by Paul Kearney
“My, you have had an unfortunate time of it.”
Cutter thought of the sea crossing, the climb up the cliffs, hauling back the dead body from the crash site.
“You could say that,” he said, closing his eyes for a second.
“There’s an Irish Naval vessel in the vicinity, and a French one will be on the way. I’ll see what I can do to get another aircraft out to you. But it all depends on the weather, Cutter.”
“You won’t get anything in today,” Cutter told him. “We’re in the eye of the storm, and socked in with fog.”
“Do you actually have a plan?” Lester asked him.
“The anomalies seem to be at the north end of the island, and that’s where the old outpost is, too. We’ll make for there. We need protection from the elements, and from the wildlife, and concrete beats the hell out of a nylon flysheet for that sort of thing. Once we’ve made the move, I’ll contact you again.” He paused. “We’ll have to conserve the batteries on this thing. It’s the only link we have with the outside world.”
“Very well.” This time it was Lester who paused. “Jenny — I take it she’s fine.”
“She’s banged about, but she’ll live.”
“Good. I wish you good luck, Cutter. And I will see what I can do about another helicopter.”
Cutter clicked off the connection and set the phone back in its cradle before packing up the dish and wiring. Then he rose and walked wearily back to the campsite, whilst around him the fog gripped the island in a silent shroud.
Connor stood, clicking a switch on the portable anomaly detector back and forth.
“It’s fixed,” he muttered, “I know it is. Professor, it should be in perfect working order.”
“Then why isn’t it picking up anything?” Cutter demanded irritably.
“Perhaps there’s nothing to pick up,” Stephen said over his shoulder. He was busy cramming his gear into his rucksack, like the rest of the team. Jenny and Brice sat to one side. The Irish pilot had his splinted arm set in a sling, and his face was drawn with pain and grief.
“You mean there are no anomalies within range,” Cutter said, his eyes widening slightly as it dawned on him.
“It’s possible, isn’t it?” Stephen said. “We know they have a fairly short shelf life. The latest lot may have simply run out of time.”
“Perhaps it’s the storm,” Connor surmised, “or rather, the lack of it.”
“The weather?” Jenny said. “You think the weather has something to do with it?”
“We’ve never encountered this many anomalies in a single place before,” Connor said defensively. “Suddenly we have this storm, this island, and a whole shed-full of the things. Maybe it’s a combination of meteorology and geology that has drawn them to this spot.” They were all watching him now. He ducked his head. “It’s just a theory,” he mumbled.
“And not a half bad one,” Cutter said, clapping him on the shoulder. “The main thing is, there’s a better than average chance that there are no anomalies open at present on the island. If that’s the case, then it’s time we were on the move.”
“There could still be creatures out there,” Stephen protested. “They don’t all pop out of existence when the anomalies disappear.”
“No, but we know there’s a finite number of them, at least for the moment,” Cutter replied. “And they aren’t just going to pop up out of nowhere. My map says there’s a well up at the outpost, and the place is built like a bunker, easily defended. It will be our base of operations on the island.”
There was a silence as they all looked at him. Even Abby had a kind of reproach in her eyes.
“You still think we can do this?” she asked.
“I spoke with Lester this morning. He’s going to try and get another helicopter out here to take out Lieutenant Brice and bring us a resupply. When that happens, we’ll be as good as new.”
Jenny delicately touched the dressing at the base of her ear.
“Perhaps not quite as good as new,” she said.
They packed up the camp in less than an hour, and once again shouldered their sodden rucksacks. Far from looking like a crack semi-military operation, they resembled a band of vagabonds. They were filthy, shivering, soaked through, grey-faced and tired. Willoby, looking them over, grinned broadly.
“The last time I saw an outfit that looked this shit, it was a bunch of Argentinians coming in to surrender to us,” he said. “Cheer up, people, it’s just a few hundred metres, and then you’ll have a real roof over your heads.”
Connor looked out at the blank wall of the fog that surrounded them.
“Let’s hope dinosaurs don’t like a roof over their heads, as well,” he said moodily.
Sergeant Fox and Stephen took point, setting out some ten metres ahead of the rest. They were just visible through the fog, and whenever they lost sight of the main party they would wait for it to catch up. Next came Willoby and Cutter, then Jenny, Connor and Abby, then Brice, helped along by the Irish soldier, McCann. Doody walked close behind them, then the signaller, Watts, and Farnsworth and Bristow at the rear.
The dead copilot’s body they wrapped in a poncho, as before, and took turns to carry it, even Jenny insisting on lending a hand. Brice looked at the body of his friend and said nothing, but shuffled along with a pistol in his free hand, looking as though he longed to use it on something.
Their progress was slow and halting. Though Guns Island wasn’t large, the plateau across which they were trekking was a broken landscape of deep gullies, steep crags, and broken boulder fields that were slick with ice and snow, and all the more menacing in the silent, dripping caul of fog which enfolded them.
At the front, Fox waved Stephen over. He was crouching and holding a prismatic compass in his free hand.
“Hey, look at this.”
Stephen knelt beside him. The needle wasn’t pointing north, but oscillated continuously through all the points of the compass.
“I’ve seen something similar in the Cuillin Mountains,” Fox told him, “but never this bad. There must be some weird geology under our feet.”
“Are you happy with where we’re going?” Stephen asked him. He was scanning the fog around them with the sniper rifle snug in his shoulder.
“Aye, it’s no great problem, over a half kay or so. I’d hate to try and navigate this place in the dark, though.”
Back down the little column, Connor came up beside Cutter, holding out the portable anomaly detector.
“Not a twitch,” he said. “Professor, how long do you think this eye of the storm thing will last?”
“Not long,” Cutter said. “A few hours maybe.”
“I almost think I preferred the wind,” Connor told him. “This silence is creeping me out. I thought there were huge colonies of birds here.”
“The gannets head for the South Atlantic in the winter. They only come here to breed in the summer months. Bloody good job, too. This island houses perhaps a fifth of the world’s breeding population — can you imagine the havoc if the anomalies had opened when there were half a million gannets hatching out their eggs underfoot? It would be an ecological catastrophe.”
“The RSPB wouldn’t be too chuffed,” Connor agreed.
Up front, both Stephen and Fox went to one knee in the same moment, and Fox raised a clenched fist into the air.
“Go firm,” Willoby said.
“Eh?” said Connor.
“Stand still. Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut.” He loped ahead to join the two men who were only shadows in the clinging mist.
“What is it, Calum?”
“Stones clattering ahead. Could be just a minor rockfall.”
“Check it out,” Willoby ordered.
Fox and Stephen set off into the fog. In twenty seconds it had swallowed them up and it was as if they had never existed. Cutter joined Willoby, wiping salty moisture off his face. He drew his pistol.
“Problem?”
“Just be still, Pr
ofessor.”
The seconds ticked by. They heard a click of stone ahead, but the fog seemed to dampen down all noise. It was as though they knelt in a vast, stony-floored cathedral whose walls were white and blank all about them.
A clattering of rocks ahead, just as Fox had described. Willoby brought his M-4 into his shoulder and looked down the iron sights which were fixed atop the telescopic ones. Whatever was out there, it was close.
A large shadow loomed up out of the mist. Cutter raised his pistol and pulled the hammer back to full cock. His mouth was dry as sand and his heart was hammering in his chest.
The shadow became two human figures, Fox and Stephen stumbling back through the fog towards them. Cutter let out a shaky breath and set the hammer to half-cock again.
Willoby lowered his rifle barrel.
“Bloody fog,” he said. “We’ll have a blue on blue if we’re not careful.”
“There’s something out there,” Stephen said. He was panting. He and Fox had the wide-eyed, livid look of frightened men. “It was moving around us in an arc, coming round our left flank. It seemed to back away when we approached.”
“It was big,” Fox said. “I thought I caught a look at it; it was a shadow as big as a frigging house, boss.” The four of them knelt in a little knot of indecision for a minute before Cutter spoke up.
“We have to keep moving. If we’re being stalked, then standing here is just issuing an invitation to lunch. But we should stay closer together. Pack animals pick off stragglers from the herd first.”
“Pack animals?” Willoby said.
“Could be our friend the Eotyrannus again, and he’s unlikely to be alone. Captain, we need to get to this base of ours as quickly as possible.”
“Nothing like stating the obvious,” Willoby said dryly. “All right; Hart, you and Fox stay close in with the rest of us. And if you have to shoot, for God’s sake make sure your arcs are clear. A gaggle of people with automatic weapons can be as dangerous to each other as they are to the enemy.
“Let’s move.”
They set off again, this time moving as a single group. Abby and Connor were given Mullan’s dead body to carry and the rest of the party walked along looking outwards at the surrounding fog, wincing at every clattering rock their feet kicked aside. They made another 150 metres before Bristow and Farnsworth, at the rear, passed forward the order to halt.
“It’s behind us,” Bristow said. Despite the cold, his crew-cut head was streaming with sweat, and heat rose in wisps of steam from his clothing.
“Is it moving?” Cutter asked.
“I hear the rocks shifting. It’s not running or anything; it’s moving slow, quartering the ground to our rear.”
“Keep going,” Willoby said. “We don’t stop for anything. Come on people, best foot forward. It’s not far now.”
They slogged on. Time seemed to pass interminably, and the ground they were traversing seemed all the same; a grim, icebound landscape of stone and lichen and scattered clumps of frozen yellow grass. There was no horizon, only the island beneath their boots and the all-enveloping shroud of the fog.
“I think I hear something,” Farnsworth said at the rear. “Joe, I’m sure.”
“Come on Pete — you heard the boss. Keep bloody tabbing.”
Farnsworth turned round. “But I tell you —”
It exploded out of the fog, launching itself through the air. Twenty feet of massive, sinewed muscle, it came down on Farnworth and smashed him onto the stones, ripping him open like a paper bag, spreading his entrails far and wide, a scarlet explosion.
Bristow got off a long burst of automatic fire, the tracers streaking wildly above the animal’s head. Then he turned and ran.
“Stand fast!” Willoby shouted. They were all pelting past him into the fog. The creature raised its snout from Farnsworth’s bloody carcass and barked sharply.
From off in the fog, an answering series of barks sounded.
A second Eotyrannus burst into view, careering out of the fog like some demon out of a child’s nightmare. It missed Jenny by less than a yard, skidded on the icy stones, and fell to its side with a crash. Teeth bared, Cutter turned around and emptied a clip into it, pulling the trigger of his pistol as fast as his finger could move. The creature screamed furiously, a shrill shriek that lanced into their ears. It pulled itself up on its side just as Cutter’s pistol gave the dead man’s click, and the slide jammed rearwards.
He had emptied the magazine.
Cutter threw the pistol at the wounded beast, grabbed Jenny’s hand and ran, trailing her after him.
The party was scattered, amid a panicked shouting of orders and a flurry of gunshots. The wounded creature found its feet and let out a high-pitched screech, blood pouring down its side. Watts turned and fired a streak of tracer into its head. The animal jerked and staggered, bellowing in pain and anger. The other one was darting from side to side, snapping out at the people running past, confused perhaps by the wealth of prey it had discovered.
The team was splintered, losing one another in the fog.
Connor, Abby and Doody sprinted stumbling up a rocky slope and found themselves staring down into nothingness; they had reached the cliff’s edge. They turned back to face the way they had come. More shots were being fired below them, and the Eotyrannus was shrieking like a thing possessed, then barking as if to signal to its fellows.
“I’m open to ideas,” Doody said, hefting his carbine.
“We have to go back,” Abby said, cocking her MP5.
“It’s all right for you two — you have guns,” Connor wailed.
Doody pulled a pistol from his thigh holster and handed it to him.
“It’s not cocked. There’s seventeen rounds in the clip. Shoot the dinosaurs, not us.”
“Got it,” Connor said, cocking the weapon with a satisfying metallic clack.
“Let’s go,” Abby said. “We left that guy’s body back there.”
“Stuff the body,” Doody told her. “We find the others, we stay alive. That’s all there is to it.”
They went back the way they had come.
Cutter and Jenny tucked themselves in a narrow rocky cleft and leaned on each other, gasping for air. Neither was armed. They could hear the other members of the party shouting — Willoby’s voice in particular, off to their left — and staccato bursts of gunfire.
“They got the drop on us,” Cutter panted. “Are you all right?”
“Fine. My God, Nick, did you see that poor man —”
“Don’t think about that now. We have to get back to the others. We’re unarmed, and at least one of those creatures is up and around and looking for a fight. We won’t last five minutes on our own.”
Jenny was shaking her head.
“I just panicked. I’m sorry.”
“We all did — it’s nothing to be ashamed of. It may have saved a life or two.” He caught his breath. “Can you run?”
“Yes — yes I can.”
“No point charging wildly around the island. We’re liable to get shot ourselves. We’ll make for the base. Sooner or later, the rest of them will all have to go there.”
Jenny was still holding his hand, clenching it so tight he thought he could feel the knuckles grate together.
“Hey,” he smiled, “it’s all right. This is my job, remember?”
“I’m going to take this up with my union,” she fired back, and he was heartened to see the feistiness come back into her eyes.
“Good lass. Now let’s go before I change my mind.”
Stephen and Sergeant Fox stood together, back to back. Fox slid another magazine into his carbine and let the working parts go forward, pushing a round up the spout.
They had shouted their heads off, once they’d stopped running, but no one had replied. Stephen had lost all sense of direction. It was as though the fog and the panic had blunted the finer workings of his brain. He drew a deep breath, content for now to rely on Fox’s interior compass.
“All set?” he asked him.
“Aye. What now? I heard the Captain shout out a minute ago from our right, but there’s not a sign of the rest. They took off like a bunch of rabbits. We’re all over the bloody place now and the radios won’t work in this weather.”
“We keep heading north,” Stephen said, “as we were before. If we just blunder about aimlessly in the fog, we won’t achieve a thing.”
Fox shook his head.
“I think we should try and rejoin the boss.”
“Calum, we haven’t a hope. We —”
They heard a woman’s scream, sounding far off to the south. Then it was cut off by an animal bellow, and a long, savage burst of automatic fire.
“Jesus Christ,” Fox said.
The Eotyrannus had disappeared, leaping out from among them as though it had made a sudden decision. Its mate was still stirring feebly, until the Irish pilot, Brice, walked over to it and with an eerily calm face shot it in the head.
Willoby looked around.
“Stay close people. Who do we have here? Brice, Watts, McCann, Bristow —”
The animal was back upon them while their minds were still numbed by the shock of the first attack. Out of the fog it jumped, a taloned phantom that landed square on the back of Anita Watts, the signaller. The impact smashed her to the ground, her rifle flying off to be lost in the fog. She twisted under it, screaming, and then the creature bit down on her head with terrifying force. There was a sharp crack as the bones of her skull gave way, and her agonised shriek was stifled.
The creature raised its head in triumph.
Willoby and the Irish trooper, McCann, stood side by side and emptied their magazines into the monster. Both were shouting as they fired, nameless noises their ancestors might have uttered as they took on some primeval creature with flint and fire-hardened wood. The bullets ripped through the creature’s belly and ribs, stitching an explosive series of red holes in its skin, blowing apart muscle and bone. Sixty rounds cannoned into it, and it reared up on its hind legs, staggering, the claws on the hind feet clicking against the rock.
Then it toppled over, and began thrashing madly, uttering a frenzied, high-pitched squealing and sending fist-sized stones flying through the air. Willoby and McCann changed mags, and emptied two more clips into it as it struggled. At last it lay still, its claws buried in agony in the ground, Private Watts a broken, limp corpse beside it.
