by Steve Cole
He was moving carefully through the gloomy valley, still racking his brains for some way out of this mess, when he heard a crack from the trees ahead. Adam froze. Wildlife or happy campers? He wasn’t keen on running into either right now, so he crouched down behind a bush and waited to see what came out.
Within a minute he saw a tall, burly man emerge from the wood. No camper, then—the man wore a uniform shaded green and brown. A big shiny badge on his jacket caught the blood-orange light of sunset. A hand-gun hung from a holster at his side.
Park ranger? Adam felt sweat prickle his skin. Were they usually armed, or was this one looking for a dangerous fugitive . . . ?
A moment later he had his answer. Another ranger, massive and familiar, pushed out from the tree line a good twenty meters away. A vivid gash ran from his ear to the edge of his bushy mustache. Stitches clustered over the wound like flies feasting on the puckered flesh.
Adam held his breath and shrank deeper down into his scant cover. Bateman! What was he doing here?
“Pete’s guys found forensics at a picnic site, east of the lake,” Bateman announced. “Anything at that camp-ground, Jonno?”
“Not a trace,” the other man drawled back. “Maybe the kid’s doubled back into town. Maybe he doesn’t know he’s wanted yet.”
“He was seen running into the park. Something must’ve tipped him off.” Bateman was looking all about. “He turned off his phone. Maybe he figured out it was bugged.”
Adam frowned. He remembered Bateman holding his phone, but had never suspected a thing; it had died of its own accord around lunchtime, the last juice drained from its batteries. Luckily for him.
“Think the kid’s headed up into the mountains?” asked Jonno.
Bateman smirked. “Most likely he’s got no clue where he’s headed. He’s one of those stay-at-home nerd types like his daddy. The Great Outdoors for them means the parking lot outside Blockbuster.”
Adam bunched his fists. But at least they weren’t talking about Dad in the past tense.
“This whole assignment stinks,” Jonno declared. “If we can’t find Adlar Junior ahead of you-know-what—”
“Aw, quit complaining.” Bateman’s fingertips strayed to his stitches. “You’re like me—joined up with Geneflow ’cause tours in the Middle East weren’t giving you the buzz no more.” He clapped a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “We’ve got grenades. Jam one of them down that thing’s throat and it won’t be taking out any more of us.”
Jonno looked at him. “You really believe that after what happened this morning? The way that thing came back from the dead like a—”
“We were expecting to handle a kid.” Bateman nodded slowly, looking all around. “This time, we’ll be ready.”
Disbelief and fear were crowding Adam’s senses. How could he have got caught up in all this? These people know you’re here, a part of him argued. They’re talking crud, trying to scare you into coming out.
But even through the fronds that hid him, Adam could see fear in the men’s eyes as they looked all around.
Who do I want to get me, he thought. Them, or . . . it?
Adam wished longingly for the power and poise of the glowering blond ninja of Ultra-Reality, the character he’d helped his dad develop. Stomp kick and jab cross, he thought, take them down. . . .
But, no—he was thirteen, sore, lost and way out of his depth.
Before he could even fully process the movement, his shaking legs were pushing him up out of cover. Both Jonno and Bateman turned at the sudden noise, drawing their handguns.
“Don’t,” Adam said hoarsely, hands raised in the air. “You got me.”
“Son of a . . .” Jonno shook his head slowly. “The kid was right under our noses.”
“Kid? Nah.” Bateman’s broad grin threatened to pop a stitch. “He’s a dangerous criminal on the run. We’ve seen to that.”
Adam fought to keep his voice steady. “Just take me to my dad.”
Jonno’s smile was as bogus as his ranger outfit. “Hear that, Frank? Kid thinks he can tell us what to do.”
“I heard it.” Bateman strode forward, grabbed hold of Adam’s arm and twisted it hard. Adam gasped in pain as the man forced him to his knees. “You little punk. Look at you—gutless as your old man. You had us by the short and curlies out here, and you go and give yourself up.”
With a surge of anger, Adam tore his arm free and snatched for Bateman’s gun. But Jonno jammed his revolver against Adam’s temple. Adam heard the hammer cock with a bone-hard click. He froze statue-still, so scared he almost puked.
And then a great thumping crash from the nearby cottonwoods echoed through the valley.
Jonno jerked the gun away from Adam’s head and toward the source of the sound. “What was that?”
“One guess,” hissed Bateman, turning the same way. “Be ready with those grenades.” He placed his boot in the small of Adam’s back, forcing him belly-down in the grass. “All right,” he shouted. “I know you can understand me, so hear this. We’ve got Adlar’s boy. We believe you want him—and you can have him. But only if you come out slowly, and don’t harm us.”
“No!” Adam squirmed helplessly as Bateman’s heel bit down harder against his spine.
“A bullet in the wrong place and the boy’s no use to you.” Bateman’s voice was getting louder, hoarser. “I repeat, come out slowly or Adlar’s kid is history. No tricks. . . .”
Suddenly the ground shook with fleet, pounding footsteps—from just behind them. A bone-grinding roar almost tore Adam’s ears off. The pressure vanished from his back as Bateman was sent hurtling through the air, arms flailing like he could fly. He couldn’t. He crashed helplessly into the trees, out of sight.
At the same time, Jonno was screaming, a sound drenched with terror. Then the scream cut off with a crunching sound. An outstretched arm flopped down in front of Adam’s face.
But the rest of the man was gone.
Adam felt the bile rise in his throat. Fear fixed him still where he lay. Then he saw Jonno’s white-knuckled fingers were locked around the promised grenade. Saw that the pin had been pulled.
The next instant, a dark, scaly blur lashed out at the severed arm and batted it into the bushes. Adam gasped as he was snatched roughly from the ground as easily as a child might pick up a pinecone. He was locked into a vise of cold, reptilian flesh, pinned around the waist.
Then the colossal thing that had grabbed him bounded away through the darkening valley in huge leaps, as the grenade went off in a lightning-white flash.
7
ENCOUNTER
In the flare of the explosion, Adam realized the nightmare thing was no longer invisible. Frozen in a long moment of sheer, unbelieving terror, he saw it in gruesome glimpses.
He saw great knots of muscle dance and twitch as the monster ran. Teeth like carving knives, jutting from black and bloody jaws. The brute outline of a huge, reptilian head, like that on the screen in the library.
Adam squeezed his eyes closed. His ears still rang with the noise of the explosion. His heart was battering at his ribs. He felt as though he were dangling from the top-floor window of a speeding double-decker bus. His body felt scratched raw, his temples throbbed as he struggled for breath.
Then the valley vanished, replaced by complete darkness. It got suddenly colder. We’re in a cave, Adam realized.
We’re in this thing’s lair.
He was dropped, surprisingly gently, to a floor of packed earth. It was black as tar in the cave; only a snatch of moonlight from outside filled the air. Heavy, hissing breaths filled the tunnel. Long claws clacked together, as if in anticipation of what they’d shred to ribbons next.
“Don’t kill me,” whispered Adam, rocking on his haunches, drenched with sweat. “You saved me out there. Please, please, don’t kill me now. Please. . . .”
The monster loomed over him, thick ropes of drool stirring cold earth to mud as its jaws cranked open. . . .
“Ple
ase!” Adam begged as the mountainous creature leaned closer. “I . . . I don’t know if you can understand my words but please, don’t do this.” He talked faster, speaking for his life. “I don’t know why you came after me this morning or how you turned invisible. And I don’t know why you want me now, but—”
A hard snout nudged up against Adam’s ear. The warning rasp of the creature’s breath was like sandpaper on his senses. Adam stopped talking, clamped his teeth down on his lower lip and tried to stop shaking. He was half grateful to the darkness for hiding most of this thing, yet terrified by the thought of what else might be lurking—
Something moved to his right.
“Keep away!” Adam said hoarsely.
“You’re Adlar’s kid, right?” It was a man’s voice, calm and fragile from the shadows. “He found you then. After all we did to him, he could still find you.”
“You know my dad?” Adam strained to see into the darkness. “What are you talking about? Who are you?”
“My name’s Sedona, Mike Sedona. Zoologist.”
“This thing came from a zoo?”
The creature gave a sharp snort of disgust. Adam felt the saliva hit his face. He spluttered, wiped his face on his sleeve as the thing lurched away from him. “Why’s it taken us here?”
“This is where it came from,” Sedona said distantly. “Fort Ponil.”
Adam swallowed hard. “We’re in Fort Ponil?”
“This cave hides the secret way in and out of the facility it was taught to use.” The zoologist paused. “This time tomorrow, I would have been safe. Most of us have already cleared out. Relocated to Europe. I was going to follow. I would’ve—”
The shadowy shape growled menacingly. It sniffed the air as it padded about the cave—and suddenly, a fierce yellow glare spat from spotlights in the rocky ceiling. Lights? Where did the lights come from? Adam screwed up his eyes, blinked as his vision slowly adjusted.
Then, as the monster stood fully revealed at last, he wished they hadn’t.
A dinosaur was glaring down at him.
A living, breathing, dark-green dinosaur. Like a T. rex. Adam’s senses reeled. That’s all it can be, he thought.
The paintings, the pictures and the movies, all the incredible special effects Adam had seen in his lifetime couldn’t capture a fraction of the power and presence of the flesh-and-blood beast before him—this sleek and scaly juggernaut, watching him from under bloodred brows.
“It looks so real,” Adam whispered. “But how . . . ?”
The sheer size of the thing was staggering. Its hind legs, each as big as a man, balanced its body in the middle—the broad trunk, neck and head hunching forward balanced the long tail tapering behind. Teeth like giant spikes and huge talons gleamed like horrific advertisements for the mauling tortures the monster could inflict. With a pang of alarm, Adam realized the arms and hands were different from the pictures he’d seen in the library—the limbs were longer, chunkier, more powerful, and each ended in a large hand with five clawed fingers, not the illustrated two. There were dark smears around the brutish face, like burn marks, that didn’t make the monster look any prettier. But somehow the scariest things were its dark, beady eyes, gleaming with a cold intelligence.
Adam turned to Sedona—who turned out to be a black man with close-cropped hair, his white lab coat stained with dirt and blood. He was shivering, covered in sweat, clearly in shock. “A miracle of biology,” he said. “Just look at him. Still standing after all we did. . . .”
“It was invisible before,” Adam murmured, unable to tear his eyes away. “How . . . ?”
“Adaptive camouflage,” Sedona hissed back. “It hunts by stealth. Skin like a chameleon’s, only a billion times more sensitive. It secretes a substance that affects light rays, so that—” He broke off and screamed as the dinosaur stamped forward and grabbed him with one hand.
The next moment, Adam was grabbed too, and lifted roughly into the air. The monster turned with some difficulty in the narrow space, then bore them both away with a strange, almost birdlike gait, moving on tiptoes. The tunnel was studded with more spotlights, and Adam glimpsed the gory remains of something else in a lab coat, half crushed into the ground. He looked away, trying not to be sick.
The journey didn’t last long, as the creature came to a halt beside an impressive metal doorway. Its five claws tapped a staccato rhythm on the keypad with impressive precision, and with a rumbling shake, the slab of steel ground opened onto darkness. Where are we going? Adam thought. But as the dinosaur tramped into the shadows, overhead lighting flickered on—and he felt his jaw drop for what had to be the fiftieth time that day.
The dinosaur had carried them into a freaky-looking high-tech laboratory carved out of a giant cave. The walls were rocky but lined with computers and cabinets and all kinds of incredible machines and medical tools. Colorful charts, maps and X-rays dangled down like decorations. A formidable-looking steel structure stood in the center of the room, like a giant caravan crossed with a tank. It was marked CONTAINMENT CHAMBER—although the meter-thick metal door hanging drunkenly from a single hinge suggested it hadn’t lived up to its name.
Adam was dropped to the ground, followed by Sedona a few seconds later—headfirst. They both lay there, panting for breath. The huge creature seemed to forget them, swinging its great, scorched head from side to side as if searching something out. It trod stealthily about the laboratory, colossal muscles rippling with every movement.
“He killed the others,” Sedona said slowly, “everyone who stayed to shut things down, he took them apart. All except me.”
That could explain why it didn’t grab me straight after I got away in the truck this morning, Adam thought. It had had things to take care of back here.
“Why not me?” Sedona was still muttering to himself. “I don’t know. There’ll be a reason. He doesn’t do anything without a reason.”
“Reason?” Adam guessed the man was hanging on to sanity by threads. “You make it sound like it’s intelligent.”
“If he could still talk, he could tell you himself.” Sedona giggled suddenly, though his eyes remained wide with fear. “Sounds like a joke, doesn’t it? A talking dinosaur.”
Adam stared at him. “It could speak?”
“Sure. Until we got orders to put twenty thousand volts through his brain.” The scientist chewed on the end of his finger. “Did as we were told, figured he was finished. Shipped him out to Utah, dumped him in a reservoir. But somehow, he pulled through, got back out. Must have headed straight to your apartment.” Sedona shook his head in admiration. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. He once zeroed in on a deer let loose in a hundred square miles of state park.” He looked at Adam. “Finding your place would be a breeze.”
“But why would it come after me?” Adam whispered.
“Confused your scent with your dad’s, perhaps.” Sedona looked at Adam. “See, it was your dad who tricked him—and put that current through his head.”
Adam stared at him, reeling. “What?”
The creature roared suddenly with such violence that Adam cringed and fell silent.
“He knows we’re talking about him.” Sedona was staring at the ground. “He’s not some dumb animal. He’s a Z. rex.”
Adam frowned. “Don’t you mean T. rex?”
Sedona turned to him, his eyes haunted. “I mean Z.”
The dinosaur shook its huge head. It came closer, mouth swinging open, displaying way too many teeth. “Zed,” it rumbled, a low, warning noise like timbers creaking, its cold dark eyes glinting with malice.
Adam swallowed hard. “No way. Come on! No freakin’ way!”
Even Sedona looked up now in wondering terror. “He can still speak. . . .”
“Zed,” the creature rasped again. “Zed. Rex. Zed. REX.”
8
ASSAULT
Adam watched the creature’s scaly lips contorting to form the words. “This has got to be a trick,” he said helplessly. “
It’s special effects, or—or something.”
“I told you, he’s a miracle of biology.” Sedona was still gazing up at the dinosaur. “Z. rex, short for Zenithsaurus rex. Means, ‘king of reptiles at his zenith.’”
“Zenith?”
“Highest point. The peak.” Sedona shot Adam a look. “Your father called him Zed, not Zee like the rest of us. Seems the creature’s picked up on that.”
Dad switched his way of saying Z when he was teaching me the alphabet. . . . Adam shook his head, unable to take it all in. You’re stuck underground with a mad-man and a dinosaur, his thoughts were screaming. A dinosaur! It was impossible to believe and yet just as impossible to deny.
There came a grating noise. “No . . .” The huge reptile was speaking again, staring down at Sedona, eyes narrowed and glaring. “No . . .”
“No . . . kill us?” Sedona said hopefully. “No keep us here? You’re going to let us go?”
The Z. rex snorted with anger, turned and lurched away, resuming his hunt through the laboratory.
“Now, while he’s distracted.” Adam turned to the frightened scientist, his voice a hoarse whisper. “We can get out and close the door on him.”
“He’d rip us apart before we were halfway across the room,” said Sedona.
Adam didn’t dare try anything alone. He watched the Z. rex, sick with fear. He knew that this thing could kill him in a dozen different ways. But it hadn’t. Not so far. That had to be good, right? He kept telling himself that while the dinosaur turned over the lab as if hunting for something in particular.
“This is your dad’s fault,” Sedona muttered. “He screwed up.”
“He works on computer games,” Adam retorted. “Whatever he was made to do here, it was against his will.”
“Oh, really?” Sedona laughed bitterly. “He was working happily enough every time I saw him.”
