Z. Rex

by Steve Cole

  “Zed!” Adam gasped.

  The Z. rex kicked Y’s face aside with savage force and followed it up with a blow from his bloodied tail that clubbed the beast to the floor. Crimson saliva dripped from his swollen, gap-toothed jaws as he sliced through the chain that joined Adam’s handcuffs with one claw.

  Adam stared up at him. “I . . . I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “Get . . . Dad,” Zed panted. “Go.”

  Glancing back at the west exit, Adam swore. “More guards!”

  Zed pounded back toward the entrance where three men had appeared, shock-guns aimed to fire. Within seconds, Zed was engulfed in a storm of blue light, snarling and snapping with pain. But he kept on going, staggering to the side of the huge metal doors. Grunting with effort, his whole body shaking, he scored his claws down a seam of cement to expose copper piping, then twisted it away from the wall. Steaming hot water came spurting out under pressure, as though a hose had just been switched on, full blast. Zed angled it at the attacking mercenaries, dousing them with scalding water. A chorus of screams went up. Blue energy hissed and fizzled out as the guards retreated.

  “Adam!” Mr. Adlar skirted the fallen Y. rex and sprinted over to join his son. “I managed to shake off Bateman. Let’s get out of here.”

  Zed reacted to the familiar voice, shuffling backward. “Dad. Got Dad.”

  Mr. Adlar looked up, unafraid, into the creature’s clouded eyes. “Yes, Zed. You got me.”

  “Ad. Dad.” Zed opened his gruesome, gory jaws and reached into the side of his mouth. He hooked out something small and rectangular and dropped it on the ground at Mr. Adlar’s feet.

  Adam gingerly picked it up. It was the framed photo of him and his dad he’d taken from the flat. The one he thought that Zed, consumed by hate, had devoured. But he’d only been storing it in one of those pouches in the flesh of his cheeks. The glass was cracked and bloody, but the picture was otherwise intact.

  The dinosaur’s voice was raw and weak. “No Zed.”

  “No.” Mr. Adlar pressed a hand against the dinosaur’s battered, bleeding face. “I’m so sorry. Sorry for all that’s happened. But thank you . . . for Adam. And for coming back.”

  “Dad.” The word sounded like it had been wrenched from one of the dinosaur’s wounds. “Zed . . . Ad—”

  The sight of an ominous shadow stopped his words.

  “Look out!” Adam saw that the Y. rex had risen again.

  Zed turned and roared full force at the Y. rex. But the creature held its ground. It shifted its weight from foot to foot, snapped its teeth and let loose a gut-clenching screech, like some insane, inhuman declaration of war.

  “Go,” Zed said to Adam, any tenderness in his eyes now lost.

  “What about me?” Bateman shrieked. “My legs are busted up! I can’t move!”

  Mr. Adlar turned to Adam, uncertain.

  “Don’t leave me!” Bateman yelled again. “Help me, and I’ll watch out for you. I’ll see you get out of here alive!”

  The Y. rex turned to him, as a human might turn at the hum of a mosquito. Adam clutched hold of his dad’s arm as Y raised its scaly foot over the fallen man.

  Bateman screamed.

  The impact—a quick, wet scrape of flesh on rock—was fast and sudden. For Bateman, everything was over.

  “Good riddance,” said Adam’s dad hoarsely.

  One victim gone, the Y. rex unfurled its wings and turned its attention back toward Zed.

  “Go! NOW!” Zed growled, his own gory wings beating in time with Y’s. The steady slicing rhythm built like a menacing soundtrack, louder and faster.

  Y. rex rose into the air, followed by Zed. They looked weirdly graceful despite their size and dripping wounds, circling as if gusted on a ghostly breeze.

  Snarling and spitting, Y swooped in, reaching for Zed’s throat. Zed dodged aside, but smashed into the wall, shaking the Ring with the impact. He tore more cables from the wall, two as thick as pythons and spewing yellow sparks—Y knocked them from his grip and lunged again for Zed’s throat, jaws hanging wide.

  Zed’s going to lose, Adam thought fearfully. Seeing the fight for real and not on a TV screen brought home the scale of the conflict, the sheer, pounding damage of each strike and counterstrike. The creatures’ roars were like pealing thunder. A rain of rubble fell from the vaulted ceiling.

  “Come on, Ad.” Mr. Adlar took his son’s hand and started to haul him toward the doorway where the high-pressure steam was beginning to dissipate. “We can’t help him.”

  “And we can’t leave him either!” Adam yanked his arm away, staring up in horror. Y. rex had seized Zed’s bad wing again, clawing and biting. Zed was weakening. He managed to rip himself free—but the pain and effort left him tumbling into a nosedive. Adam closed his eyes as Zed piled headfirst into the base of the wall. The shock waves knocked Adam off his feet, and he prayed it was stone and not Zed’s bones he heard splintering.

  When he dared to look again, he saw Zed lying in a crater, crumpled and still. The dinosaur’s eyes were closed. Hovering above like some grisly angel of death, Y. rex gave a grim howl of triumph as debris and dust rained down from above. Chunks of rock struck Zed’s prone body, but he didn’t stir.

  Mr. Adlar pulled Adam around, yelled in his face. “This place is falling down around our ears!”

  “I don’t care! Zed saved us. He—” Adam broke off as the Y. rex swooped down from the shadows to land beside its prey. “Get up, Zed,” he said quietly, almost to himself. “Please, don’t let it end like this. Get up.”

  Mouth wide open, Y made ready to bite chunks from Zed’s neck. Zed, his eyes barely open, raised both clawed arms and gripped hold of those heavy jaws, trying to force them back. But slowly, inexorably, Y. rex’s huge, ivory teeth were edging closer to Zed’s throat.

  “Please,” Adam whispered again. “Please.”

  “Come on, Ad.” His dad’s grip was harder now; he meant business. He hauled Adam through the haze of steam that hid Zed and the victorious creature from view.

  Defeated, Adam ran with his dad along a wide, deserted access tunnel, matching him mechanically, pace for pace.

  “The Y. rex will have our scent now,” Mr. Adlar panted. “It won’t stop hunting us. We’ve got to find weapons, more guards.”

  Adam stared at him blankly. “Now we want to find the guards?”

  His dad nodded. “They’re the only ones with the firepower to hold that thing back.”

  “Sorry, Bill. The guards have gone.” A suited figure stepped out of the shadows a few meters ahead of them.

  Hayden.

  He seemed confused, swaying from side to side like a man concussed, or in shock—or who had lost it completely. He was holding a gun.

  Adam almost laughed—as if a gun could scare them, knowing what was coming up behind.

  “Let us pass, Jeff,” said Mr. Adlar quietly.

  “Perhaps I should. Everyone else has given up and run out.” Hayden gave a short, bitter laugh. “Samantha, the technical staff . . . even Bateman! He must’ve taken his mercenaries with him.”

  “Your guards may have gone, but Bateman’s dead,” said Adam. “Your precious Y. rex killed him, and now he’s about to finish off Zed while you stand here—”

  The sound of a massive explosion came crashing from the far end of the tunnel. The lights flickered alarmingly, and several went out.

  Mr. Adlar whirled around as smoke ghosted into sight. “Must be the electrics—all that steam. . . .”

  A familiar bloodlusting howl sounded, crawling down the corridor in successive echoes.

  “Y. rex,” Adam breathed.

  “It’s not over, you know.” Hayden spoke with unnerving calmness as the lights buzzed on and off overhead. “Geneflow has so many projects in preparation, right around the globe, no single setback can stop us. Survival of the fittest, that’s the name of the game—and we will decide who’s fit to survive.” He raised the gun to cover Mr. Adlar and smiled. “Now, come on,
Bill. We can still turn all this around.”

  Adam glanced behind, feeling a familiar prickle of gooseflesh as a dark, bestial shadow padded into view.

  “For God’s sake, Jeff!” Adlar shouted. “Let us pass!”

  “Swear you’ll work with me willingly,” Hayden said, pointing the gun at Adam. “Swear that you’ll see the project through till the end.”

  The dinosaur came forward into the flickering light, its body battered and bloody, its head sooty and scored with scratches. And Adam’s heart capsized in his chest at the sight of the beast’s bared ivory-dagger teeth, which were all very much in place. Which meant that this was definitely the Y. rex.

  And that Zed was dead.

  “All right!” Adlar wrung his hands together. “I swear I’ll see it through. Now please . . . he’ll kill all of us.”

  The hulking, scaly monster narrowed its eyes and quickened its step. It was horribly close now, a wrathful growl building in its throat through tight-clenched jaws.

  “It’s all right, Bill.” Hayden waved his gun. “I made that thing. It can’t touch me.” As the Y. rex strode ever closer, Hayden barged angrily past father and son to yell at it. “You hear? There’s not a thing you can do to me, because I learn from my mistakes. I adapt!” He nodded. “Your predecessor turned against me, but you can’t. Because I had Josephs place one overriding priority command into your brain: You—Can’t—Hurt—Jeff—Hayden. Not ever.”

  The creature’s huge jaws swung open. Then it froze dead in its tracks.

  “Yeah, you’re feeling that conflict in your brain right now, aren’t you?” Hayden turned to face his two prisoners and smiled. “I plan for every contingency. See?”

  I see something, thought Adam, staring past him at those terrible jaws. His pulse quickened. On the upper right-hand side, five or six of those dagger-pointed teeth were sliding out from the swollen gums.

  “You want to know why I’m a natural leader?” Hayden went on arrogantly, gesturing at the frozen monster. “That’s why.”

  The loose teeth fell to the floor with a bloody clatter as the dinosaur shook its head.

  “Not Y,” it hissed.

  Before Hayden could even scream, the monster’s mouth was around him, snapping and tearing at his body, crushing bones and swallowing flesh and clothing until there was nothing left.

  Mr. Adlar put his hand over his mouth, white-faced. “Project’s through, Jeff.”

  “Zed?” Adam whispered, reeling with emotions he hardly knew how to name. “Is that really you?”

  The dinosaur wiped his grisly mouth and sank to his knees. “All . . . done . . . ,” he growled, as gore went on pooling from his wounds. Then Adam and his dad had to hurl themselves clear as Zed pitched forward and struck the concrete floor.

  With a final flicker, the overhead lights went out.

  24

  ENDING

  Twenty-four hours later, Adam was sitting in a deserted common room, glad he would soon be gone from the shelter. Partly, that was for safety’s sake; the place was designed to withstand a nuclear attack, not a clash of killer dinosaurs and massive explosions in the heart of the complex. Several walls and ceilings were already showing the strain, crisscrossed with cracks or spilling plaster and rock dust.

  Ironic that Y. rex’s attack on Edinburgh Castle had, in the end, given Zed the means to save himself, thought Adam. The bomb that Y had not deployed had gone back into the pouch in its cheek. From his poking around in the gory evidence, Mr. Adlar realized the bomb had gone off and taken Y’s head with it. Zed must have primed it while his clone was struggling to bite him, then kicked the creature clear.

  The injured reptile had even thought to take Y’s shattered teeth and use them to disguise himself as his identical twin. Adam shook his head in grossed-out wonder. Another fine Zed strategy, he thought grimly. Brutal, cunning—and successful.

  You said it yourself, Hayden. Survival of the fittest.

  Still not quite sure how he had survived this ordeal himself, Adam longed to escape the whole Frankenstein setup and get back to familiar surroundings again. The weird machines, the hum and buzz of their workings . . . they were freaking him out.

  Adam supposed it was lucky for Zed’s sake that the shelter was so well equipped. Weakened close to death, the dinosaur had been helped into one of Hayden’s bioregenerators to recover. For such a high-tech miracle it didn’t look like much—basically a large vat identical to the one Zed had hurled at his attackers back in Fort Ponil.

  If we’d only known then where the journey would take us. . . .

  His dad said it wasn’t safe for anyone else to stay in the room with Zed while treatment was in progress. So Adam tagged along while his dad checked the rest of the shelter for anyone who might be injured.

  Or for anyone who might know where Josephs had gone.

  “She’s not likely to come back here, is she?” Adam asked nervously as they sat in the common room. “And if she ever does . . . well, with Hayden and Bateman both gone, she can’t cause much damage.”

  “Sam Josephs believed in Hayden and his ideals absolutely,” his dad said. “She’ll most probably be making for one of the Geneflow facilities. Lending her expertise to another of their little projects . . . or helping them to abduct another specialist.”

  Adam chewed his lip. “They won’t come after you again, will they?”

  “I’m sure they’ll have other priorities right now,” Mr. Adlar said carefully. “What worries me more is the bigger picture. These people are organized. Well financed. Ruthless.”

  “And building more dinosaurs,” Adam murmured.

  “Experiments in evolution,” his dad agreed. “But what are their real aims? What are they working toward?”

  “Nothing good.” Adam sighed wearily. “Jeez, wouldn’t it be good to feel properly safe again?”

  “Which reminds me . . .” His dad looked at him. “Josephs told me you were New Mexico’s most wanted before you skipped continents.”

  “Oh, no, I almost forgot!” Adam jumped up from his chair. “The police won’t be after me, will they?”

  “Well . . .” Mr. Adlar paused dramatically, and then smiled. “Nah. Bateman’s phony evidence didn’t stand up more than a couple of days. The police called off their manhunt already.”

  “Dad!” Adam whacked him on the arm. “That isn’t funny!”

  “Just figured you’d like to know.” Mr. Adlar’s eyes met his. “We might never be ‘properly safe’ in this world, whatever’s out there. But if we’re together, things are better . . . right?”

  “I guess so.” Adam couldn’t find it within himself to smile back so warmly. “But you know . . . things can’t be like they were, Dad. I can’t just tag along behind, while you go off living your life. ’Cause it’s my life too.”

  “I know.” His dad nodded. “I’ve learned that. From now on, we do what’s right for us both.” He held up his fist. “Deal?”

  “Sounds like the right kind of evolution to me.” Adam knocked knuckles with him. “Deal.”

  Zed’s treatments went on for hours. While his dad sifted through Hayden’s files and records in the War Room, Adam dozed fitfully on a couch in the corner. It felt strange, sleeping on something soft after so many long nights roughing it.

  “Can we go back to the flat soon?” Adam asked when he finally woke up.

  “I want to,” Mr. Adlar told him. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do about all these research materials, all this equipment. . . .”

  Adam pulled a face. “I wish we could blitz the whole lot.”

  “But if it was used differently, a lot of this stuff could benefit humankind,” his dad argued. “Do I have the right to destroy it?”

  A brute voice grumbled from the doorway. “Zed does.”

  “Zed!” Adam turned to find the dinosaur glowering in the doorway. He was looking in much better shape, his scales a lustrous deep sea green, still scuffed and scraped, but with neat, puckered scars where o
pen wounds had gaped the day before. “Are you feeling all right?”

  “Go.” Zed’s dark eyes shone. “Time to go.” His voice was just as deep and gruff but it sounded clearer somehow, less slurred. He braced his back against the entrance to the War Room and strained with all his strength. Thick black cracks ran like rising veins in the wall above him.

  “Wait!” Mr. Adlar cried. “I know you must be angry, but you can’t just—”

  The ceiling split open with a sound like giants’ bones breaking. “C’mon, he means it.” Adam grabbed hold of his dad and dragged him outside. They ducked under Zed’s legs and hid in the relative safety of the tunnel outside as a rumbling noise built and the walls began to crumble.

  Seconds later, Hayden’s mission control was pulverized, buried under tons of rock, more ancient still than even the earliest dinosaurs.

  As the echoes of the rockfall slowly died, Zed carried Adam and Mr. Adlar to the blood-soaked ruins of the Ring. He opened his jaws, and Adam saw new shoots of ivory already pushing through to replace his lost teeth. The dinosaur flew up and sheared through the remaining cables, severing the arteries of power that fed the whole shelter.

  Emergency systems kicked in, bathing the place in thin, eerie white light.

  “The backup power will probably last for a few days,” Mr. Adlar muttered. “After that, the shelter will stay dark forever.”

  Good, thought Adam.

  He and his dad followed Zed silently out through the tunnels to the loading bay, where the massive elevator platform waited to take them to the surface.

  They came out in the lean-to behind the sham gas station, in the shadow of Arthur’s Seat. The night was surprisingly warm, and a crescent moon hung like a jaunty grin in the dark, clear sky.

  Mr. Adlar took huge lungfuls of fresh air, beaming madly with each breath. “It’s so good to be outside!”

  Adam couldn’t be sure, but Zed appeared to be nodding in agreement. He, too, breathed deep. Then he gripped the controls that opened the hidden entrance in one claw, and crushed them into scrap.