Into the Mist

by Lee Murray

  “Got to go for a few blood tests,” Temera said, waving the form at her.

  “What for?”

  Temera squinted at the computer printout. “No idea. Can’t read it.”

  “Well, the Medlab should be open,” said Pania. “Let’s go now, shall we?”

  Chapter 17

  Te Urewera Forest, Day Three

  After five hours, Coolie’s group returned. Read and Eriksen emerged from the bushes first and flopped to the ground, exhausted. Behind them, Miller, his shoulders slumped, sloped off to one of the tents – gone to have one of the fags he thought no-one was aware he hid in that top pocket of his. Taine considered stopping him – army regulations forbade smoking while on an op – but changed his mind. Let the kid have one if it helped to calm his nerves.

  Coolie was last to enter the campsite. Taine strode over to meet him, questions already forming on his lips, but Coolie cut him off with a shake of his head. “No luck,” he said. “Even with a clear view over the mountains and valleys, we couldn’t pick up a signal. Then the mist closed in on us like something out of The Hound of the Baskervilles. We could’ve been standing in the middle of a fucking cloud. Miller bloody near stepped off a ridge. Read grabbed him by his jacket; only just managed to pull him back in time. We waited a bit for the fug to clear and then tried the phone again. Even climbed another peak, although it cost us half an hour. Got nothing.”

  “So we’re on our own.”

  Coolie swallowed hard. “No, Boss. It would be a mistake to think that. That thing, I swear it followed us all the way, stalking us like a cat hunting a bird.”

  “You saw it?”

  “No, not as such,” Coolie said, shifting uneasily. “A couple of times, I thought I heard it, rustling and scratching on either side. I told myself I was being paranoid, but the longer we carried on, the more convinced I was that it was tailing us. You’d think something that big would make a lot of noise, wouldn’t you? Like a herd of elephants. It was nothing like that, it was quiet, canny. Then, when we made it to the summit, it was worse, because there was no noise at all. Just silence. We were sitting up there in fog as thick as porridge. King Kong could have been just centimetres from us. Fucking creepy. Made the hairs on the back of my neck tingle.”

  Taine knew that feeling. He’d felt it more than once himself, crouched in the dusty ruins of bombed buildings, homes that had once housed families, trying to shake off the feeling a sniper had his weapon trained on the middle of his back, his last breath about to be drowned out in the crack of gunfire. If his corporal said the creature was there on the summit, then odds-on it was. Coolie wasn’t prone to exaggerating.

  Taine had a chilling thought, and raised an eyebrow. “It followed you back, didn’t it?”

  The smallest nod.

  That explained why Coolie was the last to arrive. He’d been playing sweeper, watching their backs. Taine swivelled on his heel, ready to tell everyone to pack up, they were moving out, but Coolie grabbed his arm, holding him there a second longer. “There’s something else.”

  Taine nodded for him to continue.

  “I got the feeling it was deliberate, like the creature wanted us to know it was there.”

  * * *

  “Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get any cell coverage at the top of the ridge,” Taine announced to the little group standing around what remained of the campsite.

  “I suppose that means we can’t count on the cavalry charging in on their white horses to save us then,” Eriksen said, morose.

  “We’ve only been offline a few hours,” Read said. “They won’t know we’re in trouble yet. We need to give them a chance.”

  “They’re never going to guess there’s a fucking dinosaur in here though, are they?” Eriksen retorted.

  “It’s a Sphenodon, a relative of the tuatara,” Foster corrected.

  Eriksen forced air between his lips like a horse snickering. “Makes no difference what it’s called, a Fenneldon or whatever, they’re not going to guess.”

  “But the army know something’s up, right? After last night? So it’s only a matter of time until they send someone, right?” Ben said.

  “Once they realise we’re in difficulty, yes, the army will send help,” Taine reassured Ben. “But that could take a while. We should try and get out of here before then.”

  “Hmm,” Coolie said under his breath. Barely there, his murmur was just loud enough for Taine to hear. A reminder this was an off-record mission and theirs already the second section sent in to investigate. Coolie knew, as Taine did, that even with the civilians in the group, the army wouldn’t be in a hurry to risk more soldiers.

  “Let’s hope when they come, they bring a tank,” said Eriksen.

  “Tell them to hurry the fuck up…” Miller murmured.

  Taine let their comments go. “Dr Foster,” he said, holding the cell phone over his head. He tossed it to Foster, who caught it clumsily with both hands. “Thank you for the use of your phone. Would you mind keeping an eye on it, in case we hit a pocket of reception? I’d like to get word out if we can.” The phone’s battery was almost flat, and Taine doubted there was any reception in the entire park, but there was no point telling the civilians that.

  Nodding, Richard pocketed the phone. “I’m on it.”

  “Right, in the meantime, we’re on our own in here. And with a singed Sphenodon in the vicinity. We’ve got no choice but to abandon the mineral investigation,” Taine said. “Nathan’ll lead us back to the safety of the road. But before we go, we’re going to look for Louise Hemphill and Ira Bidois. We’ll give it two hours, while it’s still light…” Trigger nodded his approval. “… and hope we find them. Whether we do or not, we’ll be leaving the area at 1500 hours, hiking back the way we came. I don’t want to be here at daybreak tomorrow.”

  De Haas got to his feet. “I disagree, Sergeant. I propose we leave now.”

  “You mean, not look for Louise?” Jules said as she turned to de Haas. “But we have to!”

  “That thing will have eaten her,” de Haas said with an offhanded flick of his hand. “We’ll just be putting ourselves at risk.”

  “What if it was you lost in the bush?” Trigger growled. “Would you want us to leave you?”

  “Ms Hemphill might not be dead,” Read said. “She might have taken shelter, hidden herself somewhere.”

  “Well, if she is alive, she should’ve come out by now,” de Haas said.

  Taine seethed at the man’s insensitivity. Louise was his assistant! Someone he worked with every day. Taine kept his voice even. “Except she may be injured and unable to come out. Even if she isn’t, we have to remember that she not only saw the creature, she may have watched it kill a man. In those circumstances, anyone would be traumatised.”

  “We’ll wait here then, while you send a couple of your men to look for her,” de Haas said hurriedly.

  “We’ll stay together.”

  “You split the group when your men went to the ridge,” de Haas said. Taine couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed the whine in de Haas’ voice until now.

  He grit his teeth. “That was against my better judgment. I don’t intend to risk it a second time.”

  De Haas puffed up his chest. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not your decision. I’m in charge here.”

  Taine couldn’t back down. Not again. Not in front of his section. He folded his arms across his chest, the movement slow and deliberate. Then, dropping his voice, he said, “Not anymore.”

  Coolie and Trigger moved to stand on either side of Taine.

  “Excuse me,” Jules said. She approached de Haas. “I agree with Sergeant McKenna. We should stick together.”

  De Haas sneered. “Yes, yes, we know you liked Louise, and I expect you’re all starry-eyed about the sergeant now after he dashed in to save you this morning—”

  Jules’ eyes flashed. “Yes, I like Louise, but that isn’t the reason,” she said.

  “We’re really not interested
—”

  “Shut it!” Taine said sharply, cutting off the geologist. “Go on, Dr Asher.”

  “I was going to say that what we’re dealing with here is a predator, and predatory animals tend to be wary of large groups. Take lions, for example. They’ll skirt around the edges of a herd and pick off stragglers, so us staying together in a larger pack would make sense. Also, if this creature is a Sphenodon – our best guess at this stage – then it’s likely its ecology is similar to the tuatara’s. Which would mean it typically feeds at night, from dusk through to midnight. It’s just a theory of course, I don’t really know for sure, but while it’s daylight, odds are the creature will be asleep.”

  “But Dr Asher, aren’t tuatara cold-blooded?” Coolie asked quietly.

  “Well yes, technically tuatara are ectotherms.”

  “So, wouldn’t they get cold and freeze up at night?”

  “You would think so, but tuatara are exceptional in that they’re able to function at very low temperatures, lower than any other reptile.”

  Richard Foster piped up. “Plus, our guy is gigantic. These days the consensus is that prehistoric megafauna, large dinosaurs like our Sphenodon, were actually mesothermic, behaving more like mammals than cold blooded lizards—”

  Taine butted in. “I hate to break up the science lesson people, but we need to get going. Stick together. No stragglers. We have two hours.”

  * * *

  Ben shifted the foliage with his hand, searching beneath the paddle-shaped ferns for any sign of the girl. There was nothing. Not even a lost sock or a hair scrunchy. Not that he’d expected they’d find anything.

  Ben almost laughed. Kiwis were always going on about New Zealand not having any dangerous species. Unlike Aussies, where people expected the bush to be full of nasties: snakes, crocs, spiders. But Australia had nothing on this. A bloody dinosaur. Poor Louise Hemphill. A woman on her own running from that? And in heavy rain? Of course, she’d be dead. It would’ve killed her. Eaten her. This search would be about filling the gaps in the sergeant’s report, because they’d be lucky to find so much as a toenail.

  His nerves frayed, Ben checked his watch. 2:40pm. Just another twenty minutes. Twenty minutes until McKenna called off the search and they’d be heading back to the road, to civilisation and safety. The sooner, the better.

  But what was he going to do about Murphy?

  He snorted quietly. So-fucking-what about Caren Murphy! The woman can get stuffed.

  All the money in the world, he wouldn’t be able to spend it if he was dead, would he? Still, he wondered what Murphy would do. Would she follow through? Ben shifted another frond with his foot and waved his hands in the space underneath.

  What’s that?

  Ben spun, his heart in his throat.

  But it was just the dog passing him in the brush, its nose to the ground and tail high. It hadn’t run away then. Earlier on, Jules had it tied up, but one of the soldiers had suggested she let it loose, give it a chance to catch a scent of its master, or of the missing woman. And although no one had said so out loud, they’d hoped it would bark a warning if the creature turned up, too. But ever since Jules let it off the rope, the mutt had been dogging them – literally – slipping in and out of the group, getting underfoot and generally putting the wind up everyone.

  Except it had done him a favour because, now he was upright, Ben realised he’d strayed a few metres from the others. Not too far, but enough to make him uncomfortable. Jules had said to keep together in a group. She’d said a predator like this one would look for stragglers, pick them off. Ben had no intention of being a straggler. He jogged to catch up to Singh, slowing only when he reached the medic.

  Jug whirled, bringing up his gun as Ben approached.

  “It’s me!”

  Jug exhaled. “Geez, you gave me the willies.”

  Ben shrugged an apology and Jug lowered his gun. They returned to their searching, this time keeping only a couple of arms’ lengths from each other.

  Ben checked his watch. Great. Just a few minutes left now.

  There was more rustling, like a chip packet being opened, and it wasn’t coming from Jug.

  Again, adrenalin coursing, he felt a stab of panic. He swung about, checking for the source of the noise. Holding his breath, Ben strained his ears and his eyes, all his focus on the surrounding bush.

  A movement. It was coming from over there…

  That bloody dog again. Nearly gave him a heart attack. At the rate it was going, ducking in and out around his feet, Ben would die of fright without even seeing the creature again. Exhaling, he glimpsed a flash of white – the dog’s tail – as it darted away, disappearing in the greens and greys of the forest floor. Ben took another slow breath, and checked his watch, before resuming his searching, stooping to search the gap between a rock and a tree.

  More like a rock and a hard place.

  More rustling again.

  For goodness sake. That damned dog. Jules needs to tie it up.

  Ben poked his head around the tree trunk, so close it scraped at his beard.

  It was the dog again. Only this time, it was in the creature’s mouth.

  Stock still, the dinosaur had the dog clasped head first in its jaws. The dog whimpered, the sound muffled in the beast’s mouth.

  Fuck.

  The dog was as good as dead. There was no getting out of that. Ben stepped back slowly, slowly, his hands outstretched behind him. He had to get away. His body screamed at him to run, but his brain, not wanting to attract the beast’s attention, told him otherwise, forcing him to move in millimetres.

  At least the creature wasn’t looking at him. Like an art feature in a hotel lobby, it didn’t move. It didn’t even blink. You’d think it was dead, only Ben wasn’t that stupid.

  He took another backward step.

  The dinosaur threw its head back, half-gulping the dog down.

  Ben held back a scream.

  He wanted to run, but Louise Hemphill ran and where the hell was she now? Probably the same place as Ira’s dog.

  I’ve got to get out of here.

  Ben took another step back, keeping his movement slow and quiet, cold sweat pricking his forehead and trickling down his back.

  Don’t see me. Don’t see me. Don’t see me.

  A stick cracked beneath his boot. Ben froze. Held his breath. But intent on its meal, the beast gulped again, a lump appearing in its throat. Almost devoured, only the dog’s legs were visible, protruding from between the rows of razored teeth.

  Frantically, Ben looked around. Where the hell was Jug? He was right there just a second ago. They were supposed to keep together! Where were the others? McKenna. The soldiers. Anyone with a fucking gun!

  There was something at his back. Ben gave a tiny start, his heart pounding out a heavy bass.

  But the beast was in front of him. Eating the dog. The hairs on Ben’s neck rose. Was there another one?

  McKenna’s voice came low in his ear. “Get behind me, Ben.”

  Flooded with relief, Ben moved to one side, about to step around the sergeant when the creature looked up, fixing them both with that creepy eye in the centre of its head. Ben’s blood ran cold. The beast extended its neck in their direction. Could it smell them?

  It planted a taloned foot.

  It was coming closer!

  Ben couldn’t bear it. He didn’t want to die. Didn’t want to be dinosaur fodder.

  The creature hissed, and even from this distance Ben could smell its sour breath.

  It was too much.

  Ben bolted.

  * * *

  Taine found himself facing the monster once again. The dagger-like spines on its back were raised, and the green-brown feathers around its face stiffened like a porcupine’s quills. One of its eyes was raw, scorched and blackened where Taine had jabbed the burning log.

  Good. I hope you hurt, you greedy son of a bitch.

  Taine raised his gun, more through bravado than anything else.
Maybe the Sphenodon knew it too, because, through the sight, it looked at Taine, its expression almost quizzical.

  Then it took off, thundering through the bush after Ben.

  “It’s here!” Taine shouted. “Over here!” He sprinted after the creature.

  Taine hadn’t a clue what he’d do if he caught up, but he kept running, batting away branches and leaping over fallen logs. The Sphenodon changed direction more than once. Was Ben weaving, forcing the creature to slow and turn? Attempting to shake it from his tail? Good. Taine hoped he was making ground because this thing was fast. Taine put on a spurt of pace himself, dodging trees and following the furrow the creature left in its wake as it crashed through the forest.

  “Ben!” Taine shouted. “Keep moving. I’m going to try and draw it off you.”

  But abruptly the noise stopped.

  * * *

  Ben glanced around wildly. Where was it? Had he outrun it? Maybe it had gone after McKenna instead? He hadn’t heard the sergeant for a while, not since the man had yelled to alert the others. Did the dinosaur have him? Remembering the wet sound of the dog being devoured, the animal’s pitiful whimper, Ben shuddered. But if it were a choice between McKenna and him, Ben would rather it wasn’t him.

  He looked around again. No sign of the creature. Maybe it was listening for his footsteps. He slowed to a stop and concentrated on listening, straining to hear over the thundering of his own heart. The forest was eerily quiet. Only the murmur of leaves and the creak of tree trunks. But then Ben had thought that earlier, hadn’t he, and the creature had been standing right there beside him with the dog in its jaws. It could be behind him now for all he knew.

  Don’t let it be behind me.

  Slowly, hardly daring to move, Ben turned his head to check behind him, every impulse screaming at him to run again, to go, get the hell out. And he would, if he had half a clue where to go. The truth was he was lost. One look from the Sphenodon and he’d panicked, charging off, running for his life, desperate to put as much distance as he could between him and those teeth.