They were examining the ground, a cluster of low ferns nearby, their heads cocked with confusion and bewilderment like curious crows studying road kill.
None of them had yet noticed her standing there.
She had a thirty-round ammo clip, and in the blink of an eye had organized the order in which she was going to drop the targets: larger male creatures first.
The first rapidly fired half-dozen shots echoed across the clearing like so many dried and brittle branches snapping, and five out of six of her targets dropped like leather sacks of bone and meat. The one she’d missed had bobbed unpredictably, the shot skimming across the top of his head.
The other creatures froze where they were, uncertain as to what the rapid cracks of gunfire actually meant.
Becks took advantage of the moment of stillness and confusion and selected another six targets, all the larger males again. But this time the muzzle flash of her gun had attracted their attention and they began to bound towards her. She killed four and wounded another, before their short-lived charge faltered. They drew up a dozen yards away and fanned out, snapping and snarling.
Beyond them she could see the others, females and cubs being herded away from harm by a large male. She recognized it as the pack’s leader, a claw from one of its four digits missing on its left arm. It was holding one of their spears, waving it around and using it to prod and cajole the pack away into the darkness.
[Assessment: primary target]
The pack leader, the alpha male… logic and observation dictated that that particular creature was the one who’d been learning from them; the shrewd one, the clever one whose genes and unique acquired knowledge were going to pass onwards to its offspring. In only a few nanoseconds of silicon-based analysis, she realized that the one creature she had to be absolutely certain of killing was the one with the missing claw. She was striding forward like an automaton as she fired another rapid succession of single shots, killing half of the creatures bobbing and snarling in front of her; those still standing turned and fled. The noise and the muzzle flash were as startling to them as the sudden inexplicable death it seemed to deal out. The entire pack was in motion now, scattering like birds startled by a handclap. But her eyes remained on the back of the alpha male. She swung the assault rifle towards it, aimed and fired.
The shot spun the creature off its feet.
CHAPTER 75
2001, New York
Maddy looked over at Cartwright. He was with the two children and Sal, standing beside the half-raised shutter entrance, staring out at the jungle and eagerly waiting to see the spectacular sight of a new reality arriving from a distant past. Sal was doing a great job keeping them all over there, telling them all about time ripples and waves and her job as an observer.
‘You understand what you’ve got to do?’ she asked Liam quietly.
He nodded. ‘But are you sure it’s the right date?’
‘Well, I hope so. He said your fossilized message was discovered on that day. I presume he’s not lying. I’ve got the Glen Rose National Park entered in as the location. I’m sure he mentioned a river called the Paluxy River… so that’s what I’ve put in. And you’re looking for the two boys that found it.’
‘Boys? How old?’
‘I don’t know… You know, boys.’ She shrugged. ‘ Boy age, I guess.’
Liam glanced furtively over her shoulder at the others. ‘Well, then, what do they look like?’
She ran her hand tiredly through her frizzy hair. ‘Jeez… How the hell am I supposed to know!’ she muttered irritably, then immediately felt guilty and angry with herself. She looked at Liam… his bloodshot eye, the streak of white hair… and felt like a snappy cow. ‘I’m sorry,’ she sighed. ‘I guess they’ll look all excited and very pleased with themselves. OK?’
She turned towards the desk. ‘Bob, are we ready for a portal?’
› Affirmative. There is sufficient charge for this displacement.
‘OK.’ She nodded. ‘All right.’ She looked at Liam’s face again, pale like the other two, but not as bad. No nosebleeds, no apparent nausea or any other apparent haemorrhaging. ‘You sure you’re OK to go, Liam?’
He nodded. ‘I’m fine, so I am. Tired, I could sleep for a year, but I’m all right.’
Why not go in his place, Maddy? Look at him… look at the damage that last portal did to him. And now you’re sending him through again! She stilled that guilty voice in her head quickly; she needed to be right here, coordinating Becks’s and Liam’s bring-backs. It was all going to be rather tricky.
She wanted to tell him what she knew, what Foster had told her. She wanted to tell him so that at least he could decide for himself if it was worth it, killing himself slowly, one corruption at a time.
‘Shall we?’ he said.
She pressed a digital watch into his hand. ‘Six hours,’ she said softly, then glanced at the chalk circle and the concrete already gouged out of the floor in the middle. Liam understood. He had six hours back in 1941 and then she’d open the return window. He casually ambled across the floor towards the circle as Maddy silently initiated the countdown sequence. The machinery began to hum — there was no way to avoid that — and the ceiling light flickered and dimmed.
She was hoping Cartwright would be too engrossed in listening to Sal and watching for the time wave to immediately notice something was going on, but the wily old man spun round and looked back into the arch. ‘What’s going on?’
Liam stepped smartly into the chalk circle just as a sphere of air began to twitch and fidget around him.
‘What’s happ- Hang on, what’s…?’ His eyes widened. ‘Where the HELL IS HE GOING?’
Maddy ignored him. Cartwright reached into his jacket pocket.
‘No! Don’t shoot!’ shouted Maddy, realizing what he was going to do. ‘Please!’
Cartwright pulled out his pistol, straightened his arm and aimed. ‘STOP IT, NOW!’
‘I can’t! Please… I can’t stop it. Don’t sh-’
He fired a single shot at Liam just as the sphere wobbled and collapsed in on itself with a puff.
1941, Somervell County, Texas
At the very same moment that Liam landed on a riverbank of pebbles something whistled past his ear and off into the sky.
‘Jay-zusss!’ He ducked and then looked around, wondering what the hell that was. He saw nothing, just a narrow river, rolling sedately along a shallow creek of sandy-coloured rock, small and mean-looking yew trees and arid tufts of sun-bleached grass that hissed softly alongside the soothing gurgle of water.
Perhaps a bird? A bee? A fly?
It could have been. A fast one, though.
His mind turned to more pressing matters — which way to go? He had no idea, no idea at all, other than to look out for a pair of boys. He looked at the digital watch, Maddy’s. She’d set a countdown on it: five hours and fifty-nine minutes.
‘Right,’ he muttered to himself, ‘where do I start?’
A midday sun beat down on his head as he stood there, unsure which way to turn. He decided, before walking anywhere, that he was going to mark the window location with a small cairn of rocks: a dozen fist-sized worn and rounded rocks stacked in a small pyramid. Big enough so that he wasn’t going to walk right on past and miss it.
Then, caught on a lazy midday breeze that had the nearby yew trees stirring and hissing, he heard the faint call of a voice and what sounded like a splash of water.
That way… downstream. He set off, walking along the riverbank, shingle and pebbles clattering underfoot. For a moment he recalled an image of that huge sweeping bay and the calm prehistoric green sea spreading out to an infinite horizon on his right.
It was here. Right here, an incredible tropical sea.
Quite a breathtaking notion, that… in the vast dimensions of geological time, even seas and oceans, just like
