Day of the Predator
Page 29
He desperately grappled with the rough bark and the smal leafy branches that sprouted from it, merciful handholds that their smooth and straight trunk had lacked. From branch to branch he managed to pul himself out of the strong current in the middle of the river to some calmer eddies of swirling water.
Final y his foot brushed against the river bot om, Final y his foot brushed against the river bot om, scat ering pebbles, and his feet desperately fumbled for rmer footing that promised to stay beneath him. His hands fol owed the fal en tree, pul ing on thicker, more reliable branches until he found himself wading out of the river, nal y col apsing on hands and knees on wet shingle that shifted and clat ered noisily beneath him.
‘Urgh,’ he splut ered, between ragged gasps of breath. His breath was stil pounding in and out as he nal y pul ed himself, exhausted, to his feet. He turned to look at the fal en tree, trying to get his bearings and work out which side of the river he was now standing on. The base of the tree was on the far side; he could see a frayed and splintered stump that looked like it had been hacked at by a team of inept carpenters armed with blunt chisels … or beavers even.
Not beavers, obviously. Perhaps some species of termite had cannibalized the tree, or it had simply rot ed and split. Either way, he thanked it for saving his life. He noticed a mess of disturbed shingle and footprints around him among the leaves and branches of the fel ed tree and realized that perhaps Lam and the others must have fel ed the tree for wood, but foolishly al owed it to fal across the river and just left it.
Idiots.
The rst thing he’d do once he found them was get them to heave the tree back into the water and let it be carried away. He turned round and squinted up the riverbank. Through a hundred yards of jungle he could just riverbank. Through a hundred yards of jungle he could just about make out crimson slivers of waning sunlight, the trees thinning, the clearing beyond … and their camp. He’d lost his spear in the river. No mat er, he was on the safe side now. He made his way up the shingle and into the narrow apron of jungle. Up ahead through the dangling loops of vine he could see the sun casting long shadows across the leafy hummocks of their shelters and the wooden wal of their smal palisade as it began to make a bed on the horizon. But, as yet, he couldn’t make out Lam and the other three kids they’d left behind. Where are they?
‘Hel o-o-o-o! ’ he cal ed out again, his voice ricocheting through the jungle.
A few moments later he was stepping out from beneath the dark canopy of foliage and into the clearing. On the very far side, he could see Becks and the others emerging. He waved at them. ‘Hey!’
He saw their heads turn his way and their mouths form sudden dark ovals of surprise and relief.
‘I made it! I’m al right!’ he cal ed across to them. ‘I’m ne! Have you seen the others?’
Becks led them across the clearing towards Liam until nal y they converged around the smouldering remains of a camp re.
‘The others have not been located,’ said Becks. Liam noticed their smal turbine wasn’t spinning. The cross-bar was split and the school bag was on the ground, its load of round pebbles spil ed. ‘The windmil ’s broken. its load of round pebbles spil ed. ‘The windmil ’s broken. What’s happened?’
There were no answers.
‘We should get that running again rst,’ he continued. He looked around at the others. ‘Maybe they’re out looking for us?’
Becks strode swiftly towards the contraption to see whether a quick repair could be made. Liam was about to pass on some instructions to the others to split up and search for the others when he noted Jasmine’s gaze, wideeyed and lost on some detail everyone else seemed to have missed.
‘Jasmine? You al right?’
She pointed at the ground. ‘That,’ she whispered.
‘What’s that?’
Liam fol owed her gaze down to the ground. Nestled amid a cluster of pebbles, cones and the dry brown decaying leaves of long-dead ferns, he saw a pale slender object that looked to him like an impossibly large maggot. He took a step towards it and noted the ground was stained dark around it, and at one end of it, pointed yel ow-white shards poked out like the antennae of a shrimp.
He felt his stomach lurch and ip in a slow, queasy somersault.
It was someone’s index nger. The antennae, shards of bone.
‘What is it?’ asked Whitmore, stooping to get a bet er look. ‘My God! Is that a nger?’
look. ‘My God! Is that a nger?’
The conclusion hit Liam like a punch. ‘They’re here.’ He looked up at them. ‘Those pack hunters are here, on the island.’
Whitmore’s mouth apped open and shut and produced nothing helpful.
‘How?’ asked Howard. ‘It’s impossible. No way those things can swim across!’
‘They don’t need to.’ He looked at the others. ‘They went and copied us … learned from us.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I think they made their own bridge.’
CHAPTER 64
2001, New York
Everything in the archway died, leaving them in pitch black.
‘What’s going on?’ cried Cartwright.
‘Please!’ cried Maddy in the dark. ‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! It’s nothing I did!’
‘Stay right where you are!’ snapped Cartwright. ‘I hear you move or do anything and I’l re!’
‘O-OK … we’re not moving, are we, Sal?’
‘Nope. Sit ing stil . Doing nothing.’
‘Just hang on, Cartwright,’ said Maddy, ‘just a second …
the generator should kick in any time now.’
On cue, from the back room, came the rumbling of the generator ring up. A moment later the strip light in the middle of the archway ickered once, twice with a dink, dink, then stayed on.
They al stared silently at each other as the monitors ickered in unison, the computer system rebooting itself.
‘What just happened?’ demanded Cartwright.
‘I dunno yet …’ said Maddy.
‘That was a time wave,’ said Sal.
‘A what?’
‘Time wave,’ she repeated. ‘Something big changed in
‘Time wave,’ she repeated. ‘Something big changed in the past and it’s just now caught up with us.’
Maddy nodded unhappily. ‘Yeah … she’s right. That’s exactly what that was.’
Cartwright looked at both the girls, then at Forby, who returned nothing more useful than a calm professional stare. ‘Wel ?’ said the old man. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means outside this archway, outside the perimeter of our eld-o ce time shield, things have changed,’
explained Maddy. ‘Changed a lot … if we lost power.’
‘So, what’s out there now?’ he asked.
Maddy splayed her hands. ‘I don’t know! Another version of New York, I guess.’
Cartwright’s eyes widened to rheumy bloodshot pools.
‘Forby, go take a look.’
‘Yes, sir.’ He stepped across the archway and hit the green but on. Nothing happened. ‘Won’t open.’
‘The doorway’s not on the generator circuit,’ said Maddy. ‘Just crank it up with the handle. There,’ she said, pointing. Forby saw the smal metal handle, nodded and started turning it round.
The computer had nished rebooting and Bob’s dialogue box popped up.
> We are running on auxiliary power. Resume density probing?
Maddy turned in her chair, back towards the monitors.
‘How much more probing have you got to do?’
> Information: 177,931 candidate density soundings made.
made.
She made a face – less than half the total number that Bob had calculated they needed to make.
‘Are there any good suspects?’
> There are 706 soundings so far in which a density uctuation occurred.
‘Can you narrow that down any?’
> A rmative: I can analyse the int
erruption signatures returned and identify those that demonstrate a repeat or an arti cial rhythm.
‘Uh … lemme think.’ She bit a ragged edge around her ngernail. ‘But you’re only, like, halfway through doing the probes?’
> Less than halfway.
‘And if you stop now we might miss them,’ she thought out loud.
> A rmative.
‘But now we’re on generator power, have you got enough power to do al those probes, and open a window too if we nd them?’
> I do not have enough data to answer that question, Maddy.
‘Can you guess?’
> I do not have enough data to answer that question, Maddy.
She cursed. ‘Al right … so you’re saying it’s possible we’l run out of juice if you carry on doing the probes, right?’
> A rmative.
> A rmative.
The rat ling of the cranking shut er door coming from across the archway suddenly ceased.
‘OK, Bob,’ she sighed, burying her face in her hands with weary frustration. ‘OK … OK. Al right, then. Stop with what you’re doing and analyse what we’ve got already. See if we’ve got a hit.’
> A rmative.
‘What the –!’ That was Forby.
‘JESUS!’ That was Cartwright.
Maddy spun round in her chair and saw the pair of them standing in the middle of the opened shut er doorway, staring out at a canvas of emerald-green jungle. She sighed. Oh no, not again.
Last time a time wave had arrived like this one, large enough to sever the feed of power into their eld o ce, it had left New York a post-apocalyptic wilderness of tumbledown ruins under a poisoned rust-red sky. She and Sal hurried over towards the open entrance.
‘Jahul a!’ gasped Sal as they joined the other two. And Maddy nodded. Jahul a indeed.
This time New York was gone, not just shat ered ruins, but gone as in never existed. She looked down at her feet. Their cold and pit ed concrete oor simply ended in a straight line where their invisible force eld’s e ect terminated. The ground beyond was a rich brown soil, carpeted in a mat of tal grass and lush clusters of lowgrowing ferns and other unidenti able foliage. She looked up and saw no Wil iamsburg Bridge, no She looked up and saw no Wil iamsburg Bridge, no horizon of Manhat an skyscrapers, just a broad, sedate river delta of lush rainforest.
‘Uh … how … how did we end up in the middle of a jungle, sir?’ asked Forby.
A slow, understanding smile spread across Cartwright’s face. Final y he nodded. ‘Incredible,’ he whispered, his eyes wide like a child’s, ful of wonder. A solitary tear rol ed down one of his craggy cheeks. ‘This is quite …
incredible.’
‘Sir?’ Forby turned to him. His calm, professional demeanour had vanished and been replaced with barely contained panic. ‘Sir, where the hel are we?’
‘We haven’t moved anywhere,’ the old man replied. He turned to look at Maddy. ‘Or anywhen? Have we? We’re exactly when and where we were.’
‘That’s right,’ she replied. ‘But an alternate history has just caught up with us.’
Cartwright’s ragged features seemed to look ten years younger. The face of a child catching a glimpse of the tooth fairy, or a glint of Santa’s sleigh disappearing into a distant moonlit cloud bank.
‘Sir? The other men? Where are they?’
‘Gone, Forby,’ he replied in a distracted whisper. ‘Gone.’
‘They’re dead?’
‘Nope. They were just never born,’ said Sal.
‘I want to see more,’ ut ered Cartwright, stepping o the concrete on to the soft ground beyond. He grinned. ‘My God! This is real? Isn’t it?’
God! This is real? Isn’t it?’
Maddy shrugged. ‘It’s another reality. How New York might have ended up if … if …’
‘If what?’ asked Forby.
‘That’s just it,’ she replied. ‘We don’t know yet. My guess is it’s some change caused by our col eague in the past. I’m sure it wasn’t intentional.’
Forby shook his head. ‘You’re tel ing me one person can actual y change a whole … world?’
Cartwright sighed, clearly frustrated by the narrowminded thinking of his subordinate. ‘Of course, Forby. Think about it, man. If … if a certain Jewish carpenter hadn’t made his mark two thousand years ago, it wouldn’t be In God We Trust on a dol ar note, but Gods.’
Forby frowned. A patriot. No one dissed the mighty dol ar. Not on his watch.
‘And our friend’s much much further back in time than Jesus,’ added Sal.
‘Smal changes in the past,’ quoted Maddy,
remembering the rst time Foster had spoken to them, bringing them that tray of co ees and doughnuts, a simple and strangely reassuring gesture in that surreal moment of awakening. ‘Smal changes in the past can make enormous changes in the present.’
Cartwright glanced towards the nearby riverbank. ‘We should go and explore a lit le –’ He stopped dead in his tracks.
‘Look!’
Maddy fol owed his wavering nger, pointing across the Maddy fol owed his wavering nger, pointing across the broad river to the low hump of island that was once Manhat an. She squinted painful y, her eyes not so great without glasses. She managed to detect the slightest sense of movement. ‘What is it?’
‘People?’ ut ered Sal. ‘Yes … it’s people!’
‘A set lement of some kind,’ added Cartwright. She thought she could make out a cluster of circular dwel ings down by the waterside and several pale thin plumes of smoke rising up into the sky.
‘Look,’ said Forby, ‘there’s a boat.’
Halfway across the river, calm and subdued, barely a ripple upon its glass-smooth surface, was the long dark outline of some canoe. Aboard they could see half a dozen gures paddling the vessel across the river towards them.
‘They look odd,’ said Sal, shading her eyes from the sun.
‘They’re … they’re moving al funny.’
Cartwright seemed eager to rush down to the riverside and greet them. ‘We should go and make contact.’
‘No,’ said Maddy. ‘Real y, I don’t think we should.’
‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘The things we could learn from each other! The knowledge of another –’
‘Maybe the girl’s right,’ said Forby. ‘They could be hostile, sir.’
He shook his head, his face an expression of bemusement. ‘This is an incredible moment of history!’
‘But that’s just it … this isn’t history. This isn’t meant to happen,’ said Maddy. ‘Those people shouldn’t exist. This is a what if reality … this is a never shoulda happened a what if reality … this is a never shoulda happened reality, Cartwright. Do you get it? The last thing we need to do is go and make friends with it.’
‘I’m not so sure they’re people, anyway,’ said Sal, quietly watching the canoe approach the nearby riverbank. A hundred and fty yards away, the long canoe rode up graceful y on to the silt. The gures aboard the boat put down their paddles in the bot om and began, one by one, to jump o the front and on to the mud.
Even Maddy could now make out that they weren’t human.
‘My God, look at their legs,’ whispered Forby. ‘Like …
just like goat’s legs, dog’s legs.’
‘Dinosaur legs,’ added Cartwright. ‘In fact, therapod legs. A bit like velociraptors.’
‘Forget their legs,’ said Sal, ‘check out their heads!’
Maddy squinted, wondering whether her eyes were playing tricks on her. ‘They look like bananas?’
‘Elongated,’ said Forby, shaking his own head. ‘Weirdest damned thing I ever seen. They look sort of extraterrestrial.’ He turned to the others, his voice lowered. ‘My God! Do you think that’s what they are? A species of alien that’s arrived and colonized our world?’
Cartwright dismissed the man. ‘The legs suggest some possible ancestral link to dinosaurs. The heads? Damned if I know where that shape has come from.’
them.
‘What are they doing, do you think?’ asked Maddy. As if in answer to her question, some unrecognizable pig-sized creature emerged from a hole in the mud and scurried across the silt towards another hole. The nearest of the banana-heads quickly raised his spear and threw it with practised e ciency. It skewered the smal creature, and left it struggling and squealing on its side.
‘Hunting!’ said Forby a lit le too loudly.
One of the creatures suddenly turned to glance their way. The four of them instinctively hunkered down behind the gently waving fronds of a large fern.
‘Think he saw us?’ hissed Forby through grit ed teeth. Maddy looked up at the ragged outline of red brickwork around the corrugated shut er door, the portion of the bridge support that existed within the archway’s eld. Luckily most of it was shielded by a giant species of tree she didn’t recognize; drooping waxy leaves the size of umbrel as hung low over them. A perfect camou age.
‘I think we’re hidden,’ she whispered.
They watched through gaps in the swaying leaves as the creature, stil curious, slowly paced up the silty bank towards them, cocking its long head curiously on to one side. Closer now, they could see a lean hairless body covered with an olive skin, an expressionless face of bone and cartilage and a lipless mouth ful of razor-sharp teeth.
‘It’s real y ugly,’ o ered Sal in a whisper. ‘I real y don’t want to go make friends with it.’
Maddy noticed Forby raising his gun warily, a nger Maddy noticed Forby raising his gun warily, a nger slipping across the trigger. She nudged him gently and shook her head.
Don’t.
He nodded.
‘It’s beautiful,’ whispered Cartwright. ‘What a magni cent creature! Look at it!’
For a moment it lingered there, scanning the rainforest in front of it, not seeming to spot them or the squat brick shape of their archway. Then, nal y, it seemed to shrug, turn away and head back towards the others, cal ing something out with a mewling whine and a clack of its sharp teeth.