by Mark Robson
‘Now, Cal! GRAB IT!’
Callum didn’t move. He was frozen with fear.
Sam could not see him. His focus was already divided between driving at the beach ahead and keeping his distance from the monster wave behind.
‘GRAB IT NOW, CAL!’ he yelled again, instinctively sensing his friend had not reacted to his first order.
The urgency and authority in Sam’s voice spurred Callum into action. There was so much water still sloshing around that the bag was in serious danger of being swept over the low wall of the stern by the engines. Dropping onto his hands and knees on the deck, Callum began to crawl towards it. A sudden surge as Sam gunned the engines sent him sliding and rolling to the back of the boat. He impacted the back wall hard, momentarily wedging his body under the twin engines. They were hot, searing his left side with burning heat as he wrenched himself free.
‘Aaaarrrggghhh!’
The surge of power died and the change in momentum carried Callum forward this time: half rolling, half sliding across the slopping deck. The survival bag was swept with him and with a frantic scrabble, he grabbed it at precisely the moment he collided with the back of Sam’s legs, sweeping his friend’s feet out from under him.
Sam was taken totally by surprise. He crumpled onto Callum, desperately trying to retain his grip on the wheel. As he fell, he inadvertently dragged it to the right. The boat heeled round in a tight turn through ninety degrees just as the incoming wave broke behind them with a booming roar.
Now side on to the wave, the approaching wall of water sucked at them, a slavering maw of gigantic proportions. Sam scrambled to his knees, rammed the throttle to full with his left hand and spun the wheel to the left with his right. The engines roared and the boat reared in the water, twisting like a marlin trying to spit out a hook. The hungry mouth of water chomped behind, barely missing them with its great line of foaming white teeth. Sam felt Callum slide away from under him again, but could not look back to see if his friend was all right.
At full power, the boat raced forward so fast that they leapt over the wave ahead and literally flew towards the beach, thumping down into the shallow water. Still on his knees and barely able to see where he was going, it was all Sam could do to hang onto the wheel.
‘BRACE YOUR—’ he began. He didn’t get to finish the yell. The boat hit land at precisely that moment and despite having tensed his body against the impact, Sam was not ready for the force of the deceleration. His head smacked into the centre of the wooden wheel hard. For a moment, it felt as if he was floating on air. Bright lights flashed in his eyes. Then the pain began.
Confusion. Pain. Disorientation. Pain. He turned, trying to get to his feet. The world spun and he fell. There was a roaring in his ears that was more than that of the surf. Even through his haze of bewilderment he knew he was not safe. There was danger nearby. He had to move. He had to get out of the boat. Callum was flat on his back on the deck. He wasn’t moving, but his hands still gripped the yellow survival bag.
‘Cal?’ The sound of the word sounded strange to Sam as he said it. It was if his voice was muffled and the noise of it echoed around inside his head. He wanted to shake his head, but he was frightened of making the pain worse. He settled for rubbing at his ears and trying again. ‘Callum?’
‘Urrrrgggghhh!’
‘Come on, Cal. We’ve got to get out of the boat,’ Sam urged.
He looked over the stern at the sea. They had not driven far from the waterline and the surf boiled with the fury of the storm. Lightning split the sky again. Once. Twice. The crashing, crackling reports of thunder followed almost instantly.
‘Please, Cal!’ he begged, kneeling next to him and shaking his shoulders. ‘We need to find shelter and get warm. Come on!’
‘Can’t,’ he groaned. ‘Need to sleep.’
‘Soon, Cal, soon. I promise,’ Sam wept, his desperation getting the better of him. ‘Come on. I’ll help you. Let’s just get to the trees over there. I’m cold. You’re cold. We both need to get warm. Look, we’ll take the flares with us. See? They’re just here. We can light a fire with them. Wouldn’t that be good? A lovely, warm fire. Come on, Cal!’
It took a combination of nagging, begging and physically pulling, but Sam eventually persuaded Callum to try. The boat was leaning over on the hull, so climbing out over the side was not difficult. As Sam helped Callum down on to the sand, he noticed his friend’s glasses were missing. At first, he thought they were lost in the surf, but then he spied them in the footwell. Stretching back into the boat, he grabbed them and tucked them into the top of the survival pack.
‘You’ll be wanting those later,’ he muttered.
Walking up the beach was hell.
The boys linked arms over each other’s shoulders and supported one other as they struggled to stay upright in the raging wind. To begin with, the sand was firm, but as they climbed the beach, the footing became more difficult. Their feet sank into the sand at every step, making forward progress difficult and quickly sapping their waning strength.
On reaching the tree line, Sam wondered for a moment if he was making a big mistake by venturing in. Branches were whipping back and forth in the wind, twice catching him with glancing blows. The underlying foliage was dense, with many tall, broad-leaf plants that gave the impression of a jungle. Once they had entered, they could not see more than a metre or two in any direction and it was incredibly difficult to push through it.
‘Let’s not go too far in,’ Sam suggested. ‘If it’s all like this, it will be easy to get lost. Here. This will do.’
Callum didn’t answer. Sam helped his friend to sit down with his back to a tree trunk and looked at him more closely. Callum’s eyes held a glazed expression. Sam could see that his friend was in a bad way. He did not know exactly what was wrong with Callum, but his first guess would be a combination of shock and hypothermia.
Sam had learned about cold injuries during a brief stint in the army cadets. He had only gone along to the unit for a few weeks before deciding that all the marching and polishing of boots was not for him. One of the few things that had stuck with him was the session on cold injuries.
The cadets had all filed into the training room to watch a dated video showing walkers succumbing to the cold and then they had discussed treatments as part of a first-aid training programme. One particular fact Sam had been surprised to discover was that the weather did not need to be particularly cold for someone to become hypothermic. It was not truly cold now, but he knew that sitting still, soaked to the skin, combined with the heat-leeching wind-chill factor, could potentially cause a deadly drop to their core temperatures. Sam felt the effects, but he was more weather-hardened than poor Callum, so it was no wonder he had succumbed first.
‘I want to go back to the boat and salvage what I can before the tide takes it,’ Sam said. ‘I’m going to get the knife from the survival pack and hack a path back through to the beach so I’ll be able to find you again easily. Will you be OK for a few minutes?’
Callum didn’t respond.
‘I’m hoping I can find something I can use to warm you up in one of the cupboards,’ Sam added. ‘I’m not certain, but I’ve got a feeling Dad keeps a blanket in there. At the very least there’s a towel. I’ll see if I can keep it dry somehow on the way back.’
He opened the top of the pack and rummaged through it. Callum’s glasses looked vulnerable, so Sam took out a foil blanket, wrapped them inside it and tucked them deep into the pack for safety. He hadn’t looked in the survival pack for a couple of years, but he was very pleased with what he found.
‘Here, Callum,’ he said excitedly as he pulled out a small tin and opened it. ‘Have a boiled sweet. The sugar will help.’
He put the sweet into Callum’s mouth and was pleased to see his friend begin to suck on it. The response was not great, but at least it was some sort of reaction. Next Sam took out the survival knife. It was a real beauty, he thought, kneeling as he drew it from the prote
ctive scabbard. The grip felt secure in his hand despite the wet and he mentally thanked his father for being so obsessive about his equipment. He turned and stood, intending to return the knife to the scabbard and secure the scabbard on his belt.
It took a moment before Sam registered the shape standing no more than two metres away. It was hard to say what caught his eye, but he looked up and for a moment, he could not believe what he was seeing. Then he screamed.
CHAPTER TEN
The creature was manlike, but only in the broadest sense. Sam was tall for his age, but the top of his head barely came up to the chest of the thing facing him. It stood upright on two legs, but Sam could never have envisaged a man of similar proportions.
It was covered in scales, reminiscent of the underside of an alligator, with massive, muscular legs and a solid torso. The seemingly mismatched arms were much shorter and, while muscular, looked almost skeletal by comparison. The combination made the creature look very bottom heavy. Its large hairless head squatted on narrow shoulders, the apparent lack of a neck giving it a menacing, hunched look. Forward-facing black eyes were set wide on either side of a huge rounded lump of a nose that ended with two comma-shaped nostrils. Its mouth was broad and lipless, a curving slash across its face that sported the most terrifying pointed teeth Sam had ever seen, and its hands had a strange combination of finger and claw-like digits.
Sam’s scream had barely begun when the creature rushed him. He lashed out instinctively with the knife, but his blow didn’t land. Instead he felt a numbing impact on his wrist and he lost his grip on the blade. Before he could take in what was happening, the creature had hoisted him into the air and tucked him under its deceptively strong right arm.
Sam struggled with all his might, expecting to feel sharp teeth sinking into his neck at any moment. All his writhing and kicking were in vain. His arms were pinned to his sides and his position did not allow him to kick at the creature with any strength. He was both terrified and furious. He had a black belt at tae kwon do and had been armed with a knife, yet he had not managed to land a single blow before being disarmed and rendered helpless. The lizard-man had moved so fast that Sam had barely had time to flinch. It was both humiliating and terrifying in equal measure.
Squatting down, the creature gently picked up the now unconscious body of Callum with its other arm.
‘PUT US DOWN!’ Sam yelled, twisting to look up at his captor’s face.
To his surprise, there was calculating intelligence in the black eyes that returned his look. The creature opened its mouth and made a strange sequence of clicking and tick-tocking noises. Some of the sounds were not unlike those made by dolphins, except that the pitch was deeper and the variations more complex. Was it trying to speak to him? If it was, then it did not waste time repeating anything. A moment later, it turned and began carrying the boys back towards the beach.
All Sam could do was tuck his chin against his chest and close his eyes as the creature waded through the foliage at speed. Branches whipped and broad leaves slapped against his head and shoulders. In a matter of seconds, they were out in the open and the stormy winds blasted them with driving rain. The creature paused a moment and roared, seemingly in defiance of the weather. Sam opened his eyes. A second lizard-man appeared from the trees, followed quickly by a third.
‘Holy crap, there’s more of them!’ Sam muttered, blinking several times. He bit his tongue to make sure he was not dreaming. The bite hurt. This was really happening. ‘Where the hell are we?’
The creatures chattered at each other for a few seconds. Was it a form of language? If so, Sam wondered, what were they talking about? Were he and Callum destined to be their next meal? One look at their teeth and it was hard to imagine any other reason for the creature to capture them.
Suddenly, Sam’s captor turned left, its arm round his body squeezed still tighter and it began to run. Sam gasped. Nothing could have prepared him for this experience. Sport had always been one of his favourite things and he was quite a good runner for his age, but the speed of this creature was breathtaking. Despite being encumbered with the two boys, it raced along the beach far faster than any human sprinter could. Its powerful legs drove forward with incredible power, each bounding stride carrying them several metres, and the tempo of its pace was astonishing. All thoughts Sam had about breaking free and running away vaporised. Even if he could bring himself to desert his friend, Sam realised that without a massive head start, he could not hope to get far. How much faster would the thing be able to run when it wasn’t carrying them? It didn’t bear thinking about.
The wind buffeted them as they raced along the shoreline, but the creature’s balance appeared unaffected. Minutes passed and it did not show so much as a hint of tiring. Sam marvelled at its strength even as he dreaded the beast’s intentions.
Suddenly, for no apparent reason, Sam found himself dumped onto the soft sand at speed. He rolled and slid to a stop. Callum came to rest nearby, his face and hair caked in wet sand. He looked as if he was unconscious. The lizard-creature took a few more paces forward before stopping abruptly, lifting its nose in the air and tilting its head in a quizzical fashion. Quite what it thought it could smell in the middle of this gale, Sam had no idea. He winced as it opened its jaws wide and let out another heart-stopping, primeval roar.
‘What now?’ Sam moaned. ‘Why here?’
The words had barely passed his lips when the answer came in the form of another beastly roar. This one was deeper, louder and longer, leaving Sam wishing he had not asked the question. The unmistakable thumping drumbeat of gigantic footfalls began, accompanied by a sudden sound of cracking trees to their left. Something was smashing through them in a reckless charge.
Breathless, Sam waited for some enormous monster to burst out from the jungle and charge them. To his surprise, that did not happen. Whatever was marauding through the trees was not running towards them. It was running away. What did that mean?
‘Can it get any worse?’ Sam breathed. ‘OK, Niamh. I promise I’ll be happy to hear you say “I told you so” if it means getting home in one piece.’
He reached out and touched his friend’s face. It felt stone cold. ‘Callum?’ he called softly. ‘Can you hear me, mate? Don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.’
No response.
He felt his friend’s neck for a pulse, but there was no sign of life. His heart raced as he tried to keep his panic under control.
‘Think!’ he urged himself. ‘It’s not surprising you can’t feel anything. Your fingers are too cold. Even if you’re pressing on the right spot, you’re not going to feel anything.’
The other two lizard-men raced up from behind to join the one that had carried Sam and Callum. The three of them stood for a moment watching the forest at the top of the beach. There was a brief exchange of clicking chatter and Sam’s captor turned and bounded back over to where he and Callum were sprawled in the sand. It paused to look at them for a moment before baring its teeth in an obvious warning gesture. The other two continued to watch the tree line. Sam saw no point in resisting as he was picked up again. Any one of these creatures would be more than a match for him.
Seconds later, they were racing along the sand again, presumably with the other two creatures following. Despite the mind-numbing fear that seemed to be preventing Sam from making any sense of his situation, he had noticed a couple of interesting things while they had stopped. Firstly, one of the other two creatures following them was now wearing the yellow survival pack from the boat slung round its neck. Secondly, Sam had gained his first look at the creatures from behind and unless his eyes were playing tricks on him, they seemed to have a bony ridge down their spines from the back of their heads to the middle of their backs. Below this was a short, fat stump that appeared to be either the beginnings of, or the vestigial remains of, a tail.
Mrs Davies, his biology teacher, would no doubt go into raptures over them, he thought. Assuming they were contained in a zoo of course.
Were these creatures alien? If not, how had they remained undiscovered? They didn’t look like any of the monsters he had seen people supposedly searching for on the Discovery Channel. And what had been in the trees? Whatever it was had sounded huge and even scarier than their current captors. Could he and Callum have inadvertently stumbled into a top-secret experimental area? Perhaps the creatures were the result of a bizarre genetic experiment. That made a twisted sort of sense. Scientists were constantly messing with genetics these days. But anybody could see they were dangerous, so why were these creatures being allowed to run loose?
Sam found himself thinking about the film Jurassic Park. These creatures looked nothing like the dinosaurs in the film, but the thing that had gone crashing through the trees back there had been massive. Hearing it had reminded him of some of the tyrannosaur scenes. In the film it was the most dangerous dinosaurs that had broken through the park boundaries and overrun the Visitor Centre. Was this place a sort of twisted Jurassic Park?
‘Wouldn’t that be just my luck?’ he growled.
‘Whaaat?’
The moan was barely audible above the wind.
‘Cal! Callum? Are you OK?’
His friend lolled under the creature’s other arm like a bundle of wet laundry as they raced along the beach.
‘Cal? Can you hear me?’
Nothing. Callum looked in a bad way, but Sam felt a warm flood of relief at the thought that his friend was still alive. Escaping with Callum in his current state would take a miracle, but Sam knew he must not begin to think it impossible. Remaining hopeful was essential if he was to keep his mind working. They had survived the storm on the ocean, hadn’t they? What were the odds of that? Long at best, he decided. Overcoming long odds needed a combination of luck and tenacity. He had done it once. He could do it again.
