Day of the Predator - Alex Scarrow [68]
‘Is she all right?’ asked Juan.
Liam shrugged. ‘It’s her attempt at a joke. Don’t worry. She’s fine.’ He looked up at her. ‘Becks! Maybe we should save the joking around for later? All right? You’re scaring the kids.’
Her face straightened. ‘Affirmative.’
‘OK, then.’ He turned back to the others. ‘Who’s first?’
There wasn’t exactly a rush.
Liam was the last one up.
As Becks hefted him up on to the ridge and helped him to his feet, he could see she looked fatigued. In fact, he realized, it was the first time he’d ever seen her looking like that. Genuinely spent. ‘You OK, Becks?’
‘Recommendation: I should now consume protein and then rest for several hours,’ she said. Her grey eyes met his for a moment and he wondered if there was a hint of gratitude in her expression, gratitude that he’d bothered to ask if she was OK.
‘OK, you do that,’ he said, slapping her shoulder. ‘We could all probably do with a rest. Maybe we should set up camp here for tonight?’
She considered that for a moment, panning her eyes around the immediate surroundings. ‘This is an acceptable location.’
‘Right. I’ll tell the others.’ He wandered across the top of the peak towards the rest of them. They were clustered together and staring out over the sloping ridge on the far side of the peak. From where he stood, he could see nothing but a rich blue sky and a far-off top-heavy bank of cloud hanging above a flat horizon like a giant floating anvil.
‘What is it? Can you see something?’ He clattered over, kicking stones and raising dust until he was standing right beside them. ‘Oh … my,’ his voice fluttered softly.
‘There’s all the dinosaurs you’ve ever wanted to see, kid,’ said Whitmore to Franklyn.
The peak sloped down gently, grey shale gradually giving way in patches to an enormous plain of verdant grassland dotted with islands of jungle – tall straight deciduous canopy trees draped with the vines they’d come to rely on. Around the patches of jungle, herds of huge beasts Liam couldn’t begin to name grazed lazily in the late-afternoon sun. Between the slowly meandering groups of giants, smaller packs of fleet-footed beasts flocked and weaved in an endless zig-zagging race.
‘My God,’ whispered Kelly. ‘This is really … quite … incredible.’
Whitmore and Franklyn were grinning like a pair of children in a toy store.
Beyond the sweeping plain, Liam noticed the flat horizon changed from a drab olive colour to a rich turquoise.
Laura was frowning at that, confused. ‘Is that an ocean over there? I don’t recall Texas having a freakin’ ocean in the middle of it.’
Franklyn nodded. ‘Sixty-five million years ago there was,’ he said, adopting the learned air of a college principal. ‘An inland ocean that ran north–south up the middle of America, cutting it in two. In fact, Laura, you probably wouldn’t recognize Earth if you were looking at it from orbit right now.’
Liam watched in silence for a good minute, stunned, like everyone else, into stillness and quiet as he gazed out on a scene that no human before had ever witnessed, nor should ever witness again. A moment of incalculable privilege, uniqueness. Once upon a time – and it felt like another lifetime now – he’d been standing in the creaking bowels of a dying ship, waist deep in ice-cold water, facing certain death and crying like a small child. And there was Foster, holding his hand out to him uttering a promise that if he joined him there were going to be things he’d see, wonderful things. Incredible things.
‘Well, this is certainly one of them,’ Liam whispered to himself.
‘What’s that?’ said Kelly.
Liam roused himself and grinned. ‘Nothing, I just said … so, this is where all you big fellas have been hiding.’
A good-natured ripple of laughter spread among them.
‘We’re camping up here tonight,’ he announced, studying the distant strip of ocean blue on the horizon. ‘And tomorrow we’ll be at the seaside, so we will.’
CHAPTER 37
65 million years BC, jungle
Liam savoured the warmth of the fire on his