Fic, Never Say Die, Danny, Helen, 15
Aug. 28th, 2020 09:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fredbassettTitle : Never Say Die
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Danny, Helen
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Word Count : 3,800
Summary : Danny was certain Helen Cutter couldn’t do the decent thing if she tried.
Three Seconds
Helen turned sharply.
The raptor’s claws thumped against her chest, knocking her backwards. Her arms flailed wildly as she tried to twist away, but the creature’s weight carried her over the cliff. Nothing to grab onto, no one to help her.
She landed heavily, still twisting as she hit the ground, the weight of the raptor on top of her. The breath left her lungs in a long, desperate whoosh. Sharp pain shot through her body and blackness enveloped her.
Her last thought was that she didn’t want to die like this, not when she still had work to do.
Three Minutes
Danny winced at the dull thump of Helen Cutter’s body hitting the sun-baked ground.
There was sod all chance of her surviving that fall, but he still had to check, he had to be sure.
Strange for it to end like that, so far from their own time, so far from anyone who might still have feelings for her. He certainly didn’t have any. She’d been responsible for too much death, all too much destruction. She’d even been responsible for the death of the human race almost before it had begun. Not bad going, even by a psychopath’s standards, and Danny had met a few of them in his time as a copper.
He went down on one knee and rolled her onto her back.
To his surprise, her face was unmarked by the fall. She looked strangely peaceful for a woman who’d just fallen to her death. The raptor lay draped, limp and broken, over her legs. It hadn’t survived the fall, either.
Helen’s eyes were open, staring blankly at the sky.
Danny ran his hand down her face, intending to close her eyes.
Warm breath tickled his palm.
He snatched his hand away as if she’d bitten him.
Three Hours
Sweat ran freely down Danny’s back and soaked his shirt. He wanted to take it off, but with his complexion he couldn’t risk burning himself raw.
He’d managed to drag Helen into the meagre shelter of a large rocky overhang. She almost certainly had spinal and other internal injuries and dragging her over rough ground wouldn’t have helped, but there was sod all he could have done for her in the open, other than watch her slowly fry. The only bushes nearby were short, spiny and gave no shade. Even with rocks everywhere, he couldn’t build her a shelter, so it was drag and be damned.
Luckily for her, she’d remained unconscious throughout. She was now lying flat on the earth floor. He’d ripped up some grass in an attempt to provide a cushion for her head, even though he’d known he was wasting his time.
He settled down next to her and waited for her to die.
When she showed no immediate sign of doing anything so obliging, he took the water bottle from her pack and went to look for something uncontaminated to drink. He was tempted just to abandon the bloody woman and make a run back to the anomaly, but he knew if he did that, he would be condemning her to a lingering death.
Not that she deserved anything better, but it still went against Danny’s chivalrous streak to abandon anyone, even a mass murderer.
He avoided the valley with the dead hominids and went further afield, hoping that by the time he got back, she would have done the decent thing and died.
He found water and a tribe that had escaped the poison.
So she hadn’t managed to wipe out the whole human race before it had even been conceived, but she had killed a lot of innocent creatures and he hoped she’d be dead when he got back.
No such bloody luck.
Three Days
She was still unconscious.
Danny had checked her over as best he could. She was bruised everywhere, and the fall had broken her left leg below the knee. He’d straightened it and splinted it with some dead wood bound with strips of her khaki overalls. She probably had broken ribs as well, but there was bugger all he could do about that.
He found it hard to believe she was still alive, and he was starting to take it as a personal insult. The bloody woman couldn’t do the decent thing if she tried. He kept her lips moistened with water and tried to get a few drops down her throat. He stayed with her except on his forays to get water. He knew he could go a few days without food, but neither of them would last any time at all without water.
The ape-creatures seemed to be mostly harmless. As far as he could tell, they spent their time grooming each other, scavenging for food left behind by predators, and catching fish in the shallow river. They kept well away from him and he returned the compliment.
There were a few cereal bars in Helen’s pack, but he was saving those for when he was really hungry. He had some of the emergency ration packs that soldier boy had insisted they all carry that he was saving for a different emergency. He’d been half tempted to cut some meat from one of the hominid corpses, but he wasn’t sure if the poison would have tainted their flesh and even without that issue, it had felt rather too close to cannibalism for his liking. He’d tried raw raptor, but it had been the most utterly disgusting thing he’d ever eaten. It wasn’t going to be even theoretically edible much longer, so he’d taken the precaution of cutting some thin strips and hanging them up to dry in the wind. The carcass was soon dragged away by something less fussy than him.
The water bottle needed filling half a dozen times a day, and every time he got back to the rock shelter, he expected to find her gone, dragged off by a predator. But that hadn’t happened, either.
After nearly three days spent trying to get water down Helen’s throat without choking her, he knew her features better than he knew his own. Short dark hair framed a face that could probably be better described as striking, rather than conventionally beautiful. Laughter lines creased the side of her eyes. It was a shame she’d mostly spent her time laughing at people rather than with them.
He was dozing in the heat of the day, trying to summon the energy to go for another fill of water when he heard the rattle of breath in Helen’s throat. Thinking she’d finally decided to put herself out of his misery, Danny rolled over and sat up.
Helen’s eyes were open, staring at the rock above her head with fierce concentration. With an obvious effort, she turned her head to look at him.
For want of something better to say, he nodded and said, “Hello, Helen.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Quinn.”
It seemed there was nothing wrong with the wretched woman’s memory, and from the spiteful look in her eyes, he was certain her temperament hadn’t miraculously improved.
“You’ve been unconscious for three days,” he said.
The look in her eyes spoke of pain and something else. Something more difficult to fathom.
After several minutes, Helen spoke again. “Why can’t I feel my legs?”
Danny recognised the look now.
Fear.
He felt a sudden flash of sympathy for the woman.
Three Weeks
Any sympathy evaporated as fast as water on a hot stone.
Helen Cutter was relentlessly demanding and equally relentlessly rude.
He had given her water to drink. Fed her every single one of the emergency rations from their packs, wiped her arse when she’d needed a crap and even washed her underwear.
He’d mainly lived on wind-dried strips of raptor flesh.
She hadn’t offered to share her rations. He hadn’t expected her to.
She hadn’t regained the use of her legs, but her other injuries were slowly healing. There had been a full course of antibiotics in her pack, as well as some other pills he hadn’t recognised. She’d taken them all, day by day, and day by day she’d grown stronger.
But she still couldn’t move her legs.
Three Months
“Your culinary skills leave a lot to be desired, Quinn.”
“So you come up with another way of cooking gopher. It’s either raw or roasted.”
“Baked. Dig a pit. Get some clay. I’ll tell you how to do it.”
Like she’d told him how to make fire once the cigarette lighters in his pack had run out. Danny had to admit that the sodding woman knew how to survive in the wilderness.
She/d told him how to cut and straighten wood for spears and then harden their tips in the fire. She’d taught him how to set traps and how to catch fish in the rivers. Reminded him that birds’ eggs were edible and a useful source of protein.
He’d caught small mammals and roasted them. She’d done nothing but fucking criticise. She spent the day propped up against the wall of their shelter, giving orders, complaining that he was just a city boy with no idea how to survive. Danny had given up answering back, there was just no fucking point.
She couldn’t walk and he couldn’t leave her. He could have rigged up some sort of stretcher and dragged it across the dry, unforgiving landscape of what would eventually become the Great Rift Valley but that would have served no useful purpose. He spent as much time as he could scouring the landscape for anomalies, but so far, they had all been absent without leave. Helen had had nothing constructive to say on that score, but it hadn’t stopped her bitching.
Three Years
“Congratulations, Quinn. You’ve managed to make a fire in less than a glacial epoch.”
“You shouldn’t have let the last one go out.”
“It might have escaped your attention, but our meagre stock of fuel had run out.”
“My sincere apologies, your ladyship. I’ll just nip off and find some more dried caveman poo to burn.”
“They haven’t reached the stage of living in caves yet.”
“It’s got a catchier ring to it than rockshelterman. That one doesn’t seem to have really caught on.” Danny stood up, throwing their last few pieces of wood on the fire.
When he’d returned from a hunting and gathering trip it had been too close to nightfall for him to pick up more than a few lumps of wood from the edges of the river and a bagful of dried crap. It had been Helen’s idea to use that as a source of fuel and – much to his irritation – she’d been right. Once dried, it burnt well on the fire, and he’d quickly learned to ignore the smell. Just as the hominids had learned to ignore him skulking around on the edge of their troop. They no longer shied away from him now, allowing him to come close enough to pick up the crap that they seemed content to leave where it fell. He’d even overcome his reluctance to using his hands for the job, but he did make sure he washed them well in the river.
The bodies of the hominids murdered by Helen had long since been picked clean by scavengers and what remained of their bones had been pressed into service as yet another source of fuel for their small campfire. That had been Helen’s idea, too. She’d told him, with some degree of relish, that the word bonfire had originally come from ‘bonefire’.
There were times when Danny wondered if there was anything the bloody woman didn’t know. If there was, he hadn’t found it yet. His attempt to start a conversation about Pride and Prejudice (he’d seen the film starring Colin Firth) had been easily trumped (she’d done the book for her English GCSE). He’d tried again with Hamlet. That had failed because she’d once gone out with someone who’d played the part of Claudius in an am-dram production. Helen had labelled the main character an insufferable wimp with a mother fixation and declared Ophelia to be feeble. Danny had given up on culture at that point.
To his surprise, they’d come close to agreement in a discussion about old thriller writers. They’d dismissed Alastair MacLean as over-complicated, Hammond Innes as dull but had both enjoyed Desmond Bagley’s entertaining romps. Nothing intellectual, just good stories and decent characters. They’d both read High Citadel first and had really liked the scenario of ordinary people thrust into an extraordinary situation. Much like them. But it was easier to stick to a discussion of books rather than contemplating the fact that they might well have to spend the rest of their lives together, with only a few ape-men for company. Not that the hominids took much notice of them, and they certainly weren’t a source of sparkling wit and repartee. Mind you, neither was Helen Cutter.
A few weeks later – they kept track of time by scraping a mark for each day on the wall of their shelter – Danny realised that conversation about books had been something of a turning point. Helen no longer sniped at him quite so much and once, after the obligatory daily arse-wiping, she’d even muttered something that might, just might, have been a thank you. He had to admit that she’d had good cause to behave like a total bitch. If he’d lost the use of his legs, he’d wouldn’t have been best pleased. And he was the only person for umpteen million years that she should take out her anger on.
He wouldn’t say so to Helen, but he was amazed he’d managed to keep her alive so long without some sort of infection setting in. Maybe the warm, dry air had helped with that. Preventing pressure sores had been one of the hardest things to deal with. Fairly early in their time together, he’d taken to skinning the gopher things before baking them in mud. Curing the skins hadn’t been too hard – under Helen’s tutelage, of course – and once ready, he’d used them to prevent her arse being too close to the hard, dry earth for too long. He also made sure he changed the position she was lying in several times a day.
He hunted, they ate; he fetched water, they drank it; he found fuel, they burnt it. The cycle of survival continued. Helen’s injuries had healed as much as they were going to, but it was clear she was never going to regain the use of her legs. She had no feeling below the waist, but she compensated for that by dragging herself around on her arms, which had become heavily muscled from the effort. The material of her trousers had long since worn away from contact with the rough ground so she avoided abrasions by using a thick, gopher-skin mat tied around her arse and legs with gopher sinew. They’d eaten a lot of gopher in the last three years.
One day he managed to bag a large, ground-dwelling bird that even Helen couldn’t put a name to. As ever, it was feast or famine, and that night, it was feast, as neither of them fancied trying to keep anything resembling poultry in the head of the day. Afterwards, the pair of them lay stretched out on their beds in the rock-shelter, stomachs full of something that – for a change – really did taste like chicken.
A sharp intake of breath next to him as Danny lay on his back, drifting comfortably into sleep, jerked him awake in the space of a heartbeat.
“Quinn!”
“Fucking hell…” The flickering light in the distance was unmistakeable, a shining fractured brightness that for three years he’d only seen in dreams. He scrambled to his feet. “Come on, Your Ladyship, time to start moving!”
“Don’t be an idiot, Quinn. If that thing leads to the Permian, it would hardly be an improvement. You need to check it out.”
“We can take a look together.”
Before she had time to object, he went down on one knee, hoisted her onto his shoulders in a fireman’s lift and staggered to his feet. Helen was heavy, but he wasn’t taking the risk of the anomaly closing and stranding her on the wrong side on her own. She cursed furiously and thumped him with her fists. He ignored her and walked as fast as he could over broken ground. Luckily for him a bright moon rode high in a cloudless sky.
By the time he reached the anomaly, he was panting hard, sweat running freely down his face despite the cold night air. The muscles in his legs and back were screaming for respite but he kept moving. Three years they’d waited for this opportunity, he wasn’t going to let it slip away now.
He stepped through without a backward glance, feeling cautiously with his feet in case he was about to step off a cliff or into a lake. The anomaly prickled on his skin as he readied himself to jump back at the first sign of danger.
Trees.
Tall conifers, with what looked like late afternoon sun shining through.
A thick carpet of dry pine needles underfoot.
The air was warm, and he could hear the low drone of insects.
“Hold me up!” Helen demanded. “I need to see where we are.”
Danny quickly slid her off his shoulders, his arms around her waist, hauling her upright as she stared around, her formidable intellect and experience assessing their situation more accurately than he could hope to do.
His heart was hammering from exertion and nerves and he couldn’t contain himself. “Well?”
“We stay,” she said, with an air of finality, not asking his opinion.
“How do you know it’ll be better than where we were?”
She turned her head, a maddening smirk on her suntanned face. “All this time and you still doubt me? You wound me, Quinn.”
He laughed. “Doubt you, Your Ladyship? Surely some mistake?”
The prickle on his skin abruptly stopped. Behind them, the anomaly had closed.
“So what now?”
“You pick me up and carry me again.”
“Yes, mistress…” When he was settled over his shoulders again, he said, “Which way?”
“Following the electricity poles would be a good start.”
His eyes widened as he finally saw the wood for the trees. A smile spread across his face and he started walking, slowly, steadily, ignoring the burn in his muscles as he locked his eyes on the line of wooden poles and their slightly sagging electric lines.
What they needed now was a road.
As the light slowly faded, Danny had to stop more frequently. He had no idea how much ground they’d covered or how long he’d been walking. The only consolation was that at least he knew they weren’t walking in circles.
By the time Danny felt something other than springy pine needles underfoot, he was fucking exhausted. He slid Helen off his shoulders again and leaned against a tree, holding her up.
“Gonna have to call it a day for a while, Princess.”
To his surprise, she didn’t treat him to a sharp exhortation to get his arse in gear, she just leaned back against him and muttered, “My extremely elegant gopher-skin skirt is slipping down, Can’t feel it round my waist any more.”
He laughed, fumbling for the sinew ties and tightening them for her. “I’m going to sit you down for minute. Need to take a better look at this track.”
“It’s driveable,” Helen declared, before he had chance to move her.
“How do you know?”
“Because there’s a vehicle approaching.”
Danny’s heartrate jumped again. “Let’s hope they don’t mind picking up hitchhikers.”
With his arm around Helen’s waist, he manoeuvred them to the side of the rough track.
Three sets of headlights were approaching at a speed that bordered on reckless.
Danny stuck his arm out, thumb in the air and waved it around.
The lead vehicle, a black Range Rover, braked hard and came to a halt two metres away in a spray of dust and small stones.
The driver’s door opened and a tall, dark-haired man in black combats stepped out, looking them up and down, a wide smile on his handsome face.
“You need a fucking haircut, Danny boy, and that beard really doesn’t suit you.” Becker’s eyes hardened as he stared at Helen. “Look what the cat dragged in. Welcome back, Mrs Cutter. I do believe there’s a still a warrant out for your arrest for the attempted murder of your husband.”
Danny tightened his hold on Helen. “Play nicely, Becks.”
“Danny!” Sarah Page was running down the track towards him from the second car. She came to halt a metre away, staring at Helen as though trying to will her away from him so she could hug him.
He held out his free arm. “Sarah, you’re a sight for sore eyes!” When she didn’t move to close the distance between them, he muttered, “Sorry, Princess,” to Helen, then raised his voice enough to carry to the occupants of all three vehicles. “Helen broke her back three years ago in a fall and lost the use of her legs. If I let go of her, she’ll fall. So if anyone wants to hug me, you’ll have to get a bit closer. If you don’t, then fair enough.”
Sarah stepped up to Danny’s side and gave him a kiss on the cheek, tears in her dark eyes. He saw a livid scar running down the side of her neck. There was a story there to be told. He gave her a one-armed hug, burying his face in her soft dark hair for a moment. She kissed him again, then said to Helen, “I’m sorry. Is there anything I can help with?”
“A drink of water would be nice,” Helen said, in a perfectly composed tone that belied the rigid tension in her upper body.
Becker took Sarah’s place, his hand held out to Danny. “It’s good to have you back. Do you need me to call an ambulance?”
“No,” Helen said.
“The medical bay in the ARC will be fine,” Danny said.
“We’ve moved to new premises,” Abby said, throwing her arms around Danny’s neck and kissing him. “We thought we were never going to see you again.”
His next hug was from Connor. The lad moved with easy grace and a confidence that Danny found hard to reconcile with the gawky young man he’d known.
A short-haired man that Danny didn’t recognise finished talking into a throat mic then stepped forward, his hand outstretched. “Matt Anderson,” he said. The handshake was firm and the man had an air of quiet authority, despite his civilian clothes.
“New team leader?” Danny hazarded.
“Got it in one.” The look Anderson gave Helen was cool but not openly hostile, for which Danny was grateful.
He’d spent three years looking after the bloody woman.
He wasn’t about to stop now.
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Danny, Helen
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Word Count : 3,800
Summary : Danny was certain Helen Cutter couldn’t do the decent thing if she tried.
Three Seconds
Helen turned sharply.
The raptor’s claws thumped against her chest, knocking her backwards. Her arms flailed wildly as she tried to twist away, but the creature’s weight carried her over the cliff. Nothing to grab onto, no one to help her.
She landed heavily, still twisting as she hit the ground, the weight of the raptor on top of her. The breath left her lungs in a long, desperate whoosh. Sharp pain shot through her body and blackness enveloped her.
Her last thought was that she didn’t want to die like this, not when she still had work to do.
Three Minutes
Danny winced at the dull thump of Helen Cutter’s body hitting the sun-baked ground.
There was sod all chance of her surviving that fall, but he still had to check, he had to be sure.
Strange for it to end like that, so far from their own time, so far from anyone who might still have feelings for her. He certainly didn’t have any. She’d been responsible for too much death, all too much destruction. She’d even been responsible for the death of the human race almost before it had begun. Not bad going, even by a psychopath’s standards, and Danny had met a few of them in his time as a copper.
He went down on one knee and rolled her onto her back.
To his surprise, her face was unmarked by the fall. She looked strangely peaceful for a woman who’d just fallen to her death. The raptor lay draped, limp and broken, over her legs. It hadn’t survived the fall, either.
Helen’s eyes were open, staring blankly at the sky.
Danny ran his hand down her face, intending to close her eyes.
Warm breath tickled his palm.
He snatched his hand away as if she’d bitten him.
Three Hours
Sweat ran freely down Danny’s back and soaked his shirt. He wanted to take it off, but with his complexion he couldn’t risk burning himself raw.
He’d managed to drag Helen into the meagre shelter of a large rocky overhang. She almost certainly had spinal and other internal injuries and dragging her over rough ground wouldn’t have helped, but there was sod all he could have done for her in the open, other than watch her slowly fry. The only bushes nearby were short, spiny and gave no shade. Even with rocks everywhere, he couldn’t build her a shelter, so it was drag and be damned.
Luckily for her, she’d remained unconscious throughout. She was now lying flat on the earth floor. He’d ripped up some grass in an attempt to provide a cushion for her head, even though he’d known he was wasting his time.
He settled down next to her and waited for her to die.
When she showed no immediate sign of doing anything so obliging, he took the water bottle from her pack and went to look for something uncontaminated to drink. He was tempted just to abandon the bloody woman and make a run back to the anomaly, but he knew if he did that, he would be condemning her to a lingering death.
Not that she deserved anything better, but it still went against Danny’s chivalrous streak to abandon anyone, even a mass murderer.
He avoided the valley with the dead hominids and went further afield, hoping that by the time he got back, she would have done the decent thing and died.
He found water and a tribe that had escaped the poison.
So she hadn’t managed to wipe out the whole human race before it had even been conceived, but she had killed a lot of innocent creatures and he hoped she’d be dead when he got back.
No such bloody luck.
Three Days
She was still unconscious.
Danny had checked her over as best he could. She was bruised everywhere, and the fall had broken her left leg below the knee. He’d straightened it and splinted it with some dead wood bound with strips of her khaki overalls. She probably had broken ribs as well, but there was bugger all he could do about that.
He found it hard to believe she was still alive, and he was starting to take it as a personal insult. The bloody woman couldn’t do the decent thing if she tried. He kept her lips moistened with water and tried to get a few drops down her throat. He stayed with her except on his forays to get water. He knew he could go a few days without food, but neither of them would last any time at all without water.
The ape-creatures seemed to be mostly harmless. As far as he could tell, they spent their time grooming each other, scavenging for food left behind by predators, and catching fish in the shallow river. They kept well away from him and he returned the compliment.
There were a few cereal bars in Helen’s pack, but he was saving those for when he was really hungry. He had some of the emergency ration packs that soldier boy had insisted they all carry that he was saving for a different emergency. He’d been half tempted to cut some meat from one of the hominid corpses, but he wasn’t sure if the poison would have tainted their flesh and even without that issue, it had felt rather too close to cannibalism for his liking. He’d tried raw raptor, but it had been the most utterly disgusting thing he’d ever eaten. It wasn’t going to be even theoretically edible much longer, so he’d taken the precaution of cutting some thin strips and hanging them up to dry in the wind. The carcass was soon dragged away by something less fussy than him.
The water bottle needed filling half a dozen times a day, and every time he got back to the rock shelter, he expected to find her gone, dragged off by a predator. But that hadn’t happened, either.
After nearly three days spent trying to get water down Helen’s throat without choking her, he knew her features better than he knew his own. Short dark hair framed a face that could probably be better described as striking, rather than conventionally beautiful. Laughter lines creased the side of her eyes. It was a shame she’d mostly spent her time laughing at people rather than with them.
He was dozing in the heat of the day, trying to summon the energy to go for another fill of water when he heard the rattle of breath in Helen’s throat. Thinking she’d finally decided to put herself out of his misery, Danny rolled over and sat up.
Helen’s eyes were open, staring at the rock above her head with fierce concentration. With an obvious effort, she turned her head to look at him.
For want of something better to say, he nodded and said, “Hello, Helen.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Quinn.”
It seemed there was nothing wrong with the wretched woman’s memory, and from the spiteful look in her eyes, he was certain her temperament hadn’t miraculously improved.
“You’ve been unconscious for three days,” he said.
The look in her eyes spoke of pain and something else. Something more difficult to fathom.
After several minutes, Helen spoke again. “Why can’t I feel my legs?”
Danny recognised the look now.
Fear.
He felt a sudden flash of sympathy for the woman.
Three Weeks
Any sympathy evaporated as fast as water on a hot stone.
Helen Cutter was relentlessly demanding and equally relentlessly rude.
He had given her water to drink. Fed her every single one of the emergency rations from their packs, wiped her arse when she’d needed a crap and even washed her underwear.
He’d mainly lived on wind-dried strips of raptor flesh.
She hadn’t offered to share her rations. He hadn’t expected her to.
She hadn’t regained the use of her legs, but her other injuries were slowly healing. There had been a full course of antibiotics in her pack, as well as some other pills he hadn’t recognised. She’d taken them all, day by day, and day by day she’d grown stronger.
But she still couldn’t move her legs.
Three Months
“Your culinary skills leave a lot to be desired, Quinn.”
“So you come up with another way of cooking gopher. It’s either raw or roasted.”
“Baked. Dig a pit. Get some clay. I’ll tell you how to do it.”
Like she’d told him how to make fire once the cigarette lighters in his pack had run out. Danny had to admit that the sodding woman knew how to survive in the wilderness.
She/d told him how to cut and straighten wood for spears and then harden their tips in the fire. She’d taught him how to set traps and how to catch fish in the rivers. Reminded him that birds’ eggs were edible and a useful source of protein.
He’d caught small mammals and roasted them. She’d done nothing but fucking criticise. She spent the day propped up against the wall of their shelter, giving orders, complaining that he was just a city boy with no idea how to survive. Danny had given up answering back, there was just no fucking point.
She couldn’t walk and he couldn’t leave her. He could have rigged up some sort of stretcher and dragged it across the dry, unforgiving landscape of what would eventually become the Great Rift Valley but that would have served no useful purpose. He spent as much time as he could scouring the landscape for anomalies, but so far, they had all been absent without leave. Helen had had nothing constructive to say on that score, but it hadn’t stopped her bitching.
Three Years
“Congratulations, Quinn. You’ve managed to make a fire in less than a glacial epoch.”
“You shouldn’t have let the last one go out.”
“It might have escaped your attention, but our meagre stock of fuel had run out.”
“My sincere apologies, your ladyship. I’ll just nip off and find some more dried caveman poo to burn.”
“They haven’t reached the stage of living in caves yet.”
“It’s got a catchier ring to it than rockshelterman. That one doesn’t seem to have really caught on.” Danny stood up, throwing their last few pieces of wood on the fire.
When he’d returned from a hunting and gathering trip it had been too close to nightfall for him to pick up more than a few lumps of wood from the edges of the river and a bagful of dried crap. It had been Helen’s idea to use that as a source of fuel and – much to his irritation – she’d been right. Once dried, it burnt well on the fire, and he’d quickly learned to ignore the smell. Just as the hominids had learned to ignore him skulking around on the edge of their troop. They no longer shied away from him now, allowing him to come close enough to pick up the crap that they seemed content to leave where it fell. He’d even overcome his reluctance to using his hands for the job, but he did make sure he washed them well in the river.
The bodies of the hominids murdered by Helen had long since been picked clean by scavengers and what remained of their bones had been pressed into service as yet another source of fuel for their small campfire. That had been Helen’s idea, too. She’d told him, with some degree of relish, that the word bonfire had originally come from ‘bonefire’.
There were times when Danny wondered if there was anything the bloody woman didn’t know. If there was, he hadn’t found it yet. His attempt to start a conversation about Pride and Prejudice (he’d seen the film starring Colin Firth) had been easily trumped (she’d done the book for her English GCSE). He’d tried again with Hamlet. That had failed because she’d once gone out with someone who’d played the part of Claudius in an am-dram production. Helen had labelled the main character an insufferable wimp with a mother fixation and declared Ophelia to be feeble. Danny had given up on culture at that point.
To his surprise, they’d come close to agreement in a discussion about old thriller writers. They’d dismissed Alastair MacLean as over-complicated, Hammond Innes as dull but had both enjoyed Desmond Bagley’s entertaining romps. Nothing intellectual, just good stories and decent characters. They’d both read High Citadel first and had really liked the scenario of ordinary people thrust into an extraordinary situation. Much like them. But it was easier to stick to a discussion of books rather than contemplating the fact that they might well have to spend the rest of their lives together, with only a few ape-men for company. Not that the hominids took much notice of them, and they certainly weren’t a source of sparkling wit and repartee. Mind you, neither was Helen Cutter.
A few weeks later – they kept track of time by scraping a mark for each day on the wall of their shelter – Danny realised that conversation about books had been something of a turning point. Helen no longer sniped at him quite so much and once, after the obligatory daily arse-wiping, she’d even muttered something that might, just might, have been a thank you. He had to admit that she’d had good cause to behave like a total bitch. If he’d lost the use of his legs, he’d wouldn’t have been best pleased. And he was the only person for umpteen million years that she should take out her anger on.
He wouldn’t say so to Helen, but he was amazed he’d managed to keep her alive so long without some sort of infection setting in. Maybe the warm, dry air had helped with that. Preventing pressure sores had been one of the hardest things to deal with. Fairly early in their time together, he’d taken to skinning the gopher things before baking them in mud. Curing the skins hadn’t been too hard – under Helen’s tutelage, of course – and once ready, he’d used them to prevent her arse being too close to the hard, dry earth for too long. He also made sure he changed the position she was lying in several times a day.
He hunted, they ate; he fetched water, they drank it; he found fuel, they burnt it. The cycle of survival continued. Helen’s injuries had healed as much as they were going to, but it was clear she was never going to regain the use of her legs. She had no feeling below the waist, but she compensated for that by dragging herself around on her arms, which had become heavily muscled from the effort. The material of her trousers had long since worn away from contact with the rough ground so she avoided abrasions by using a thick, gopher-skin mat tied around her arse and legs with gopher sinew. They’d eaten a lot of gopher in the last three years.
One day he managed to bag a large, ground-dwelling bird that even Helen couldn’t put a name to. As ever, it was feast or famine, and that night, it was feast, as neither of them fancied trying to keep anything resembling poultry in the head of the day. Afterwards, the pair of them lay stretched out on their beds in the rock-shelter, stomachs full of something that – for a change – really did taste like chicken.
A sharp intake of breath next to him as Danny lay on his back, drifting comfortably into sleep, jerked him awake in the space of a heartbeat.
“Quinn!”
“Fucking hell…” The flickering light in the distance was unmistakeable, a shining fractured brightness that for three years he’d only seen in dreams. He scrambled to his feet. “Come on, Your Ladyship, time to start moving!”
“Don’t be an idiot, Quinn. If that thing leads to the Permian, it would hardly be an improvement. You need to check it out.”
“We can take a look together.”
Before she had time to object, he went down on one knee, hoisted her onto his shoulders in a fireman’s lift and staggered to his feet. Helen was heavy, but he wasn’t taking the risk of the anomaly closing and stranding her on the wrong side on her own. She cursed furiously and thumped him with her fists. He ignored her and walked as fast as he could over broken ground. Luckily for him a bright moon rode high in a cloudless sky.
By the time he reached the anomaly, he was panting hard, sweat running freely down his face despite the cold night air. The muscles in his legs and back were screaming for respite but he kept moving. Three years they’d waited for this opportunity, he wasn’t going to let it slip away now.
He stepped through without a backward glance, feeling cautiously with his feet in case he was about to step off a cliff or into a lake. The anomaly prickled on his skin as he readied himself to jump back at the first sign of danger.
Trees.
Tall conifers, with what looked like late afternoon sun shining through.
A thick carpet of dry pine needles underfoot.
The air was warm, and he could hear the low drone of insects.
“Hold me up!” Helen demanded. “I need to see where we are.”
Danny quickly slid her off his shoulders, his arms around her waist, hauling her upright as she stared around, her formidable intellect and experience assessing their situation more accurately than he could hope to do.
His heart was hammering from exertion and nerves and he couldn’t contain himself. “Well?”
“We stay,” she said, with an air of finality, not asking his opinion.
“How do you know it’ll be better than where we were?”
She turned her head, a maddening smirk on her suntanned face. “All this time and you still doubt me? You wound me, Quinn.”
He laughed. “Doubt you, Your Ladyship? Surely some mistake?”
The prickle on his skin abruptly stopped. Behind them, the anomaly had closed.
“So what now?”
“You pick me up and carry me again.”
“Yes, mistress…” When he was settled over his shoulders again, he said, “Which way?”
“Following the electricity poles would be a good start.”
His eyes widened as he finally saw the wood for the trees. A smile spread across his face and he started walking, slowly, steadily, ignoring the burn in his muscles as he locked his eyes on the line of wooden poles and their slightly sagging electric lines.
What they needed now was a road.
As the light slowly faded, Danny had to stop more frequently. He had no idea how much ground they’d covered or how long he’d been walking. The only consolation was that at least he knew they weren’t walking in circles.
By the time Danny felt something other than springy pine needles underfoot, he was fucking exhausted. He slid Helen off his shoulders again and leaned against a tree, holding her up.
“Gonna have to call it a day for a while, Princess.”
To his surprise, she didn’t treat him to a sharp exhortation to get his arse in gear, she just leaned back against him and muttered, “My extremely elegant gopher-skin skirt is slipping down, Can’t feel it round my waist any more.”
He laughed, fumbling for the sinew ties and tightening them for her. “I’m going to sit you down for minute. Need to take a better look at this track.”
“It’s driveable,” Helen declared, before he had chance to move her.
“How do you know?”
“Because there’s a vehicle approaching.”
Danny’s heartrate jumped again. “Let’s hope they don’t mind picking up hitchhikers.”
With his arm around Helen’s waist, he manoeuvred them to the side of the rough track.
Three sets of headlights were approaching at a speed that bordered on reckless.
Danny stuck his arm out, thumb in the air and waved it around.
The lead vehicle, a black Range Rover, braked hard and came to a halt two metres away in a spray of dust and small stones.
The driver’s door opened and a tall, dark-haired man in black combats stepped out, looking them up and down, a wide smile on his handsome face.
“You need a fucking haircut, Danny boy, and that beard really doesn’t suit you.” Becker’s eyes hardened as he stared at Helen. “Look what the cat dragged in. Welcome back, Mrs Cutter. I do believe there’s a still a warrant out for your arrest for the attempted murder of your husband.”
Danny tightened his hold on Helen. “Play nicely, Becks.”
“Danny!” Sarah Page was running down the track towards him from the second car. She came to halt a metre away, staring at Helen as though trying to will her away from him so she could hug him.
He held out his free arm. “Sarah, you’re a sight for sore eyes!” When she didn’t move to close the distance between them, he muttered, “Sorry, Princess,” to Helen, then raised his voice enough to carry to the occupants of all three vehicles. “Helen broke her back three years ago in a fall and lost the use of her legs. If I let go of her, she’ll fall. So if anyone wants to hug me, you’ll have to get a bit closer. If you don’t, then fair enough.”
Sarah stepped up to Danny’s side and gave him a kiss on the cheek, tears in her dark eyes. He saw a livid scar running down the side of her neck. There was a story there to be told. He gave her a one-armed hug, burying his face in her soft dark hair for a moment. She kissed him again, then said to Helen, “I’m sorry. Is there anything I can help with?”
“A drink of water would be nice,” Helen said, in a perfectly composed tone that belied the rigid tension in her upper body.
Becker took Sarah’s place, his hand held out to Danny. “It’s good to have you back. Do you need me to call an ambulance?”
“No,” Helen said.
“The medical bay in the ARC will be fine,” Danny said.
“We’ve moved to new premises,” Abby said, throwing her arms around Danny’s neck and kissing him. “We thought we were never going to see you again.”
His next hug was from Connor. The lad moved with easy grace and a confidence that Danny found hard to reconcile with the gawky young man he’d known.
A short-haired man that Danny didn’t recognise finished talking into a throat mic then stepped forward, his hand outstretched. “Matt Anderson,” he said. The handshake was firm and the man had an air of quiet authority, despite his civilian clothes.
“New team leader?” Danny hazarded.
“Got it in one.” The look Anderson gave Helen was cool but not openly hostile, for which Danny was grateful.
He’d spent three years looking after the bloody woman.
He wasn’t about to stop now.