Day of the Predator

CHAPTER 51

65 million years BC, jungle

Liam heard it. A brittle scream, long and ragged and then suddenly silenced. ‘Did you hear that?’

Becks nodded. ‘Affirmative.’ She straightened up. ‘The hominid pack hunters may have returned. We should rejoin the others immediately.’

Liam grabbed his spear. ‘Come on.’

They splashed across the shallow stream, kicking up fans of water, and then along the bank on the far side. No more than two hundred yards closer to the beach, that’s where Whitmore and the others had been left to place their tablets. That seemed to be where the scream had come from. Liam couldn’t tell if that one long cry had been a male or female voice, but it had rattled with horror and ended in a way that hadn’t sounded good.

They splashed back across the water again to avoid another thicket of reeds as the stream weaved around a smooth boulder the size of an automobile. A minute later, up ahead, he could make out the others gathered in a group, standing closely together and studying something on the ground.

‘What happened?’ he called out.

None of them replied. They looked up at him with faces as pale as bed linen. Kelly and his group had heard the cry too and had come up from the beach. They must have arrived there only a minute or so earlier.

‘What happened?’ he called out again as he and Becks splashed across the stream one last time and finally joined them on the silty bank.

Then he saw it for himself.

Blood.

Blood everywhere, and a few tattered shreds of clothing that he recognized as belonging to Franklyn. But no sign of the boy himself. ‘Oh no,’ he uttered, blessing himself absent-mindedly. ‘That isn’t really…?’

Whitmore nodded. ‘Franklyn’s. He… was… we were just down there,’ he uttered, pointing downstream. ‘Just there… just b-beyond those reeds.’

‘Didn’t hear anything,’ said Howard. ‘Or see anything. Just heard him scream. We came up here and… he was gone. Just gone.’

It was Kelly who decided to say first what they were all thinking. ‘Those things… it’s those things, isn’t it? They’ve damn well come after us.’

‘We don’t know that for sure,’ said Liam. ‘There are other predators.’

‘Oh, we know,’ said Laura. She passed Liam a mobile phone, dappled with droplets of congealing blood. On the small screen, a shaky low-resolution image looped over and over: nothing but the bright pale blue sky, and then the jerky image of something stepping over just the once. But that was all he needed to recognize it: lean, almost skeletal, and that long tapering skull. The image was pale sky again, occasionally shuddering as the camera was knocked, and through the small speaker the sound of growling, snapping teeth and the frenzied noise of something being torn to pieces.

Liam swallowed, his mouth and throat suddenly dry. He felt his face drain of blood and blanch, just like theirs now, pale as a ghost. ‘We’re leaving,’ he said quietly. ‘Leaving right now.’

‘Uh… I left my bag at the beach,’ said Juan.

‘Forget the bloody bag!’ snapped Liam. He glanced at Becks, ready to bark at her to be quiet should she decide to caution him about potential contamination. But she seemed to understand. Instead she pointed out which way they needed to go. Up the steep slope, thick jungle. ‘I will lead the way,’ she said. ‘Recommendation: you should all remain close.’

‘Oh, don’t you worry about that,’ uttered Liam under his breath. He pulled one of their homemade hatchets out of his bag and hefted his spear in his other hand. ‘Everyone ready?’

The others nodded, all of them with a weapon of one sort or another in their hands. None of them keen to step back into the thick canopy of leaves and vines and dense clusters of fern leaves that could quite easily conceal death, but even less keen to remain here a moment longer.

‘So, what about Franklyn?’ asked Chan in a small voice. No one seemed to want to answer that question. The boy looked up at Howard. ‘We’re not looking for him, Leonard?’

Howard answered. ‘He’s gone, Edward. He’s gone.’

Becks nodded. ‘Correct. Information: approximate calculation — at least five pints of blood on the ground. Franklyn cannot be alive.’

‘Come on,’ said Liam, resting a hand on Edward’s shoulder. He looked up at the sloping jungle ahead of them. ‘We should go.’