Day of the Predator

CHAPTER 75

2001, New York

Maddy looked over at Cartwright. He was with the two children and Sal, standing beside the half-raised shutter entrance, staring out at the jungle and eagerly waiting to see the spectacular sight of a new reality arriving from a distant past. Sal was doing a great job keeping them all over there, telling them all about time ripples and waves and her job as an observer.

‘You understand what you’ve got to do?’ she asked Liam quietly.

He nodded. ‘But are you sure it’s the right date?’

‘Well, I hope so. He said your fossilized message was discovered on that day. I presume he’s not lying. I’ve got the Glen Rose National Park entered in as the location. I’m sure he mentioned a river called the Paluxy River… so that’s what I’ve put in. And you’re looking for the two boys that found it.’

‘Boys? How old?’

‘I don’t know… You know, boys.’ She shrugged. ‘ Boy age, I guess.’

Liam glanced furtively over her shoulder at the others. ‘Well, then, what do they look like?’

She ran her hand tiredly through her frizzy hair. ‘Jeez… How the hell am I supposed to know!’ she muttered irritably, then immediately felt guilty and angry with herself. She looked at Liam… his bloodshot eye, the streak of white hair… and felt like a snappy cow. ‘I’m sorry,’ she sighed. ‘I guess they’ll look all excited and very pleased with themselves. OK?’

She turned towards the desk. ‘Bob, are we ready for a portal?’

› Affirmative. There is sufficient charge for this displacement.

‘OK.’ She nodded. ‘All right.’ She looked at Liam’s face again, pale like the other two, but not as bad. No nosebleeds, no apparent nausea or any other apparent haemorrhaging. ‘You sure you’re OK to go, Liam?’

He nodded. ‘I’m fine, so I am. Tired, I could sleep for a year, but I’m all right.’

Why not go in his place, Maddy? Look at him… look at the damage that last portal did to him. And now you’re sending him through again! She stilled that guilty voice in her head quickly; she needed to be right here, coordinating Becks’s and Liam’s bring-backs. It was all going to be rather tricky.

She wanted to tell him what she knew, what Foster had told her. She wanted to tell him so that at least he could decide for himself if it was worth it, killing himself slowly, one corruption at a time.

‘Shall we?’ he said.

She pressed a digital watch into his hand. ‘Six hours,’ she said softly, then glanced at the chalk circle and the concrete already gouged out of the floor in the middle. Liam understood. He had six hours back in 1941 and then she’d open the return window. He casually ambled across the floor towards the circle as Maddy silently initiated the countdown sequence. The machinery began to hum — there was no way to avoid that — and the ceiling light flickered and dimmed.

She was hoping Cartwright would be too engrossed in listening to Sal and watching for the time wave to immediately notice something was going on, but the wily old man spun round and looked back into the arch. ‘What’s going on?’

Liam stepped smartly into the chalk circle just as a sphere of air began to twitch and fidget around him.

‘What’s happ- Hang on, what’s…?’ His eyes widened. ‘Where the HELL IS HE GOING?’

Maddy ignored him. Cartwright reached into his jacket pocket.

‘No! Don’t shoot!’ shouted Maddy, realizing what he was going to do. ‘Please!’

Cartwright pulled out his pistol, straightened his arm and aimed. ‘STOP IT, NOW!’

‘I can’t! Please… I can’t stop it. Don’t sh-’

He fired a single shot at Liam just as the sphere wobbled and collapsed in on itself with a puff.

1941, Somervell County, Texas

At the very same moment that Liam landed on a riverbank of pebbles something whistled past his ear and off into the sky.

‘Jay-zusss!’ He ducked and then looked around, wondering what the hell that was. He saw nothing, just a narrow river, rolling sedately along a shallow creek of sandy-coloured rock, small and mean-looking yew trees and arid tufts of sun-bleached grass that hissed softly alongside the soothing gurgle of water.

Perhaps a bird? A bee? A fly?

It could have been. A fast one, though.

His mind turned to more pressing matters — which way to go? He had no idea, no idea at all, other than to look out for a pair of boys. He looked at the digital watch, Maddy’s. She’d set a countdown on it: five hours and fifty-nine minutes.

‘Right,’ he muttered to himself, ‘where do I start?’

A midday sun beat down on his head as he stood there, unsure which way to turn. He decided, before walking anywhere, that he was going to mark the window location with a small cairn of rocks: a dozen fist-sized worn and rounded rocks stacked in a small pyramid. Big enough so that he wasn’t going to walk right on past and miss it.

Then, caught on a lazy midday breeze that had the nearby yew trees stirring and hissing, he heard the faint call of a voice and what sounded like a splash of water.

That way… downstream. He set off, walking along the riverbank, shingle and pebbles clattering underfoot. For a moment he recalled an image of that huge sweeping bay and the calm prehistoric green sea spreading out to an infinite horizon on his right.

It was here. Right here, an incredible tropical sea.

Quite a breathtaking notion, that… in the vast dimensions of geological time, even seas and oceans, just like any other living creature, had lifespans that came and went.

He heard voices again, echoing up the creek. The sound of children playing, larking about.