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fredbassettTitle : Within These Walls, Chapter 29 of 30
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 18
Characters : Ryan, Stephen, Becker, Nick, Danny, Abby, Jenny, Lyle
Disclaimer : Not mine (except the OCs), no money made, don’t sue.
Word Count : 59,000 words in 30 chapters of approx. 1,500 – 2,500 words each
Spoilers : None
Summary : Ending up in Dartmoor prison for refusing to recant their belief in evolution is only the start of the problems facing Nick, Stephen and Connor. And Sir James Lester soon ends up with other problems on his hands than just an over-crowded prison population.
A/N : For acknowledgments etc please see Part 1.
Stephen swung his rifle up again, about to empty an entire clip into the charging gorgonopsid, but before he had a chance to squeeze the trigger, the sound of a vehicle engine screeching towards them overrode the roar from the creature.
A silver Hilux shot out of the mist and drove straight into their attacker, slamming into the gorgonopsid and knocking it off its feet. Much as Stephen hated killing any living thing, he knew that this was no time to be ruled by his principles, and besides, they’d hardly be altering the course of evolution by killing one creature from a time when something like 96% of life on earth was going to be wiped out anyway.
He changed his aim and then fired, and Ryan’s rifle discharged as one with his. The creature jerked as the bullets struck its skull, punching through leather-hard skin, thick bone and hitting home into its brain. In a heartbeat, the gorgonopsid was dead.
The door of the Hilux swung open and Captain Becker jumped lightly down onto the road, staring down at their dead attacker with a look of complete amazement on his face.
“What kept you?” Ryan demanded, dropping the spent magazine out of his M4 and slamming another one home in its place. “And don’t tell me you got stuck at a red light.”
“Already got six points on my licence, mate. Couldn’t afford to get another ticket.” Becker grinned at Ryan, not a hair out of place despite the standard of his driving, and then went back to staring at the dead creature. “Christ on a crutch, you’ve had all the bloody fun.”
“I thought you had the privilege of watching Gordie Frazer get ripped to shit?”
Becker’s grin widened. “I missed the actual event, but I saw what was left after they’d finished with him, and I have to admit that Joe Wilder and I weren’t weeping any tears over that little shit.”
“Neither is anyone else.”
Stephen felt a grim satisfaction at hearing those words. Prison gossip had already passed around lurid versions of what had happened to him at Gordie Frazer’s hands and knowing the man wasn’t able to gloat any more gave him a certain grim satisfaction.
Ryan switched his attention back to the stricken minibus. “Come on, we need to get that back on the road before any more of those fuckers decide to join the party. Hart, keep watch over the kids. We’re going to need to get them out of the bus while we shift it.”
As the mist closed in around them again, Stephen stood at the side of the road, with a bunch of terrified children clustered around him, although he had to admit that most of them seemed to be coping better than their teacher, who was still red-eyed and shaking like a leaf. He steered her away from the side of the road and got her to sit down on a granite boulder. She looked up at him gratefully but clearly was too shocked to be much use. The children seemed to have the resilience of youth, and with the ghoulishness of kids everywhere were busy staring at the bodies of the dead creatures.
“Is that a real dinosaur?” one of the boys asked, looking down at the corpse of the gorgonopsid.
“Technically, it’s not actually a dinosaur.”
“Looks like one to me,” the boy said. He aimed an experimental kick at the body. It had about as much effect as kicking a brick wall. “Used to have a book with ‘em in, but then they took it away and said it wasn’t true.”
“Looks true to me,” commented one of the other kids. “What’s it doing here?”
“Noah wouldn’t let it on the ark,” one of the girls said. “That’s why they all died out. We learnt that at Sunday school.”
“My dad says Sunday school’s a load of old bollocks.”
One of the other boys dug his friend sharply in the ribs and gave a wary glance at Stephen and the soldiers.
Stephen wanted to agree with the boy – and his dad – but in a country where doubting the literal truth of the Bible got you banged up in prison until you recanted your non-belief that didn’t seem fair on the kid. The lad was going to need to learn to keep his views to himself.
“Can we go and look at the other one?” The one who’d done the rib-digging pointed at the carcass of the Andrewsarchus.
Stephen shook his head. The body of the driver was on the other side of the huge, brindled predator and he wasn’t a pretty sight. The look one of the slightly older boys gave him told Stephen that some of the children were all too well aware of why he was keeping them so close to him. The same boy promptly provided a distraction by asking Stephen about his rifle. That, and the creative swearing coming from the soldiers as they started to tow the minibus out of the ditch, provided enough of a distraction.
The only problem they were now faced with was where to take the kids. With anomalies opening in both the prison and Princetown, it was hard to know where might be safe. Ryan ended up taking the decision that they would be better getting the kids and the people involved in the other accident off the moor to somewhere there was at least a chance of keeping them safe, so for now, the prison was the obvious place. If necessary they could be kept in the induction area until they knew what kind of spin the authorities were going to put on what had happened.
* * * * *
As they approached the prison gates, Stephen could see a pall of dark smoke further down the road, rising slowly in the air and mingling with the damp, grey mist. He wound the window of the Range Rover down and sniffed the air.
“That’s coming from a car fire,” he told Ryan.
“Looks like more than one,” Ryan agreed.
The vehicles came to a halt in the outer courtyard. Ryan left Becker and Ditzy giving orders to the kids and the other civilians and beckoned to Stephen. “Come on, I expect that’s where we’re going to find Cutter and the others. If something’s been blown up, Lyle won’t be far away.”
With Finn and Blade behind him, Ryan broke into a run. The smoke hadn’t been that far away, so there was no point in adding their vehicles to the mix. Stephen lengthened his stride and caught up with the soldiers, taking his place at Ryan’s side.
The sound of an exploding fuel tank was followed by a yell of: “I told you there was a use for Smart cars, Danny boy!”
They rounded a slight bend in the road to a sight that looked like just about every car in Princetown was on fire, but even the wreaths of foul-smelling smoke couldn’t totally hide the sight of the anomaly, shining like a jewel in a particularly noxious crown. That wasn’t the most impressive sight, though. That accolade went to the vast bulk currently lumbering in the direction of the anomaly itself.
A small knot of people were standing some way behind a burning car. Stephen presumed it was the Smart car Lyle had been referring to, but it was hard to tell now as flames were leaping in the air around it, wrestling with the smoke for dominance. Stephen could see Cutter, with Connor at his side. Standing slightly further away, recognisable by her bleached blonde hair was Abby Maitland, the animal expert from Wellington zoo. At her side was a taller woman, smartly dressed, a pair of high-heeled shoes dangling from one hand, and strands of her dark hair flying freely around her face, escaping from what looked like a once-neat coiffure,
From what Stephen could see, two cars had been positioned between the anomaly and the prison, on either side of the road, and then deliberately set on fire. More smoke was coming from behind the creature, and it looked very much like a series of car fires had been used as a means of herding the huge dinosaur in the direction it needed to go – back to its own time.
As they ran up to join the others, Cutter turned to Stephen, a huge grin on his friend’s face. “It’s working, it’s bloody working! Stephen, we’ve managed to get a diplodocus to go the way we wanted it to go!”
Stephen laughed, his eyes fixed on the creature as it took another step towards the anomaly. “Cutter, if anyone could persuade something that size to do as it’s told, it’d be you.”
Cutter laughed with him and rubbed a hand across a very sweaty forehead, smearing smoke smuts across his face and clearly not caring. “I just thought up the idea of fire and smoke. We’ve got Danny and Lyle to thanks for the fine details.”
“Best bloody fun I’ve had for years, Prof!” Lyle declared.
“Does Lester know?” Ryan asked.
“We thought we’d better wait until it’s gone before we tell him the size of the bill,” Lyle said. “But I bet we can leave it to Jenny to spin a good yarn for the insurance companies.” He shot the dark-haired woman a grin.
“I thought we were going to take it out of your wages, Lyle,” Jenny retorted, but she was smiling as well, clearly buoyed up on the same adrenaline high as the others.
It looked like they’d gone up against one of the largest creatures ever to have walked the earth and actually seemed to be winning.
“Come on, beauty,” Abby murmured, a rapt look on her face as the diplodocus stuck its head through the anomaly for a moment.
When the creature pulled its head back and looked around, Stephen knew his friend’s crazy plan had worked. Beyond the anomaly lay fresh air, on this side was billowing smoke so thick with the reek of oil and diesel that Stephen already wanted to cough his guts up and he’d only been standing there for a few moments. It wasn’t a hard choice to make, even for something that probably wasn’t very bright. He knew what he’d choose. And for a moment, it crossed Stephen’s mind to make the same choice. A world without human beings held a certain amount of appeal.
“Go on, you know you want to,” Cutter said encouragingly.
Stephen smiled at the unintended irony of his friend’s words as he spoke to the unheeding dinosaur. Stephen did want to go, but there was no way he would leave his friends behind, no matter how much appeal a world unspoiled by humans might hold. They were all in this madness together, and they’d given their word to Lester that they wouldn’t do a bunk.
“Go home,” Cutter whispered, his whole attention on the massive animal that he was trying to bend to his will.
The diplodocus did indeed want to go home. It took one last look around, then ducked its head and proceeded to make its way slowly back through the anomaly. It took several minutes for the journey back into the past to be completed, but eventually, the tip of its long tail disappeared, shooting out of sight like a bullwhip being abruptly snatched back.
Led by Danny and Lyle, the onlookers started whooping and high-fiving each other, laughing and talking loudly all at once. Connor grabbed hold of Abby’s hands and twirled her around in a circle and Stephen clapped Cutter on the back. From what Stephen had just seen, Cutter and his team had a right to be pleased with themselves.
But with the huge dinosaur safely back in its own time and, if they were lucky, the threats from the other anomalies now contained, the question of what would happen to the prisoners who had helped then loomed large.
Stephen just hoped Lester would honour the promise he’d made to Cutter. But what alternative there was to a return to a cell in a riot-torn prison, he simply didn’t know, and from the troubled look in Ryan’s grey eyes as he looked at the small knot of civilians all laughing and talking at once, Stephen had a feeling that similar thoughts were going through the captain’s mind.
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 18
Characters : Ryan, Stephen, Becker, Nick, Danny, Abby, Jenny, Lyle
Disclaimer : Not mine (except the OCs), no money made, don’t sue.
Word Count : 59,000 words in 30 chapters of approx. 1,500 – 2,500 words each
Spoilers : None
Summary : Ending up in Dartmoor prison for refusing to recant their belief in evolution is only the start of the problems facing Nick, Stephen and Connor. And Sir James Lester soon ends up with other problems on his hands than just an over-crowded prison population.
A/N : For acknowledgments etc please see Part 1.
Stephen swung his rifle up again, about to empty an entire clip into the charging gorgonopsid, but before he had a chance to squeeze the trigger, the sound of a vehicle engine screeching towards them overrode the roar from the creature.
A silver Hilux shot out of the mist and drove straight into their attacker, slamming into the gorgonopsid and knocking it off its feet. Much as Stephen hated killing any living thing, he knew that this was no time to be ruled by his principles, and besides, they’d hardly be altering the course of evolution by killing one creature from a time when something like 96% of life on earth was going to be wiped out anyway.
He changed his aim and then fired, and Ryan’s rifle discharged as one with his. The creature jerked as the bullets struck its skull, punching through leather-hard skin, thick bone and hitting home into its brain. In a heartbeat, the gorgonopsid was dead.
The door of the Hilux swung open and Captain Becker jumped lightly down onto the road, staring down at their dead attacker with a look of complete amazement on his face.
“What kept you?” Ryan demanded, dropping the spent magazine out of his M4 and slamming another one home in its place. “And don’t tell me you got stuck at a red light.”
“Already got six points on my licence, mate. Couldn’t afford to get another ticket.” Becker grinned at Ryan, not a hair out of place despite the standard of his driving, and then went back to staring at the dead creature. “Christ on a crutch, you’ve had all the bloody fun.”
“I thought you had the privilege of watching Gordie Frazer get ripped to shit?”
Becker’s grin widened. “I missed the actual event, but I saw what was left after they’d finished with him, and I have to admit that Joe Wilder and I weren’t weeping any tears over that little shit.”
“Neither is anyone else.”
Stephen felt a grim satisfaction at hearing those words. Prison gossip had already passed around lurid versions of what had happened to him at Gordie Frazer’s hands and knowing the man wasn’t able to gloat any more gave him a certain grim satisfaction.
Ryan switched his attention back to the stricken minibus. “Come on, we need to get that back on the road before any more of those fuckers decide to join the party. Hart, keep watch over the kids. We’re going to need to get them out of the bus while we shift it.”
As the mist closed in around them again, Stephen stood at the side of the road, with a bunch of terrified children clustered around him, although he had to admit that most of them seemed to be coping better than their teacher, who was still red-eyed and shaking like a leaf. He steered her away from the side of the road and got her to sit down on a granite boulder. She looked up at him gratefully but clearly was too shocked to be much use. The children seemed to have the resilience of youth, and with the ghoulishness of kids everywhere were busy staring at the bodies of the dead creatures.
“Is that a real dinosaur?” one of the boys asked, looking down at the corpse of the gorgonopsid.
“Technically, it’s not actually a dinosaur.”
“Looks like one to me,” the boy said. He aimed an experimental kick at the body. It had about as much effect as kicking a brick wall. “Used to have a book with ‘em in, but then they took it away and said it wasn’t true.”
“Looks true to me,” commented one of the other kids. “What’s it doing here?”
“Noah wouldn’t let it on the ark,” one of the girls said. “That’s why they all died out. We learnt that at Sunday school.”
“My dad says Sunday school’s a load of old bollocks.”
One of the other boys dug his friend sharply in the ribs and gave a wary glance at Stephen and the soldiers.
Stephen wanted to agree with the boy – and his dad – but in a country where doubting the literal truth of the Bible got you banged up in prison until you recanted your non-belief that didn’t seem fair on the kid. The lad was going to need to learn to keep his views to himself.
“Can we go and look at the other one?” The one who’d done the rib-digging pointed at the carcass of the Andrewsarchus.
Stephen shook his head. The body of the driver was on the other side of the huge, brindled predator and he wasn’t a pretty sight. The look one of the slightly older boys gave him told Stephen that some of the children were all too well aware of why he was keeping them so close to him. The same boy promptly provided a distraction by asking Stephen about his rifle. That, and the creative swearing coming from the soldiers as they started to tow the minibus out of the ditch, provided enough of a distraction.
The only problem they were now faced with was where to take the kids. With anomalies opening in both the prison and Princetown, it was hard to know where might be safe. Ryan ended up taking the decision that they would be better getting the kids and the people involved in the other accident off the moor to somewhere there was at least a chance of keeping them safe, so for now, the prison was the obvious place. If necessary they could be kept in the induction area until they knew what kind of spin the authorities were going to put on what had happened.
* * * * *
As they approached the prison gates, Stephen could see a pall of dark smoke further down the road, rising slowly in the air and mingling with the damp, grey mist. He wound the window of the Range Rover down and sniffed the air.
“That’s coming from a car fire,” he told Ryan.
“Looks like more than one,” Ryan agreed.
The vehicles came to a halt in the outer courtyard. Ryan left Becker and Ditzy giving orders to the kids and the other civilians and beckoned to Stephen. “Come on, I expect that’s where we’re going to find Cutter and the others. If something’s been blown up, Lyle won’t be far away.”
With Finn and Blade behind him, Ryan broke into a run. The smoke hadn’t been that far away, so there was no point in adding their vehicles to the mix. Stephen lengthened his stride and caught up with the soldiers, taking his place at Ryan’s side.
The sound of an exploding fuel tank was followed by a yell of: “I told you there was a use for Smart cars, Danny boy!”
They rounded a slight bend in the road to a sight that looked like just about every car in Princetown was on fire, but even the wreaths of foul-smelling smoke couldn’t totally hide the sight of the anomaly, shining like a jewel in a particularly noxious crown. That wasn’t the most impressive sight, though. That accolade went to the vast bulk currently lumbering in the direction of the anomaly itself.
A small knot of people were standing some way behind a burning car. Stephen presumed it was the Smart car Lyle had been referring to, but it was hard to tell now as flames were leaping in the air around it, wrestling with the smoke for dominance. Stephen could see Cutter, with Connor at his side. Standing slightly further away, recognisable by her bleached blonde hair was Abby Maitland, the animal expert from Wellington zoo. At her side was a taller woman, smartly dressed, a pair of high-heeled shoes dangling from one hand, and strands of her dark hair flying freely around her face, escaping from what looked like a once-neat coiffure,
From what Stephen could see, two cars had been positioned between the anomaly and the prison, on either side of the road, and then deliberately set on fire. More smoke was coming from behind the creature, and it looked very much like a series of car fires had been used as a means of herding the huge dinosaur in the direction it needed to go – back to its own time.
As they ran up to join the others, Cutter turned to Stephen, a huge grin on his friend’s face. “It’s working, it’s bloody working! Stephen, we’ve managed to get a diplodocus to go the way we wanted it to go!”
Stephen laughed, his eyes fixed on the creature as it took another step towards the anomaly. “Cutter, if anyone could persuade something that size to do as it’s told, it’d be you.”
Cutter laughed with him and rubbed a hand across a very sweaty forehead, smearing smoke smuts across his face and clearly not caring. “I just thought up the idea of fire and smoke. We’ve got Danny and Lyle to thanks for the fine details.”
“Best bloody fun I’ve had for years, Prof!” Lyle declared.
“Does Lester know?” Ryan asked.
“We thought we’d better wait until it’s gone before we tell him the size of the bill,” Lyle said. “But I bet we can leave it to Jenny to spin a good yarn for the insurance companies.” He shot the dark-haired woman a grin.
“I thought we were going to take it out of your wages, Lyle,” Jenny retorted, but she was smiling as well, clearly buoyed up on the same adrenaline high as the others.
It looked like they’d gone up against one of the largest creatures ever to have walked the earth and actually seemed to be winning.
“Come on, beauty,” Abby murmured, a rapt look on her face as the diplodocus stuck its head through the anomaly for a moment.
When the creature pulled its head back and looked around, Stephen knew his friend’s crazy plan had worked. Beyond the anomaly lay fresh air, on this side was billowing smoke so thick with the reek of oil and diesel that Stephen already wanted to cough his guts up and he’d only been standing there for a few moments. It wasn’t a hard choice to make, even for something that probably wasn’t very bright. He knew what he’d choose. And for a moment, it crossed Stephen’s mind to make the same choice. A world without human beings held a certain amount of appeal.
“Go on, you know you want to,” Cutter said encouragingly.
Stephen smiled at the unintended irony of his friend’s words as he spoke to the unheeding dinosaur. Stephen did want to go, but there was no way he would leave his friends behind, no matter how much appeal a world unspoiled by humans might hold. They were all in this madness together, and they’d given their word to Lester that they wouldn’t do a bunk.
“Go home,” Cutter whispered, his whole attention on the massive animal that he was trying to bend to his will.
The diplodocus did indeed want to go home. It took one last look around, then ducked its head and proceeded to make its way slowly back through the anomaly. It took several minutes for the journey back into the past to be completed, but eventually, the tip of its long tail disappeared, shooting out of sight like a bullwhip being abruptly snatched back.
Led by Danny and Lyle, the onlookers started whooping and high-fiving each other, laughing and talking loudly all at once. Connor grabbed hold of Abby’s hands and twirled her around in a circle and Stephen clapped Cutter on the back. From what Stephen had just seen, Cutter and his team had a right to be pleased with themselves.
But with the huge dinosaur safely back in its own time and, if they were lucky, the threats from the other anomalies now contained, the question of what would happen to the prisoners who had helped then loomed large.
Stephen just hoped Lester would honour the promise he’d made to Cutter. But what alternative there was to a return to a cell in a riot-torn prison, he simply didn’t know, and from the troubled look in Ryan’s grey eyes as he looked at the small knot of civilians all laughing and talking at once, Stephen had a feeling that similar thoughts were going through the captain’s mind.
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no subject
Date: 2014-06-03 07:33 pm (UTC)And I loved Becker hitting the gorgonopsid with the Hilux (with his hair still immaculate *g*). Wonderful how you entwined the scene from the series in the fic.
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Date: 2014-06-11 09:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-03 09:07 pm (UTC)Hope Stephen and Ryan are worrying over nothing.
*purrs*
*meep* Only one more part to go :(
no subject
Date: 2014-06-11 09:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-03 10:47 pm (UTC)"Noah wouldn't let them on the arc" Yeah, that's scary.
Actually, Stephen's thoughts mirrored my own. They could have gone through at any time, but then, they're men of honor so that just wouldn't fly.
**meep** last chapter coming up.
ps: Loved the comments about our good buddy Gordy. lol
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Date: 2014-06-11 09:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-04 08:59 am (UTC)And I love the bit where Stephen thinks about going through the anomaly.
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Date: 2014-06-11 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-05 07:28 pm (UTC)But yes, what will happen now...
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Date: 2014-06-11 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-06 08:30 pm (UTC)Great chapter! Love Becker arriving to the rescue!
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Date: 2014-06-11 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-08 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-11 09:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-12 09:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-22 11:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-21 11:15 pm (UTC)LOL at Becker being cross at missing out on the action.
The slow progress of the diplodocus through the anomaly was very touching - for it's own sake, quite apart from Stephen's private musings.
Danny and Lyle have clearly had all too much fun with those explosions.
no subject
Date: 2014-06-22 11:39 am (UTC)