Day of the Predator

by Alex Scarrow

  He looked at her. She was right. A routine protocol before opening a window, to make sure they weren’t going to get mangled up with somebody else. ‘Do you remember exactly where we appeared on this clearing?’

  She nodded. ‘I have the exact geo-coordinates logged in my database.’ She pointed across the ground towards a my database.’ She pointed across the ground towards a cluster of ferns. ‘You appeared there. Fifty-one feet, seven and three-quarter inches from this location.’

  ‘Then –’ Liam looked at the spot – ‘we’d need to stand someone right there … apping their arms around or something, right?’

  ‘Correct. But it is unlikely the eld o ce wil be making probe sweeps this far back in time.’

  Liam felt himself sagging again. Another dashed ray of hope. He bal ed a st with frustration. ‘This time-travel stu is nonsense. Would it be so hard for the agency to come up with some beamy signal thing we could send back to them?’

  ‘In theory it would be possible. But it would require an enormous amount of energy and of course time displacement machinery, and a sophisticated enough computer system to target where to aim a –’

  He raised a hand to shush her. ‘Becks?’

  Her grey eyes locked on him obediently.

  ‘Please, shut up.’

  ‘A rmative.’

  He stood, stretching an aching back. ‘Ah, sod this!’ Then he suddenly snapped, slamming his st against the log wal . The palisade vibrated slightly with the soft creak of stretched vine-rope.

  ‘Ouch!’ he mut ered, and sucked on grazed knuckles.

  ‘That hurt.’

  She tilted her head, curious. ‘Then why did you do that?

  ’

  ’ ‘Ugh … wil you not be quiet?’

  CHAPTER 32

  65 mil ion years BC, jungle

  Several of the new creatures were standing in the shal ows of the raging river, frothing white water tumbling noisily around their legs. They al held long sticks in their hands and seemed to be studying the water intently, keeping motionless for long periods then nal y, inexplicably, lashing out with their sticks.

  Broken Claw turned to the others crouching a few yards away, watching these creatures with fascination. He snicked his claws to at ract their at ention. They al obediently looked his way. Broken Claw ut ered a series of soft throaty barks, and snapped his teeth.

  New creatures. They are dangerous.

  He couldn’t explain why – he just knew somehow that they were. Quite possibly far more dangerous than them. His yel ow eyes swivel ed back to the creatures, and across the far side to the curious contraption these things had been fashioning with their pale clawless arms. The long trunk of a tree stripped of branches and leaves and hanging at a raised angle over the river, just like the longslanted neck of one of the giant leaf-eaters that lived on the open plain. Tied round the contraption’s top, Broken Claw recognized vines, entwined together, taut and angling Claw recognized vines, entwined together, taut and angling back up towards another tree, over a thick branch and dangling straight down to the ground, where the vines were wrapped round a cluster of logs.

  He couldn’t begin to understand what the contraption did, or why these things had laboured so hard on making it. But they had, and it worried him. That he himself couldn’t understand what it did worried him. He barked again softly.

  New creatures. Cleverer than us.

  The others seemed to agree. They cowered lower among the foliage at the edge of the jungle. He could see as many of them wading in the water as the number of claws he possessed. He wondered how many more of them were on the island on the far side of this narrow river. More than his pack?

  Just then, one of the new creatures lurched forward, pushing the stick into the water. A moment later it pul ed the stick out. On its end, one of the grey river creatures thrashed and struggled, silver and glistening. The stick had somehow captured the creature. The stick … captures … the river creature.

  He watched with fascination as the new creatures carried the large apping river-dwel er between them, away from the water’s edge and through the trees until they were gone from view. Only one of them remained behind. Stil , poised, gazing intently out at the water. Broken Claw recognized this one. He’d seen him before three sun-rises ago, back in the jungle. Their stare had three sun-rises ago, back in the jungle. Their stare had actual y met for a moment, although the thing’s pale blue eyes had seemed to register nothing of that. Broken Claw sensed this one led the others, just like he led his pack. A position of loneliness and responsibility. For a moment his animal mind processed a thought that a human might have cal ed kinship.

  New creature. Is like I. Leads others.

  When the time came to kil them al , when he was sure it was safe for them to make their move, he decided this creature should be his and his alone. Perhaps in the moment that he tore this pale thing’s heart out al the wisdom and intel igence inside it would become his. Then he too would understand the stick that captures … and the curious construction raised over the river.

  Liam scanned the swirling suds of water in front of him. Every now and then he could see the dark outline of one of these large prehistoric mud sh darting around the shal ows, teasing him to make a lunge at it with his spear. He was useless at it, unable to anticipate which way the dark shape would lurch to avoid being skewered. Juan was probably the best among them at catching these things. The one he’d just caught was a whopper: four feet of wriggling wet meat, enough to feed at least half of them tonight. If he could just manage to bag another one himself while the others were carrying it back to the camp, then he could at least feel less like a useless jerk. Some leader.

  Some leader.

  Franklyn seemed to know everything about dinosaurs, Whitmore quite a lot too. Juan seemed to be at home in this survival situation, good at hunting, building a re and al . Keisha seemed to be the group’s carer and doctor. And, despite the unfortunate incident a few days ago, the others were beginning to regard Becks as their bodyguard. Even Jonah seemed to have a valued role as the group’s comedian.

  And then there’s me. The Irish kid who can do nothing more than keep saying ‘help’s on the way’.

  He wondered if the only reason they’d accepted him as the nominal leader was because he’d made the rash promise to get them back home. That and, of course, because Becks took her orders only from him. He wondered how they were going to feel about him being in charge in a few weeks’ time or months’ time, when there was stil no sign of rescue.

  He felt lonely and worn out with the burden of responsibility. At least the last time he’d been stuck in the past it had just been himself to worry about; he hadn’t been asked to lead anyone.

  No, that was Bob’s job. He laughed at the memory of Bob leading that army of freedom ghters. They’d thought he was some sort of warrior angel sent down from Heaven by God himself; they’d thought he was a superhero just like out of one of those comicbooks. Superman, Captain Freedom. He’d certainly looked the part.

  Movement.

  Movement.

  He looked up and saw a pack of smal dinosaurs, lit le more than lizards, standing upright on their hind legs and gazing at him curiously. None bigger than his hand. They were standing only a couple of yards away and tweeted and twit ered among themselves as they idly watched him. Franklyn had a species name for them, although Liam was damned if he could remember it.

  ‘What do you fel as want?’ he cal ed out.

  He could guess … begging for scraps. These lit le chaps had been hopping and skipping around their camp re last night like excited children, drawn by the smel of sh meat being gril ed on a spit. One of them had even been bold enough to hop up on to the cooking carcass, but had slipped on the greasy scales of the sh and fal en into the re, where it had apped around and screamed for a while before nal y succumbing to the ames.

  ‘Did you not learn your lesson last night, you sil y eejits? Best staying away, eh?’

  They al
cocked their heads to the right in unison at the sound of his voice.

  ‘Jay-zus, you lit le fel as real y are stupid, aren’t you?’

  They tweeted and twit ered and cooed at that.

  ‘Ah, go away, wil you? You’l spook my sh, so you wil .’ Liam bent down, scooped up a rock and tossed it a dozen yards down the silted riverbank. The entire pack of mini-therapods turned and scooted after it excitedly, presumably ut erly convinced it was a hunk of juicy meat. Liam watched them go, pat ering across the silt, leaving Liam watched them go, pat ering across the silt, leaving a host of tiny trails behind them, like the trail of winter birds across virgin snow.

  And that’s when the idea struck him.

  ‘Oh … oh,’ he gasped to himself. ‘Oh Jay-zus-’n’-MotherMary,’ he added for good measure. ‘That’l be it!’ He dropped his spear into the water and turned on his heels, heading through the trees towards the camp.

  CHAPTER 33

  65 mil ion years BC, jungle

  He stumbled out of the jungle and into the clearing. Across the way he could see a thin column of smoke from yesterday’s camp re, stil smouldering, and clustered around it their dozen wigwam shelters, cone-shaped frames of wood beneath layers of broad waxy leaves the size of elephant’s ears. To one side their palisade, nished now, and reinforced with a coating of rust-coloured dried mud, packed into the spaces between the logs and almost as hard as concrete. Around the tree-trunk palisade wal a three-foot-deep trench had been dug out. It e ectively added another two or three feet to the height of their defence. Liam very much doubted it would hold at bay something as large as a rex, but it might be enough to dissuade any smal er beasts on the hunt for an easy meal. He picked out Becks among the gures moving around the camp: a gure in black, her head no longer a pale round eggshel , but dark now with a week’s worth of hair growth.

  ‘Becks!’ he cal ed out. Her head turned sharply towards him, and her posture instantly adjusted to one ready for action. Every other head turned his way as he stumbled awkwardly across the ground towards them.

  awkwardly across the ground towards them.

  He saw Juan and Leonard scrambling to their feet and reaching for spears. He realized his voice must have sounded shril as if he was shouting a warning. Kel y reached into his trousers for his penknife, Whitmore for one of their hatchets.

  By the time Liam arrived beside the camp re, breathless and sweating from the exertion, everybody stood poised with a weapon and ready to run for the safety of the palisade.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Kel y. ‘Something coming?’

  Liam looked at them al . They were wide-eyed, some of the girls terri ed even. Glances skipped from Liam to the far side of the clearing from where he’d emerged sprinting as if the devil himself was in hot pursuit.

  ‘What’s happened, dude?’ asked Jonah.

  Becks said, ‘Your voice indicated a threat.’

  Liam shook his head. ‘Ah no, not real y. I just had an idea.’

  ‘Fossils, that’s what you’re talking about,’ said Franklyn.

  ‘Fossils. They’re not even the original print that’s left behind, but just an imprint of the print: sediment that has l ed the footprint, then hardened over thousands of years to become a layer of rock.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s stil a mark that’s survived through al that time. An impression of that original mark.’

  ‘Of course,’ sni ed Franklyn. ‘Yes, of course that’s exactly what it is.’

  exactly what it is.’

  Kel y shook his head. ‘That’s it? That’s how you intend to communicate with your agency? Leave a mark on the ground in the Cretaceous period and hope some lucky fossil hunter nds it?’ He shrugged, exasperated. ‘Oh, great

  …’ He gazed at the re. ‘And there was me thinking you and your robo-girl here had some sort of high-tech beacon or something to bring them here!’

  Becks shook her head. ‘Negative. No beacons.’

  Liam raised a hand to hush her. ‘That’s just the way it is, Mr Kel y. There’s nothing I can do about that.’

  Laura bit her lip. ‘That … that doesn’t sound like much of a chance, though – a message traced in the ground surviving mil ions of years in one piece?’

  ‘Survivin’ that long,’ added Juan, ‘and bein’ found as wel , man. What’s the chances of that?’

  Liam shrugged. ‘Maybe we can improve our chances.’

  He looked at Franklyn. ‘Do we not know where the rst fossils were discovered? I mean historical y? That’s actual y known, right?’

  Whitmore and Franklyn exchanged a glance. ‘Wel , yes,’

  said Whitmore. ‘It’s common knowledge where the rst American dinosaur fossils were discovered.’

  Franklyn nodded. ‘In Texas, of course. Right here in Texas.’ Behind his bot le-top glasses, his eyes suddenly widened. ‘Yes! Oh, hang on! Yes … Dinosaur Val ey. Right, Mr Whitmore?’

  Whitmore nodded. ‘Good God, yes, you’re right, Franklyn. Near Glen Rose, Texas.’

  Franklyn. Near Glen Rose, Texas.’

  ‘Glen Rose?’ Liam shrugged. ‘Would that be far away?’

  Kel y’s scornful frozen expression of cynicism looked like it was thawing. ‘Not that far from where the TERI labs were, actual y. About sixty miles away.’

  ‘Dinosaur Val ey State Park,’ continued Whitmore. ‘It’s a protected area now, a national landmark. At the beginning of the 1900s, I think, some of the rst fossils were found along a riverbed there. Lots of them.’

  ‘The Paluxy River,’ said Franklyn, ‘where the fossils were found, was thought to be the shoreline of some Cretaceous-era sea.’

  Liam looked from Whitmore to Franklyn. ‘So? We could get to this place, right? You fel as know exactly where it would be?’

  Both shook their heads. ‘Not real y,’ said Whitmore.

  ‘How could we know that?’ He gestured around at the jungle. ‘It’s an entirely di erent landscape.’ He laughed.

  ‘Hel , it’s out there somewhere!’

  ‘I know where it is in relation to the TERI labs,’ said Kel y. The others looked at him. ‘Wel , I drive in to work from Glen Rose. It’s where I live. I pass the signs for Dinosaur Val ey Park every day on the way up to the interstate. It’s just outside Glen Rose, about a mile north of the town.’

  ‘I have geo-coordinates for the town of Glen Rose,’ said Becks.

  Liam looked at her. ‘You do?’

  ‘Of course. It was part of the data package Maddy

  ‘Of course. It was part of the data package Maddy Carter uploaded prior to departure. I have the complete set of US Geological Survey maps for the State of Texas.’

  Liam’s eyes glistened by the light of the camp re. ‘We could actual y do this!’ He looked at them al , piecing together on the y something that was beginning to resemble a plan. ‘Then, in theory, Becks, you could lead us right to this place that wil one day become this dinosaur park?’

  ‘A rmative.’

  ‘And if we know some fossil-hunting fel as nd a whole load of fossils, as you said, Mr Whitmore, sometime in the 1900s, then could we not place some fossils of our own right there?’

  ‘I suppose we –’

  ‘Negative,’ cut in Becks. She understood now where Liam was going with this. ‘That would represent a signi cant contamination risk.’

  Liam clenched his teeth in frustration. ‘Come on, Becks, we have to break a few eggs, so we do.’

  She cocked her head. ‘Break eggs?’

  ‘You know … how does it go? To make an omelet e. We leave a message to be found. So, al right, it causes a new load of contamination problems. But then we have a chance at being rescued, get ing these people back home where they should be, and then … then we go and x that lit le problem.’

  ‘This action introduces a third independent source of contamination.’ She looked cool y at the group gathered contamination.’ She looked cool y at the group gathered around the camp re. ‘Already there are two potential sources of time corrupti
on. One in 2015 – the absence of Edward Chan. The second, this time, the presence of humans where there should not be any. Either or both contamination sources have a high probability of already causing signi cant time waves in the future.’

  ‘What if …’ started Jonah, but he almost stopped when every pair of eyes swung on to him. Clearly now wasn’t the time for some ippant wisecrack. But he continued anyway. It seemed like a smart idea to him. ‘What if …

  like … we left a message that was, you know, like, too important to become common knowledge.’

  They stared at him in silence. No one was tel ing him to shut up, so he elaborated. ‘I mean, like hushed up. Like, say, Roswel .’

  Liam shrugged. ‘Roswel ?’

  Kel y snorted a dry laugh. ‘The supposed sight of a crashed UFO in 1947. Conspiracy nuts love that story. According to them it was a real ying saucer from outer space with real live LGM onboard.’

  Laura saw Liam purse his lips in confusion. ‘Lit le Green Men,’ she said helpful y.

  ‘Anyway,’ continued Kel y, ‘despite the fact it was most probably just a crashed test jet of some kind, you stil get nut-jobs going on about wanting to free the lit le green men from their years of medical testing and enforced imprisonment.’

  Jonah made a face. ‘Yeah … but how do we know for Jonah made a face. ‘Yeah … but how do we know for sure it ain’t true, Mr Kel y, eh? Point is, it could’ve been just a test jet, it could’ve been an alien spaceship, but the world wil never know ’cause the government being, like, total y paranoid douche bags, hushed it al up. Kept the secret to themselves.’

  ‘Oh, come on, kid,’ said Kel y, ‘that’s a load of –’

  Liam waved him silent. ‘Hang on! No, wait! Jonah has a point … I think.’ He scratched his cheek, deep in thought for a moment. ‘Look, the point is people like the government … Your American government, right, if someone, some everyday person discovered a fossil that suggested something as amazing as the invention of time travel and they told the government, what would they do?’