Day of the Predator - Alex Scarrow [92]
Juan looked up. ‘We got our weapons, and we got robo-girl. We’re going to be all right.’
‘Maybe we’re safer now than we were,’ said Kelly. ‘One of them was killed trying to attack us. So maybe they’re more wary of us now.’
Laura tightened the grip on her spear. ‘Yeah … I guess you’re right.’
Franklyn finished piling a small cairn of stones around the base of the bamboo stake in the ground and looked up. Whitmore was leading the other two: Edward and his seemingly adopted big brother, Leonard, a hundred yards down towards another hump of silty bank they’d identified earlier as a good place for their second tablet.
‘You coming, Franklyn?’ the teacher called out.
‘Just a sec!’ he replied. The bamboo stake kept flopping over to one side and the rocks were very nearly, but not quite, holding it up. ‘I’ll join you in a second!’ he called back, reaching for another large river-smoothed stone.
He heard it then. A soft, muted cry. Like the whimpering of a small child. He froze, listening for it over the stirring hiss of the reeds and the chuckle of the stream. And there it was again, a little louder, a little clearer. It sounded like someone in pain.
‘Hello?’ he replied. ‘Who’s that?’
One of the girls perhaps? Maybe slipped on a wet rock and broken something?
‘Jasmine? Laura?’
The cry again, pitiful, wretched and insistent. It seemed to be coming from the reeds. ‘Akira? Is that you?’ He stepped towards them and fancied he saw someone shifting on the ground at the base of the reeds. He pushed his way in.
‘What? Have you slipped? Hurt your –’
The form slithered back from him through the reeds and out of sight, moving in a fast – too fast for human – way. It was then his peripheral vision picked out eyes watching him intently from among the reeds to his right. It shifted forward, silently revealing itself a mere couple of yards from him: distinct yellow forward-facing eyes at the front of an elongated, tapering skull that sloped back over hunched bony shoulders and a hunched spine. The curious shape of its skull vaguely reminded him of the aerodynamic helmets worn by speed cyclists, or downhill skiers at the winter Olympics, only much longer, like the aliens in those DVDs his older brother kept watching over and over. It scrutinized him, perfectly still, perfectly poised. And then its scalpel-sharp teeth parted and he saw its black tongue coiling and unfurling like a snake.
‘Aye … ammm … Fanck … leeennnnn …’ it hissed softly.
My God. This creature – he realized now, the very same reptilian hominid he had faced back up the hillside in the jungle yesterday – had remembered his name, had remembered their fleeting moment of communication, the exchange of a spoken word. Something that wasn’t going to happen again on this world for tens of millions of years. What’s more, this thing had actually the voice-box and the oral dexterity to reproduce a human word!
‘Yes!’ he whispered excitedly. ‘Yes … that’s me!’ He gestured to himself. ‘My … name … is … Franklyn.’
Its long tapered head tilted to one side and silently it glided a step forward out of the reeds towards him.
In his rucksack, nestled at the bottom beneath the last couple of parcels of grilled fish meat wrapped in waxy leaves, was his phone still with some charge left on it. Enough, he hoped, just enough to take a few photographs and maybe a short recording of this thing actually speaking. He eased the rucksack off his shoulders.
‘I’m just going to get something,’ he said softly, soothingly, moving slowly. ‘OK?’
The creature remained perfectly still, yellow eyes curiously watching his every move. He unzipped the bag and reached inside, the rank smell of fish spilling out. The skin flaps around the hominid’s nasal cavity began to twitch.
He can smell the food. Change of plan. Franklyn grasped one of the packages, pulled it out and unwrapped it. ‘Here you are … look! Food.’ He held the small hunk of barbecued flesh out in one hand towards the creature.
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