Z. Raptor (9 page)

“Brutes?” whispered Lisa.

Harm shook her head. “Two Vels, headed this way. One of them's holding something—metal and a bit of rope maybe.”

Lisa turned to David. “What are they gonna do this time?”

“Come on.” David was white-faced as he turned and ran in the opposite direction. “The dugout.”

Harm grabbed hold of Lisa's hand. Adam followed as they broke into a stumbling run through the fronds and bushes. “What is this ‘dugout'?” he asked.

“Our only hiding place,” Harm told him.

“We sleep there most nights,” Lisa muttered. “It's like being buried alive.”

Adam quickened his step, sweat soaking his body while his throat stayed sore and dry. He didn't think he'd ever felt thirstier in his life. He caught movement at ground level up ahead, shied away for a second. Then he realized it was David clearing grass away from a small hole dug between the roots of a tree; the thick wooden gnarls formed a tough, narrow barrier to forcing the hole any wider. Beyond it lay a mass of branches heaped as if trying to conceal something.

“It's an old bunker,” said David as he worked. “Built by American soldiers for jungle warfare against the Japanese in World War II. Used to be bigger, but part of it caved in.”

Harm led Adam on, but Lisa hung back. “I hate it,” she was still muttering under her breath. “Hate it, hate it.”

“Please.” David looked into her eyes, put his palms on the woman's shoulders. “We're not losing anyone else. Right? No one else.”

Lisa lay down on her back, started wriggling through the hole feetfirst. David supported her by the arms as she squeezed through. Adam kept looking back into the trees, dreading the first glimpse of movement.

“Now you, Harm,” David said as Lisa's hair slipped from view. “Help Adam through from the inside.”

Harm nodded. She pushed herself headfirst into the hole, gasping as she wormed her way through the gap.

David looked at Adam, a sheen of sweat on his face. The crashing through the trees was getting louder. “Quickly.”

Adam got down on his back. He could barely fit both feet together through the hole. “Is there room inside?”

“We'll make room.
Get in!
”

Bracing himself, Adam squeezed through the hole feetfirst. Hands grabbed his flailing ankles, pulling hard to draw him down into the darkness. He had a panicked, suffocating moment as the hard-packed mud of the entrance dragged against his ears and hair. More hands pulled at his shirt and sides—and then he was dropping down into a dark, sweat-stinking concrete pit in the ground, pressed up against Harm and Lisa. Their bony limbs jabbed against his. The rasp of their breathing filled the stale air.

“Curl up,” Harm hissed at him. “Make more space.”

With neat, economical movements, David worked himself into the tiny shelter, then reached for something heavy at his feet and forced it with some difficulty up into the hole. The trickle of daylight was blocked off. Adam heard the scrape of concrete against earth as the makeshift plug was wedged securely into their point of entry, a metal pole holding it in place. Only a chink of sunlight broke through.

Adam held himself tensely in the pitch darkness, trying not to shake. He was sure he could hear stamping noises getting closer. “What happens now?”

“We wait for them to leave,” said David.

“But won't they sniff us out down here? I mean, their sense of smell must be—”

“That's enough,” David told him.

Adam turned to Lisa instead and lowered his voice further. “Is that hole in the roof the only way in?”

“It is now,” Lisa muttered. “A pack of Brutes stamped the roof in when they couldn't get in through the main entrance. Most of the shelter collapsed.”

Adam swallowed hard. “And you still use what's left?”

“What choice have we got?” Harm whispered.

The four fugitives heard grunts and heavy footfalls. Then an earthy, scraping sound, like a shovel hitting concrete.

Lisa started to whimper as the plug in the ceiling began to budge and a loud hissing sound started up, like someone using a spray can. Except the hissing went on. David held Lisa's hand. “We're safe down here,” he breathed.

But then something poked down into sight through the narrow gap next to the concrete plug. Not rope. The end of a rubber hose. And immediately white smoke coiled out from inside.

“What is that?” Lisa held her hand to her mouth.

David started choking, gasping for breath. “Gas,” he spluttered.

“Gas?” Lisa wailed incredulously. “How did they—”

“Who cares how?” Adam's eyes felt suddenly on fire. “We've got to block it!” He ripped at the hem of his shirt, trying to tear it free. But his efforts were hampered as the others started to jostle and push into the narrow space. Nose and eyes streaming, saliva coming so fast he thought he might hurl, Adam fell to his knees. Lisa was shrieking in his ear. David and Harm coughed and retched as the gas misted over the crack of sunlight. The raptors above began to stamp their feet.

They're using human weapons against us,
Adam realized, his throat on fire.
They're going to smash their way inside and then reach in and pluck out our bodies.

A
dam could barely see; his eyes burned like someone had rubbed them with chili peppers. He knocked against the base of the metal pole holding the concrete plug in place—just as a stamp from above smashed the rock in two. A chunk hit his leg, and sunlight burst in like a spotlight. Something metal clattered down into the tiny space—a canister, spewing out the evil smoke. Eyes awash, Adam saw a claw as big as his face plunge down into the dugout, grasping blindly. He grabbed the concrete and swung it at the creature's hand, trying to knock it away. But the claw closed around his wrist, and with a choking gasp, Adam found himself hauled up, clear out of the dugout.

Blazing sunlight hit his skin, closely followed by hard, scaly flesh. Before his terror could even fully register, he was thrown aside, a tree root biting into his spine. He heard Lisa's shriek and a deep, bestial snarl as the other Vel rooted about in the concrete cavity. Forcing his swollen eyes apart, he glimpsed through his tears a blurred red shape bearing down on him. Rank breath hissed into his face.

“You will join us.” The Vel spoke in a grating rasp as though choking up the syllables. “All of you will join us for the feast.”

“No,” Adam moaned helplessly. “No, please . . .” He felt his wrists being bound roughly and clumsily with the rubber tubing. He cried out as the raptor's claws scraped at his flesh.

But then the monster was knocked clear by some massive impact. It grunted with pain as it slammed into something, started snarling and snapping its jaws. There was a wet crunch of flesh on flesh, a howl of anger. The foliage around Adam danced and shook as though alive and wild. A second roar, deeper and angrier, sounded to his left—the second Vel, close by. Whimpering with fear, Adam tried again to open his swollen eyes, but then the sounds of struggle broke off and something picked him up. Sharp claws pressed into the small of his back as it ran off, taking him away. Adam felt sharp, stubby feathers chafe his neck, his body clamped hard against folds of reptilian skin.
Another raptor,
he realized.
Got to be a Brute. Brutes hate Vels. This one's stolen their prey.

Helplessly, Adam began to struggle in the creature's grip. It was too strong. He couldn't overbalance it, and it didn't seem to feel the blows he rained down on its back. Any moment now, he imagined, that acidic spray would eject from its mouth, searing his flesh. ...

But then suddenly he was dumped to the ground. He lay for a few seconds, still choking from the gas. His eyes had cleared enough to see he was lying in long grass just beyond a leafy tangle of creepers. The space was wide open, no cover. Something was trampling quickly through the undergrowth toward him, and there was nowhere to hide.

“Stay there,” came an eerie voice—a voice that made Adam picture the steam of breath on cold glass. And with a surge of sudden hope, he realized it was a voice he'd heard before.

“Are . . .” Adam choked. “Are you Loner? The one who helped Lisa? The one who—”

“Yes.” The voice was eerily soft for such a fiercelooking animal. “I am Loner.”

Adam blinked away his tears, focused—and then flinched. The blurred video he'd watched in the safety of a UN conference room had done no justice at all to the scale and power of this creature before him. Loner stood taller than a man but hunched over in the classic prehistoric predator stance, arms hooked over and outstretched. Piercing orange eyes shone in the low, elongated head that crowned the thick curl of his neck. The scarlet-striped snout sniffed and quivered. His thighs were bunched with corded muscle, and the claws curling out from his hind feet were like butcher's hooks. A thicket of thorny quills blanketed his chest and shoulders.

The creature stood there, breathing heavily. Just watching. Unbelievable, but so real.

The stamping noise was getting louder. “Is that the Vels?” Adam croaked.

“I killed one of them.” Loner shifted his weight from foot to foot as though anxious or in distress. “I took you here to lure the other Vel away from the bunker.”

Adam stared at him helplessly. “What?”

“The gas left the others helpless. But you are free.”

So it's coming to get me,
Adam realized.

“Stay
still,
” hissed Loner. “Trust me.”

Trust you? How can I? You're . . .
Adam looked into Loner's unblinking eyes.
You're an impossible creature, put together by madmen from scraps of fossil, given powers no wild animal ever had.
He was scared and sickened, but it was like some force was compelling him to keep searching out Loner's eyes. Then he found himself nodding.
If I'm wrong,
he thought darkly,
I guess it won't hurt for very long
.

Loner turned abruptly and left the glade with a striding, birdlike gait, disappearing back into the thicker trees.

It was too late for Adam to move now, in any case. A raptor, similar in build to Loner, yet darker and with thicker stripes, burst out of the foliage and skidded to a stop at the sight of the human prey before it. Hissing and snorting, it lowered its head and tore toward him, clawed feet kicking up the turf. Adam opened his mouth to scream.

But then, mid-charge, the creature dropped out of sight—fell through the covering of foliage into a hidden pit beneath.
A trap,
Adam realized, his pulse rate as wild as the howling raptor in its prison of mud.
Loner must've dug the pit. I was the bait to lure that thing inside.

He edged away nervously as the raptor began thrashing and clawing at the steep walls of the pit. But the next moment, the leafy vegetation to Adam's left exploded as Loner charged back out, built up speed and then jumped inside the pit, his large feet trampling the raptor caught inside.

There was a wet, crunching sound and a rattle of wheezing breath, and the captive raptor's struggles ceased.

Loner hauled himself back out from the hole in the ground, using the body lodged inside for leverage. Once clear, he lay on the ground, apparently exhausted.

Adam looked into the pale orange ovals of Loner's eyes; the sly intelligence of the predator shone there, as they had in the eyes of Zed. But here was something else too—uncertainty, maybe. Or regret.

“I had to,” Loner whispered.

“Uh . . .” Adam licked his dry lips. “Had to what?”

“To kill.” Loner's breathing grew slower, more even.

“The first of my pack brothers I killed swiftly and by surprise. The second would have slashed my throat if I had not done this.” He stared down at the hole in the ground. “I dug the pit for catching ostrich, you see? There were spikes at the bottom. But . . . not sharp enough.”

Adam shuddered. “So you jumped on that thing to . . . to push it down onto the spikes?”

“Not ‘that thing,'” Loner snapped. “Pack brother.” His tail flicked over the edges of the pit as if to caress the mangled remains inside. “He was like me. But not like me.” He looked at Adam and edged closer. “Same with you. You are like the other humans . . . but not.”

Adam shook his head. The weird reality of his situation was sinking in.
I'm having a full-on conversation with a dinosaur
. He'd grown used to Zed grunting syllables at him like a belligerent child. But Loner spoke more like Adam himself.
Geneflow's techniques have grown way, way more advanced—and in just a few months.

Adam felt more afraid than ever.

“I saw you on the beach.” Loner rose up slowly on his haunches. “Smelled you. I was following you, when my pack brothers . . .” The bestial head cocked to one side. “How do I know you so deep down? How do I know . . . the
thought
of you?”

Adam flinched as the bestial head pushed slowly toward him on the elongating S of its neck. He swallowed hard. “I guess you were taught with something called Think-Send. My dad invented it, and he used my brain waves to get the whole thing working.”

“Like an echo in my head,” Loner said hoarsely. “Yes?”

“Maybe.” Adam could see every scale of that rough, reptilian face now, close enough to touch, and thought of Zed. “Maybe there's a trace of my thoughts in your head. It happened that way before. I'm Adam Adlar.”

“Adlar.” The towering creature nudged Adam's head, scraping his scales against Adam's skin. He closed his eyes, held his breath. He realized that Loner was doing the same. Then they both released a shaky sigh at the same time, and the raptor recoiled. Adam, with relief, fell backward, supporting himself with his hands. He felt like a lion tamer who'd just put his head in the lion's mouth during his first day on the job.