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fredbassettTitle : The Boys’ Own Big Book of Dinosaurs
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 12
Characters : Billy Foster Abby, Becker
Disclaimer : Not mine (except Billy), no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Summary : It’s not every day you get to see a real, live dinosaur
A/N : Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
primeval_denial’s Abby Month as part of my interntion to writer an outsider POV fic for each character.
Billy Foster stared at the chaos unfolding on the enormous TV screen his step-dad was so proud of.
A T. rex rampaging through Green Park.
A herd of triceratops peacefully grazing amongst the deer in Richmond Park.
What looked like an ankylosaur turning Sainsbury’s carpark in Reading into a heap of spare parts for a Scrapheap Challenge.
The newsreaders had no idea what to make of it, and they weren’t alone; reports were flooding in from around the world that prehistoric animals were appearing everywhere. At first everyone had thought it was some sort of elaborate hoax, but then someone was ripped apart by a pack of raptors on live TV and then everyone started taking it seriously.
The government was calling for calm and advising everyone to stay indoors. But since when had anyone listened to that bunch of cockwombling wankpuffins?
“Your nan’s not answering her phone,” his mum said from the hall as she stared anxiously at the phone in her hand, as though she could somehow will her 90-year-old mother to answer.
Billy tore his eyes away from the screen. He’d loved dinosaurs as a kid but seeing them with his own eyes was something else. They were bigger than he’d imagined, brighter, more colourful, more… real.
More fucking lethal.
He grabbed his leather bomber jacker. “I’m going round there.”
His mum caught hold of his arm. “You can’t. They’ve said to stay inside.”
“Come off it, mum, the sodding government don’t know their arse from their elbow. Can’t just do nothing. Nan’ll be scared if she sees this lot on the telly.”
“Her telly’s on the blink, love. Cousin Dave’s going round tomorrow to see if he can fix it.”
“So she might try and go to the shops for a paper. I need to go, mum.”
“Let me try her again…”
As soon as she let go of his arm, Billy bolted for the front door. “I’ll phone you, mum. Don’t worry!”
A
He grabbed his bike from the front garden and was off. There were still cars on the road, but they were all going faster than they should be. Sod the 20 mph limit. No one wanted to be out longer than necessary with dinosaurs about. After a near miss with a wanker in a Beemer, he did a wheelie onto the pavement and stayed there. He could live with a few dirty looks and one-fingered salutes from the few pedestrians that were still out and about, but he did take the precaution of pulling his grey hoodie around his face, just in case he got clocked by a copper or a camera, even though they had bigger fish to fry, you couldn’t take any chances if you were a black teenager in mainly white area.
Ten minutes later, he turned the corner into his nan’s road, panting from pedalling as fast as he could, but it’d been worth it to get there so quickly, then he did a doubletake, and was struggling to get his head around the sight of a huge, grey-green creature with a bulbous red forehead frantically butting the side of a Chelsea tractor. The occupants, a woman in her 30s and a bunch of kids, were screaming like hell, but it looked like the woman had had the sense to stick the child locks on, so none of the little darlings could leg it.
“Oi!” he yelled, waving his arms around, as he kept pedalling down the road.
Two white blokes who’d jumped into one of the gardens and were hammering on someone’s front door looked at him like he’d gone daft – which he probably had – but he didn’t see them doing much to help.
The creature turned its head to look as he shot past. He couldn’t remember what the hell it was called, but he remembered one from his DK Book of Dinosaurs. They were meant to be veggies, but then the bloke who’d written that had probably never met one. But whether it ate meat was pretty irrelevant. It had already bashed in the side of the Chelsea tractor and had knocked out one of the windows. The women and kids were yelling fit to bust and he’d bet there were a few brown pants in there. Not that he blamed them.
“Come on if you think you’re hard enough!” Billy shouted, managing to embarrass himself with the cheesy line but, in his defence, it was hard to come out with something witty and original when you were about to whizz past a real life fucking dinosaur.
The dinosaur turned to look at him.
A car turned into the road from the other end driving way too fast. It fishtailed badly, smacking its rear end into a parked car. The driver saw the critter in the road and slammed his foot down on the accelerator. The car shot forward, horn blaring. The dinosaur looked like it wanted to run, but couldn’t decide which direction to go in. It was hemmed in by cars parked on both sides of the road and had nowhere to go.
Billy skidded to a halt at the side of the road, trying to make himself as small as possible.
The car shot past, catching the dinosaur with its wing-mirror, snapping it off and gouging a red furrow down its side with what was left. The creature let out a bellow of distress.
“You stupid fucker!” Billy yelled at the car as it careered down the road.
A moment later, a black Range Rover turned into the road, but managed it without thumping into anything. Behind him, he heard another engine being gunned and turned to see an identical vehicle pulling into the other end of the road.
Men in black uniforms jumped out, each of them carrying a great big motherfucker of a gun.
The dinosaur threw its head back and started bellowing in pain and confusion.
One of the blokes with the guns ran forward, yelling at Billy to stay where he was.
“It’s a veggie!” Billed yelled back. “Don’t fucking kill it!”
He hated animals being killed. He’d not eaten meat since he was eight. His mates took the piss something rotten but he didn’t fucking care. The dinosaur was scared and hurt. It needed help, not putting down, but this lot looked like they meant business, and the dark-haired bloke that was busy yelling at him didn’t look much like a member of an animal rights group.
The dinosaur thrashed its head from side to side, a bellow rumbling up from its deep chest and exploding out of its mouth. The women and kids in the car were still screaming their heads off, silly sods. If they’d just shut the fuck up they’d do better, but it wouldn’t help if he started yelling as well. Between that lot and Rambo, there was enough bloody yelling going on.
Billy jumped off his bike and shoved it through the gap between two parked cars. It was a rusting piece of shit that he’d found abandoned in a skip, but he didn’t really want it getting trampled on.
“Get out of the road!” Rambo yelled.
“Keep yer fucking hair on,” Billy muttered, doing his best to edge towards the car so he could tell the women and her squealing kids to shut the fucking fuck up. The dinosaur was getting ready to bolt, it just wasn’t sure which direction to pick.
Rambo lifted his great big fuck-off gun to his shoulder and pointed it at the panicking creature. Billy was going to get really fucking mad if they killed it. Couldn’t they see it was scared out of its tiny brain?
He was about to yell at the bloke with the gun not to be such a twat when a small woman with short bleached blonde hair piled out of one of the Range Rovers and ran up. She was carrying a similar gun, but in her hands it looked less lethal, probably because she was the only one who was looking at the dinosaur like it was a real, living, breathing creature, not just something that would be better off on a slab.
“Leave it to me!” she told the man with the gun. “Back off, Becker!”
Rambo – Becker – shot her a look but didn’t argue. She pulled the trigger on the weird-looking gun and there was a crackle in the air. The creature juddered just like Darren Wilks had done when the fuzz had Tasered him outside the Rat and Carrot last year after a Friday night ruckus. Was that what the guns were? Dino-sized Tasers?
The creature bellowed again as it swayed from side to side then slowly crumpled to the tarmac, bright red blood staining its injured side. It opened its mouth to bellow again but all that came out was a rattling groan. Billy ran forward, not really knowing what he was going to do, but he hated the idea of it dying like that, out of its own time, lying in the road, not even knowing what the fuck had happened to it or why it was hurting.
“You bastards! You didn’t have to fucking kill it!”
“We haven’t,” the woman said. “It’ll be out for the count for about half an hour from that shot and I’m going to give it something to keep it out a bit longer, as well as something to help with the pain when it does wake up.”
“It’s hurt,” Billy said, probably unnecessarily, but he was still fucking mad about the whole thing. And just because he could, he turned to the broken window of the Chelsea tractor and yelled even more loudly than Becker had yelled at him, “Put a fucking sock in it, missus, you’re doin’ me sodding head in!”
The blonde woman grinned at him. “Beat me to it,” she muttered, as she rummaged in a belt pouch and brought out a sodding great big hypodermic needle. She hammered the needle into the creature’s shoulder and pressed the plunger. “That’ll keep him quiet.” She nodded at Billy, then started speaking into a throat mic and giving orders. “Ranjit, I need at transporter to ….” She looked quizzically at Billy.
“Acregate Road,” he supplied.
“…Acregate Road. Have you found the anomaly yet?... Already?... OK, then we’ll have to keep hold of this guy until we can get him somewhere safe. Adult pachycephalosaurus. Just tranked him up for about an hour… Thanks.”
“What the fuck’s going on?” Billy asked. “Why are there dinosaurs everywhere?”
“Long story,” the bloke in black said. “Just go home, lad, and stay there.”
“I’m going to my nan’s,” Billy said. “And I’m 17, so you can fuck right off, mate.”
The woman’s grin widened. “He’s not as bad as he looks,” she said, nodding at the bloke with the gun. “It’s his job to keep us safe.” She looked down at the dinosaur – the pachycephalosaurus – and added, “It’s my job to keep them safe.”
Billy grinned back. “Good, someone needs to do that. It’s not their fault, innit?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s not. Where’s your nan’s house?”
Billy pointed down the road. “Number 46. she’s not answering her phone.”
“Have you got a key?”
He nodded.
“Two minutes, Becker,” she said, starting to walk towards his nan’s house. “My name’s Abby. What’s yours?”
“Billy.”
Leaving his bike where he’d shoved it, Billy ran over the road into his nan’s front garden and fumbled in his pocket for the door key, suddenly scared of what he might find in the house and glad of the calm presence of the blonde-haired woman – Abby – at his side.
“Nan? Are you OK?”
“Billy lad!”
At the sound of his nan’s voice, Billy’s tension started to drain away.
“Have you come to fix the telly? Your mam said our Dave’s coming, but he’s as much use as a chocolate teapot.” His nan came out of the kitchen, leaning heavily on her stick. “Didn’t tell me you were bringing a girlfriend…”
Billy rolled his eyes. “Long story, nan, and she’s not my girlfriend.”
“Keep an eye on our friend out there,” Abby said, handing him a business card that just gave her name and a mobile number. “There should be a pick-up wagon here soon. I promise they’ll look after her.”
Billy took the card and tucked it into his pocket. “Thanks. And… watch yourself out there,” he added.
She smiled at him, said, “Nice to meet you,” to his nan, and then headed off.
Billy watched as Abby ran back over the road, calling instructions to the Rambo and the rest of the blokes in black.
“Kettle’s on,” his nan said, her eyes twinkling. “You can tell me all about her.”
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 12
Characters : Billy Foster Abby, Becker
Disclaimer : Not mine (except Billy), no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Summary : It’s not every day you get to see a real, live dinosaur
A/N : Written for
primeval_denial’s Abby Month as part of my interntion to writer an outsider POV fic for each character.Billy Foster stared at the chaos unfolding on the enormous TV screen his step-dad was so proud of.
A T. rex rampaging through Green Park.
A herd of triceratops peacefully grazing amongst the deer in Richmond Park.
What looked like an ankylosaur turning Sainsbury’s carpark in Reading into a heap of spare parts for a Scrapheap Challenge.
The newsreaders had no idea what to make of it, and they weren’t alone; reports were flooding in from around the world that prehistoric animals were appearing everywhere. At first everyone had thought it was some sort of elaborate hoax, but then someone was ripped apart by a pack of raptors on live TV and then everyone started taking it seriously.
The government was calling for calm and advising everyone to stay indoors. But since when had anyone listened to that bunch of cockwombling wankpuffins?
“Your nan’s not answering her phone,” his mum said from the hall as she stared anxiously at the phone in her hand, as though she could somehow will her 90-year-old mother to answer.
Billy tore his eyes away from the screen. He’d loved dinosaurs as a kid but seeing them with his own eyes was something else. They were bigger than he’d imagined, brighter, more colourful, more… real.
More fucking lethal.
He grabbed his leather bomber jacker. “I’m going round there.”
His mum caught hold of his arm. “You can’t. They’ve said to stay inside.”
“Come off it, mum, the sodding government don’t know their arse from their elbow. Can’t just do nothing. Nan’ll be scared if she sees this lot on the telly.”
“Her telly’s on the blink, love. Cousin Dave’s going round tomorrow to see if he can fix it.”
“So she might try and go to the shops for a paper. I need to go, mum.”
“Let me try her again…”
As soon as she let go of his arm, Billy bolted for the front door. “I’ll phone you, mum. Don’t worry!”
A
He grabbed his bike from the front garden and was off. There were still cars on the road, but they were all going faster than they should be. Sod the 20 mph limit. No one wanted to be out longer than necessary with dinosaurs about. After a near miss with a wanker in a Beemer, he did a wheelie onto the pavement and stayed there. He could live with a few dirty looks and one-fingered salutes from the few pedestrians that were still out and about, but he did take the precaution of pulling his grey hoodie around his face, just in case he got clocked by a copper or a camera, even though they had bigger fish to fry, you couldn’t take any chances if you were a black teenager in mainly white area.
Ten minutes later, he turned the corner into his nan’s road, panting from pedalling as fast as he could, but it’d been worth it to get there so quickly, then he did a doubletake, and was struggling to get his head around the sight of a huge, grey-green creature with a bulbous red forehead frantically butting the side of a Chelsea tractor. The occupants, a woman in her 30s and a bunch of kids, were screaming like hell, but it looked like the woman had had the sense to stick the child locks on, so none of the little darlings could leg it.
“Oi!” he yelled, waving his arms around, as he kept pedalling down the road.
Two white blokes who’d jumped into one of the gardens and were hammering on someone’s front door looked at him like he’d gone daft – which he probably had – but he didn’t see them doing much to help.
The creature turned its head to look as he shot past. He couldn’t remember what the hell it was called, but he remembered one from his DK Book of Dinosaurs. They were meant to be veggies, but then the bloke who’d written that had probably never met one. But whether it ate meat was pretty irrelevant. It had already bashed in the side of the Chelsea tractor and had knocked out one of the windows. The women and kids were yelling fit to bust and he’d bet there were a few brown pants in there. Not that he blamed them.
“Come on if you think you’re hard enough!” Billy shouted, managing to embarrass himself with the cheesy line but, in his defence, it was hard to come out with something witty and original when you were about to whizz past a real life fucking dinosaur.
The dinosaur turned to look at him.
A car turned into the road from the other end driving way too fast. It fishtailed badly, smacking its rear end into a parked car. The driver saw the critter in the road and slammed his foot down on the accelerator. The car shot forward, horn blaring. The dinosaur looked like it wanted to run, but couldn’t decide which direction to go in. It was hemmed in by cars parked on both sides of the road and had nowhere to go.
Billy skidded to a halt at the side of the road, trying to make himself as small as possible.
The car shot past, catching the dinosaur with its wing-mirror, snapping it off and gouging a red furrow down its side with what was left. The creature let out a bellow of distress.
“You stupid fucker!” Billy yelled at the car as it careered down the road.
A moment later, a black Range Rover turned into the road, but managed it without thumping into anything. Behind him, he heard another engine being gunned and turned to see an identical vehicle pulling into the other end of the road.
Men in black uniforms jumped out, each of them carrying a great big motherfucker of a gun.
The dinosaur threw its head back and started bellowing in pain and confusion.
One of the blokes with the guns ran forward, yelling at Billy to stay where he was.
“It’s a veggie!” Billed yelled back. “Don’t fucking kill it!”
He hated animals being killed. He’d not eaten meat since he was eight. His mates took the piss something rotten but he didn’t fucking care. The dinosaur was scared and hurt. It needed help, not putting down, but this lot looked like they meant business, and the dark-haired bloke that was busy yelling at him didn’t look much like a member of an animal rights group.
The dinosaur thrashed its head from side to side, a bellow rumbling up from its deep chest and exploding out of its mouth. The women and kids in the car were still screaming their heads off, silly sods. If they’d just shut the fuck up they’d do better, but it wouldn’t help if he started yelling as well. Between that lot and Rambo, there was enough bloody yelling going on.
Billy jumped off his bike and shoved it through the gap between two parked cars. It was a rusting piece of shit that he’d found abandoned in a skip, but he didn’t really want it getting trampled on.
“Get out of the road!” Rambo yelled.
“Keep yer fucking hair on,” Billy muttered, doing his best to edge towards the car so he could tell the women and her squealing kids to shut the fucking fuck up. The dinosaur was getting ready to bolt, it just wasn’t sure which direction to pick.
Rambo lifted his great big fuck-off gun to his shoulder and pointed it at the panicking creature. Billy was going to get really fucking mad if they killed it. Couldn’t they see it was scared out of its tiny brain?
He was about to yell at the bloke with the gun not to be such a twat when a small woman with short bleached blonde hair piled out of one of the Range Rovers and ran up. She was carrying a similar gun, but in her hands it looked less lethal, probably because she was the only one who was looking at the dinosaur like it was a real, living, breathing creature, not just something that would be better off on a slab.
“Leave it to me!” she told the man with the gun. “Back off, Becker!”
Rambo – Becker – shot her a look but didn’t argue. She pulled the trigger on the weird-looking gun and there was a crackle in the air. The creature juddered just like Darren Wilks had done when the fuzz had Tasered him outside the Rat and Carrot last year after a Friday night ruckus. Was that what the guns were? Dino-sized Tasers?
The creature bellowed again as it swayed from side to side then slowly crumpled to the tarmac, bright red blood staining its injured side. It opened its mouth to bellow again but all that came out was a rattling groan. Billy ran forward, not really knowing what he was going to do, but he hated the idea of it dying like that, out of its own time, lying in the road, not even knowing what the fuck had happened to it or why it was hurting.
“You bastards! You didn’t have to fucking kill it!”
“We haven’t,” the woman said. “It’ll be out for the count for about half an hour from that shot and I’m going to give it something to keep it out a bit longer, as well as something to help with the pain when it does wake up.”
“It’s hurt,” Billy said, probably unnecessarily, but he was still fucking mad about the whole thing. And just because he could, he turned to the broken window of the Chelsea tractor and yelled even more loudly than Becker had yelled at him, “Put a fucking sock in it, missus, you’re doin’ me sodding head in!”
The blonde woman grinned at him. “Beat me to it,” she muttered, as she rummaged in a belt pouch and brought out a sodding great big hypodermic needle. She hammered the needle into the creature’s shoulder and pressed the plunger. “That’ll keep him quiet.” She nodded at Billy, then started speaking into a throat mic and giving orders. “Ranjit, I need at transporter to ….” She looked quizzically at Billy.
“Acregate Road,” he supplied.
“…Acregate Road. Have you found the anomaly yet?... Already?... OK, then we’ll have to keep hold of this guy until we can get him somewhere safe. Adult pachycephalosaurus. Just tranked him up for about an hour… Thanks.”
“What the fuck’s going on?” Billy asked. “Why are there dinosaurs everywhere?”
“Long story,” the bloke in black said. “Just go home, lad, and stay there.”
“I’m going to my nan’s,” Billy said. “And I’m 17, so you can fuck right off, mate.”
The woman’s grin widened. “He’s not as bad as he looks,” she said, nodding at the bloke with the gun. “It’s his job to keep us safe.” She looked down at the dinosaur – the pachycephalosaurus – and added, “It’s my job to keep them safe.”
Billy grinned back. “Good, someone needs to do that. It’s not their fault, innit?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s not. Where’s your nan’s house?”
Billy pointed down the road. “Number 46. she’s not answering her phone.”
“Have you got a key?”
He nodded.
“Two minutes, Becker,” she said, starting to walk towards his nan’s house. “My name’s Abby. What’s yours?”
“Billy.”
Leaving his bike where he’d shoved it, Billy ran over the road into his nan’s front garden and fumbled in his pocket for the door key, suddenly scared of what he might find in the house and glad of the calm presence of the blonde-haired woman – Abby – at his side.
“Nan? Are you OK?”
“Billy lad!”
At the sound of his nan’s voice, Billy’s tension started to drain away.
“Have you come to fix the telly? Your mam said our Dave’s coming, but he’s as much use as a chocolate teapot.” His nan came out of the kitchen, leaning heavily on her stick. “Didn’t tell me you were bringing a girlfriend…”
Billy rolled his eyes. “Long story, nan, and she’s not my girlfriend.”
“Keep an eye on our friend out there,” Abby said, handing him a business card that just gave her name and a mobile number. “There should be a pick-up wagon here soon. I promise they’ll look after her.”
Billy took the card and tucked it into his pocket. “Thanks. And… watch yourself out there,” he added.
She smiled at him, said, “Nice to meet you,” to his nan, and then headed off.
Billy watched as Abby ran back over the road, calling instructions to the Rambo and the rest of the blokes in black.
“Kettle’s on,” his nan said, her eyes twinkling. “You can tell me all about her.”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2019-02-23 09:05 pm (UTC)*g* I think they need to recruit Billy!
He and Abby would make a formidable pair.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-24 05:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-24 10:29 am (UTC)Great fic!
no subject
Date: 2019-02-24 05:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-24 11:45 am (UTC)Really enjoy the outsidersˋ POVs
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Date: 2019-02-24 05:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-24 12:00 pm (UTC)Rambo Becker, lol.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-24 05:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-24 11:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-25 09:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-03 11:26 am (UTC)Great view of Abby as the sensible, animal loving one :D
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Date: 2019-03-03 06:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-12 07:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-12 08:09 pm (UTC)