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Title: Several Miles from the Sun: Book 1 (Part 3 of 4)
Author: alyse
Fandom: Primeval
Pairing: Abby/Connor eventually
Rating: 15
Spoilers: This is an AU from 2.04, so spoilers up until the end of that episode
Author's Notes: Written for the Primeval Ficathon for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
temaris. Full notes and disclaimer on part 1.
The title - and quotes - are from 'The Sun' by Maroon 5.
Summary: The first step is always the hardest. After that, it's all downhill.
Chapter Listing
Several Miles from the Sun: Book One - Part 1
Several Miles from the Sun: Book One - Part 2
~*~
Day 5
When the sound first rent the air, she froze, feeling Connor freeze beside her. She took a step back, bumping into him, and it brought her up short. His hand slid down her back then around to grab at her wrist as he tugged her sideways, towards the largest boulder. She resisted, frozen to the spot and not wanting to attract the attention of whatever it was that she could hear, but he tugged harder. It was easier to go than to put up a fight, especially when Connor's fingers were shaking against her skin.
She fell on to her knee, the gravel digging into her skin painfully, and then Connor's arm was around her waist, tugging her even closer to him, almost dragging her behind the cover of the rock - what little cover there was. He was craning his head, trying to see around it, see whatever it was that was making that noise and she flailed for him, sinking her fingers into the fabric of his t-shirt to try and keep his head down.
She lost the battle but nothing leapt out at him, nothing tried to tear his stupid, idiotic face off. Instead his eyes just grew wider at whatever it was he could see, the pupils blown wide and dark until thin slivers of dark brown surrounded black. She couldn't help it, no matter what the danger, couldn't leave him watching it on his own and lifted her head up until she could see, too.
There was something on the shore, something beyond the tangles of the mangroves they'd emerged from. It… there wasn't a way to describe it, even in her head, that didn't use the creatures she was familiar with as a reference even if they were long, long dead by now, as extinct as the dinosaurs. The closest she could come to thinking of it was as something halfway between a hyena and a boar: broad, ungainly shoulders and a powerful neck tapering down to a narrow waist and shorter, powerful back legs. It was ugly as hell, tusk-like protuberances jutting up from its bottom lip, glistening evilly in the sunlight.
She pressed closer to Connor, his breath coming hot and fast against her face and his fingers still digging painfully into her waist.
Whatever it was, it had cornered a Mer. She'd finally christened it that when she'd grown sick of Connor describing them as 'those mermaid things'. They were nothing like the mermaids of her childhood, nothing beautiful or romantic about them. Nothing safe.
This one wasn't safe. This was one losing, its flanks already blood stained, heaving with the effort of trying to stay out of the reach of the teeth and claws of the thing that was attacking it.
Another hideous snarl, and the thing struck again, going for the throat this time.
Abby was no stranger to nature, red in tooth and claw, but this was truly terrifying, watching something being torn apart so close to them. The wind was blowing in from the sea, rolling up the shore towards them, carrying the scent of blood mingled with the salt. It made her nauseous but at least it meant that the thing was upwind, couldn't smell them. She hoped. The idea of the thing scenting them, turning those long, sharp fangs on them, turned the blood in her veins to ice water, freezing the sweat on her skin and snatching the breath from her lungs.
She couldn't move, her fingers digging into the skin of Connor's arms, hard enough to draw blood to the surface, filling the grooves her nails had left. He didn't flinch though, his breathing now rapid and shallow, his eyes still those wide dark pools surrounded by rings of white.
She didn't know how long they were there, frozen into position, turned to stone by the fear, turned into prey by this harsh, savage world. It was long enough for the thing to eat its fill, teeth ripping at the blubber until its belly bulged obscenely large and its muzzle was bright red with blood, darker clots of blood and flesh staining its chest and paws.
Only then did it lift its head, sniffing suspiciously at the air around it, and she shrank back against Connor, barely breathing at all. Its eyes were sharp, pitiless in the ugliness of its face, but at last it turned tail, loping up the beach with its fast, ungainly stride.
She waited until the thing had disappeared into the distance, skirting around the edges of the mangroves with ease, before she pushed herself up, away from Connor. He made a grab for her, his eyes frantic, continually darting between her and where that thing had disappeared, but she slipped from his grasp easily, staying low and fixing her own eyes on the path that the predator had taken as she moved around the rock, approaching what was left of the carcass.
Connor followed her, stumbling in her wake, his fingers grabbing for her and tangling up in his jacket, the one she was still wearing. He didn't try and stop her this time though, but followed her, just seeming to want to hold on.
She knew how he felt. She only had the vaguest idea of what she was doing and it was clear that Connor was completely lost. Her brain was still numb, short circuited by fear and horror, all mixed up until she didn't know where one ended and the other began, and it made this whole nightmarish thing easier. Not being able to think. Not stopping to think.
The heavy, cloying scent of blood and the rank scent of the Mer's innards washed over them, again turning her stomach, making her head swim. But her mouth watered, a reflex she had no control over, not when she hadn't eaten properly for so long, and that just made her nausea worse. She'd have thrown up right there, on the beach, if she'd had anything but acid in her stomach. If it hadn't meant taking two steps away from Connor, steps she didn't want to - couldn't - take. As if Connor would let her, with his face frozen and stunned, just staying as close as he could to her without tripping her up.
She crouched down, examining the corpse. Connor watched her numbly like he had no idea why she was interested. It hadn't clicked for him yet but it would.
"The knife," she said. "Give me the knife, Conn."
He blanched and for a second she thought he really would throw up but he didn't, just fumbled clumsily in his pocket for his pocket knife and handed it to her without a word.
It was puny against what was left of the massive Mer's body, but she started to saw frantically at the flesh with it anyway, her attention torn between the task ahead of her and the path the predator had taken. The one it could return down at any moment.
Connor was sick then, staggering away and bracing his hands against his knees as his stomach revolted. All he seemed to bring up was bile and her own stomach protested in sympathy when she pushed the knife through to the Mer's guts and the smell rolled over her, thick and stomach churning. She could taste the gorge rising in her throat, acid on her tongue, and she fought it back, wiping the back of her hand across her lips weakly.
Connor came back though - to give him credit, he came back, standing beside her with his pale face and shaking hands. "Abby?" His voice was a harsh whisper but she couldn't let it distract her - she just had to concentrate on sawing and not thinking. "Abby?" He tugged on her - his - jacket, and that caught her attention, dragging it back to him just in time to see him sway on his feet.
For one horrible moment she thought he was going to keel over and how the hell she was supposed to carry him out of here if that thing came back…
God, if that thing came back.
But he wasn't toppling over - he was pulling at the jacket, his lips set in a thin, grim line, and it clicked, it finally clicked.
She pulled one arm out of the sleeve, switching the knife to that hand as he helped pull the jacket off the other arm and then it was on the ground as she was back to sawing.
A chunk of flesh - mottled and grey, still smeared with the Mer's blood - came loose and she stared at it for a moment, her stomach roiling, before chucking it down onto the jacket. Connor fell to his knees beside her, his face green now and his eyes a little crazy. He took a deep breath - she could hear it - and then his hands were pulling at the flesh she was cutting away, tugging even as he retched but this time holding it together.
She was so bloody proud of him but she couldn't stop long enough to tell him that.
Her eyes kept darting up to the tree line, her fingers clumsy with the knife because she wasn't paying attention, focusing solely on cutting and pulling and throwing the flesh down onto their makeshift bag. Once it slipped, a bright line of blood welling up across her palm and she only hissed, waving Connor off when he stopped, his face worried and tried to grab at her hand. She kept on going even while Connor sat next to her, watching numbly as the red drops slid down the hilt towards the blade.
It wasn't like stripping a chicken. It wasn't even like feeding her snake with the corpses of rats and mice. That was child's play compared to this - cooked meat that slid easily off the bone or carcasses that were stiff and newly thawed, clinical in their cleanliness. This was fat that slipped against her fingers, against her knife; tendons and sinews that refused to give way, no matter how hard she tugged.
A sharp snap pulled her attention back to Connor, her heart pounding in her chest. Then he did it again, hitting the corpse hard with a rock he'd picked up until one of the ribs snapped, the bone sticking into the body cavity at an awkward angle. This time her stomach did revolt and she had to turn away, put her hand over her mouth, as he yanked it free, throwing it down onto the pile.
It didn't help. Her hand stank of blood and death.
She swallowed it down and turned back to the corpse, calling on every ounce of determination to keep going. Connor was watching her again, looking like the bottom had dropped out of the world and she had no time to give him a pep talk. His fingers were still slack against the bone he'd ripped out, his eyes a little vacant.
She had no idea what to say and so said nothing, going back to sawing and pulling. There was another crack and this time she didn't look up.
"Abby!" Connor's hiss this time was frantic, and he grabbed at her, his fingers digging painfully into her shoulder, yanking her up. She stumbled again, throwing her arm out for support. "C'mon," Connor said and this time it sounded like a snarl, his lips curling back from his teeth and his eyes wild.
That was when she saw it, the beast that Connor had spotted and was now loping down the slope slowly as it watched them warily. It was a smaller version of the not-hyena, not-boar, and she scrabbled to her feet, holding the knife out like it was going to do any bloody good if it decided it wanted fresh human meat instead of fairly fresh Mer. Connor was behind her - she could hear him moving about - and the creature's eyes tracked him instead.
It scared her more than she wanted to admit, that this hideous thing was watching Connor and not her, not the one with the admittedly very slim chance of defending herself. She shifted her stance, subtly moving so that she was between it and Connor, and then Connor's hand grabbed her elbow, tugging her away from the Mer's corpse, sideways and backwards, so that they were putting some distance between not only the corpse but it, that thing with the ugly face and sharp, sharp teeth.
It finally decided that they weren't a threat, especially as they were moving away from the corpse it had decided was dinner. It didn't seem willing to let them go without driving that message home, though, its own lips curling back from its teeth and its breath huffing out in something like a growl, eerily reminiscent of Connor.
Like Connor, who tugged at her harder, pulling her back towards the safety of the rocks, one hand around her elbow and the other clutching the crude bag he'd made of his jacket. She stumbled backwards, never talking her eyes off the thing that still might decide that they were the tastier option, everything around her sharply back in focus. She didn't pull away from Connor until they'd reached the rocks, and then she shoved the knife deep into the pocket of her hoodie, one hand over it to stop it falling out and the other grabbing at the rocks as she pulled her way back up the slope, following Connor at an angle that took her as far away and as quickly as possible from the predator that even now was circling the carcass and watching them.
It soon lost interest in them when it realised that they were giving up the kill to it. It sank its head down and buried it into the Mer's guts, the grunting and ripping sounds carrying up towards them.
They moved back a safe distance, Connor alternatively pushing and pulling at her like he was terrified to let go in case she slipped from his grasp. She didn't push him away, although the temptation to do just that was there. Instead she tolerated it because he was scared.
And so was she.
She didn't push him away because having his hands on her, knowing that he was within touching distance, was the only thing that kept her from just stopping once they were out of sight and sinking to the ground to weep, to just give in to the mingled exhaustion and fear that was dragging her down.
They didn't stop until they were not just out of sight but somewhere they could hide. Only then did she sink down to the ground, Connor falling down next to her. He opened his jacket, stained red with blood, and both of them stared down at the torn flesh in it.
It didn't look any more appetising away from the stench of the Mer. But they had to eat, even without the fire to cook it. They'd gone too long without, and every hour they went without food, the weaker they were becoming.
She reached out and took hold of one piece, trying not to look at it too closely. It didn't help. She had to stare at it for a moment and then, gathering up all of her courage, she brought it up to her mouth and closed her eyes, sinking her teeth into it.
It tasted foul, like slippery rubber, and she had to fight the urge to gag, chewing stubbornly until it had broken down enough for her to be able to swallow it. She choked down the first mouthful and it sat in her throat, thick and greasy. When it finally hit her stomach she thought she'd bring it up again, bending over and retching until the violent spasms of her stomach eased and tears welled up in her eyes.
"Abby?" Connor sounded terrified again. She couldn't look at him, instead reaching out and picking up another piece of flesh, this time holding it out to him.
He made no effort to take it from her, just sat there looking at it, his face uncomprehending, obviously pushed beyond endurance. She thrust it at her again, her chest tightening with a mixture of fear and impatience. "We have to eat. Connor, you've got to eat."
He stared at it, still uncomprehending, for another long moment and then his hand finally reached out for it.
"Eat it," Abby insisted. She watched him bring it up to his mouth, his face now slack, terrified that he'd baulk at the last minute, that she'd have to push him down and force it down his throat.
She would if she had to, if it was a choice between Connor eating it or not. She wasn't going to lose him to hunger if there was anything she could do about it, and she could. She would do whatever was needed.
He put it in his mouth, his face turning pale, sweat sliding down his face, and she watched him until he chewed and swallowed before she reached for another piece. The second mouthful went down a little easier, although it tasted just as disgusting. The third piece slipped in her hands as she tried to pick it up, sliding through her fingers and leaving a slick patina of blood and fat behind.
"Eat," she said again, a whisper that was aimed as much as herself as Connor, who was still trying to choke down another mouthful. There were tears streaming down his face although she had no idea why - whether it was the taste of the meat, or a result of his gag reflex or anything else. "Connor?" she said and he finally looked at her, wiping his hand over his eyes and leaving a smear of blood behind. He gave her a small smile, all broken and hurt around the edges, and it cut as cleanly into her as if he'd used his knife. She wanted to cry, watching him cry, watching him finally pick up a piece of his own, his sharp white teeth tearing into it until blood ran down his chin. And when that was gone, he took one of the bones he'd managed to break off and picked up another rock, smashing it open while she watched him dully, the meat she'd swallowed sitting heavily on her stomach. He offered it to her first, either chivalry or maybe - more likely - that he couldn't take that step unless it was by following her example. She didn't comment but dug her fingers dug into the marrow, the move almost automatic, and scooped it out.
She sucked it off her fingers, the texture grainy and coarse against her tongue. Her stomach was cramping, the food almost too rich for her after so long without, stretching her shrunken stomach. She willed it into submission, twisting her body into a shape that lent her the most comfort, eating more slowly and watching him, waiting for him to follow where she led.
This time Connor was sick again and she couldn't even pat his back comfortingly as his stomach got rid of the hard won sustenance. She didn't have the energy, beyond lethargy now, covered in blood and eating the flesh raw.
When his retching had eased, she handed him the rest of the marrow, merciless in her drive to keep him alive.
He took it, the tear tracks from the violence of his retching - from everything else - clear against the dirt on his face.
This time he managed to keep it down. It was all she could ask for.
---
Jenny was smart enough to stay the hell out of his way when they got back to the ARC. Stephen wasn't anywhere near that smart, not on this occasion, despite knowing Nick for longer and usually being more attuned to his moods.
That meant that it was Stephen who bore the brunt of Nick's ill-humour. He took it with better grace than Nick would have done if the circumstances had been reversed. He didn't comment on Nick's foul mood but watched, silently, as Nick stormed into his office and sank into the chair behind the desk. One of the admin staff - and Nick had yet to learn her name, not when there were so many of them in this timeline, all scurrying about and doing things that seemed important to them if not to Nick - stuck her head around the doorframe, took one look at him and, sensibly, fled.
Stephen turned his head to watch her go, his face inanimate, giving absolutely nothing away about what he was thinking, how he was feeling. There were thin lines around his mouth, though, and rings around his eyes, making him look a hell of a lot older than his thirty odd years, drawn and exhausted before his time.
He looked back at Nick, still saying nothing, and the silence grew oppressive.
"You got nothing to say?"
Stephen gave him a one shouldered shrug, watching him closely. There was nothing of Stephen's normal ease in his stance, the unconscious grace that said that Stephen was perfectly comfortable in his body. Instead there was a tension evident and Nick had no idea whether or not that was because of him or the situation. Or even anything else. Stephen was as opaque to him now as Jenny was, the unfamiliarity jarring when there'd been a time when he knew exactly what had been going through his colleague's - his friend's - head.
It… hurt. It… there was nothing familiar now, nothing. Stephen was this distant stranger, Claudia was gone. And now Abby and Connor…
It was disconcerting to realise that the only person who was still the same, the only one who had neither changed or vanished, was Lester. More than disconcerting - depressing. And lonely.
"We saved a lot of lives today," Stephen said eventually.
"But not Connor or Abby's."
Stephen sighed and again Nick's temper flared, the urge to lash out, say something - do something - rising. "What do you want me to say?" Stephen asked. "That we'll get them back? That the next anomaly that opens will be the one to where they are?"
"Do you actually believe that?" The anger had drained out of his tone, ebbing as soon as it had risen and exhaustion taking its place. He didn't bother to hide any of that because what was the point? All that was left was a kind of dull emptiness, so familiar from those weeks and months after Helen's disappearance. The first one, when he'd actually cared about her and believed that she cared about him. The one where he'd actually wanted to get her back.
Stephen met his gaze frankly, nothing hidden there either, for once. "I have to," he said simply. "What's the alternative?"
"Give up?" It wasn't a suggestion and thankfully Stephen didn't take it as such.
"The next anomaly that opens up will lead to them." He held Nick's gaze unwaveringly. "And if not that one, then the one after that or the one after that and we'll be here, ready. Waiting for it."
"Will it be in time?" Nick didn't let his gaze drop either, wanting - needing - complete honesty from Stephen on that point.
"Like you said. They're smart, resourceful. And they have each other."
"And is that going to be enough?"
Now Stephen sighed, and looked away, looking immeasurably weary. "It's going to have to be," he said, and Nick felt like a complete heel, pushing the point like that. None of this was Stephen's fault. In the end, Nick only had one person to blame, the same person who was always to blame - himself.
After a second, Stephen turned back, all brisk business. "Have you made any more progress on reviewing the data from the canal?"
Nick could only slump back into his chair, defeated on that as he had been on everything else. "I think there might be a pattern emerging," he said, "but… I don't know. I can barely think." He scrubbed his hands over his face, not missing the way that the bristles on his cheeks and chin scratched at his palms. He was surprised that Jenny hadn't said something about that, but perhaps she was of the 'discretion is the better part of valour' school of thought. "What about you? Anything from the stuff Jenny got from our local businessmen?" He wondered, briefly, what it said about them that he was reviewing the data from the canal - where Stephen had been convinced the anomaly was - while Stephen reviewed the data that wasn't.
Stephen pushed himself away from the doorway and finally took a few steps into the room. "Same as you - a lot of anecdotal data to try and fit together into some kind of pattern and, frankly, it's doing my head in."
The rueful smiles they shared this time were easier, more genuine. More like it used to be, as far as Nick recalled.
"Need some help?" Nick offered. "A fresh pair of eyes might work."
Stephen pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Maybe if we combined the data?" he suggested. "The anomaly in the canal seems to have opened first this time." At Nick's look, he added, his mouth quirking a little, "The one the shark came through. And it was the one that the anomaly detector picked up first."
Nick supposed that when it came to it, he couldn't argue that point, not with the data he'd been picking over for the last few days. There was no doubt that there had been anomalies opening in the canal - not to Nick's mind at least - and there was no doubt that the walrus like creatures had come through the warehouse, at least. They may even have come through both, assuming that both opened to the same future timeline, but the shark couldn't have come through the one that Abby and Connor had disappeared through. There was no way that the flooding in the warehouse had been anything but tidal and therefore no way for a purely aquatic creature to have made it through that particular anomaly.
Stephen was still eyeing him, his face settling back into immobility, giving nothing away. "Sure," Nick said, finally. "Let's put them together, and see what we've got."
---
They found a cave, finally, set back from the shore, another one of those that seemed to have been eaten into the rock by long gone tides. She hoped they were long gone, anyway. She had no desire to wake up one morning and find herself drowned. But it was set back from the intertidal zone, as far as they could determine it, and was deep enough to shelter them from the rain and the worst of the storms. She hoped.
It was, however, a good half hour's walk from where the river fed into the sea, and the mangroves that grew around the margins there. Which meant they were a good half an hour from fresh water.
That worried her but not as much as being closer to it did. The not-hyena, not-boar thing - and she was going to have to come up with a better name for it than that - probably came from the grasslands that surrounded the forest rather than the forest proper - she didn't see how something that massive could hunt well in between the ferns and the tangled roots of the trees that thrust down into the river canals, trapping the silt they grew in. It was too large, surely.
But it obviously had no qualms about coming down to the beach, and the further they were from the only reliable source of water, the further they'd be from its hunting grounds - she hoped.
The foreshore here was largely flat, though. There were boulders, like the ones they'd cowered behind, but it meant that even though they had to trek to find water, they didn't have to clamber up and down, leaving them exhausted and vulnerable.
She hoped about that too.
But this, at the moment, was home and Connor had agreed to that without argument; without comment even. It worried her a little, that he was so quiet and subdued, but the larger part of her brain was worried about the more immediate dangers. She simply didn't have the reserves to cope with anything else.
The meat had settled in her stomach and, provided she didn't think about it, she wasn't feeling nauseous any longer, just tired and beaten. But she couldn't stop - neither of them could. They were still teetering on the very edge of survival and there was so much more that could kill them. And not all of those things came with teeth.
They were gathering driftwood now - and that showed that there were trees, somewhere. Real ones, as Connor would call them, rather than simply ferns. Maybe they were from the mangroves, thrown into the sea by the violent storms that wracked the area but frankly Abby didn't care where they'd come from. She only cared whether or not they'd burn.
They hadn't figured out how to create fire yet, but they'd have to at some point. She didn't want to subsist on raw meat and given the encounter they'd had on the foreshore earlier, she wanted to be sure that they had some way of defending themselves. In the absence of an assault rifle, she reckoned that fire was the next best thing. She wasn't stupid. If Connor was right about the prevalence of forest fires in the Carboniferous, and right about the climate of this world and the composition of the air being similar, well… As far as Abby was concerned, anything in this world that wasn't terrified of fire, when the world might set itself ablaze around them with a monotonous frequency, was simply too stupid to live.
Survival of the fittest and all that.
They might not be the fittest or the fastest or even the most dangerous of species, not anymore, but the creatures of this world might find out to their cost that when it came down to it, humans were resourceful and humans were mean.
Connor had already found some flint, the hard rock buried in the far softer chalk, easy to dig out when you had something like a sharp, curved bone to help you. It was kind of symbolic, she supposed, that when you uncovered something from rock soft enough to be eaten away by water, it was something hard and sharp.
Humans had been making hand axes for as long as there had been humans; longer, if you counted some of their hominid ancestors. She had faith that Connor would figure it out. He was the sort of person who really could build a better mousetrap if he put his mind to it.
She had faith in him, more than he'd ever realise.
She dumped the armful of driftwood she had just inside the entrance to their cave, and raised her hand, shielding her eyes from the sun as she scanned the foreshore for him. There was a dark head, bowed down near the water's edge and, when she rose onto her tiptoes, the rest of Connor came into view, crouched down.
Frowning slightly, she made her way down the beach, keeping her eyes peeled for signs of anything really. Anything with teeth or claws, or that looked like it might be vulnerable to their teeth and claws, weak though they were.
Connor looked up when she approached, and she should be thankful that he was that aware of his surroundings given how he usually got when something caught his attention. He smiled at her, his eyes crinkling. He was still a little green around the edges because their diet didn't seem to be agreeing with him, and his nose was peeling worse than ever, but there was a brightness to his eyes that had been missing for the last few days, since the hunger had started to bite.
"Abby, look at this."
He tugged at something that slowly revealed itself to be a turtle's shell - another species that predated the dinosaurs and had apparently had made it this far into the future as well. There were weird spikes at the fore-end of the carapace, growths that presumably jutted out and had protected this species' head, and the carapace itself was blockier in shape, with fewer plates than she was used to, but they were thicker, more armoured. It didn't seem as streamlined as the turtles she was used to either, but then neither had the future shark. Maybe speed had been sacrificed for resilience and protection against attack.
Connor tugged harder and finally managed to flip it over. The plastron had gone entirely, leaving just the back of the shell, and there were bits of meat still clinging to the inside of the shell, black and stringy.
Her stomach turned over again. Surely Connor couldn't expect them to try and eat this. Could he?
It seemed that Connor had other ideas.
"What do you think?"
She looked at him blankly, not really surprised when he huffed in exasperation. It was more animation than he'd shown for a while, so she let it slide past without comment.
"It's waterproof, right?" She continued to look at him blankly, and his face grew a little uncertain. "I was thinking, you know… in case it rains again?"
The penny dropped. "Connor," she said slowly. "You're a genius."
This time his whole face lit up before he ducked his head, a little embarrassed at the praise. That was the thing about Connor - sometimes he could be entirely clueless about personal interaction, or about how he came across. At other times, sweet didn't even begin to describe him.
"I was just…" He rubbed his hand along the edge of the shell, a small, pleased smile still playing around the corners of his mouth. "I wasn't sure how we get it clean. I mean, we could use the knife… but, you know."
Yeah, she did. The risk of snapping it was too great.
"It's easy," she said. This time it was his turn to look at her blankly, and she picked up a handful of sand, let it trickle through her fingers. It took him a second to get her drift but then she could see it click. His face lit up again. She could get used to that.
It would be worth the inevitable sore fingers that scrubbing the inside of the shell with makeshift sandpaper if it meant that they had a way to store fresh water. Connor would figure out the hand axe thing, and they'd figure out how to make fire - she had faith in that. She had to.
A little time and a lot of ingenuity, and they'd have water and weapons, which was a hell of an improvement on the situation previously.
Things were looking up.
---
"We've found it!"
Lester looked spectacularly unimpressed at the announcement.
"Found what, exactly?"
Nick waved the sheaf of papers he had clutched in his hand at the man, not that it made much difference.
"The anomalies. We've found a pattern to the opening of the anomalies."
Now that finally got Lester's attention; the man actually sat up straight and the bored look evaporated from his face as though it had never been there.
"What, all of them?"
"The one that Abby and Connor disappeared through. And the one that preceded it, in the canal."
"Ah." There was a subtle shift in Lester's body, one that spoke of his lessening interest. No, that wasn't fair of Nick - it wasn't that Lester was no longer interested. It was more, he thought, that Lester's interest had been shifted from the 'bigger picture', to steal one of the man's own phrases, to a smaller, more personal family snap.
And Lester was not a man particularly comfortable with the personal.
"We've determined that there was one in the canal, then?" He eyed Nick a little beadily and Nick tensed. "I thought we'd decided that it was in the warehouse."
"It's in both," Stephen interrupted, moving around to place his laptop on Lester's desk, opening the lid and waiting for the machine to come out of hibernate mode. Lester switched from eyeing Nick to eyeing the laptop beadily instead.
"Please tell me that you aren't about to fire up a PowerPoint presentation," he said. "I can't abide the things."
The corner of Stephen's mouth twitched; it seemed as though not even Lester's snide little remarks could shatter his good mood now, not when they'd finally made a breakthrough that could give them hope.
"No," he said, calmly. "It's a graph."
"Oh, joy," murmured Lester, his trademark sarcasm now firmly back into play.
Stephen ignored the comment, and turned the screen around so that Lester could see it. Nick had already seen it more than once, but the hope was such a tentative thing that he moved around behind Lester's chair anyway, just to see it again.
Lester gave him a look but didn't comment.
"What is it I'm actually looking for?"
"The blue line is when we think the canal anomaly opened. Where it's solid, we've got good evidence that supports it. If it's a dash, it means we've had to extrapolate from data that perhaps isn't quite as robust."
"Oh, God save me from scientists. Do try to keep it simple, gentlemen. And by simple, I mean 'cut to the chase'. What's the red line."
"When we think that there was an anomaly opening in the warehouse, or in one of the warehouses nearby," Nick interjected.
"It moves?" Trust Lester to leap on that point.
"Not far, no. Most of the time, it opens up exactly where we saw it, or at least in the same building. The flooding tells us that much. Where there are squares on the line, that means that there's evidence of flooding in nearby warehouses as well. It could simply be seepage in from the main site, or it could be the anomaly shifting slightly. If it does, it stays within a few hundred feet."
"Hmmm." Lester tapped his finger against the desktop thoughtfully. "And that little blip there?" Now he tapped the screen, scowling at Stephen when he pulled the laptop back an inch or so, a little protective of it.
Nick craned his neck so that he could still see the point where Lester had indicated. "That's the reading we got from the anomaly detector this time around, when Leek's team had trouble actually pinpointing it. You see how the lines intersect?"
"If you mean the way that they cross over each other, yes. I'm not completely stupid."
Nick exchanged a look with Stephen and the smile they shared didn't go unnoticed.
"The point, gentlemen?"
"The anomalies seem to come in cycles," Stephen explained. "The one in the warehouse seems the more significant event - it opens more frequently, and seems to be open for longer. But they seem to alternate, and they're very close together, at least at first." He looked at Nick again before continuing. "We think that may have been why the anomaly detector couldn't home in on it fast enough."
"It was caught between trying to pinpoint two synchronous, geographically close anomalies, you mean?"
No. Lester was a long way from being stupid.
"Yeah," Nick said. "That's what we think."
"Okay. Now you've tried blinding me with science - and, I might add, failed - why don't you get to the important part?" Nick and Stephen exchanged looks again, a little confused, and Lester snorted impatiently. "When is it next going to open? I'm assuming you didn't go to the effort of creating pretty pictures just for the hell of it."
"The cycles seem to come and go over two weeks or so, at least as far as we can determine. They're open for two or three days - sporadically, at least - and then there's a lull before the next cycle of openings that lasts eleven or twelve days."
"And it's been five days since it last closed?"
Lester knew that - or he should, given the way that almost everyone around him had been counting down the hours - but it was possible he was simply trying to keep them focused.
That might be giving the man a little too much credit, though.
"Yes." It was Stephen who answered this time too, Nick too busy watching Lester, wondering which way he was going to jump.
"So that means you have six or seven days to figure out as much as you can from the little evidence we've got about what the retrieval teams are likely to run into on the other side of the anomaly." He looked between them before raising an eyebrow, beginning to look a little exasperated again. "It pays to plan. I'm surprised the pair of you haven't figured that out by now.
"Well, once you have figured it out, talk to Jenny." He sat back up in his chair, spinning it around to face his desk and gesturing peremptorily at Stephen to remove his laptop. "Make a list of what you need, liaise with the military unit on the ground if you have to, and get Leek to organise any requisitions." He looked up, seeming a little surprised to find them still standing there. "I'll sign them, of course. Assuming you don't go a little mad and try to order a nuclear submarine. I'm pretty sure that there's nothing on the other side that would make that an appropriate response."
He pulled some paperwork towards him, not even looking up when he added, "Don't let me keep you, hmm?"
Several Miles from the Sun: Book One - Part 4
Author: alyse
Fandom: Primeval
Pairing: Abby/Connor eventually
Rating: 15
Spoilers: This is an AU from 2.04, so spoilers up until the end of that episode
Author's Notes: Written for the Primeval Ficathon for
temaris. Full notes and disclaimer on part 1.The title - and quotes - are from 'The Sun' by Maroon 5.
Summary: The first step is always the hardest. After that, it's all downhill.
Chapter Listing
Several Miles from the Sun: Book One - Part 1
Several Miles from the Sun: Book One - Part 2
~*~
Day 5
When the sound first rent the air, she froze, feeling Connor freeze beside her. She took a step back, bumping into him, and it brought her up short. His hand slid down her back then around to grab at her wrist as he tugged her sideways, towards the largest boulder. She resisted, frozen to the spot and not wanting to attract the attention of whatever it was that she could hear, but he tugged harder. It was easier to go than to put up a fight, especially when Connor's fingers were shaking against her skin.
She fell on to her knee, the gravel digging into her skin painfully, and then Connor's arm was around her waist, tugging her even closer to him, almost dragging her behind the cover of the rock - what little cover there was. He was craning his head, trying to see around it, see whatever it was that was making that noise and she flailed for him, sinking her fingers into the fabric of his t-shirt to try and keep his head down.
She lost the battle but nothing leapt out at him, nothing tried to tear his stupid, idiotic face off. Instead his eyes just grew wider at whatever it was he could see, the pupils blown wide and dark until thin slivers of dark brown surrounded black. She couldn't help it, no matter what the danger, couldn't leave him watching it on his own and lifted her head up until she could see, too.
There was something on the shore, something beyond the tangles of the mangroves they'd emerged from. It… there wasn't a way to describe it, even in her head, that didn't use the creatures she was familiar with as a reference even if they were long, long dead by now, as extinct as the dinosaurs. The closest she could come to thinking of it was as something halfway between a hyena and a boar: broad, ungainly shoulders and a powerful neck tapering down to a narrow waist and shorter, powerful back legs. It was ugly as hell, tusk-like protuberances jutting up from its bottom lip, glistening evilly in the sunlight.
She pressed closer to Connor, his breath coming hot and fast against her face and his fingers still digging painfully into her waist.
Whatever it was, it had cornered a Mer. She'd finally christened it that when she'd grown sick of Connor describing them as 'those mermaid things'. They were nothing like the mermaids of her childhood, nothing beautiful or romantic about them. Nothing safe.
This one wasn't safe. This was one losing, its flanks already blood stained, heaving with the effort of trying to stay out of the reach of the teeth and claws of the thing that was attacking it.
Another hideous snarl, and the thing struck again, going for the throat this time.
Abby was no stranger to nature, red in tooth and claw, but this was truly terrifying, watching something being torn apart so close to them. The wind was blowing in from the sea, rolling up the shore towards them, carrying the scent of blood mingled with the salt. It made her nauseous but at least it meant that the thing was upwind, couldn't smell them. She hoped. The idea of the thing scenting them, turning those long, sharp fangs on them, turned the blood in her veins to ice water, freezing the sweat on her skin and snatching the breath from her lungs.
She couldn't move, her fingers digging into the skin of Connor's arms, hard enough to draw blood to the surface, filling the grooves her nails had left. He didn't flinch though, his breathing now rapid and shallow, his eyes still those wide dark pools surrounded by rings of white.
She didn't know how long they were there, frozen into position, turned to stone by the fear, turned into prey by this harsh, savage world. It was long enough for the thing to eat its fill, teeth ripping at the blubber until its belly bulged obscenely large and its muzzle was bright red with blood, darker clots of blood and flesh staining its chest and paws.
Only then did it lift its head, sniffing suspiciously at the air around it, and she shrank back against Connor, barely breathing at all. Its eyes were sharp, pitiless in the ugliness of its face, but at last it turned tail, loping up the beach with its fast, ungainly stride.
She waited until the thing had disappeared into the distance, skirting around the edges of the mangroves with ease, before she pushed herself up, away from Connor. He made a grab for her, his eyes frantic, continually darting between her and where that thing had disappeared, but she slipped from his grasp easily, staying low and fixing her own eyes on the path that the predator had taken as she moved around the rock, approaching what was left of the carcass.
Connor followed her, stumbling in her wake, his fingers grabbing for her and tangling up in his jacket, the one she was still wearing. He didn't try and stop her this time though, but followed her, just seeming to want to hold on.
She knew how he felt. She only had the vaguest idea of what she was doing and it was clear that Connor was completely lost. Her brain was still numb, short circuited by fear and horror, all mixed up until she didn't know where one ended and the other began, and it made this whole nightmarish thing easier. Not being able to think. Not stopping to think.
The heavy, cloying scent of blood and the rank scent of the Mer's innards washed over them, again turning her stomach, making her head swim. But her mouth watered, a reflex she had no control over, not when she hadn't eaten properly for so long, and that just made her nausea worse. She'd have thrown up right there, on the beach, if she'd had anything but acid in her stomach. If it hadn't meant taking two steps away from Connor, steps she didn't want to - couldn't - take. As if Connor would let her, with his face frozen and stunned, just staying as close as he could to her without tripping her up.
She crouched down, examining the corpse. Connor watched her numbly like he had no idea why she was interested. It hadn't clicked for him yet but it would.
"The knife," she said. "Give me the knife, Conn."
He blanched and for a second she thought he really would throw up but he didn't, just fumbled clumsily in his pocket for his pocket knife and handed it to her without a word.
It was puny against what was left of the massive Mer's body, but she started to saw frantically at the flesh with it anyway, her attention torn between the task ahead of her and the path the predator had taken. The one it could return down at any moment.
Connor was sick then, staggering away and bracing his hands against his knees as his stomach revolted. All he seemed to bring up was bile and her own stomach protested in sympathy when she pushed the knife through to the Mer's guts and the smell rolled over her, thick and stomach churning. She could taste the gorge rising in her throat, acid on her tongue, and she fought it back, wiping the back of her hand across her lips weakly.
Connor came back though - to give him credit, he came back, standing beside her with his pale face and shaking hands. "Abby?" His voice was a harsh whisper but she couldn't let it distract her - she just had to concentrate on sawing and not thinking. "Abby?" He tugged on her - his - jacket, and that caught her attention, dragging it back to him just in time to see him sway on his feet.
For one horrible moment she thought he was going to keel over and how the hell she was supposed to carry him out of here if that thing came back…
God, if that thing came back.
But he wasn't toppling over - he was pulling at the jacket, his lips set in a thin, grim line, and it clicked, it finally clicked.
She pulled one arm out of the sleeve, switching the knife to that hand as he helped pull the jacket off the other arm and then it was on the ground as she was back to sawing.
A chunk of flesh - mottled and grey, still smeared with the Mer's blood - came loose and she stared at it for a moment, her stomach roiling, before chucking it down onto the jacket. Connor fell to his knees beside her, his face green now and his eyes a little crazy. He took a deep breath - she could hear it - and then his hands were pulling at the flesh she was cutting away, tugging even as he retched but this time holding it together.
She was so bloody proud of him but she couldn't stop long enough to tell him that.
Her eyes kept darting up to the tree line, her fingers clumsy with the knife because she wasn't paying attention, focusing solely on cutting and pulling and throwing the flesh down onto their makeshift bag. Once it slipped, a bright line of blood welling up across her palm and she only hissed, waving Connor off when he stopped, his face worried and tried to grab at her hand. She kept on going even while Connor sat next to her, watching numbly as the red drops slid down the hilt towards the blade.
It wasn't like stripping a chicken. It wasn't even like feeding her snake with the corpses of rats and mice. That was child's play compared to this - cooked meat that slid easily off the bone or carcasses that were stiff and newly thawed, clinical in their cleanliness. This was fat that slipped against her fingers, against her knife; tendons and sinews that refused to give way, no matter how hard she tugged.
A sharp snap pulled her attention back to Connor, her heart pounding in her chest. Then he did it again, hitting the corpse hard with a rock he'd picked up until one of the ribs snapped, the bone sticking into the body cavity at an awkward angle. This time her stomach did revolt and she had to turn away, put her hand over her mouth, as he yanked it free, throwing it down onto the pile.
It didn't help. Her hand stank of blood and death.
She swallowed it down and turned back to the corpse, calling on every ounce of determination to keep going. Connor was watching her again, looking like the bottom had dropped out of the world and she had no time to give him a pep talk. His fingers were still slack against the bone he'd ripped out, his eyes a little vacant.
She had no idea what to say and so said nothing, going back to sawing and pulling. There was another crack and this time she didn't look up.
"Abby!" Connor's hiss this time was frantic, and he grabbed at her, his fingers digging painfully into her shoulder, yanking her up. She stumbled again, throwing her arm out for support. "C'mon," Connor said and this time it sounded like a snarl, his lips curling back from his teeth and his eyes wild.
That was when she saw it, the beast that Connor had spotted and was now loping down the slope slowly as it watched them warily. It was a smaller version of the not-hyena, not-boar, and she scrabbled to her feet, holding the knife out like it was going to do any bloody good if it decided it wanted fresh human meat instead of fairly fresh Mer. Connor was behind her - she could hear him moving about - and the creature's eyes tracked him instead.
It scared her more than she wanted to admit, that this hideous thing was watching Connor and not her, not the one with the admittedly very slim chance of defending herself. She shifted her stance, subtly moving so that she was between it and Connor, and then Connor's hand grabbed her elbow, tugging her away from the Mer's corpse, sideways and backwards, so that they were putting some distance between not only the corpse but it, that thing with the ugly face and sharp, sharp teeth.
It finally decided that they weren't a threat, especially as they were moving away from the corpse it had decided was dinner. It didn't seem willing to let them go without driving that message home, though, its own lips curling back from its teeth and its breath huffing out in something like a growl, eerily reminiscent of Connor.
Like Connor, who tugged at her harder, pulling her back towards the safety of the rocks, one hand around her elbow and the other clutching the crude bag he'd made of his jacket. She stumbled backwards, never talking her eyes off the thing that still might decide that they were the tastier option, everything around her sharply back in focus. She didn't pull away from Connor until they'd reached the rocks, and then she shoved the knife deep into the pocket of her hoodie, one hand over it to stop it falling out and the other grabbing at the rocks as she pulled her way back up the slope, following Connor at an angle that took her as far away and as quickly as possible from the predator that even now was circling the carcass and watching them.
It soon lost interest in them when it realised that they were giving up the kill to it. It sank its head down and buried it into the Mer's guts, the grunting and ripping sounds carrying up towards them.
They moved back a safe distance, Connor alternatively pushing and pulling at her like he was terrified to let go in case she slipped from his grasp. She didn't push him away, although the temptation to do just that was there. Instead she tolerated it because he was scared.
And so was she.
She didn't push him away because having his hands on her, knowing that he was within touching distance, was the only thing that kept her from just stopping once they were out of sight and sinking to the ground to weep, to just give in to the mingled exhaustion and fear that was dragging her down.
They didn't stop until they were not just out of sight but somewhere they could hide. Only then did she sink down to the ground, Connor falling down next to her. He opened his jacket, stained red with blood, and both of them stared down at the torn flesh in it.
It didn't look any more appetising away from the stench of the Mer. But they had to eat, even without the fire to cook it. They'd gone too long without, and every hour they went without food, the weaker they were becoming.
She reached out and took hold of one piece, trying not to look at it too closely. It didn't help. She had to stare at it for a moment and then, gathering up all of her courage, she brought it up to her mouth and closed her eyes, sinking her teeth into it.
It tasted foul, like slippery rubber, and she had to fight the urge to gag, chewing stubbornly until it had broken down enough for her to be able to swallow it. She choked down the first mouthful and it sat in her throat, thick and greasy. When it finally hit her stomach she thought she'd bring it up again, bending over and retching until the violent spasms of her stomach eased and tears welled up in her eyes.
"Abby?" Connor sounded terrified again. She couldn't look at him, instead reaching out and picking up another piece of flesh, this time holding it out to him.
He made no effort to take it from her, just sat there looking at it, his face uncomprehending, obviously pushed beyond endurance. She thrust it at her again, her chest tightening with a mixture of fear and impatience. "We have to eat. Connor, you've got to eat."
He stared at it, still uncomprehending, for another long moment and then his hand finally reached out for it.
"Eat it," Abby insisted. She watched him bring it up to his mouth, his face now slack, terrified that he'd baulk at the last minute, that she'd have to push him down and force it down his throat.
She would if she had to, if it was a choice between Connor eating it or not. She wasn't going to lose him to hunger if there was anything she could do about it, and she could. She would do whatever was needed.
He put it in his mouth, his face turning pale, sweat sliding down his face, and she watched him until he chewed and swallowed before she reached for another piece. The second mouthful went down a little easier, although it tasted just as disgusting. The third piece slipped in her hands as she tried to pick it up, sliding through her fingers and leaving a slick patina of blood and fat behind.
"Eat," she said again, a whisper that was aimed as much as herself as Connor, who was still trying to choke down another mouthful. There were tears streaming down his face although she had no idea why - whether it was the taste of the meat, or a result of his gag reflex or anything else. "Connor?" she said and he finally looked at her, wiping his hand over his eyes and leaving a smear of blood behind. He gave her a small smile, all broken and hurt around the edges, and it cut as cleanly into her as if he'd used his knife. She wanted to cry, watching him cry, watching him finally pick up a piece of his own, his sharp white teeth tearing into it until blood ran down his chin. And when that was gone, he took one of the bones he'd managed to break off and picked up another rock, smashing it open while she watched him dully, the meat she'd swallowed sitting heavily on her stomach. He offered it to her first, either chivalry or maybe - more likely - that he couldn't take that step unless it was by following her example. She didn't comment but dug her fingers dug into the marrow, the move almost automatic, and scooped it out.
She sucked it off her fingers, the texture grainy and coarse against her tongue. Her stomach was cramping, the food almost too rich for her after so long without, stretching her shrunken stomach. She willed it into submission, twisting her body into a shape that lent her the most comfort, eating more slowly and watching him, waiting for him to follow where she led.
This time Connor was sick again and she couldn't even pat his back comfortingly as his stomach got rid of the hard won sustenance. She didn't have the energy, beyond lethargy now, covered in blood and eating the flesh raw.
When his retching had eased, she handed him the rest of the marrow, merciless in her drive to keep him alive.
He took it, the tear tracks from the violence of his retching - from everything else - clear against the dirt on his face.
This time he managed to keep it down. It was all she could ask for.
---
Jenny was smart enough to stay the hell out of his way when they got back to the ARC. Stephen wasn't anywhere near that smart, not on this occasion, despite knowing Nick for longer and usually being more attuned to his moods.
That meant that it was Stephen who bore the brunt of Nick's ill-humour. He took it with better grace than Nick would have done if the circumstances had been reversed. He didn't comment on Nick's foul mood but watched, silently, as Nick stormed into his office and sank into the chair behind the desk. One of the admin staff - and Nick had yet to learn her name, not when there were so many of them in this timeline, all scurrying about and doing things that seemed important to them if not to Nick - stuck her head around the doorframe, took one look at him and, sensibly, fled.
Stephen turned his head to watch her go, his face inanimate, giving absolutely nothing away about what he was thinking, how he was feeling. There were thin lines around his mouth, though, and rings around his eyes, making him look a hell of a lot older than his thirty odd years, drawn and exhausted before his time.
He looked back at Nick, still saying nothing, and the silence grew oppressive.
"You got nothing to say?"
Stephen gave him a one shouldered shrug, watching him closely. There was nothing of Stephen's normal ease in his stance, the unconscious grace that said that Stephen was perfectly comfortable in his body. Instead there was a tension evident and Nick had no idea whether or not that was because of him or the situation. Or even anything else. Stephen was as opaque to him now as Jenny was, the unfamiliarity jarring when there'd been a time when he knew exactly what had been going through his colleague's - his friend's - head.
It… hurt. It… there was nothing familiar now, nothing. Stephen was this distant stranger, Claudia was gone. And now Abby and Connor…
It was disconcerting to realise that the only person who was still the same, the only one who had neither changed or vanished, was Lester. More than disconcerting - depressing. And lonely.
"We saved a lot of lives today," Stephen said eventually.
"But not Connor or Abby's."
Stephen sighed and again Nick's temper flared, the urge to lash out, say something - do something - rising. "What do you want me to say?" Stephen asked. "That we'll get them back? That the next anomaly that opens will be the one to where they are?"
"Do you actually believe that?" The anger had drained out of his tone, ebbing as soon as it had risen and exhaustion taking its place. He didn't bother to hide any of that because what was the point? All that was left was a kind of dull emptiness, so familiar from those weeks and months after Helen's disappearance. The first one, when he'd actually cared about her and believed that she cared about him. The one where he'd actually wanted to get her back.
Stephen met his gaze frankly, nothing hidden there either, for once. "I have to," he said simply. "What's the alternative?"
"Give up?" It wasn't a suggestion and thankfully Stephen didn't take it as such.
"The next anomaly that opens up will lead to them." He held Nick's gaze unwaveringly. "And if not that one, then the one after that or the one after that and we'll be here, ready. Waiting for it."
"Will it be in time?" Nick didn't let his gaze drop either, wanting - needing - complete honesty from Stephen on that point.
"Like you said. They're smart, resourceful. And they have each other."
"And is that going to be enough?"
Now Stephen sighed, and looked away, looking immeasurably weary. "It's going to have to be," he said, and Nick felt like a complete heel, pushing the point like that. None of this was Stephen's fault. In the end, Nick only had one person to blame, the same person who was always to blame - himself.
After a second, Stephen turned back, all brisk business. "Have you made any more progress on reviewing the data from the canal?"
Nick could only slump back into his chair, defeated on that as he had been on everything else. "I think there might be a pattern emerging," he said, "but… I don't know. I can barely think." He scrubbed his hands over his face, not missing the way that the bristles on his cheeks and chin scratched at his palms. He was surprised that Jenny hadn't said something about that, but perhaps she was of the 'discretion is the better part of valour' school of thought. "What about you? Anything from the stuff Jenny got from our local businessmen?" He wondered, briefly, what it said about them that he was reviewing the data from the canal - where Stephen had been convinced the anomaly was - while Stephen reviewed the data that wasn't.
Stephen pushed himself away from the doorway and finally took a few steps into the room. "Same as you - a lot of anecdotal data to try and fit together into some kind of pattern and, frankly, it's doing my head in."
The rueful smiles they shared this time were easier, more genuine. More like it used to be, as far as Nick recalled.
"Need some help?" Nick offered. "A fresh pair of eyes might work."
Stephen pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Maybe if we combined the data?" he suggested. "The anomaly in the canal seems to have opened first this time." At Nick's look, he added, his mouth quirking a little, "The one the shark came through. And it was the one that the anomaly detector picked up first."
Nick supposed that when it came to it, he couldn't argue that point, not with the data he'd been picking over for the last few days. There was no doubt that there had been anomalies opening in the canal - not to Nick's mind at least - and there was no doubt that the walrus like creatures had come through the warehouse, at least. They may even have come through both, assuming that both opened to the same future timeline, but the shark couldn't have come through the one that Abby and Connor had disappeared through. There was no way that the flooding in the warehouse had been anything but tidal and therefore no way for a purely aquatic creature to have made it through that particular anomaly.
Stephen was still eyeing him, his face settling back into immobility, giving nothing away. "Sure," Nick said, finally. "Let's put them together, and see what we've got."
---
They found a cave, finally, set back from the shore, another one of those that seemed to have been eaten into the rock by long gone tides. She hoped they were long gone, anyway. She had no desire to wake up one morning and find herself drowned. But it was set back from the intertidal zone, as far as they could determine it, and was deep enough to shelter them from the rain and the worst of the storms. She hoped.
It was, however, a good half hour's walk from where the river fed into the sea, and the mangroves that grew around the margins there. Which meant they were a good half an hour from fresh water.
That worried her but not as much as being closer to it did. The not-hyena, not-boar thing - and she was going to have to come up with a better name for it than that - probably came from the grasslands that surrounded the forest rather than the forest proper - she didn't see how something that massive could hunt well in between the ferns and the tangled roots of the trees that thrust down into the river canals, trapping the silt they grew in. It was too large, surely.
But it obviously had no qualms about coming down to the beach, and the further they were from the only reliable source of water, the further they'd be from its hunting grounds - she hoped.
The foreshore here was largely flat, though. There were boulders, like the ones they'd cowered behind, but it meant that even though they had to trek to find water, they didn't have to clamber up and down, leaving them exhausted and vulnerable.
She hoped about that too.
But this, at the moment, was home and Connor had agreed to that without argument; without comment even. It worried her a little, that he was so quiet and subdued, but the larger part of her brain was worried about the more immediate dangers. She simply didn't have the reserves to cope with anything else.
The meat had settled in her stomach and, provided she didn't think about it, she wasn't feeling nauseous any longer, just tired and beaten. But she couldn't stop - neither of them could. They were still teetering on the very edge of survival and there was so much more that could kill them. And not all of those things came with teeth.
They were gathering driftwood now - and that showed that there were trees, somewhere. Real ones, as Connor would call them, rather than simply ferns. Maybe they were from the mangroves, thrown into the sea by the violent storms that wracked the area but frankly Abby didn't care where they'd come from. She only cared whether or not they'd burn.
They hadn't figured out how to create fire yet, but they'd have to at some point. She didn't want to subsist on raw meat and given the encounter they'd had on the foreshore earlier, she wanted to be sure that they had some way of defending themselves. In the absence of an assault rifle, she reckoned that fire was the next best thing. She wasn't stupid. If Connor was right about the prevalence of forest fires in the Carboniferous, and right about the climate of this world and the composition of the air being similar, well… As far as Abby was concerned, anything in this world that wasn't terrified of fire, when the world might set itself ablaze around them with a monotonous frequency, was simply too stupid to live.
Survival of the fittest and all that.
They might not be the fittest or the fastest or even the most dangerous of species, not anymore, but the creatures of this world might find out to their cost that when it came down to it, humans were resourceful and humans were mean.
Connor had already found some flint, the hard rock buried in the far softer chalk, easy to dig out when you had something like a sharp, curved bone to help you. It was kind of symbolic, she supposed, that when you uncovered something from rock soft enough to be eaten away by water, it was something hard and sharp.
Humans had been making hand axes for as long as there had been humans; longer, if you counted some of their hominid ancestors. She had faith that Connor would figure it out. He was the sort of person who really could build a better mousetrap if he put his mind to it.
She had faith in him, more than he'd ever realise.
She dumped the armful of driftwood she had just inside the entrance to their cave, and raised her hand, shielding her eyes from the sun as she scanned the foreshore for him. There was a dark head, bowed down near the water's edge and, when she rose onto her tiptoes, the rest of Connor came into view, crouched down.
Frowning slightly, she made her way down the beach, keeping her eyes peeled for signs of anything really. Anything with teeth or claws, or that looked like it might be vulnerable to their teeth and claws, weak though they were.
Connor looked up when she approached, and she should be thankful that he was that aware of his surroundings given how he usually got when something caught his attention. He smiled at her, his eyes crinkling. He was still a little green around the edges because their diet didn't seem to be agreeing with him, and his nose was peeling worse than ever, but there was a brightness to his eyes that had been missing for the last few days, since the hunger had started to bite.
"Abby, look at this."
He tugged at something that slowly revealed itself to be a turtle's shell - another species that predated the dinosaurs and had apparently had made it this far into the future as well. There were weird spikes at the fore-end of the carapace, growths that presumably jutted out and had protected this species' head, and the carapace itself was blockier in shape, with fewer plates than she was used to, but they were thicker, more armoured. It didn't seem as streamlined as the turtles she was used to either, but then neither had the future shark. Maybe speed had been sacrificed for resilience and protection against attack.
Connor tugged harder and finally managed to flip it over. The plastron had gone entirely, leaving just the back of the shell, and there were bits of meat still clinging to the inside of the shell, black and stringy.
Her stomach turned over again. Surely Connor couldn't expect them to try and eat this. Could he?
It seemed that Connor had other ideas.
"What do you think?"
She looked at him blankly, not really surprised when he huffed in exasperation. It was more animation than he'd shown for a while, so she let it slide past without comment.
"It's waterproof, right?" She continued to look at him blankly, and his face grew a little uncertain. "I was thinking, you know… in case it rains again?"
The penny dropped. "Connor," she said slowly. "You're a genius."
This time his whole face lit up before he ducked his head, a little embarrassed at the praise. That was the thing about Connor - sometimes he could be entirely clueless about personal interaction, or about how he came across. At other times, sweet didn't even begin to describe him.
"I was just…" He rubbed his hand along the edge of the shell, a small, pleased smile still playing around the corners of his mouth. "I wasn't sure how we get it clean. I mean, we could use the knife… but, you know."
Yeah, she did. The risk of snapping it was too great.
"It's easy," she said. This time it was his turn to look at her blankly, and she picked up a handful of sand, let it trickle through her fingers. It took him a second to get her drift but then she could see it click. His face lit up again. She could get used to that.
It would be worth the inevitable sore fingers that scrubbing the inside of the shell with makeshift sandpaper if it meant that they had a way to store fresh water. Connor would figure out the hand axe thing, and they'd figure out how to make fire - she had faith in that. She had to.
A little time and a lot of ingenuity, and they'd have water and weapons, which was a hell of an improvement on the situation previously.
Things were looking up.
---
"We've found it!"
Lester looked spectacularly unimpressed at the announcement.
"Found what, exactly?"
Nick waved the sheaf of papers he had clutched in his hand at the man, not that it made much difference.
"The anomalies. We've found a pattern to the opening of the anomalies."
Now that finally got Lester's attention; the man actually sat up straight and the bored look evaporated from his face as though it had never been there.
"What, all of them?"
"The one that Abby and Connor disappeared through. And the one that preceded it, in the canal."
"Ah." There was a subtle shift in Lester's body, one that spoke of his lessening interest. No, that wasn't fair of Nick - it wasn't that Lester was no longer interested. It was more, he thought, that Lester's interest had been shifted from the 'bigger picture', to steal one of the man's own phrases, to a smaller, more personal family snap.
And Lester was not a man particularly comfortable with the personal.
"We've determined that there was one in the canal, then?" He eyed Nick a little beadily and Nick tensed. "I thought we'd decided that it was in the warehouse."
"It's in both," Stephen interrupted, moving around to place his laptop on Lester's desk, opening the lid and waiting for the machine to come out of hibernate mode. Lester switched from eyeing Nick to eyeing the laptop beadily instead.
"Please tell me that you aren't about to fire up a PowerPoint presentation," he said. "I can't abide the things."
The corner of Stephen's mouth twitched; it seemed as though not even Lester's snide little remarks could shatter his good mood now, not when they'd finally made a breakthrough that could give them hope.
"No," he said, calmly. "It's a graph."
"Oh, joy," murmured Lester, his trademark sarcasm now firmly back into play.
Stephen ignored the comment, and turned the screen around so that Lester could see it. Nick had already seen it more than once, but the hope was such a tentative thing that he moved around behind Lester's chair anyway, just to see it again.
Lester gave him a look but didn't comment.
"What is it I'm actually looking for?"
"The blue line is when we think the canal anomaly opened. Where it's solid, we've got good evidence that supports it. If it's a dash, it means we've had to extrapolate from data that perhaps isn't quite as robust."
"Oh, God save me from scientists. Do try to keep it simple, gentlemen. And by simple, I mean 'cut to the chase'. What's the red line."
"When we think that there was an anomaly opening in the warehouse, or in one of the warehouses nearby," Nick interjected.
"It moves?" Trust Lester to leap on that point.
"Not far, no. Most of the time, it opens up exactly where we saw it, or at least in the same building. The flooding tells us that much. Where there are squares on the line, that means that there's evidence of flooding in nearby warehouses as well. It could simply be seepage in from the main site, or it could be the anomaly shifting slightly. If it does, it stays within a few hundred feet."
"Hmmm." Lester tapped his finger against the desktop thoughtfully. "And that little blip there?" Now he tapped the screen, scowling at Stephen when he pulled the laptop back an inch or so, a little protective of it.
Nick craned his neck so that he could still see the point where Lester had indicated. "That's the reading we got from the anomaly detector this time around, when Leek's team had trouble actually pinpointing it. You see how the lines intersect?"
"If you mean the way that they cross over each other, yes. I'm not completely stupid."
Nick exchanged a look with Stephen and the smile they shared didn't go unnoticed.
"The point, gentlemen?"
"The anomalies seem to come in cycles," Stephen explained. "The one in the warehouse seems the more significant event - it opens more frequently, and seems to be open for longer. But they seem to alternate, and they're very close together, at least at first." He looked at Nick again before continuing. "We think that may have been why the anomaly detector couldn't home in on it fast enough."
"It was caught between trying to pinpoint two synchronous, geographically close anomalies, you mean?"
No. Lester was a long way from being stupid.
"Yeah," Nick said. "That's what we think."
"Okay. Now you've tried blinding me with science - and, I might add, failed - why don't you get to the important part?" Nick and Stephen exchanged looks again, a little confused, and Lester snorted impatiently. "When is it next going to open? I'm assuming you didn't go to the effort of creating pretty pictures just for the hell of it."
"The cycles seem to come and go over two weeks or so, at least as far as we can determine. They're open for two or three days - sporadically, at least - and then there's a lull before the next cycle of openings that lasts eleven or twelve days."
"And it's been five days since it last closed?"
Lester knew that - or he should, given the way that almost everyone around him had been counting down the hours - but it was possible he was simply trying to keep them focused.
That might be giving the man a little too much credit, though.
"Yes." It was Stephen who answered this time too, Nick too busy watching Lester, wondering which way he was going to jump.
"So that means you have six or seven days to figure out as much as you can from the little evidence we've got about what the retrieval teams are likely to run into on the other side of the anomaly." He looked between them before raising an eyebrow, beginning to look a little exasperated again. "It pays to plan. I'm surprised the pair of you haven't figured that out by now.
"Well, once you have figured it out, talk to Jenny." He sat back up in his chair, spinning it around to face his desk and gesturing peremptorily at Stephen to remove his laptop. "Make a list of what you need, liaise with the military unit on the ground if you have to, and get Leek to organise any requisitions." He looked up, seeming a little surprised to find them still standing there. "I'll sign them, of course. Assuming you don't go a little mad and try to order a nuclear submarine. I'm pretty sure that there's nothing on the other side that would make that an appropriate response."
He pulled some paperwork towards him, not even looking up when he added, "Don't let me keep you, hmm?"
Several Miles from the Sun: Book One - Part 4