Day of the Predator

CHAPTER 29

65 million years BC, jungle

Liam heaved a sigh of relief as he caught a glimpse of the raging river and the long slender trunk that bridged one rocky bank to the other. It appeared Becks had finished her work on the bridge. It could now be raised, courtesy of a crudely rigged counterweight of a bundle of logs. They were tied together and connected to a stout rope of a dozen twisted vines, which ran up and over the thick branch of a canopy tree that stretched a sturdy limb out above the river. The other end of the rope was tied round the end of their ‘drawbridge’, a thirty-foot trunk as straight as a javelin and a slender foot in diameter. It was thick enough to take their weight, one at a time, but not so heavy the supporting branch above would snap as it was raised.

One by one, they stepped on to the log, and cautiously inched their way over the tumbling froth a few feet below. Liam was the last one over and, as he anxiously awaited his turn, he scanned the wall of jungle behind him, wary that, being the last one on this side of the river, he might prove a tempting morsel for some hungry beast.

But his turn came, and a few moments later he was on the far side with the others. ‘OK, let’s raise the drawbridge.’

Between them they pulled on the counterweight of logs, and with the creak of stressed vine rope and the branch above taking the burden, the bridge rose up until it was approximately at an angle of forty-five degrees.

‘Good enough.’ Liam looked up at the sky. The sun was beginning to head for the horizon and long dark shadows stretched across the river. Through the trees and tufts of bamboo thickets on their side of the river, from the direction of the clearing, they could hear the echoing hack of blades on wood: the others working on their camp, their home… a temporary home, Liam found himself hoping. The sound of activity was reassuring.

‘I hope somebody’s got the kettle on for us,’ said Liam.

A minute later they were just stepping out into the broad clearing, keen to see what the others had managed to construct in their absence, when they heard a scream echo across the open space.

‘Uh?’ uttered Lam.

On the far side Liam could see movement. Someone running. It was the girl Laura, running, staggering, stumbling to her knees, then back up on her feet. Behind her, pursuing with a swift purposeful stride, a figure all in black with flaming red hair: Becks.

‘Whoa… catfight,’ uttered Jonah, grinning like an idiot.

‘Hey!’ Liam called out. ‘What’s going on?’

Laura glanced his way and changed direction towards him. Becks was swiftly closing the gap. He noticed her holding one of their bamboo spears in one hand, the tip bright red with a splash of blood.

What the…?

He ran forward. ‘Becks! What’s going on?’

Closer now, he could see a long gash down Laura’s left arm, blood splattered across her bright pink sweatshirt.

‘Oh God! Oh God! She’s trying to kill me!’ Laura screamed. The rest of the group on the far side of the clearing, where a row of simple frames of wood had thus far been erected, were watching the scene in stunned, uncomprehending silence.

Finally Laura collapsed in a pile at Liam’s feet, clasping at her arm and looking back in panic as Becks strode forward. ‘She speared me!’ gasped Laura. ‘Just walked up and stabbed me for no reason!’

Becks came to a halt several yards away and looked calmly at Liam. She even smiled her faltering horse smile, lips slowly stretching to reveal a row of perfect teeth. ‘Hello, Liam,’ she said.

‘Jay-zus, Becks! Why’d you go and attack the poor girl?’

‘Mission priority. She has to be terminated.’

‘ What? ’

Becks nodded at the others standing just behind Liam. ‘All of them as well. The others, and you, Liam.’ He thought he detected a hint of regret in her voice as she said that. ‘After that, I must purge this area of evidence of human occupation. Then I must self-terminate.’

‘What? That’s crazy!’ said Lam.

‘Becks, listen,’ said Liam, spreading his hands slowly. ‘This is not necessary, all right?’

She took another two strides forward, reached down and grabbed Laura round the throat, and effortlessly lifted her up off the ground, her legs kicking in the air. Laura scrabbled and scratched at her face, one hand finally grabbing a fist of Becks’s red hair.

‘BECKS! STOP IT!’

Liam’s command halted her. She looked at him, confused. ‘It is a mission priority. We have already caused unacceptable levels of time contamination.’

‘PUT HER DOWN!’

Becks stared at him, but remained poised and perfectly still, Laura still dangling, kicking, struggling and slowly choking; the sharp ragged point of the spear held in Becks’s other hand hovered mere inches away from her throat.

‘THAT IS AN ORDER!’

Becks’s eyes slowly panned from Liam to Laura then back again. Her eyelids fluttered momentarily then finally she said, ‘Affirmative.’ She released her grip on Laura and the girl tumbled heavily to the ground, Becks’s red wig wrenched from her bare head, still clasped by Laura’s bloody fingers.

‘Now, put that spear down!’ snapped Liam.

She obediently released her tight grip and it clattered on the soft ground.

Laura’s breath chugged in and out in whooping gasps while the others stared in stunned silence at Becks and her bald head, already sporting a quarter-inch fuzz of dark hair.

‘Oh my God! She’s a complete freakin’ psycho!’ said Lam.

Behind him, Liam heard Jonah mutter, ‘Jeez… got that right, dude.’

Becks was staring at him. There was something in those cold grey eyes, something that looked like guilt, regret. Possibly even sadness. Like a scolded baby in that moment — that stunned could go either way moment — just before the face creases up and the tears and wailing come.

‘No,’ said Liam, ‘no, she’s not.’

‘She’s not a psycho?’ said Lam. ‘Sure about that?’

Liam nodded. He could see muscles twitching in Becks’s face. Confusion, desperation… her mind struggling to reconcile conflicting priorities: Liam’s direct order versus hard-coded mission protocols.

‘She’s just doing what she thinks is right. She’s following her programming.’

Franklyn cocked his head. ‘Programming?’

The fire crackled noisily, illuminating their faces as they gathered in a circle round it like so many amber-coloured ghosts in a graveyard. The jungle, beyond the thrown flickering glow of light, was dark and noisy with the far-off echoing cries of creatures calling to each other.

‘But how can we be sure that… thing won’t just freak out on us again?’ asked Kelly. He cast a glance at Becks standing several dozen yards away out in the darkness, motionless, dutifully keeping watch for any signs of a night predator entering the clearing.

‘She just won’t,’ said Liam.

‘Yeah, well, that doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.’ Kelly threw a small branch on the fire, sending a cascade of sparks up into the pitch-black sky. ‘I mean, it’s not like you knew she was going to attack Laura earlier.’

Liam looked at the girl. Her arm was bandaged with a strip of cloth torn from her sleeve. The black girl, Keisha, had done a good job with the dressing. It hadn’t been a particularly deep gash, but luckily hadn’t severed an artery. Laura must have been incredibly lucky; Becks had stumbled on the uneven ground as she’d lunged with the spear. Laura had been fortunate Becks hadn’t managed to get hold of her. Liam had seen enough of Bob in action to know that, male or female, these support units were lethal killing machines up close and personal.

‘She won’t,’ said Liam again. ‘I’ve discussed the situation with her.’

‘Discussed the situation?’ snorted Jonah. ‘Can’t you just pull some sort of plug on her? I mean… she’s a robot, right?’

‘No.’ Liam shook his head. ‘She’s not that sort of a robot. Not all wires and motors and metal bits. She’s an organic unit, what the agency call a genetically engineered unit.’ He looked around at the pale faces. ‘You’ve heard of that term, have you?’

‘Well, duh,’ sighed Keisha. ‘Any kid who watches the Cartoon Channel knows that term.’

Liam shrugged apologetically. ‘Anyway, she’s what we call a meat robot. Flesh and blood, so she is. But she has a real computer up in her head.’

‘And what? You sayin’ her programmin’ made her go for Laura with the spear?’ said Juan.

‘That’s right. She was concerned about all the contamination we were causing, and without me being there to discuss it with her she had to make a decision on her own.’

‘Concerned?’ said Jonah ‘ Concerned? Dude, I’d hate to see what she’s like when she’s really mad at something.’

Liam ignored that.

‘Liam, you said contamination,’ said Kelly. ‘You mean, creating evidence we’ve been here? Like our camp and the bridge?’

‘That’s right. Every cut, every scrape, every footprint — in fact, everything we do — just our being here could potentially alter history in such a way that the future is totally destroyed.’ Liam glanced at the motionless silhouette of the support unit standing guard in the middle of the clearing. ‘It’s a basic command for her… like, I suppose, like one of the ten commandments would be to us.’

‘Thou shalt not mess around with time,’ chuckled a dark-skinned boy called Ranjit. ‘That would be a cool eleventh commandment to have.’

‘Yeah,’ said Jonah. ‘Thy shalt not kill your ancestor, for he begets — ’

‘You think it’s funny?’ cut in Howard sharply. The others looked at him, taken aback at the outburst. Thus far he’d been one of the quieter members of the group. ‘You think messing with time is just some sort of a game? It’s the most insane thing man has ever done.’ He stopped himself short. Took a breath and dialled it back a bit. ‘What I’m saying is… it’s just pretty insane, time travel.’

Liam nodded sombrely. ‘He’s quite right. It is insane. Although a man called Waldstein is the first man to travel through time — ’ he looked at Edward, the smallest face around the fire — ‘it all begins with you. It’s all based on work that you will do one day.’

‘So… theoretically,’ said Kelly, ‘if Edward had, for example, died in that explosion back in the reactor, and not gone on to do his work, then this Waldstein guy would not have invented a time machine?’

‘And we’d not have been blasted back into dinosaur times?’ said Laura.

Liam noticed one or two heads turning towards the young boy, giving him a long, silent stare that looked like careful deliberation. Liam could see where this conversation might go.

‘There can only be one correct history, one correct timeline. And, whether we like it or not, that timeline includes an Edward Chan who becomes a maths genius, and a Mr Waldstein who makes that first machine, so he does. That’s how it goes. That’s how it has to go.’ Liam stared at them all, each in turn. ‘And that’s why you can trust me… why you can trust Becks, to be sure. Our primary goal now is to make sure that this young lad gets back home to 2015 to do what he has to do. And that means the rest of you too.’

‘So, if there’s, like, a primary goal… then there’s a secondary goal,’ said a dark-skinned girl with long black hair and a pierced upper lip that glinted with several metal studs. It was the first time he’d heard her speak today. Quiet, pensive, she reminded him a little of Sal. She was still wearing her name tag: JASMINE.

‘There’s no other goal, Jasmine, I promise,’ said Liam. ‘Me and Becks want to get you all back home, so we do.’

But that’s not strictly true, is it, Liam?

He and Becks had spoken in private earlier. He’d managed to reason with her calmly — to talk her down from proceeding any further with her self-decided mission objective to kill them all, then herself. But it was a compromise. A perfectly logical compromise that successfully reconciled the conflicting protocols in her head.

‘ In six months’ time,’ he’d agreed with her, ‘ if they haven’t rescued us by then, before your six months is up and you have to self-terminate… then, yes, you’re right… I suppose we’d all have to die. I’ll even help you.’ He’d smiled at her. ‘ Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that, eh? ’

The campfire crackled noisily.

‘So, there you go, all friends now, right?’ said Jonah. ‘Even robo-girl.’ He grinned. ‘Now about a nice sing-song. A round of “Kumbayah”?’ he added sarcastically. ‘I’ll take the lead. Kumbayah, my Lord!.. Kumba- ’

Someone threw a chip of dried dino dung across the fire at him.