Day of the Predator

CHAPTER 58

65 million years BC, jungle

Kelly struggled up the steep incline, cursing under his breath as low-hanging thorned vines scratched at his face. Ahead he could hear the others pushing their way noisily uphill, the snapping of branches and vines, the clatter of dislodged rocks and soil rolling downhill.

‘Leonard? Edward?’ he called out.

‘Here,’ gasped Edward.

‘Come on, you need to pick it up… we’re lagging behind the others.’

Their sweat-drenched faces emerged through a curtain of waxy leaves. ‘I’m exhausted,’ gasped Howard. ‘My leg…’ He failed to finish his words between ragged puffs of air. He dropped uncomfortably to his knees on to an uneven bed of dried cones, twigs and jagged rocks.

‘It’s slowing him down,’ said Edward. ‘His ankle.’

‘I know, I know, but we can’t let the others get too far ahead.’

Around their campfire last night the discussion had turned to why those creatures hadn’t attacked them again, instead choosing to discreetly follow them at a distance. The conclusion they’d come to was that they were playing a tactical game, waiting for the group to become spread out enough to be able to pick them off one at a time. This morning as they’d made their way across the rest of the plain towards the last stretch of the journey, down into the jungle valley, they’d been almost comically bunched up.

But now, hacking their way through dense foliage, the group was getting dangerously strung out.

‘Come on, Edward, help me get him up.’

It was then that Kelly caught a glimpse through a gap in the leaves of some dark form fifty yards below them.

‘Oh Jesus,’ he hissed. ‘I saw something back there!’

‘What?’

‘Just… just… there’s no one else behind us, is there?’

Edward shook his head.

Kelly saw it again, a dark form hurrying between the trunks of two trees, then dropping down out of sight. ‘Oh my God! They’re down there!’

Howard was on his feet again.

‘Go! Go!’ snapped Kelly. ‘I’ll watch our backs!’

Edward and Howard stumbled forward again, Kelly reversing uphill, keeping his eyes on the downhill as he fumbled his way after them. Again, he saw it. Closer now, the flicker of dark olive skin, leaping between the gaps in the leaves. More than one of them, and moving so terrifyingly quietly. More worryingly… they didn’t seem to care that they were being seen.

Oh no.

Now they were in the jungle they were closing the gap.

I’m not going to outrun them.

He realized he stood a far better chance squaring up to them, perhaps even skewering one of them on the end of his spear. Maybe another kill would buy them another day of caution, enough time to get back over that river to the camp.

‘Come on,’ he hissed. ‘I know you’re down there!’

He heard Edward calling down. ‘Mr Kelly?’

‘Go!’ he shouted. ‘I’m just coming!’

The sound of the two boys’ clumsy staggering slowly receded from him until all he could hear was the occasional snap of a branch echoing off the tall stout trunks of the canopy trees.

‘Come on!’ he whispered again. He was surprised that it wasn’t abject terror he was feeling right now, but anger. Rage. He wanted to grab one of those scrawny things and rip its ridiculous marrow-shaped head off. His throat filled with a dry laugh.

Who do you think you are — Tarzan?

A far cry from his normal life: PR guy, meeting and greeting visitors with his cheesy tanned smile and his nice linen suit and expensive polo shirt. Right now, standing legs apart in trousers ripped off at the knees to make shorts, bare-chested, revealing a pale torso tufted with silver-grey hair and drooping man-boobs that spoke of a lapsed gym membership… right now he felt like that commando character in the film his sons liked, the one with the alien with a crab face and dreadlocks.

Oh yeah, he was ready for them.

‘Come on… you want some of me? Then COME ON!’

As if in answer, in the stillness of the jungle around him, he heard a soft, high-pitched voice.

‘… Come… on…’

Then ahead of him, as if it had appeared like the Cheshire Cat, only yellow eyes first instead of a big grin, there stood one of the creatures, a dozen yards downhill of him, cocking its head and studying him intently.

Kelly took several steps downhill, lunging with the tip of his spear. ‘Yeah? So that’s what you things look like up close.’

It recoiled at the sight of the spear, ducking back into a patch of waxy leaves, only to emerge again a moment later.

‘Oh yeah! I can kill you with this spear,’ muttered Kelly triumphantly. The spear seemed to be warding off the creature, its yellow eyes warily locked on the sharpened tip of bamboo.

The sound of the others moving through the jungle was all but gone now. He couldn’t afford to remain like this much longer. He needed a kill pretty soon, and for the rest of those things to hopefully bolt like rabbits.

‘Come on,’ he said quietly, ‘just you and me. Man versus ugly lizard thing.’

Its jaw snapped open and a dark tongue curled like a serpent inside. ‘… Lizz… arrrrd… ting…’ A surprisingly close approximation of his own voice.

‘So you do impressions, huh?’

The creature cocked its head thoughtfully, and it was then, as the creature was distracted, working out how to replicate what he’d just said, that he decided to make his move. He took a quick step and a short leap forward and thrust the spear hard. It caught something soft and the creature flapped and flailed on the end of the bamboo, howling with a voice that reminded him of the awful noise a dog can make if you step on its tail.

‘YES!’ he snarled.

First blood. He pulled the spear back out, leaving a large puncture wound in the creature’s belly, out of which thick dark blood began to sputter as it flailed in screeching agony on the jungle floor.

He was about to stab the thing again, but he felt the spear yanked roughly out of his hands.

‘Whuh?’

He turned to see a larger hominid, standing fully erect, maybe a foot taller than him. It snarled angrily, a rattling croak in the depth of its throat. He saw others behind it, then became aware of yellow eyes all around him.

The creature held his spear in both of its clawed hands, closely inspecting the long thick shaft, and then finally the sharpened tip, wet with dark blood. It looked at the tip, cocked its head and then looked down at Kelly, who now no longer felt so much like a commando. His knees buckled beneath him and he found himself in a helpless squat on the jungle floor.

Oh God, oh God…

‘Run,’ he whimpered. ‘Why aren’t you r-running? W-why aren’t you running?’ That was what was meant to happen. If this was a film, that’s what would happen, right? The weedy office guy finally finds his inner hero and saves the day?

‘I k-killed one… so why… w-why aren’t you r-running?’

The creature holding the spear took a step forward and once more inspected the bloodied tip of the bamboo before turning it round so that it pointed towards Kelly.

‘Oh… no…’ he found himself whimpering. ‘P-please…’

The normal everyday sounds of a Cretaceous jungle, the distant lowing of large ambling leviathans on the far-off plain, the chatter and squeak of small foraging creatures going about their business, were punctuated by a peculiar sound: the protracted, rattling scream of a human being. It echoed up through the jungle and out through the tops of the canopy trees, startling flocks of small anurognathus from their branches and into the air.