Day of the Predator - Alex Scarrow [45]
‘Maddy?’
She looked up at Sal. ‘I’m going to go find Foster. Bring him back if I can. He’ll know what to do, Sal. Because I sure don’t.’
‘But he’s gone for good you said. He wasn’t here when the bubble reset. He’s gone.’
‘Gone from our two days, yeah. But not Wednesday … not Thursday, not any other day after that.’
‘You’re going to ride forward?’
Maddy considered that, but the less time travel she did – forward or backwards – the better. Foster had quietly told her timeriding was a bit like smoking; like a single cigarette, it was impossible to say for sure how much a single smoke might take off your life, but if you could ever avoid having a cigarette that could only be a good thing.
‘I’ll miss the reset. That’s what I’ll do,’ said Maddy. ‘I’ll go into Wednesday and hang around those places. Who knows? I might get lucky.’
‘You can’t do that! You’ll be gone for good like Foster!’
‘No … we’ll schedule a return window.’ Maddy pinched her lip in thought. ‘Yeah, we’ll schedule a window at, let’s say, eight in the evening on Wednesday.’ She turned round and pointed towards the shutter door. ‘Just outside the archway in our side street. That’ll bring me right back into our time bubble, back into Monday.’
‘But what if a time wave happens while you’re gone?’
Maddy shrugged, resigned. ‘I can’t see you coping any worse than Maddy “Mess-up” Carter’s done so far, right?’
‘Oh shadd-yah! We should be figuring out how to get Liam back, not messing around visiting tourist attractions.’
‘Yeah? But think about it – there’s nothing we can do, is there? Just wait around … wait for a time wave to hit us and hope it’ll lead us directly to him? That’s it. That’s pretty much all we can do right now. Just wait. Well, at least while we’re sitting around here doing nothing useful I can try and find Foster, see what else he can suggest.’
Sal clamped her mouth shut.
‘Make sense?’
Sal nodded slowly. ‘OK,’ she replied, fiddling with a pair of plastic bangles on her wrist. ‘Do you want me to come with you? Two pairs of eyes?’
The screen in front of them flickered.
> Recommendation: Sal should remain here as the observer.
Maddy nodded reluctantly. ‘Bob’s right. If we get a time ripple preceding a wave, we need you here as our early heads-up. You should stay here and do your mid-morning walk around Times Square just like always. And, anyway, if the poop hits the fan and for some reason I end up being stuck out in Wednesday it’ll be good to know there’s someone left holding the fort, right?’
Sal tried a confident nod. ‘Uh … yeah.’
‘Right … that’s the plan, then.’ Maddy looked at her watch. It was just gone five in the afternoon. Outside, the sun would be looking ahead for a place to settle beyond the smoke-filled sky of Manhattan, and most of New York was already back at home, the normal day of work abandoned hours ago as they silently watched live news feeds from their dinner tables.
Tonight, New York was going to be a ghost town, just like it always was on the Tuesday as the clock ticked down towards their field office time bubble resetting itself.
CHAPTER 26
65 million years BC, jungle
Liam wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. ‘Jay-zus, it’s almost as hot as the old lady’s boiler room, so it is.’
‘Old lady?’ It was Mr Whitmore.
Liam thought the man had been far enough behind not to hear his bad-tempered mutterings. He shrugged. ‘Oh, just a … just an old ship I used to work on.’
He stopped where he was, catching his breath for a moment. The hot humid air felt heavy on his lungs. They stood still for a while, trading ragged breaths and listening to the subdued noises of the jungle around them, the tap of water dripping on waxy leaves, the creak of the tall canopy trees subtly swaying and shifting, the echoing chatter and squawk of some flying creatures far above amid the branches.
Further back down the trail he’d been hacking out with his improvised machete, he heard the others stumbling towards them: Franklyn, their resident dino expert grinning at the prehistoric