Lost Predator

by Alicia Brodersen

  ‘Man has no predators,’ he pointed out. ‘We have nothing to be afraid of except each other.’

  ‘Well, that used to be the case,’ she agreed wryly. ‘But times are changing, aren’t they, Stephen?’

  ‘Why don’t you just tell me what you want?’ Stephen asked bluntly as they walked inside to the university’s cafeteria. He’d had enough of her already.

  ‘A meeting,’ she replied succinctly. ‘With Nick and Lester.’

  She handed Stephen a hand-drawn map and pointed at it.

  ‘Tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock, here. No armed thugs, no ambushes,’ she urged, looking him in the eye. ‘They’ll want to hear what I’ve got to say.’

  ‘But they don’t trust you.’

  ‘I don’t trust them either,’ Helen retorted. ‘But this is serious.’

  Reaching into the rucksack she was carrying, Helen pulled out a newspaper and threw it on the table.

  ‘Three people have disappeared in the last forty-eight hours,’ she said, jabbing a finger at the front-page headline. ‘I know what happened to them.’

  Stephen scanned the newspaper article, quickly realizing it was connected to the crisis currently unfolding in the Forest of Dean.

  ‘A creature,’ he said out loud. ‘What kind?’

  Helen ignored his question. As far as she was concerned, the conversation was over. She stood up and hoisted her rucksack on to her shoulders.

  With distaste, Stephen watched her leave. Whatever game she was playing, he’d have to wait until tomorrow to find out. The whole thing made him very uneasy.

  Abby and Connor were crawling around the lion enclosure at Wellington Zoo. Abby had received a call at home saying one of the lions had gone missing, and they were looking for clues.

  ‘At first we thought the lions had been fighting,’ she said, as two other keepers and Abby’s boss, Tim Parker, surveyed the scene. ‘But none of them are wounded. Then we realized we’d lost one.’

  They watched as the other two keepers and Tim stood arguing underneath a large hole, high up in the strong wire netting that covered the enclosure.

  Connor pointed to a blood-spattered leaf on the ground.

  ‘Looks like something got wounded,’ he said.

  Making sure they weren’t being watched, he crouched down and took a blood sample with a swab he’d brought with him. Connor and Abby had seen enough strange creatures come through recent anomalies to know they should get evidence. If a dinosaur turned out to be responsible for the attack, then it might help them to identify it.

  ‘There’s no other proof, is there?’ asked Connor, placing the phial carefully in his pocket. ‘All you’ve got is a missing lion.’

  Connor snuck Abby a look out of the corner of his eye. She shook her head as she rested her chin in her hand, looking completely bewildered.

  ‘Maybe he just ran away to join the circus?’ Connor offered, trying to lighten the mood.

  Abby gave him a shove, almost knocking him over. This was serious! When was Connor ever going to stop fooling around?

  A short time later, Abby walked out to the elephant enclosure, carrying large buckets full of feed. Thunder rumbled in the distance as Abby nervously scanned the horizon. Something didn’t feel right – it almost felt like she was being watched. Abby was relieved as the elephants came running for their food. If something was out there, at least it wouldn’t attack her with such large animals around.

  Meanwhile, Abby’s boss picked up a call on his mobile phone as he juggled papers and his briefcase.

  ‘Thanks for calling back,’ Tim said, walking through some stables. ‘No sign of the lion as yet. We’re still hopeful, obviously.’

  The park manager was too wrapped up in the call to notice a large black shadow moving across the metal tops of the pens inside the shed. It moved swiftly, jumping over the gates and emitting a low-pitched, clicking growl. It didn’t bear any resemblance to any of the creatures from the zoo.

  Abby had been right when she felt something watching her. But the thing was no longer interested in the pretty zoologist. As it crept out of the stables, it was far more interested in Tim.

  And it was hungry.

  Early next morning, Abby and Connor found themselves in a busy room of the Home Office, waiting for the other members of the team. Once again, Cutter had called them in to help with investigations.

  ‘The blood analysis came back from the lab,’ Connor said casually, reading the front page of the newspaper. ‘Most of it was from a lion, but some of it was from a bat.’

  Abby turned to look at him. She’d changed out of the zoo uniform and wellies she’d been wearing earlier, and was now in a simple T-shirt and jeans. Connor thought she looked amazing. Then again, Connor always thought Abby looked amazing.

  ‘Bats get everywhere,’ Abby replied, shrugging her shoulders.

  ‘Yeah,’ stressed Connor. ‘But it was some really weird DNA. They said they’d never seen anything like it before.’

  Abby pulled out her phone as a message beeped. It was from the zoo.

  ‘My boss,’ Abby said, frowning. ‘No one’s seen him since yesterday. They found his stuff, but there’s no sign of him. He just vanished.’

  The zoologist swallowed as she remembered feeding the elephants. She’d really felt like something had been watching her. And now here they were talking about a new anomaly, and Tim was missing. The whole thing was giving her the creeps.

  She shook her head and decided it was time to go back to work. It was probably all a coincidence, anyway. Besides, if Tim wasn’t around, they’d need all hands on deck to look after the animals today.

  Elsewhere in the Home Office, Cutter, Stephen, Claudia and Lester stood talking about Stephen’s encounter with Helen the day before. As usual, Lester was being difficult.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t already know what this is about?’ he demanded, riling Cutter.

  ‘Helen did save my life,’ Claudia pointed out, trying to calm the situation. ‘We should give her some credit for that.’ Wringing her hands, she hoped to get Lester onside. Why did he have to be so difficult?

  ‘And if she does know something about the disappearances…’ she continued helpfully.

  ‘That’s a police matter,’ Lester trumpeted, cutting her off mid-sentence. ‘There’s no evidence of creature involvement.’

  ‘Yet.’ Cutter said firmly. He was getting seriously frustrated. Here was Lester, a pasty-looking man who’d obviously never done a day of physical work in his life, wandering around in a freshly pressed suit and telling him how to run a dinosaur investigation!

  ‘OK, fine,’ Lester said reluctantly. ‘But if this turns out to be another of her manipulative little schemes, the deal is off and she goes straight back on the wanted list.’

  Agreeing to disagree, the group caught a lift down to the car park and began making their way to the outskirts of London. Following the directions on Helen’s map, they eventually found themselves by a lake in woodlands not far from the Forest of Dean.

  Right on time, Helen strode up the dirt path towards them. Lester watched her approach, scorn flashing in her eyes.

  ‘You have a serious creature incursion,’ Helen said, addressing Cutter first. ‘A highly evolved ambush predator. Intelligent, adaptable and ruthless.’

  ‘If there was a creature on the loose,’ Claudia said haughtily, annoyed at Helen’s abruptness, ‘we would know about it.’

  ‘At least three people have disappeared in the last few days,’ Helen pointed out, staring at the woman whose life she had so recently saved. She was starting to regret it – Little Miss Home Office could be very irritating.

  ‘Missing,’ dismissed Lester, folding his arms resolutely.

  ‘Killed,’ corrected Helen. ‘The creature has a lair somewhere nearby. It’s taken them for food.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ asked Cutter sceptically. Helen had no right to come in and cause panic like this. Why didn’t she just tell them what they needed
to know?

  ‘Because it nearly got me too.’

  ‘What is it?’ Stephen insisted, repeating his question from the previous day.

  ‘It has no name,’ said Helen mysteriously.

  Cutter was beginning to get annoyed. Why couldn’t she just be helpful for a change? Getting anything out of her was like getting blood out of a stone.

  ‘Then which era is it from?’ he asked, glaring at her.

  ‘It doesn’t come from any era,’ Helen said, lowering her voice and stepping towards him until they were only centimetres apart. ‘At least not one that can be identified yet.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ replied Cutter, shaking his head. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Yes, you do, Nick,’ Helen whispered, staring at him intently. ‘You’ve known it ever since you first stepped into the past.’

  Cutter’s face fell as the realization hit him. If the creature wasn’t from the prehistoric era, then…

  ‘Are you saying we’re being attacked by a creature from the future?’ he asked, almost unable to get the words out.

  ‘I’ve seen a lot of amazing creatures, but nothing like this one,’ Helen said finally. ‘It has human levels of intelligence and an almost supernatural ability to stalk its prey. It could be right here now watching us and we’d never know.’

  The group were all trying to deal with this startling news in their own way. Lester rolled back on his heels, deep in thought. Cutter and Stephen raised their eyebrows at each other. Claudia, meanwhile, was steadfastly refusing to believe Helen could be right. The woman was clearly mad as a hatter.

  ‘If it’s so clever,’ she said with an air of superiority, ‘how did you see it?’

  ‘I discovered it in the Permian,’ replied Helen, mentioning the prehistoric era that the Forest of Dean anomaly led to. ‘Just after a kill. It was feeding and its defences were down.’

  ‘What does it look like?’ probed Cutter. If Helen was finally talking, he was going to try and get all the information he could.

  ‘Like a great ape. But bigger, faster and a lot more agile.’

  ‘Hold on,’ said Cutter sharply, realizing they were just relying on Helen’s analysis so far. ‘What makes you so certain that it’s not some lost species that’s just disappeared from the evolutionary records?’

  Helen shook her head. ‘It’s not like any creature from the Permian – or any other – prehistoric era,’ she said gravely. ‘The only possible explanation is that it strayed through a future anomaly, into the Permian era and then on into ours.’

  ‘How did it get here?’ asked Claudia.

  ‘I have no idea. It was only when I got back I found out it was on the loose. Obviously, my first thought was to do as much as I could to help.’ Helen gave the group a winning smile.

  Cutter eyed her suspiciously. She might have been missing for eight years, but he knew her well enough to be able to tell when she was lying. He knew Helen wasn’t here because she wanted to be helpful.

  ‘How public-spirited of you,’ Lester sighed. ‘Where can we contact you?’

  Helen looked at Cutter, a calculating grin spreading across her face. ‘At my house, of course,’ she said, challenging him.

  Cutter baulked. Although she hadn’t stepped through the front door of their place for eight years, it was true – it was still her house. Technically, they were still married and she had every right to be there.

  Claudia looked on with a mixture of hurt and disdain. She’d thought a lot about Cutter kissing her in the golf club, and she really liked him. She couldn’t help feeling that Helen knew it and was being a pain in the neck on purpose.

  By mid-afternoon, Cutter and Helen were back at their house. Helen was casting a critical eye around the living room.

  ‘You could’ve redecorated,’ she said, as Cutter watched her from beside the piano.

  ‘I like it,’ he replied, smiling. He’d been expecting a comment like that from her. ‘Are you going to tell me why you were lying?’ he added.

  ‘No idea what you’re talking about,’ Helen replied nonchalantly, pulling off her boots and leaning back on the couch.

  ‘The others buy that line about you just wanting to help,’ Cutter began, moving over to sit in a red chair in front of her. ‘But I’ve known you for longer than they have.’

  Helen paused for a second. Her husband was right, and she realized the game was up.

  ‘Look,’ she sighed, picking up a familiar camera from the table. ‘Everything I said about the Permian was true. I discovered the creature and made my observations. But I got too close – it sensed I was watching.’

  Cutter watched her patiently. The pieces of the puzzle were finally beginning to fit.

  ‘So you became the prey,’ he figured.

  ‘I only just got away,’ Helen reminded him, hoping to elicit pity. ‘The problem was, my escape route led me back here.’

  ‘And it followed you,’ Cutter groaned, finishing her sentence. ‘So this is your fault.’

  ‘I could’ve walked away,’ Helen snapped, on the defensive now. ‘But I didn’t. I stayed to help.’ She looked at Cutter, her face softening. ‘I’m still human, Nick. I do care what happens. And I do care about you.’

  Cutter wanted so much to believe her. But he couldn’t help thinking that if she really cared about him, she wouldn’t have disappeared without a trace for eight years.

  She had so many questions to answer.

  Sitting in the Department of Evolutionary Zoology office at the Central Metropolitan University, Connor was looking confused. Stephen had just told him about the meeting with Helen earlier in the day, and Connor couldn’t understand why she’d been so scant on details about the new creature. He decided it was time to let Stephen in on his and Abby’s discovery.

  ‘I found some bat blood at the zoo yesterday,’ Connor said hesitantly.

  ‘So?’ retorted Stephen as he rifled through some papers, only half paying attention.

  ‘This bat blood had really screwed-up DNA,’ he said, looking at Stephen anxiously. Stephen ignored him. ‘I mean, it’s probably nothing… but one of the lions went missing yesterday.’

  Stephen looked up at him as Connor started spinning round in the chair, seemingly talking to himself.

  ‘And now Abby’s boss,’ Connor continued, as Stephen put down the papers. ‘He’s just disappeared as well.’

  ‘Where’s Abby?’ Stephen demanded, while Connor came to a stop. Connor was relieved to see Stephen was finally listening, but the serious look on his face made him nervous.

  ‘She said she was working late,’ Connor replied, as Stephen ran across the room to grab his jacket.

  ‘Meet me at the zoo,’ Stephen said, heading towards the exit and leaving a bewildered-looking Connor sitting in the office. ‘With as much backup as possible!’

  Connor frowned as Stephen bolted out of the door. What was his problem, all of a sudden? One minute he was talking about Helen and an alien creature from the future, the next he was running off after Abby.

  Connor’s jaw dropped as he realized what was going on. If the bat wasn’t a bat, it was probably the future predator Helen had been talking about. And if the creature had been stalking prey at the zoo yesterday, it was probably still in the same area and looking for food.

  And right now, Abby was there on her own.

  It was late afternoon, and Abby was watching the seals gliding through the water in their tanks. She was thinking about yesterday. Something had definitely been watching her and it freaked her out.

  Abby drew a quick breath as the same feeling washed over her. She could feel something behind her. Gasping, she spun round – only to be confronted by a smiling Stephen.

  She was so relieved she couldn’t stop herself from punching him in the stomach. ‘Don’t creep up on me like that!’ she cried.

  ‘I wasn’t creeping!’ Stephen grinned. ‘I was walking… normally!’

  Abby laughed. She couldn’t stay angry with Stephen for lo
ng – he was way too cute!

  ‘Are you all right?’ Stephen asked frantically as Abby frowned at him. ‘There might be a creature here. We think it killed the lion and maybe your boss.’

  Abby’s head spun as she took in the news. She couldn’t bear to think of Tim as a victim. But with the blood and DNA sample, it all made sense.

  ‘The others are on their way,’ Stephen added.

  ‘You came here on your own just ‘cause you were worried about me?’ Abby asked, smiling.

  ‘Well…’ Stephen teased. He knew how Abby felt about him, and he had to admit he liked her company too. ‘You and the sea lions – I’d hate it if anything happened to them.’

  Abby felt like her heart was going to explode into thousands of pieces. As Stephen grabbed hold of her, she hoped for a second he was going to kiss her. But instead, he suddenly pulled her against the wall, indicating to her to keep quiet. A strange noise was coming from the end of the corridor.

  As Stephen watched breathlessly, a large creature crept into view on all fours, its strange growl emitting a clicking noise as it sniffed the air through its enormous nostrils.

  Abby’s eyes were wide with fascinated horror. They’d seen a lot of strange things come through the anomalies, but nothing like this. Its black body was shaped like that of a great ape, only much leaner, with leathery skin and a wide, scaly ridge running down its back instead of fur. And rather than toes, it had a cloven claw at the end of each limb. Its eyes were small slits set wide apart on either side of its head, and as it bared its razor-sharp teeth, drool dripped from its mouth.

  There was no doubt it was the Future Predator Helen had seen in the Permian.

  Abby and Stephen didn’t move a muscle. It moved closer, until they could smell the creature’s rancid breath.

  Then, without warning, lights flashed at the other end of the corridor as Captain Ryan and his men came running through the zoo. As Stephen pulled Abby to the ground, the beast leapt on to the wall just above them, swiftly making its way outside and back into the safety of the forest.