Fire and Water

by Simon Guerrier

  Lester responded coolly.

  “Quinn can’t sit still for more than five minutes so if you see him where he’s not meant to be, you have my blessing to shoot him.”

  The weasel-faced man leered.

  “I’ll do that,” he said.

  The remaining keepers packed up their things in silence and piled into their own cars. Only Ted in any way acknowledged Danny as he stood watching them.

  “You will go home tomorrow,” he said. He spoke slowly and carefully, with a precision that suggested he didn’t know much English.

  “We’d like to stay for the funeral,” Danny responded. “Pay our respects.”

  Ted regarded him, searching over his features as if trying to make sense of what he’d just said. Perhaps his English didn’t stretch to “funeral”. Perhaps it was something else.

  “It will be soon, because of the heat,” he said finally. “Then you will go?” And Danny realised it wasn’t an order; rather Ted was sounding him out.

  “We were sent here to help. If that help is not wanted...”

  Ted nodded.

  “I’m very sorry she died,” Danny said, glancing around to ensure none of the other gamekeepers remained to hear them. “But she died saving our lives. She wanted to help us.”

  Ted said nothing. A few minutes later he drove away.

  Lester went inside armed with his laptop to set himself up as a remote office and try and get through to the ARC again.

  Danny stood outside on the raised platform, watching the last of the departing cars disappear into the fading light. He knew he’d be on edge for the rest of the evening, waiting for the next thing to fall on them. But there was nothing he could do, except maybe make dinner. He wandered back through to the mess room and into the kitchen to investigate the cupboards.

  He found Ted standing there.

  “Uh, hello.”

  The man raised one finger to his lips.

  Danny took a moment to recover, then said in a whisper, “It’s all right. They’ve all gone.”

  Ted remained completely still, poised and alert, listening intently. Then when he seemed to be confident that Danny had been right, he relaxed.

  “Don’t know about you, boss,” he said with an ease that suggested he was much more comfortable with English than he’d let on before, “but I could do with a drink.”

  Much to Danny’s surprise, Lester abandoned his laptop and proposed that he’d cook. So Danny and Ted sat down at the table to talk.

  Danny soon found that he had a few more hoops to jump through before Ted would be ready to confide in him. As he sat down Ted reached into the pocket of his army-issue jacket and withdrew a clear plastic bag. It took Danny a moment to realise that it was filled with fat blue and green caterpillars. Once he caught on, he jerked back in his seat in surprise — he’d never been very good with crawly, wriggly things — but as Ted reached a hand into the bag, he saw the insects were all dead.

  The gamekeeper withdrew a single specimen and laid it flat in his palm. It had the same length and thickness as one of his fingers and was covered in short, bristly spikes.

  “Caterpillar of the Emperor moth Imbrasia Belina. Live in mopane trees. You shake the trees and they come tumbling out.”

  “Very nice,” Danny said, trying to be polite.

  “Here.” Ted passed the thing over. Danny took it carefully between two fingers, its skin was thick and hard, like it had been cooked.

  “Thanks. I take it I’m meant to eat it?”

  “Oh, yes, a favourite of my youth. Sixty per cent protein, plus phosphorous, iron, and calcium. Makes you grow up strong. Best free food there is.”

  He grinned mischievously at Danny, willing him on.

  “It’s not going to give me weird visions or anything, is it?”

  Ted’s nostrils flared.

  “You watch too many things on television.”

  Danny leant forward so he could look into the kitchen. Lester had his back to them, an apron tied round his waist, caught up in saucepans and chopping, oblivious to Danny’s plight.

  “All right, then.” He took a deep breath and bit the front inch off the caterpillar. The surface crunched dry against his teeth, but it was horribly soft underneath. It had the texture, he thought, of an over-cooked sausage, maybe one of those vegetarian ones. In fact, as he chewed, he was a little disappointed by the bland flavour.

  “Yeah, it’s all right,” he told Ted, and obligingly chewed the rest of it. Ted grinned, dug deep into his bag and produced several more, popping one into his own mouth.

  Danny swallowed. The caterpillar left a slightly bitter aftertaste, and he failed to stop himself pulling a face.

  Ted grinned broadly.

  “But you want to have some more,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.

  Danny reached forward and picked up another one. He bit the head off, and chewed it with gusto, eager to show his willingness. Ted watched him, then got up from the table. What he said next sent dread coursing through Danny’s veins.

  “I brought something else.” With that, he went into the kitchen. Lester turned around from his cooking and took in the dead caterpillars that still lay on the table. He pulled a face like this was all he’d ever expected from Danny.

  Danny lounged back in his seat, grinning broadly at Lester’s discomfort, then popped the remainder of the caterpillar into his mouth and chewed with his mouth wide open. Lester just raised an eyebrow and turned back to his work.

  Cockiness turned to suspicion as Ted returned, brandishing a couple of carrier bags which strained under the weight of the large cartons that had been squeezed into them. They banged heavily as he plonked them down on the table. Danny tried to read the cheaply printed inscriptions. In slightly blurred red ink, it said something about Johannesburg.

  “In the old days,” Ted said, heaving out the cartons, “we weren’t allowed to drink the white man’s beer, so we made this stuff ourselves. Jo’burg Beer. Local delicacy.” He expertly worked his thumbs round the corners of one of the cartons and pulled the thing wide open.

  Danny relaxed a bit. He was a lot less squeamish about beer than he was about caterpillars, and he leant forward to investigate. The contents looked frothy and pale, more like fresh milk. He got a nose full of raw, pungent yeast.

  “Reminds me of the home brew my mate’s dad used to make.”

  Ted pushed the open carton across the table to Danny.

  “We drink this in the shebeens. It’s like a pub, only with a dirt floor and chickens.”

  “Sounds like my local.” Danny put both hands around the carton. He picked it up gingerly, angling the thing round so that one open corner acted as a spout. Then, trying not to spill it all down his chin, he took a hesitant sip.

  He’d expected fire water, or at least something surprising. But the beer had the same texture and richness of milk, though full of crude bubbles of air. Danny washed it round the inside of his mouth before swallowing, assessing what seemed to be a low alcohol content, the texture of rich proteins and goodness. The stuff was probably better for him than any brand of fizzy drink.

  “It’s good,” he said, and he took another drink. He offered the carton back to Ted, but Ted shook his head and reached for his own. When he had gulped back what looked like half the contents, he reached his hand out across the table.

  “We’ve eaten and we’ve had beer together.”

  Danny took his hand and shook it, as if they’d just agreed to a cricket match. Ted shook once, then quickly changed his hand around, locking the tips of his fingers round Danny’s. Then they locked thumbs. After this three-part handshake, Ted sat back in his seat.

  “You’re okay,” he said pleasantly.

  “I’ve passed the test?”

  Ted exploded in laughter, a rich and vibrant belly-laugh that brought Lester in from the kitchen, still wearing his apron.

  “Is that beer?” he said.

  “It’s an initiation,” Danny explained, offering his
carton.

  “It’s hospitality,” Ted said. “I am being polite.”

  Lester warily raised Danny’s carton to his lips. He took a tentative sip, then leaning back, he gulped down the whole lot and placed the empty carton back on the table.

  “Not bad,” he commented, turning and heading back into the kitchen.

  “I like him,” Ted said, staring after the retreating figure.

  “You don’t really know him.”

  Again Ted laughed. He sat quietly for a few minutes, then he fixed Danny with a serious gaze.

  “Sophie liked you.”

  “I liked her.”

  “You get the animals, she said. You get that we have a duty.”

  “Even to these giant lizards,” Danny agreed.

  “Please, we have shared beer and caterpillars. There are no secrets between us. They are dinosaurs.”

  “They are dinosaurs.”

  “The two you have seen are not the first,” Ted said. “My colleagues used to discuss it. There have been many strange things in the park.”

  “But then they stopped talking?”

  Ted nodded. “Then they stopped drawing breath. Sophie, the guys who died last night, Jace and Ellie who died just a few days ago and brought you out here. But they’ve not all died, some simply lost their jobs. ‘Cutbacks’, they said. Only...”

  “Only,” Danny added, “they’ve also been recruiting.”

  “This new lot, they don’t care for the animals. I don’t know what they care for. I’m not the last of the old guard, but I’m the only one who’d dare speak to you like this. They’ve offered me money, a lot of money for a gamekeeper. And I could use it. Don’t mistake me, I would have looked the other way if they had not killed Sophie.”

  Danny left a respectful pause before asking his next question.

  “Who are they?”

  Ted looked up, surprised.

  “The people from your mine.”

  Danny blinked. “The mine?”

  “The British. The oil mine. They said you were working with them.”

  Danny remembered the joke Sophie had made as they’d passed the mine on their way to the park. She’d said it should sport a Union Jack, and he’d picked up on the bitterness in her words. It turned out now that was because they were the ones buying her.

  “They’ve replaced your staff with thugs,” Danny said to Ted.

  “Yeah. Told us you were no better. But Sophie called in this morning. Wanted my gun. Said you knew about the dinosaurs, and you only wanted to help them.”

  “Well, that makes a certain amount of sense,” Lester said. He stood in the doorway of the kitchen and had evidently heard every word. “A British interest with government connections, who wants you and me out of the way.”

  “Someone we know, then,” Danny suggested.

  “Maybe, but not necessarily. I do have quite a reputation, you know.”

  Danny turned to Ted. “And you’re sure it’s the oil operation.”

  “That’s where all the money is,” Ted said. “They’re promising every one of us will be rich. And the dinosaurs only started appearing once it had been set up, in the last month or so.”

  Lester frowned.

  “I’ve got enough former colleagues and peers with an interest in my career... It could even be someone I’ve had lunch with in the last few days.”

  “That friend of yours, Christine.”

  “It does have her paw prints all over it. It would be just her thing to get us all the way out here, merely to bump us off and leave the ARC with no one in charge.”

  “She could be there now,” Danny said, worry in his voice. “That’s why they’re not answering the phone.”

  “I don’t think so. I’ve left a few instructions in case that should happen.”

  “You’ve expected something like this?”

  “I’ve been in the civil service too long not to understand how it works. If I fail, then I’m out of a job. If I’m successful, everyone else wants to steal it from me.”

  Lester’s brow creased with irritation. “Anyway, I’m not beaten yet.”

  “What are we going to do?” Danny asked.

  “We’re going to get back to London immediately. I’ll call the airport now. And yes, we’ll go first class...”

  NINETEEN

  The rain crashed down like ball bearings as they climbed out of Abby’s Mini Cooper. She’d have parked at the wrong end of the huge car park, thought Connor, by the warehouse-sized pet store with the cute logo of a cat. But he had pointed out the army trucks all parked just in sight of the silver dome of Surrey Quays Tube Station. There were few other cars around, as the huge shopping centre had already been evacuated. The public had been told the flood had ruptured some pipes and a tide of raw sewage was quickly heading their way.

  Abby and Connor ran through the rain to join Becker and his men sheltering in the entrance to the station, using the cover it afforded to check over their weapons.

  Connor watched Becker checking over his custom H&K G36, the one with the grenade launcher added to the end and the nifty tactical sight on the top. The magazine had a clear panel so you could see how much ammunition remained. More importantly, the sight didn’t fire a red tracer like you got in movies — which kind of gave you away to anyone you wanted to shoot. Instead, the hologram sat inside the sight, so only the shooter could see it. For low light conditions you could switch it from red to night-vision green.

  As back-up, Becker had a pump-action Mossburg 500 on a strap across his back, with spare cartridges tucked into the loops at the breast of his flak jacket. His men sported G36s too, only without the grenade launchers.

  Finished checking his rifles, Becker pulled his trusty SIG .229 from the pouch at his thigh and checked its contents and the movement of the slide.

  “We’re not going to war,” Connor said with a grin. “It’s just some big, stupid dinosaurs. Tranquillisers will be enough.”

  “You seen them?” Becker replied. “They’re big.”

  “I heard the description. I think they’re probably Brachiosaurus: four legs, long neck, round body — all the threat of an average cow.”

  Becker slipped his pistol back into its pouch,

  “You say that, but you haven’t seen them.” He nodded at his men and led them off into the rain, making their way along the road running round the back of the station, over the gravel and mud.

  Connor turned to Abby.

  “Them?”

  She sighed and handed him a tranquilliser rifle. They hurried after the soldiers, their progress slow as the mud sucked at their boots. Becker held open a chain-link fence that blocked their way into a building site, and they slipped and slid down a steep slope until they found themselves in a valley.

  Railway lines sat in the tightly packed gravel, stretching off south further than Connor could see. Enormous four-legged dinosaurs moved mournfully about, their long necks perusing the steep grassy banks for anything they might eat. Their tails were shorter than those found on the Apatosaurus, their front legs were longer than the ones at the back — a bit like a giraffe’s — and each one had a bump in the centre of its head, between the eyes. There were six of them. They looked rather unhappy with the poor quality of the grazing. They’d come all this way from prehistory just for some damp, muddy grass.

  “Is the power off?” Connor asked Becker as the soldiers stepped over the rails.

  “Whole line’s off at the moment. They’re extending it for the Olympics. Just as well, really, or this lot would disrupt the trains.”

  “We apologise for the short delay,” Connor said, adopting his plummiest voice. “This is due to dinosaurs on the line. We hope to be moving again shortly.”

  He studied the huge creatures, realising as he did so that these vast specimens weren’t even fully grown. He heard a terrible sad cry coming from behind them, and turned to see the head of an even larger dinosaur — a female — emerging from the railway tunnel that led into the
station.

  “They’re not Brachiosaurus,” he said, amazed. “They’re Sauroposeidons — one of the biggest dinosaurs there ever was.”

  “Really,” Becker said, standing beside him and sounding unimpressed. “What’s so great about that?”

  “Well, she’s got all sorts of tricks for keeping her weight down just so she’s able to move. Thin bones all honeycombed with pockets of air. Air sacs just like in birds.”

  “Looks trapped,” Abby said, from where she stood on the other side of him. “Poor thing can’t go back or forward.” She started to walk towards the stricken creature.

  “The anomaly’s just behind it,” Becker informed them, “but we can’t get this other lot back through it while mummy’s in the way.”

  The huge creatures seemed quite placid, but looked miserable in the rain. Connor shivered. He was pretty cold himself.

  “Oh no!” Abby cried, suddenly distraught. Connor and Becker ran to join her at the mouth of the tunnel. She had got up close to the stuck Sauroposeidon, just out of reach of its slender neck.

  It struggled to free itself from its entrapment, but had only done itself damage. A huge rent where its neck met its shoulder dripped thick and glistening blood. The creature looked exhausted from the pain and exertion, but couldn’t even move enough to lie down.

  “If we could take away some of this wall...” Becker suggested, prodding at the brickwork.

  “It’s too late,” Abby told him sadly, inspecting the wound. “She’s not going to recover from this. Oh, you poor thing.” She glanced at Becker, meaningfully.

  Becker nodded. “Her children aren’t going to like this.”

  “It’s the only way we can get them back home. And we need to do it quickly before they suffer too much from the cold.”

  “We need to do what?” Connor said. “What are we going to do?”

  “Make it quick,” Abby told Becker. She took Connor’s hand and led him back out into the rain.