Rude Astronauts (36 page)

The second canoe was almost abreast of their own when Pete looked through his binoculars to his right and suddenly pointed. “Over there!” he whispered urgently. “There’s the pack!”

Denny looked around. At first he didn’t see them … then he did, and he involuntarily sucked in his breath. The three long necks of Jason, Freddie and Michael rose above the high yellow grass, about two hundred yards away. It didn’t seem as if they had seen the canoeists as they slowly moved across the floating prairie. As Bernie Cooper had pointed out earlier, the dinosaurs seemed to have learned not to stick too closely together lest their combined weight cause them to sink through the peat moss. It was almost a pastoral scene: the bright clear sky, the noonday sun, the high grass wafting in the soft breeze, the distant figures of the dinosaurs. Like a landscape painted by an insane Winslow Homer.

As he watched, one of the deinonychi—Freddie, he reckoned, since it was in the lead—suddenly darted forward, its head snapping downward into the grass. A moment later Freddie reared up again, this time with a small animal caught in its jaws; a raccoon maybe, or perhaps an otter which had not moved fast enough. Freddie’s head arced back and they heard the wet leathery snap of its teeth as the unlucky creature was eaten alive. Then the dinosaur kept moving as Michael and Jason caught up with him, their heads slowly swiveling back and forth in search of more prey. The boys were out for a midday stroll. Don’t mind us. Just looking for an appetizer or two before we go have a steer for lunch …

Denny was distracted by the sudden bump of the bow prodding against the shoreline; while he had been watching the pack. Tiffany had slowly paddled them to the shore. “Get out and pull us up,” she said softly, pulling up her paddle and carefully laying it in the canoe.

His eyes widened. “Are you kidding?” he protested. “The pack’s right over there!”

“Get out and pull us up, Denny,” she repeated. The scornful look in her eyes told him that she wasn’t joking, and as the second canoe nosed into the shoreline next to them, Pete Chambliss was already loading a fresh disc into his Nikon. Joe Gerhardt half-stood in the bow, quickly scrambled forward with his hands on the gunnels to keep the canoe steady, and clambered off the front of the canoe onto the ground. He shot a look at Denny which relayed an unspoken admonition: “Kid, I’m not going to shepherd your camera-happy boss all by myself. Get moving.”

“I hope you do know how to use that thing,” Denny muttered back, meaning Gerhardt’s MAC-10. Gerhardt said nothing, but fitted the radio over his head again and murmured something into the mike. Denny laid down his own paddle and carefully stood up to crawl out of the canoe. He managed to get out without tipping the canoe, then he grabbed the prow and hauled the front of the canoe onto the ground.

As Nixon began to crawl across the lashed-down camping gear in the middle of the canoe, Denny tentatively took a few steps forward. The mossy ground squished and rolled under his feet as if he were walking on a feather mattress; it was no wonder that it was called trembling earth. Watching his feet, he took another few steps, then his right boot abruptly sank to his calf in the ground as it found a weak spot in the peat moss. He swore and pitched forward, throwing out his hands to catch himself; the sharp, serrated edges of some weeds cut against his palms, making him cuss and flounder some more before Tiffany grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him erect.

“Cut it out, willya?” she hissed in his ear. “Test the ground with your foot before you put your weight on it … and keep your voice down.”

“Not that it matters,” Gerhardt said in a slightly louder voice. “They’ve spotted us.”

Denny looked up again and felt his heart freeze. The pack had stopped moving and now they had each looked around, straight in their direction. As he watched, Freddie began to slowly move towards them, followed on either side by Michael and Jason. Triangle formation, just as Andy the researcher from Team Colorado had said yesterday.

“This is a really stupid idea,” he said to no one in particular. “Let’s get back in the canoes.”

But Pete Chambliss was already stepping past him and Tiffany, holding his camera between his hands as he negotiated his way through the tall grass. Joe Gerhardt moved to his side, pulling the MAC-10 from his shoulder holster and cradling it in his hands. “It’s all right,” Tiffany said. “The gronkers will keep them at bay. Don’t worry about them. Just try to relax.”

“Sure. Right.” Tiffany was already walking away, following the senator and the Secret Service escort. Steinberg looked back once at the canoes—an office in the White House couldn’t be worth this crazy shit—but then he took a deep breath which did little to steady his nerves and stepped into the path made by the naturalist, as the four of them slowly approached the pack.

Five feet away from the canoes, ten feet, twenty … the three dinosaurs were still moving toward them, and although they seemed to be keeping their own distance, the gap between them had shrunk to only a few hundred feet. They gradually moved through the high grass like reptilian emissaries from a distant time. It was not at all like yesterday, when they had been separated from the pack by the tall platform and the security fence. This was to be a face-to-face encounter, and Denny was all too aware that Freddie was his own height; just tall enough to snap out and tear his head off. They were man-sized, but their relative lack of stature was not deceptive. These were not men, or even alien lizard-men out of some Hollywood space opera. They were born killers; in their own epoch, they had ganged up on dinosaurs four times their size and ripped them to shreds.

But they’ll stay back, he reminded himself. Tiffany’s right. That’s what the gronkers are for. Team Colorado’s gotten closer than this without any problems. Don’t worry about it. Yet he found that his feet refused to move any further, that he couldn’t look away from the pack as it moved closer, closer … Transfixed despite himself by their awful beauty, he barely noticed that Tiffany had paused to let him pass her.

Ahead of him, he heard the click and whirr of Pete’s camera as the senator stopped to shoot more pictures. “Absolutely incredible,” Chambliss said softly. “Just wonderful. It’s like they’re just posing for …”

Then, all at once, the pack charged.

3. The Smoking Gun

When he awoke again, it was to cool, crisp sheets against his naked skin, to the acrid smell of antiseptics mixed with the foreign yet unmistakable odor of dead flesh, to muffled voices and a strange
pat-pat-pat
of some liquid dripping onto a tiled floor.

“Oh, Christ, there’s not much left.”

“Do the best you can.” He vaguely recognized Bernie Cooper’s voice. “When the feds get here they’ll want everything in situ that they can get for their …”

“Feds? Secret Service? Jesus, Bernie!”

“Secret Service, FBI, Interior, probably the Army and Navy and Air Force too for all I know. … I’ve just been told to keep everyone in the refuge and let nobody leave. It can’t be helped, Bob. The shit’s hit the fan.”

He opened his eyes to harsh fluorescent lights reflecting off formica and stainless steel. The light hurt his eyes and his head felt as if it were encased in taffy-soft cinderblocks; it was hard to think, but he gradually perceived that he was in the compound’s clinic. Soft pressure across his forehead and the white edge of gauze just above his brow told him that his head had been treated as well. He moved his head to the right and saw that a screen had been moved into place across one half of the room; the voices came from the other side of the screen.

“If they want us to leave everything alone until they get here, then why are we …?”

“Because I don’t want us to look entirely incompetent, that’s why. It’s going to be bad enough as it is without … look, I know they’re in bad shape, but I want at least a preliminary autopsy performed before they get here, so just …”

“I can’t do that, Bernie. You know I can’t. I could lose my license.” A slow intake of breath. The sound of a sheet being pulled back again. “God damn, just look at him. This is one fucking mess we’re in. Did we get everything from the site?”

“Everything. Their personal effects are over there … the survivors, too, and we’re not to touch them under any conditions. Especially not the gronkers, although we could only find the one belonging to the Secret Service guy.”

“Where’s the … no, don’t tell me. I’d rather not know.”

The slow pattering continued, just under the sound of the voices. He looked down, peering beneath the bottom of the screen. He could see two pairs of shoes on either side of the wheels of a gurney. Blood was pooled at their feet, seeping into the cracks of the white-and-tan tiled floor, dripping from the tabletop above.

“What about the other two? Nixon and … aw, what’s his name, the senator’s flunky?”

“Shaddup. He’s right over there. They made it out okay. I thought the kid had a concussion, but it was just a bad cut and shock. She had to be stitched up some but otherwise she’s fine. I saw her out in the corridor just a few minutes ago.”

Tiffany. He had to tell someone what was going on. He opened his mouth to speak, but all he could manage was a dry, inaudible rasp. As he swallowed, trying to get his voice to work again, he heard the sound of a sheet being pulled forward again.

“Let’s get out of here. I haven’t seen anything like this since I interned in an emergency room. Where is everyone, anyway?”

“Down at the dock. We managed to get Freddie’s body out of there before the animals got to it. I didn’t want it on the landing pad, so that’s the only place we can examine it.”

“More attention being paid to that damn lizard than …”

He heard them walk across the room, then the sound of a door opening and swinging shut. Tiffany. He turned his head again, saw another gurney parked next to his own, but the covers were pushed aside and there was a warm dent in the sheets where she had once lain. She was gone … but he had little doubt that she would return. He had seen the look on her face in the Osprey.

He had to get up. Get up, get dressed, go tell someone what he knew before she came for him. Denny sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and stumbled to the sink across the room. He cupped some water in his mouth and swallowed gratefully; his throat was no longer quite so parched, his head a little clearer. He was naked; second order of business to get on some clothes. Didn’t the doctor say that his stuff was over there?

He walked across the cold floor to push aside the screen. Two bodies lay side-by-side on adjacent gurneys. He fought back the urge to vomit and was thankful for the sheets that covered them; he could tell that not much was left of either corpse.

There were four large plastic boxes on the counter under the medical cabinets; in them was the clothing he had worn, plus those belonging to the others. As he pawed through one of the boxes, groggily searching for his undershorts, he found the gronker he had been wearing. The one marked NIXON; he picked it up, stared blearily at it, then placed it on the counter and reached into another box. Here, the one Tiffany had worn, marked STEINBERG. Good; he would need to show them to Cooper and the others to convince them of his story.

He placed her gronker back on top of her clothes, then returned his attention to his own clothing. He was about to step into his trousers when he heard the curtain slide back behind him. Denny began to turn around when the hard muzzle of a .22 Beretta was pressed against the side of his head and he heard Tiffany Nixon whisper, “Don’t move.”

He gasped involuntarily, but froze in place. “Tiffany,” he murmured, not daring to even look back at her. “Figured you might be …”

“Shut up,” she hissed. “Just get dressed.”

The barrel of the revolver was removed from his skull and he heard her step away. He glanced across the counter, looking for something nice and lethal to throw at her. “Don’t even think about it,” Tiffany commanded, her voice raised a little more loudly now. “The building’s empty, so no one will hear if I shoot you in the back. Just hurry up and get dressed. We’re going for a little walk in the swamp, you and I.”

Denny slowly nodded his head. He didn’t turn around, but he heard a creak as she bumped against one of the gurneys. As he pulled up his pants, though, he happened to look at the reflective glass of the medical cabinets above the counter and found that he could see her clearly. Tiffany was still behind him, with the gun trained at his back, but with her free hand she had pried open the blinds of the far window and was peering out, undoubtedly watching the people who were gathered around the corpse of the dinosaur by the boat docks. Going for a walk in the swamp. Denny knew exactly what she was implying. “Tiffany,” he continued, “you don’t want to …”

Her face moved away from the window, and he quickly looked away from the medical cabinet. “I’m not kidding, Steinberg. Shut up and put your clothes on.” Then she was looking out the window again. “And hurry up.”

“Okay, all right.” He slowly let out his breath as he zipped his fly. No way out of this. Christ, pal, she’s got you dead in her sights. He reached for his shirt, and as he did he glanced down at the counter … and spotted the two gronkers he had just found.

Or was there a way out? Holding his breath, studying her reflection in the medical cabinet, Steinberg carefully reached for the gronker with his name written on it.

From the testimony of Alex J. Cardona; Director of Forensic Sciences, Federal Bureau of Investigation:

SEN. HOFFMANN: Mr. Cardona, I think I speak for the rest of the Commission members when I say that we appreciate the hard work the Bureau has done in this case. For the public record, can you summarize the findings of your lab?

CARDONA: Certainly, Senator. We …

KAPLAN: Excuse me, Mr. Cardona. I believe Dr. Williams has an important question to ask first before you go on. Fred?

DR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Cardona, the senator from California does not speak for us all, I’m sad to say. I’ve read your draft report to the Commission and I’m dissatisfied with one of your key findings. There is an unanswered question which interests every American.