Z. Apocalypse (6 page)

‘Big Bird’s in there, kid,’ said the soldier with the pass card. He paused, looking troubled. ‘It’s all right, we’ll go in with you.’

Adam nodded, took a deep breath. ‘Well, Zoe’s in there. I bet she’ll be glad of some company.’

The two soldiers looked at each other. ‘Yeah,’ said one, ‘I expect she will.’

Pass-card Man waved him in. Not wanting the soldiers to know how scared he was, Adam attempted a nonchalant stroll into the hangar ahead of them. A row of lockers formed a high wall to his left so he couldn’t see the whole space. It gave his eyes time to adjust. The blackness was not as absolute as he first thought; dozens of lights studded the ceiling high above, giving off the weakest of light.
He felt a little more confident.

That was before he ran out of cabinets and saw the Z. dactyl.

Adam felt as if he were standing on the set of some crazy monster movie. A massive cage at least half the size of the hangar had been erected, towering girders welded messily to floor and ceiling. Behind them,
the colossal reptile lay on its side, wings splayed out. Its scale was breathtaking – easily
twice the size of a glider, with that huge, elephant-sized body pinned down beneath a vast mesh-like oversized chicken wire, glowing with an eerie ultraviolet light. The long beak, as big and broad as two canoes set together, had been muzzled with steel bands. He could barely make out the head through the morass of wires and sensors placed all round it, but he saw with relief the monster’s eyes
were closed. She couldn’t see him for real even if she saw him in her dreams.

‘There’s the dinosaur whisperer,’ murmured Pass-card Man. ‘Go ahead and say hi.’

Adam suddenly noticed a figure in a chair, right in front of the bars, dwarfed by the leathery giant before her. With a quickening of his pulse he saw the wires and cables connecting the two, leading to a stack of hard drives and monitors
off to one side that lent their own flickering blue light to the weirdness of the proceedings.

Gingerly, Adam walked towards her. She had her back turned to him, and was wearing a pair of strange, cobbled-together headphones so she couldn’t hear him approach. He heard her mutter to herself, holding her head at an awkward angle.

But as his dim shadow fell over her she reacted, jolting as if electrified,
turning to face him. Adam
jumped too. The first thing he noticed was that the girl’s neck was twisted, tilting her head towards her left shoulder. Then he saw her fingers were miss-hapen, and the high-back seat was actually a wheelchair. Only then, with a guilty kick, did he look at the girl’s face, which was round and white and quite pretty, framed by thin red curls that she pulled on now as
if to cover her neck.

‘Jeez!’ He saw her surprise change into embarrassment and then harden into anger. ‘You scared the life out of me. It’s a good job I’d just about broken the connection.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Adam quickly, ‘I didn’t mean to . . .’

‘OK.’ Zoe turned to look at her monitors, which were either dark or flatlining. ‘It just takes me a while to get out of the zone, that’s all.’ She
pulled a lever on the left arm of her chair and the wheels rolled backwards; she was either retreating or trying to get a better look at him. ‘You must be Adam.’

‘Uh, yes. Adam Adlar,’ said Adam, staring at her fingers again, then trying not to. ‘You . . . you’re Zoe, right?’

She nodded, and raised her eyebrows. ‘Giant prehistoric monster trapped in aircraft hangar . . . and still it’s me you
gawp at.’

‘I didn’t mean to. Your mum didn’t tell me you were . . .’

‘Disabled?’ Zoe’s tone grew sarcastic. ‘Gee, I’m sorry. I can only apologize for her thoughtlessness.’

‘No! Sorry, that came out wrong.’ Adam felt himself blush and turned quickly to the Z. dactyl. ‘I, um . . . wasn’t looking at this thing ’cause I’ve seen it already. Up close.’ He glanced back at her. ‘I’ve been inside those
jaws.’

‘So I saw. Inside her head.’ She rolled a little closer, her features softer now but her gaze even harder. ‘The image our girl here shared with me. The ghost boy in her head. It’s you.’

‘Looks like it.’ Adam shifted. ‘Now who’s staring?’

‘Me.’ Unexpectedly, she smiled. ‘Now that we’ve made each other uncomfortable, how about we shake? I’m Zoe Halsall.’

‘Adam Adlar.’ He reached out and
took the offered hand.

‘You can squeeze harder than that, they’re tough enough.’ Zoe gripped his own fingers with punishing force and grinned when he yelped. ‘Typical whinging pom.’

‘Are you from Australia?’

‘Stop it!’ Zoe squeezed even harder. ‘Mum and me are from New Zealand, and don’t you forget it.’

Adam pulled his hand back with a cheeky smile. ‘I
probably will. After all, Australia and
New Zealand are pretty much the same place, aren’t they?’

‘Say that again and I’ll run you over with this chair,’ she countered. ‘Now, Scotland and England, they really
are
the same place . . . right?’ Her smile matched his for mischief. ‘Where are you from, Edinburgh?’

‘Spot on.’ Adam pushed his hands in his pockets. ‘You must have a good ear for accents.’

‘I’m just good at listening, I suppose.
That’s why I’m here.’ She shrugged. ‘What’s your excuse? If Keera had tried chewing on me, I don’t think I’d be back.’

‘Keera?’

‘My name for her. Well, Dr Marrs says she’s been adapted from the species
Ornithocheirus
 . . .’

‘You know Dr Marrs?’

‘Sure, him and mum go way back. Science stuff, yada, yada.’

‘And you also know how to pronounce that crazy pterosaur word . . .?’

‘Or-nee-tho-KEER-as.’
She shrugged. ‘The “keera” bit sounds best, right?’

Adam nodded. ‘Beats calling her Z. dactyl the whole time. Anyway, as for why I’m back, it’s a long story. And since my dad and your mum are going to be ages and ages putting their gadgets and gizmos together, maybe I could tell you some of it?’

Zoe seemed to consider. ‘Is it going to give me nightmares?’

‘If you’ve seen inside the heads of
these creatures, you can’t scare easily.’

‘Ha!’ She turned and steered her wheelchair towards the exit. ‘Let’s get out of here. I need some fresh air.’

As he followed her, Adam glanced back over his shoulder at the captured pterosaur. One of her huge eyes had flickered open, watching him go. Dark, accusing.

And maybe
, he thought,
a little afraid
.

Zoe set the pace for Adam, her electric wheelchair
trundling along a track through the peaceful countryside. Normally the refuge was open to tourists, school trips, all manner of visitors. But today Patuxent was closed and the two of them had the whole wildlife reserve to themselves – aside from the entourage of soldiers assigned to make sure they stayed safe.

Adam found himself talking and talking, telling Zoe all of his terrifying adventures.
How his dad had been kidnapped . . . how he’d wound up befriending Zed, crossing the Atlantic on the dinosaur’s back . . . How not once but twice he’d confronted the maniacs who’d made these monsters; first in the bowels of a nuclear shelter in Edinburgh,
then in a fight for survival on an island of warring raptors . . .

Finally he told her about his insane flight over DC last night. She made
a good audience, letting him ramble on, making all the right noises to show she was listening and interested.

‘I can’t believe we’re talking about it so normally. You know – dinosaurs and mad scientists and stuff.’ Zoe shook her head. ‘You must’ve had a great view of the end of the White House, up in the air.’

‘It was horrible.’

‘Uh-huh. But maybe that’s why Keera associates you with the sky.
You know, she flew you all around . . .’ Zoe took a deep breath of fresh air that turned into an almighty yawn. ‘Sorry.’

‘I knew I was boring you,’ said Adam. Then he yawned too and they laughed.

‘I’m the one who feels boring.’ Zoe stopped her chair at the end of the track, looking out over a lake fringed with heather. ‘You’ve been caught up in all that crazy stuff, while I was sat on my butt
in New Jersey, missing Auckland, getting a lousy home education and working with CIA sniffer dogs.’

‘Were you looking inside the dogs’ heads?’

‘That’s classified.’ She smiled. ‘Y’know, dogs love me. At least until they want to go for a run – pulling me along slows them down.’

Feeling awkward, Adam tried to change the
subject. ‘You’ve come from Auckland to New Jersey to Maryland. Do you travel
a lot?’

‘I grease up the wheels on this chair, lasso a car’s towbar and hang on tight.’ Zoe smiled ruefully. ‘Sorry, I should let you off the hook. Uncomfortable, much? People always are.’ She paused. ‘You know, all you need to do is ask me why I look like I do and I’ll tell you.’

Adam sat down on a bank of grass beside the track, so he was more at her eye level. ‘I’m sorry. I guess I wasn’t
sure if you want to talk about it.’

‘Thing is, people are so busy worrying about offending me, they mostly don’t talk to me at all. I weird them out and they don’t know how to handle that.’ She pulled her hair down over her twisted neck again, vulnerability now in her blue eyes. ‘It’s called Proteus syndrome. It’s double rare, especially in girls. Basically, some bits of your body grow too much.
Out of proportion, you know? Bones, skin . . .’ She shrugged, looked back out across the lake. ‘“Sporadic overgrowth”, the doctors call it. You don’t want to know what
I
call it.’

‘It’s unfair,’ Adam mumbled.

‘Yeah, well. Is it fair that you fell into this whole mad dinosaur business, and that you’ve been tied up with it ever since?’ Zoe shrugged. ‘That’s just how it is. You play with the cards
you’re dealt, right? That’s what Mum says.’

‘What about your dad?’

‘He left. Started another family. What about your mum?’

‘She died. Car accident.’

Zoe screwed up her nose. ‘I think I liked the conversation better when there were more dinosaurs in it.’

‘And sniffer dogs,’ said Adam, forcing a smile. ‘Sniffer dogs are cool.’

‘Secret agent dogs are even cooler.’ Zoe smiled slyly. ‘Me and
Mum were testing how dogs recognize their owners, how much of it is scent, how much is visual. When the CIA heard we’d got images of the dogs’ owners out of their little puppy brains and onto a computer, they started thinking . . .’

‘Send a dog out to spy for them and no one would suspect.’

‘Precisely! Except then Keera showed up and we were shipped out here in one heck of a hurry . . .’

‘How
did you get into this talking-to-animals stuff?’ Adam wondered.

‘I got the right mum.’ Zoe smiled. ‘She studied animal behaviour and psychology at university, and got kind of obsessed with the way animals can hear and see and sense stuff that we can’t. And maybe it’s in the genes, ’cause right from being a little kid I found I could . . . you know, understand animals. Empathize, I guess you’d
call it. Mum thought I was just playing at first, but when I knew
our pet dog had something bad in her gut way before her tumour showed up, she started to get interested. Took me in after school to the lab where she works.’

Adam pulled a sympathetic face. ‘Yeah, I’ve been part of that routine with my dad. Getting you involved—’

‘– so they don’t feel so bad about spending the whole time working,’
Zoe concluded. They both laughed knowingly.

‘And they figure we don’t know what they’re doing,’ said Adam.

‘It has been cool though.’ Zoe had become confident and animated now. ‘I know Mum’s set-up looks crazy, but there’s been so much tinkering with it over the years, trying to integrate my own brainwaves with the translation systems . . . we’re both scared to death it won’t work if she ever
updates it.’

‘Her technology has boosted what you can do naturally,’ said Adam. ‘I’ll bet the military have offered to take it apart and find out exactly how it works.’

‘Just one or two hundred times since they got us into this,’ Zoe agreed. ‘Mum’s kept them off so far . . .’ She sighed. ‘I hate the thought of having all this taken away from me. When Mum captures an image, or words, from inside
an animal’s head it’s like . . . proof.’

Adam thought he understood. ‘Proof that your mum’s not crazy?’

Zoe shook her head. ‘Proof that I can do something most other people can’t. That Zoe Halsall is more than just a medical condition. You can’t believe how important that is to me.’ She shrugged. ‘I was ready to hate you for steaming in here to “help us out”.’

Adam stiffened. ‘Not exactly my
choice.’

‘I know. And if Keera didn’t have so much tech in her head to keep her feelings and instincts in, I could handle her all by myself.’

‘I’m not trying to take anything away from you,’ Adam told her.

‘Bit too late for that!’ Her smile showed she was teasing. ‘I mean, you say you’ve actually
talked
with animals! To properly talk to something that’s not human and have it talk back to you
 . . . That’s awesome. Respect to you.
Awe
to you.’

‘It’s crazy.’ Adam shivered. ‘Scary and weird. I can’t tell you how weird it is.’

‘I did kind of notice. I mean, like, making a dinosaur wasn’t impressive enough for these Geneflow guys – they had to make it speak too?’

‘Right . . .’ Adam paused, distracted by some distant noise of movement in the trees that bordered this part of the park.
‘I guess because Zed was an early experiment, able to think for himself, Geneflow
thought he should be able to explain his actions.’ He thought of the huge animal with whom he’d shared so many frightening, desperate days and felt a pang of loneliness. Zed had protected him, tried to keep him safe before departing for who knew where. But now . . .

Wish you were here, big feller
, he thought.

‘You OK?’ Zoe asked him.

Adam was about to nod when he heard a sudden rustling in the reeds over on the other side of the lake. The soldiers jerked into life, clicks and rattles hurled into the quiet as they cocked their weapons and took aim.

A moorhen or something flapped from out of the reeds and swam busily into the middle of the water. Zoe and Adam swapped relieved looks. Then Adam spotted
further movement in the leafy brush around the lake’s edge. Some shy animal was edging towards them.