Alex Scarrow - Day of the Predator

Maddy’s mouth was dry and her head was pounding. She slowly opened her eyes and winced them shut against the painful bright glare of the light overhead.

‘Sorry about that,’ she heard someone say. The lights in the room dimmed slightly. ‘Better?’

She cracked her eyes open again, and then nodded. She felt something cool pressed into her hands.

‘Water. Have a sip. It’s just water, I assure you.’

Maddy lifted a plastic tumbler and gratefully slurped a mouthful. Her eyes blinked and she tried to focus on her surroundings: a small room with a low ceiling, what looked like a medicine cabinet, a strip light overhead. She was lying on what appeared to be a hospital bed and beside her she saw the old man who’d come knocking at their door sitting on a stool. He’d taken his jacket off, rolled up his shirtsleeves and loosened his tie.

‘You took a knock on the head when you went down. I’m sorry I had to taser you.’

Yes… that was it. She’d felt like every muscle in her body had locked and an unbelievably agonizing sensation had coursed through her whole body.

‘Where am I?’ She realized she was lying on some sort of a hospital gurney. But then this didn’t look like a hospital ward, or a private ward.

‘New York still,’ he smiled. ‘And somewhere perfectly safe.’

She sipped the water again. ‘Who are you?’

The man pulled the stool forward. It rattled on castors across a smooth linoleum floor. ‘My name’s Lester Cartwright,’ he answered warmly. ‘And yes — if that’s your next question — I work for a, shall we say, a quiet little intelligence agency on behalf of the American government.’

Maddy nodded and smiled blearily. ‘I figured it would be someone like that who’d come to our door.’

‘Well… who else would it be?’ he asked. ‘Something like this, knowledge of this… it’s far too important for any old Joe to have in his possession. I’m sure you’d agree.’

Maddy shrugged, her hand reaching up to her forehead and finding a dressing there. ‘I suppose.’

‘So,’ he said, leaning forward. ‘I have just about a million goddamn questions I’ve been wanting to ask someone like you. Questions I’ve been waiting for answers to most of my adult life. And, in return, I have a curious message that I’m sure you’re rather keen to see.’

She was encouraged by the old man’s directness. No beating about the bush, no attempting to fool her, beguile her. Just the straightforward declaration of a quid pro quo.

She nodded. ‘A message from a friend.’

‘Yes,’ he said as he got up and reached for his jacket neatly draped on a small storage cabinet in the corner of the room. He fumbled for the inside pocket and finally pulled out a folded sheet of paper. ‘A friend who apparently decided to take a holiday during the, if I’m not mistaken, the late Cretaceous period?’

Maddy’s jaw dropped open. ‘I… uh… when did you say?’

‘The late Cretaceous. We’ve tested the rock. It’s definitely from that time.’

Her lungs emptied a gasp. ‘You mean, like, dinosaur times?’

Cartwright nodded. ‘Yes, I believe it was a popular time for dinosaurs.’

‘Oh my God, I didn’t think the machine — ’ She stopped herself before she blurted out anything else. She decided it would be far smarter to keep as much as possible to herself for now.

‘Yes.’ The man’s eyes narrowed curiously. ‘Yes, you do look genuinely surprised at that. What were you going to say?’

She shook her head. ‘Nothing.’

He studied her silently for a few moments. ‘This is someone you lost, isn’t it? Someone you’ve been unable to retrieve? To find? Some kind of mistake? Is that it?’

‘May I see the message, please?’ she replied.

‘You didn’t think time travel that far back was possible?’ he said, fishing for a reaction on her face. ‘Am I right?’

‘We lost someone, all right? Now, can I see the message?’

‘Where are you from?’ he asked, then shook his head. Comically, he gently slapped his forehead. ‘Stupid, stupid me… it’s when are you from I should be asking, isn’t it?’

Maddy couldn’t help a smile and a dry laugh. ‘It does that to you, this business… makes you want to slap your head.’

The old man shared the smile. ‘I can imagine.’ The smile eased away. Business again. ‘You’re American, that much I’ve worked out. Boston?’

She nodded. No point trying to hide that. ‘Yes.’

‘When?’ He looked at her T-shirt, the faded Intel logo on the front, her jeans, her pumps. ‘Not too far into the future is my guess.’

‘Maybe.’

‘You want to see this?’ he asked, unfolding the message.

She nodded.

‘Then can we start having some precise answers from you?’

She shrugged. ‘OK.’

‘Your name is?’

‘Maddy. Maddy Carter.’

‘Hello, Maddy.’ He nodded politely. ‘And what year are you from?’

‘I’m from 2010,’ she replied.

The answer seemed to stun him. His eyes widened involuntarily and beneath the folds of his wrinkled skin above the crisp white collar of his shirt, his jaw worked as teeth ground. Finally he pursed his lips. ‘2010 you said?’

‘Yup.’

‘You actually know the future? The next nine years of it?’

‘Of course.’

His face drained. ‘Then you… you’re saying you know, for example, what this government’s foreign policy goals might be? Long-term strategic plans? Those kind of things?’

She smiled. ‘Oh yeah, I know what’s round the corner.’

That silenced him for a long while. She watched the folded paper flutter in his hand.

‘Do you know just how dangerous that makes you to certain people?’ he said softly. ‘I can think of quite a few colleagues in my line of business who’d want to put a bullet in your head right now. Quite a few more who’d want to torture every last little fact out of that head of yours… oh, and then put a bullet in it.’

‘The message?’

He nodded his head absently and then handed it over. ‘It might amuse you to know,’ he said, ‘I can recite every word and every last number of the coded section. I’ve known off by heart what’s written down on there for the last decade and a half.’ He laughed humourlessly. ‘Like an old poem drummed into your head at school and you never ever forget.’

Maddy reached for it and unfolded the paper. She saw handwriting. She presumed it was the old man’s handwriting.

Take this to Archway 9, Wythe Street, Brooklyn, New York on Monday 10 September 2001.

Message: -89-1-9/54-1-5/76-1-2/23-3-5/17-8-4/7-?3–7/5-8-3/12-6-9/2 3-8-1/3-1-1/56-9-2/12-5-8/67-?8–3/92-6-7/112-8-3/234-6-1/45-7-3/30-6-2 /34-8-?3/41-5-6/99-7-1/2-6-9/127-8-1/128-7-3/259-1-5/2-?7–1/69-1-5/142-66. Key is ‘Magic’.

Oh my God, Liam… you’re alive. You made it.

‘Now, the first bit makes sense to me… clearly designed to make sure the message finds its way to you — ’

She cut him short. ‘ Where did you get the message from?’

He cocked a wiry grey eyebrow. ‘A fossil, would you believe? A fossil discovered by some boys in 1941. The second of May, to be precise. Along a river near a town called Glen Rose in the state of Texas. It nearly caused a sensation, but… the wartime secret service worked quickly to hush up the find. And, of course, people were far more concerned about the war then than silly rumours about mysterious fossil finds.’

He smiled. ‘The place was taken over by secret service goons, and guess what else they found?’

Maddy shrugged.

‘A few months after the message was discovered, they found a human footprint.’ He looked up at her. ‘Oh yes, a genuine human footprint, from the same strata of sedimentary rock. The print of some sort of a running shoe.’ He was amused by that. ‘That’s what they called it back then, a running shoe. They didn’t have training shoes back then.’