Day of the Predator - Alex Scarrow [59]
And then there’s me. The Irish kid who can do nothing more than keep saying ‘help’s on the way’.
He wondered if the only reason they’d accepted him as the nominal leader was because he’d made the rash promise to get them back home. That and, of course, because Becks took her orders only from him. He wondered how they were going to feel about him being in charge in a few weeks’ time or months’ time, when there was still no sign of rescue.
He felt lonely and worn out with the burden of responsibility. At least the last time he’d been stuck in the past it had just been himself to worry about; he hadn’t been asked to lead anyone.
No, that was Bob’s job. He laughed at the memory of Bob leading that army of freedom fighters. They’d thought he was some sort of warrior angel sent down from Heaven by God himself; they’d thought he was a superhero just like out of one of those comicbooks. Superman, Captain Freedom. He’d certainly looked the part.
Movement.
He looked up and saw a pack of small dinosaurs, little more than lizards, standing upright on their hind legs and gazing at him curiously. None bigger than his hand. They were standing only a couple of yards away and tweeted and twittered among themselves as they idly watched him. Franklyn had a species name for them, although Liam was damned if he could remember it.
‘What do you fellas want?’ he called out.
He could guess … begging for scraps. These little chaps had been hopping and skipping around their campfire last night like excited children, drawn by the smell of fish meat being grilled on a spit. One of them had even been bold enough to hop up on to the cooking carcass, but had slipped on the greasy scales of the fish and fallen into the fire, where it had flapped around and screamed for a while before finally succumbing to the flames.
‘Did you not learn your lesson last night, you silly eejits? Best staying away, eh?’
They all cocked their heads to the right in unison at the sound of his voice.
‘Jay-zus, you little fellas really are stupid, aren’t you?’
They tweeted and twittered and cooed at that.
‘Ah, go away, will you? You’ll spook my fish, so you will.’ Liam bent down, scooped up a rock and tossed it a dozen yards down the silted riverbank. The entire pack of mini-therapods turned and scooted after it excitedly, presumably utterly convinced it was a hunk of juicy meat.
Liam watched them go, pattering across the silt, leaving a host of tiny trails behind them, like the trail of winter birds across virgin snow.
And that’s when the idea struck him.
‘Oh … oh,’ he gasped to himself. ‘Oh Jay-zus-’n’-Mother-Mary,’ he added for good measure. ‘That’ll be it!’ He dropped his spear into the water and turned on his heels, heading through the trees towards the camp.
CHAPTER 33
65 million years BC, jungle
He stumbled out of the jungle and into the clearing. Across the way he could see a thin column of smoke from yesterday’s campfire, still smouldering, and clustered around it their dozen wigwam shelters, cone-shaped frames of wood beneath layers of broad waxy leaves the size of elephant’s ears. To one side their palisade, finished now, and reinforced with a coating of rust-coloured dried mud, packed into the spaces between the logs and almost as hard as concrete. Around the tree-trunk palisade wall a three-foot-deep trench had been dug out. It effectively added another two or three feet to the height of their defence. Liam very much doubted it would hold at bay something as large as a rex, but it might be enough to dissuade any smaller beasts on the hunt for an easy meal.
He picked out Becks among the figures moving around the camp: a figure in black, her head no longer a pale round eggshell, but dark