Z. Rex (17 page)

And then Adam heard an earth-shaking boom like thunder. Or like a bomb going off. “What the . . . ?” A sudden, distant gale of sound blew across the twilight, eerie and high-pitched. It reminded him of something. . . .

Alarm tingling across his skin, Adam scrambled toward the top of the rise to get a better view. Yes, it was definitely screaming he could hear, coming from the city center to the west. And as he staggered up, another thundering crash cracked apart the night around him.

He stood and gaped. And suddenly understood the screaming.

Because Edinburgh Castle was falling down.

Far across the rooftops, bathed in orange floodlights, that formidable, ancient pile was crumbling like chalk over the craggy ancient rock it stood upon. Adam flinched as a turret seemed to explode under two great impacts, a huge spray of debris arcing through the air. He watched, stunned and disbelieving, as history was demolished before his eyes.

A poisonous-looking cloud of dust was thickening in the orange lights. Through it, just for a second, Adam caught the barest details of a giant, dramatic shape sweeping through the air, barely visible unless you knew what you were looking for. A hunched, reptilian back. Vast wings extended. A thick tail smashing chunks from the battlements, deadly rain to crush the shrieking spectators who must be gathered below.

“Zed!”
he screamed, as a bloodlusting bellow railed out into the night.

A
n ancient wall bulged and bowed, then blew apart. Even from this distance, Adam flinched. It was like watching stone fireworks explode in the face of the on-looking crowds. A hollow rattle rose above the crumble of ruined stone—gunfire. There were soldiers at the castle for all the ceremonies. Perhaps a few had glimpsed that vast shimmer on the air, heard the exultant roar, and were trying to fight back.

The gunfire soon stopped, buried by still louder crashes.

And it’s Zed,
thought Adam.
He’s cracked.

The words GET DAD NOW rang in Adam’s brain. He grabbed his bike and set off for the road at a stumbling run. The castle was maybe a mile away. . . .

Reaching a wide, tree-lined avenue, he swung himself onto the seat and started pedaling. A police van streaked past, pursued by two fire engines, a deafening chorus of sirens. He passed people crowding together for comfort as they watched that indelible chunk of the skyline being clawed away. Helicopters swept overhead, making for the castle—police, film crews. Adam guessed that soon the skies would be thick with them. He crossed the road and took a left into a tall-walled canyon of buildings. Another police car bombed by, twinned with an ambulance this time. More helicopters buzzed above.

And a shadow fell over him.

The next instant, a car across the street buckled flat with a scrunch of steel as violent as any explosion. Adam swerved and lost control of his bike. He tumbled onto the pavement and slammed against a large, black salt bin. Winded, he turned, wide-eyed with fear.

Zed was striding toward him.

“Get back!” Adam shouted, cowering behind the bin. “Get away from me!”

But Zed smacked the huge plastic bin aside with a single swipe of his tail and lunged forward. His dark eyes were wild, his jaws flecked with foam.

Suddenly a woman’s shriek, arrow-sharp, pierced the night. A small crowd had gathered over on Nicolson Street, and they’d spotted the monster. Before Adam could react, Zed snatched him up and took off into the night sky, switching to chameleon mode so he seemed to vanish, a dark bruise moving over the face of the night.

“Put me down!” Adam hollered, struggling in the scaly crook of Zed’s elbow. He saw the helicopters buzzing around the scene of destruction like wasps around jam. The traffic in the streets below was grid-locked. Honking horns fought for attention over the row of sirens.

Zed hurtled north over the darkened estates. He swooped down over an enormous large white truck parked outside the neighboring gasworks and landed near the warehouse with a thud, his claws churning up the old concrete. The distant bedlam of shouts, horns and air traffic carried even here to the dark, deserted wasteland, as Zed opened the roll-up doors and stalked inside.

Adam wriggled free of Zed’s grip and dropped to the ground, shaking in the murky gloom. “You’re crazy!” he yelled, staring up at Zed. “If you’re gonna kill me, just get on with it!”

The creature seemed agitated, his claws clicking together, padding around in a circle and scenting the air, his massive muscles tensed. Then he reached into his giant jaws and pulled something out.

It took Adam a few seconds to realize he was staring at a White Sox sweatshirt, crumpled and damp.

“That’s Dad’s,” Adam said. He was frozen inside. “I got it for him in New Mexico. He packed it when he went to Fort Ponil.”

“Dad . . . scent. Dad.” He looked distressed, heaving great breaths. “Tried.
Get
Dad.”

“Tried?” Adam breathed.

Zed nodded. “Get. Zed must. Must get.”

“No!” Adam shook his head. “Smash all the castles you want, but for the last time, it’s not him you should be after. You don’t want to kill him!”

“KILL?” As he shouted the word, Zed thrust his huge face up close to Adam’s. Adam gasped and lay very still, petrified as those huge, dripping teeth hovered just millimeters away from his neck. “GET. Get Dad.” He stamped his foot. “Get. Dad. Out.”

“Get him . . .
out
?” Adam felt a huge crash of confusion.

Zed’s brows beetled together. “Pain. Dark. Get Dad out.”

Adam stared at him. “That’s why you came to our apartment in New Mexico?” Sadness, fear and relief surged through his brain in a dizzying rush. “You weren’t trying to kill him? But you trashed the place!”

“Men. Guns,” the dinosaur sneered. “Zed mad.”

He’s like an overgrown kid,
Adam realized, still trembling.
Lashing out. Not thinking stuff through
. “Zed, why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Am . . . Ad . . . am.” Zed stared down at him, just as he had back in Fort Ponil. “Zed. Ad. Knows.”

“No.” Adam shook his head. “No, you don’t understand. You’ve got bits of my thoughts in your head, but I haven’t got any of yours! I’ve never known what you were thinking about me, or my dad, or—”

“Dad,” Zed growled. “Mine. Dad mine.”

“
Your
dad?” Adam closed his eyes and thought. If Zed’s head had been so scrambled he’d come to see Bill Adlar as a kind of surrogate father, and Adam as close to a brother, then no wonder he’d come so far to bring them back together. But what if Zed’s mind was starting to heal, and the links binding him to Adam and Dad were breaking down? He remembered the way Zed had clutched his head in the horse field, thought of the woman being taken to the hospital, the castle collapsing. . . .

Zed’s savage side had to be gaining control.

“What about Dad’s shirt?” Adam said quietly. “Where’d you find it?”

“Long way. Sky.”

Frowning, Adam spotted a string hanging down from the White Sox top with shreds of foil tied to the end. “Helium balloons,” he whispered. “Someone tied his shirt to balloons and let them fly out over the sea?” He got up from the floor, thinking hard as more sirens went shrieking into the night beyond the warehouse grounds and the persistent helicopters whirled on overhead. “It was a trick, Zed. A trick to get you out of the way. Whoever did it knew you’d pick up the scent and try to follow. But why?” He looked imploringly at Zed. “The woman you attacked last night, did she have anything to do with Geneflow?”

Zed ignored him, sniffing the air. “Feel wrong. Bad.”

“And what about the castle?” Adam demanded. “Zed, I know you’re confused. You’ve been put through so much, but now you’ve—”

The dinosaur turned without warning and pounded over to the loading doors. He slammed his fist against the red button, almost tore it from the wall. The chains clanked as the metal barrier lifted.

“What is it?” Adam ran after him, afraid of what Zed might do next.

As he reached the exit, massive floodlights slammed on, the white light blinding. Zed flinched, ducked his head, while Adam threw his own hands up over his eyes. The growl of helicopters overhead grew louder.

“Hey, kid!” It was Bateman’s voice, ringing out from the wall of light. “We’re from the local pound, heard reports of a dangerous animal.”

Before Adam could even react, Zed charged forward and stomp-kicked the nearest floodlights, buckling metal and shattering glass. He was about to follow up with the jab cross when a huge copter dropped from out of the darkness to drive him back. The rotor wash whipped at Adam’s hair and clothes, forcing him to the ground. He saw there were men jammed in the doorway. Men with guns.

Zed roared out in defiance, flicked open his wings and turned himself invisible. But four jagged shafts of blue light spat from the men’s weapons, and Adam was driven back by the fierce, crackling power. Zed’s form reappeared as an outline of sparking, blinding energy, and his shrieks rose above the roar of the rotors.

Adam stared in horror, shaking his head. Wasn’t this what he’d wanted—Zed under control, incapable of hurting anyone ever again? He looked away, unable to watch—and gasped as his arm was twisted up behind his back.

“There now, Ad—isn’t this better?” Bateman had snuck around and grabbed him, hissing in his ear. “Thanks for leading us to him. Cycling away from Lawnmarket in such a hurry this morning. . . . You should’ve looked
behind
you instead of overhead.”

Adam struggled wildly, gasping with pain, as the men kept blasting away. Zed was down on the ground, unable to withstand the assault, his head jerking from side to side.
They sent him on a wild-goose chase ’cause they wanted him tired,
Adam realized.
Wanted him easier to take.
“Mr. Bateman,” he gasped, “his mind’s all messed up, he doesn’t know what he’s done. Please, make them stop!”

“Stop? You know how hard it is to get private security for a gig like this?” Bateman laughed as the coils of blue energy thickened around the twitching dinosaur. “These guys are mercenaries. They want to be fighting wars.” He twisted Adam’s arm farther behind his back. “So, here’s their war.”

Zed tried to beat his wings, took a couple of stumbling steps, but then fell against the corner of the warehouse with a deafening crash. Masonry tumbled to the ground with him. He struggled feebly to rise.

“Wave two,” Bateman shouted into a handheld radio. “Move in!”

The surviving floodlights dimmed as their operators, four more men in black, faces smeared with camouflage paint, ran forward with strange-looking pistols. They opened fire on Zed—no light show, just the eerie whistle and thud of silenced weapons, again and again. Behind them, the large white truck parked out in the road—the same one Adam had nearly crashed into earlier—was rumbling slowly toward the warehouse. The back doors were wide open, and men bearing heavy chains spilled out.
While we were away, these guys moved in,
he realized. The dinosaur lay motionless now in the blue spit of sparks.

“Get the ramps in place, and the forklifts,” Bateman yelled to the men in the truck. “It’s time we loaded up this scaly sack of—”

Adam brought his foot down hard on Bateman’s ankle and elbowed the man in the stomach with all his strength. At the same time he wrenched himself free and sprinted, terrified, for the warehouse.

“Wave two, hold your fire!” Bateman bellowed. “Get the boy!”

The firing stopped as Adam disappeared into the loading bay. He ran for the fire exit, hoping to fool them into thinking he was still somewhere inside. But before he’d covered half the ground, the fire doors burst open. Two men carrying the weird pistols blocked his way. Adam skidded to a stop and in desperation ran for the humming power cables. Maybe he could ward them off with an electric shock, see how they liked their own medicine. . . .

He grabbed hold of the thick, snaking cable, straightened to face his attackers—and felt a thud in his chest. He looked down and saw some sort of dart protruding from his jacket, but couldn’t feel a thing. Whimpering, he hefted the cable. A cold jolt went through his body like a physical blow. Adam fell over backward, the cable slipping from his grip.
We blew it, Zed,
he realized numbly.
Never got Dad out. They got
us
.

The men rushed in, surrounding him like the darkness that was closing over his head.

A
dam stirred, his face cold and numb. There was a dull throb in the muscles of his left arm. He wished that could be numb too. Slowly he became aware of movement.

He realized his face was pressed up against glass. A car window? No, he was higher up in his seat than that. A truck, then. Big and heavy, by the growl of the engine.

Adam held very still. He didn’t want anyone knowing he was awake.

It was dark outside.

The vehicle turned and Arthur’s Seat swung obligingly into sight, massive in his window view.

He was still in Edinburgh. How long had he been out? The ugly scene at the warehouse stuttered through his head as a series of horrific images: Zed collapsing . . . Breaking free from Bateman’s grip . . . Looking down to see the tranquilizer dart lodged in his chest . . .

Strange that the dart hadn’t hurt. Adam looked down at his ghostly reflection in the glass and saw the end of it still sticking out from his jacket, like a syringe with a fluffy tail. And yet, it wasn’t a sharp silver point he felt digging into his chest now.

He held his breath.
Dad’s phone.
The dart must have hit that instead of his chest. So how come he had blacked out? He remembered the jolt that slammed through him as he’d tried to bring that unplugged cable to bear. . . .