Z. Rex (6 page)

Then the valley vanished, replaced by complete darkness. It got suddenly colder.
We’re in a cave,
Adam realized.

We’re in this thing’s lair
.

He was dropped, surprisingly gently, to a floor of packed earth. It was black as tar in the cave; only a snatch of moonlight from outside filled the air. Heavy, hissing breaths filled the tunnel. Long claws clacked together, as if in anticipation of what they’d shred to ribbons next.

“Don’t kill me,” whispered Adam, rocking on his haunches, drenched with sweat. “You saved me out there. Please, please, don’t kill me now. Please. . . .”

The monster loomed over him, thick ropes of drool stirring cold earth to mud as its jaws cranked open. . . .

“Please!”
Adam begged as the mountainous creature leaned closer. “I . . . I don’t know if you can understand my words but please, don’t do this.” He talked faster, speaking for his life. “I don’t know why you came after me this morning or how you turned invisible. And I don’t know why you want me now, but—”

A hard snout nudged up against Adam’s ear. The warning rasp of the creature’s breath was like sandpaper on his senses. Adam stopped talking, clamped his teeth down on his lower lip and tried to stop shaking. He was half grateful to the darkness for hiding most of this thing, yet terrified by the thought of what else might be lurking—

Something moved to his right.

“Keep away!” Adam said hoarsely.

“You’re Adlar’s kid, right?” It was a man’s voice, calm and fragile from the shadows. “He found you then. After all we did to him, he could still find you.”

“You know my dad?” Adam strained to see into the darkness. “What are you talking about? Who are you?”

“My name’s Sedona, Mike Sedona. Zoologist.”

“This thing came from a zoo?”

The creature gave a sharp snort of disgust. Adam felt the saliva hit his face. He spluttered, wiped his face on his sleeve as the thing lurched away from him. “Why’s it taken us here?”

“This is where it came from,” Sedona said distantly. “Fort Ponil.”

Adam swallowed hard. “We’re in Fort Ponil?”

“This cave hides the secret way in and out of the facility it was taught to use.” The zoologist paused. “This time tomorrow, I would have been safe. Most of us have already cleared out. Relocated to Europe. I was going to follow. I would’ve—”

The shadowy shape growled menacingly. It sniffed the air as it padded about the cave—and suddenly, a fierce yellow glare spat from spotlights in the rocky ceiling.
Lights? Where did the lights come from?
Adam screwed up his eyes, blinked as his vision slowly adjusted.

Then, as the monster stood fully revealed at last, he wished they hadn’t.

A dinosaur was glaring down at him.

A living, breathing, dark-green dinosaur. Like a T. rex.
Adam’s senses reeled.
That’s all it can be,
he thought.

The paintings, the pictures and the movies, all the incredible special effects Adam had seen in his lifetime couldn’t capture a fraction of the power and presence of the flesh-and-blood beast before him—this sleek and scaly juggernaut, watching him from under bloodred brows.

“It looks so real,” Adam whispered. “But how . . . ?”

The sheer size of the thing was staggering. Its hind legs, each as big as a man, balanced its body in the middle—the broad trunk, neck and head hunching forward balanced the long tail tapering behind. Teeth like giant spikes and huge talons gleamed like horrific advertisements for the mauling tortures the monster could inflict. With a pang of alarm, Adam realized the arms and hands were different from the pictures he’d seen in the library—the limbs were longer, chunkier, more powerful, and each ended in a large hand with five clawed fingers, not the illustrated two. There were dark smears around the brutish face, like burn marks, that didn’t make the monster look any prettier. But somehow the scariest things were its dark, beady eyes, gleaming with a cold intelligence.

Adam turned to Sedona—who turned out to be a black man with close-cropped hair, his white lab coat stained with dirt and blood. He was shivering, covered in sweat, clearly in shock. “A miracle of biology,” he said. “Just look at him. Still standing after all we did. . . .”

“It was invisible before,” Adam murmured, unable to tear his eyes away. “How . . . ?”

“Adaptive camouflage,” Sedona hissed back. “It hunts by stealth. Skin like a chameleon’s, only a billion times more sensitive. It secretes a substance that affects light rays, so that—” He broke off and screamed as the dinosaur stamped forward and grabbed him with one hand.

The next moment, Adam was grabbed too, and lifted roughly into the air. The monster turned with some difficulty in the narrow space, then bore them both away with a strange, almost birdlike gait, moving on tiptoes. The tunnel was studded with more spotlights, and Adam glimpsed the gory remains of something else in a lab coat, half crushed into the ground. He looked away, trying not to be sick.

The journey didn’t last long, as the creature came to a halt beside an impressive metal doorway. Its five claws tapped a staccato rhythm on the keypad with impressive precision, and with a rumbling shake, the slab of steel ground opened onto darkness.
Where are we going?
Adam thought. But as the dinosaur tramped into the shadows, overhead lighting flickered on—and he felt his jaw drop for what had to be the fiftieth time that day.

The dinosaur had carried them into a freaky-looking high-tech laboratory carved out of a giant cave. The walls were rocky but lined with computers and cabinets and all kinds of incredible machines and medical tools. Colorful charts, maps and X-rays dangled down like decorations. A formidable-looking steel structure stood in the center of the room, like a giant caravan crossed with a tank. It was marked CONTAINMENT CHAMBER—although the meter-thick metal door hanging drunkenly from a single hinge suggested it hadn’t lived up to its name.

Adam was dropped to the ground, followed by Sedona a few seconds later—headfirst. They both lay there, panting for breath. The huge creature seemed to forget them, swinging its great, scorched head from side to side as if searching something out. It trod stealthily about the laboratory, colossal muscles rippling with every movement.

“He killed the others,” Sedona said slowly, “everyone who stayed to shut things down, he took them apart. All except me.”

That could explain why it didn’t grab me straight after I got away in the truck this morning
, Adam thought.
It had had things to take care of back here.

“Why
not
me?” Sedona was still muttering to himself. “I don’t know. There’ll be a reason. He doesn’t do anything without a reason.”

“Reason?” Adam guessed the man was hanging on to sanity by threads. “You make it sound like it’s intelligent.”

“If he could still talk, he could tell you himself.” Sedona giggled suddenly, though his eyes remained wide with fear. “Sounds like a joke, doesn’t it? A talking dinosaur.”

Adam stared at him. “It could
speak
?”

“Sure. Until we got orders to put twenty thousand volts through his brain.” The scientist chewed on the end of his finger. “Did as we were told, figured he was finished. Shipped him out to Utah, dumped him in a reservoir. But somehow, he pulled through, got back out. Must have headed straight to your apartment.” Sedona shook his head in admiration. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. He once zeroed in on a deer let loose in a hundred square miles of state park.” He looked at Adam. “Finding your place would be a breeze.”

“But why would it come after me?” Adam whispered.

“Confused your scent with your dad’s, perhaps.” Sedona looked at Adam. “See, it was your dad who tricked him—and put that current through his head.”

Adam stared at him, reeling.
“What?”

The creature roared suddenly with such violence that Adam cringed and fell silent.

“He knows we’re talking about him.” Sedona was staring at the ground. “He’s not some dumb animal. He’s a Z. rex.”

Adam frowned. “Don’t you mean
T. rex
?”

Sedona turned to him, his eyes haunted. “I mean Z.”

The dinosaur shook its huge head. It came closer, mouth swinging open, displaying way too many teeth. “Zed,” it rumbled, a low, warning noise like timbers creaking, its cold dark eyes glinting with malice.

Adam swallowed hard. “No way. Come on! No freakin’ way!”

Even Sedona looked up now in wondering terror. “He
can
still speak. . . .”

“Zed,” the creature rasped again. “Zed. Rex. Zed. REX.”

A
dam watched the creature’s scaly lips contorting to form the words. “This has got to be a trick,” he said helplessly. “It’s special effects, or—or
something
.”

“I told you, he’s a miracle of biology.” Sedona was still gazing up at the dinosaur. “Z. rex, short for
Zenithsaurus rex.
Means, ‘king of reptiles at his zenith.’”

“Zenith?”

“Highest point. The peak.” Sedona shot Adam a look. “Your father called him Zed, not Zee like the rest of us. Seems the creature’s picked up on that.”

Dad switched his way of saying
Z
when he was teaching me the alphabet. . . .
Adam shook his head, unable to take it all in.
You’re stuck underground with a mad-man and a dinosaur,
his thoughts were screaming.
A dinosaur!
It was impossible to believe and yet just as impossible to deny.

There came a grating noise. “No . . .” The huge reptile was speaking again, staring down at Sedona, eyes narrowed and glaring.
“No . . .”

“No . . . kill us?” Sedona said hopefully. “No keep us here? You’re going to let us go?”

The Z. rex snorted with anger, turned and lurched away, resuming his hunt through the laboratory.

“Now, while he’s distracted.” Adam turned to the frightened scientist, his voice a hoarse whisper. “We can get out and close the door on him.”

“He’d rip us apart before we were halfway across the room,” said Sedona.

Adam didn’t dare try anything alone. He watched the Z. rex, sick with fear. He knew that this thing could kill him in a dozen different ways. But it hadn’t. Not so far. That had to be good, right? He kept telling himself that while the dinosaur turned over the lab as if hunting for something in particular.

“This is your dad’s fault,” Sedona muttered. “He screwed up.”

“He works on computer games,” Adam retorted. “Whatever he was made to do here, it was against his will.”

“Oh, really?” Sedona laughed bitterly. “He was working happily enough every time I saw him.”

“He can’t have been.” Adam put his head in his hands. “I don’t get it, he was only here eight days—”

“ZED!”
The blast of sound almost tore Adam’s ears off, as the Z. rex strode over with a huge bundle of folders and clipboards and dumped them at his feet. “Zed . . . no.” Cold reptile eyes glared down at him, one claw pointed accusingly at the mess of papers like it was somehow Adam’s fault they’d been dropped. “No . . .” Scaly brows knotted in concentration, he tried one more time to get his lips around the word: “No . . . tes . . .”

“Notes!” Sedona cried suddenly. “You wanted me to find these notes for you? I’m sorry, I thought Josephs had shipped them out already.”

“Notes,” the reptile repeated more clearly, pointing at Adam.

“You . . . you want
me
to read this stuff?” Adam looked in dismay at equations and long Latin words and scientific jargon he couldn’t even pronounce, let alone understand. “I—I can’t. I don’t get it. I’m thirteen, I’m still at school.”

“This is a child, an immature human,” said Sedona, jumping in quickly as if seeing an opportunity. “He . . . he lacks intelligence and skill. Whatever information you want out of these notes, I can help you. I can, I promise.”

A low, grating sound formed in the monster’s throat: “Help . . . ?” He lashed out with his tail, and a metal vat buckled like wet cardboard, the sound reverberating around the lab. “HELP?”

“I’m just support staff!” Sedona screwed up his eyes and pressed his sweaty palms together. “It was Adlar who flicked the switch that hurt you, and Josephs who gave the order. Maybe . . . maybe I can help you find them?”

“No,” hissed Adam.

“Geneflow Solutions has a base in the United Kingdom, in Edinburgh,” Sedona babbled on. “If you’ll let me go I can find an exact—”

The Z. rex stamped his foot down on the bundle of papers, stopping the scientist’s rant short. As the echoes crashed on, he closed his scale-lidded eyes, his claws twitching dangerously. “Tell,” came the sinister growl. “Tell. Zed.”

“Tell you what?” Sedona whispered.

The creature shook his brutish head, pointed at the papers and then stared down at Adam. “Zed.
No
. . .”

“No?” Adam shrugged helplessly. “ ‘Notes’ again?”

Frustration creased the beast’s forehead. “Tell. Zed.”

“You mean”—Sedona looked uncertainly at Adam—“tell the kid
about
you?”

The dinosaur thing thrust his head closer to his prisoners, his breath coming in short, snarling snatches. Adam held very still, barely daring to breathe.

Sedona started babbling. “He was created here as a first step—the Z. rex, I mean. A first step toward changing the world.” Sedona wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “He was Geneflow’s emblem in a way. A synthesis of science and history, re-engineering the past—”

“If I’m supposed to understand this stuff, you’re gonna have to go slow,” Adam broke in, tensely. “What
is
Geneflow Solutions? Solutions for what?”

But then the reptile’s huge nostrils, each the size of Adam’s head, flared and twitched. Clearly agitated, he looked past them to the doorway and bared his teeth.

“Hold still, all of you!” came a shout from just outside.