Day of the Predator

CHAPTER 39

65 million years BC, jungle

From the darkness they watched them. Beyond the illumination of the dancing yellow flower in the middle. Broken Claw had seen this fascinating dancing creature only once before, after a storm. When a stab of light from the sky had come down and touched the long dead trunk of a tree. The yellow flower had engulfed it, consumed it, producing such unbearable heat as it did so. He’d been young then. And ever since then the yellow flower had been an occasional monster in his dreams, chasing him, reaching out for him, wanting so much to consume him.

And now here it was, tamed like some sort of a pet by these new creatures. They were gathered around it, unafraid of it, every now and then casually throwing a branch on to it and not even flinching as the creature reared up angrily, sending tendrils of light up into the dark sky.

He looked around at his pack, cowering further back down the slope, clearly unhappy at being out of the jungle and here in the open. This was not their terrain, this was not where they were strong. Open ground made them visible, it made them vulnerable. Larger predators existed in the open; large, lumbering and stupid predators like the tall upright one with tiny front claws, enormous jaws, powerful rear legs and a strong sweeping tail. His pack called it Many-Teeth.

Out in the open Many-Teeth could quite easily kill them all. After all, Broken Claw’s kind were small, fragile things compared to this powerful mountain of muscle and energy. But between them his family pack had killed quite a few in his living memory. And always in the same way: luring them into the jungle with the tempting cry of one of their young. A pitiful cry that perfectly replicated that of a young helpless plant-eater, a cry that signalled fear and proved an irresistible taunt to one of those large stupid beasts. Once among the densely packed trees, unable to sweep its tail easily, unable to turn quickly, the pack was always able to leap upon the various Many-Teeth they’d lured in that way and begin to tear through their thick hides and rubbery bands of tough muscle tissue to the vulnerable soft tissues inside as they thrashed and roared.

Broken Claw had led many such attacks in past seasons, always the first to gnaw his way through the hide and into the bellies of such creatures, slashing and pulling through the vulnerable insides as the creature still stomped and roared, pulling himself towards the throbbing red organ in its chest. It was slashing at this that usually felled a Many-Teeth. Broken Claw and the others knew that this organ — which seemed to have a life of its own, which every species of creature seemed to possess — was the source of its very life.

In the seasons of his youth, the jungles had once been full of the larger stupid species. So many of them in fact that they often killed many more than they could eat, often only bothering to consume their favourite organs and leaving the rest of the carcass to rot.

But there were fewer now, far fewer of the bigger creatures. They only existed on the plain these days.

Broken Claw understood a simple principle. They had hunted too many of them. They had been too successful for their own good in the jungle, and his family pack had been forced to migrate from one jungle valley to the next several times during his lifespan. Now too, in recent seasons, this jungle had become sparsely populated — another hunting ground that they’d almost completely exhausted.

There certainly was not enough food available in the jungle valley for these new creatures as well.

Slowly, lightly, he glided forward across the loose shale, mindful that his agile feet not dislodge anything that might make the slightest noise. Behind him he heard the soft barking cough of one of his mates warning him not to get too close to these things. He ignored her. He needed to listen to the noises these things made. Perhaps their sounds could be learned, even mimicked. Perhaps they could employ the same technique they used on the Many-Teeth, identifying a sound that could be practised and used by their young to lure one of the new creatures away from the others.

If just one of them could be isolated. They could study it, understand how dangerous it could be, understand its weakness. Perhaps in the last moments of its life, even share some of its intelligence. Then he could find out if this creature also had the same fluttering red orb in its ribcage, the organ that provided life.