by RR Haywood
Those ultra-modern buildings border the open area. Sentinels that stand proud and forever watchful. Screens on some that are big enough to be seen from any angle and crowds of people sitting in defined areas, laughing and cheering at the silent footage.
The whole thing, the whole of it, the sheer size makes the three grin and look at each other in wonder. Even Miri, who has mastered the overt show of facial expressions, now allows stunned surprise to reflect on her features.
Gardens here and there. Raised sections of greenery with lawns, ferns and willowing trees. Other statues, works of art and public interaction pieces dot the landscape, but of the old Piccadilly Circus there is no sign.
No grand old buildings. No graffiti-covered walls. No dirty roads contrasting against shiny sleek glass-fronted stores. No hawkers selling guides or pickpockets making the most of the bustling crowds.
‘The size of it,’ Ben says, looking ahead to the distant line of skyscrapers bordering the far end. He tries to calculate the distances involved and guesses the plaza area extends past where Leicester Square was, maybe all the way up to Covent Garden and across to where Tottenham Court Road was on the northern edge. A vast area that once contained millions of people crammed into the myriad of old buildings of London.
Not now though. Now only this massive place devoid of habitable structures. But how? From the thing called Affa? From something near Hadrian’s Wall over two thousand years ago? Hyde Park was relatively the same, so how can this be so different?
‘See that?’ Miri asks, nodding ahead to a tall black obelisk statue. ‘Must be the middle.’
It takes minutes of solid walking to reach it, and as they get closer they see the sheer size of it. A towering thing that looks ugly and unpleasant with nasty bulges and spokes jutting out at irregular angles.
An old-fashioned plaque is fitted to a stand on one side and it takes time for the crowds to move on so that Ben, Miri and Safa can edge close enough to read the words and as they do so a deep crawling horror flips their stomachs with a sickening realisation that this game just ramped exponentially.
‘Malc, grow some balls. The doc’s here with Ria. Bertie’s safe. We nip into Milwaukee, get to the depot, buy what we need and get on with it. Got the money? Good. On we go then.’
Konrad goes first, stepping through the portal to wait for Malcolm who comes through to blanch in fright.
‘This isn’t the van we used before, Kon . . . This is a motorhome . . .’
‘It’s fine. We’re in the same place.’
‘Kon, it’s changed . . . We can’t be here.’
‘It’s fine, Malc. Look outside . . . We’re in a motorhome sales depot. Nobody is going to come inside this one . . . We’re right at the back for a start.’
‘Oh bloody hell, Kon. We shouldn’t be doing this.’
‘Come on, look . . . the door opens from the inside.’
‘Kon, the mall isn’t there . . . It’s all different.’
‘We’ll find something; stop being a wimp. Roland always said you were a wimp.’
‘Now, now, Kon, that’s not nice, that isn’t. I’m hung over and being the voice of reason.’
‘The voice of a big girl more like. Look, you stay here then. I’ll go and find what we need.’
‘You aren’t going alone!’
‘I am,’ Konrad says, jumping out the side door.
‘Oh bloody hell,’ Malcolm mumbles, following him out. ‘Miri will go nuts.’
‘She will applaud our ingenuity, Malc.’
‘Yeah, with a hammer and nails on our bollocks.’
‘Just go and have one,’ Emily says. She looks round again, staring at faces and people as the sensation of being watched comes back again. She shrugs it off, putting it down to an emotional reaction from last night and getting so drunk. Harry shifts his leg under her head, making her look up. ‘Go on,’ she sighs. ‘It’s fine.’
‘Ach no.’
‘It’s fine. There’s nothing happening and you’ll only be over there.’
‘I can wait,’ Harry says, looking round at the people passing by.
‘Go and have a cigarette. Blow the smoke through the portal though in case they’ve got a sensor in there. I’ll go for a wee when you get back.’
‘Sure?’ he asks.
‘Go on,’ she says, pulling her hand free from his as she sits up. ‘I’ll be fine.’
The greatest sense of detachment comes now in a wide-open plaza filled with thousands of people in a city of millions who have no idea they are pawns in a game.
Safa slides her hand to the back of her waistband to grip the pistol in readiness for anything that might happen. Her other hand gently holds the switch on her microphone, ready to transmit to Emily and Harry while moving closer to Ben as though expecting to be attacked now, as though this very thing is a trick to lure them to this point.
‘Don’t speak a word,’ Miri says, tugging an old smartphone from her pocket to take a picture of the plaque while her mind processes what she is reading. She nods curtly for the other two to move away with her, then smiles a warm grin at the people waiting to read the plaque. ‘Say, sorry for taking your time,’ she tells them in a nasal American drawl.
‘Oh, that’s fine, me love,’ a woman grins.
The night is here proper. An inky sky above them with flashing lights of airborne craft in every direction. The giant screens on the skyscrapers and the lights within the plaza all work to magnify that futuristic feel as they walk away from the obelisk and hear snatches of music coming from different directions.
Ben and Miri think hard and fast of all the things this could mean. Safa watches the crowd, checking the hands and eyes of anyone coming near them.
Halfway back to the exit they came in from and they see it at the same time. The red-and-blue strobing lights of a thing the size of a car wheel flying slowly over the plaza at a height of four metres with a shining red light glowing underneath that makes Ben think of the barcode scanners in supermarkets. The light turns as the drone flies, scanning the crowds below as the three walk faster, veering off to get out of the drone’s flight path.
‘Move faster,’ Miri urges. They speed up, all of them feeling the urge to break into a jog as that red light moves over them and away, then spins back to stay fixed and glowing on Safa as the drone alters course and starts flying towards them.
‘FIREARM ALERT. FIREARM ALERT. UNKNOWN ADULT FEMALE. FIREARM ALERT . . .’
‘Fuck,’ Safa snaps as everyone around them spins in alarm to see her torso peppered with red-dot lights.
‘FIREARM ALERT . . . DISARM NOW . . . DISARM NOW . . .’
The voice booms louder and louder, growing in volume to fill the area as the people near them cry out as a second drone zooms into view, the red-and-blue lights strobing as it aims at the three now standing in an open patch of ground.
‘UNKNOWN ADULT MALE . . . UNKNOWN ADULT FEMALE . . . UNKNOWN ADULT FEMALE . . . FIREARMS ALERT . . . DISARM NOW . . . DISARM NOW . . .’
The automated voices fall in sync with each other. Booming the orders to disarm as the second drone arrives to hover a few feet from the first with yet more coming through the air towards them.
‘Shit,’ Ben grunts as his torso lights up with multiple red-dot laser points holding steady on him. Safa spots the threat to Ben and draws instantly, bringing her pistol up to aim, and fires once with the pistol giving a sharp crack in the open space.
‘DISARM NOW . . . DISaaaarrrrssszzzz . . .’ The drone slews to the side with the voice warping as it spins and skids across the ground.
‘SHOTS FIRED . . . MOVE AWAY NOW . . . MOVE AWAY NOW . . . DISARM NOW . . .’
‘Run,’ Safa orders, aiming to fire at the next closest drone. She misses with the first shot as it takes evasive action and rocks quickly left to right. The second shot hits, making it flip upside down as it drops with a heavy thud to the hard surface of the plaza.
‘TERRORISTS. TERRORISTS. YOU WILL BE FIRED UPON. DISARM NOW . . .’
> The voices come from all directions, all in sync as the drones fly at speed towards the three now running as fast as they can.
‘See, what did I say?’ Konrad says. ‘Yeah, they’ve all got different names for things here, but we managed okay.’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ Malcolm grumbles.
‘Stop sulking. Miri will be pleased as punch she will.’
Malcolm hefts one of his big black holdalls purchased in the hardware store to carry all the tools, wiring and supplies they needed. ‘Bit funny about the money though,’ he says at length. ‘They didn’t want the twenties . . . Fifties were okay though. Who’s on the twenties?’
‘Andrew Jackson,’ Konrad says. ‘Maybe they didn’t have an Andrew Jackson here. We’re lucky they didn’t call the police.’
‘It’s not the bloody police I’m afraid of . . . Miri will kill us to death if we get arrested . . .’
‘Ah, but we’re fine,’ Konrad says happily. ‘And there’s our motorhome all waiting for us, eh? We’ll have a cuppa and you can cheer up a bit, you hung-over sulky twat.’
She bellows as another one lunges in to bite her legs that already stream with blood. Her skin is thick and hard and the blood loss can be survived, but they’ll keep coming and keep biting. They won’t stop now. They can taste her and they are hungry.
Doctor John Watson holds Ria’s wrist and counts the beats before sighing deeply and gently lowering her arm. He can’t keep her under sedation any longer. Not safely anyway. Her body needs motion, her limbs need to move and her mind needs to start functioning in order to heal. Not that anyone can ever truly heal from such a thing.
Four feet support her weight. Each the size of a washing machine and from the tip of her nose to the end of her tail she measures over one hundred and twenty feet. Her weight is many, many tonnes and she only moved away from the other sauropods of her herd to follow the strange scents that carried up nasal passages big enough for a man to crawl through. Food, cigarette smoke, faeces, sweat and the dozens of odours brought with the arrival of humans into an environment that is not theirs to occupy.
Doctor Watson smiles sadly at her sleeping form. Time for a cup of tea and maybe a nice sit down outside now that it’s stopped raining. The lads will be back soon, then he can go and have a paddle and snooze in his hammock on the island.
They are far smaller than her and they run on two powerful hind legs aided by a thick tail that gives balance. Feathered, leathered, over three metres high with mouths full of rows of teeth and over twenty of them hunt the big sauropod through the thick forest, which fills with the sounds of logs snapping, branches breaking and creatures screeching out in fear and alarm.
He walks from Ria’s room and pauses at the scuffling he heard coming from the armoury. He goes down, peering in to see it’s all empty and tuts softly at his imagination before setting off, lost in his thoughts while humming to himself. He sets water to heat and carries on humming while preparing a cup and glancing to the window to see the overcast sky outside.
She is tiring. She cannot run much longer and even her tiny brain knows the end will surely come. She still goes on, because the instinct of any creature is to survive, so she shifts her colossal bulk with her tail swishing left to right and snapping small trees as she goes. She has no idea she killed one of the predators by swishing her tail and slamming it into the base of a huge tree. If she knew that she might try to kill a few more and increase her chances, but alas she thinks only to keep moving and each thud of her feet drums the ground and each cry from her huge mouth fills the air with a pain-filled screech of terror.
The gas burns in the hob, heating the water with a motion that sends a gentle vibration through the table and the doctor drums his hands lightly on the wooden top while waiting for it to boil. He taps a foot too and thinks to listen to some jazz while drinking his tea. Those things serve to cover the sounds and vibrations outside. He looks again at the window and misses the rippling tremor in the water on the stove. He drums a bit louder, hums a bit more and still does not hear it.
She screeches again, but each bite only seems to inject a fresh burst of power into her exhausted body. Her enormous heart booms so fast now and her lungs suck air in like the turbines on a jet aircraft. Her eyes are huge and filled with fear and her great head swishes side to side on top of the long neck. She pays no heed to the trees in front of her, but uses brute force to batter through and out into the clearing of the plateau once used as a training ground for the assault on Cavendish Manor.
‘Dumdumdum de de de . . .’ he sings softly, then spies the open packet of cakes on the table and considers, in the great scheme of things, whether he should eat one or not. He does eat one on the basis of the self-justification brought from the victory of not drinking alcohol and taking more exercise. ‘Hmmm,’ he says pleasantly, mouthing the whole thing to chew noisily while pouring the boiling water into the mug. A noise outside. A bang maybe? He pauses to listen, ceasing his chewing for a second, then shrugging and carrying on to make his tea and eat his cake.
She crosses the plateau in seconds with her huge feet crushing the speakers left there by Ria when she added sound effects. The predators burst from the tree line too. Ranged out in a horseshoe shape behind her and taking turns to run up to bite and scratch with the claws on their small but powerful forearms. She doesn’t know the valley is below. She doesn’t know anything other than to keep going. They don’t know about the valley either. They’ve tracked and chased the big female diplodocus for many miles and this ground is not their ground. They too detect the odours in the air, but the frenzy of the chase is all they care about.
Doctor Watson sits down heavily at the big table in the main room, then groans at remembering he was going to go outside. He contemplates staying where he is out of pure laziness, then grimaces at that nasty smell still hanging in the air and slowly rises to head towards the door.
The gait of her motion swings her tail left to right and the flexibility of that long appendage is such that it curls inwards on the apex of each swing. Again she doesn’t know or feel when the last few feet of her curling tail strike one of the attackers with enough force to send it screeching and flying past her body and head and over the edge of the plateau to plummet down onto the roof of the bunker.
The doctor walks down the corridor towards the back door left open to generate air flow and sniffs the air at smelling Harry’s cigarette smoke. He even looks round as though expecting to see the big man, then hears the screech and comes to a sudden stop with his mouth dropping open as something slams into the roof above his head. He ducks and veers to the side, his tea spilling from the mug as he hears the creature scrabbling to get upright with claws that slash at the smooth concrete and smash through the array of solar panels fitted on the top.
She goes over the edge. She only knows she goes over the edge when her feet lose purchase and start to slide down. She bellows again at the fright of it and the sensation of falling and her whole body drops tumbling down as the predator she flicked over finally stands upright to see the sauropod coming at him. She lands hard, killing him instantly and driving down through the roof of the bunker that collapses inwards from the tonnes of meat impacting on it.
Ben’s room is destroyed instantly. Harry’s too. The rooms at that end are obliterated, with chunks of concrete flying over the edge of the hill to roll down the valley side to the great distance below. She tries to get upright from landing on her side and her huge neck, legs and tail slam about as she bellows with a sound that fills the world of Doctor John Watson. He dives to the floor as the ground heaves and the walls buckle and the ceiling above him crumbles inwards with rays of daylight punching through.
The attackers follow, scrabbling and falling down the bank to jump into and onto the bunker to finish off their prey. As they land so the roof buckles and crashes in with those leathered and feathered creatures landing amongst the debris.
Doctor Watson screams out in absolute horror and starts crawling wi
th an instinct to get to Ria. A huge foot the colour and texture of an elephant’s, but the size of a washing machine and dripping thick red blood slams down next to his head. He screams out again, wilting back and feeling the hot spray coat his face.
The diplodocus flails about with wild frantic panic. Screeches and cries rip the air apart. The main room and the furniture Ria took so long to gather are destroyed.
The doctor gibbers in fright, but crawls down the broken corridor and into the doorway of Ria’s rooms as the roof above him comes crashing in. Chunks of concrete hit his arms and hands, breaking several fingers on his left hand. His head is hit and he drops with waves of nausea pulsing up through his body and seeing stars behind his eyes. The attacking creatures continue on, devoid of care as to where they are and only seeing their prey trapped and struggling to break free.
One of the attacking dinosaurs falls through the ceiling onto the doctor’s legs, snapping a bone with ease and scoring his flesh open with filthy talons as it fights to get up. He cries out, writhing in agony before summoning reserves from his inner soul that make him roar and crawl to Ria’s bed. The walls crash in around him. His whole world heaving and bucking as he grabs Ria and pulls hard, ripping her from the bed and pulling, tugging and pushing to get her underneath the solid metal frame. He crawls in after her, his mind closing, but the doctor holds his oath dear and protects the patient with the only thing he has, his own broken body.
Harry smokes in the hut. His right arm extended to hold the cigarette in the portal room in the bunker while his body remains in 2111. He ducks to see through the hut’s window to Emily sitting with her back to the tree, then pulls his arm back and takes a drag before once again extending his arm to hold the smoke in the Cretaceous period where a falling chunk of masonry narrowly misses his hand.
