Day of the Predator - Alex Scarrow [3]
Her father angrily snatched at her hand. ‘Saleena! You must go with him!’
She looked at her father, her mother. ‘Why c-can’t we all go?’
The old man shook his head. ‘Only you, Saleena. I’m sorry.’
‘Why?’ She realized tears were streaming down her cheeks, tracing dark tracks on her chalky face.
‘You’re special,’ said the old man, ‘that is why.’
‘Please, you must take my boys too!’ called out Mrs Chaudhry.
The old man turned to her. ‘I can’t. I wish I could … but I can’t.’
‘Pleeease! They’re so young. Younger than this girl! They have their whole lives –’
‘I’m sorry, it’s not my choice. I can only take Saleena.’
Sal felt her father’s hands on her shoulders. He pushed her roughly forward towards the stranger. ‘You take her! You take her now!’
‘Dadda! No!’
‘You take her now!’
‘No! Not –’
They heard a deep rumble and felt the floor trembling beneath their feet.
‘We have only seconds,’ said the old man. ‘Hurry!’
‘SALEENA!’ her father screamed. ‘YOU GO!’
‘Dadda!’ she cried. She turned to her mum. ‘Please! I can’t!’
The old man stretched forward and grasped hold of her hand. He pulled her towards him, but she found herself instinctively squirming and twisting her hand to escape his tight grip. ‘No!’ she screamed.
The deep rumbling increased in volume, the floor shuddering, and cascades of dust and grit filled the air around them, tumbling down from above.
‘This is it!’ the old man said. ‘Time has come! Saleena … I can save your life if you come with me!’
She looked at him. It seemed madness that he could, but, somehow, she believed him. ‘Your parents want this too.’ His eyes, so intense, so old.
‘Yes!’ yelled her father above the growing roar. ‘Please! Take her NOW!’
Beside his small frame, her mother was screaming, stretching out her hands to hold her one last time. Her father grabbed her, held her back. ‘No, my love! She must go!’
Mrs Chaudhry pushed her boys at the old man. ‘Please! Take their hands too! Take their hands –’
The floor shook beneath their feet, lurching to one side.
Sal suddenly felt light-headed, as if she was free falling.
This is it, it’s falling!
Then the floor suddenly fractured beneath their feet, revealing an ocean of churning, roiling flames, like gazing down into Hell itself. And the last thing she recalled was seeing that one-eyed bear tumbling down through a large split in the stairwell’s floor into the fire below.
CHAPTER 2
2001, New York
Sal sat upright in her bunk – gasping for breath, feeling her cheeks wet with tears.
The nightmare again.
It was quiet and still in the archway. She could hear Maddy snoring on the bunk below, and Liam whimpering nonsensical words in his soft Irish accent as he stirred restlessly on the bunk opposite.
A muted lamp glowed softly from across the archway, lighting their wooden dinner table and the odd assortment of old armchairs around it. LEDs blinked among the bank of computer equipment across the way, hard drives whirring. One of the monitors remained on; she could see the computer system was doing a routine defrag and data-file tidying. It never slept.
Not it … not any more – the computer wasn’t IT any more. It was Bob.
Unable to go back to sleep, she clambered off the top bunk. Maddy twitched in her sleep, and Liam also seemed to be unsettled. Maybe they too were reliving their last moments: Liam’s sinking Titanic, Maddy’s doomed airliner. The nightmares came all too often.
She tiptoed across the archway, barefoot on the cold concrete floor, and sat down in one of the swivel chairs, tucking her feet under her and sitting on them for warmth. She grabbed the mouse and opened a dialogue box. Her fingernails clacked softly on the keyboard.
> hey, bob.
> Is this Maddy?
> no, it’s sal.
> It is 2.37 a.m. You cannot sleep, Sal?
>nightmares.
> Are you recalling your recruitment?
Recruitment, that’s what the old man, Foster, had called it. Like she’d had any real choice