by Adam Carter
But if that was true, if it had indeed been trained, it must have had discipline instilled into it, and harshly.
Valentine shouted as loud as he could, “Attention!”
The creature’s reaction was instantaneous. Its grin faded and it snapped bolt upright for a single instant before Valentine could see anger flash across its face. The reaction had been instinctive, but now it was furious and stared at him as though it had at last found that which it had sought all this time.
The air erupted and the creature pitched forward. Valentine screamed as the thing came for him, crushing him with its full weight. Valentine struggled against it, feeling its claws tear into him, and he continued to scream and scream even as he flailed uselessly in his death throes.
And then the creature was torn from him and Cartello threw the body aside. “Clever that,” she grunted. “Getting it to stand up so I could get a clear shot.”
Valentine was alive. His brain fought for clarification, for a reason behind why he was alive, but it did not matter. He was alive, and that was all he cared about. As Cartello helped him to his feet he looked down at his shredded suit, the material torn by his own struggles with the dead claws, and then focused his eyes upon the gaping wound in the side of the creature’s head. Its huge eyes stared out emptily now, and Valentine shuddered at the very thought of what the thing might have been.
“I almost wish it didn’t work,” Valentine said in a small voice.
“Why’s that?”
“Because it means someone trained this thing, Cartello. And if someone trained it, they may well be training an entire army.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Her boss had told her to stay away, but Whitsmith had never much liked taking orders. Dexter Valentine may not have been what she would have considered a good man, but he was a halfway decent one, and that had to count for something when every second person was a murderer. That Valentine wanted to protect her only pushed Whitsmith on even harder to help him. As she approached the main entrance to the prison, however, Whitsmith glanced to her companion and could not help but feel it wasn’t Whitsmith Valentine wanted to protect so badly.
“It would help if you gave me a gun,” Torrance complained for the dozenth time.
The storm had passed and the rain had reduced to a trickle, but the two women were still soaked through and cranky. Finding what was left of Katie Hudson had made Whitsmith violently sick, and having to deal with Torrance whining all the way back was not helping her mood. She knew it was only common sense to give Torrance a firearm, and in truth she did not expect the girl to shoot her in the back or anything. It was the very fact that Torrance kept asking for one, however, that made Whitsmith not hand one over. Whitsmith had never been a particularly spiteful woman, but Torrance was bringing out all the worst qualities in her. It was just another reason to despise her.
Whitsmith unbolted the main gate to the prison and pushed it open. There was no point in having a lock on the gate since there were officially no other people on this world: the only things they were keeping out were the dinosaurs and their prehistoric friends.
“I’m going inside,” Whitsmith told her. “You can come if you like, but that creature’s going to be in there. Your best bet for survival would be to take off through the swamp. Head west. The swamp ends soonest that way.”
“Without a weapon?”
“If I give you a weapon do you promise to get out of my life?”
Torrance set her shoulders firm and scrunched her face in a very juvenile, petty manner. “I wouldn’t last five minutes on my own. At the very least I need to collect Cartello, but I can’t see Dexter throwing us both out when all this is done.”
“Oh, because you know Dexter so well.” She put such sweet emphasis on the name she felt ashamed of herself even as she did it.
Torrance blinked. “Please don’t tell me you’re still jealous. I was only all over him because I was distracting him. I couldn’t have him thinking too much about who we were and where we came from.”
“Dex wouldn’t be interested in you anyway, blondie.”
“Why? Because I’m younger and hotter than you?”
“You’re a fad, that’s all.”
“Which is more than you’ve ever been with him.”
Whitsmith forced herself not to rise to the bait. She knew what Torrance was doing. She wanted another roll around in the mud so she could get her hands on a weapon. If Whitsmith was smart she would just put a bullet through the girl’s knee and leave her out here for the wildlife. But Whitsmith wasn’t that far gone yet. She had spent five years trying not to lose her morality and she wasn’t about to let some teenage hussy destroy her resolve.
“In or out?” Whitsmith asked, holding the gate.
Torrance stepped in without a word and Whitsmith slammed the gate, shooting the bolt. She motioned with her gun for Torrance to precede her.
Whitsmith’s radio chose that moment to crackle and she brought it up to her ear. “Dex?”
“Good news,” he said. “Or at least some good news anyway. The creature’s dead.”
“You sure about that?”
“Unless it can gather up its brains where they’re spattered all over the floor. Now all we have to worry about is Hunter and you can come back.”
“Already back, Dex. Never was good at doing what I was told.”
“Aubrey,” he said, sounding truly worried, “it’s not safe here. Hunter kidnapped Zebadiah. She let a reptile loose and doesn’t seem to care who gets hurt.”
“Why’d she kidnap Zebadiah?”
“No idea. Because she’s a nut-job?”
“Zebadiah?” Torrance asked, concerned. “He knows about the dinosaurs. She probably thought he could tell her about this creature.”
“He didn’t even know it existed,” Whitsmith snapped at her. “Now shut up.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Valentine said. “She may have something there.”
Torrance folded her arms and huffed. “Got more than your girlfriend anyway.”
“My girlfriend?” Valentine asked. “I don’t have a ... Never mind. We have two dinosaur experts here, Aubrey.”
Whitsmith barely heard him. Between the two of them, Torrance and Valentine were flaring her cheeks with fury. “I don’t know why I bothered coming back to help you, Dex. Of all the ... You know what? You’re welcome to this blonde little tramp. I hope you have ugly babies together.”
“Babies? Aubrey, just listen to me. We have two dinosaur experts and ...”
“Yeah, so? Zebadiah and me, I know that already. What do you want? A medal for the bleedin’ obvious?”
“And you’ve also met this creature,” Valentine continued. “Twice now. And survived both times.”
He sounded frantic but Whitsmith wasn’t about to let him change the subject that easily. “I’ll scout out a nice place for you to have your honeymoon. Somewhere you can relax on a nice beach: I’m sure it’ll be perfectly safe for you to just lie out in the open.”
“Aubrey, what are you going on about? You’ve survived the creature and ...”
“And I’m beginning to wonder why I bothered with that either.”
“Whitsmith,” Torrance said, her eyes wide.
Whitsmith stared daggers at her. “One more word from you, missy, and I’m shooting you where you ...”
A gunshot tore through the air, making Whitsmith physically jump. Torrance flew backwards, blood spraying in the air. She landed heavily, rolling on the ground, screaming. Whitsmith felt fear wash through her entire body like a shivering wave. She looked down at her gun, shaking in her hand. She had not even realised she had pulled the trigger: she had become so callous she had shot the woman without even knowing it.
“Drop the gun.”
Whitsmith glanced to the side, where Tana Hunter stood, levelling her own pistol upon her. Hunter’s eyes were intense, focused, and entirely without mercy.
“Drop the gun,” she repeated. “Now.”
The gun fell from Whitsmith’s trembling fingers. Perhaps relief should have washed through her in the realisation she had not been the one to have pulled the trigger, but all she could hear was the soft weeping of Torrance lying in a pool of her own fluids.
“And the radio,” Hunter said.
Whitsmith unhitched the radio and let that fall also.
“You’re the dinosaur expert,” Hunter told her straight. “And, as your boss just said, you’ve survived the creature. Twice. You’re going to show me how to track it and how to kill it.”
Whitsmith opened her mouth to tell her the creature was dead, but realised that would negate the psychopath’s reason for keeping her alive. Similarly she would be instantly killed were she to convince Hunter she would be of no use against the thing.
“All right,” Whitsmith told her. “I don’t know what it is precisely, but I can tell you how I survived it. Twice.”
“You only need to tell me once.”
Whitsmith fought for something with which to reply to that.
“That was a joke,” Hunter said flatly. “You were supposed to laugh.”
Whitsmith laughed. Sort of.
Hunter shook her head. “No, you don’t laugh after I tell you it was a joke. That just makes me look stupid.”
Whitsmith stopped laughing. “Uh, can we just get on with tracking this creature of yours?”
“Sure. But first, that whimpering’s getting on my nerves.”
Whitsmith watched as Hunter turned her gun upon Torrance. She did not like Torrance – in fact, it seemed no one much liked her – but Whitsmith could not watch as someone shot her to death while she lay wounded on the floor. “No!” Whitsmith shouted, and Hunter raised a questioning eyebrow. Whitsmith thought quickly. “We might need her. This creature’s tracking the three of you, right? Well, we’ll need her as bait. Unless you want to volunteer yourself?”
Hunter considered that for all of two seconds before training the gun upon Whitsmith once more. “All right. Pick her up. She’s your responsibility. If she annoys me too much, I’ll shoot you instead.”
Whitsmith swallowed back a retort, again wondering why she bothered with helping people. Moving across to the downed young woman, Whitsmith quickly assessed the damage. The bullet had struck Torrance in the arm and passed straight through. The wound was bleeding and didn’t seem to want to stop. Whitsmith swiftly formed a tourniquet by tearing off Torrance’s sleeve. It was soaked and caked with dirt, but it was all she had to work with. Torrance was crying, wincing and what very much sounded like howling. Whitsmith would have liked to have considered her a weak woman for behaving in such a way, but Whitsmith herself had never been shot so would not condemn someone who had been.
“Listen to me,” she said, talking quietly so Hunter would not overhear. Torrance did not seem to be listening at all, so Whitsmith grabbed her face with both hands and forced her eyes to focus. “Listen to me, Aura. Hunter’s going to kill us both, do you understand me? She’s going to kill us both. I can’t get us out of this, but I can buy us some time. Dex will save us. Do you understand? Dex will save us.”
Torrance seemed to comprehend at least some of what she was saying, because she nodded, although her eyes were not focused at all and Whitsmith suspected she was in shock or something. She was hardly a doctor but it seemed the most logical answer.
“Now, you have to stand,” Whitsmith told her. “I’ll help you, but you have to stand.”
Placing her arm about the young woman’s back and hooking her hand under her arm, Whitsmith was able to lift her from the ground. Torrance’s feet gave out beneath her, her legs not seeming to want to work, although as Whitsmith steadied her she was able to put some weight on them. Whitsmith threw Torrance’s arm over her shoulder, realising she was going to have to help her a lot more if she wanted her to walk anywhere.
Then she realised Hunter was staring at the two of them with something like wonderment in her eyes. “Gosh,” she said, “it’s like watching sisters kiss and make up. Start moving.”
Whitsmith bit back her retort. Torrance was heavier than she looked and Whitsmith struggled to move with her at all, although after but a few steps did Torrance seem to understand their lives were on the line and she was able to literally pull her own weight. They moved ahead of Hunter, who trailed them with her gun in hand.
Whitsmith could faintly hear the scratchy voice of Dexter Valentine calling to her through her radio. Calling to her, not Torrance. Perhaps she should have taken that as a victory. Instead she just wished this had been a segregated female prison in the first place.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“You must have some idea what she might be trying.” Valentine was becoming frantic now. The remains of the creature were being removed but the prison could not return to normal until Hunter was taken care of. Stone had regrouped with Valentine and Cartello, and Valentine could not think of a worse bodyguard who only appeared once the threat was dead. Following the death of the creature, Cartello seemed in two minds of whether to stay. Valentine had pleaded with her, saying Hunter was deranged and might well come after Cartello later. He had argued they should take her down while there were so many numbered against her. Cartello had seemed to accept the argument and had stuck around, at least for the moment. Unfortunately she was not proving much in the way of help.
“Don’t really know her,” Cartello admitted. “Kept to herself mostly.”
Valentine had tried to raise Whitsmith on the radio several times since the transmission had been cut off, and the continued silence was only making him certain his secretary was in terrible danger. Hunter needed her knowledge of dinosaurs, but as soon as she realised Whitsmith knew nothing about this strange reptile she would put a bullet in her and be done with it. Torrance would have been of no use to her at all, and Valentine was all but resolved to her having been killed already. Even this possibility did not seem to stir Cartello to action.
“You don’t care about much, do you?” Valentine asked. Over his years at the prison Valentine had only been able to hold things together because of his own sociopathic tendencies, but with Whitsmith’s life at stake even he was willing to throw them aside and focus on saving lives. Cartello did not even seem to have that little compassion in her soul. He briefly wondered why she had been incarcerated, but had been playing that game for five years now and had long since ceased caring for the answers.
A crackle sounded at his belt and Valentine answered the radio. It was a report from one of the search teams. It seemed they had located Zebadiah and were bringing him down. Valentine said he would meet them and the three of them headed to the hospital room. It was a large area containing several beds, only one of which was currently in use as they arrived. Medical equipment was stored and used in this room, and sometimes surgery was even performed. Creature attacks seldom left survivors, which was almost fortunate for the poor souls who were wheeled in here. They only had one surgeon in the prison, and that was a former inmate who had delighted in making unnecessary incisions in her patients because she liked to see people suffer. Valentine did not know her back story and honestly did not want to. She was the only person in the entire building with the necessary skill to put people back together. She was also a very good reason for never wanting to get hurt in the first place.
Thankfully the good doctor was nowhere in sight as Valentine approached the team leaving Zebadiah lying on the bed. The old man’s clothes were soaked through with rainwater, his body having stiffened in death. Valentine could not even see any marks upon him, so whatever had happened he had not been savaged by the beast. A proper assessment was probably out of the question, but he suspected Zebadiah had died of a heart attack. Kneeling beside the prone form, he leant his elbows upon the bed and wondered whether a prayer would do the man any good. He did not know any of Zebadiah’s religious beliefs, had never really spoken to the man outside of his professional capacity. There were so many people in this prison Valentine did not know simply becaus
e he had not wanted to know them. But whatever their crimes, some of them were decent people, and he asked himself how many more would have to die before he accepted that the pasts of everyone on this world needed to be buried forever.
“I wonder whether it was the creature that got to him,” Valentine said in a small voice, “or Hunter.”
“Why don’t we ask him?” Cartello said.
“What do you mean?”
Cartello prodded the old man in the side with her gun. “Wake up, you old coot.”
Zebadiah stirred, his brow furrowing. His eyes opened tentatively and at first Valentine thought he was witnessing a miracle. Then the truth dawned on him and he got back to his feet.
“Zebadiah, wake up,” Valentine demanded, shaking him.
Zebadiah mumbled something and rose to a sitting position. He blinked several times, looked about him and seemed genuinely even more surprised than Valentine that he was still alive.
“What happened?” Valentine asked.
“That woman of yours,” the old man told Cartello, “is insane.”
“Quite possibly,” Valentine said. “What happened?”
“That creature attacked me. Or sort of did anyway.” He frowned. “It lunged for me, but then pitched forward. Its side was giving it jip. Anyway, after it pitched over it seemed to decide I wasn’t worth killing and it took off. No idea where it went.”
“Because you fainted,” Valentine supplied.
“Like to see you do any better.”