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From: (Anonymous)

They made slow progress along the edge of the wetland, and Nile was increasingly worried about hypothermia; it was getting towards sunset, and it was going to cool down, even if they were in the tropics. The only good thing was that there were no signs of pursuit. They’d heard shots at one point, but muffled, and far away – back up the hill.

“I think that’s towards the raptor house,” Andy said. She looked pale. “I hope not.”

“Better the raptors than us,” said Booker. “Sorry, Andy, but it’s true.”

“It doesn’t stop them shooting us, unless you think they’re going to run out of ammo,”
Andy snapped back at him.

“Again,” Nile said, “why the fuck does anybody even have guns here?”

“Merrick is paranoid about corporate espionage,” said Quỳnh, “but officially they are a fail-safe, in case any of the large animals get out of control.”

“If I was up against a T-rex – or a medium-size sauropod, come to that – I’d want an RPG, not a pistol.”

“How do you know they have pistols?”

“The sound,” Nile said.

“They’re not armour-plated.” Andy sounded weary. “Hit one of the big girls in the eye, or
the brain pan, you’ll take them down.”

“It’s academic,” her wife said soothingly. “The animals are the heart of Merrick’s entire investment. He’s not going to let anybody shoot them. Not even the raptors.”

Booker shook his head. “Keane and his men are terrified of the animals, I’ve seen it. I was a lot more worried before I started talking to you two.” He nodded to Andy and Quỳnh. “If they do decide to come through the paddocks after us, they will shoot them. Dr Kozak will just breed more. How many dinosaurs do they really need, anyway? One is a miracle. This is overkill.”

“Then we need a better plan,” Nicky said, coming to a halt. “If you really think they will kill the dinosaurs, we can’t just use them as shields. You’re responsible for them. It’s not right.”

Joe gave him an incredulous look. “People are trying to kill us and you’re worried about if they’ll kill the dinosaurs? We have to keep ourselves alive, first.” He didn’t quite look at Nile, but Nile could feel him not doing it. It was exasperating and weirdly reassuring all at once. She was sure she’d been in life-threatening situations way more than Joe had, but he was her supervisor, and he felt that responsibility keenly, she knew.

“We can’t control what they do,” Nicky argued, “only what we do.”

“We don’t have time for this right now,” said Andy. “We have to keep moving.”

“Andy’s right.” Nile put her hands on her hips. “We’re drenched, it’s getting dark, Dr – Nicky is hurt – we have to find shelter or we’re going to have much more immediate problems even than being shot at. Andy, how far away is this rest hut of yours? Can we even make it?”

“If we cut through the azhdarchid enclosure,” Andy said, “but I was hoping…that’s the one I’m most worried about. Well, that and the Gallimimus, but we’re just not going in there.”

“I thought they were herbivores,” said Booker.

“They have all the worst qualities of Canada geese crossed with cassowaries,” said Quỳnh. “But sure. They eat plants. That will be a big reassurance when they’ve kicked you to death. Don’t get me wrong, I love them, but they’re assholes.”

Booker raised his hands. “Okay, okay.”

“About five hundred metres that way,” Andy said, pointing, “and then we go up the hill to the azhdarchids and over, or the long way around.”

Nile rubbed her arms. “Well, let’s keep moving, it’s cold standing about.”

Joe and Nicky were still arguing in low voices, focused on each other.

“Walk and talk,” Andy said, tapping Joe on the arm. “Come on.”

They did; Nile wasn’t sure how they weren’t twisting their ankles. But at least they seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Quỳnh was starting to shiver by the time they got to the decision point. That made it easy as far as Nile was concerned, and nobody disagreed. They had to backtrack another half-kilometre to get to one of the small failsafe gates. As they went up the hill and became more visible, Nile got more and more nervous. She asked Joe and Nicky if they would keep watch.

“I’ll take our six – I’ll go to the rear,” she said, “and you two, left and right. Just keep an eye out for any movement, anything weird. Don’t yell, but get our attention if you see something.”

Joe regarded her, his mouth quirking. “Yes ma’am.”

There were two false alarms – birds, and a lone pachy, which Nicky spotted with surprisingly good attention to detail – but they made it through the gate without incident. The rain had lightened and then stopped by then, but the sky was noticeably darkening.

“Okay, we’ll hear these guys if they come our way,” Andy instructed, “and if they do, make noise, okay? Nile, I know it’s not good military practice, but they don’t think we’re prey and they’ll leave if we yell and wave our arms. But probably we won’t see them at all – there’s only two adults.”

“Pity we missed them on the tour,” said Joe.

“Sorry, you’ll have to explain,” said Nicky. “My dinosaur knowledge stops at the ones they make children’s toys out of. What’s an azhdarchid?”

“Pterosaur,” said Joe. “Big, though. Giraffe-sized.”

Nicky looked up. “There is no cover on the enclosure.”

“They’re terrestrial,” said Andy. “That was a surprise. Walk around like big stabby giraffes. Giraffes crossed with storks, maybe. Mostly we feed them iguanas. And turkeys. They do like a turkey.”

“Try not to look like a turkey, check,” Joe said.

“Nile,” Nicky said, low and very urgent. “On our right, I saw something –”

A shot hit the tree above Nile’s head. She ducked. “Keep low, keep low!”

They broke into a clearing, lit by the last dim red rays of sunset. Nile was keeping low, like she’d told everybody else to, and nearly cannoned head-first into Quỳnh, who had stopped dead. It only took a glance for Nile to realise why. There were two men with guns on the other side of the clearing, with easy shots at everybody. Joe and Booker already had their hands up. She heard Andy mutter “Motherfucker.”

Nile could hear someone coming up on the right, probably whoever Nicky had spotted. They were being surrounded. Motherfucker, that was definitely the right word.

It was very quiet, all of a sudden, except it wasn’t; there were still the noises of the living forest further off, and the wind in the trees. But everybody in Nile’s group was silent, except for the harsh noises of breathing. Nile was clinging to those noises. God, this was stupid.

Stephen Merrick stepped out from between the two armed men. He looked impossibly smug. If Nile had been next to him she would have punched him in his ridiculous fucking billionaire dinosaur-cloning face.

“Mr Merrick,” said Nicky. “I cannot say your hospitality is living up to the standard you promised, when you asked me to come and evaluate your project.”

“There’s been a few misunderstandings,” Merrick said, waving a hand dismissively. “I can see you’ve been lead astray by my unfortunately disloyal staff –”

“Fuck off!” Andy exclaimed, with feeling. “I took time out of doing my actual job to show these guys around – no offence, Joe, Nile – and then suddenly you’re locking people up and having your paranoid security people shooting at us!”

“I told you when you were hired, I would not tolerate breaches of project secrecy,” Merrick hissed, “much less talking to my competitors.”

“When did I do that?”

“Mr Le Livre,” Merrick said, meaningfully.

Booker jerked like someone had fired on him. “Listen –”

Nile became aware, as he started to speak, of the noises of something very large, moving through vegetation. When it came into view, at first she couldn’t put together what she was seeing. It was furry, or it looked furry – it wasn’t fur, of course – and as tall as the lower trees, a series of shapes that didn’t add up to any animal she was used to seeing. Great sheet-arms, no, wings used to walk on, an enormous head, nearly twice as long as Nile. The patterns on the wings threw off the eye; no palaeoartist had ever depicted an azhdarchid like this. It loomed above all of them.

Quỳnh sucked in a shaky breath. Andy didn’t hesitate. She started jumping and waving her arms. “Hey! Back off! You don’t need to be here! Yeah, you with the wings! Go the other way! We feed you on the other side of the enclosure, come on!”

Joe joined her almost without hesitation, yelling in Tounsi. The pterosaur make a croaking screech that might be displeasure, and started to turn. That was when the guy off to the right took the first shot at it.

Nicky said “Stop that! It isn’t –” very loudly, but was cut off by the hiss from the pterosaur, exactly like a very big and angry goose.

Merrick had stumbled back a step towards their group. “Drive it off!”

“No!” Quỳnh cried, and there was another shot. Nile hadn’t seen either land; were they shooting to scare it?

It was a mistake. Its head came down, lightning-fast, at Merrick. Through Merrick, like a stork with a fish.

The noise Merrick made was truly like nothing on earth. The pterosaur lifted him up, on its beak, and then tossed him off onto the ground. Blood arced through the air like rain being shaken off a treebranch. Nile forced herself to look for the armed men instead. One of them had already taken off; the others were still shooting at the pterosaur.

Nicky made like he was going to run towards Merrick. Nile went to grab him, but Joe got there first. “We gotta go, we gotta go!”

The pterosaur stumbled. Someone had hit it somewhere important, in that hail of bullets. Nile didn’t see anything more, because they were going, going, gone out of the clearing. Quỳnh was gulping loud, angry half-sobs.

Nile kept her head down, and kept running.