Day of the Predator - Alex Scarrow [74]
‘Oh, he likes you, man,’ called out Juan.
Liam felt a fetid blast of warm air across his face and closed his eyes as the dinosaur’s head moved even closer. ‘Ohh … I’m not happy about this,’ he hissed out of the side of his mouth. Thick leathery lips the size of an automobile tyre probed his face, then moved up to explore the intriguing texture of his dark hair.
‘Oh, he really likes you, man. Want us to leave you two alone?’ chuckled Juan.
‘Hair,’ said Whitmore. ‘That’s an evolutionary step that’s millions of years away for this creature. The texture of it must be fascinating to him.’
Liam felt a sharp tug on his scalp. ‘Ow! Well, he’s bleedin’ well eating it now, so he is!’ He slapped at the creature’s mouth. ‘Hey! Ouch! Let go! Becks! Help!’
Becks reacted swiftly. She stepped towards him and swung a fist at the alamosaurus’s nose. The blow smacked heavily against the leathery skin and with a roar of pain and horror the giant let go of Liam. Its thick muscular neck reared up suddenly, a tree-felling in reverse, and it let loose a deafening bellow that reminded Liam of the dying groans of the Titanic’s hull. The air vibrated with its startled roar.
Liam clasped his hands over his ears to protect his rattling eardrums, as the cry spread across the plain from one giant herbivore to the next. The alamosaur stumbled back from them on its tree-trunk legs, turning in a long cumbersome arc, and began to shamble away in a loping slow-motion run that felt through the ground like the early tremors of an earthquake.
‘Oh, great!’ shouted Franklyn. ‘Now you started a stampede!’
The calm scene of moments ago, a vista of leviathans grazing peacefully across the open plain, had been instantly transformed into a deafening display of motion and panic. Liam watched the smaller species of plant-eaters scrambling to avoid being stampeded by the other alamosaurs darting into the islands of trees and ferns for cover.
‘Whoa!’ Juan was doubling up with excited laughter. ‘Those alamo things are real chickens, man! Look at the suckers go!’
Amid the confusion of movement and kicked-up dust Liam caught sight of something else. Dark shapes behind them, half a mile away, smaller than any of the other species out on the plain. Just a glimpse of them, a second, no more. Then they were gone to ground, hidden among the knee-high tufts of olive-coloured grass scattered in threadbare clumps across the open plain.
Liam turned to ask if anyone else had seen them, but the others were still marvelling at the sight of an entire food chain on the move, a thunderous spectacle of swaying folds of leathery skin and sinews taut with panic.
He turned back to look again. Nothing. As if the dark shapes had never ever existed.
What the heck are those?
Vanished like skeins of dark smoke, like that ghostly seeker.
Or am I losing me mind now?
It was fully five minutes before some semblance of calm returned to the area; the various species of herbivores gathered in a worried-looking cluster a mile away. Tall necks protruded from the pack standing fully erect, watching them from afar like impossibly large meerkats.
‘Oh, that was fun,’ said Laura. ‘Can we go do it again?’
Liam looked at Becks. Her face was folded with a confused expression. ‘Becks? What’s the matter?’
She looked down at her fist, still balled up. ‘I did not hit it very hard.’
‘You must have hit a sensitive spot,’ said Whitmore.
They made their way across the plain towards the coastline on the horizon, most of the time with Franklyn complaining about how Becks had ruined his chance to study the creatures up close. By noon they were standing among a scattering of boulders and looking at a broad beach of dark coarse sand and a tranquil tropical ocean sending gently lapping waves of surf up the shingle and back down again with a soothing hiss.
‘So?’ said Liam.
Becks studied the view for a long moment, her eyes narrowed. ‘Twenty-one miles north-east of our current location.’
Liam grimaced. ‘So then it