Day of the Predator - Alex Scarrow [122]
They’d just begun to carefully retrace their steps when Juan suddenly convulsed, burping a trickle of blood down the front of his varsity sweatshirt. He looked slowly down at the six inches of sharpened bamboo tip that protruded from his belly.
‘Oh … oh, man …’ was about all he could say before his eyes rolled and his legs buckled beneath him.
Crouching behind Juan’s collapsed form was one of the bipedal creatures, its long head cocked with curiosity and its yellow eyes marvelling at the spear in its hands.
‘RUN!’ screamed Whitmore to the other two. ‘IT’S A TRAP!’
Howard and Edward turned on their heels to head back towards the clearing, only to face another pair of those creatures, springing seemingly out of nowhere. Howard lunged quickly with his spear, catching one of them in the thigh. The creature recoiled with a scream.
‘GO!’ screamed Howard, pushing Edward away from the creatures. Meanwhile, Whitmore found himself trapped by a closing circle of four of them.
‘You r-really … are … c-clever … aren’t you?’ he found himself babbling through trembling lips. A couple of them were holding spears just like he was holding his. ‘My G-God … you’ve learned f-fast … haven’t you?’
The creature that had speared Juan stepped over his body and approached Whitmore with an unsettling raptor-like bobbing movement. The creature barked an order to some more of its kind hiding in the undergrowth and Whitmore heard the thud of feet and the swish of branches flicked aside as several set off in pursuit of the other two boys.
Now it cocked its head, its yellow eyes drinking him in, eyes that burned with intelligence and curiosity and a thousand questions it probably wanted to ask, but hadn’t yet developed a sophisticated enough language to know how to ask.
‘I … I know … you can c-communicate …’ Whitmore babbled, his man’s voice broken and mewling now like a child’s. ‘S-s-so … can w-we. W-we’re the s-same. Y-you,’ he said slowly, pointing a shaking finger towards the creature. ‘M-me … me,’ he said, gesturing to himself. ‘We’re the s-same!’
Its long head protruded forward on the end of a fragile, almost feminine, neck.
‘Th-the same … the same,’ whimpered Whitmore. ‘Intelli-intelligent.’
Whitmore was only vaguely aware of his bladder letting loose, a warm trickle running down his left leg and soaking his sock. A small detail. A faraway detail. Right in front of his own face, only inches away, his world was this bony carapace of another face and yellow piercing reptile eyes that seemed to grow ever larger.
Its jaw snapped open, revealing rows of needle-sharp teeth and a twisting, leathery black tongue that furled and unfurled like an angry snake in a cage.
Whitmore let go of his spear and it clattered to the ground between them. ‘Do … d-do you s-see? No n-no harm. I m-mean y-you no h-harm!’
The tongue twisted and coiled and Whitmore heard an odd facsimile of his own voice coming right back at him. ‘… No h-harm … the s-same …’
He nodded. ‘Y-yes! Y-y-es! W-we-we’re intelli–’
Whitmore felt a punch to his chest. It winded him – like a medicine ball launched at his thorax. He gasped, spattering a fine spray of blood on to the creature’s expressionless face. He would have doubled over from the blow, but claws from behind were holding him up on his feet. The yellow eyes inches in front of him looked down at something. All of a sudden, feeling oddly dizzy and lightheaded, he decided the polite thing was to do the same.
And there it was in the palm of the creature’s hand, his own heart still dutifully beating away.
CHAPTER 66
65 million years BC, jungle
Howard and Edward stumbled through the jungle, skirting the clearing but unable to get to it because one of the creatures was deliberately blocking them.
‘Clever,’ wheezed Howard. Keeping them bottled up here amid tree trunks and dangling loops of vine, it prevented them making big sweeping strikes with their spear and hatchet; the blade or