Day of the Predator - Alex Scarrow [117]
He waved at them. ‘Hey!’
He saw their heads turn his way and their mouths form sudden dark ovals of surprise and relief.
‘I made it! I’m all right!’ he called across to them. ‘I’m fine! Have you seen the others?’
Becks led them across the clearing towards Liam until finally they converged around the smouldering remains of a campfire.
‘The others have not been located,’ said Becks.
Liam noticed their small turbine wasn’t spinning. The cross-bar was split and the school bag was on the ground, its load of round pebbles spilled. ‘The windmill’s broken. What’s happened?’
There were no answers.
‘We should get that running again first,’ he continued. He looked around at the others. ‘Maybe they’re out looking for us?’
Becks strode swiftly towards the contraption to see whether a quick repair could be made. Liam was about to pass on some instructions to the others to split up and search for the others when he noted Jasmine’s gaze, wide-eyed and lost on some detail everyone else seemed to have missed.
‘Jasmine? You all right?’
She pointed at the ground. ‘That,’ she whispered. ‘What’s that?’
Liam followed her gaze down to the ground. Nestled amid a cluster of pebbles, cones and the dry brown decaying leaves of long-dead ferns, he saw a pale slender object that looked to him like an impossibly large maggot. He took a step towards it and noted the ground was stained dark around it, and at one end of it, pointed yellow-white shards poked out like the antennae of a shrimp.
He felt his stomach lurch and flip in a slow, queasy somersault.
It was someone’s index finger. The antennae, shards of bone.
‘What is it?’ asked Whitmore, stooping to get a better look. ‘My God! Is that a finger?’
The conclusion hit Liam like a punch. ‘They’re here.’ He looked up at them. ‘Those pack hunters are here, on the island.’
Whitmore’s mouth flapped open and shut and produced nothing helpful.
‘How?’ asked Howard. ‘It’s impossible. No way those things can swim across!’
‘They don’t need to.’ He looked at the others. ‘They went and copied us … learned from us.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I think they made their own bridge.’
CHAPTER 64
2001, New York
Everything in the archway died, leaving them in pitch black.
‘What’s going on?’ cried Cartwright.
‘Please!’ cried Maddy in the dark. ‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! It’s nothing I did!’
‘Stay right where you are!’ snapped Cartwright. ‘I hear you move or do anything and I’ll fire!’
‘O-OK … we’re not moving, are we, Sal?’
‘Nope. Sitting still. Doing nothing.’
‘Just hang on, Cartwright,’ said Maddy, ‘just a second … the generator should kick in any time now.’
On cue, from the back room, came the rumbling of the generator firing up. A moment later the strip light in the middle of the archway flickered once, twice with a dink, dink, then stayed on.
They all stared silently at each other as the monitors flickered in unison, the computer system rebooting itself.
‘What just happened?’ demanded Cartwright.
‘I dunno yet …’ said Maddy.
‘That was a time wave,’ said Sal.
‘A what?’
‘Time wave,’ she repeated. ‘Something big changed in the past and it’s just now caught up with us.’
Maddy nodded unhappily. ‘Yeah … she’s right. That’s exactly what that was.’
Cartwright looked at both the girls, then at Forby, who returned nothing more useful than a calm professional stare. ‘Well?’ said the old man. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means outside this archway, outside the perimeter of our field-office time shield, things have changed,’ explained Maddy. ‘Changed a lot … if we lost power.’
‘So, what’s out there now?’ he asked.
Maddy splayed her hands. ‘I don’t know! Another version of New York, I guess.’
Cartwright’s eyes widened to rheumy bloodshot pools. ‘Forby, go take a look.’
‘Yes, sir.’ He stepped across the archway and hit the green button. Nothing happened. ‘Won’t open.’
‘The doorway’s not on the generator circuit,’ said Maddy. ‘Just crank it up with the handle. There,’ she said, pointing. Forby saw the small metal handle, nodded and started turning it round.
The computer had finished rebooting