Shadow Creatures (12 page)

Briefly he wondered about heading over to see his Great-Aunt Merrily and showing off the new bionic legs to her, but he knew he’d have to stay for hours while she chatted, and he wanted to
be sure that the legs were going to be a full-time solution before he went public with them.

So, what could he do?

His mind flicked back to the moment earlier that afternoon when he and Tara had walked –
walked!
– down the stairs and left the warehouse. They had passed the door to the
bottom floor of the warehouse, where his great-grandfather’s possessions and artefacts were stored. There were crates of them, all labelled, from the many expeditions that Professor George
Challenger had made between the years 1899 and 1933. Calum had always wanted to take a look around. Before the crash he’d never found the time; since the crash he’d not had the mobility
– and he certainly wasn’t going to send anyone else down there on his behalf. But now . . . now he could simply wander down there and take a look for himself.

Part of his mind tried to point out that wandering around by himself with a new and relatively untested pair of bionic legs was not a good idea, but another part responded that there might well
be crates containing stuffed or preserved cryptids, found in various remote locations, and what was the point of going to Hong Kong in search of one when there might be an example of it less than a
hundred metres away? Would the DNA still be viable? Well, he wouldn’t know until he checked.

He left his apartment, setting the security system behind him, and headed cautiously down the stairs. At the bottom he turned right instead of heading straight on to the front door. There was
another door there, in the shadow cast by the stairs. It was made of riveted metal, like the door to Calum’s apartment, and it had a similar alarm system connected to it. He typed in the
security code. Fortunately he’d had it changed to match the upstairs one when he’d moved in and upgraded the whole system. The door clicked, and opened an inch.

He pushed it further open and entered the room beyond.

It was less of a room and more of a cavern. This was the original warehouse space, unmodified: a huge area filled with piled-up wooden crates of various sizes. Aisles had been left between the
stacks: a winding maze of narrow canyons running between wooden cliff-faces. The windows were boarded up, but stray beams of sunshine penetrated through chinks in the boards and formed a diagonal
lattice of light across the entire area. Motes of dust drifted through the glowing lattice and glittered for a few seconds before they vanished again.

Just to one side of the door, tucked out of the way, was the metal bulk of the ARLENE robot that Gillian Livingstone had provided the team for their trip to Georgia. It was about the size of a
horse, with six legs instead of four, but its ‘head’ was a collection of cameras, sensors and lights, and its ‘skin’ was metal plating. He shuffled past it, patting it on
the side as he went.

In the light trickling in from outside, Calum could just about read the words that had been stencilled in big black letters on to the sides of the nearest crate.

Pterodactyls? This had to be some kind of mistake, surely. Professor Challenger might have found some fossils that he
thought
might be pterodactyl eggs, but they
wouldn’t be
real
eggs. That would be . . . insane.

He looked at the stencilled sign again.
Crate #233
of Professor George Challenger’s April 1912 South American expedition. That meant there were at least 232 other crates, and that
was only in the unlikely event that he’d accidentally stumbled across the last box.

He moved further down the row. The next crate in line also had a label stencilled on it, but this one was slightly different.

Why not? What were they going to do – hatch?

Smiling to himself, Calum walked along the aisle. Many of the crates were from the 1912 South American expedition, but there were other expeditions there as well: a 1909 Siberian expedition, a
1915 Arctic expedition, a 1925 expedition to the South China Seas. His great-grandfather had obviously spent an awful lot of time away from home. Pity his poor family.

He came to a junction, and on a whim turned left. The crates along that aisle didn’t seem to be associated with any expeditions. One was labelled:

Another, a little further along, said:

Next to it was a much larger crate labelled:

A disintegration machine? That had to be a joke, surely.

All he could see ahead of him were more and more crates. He could spend hours down here, but he was beginning to realize that doing any serious inventory of the warehouse’s contents was
going to take time. At least he’d scoped the problem out, he consoled himself. And done it on his own terms.

He turned round and headed back to the crossroads where he’d turned left, but instead of turning right, back towards the lobby, he headed straight on, down the right-hand arm. His
curiosity was engaged, and he was still revelling in his ability to walk.

For the first hundred metres or so it was just more and more obscurely labelled crates, but then he came to an area that had been left clear. Well, clear apart from an object about the size of a
bus that was covered in a dusty old tarpaulin.

What the hell? he thought. It wasn’t as if there was a sign saying: Keep Off! Or even: Danger! Keep off if you value your life! So he pulled the tarpaulin away.

And froze in shock.

It was a dinosaur. Fortunately it wasn’t moving.

It was stuffed – that much was obvious from a second’s examination. It had a lumpy look to it, and Calum could see a line of stitching running underneath its belly where two skin
seams had been secured together. It was also covered with cobwebs that had been built over the course of probably a hundred years by generation upon generation of spiders. The cobwebs filled the
area underneath it with a hazy mass of dusty strands, and gave its head a strange and inappropriate beard. It had been mounted on a wooden base that had to be six metres long and three metres
across, and which was barely large enough to take the creature.

Except that this was a dinosaur like Calum had never seen before. He would have recognized a stegosaurus, a triceratops, a T-rex, a diplodocus and probably seventy or eighty other different
types of dinosaur. This particular one had four legs and a long, muscular tail, but its body seemed to be covered with thick armoured plates, and around its neck area was a frill of sharp spines,
all pointing backwards. Its head was small and wide and snake-like, and covered with smaller spines. Spiders had built cobwebs between the spines as well.

By its front right foot was a label that read:

Incredible. Absolutely incredible.

Calum reached out to touch the skin of the creature. It was dry and leathery, and covered with dust, just the way he thought it would be, but the idea that he was actually
touching
the
skin of a real dinosaur was mind-blowing. Especially if it was one that had been missed, apparently, from all the catalogues and textbooks.

He stared at the creature for a while, marvelling at it, and then covered it up again with the tarpaulin, leaving it the way he had found it. There would be time later for a full examination of
the warehouse and its contents – preferably with his friends there to help. For now, he was content in the knowledge that he had a storehouse of wonders located just below his apartment.

He turned to head back to the lobby.

Something clattered against wood. It sounded as if it was about thirty metres behind him.

As he turned, Calum thought he saw something move at the far end of the aisle. It looked as if someone had been watching him, and had ducked into one of the side aisles as soon as they’d
realized they’d been seen.

‘Hello?’ he called. ‘Tara, is that you?’

No reply. He took a couple of steps towards where the sound had come from. ‘Mr Macfarlane?’

Still no answer, but Calum thought he could see a shadow cast by one of the diagonal beams of sunlight. It looked as if someone was standing just round the corner of an aisle, hidden by a
crate.

The shadow suddenly shifted. Now that he was listening, Calum thought he could hear footsteps moving away. A sudden flush of anger ran through him like a hot wave. This was his warehouse, and
someone was in it!

He couldn’t run – at least, he didn’t
think
he could run, not with the bionic leg braces – but he moved as fast as he dared along the aisle back to the
crossroads.

He could see nothing. No movement, no people, nothing. The dust on the floor was disturbed, but Calum had come from there, so he was probably just looking at his own footprints.

He sighed. Whatever the situation was, he ought to head back to his apartment. If there had been someone here and they had left, then he could set the security lock again to stop them from
getting back in. If there had been someone here and they were still hiding, then he would lock them in, and the motion sensors would tell him if they moved. Then he could call the police.

Heading down the aisle, back towards the door to the lobby, Calum noticed that ARLENE was almost blocking his way. He slowed down, momentarily confused. He was sure that the six-legged robot had
been tucked to one side when he’d entered the warehouse, neatly out of the way. Maybe it had something to do with the angle he was coming at it from, but he could swear that it had . . .
moved.

He took a couple of steps closer. He had a strange urge to call out and ask ARLENE what it thought it was doing, but that would just be stupid. It was an inanimate collection of circuits, wires,
pistons and metal struts. It responded to commands and it sometimes made its own decisions based on a mission-list and local conditions, but it couldn’t initiate movement on its own account.
It couldn’t just wander around.

Could it?

This was stupid. He was letting the shadows and the noises freak him out. He needed to get back to his apartment and settle down with a can of cola.

He walked towards ARLENE, aiming to squeeze past it and head for the lobby.

The robot’s head suddenly spun round to stare at Calum. The lamps on either side of its camera ‘eyes’ flared to life, almost blinding him. He threw a hand up in front of his
eyes, but his immediate instinct to step away was translated into a command for the bionic legs to start walking backwards. Taken by surprise, Calum overbalanced and fell.

The impact drove the breath from his body. His head hit the floor with a sickening thud. For a moment he just stared at the ceiling, wondering what had happened, and then he raised his head to
look around.

ARLENE was walking towards him.

The whirr of the motors that powered the robot’s legs – similar to his, now he came to think about it – was a repetitive and menacing sound that echoed around the warehouse as
it came closer and closer to him.