Kingdom Of The Nanosaurs (trilogy)

Kingdom Of The Nanosaurs - chapter 15

PART THREE

15. Heading for London

Morgan awoke with a gasp. Musty sunlight was streaming through the bedroom window and he could hear Lin humming tunelessly in the kitchen and the sound of a kettle boiling. For a moment he had no idea where he was. He stared around the room, then he remembered. He got out of bed stiffly and looked out of the window. All was still. The barn door was partially open but there was no one to be seen. The landscape looked markedly friendlier under a blue sky with high flying clouds pushed by a sea breeze. He went into the bathroom and saw Lin brewing tea and making toast. The last tin of beans was heating up in the microwave and the television was on in background. Morgan cleaned his teeth carefully, touching his bruised jaw and loose tooth gingerly and washed the nightmare of Inish Crag out of his head. Lin poked her head around the bathroom door.

“Sleep well?” asked Lin. “I did. I feel a hundred percent. Oh, I did the I-Ching this morning and it was really interesting. We’re going to find a new friend and there’s going to be a journey but it might be dangerous. We got the opposite of a double strike and our hexagrams show advancement to high status.”

“Wow!” remarked Morgan then he put his fingers to his lips. A faint whistling noise was coming from outside the building. Lin stopped what she was doing and looked scared. Her eyes were open wide staring at Morgan. He went over to the living room window and peeked out behind the curtain to a view that overlooked the harbour. Hovering some thirty feet above the water causing mini waves to race across the surface was a ninety feet long air shark. The monster moved its tail fins slowly and its eye lens transmitters were swiveling this way and that making a slight whistling sound as they did so but then they stopped and pointed straight at the apartment. Without showing himself, Morgan scanned the harbour front and the roads leading from it. As before, there was no sign of life. There were no white clad technicians armed with automatic weapons hunting the streets. He let his pent up breath out slowly. The air shark began to cruise around Brianstown displaying its titanium teeth that shimmered in the sun making its mouth resemble a string of pearls.

“Maybe they’ll be waiting for us,” whispered Lin.

“We’ll have to take that chance,” Morgan replied. “They won’t imagine we were able to cross that stretch of water. They’re just double-checking. If they can’t find us quickly they’ll probably go back to the island.”

Lin joined Morgan at the window and looked out. “Oh my God!” she let her breath escape, “it’s monstrous.”

“Down!” ordered Morgan pulling Lin to the floor and crouching tight up to the wall under the window. The whistling noise increased in intensity until the window-panes steamed up and the giant head of the air shark pressed against the glass. They could hear its recording eyes swiveling and rotating, examining every angle of the room. For what seemed an age the air shark peered in through the window. Eventually it moved away and Morgan raised his head to look out while Lin crawled back to the kitchen. The body of the nano shark was passing outside the window. It took at least a minute to reach the tail fin, by Morgan’s estimation.

“Breakfast,” said Lin bringing out plates of beans on toast and mugs of steaming tea. They ate and drank mechanically while watching the news programmes that showed footage from various parts of the globe where there was looting, violence, queues outside supermarkets and people in fields uprooting vegetables. There were scenes of joy too as nanosaurs of every bizarre type and description seemed to have become part of society in no time at all. They watched images of nanosaur hawks transporting people up and down Madison Avenue in New York. Then there were perfumed dogs and bouncing kangaroids delighting crowds in Trafalgar Square, London. Footage from Australia showed multicoloured bearoids walking with their owners in front of Sydney Opera House and circling around the Eiffel Tower in Paris were a squadron of air sharks, giant swans and nano bats swooping and fluttering.