Shadow Creatures (11 page)
Authors: Andrew Lane
‘Are you actually wearing the bionic legs now?’
He tapped his jeans. He could feel the metal braces beneath the denim. ‘I actually am.’
She glanced up at the straps that hung from the ceiling. ‘Are you going to take those things down, then?’
‘Not just yet.’ He gently touched the metal frame that encased his right leg. ‘I want to be absolutely sure that these things work properly and won’t suddenly fail on me
before I start doing something drastic. Which is why you’re here.’
She put her hands on her hips and tilted her head to one side. ‘You mean this isn’t just a social visit?’
‘You know I’m always glad to see you, and the others,’ he said, suddenly aware that he might have been a little too . . .
honest.
‘Yeah, I remember how grateful you were that Gecko and I had drunk all of that Mexican cola that you have imported.’
‘But that’s my special cola!’ he protested, aware even as he said the words of how petty they sounded.
‘Calum, there’s no point having really tasty drinks around, and then
boasting
to your friends that you have really tasty drinks around, and then not letting your friends
actually
drink
those really tasty drinks.’
‘Point taken,’ he said. ‘Anyway – back to me.’
She smiled tolerantly.
Calum took a deep breath. ‘I want to go outside,’ he said.
A long pause, then: ‘Are you sure about that? Shouldn’t you test those bionic things around the apartment for a while, just to iron out any glitches? Because if there’s one
thing I know about complicated electronics and computerized systems, it’s that there’re always glitches.’
He shook his head. ‘Look, apart from being up on the roof with Gecko a few days ago, I haven’t felt the sun on my face or the breeze on my skin for . . . for as long as I can
remember.’
‘You went for a drive only this morning,’ she pointed out with the kind of remorseless logic that Calum usually used on people. ‘You could feel the sun and the breeze
then.’
‘It wasn’t the same.’ He took a breath. This was important to him. ‘
Then
, I was out in the open for about ten seconds between the door to the apartment and the
car, and I was in a wheelchair. The same at the other end. I want to be able to walk there, in the open air, somewhere with grass around me, and just . . . soak it in. Be in the moment.’
Tara stared at him for a few seconds. ‘OK, then – let’s go and get an ice cream. There’s a community park a little way down the road.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ Calum said in a small voice, and it was true – he hadn’t known. He’d moved in here after his parents died. He didn’t know the
area. He’d chosen it because the warehouse had belonged to his great-grandfather. In fact, his great-grandfather’s stuff was still stored in the basement, along with ARLENE. But he
would have known that if he’d been able to go out.
Shutting the apartment door behind him and activating the security systems, Calum turned and headed for the stairs.
‘Don’t you want to use the lift?’ Tara asked, standing by the lift doors.
‘I’ve got legs and I’m going to use them,’ he said stubbornly.
Tara frowned. ‘That sounds like an old ZZ Top song,’ she mused. She looked up at him. ‘Are you sure you’re allowed to use those legs on stairs? Have they been cleared as
safe?’
He nodded. ‘I’m meant to use them whenever and however I can,’ he said, fingers crossed behind his back again.
She looked dubious. ‘OK, then.
He took the stairs carefully, with Tara in front of him in case he fell forward. The steps were concrete, and had eroded edges, and cracks running through them. They dated from the time the
warehouse was built, back when his great-grandfather was exploring the world. He moved gingerly, but the legs coped well with the challenge. He was amazed at how natural it felt to be walking
again.
Outside, he luxuriated in the feel of the sun on his skin. He looked left and right along the narrow road where the warehouse and apartment were located. ‘Which way now?’
Tara pointed left. ‘That way.’
They walked along the road, to all intents and purposes like a couple of ordinary teenagers wandering around London. Tara led Calum to the park, and while he stood there and watched the pigeons
pecking for food, the grey squirrels eyeing up the sunbathers cautiously and the dogs jumping in the fountains she bought two ice-cream cones from the cafe.
They sat on a park bench and ate their ice creams. Calum couldn’t remember anything ever tasting as delicious.
‘This,’ he said quietly, ‘is paradise.’
Tara was distracted. ‘Sorry?’
‘I said, this is paradise.’
‘Oh.’
He glanced at her. She was looking off to one side. He followed her gaze, to see two men with close-cropped hair wearing leather jackets leaving the park through a different gate to the one he
and Tara had used. ‘Seen someone you recognize?’ he asked.
‘Kind of,’ she said, frowning. ‘I think I’ve seen those two men before. I just can’t remember where or when.’
Calum felt a sudden chill run through him. ‘Nemor Incorporated?’ he asked quietly.
‘It could be,’ she said, just as quietly, ‘but which one of us are they interested in?’
six
W
ith Rhino, Gecko and Natalie on their way to Hong Kong, and Calum in his apartment resting after the strain of trying out his new legs, Tara found
herself at a loose end once she’d seen him home. She drifted from coffee shop to bookshop and bookshop to coffee shop, wasting time. She realized now that she had thought that suddenly having
so many friends would mean she’d never be lonely again, but that wasn’t the case. Ultimately, she was still by herself.
It occurred to her, somewhere between one latte and the next, that she could easily go and get her passport from her room, head for Heathrow, stand in front of the ticket desk and say,
‘I’d like to buy a return ticket to Hong Kong, please.’ Nobody would miss her. The dream lasted while she got up and left the coffee shop she was in at the time, but after a few
steps she stopped. The tickets for Rhino, Gecko and Natalie had been paid for by Calum, from his own seemingly inexhaustible funds, just like the flights to Georgia a few months back. Tara
didn’t have the money to jet off around the world. She was a poor student.
She felt that familiar crushing sense of loneliness falling over her again like a dark blanket. The more things changed in her life, the more they stayed the same.
She headed for yet another small coffee shop that she knew, where they made cheap ham-and-cheese bagels and would let her sit for several hours nibbling at her food without disturbing her.
Passing so many laughing families and groups of friends on the way made her loneliness feel more acute.
Once she got to the coffee shop, she ordered a bagel and a drink and curled up in a corner seat, taking her tablet out of her bag. While she was waiting for her order, she thought she’d
see if Rhino or anyone had mailed from Hong Kong. They hadn’t, but there was one from Tom Karavla waiting for her. Suddenly Tara didn’t feel quite so alone.
Hi Tara!
I was thinking about what you said – you know, about people making modern-day films and TV programmes with dinosaurs in them and assuming that no
evolution had taken place in the meantime, and you’re right. The creatures would have changed quite a bit in the intervening time. For instance, there’s a biological law that says
that animals living on an island or in an isolated area like a plateau tend to get smaller over thousands of years, because smaller animals need less food and tend not to starve. Well, it
occurred to me that if any diplodocus had survived from the prehistoric era then they might have naturally grown smaller so they were the size of a dog now, or a triceratops that had shrunk
to the size of a large horse. Wouldn’t that be great? You probably know about the dwarf elephant fossils that have been found in various places around the world – elephants that
had naturally reduced in size over many generations until they were smaller than a person (well, smaller than some people, anyway). There’s supposed to be a group of these dwarf
elephants still living in the rainforests of the Kerala region of southern India. The locals called them ‘kallana’, and they say they avoid associating with the
‘normal-sized’ Indian elephants (well, you would if you were less than a quarter of their size, wouldn’t you?). I keep hoping that thelostworlds.com will put up a photograph
by some tourist or researcher showing that the kallana actually exist, but that hasn’t happened yet. (I don’t suppose that Calum Challenger has some images tucked away in a drawer
somewhere that he hasn’t got around to using yet? That would be awesome!)
Thinking about it, the other thing that gets me about dinosaur movies is that they only use the dinosaurs we know about. Given the infrequent way that bones get changed
into fossils, and the difficulty in actually finding those fossils in the rocks, there’s no way we’ve found all the dinosaurs that ever existed yet. In fact, I saw a statistic
recently that suggested we’ve only identified 30% of the types of dinosaur that ever existed. And yet whenever a dinosaur appears on film or TV, it’s one we already know about,
rather than a new one that the special-effects guys could have come up with themselves. In fact, if you remember the film
Jurassic Park III
, the film-makers there used a type of
dinosaur called a spinosaurus that had only recently been characterized. Funny, that.
Sorry – I’m going on a bit. I tend to do that when I get excited about something. I’ll go now, but I just wanted to say that I live in London, so if
you’re ever in the area let me know and I’ll buy you a coffee and talk about extinct animals that might not be extinct . . .
Cheers,
Tom
He was in London? Instinctively, Tara looked around to see if there was anyone watching her, but of course there wasn’t. Everyone was minding their own business. He
wasn’t there.
London? She shook herself. Wow Yes, they
could
meet up for coffee. Tom sounded as if he had a very similar kind of mind to hers, and it would be nice to deal with someone like that on an
equal level. Now she came to think about it, she still felt like a bit of an outsider with Calum and his friends. Every now and then, in her darker moments, she wondered if they were just using her
for her computing skills – in a nice way, of course. Having a new friend who wasn’t part of that group would be great.
Except that he would
want
to be part of that group. He had already made it clear that he loved thelostworlds.com and the kinds of things that Calum was into. Well, she would just have to
manage that as and when it happened. It was a risk.
There was another risk, of course – the risk that Tom wasn’t what he seemed to be. Everybody had heard terrible stories of girls arranging to meet in real life people they’d
previously just met online, only for them to disappear or turn up dead. Tara didn’t want to become another statistic.
Maybe she could subtly find out where he was going to be at a particular time – maybe say she
might
be able to meet up, but no promises. She could go along and watch out for him. If
he was the guy from his photo, she could head over and introduce herself. If not, she could leave and never communicate with him again.
Before she could have second thoughts about the dangers of this plan, she typed a response:
Hi Tom,
Thanks for emailing. I agree with everything you say about dinosaurs. It’s kind of interesting the way that they’ve been portrayed in films
over the years – in those old 1950s and 1960s stop-motion films the T-rexes all stood upright, and the triceratops all had their legs sticking out to the side like crocodiles, which is
the way the Victorian palaeontologists put the skeletons together, but more recently the tyrannosaurs have been horizontal, with their tails balancing their extended necks, and the
triceratops have their legs beneath them like cows. Latest research indicates that some dinosaurs might have been covered with hair, or things like early feathers. I mean, we don’t even
know what colour they were! Tyrannosaurs might have had bright red and yellow stripes, for all we know!
I’m in London quite a lot. Let me know where you tend to hang out, and if I’m passing I might be able to pop in and introduce myself!
Regards,
Tara
She felt a bit guilty, misleading him like that, but it was necessary. She needed to check him out without him knowing she was there.
Who knew? If he was real, and if they got on together, maybe the relationship would lead to something on a different level. Which, she thought ruefully, would be a first for her.
Calum stood in the middle of his apartment, wondering what to do now with his new-found mobility.
The walk out to the park and back had been incredible; he’d crashed out as soon as he’d got home, and Tara wasn’t there when he woke up. He’d tried to check in with
Rhino, Gecko and Natalie, but it looked as if they were still travelling. Desperate for someone to talk to, he’d even tried to call Gillian Livingstone so he could tell her how wonderful it
was to be able to walk again, and how grateful he was, but her number went straight to voicemail. Knowing her, she had meetings stacked up with various scientists, technicians and potential
investors.
He looked around. There was always the website – thelostworlds.com. He hadn’t spent much time on it recently, not now that Tara had been given administrator privileges, but it was
always possible that someone had emailed in with a new report of some cryptid somewhere in the world.
He was just kidding himself. He wanted to keep walking. He wanted to revel in the unexpected luxury of actually being able to move around without hanging from straps or using crutches.
He glanced over at the window. The sun was low in the sky, but the weather was good. He could always go out for another walk. The moment the thought crossed his mind, he recoiled from it.
He’d spent so long cooped up in his apartment since the accident that the idea of actually talking to strangers, or being somewhere unfamiliar alone, was scary.
