Stormy Weather

"Abby!"

Abby woke up with a start. Someone had called her name.

"ABBY!"

There it was again, louder now and familiar. She got out of bed and pulled on her dressing gown, hurrying across the bare wooden floor, her feet cold where they made contact with the varnished planks. She hastened out of her bedroom and across the upper floor of the two storey studio apartment towards the spiral staircase that led down to the lower level.

"I'm coming," she called back, ignoring the sharp iciness of the cast iron stairs.

As she reached the last turn in the spiral, the scene before her made her catch her breath in shock. The rest of her team stood before her: a gash across Cutter's temple dripped red as he and Stephen supported an unconscious Connor between them.

"What happened?" Abby gasped, rushing forwards as the two older men dragged Connor over to a nearby sofa and deposited him awkwardly on it.

"Anomaly," Cutter spat out, his breathing made difficult by the effort of carrying his prone protégé.

"I'll get the first aid kit," Abby muttered, hurrying off and returning a short time later with a basin of water in her hands, towels under one arm and a first aid kit under the other.

The first thing she noticed was that Stephen had disappeared. She hadn't heard the door close, but then: she had been a little distracted.

"Where's Stephen?" Abby asked as she squeezed water out of a sponge and started cleaning Nick's wound.

"Gone for help," he replied. "We lost our mobiles and the storm's brought down the telephone lines."

"Storm?" Abby glanced up at the window, confused. Sure enough, there was a storm raging outside. It was odd that she hadn't noticed it, she thought, but then she had only just woken up after all.

"Why weren't you there?" Cutter asked, angrily, as Abby fixed the dressing on his wound and turned her attention to Connor. "We waited for you, but we had to go through alone."

"I didn't know!" Abby's hand shook as she pulled back the torn shoulder of Connor's rain-soaked shirt to reveal a gaping wound that bled freely. Something had punched straight through his shoulder blade.

"We called you. We left messages. Then Stephen got through and he said you were on your way. Why weren't you there?"

"What happened to him?" Abby cried, ignoring Cutter's angry remarks and trying desperately to find a pulse while at the same time pressing a thick wad of gauze into Connor's shoulder.

"Giant bug, Precambrian era. You're too late: he's already gone. There's a matching hole straight through his heart. If you'd been there we might have stopped it. Where were you?"

"I-I didn't know!" Abby stammered, tears beginning to fall freely now as she realised her friend wasn't just unconscious but, as Cutter had venomously yelled at her, dead.

"Stephen spoke to you! You told him you were on your way!"

"I-I didn't..."

"Why weren't you there?"

"I haven't spoken to him..."

"You could have stopped this!"

"N-No..."

"Where were you?"

Abby shrank back from the onslaught of the professor's anger, rapidly casting her mind back

over the events of the previous evening. When she had gone to bed, everything was fine. She had tucked Rex up in his vivarium, said goodnight to Connor and left him playing some game on his X-box. Then, he was alive and doing something he loved. Now, he was dead. She couldn't take it in.

"I never spoke to Stephen," she interrupted suddenly, stopping the professor's tirade mid-flow. "Where is he?"

"I'm here."

Abby looked up to see Stephen standing by the door. Again, she hadn't heard it open or close.

"I thought you'd gone to get help?" Abby asked, getting to her feet.

"I didn't think there was much point," Stephen replied, nonchalantly, pulling his gun out of it's holder and firing a shot straight at Nick. Cutter went down with a red wound in the middle of his forehead. Stephen turned the gun to Abby. "You'll be dead before they get here."

--

Abby Maitland sat bolt upright in bed, cold sweat dripping off her as she fought for breath. It had been so real. Outside she could hear the storm raging. She closed her eyes in relief as her breathing returned to normal with the realisation that it was all just a bad dream.

"ABBY!"