Apex predator, p.1
Apex Predator, page 1
To those kids who are decoding the past and creating the future
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Part 1
1: Molly
2: Anna
3: Yoshi
4: Javi
5: Molly
6: Javi
7: Yoshi
8: Javi
9: Molly
10: Yoshi
11: Molly
12: Javi
13: Anna
14: Molly
15: Javi
16: Molly
17: Yoshi
18: Javi
19: Yoshi
20: Molly
21: Anna
22: Akiko
Part 2
23: Molly
24: Yoshi
25: Kira
26: Molly
27: Yoshi
28: Javi
29: Yoshi
30: Anna
31: Molly
32: Javi
33: Anna
34: Molly
35: Yoshi
The Game
About the Author
Copyright
Molly was tired of fighting for her life. She wanted to curl up someplace cozy and sleep for a week.
The blue forest she was hiking through looked safe enough, but she no longer believed in safety. She didn’t think she’d ever feel safe again.
The trees around them, for one thing, didn’t look exactly like trees, more like blue broccoli or cauliflower. And she knew that none of the small creatures rustling in the toothy bushes would look much like the animals she was used to.
She said out loud, “At least for once there’s a path.”
“Does that make you feel better or worse?” asked Hank, the tall, unhappy-looking boy at her side. “That means someone made the path.”
“Or something,” said Anna, the third and final person in their scouting party. She was walking a few steps behind them, looking around carefully at the overhanging cauliflower. “Maybe the path we’re on is like a deer path,” she mused. “Some animal goes back and forth to the water this way.”
“It’s a wide path,” Molly said. “It would have to be a …” She didn’t finish the sentence.
“Pretty big deer?” Anna finished. “Yes. Larger than almost any animal on Earth.”
“Let’s not think about it,” said Molly, shaking her head. She was supposed to be the leader of the group. She couldn’t let herself be frightened.
“In any ecosystem,” Anna explained relentlessly, “there is always an apex predator—a predator at the top of the food chain who is too big to be killed by the other animals. Usually some kind of hypercarnivore.”
Hank muttered, “Oh, that’s swell.”
Anna had a way of reminding people of facts they didn’t really want to remember. She believed a little too much in always telling the truth.
Molly argued hopefully, “Or maybe this path was made by some big plant eater. Like an elephant.”
“Yup,” said Anna. “That would be good, but there would still be an apex predator that would eat the giant herbivore—and it would probably be bigger and meaner.”
“All right,” said Hank. “We get the idea.”
“Or,” Anna continued, “something smaller but more deadly—a vicious pack animal, a super parasite, a …”
“We’d better keep quiet, then,” said Molly. “We don’t want to attract attention.”
Sometimes, with Anna, it wasn’t worth trying to paint a happier picture.
This constant sense of danger was what really exhausted Molly. For more than a week, there had been no rest. Birds with beaks as sharp as knives, sand that ate people whole, vines that dragged struggling animals to their doom, weird tech that threw people forward in time or hurled kids into the air … She could barely remember the last time she had relaxed. Every moment, she and the others had to watch out to make sure no new beast was stalking them and no new peril was about to swallow them whole. She was an optimistic person, but sometimes the constant watchfulness made her bone-weary. Ten days ago, Molly, Anna, and their whole Robotics Club had been on an airplane jetting off to Tokyo, where their toaster-size Killbots were going to compete in a mechanized soccer match. Then, somewhere over the Arctic, their plane had mysteriously come under attack. The top of the plane had been torn right off and a strange electrical force had buzzed through the cabin, plucking at each passenger as if choosing chocolates from a quality assortment, hurling out the ones it didn’t want—just before the airliner crashed.
When the group of kids had stepped out of the wreckage, they found themselves not in the middle of the snowy wastes of the frigid pole—but in a tropical jungle. Since then, they’d been trying to escape through jungle, desert, and forest. And each setting they passed through claimed lives.
A few days after the crash, Anna and some of the others had stumbled on some kind of a map: an interactive model floating in a cave. It showed a whole miniature world nestled in a tear in the earth, a rift. At the one end was the jungle where their plane had crashed. At the other end was a weird structure bristling with needle-sharp spires—some kind of city, maybe, or a futuristic castle jutting out of the rock. That was their goal. That was where they’d find answers.
And, hopefully, help to get home. Molly was particularly anxious to find some adults who knew what was going on and might provide medical attention. She’d been bitten by a monster bird and had been infected somehow. Her body was corrupted. She was changing. No one else knew how bad it had gotten.
Molly reminded herself: The important thing, in the midst of all this confusion, chaos, and horror, was to keep focused on short-term goals. For the moment, the three of them were just on a scouting mission. They were supposed to find the huge lake or miniature sea they’d spotted from a distance a couple of days before. The next step of their voyage would have to be across that sea if they were going to reach the city of spires.
But while they’d been thrashing around in the blue cauliflower forest searching for the shore, they’d come across this path. It was wide and beaten down. On the one hand, it was a huge relief to walk easily without kicking their way through alien bushes all the time and hopping over fallen stalks. On the other hand, they might run into whatever monster used this route.
“We used to hear something big in the forest near our compound sometimes,” said Hank. “It’s probably what made this.” Hank wasn’t originally with Molly’s team. He’d lived in this strange world for a long time—longer than he realized—setting up a defensive camp with the members of his stranded marching band. “Whether it’s a plant eater or a meat eater, it killed a couple of us.”
“And we heard it on the other side of this biome,” said Anna. “When we came into the blue forest. It must be huge.”
“Okay,” Molly demanded, “let’s talk about trees instead. Anna, you know a lot about life science. Have you ever seen pictures of trees like this anywhere in the world?”
Anna craned her neck, peering around them. “No. They look less like trees and more like cruciferous vegetables. For example, the leaves don’t look like deciduous tree leaves, more like broccoli florets. Maybe they’re some kind of prehistoric tree …”
“Or,” said Molly thoughtfully, “a tree from the far future.”
“We didn’t have trees like this in the forest where we crashed,” said Hank. “Or weird pods like that.” He pointed into the upper story of growth. Huge plant pods hung from the upper branches.
“We’re in another biome,” said Anna.
“I don’t know what that means,” said Hank.
“A biome is a community of plants and animals that—”
“And I actually don’t care,” said Hank.
Anna fell silent, looking bruised.
Hank was still peering up into the trees at a pod that had split partway open. “It looks like there are seeds inside. Like peas. They’re huge … I wonder if we could eat them.” He looked around, kicking the underbrush, shoving branches back. “Looking for a stick,” he muttered.
“Here’s one,” said Anna, trying to be helpful.
“Thanks.” Hank took it and started waving it over his head, as if trying to bash a piñata.
Wham! He hit the pod, and it started swinging, splitting wider. Wham! He hit it again.
Then a volley of shots rang out. Explosions.
Molly screeched—she’d been hit in the cheek.
She dropped to the ground. “Get down!”
The others crouched. Their hearts pounded. But the forest had gone silent.
As they looked for their attackers, they noticed they were covered in goo.
Molly reached up and grabbed at the dart that had hit her. She pulled it out.
It wasn’t a dart; it was made of wood, but not carved.
“What is that?” whispered Hank.
Molly held it up for the others to see. “Theories?” she said.
Anna was squinting up at the shell of the pod that still rocked back and forth over their heads. “I think,” she said, “it’s a seed. From an explosive vegetable.”
“Huh?” Hank straightened up.
“It’s a fruit or vegetable that spreads its seeds with some kind of little detonation when they drop to the ground. So they’ll travel beyond the range of the parent plant. Like other seeds spread themselves by attaching to animals’ fur or passing through animals’ digestive tracts.” Anna pointed. The little firecracker detonations had spread globby plant flesh and se eds all over the path. A few of them stuck point-first into the ground. One of them had shot straight into Molly’s cheek.
“I wonder if the plant flesh is edible,” said Anna. “There’s a lot of it.”
“Yeah,” said Molly. “Some went into my mouth when I screamed.” Hank and Anna looked at her in horror. She admitted, “It was delicious.”
She knew, however, that her body was no longer digesting things exactly like a human. She didn’t want to tell them how alien she felt sometimes, since she’d been bitten. Maybe the red flesh of the exploding vegetable was only safe for her, and for Cal, who was undergoing the same transformation.
“We can take some back,” said Hank. “We’ll try it tonight in controlled conditions.” He shoved some of the gooey rind into his bag.
“Javi will want to name it,” said Molly, always thinking of her best friend.
Anna suggested, “Maybe pea-splosion?”
The other two looked at her.
“Not good?” she said.
“Sounds like you waited too long for the restroom,” said Hank.
“Ohhhh …” Anna said.
For a time, all three of them tried to think of punny names for detonating fruit. Bam-anas. Blew-up-berries. They were almost like normal kids, making up normal, stupid jokes.
And in that moment of silence, Molly perked up. “Hear what I hear?” she said. “Waves on a beach.”
She held up a finger and they all listened closely.
“I think we found our ocean!” she said.
They jogged forward.
As they crested the next hill, they saw the rift’s sea. It was a dark green plain of chilly water, troubled by winds, with whitecaps lashing against the rocky shore. It stretched farther than the eye could see.
The pebble beach was broken with several outcroppings of boulders. Shredder birds circled above them, crying forlornly.
“I can’t see the other shore,” said Hank, squinting.
“The human eye can see about three miles at sea level,” said Anna.
“Because of the curvature of the Earth,” Molly said, nodding. She walked backward up the slope. “There’s the far side. Now I can see it. So maybe the mini-sea is five or six miles across? Take a look and—”
A boulder outcropping had moved. At first, Molly thought it was a trick of her eyes. She blinked and looked again.
No question. A heap of boulders shifted. Slanted. Stood.
Molly shouted to the other two down on the beach, “This way! Watch out!”
Now Anna and Hank saw the motion. They stumbled backward on the loose gravel as a giant body rose from the beach. It was not really boulders. It was alive. Something had been digging.
At first, Molly couldn’t make out its shape. She just saw muscle and hide and glinting metal. It heaved out of the pit it had dug.
And it started to stalk toward them.
It was like nothing Anna had ever seen—no head visible, just a burly, armored trunk on top of muscled animal haunches, powerful arms cocked back like a praying mantis’s front legs, ready to grab. The thing was easily twenty feet tall.
She and Hank staggered away as it surveyed them from its height. Molly was yelling something at them from up on top of the rise, and they ran toward her.
The creature stirred itself and stomped up the beach. Only a few steps and it was right behind them. Another step and it would crush them.
Hank grabbed Anna’s hand and pulled her to the side. She tripped and spun, but he held tight, and she was still standing when a huge clawed foot smacked into the gravel beside her, right where she had been just a second earlier.
Hank shoved her into the underbrush.
They thrust vines and bushes out of their way, crashing on all fours away from the beach. Anna had no idea where Molly was.
Anna felt something clutch her. She swiveled her head and saw branches snagging at her shoes. The beast was sweeping an arm side to side through the underbrush, searching. Hank yelped and threw himself forward. The two kids clambered through bushes that scratched and tore. The crash of vegetation followed close behind them.
And then stopped.
Anna became very aware of the silence. She and Hank suddenly sounded loud in the quiet morning. She reached out and snagged one of his belt loops. That brought him to a halt.
The thing was standing up straight now. It truly had no head. It was waiting, for some reason—biding its time.
Anna hardly dared to breathe.
Surely it saw them.
She couldn’t tell if it was a robot or some gigantic animal. I wonder if it’s a combination, she thought rapidly. Some kind of cyborg. It would be interesting to investigate the interface between living muscles and the mechanized—
There was a crash—a series of crashes—off to the side. Molly’s footfalls as she fled.
Hank’s mouth dropped open. How could Molly be so stupid as to draw the thing toward her? Just to save them?
Another footfall.
Abruptly, the thing leaped. Its arm flew out and punched into the forest.
“Molly!” Anna screamed, unable to keep silent.
I should have gone with the scouting party, instead of that idiot Hank,” said Yoshi, sawing at a broccoli branch with his knife.
Smirking, Kira said, “You’re just worried he’s better looking than you.” She handed the branch to her sister, Akiko.
“That’s not it,” grunted Yoshi. “He’s a liar. He can’t be trusted.”
“But he’s so tall,” Kira sighed playfully. “Is that what’s bothering you?”
Yoshi scowled. “He trapped his whole marching band in a time bubble.”
“Girls love a boy who can slow down time.”
“Would you stop it? I’m serious. We shouldn’t have even let him come along on our march toward the city of spires. We should have left him back in his base camp. No one trusts him. And Molly shouldn’t have taken him along to look for the route to the sea.”
Akiko said carefully, “I think Molly chose him specifically because no one trusts him. She wants to give him a chance to prove himself.”
Yoshi had plenty of things to say to that, but all of them were angry; and whenever Yoshi had too much to say, he said nothing.
Kira said, “Hank has to get used to someone else being in charge.”
Yoshi frowned. There were times that he wished he could leave this group of amateurs behind and go off on his own, or that he, instead of a faceless electrical force from beyond, had been allowed to make a few key decisions about who would be stuck in this rift.
His father had taught him to be a decision maker, grooming him for the boardrooms and glass-walled offices of Tokyo and New York. “First, name the problem. Second, think through all the tools at your disposal. People often forget that a knife is also a mirror, and that an enemy is often more useful than a friend. Third, think through the pros and cons of each solution. Then decide. But once you’ve chosen, don’t look back. The decision’s over. It’s in the past. It can’t be changed. There’s a new decision to be made.”
His father couldn’t have offered better advice for living in this weird alien landscape, Yoshi realized sourly. In a sense, he now spent his days living by his father’s philosophy: naming problems, quickly picking solutions, dealing with the sometimes bloody aftermath. Did you do anything useful today, son? his father would ask.
Fed a whole group of starving kids in the wilderness, would be his defiant answer for today, and he hated that it still didn’t feel like enough.
Of course, when Yoshi had quite literally chosen his tools in the past year, he’d made a bad decision: He had stolen a priceless katana, four hundred years old and forged in feudal Japan. If he ever got back to civilization, the fact that the katana had kept him alive when he was confronted by tanglevines and razor-beaked shredder birds wouldn’t protect him from the legal consequences of smuggling a priceless blade out of the country.
Yoshi, Akiko, and Kira were building a trap to catch slide-whistle birds, using the webbing they’d pulled from the plane as a net and the pliable broccoli tree branches as springs. Akiko would use her flute to attract the birds, and then, when the birds had settled, Yoshi would snap the trap closed. It would be a lot easier than throwing the net into the air each time and hoping they caught something.
Yoshi saw that on the other side of the clearing, three more kids—Javi, Kimberly, and Crash—had returned with wood for the campfire. They were talking loudly in English. They didn’t understand the Japanese that Yoshi spoke with sisters Akiko and Kira. Two of the kids, Kimberly and Crash, were from the past, from a time when people still danced the Twist and the Mashed Potato. They didn’t just speak English—they spoke in the English of the mid-twentieth century.
