Z. Apocalypse (24 page)

Adam, his dad and Eve followed Oldman and Zoe as fast as they could across
the snowy plain, the cold turning their ragged breaths to steam.

‘All right,’ Oldman commanded once they were maybe three hundred metres clear of the wreck. ‘This ought to be far enough.’

He put Zoe down, who thanked him self-consciously and turned to her mother. Eve clutched her tightly, and smiled weakly at Adam and his dad. To their right, just a stone’s throw away, the huge body of a Z.
dactyl lay sprawled in an icy crater. Its body was a gory mess, a weighty bag of scales and flesh that had burst clean open.

I did that
. Adam closed his eyes.
I mean
, we
did
 . . .

‘Well, if we get desperate for shelter,’ said Oldman, ‘we can always do a Luke Skywalker and hide in that thing.’

Mr Adlar squinted at the monumental spread of crimson through the snow all around the body. ‘The force
of the impact destroyed it.’

‘And then some.’ Adam found he could take no
pride in what he’d done. He was glad a dusting of snow now hid the worst of the mess. ‘D’you think all those things are dead?’

‘It’s likely. Dead weight, falling from twenty thousand feet . . .’

‘You did a good job, kid,’ Oldman muttered.

‘It wasn’t just me,’ Adam shot back.

‘No, I know – Zed as well, of course. I just
hope he can protect us on the ground as well as in the air . . .’

‘I didn’t mean Zed either,’ Adam broke in. ‘When I was hooked up to Think-Send, I . . . I kind of made contact with someone who said Geneflow were going to be stopped, and then all the buildings fell down and . . .’

Mr Adlar peered at him. ‘Made contact with who?’

As Adam opened his mouth, a colossal explosion ripped the VC-25
apart and lit the landscape an incandescent orange. The blast threw Adam to the ground with a wave of heat that felt hot enough to strip his skin from his back. Rolling over, he found the pale blue sky replaced by a mass of smoke and flame billowing from the plane wreck, dancing over the desolation. His dad and Oldman lay sprawled in the snow beside him, while Eve cradled Zoe in her arms, both staring
wide-eyed at the wreck.

‘Is everyone OK?’ Mr Adlar asked hoarsely.

‘Maybe one day,’ muttered Zoe.

‘Well, this is terrific.’ Oldman scrambled up, coughing. ‘Just in case those Russian fighter planes have any trouble finding us, we’ve lit them a signal fire.’

The thick drone of engines stole into the frozen stillness.

Eve put an arm round Zoe on the ground. ‘Is that them now?’

Oldman shook
his head, staring about. ‘Sounds like a small plane, getting ready to take off.’

‘Geneflow’s airstrip,’ Zoe realized.

‘Josephs,’ breathed Adam. ‘It’s got to be.’

‘And we can’t stop her.’ Oldman raised his gun up to the sky, pointing as a small white passenger aircraft climbed into the air from behind the ruins of the city. ‘She’ll start this whole damn thing again somewhere else, and there’s
not a thing we can do . . .’

He broke off, as the churning pillar of smoke gusting up from the wrecked jet parted and a massive blur of scaly flesh scythed through high overhead. Mr Adlar cried out in alarm, Oldman swore, Eve screamed.

Zed
, Adam hoped for one desperate second.

But no, the wings were too large, the jaws long and pointed; a pterosaur was speeding from the smoke and flame like
some twisted phoenix.

Adam closed his eyes, overwhelmed by frustration and fear, unable to bear the scene before him any longer.
Then
 . . .
we didn’t stop all the Z. beasts. Josephs will escape, and now this one will complete its task as ordered
–
and kill us all
.

Chapter 26: Instinct to Survive

THE PTEROSAUR SOARED
low, blotting out the sun, bearing down on Adam and his friends.

‘Look! It’s Keera!’ Zoe screamed. ‘See? The scars on her wing . . .’

Adam felt a surge of impossible hope. ‘It
can’t
be her! She was so sick.’

‘That misfiring circuitry in her head was the only thing holding back her powers to regenerate.’ Mr Adlar stared up in wonder. ‘Her
healing cycle must’ve kicked into overdrive.’

‘And she came after us . . .’ The rest of Adam’s words were drowned out as the Geneflow plane flew overhead – and with a screaming howl Keera made straight for it.

‘She knows who’s on that plane.’ Zoe sounded utterly certain.

Keera was perhaps a third of the plane’s size but way more manoeuvrable – swooping underneath the starboard wing she doubled
back in a graceful turn and clamped her jaws down on the tail fin at
the rear of the plane. Then she bent her body double and dug her talons in either side; once secured, she started scissoring through the plane’s hull with those monstrous jaws.

Adam felt a shiver that went deeper than the cold as he watched Keera systematically demolish the plane, biting and tearing at its steel flanks. Suddenly
flames erupted from the shattered tail section, engulfing Keera completely so that for a moment she resembled some monstrous demon wreathed in hellfire. As she let go and flapped away her triumphant shriek all but drowned out the tortured engines.

‘It’s finished,’ said Eve, as the aircraft started going down fast. But the pilot of the plane managed to lift the craft from its fatal dive; it scraped
the icy ground on its belly and cut a huge, curving swathe through the snowy landscape.

‘Oh, no,’ breathed Adam.

The plane was making like a missile straight for them.

‘Run!’ bellowed Oldman, half leaping, half striding through the thick snow. ‘Try to use my tracks.’

‘I can’t even see them,’ hissed Mr Adlar.

‘That way.’ Adam shoved his dad after Oldman, then turned to Eve and helped her carry
Zoe. They shambled desperately through the heavy, clinging
whiteness. But the plane was ploughing towards them with horrible speed.

‘We’ll never make it!’ Eve shouted.

But then Keera sailed down low, her scaly hide blackened by the flames, and slammed her entire body into the front end of the plane. The aircraft was sent scraping away from Adam’s group and towards the blazing remains of the
VC-25. The snow piled up around it, finally halting its horrible progress just a stone’s throw from the first wreck. The gusting wind had changed direction too, cloaking both planes in dark, stinking smoke as if trying to draw a veil over the whole sorry scene.

Silently, Keera flapped away without a backward look, to land with a crump and clatter of folding wings a few metres from where Adam,
Zoe and Eve cowered together. She sat, heaving for breath, her eyes dark and unfathomable. And while Oldman and Mr Adlar backed away in frightened wonder, Zoe pushed herself through the snow towards her.

‘Zoe, no!’ Eve shouted.

‘It’s all right,’ Zoe insisted. ‘She’s different, but . . . she doesn’t want to hurt us. I know it.’ She pulled off her mitts and pressed her thick-fingered hands against
the pterosaur’s scaly flank. She made soft cooing noises, which Keera seemed to echo, almost lost beneath the wind’s breath.

Adam retreated to his dad, pressed himself up against him for comfort. But Oldman, it seemed, was more concerned with the downed plane, which lay half-hidden by the billowing curtain of smoke. ‘I need to check that wreck for survivors,’ he announced. ‘We need Geneflow staff
alive for prosecution. If the flames spread from our plane, no one inside will stand a chance.’

‘But it could explode at any moment,’ Eve protested. ‘You’re the one who told us that if there were any wiring sparks near the fuel tanks—’

‘Do as I say, not as I do. And stay well back.’ Oldman trudged past Zoe and Keera, making for the half-buried plane.

‘She didn’t come here for revenge,’ Zoe
said distantly. ‘Didn’t even come to help us.’ She turned to Adam. ‘She came because we made her free – and the only way to be sure she can
stay
free . . .’

‘Is to kill Josephs,’ Adam concluded.

Zoe nodded slowly, pressed her head against Keera’s side. ‘I think . . . after all she’s gone through . . . she just needs to be sure.’

Adam nodded too, a mess of emotions. ‘I think we all do.’ Why
should he be surprised by Keera’s savagery? Hunger, pain, the hunt, the kill . . . like Zed, she might know plenty more, but he supposed these were the only things she really understood.

Eve watched Oldman draw closer to the Geneflow
plane wreckage. ‘I guess he needs Geneflow personnel as witnesses if he’s going to put the world straight.’

‘Or if he wants to put them to work for the US military,’
said Mr Adlar cynically.

But then a series of clangs – something bone-hard striking metal – stopped Oldman in his tracks. Adam looked nervously at his dad. The clangs were followed by a sharp rending scrape.

Then Oldman jumped backwards and slipped, yelling out in surprise as a gargantuan, scaly hulk leaped out through the smoke and thumped down in front of the plane.

‘Zed!’ Stunned, Adam stared
at his friend. ‘Zed, is it . . . are you . . .?’

Zoe turned to him, her grin wide and full. ‘I
knew
he couldn’t be dead!’

Adam couldn’t tear his eyes away. ‘I really thought this time we’d lost him . . .’

But his delight was tempered by Zed’s condition. The beast was swaying on bloodied legs, his head and neck a mass of deep welts and bites. One eye was a swollen mess, but the other eye glinted
bright in the flames. He was clutching a large, misshapen bundle in his arms, holding it to his chest like it was treasure. As the wind cleared the smoke further Adam realized Zed’s haul appeared to be half a dozen blood-soaked bodies.

‘Back,’ Zed said.

‘Oh, yes, you had our backs, all right . . .’ Adam charged towards his friend, tripping and tumbling across the snow.

‘No, Ad,’ his dad bellowed.
‘You heard Oldman, that wreck could go up any moment!’

Adam couldn’t stop himself. He ran past Oldman, all the way up to Zed, and pressed himself against the animal’s warm, heaving flank. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered. ‘Just . . . thanks. Without you . . .’

‘Back,’ Zed said again, his voice a splintered growl.

Adam realized Zed might be warning him away. Looking up at Zed uncertainly, he retreated
to join Oldman. ‘You . . . are all right, aren’t you?’

Oldman was staring at the grisly bundle of bodies Zed was holding. ‘Those people. Are they alive?’

‘Others dead. These ones . . . live.’

‘So
that
was the scraping noise,’ Oldman mumbled. ‘Zed opened the plane like a tin of sardines and fished out the live ones.’

‘But look at them.’ Adam stared, repulsed but fascinated by the tough scales
that patterned the bodies’ dark green skin.

‘This is what you meant by “hybrids”?’ Oldman murmured.

Adam nodded. ‘Like the clone of my dad . . . and Zoe and me . . .’

‘I guess they all turned reptile ready to start their new world,’ said Oldman. ‘Prematurely, let’s hope.’

Zed strode past them both, away from the plane wrecks, his badly mauled tail dragging through the snow. Adam and Oldman
hurried after him as Zed dumped the grisly pile of victims in front of Keera and Zoe.

Eve and Mr Adlar came over to see. A grotesque, powerful-looking creature, half woman, half reptile, was sprawled on top of the pile, both legs bloody and mangled, her breathing fast and shallow.

Adam’s heart twisted as he recognized the distorted features. ‘Josephs.’

Mr Adlar peered down at her, myopically.
‘What has she done to herself?’

‘Stage one of her grand design,’ said Adam. ‘She did that to you too.’

A low, menacing noise started up somewhere in Keera’s chest, and Zoe tried to shush her. Zed sank to his haunches in the snow and watched as Oldman, Eve and Mr Adlar tried to separate the gruesome tangle of bodies, laying them out straight. Adam hunkered down beside Zed and tried rubbing snow
into one of the deeper gashes in his scaly neck. But when the beast flinched and growled, Adam took the hint.
Guess I’ll leave dino-first-aid to the experts
.

‘Where . . .?’ Josephs stirred and coughed, staining her chin with blood. ‘Where am I?’

‘In your own back yard,’ snapped Mr Adlar. ‘The animal you created and tried to kill brought you down.’

‘No, where am
I
? Me . . . the me before . .
 .’ She brushed her fingers against her scaly cheek. ‘Before this?’

Oldman glanced back at the wreck of the Geneflow plane. ‘If she was in there with you, she’s dead.’

Josephs’ eyes closed, her breathing growing more erratic.

‘We’re going to need the mother of all first-aid kits,’ Eve muttered.

Adam saw the red case lying on its side in the snow between them and the wreck. Since there was nothing
he could do for Zed, he ran over, braving the fierce heat of the flames to retrieve it.
How many times have I dreamed of Josephs lying beaten at last? Never looking like that, but even so
 . . . Adam had always imagined he’d feel awesomely triumphant. Instead, he found he felt nothing but a cold, weary relief.

He set the first-aid box down beside Oldman, who tore it open. He grabbed a loaded syringe
from the kit with bloody fingers and jabbed it into Josephs’ shoulder. ‘Now, come on, Samantha. I can fix you up. But you need to tell us about your accomplices. The other bases you got.’

Josephs’ eyes flickered open as the drug went to
work. She looked down at her crushed legs and groaned, shaking her head.

‘Not quite perfection, is it,’ Zoe hissed spitefully. ‘Prisoner of your own “unfortunate”
body now. Doesn’t look like you made it quite tough enough.’

Eve shook her head. ‘Don’t gloat, Zoe.’

‘You want me to feel sorry for her?’ Zoe looked stung. ‘Josephs deserves it! After all she’s done . . . the blood on her hands, she deserves to be dead.’

‘Maybe.’ Oldman unzipped Josephs’ coat to reveal a grisly open wound in her ribs. Adam felt sick but the colonel calmly tore a large field
dressing from its wrapper and straightened the airtight material.