Pax Britannia: Unnatural History

by Jonathan Green

  "But perhaps I did not choose the best moment to impart all I suspected, particularly without the evidence to back it up."

  "But you have that evidence now." It wasn't a question. Genevieve Galapagos was no fool. The previous night's adventure had convinced Ulysses of that much.

  "Walk with me," Ulysses said.

  As she took his arm he caught the scent of her again carried on the warm breeze; the scent of jasmine flowers. For a moment he was transported back to Tibet and the Gardens of Sanctuary at Shangri-La. Then, in silence, the two of them joined the other promenaders in their wanderings of the Challenger Enclosure.

  The Regent's Park menagerie was always popular with the leisured classes and it was busy now, the zoo having been open for over an hour. Chaperoned courting couples were making their promenade of the dinosaur pens. There were ladies at leisure carrying parasols against the glaring sun, and nannies pushing perambulators whilst trying to keep their slightly older and yet more unruly charges under control.

  Genevieve had been late. Ulysses had waited half an hour, with only the lowing and farting of the goliath animals and the clattering of the Bakerloo line above him for company, before trying her again on his personal communicator. The phone had rung and rung without anyone answering. After an hour, and with the crowds steadily increasing, he had begun to wonder if she would come at all and whether he shouldn't just give up on the distraught Miss Galapagos and continue with his investigation.

  And then she had appeared between the crowds of sauntering zoo-goers, dressed in a long green velvet coat with her luxurious auburn hair done up in a bun under a top hat, an anxious searching look in her eyes.

  They joined the ambling throng of the general public as if enjoying the wonders of the Challenger Enclosure like any other curious couple, for a moment all their worries and the pressure of the mission put to one side. As they walked they caught snippets of conversation.

  "In the wild they graze the low-growing vegetation of their savannah homes but here at the zoo they do just as well on a diet of hay and fresh fruit and vegetables," a keeper was explaining to an interested party of parvenus, describing the dietary habits of the stegosaurus. "Mabel here is particularly fond of bananas, aren't you girl?"

  "Are they not dangerous?" a young woman asked.

  "Only if they're frightened and you get in the way of a stampede. They're quite placid really. They're only really dangerous during the mating season when the males fight for the females' attention but old George over there is a bit past that sort of thing these days. He can only really manage a bit of bellowing now. But then we don't have any other younger males here at the zoo to threaten his position as top dog, as it were."

  They moved on to where a party of school children were completely ignoring what their harassed teacher was trying to tell them about the styracosaurs they were supposed to be studying. "They produce as many as eight eggs in a clutch," the schoolmistress was saying. "Gregory Pike, will you stop that at once!"

  "But what's to stop the animals escaping?" a concerned portly woman wearing a garish ostrich-feather hat was asking another attendant whilst her hunched and hen-pecked husband gazed distractedly at a younger man's more comely companion.

  "Don't worry, madam," the zookeeper reassured her jovially. "Every pen is either surrounded by a moat or ditch, like this one here, so that the animals can't climb out, or they are kept behind six-inch thick reinforced steel bars, like the carnivores in the 'Prehistoric Killers' section. And if that weren't enough the fences are also electrified."

  "Goodness me. Did you hear that, Stanley?" the woman asked her husband.

  "What was that, my dear?" he replied distractedly, as though enjoying some lovely private dream.

  "The fences are electricityfied. Oh I do wish you would listen!"

  "Yes dear."

  "So you have nothing to fear, madam. You are perfectly safe, as is the rest of London," the keeper said with a chuckle.

  They walked on, leaving the herbivore pens behind, moving into the area the keeper had referred to as the 'Prehistoric Killers' section.

  "Why, they're just like birds," a chinless fop with a monocle and an oiled moustache was saying to impress an equally inbred-looking pug-nosed girl.

  "And of course the work we're doing here has an environmental aspect to it as well," a zoo employee dressed more like a clerk than a keeper was explaining to a group of broad-waisted businessmen venture capitalists. "In the wild these animals are either being hunted to extinction for sport or their natural environment is being steadily destroyed as a result of Man's continued, and utterly thoughtless, pillaging of the planet. Either to provide farmland to grow crops to feed an ever-increasing population, or to be strip mined in the incessant quest for coal for the monstrous machines on which we have all so come to depend. So you see, gentlemen, your investment is of vital importance to our continued good work here."

  They passed a large domed enclosure that looked not unlike a giant birdcage, for that was effectively what it was. Perched on the branches of trees growing inside were a flock of leathery-winged pterosaurs.

  "Look, Templeton Trench brought this specimen back from the Congo as an egg," a tanned, older man with a huge white handlebar moustache was bellowing to the two simpering girls hanging off his arms - both young enough to be his nieces but of no apparent familial connection. They ooh-ed and ah-ed and giggled in all the right places as he continued his monologue, casting only half-interested glances in the direction of the monstrous, red-skinned allosaurus devouring a pig's carcass in front of them.

  "Of course the Megasaurus Rex is our finest specimen." The party of businessmen and their fund-raising guide had moved along with Genevieve and Ulysses. "A true king of the megasaurs, although of course ours is a female. The keepers call her Glenda. She eats up to three cows a day."

  "How horrible!" Genevieve suddenly exclaimed and Ulysses felt her squeeze his arm more tightly. In the shade of a magnolia tree she pulled him to a halt. "You said you had some news." Suddenly he was abruptly back in the real world with all its attendant worries and inconclusive problems.

  Ulysses looked Genevieve squarely in the eyes. He could have let himself drown in those limpid pools. "What was your father doing? What did his most recent work entail?"

  An expression of guilt flickered across her face for a moment and she turned her eyes away. The croaking cries of the dinosaurs filled the silence.

  "The truth is, I don't know," Genevieve admitted at last. "I hadn't actually seen him for some time. He had become totally absorbed by his work, whatever it was. And you think that whatever it was he was working on caused him to..."

  "Change?" Ulysses finished for her. "Yes, I do."

  Then she was staring intently into his eyes again with that imploring look of hers and Ulysses felt his heart leap inside his chest. "Help me find my father," she said, "I beg of you. Help me." There was a hand on his shoulder now, the other slipped from his arm around his waist. Above them an Overground train whistled as it approached the aerial platform of Albany Street station four storeys above.

  She was beautiful, of that there was no doubt - her body athletically slim, accentuated with curves in all the right places - and she was no mean markswoman either. What more could a man look for in a girl?

  But he was becoming distracted. Another part of his mind was musing upon the matter of where a rogue apeman would hide in London, if not the Natural History Museum or London Zoo? Except that the sample he had taken to the old curmudgeon Methuselah was now showing signs of turning into something more akin to lizard scales, so the supposition was that Professor Galapagos would be undergoing the same unspeakable transformation. So the question wasn't so much, where would an apeman hide in the overrun capital as, where would a lizard make its lair? And then, by extension, how on Earth would Ulysses Quicksilver, dandy adventurer and detecting intellect for hire, find it?

  All the while that other part of his mind, the part ensnared by Genevieve's lustrou
s gaze, her cherry bud lips, her jasmine blossom aroma and the warmth of her breath on his cheek, was aware of how close the two of them were to one another now. He took her in his arms, lowering his head to meet hers. Her glistening lips parted to meet his.

  Then another, almost subconscious part of his mind, took over as his sixth sense screamed for his attention. And what it screamed was 'Danger!'

  The thunderous roar of the explosion tore through the peace of the morning promenaders, the force of its shockwave throwing many to the ground. Ulysses instinctively threw himself on top of Genevieve as the two of them were bowled off their feet by the blast. Pieces of twisted metal and other debris rained down around them. One man went down with blood pouring from his head. Another cried out as a buckled spar speared his torso and then fell silent.

  Ulysses turned to look up at the Overground line that crossed the sky above the zoo, his body taut, ready. Thick black smoke shot through with greasy orange flames, rose into the sky over Regent's Park from a fifty foot wide span of the Bakerloo line. As Ulysses watched, with a tortured metal scream, a section of track broke free from a cast iron stanchion and fell, cantilevering under its own great weight. To Ulysses' adrenalin-heightened senses it seemed that the track was falling in slow motion, trailing oily smoke and charcoal-blackened railway sleepers as it swung down towards the crowded Challenger Enclosure. People were screaming. Some were running in an attempt to escape the catastrophe unfolding around them.

  The descending track crashed into the side of the stegosaurus pit, crushing a keeper and the panicking woman he was trying to save as the pen wall crumbled. Other pieces of debris continued to rain down from the devastation of the Bakerloo Line above. Ulysses could hear the schoolmistress screaming hysterically, her wailing charges suddenly desperate to obey her instructions.

  The animals were in uproar. Herbivores hooting and bellowing in fear. Carnivores paced their cages roaring, smelling the pheromone fear of their natural prey. The musky scent was sending them into a frustrated frenzy, desperate to get to the panicking animals - and desperate humans.

  Keepers were running from other parts of the zoo, along with huddles of zoo-goers, eager to witness the escalating drama within the Challenger Enclosure as much as to aid those at the forefront of the disaster.

  But it seemed that Ulysses alone realised that this was only the beginning and that a more terrible disaster was about to strike. The Overground was running still, the drivers of the trains on the Bakerloo Line as yet unaware of the accident, or act of sabotage, whatever it might be. And there was a train coming now.

  There was the shriek of brakes being applied as the driver saw first the roiling column of smoke and then the gaping hole in the track, but with the train still travelling at speed there was no hope of it stopping in time. Instead, the fully laden passenger train careered off the broken span, following the track down into the zoo, the carriages being pulled violently off the rails as the lead engine hurtled down into the Challenger Enclosure. The engine hit the tarmac with deadly force, its boiler casing rupturing and its smokestack exploding into flame. Those within ten yards, not crushed beneath the falling train, were scalded to death by the superheated steam rushing from the broken boiler or burned alive in the fiery inferno that followed.

  But the train did not stop there. It ploughed on through the enclosure, carried forward under its own momentum as well as being shunted from behind by the ten carriages that clattered after it. Walls crumbled to dust before the hurtling comet of the burning engine, bars of cages crumpling and steel tearing like paper. Yet still the train hurtled on, sparks flying from the pathways and plazas, carriages keeled over onto their sides, the passengers trapped within screaming as fires took hold throughout the body of the wreck. Dinosaur pens were breached, carnivore cages torn down and the pterosaur enclosure smashed open.

  Finally the devastated engine broke through into the apatasaurs' lake enclosure, killing a young female as the train wreck smashed through the electric barrier and into the animal's flank, ploughing a great furrow into the turf leading to the shore of the herd's watering hole. Carriages piled into the back of the engine, several breaking free at last. Ulysses watched as one of the carriages - its side scraped bare of its coat of paint - barrelled through the air over him and Genevieve. He momentarily glimpsed the faces of the carriage's terrified occupants pressed against the shattered windows as it spun in its hurtling airborne path. Then it crashed down into the high perimeter wall of the zoo and smashed through, breaching the one barrier that remained between the prehistoric bubble of the Challenger Enclosure and the outside world in a cloud of mortar and brick dust. Ulysses - his heart pounding from their dramatic escape - heard the blaring of car horns, the screech of more brakes and the inevitable collisions as the carriage ploughed onto the thoroughfare beyond the boundary of the zoo.

  People fled in panic as did the zoo's most prized exhibits, the dinosaurs breaking free of their long incarceration. There was a sobbing shout from one of the keepers that the electric fence was down.

  "We have to get out of here!" Ulysses yelled at Genevieve over the screams of the fleeing crowd and the bellowing of the dinosaurs, pulling her to her feet. Genevieve was too shocked to answer but merely stumbled after Ulysses through the chaos as he pulled her onward, his hand in hers, the force of his desperate grip crushing her fingers.

  Already a pack of velociraptors were running through the enclosure, instinct taking over, seizing the opportunity to hunt amidst the confusion of the crowd. Out of the corner of his eye Ulysses saw one of the lithe reptiles leap from the top of an ice-cream kiosk onto a nurse, snatching the child she was desperately clinging onto with its razor sharp jaws. Genevieve whimpered beside him.

  They ran on. If they made it to the exit Ulysses knew Nimrod would be there waiting for them, ready to carry them clear of this present danger.

  Then Ulysses stumbled as he heard a crunching thud behind him that he felt ripple through the ground beneath his feet. Genevieve tripped and, as she went down, her hand slipped from Ulysses' sweaty grip. He stumbled to a halt, turning in time to see the terrifying form of the zoo's Megasaurus Rex bearing down on them both.

  It was as tall as a house, its bipedal saurian form built of slabs of muscle. Its hind legs were two massive pistons of bone and muscle, powerful enough to carry it at a speed of twenty-five miles an hour under the right conditions. By contrast its forelimbs were little more than tiny, grasping claws. But then the monster had little need for anything more when one considered its over-sized jaws, filled with teeth the size and sharpness of butchering hooks. Its eyes were tiny black orbs of pitiless, primeval savagery, and they were fixed on the fallen Genevieve.

  Even as its head came down, its jaws hinging open, Ulysses grabbed Genevieve around the waist and pulled her clear as the megasaur's teeth snapped shut, the weight of its hard-nosed skull cracking the skin of the tarmac where Genevieve had been scant moments before.

  And then they were running again, their legs given a new burst of energy by fear.

  The zoo's ornately gated entrance appeared before them as they barged through the stumbling masses, Nimrod blaring the horn of the Silver Phantom even as he revved the engine, ready to make a speedy getaway. They hurdled the turnstiles as a pod of apatasaurs barged through the breach in the wall made by the crumpled carriage that now blocked the road outside.

  Then, in the merest blinking of an eye, he caught sight of a face in the crowd ahead of him - an unpleasantly familiar face that made his blood boil in fury - and suddenly he understood what had happened here.

  Ulysses slammed into the side of the car and pulled open the back door. "We ran into a little trouble," he panted, pushing Genevieve onto the back seat.

  "Evidently, sir," Nimrod managed with barely any hint of emotion, despite their current predicament.

  "And I think I know who's responsible."

  Ulysses slammed the car door shut.

  "What are you doing, sir?" Nimrod call
ed through the open passenger window.

  "Ulysses, get in the car!" Genevieve screamed.

  Ulysses looked back into the fleeing crowd. One man stood still as an island amidst the panicked flow. Dressed all in black like a navvy, bald-headed, roguishly unshaven, his darkly handsome features twisted by the livid purple scar that bisected his face. The figure stared back at Ulysses, his expression set in a tight-lipped scowl, his narrowed eyes filled with a depthless hatred. It was a face from his past, one that he had believed he would never see again, that belonged to an enemy he thought he had put an end to long ago. It was Jago Kane: agitator, revolutionary, terrorist.

  Then, as if suddenly shamed by what he had done under Ulysses' righteous glare, the reactionary turned and fled, running for the Albany Street stop elevator pillar.

  "Nimrod, get Miss Galapagos out of here," Ulysses commanded.

  "But what about you, sir?"

  "Please, get in the car!" Genevieve was begging, pushing the rear door open.

  "I can't, Genevieve," he said, flashing her a manic grin. "There's an old friend from the past who I really must catch up with."

  "Now?"

  "Well, there's no time like the present," he laughed mirthlessly, slamming the car door again. "Now, Nimrod, drive!"

  With a screech of tyres the Silver Phantom hared away along Prince Albert Road leaving a cloud of burnt rubber in its wake. Ulysses sprinted across the road - men, women and children running, screaming in disarray all around him - towards the Overground pillar, and after Jago Kane.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Overground

  Ulysses burst out of the elevator carriage and onto the Bakerloo Line aerial platform. The platform was packed, the people there milling around in confusion. Some were crying in fear, many were trying to barge past Ulysses and into the lift, while just as many were pushing their way towards the end of the platform to his left. Ulysses craned his head that way, trying to see over the heads of the crowd.