Day of the Predator - Alex Scarrow [1]
CHAPTER 34: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 35: 65 million years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 36: 65 million years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 37: 65 million years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 38: 65 million years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 39: 65 million years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 40: 65 million years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 41: 65 million years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 42: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 43: 65 million years BC, jungle
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CHAPTER 46: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 47: 65 million years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 48: 65 million years BC, jungle
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CHAPTER 50: 65 million years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 51: 65 million years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53: 2 May 1941, Somervell County, Texas
CHAPTER 54: 2001, New York
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CHAPTER 56: 65 million years BC, jungle
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CHAPTER 58: 65 million years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 59: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 60: 65 million years BC, jungle
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CHAPTER 62: 65 million years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 63: 65 million years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 64: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 65: 65 million years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 66: 65 million years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 67: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 68: 65 million years BC, jungle
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CHAPTER 70: 65 million years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 71: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 72: 2001, New York
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CHAPTER 74: 65 million years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 75: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 76: 65 million years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 77: 1941, Somervell County, Texas
CHAPTER 78: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 79: 65 million years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 80: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 81: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 1
2026, Mumbai, India
They’d heard the rumbling coming towards them down the echoing stairwell like a locomotive train. Then all of a sudden it was pitch black, the air thick with dust and smoke. Sal Vikram thought she was going to choke on the grit and particles of brick plaster she was sucking in through her nose, clogging her throat and the back of her mouth with a thick chalky paste.
It felt like an eternity before it was clear enough to see the emergency wall light in the stairwell once more. By its dim amber light she could see the lower flight of stairs was completely blocked by rubble and twisted metal spars. Above them, the stairwell they’d been clambering down only moments earlier was crushed by the collapsed floors above. She saw an extended arm emerging from the tangle of beams and crumbling breeze-blocks, an arm chalk-white, perfectly still, reaching down to her as if pleading to be held or shaken.
‘We’re trapped,’ whispered her mother.
Sal looked to her, then to her father. He shook his head vigorously, dust cascading off his thin hair.
‘No! We are not! We dig!’ He looked at Sal. ‘That’s what we do, we dig. Right, Saleena?’
She nodded mutely.
He turned to the others trapped on the emergency stairwell along with them. ‘Yes?’ he said. ‘We must dig. We can’t wait for rescue …’ Her father could have said more, could have completed that sentence, could have said what they were all thinking – that if the skyscraper had collapsed down to this floor there was no reason why it wasn’t soon to fold in on itself all the way down.
Sal looked around. She recognized faces despite them all being painted ghost-white with dust: Mr and Mrs Kumar from two apartments along; the Chaudhrys with their three young sons; Mr Joshipura, a business man like her father, but single … enjoyed a string of girlfriends. Tonight, presumably, he’d been on his own.
And … another man, standing at the back of the stairwell, beneath the wall light. She didn’t recognize him.
‘If we move things, we may cause more of it to collapse!’ said Mrs Kumar.
Sal’s mother placed a hand on her husband. ‘She is right, Hari.’
Hari Vikram turned to look at them all. ‘Some of you are old enough to remember, yes? Remember what happened to the Americans in New York? Their twin towers?’
Sal remembered the footage, something they’d been shown in history class. Both