me alone. Just let me go. I’m the damage.”
“I’m not leaving you, especially not like this. We need you, Reece. We need your help.”
“I killed my Becca and I did that. I had… I killed her…” he said, sniffing, a pained moan rising. “I miss her, Tim… I crashed the starjet. I killed my Becca. I wish every day I could take it back.” He bit his finger. “I just… I… I can’t handle these feelings in my head…”
“Listen to me,” Tim said, stooping down and resting a hand on his shoulder. “You saved a whole heap’a lives, you both did. Those kids wouldn’t have made it if it wasn’t for what you did. And Becca knew what she was doing, she chose to do what she did. She’s a hero, you both are.” Tim then checked around the room, searching for cameras or recording equipment. Unable to spot anything obvious, he leaned close to Reece’s ear and whispered, “Don’t make a scene, chap, but she’s still alive. We’re going back to get her. She survived and has been sending messages through starcom. Are you in, clocks ticking, mate?”
“Huh?” Reece said looking up, his body starting to tremble. “Did you…”
“Yes, exactly what you think I said. Run it back in your head. I won’t say it again, not in public. Now, are you gonna come with me or not. Nori’s dying and he needs to see you.”
“Nori?” Reece queried, looking even more confused than before. “But you…”
“If you weren’t such a worthless mess, I’d thump you one. Run it back. You heard what I said. You have five minutes to… okay fifteen, you stink and need a shower, fifteen minutes to get yourself together and come with me. This is a rescue mission. Are you in?”
Wheel Spin
W atching two men wheel three large suitcases through the central mall of the Bellagio Casino wasn’t close to the strangest things James Ovuike had seen in his tenure as roulette pit boss, yet it piqued his attention. The pair were embroiled in a heated argument and one of them seemed so drunk he could barely stand. It wasn’t uncommon for couples to lose large sums of money and argue as they departed the hotel, or for patrons to marinade themselves in alcohol to the point their inhibitions went the way of the dinosaurs. The bachelorette party at table five who insisted on taking it in turns to flash every time they had a win, whilst cheering in unison ‘ladies love boobie luck,’ was testament to that.
It never ceased to amaze James how normally well-mannered people turned into maniacs the moment the razzmatazz and the twinkle of the Vegas lights caught their eyes and the drinks started flowing. It was one of the reasons he loved his job. The lights and sights of Sin City was a never-ending rollercoaster thrill-ride. It was the most exciting place on Earth, hands down, no doubt about it, and the Bellagio was its epicenter, the jewel in its glittering crown.
James’ interest turned to mild concern as the bearded and drunkest of the two men staggered towards table number two, much to the apparent annoyance of his smartly dressed partner, or was it his manager? The Bellagio attracted so many minor celebrities these days, with egos that far exceeded their talent, it was hard to keep track. The more James studied the duo, the more he was convinced they were tangled in a manager-talent bust-up. His Spidey senses started to tingle. Something was brewing. Maybe not something bad, but something. Maybe the talent was about to stage a social media style stunt to try and inject some scandal into a flagging career, and his manager was desperately trying to stop him making an ass of himself.
“You seeing this?” James said into the concealed microphone on his cuff, which fed a signal to the control room out back, the eyes in the sky.
“Yeah, stand down,” a voice came through his earpiece. “That’s Reece Hunter, that Jurassic hero guy. He’s been holed up in the Baller Suite for the last couple of months. Could be a high roller.
Whatever he wants, it’s our pleasure. You know the drill.”
James signalled the bar and nodded towards Reece. The bartender nodded in acknowledgement and instructed a hostess to be ready to accommodate any requests Reece might have.
“Sure doesn’t look like a hero,” James said under his breath. “Looks like he’s been living under a bridge, in Mordor.”
“The amount of money he’s spending, that’s hero enough for us. He paid straight up two mil and told us to leave him alone until it runs out.”
“How much is left on the tab?”
“A little over one-point-three. He gets a lot of room service, mostly alcohol. If he wants, you get him a quilt and pillow and make him up a bed on that table. Everything’s comped. Vegas royalty, baby.”
“Hooah, I’m all twinkles and toes.”
“Get ‘em Tink.”
James strode towards the pair of gentlemen, smiling. The smartly dressed man was becoming ever more agitated and saying how they didn’t have time for this.
“I got this, I gots this, relax,” Reece said, patting his friend on the chest. “You trusss me and I trusst you. We have trusss bond,” he added, linking two fingers together, then whispering in a slurred voice, “Like swans. We dancing like the swans.”
“We are not swans and you’re making a scene. We’re supposed to be flying under the radar.”
“Tha’s why’s so good. We breaking the radars. It’s perfect cover, don’t you see. I’ve thunk everything,” Reece said, tapping his head and looking incredibly pleased with himself.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” James announced. “Can I assist you this evening?”
“My good man,” Reece said, grinning and clutching his t-shirt like the lapels of a fine dinner suit. “I sshall have three, uh four… can I have the bottle of the finest tequilas in the land. And for my little swan,” Reece added with a chuckle, tickling his unimpressed friend under the chin, “he’s have all the pink drinks.”
Jurassic Earth Trilogy Box Set Page 27