Z. Rex

by Steve Cole

  “He can’t have been.” Adam put his head in his hands. “I don’t get it, he was only here eight days—”

  “ZED!” The blast of sound almost tore Adam’s ears off, as the Z. rex strode over with a huge bundle of folders and clipboards and dumped them at his feet. “Zed . . . no.” Cold reptile eyes glared down at him, one claw pointed accusingly at the mess of papers like it was somehow Adam’s fault they’d been dropped. “No . . .” Scaly brows knotted in concentration, he tried one more time to get his lips around the word: “No . . . tes . . .”

  “Notes!” Sedona cried suddenly. “You wanted me to find these notes for you? I’m sorry, I thought Josephs had shipped them out already.”

  “Notes,” the reptile repeated more clearly, pointing at Adam.

  “You . . . you want me to read this stuff?” Adam looked in dismay at equations and long Latin words and scientific jargon he couldn’t even pronounce, let alone understand. “I—I can’t. I don’t get it. I’m thirteen, I’m still at school.”

  “This is a child, an immature human,” said Sedona, jumping in quickly as if seeing an opportunity. “He . . . he lacks intelligence and skill. Whatever information you want out of these notes, I can help you. I can, I promise.”

  A low, grating sound formed in the monster’s throat: “Help . . . ?” He lashed out with his tail, and a metal vat buckled like wet cardboard, the sound reverberating around the lab. “HELP?”

  “I’m just support staff!” Sedona screwed up his eyes and pressed his sweaty palms together. “It was Adlar who flicked the switch that hurt you, and Josephs who gave the order. Maybe . . . maybe I can help you find them?”

  “No,” hissed Adam.

  “Geneflow Solutions has a base in the United Kingdom, in Edinburgh,” Sedona babbled on. “If you’ll let me go I can find an exact—”

  The Z. rex stamped his foot down on the bundle of papers, stopping the scientist’s rant short. As the echoes crashed on, he closed his scale-lidded eyes, his claws twitching dangerously. “Tell,” came the sinister growl. “Tell. Zed.”

  “Tell you what?” Sedona whispered.

  The creature shook his brutish head, pointed at the papers and then stared down at Adam. “Zed. No . . .”

  “No?” Adam shrugged helplessly. “ ‘Notes’ again?”

  Frustration creased the beast’s forehead. “Tell. Zed.”

  “You mean”—Sedona looked uncertainly at Adam—“tell the kid about you?”

  The dinosaur thing thrust his head closer to his prisoners, his breath coming in short, snarling snatches. Adam held very still, barely daring to breathe.

  Sedona started babbling. “He was created here as a first step—the Z. rex, I mean. A first step toward changing the world.” Sedona wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “He was Geneflow’s emblem in a way. A synthesis of science and history, re-engineering the past—”

  “If I’m supposed to understand this stuff, you’re gonna have to go slow,” Adam broke in, tensely. “What is Geneflow Solutions? Solutions for what?”

  But then the reptile’s huge nostrils, each the size of Adam’s head, flared and twitched. Clearly agitated, he looked past them to the doorway and bared his teeth.

  “Hold still, all of you!” came a shout from just outside.

  “Bateman?” Hope flared suddenly in Sedona’s dark eyes. “Bateman, I’m here!”

  Adam’s insides felt like mince in a grinder. Some rescue, he thought grimly, as three men wearing white armored hazard-suits and gas masks spilled inside through the doorway, packing strange, chunky handguns. And some choice—the psycho ringmaster or his hungry lion. The biggest man—and judging by the paunch, it was Bateman—stepped forward, his left arm clearly injured and strapped to his chest. Two more men appeared behind the others and guarded the doorway, wielding what looked to be rocket launchers.

  The Z. rex roared defiantly. But the men held their ground.

  Bateman pulled off his mask with his good arm. His heavyset face was swollen and bruised, and he looked even more like a once-great soldier gone to seed. “Sedona, take the kid and stand clear of that freak.”

  Obediently, Sedona tried to grab Adam by the arm.

  “Get off me!” Adam pulled free and backed away from both the dinosaur and the new arrivals. He didn’t know what to do, but he was sick of being pushed around.

  “I’m sorry about before, kid,” Bateman told him. “C’mon, I wouldn’t really hurt you. . . .” He kept his eyes on the Z. rex. “Besides, you really want to be left alone with our friendly monster? Looks like it’s got plans for you, kid. And you saw what it did to Jonno. . . .”

  Adam shuddered as the reptile made a sound uncomfortably like laughter.

  The noise sent Sedona backing away toward Bateman. “It killed Neil too, and Laura and Goldblum and—”

  “Guess I got lucky,” Bateman interrupted. “When it whacked me, I hit more bushes than trees.” He waved his weapon. “I told you, my friends were patrolling the park with me, kid. This time we’re prepared. That thing’s not attacking, ’cause he knows what these guns can do to him. We can get you away, protect you.”

  “That thing” was looking at Adam now as if daring him to believe it.

  “He means what he says, Adam,” Sedona spoke up, sounding more confident now. “Mr. Bateman is head of security, the best. The Z. rex could find his way back to Fort Ponil because he was spawned here. But I developed an antipheromone spray that deadens our scent so the creature can’t sniff us out.”

  “That’s how we could sneak up on it,” Bateman added quietly, his weapon pointing at the dinosaur’s head, his fat finger poised on the trigger. “And how the only trace of yer dad it could find was at his old apartment. We can hide you, Adam. We can take you to your dad—he’s waiting for you back home in Edinburgh. And he’s just dying to see you—”

  That settled it. Bateman didn’t inspire much trust, but right now . . .

  I just want to see you again, Dad.

  Slowly, carefully, Adam took a step toward Bateman.

  The Z. rex bellowed with fury and swiped his tail into Adam’s chest. Adam felt like he’d been smacked with a telephone pole. He flew through the air and landed on a workstation, knocking the PC and keyboard from the desk. As he gasped for breath, the air thumped from his lungs, he saw the dinosaur shimmer and all but disappear.

  “How . . . ?” Adam breathed.

  “Don’t think so, dino-freak!” Bateman yelled, as he leveled his gun at the Z. rex and yanked on the trigger. A bolt of blazing blue energy tore from the barrel, soon joined by two more as the other men opened fire. Electroshock weapons, like crazy, sci-fi shock-guns. Adam guessed—set to the highest possible voltage. The giant reptile became visible again, engulfed in a swell of crackling indigo, bellowing in pain and rage.

  “Get him!” Sedona shrieked. “Get him, get him, get him!”

  Adam watched the dinosaur’s gruesome dance, revolted. This was his chance to run over to Bateman and the others, to try to split. But the creature was twisting and jerking this way and that in the flow of power.

  Still blasting away, Bateman dropped to one knee, and his two buddies did the same—giving the men with the rocket launchers a clear aim at the struggling animal. . . .

  But the Z. rex somehow caught an overturned swivel chair with the tip of his tail and propelled it across the floor toward Bateman. It slammed straight into the burly man, knocking the gun from his grip and sending him crashing into some lockers with a shout of pain. Sedona ran over to help him.

  Now the reptile had only two blasts of current to contend with. Roaring his defiance, fighting against the powerful charge, he picked up the vat he’d already dented and brought it down on the two men. The sickening ring of steel on bone resonated around the room. Weapons and bodies crunched into the floor. The guns cut off dead.

  The monster was free, and mad as all hell.

  Even as the gunmen went down—and as Sedona tried desperately to revive Bat
eman—the guards in the doorway aimed their rocket launchers and prepared to open fire. Adam’s blood ran cold as the Z. rex lunged forward, kicked one man aside with a huge, green foot and jabbed left-right at the other with his clawed fists, cracking ribs and body armor.

  Stomp kick and jab cross. There was no mistaking the distinctive actions.

  “My moves,” Adam realized, as the world seemed to tilt in a violent, headlong rush. “That monster just used the moves I thought up for the Ultra-Reality demo. Which means . . .”

  Dad did this. Adam clutched his temples. Dad did this, Dad did this, Dad did—

  “NO!” Adam screamed.

  The Z. rex turned from the bodies at his feet, his black, bright eyes fixing on Adam.

  While the monster was distracted, Sedona left Bateman groaning beside the locker and scrabbled on the floor for an abandoned rocket launcher. “You’re not killing anyone else!” he shouted.

  The Z. rex swung around. Its lethal tail lashed out and caught Sedona under the chin. The scientist’s neck snapped as his head twisted around one hundred eighty degrees, eyes turned to the door behind him, as if he were considering one final escape plan.

  Then Sedona pitched to the floor, dead.

  Adam stood very still, trying not to shake as, with a defiant growl, the Z. rex keeled over, apparently exhausted.

  At the same moment, Bateman pulled out a stubby metal canister from a pocket in his hazard-suit and hurled it down on the floor with a clatter. Thick white mist started hissing from inside.

  Oh, no way, thought Adam, new horror cutting blade-like through his thoughts. Gas!

  9

  DEPARTURE

  As the white gas began to fill the room, the Z. rex got back on his feet and a deep, crunching sound ripped through the air. Adam stared as the dinosaur’s back split open, revealing something dark and ridged underneath. The next moment, two huge, spiny sails of gnarled flesh unfolded, impossibly outward. . . .

  “Wings,” Adam breathed in utter disbelief. “You’re a dinosaur . . . and you’ve got wings!”

  Wings that the Z. rex now flapped, and a strong wind blew up, tearing the gas haze apart like invisible teeth. Charts and papers pinned to the wall were snatched into the vortex. The backdraft knocked Adam to the ground.

  And in the middle of the homemade tornado, the Z. rex rose up into the air like some monstrous dragon of legend. He reached down with his muscular arms, upturned the buckled metal vat and then dropped it over the gas canister.

  The clang and clatter jarred Adam from just watching; he stepped over Sedona’s body, ran through the white haze to the nearest of the two sprawled gunmen and clawed off a gas mask. He struggled into it and breathed again—sour, rank breaths but at least they were clearing his head.

  “Mr. Bateman!” Adam shouted, staring all around, his voice muffled by the mask. “Where are you?” My best hope is a man who’s almost shot and gassed me, he thought miserably. He staggered through the fumes toward the broken bodies in the doorway. But there was no sign of the stocky survivor. Bateman must’ve run for it.

  Which means, I’m left all alone with—

  A wet clacking sound made Adam turn. The dinosaur’s incredible wings were folding up, disappearing into the thick ridges of scale and skin on his back. The Z. rex lowered his head and came stomping toward him once again.

  “No!” Adam yelled, cowering on the floor. “Please!”

  The monster scooped up Adam in his claws and thundered out through the doorway into the tunnel beyond. Adam clung grimly to the cold, muscular arm as though it were the restraint bar on a roller-coaster ride. He couldn’t believe that he had already survived so much violence. Where was this going to end?

  Dad really did put this thing into the Ultra-Reality game. The realization kept biting at Adam, the dinosaur’s stomp kick and jab cross—and its aftermath—looping through his head in an endless action replay. Where else could the Z. rex have got those distinctive moves? But the Think-Send tech was modeled on my brain waves. The game wouldn’t work at all with anyone else playing it, Dad said so. . . .

  How could his father be a part of this madness?

  The creature’s step quickened, as if some scent were growing surer in his nostrils. As he rounded the corner, Adam saw a circle of night sky ahead, the way back out into the valley. Freedom. He pulled off his respirator. The air was almost painfully fresh after the atmosphere in the complex. Now, if he could only get away from this mad monster. . . .

  Suddenly the Z. rex stopped dead, jarring Adam’s bones. It cocked its massive, blackened head to one side.

  “What . . . what is it?” Adam asked nervously.

  The monster’s only answer was to dump him on the ground and tread stealthily toward the exit, as if advancing on something invisible to Adam’s eyes. Carefully, he crouched down, sniffed the air, then pulled away a loose tangle of gorse from beside the cave exit.

  Adam crept up behind the dinosaur, wondering if he dared risk squeezing past and escaping into the park. If he could only find Bateman, then maybe—

  The beast gave a growl of warning. There was no mistaking the message—“keep back.” And as Adam peered past his captor’s enormous leg, he realized why.

  A digital clock face glowed cold blue from the shadows. It was fixed in place with wires on top of a small white bundle.

  “A bomb?” Adam breathed, the words choking in his windpipe. A big one too, if it’s meant to wipe out a dinosaur. “We’ve got to get out of here.” He tried to speak in a low, firm voice, the way he’d seen people on TV talking to wild dogs, but to his own ears his words sounded shrill and feeble. “Look, if you can really understand, at least let me get out of here—”

  With an impatient roar, the Z. rex used his tail to push Adam away, back down the tunnel toward the lab. Adam hesitated. Run back to the lab, he thought. Hide under a desk. Hope the blast kills that thing, then you can get away.

  But as he was about to go, the massive reptile gave a hiss of satisfaction, turned and took a step toward him, flexing its claws. In one hand it was holding the bomb.

  “No!” Adam staggered back, came up sharp against the rock wall. “Don’t bring it inside!”

  Ignoring him, the creature came closer.

  “Outside!” Adam yelled. “Throw it outside, quick, it’s going to—”

  Then he saw that the clock face wasn’t blinking. The countdown had stopped.

  Adam clutched his chest and sank down against the wall. “It’s okay. It’s okay. Bateman must have mucked up when he set it.”

  There was a contemptuous look in the cold, black eyes. “Not man,” the dinosaur ground out in that deep, raw-throated rasp. “Zed.”

  “You?” Adam looked at him uncertainly. He thinks he defused it.

  Zed placed the bomb carefully on the ground, then grabbed Adam’s arm and half pulled him, half carried him back down toward the laboratory. Adam gasped with pain, dangling like a doll in the dinosaur’s grip—until he was dropped just inside the doorway and pushed roughly toward the scattered files.

  “I already told you,” Adam panted, massaging his bruised arm. “I can’t read them.”

  The dinosaur watched him, eyes cold and bright.

  Unable to meet that gaze, Adam crouched down and submissively started to tidy the files. “I—I’m sorry I tried to go with Bateman,” he said shakily. “I’m just scared. Can’t you see that? I lost my dad, my home, everything.” He fell to his knees. “Please let me go. I can’t help you, I don’t know anything—”

  “Know,” Zed echoed. Or was he saying “No”? He was leaning over one of the dead men in the hazard-suits, opening up the rubber outfit from neck to waist with the tip of one gleaming claw. With surprising deftness, he pulled it free of the corpse. Then, with the fabric clamped in one hand, Zed crossed to a small fridge in one corner and tore off the door. He upended it, and a pile of drink cans and ready meals fell out noisily.

  “Uh. . . .” Adam licked his dry lips. “You hung
ry?”

  “You . . . hungry,” Zed repeated, though as he rumbled through the syllables he made it sound more like a statement of fact. “Hungry. Need. Go.”

  Adam was baffled. “I . . . I’m sorry, I don’t get you.”

  The monstrous creature hurled the hazard-suit at Adam’s feet and pointed to it.

  “What do I do with that? Wear it?” Adam looked doubtfully at the heap of white rubber. “I think it’s kind of ruined.”

  “Need. Go.”

  Skin crawling, Adam climbed into the dead man’s suit. He put on both legs, but before he could slip on the arms, Zed grunted and shook his head. He stretched out his tail and pointed to a map of the world on the wall.

  The scaly tip hovered like an arrow over Scotland.

  “Uh, yeah. Looks like everyone’s either there or headed that way.” Adam sighed. “If only I could get back too.”

  “Zed. Get. Back.”

  “What?” Adam shook his head, tired, scared and frustrated. “I don’t know what you’re saying.”

  With a wet crunching sound, Zed’s sail-like wings unfolded again from his back. He looked at Adam, an unspoken challenge in his black crocodile eyes.

  “What?” Adam shook his head. “You can’t fly there.”

  “You,” rasped the dinosaur. “Zed. Go.”

  “No.” Adam felt his stomach twist. “No, you can’t take me with you. Not all that way.”

  Zed kicked the empty fridge into the wall and stabbed a claw down at the jumble of food. “Hungry,” he grunted. “Need. GO.”

  Thirty minutes later, Adam’s stomach was full, but he felt sicker than ever. While he’d been eating, Zed had quietly, methodically gathered supplies in a couple of rucksacks: tins of food, matches, coats and blankets—and a selection of the mysterious files. Then the monster had fastened both bags to his tail.

  His brain’s been fried, Adam realized, still half dressed in the oversized hazard-suit. He’s been inside Ultra-Reality, and now he thinks life is like a video game, thinks he’s a superhero. He reckons he can fly halfway across the world with me on his back.