Z. Rex (5 page)

You wouldn’t want to meet it in a dark alley.

Or even in an industrial park.

I’m cracking up.
Adam felt cold despite the blazing sun.
What am I thinking? That dinosaurs still exist?

Tyrannosaurus rex meant “tyrant lizard king.” It had the strongest bite of any carnivore, with jaws uniquely designed to help it rip maximum bone and tissue with a single snap. And while some experts figured the T. rex was a scavenger that fed on the dead, most declared it a hunter—one equipped to tackle the largest prey around. . . .

Adam grimaced and tried harder to recall the route to the clinic.

The sight of a phone booth distracted him for a moment. Maybe he could find the number for Jeff Hayden at this Symtek place. He had no cash, but if the operator could reverse the charges. . . .

He went inside the booth and dialed double-zero for the international operator. Then he saw the phone cable had been cut.

Swearing under his breath, he decided to gamble the last bar of battery on his old Nokia. He searched for Symtek Biotronics online, but the browser was taking forever to load anything—and when it came to coping with the company’s Flash animated home page, it seemed to give up altogether. “Come on,” he muttered, shaking the phone uselessly. It bleeped a low-power message at him morosely, as if making excuses.

Crossly, Adam clicked back to his SMS folder and resolved to try again at the walk-in clinic. There was bound to be a phone.

A signpost and an old lady helped him on his way there. But as he threaded his way through the sunlit streets, he noticed people clocking his face, eyes lingering just a little too long. It made him feel weird.

Finally Adam reached the clinic. It was newly built at the edge of town and looked like something out of Toyland—single-story, blocky and white with a gray pointed roof. He pushed through the door into the welcome shade of a waiting room. A woman sat behind a counter, the scowl on her face seemingly as ingrained as the smell of lavender and disinfectant. Adam wondered how a kid with no passport, money or health insurance would be received. Then he shrugged. After all that had happened today, how scary could she be?

Adam lined up behind an elderly couple and watched the TV mounted on the wall, showing the local news to waiting patients.

“A freak tornado caused a trail of damage throughout the Brakspear Industrial Zone outside of Santa Fe early this morning,” said the anchorwoman, and Adam felt a jolt go through him. The camera lingered lovingly on the crushed remains of his apartment block and his dad’s trashed rental car. Adam swallowed hard as he relived the morning’s mayhem. For those few seconds he was staring at the carcass of an old life, trampled suddenly to dust.

The cameras cut to the meatpacking plant next, its corrugated roof hanging off like a picked scab.

And then a photograph of Adam sprang onto the screen.

“What the . . . ?” Adam saw it was the picture Dad had taken last Christmas, the one he’d said he always kept on his desk. The world seemed to tilt sideways as the anchorwoman resumed her voice-over with new gravity.

“Police are pursuing a thirteen-year-old runaway, Adam Adlar, in connection with a spate of lootings in the wake of the tornado. Adlar is slightly built, around five foot five, speaks with a Scottish accent and may be armed. Anyone sighting him should alert police on this number . . .”

“No. . . .” Adam’s voice was a choke in his throat as anger, disbelief and fear fought to hold sway in his head. Those people in the street outside, staring at him . . . just as the woman at the counter was staring now, her frown starting to deepen.

Adam turned and ran out of the health center, crashing through the doors and back out into lurid daylight. His mind was racing as fast as his heart, but he forced himself not to run and draw any more attention. He walked through the parking lot and then hunkered down between a couple of four-by-fours, trying to gather his thoughts.

Bateman and those men were after me before that monster thing came, but I got away—so now they’re trying to put the whole of New Mexico on my back, including the police. But why do they still want me if they’ve already trashed the evidence Dad’s meant to have?
He chewed his lip. Maybe the cops were in on his dad’s kidnapping too. Maybe they knew about the invisible creature, knew it was no tornado but were trying to cover it up, reeling in any witnesses who might speak out.

He shivered as he thought back to his dad’s text. Suddenly he was seeing
“No police . . . too risky”
in a different light.

Voices carried from the other side of the lot. Doors clunked open and shut. Adam expected to hear sirens at any moment. He couldn’t risk giving himself up. It was time to split.

The parking lot edged onto an alien landscape of red prairie, interrupted only by coarse scrub bushes and a line of trees in the middle distance. With a deep breath and a muttered prayer to anyone who might be listening, Adam set off at a run for the wildness beyond Gray Rock.

D
usk was starting to fall as calmly as the dawn had risen some twelve hours earlier. But it felt to Adam as if he’d lived a lifetime between the two. Slumped against a tree, he watched the sun’s belly nudge the mountains on the horizon as the vibrant colors of soil and scrubland began to fade. There was maybe an hour of daylight left, and he knew nights around here fell cold and heavy.

Adam got up, brushed down his sweat-drenched summer clothes.
I need shelter, and fast.

He was hiding out in one of the area’s State Parks, surrounded now by miles and miles of plains and rock. He didn’t know where he was. Hopefully, no one coming after him would know either.

The few people Adam had chanced upon were care-free hikers smiling as they passed. One guy even swallowed Adam’s story about falling down a gully, and treated his scrapes properly with cotton wool and antiseptic. Better still, Adam had chanced upon a picnic site in the afternoon. He’d braved a trash bin full of wasps to feast on stale sandwich crusts and coffee dregs from paper cups.

“Dad always said I ate garbage,” Adam murmured. “If he only knew. . . .”

Welcome to life on the run,
he thought.
Oh, Dad, where are you?

A line of cottonwood trees, their branches bristling with green arrowheads, dominated the valley below. Adam scrambled over the scrub toward them. He seemed to recall that these trees grew near water—and where you found water, you often found campsites. A stinky outhouse or a damp shower block was hardly a dream accommodation, but any cover was better than none. And maybe the bins there would offer a little late-night supper.

He was moving carefully through the gloomy valley, still racking his brains for some way out of this mess, when he heard a crack from the trees ahead. Adam froze. Wildlife or happy campers? He wasn’t keen on running into either right now, so he crouched down behind a bush and waited to see what came out.

Within a minute he saw a tall, burly man emerge from the wood. No camper, then—the man wore a uniform shaded green and brown. A big shiny badge on his jacket caught the blood-orange light of sunset. A hand-gun hung from a holster at his side.

Park ranger?
Adam felt sweat prickle his skin. Were they usually armed, or was this one looking for a dangerous fugitive . . . ?

A moment later he had his answer. Another ranger, massive and familiar, pushed out from the tree line a good twenty meters away. A vivid gash ran from his ear to the edge of his bushy mustache. Stitches clustered over the wound like flies feasting on the puckered flesh.

Adam held his breath and shrank deeper down into his scant cover. Bateman! What was he doing here?

“Pete’s guys found forensics at a picnic site, east of the lake,” Bateman announced. “Anything at that camp-ground, Jonno?”

“Not a trace,” the other man drawled back. “Maybe the kid’s doubled back into town. Maybe he doesn’t know he’s wanted yet.”

“He was seen running into the park. Something must’ve tipped him off.” Bateman was looking all about. “He turned off his phone. Maybe he figured out it was bugged.”

Adam frowned. He remembered Bateman holding his phone, but had never suspected a thing; it had died of its own accord around lunchtime, the last juice drained from its batteries. Luckily for him.

“Think the kid’s headed up into the mountains?” asked Jonno.

Bateman smirked. “Most likely he’s got no clue where he’s headed. He’s one of those stay-at-home nerd types like his daddy. The Great Outdoors for them means the parking lot outside Blockbuster.”

Adam bunched his fists. But at least they weren’t talking about Dad in the past tense.

“This whole assignment stinks,” Jonno declared. “If we can’t find Adlar Junior ahead of you-know-what—”

“Aw, quit complaining.” Bateman’s fingertips strayed to his stitches. “You’re like me—joined up with Geneflow ’cause tours in the Middle East weren’t giving you the buzz no more.” He clapped a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “We’ve got grenades. Jam one of them down that thing’s throat and it won’t be taking out any more of us.”

Jonno looked at him. “You really believe that after what happened this morning? The way that thing came back from the dead like a—”

“We were expecting to handle a kid.” Bateman nodded slowly, looking all around. “This time, we’ll be ready.”

Disbelief and fear were crowding Adam’s senses. How could he have got caught up in all this?
These people know you’re here,
a part of him argued.
They’re talking crud, trying to scare you into coming out
.

But even through the fronds that hid him, Adam could see fear in the men’s eyes as they looked all around.

Who do I want to get me,
he thought.
Them, or . . . it?

Adam wished longingly for the power and poise of the glowering blond ninja of Ultra-Reality, the character he’d helped his dad develop.
Stomp kick and jab cross,
he thought,
take them down.
. . .

But, no—he was thirteen, sore, lost and way out of his depth.

Before he could even fully process the movement, his shaking legs were pushing him up out of cover. Both Jonno and Bateman turned at the sudden noise, drawing their handguns.

“Don’t,” Adam said hoarsely, hands raised in the air. “You got me.”

“Son of a . . .” Jonno shook his head slowly. “The kid was right under our noses.”

“Kid? Nah.” Bateman’s broad grin threatened to pop a stitch. “He’s a dangerous criminal on the run. We’ve seen to that.”

Adam fought to keep his voice steady. “Just take me to my dad.”

Jonno’s smile was as bogus as his ranger outfit. “Hear that, Frank? Kid thinks he can tell us what to do.”

“I heard it.” Bateman strode forward, grabbed hold of Adam’s arm and twisted it hard. Adam gasped in pain as the man forced him to his knees. “You little punk. Look at you—gutless as your old man. You had us by the short and curlies out here, and you go and give yourself up.”

With a surge of anger, Adam tore his arm free and snatched for Bateman’s gun. But Jonno jammed his revolver against Adam’s temple. Adam heard the hammer cock with a bone-hard click. He froze statue-still, so scared he almost puked.

And then a great thumping crash from the nearby cottonwoods echoed through the valley.

Jonno jerked the gun away from Adam’s head and toward the source of the sound. “What was that?”

“One guess,” hissed Bateman, turning the same way. “Be ready with those grenades.” He placed his boot in the small of Adam’s back, forcing him belly-down in the grass. “All right,” he shouted. “I know you can understand me, so hear this. We’ve got Adlar’s boy. We believe you want him—and you can have him. But only if you come out slowly, and don’t harm us.”

“No!” Adam squirmed helplessly as Bateman’s heel bit down harder against his spine.

“A bullet in the wrong place and the boy’s no use to you.” Bateman’s voice was getting louder, hoarser. “I repeat, come out slowly or Adlar’s kid is history. No tricks. . . .”

Suddenly the ground shook with fleet, pounding footsteps—from just
behind
them. A bone-grinding roar almost tore Adam’s ears off. The pressure vanished from his back as Bateman was sent hurtling through the air, arms flailing like he could fly. He couldn’t. He crashed helplessly into the trees, out of sight.

At the same time, Jonno was screaming, a sound drenched with terror. Then the scream cut off with a crunching sound. An outstretched arm flopped down in front of Adam’s face.

But the rest of the man was gone.

Adam felt the bile rise in his throat. Fear fixed him still where he lay. Then he saw Jonno’s white-knuckled fingers were locked around the promised grenade. Saw that the pin had been pulled.

The next instant, a dark, scaly blur lashed out at the severed arm and batted it into the bushes. Adam gasped as he was snatched roughly from the ground as easily as a child might pick up a pinecone. He was locked into a vise of cold, reptilian flesh, pinned around the waist.

Then the colossal
thing
that had grabbed him bounded away through the darkening valley in huge leaps, as the grenade went off in a lightning-white flash.

I
n the flare of the explosion, Adam realized the nightmare thing was no longer invisible. Frozen in a long moment of sheer, unbelieving terror, he saw it in gruesome glimpses.

He saw great knots of muscle dance and twitch as the monster ran. Teeth like carving knives, jutting from black and bloody jaws. The brute outline of a huge, reptilian head, like that on the screen in the library.

Adam squeezed his eyes closed. His ears still rang with the noise of the explosion. His heart was battering at his ribs. He felt as though he were dangling from the top-floor window of a speeding double-decker bus. His body felt scratched raw, his temples throbbed as he struggled for breath.