After the nightmare.
A/N: I can't believe how long it's been since I've posted. I admit I had thought my interest had long gone but my sister was re-watching Primeval from the beginning and I found myself thinking about this story and felt like writing some more. I know few people will read it but hey ho.
Many thanks to Walking with Monsters, Beasts and Dinosaurs and the many prehistoric era documentaries I have enjoyed watching which have helped with this story.
A loud crash of lighting pulled her viciously from a fitful sleep. Disorientated by the unfamiliar room and gasping for breath, Claudia hugged her knees to her chest as the storm raged outside. It was a just mild English thunder storm, but it amplified a million different memories of the past few years and woken her up in terror. Memories of pain, hunger and the rumble of the shifting earth flashed in front of her eyes. The cries of great beasts caught up in the Mother Nature's harsh temper.
A trembling hand fumbled for the bedside lamp, which she flipped on with difficulty. The dim light lit the room softly, allowing her to view her surroundings. Nick had put her in the upstairs guest room. It was a plain room in soft colors, comfortable, but impersonal. She wasn't surprised. Helen had never struck her as the hospitable type and she had seen the Nick's office.
It had been a pleasant weekend tucked up in Nick's house. She and Abby had relished the central heating, soft mattresses and the ready available food. Abby was catching up on her soaps whilst Claudia trawled the internet, catching up on current world events and when she felt able, starting to write her statement, a report to cover the past four years. Conner was like a hyperactive child. He had tried to watch soaps with Abby, but after one too many spoilers the girl had kicked him out the room. He had then gone to work with Nick who had tolerated him for a while but soon kicked the university student out of the study to make lunch. His lunch consisted of grilled ham and cheese sandwiches which set off the fire alarm.
Soaps over, he had challenged Abby to try and reclaim her top spot on some sort of video game. One thing that had not been dulled or changed during the past four years, it was Abby's ability to rise to the occasion. It had saved their lives more than once, especially during the early days when Claudia's injuries had made her a liability. She owed Abby her life. Since their return, Abby avoided talking about their experiences. Claudia knew why. Survival had been first for so long, she
Nick had been great. He spent most of the day in the study, leaving only to refill his coffee cup. When Conner and Abby's video game began to grate on her nerves, he had granted her sanctuary in the small hideaway. He had sat at his desk reading though articles and scribbling notes whilst she taken over the cosy armchair with her laptop and typed, deleted and retyped her report. They had worked in a cosy quiet, occasionally breaking the silence with a quick question, opinion or offer of a coffee. When the words didn't come to her, Claudia surreptitiously watched the professor work, amused at his facial expressions when he read something he didn't agree with and the muttered grumblings under his breath.
It was easier during the day, but at night…
At night, she felt utterly alone. She knew Abby was just downstairs with Conner, Nick just across the hall, but she wasn't used to being on her own. There was safety in numbers, but she was just one. Feeling the overwhelming urge to cry, she buried her head into her knees swallowing hard. She would not go downstairs. She was a grown woman who had survived ice ages, meteors, forest fires and sandstorms. She was not afraid of a little thunder and memories where just that, memories. They couldn't touch her.
Drowning in her misery, she almost missed the soft knock on her door.
"Yes, come in." She whispered just loud enough, wondering if Abby had also been woken by the rolling thunder.
The door creaked open to reveal a concerned Nick.
"Hey," He whispered back, noticing her red rimmed eyes. "I was on my way downstairs when I saw your light on. You OK?"
"Yes." Her voice was thick with tears she hoped he hadn't noticed. "Just woke up suddenly. "Did the storm wake you?"
"Couldn't sleep. I was going down for a drink. Want one?"
"I'm fine." She smiled weakly, fighting the urge to beg him to stay.
He asked her again but she declined and after a long look he left the room. Claudia listened to his footsteps move down corridor, then onto the stairs, shivering when he was out of ear-shot. Determined to be strong she took even breaths, even as the shadows that had drawn back at Nick's interruption began to close in again. A loud clap of thunder made her jump wildly and her grip on her knees became bruising. She squeezed her eyelids together, scolding herself. She hadn't been afraid of thunderstorms since she was seven.
Stupid, stupid. Snap out of it Claudia!
Minutes later she heard Nick start to ascend the stairs. She strained to hear his soft footfalls on the carpeted stairs and back towards their rooms. She waited for them to bypass her, but they stopped at her door. Her heart jumped as the door to her room creaked open again. A sheepish Nick stepped back into the room, two steaming cups of what smelt like hot chocolate in his hands.
"I thought, seeing as we are both up, we could keep each other company." He said, setting one mug in her reach on the coffee table and retreating to the other end of the bed, sitting at the foot of the bed.
She smiled gratefully at him, picking up the mug of chocolate and grinning at the large dollop of cream on the surface of the drink. He was constantly trying to feed them, small snacks here and there, trying not to be a pest but obviously wanting to fatten the two women up.
"I can't thank you enough." She told him sincerely. "For all of this."
"You don't have to…"
"Yes. I do." Claudia interrupted his protests. "Thank you for everything, for letting us stay here, for looking after us…for everything."
"It's a pleasure." Nick said thickly. "I'm just so glad your back, both of you, in one piece more or less." He joked.
"Me, too." She whispered. "I can't quite believe it. It's been so long…I honestly believed we would die out there. That our luck would run out. But we just kept surviving, kept going.
"You must have some stories."
"Of all genera." Claudia agreed. "Horror, survival, disaster, fantasy, sci-fi, wonder."
"Tell me a story."
"Any particular era?" She joked.
"Surprise me."
Claudia thought hard for a moment. He was right; they had many stories to tell, but which one to choose? What time, what monster?
"There was one time period, about three months in, that we were stranded in for a while. It was one of the more…enjoyable I guess. We were able to relax a bit. Not much but a bit. It was warm, very warm, humid, like a tropical rainforest. We walked for quite a while but we never left the trees. They were huge, taller than any I've ever seen. We could hide in the roots; we actually made a little burrow in them. We had figured out early that the anomalies were grouped together. Where ever we went, if we waited a few days, weeks or months, another anomaly would form within a few miles radius as the one we had arrived in."
She reached down under her bed and pulled out the bag that had accompanied her though time. She pulled out a rather battered set of keys; Nick saw how some of the keys had been sharpened into tools. Claudia showed him the same compass on a fob. The glass was cracked but it still worked.
"This was our guide. We would wait for it to go haywire and try and find the anomaly. Anyway, most of the animals were mammals and smaller than us. There were large rat like creatures with long snouts that had kangaroo legs and used to hop everywhere. They were bizarre, curious little creatures, not afraid of us at all."
"They sound like Leptictidium."
"We called them Kangarats." She laughed at his wince, "Sorry Professor. If I'd known I was going to travel back in time and get stuck in prehistoric times, I would have taken your class in preparation. "
"Claudia you could probably teach it better than I could." He laughed, muttering. "Kangarats."
"The birds were bigger. Meaner. There was this one bird, big, taller than a grown man. She ruled the roost, or at least the area we were in. She seemed to be the top predator. She really didn't like us. We called her Turkey-saurous, because if you ignored the huge beak and the talons, she just looked like a parrot-coloured turkey."
Nick shook his head, smiling at the idea.
"Do you have any idea where or when we were?" She asked him, curiously.
"A vague guess. Tell me more. Were there any oceans nearby?"
"No, just a lake. We had to stay away from it though. It was volcanic and looked very active. Not to mention the predators in there, early Croc's and this weird creature that had four legs but spent most of its time in the water. It looked a bit like a croc but Abby said it was a mammal. It used to come in land a bit and lie in wait for any prey."
"Sounds like an early whale."
"A whale!"
Cutter nodded seriously. "An Ambulocetus."
"It looked nothing like a whale."
"Nothing like a modern whale. I reckon you were in the Eocene Era, 40, 50 million years ago."
"Jeez. And the Turkey-saurous?"
"Possibly a giant Gastornis. It was in the early days of the mammals that birds got a brief look in at top of the food chain. "
"They made the most it." Claudia told him. "It was so strange, like we were on another planet. Every time you saw something familiar, something that reminded you of home, a dinosaur would wonder past, or a creature that also looked by a rhino but wasn't, or you'd look out at the seas but know you can't get too close to the shore."
Nick reached out and grabbed her hand, his touch soothing her rising anxiety. With a trembling smile she squeezed it before changing the subject.
"Your turn. Tell me something I've missed."
Nick was quiet for a moment in internal debate, the serious expression on his face sobering.
"It was quiet on the anomaly front for a while. I got a lot of marking done. Then about a month ago, the Forest of Dean anomaly re-opened."
"Our return wasn't the first one?"
"No. That's why there was such a large special forces guard when you came through. I knew it had to happen at some point but seeing it was another thing,"
"What?"
"The future. Helen had come though an anomaly from the future into the Permian. This future predator followed her. She then came here…"
"And it followed her." Claudia finished grimly. "What was it like?"
"A killing machine." Nick told her. "Extraordinary senses, speed, strength."
"Sounds terrifying."
"It was. They are. Helen, Ryan and I went back to the Permian with a Special Forces team to lead it back and destroy any other predators that made it through the anomaly after Helen. It did not end well. The Special Forces team was slaughtered, Ryan almost killed and if it hadn't been for a foul tempered Gorgonopsid…"
"My God." Claudia breathed.
"Yeah you didn't miss too much…"
Abby crept up the stairs quietly, her socked feet making no sound against the carpet stairs. She had become concerned when neither the Professor nor Claudia had come down for breakfast and when ten o'clock came and went she decided to check up on them. The door to Claudia's room was slightly open, so she stuck her head around the door and looked in.
Claudia was curled up on the bed, on top of the quilt, half sitting up on the pillows she hugged sound asleep. At the other end of the bed Cutter slept awkwardly, slouched down against the footboard at the end of the bed, one foot on the floor, the other stretched out along the bed. It was a cute scene. Leaving them to their rest, she crept back down the stairs and scrawled a note that she left on the fridge.
Conner had promised to take her to see Rex.