Lost Worlds (26 page)

‘Are you OK, girl?’ Levan asked breathlessly. ‘I heard you scream.’

Natalie nodded, unable to form words.

‘What
is
this thing?’ he continued.

‘It’s the thing we’re looking for,’ she finally managed to say.

‘It seems to have found you first,’ he said, but he had taken his eyes off the Almast, and while he was distracted the creature took its chance to spring at him, teeth bared. It was
going for his throat!

Levan grabbed the Almast’s head in both hands and tried to keep its teeth from fastening about his throat, but its hands were scrabbling at his chest. Natalie could see the material of his
shirt shredding beneath its nails, and blood begin to splatter across his chest as the nails grazed his skin. His face was creased in pain and exertion.

The Georgian guide fell backwards. Natalie thought for a second that he had been pushed, but he brought his right leg up, bent tight, and pushed his foot into the Almast’s stomach. As
Levan’s back hit the ground, he rolled, still holding on to the creature’s head but pushing up with all the power of his right leg. The Almast flew over him and he let go of its head.
It flipped through the air, grunting in fury, and hit the side of a barn. Natalie heard its head connect with a solid
thud.
It slid down the side of the barn, but, amazingly, when it
crumpled to the ground in a heap of tangled limbs, it immediately tried to stand up again.

‘Stay back,’ Levan cautioned as he rolled on to his stomach and pushed himself to his feet. His chest was a mass of ripped fabric and bright red blood. He staggered over to where the
Almast was holding on to the barn wall in an effort to stay upright. Levan lashed out with his right fist, catching the Almast on the chin. Its head snapped to one side, but it remained upright and
conscious. Natalie had a feeling that Levan’s blow would have paralysed an ox, but the Almast seemed to just shake it off.

Levan tried to bring his left fist up in a hard uppercut that surely would have knocked the creature out, but it grabbed his hand and squeezed. Levan’s expression changed from one of
concentrated anger to one of shock as the Almast ground the bones of his hand together, knuckle against knuckle. Natalie braced herself for the cracking sound of something breaking in Levan’s
hand, but before things went too far Levan stepped forward and brought his knee up into the Almast’s groin. The creature let go of his hand and squealed. Protecting itself from another attack
with its left hand, it swept its right fist sideways across Levan’s face. The guide flew through the air and hit the ground with an audible grunt. Rolling over on to his back, he clutched at
his shoulder in agony.

The Almast glanced from Levan to Natalie and back again, and then at the bag that it had dropped. It seemed uncertain what to do. For a long moment the three of them waited, each for the other
to make a move. Eventually the Almast snarled. It took a step towards Natalie, hands outstretched and claw-like. For a second she thought it was going to rush at her again, but the sound of shouts
from the direction of the village centre distracted its attention. It darted towards the bag, snatched it up and loped towards the edge of the village.

There was some kind of disturbance behind Natalie: she could hear voices calling, and torches appeared to be pointed her way, making her shadow flicker in front of her. In the distance the
Almast was running past the final building and towards the scrubby bushes that marked the place where the local countryside began. A sudden flash of bright white light made Natalie blink. The
Almast lurched to one side, throwing an arm up to protect its eyes and almost letting go of its stolen bag. The source of the light seemed to be an apple-sized sphere that had been planted on top
of a metal pole just past the final building.

The light vanished, leaving a green, blobby afterglow in the centre of Natalie’s vision. By the time the blob had faded away, the Almast had vanished into the bushes.

Someone grabbed her shoulder. She turned to find Rhino and Gecko standing beside her, poised for action. A handful of villagers were bent over Levan Ketsbaia, talking to him in rapid
Georgian.

‘Are you OK?’ Gecko asked, pulling Natalie’s attention back.

‘You shouldn’t have wandered off by yourself,’ Rhino said in an irritated tone.

‘It was one of those things we’re looking for,’ Natalie gasped. ‘And, by the way – you’re not my father. Or my mother.’

‘For which I’m sure we’re all equally grateful,’ Rhino murmured. He glanced towards the village boundary. ‘Are you sure it was an Almast?’

‘Either that or they’re making a horror movie around here and they’re doing some late-night filming.’ She sighed. ‘Yes, it was an Almast, not a villager, or a dog,
or anything like that. I know what I saw.’

Rhino looked at Gecko, then out into the darkness. Gecko nodded and ran forward to where the buildings ended and the bushes began. He stopped and stared out into the darkness, pointing his torch
in various directions.

Rhino bent down and examined the ground. ‘The earth’s too hard to take any tracks,’ he said to himself. ‘No rain for a while. We won’t be able to follow
it.’

Gecko walked back more slowly than he had gone out. He was shaking his head. ‘I cannot see anything. It has run away.’

Rhino crossed over to where the villagers were clustered around Levan. He bent down and talked to the injured guide for a few moments before returning to Natalie and Gecko. He looked angry and
frustrated.

Before he could say anything, Tara arrived. She was breathless from running. ‘I got a signal from one of the sensors. What happened? What did I miss?’ She glanced at Levan, who was
being helped to his feet. ‘My God – is he OK?’

‘Fortunately, he’s going to live,’ Rhino said. ‘His chest is a mess, and his shoulder appears to be dislocated. There’s some discussion about whether he should be
put in the back of a car and driven straight to hospital, or whether a local doctor ought to be called out, or whether the villagers can reset the shoulder themselves. Apart from giving him a
tetanus shot I can’t really help.’

‘What did that to him?’ Tara breathed, wide-eyed.

‘Natalie had a close encounter with one of the Almasti,’ Rhino explained.

‘And she survived?’ Tara gave Natalie a thumbs-up. ‘Well done, you.’

‘Is that thing something to do with you?’ Natalie asked, indicating the globe on a stick that had given out that bright white flash of light. ‘It’s just that it looks
kinda geeky.’

‘Yeah, that’s one of our sensors.’ She frowned. ‘Don’t you remember me talking about them on the flight out?’

‘Sorry.’ Natalie shrugged. ‘I must have been asleep.’

‘I only got one signal.’ Tara looked at Rhino. ‘That means it’s still in the village. If it had come in and then left again there would have been two signals.’

Rhino shook his head. ‘Natalie said she saw it leaving the village. That means it must have been here before you put the sensors up and activated them.’

‘Here in the village?’ Tara repeated. ‘You mean, while I was wandering around alone, that thing might have been
watching
me?
Following
me?’

‘And you survived?’ Natalie said brightly. She gave Tara a sarcastic thumbs-up. ‘Well done, you!’

Tara narrowed her eyes and stared directly at Natalie, but Natalie had been stared at by experts – not least, her mother – without being fazed. She just smiled back innocently.

‘Well, at least we’ve got a photograph of Natalie’s latest boyfriend,’ Tara said, looking away. ‘Let’s go and take a look at it.’

Tara led the way back through the village to the inn. Some of the villagers were around, disturbed by the commotion, but the guide, Levan, told them that there was nothing to worry about and
encouraged them to go back to bed. There being no street lights to speak of, and no electricity in the houses, Natalie got the impression that they pretty much went to bed when the sun went down
and got up when it rose.

Back in the inn, Tara led them all to her room, which was, Natalie noticed, just as rough as her own.

Tara’s tablet was on the bed. She flung herself down in front of it and typed some instructions into the keyboard. The screen flashed to life with a photograph.

Natalie shuddered.

It was the thing she had seen, captured in mid-stride. Its mouth was open, revealing its yellow, tombstone-like teeth, and its eyes were wide. It definitely wasn’t a villager – not
unless they’d been keeping some deformed monster-child hidden away. The picture looked like a brighter, sharper image of the photograph that Calum had found on the internet, the one that had
sparked off this whole crazy expedition.

‘The hunt is on,’ Rhino murmured.

‘The question is,’ Tara added, ‘who is hunting whom?’

C
alum sat in front of his computer screens, staring at the image that Tara had emailed through from the village of Ruspiri.

He couldn’t quite believe it. The picture taken of the Almast by the backpacker had been blurry and difficult to make out. This one was perfectly sharp. There was no doubt this time, no
ambiguity. The Almasti existed.

As well as the image on his central screen, three of the surrounding screens were all showing grainier versions of the same image but seen from various directions, transmitted from the headbands
of Tara, Gecko and Rhino. He’d insisted that they all wear the headbands every moment they were awake, now that they were sure they were on the right track. As Natalie’s experience had
proved, anything could happen without warning. He was pleased to see that she was wearing hers now, although she kept pulling at it as if she really wanted to take it off.

‘Calum, are you listening to this?’ Rhino said.

‘I am.’ He quickly flicked his gaze across the screens. ‘Gecko, can you turn round and face Rhino? I want to see him speak.’

One of the screens displayed a blur for a moment, and then Rhino’s face appeared.

‘I’m not sure we can track the creature very well – certainly not now, at night, but even when the sun’s up I doubt that it’s left much of a track. The ground is
too hard to retain any imprints, and the vegetation is too dry. It’s going to be difficult to work out where it went. Our best bet is to fall back on the original plan – look for likely
areas in the foothills where a village or a settlement might be hidden.’

‘I understand what you’re saying.’ Calum sighed. ‘But I wish there was some way of capitalizing on the fact that you’ve actually had a face-to-face
experience.’

‘Actually,’ a voice said, ‘I think there’s a way you might be able to track it.’

It took Calum a couple of moments to identify the voice, and just as he did so all but one of the headband cameras suddenly slewed round to focus on Natalie’s face.

‘What do you mean?’ Rhino’s voice asked.

Natalie looked uncomfortable at being the focus of so much attention. Her gaze flickered from side to side, as if she was looking for some way out, and there were spots of colour in her cheeks.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I kinda slipped my mobile phone into one of the pockets on its shirt-thing.’

There was silence in the room in Ruspiri. As far away as England, Calum could have heard a pin drop. ‘You did
what?
’ he asked eventually, if only to break the silence.

‘I slipped my mobile into its shirt pocket.’

Rhino had found his voice by now. ‘Why did you do that?’ he asked mildly.

‘Well, it wasn’t like I was getting much of a signal, and I didn’t want to talk to any of my friends because it would just make me sad. And it occurred to me that you guys
might be able to track my mobile’s signal.’ She looked concerned. ‘You can do that, can’t you? I mean, I’ve seen it on
CSI
.’

‘Yes,’ Calum said, ‘we can do that. Or, rather,
I
can do that from here. But, Natalie, that was a brilliant idea.’

‘Don’t sound so surprised,’ she said.

‘Won’t the Almast feel the weight of the phone in its pocket?’ Tara’s voice asked.

Natalie shook her head. ‘It’s a really lightweight mobile. I keep forgetting I’ve got it with me.’ She paused, and smiled brightly. ‘And it’s pink!’

‘Battery life?’ Gecko asked.

‘I charged it yesterday from the lighter socket in the van. It’s got pretty much a full charge.’

‘Let’s hope your mother doesn’t ring it,’ Gecko’s voice said.

Natalie flinched. ‘Actually, what worries me is: what happens if she rings and that creature answers?’

There was silence for a few moments as the group tried to imagine the consequences, and then tried not to.

‘I’ll start the tracking programs,’ Calum said. ‘If I get a location, I’ll let you know.’

Rhino started to say something, then paused as the sound of raised voices from outside intruded on the conversation. ‘Hang on a sec,’ he said. ‘I’m going to check on
what’s going on out there.’

‘Tara,’ Calum said, ‘while I’m booting up the tracking programs and Rhino is talking to the villagers, can you run a check on the boundary sensors? I’d hate to have
something sneak past them while we were distracted.’

‘Will do, boss.’

‘I’ll go with her,’ Natalie offered.

The team in Georgia fragmented as each of them went different ways, and the computer screens in Calum’s apartment started to display different pictures rather than different versions of
the same one. Calum switched his attention to a screen where he could flash up the apps that he could use to track mobile-phone locations. It wasn’t
entirely
legal, but then it
wasn’t entirely
illegal
either. It was a grey area of law. It took him less than five minutes to call up a Google Earth map of northern Georgia with the position of Natalie’s
phone on it. The accuracy wasn’t perfect – the cell size was pretty huge that far into the wilds of the country – but it was enough to work out the location of the Almast to
within a mile or so. It was heading roughly north-west, away from the village and into the mountains.

He could feel his heart beating faster than usual. He felt breathless, excited.