Chapter 5
Connor slumped back against the wall of the tunnel. It had taken all his reserves of strength just to get this far. He'd lost track of time, but the light outside was fading fast now. Was it just one day since they had woken up in that tree? It felt longer. Could a full twenty four hours and more have passed since that fateful fall? Abby was still unconscious. The fever still burned through her veins. They were no nearer to finding a way home where she could be pumped full of antibiotics and life-giving water and soluble food.
They were safe though. In relative terms. For the moment. She was still alive. For the moment. Laid out where the spray of the waterfall just reached her, doused in water and her head resting on a folded blanket from Becker's pack, Abby slept. He had carried her there, a distance of at least two miles, in utter darkness. She hadn't been as heavy a burden as Cutter, but the road had been longer and darker, and the sheer uncertainty of her fate dragged at his heart until he felt it would tear itself out of his chest.
He had only left her once since then, chancing his way down the cliff in search of some dry kindling to light a fire with. He'd taken the backpack, to keep the wood dry, and had filled it with whatever he could find that would burn, or might be edible or otherwise useful. He'd left the contents of the pack wrapped in his jacket, by Abby's side. He could have used the other emergency blanket, but if she woke up while he was gone he wanted her to know he was coming back. The jacket was a sign of that.
Now he was back. Abby showed no signs of having woken up. The impromptu parcel of all their worldly goods had not been disturbed. All he needed to do not was get himself and the backpack further into the tunnel and build a fire, in the dark, with no matches, no lighter and not even a working torch to see what he was doing. He was so tired. If he could just sleep for a while, just a little while, and get his strength back.
Connor forced his eyes open.
He couldn't rest yet, not yet. He had to make the fire first. Abby might be running a temperature, but he wasn't. Add together the chill of the evening, a cold, damp cavern and a soaking from climbing up and down through a waterfall and you have the perfect recipe for hypothermia. He was no good to Abby dead.
Dragging himself to his feet, Connor made his way over Abby's sleeping form and further into the tunnel. Once the ground felt suitably dry, and he felt he was far enough away from Abby, he put the pack down and got to work. It took him a good half hour at least to put the fire together, wishing all the while he had paid more attention on those camping trips with the scouts when he was younger. Eventually he decided it was ready. Enough kindling to take a light, not too much fuel to overwhelm it, and nothing possibly edible mixed up in the middle of it. He reached into the pack and pulled out one of the heaviest objects he had found, reaching into his pocket and extracting his penknife with the other hand. He wasn't sure if it would work. He'd never even seen it done before. Unfortunately, however, he was out of options.
The rock in his hand was flint. He could tell it was flint because it had broken and split to reveal its flinty insides. The penknife in his other hand was steel. He tried scraping the knife attachment over the stone a few times. Other than a scraping sound, nothing much happened. He tried scraping the knife lengthways. Nothing. He sighed. He was so tired. If only they'd had a lighter, but then neither of them had smoked. Abby had always been so much of a health freak he doubted she'd ever even considered trying it. He had, in his schooldays, once, and been violently sick afterwards. If only he hadn't been so much of a quitter!
His tired brain, begging for sleep, suddenly went ping. Lighter. There was something there. Something he was missing. What? He was so tired. What was it? He dropped forward onto his hands and hissed as raw flesh scraped against the rocky floor. That was it: friction. Friction caused the change from kinetic energy to heat energy. He needed more friction. Picking up the penknife again, which he had dropped in frustration, he fiddled with the appendages, dragging each one out of its secure hiding place until he found the rasp. That was it. That was what he needed. He felt around for the flint, also dropped in his despair, and found it lying by his bad knee. In the stress and strain of the day he had forgotten about that injury. Now it came back to him with aching reality and he groaned, wincing as he shifted himself into a more comfortable position.
Again, he struck the steel against the stone. Again nothing. A different angle, perhaps? Yes! This time a single, solitary spark burst forth in the now complete darkness. He held the rudimentary tools closer to the kindling and tried again. More sparks this time! Finally! Again! This time one or two of them caught, smouldering redly in the darkness. Again! More sparks caught. He breathed on the glowing embers, blowing more oxygen their way and fanning the sparks until they grew into flames. Small flames, but flames. The flames spread. He added more twigs, feeding the fire until it was large enough to light the tunnel from side to side. He could feel the warmth from it now, seeping into his body as it dried his still damp clothes. He sighed in relief, and crumpled into an exhausted heap beside the flames.
XXXX
Danny hit his head off the mossy trunk of the nearest tree. He'd done it again. A full circle of the island, but still no fresh water. Why he expected there to be some the second time round, he didn't know! It hadn't taken him long to work out he was better off following the tree line round, gathering water from the spongy moss into his water bottles as he went, but for some reason rational thought on the subject of streams was still eluding him.
He had to do something. He couldn't survive here indefinitely. The water from the moss might keep him going for a while, but without a food source he'd eventually starve. There was no stream on the island. He was sure of that now. He had accepted that fact. Fine. If there was no stream on this island, then he would have to try and make it to another island. Okay. He could do that. The other island he had seen wasn't far. It was the only other one he'd seen so far, but it wasn't far away and it looked a bit larger than the one he was currently on. Right. Sorted. Get to the other island. That was the plan.
How?
He could swim, that wasn't the issue. He had always been a strong swimmer. Even in his currently weakened state, he could probably swim the distance between the two islands: it really wasn't that far. In fact, if he waited until the tide went out, and the sea was shallow enough, he might even be able to walk it!
The only problem lay in what he might find in the water. He hadn't seen any non-plant life forms on his island, but that didn't mean there weren't any in the water, or on the other island. He would have to be prepared for the possibility.
He couldn't make a raft from what was lying around. Not without any tools. He wasn't that much of a Robinson Crusoe. He could make a spear though. The trees he had been stealing water from could also provide him with that.
He reached up and fastened his hand around one of the long straight branches reaching out from the nearest tree trunk. By putting all his weight on it, he managed to break it away from it's life source. The screeching sound it made as it finally gave way hurt his head, but it was soon gone and the silence of the island returned, broken only by the soft wash of the waves on the shore.
XXXX
"What do you mean you have no idea!" Lester's irritated tones rang out through the office above the atrium. "You're a scientist aren't you? Look it up! You must have some big book of weird creatures or something! What does it look like? If you can't find an exact match, you can at least try and work out what it's evolved from!"
"Nothing like this has ever been documented, Lester," Sarah sighed. "It might be something completely brand new in the future, or something remarkably old in our own history. There's just no way of telling."
"Isn't there anything in this fossil record Professor Cutter was so fond of?"
"Nothing, Lester, nor is there likely to be," Sarah folded her arms. "I'm no zoologist, or palaeontologist, but any student of archaeology knows only a fraction of what was once there gets preserved. This could be something the fossil record missed entirely, just by chance, or there might be some reason why we have no known fossils of it, or perhaps a future awaits us where bizarre fleshy creatures with no bones and no recognisably developed sense organs are the order of the day, I just don't know!"
Lester looked over to Meg, who was watching nervously from a corner. She shook her head and shrugged, her eyes wide. Lester transferred his gaze to Becker, who was staring solidly at the wall opposite, and gave up.
"Fine," Lester sighed. "I will find you a zoologist, palaeontologist or evolutionary something or other. Just try not to get us all killed in the mean time, will you?"
Her arms still folded, Sarah Page turned and stalked out of the room, followed by a hurrying Meg and a calmly striding Becker. So she was being asked to do the job she'd been hired for? Fine. That job was to study the anomalies and help out at the incursions, not identify bizarre, slimy creatures from the black lagoon of time and space. She'd been hired to help Cutter, not replace him. As far as she could make out, the mouse, as she'd decided to call her, had been hired to replace Connor, but only in his IT capacity. Becker had been there before Sarah, but she knew he'd been hired to replace someone. He's assumed leadership of the group though, at least over the incursion side of things, and that hadn't been his job either. If Lester wanted a fully functioning team he would just have to bite the bullet and pay for one.
Sarah let the door fall closed behind her, hearing the cessation of the small hurrying footsteps that had tried and failed to keep up with her. She could do without more inane questions for the moment. The girl was meant to be a genius with theoretical physics: she could go and work out the anomalies herself without trying to prise information of Sarah that just wasn't there. How was she meant to know what caused the anomalies? How was she meant to know what happened if you got stuck on the other side of one? Or halfway through one? She'd never experienced either of the last two and she didn't know anyone who could explain the first. Not even Connor! And she was an Egyptologist, for pity's sake. She had a rudimentary knowledge of physics at best, and that was just high-school stuff!
XXXX
On the outside of the door, Doctor Meg Bowman paused, watching it slam shut in her face. She heard a footstep behind her and turned to see the tall, dark Captain come to a halt a meter or so away from her, his hands behind his back and his back straight, his face a stony mask.
"You don't like me very much do you?" Meg asked timidly. "Doctor Page doesn't either. I think I ask too many questions. It annoys her." Silence. "I'm sorry about your friends. Really, I am. I wish I could help get them back, but I just don't know how. Doctor Page is avoiding me. You don't speak unless it's to give an order, or accept one from Sir James. And there's no point asking Sir James anything as he's far too busy and has already passed the job on to you and to Doctor Page!"
Becker's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly Meg took a hesitant step towards him.
"Tell me how I can help! Please!" Meg begged, hugging her arms around her slight frame. "There's no point in me being here if I can't help!"
"You're here to study the anomalies," Becker replied curtly, his eyes stubbornly set on a point over the top of Meg's head. "You have your own lab, your own access to the mainframe and all the information we have is on there. I suggest you use it."