by Rachel Ford
Before long, he was asleep.
Alfred was a heavy sleeper. That, he believed, was only natural. The rest of the righteous had every reason to be sound, after all.
Tonight, his head lolling to the side and snoring lightly, was no exception. Alfred dreamed of waking to find the data center, intact and rich with incriminating evidence. He had more bank transfer statements and financial records than he knew what to do with.
Then his dreams took him to an island in the Bahamas. There was a house and a dock, and no one as far as the eye could see. Caspersen had promoted him for a job well done on the Futureprise case, and sent him off for his first real vacation in years. You deserve it, Al. And don’t worry: the bad guys will still be here when you get back. He was sunning himself on the dock, enjoying the smell of ocean water.
Now the wind began to pick up, and the sun vanished behind clouds. The gentle swell of the ocean made way for thrashing waves. Now and again a spray of water would fly onto the dock, splashing his face and hands.
Alfred’s sleep became uneasy, and he started and twitched, drawing away from the water. But the spray continued.
Finally, he woke. He was not at sea, or the victim of churning waters. On the contrary, his situation was far, far worse. He was propped up in a chair, with a great, drooling reptile standing over him, slobbering on his face and arms.
Piercing shrieks split the early morning stillness. Later, he was glad that the campus was deserted; those screams, he was sure, would have been audible from one end of the oasis to the other.
At the moment, though, he was far too insensible for any such considerations. On the contrary, one of the IRS’s grimmest, most self-composed agents had been reduced to a blubbering imbecile. And he didn’t even care. All he could think of was his impending death at the jaws of that – whatever the heck it is!
He couldn’t begin to guess what manner of creature was attacking him. It looked something like a crocodile, sans the teeth. Its snout was long and reptilian, its hide rough and green, and in its eyes, there was a vague, confused expression. More than any of that, though, he was arrested by the size of the thing before him. Even bent to hover over his seat, it still towered over him.
Alfred continued to scream. From the side, something seized him. He screamed louder, until he heard Nancy’s voice, “Get out of here. Get the hell out of here!”
He realized the hand on his shoulder was hers. He’d never been so happy to see her in his life. He expected it was a sensation that would never be repeated. “Nancy! Oh, thank God.”
She, though, was advancing on the creature, who stumbled backwards at her approach. “Get out of here.”
When it had retreated a few steps, Nancy turned back to him. “Come on, Alfred.”
He didn’t need to be told twice. He was on his feet in a heartbeat. Grabbing her hand, he dashed in the opposite direction of the monster. They ran to the door – the open door. Sugar cake! he thought. I forgot to close that last night, didn’t I?
At the sound of their approach, a great, green head poked into the doorway. Alfred stopped short, and Nancy collided with him. “Another one.” His voice sounded strange to his own ears, and he realized he was screeching again.
“What the hell are those things?” she asked, her tones almost as hysterical as his own.
What it was, he couldn’t say; but it was headed their way, and that was enough. He took her hand again and headed in the opposite direction. They went deeper into the building, away from the room where the other monster remained, down a long, dark hall. The morning sun filtered in past iron bars and through grimy windows in long, dull streaks. It was enough to see by, but not much more.
The facility, Alfred saw, was a sort of prison. He remembered their conversation of the night before with mounting consternation at the sight of cells – cages, almost – lining the walk.
They looked empty, at least. Still, his footsteps slowed.
“What in the hell?” Nancy asked. “What is this place?”
He paused to listen for footsteps behind them. Hearing nothing, he said, “Do you have your flashlight?”
She nodded, reaching into her backpack. In a minute, she sent a beam of light into the cells. They were, as he’d already noted, empty. But as they rounded a corner, this changed. Here, he saw animal remains. They were littered in bone – bare of flesh, and ranging in size from rat like to elephantine. A sinking feeling turned at the pit of his stomach as he realized that these creatures must have been abandoned to their fate years ago, left here to die trapped in cages.
“My God,” he said. “What are we dealing with?”
They’d paused outside a tremendous cage, and Nancy was staring at the skeleton that rested inside. He drew up to study the bones. It was a massive animal, vaguely familiar to him in shape and construction. Its ribcage was vast, its leg bones thick. Empty eye sockets stared back ominously at him – but not so ominously as the banana sized canines that peeked out from fleshless lips. The front appendages, of all the body, seemed unimpressive and out of place, being short and stunted.
Had this creature been some sort of failed experiment, he wondered? Whatever it was, he was quite sure none of this was legal. Futureprise’s genetic research was clearly outside the boundaries of medical and scientific ethics.
This was an angle Alfred had not previously considered. He had never doubted that the corporation was run by criminals. On the contrary, he was here to prove it. But genetic experiments on animals? Creating monsters, and leaving them to die? Even tax fraud seemed benign by comparison.
Alfred shivered. He was dealing with monsters, alright; but not the ones in the cage, and not the ones slobbering behind him.
“They’re dinosaurs,” Nancy said abruptly.
He started at the sound of her voice, shattering the stillness that had settled between them. “What?”
“The things we met. These skeletons. They’re dinosaurs.”
Despite the situation, he laughed. “Dinosaurs? Did you hit your head, Nancy?”
“This is a T. Rex.”
He scoffed. “A T. Rex? Don’t be ridiculous. Why would anyone put a fossil in a cage?”
“It’s not a fossil, Alfred. It’s a skeleton.”
“Same difference.”
“It’s not,” she argued. “Those things we met, back there – they’re not fossils either.”
“Well of course not…”
“They’re living dinosaurs.”
Chapter Four
At first, Alfred didn’t believe it. He couldn’t. But, somehow, she’d convinced him; and that only made it worse. Through some devilry, Futureprise had managed to recreate dinosaurs. And they’d left them alive in the middle of the Mojave.
There was more than tax law that had been violated here. Photographic evidence, they decided, was what they needed. So they each pulled out their phones, snapping images of the twisted, grotesque skeletons up and down the hall.
Then, they turned their minds to more pressing matters: escape. “We’re at twenty-four hours,” Nancy said. “We’ve only got one day left. We need to move.”
He had no desire to return to the reptile at the main entrance, and neither had she. They were, he thought, getting rather good at making unanimous decisions.
“We need an alternate exit,” he opined. “The windows are barred. No way we’re going to get out of them.” He pursed his lips, and then stated the obvious. “That leaves one thing: another set of doors.”
Keeping to the exterior halls, they circled the facility. On the opposite side of the building, they found the very thing: a backdoor. With a little trouble, they managed to push it open.
The sun was bright – very bright – as they stepped out. He reached for his backpack, but pulled up short. “Sugar cookies.”
“What?”
“Sorry,” he said. He tried not to curse in front of ladies, but the situation was dire. “It’s just – I lost my stuff back there.”
“Your
cookies and sunscreen, you mean?” she asked skeptically. “Did you even have anything else in that bag?”
He ignored the question. “This is a real pickle. I can’t be in the sun without sunscreen.”
“Well,” she said, “if you want to stay here and hope those are herbivores back there, be my guest. I’m going to the data center.”
He considered radioing in, and calling the pilot back early. He considered throwing the towel in, and retreating to safety. But he remembered that better men than he had risked more in the pursuit of justice. “Here I am,” he said, “and I can do no other.”
She stared at him incredulously. “What is that even supposed to mean?”
“It means,” he said, a touch superciliously, “that duty calls. I’m going with you.”
“Oh goodie.”
They traveled in silence for about an hour, pausing only to disappear from the road long enough to answer calls of nature. Finally, Alfred could contain his discontent no longer. “God, I’d give my right arm for an iced latte right about now.” Then, he glanced around apprehensively. “Not literally, of course.”
He wasn’t a particularly religious man, but he also didn’t feel like tempting fate. A crime fighter’s dominant typing hand was too important to sacrifice; reports, after all, didn’t write themselves.
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t bring an espresso machine.”
“Too bad,” he said. He was only half joking. She’d seemed to have packed pretty much everything else. “I don’t suppose, though, you have a spare water?”
Grumbling at his lack of preparation, she supplied him with a bottle, and for a few minutes longer they traveled in renewed silence, each lost in their own thoughts.
Alfred was still struggling on some level to accept that he’d met not one, but two, live dinosaurs. Rationally, he reviewed the evidence and could only conclude that he had in fact encountered some species of dinosaur. But on a less rational level, the absurdity of such a conclusion weighed heavy on his mind.
“What the hell was that?” Nancy said suddenly, drawing up short in front of him.
“What was what?” Alfred wondered.
“That noise.”
“What noise?” Even as he asked, though, he heard a distant roaring.
“That noise!”
His eyes darted around, surveying the landscape. There were no buildings in the vicinity, just old clearings in the process of growing in and distant forests of trees that stretched like towers to the sky.
“There’s nothing there,” he said in a moment, as much to reassure her as himself.
“We couldn’t have both imagined the same thing,” she argued.
They listened together in silence, and despite the improbability of it, he had half convinced himself that they had in fact imagined it when it sounded again – and much closer this time.
Fudge muffins. Whatever it was, it was big, it was near, and it sounded mean. Alfred surveyed his surroundings again, this time with an eye for finding a hiding spot.
In the end, he didn’t have time. A distant patch of greenery parted as a giant reptile emerged. It was – and Alfred almost fainted at the sight – another dinosaur. Specifically, a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
“Well fuck,” he said aloud, and this time he was too addled to pass the four-letter word through the appropriate mental filter.
The creature spotted them at around the same juncture, and emitted another bellowing roar.
“Run!” Nancy yelled.
Alfred took to his heels as if they were on fire, following her toward the trees. They dove into the thickets, through the bramble, over the shrubbery, without a second thought. Whatever waited in the forest, it couldn’t be worse than what was behind them.
The dinosaur followed, the earth thundering under its feet. Alfred found himself shrieking as he went, a high wail that was lost to the beast’s roar. They’d reached the edge of the cleared land, and now they were among the trees.
The woods were darker, the great canopies overhead casting shadows on the forest floor. Alfred barely noticed, realizing with dismay that the trees here were not so close together as to inhibit their pursuer.
He pushed onward, his aching muscles working harder than they had ever worked, his lungs burning with exertion. He could hear the T. Rex behind them, getting closer by the minute. The earth trembled more violently underfoot, and a hot, malodorous wind pursued him. It was the creature’s breath, he realized. He was keenly aware that any moment might be his last.
All at once, Nancy cried out and seemed to vanish in front of him. But, he saw, she hadn’t vanished; she’d tumbled into a hole. He drew up a moment before he followed her into the dark.
He turned to gauge the dinosaur’s distance; and he found himself staring down parted jaws, and two rows of giant teeth. He was bathed in hot, humid air, and the smell of blood was heavy – sickeningly heavy – in his nose. The jaws pulled apart wider. He could see the creature’s tongue slick with saliva.
And somewhere, in the back of his mind, he heard Nancy yell, “Jump! Dammit, Alfred, jump!”
Chapter Five
He did jump – backwards, into the darkness. As terrifying as the prospect was, the jaws that flashed over him, the clicking of teeth – monstrous teeth – meeting teeth, was more terrifying.
Pain blinded his senses as he landed, though. He ached all over.
“Get up!” Nancy was saying. He felt her hands pulling at him, and he complied. “Come on.”
He stumbled into the dark behind her, hastened by the T. Rex’s frustrated roaring.
Visibility here was very poor. What little light seeped into the hole from above was insufficient to illuminate much. But it was enough to see solid walls and a solid floor below them, for the first few steps anyway.
Whether they were in a small room or a tunnel, he couldn’t be sure. Nancy was running as if there was somewhere to run to, and Alfred found himself hoping fervently that they were not about to make face-to-block contact with a wall she hadn’t been anticipating.
However, before they went too many steps, her flashlight kicked in. She shone the light around them in a frantic, stomach-turning fashion. He almost turned away as the beam cut up and down, over and across, with so much energy.
He managed to focus, though, and he saw that they were indeed in a tunnel. A mighty scream, deep and sonorous, sounded behind them, and Alfred’s heart leapt into his mouth. At the same moment, Nancy turned the light toward their point of entry.
There was nothing but a shadow, now dissected by the flashlight beam, in the tunnel. The T. Rex seemed to be hovering over the hole, yelling his discontent.
But, Alfred saw, it wasn’t a hole. Some twenty yards behind them, where they’d fallen in, was a staircase, now rather overgrown with vegetation. They had come on it from the opposite end, plunging the full distance to the landing rather than entering at the mouth of the stairs. In the back of his mind, he couldn’t help but wonder what kind of madmen would leave trap doors lying open in the middle of a forest. And who, for that matter, puts secret entrances in a forest anyway?
But Alfred was keenly aware that only a bit of concrete and a few score million years of evolutionary development separated himself and the carnivore behind him. And this was a problem he wanted to remedy sooner rather than later. “Let’s go,” he urged Nancy.
“Where?”
“Wherever these tunnels lead.”
She didn’t argue, and they plunged into the passage. They passed labs, some locked and dark, others lit by dim emergency lights. They stopped in a few to examine the equipment they found.
He saw all the detritus of lab life, at least as it existed in his mind anyway. There were microscopes, beakers and Bunsen burners, refrigeration units with biohazard stickers – units he carefully avoided – and chemical repositories. But he also saw cell imagers and microplate readers, and other equipment he didn’t recognize. Some of it, Nancy could identify; others left them both mystified.
As they meandered through the tunnel and its adjacent rooms, the roars became distant echoes. Alfred began to relax, enough to think clearly, at least. “This place wasn’t on the map,” he said.
“No,” she agreed. “It wasn’t.”
“It wasn’t in any of their filings.”
“I’m guessing it’s a secret facility. I don’t know why it was open – that doesn’t make sense – but I doubt it’s meant to be.”
That was all true, but it was missing the larger point. “Yes, but this means I was right.”
“What?”
“They didn’t report it. They didn’t pay taxes on it. They were scamming Uncle Sam!” Something like a groan, he thought, sounded from her. But she said nothing, and so he assumed he must have been mistaken. He continued. “Mission accomplished.”
“Yeah, sure,” she said. “As long as we can get the hell out of here without ending up a dinosaur’s lunch.”
He paused to consider. “I hope there’s another exit.”
“Me too. Because I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be the one to poke my head out and see if that guy’s gone.”
As they got deeper into the facility, Alfred saw a marked shift in the nature of the labs. The equipment changed, becoming computer focused. There were imaging machines, and great displays – all of them dark to the world.
“Dammit,” Nancy said, examining one of these dead machines. “I’d sure love to get a look at what’s on these computers.”
“Why can’t you?”
“No power. This whole facility seems to be without electricity.”
Alfred frowned. “What kind of incompetent villain puts in a reliable power source for the hair salon, but skimps on the power to his secret lair?”
“Lair?” Nancy repeated. He could see her eyebrows arched over the torchlight. “Villain?”
He shrugged. “Who else works out of a secret facility?”
“Or,” she said, “say, an unmarked building. Like the one we work out of?”
He felt his forehead creasing at the comparison, so unjust as it was. “That’s ridiculous, Nancy. We’re the good guys.”