Pax Britannia: Unnatural History

by Jonathan Green

  Ahead of them lay Oxford Circus, beyond that the teeming hunting ground of Piccadilly Circus, and nothing that could stop the frenzied dinosaurs and the world of carnage that was surely to come.

  Ulysses arched back, pulling his exposed midriff out of the path of Kane's bowie knife as the anarchist slashed at him. Kane pressed forwards, following up with a backhanded swipe.

  The two combatants so far appeared to be evenly matched. Neither had managed to draw blood, although Ulysses had managed to lay a punch against Kane's chin, Kane in response having kicked Ulysses painfully in the shins. Incredibly both had managed to maintain their balance on the roof of the speeding train, in spite of its irregular rolling motion. Ulysses thanks, in part, to the skills the monks of Shangri-La had imparted to him. Kane through sheer luck or stubbornness. Yet both were putting their all into the duel and the energy they were expending was beginning to weary them.

  But now, as Kane pressed home his attack with an angry snarl, Ulysses saw a way to break the exhausting impasse. He had to concede ground to escape the blade but did so by spinning on one heel and turning himself at a right angle, placing himself very close to the cambered edge of the carriage roof and with his back to the precipitous drop beyond the edge of the aerial railway. As Kane's blade nicked the lapel of Ulysses' jacket, Ulysses grabbed hold of his opponent's over-reaching arm and pulled him forwards with all the strength he had in his left arm, the rapier blade of his sword-cane still held tightly in his right.

  The revolutionary stumbled forwards, losing his balance at last, sprawling onto his hands and knees on the roof of the rattling carriage. Ulysses didn't waste a moment. But Kane was fast too. As Ulysses brought down his blade in what would otherwise have been a killing stroke, Kane twisted round, stopping the rapier with his bowie knife. Ulysses' blade slid free, turned by the knife, and as he tried to bring his weapon back under control, and not lose his own footing, he managed to snag its tip in Kane's wrist. The felon cried out in pain and astonishment, unable to stop his hand spasming, the knife falling from his open fingers onto the roof of the carriage.

  Ulysses rocked backwards as the train clattered over an intersection. Kane, seeming to ignore his new injury, lunged after the knife. His fingertips scraped the carved horn handle, only for the motion of the train to send the knife over the edge. The weapon clattered down between the sleepers of the aerial track, to plummet towards the distant streets below.

  Kane shot a savage look of pure hatred over his shoulder as Ulysses bore down on him. Then the sneer became a grin, more disconcerting than anything Ulysses had seen in a long time. Before he could stop the anarchist, Kane pulled himself forwards and threw himself off the edge of the train.

  Ulysses made a grab for him, landing heavily on his stomach, his head and shoulders over the edge of the roof, one arm outstretched. He could not bear to lose Kane again now. From this position Ulysses was treated to a clear view of the fate of his enemy. Kane dropped, arms and legs flung out, his body flat, freefalling for a good twenty feet. Then, incredibly, the northbound Bakerloo train hurtled by beneath him and he landed on its roof, snatched from a certain death on the rails below. Ulysses watched, stunned, as Kane was carried away.

  Without hesitation Ulysses swung down onto the side of the carriage, still clinging onto the lip of the roof with one hand and, breathing deeply, watched the carriages passing on the track below him, carefully timing his jump.

  But the moment passed. The train was gone taking Jago Kane with it. His heart sank.

  The ringing from his pocket took him completely by surprise.

  He extracted his personal communicator and flipped it open. "Yes?" he barked into the handset.

  "Sorry to trouble you, sir," his manservant's cultured tones came through. "I hope this isn't a bad time."

  "No, now is fine," Ulysses said, his voice relaxing even as he did so. The train's passengers watched him through the windows in appalled fascination as he calmly conducted his call whilst clinging to the exterior of the carriage.

  "I'm pleased to hear it, sir. I wish the same could be said of down here but we have a situation developing."

  In his desperate determination to corner and finish his old adversary, Jago Kane, Ulysses had momentarily put from his mind the breakout from the zoo. Now, high above the city streets, the wind roaring in his ears, he was only too aware of the dinosaurs rampaging through the streets a hundred feet below.

  "What's happened?" was all he could think to say. "Is Genevieve all right?"

  "Yes sir, Miss Galapagos is with me."

  Ulysses heard a muffled scream through his communicator accompanied by a primeval reptilian roar.

  "What was that?"

  "That was the situation I was telling you about, sir. It would appear that there is a Megasaurus Rex running amok down the Mall. It is all most perturbing. Something needs to be done, sir."

  Ulysses looked beyond the engine ahead of him, trying to ascertain the train's precise location within the capital, peering at the architecture of the Upper City through the smoke belching from the chimneystack. Slowly he began to recognise particular buildings - the Regent Palace Hotel, the Criterion Theatre.

  He was somewhere over Piccadilly. Distant guttural bellowing, hooting car horns and shrill human screams rose to his ears from the streets below. Ahead the Bakerloo Line curved round as it passed over Trafalgar Square.

  "Where is the beast now?" Ulysses said into the communicator.

  "It's passing under the Admiralty Arch. It's now moved into Trafalgar Square itself."

  "Don't worry, Nimrod, I'm on it."

  Quickly and carefully he stowed the communicator.

  Peering over the edge of the blurred track speeding past a few feet below him he saw the domed roof of the National Gallery and the towering pillar of Nelson's Column as the Bakerloo Line began to descend towards the station at Trafalgar Square.

  And then he saw the terror-inducing form of the colossal carnivore. People fled in waves of panic before the titan as it claimed dominion of its new territory.

  His heart in his mouth, Ulysses judged that he would pass over Trafalgar Square as the Megasaurus lumbered under this stretch of the Overground.

  He took a deep breath to steady his nerves, checking his grip on the roof of the train and adjusting his hold on his sword. Ulysses was about to attempt either the bravest or the most stupid stunt in his life.

  "Well, here goes nothing," he said to himself.

  And jumped.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Evolution Expects

  Ulysses dropped, the wind whipping through his hair and pummelling his face. Just as he was beginning to wonder whether he had misjudged his fall and that he would not stop until he collided with the flagstones of Trafalgar Square, he came to an abrupt halt as he slammed onto the back of the dinosaur. He started to slide but then managed to get a grip on the knobbly exterior of the dinosaur's hide. Its scales were rough as sandpaper and one cheek was grazed from his collision with the creature.

  But it seemed to Ulysses that as far as the Megasaurus Rex was concerned he might as well not be there at all. It continued to stalk between the leonine statues of the square and Ulysses took a moment to recover himself, feeling the creature's body moving beneath him, the curious texture of the dinosaur's hide uncomfortable against his skin. His cheek stung from the graze, but it was not the only part of his body now telling him that it was suffering. His fight with the revolutionary Kane had taken its toll more greatly than he had realised, so focused had he been on thwarting his foe, his bloodstream flooded with adrenalin. On top of the dramatic drop he had just made onto a surface almost as hard and resistant as tarmac, all his old injuries had come back to haunt him. The calf of his left leg ached, but that would pass and certainly wasn't debilitating. However, he knew for a fact that he had strained his shoulder again, and he had added a whole host of bruises to his battered body. The ribs of his left side in particular were protesting forcefully, wincing stabs o
f pains reacquainting him with past battles. But there would be time enough to worry about that later. For back in the present he had to see to bringing the matter in hand to conclusion.

  Fortunately - incredibly even - he had managed to maintain his hold on his sword-cane. He also had his personal communicator about his person, as well as his Brabinger pistol.

  He raised his head, all the while keeping the rest of his body flat, lest he dislodge himself from his precarious position. They were in the middle of Trafalgar Square. Lord Admiral Nelson and his attendant pigeons watched with, on one side, stony disinterest and, on the other, dumb avian curiosity as the Megasaur scattered the crowds. But still there were those who could not get out of the way in time, the monster scooping them up with its dredging jaws, gulping them down to satisfy its newly acquired appetite for human flesh.

  "What did I think I was doing?" Ulysses asked himself aloud as the rational part of his brain took over, his gung-ho, thrill-seeking side evaporating in a cloud of logic.

  But what he was doing now on the back of the dinosaur was academic. The more pressing question was, now that he was lying between the heaving shoulder blades of the dinosaur, how was he going to bring its bloodthirsty rampage to an end?

  He felt the weight of his gun in its holster against his aching ribs. "That has to be the way, surely," he told himself, but he didn't sound too convinced, even to his own ears. But if he were going to be able to take a shot, he would have to get into a better position than the one he was in now. Somehow he was going to need to get up onto his feet, or at least his knees.

  Pushing himself up with his left hand, his fingers clenched around a protruding scale, he was able to bring his sword to bear. With one powerful downward thrust, he plunged the tip of the blade into the creature's hide. It sank up to fully half its length. Now he knew for sure that he had got the monster's attention.

  The dinosaur let out a primeval roar, redolent with pain and savage fury. Its jaws opened wide as it threw its head back in agony, the megasaur leaving the pram and its occupant that it was about to consume, the infant never knowing how close it had come to an early death.

  The megasaur bucked. Ulysses kept a tight hold of his half-buried sword, riding the beast like some American rodeo rider. And then the enraged beast was off. With its massive piston legs of muscle and bone covering five yards with every bounding stride, the megasaur left off hunting the tiny, shrieking mammals and abandoned the abattoir it had made of Trafalgar Square, haring off at speed along Whitehall.

  As he clung on to the hilt of his rapier-blade, his legs braced against the rolling gait of the running carnivore, Ulysses pulled his gun from its holster. There was no time to check the load, and certainly no way of reloading here and now. It was all he could do to maintain his position on the creature's back; it was like trying to keep his balance in a storm-tossed boat. He pointed the muzzle at the creature's heaving sides and let off five shots in quick succession.

  The beast bellowed again and careered in front of a steam-driven omnibus - Ulysses was dimly aware of further cries of horror and surprise rising from the street, the screech of brakes and the dull crumps of collisions - but the megasaur showed no signs of slowing, let alone of actually dropping down dead.

  The Admiralty passed by to the left in a blur. The plume-helmed guardsmen on sentry duty outside Horse Guards Parade were thrown into disarray, one terrified horse throwing its rider, the other galloping away back in the direction of Trafalgar Square.

  It had been nothing more than dumb hope that had made Ulysses try shooting the creature, he realised now. If he had been able to get into a position whereby he was close enough to shoot the megasaur through the eye, at point-blank range then he might have been able to bring it down with a single shot. But chances were that he would die before he even managed to take aim, either eaten alive by the brute or by having his brains smashed out on the tarmac of Whitehall as he was thrown from his curious steed.

  The megasaur sprinted past the entrance to Downing Street, a rattling fusillade of gunshots chasing after it from the armed sentries on duty there. Their bullets did nothing to stop the monster and fortunately missed the startled Ulysses as well.

  "Bloody hell!" he swore as they swept past the Cenotaph.

  The momentum of the charging beast beneath him swung Ulysses to the left so that he could see the pavement clearly beneath him, as the dinosaur cracked the dressed stones beneath its massive, pile-driving feet, forcing him to pull on the embedded sword. The megasaur roared again as the blade cut deeper into its flesh.

  And then the jumble of desperate thoughts crowding Ulysses' mind resolved into something resembling a logical idea. The orbits of the eye were not the only weak point in an animal's skull; something as thin as a rapier blade thrust into the base of the skull, where it joined the neck, could find a way between vertebrae and sever the spinal cord, or even pierce the monster's diminutive brain.

  "All very well in theory," Ulysses addressed himself again. Achieving such a feat would be another matter altogether. But there was no longer any time to think about how such a thing could be achieved. There was only time for action. The Palace of Westminster and the looming tower of Big Ben lay ahead. This had to stop now.

  In one deft movement Ulysses pulled the sword-cane clear of the beast's flesh even as he used it to steady himself as he scaled the ridge of the megasaur's back. He flung himself forwards, bringing the sword in a high arc as he did so. As he landed on the neck of the creature so he landed his blow, the devilishly sharp tip of the rapier blade split scales as Ulysses put all his weight behind it, plunging the sword beneath vertebrae the size of ale casks, cutting cleanly through the cable-thick spinal cord they shielded and into the monster's cerebellum.

  All muscle activity within the creature ceased. Its legs gave way beneath it and the dinosaur crashed to the ground, its massive jaw ploughing a trench through the scrubby grass in the middle of Parliament Square. Its glassy eyes closed and its jaws slammed shut, half severing the monster's huge purple tongue that lolled from the side of its mouth. The megasaur was dead.

  Ulysses gratefully slid down from the back of the beast, stumbling to regain his balance now that he was back on terra firma after his hair-raising ride. He was bruised and battered, bloody from numerous cuts and grazes. The joint of his right shoulder had gone beyond pain to a dull throb that told him he had probably dislocated it.

  Slowly, the sound of a city in heightened panic seeped its way back into his beleaguered senses. The megasaur's desperate charge and subsequent death had brought the streets around Parliament Square to a standstill. An expectant host of Londoners surrounded the square. Confident that the megasaur was dead, some of the bolder members of the public were approaching the fallen monster and the dino-killer, their faces slack with bewilderment, making them look like weird wandering lost souls as they tried to make sense of what had just happened. There were robo-Bobbies among the crowd too. The Northern Line branch of the Overground trundled on its way overhead as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all.

  A stupefied tramp, sporting a filthy white beard and clutching a crumpled brown paper bag to his chest, cautiously approached the equally stunned Ulysses, an outstretched hand offering comfort. "Are you all right, son?" the old codger asked.

  "A-Am I?" Ulysses stammered. "That's a very good question. Give me a swig of whatever you've got wrapped in that paper bag and I'll tell you."

  As Ulysses put the fumy bottle to his lips, and felt the bite of the alcohol on his tongue, he saw the sleek silver shape of the Mark IV Phantom ease its way through the gathering crowd as Big Ben struck noon.

  A discordant wail, like a hundred foghorns sounding in jarring synchronicity, suddenly filled the square. The crowd tensed and Ulysses, despite the sharp pain in his shoulder, tried to cover his ears.

  With an epileptic flickering the kinema-sized broadcast screens around Parliament Square hummed into life. But rather than the usual propaganda message
s or mega-corporation advertisements, grainy static soon resolved into the image of a rippling New Union Jack. Only rather than bearing the encircled silhouette of Britannia herself at the centre there was the silhouette of a dinosaur's skull.

  "People of Britain and Londinium Maximum!" The voice boomed from the loudspeakers. No one could ignore it. Suddenly all eyes were drawn hypnotically to the massive broadcast screens. "This is the voice of the Darwinian Dawn!

  "The British Empire of Magna Britannia is a dinosaur of a previous age and should have perished long ago. Our cities are over-populated and none more so than the jewel of the Empire that is Londinium Maximum. The filthy slums overflow with the poor, the unemployed, the destitute, and the downtrodden."

  As the condemning voice continued in its tirade, like that of some vengeful deity passing judgement on the British Empire, the image of the defaced flag faded to be replaced by a relentless moving montage culled from newsreel footage and who knew what other media sources. There were starving, malnourished children begging in gutters clogged with filth. The automata armies of Magna Britannia marching against unarmed Indian villagers. Factories the size of towns pumping clouds of polluting toxins into the atmosphere from colossal chimney stacks. A pox-ridden prostitute kicked to death by a gang of thugs. Swathes of rainforest being cut down by monstrous harvesting machines to feed the hungry furnaces of the workshop of the world. Livestock being reared in appalling conditions in cathedral-sized factory barns to feed the rapacious appetites of the decadent elite while the poor starved only streets away in the same cities. But no matter what the image being broadcast - whether war, famine, poverty, moral decline or the heedless raping of the Earth's natural resources - they all had one thing in common; each and every image was a condemnation of the world-dominating super-power of Magna Britannia, the rapacious, world-devouring monster that was the British Empire in the dying days of the twentieth century.