fredbassett

Title : Cool Kids
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : OCs, Ryan, Stephen, Ditzy
Disclaimer : Not mine (except the OCs), no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Summary : Life isn’t easy when you want to get in with the cool kids.
A/N : Written for the

primeval_denial monthly challenge, for the quote: “Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero.” - Ursula K Le Guin.

“I told you so!” Rory Calvert folded his arms and grinned maliciously.

“It was here!” Billy Gregg stared in dismay at the empty space where his big surprise had been. This was meant to have earned him a place in the ranks of the cool kids, the ones everyone looked up to and wanted to be like. Now it had all gone wrong. “Honest it was, Rory, cross my heart and…”

“Hope to die?” The grin had morphed into a full blown sneer. “Jeez, who the fuck says that any more? You sound like my gran. Although if you fancy dying…”

Rory’s acolytes sniggered loudly.

His girlfriend, Kylie Morris, was leaning against a tree smoking a cigarette that she’d nicked off one of the younger kids at school, while her friend Megan took a swig direct from the neck of a bottle of vodka she’d lifted from Mr Patel’s Eight Till Late. They both stared contemptuously at Billy, leaving him wondering how he’d ever thought they’d be friends with him. They just thought he was a complete munter.

“It was here,” Billy repeated, pointing at the straggly grass in the middle of the copse of trees where the local kids hung out. The undergrowth was littered with beer cans, broken bottles, used condoms, plastic bags and other detritus. But, less than an hour ago, it had been home to the biggest fucking Christmas tree light that Billy had ever seen, just hanging in the air, twirling around, its light reflecting off the broken glass on the ground.

Billy had reached out to touch it and had felt a prickle on his skin, like the sort of shock you got sometimes off a supermarket trolley. He’d pulled his hand back pretty smartish. But now, it was as though the fucking thing had never, ever existed and Billy knew that wasn’t right. He’s seen it. He’d fucking seen it!

Before Rory had chance to take the piss even more, the air in front of Billy’s nose shimmered like a summer heat haze and the light burst into life again, looking like someone had smashed an enormous bottle of vodka in the air. The fragments of light twisted and turned like a living thing and Billy could feel the familiar prickle on his skin.

Kylie and Megan both squealed like a pair of fighting cats.

Something in the air shot past Billy at speed.

“Fucking thing’s taken my fucking phone!” one of the other boys yelled. Jason Knight stared down at his empty hand, as though that would suddenly make his phone reappear.

Billy looked mutinously at the other kids and wrestled down the temptation to rub their noses in it. He’d told them he’d seen something fucking amazing and not one of them had believed him. But he knew perfectly well that even a hint of an ‘I told you so’ would end up with him nose down in a pile of dog shit.

“Get my fucking phone back, you fucking retard!” Jason yelled, giving Billy a hard shove between the shoulder blades.

He stumbled forward into the light, feeling the static prickle running all over his body. It wasn’t painful, just well weird, but what was even weirder was that instead of the scrubby bit of woodland next to the playing field, Billy was now in the middle of something that looked like the tropical zone in the Eden Project. They’d gone there on a school trip and Billy had loved it, even though it had made him all hot and sweaty inside the big anorak his mum had insisted on him wearing. He hadn’t dared leave it on the coach in case one of the other kids had got back there before him and stashed it somewhere…

A flash of bright feathers attracted Billy’s attention as something dashed into the shelter of a large, overhanging fern. Billy couldn’t work out how the fricking hell he’d ended up in Cornwall when he’d started out in Croydon, but he knew he needed to find Jason Knight’s sodding phone. The bastard had mugged a kid for it in Streatham only a couple of days ago and he’d been flashing it around ever since.

Billy picked up a lump of wood and started poking around in the smaller ferns on the ground. He’d already started to sweat from the heat, just like he’d done in the Eden Project, but at least he didn’t have that ruddy yellow anorak on.

“Gotcha!” The phone had landed right in the middle of a patch of tall bright green plants that looked a bit like the horsetails that grew in the back lane near his granddad’s allotment. Gramps used them to scour the bottom of his kettle when it got all black from his little gas stove.

He grabbed hold of the phone and shoved it in his pocket to stop it disappearing again. As soon as he’d picked it up, he could feel something unseen trying to tug it out of his grip but he wasn’t for letting go. If Jason Knight was going to get the phone back, Billy wanted to be the one to get the credit for it.

Another bright flash in the undergrowth made him jump like a scared cat. Something shot past him at high speed, heading straight for the middle of the light. Before Billy ha chance to react, another two things ran past, hot on the trail of the first one, all equally colourful. They were bigger than the turkeys he’d seen on a farm in Norfolk when he went to stay with Aunty Pru, but not as fat. These were more like racing turkeys than the big ones sitting around in a field all day waiting to get eaten.

With the lump of wood still clutched in one hand, Billy followed the racing turkeys back through the ball of light.

The cool air was great after the thick, damp heat of wherever he’d just been, but the sight of one of the brightly coloured creatures backing Jason Knight against one of the thin trees and doing its best to rip a chunk out of his leg made him wasn’t quite so great. Jason was screaming like a girl and batting frantically at the bird with his hands.

The other two bird-things had pinned Kylie and Megan up against another tree and were staring at them, chittering menacingly like something out of Jurassic World.

Billy had liked dinosaur books as a kid and he’d seen pictures of things like that, but he hadn’t expected to see anything like this in real life. He liked this a lot less than the films.

Rory Calvert took one look at what was happening to his friends and promptly turned tail and legged it.

Megan Brown chucked what was left in the vodka bottle at the bird-things but it didn’t do much good. One of them lunged at her and came away with a mouthful of her bright pink puffa jacket. She kicked out at it, but three inch platforms weren’t exactly made for high kicks and she wobbled unsteadily, grabbing Kylie’s shoulder for balance. The pair of them tottered like his dad’s rickety stepladder then fell over, yelling almost as loudly as Jason.

Billy swung the lump of wood in his hand and thumped one of the bird-things as it lunged again at Megan’s jacket. It squawked and turned on him, hissing like a snake.

Megan picked up an empty beer can and threw it hard at her attacker. It was good shot.

“I only got this last week!” she yelled, staring angrily at the padding spilling from the rips in her pink jacket. “Fucker!” Struggling to her feet despite the daft shoes, she snatched up the vodka bottle by the neck and started to swing it menacingly. She gestured to Jason, wild-eyed and frantic, and said to Billy, “Do something!”

Billy pulled a face, but did as he was told. “Oi, you!”

The bird-thing turned around at the challenge and Kyle Morris promptly smacked it straight in the mouth with a large stone. Billy took advantage of its surprise and promptly played Whack-a-Rat again with his branch. It fluffed up its feathers, making it look twice as large and lunged at him again.

The fuckers were fast, and Jason Knight was no sodding use. His designer jeans were ripped and there was a wet stain spreading across his crotch. Billy didn’t exactly blame him for pissing himself, but it hadn’t done much for Jason’s hard-man image. The girls were picking up whatever they could find and chucking a hail of missiles at the birds, while Billy did his best to intercept them if they looked like getting too close.

“Need to make a run for it,” Billy panted. “Grab Jason and I’ll cover you.”

Megan threw him a dubious look.

“Do it!” Billy urged. He turned to face the three bird-things, trying to look braver than he felt. His gramps had told him once that animals could scent fear, so they’d probably know perfectly well he was close to shitting himself, but with Megan and Kylie watching, he wasn’t going to do what Rory Calvert had done and just leg it. Like it or not, they were in this together.

Trying to stay steady on their feet, the two girls hauled Jason to his feet.

Billy landed a good smack on one of the birds, sending it flying, but the fucking things never stayed down for long.

It started to scrabble to its feet but then suddenly fell over again, its scaly yellow claws tightening up as it lay there twitching.

“We’ll take it from here,” a calm voice said.

Billy turned around and saw a big bloke dressed in black, military-looking gear appear amongst the trees. He had a rifle of some sort in his arms and promptly dropped another one of the birds. There was no blood and no feathers and, even more weirdly, no noise.

Another bloke stepped up next to him and took down the third of the birds y pointing the same sort of gun at it and firing. This time Billy saw something that looked like a static charge flash out.

“How many of them are there?” the new bloke demanded. He was even taller than the first guy, but was dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a grey shirt.

“Just the three, I think,” Billy said. “They came from there.” He pointed at the ball of light.

The tall, dark-haired guy nodded. “Did any of you go through?”

“Me,” Billy admitted. “But only for a minute.”

The blond guy in black gave him an approving look. “You did well, all of you.”

More big blokes in black arrived, all carrying the same weird-looking guns. One of them took one look at Jason Knight and promptly slung his gun over his shoulder. There were tears streaming down Jason’s face, mingling with snot and blood as he clutched at his leg. The bloke swung him up into his arms, even though Jason was no light-weight. Not with all the Big Macs he like to stuff down his gob. “Come on, lad, let’s get you sorted out.”

“Take the rest with you, Ditz,” the blond bloke ordered.

Billy and the girls were only too glad to get the fuck out of there. Billy kept hold of the lump of wood and Megan was still swinging the vodka bottle by the neck.

“That little prick Calvert legged it,” she said darkly. “Reckon you can do better than him, Ky,” she said scornfully.

“He can fuck right off,” Kylie agreed. “Don’t reckon much to yours, either, Meg. I’d drop Jase, if I were you, an’ all.”

The two girls linked arms with Billy and they walked out of the trees together, heads held high.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

goldarrow

That was so true-to-life.
The descriptions of the actions was beautifully clear and very exciting.
Good for Billy, getting (both) the girl(s) - though I don't envy him having to make a decision between them later!

Mmmmmmm - the rescuers. Just the descriptions were enough to know exactly who each one was. Perfect!