Z. Raptor (17 page)

Horrified, Adam turned and ran on. But where was Harm? The darkness was disorienting—everything looked different in shadow, and the noise of threat and combat was growing louder, harsher.
I can't even shout her name,
Adam realized, shrinking into the scant cover of some small and scrubby bushes.
I'll get us both killed, I'll—

With a bellowing roar, a massive armored Vel sentry thundered past Adam's hiding place. The two Brutes left the corpse of their victim and stomped toward the newcomer. The sentry backed slowly away toward the forest—as two more Vels flew out of the jungle foliage, sickle claws slashing, jaws snapping. It had been a trap. Now it was three against two. In a blur, the sentry blocked an acid strike with the armor on its arm, grabbed hold of the Brute's head and snapped its neck, even as his pack brothers stabbed at it with their own claws. The other Brute refused to retreat, spitting and clawing at the Vels as they wrestled him to the ground through sheer weight of numbers.

Got to head for the outbuilding,
thought Adam.
It's close to the cliffs, and maybe I can climb down and hide
. He crawled for the egg-house on all fours, sick with dread, alive with adrenaline. He realized the sky was beginning to lighten—he'd soon be easier to spot.

But then a different kind of scream rang out. Terrified. Human.

“Harm,” Adam breathed. He got to his feet and broke into a sprint before his head could even process what he was doing, following the winding power cable.
There must be something I can do,
he thought helplessly as he burst out of the undergrowth close to the now-dead electrified fence. He saw two Vel sentries lying in twisted heaps on the blood-soaked ground. He saw the door standing wide open and trampled nests inside.

And he heard a familiar cold, choking voice from the other side of the outbuilding. “Sweet. Perfect. Mine.”

Adam crouched behind one of the reptile corpses and saw the Brute with the hunched back advancing on Harmony, who was sprawled on her back on the grass, frozen with terror. He opened his mouth to shout, to try to distract the Brute so Harm could get up and run.

Then a menacing, cackling hiss stirred the hackles on his neck as a scorching jet of fluid arrowed over his shoulder past his face. An inarticulate noise escaped his lips as he realized how close he'd come to getting the back of his skull burned open. He turned to find another Brute behind him, the largest yet. Its jaws were still drooling, and its dark eyes shone in the scaly, mudbrown face, which was crowned with a thick coronet of barbed wire.

The Brute queen
. All other thoughts were shattered in that terrified moment of recognition. Adam tried to run but stumbled over the Vel corpse and fell.

“Adam!” Harm cried out. The hunchback almost crushed him while turning to face the queen.

“We want soft-skins alive.” The towering creature started toward Harm, claws clicking and catching the rising sunlight. “Alive for the newborns' feast.”

But Hunchback barred her way, stretching his neck as if trying to match the queen for height. “Back,” he rasped. “Girl is perfect. Mine.”

“Bent-backed scum.” The queen tilted her head to one side and spat flecks of acid at his face, her hate-filled eyes agleam. “I rule you.”

“No.” Jaws twitching, Hunchback shook his head. “We do not serve you.”

Adam saw Harm, still on her back, edging sideways on her elbows toward him. The Brute queen noticed too; she swung her head toward Harm and hissed—just as Hunchback lunged forward and stuck his claws into her flank in a series of swift, razorlike slices. “Mine!” he barked again.

With a shout more of disbelief than of pain, the queen cuffed Hunchback hard around the jaws and gripped him in a tight hug. She ground his throat against the fierce thorns of her chest quills, opening his flesh in twenty places. Hunchback thrashed and flailed, blood and acid frothing in his throat.

Harm stared as though rooted to the spot. “Quick,” Adam panted, grabbing her wrist and pulling her to her feet. “While they're distracted.” But he hesitated himself—should they run for the cliff edge and hope they could climb down out of reach or run back into the jungle?

While these thoughts flashed through his mind, the Brute queen finished with Hunchback. As his body flopped at her feet and lay still, she looked up, licked her bloody claws and fixed Harm and Adam with her hate-filled stare.

“Now!” Adam insisted, breaking into a sprint for the dense jungle and dragging Harm along with him.

“We can't outrun that thing!” she shouted.

“We have to!” snapped Adam.

The Brute queen was already coming for them.

Harm broke free of Adam's grip and began to climb the nearest tree, legs and arms at ninety degrees to the trunk, scaling it as swiftly as Adam might've climbed stairs. As the huge beast quickened its stride, Adam tried to follow her, but his own technique was clumsy in comparison. The giant reptile was closing the distance between them with terrifying speed.

“Come on,” Harm shouted down at him. “Do it!”

Adam half climbed, half shinnied his way up the rough trunk, adrenaline giving him strength he'd never known. The pounding footfalls grew louder. Then the Brute queen slammed into the tree with colossal force. The sturdy trunk shook. Adam clung on with all his strength as he felt himself begin to slip. The Brute bellowed, scoring the tree with her lethal claws. Harm reached out to pull Adam higher. His fingers touched hers, then slipped free as the Brute queen kicked and shook the base of the tree, rasping and bellowing with fury, pawing the sandy ground as she heaved her weight against the wood. A deep, creaking, splitting noise made Adam stare down. He saw the tree roots rising to the surface, shifting like immense tendons in a convulsing arm. The tree was beginning to upend. Harm shrieked as the beast shook the trunk harder and Adam finally lost his grip, plunging to the ground. ...

A
s Adam struck the ground hard on his shoulder and lay winded, a blur of red and black scales launched itself from the jungle gloom and smashed into the Brute queen.

“Loner!” Harm shouted.

Adam raised his head, stunned by his sudden rescue.

He watched spellbound as Loner pounced on the fallen Brute and slashed at her throat with his claws, his bad arm apparently healed.
He's back risking his life for us.
The queen fought viciously, scoring deep slashes in Loner's shoulder and kicking him away. Loner fell back gasping, bobbed his head as though bowing and turned down his claws—a submissive gesture, an appeal for mercy.
Mercy that he's not going to get,
thought Adam helplessly as the bloodied Brute queen stomped forward and raised her lethal foot claw to open Loner's belly.

But before she could move, she was engulfed in a storm of blue light, like vicious lightning playing all around her. The Brute shrieked and wailed, falling to her knees as a scorched, static smell filled the air. With a chill Adam saw two men in hazard suits and gas masks had emerged from his earlier hiding place, firing sophisticated electroshock guns.

Geneflow guards,
he thought numbly.
The fighting's smoked them out.

Loner was caught up in the flashing blue vortex, joining the Brute queen in a macabre, jerking dance. He collapsed and the queen soon followed. Once she'd slumped to the ground, the guards stopped firing. One of them ran into the outbuilding.

“Get down from that tree.” The remaining guard trained his gun on Harm. “Sit beside your friend.”

Harm dropped from the tree, and Adam could see she was trembling. He looked at Loner's mud-caked face; the reptile's eyes were shut, but he was still breathing.
Wake up,
Adam willed him.
Wake up!

The guard who had stayed outside covered Adam and Harm with his weapon. “Dr. Haskins, there's a couple of kids here,” he called to his friend. “Live ones.”

“Deal with them, JJ,” Haskins called from the outbuilding. “There's just one egg I can see here that might still be viable.” The man came outside holding a large plastic case; Adam could see the football-sized egg nestled inside. “Double-check I didn't miss anything. I've got to get this back to the lab before the surviving Utahraptors take over.”

He hurried away, and JJ shrugged at Harm and Adam. “Sorry, kids. But trust me, you won't want to know much about it when these things hold their feast.”

Adam looked helplessly at Harm. She had already closed her eyes in grim anticipation.

“Loner!” Adam cried.

At the sound of his name, the raptor's eyes snapped open. Before JJ could react, Loner launched himself through the air, pushing off with his tail as well as his hind legs in an awesome pounce for the guard. A gush of blue sparks poured from the shock gun's nozzle, catching him in midair. Loner twisted his long neck and butted JJ in the face, knocking him back into the fence so hard that it broke under his weight. The gun dropped from the guard's hand, and Adam raced over to grab it.

“Adam!” Chen burst from the jungle, his face streaked with sweat and dirt. Lisa, David and Dr. Stone were huddled close behind him. “You okay?”

Adam wanted to sink to his knees with relief at the sight of them. “Not really,” he said hoarsely, and crawled over to where Loner lay. “Thank you,” he whispered.

Loner looked at him, his eyes alight, and nodded.

“Your pet raptor told us he could hear you,” Chen went on. “Charged off like a dog chasing a postman.”

“We couldn't get here any sooner, honey.” Lisa helped Harm up and hugged her. “There were so many Brutes in the jungle, surrounding the camp.”

David nodded, eyeing the dead hunchback and the body of the Brute queen warily. “The Vels fought the first wave back, and when the Brutes fled into the trees, they followed—straight into an ambush.”

“I thought we were all dead,” Stone muttered, scratches vivid on his deathly pale face.

“If you'd gotten here sooner, you probably would've been.” Harm pointed to the outbuilding and looked straight at Chen. “Good place to meet—under guard and full of Vel eggs.”

Lisa's hand flew to her mouth. “Eggs?”

Chen swore under his breath. The shock on his face seemed genuine.

“The Brutes smashed most of them,” Adam told him. “But these two guards came with weapons and took down the queen, and one of them took an egg he thought might be all right.”

Lisa looked closely at the man in the hazard suit sprawled in the wreck of the fence. “This guy's from Geneflow—one of the roaches who killed Andy.”

Dr. Stone hurried forward. “He's badly hurt.”

“Good,” said David fiercely.

“We want to get into their base, don't we?” Chen reminded him. “This jerk can help us.”

“A hostage?” Harm said.

“The guy's called JJ,” Adam murmured. “He almost killed Harm and me. If Loner hadn't saved us when he did—”

“It's not safe to wait here.” David crossed to join them and took the electroshock gun from Adam. “The fighting's still going on.”

Adam nodded. “And any Vels will come and try to save their eggs.”

“No.” Loner shook his head weakly. “They will smell . . . the eggs are smashed.”

“Well, the Brutes are going to smell their dead queen for sure,” said Harm. “And they're going to come looking.”

“She is not dead. Only wounded.” Loner got up, loped over to the gargantuan body and stared down at it. Then, with a hiss, he brought his hooked claws down on the back of the queen's neck. Adam grimaced as he pulled them back out, dripping with gore. “Now she is dead.” Loner plucked the barbed-wire coronet from the gray, misshapen head and crushed it.

Though his stomach turned, Adam couldn't help feeling a sense of relief—relief that almost outweighed his unease at Loner's sudden violence.
He's still an animal at the end of the day,
he reminded himself.
It's no different from a lion or tiger killing a rival.

Chen, crouching over the guard's body, barely seemed to have noticed a thing. “Come on, JJ. While it's all quiet, you've got some talking to do.” He tried to pull the man into a sitting position—but as he did, a scraping noise was accompanied by a rush of blood from the back of the man's shoulder. “Doc! Get over here.”

Adam grimaced as he saw a splintered fence post jutting from the grass, soaked crimson. “He must've fallen onto it.”

Stone hurried over with his bag. “Help me get this suit off him.”

Chen pulled off the helmet, unmasking a round-faced man with dark skin, a shaved head and a bloodied, broken nose. Loner loomed over him, and Adam watched anxiously as he stretched out with those killer claws. But with scalpel precision, the raptor only tore open the rubbery neckline of the hazard suit and the white T-shirt beneath it before stepping back. Stone regarded the raptor for a moment before carefully peeling away the clothing to uncover an ugly wound.

“My arm,” JJ gasped, coming around. “What . . . what did I do?”

“You messed up, JJ.” Chen smiled at him. “Now, it looks like you need a doctor. I got one right here, but first you need to tell us a few things.”

JJ looked pale and sweaty. His T-shirt was soaked with blood. Loner seemed transfixed, drool frothing in his jaws, claws twitching. Adam realized the raptor must be ravenous, and here was helpless prey sitting right in front of him.

“Get that thing away from me,” the guard growled. “I don't know how you're controlling it, but—”