by Jodi Taylor
‘Are you insane? This woman has more lives than a herd of cats. I want her dead at my feet before we go anywhere.’
‘She is only a woman.’
‘Get her up.’
I was hauled to my feet. My legs buckled again and down I went back into the mud. Khalife yanked me up again. And not gently. I was beginning to go off him in a big way.
Ronan said something which, given the distance, the torrential rain and the by-now almost permanent ringing in my ears I didn’t catch but I felt Khalife shake his head.
‘No. The price is doubled now. This woman has value to you and I have the woman. The transaction is simple.’
‘It certainly is,’ said Ronan, and shot him.
Down went Khalife and again, so did I.
Ronan approached, very, very cautiously.
I tried to blink away some of the mud and rain out of my eyes and there he was. He looked down at me. I looked up at him. We regarded each other.
‘Now look what you made me do,’ he said, quite mildly.
I stared at Khalife. His eyes were open. I saw him blink. His dark blood pumped into the swirling water and was carried away. That wasn’t good. Even setting aside the normal predators, there was a T-rex out there somewhere. I managed to slur, ‘Should get out of here.’
He nodded calmly. ‘I’m aware,’ and I remembered him leaving Davey Sussman dying in his own blood. To be torn apart by a herd of Deinonychus.
I could see most of him now – well, as clearly as anyone not wearing her glasses in a tropical rainstorm and with a face full of mud can see anyone.
Brace yourself for entirely understandable bad language. Where the fuck were the Time Police? No matter what was going on at St Mary’s, they could have sent a small team, at least. I loved the way everyone had blithely assured me they’d be here when I needed them and then, presumably, found somewhere more exciting to be.
And what of Mikey? Was she, even at this moment, being swept over a Cretaceous waterfall?
Or St Mary’s and Dr Bairstow? Where the fuck were all these people? I don’t know, you work hard at uni, you get your qualifications, you sign up for a nice indoor job with adequate access to chocolate and just look how it all turns out.
He threw his gun to someone beyond my range of vision. I knew he wasn’t alone because, through the noise of the storm, I could catch men’s voices on the wind and hear their blasters whining. He leaned down and hauled me up out of the swamp.
I was none too steady on my feet but he had hold of the scruff of my T-shirt, easily holding me upright. He was unarmed. Now was my opportunity. In my mind, I tensed every muscle and hurled myself at him. What actually happened was that my left arm waved vaguely for a moment and then fell to my side again. I had a vague idea I might be dribbling. Can I refer you to my previous comments on historians and good career choices?
If he was heading for solid ground then he was going to have to put his back into it. Everywhere was water. Fast-flowing water. And not just water – branches, debris, the occasional small dinosaur or mammal body . . . We really needed to get out of here. Dirty water was cascading down from higher ground bringing small rocks and boulders with it. A liquid landslide.
I spared a thought for Mr Khalife. I couldn’t see him anywhere. Was he underwater? Had he been washed away? Was he, at this moment, something’s lunch? It occurred to me that no matter how badly my day was turning out, Wolfe’s and Khalife’s had turned out worse. Not that I was doing that well . . .
I peered blearily at Ronan and slurred, ‘Ever wished you’d never got up this morning?’
He shook me, rather as a terrier shakes a rat, which did me no good at all. I added nausea to my long list of things to be unhappy about.
‘No, you don’t, Maxwell. You don’t try to smarm or charm your way out of this one.’
Movement was coming back into my uncooperative lips. ‘What, you mean identifying a common bond and using that to establish a relationship? Like we did in the desert?’
His voice was harsh. ‘When you betrayed me?’
I shook my head and nearly overbalanced. ‘When you did good work, Clive. When you remembered you were once an historian. When you saved my life . . . and I saved yours.’
‘Yes, well, I expect we both regret that now.’
I made an effort. ‘Clive, for the last time – it wasn’t me. I didn’t tip off the Time Police.’
‘Well, not you, obviously. It was that bastard Bairstow.’
‘It wasn’t,’ I said, my mouth still feeling as if I’d spent the morning at the dentist. ‘He was as taken aback as any of us. It was just a coincidence. The Time Police had been chasing you ever since you took me from St Mary’s.’
He actually seemed offended. ‘Oh, before that, surely?’
‘Well, yes, I expect so, but only in a kind of half-hearted “We’ll get you one day, Ronan” way. It was only after what you did to Helen and . . . and Matthew . . . that everyone really started having a go at you.’
‘And look how that turned out. You nearly lost everything, didn’t you? Husband . . . son . . . friends . . .’
‘I got them all back. You’ll never win. You know it.’
His grip tightened. I was making him angry again but my instinct was to keep him talking. If he was talking and listening then he wasn’t shooting. There was still time for the less than timely Time Police to amble into the picture. And Mikey was brave and resourceful and would think of something, with luck before she was washed into the nearest ocean.
‘And really, you know, Clive, you’ve only got yourself to blame. If you’d just settled down somewhere quiet you’d probably have got clean away. You could have used your future knowledge to make yourself a fortune. You could have been rich and powerful and comfortable but instead you raced up and down the timeline destroying this and killing that – really you couldn’t have been any more obvious, could you? It’s almost as if . . .’
I stopped deliberately. The wind no longer shrieked at us but the heavy rain still ran down his face. We looked at each other.
‘Almost as if what? Don’t stop now, Maxwell.’
Shit. Well, in for a penny . . .
I took as deep a breath as I could manage. ‘Almost as if you wanted to draw attention to yourself. Almost as if you wanted to be caught. Almost as if you . . .’
He slapped me with his free hand. ‘Shut up.’
‘Almost as if you wanted to die . . .’ and I knew that I had touched a nerve.
He was furious. Gobs of spittle flew from his mouth. He was white-faced with rage. His eyes glittered. He had no gun – possibly a safeguard against me making a death-or-glory grab for it – but he was powerful enough to snap my neck where I stood. One hand still held me up – the other curled around my throat.
A deadly voice said, ‘As long as I outlive you.’
I honestly thought my last moment had come. I had nothing to lose.
I hurled myself at him – although, again, the word ‘hurled’ might be slightly overstating my uncoordinated lurch. And I slipped as I lurched. My foot slithered backwards in the mud and instead of launching myself forwards as I’d planned, I lost my balance and fell. Which turned out to be a Good Thing.
It couldn’t have been Ronan so it must have been one of his men who fired his blaster at me. Something hot sizzled over my shoulder. Whoever it was, they were far enough away to miss but close enough to give me a painful burn.
I lost all momentum and fell heavily, but I did manage to drag Ronan down with me. Which turned out to be a very Bad Thing because he immediately tried to drown me in the mud.
I was so pissed off with today. How much more could go wrong?
He forced me on to my front, grinding my face down into the mud. I screwed up my eyes and tried to close my mouth but the pressure was too great. And I could feel watery mud bein
g forced up my nose and into my mouth. My instinct was to swallow and that wouldn’t be good. His weight was on my back and I could barely move. I flailed helplessly and, typically, it was at this point that Mrs Partridge’s words came back to me. When I’d sat in her office all those weeks ago. When all this had seemed like such a good idea.
‘You must not make the mistake of thinking that because the circumstances are the same, the result will be the same.’
I heard the alarm in her voice – the warning – and suddenly, now that it was too late, I realised I might have made a huge mistake. Yes, Ronan had died here in another world, but I’d been in this world long enough to know that while events often played out in a similar fashion – the results weren’t always exactly the same. Ronan and I had been trapped in a tropical storm in the Cretaceous period and he’d died. Now – today – Ronan and I were again trapped in a storm in the Cretaceous period but this wasn’t Ronan’s end. It was mine.
36
Typical Ronan, he didn’t go for any of the complicated ways of ensuring my death. All this tying me to the railway track and retiring to twirl his moustaches and gloat wasn’t his style at all. He simply pushed my face in the mud and put his knee on my back.
There wasn’t a thing I could do about it. I kicked my legs but they were underwater and all that happened was a great deal of splashing. I flailed my arms but I couldn’t reach him. There was nothing to catch hold of. Nothing with which to get a purchase. Instinctively I put my hands down to try to push myself up and all that happened was that they sank more deeply into the warm, wet mud.
Mud was everywhere. My eyes were full of it. As were my mouth and nose. I hadn’t had a chance to take a deep breath before he attacked me and my heart and lungs were pounding. The next breath I took would probably be my last. Even my ears were full of mud, although I could still hear the floodwaters roaring past. I was panicking.
It was at this moment that I accepted that the Time Police weren’t coming. No one was coming. I was alone. I’d been too clever and one of the complicated elements of my wonderful plan had failed to mesh with the others and everything was crashing to the ground.
I could feel my heart thumping inside my head. And inside my chest. I tried twisting from side to side. Nothing happened. He was a big, strong man. He knew what he was doing. His weight was in all the right places. I was as helpless as a baby. There was nothing I could do to save myself. In desperation, I pushed down even harder.
Something moved beneath my hand.
I thought I’d been panicking before but that was nothing to this. Something squirmed under my hand. And then it writhed about and twisted around my wrist and arm. Whatever it was, it was very thick and very strong.
And then it bit me. A sharp red pain shot up my arm.
My panic went into overdrive. Instinctively, I tried to scream and my mouth filled with more mud and grit and God knows what. Most of it went down my throat and that was when my body kicked my brain into touch and took over.
Facing imminent choking, my entire body heaved in one huge paroxysm that dislodged Ronan’s knee. The weight shifted. Desperate for air, I twisted somehow and he toppled off me. The pressure eased. I could move my head. I twisted to one side, got my head free and coughed and coughed, spitting mud and stuff until finally, I could suck in some Cretaceous air.
But only for a second. He wasn’t going to let me go. I could feel his fingers scrabbling for my throat but the best thing about a Cretaceous downpour is that it’s as bad for everyone. He couldn’t see either. And he was as hampered by the rushing water and mud as I was. Neither of us could see what we were doing. Neither of us could get a grip on the other.
Not unsurprisingly, I think, I’d forgotten about whatever it was I’d disturbed under the mud but just when I could have done without the distraction, the thing wrapped around my arm tightened its grip. It was like having one of those old-fashioned blood-pressure cuffs which had malfunctioned and wasn’t going to stop until it had cut my arm in half.
At the same time the something bit me again – on the back of my hand this time. The same sharp pain flashed. I had no idea what was attacking me – other than Ronan, of course – and terrified that something was about to eat my entire arm, and in an attempt to dislodge it, I flung that arm around in a wide arc.
I hit something that could only have been Clive Ronan. I heard him yell. The next moment he’d rolled away from me.
Whatever was around my arm slackened its grip. I couldn’t see a thing for all the gunk in my eyes. I had no idea what was attached to me. A giant leech, perhaps, black and glistening with mucus, and with an orifice as big as my head. Or was this just one arm of a multi-tentacled Cretaceous monster the size of Penge? Whatever it was, I didn’t want it anywhere near me. For once in his life, Ronan could perform a useful function and act as alternative host.
I struggled to get up but the rushing water was strong and I couldn’t get any further than kneeling. Screaming fit to burst, I flapped my arm wildly, shouting, ‘Get off. Get off. Get off.’ Which of them I was talking to was anybody’s guess but my tactics were successful. The snake-like creature slackened its grip. I don’t think it was anything I did. I suspect it had been ripped from its nice, safe refuge deep in the mud and it didn’t like what was currently happening to it. Its instinct would be to lash out at everything in sight and at that moment everything in sight was Clive Ronan.
In one sinuous movement it unwound itself from my arm and plopped on to Ronan. As it did so, a head emerged from the coils, piranha-shaped and with huge, inward-pointing teeth far out of proportion to its mouth, followed by, as far as I could blurrily make out, yards and yards of snake body.
Behind the front end – or the teeth end, as I liked to think of it – protruded two stubby, fin-like legs. Whether this was some snake creature evolving to be a land animal, I had no idea. Or perhaps it had given up on land and was becoming a water-based creature? A gigantic eel, perhaps, or a transitional snake. As far as I could see – which wasn’t far – it was about twelve feet long, as thick as my arm, and an oily blackish-brown.
Ronan instinctively tried to bat it aside and it didn’t like that at all. Perhaps I was splashing too much as I struggled to get away, because the next moment it had abandoned me completely and was slithering across his upper body, teeth bared and looking for trouble. Ronan twisted, and in his efforts to get away, fell backwards on top of me.
I opened my mouth for a scream that was half shock, half terror, half Ronan’s crushing weight driving the breath from my body again, and half regret that I wasn’t better at maths.
Unlike me, Ronan didn’t waste time screaming and flailing. Baring his teeth, he seized the snake between head and fins and began to squeeze with both hands. And now it really was a Clash of the Titans. The thing hissed and spat, snapping at him with those giant teeth and squirming in his grip. Pulling itself further out of the water it attempted to encircle Ronan in its thick coils. Really, I suppose it was just a case of who would do for the other first. From a safe distance, it could have been interesting and I rather thought that now might be a good time to achieve that safe distance. With an effort, I heaved myself out from beneath Ronan and tried to crawl away. Not a lot of me was working that well, and it’s difficult crawling through mud because it just wants to pull you downwards rather than forwards, but I’d achieved nearly six or seven inches when the pair of them, still locked together in mortal combat, crashed down on top of me and I was face down in the mud again with one hugely pissed-off snake indiscriminately biting both of us.
Something was happening. Something other than the life and death struggle going on over my head, I mean. The ground was moving. Literally moving underneath me. A surge of colder water swept over me and did what I could not – dislodged Clive Ronan.
I knew what this was. I’ve been caught in a flash flood before. They’re not tsunamis – there’s not a lo
t of height – but they just don’t stop. They sweep everything before them and that’s what kills you. Being walloped round the head by a socking great tree trunk. Or caught under an impenetrable mat of debris and branches and unable to get your head above water to breathe, or tossed and turned by the power of the uncaring water as your body is slowly battered into tiny pieces.
I vaguely recall being washed along, turning and rolling as the current took me. I could hear a roaring in my ears. I needed to get out of here. I needed either to drag myself to solid ground, or find something sturdy to hang on to until the worst was past.
The water was carrying me along. Sadly, there wasn’t enough of it in which to swim but too much to stand up in so I was bounced along the ground, colliding with what felt like every rock and tree stump in the Cretaceous period. I tried to hang on to something but it was all moving with me.
Heaven knows where I would have ended up eventually, but a lucky collision with a tree stump somehow pushed me out of the main flow. Suddenly, the current was lessened and there was ground beneath me.
I forced my arms and legs to move. Whether through terror or because the effects of my own stun gun were wearing off, I found I could slither along fairly easily. I wriggled along, very much like a snake myself, feeling more and more optimistic with every moment. Suddenly, there was a chance I might make it after all.
Something caught at my leg. A hand. He was still there. Still doing his best to kill me. And this time I was finished. I had no more fight left in me. I thought I saw the snake, too, twisting and turning in the torrent. That was it then. One of them was bound to get me. This was the end.
So, obviously, that was when the Time Police turned up, took one look at the situation and shot us all.
Bastards.
They must have had their sonics on a stronger setting this time because it was more than just the chest pain and disorientation. I think I lost consciousness altogether. I know I fell back into the water.