fredbassett | Fic, Falls the Shadow, Part 11, Stephen/Ryan Series 18

Title : Falls the Shadow, Part 11
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Characters : Ryan, Stephen, Lyle & Others
Rating : 18
Disclaimer : Not mine (except Lyle & some of the others), no money made, don’t sue
Spoilers : None.
Summary : A rustle in the undergrowth means more trouble.
A/N : The remainder of this series can be found here

Lyle jogged rapidly up the track. His thumbs were pricking as badly as they’d done on the night of the T rex attack in the Forest of Dean. One itching hand stayed firmly attached to his assault rifle.

Low cloud was settling on the Kentmere fells, bringing down the visibility yet again. The three men he was following had already been swallowed up by the mist.

The soldier’s thoughts drifted as he ran. Part of him wished Ryan had just given the order to beat the truth out of Cutter’s stubborn bitch of a wife. Helen Cutter didn’t lack physical courage, Lyle had seen enough of the woman to know that, but she wasn’t trained to stand up to pain, and her reaction when he’d dislocated her finger down the Devil’s Crowll told him that it probably wouldn’t have taken too much effort to make her cooperate. But information gained by those methods came with no guarantees of reliability, and time wasn’t on their side. Plus the inconvenient fact that beating the crap out of women wasn’t Ryan’s style. Or his own, for that matter, no matter how tempting Helen Cutter made it seem.

Lester had told him that the anomalies were thought to be weakening, which didn’t bode well for their chances of recovering either the kids or Stephen Hart. But they’d just have to make the best of what was turning out to be a bloody bad job and keep looking, even though their intel was worse than fucking useless.

Lyle thumbed the safety catch off his rifle in response to a rustle in the undergrowth off to his left. Bracken waved in the breeze. The soldier hesitated, then kept on moving up the track.

More in hope than expectation, he flicked the switch on his radio headset. A vicious burst of static crackle was all he got in return.

A burst of gun fire ahead of him sounded without any warning. Lyle broke into a run.

The mist swirled, parting for a second to reveal the fractured light of an anomaly, hanging in the air no more than three metres off the path up in an area of the fells where he swore he’d spent almost two hours sitting on his arse on a damp rock the previous night.

Ryan was down on one knee next to the boulder, rifle aimed at something that had risen up out of the bracken. A second burst of automatic fire failed to take the creature down. It lunged forward, displaying something that looked improbably like horns sticking out sideways above its eyes.

The Special Forces captain flung himself sideways and rolled.

Lyle watched as the hillside suddenly came to life with what seemed to be a swarm of ugly looking sods rising up out of the mist, making a bee line for Ryan, Greg Thornton and Calum Richards. The Detective Inspector held his ground and, from what Lyle could see even managed to take one of the bastards down, but the rest kept moving, straight towards the three men, closing in from all sides.

Ryan didn’t hang about to debate what to do next. He snapped off a quick hail of bullets, then took the anomaly at a run. The other two followed.

“Thanks, mate,” muttered Lyle, still some distant away, “leave me to mop ‘em up, why don’t you?”

Four of the creatures broke away from the main pack and went straight after their original quarry, back through the anomaly. The rest stood their ground, heads swivelling to face Lyle, as he approached them at a run. The lieutenant came to a halt about twenty metres away from the dinosaurs and swung his pack off his shoulder, grabbing for something that might give him a chance of turning this into a more even contest.

Him against six of the most monumentally ugly bastards he’d ever had the misfortune to clap eyes on. Not necessarily the best odds he’d faced, but not the worst, either.

The beasts were big, standing at least 5 metres tall. They blended all too well into the dark greeney brown of the bracken, their skin appearing to be composed of a mass of pebbly scales, with bony ridges running along their sides and also down the back of their necks and bodies. Their heads were short, and made them look like they’d run into a brick wall at speed. At first Lyle thought they had enormous eyes on the sides of their heads, then he realised that no, they actually had a bloody great big hole in front of their eye sockets.

An antorbital opening. Christ knows what they were for, but he remembered the name.

The soldier grinned. Something had clearly stuck in his brain from Cutter’s Friday afternoon lectures. Now if he could only get something lodged in their heads, he’d be even happier. Preferably something wearing a steel jacket, delivered at high velocity.

Lyle let out the sort of whistle that used to get him into all kinds of trouble at school.

Six heads turned as one.

The soldier went down on one knee and took careful aim.

* * * * *

Ryan flung himself to one side as he burst out of the anomaly then turned back to, hoping to take advantage of confusion as their pursuers came hurtling after them through the broken light.

His first shots cut a red swathe along a creature’s side, but it kept moving. He fired again, trying for a head shot.

“What the hell are they?” breathed Greg Thornton, scrabbling round for something to use as a weapon as another creature barrelled past him, fortunately without inflicting any damage.

“Angry,” commented D.I. Richards, snapping off a burst of bullets at the fourth of the creatures to come through after them.

“Carnivorous,” said Ryan calmly, emptying an entire clip of bullets into the largest of the dinosaurs. “Cover me!” he ordered, as he changed the magazine, watching in satisfaction as one of the huge animals crumbled to the ground. “One down, three to go. And they don’t half take a lot of lead to stop. Go for head shots. They can take a fuck of a lot of damage to the body, by the look of it.”

One of the dinosaurs turned and started to run, but this time away from them.

“Nice sight,” breathed Greg Thornton.

Calum Richards sucked his breath in sharply, “No, it fucking isn’t ………look!”

Coming towards them at a run were a ragged group of school children, trying hard to stay together, with one adult, a woman with her arm in a sling, bringing up the rear. Something looking like a smaller version of one of the things that had ambushed them on the moor darted forward out of some low growing ferns and made a grab for a child’s arm. One of the group stopped and the blast from both barrels of a shotgun took the creature in the chest and hurled it off its feet.

“Keep running!” yelled the child who’d done the shooting, as he stopped and started to reload the shotgun. He dropped one cartridge in his haste. His companion shoved long blonde hair from around her face with one hand, while grabbing at the fallen cartridge with the other.

Ryan’s heart climbed rapidly up his throat and into his mouth as he watched with a mixture of pride and terror as his daughter calmly handed the cartridge to her companion. Next to them, another kid, a boy, stood his ground with them, fiddling with something in his hands.

Two of the smaller dinosaurs appeared from the long fern fronds, emitting a high pitched hiss, darting their long heads forwards like snakes snapping at a mongoose.

An loud whine came from whatever the boy was holding in his hands and the two creatures veered off to one side, keeping their distance, clearly disliking the ear-splitting noise.

Rifle fire sounded from some distance away, from the cover of what looked like a stand of huge pine trees.

A figure broke from the trees at a fast run, a child held tightly in his arms.

For a second, Ryan was frozen into immobility as he recognised his lover, the lover he’d believed was still somewhere on a hillside millions of years in the future, then training and instinct took over. A carefully aimed burst of semi-automatic fire sent two of the smaller creatures flying backwards. Stephen kept on running and Ryan realised the child in his arms was covered in blood.

Oh fuck!

The first of the kids was now only twenty metres away. A girl. No older than his daughter, with red hair and a pair of glasses balanced precariously on a small, snub nose. The fern fronds in the undergrowth moved and long thin head snaked out. The kid skidded to a halt, swinging ……… a hammer.

Ryan dropped her attacker with three single shots and the girl turned round, grabbed the hand of the boy behind her, took a swipe at the undergrowth with the hammer just for good measure and started running again, throwing the soldier a large smile.

At Ryan’s side, Calum Richards had dropped to his knees, less practiced than the Special Forces captain at shooting an assault rifle from a standing position. The M4 might not be standard issue at Police Training College, but the inspector was still doing a fair job of laying down covering fire without endangering any of the children or their teacher.

The soldier dragged the Glock pistol out of his thigh holster and thrust it at Greg Thornton. “Get the kids back through the anomaly. Lyle will have taken care of the other fuckers by now.”

“That’s Vicky,” breathed her step-father, staring at the rapidly approaching group of children.

Ryan nodded, grey eyes scouring the landscape for threats. His daughter was alive. His lover was alive, although fuck knows what Stephen was doing on the wrong side of an anomaly. But the main thing was that the two most important people in his world were both alive. And he was going to fucking well make sure they stayed that way.

* * * * *

The anomaly flickered.

Greg Thornton arrived at a run onto a mist-covered Cumbrian hillside, his step-daughter no more than two paces behind him.

Four other children followed in quick succession.

Calum Richards came backwards through the dancing light, his rifle dangling from his shoulder and a small, limp figure cradled in his arms, dripping blood. At his side, his nephew was still fiddling with his hearing aid amplifier for maximum effect.

The police inspector threw Lyle a wild eyed look. “Clear?”

The lieutenant nodded, but didn’t stay to make conversation.

Lyle was dimly conscious of being passed by at least one figure, maybe more, as he ran through the shimmering light into the past.

He was greeted by a chaotic scene, straight out of one of his worst nightmares. A child was on the ground, one of the ugly horned buggers was bending over her, jaws agape in classic movie fashion. Another figure – Stephen? – was rolling over and over in an attempt to evade snapping jaws, as a woman passed by him at a run, a child scooped up under one arm, neatly side-stepping both Stephen and the thing that was trying to pin him down.

“Hart! Stay down!” yelled Lyle, taking aim and squeezing the trigger in one fluid movement.

The grenade hit the creature in the stomach, blowing it into messy fragments.

The woman ran on without stopping, diving through the flickering anomaly, the child still clinging to her.

Lyle watched Stephen Hart get to his feet and stare wildly round, his blue eyes seeking out Ryan like a drowning man looking for water. The lieutenant watched the younger man’s mouth moving, forming words that Lyle couldn’t make out, then Hart turned, and ran back the way he’d come. Away from the anomaly.

A predator rose up out of the foliage. Christ, Lyle was really taking a dislike to the bloody things. He jammed another grenade into the launcher attached to his assault rifle and fired. Fuck it, missed the bastard! Getting the trajectory right was a sod, especially when the targets wouldn’t do the decent thing and stay still. A second grenade followed the first, this time to better effect.

“Ryan, grab the last two kids and get the fuck out of here!”

“Blade’s holed up in the trees. His leg’s fucked.” Ryan’s voice sounded preternaturally calm as he watched his lover heading back into danger. “That’s why Hart’s going back.”

Lyle let fly with a quiet, but inventive stream of obscenity, finishing with, “Then get the hell out of here and leave them to me. I think I got the bastards on the other side, but I can’t be sure. Fuck off out of here, Ryan, I’m loaded for bear, trust me! Go on, you’re cramping my style.” The hazel eyed lieutenant shot one last look at his friend as the other man backed towards the flickering anomaly. “And tell Lester I meant what I said on the phone.”

“Jon…..”

“Go!”

Ryan reached out, grabbing the arm of the last two children, and dived back through the anomaly, pulling them both after him.

Seconds later, it winked out of existence.

Lieutenant Jon Lyle took a deep, and slightly shaky breath as he rammed another rifle grenade onto the launcher and called out, “Hart? Blade? I’m coming, ready or not! Last one home writes the report!”

* * * * *

Ryan stared at the hillside in disbelief. It had been there only seconds ago, but now ………now it was gone, taking with it his lover, his best friend and one of his men.

The soldier tore his eyes from the swirling white nothingness of the mist, scanning the fell for threats.

Around them the grass was strewn with blood and dinosaur guts. Lyle hadn’t been in a mood to take prisoners, that was for sure. The small grenades designed to be fired from an attachment on the barrel of the M4 had done a good job of taking their attackers down.

He glanced round him, trying to force his thoughts into some sort of order.

The unconscious kid that Stephen had thrust into Calum Richards’ arms appeared to have the worst injuries. Blood was dripping from light brown hair and running down one pale limp hand. “How bad?” he asked, forcing the words out of a throat that seemed to have grown an extra Adam’s apple.

“Not as bad as it looks, I don’t think,” said the policeman, after a rapid examination of the child’s still form. “The rips on her arm are fairly superficial, but there’s a lump the size of an egg coming up on her forehead.”

“She tripped and hit her head on a tree,” said a quiet voice at his side. His daughter’s hand found his and clung to him. “Three of the bird things grabbed her. Stephen bashed two of them with his rifle and Blade shot the other.”

Ryan squeezed the small hand gently, then pulled his daughter up into his arms for a fierce hug, enjoying the luxury, for an all too brief moment, of burying his face in his daughter’s hair and inhaling deeply, smelling sweat, blood and small girl. She kissed his cheek, snaking both arms around his neck and hugging tightly.

“You came, Daddy, I knew you would.” The breathless voice held an unwavering certainty.

“So did your step-dad,” said Ryan, lowering his daughter to the ground.

Victoria Thornton grinned, and grabbed Greg with her free hand. The tears shining in his eyes said it all, and in a second the blonde haired child was in his arms. The two men faced each other over their daughter’s head and exchanged shaky smiles, then the reality of the situation hit Ryan again with the force of a 10 ton truck.

The anomaly had closed, trapping three men in the past.

Would they be lucky a second time?

Somehow, Ryan doubted it.

Greg Thornton gripped the soldier’s shoulder hard with one hand. “Don’t give up on him, Ryan. We haven’t reached the end of the road yet, I promise you.”

And in the professionally detached part of his mind that hadn’t yet succumbed to the urge to fold in on itself, looking for a safe place to give in to fear, Ryan noticed that the other man had said him, rather than them.

“They’ve got Declan’s notebook, Daddy,” said Vicky, squeezing her father’s hand in an attempt at comfort. “That’s got stuff on all the Gates. We gave it to Blade when he said he’d stay behind and cover us. His leg’s bad, he knew he wouldn’t make it through.” Tears pricked at her eyes and she scrubbed at them with one grimy fist. “There are other Star Gates, loads of them. They’ll get back, I know they will.” Her voice trailed off, and tears started to run down her cheeks. “Stephen saved me from one of the carnotauruses. He shoved his dart gun down its throat.” She squeezed her father’s hand again. “He’ll be all right, I know he will. They’ll all come back, just like we did.”

It had been three years since Ryan had seen his daughter. Three long, lonely, crappy, fucking awful years. And after less than five minutes in each other’s company, Vicky was now doing her best to tell him that his boyfriend would make it back in one piece. And she spoke with such a fierce intensity behind her words that he actually found himself believing her. Even in the soldier’s current state of emotional turmoil, the irony of that wasn’t lost on him.

Two blue eyes stared solemnly up at him out of a face that suddenly seemed far older than its years. Eyes that had faced things out a nightmare. Eyes that had seen the past. And maybe, just maybe, she was right. Maybe Stephen would make it back.

Ryan looked down at his daughter and brushed her filthy hair back from the forehead. “Do a count for me, Vicky. We need to know everyone’s here. Then we need to get you lot back to civilization.”

They were almost back at the vehicles before any of the three men succeeded in getting a mobile signal, then suddenly, all of their phones came to life at once.

Calum Richards rang 999 and demanded ambulances.

Greg Thornton tried calling his wife.

Ryan dialled Lester. “We’ve got the kids and the teacher back, sir, ……….yes, all of them ………….. some injuries, ……….no, we don’t know yet …………” the soldier hesitated. “Sir, I think you ought to get up here……………. Yes, as quickly as you can. I think Miss Brown might need some help containing this one. And we don’t know how active the anomalies still are, so we’ll need Stringer and his lads. Yes, sir, I know that, but we need them here, as well. We’ve taken ………… casualties.”

To his relief, the signal cut out again almost immediately. There was one piece of news he had no intention of breaking over the phone. Even if Lester commandeered a helicopter or a plane, it would still be three hours or so before he could get here, and a lot could happen in that time. If it didn’t, there’d be plenty of time for bad news later.

If Ryan had to punch a big hole in the guy’s cold, composed mask, he’d prefer to be somewhere more private when he did it. Somehow he doubted that they’d end up crying on each other’s shoulders, but he’d still prefer not to have an audience when he broke the news.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

admiralandrea.livejournal.com

Ooh, lots of action and excitement in this bit! And like Miss Ryan, I know Stephen and co. will make it back! And she's just great, as are the rest of the bunch. You really do write impressive OCs.

From:

Fic, Falls the Shadow, Part 11, Stephen/Ryan Series 18

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags