Nasty Jack
Chapter 1
Danny knelt on the sight where the anomaly had been, holding his head in his hands.
He couldn't belive how unlucky he was. If only the anomaly had stayed open for just a few seconds more, then he could have made it back. He could be with Abby and Connor now, they could all be going home safe in the knowledge that humanity was safe. Instead, he was trapped here in the Pliocene, 3 million years away from home.
Then he pulled himself together. 'Come on Danny' he told himself. 'There's no point just staying here, the important thing now is to look for another anomaly and go through it.'
Steadily, he rose to his feet and headed back in the direction he had come, back towards the stream. As he reached it, he passed the corpses of Helen Cutter and the raptor that had ended her life, along with the bodies of countless hominids whom Helen had mercilessly poisoned. The bank of the stream was now alive with vultures, all picking at the dead animals. Danny was pleased to see most of them picking at Helen, eager to see what human tasted like.
He continued to head upstream, hoping to find another anomaly. But there was none. Tired from walking under the merciless Pliocene sun, Danny sat down on a rock to rest.
Suddenly, he heard a strange grunting noise coming from his right. He looked in that direction to see two equally strange animals coming down to the stream. They walked a lot like gorillas, but instead of walking on their knuckles, they had padded hooves. Their black faces were similar to a pony's, but with much shorter ears. They had a zebra-like pattern on their bodies and were the size of elephants. Danny remembered reading about these in one of the ARC's creature files, these creatures were ancylotherium. It was a mother and baby, and they were obviously coming here to drink, unaware that the stream was filled with Helen's deadly poison.
"No!" cried Danny, running towards them and waving his arms, "You musn't drink from here!"
The mother ancylotherium saw him and bellowed with alarm, before ushering her calf away and upstream, as they tried to find another bit of stream to drink from. Danny found himself running after him, trying desperately to get them away from the stream. They turned a corner, Danny hoped that they were going to move away.
But as he rounded a corner, he found the ancylotherium to be standing stock still, and the reason soon became apparent, an anomaly. There it was, shimmering in front of them, the two animals were transfixed by it, as was Danny.
Then, the mother ancylotherium turned and saw Danny. She bellowed adn aslong with her baby, dashed through the anomaly. Danny groaned and followed them.