Cutter heard Koshkin let out a curse, and the ATV came to a halt. He moved up to the driving position.
“What is it?” he asked, but he could immediately see.
A herd of Torosaurs was moving down the watercourse towards them. There were dozens of them, ranging in size from juvenile calves to colossal mature adults.
“You don’t want them to stampede,” Cutter advised Koshkin.
“I’m well aware of that,” Koshkin snapped.
“I’m serious,” Cutter persisted.
“We’ve got two main battle tanks to protect us,” Koshkin pointed out.
“Leaving aside the fact that I don’t want you killing any of these creatures,” Cutter continued, “we really do not want them to break. The tank crews will be fine. They’re riding inside armoured hulls. But we’re in lightweight ATVs. You saw for yourself what one of those did to a 4×4.”
The herd had sensed the vehicles ahead of them, and came to a stop about thirty metres away across the stone bed. They evidently didn’t like the smell, or the engine noise, or simply the sight of the four heavy machines. Patterns of lowing and snorting started up, and they could hear them even through the ATV’s plated hull.
The bull Torosaurs had formed a defiant line at the vanguard of the herd, and were beginning to display, swinging their huge crests and horns from side to side. Their frills flushed pink, and dark, and threaten-ing dots appeared in the middle of their crest lobes.
“We’re going to have to back up,” Cutter said.
“I’m not backing up,” Koshkin stated.
Yushenko moved to open the side door.
“I want to get some footage,” he said.
“No!” Bulov, Suvova and Abby all chorused.
“Stay inside,” Cutter said firmly. He looked at Koshkin. “Let’s not all be idiots. Get us rolling back slowly.”
Koshkin looked doubtful.
“Too late,” Abby said. She pointed through the windscreen. The herd had started to move again. “Presumably, they’ve given us a sniff and they think we’re safe enough,” she added.
“Okay, don’t move now,” Cutter said. “Just let them go by.”
Koshkin lifted the radio hand set to rap out an order. The first of the big bulls was drawing closer, head down, puffing throaty sounds out of its gullet. It passed to the right of the lead ATV, moving between it and one of the T-90s. Almost immediately, an even larger creature went by on their left. It blocked out the sun for a moment. They could hear stones crunching under the creatures’ feet.
“Steady, steady...” Cutter murmured.
There was a bang. It was sudden, and very loud, and came as a complete surprise. For a moment, no one knew what had happened. Then the situation deteriorated very quickly indeed.
One of the tanks had fired its main gun into the herd. The shell had killed two creatures instantly, but the main effect of the noise and flash was to spur the already tense creatures into a panic.
“The idiots!” Cutter spat, swearing.
The Torosaurs began moving as fast as they could to get past the machines and out of the gorge. The mature bulls bolted. Cows and calves began to squeal and grunt in distress. The ground began to shake.
“Hold on!” Cutter yelled.
The herd poured past them, a river of horns and plate. Crest frills and shoulders barged and thumped against the sides of the ATV, rocking it hard. Dents appeared in the skin of the hull. Suvova cried out as a slit window beside her shattered, but the horn withdrew without becoming lodged. Huge creatures sideswiped the vehicle as they went past, trying to get between the tanks and the ATVs.
The tip of a horn suddenly punched through the side of the hull, and cut a half-metre long tear in the metal before vanishing. The entire ATV jerked backwards as a bull adult butted the front fender with his nose horn in an effort to clear a path.
Another creature hit the left-hand side of the ATV so hard that Yushenko was thrown off his feet. He bounced off one of the body struts, and cried out as he cut the back of his hand trying to protect the camcorder.
“Stay down!” Abby hissed at him. “You can’t fall off the floor!”
Another horn tip stabbed through the side door. It twisted as it tried to disengage, and buckled the sliding door off its runner mechanism. The rubber seam around the door socket ruptured, and thousands of small, lubed ball bearings showered out of the seal.
Ignoring Abby’s advice, Yushenko tried to get up, but his feet shot out from under him as he stood on the scattered bearings.
“Stay down!” Bulov shouted. “Listen to the girl!”
Like Abby, Bulov and Suvova, Cutter was hanging on to a handrail strap. To his disbelief, he saw and heard the T-90 to their left fire into the herd again. The huge report rolled around the gorge like a thunderclap. Gunsmoke coiled off the massive tank like steam. Two more creatures barrelled into the ATV in terror.
“You’ve got to stop them from doing that!” Cutter yelled. “They’re going to get us killed!”
Koshkin was already bellowing into his handset.
“Nicky!” Suvova screamed.
Cutter looked up. A big female was coming right for them. Her crest was up, white with panic, and she was running virtually blind, her horns lowered to clear the way. It was going to be a head-on collision.
Cutter grabbed Koshkin and tried to haul him out of his seat. Beside them, the ATV driver uttered a cry of terror and began to bail, too.
But there wasn’t time.
The creature hit them.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The impact was square on. Despite their handholds, everybody was knocked off their feet. The ATV was thrown backwards three or four metres, and the front end buckled.
As the creature’s massive nose horn crushed the vehicle’s bull-bars and fender, the two huge brow horns plunged through the windscreen as neatly as if they’d been aimed, one each side of the central window pillar. The windscreen sections both perished in sprays of safety glass rubble, and the lethal horns kept going. One punched through the back of the driver’s seat, the other through the co-driver’s.
Koshkin was no longer sitting in the co-driver’s seat. Cutter had removed him, bodily, dragging the bigger man out of the way milliseconds before the spear of bone and keratin impaled the spot where he had just been sitting. Cutter hauled Koshkin so hard that the man ended up on his back on the floor of the ATV with the radio mic — its lead snapped — still in his hand.
The other horn missed the driver. In desperation, he had simply cowered wildly, and the tip had just missed his right shoulder before skewering the seat and snapping off the headrest.
The driver looked up, let out a nervous laugh of relief and then threw open his door and leapt out.
“Don’t!” Cutter yelled.
They saw the driver land on the shingle outside, rise and then vanish as a sub-adult male ran him down and carried him away on his horns. The passing force slammed the driver’s door shut, though it immediately swung open again, too deformed by the impact to fit in its frame any more.
The ATV shuddered as the female shook her head, and then the horns withdrew like blades out of a pair of stab wounds. There was another violent, glancing jolt, and then she was off on her way.
“Is that the last of them?” Yushenko asked.
It wasn’t. Another impact jarred them as one last stray creature ploughed past. The ATV was turned through ninety degrees and left rocking on its springs.
The stampede had cleared them.
They clambered out into the open air. Both of the ATVs were badly battered and dented, but Koshkin’s driver had been the only casualty. There was no sign of his body.
Abby tried to help Yushenko with the cut on the back of his hand.
“It’s nothing, it’s all right,” he told her, though the wound had bled enough to soak the cuff of his jacket. He’d covered the gash with a piece of gaffer tape.
“It needs to be cleaned,” she said.
“When
we get back,” Yushenko replied, “Antila can do it.” He hoisted the camcorder and began to film the damage inflicted to both ATVs. A nose horn had burst one of the thick tyres on the second vehicle, and the troops had dismounted to switch in the spare that was carried on the tailgate.
“Look at this,” Yushenko called. A metre-long section of Torosaurus brow-horn was sticking out of one of the T-90’s track guards. It had wedged there in a passing impact and snapped off. Cutter didn’t feel much like approaching the tank to examine it.
He could see up ahead on the stone bed the exploded carcasses of the creatures killed by the tank rounds.
They started moving again once the troops had changed the second ATV’s wheel. They advanced up the river gorge for about four kilometres. Despite being badly pummeled, both ATVs were serviceable, though Cutter had misgivings about the one they were riding in. Since the clash with the herd, its engine sound included a bad, persistent rattle, and it had become prone to misfires.
From the long stone bed of the tributary, they advanced into sparse forest glades where the fog still clung on despite the hour. Grey lichens caked the bark of the silent trees like mould, and skeletal spider ferns seemed to claw at the sheen of airborne moisture. Thin sunlight stabbed down through the canopy in rungs of yellow that appeared just a little brighter than the white mist, as if the light were watered down.
It didn’t last long, and soon the rain began to fall again.
“Over there,” Abby called out.
Through the smashed screen of the ATV, they could see a pair of duck-billed Hadrosaurs about half a kilometre away through the forest. They were smaller than the mature Hadrosaurs they had seen previously, though it was possible they were juveniles.
It was too far away for a clear identification. The Hadrosaurs seemed agitated, circling oddly through the stand of trees before finally breaking and bounding away through the trees as the vehicles drew near.
Koshkin was driving the lead ATV, and all the passengers had huddled up in slickers and coats. With the windscreen smashed, the cold air and the rain blitzed in, and the vehicle’s heaters were useless.
A few minutes after Abby had spotted the first duck-bills, they saw more of them. Another pair crossed their path, running fast, and then a trio went by through the trees, two mature adults curiously following a sub-adult. Every few minutes, a brass-band honk or snort echoed through the glades.
“The needle just rose,” Bulov said suddenly from the back.
“What?” Koshkin demanded.
Bulov was studying the geiger counter. It was clicking quietly, like a wood-boring beetle.
“It’s just a trace, nothing close to a concerning level, but the needle is lifting now,” he said.
“I’m not turning back,” Koshkin announced.
“No one’s asking you to,” Suvova said.
“We’re going to have to think about what we do soon,” Cutter put in. “It’s going to be dark in a few hours.”
“I’m not spending the night out here,” Bulov said flatly.
Then they came upon the dead.
TWENTY-NINE
Cutter jumped down out of the ATV and walked ahead through the glade. Apart from the occasional and now quite distant honk of the Hadrosaurs, it was very quiet. He could hear insects in the leaf mould, flies buzzing, the knock and pop of woodpeckers, and the patter of rain through the leaves.
He could smell death.
“How did this happen?” Abby whispered at his side.
From where they were standing, in front of the halted vehicles, they could count almost forty corpses, all Hadrosaurs. The bodies were scattered over a wide area through the forest, some half hidden in tangles of undergrowth. Cutter and Abby walked towards the nearest one, a sub-adult curled on its side with one hind limb raised and crooked, eyes staring, and a pallid blue tongue bulging from its bill.
Beards of black flies were busy around it, seething in the pale light.
“There’s not a mark on it,” Abby said.
Yushenko had come after them, the camcorder whirring. Behind them, Koshkin, Bulov and Suvova had spread out to look, along with soldiers from the second ATV. The tanks killed their engines and waited under the trees.
“I thought it was another display of Russian firepower at first,” Cutter said, “but you’re right. There are no wounds, no signs of damage.”
They moved to look at the next creature, and then another. There was a sour smell of ferment from their barrel stomachs. Flies covered their snouts and bellies like anthracite dust.
“I think it was the impact,” Cutter said at last. “I’ve seen this sort of thing before. Flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, all found dead. A close lightning strike will do it. It’s shock.”
Abby looked surprised.
“So the impact did this?” she asked.
Cutter nodded.
“The noise. The light-flash. The whole force of it. Herbivores are often quite timid creatures, and it doesn’t take much to upset them.”
“The meteor really accomplished this?” Yushenko asked, aiming the camcorder at Cutter.
“I can’t be certain, but I think so.” Cutter reached forward impatiently to push away the camcorder. “Point that thing somewhere else,” he snapped. Then he added. “It would also explain the bewildered behaviour exhibited by the other Hadrosaurs we’ve seen in the forest.”
“Couldn’t there be other explanations for the deaths?” Bulov asked.
“Like what?” Cutter turned to look at his fellow scientist.
Bulov paused, as though reluctant to say his next words.
“Radiation poisoning?”
Cutter shook his head.
“Is your counter picking up anything more than it was just now?”
“No,” Bulov admitted.
“Trace levels wouldn’t do this. Even if the levels were moderately harmful, radiation would take weeks or months to kill creatures this big. Look at the attitude of the bodies. These creatures died suddenly. They fell where they were standing. There was no staggering or limping, no sign of a progressive ailment before collapse. It was like the flick of a switch. Alive, then dead.”
Bulov didn’t seem convinced.
“What if it’s something else?” he persisted. He gestured with the geiger counter. “Something we can’t measure?”
“Your xenobacteria, eh, Grisha?” Yushenko asked.
“Shut up,” Bulov replied.
“I really don’t think so,” Cutter said. “Again, it would take time. It wouldn’t leave a mortality site like this.”
Koshkin suddenly raised the AK he was carrying to his shoulder.
“What is it?” Suvova asked.
He tilted his head to indicate.
“Something moving,” he said.
“Don’t shoot it,” Cutter said urgently, raising his hand. He edged forwards.
Scavengers were at work on the dead Hadrosaurs. Grunting, snuffling Didelphodons and other small, whiskery mammals were feeding on the carcasses, and so were some small, darting modern birds.
Then Abby spotted something else.
Three delicate, slender bipedal dinosaurs, each one no taller than a man’s waist, were picking meat from the corpse of a large adult Hadrosaur. The creatures were sinuous, with powerful hind legs, long, whip-like tails and narrow skulls. They were well equipped with cutting teeth and claws. At first, Abby thought them alarmingly similar to the Raptors she’d encountered inside an anomaly on a gruelling trip to an island off the coast of Ireland, but these were less fearsome. Their large, golden eyes were alert, and faced somewhat forward, fringed by bushy eyebrows of feathery fronds.
They clacked and whistled at the approaching humans, darting back, tails lashing, heads cocked, staring with fiercely intelligent gazes, unwilling to abandon their meal.
“Troodons,” Cutter whispered to Abby. “Oh, they’re amazing. Look at the eyes.”
The eyes were following them keenly. The Troodons chirred and piped, low
ering their necks to look inquisitively at Yushenko and his purring camera.
“Are they Troodons?” Suvova asked, stealing up beside them. “Nicky, are they Troodons?”
Cutter nodded. “Look how smart they are. They’re watching us as much as we’re watching them.”
The Troodons continued to snap and warble, warily skirting the human audience, taking morsels of food from the dead Hadrosaur as often as they dared. Their very deliberate gaze seemed to want to engage in a way that Abby had seldom seen except in primates.
“Just think what they might have become,” Suvova sighed.
“What do you mean?” Abby asked.
“If it hadn’t been for the extinction event, who knows where evolution might have taken them,” Cutter explained.
One of the Troodons suddenly yapped loudly, like a monkey. It raised its head and stared off into the denser undergrowth. Its two companions stopped feeding and did the same. All three noses turned in exactly the same direction. All three sets of eyes stared, unblinking. All three creatures froze, as attentive and indicative as pointing gundogs.
Then they were gone. At some subtle signal too small for human senses to detect, the three Troodons took off in a pack, and sprinted away through the trees, their thin tails high and waving.
“What made them start?” Yushenko asked, lowering his camcorder.
Cutter waited, staring into the trees.
“I don’t know, but there’s a lot of meat here if anything was hungry.”
“Baba Yaga?” Abby suggested with a cheery smile that took some effort.
Cutter shrugged, still watching the treeline.
“Let’s put it this way: the Troodons are smart. If they didn’t want to stay around here, they’d have a good reason.”
“Here! This way!”
Koshkin had gone on ahead. They could see him through the trees thirty or forty metres away. He was calling back to them.
“What’s he found?” Suvova muttered.
He called again, and waved at them to join him.
“Koshkin! Stay close!” Cutter yelled back. The Russian turned, waved again and pressed on through the forest, moving further away.