breath deep, seek heavy artillery.
Title: Jurassic Thursday
Characters: Nicholas, Danny, the team, Peter Staker.
Word Count: 2290
Rating: PG-13 for language, violence, blood. Nothing too nasty.
Summary: When a mysterious convoy meets a nasty end just outside of Sandford, Nicholas and his team soon find themselves facing a deadly prehistoric foe.
Notes: I'm still not 100% sure what gave me the idea for this crossover in the first place. I wanted to include Peter Staker, and I wanted to keep up a fast-paced, fragmented story while still retaining a coherent narrative. Successful? Definitely in the first category!
Thursday, September 29th
5:15 AM
Pembry's Field
“The fuck happened here?” said Andy Wainwright.
The debris trail stretched most of the length of the cornfield. Nicholas walked slowly through the damage, past the overturned truck and the remains of the Jeep, pushing through the knee-high corn wherever it was still standing and taking care not to stumble on the ploughed-up furrows of earth, the bits of vehicle, the shattered crates. Up ahead, Danny was prodding at the burned-out remains of the helicopter, which was still smouldering, gently, flanked by Doris and a doleful-looking Mr. Pembry. Whatever had happened here in the night, it had done a hell of a number on the cornfield.
“I have absolutely no idea,” he said. “Must have been a hell of a detour, whatever it was. We're nowhere near Staverton airspace. Any sign of the pilot, Danny?”
Danny withdrew his head from the cockpit.
“Bit of blood,” he said. “Can't see nothin' else in there.”
Nicholas ducked half-inside the tear in the side of the largest crate, the great big metal tanker which, presumably, had been slung beneath the helicopter. The darkness inside smelled unpleasantly organic, thick and fetid. He pulled back, grimacing, as the Andes ambled up behind him.
“Christ. I don't like this at all.”
Danny kicked absently at a fragment of metal from the destroyed chopper, turning it over with his foot. There was some kind of logo on it, an I and an N together, cut through by a line of smaller letters. GEN.
“You en't alone there, Nick. Bob can't even get Saxon out the car.”
Nicholas's eyes narrowed. In the churned-up earth at his feet, a blurred footprint stared accusingly back at him. It wasn't human.
“Get SOCO up here,” he said. “We've got some digging to do.”
12:25 PM
Sandford Police Station
Despite Nicholas's best investigative efforts, things didn't really kick off until around noon.
“What? Speak up, I can't hear a blind word you're sayin'. You got a what in your garden? What? Ate your cat? Come off it!”
Slam.
“Tchuh. Oi! Chief! Just got another one!”
1:17 PM
Sandford Primary School
“No, Nicholas, there is nothin' wrong with the fuckin' radio!” hissed Danny. “There's a dinosaur in the school playground an' it just chased Mrs. Wicherly up the climbing frame! Delta India November Oscar Sierra Alpha Uniform whatever the fuck R is! Dinosaur! And no I fucking have not been fucking drinking! This is me extremely fucking sober an' hiding behind a giraffe on a spring!”
2:42 PM
Sandford Castle
“They're like birds,” said Peter Staker, enraptured. “Great big... birds.”
“Great big birds with a lethal five-inch claw on each foot, Mr. Staker,” said Nicholas. “I've had reports of these things killing people.”
“Yes, I saw,” said Peter. He was still gazing out of the window, and Nicholas didn't at all like the awestruck, nearly lovelorn glint behind his glasses. “Two of 'em got that tourist down there. Hunted him down and ripped him up like a piñata. Incredible. They're actually intelligent...”
He was rudely interrupted by Nicholas, who grabbed a handful of lanky shoulder and slammed him against the wall.
“Mr. Staker, I don't think you quite appreciate the urgency of the situation,” he growled. “I've already lost contact with- with half my team. I need tranquillizers, darts, restraint poles for the smaller ones, and information. What've you got that'll take 'em down?”
3:10PM
Sandford Police Station, Main Office
“Alright, listen up. Doris, Tony, grab a trank rifle and a sidearm each and head up to the primary. Make sure the kids are safe up there, then find out what happened to the Andes.”
“Right y'are, Chief.”
“What?”
“Evan, Owen, you're in charge of rounding up all the little green ones. They're not dangerous unless they bite you, but for God's sake don't let them get you in a corner.”
“D'we get overtime?”
“Shuttup, y'twat. We're on it, sir.”
“Good. Bob, hold things down here. Keep trying the phones. We've got to get in touch with Quegley, the RSPCA, the army... anyone. If you get through, remember, um... enunciate. Please.”
“Yarrright.”
“Warf!”
“I'm going after Danny. Any questions? Good. Radios on, people. Let's move.”
3:51 PM
Somerfields Car Park
Andy Wainwright collapsed back into the driver's seat, grey and sweating. Behind him, Cartwright was holding what looked like Evan Turner's spare shirt to his bleeding shoulder, desperately trying to reload with one hand.
“Fucking shit, Butterman, you stupid sod, you nearly gave us a heart attack! Din't know who the fuck you were!”
Danny slammed his Deagle down on the dashboard, spraying rainwater everywhere. He felt, quite rightly, that this was a bit much. In a film, if someone had just put their life on the line by fighting their way over to a stranded truck while being hunted down by a six-foot jumping lizard with razor-sharp claws and teeth, there would have been a lot more of the my-heroing and a bit less of the you-stupid-sodding. Plus the truck probably would have contained a gorgeous babe with exotic tattoos and inadequate clothing, instead of two arsy blokes with scratty moustaches and foul mouths.
“Who did you think'd be tryin' to get in here? Richard fuckin' Attenborough?”
4:19 PM
Somerfields, Aisle Four
The dinosaur padded closer, crunching over scattered bags of crisps. It was maybe three feet tall, with a weird blunt V-shaped crest on top of its head. The effect was odd, but also sort of cute. It stopped a little way off, cocked its head on one side, and cooed.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Danny. “You're pretty, I get it.”
He pulled the perspex frontplate of the riot helmet down over his face.
“So're swans.”
He peered sideways down the nearest aisle, hoping to spot if anyone was still hiding in the back. Some back-up would be pretty tidy right now-
As soon as he dropped eye contact, the dinosaur screeched, and a gigantic brightly-coloured ruff of skin erupted from nowhere around its neck, patterned with twists and splotches of red, yellow and black, scalloped like a Spanish fan. Danny stumbled backwards over a drift of scattered vegetables, and the next sound he heard was uncannily like a large, messy sneeze. He had heard Owen Turner making a very similar sound once or twice, full-on into the pages of his book when he thought nobody was watching. Nobody borrowed Owen's books.
A dense splat of something purple-grey and slimy slapped across his face-shield. Danny flinched, caught his balance and backed off, swiping it away with his sleeve. Where the slime had come into contact with his neck, he felt the skin begin to tingle slightly, like a mild case of pins and needles. He stared incredulously at the dinosaur through the smeared perspex.
“D'jou... d'jou just fuckin' spit at me?”
The dinosaur cocked its head again, its beautiful ruff held uncertainly at half-mast. It looked a bit bewildered by his lack of reaction, but it didn't get to be bewildered for very long, because the next second Danny took a good swing and brained it over the head with the fire extinguisher with a wonderfully satisfying BDONNNGG.
“Danny!”
Nicholas shoulder-charged through the stockroom door, recovered himself, jogged down the cluttered aisle, his Taurus out and at the ready. “Oh, thank God. What happened?”
Danny struggled for a moment. Nicholas had some nasty scratches on his face and hands but he definitely still had all his limbs and his head, and he was alive, and this fact alone was making it very hard for Danny to stay frosty, as opposed to doing a little dance in Nicholas's honour and then hugging the absolute shit out of him.
“This one wanted to get into it,” he said, hefting the fire extinguisher in the direction of the unconscious dinosaur. “Gobbed a load of purple sick at me, so I twatted it. The Andes're out the front. Where's the others?”
4:20 PM
Sandford Primary School
“Bait! You used me as bait!”
“S'about all you are useful for, Tony Fisher. Now stop gawping an' help me down off this soddin' jungle gym. S'much as I like gettin' a bit physical every now an' again, this skirt was never meant for climbing in.”
“Could've eaten me alive!”
“Yeah, or the dinosaur could've got you. Get a move on, I'm freezin' my arse off up here.”
5:30 PM
Sandford Castle
Peter Staker lay quietly on his back, marvelling at how soft the grass felt against his shoulders. He had to admit, he'd been quite worried when the injured Velociraptor mongoliensis had kicked him down the Castle steps, breaking his arm in the process. and then closed in on him, those incredible teeth stringing hot saliva down into his face. He'd only been trying to sedate it in the first place, wanting to stop it hurting itself any further.
Yes, he'd been quite worried, and after he'd regained consciousness, it had taken him quite a while to realise that he actually wasn't dead, and after that it had taken him even longer to realise that, instead of witnessing himself being torn apart by a perfect predator which had been extinct for sixty-five point five million years, he was instead witnessing his swans surrounding the animal, beating it to the ground and systematically pecking it to death. It had taken them a long time, but if there was one thing his beauties had in spades, apart from bad tempers and fluffy white feathers, it was persistence.
In any case, it was over now, and everything was quite peaceful, despite the pain and the occasional nearby honk. Peter closed his eyes again, and went back to his leisurely mental leaf-through of Common Illnesses of the British Bird. He hoped to get to the chapter on fungal infections before he was rescued- it was his favourite bit.
6:45 PM
Sandford Police Station, Main Office
“Nobody move,” hissed Nicholas, but he already knew it was hopeless. The raptor's terrifyingly intelligent eyes were fixed directly on him, and he was trapped with his team behind him, no-one even had any ammo left and it was so unfair, that they were all going to be killed by the last one, the only remaining raptor at large in Sandford. They'd been so close.
“We tried, though, 'ey,” whispered Danny, at his back.
The raptor stalked closer. Now there was barely six feet between them. It hissed and arched its neck and raised its claws to strike-
In a bright green flash of movement, something small and fast skittered across the floor at its feet.
Distracted, startled, the raptor swung around and struck out at the little creature that Gabriel had called a compsognathus. Nicholas ducked, Danny a moment after, as the long muscular tail whipped through the air and sent picture frames and commendations cascading from the mantelpiece behind them.
The little thing screeched and leapt away, and the raptor lunged after it, striking like a snake-
-and was promptly obliterated, two simultaneous mini-explosions blasting it backwards through the doorway in a hail of blood and gunpowder, sending it crashing into Tony's desk, sparks showering from the monitor as it was crushed under the stricken animal's bulk.
Frozen at the back of the room, Nicholas and the others watched with their mouths open as the Turner twins emerged through the smoke. Evan's normally immaculate uniform was splattered with raptor blood, and his twin was wearing his tie around his head, like a tourniquet for his frizzy hair.
“Serves you right, y'big bully,” Evan told the ex-raptor, pumping his shotgun.
“Yeah,” snarled Owen. The baby dinosaur leapt from the floor and landed on light claws on his shoulder, chittering happily in his ear. “No-one touches Geraldine!”
10:49 PM
Sandford Police Station, Main Office
Doris put the phone down. As they watched, she crunched carefully through the sea of broken glass and furniture which had formerly been the main office to join them.
“That was Marwell Zoological Park, Chief,” she said. “They say they're very sorry about all this, an' they'll pay for all the damage, but they think they might have accidentally started some sort'f international incident, and there might be a couple of people from the Costa Rican government here to talk to us in a bit.”
One Week Later
12:35 PM
The Crown
“I just think it's in bad taste, that's all,” said Nicholas.
“It's good for business, Mister Angel,” said Gwen Richards, the Crown's new owner and landlady of one year, nine months, and counting. “Specially the family trade. Kids like it.”
Nicholas looked up in astonishment. Over the bar, the dilophosaurus's head glared down at them out of mad orange glass eyes, displaying an open mouthful of bristling needle-sharp teeth, the fully-extended mottled ruff so big it completely obscured the wooden plaque it was mounted on.
“They do?”
Danny nudged him in the shoulder, a pint in each hand. Nicholas gave up and took one, and they navigated together through the busy pub to the team's usual lunchtime table.
Andy C and Owen were comparing war wounds. Most of the others were watching Doris describing, with enthusiastic hand gestures... well, how big something was, definitely. Nicholas only hoped it was the size of something she'd killed on what had already become known as Jurassic Thursday. Bob was teasing Saxon with a squeaky triceratops.
They looked up as he sat down, a momentary pause descending over their conversations. He glanced sideways at Danny, who smirked into his pint and gave him a surreptitious thumbs-up.
“Well,” he said, raising his glass. “Here's to evolution.”