The Devil's Triangle (22 page)

Later that afternoon Sam followed Brad outside, eager to get their journey under way. Nipper and a second raptor were waiting for them.

‘They’re wearing clothes!’ Callum whispered to Sam.

‘Perhaps it’s the convention at the Imperium,’ Sam replied softly, noting the drab brown garments that now covered the raptors’ loins and upper body. There was nothing stylish about them. The cloth hung round their bodies looking both out of place and uncomfortable.

‘Ssss’amm,’ Nipper said, pointing a wickedly curved middle claw.

Sam’s eyes went wide. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s my name.’

‘K’umm,’ Nipper continued, moving the claw to point at Callum.

‘Close enough,’ Callum acknowledged. He adjusted his glasses up his nose before glancing first at Sam and then nodding at Nipper. The raptor repeated the nod before pointing at the second raptor and making an explosive, rolling huff noise in the depths of his throat.

‘Just call him Grunt, boys,’ Brad chuckled. ‘It’ll save you gettin’ sore throats.’

Nipper gestured for the boys to follow him. They exchanged a final look of amazement and then stepped out after him. Brad followed close behind, with Grunt bringing up the rear. Leah followed the group to the edge of the trees. The boys turned to say goodbye.

‘Good luck, boys,’ she said, wiping a tear from her cheek. ‘Stay with Nipper and keep safe.’

‘Bye, Leah!’ the boys chorused back.

‘Thanks for everything,’ Callum added.

Brad drew Leah into a tight hug and kissed her, first on the top of her head and then on the lips. Their embrace lasted some time, but at last he pulled away.

‘Gotta go,’ he said.

‘Be careful, love,’ Leah told him, blinking hard as she tried to stop more tears from welling. There was no mistaking her worried look.

‘I will,’ he assured her. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

Nipper pushed into the dense greenery underneath the trees and the boys followed. A few steps and the dense jungle closed around them. Leah and the house disappeared. Sam looked back at Brad and the older man gave him an encouraging smile. Sam envied him his relaxed attitude. It was hard to imagine ever being able to relax in this environment. There were too many unknowns: too many dangers.

Nipper pushed through the undergrowth with ease. But following him was not so easy for the humans. To Sam, the forest was more reminiscent of the African or Amazonian equatorial jungles he’d seen featured on the
Discovery Channel
wildlife programmes than anything he would have expected to find in Florida. Huge broad-leaf plants and enormous shiny-leaved ferns limited forward visibility between the trees to no more than a metre or two.

Looking up, the dense canopy was many metres above, capping long, relatively spindly tree trunks that stretched up like so many gigantic spears. All around him the air was alive with birdsong and the whining of insects, but if any of the cacophony of sounds were being made by other animals, Sam could not tell them apart. If he had been alone, he would have trodden carefully, wary of the possibility of snakes. Following Nipper, however, all he could do was blindly push forward and hope.

Unlike the stink of rotting vegetation in the mangrove swamps of Florida, the air in this jungle smelt green with life. Sam breathed it in through his nose, trying to separate out the scents, but it was an impossibly complex blend that changed with almost every step. The only constant he could identify was the background hint of sulphur, which seemed to permeate everything in this world.

Branches of bushes and trees whipped back at Sam as the raptor moved forward with no apparent regard for his immediate follower. Sam had no doubt that the raptor could move much faster if he had a mind to, but as the fourth and fifth branches swished back at him in quick succession, he realised this journey was going to be anything but easy. Twisting, ducking and constantly tense, he gritted his teeth and did his best to keep up.

It was hard to tell exactly how long they walked. When they emerged from the trees, Sam was scratched, sweating and sore in several places from having sustained particularly fierce whipping impacts. He guessed they had spent about two hours trekking through the jungle. He had learned quickly to keep his head and eyes down and it took a few moments after entering the clearing before he could bring himself to look around.

‘Wow!’ he breathed when he lifted his eyes.

He turned to his friend. Callum’s jaw was hanging slack with amazement. The gigantic structure in front of them was like nothing Sam had ever seen before. Its many-faceted exterior reflected light in all directions rather like a gigantic distorted version of the mirror ball that had been hung for their school disco. It was impossible to imagine a human architect ever designing such a seemingly unnatural, amorphous-looking shape, but what left Sam’s mind reeling was not the shape of the strange structure. It was the dazzling effect of the myriad reflective surfaces.

‘Welcome to the local train station, boys,’ Brad laughed. ‘Impressive, isn’t it?’

‘You could say that,’ Sam choked, barely able to speak.

‘Wait until you see inside. Grunt tells me there should be a train arriving any time now.’

Nipper turned and uttered a slow sequence of clicks, grumbles and guttural
tocks
to Brad before firing a much faster sequence of clicking, growling noises at Grunt, who in turn raised his head and gave a strangely restrained roar by way of response.

‘What was that all about, I wonder?’ muttered Callum. ‘That noise Grunt made reminded me of Chewbacca from
Star Wars
.’

‘I don’t know,’ Sam replied softly. ‘And I have the distinct feeling that it would be better if we didn’t ask.’

Nipper led the way again, stepping out with such long strides that the boys and Brad had to jog to keep up. The raptor did not look back to check on them. He seemed preoccupied with getting into the building. They went left along the outside wall, but the boys could see no obvious point of entry. The irregular-shaped panel Nipper led them to looked no different from any of the others around the building, save for a wide network of well-trodden paths across the ground that all converged towards it. There was no sign of an entry mechanism that Sam could see, but as Nipper approached the panel, it slid diagonally up and left into a hidden sheath within the skin of the building. He moved forward until he was standing in the opening, then he turned and beckoned the rest of the party through.

‘Cool!’ Callum muttered. ‘I wonder what sort of sensors it uses. What do you think, Sam? Movement? Weight?’

‘They’re DNA scanners,’ Brad explained, picking up on their conversation. ‘Raptors don’t want unwanted species entering the station. That’s why Nipper is standing in the doorway. If we were to try to enter without him standing there, the door would slam shut instantly.’

‘And I bet that you wouldn’t want to be underneath that door if it came down,’ Callum added.

‘Not a good idea,’ Brad confirmed. ‘It wouldn’t make your day.’

Sam moved quickly through the doorway, looking up nervously as he crossed the threshold. No sooner was he inside, however, than the potentially lethal door was forgotten as his eyes were drawn towards new wonders. The entire interior of the building appeared to be a single chamber.

The first thing that drew his attention was the lighting. Aside from a few transparent panels in the roof that allowed shafts of natural light in like great golden spears, the space was lit by huge glowing globes that appeared to be floating in the air at regular intervals across the main inner chamber. Sam could see no telltale signs of any hidden support structure. At first, he thought it must be some sort of visual illusion, but the globes occasionally appeared to bob, giving an even stronger indication that they were indeed free-floating.

The flooring appeared initially to be bare earth, but there was something about the way it felt underfoot that raised Sam’s suspicions. Putting his fingers to the ground, he discovered the surface had the texture of dense plastic, though there was a thin layer of dusty earth on top that had doubtless been brought in from outside by countless raptor travellers over the years.

Everywhere Sam looked there was something amazing to see, but the building was filled with strange contradictions. It was as if someone had been designing a film set for a science fiction film and then decided to build an Iron Age market in the middle of it. Nearby, there were holographic image generators projecting remarkable miniature scenes of raptors hunting not three paces from a huge stack of what looked like home-made wooden cages filled with an entire menagerie of creatures. Even as Sam watched, the constant squawking and screaming of the animals suddenly increased in volume to a terrified frenzy. A raptor was approaching the pile of cages. It stopped and pointed at a specific animal. Sam’s stomach churned as he suddenly realised that what he was looking at was the equivalent of a café.

He looked away, turning his attention to an enormous central holographic screen displaying a gigantic raptor face, whose voice was being broadcast above the general hubbub of the station. Brad was also looking at the screen and his face was a study of concentration.

‘It’s the latest news,’ Brad explained as he met Sam’s inquisitive gaze.

‘So what’s happening?’ Sam asked.

‘Nothin’ good,’ Brad mumbled. ‘Since when does anyone broadcast good news?’

Sam raised a hand to his chest. There was something else here. He couldn’t see or hear it, but he could feel it. Underlying everything in the station was a deep thrumming of energy unlike anything Sam had ever experienced before. It vibrated deep in his chest; an unsettling sensation, made suddenly worse by the realisation that every set of raptor eyes in the immediate vicinity had now turned and were focused on the three humans.

A nearby raptor peeled back the lipless flesh round his mouth to reveal rows of razor-sharp teeth, and gave a low warning growl. Sam took an involuntary step backwards and stepped on Callum’s toes.

‘Ow!’ Callum breathed, grabbing Sam by the arms from behind and manhandling him to his right.

Another raptor bared his teeth and then another. Sam could feel his heart accelerating. If the nearby raptors attacked, they would be dead in seconds. The image of the three raptors killing the much bigger dinosaur the previous day was still fresh in his mind.

Brad made several clicking noises, and a rolling guttural sound in the back of his throat. The eyes of some of the nearest raptors widened and then narrowed.

‘What did you say?’ Sam asked him without looking.

‘Well, I think I said, “It’s great to meet y’all,” but somethin’ tells me my grasp of the language might not be as good as I thought,’ Brad replied.

The eyes of the raptors shifted as Nipper and his friend prowled around to position themselves in front of Brad and the boys. They radiated confidence with every tiny movement they made.
It’s like watching a tiger walking
, Sam thought – majestic and mesmerising, saying, ‘I’m the top predator around here and there’s nothing you can do that will ever worry me.’

Nipper opened his mouth and roared. The sound was both reassuring and terrifying at the same time. Sam’s heart started to thump. A stab of pain in his chest accompanied each beat, as if his heart was bruising itself against his ribcage. The defiance in Nipper’s roar caused a ripple of surprised clicking responses through the station, but it had the desired effect. Sam felt the shift. Within a matter of seconds, he, Callum and Brad went from being the centre of attention to being deliberately ignored.

‘Nipper and Grunt have declared us their wards,’ Brad explained. ‘We shouldn’t have any problems in the station now.’

By chance, the train arrived at that precise moment and the sight of it took the boys’ breath away. Awestruck, and all fear momentarily forgotten, they moved forward to get a better look at the amazing vehicle. Distracted, none of the group noticed a particularly large raptor slide into a convenient shadow nearby. From the concealed vantage point, a single staring pair of eyes followed their every move.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Niamh woke with a start from a strange dream and it took her a few moments to realise where she was. The confinement of the tiny cabin and the gentle rocking movement of the boat brought it all back in a flash. No one had bothered her during the night, so the camouflage that she and her newfound friends had applied the day before had done its job.

‘Thanks, guys,’ she breathed as she relived flashes of the previous afternoon.

The three American teenagers had been amazed when she had led them to her boat. Until they saw it, she felt sure they were expecting her to show them a little dinghy. Their reaction when they saw the ten-metre cabin cruiser had been most gratifying. It had taken them a while to believe that there were no adults around and that she was serious about trying to hide the boat somewhere, but eventually, Tony had made the suggestion that had led her to this old disused mooring on the far side of the island.

Getting to it had been tricky. The channel through the reef was very narrow, and if Niamh had faced the task alone, she was sure she would have damaged the boat or worse. Tony, however, was a skilful driver. He drove them through the narrow channel and into the mooring bay with apparent ease, adding only a couple of gentle scrapes against the coral along the way. The tiny inlet itself was so overgrown that they didn’t have to add much to the natural concealment of the mangrove trees to make the boat all but invisible from the sea. It would still be partially visible from the air, but Niamh had done what she could to reduce the chances of it being spotted.