Kingdom Of The Nanosaurs (trilogy)

Kingdom Of The Nanosaurs - chapter 16

16. B of the Bang

Lin had stopped crying and wailing. It was doing no good at all. As she flew she was cold even though the sun was warm on her face. The talons of the pterodactyl had wrapped themselves around her shoulders but, although she could feel them, the savage three-inch spikes had not punctured her skin. She was being carried high above the English countryside and down below she could see a motorway snaking its way through fields and small towns.

On either side of her the two other nano reptiles flew effortlessly. She had been through her moment of high panic when she thought she might be eaten before realizing that these creatures did not eat. That was a relief. Why they had snatched her and where they were heading was anyone’s guess.

She was trying to work things out. Were these nano creatures somehow under the control of Marius Natzler? That was possible, she supposed. If not, which was more likely, were they just some kind of aberration; nanosaurs that had gone a bit loopy? In that case, she felt panic rising again, might she not be just dropped like a stone at the whim of this beast? Carefully, she reached up and grasped the pterodactyl’s legs just above the talons. The artificial skin was rough and the tendons inside the leg were like steel hawsers. But at least if it let go of her, she might be able to hang on.

The nano formation of pterodactyls suddenly veered left and seemed to be heading for a large city in the distance, a grey smudge simmering under the red and yellow umbrella of the inversion layer. Trying to relax and quell her fear, Lin allowed herself to gaze around her. It was wonderful to be able to fly and this was the closest she’d ever been to free flight. Here and there she saw nanosaurs. Some strange birds were flying close to the ground and odd shaped creatures could be seen running along streets and in fields. Only the glimmer of the sun’s reflection on the stream of cars moving along the motorway denoted there was normal life anywhere. Morgan and Winston would be really worried. But there was no way of getting in touch since their mobile phones had been ruined.

They were descending now, only a few feet at a time, but they were definitely going down. Lin could make out the details of houses and farms and people. Many of them looked up, pointed and stared. As they approached the outer suburbs of the city Lin could see crowds of people, many in queues, and children in playgrounds. Cars and buses snarled in traffic jams were making slow progress. Horns blew, radios blared, all the sounds and clamour of the city reached her ears including the blare of police sirens. As they flew over at around three hundred feet they caused a stir. Lin could see a few other nanosaurs here and there and quite a number of flying creatures but nothing like these pterodactyls. Lin looked up and immediately swallowed a burst of vertigo. The eyes of her pterodactyl were unreadable, just like black stones in the middle of an ice cream cone.

She was desperately trying to work out where she was. She screwed up her eyes and tried to focus. Maybe a bus would give her a clue. For a minute she stared hard looking for any kind of reference and then she saw it. A double-decker bus was approaching along a busy street and the destination was Trafford Park. She was in Manchester. Just knowing her location seemed to help; it gave her a sense of reality. Suddenly, she went quite cold. Black shadows were appearing; many more of them than she had ever seen before in one place. Below her someone screamed and she heard a woman yell: ‘He’s gone. He was just here.’ There were other cries as individuals suddenly vanished into the black maw of the mysterious shadows. Luckily, it seemed, the shadows couldn’t fly.

Lin was now being carried along Deansgate and the very sight of her and the pterodactyls was causing the milling crowds to stand and stare. Lin saw a policeman with a bouncing meerkat by his side pointing up at them speaking into his radio. At this point, the crowd became dense and Lin could see people waving banners, placards and signs and hear angry voices booming metallically through megaphones. Some kind of march or rally was moving along the street ahead of her.

Further towards the front, a convoy of heavily decorated vehicles was heading out of the city. The cars and vans were brightly painted and could have been part of a circus or a travelling fair. The people in charge of the vans were brightly dressed with painted faces. A Bob Dylan song, ‘Masters Of War’ drifted into the air. As Lin was carried forward she saw the famous Manchester sculpture B of the Bang glowing like a golden starfish only a few hundred yards away.

Next to the remarkable structure a number of white tents had been erected billowing invitingly in the breeze. Behind the sculpture rose the City of Manchester stadium and across the street stood a supermarket with a large, noisy and irate crowd of shoppers queuing and losing patience. The shoppers and the hippies in the bizarre convoy were swapping insults. There was a tense atmosphere that Lin could feel even two hundred feet above the street.

With a sense of rising panic, Lin realized she had reached her destination. The pterodactyls must have recognized something primeval in the barbs of the sculpture, something that called them to roost. Lin could hear a lot of voices now, shouting up at her, some screaming abuse at the nanosaurs, others calling for them to be shot down.

Stillness descended over the watching crowd gazing upward at the spectacle of a small girl dangling from the talons of a giant nano reptile as it hovered with its companions directly over the wicked spikes of the B of the Bang.

“It’s going to drop her,” yelled a voice.

“She’ll be skewered like a kebab,” screamed another.

“Someone shoot the bloody thing,” cried a man whose voice was hoarse from shouting.

The pterodactyls decided they had found a home from home amongst the network of sharpened rods. They began to descend, slowly at first then with increasing speed. Lin could feel the nanosaur’s talons starting to loosen. She tightened her grip on its legs and clamped her eyes tight shut.

Then everything happened all at once. A young man emerged from the hippie group with an air rifle. People yelled at him: if you shoot the monster the girl will be dropped onto the spikes. The young man hesitated. He closed his ears to the screams of the crowd urging him on with conflicting advice and took aim. He squeezed the trigger. The pellet zipped through the air and skimmed the pterodactyl’s head by the width of a feather. The nano beast reacted instinctively, swerving away from its intended roost and letting go of Lin who hung on for a moment or two then could not hold on any longer. She fell towards the ground gathering speed until a dark and dense blackness swallowed her up.