Day of the Predator - Alex Scarrow [131]
Around him, Liam could hear a mixture of frustrated snarls and startled whimpers … and a sudden high-pitched scream that sounded unmistakably human. His mind solely on dragging Becks, heavy despite her slight frame, he could only fleetingly hope that it wasn’t Edward Chan’s voice he’d just heard.
‘Mission priority –’ Becks began to chastise him.
‘JUST KEEP HITTING THE BLOODY THINGS!’ he bellowed back at her. She shut up and obliged, swinging a booted foot out at a long bony jaw getting ready to snap down on her blood-caked thigh. Her boot made heavy contact, and the skull spun on its turtle neck like a skittle, a handful of toothpick-sized teeth whizzing out into the dark.
Ten seconds later – ten seconds that to Liam could easily have been a minute or an hour, ten seconds of dragging, hacking, swinging, kicking and screaming – and all of a sudden he felt the hair on his head lift in response to the warm soup of energy and excited particles around him. Over his shoulder, he could see Sal, actually see her shape, dancing and undulating as if seen through a thin veil of oil, and other shapes, Edward, Laura standing beside her. He could see the flickering blue fizzing archway light that normally irritated him so much as he read on his bunk.
‘WE DID IT!’ he found himself yelling as his foot seemed to lose touch with solid ground and he felt that all too familiar nauseating sensation of falling.
CHAPTER 71
2001, New York
He felt his face smack against a hard concrete floor, the dead weight of Becks landing heavily on the top of his back, knocking the air out of his lungs.
‘Good God!’ he heard from somewhere nearby – a male voice he didn’t recognize.
While his eyes were still seeing stars, he could feel Becks struggling to lift herself off his back. He heard the pounding rasp of laboured breath nearby, presumably, hopefully, Edward and the other two. He could hear the faint muted chug of the generator in the back room. And through the still-open portal hovering a couple of feet above the tangled pile of himself and Becks, the far-off sounds of a jungle night stirring to life … and the click-clacking and mewling of those things getting louder, closer.
‘Ummpph … closhhhh the ’ortal!’ he mumbled into the floor, his bloodied lips still mushed against the hard concrete as Becks struggled to lift her dead weight off him.
‘Liam? Is that you under there?’ Maddy’s voice.
‘Umpph. U’mm … yeshhh,’ he mumbled. ‘Closhhh the ’leedin’ ’ortal!’
Then all of a sudden he felt another heavy load land on his back, and the excruciating pain of three sharp blades digging deep into his left shoulder-blade.
‘What on earth is THAT?’ Another unfamiliar voice, another man’s voice.
The weight was gone as quickly as it had arrived and he heard the skittering of claws across the concrete floor and the startled bark of one or two of those creatures echoing off the arched brick ceiling.
‘My God, Forby! Shoot it! SHOOT IT!’
The piercing scream of a girl, he couldn’t be sure who. Then, with a rattling sigh, Becks finally flopped off the side of his back, her pale face spattered with dark dots of drying blood, thudding to the floor beside his. Her grey eyes stared lifelessly back at him, as if looking at something far, far away. He managed to lift himself up on to his elbows, grimacing at the sharp pain in his shoulder and his head still spinning from the impact of the heavy landing. He attempted to get his first glance at what was going on around him.
Two of the creatures had managed to follow them through and were now darting in confusion and panic one way and then the other across the archway floor. He spotted two men he didn’t recognize: one old, in a rumpled suit with a loosened tie dangling