‘Yes,’ she replied absently. ‘What do you think, Bob?’
> This image looks most probable.
‘Quickly run through the rest.’
The slideshow ickered through the last sixty-eight images, one image per second. A juddering animation of time … the re slowly dwindling, dying and vanishing, the sky darkening until the nal few dozen images were simply a sequence of black pixels.
> Sequence complete.
‘Looks like we have a winner,’ said Cartwright. ‘Can we now proceed?’ He looked up at Forby. ‘You know? Before those hunters come knocking on our door?’
‘OK … let’s begin powering up, Bob.’
> A rmative.
Cartwright stood up straight, his arms caressing a sti back. ‘So … what happens next?’ He glanced at the large perspex tube. ‘They’re going to appear inside that?’
She shook her head and pointed to a circle of chalk scrawled across the concrete oor. ‘There. You and Forby need to stand wel clear of that.’
Cartwright’s man stepped away from the table and faced the circle, unslinging his assualt ri e in readiness. Maddy turned to regard both men. ‘I’d be happier if Mr Forby could take his nger o the trigger.’
Cartwright smiled. ‘Of course.’ He nodded at his man.
‘You can stand down, Forby. But … just stay alert, al
‘You can stand down, Forby. But … just stay alert, al right?’
Forby nodded, slackening his grip and lowering the barrel of his gun.
CHAPTER 70
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Liam lashed out with his hatchet, swinging the serrated metal blade in one hand and probing and prodding with his bamboo spear in the other. But the creatures dodged back with graceful agility, keeping their eyes on the weapons.
The re nearby had taken a rm hold of the branches that had been thrown on top of it. Occasional tongues of ame lashed up into the almost dark sky, and upward cascades of sparks danced like re ies. The ickering light, the warmth from the camp re and the dancing ames on the ends of their torches were causing the hominids’ probing at ack to falter.
‘GO AWAY!’ screamed Laura, prodding the aming end of her branch towards the nearest of them.
Becks, meanwhile, had managed to kil one of them and severely wound another. She could move forward with the same sudden speed as these things, catching them o balance. The wounded creature, now thrashing around on the ground, had lost a limb to one vicious roundhouse sweep of her hatchet. The creature she’d managed to grasp hold of moments ago had had its fragile spine snapped over her knee.
over her knee.
For her e orts she’d received a deep gash down one thigh. Her left leg was red with her own blood, soaking the sock rol ed over the edge of her combat boot almost black. The wound was already clot ing, but Liam couldn’t help notice how much blood she’d lost in that one sudden crimson gush and worried whether her engineered body was capable of replacing that blood with the same e ciency as it could staunch a wound.
The creatures probed and circled, clacking teeth and claws and mewling like foxes, occasional y testing them with a lunge and snap of jaws … so far the six of them were doing bet er than Liam could have hoped holding them back. But then he realized there was patient thinking going on behind what these creatures were up to. Wearing us down. That’s al they’re doing. Wearing us down.
His eyes picked through the lean olive-coloured hides, the ickering chitinous teeth, until he found the pack leader, holding that spear and looking strangely human because of that.
If we got him …
Yes, if Becks could somehow be fast enough to reach out past the others and grab him, and snap his neck in her hands, then the others would surely panic and run. He had a spear in his hand; he realized he could at least have a go. The pack leader was only fourteen or fteen feet away and, unlike the others, circling in that strange bobbing way, he stood perfectly stil , watching them with keen way, he stood perfectly stil , watching them with keen studious eyes.
Liam dropped his hatchet at his feet.
‘What are you doing?’ yel ed Jasmine.
‘Gonna get that one there,’ he said, nodding towards Broken Claw.
He steadied his balance on his back leg, lined up the creature staring at him with cocked-head curiosity down the length of the bamboo shaft and then hurled it like a javelin. A straight point-to-point throw instead of an arced trajectory. He surprised even himself with his accuracy and would probably have caught the thing square in its narrow chest, had not another smal er one bobbed in the way unintentional y. The sharp tip of the bamboo punched into its long bony skul and the creature crumpled to the ground with a short brit le scream that sounded almost like the wail of a human child.
Liam winced and cursed that he’d not got the leader. And now they were down to one spear.
Out of the black one of the smal er hominids suddenly ducked down low and swiped with a claw, knocking Akira o balance. Her leg buckled and, with a thin yelp, she dropped heavily into the dirt. Winded and worn out, she struggled to get up. Yet more spindle-thin arms emerged from the gloom and clawed digits wrapped tightly round her ankles and wrists.
‘No!’ she screamed, her pale face just two wide eyes and her mouth an ‘O’ of horror. Within a second, two beats of a pounding heart, they’d dragged her struggling form out a pounding heart, they’d dragged her struggling form out of the pal of ickering light, her screaming voice smothered, mu ed and then brutal y silenced. Becks took advantage of a careless incursion and lunged forward again, sweeping her blade and missing as the creatures leaped once more back out of her range.
‘We … can’t keep this … up,’ said Laura. ‘Not al … not al n-night.’
‘I know,’ replied Liam.
Just then something whistled past his cheek. ‘Whuh?’
He looked down and saw the shaft of a bamboo spear rat ling and exing on the ground. He looked up at the empty-handed pack leader and understood.
‘Oh no!’ he gasped. ‘You see that? It … threw … It threw it back.’
Good going, Liam. You just taught them how to toss a javelin.
‘Ah Jay-zus … if they start throwin’ missiles at us, we’l be in trouble.’
‘L-like we’re not already?’ mut ered Laura, lashing out at one of the smal er creatures bobbing too close. Liam watched the leader, moving around the rear of his pack, those yel ow eyes no longer on him but it ing across the ground, looking for something.
Looking for another spear to throw?
‘Information.’ Becks’s voice suddenly cut across the clacking and mewling. ‘I am detecting a burst of precursor particles.’
‘Is … is that good?’ asked Jasmine.
‘Is … is that good?’ asked Jasmine.
Liam nodded. ‘Yes! Oh Jay-zus, yes!’ He turned to Becks.
‘That’s a window, right? Tel me it’s a window and not another probe?’
‘A rmative. The con guration suggests an imminent window.’
‘YES! Oh yes!’ He grinned breathlessly.
‘We must move out of this space,’ said Becks. ‘They wil not open the window until it is completely clear.’
‘Right. Together,’ said Liam. ‘Keep together, back to back … move towards the re!’
The ve of them backed up towards each other, until they were almost bumping together. Then Becks stepped a lit le ahead, swiping and spinning a hatchet in each hand with bal et-like precision at the creatures. They wisely backed away from her, creating a path for them to shu e along in her wake.
‘Enough!’ barked Becks after they’d moved half a dozen yards across the clearing towards the increasing heat and ickering light of the camp re. She turned round to face them. ‘The extraction area is now unobstruct–’
It was then a sharpened tip of bamboo erupted through her abdomen, ripping through her esh and the tat ered material of her black crop top. Becks glanced casual y down at the bloody tip.
‘
Becks!’ gasped Liam.
With a blur of movement, she reached round and grabbed the creature that had skewered her from behind. She ipped it over her shoulder on to the ground in front She ipped it over her shoulder on to the ground in front of her. Its claws viciously ailed at her, shredding the skin on her forearm into tat y red ribbons. With a savage jerk she twisted its long head. The creature’s yel ow eyes and leathery black tongue bulged under the sudden tension in its slender neck. They heard a crackling sound and then the thing stopped squirming.
‘Becks! You OK?’ cried Liam.
‘Negative. The damage is signi cant,’ she replied, looking down at the point of the spear, stil protruding from her waist. One of her legs wobbled beneath her and she dropped to her knees.
‘BECKS! Hang in there!’ yel ed Liam.
Then they al felt it, the solid push of displaced air. Liam looked behind him and saw a shimmering sphere: the faint, dancing pat ern of a reassuringly familiar place –
the archway. ‘LOOK! That’s it! THAT’S THE WINDOW!’
Right now, in this instant, there were no creatures between them and their way home. ‘GO!’ Liam yel ed. For a moment the two remaining girls and Edward stared at him, unsure what he meant by that.
‘NOW!’ he screamed, his voice breaking. ‘THERE! …
RUN FOR IT! GO, GO, GO!’
Laura nodded, more than happy to obey. She turned on her heels and sprinted for the window. Jasmine fol owed suit. Edward lingered. ‘What about –?’
‘NOW!’ screamed Liam.
Edward turned and sprinted after the girls. Liam turned to Becks. ‘Come on!’
to Becks. ‘Come on!’
She struggled to her feet unsteadily. ‘Information: I have lost signi cant levels of blood –’
‘Just shuddup!’ he snapped, sliding his hands under her armpits and hefting her up. She staggered to her feet.
‘Leave, Liam!’ she ordered him. ‘Protect Edward Chan!’
Liam shot a glance over his shoulder. He could see Laura hovering just outside the spherical boundary of the window, hesitating to step in. Between her and them, Edward and Jasmine sprinting.
‘GODDAMMIT GO THROUGH!’ he shouted. ‘GO THR–… AGHHhhhh!’
He suddenly felt a searing pain through his leg and saw that one of the smal er creatures had grasped his shin; the razor-sharp edge of its claws sliced through his shorts, through his skin and now grated against his shin bone. Becks swiped with the hatchet stil in her left hand, and cut through the creature’s thin wrist. Its claws and its hand were stil at ached to Liam’s lower leg like the jaws of some tenacious decapitated soldier ant. Despite the grating agony in his leg, he dragged Becks with him, she barely able to drunkenly stagger, and yet stil swinging her blade in powerful y vicious yet groggy il -aimed arcs that thwacked and cracked against the hungrily grasping reach of those creatures determined enough to reach out for them.
Around him, Liam could hear a mixture of frustrated snarls and startled whimpers … and a sudden high-pitched scream that sounded unmistakably human. His mind solely scream that sounded unmistakably human. His mind solely on dragging Becks, heavy despite her slight frame, he could only eetingly hope that it wasn’t Edward Chan’s voice he’d just heard.
‘Mission priority –’ Becks began to chastise him.
‘JUST KEEP HITTING THE BLOODY THINGS!’ he
bel owed back at her. She shut up and obliged, swinging a booted foot out at a long bony jaw get ing ready to snap down on her blood-caked thigh. Her boot made heavy contact, and the skul spun on its turtle neck like a skit le, a handful of toothpick-sized teeth whizzing out into the dark.
Ten seconds later – ten seconds that to Liam could easily have been a minute or an hour, ten seconds of dragging, hacking, swinging, kicking and screaming – and al of a sudden he felt the hair on his head lift in response to the warm soup of energy and excited particles around him. Over his shoulder, he could see Sal, actual y see her shape, dancing and undulating as if seen through a thin veil of oil, and other shapes, Edward, Laura standing beside her. He could see the ickering blue zzing archway light that normal y irritated him so much as he read on his bunk.
‘WE DID IT!’ he found himself yel ing as his foot seemed to lose touch with solid ground and he felt that al too familiar nauseating sensation of fal ing.
CHAPTER 71
2001, New York
He felt his face smack against a hard concrete oor, the dead weight of Becks landing heavily on the top of his back, knocking the air out of his lungs.
‘Good God!’ he heard from somewhere nearby – a male voice he didn’t recognize.
While his eyes were stil seeing stars, he could feel Becks struggling to lift herself o his back. He heard the pounding rasp of laboured breath nearby, presumably, hopeful y, Edward and the other two. He could hear the faint muted chug of the generator in the back room. And through the stil -open portal hovering a couple of feet above the tangled pile of himself and Becks, the far-o sounds of a jungle night stirring to life … and the clickclacking and mewling of those things get ing louder, closer.
‘Ummpph … closhhhh the ’ortal!’ he mumbled into the oor, his bloodied lips stil mushed against the hard concrete as Becks struggled to lift her dead weight o him.
‘Liam? Is that you under there?’ Maddy’s voice.
‘Umpph. U’mm … yeshhh,’ he mumbled. ‘Closhhh the
’leedin’ ’ortal!’
Then al of a sudden he felt another heavy load land on Then al of a sudden he felt another heavy load land on his back, and the excruciating pain of three sharp blades digging deep into his left shoulder-blade.
‘What on earth is THAT?’ Another unfamiliar voice, another man’s voice.
The weight was gone as quickly as it had arrived and he heard the skit ering of claws across the concrete oor and the startled bark of one or two of those creatures echoing o the arched brick ceiling.
‘My God, Forby! Shoot it! SHOOT IT!’
The piercing scream of a girl, he couldn’t be sure who. Then, with a rat ling sigh, Becks nal y opped o the side of his back, her pale face spat ered with dark dots of drying blood, thudding to the oor beside his. Her grey eyes stared lifelessly back at him, as if looking at something far, far away. He managed to lift himself up on to his elbows, grimacing at the sharp pain in his shoulder and his head stil spinning from the impact of the heavy landing. He at empted to get his rst glance at what was going on around him.
Two of the creatures had managed to fol ow them through and were now darting in confusion and panic one way and then the other across the archway oor. He spot ed two men he didn’t recognize: one old, in a rumpled suit with a loosened tie dangling round his throat like a hangman’s noose. The other man was younger with buzz-cut sandy hair and an army-t physique beneath what looked like a baggy light-green boiler suit. He raised a gun.
‘Where did they go?’ snapped Maddy.
‘Where did they go?’ snapped Maddy.
They heard something fal o a shelf in a dark corner of the archway and rol noisily across the oor.
‘Over there!’
With trained, quick precision, Forby squinted down the weapon’s barrel and ipped the night-sight of his scope on. A soft green glow poured across his face as he slowly panned the weapon around the archway, then up towards the curved brick ceiling.
‘Ahh … I see one.’
Liam fol owed the direction of his gaze and thought he could just about make out some dark shape moving among a criss-cross of old rusting pipes and loops of electrical ex. Age-old dust and the grit from crumbling bricks and mortar trickled down past the softly zzing glow of the ceiling light, giving the hapless creature’s position away. The man red two aimed shots in quick succession. The creature screamed, then plummeted to the oor, bringing down a smal urry of dust and grit with it. It squirmed and screamed and drummed arms and legs against the oor, until the young man put a third shot into its long skul .
As the ec
ho of the last shot rat led around the brick wal s, Liam looked around him. He could see Edward and Laura huddled together by the displacement machine’s perspex tube, and Sal and Maddy beside the computer desk. Al of them looking from one dark recess to another, listening intently for the sounds of movement.
‘Where’s the other one?’ whispered Sal.
‘Where’s the other one?’ whispered Sal.
The man with the gun placed a nger to his lips to hush her. ‘Hiding,’ he whispered.
‘Wel , for Christ’s sake nd him, Forby!’ hissed the older man.
Liam watched as Forby stepped across the oor into the middle of the archway, continuing to slowly pan his gun, studying every nook and cranny around until nal y he came to a halt, aiming at the arched recess where their bunk beds were.
‘Uh-huh … I think he’s skulking under there.’
He squat ed down low and pumped his nger. A single shot danced and ricocheted under Liam’s cot, sparking against the metal frame.
It was then that something dropped down from above, past the ceiling light on to Forby’s back – a blur of movement and ashing of claws and teeth, a bright arc of crimson.
‘HEELLP M–!’ His voice was cut o as the creature’s claws ailed at his neck. He dropped the gun as he staggered and struggled to wrestle the thing o his back. Liam picked himself up and scrambled across the oor, reaching out for the heavy assault ri e as Forby’s legs buckled and he dropped to his knees, blood spraying from the multiple ragged wounds across his face and head. The creature leaped o his shoulders and darted towards the shut er door as Forby opped the rest of the way to the ground. Quite dead.
Liam raised the gun and pul ed the trigger. The gun Liam raised the gun and pul ed the trigger. The gun kicked his shoulder as he emptied the clip with a protracted and unaimed vol ey that produced a dozen showers of sparks and brick-red plumes of dust. With the gun angrily clicking in his hands, he nal y eased his nger o the trigger and peered through the gunsmoke at the inert body of the other creature. Now a shredded mess.