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Isla Sorna
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A jovial old man paced down a hall, flanked by two younger persons in lab coats. One, a dark, short haired man tapped at his PDA while the glasses wearing, blonde haired woman went through her notes with a frown. The man upfront, walking down the hallway to survery Site B's paddocks, had an expression comparable to a kid in a candy-store beneath his short, white beard. Hammond surveyed his embryo stock, a good two dozen species cataloged and recorded. It was 1987. Isla Sorna was fully staffed and Isla Nublar's paddocks were nearing completion, meaning he effectively had a zoo prepped and ready with only the need for animals to stock it. They'd already produced so many fantastic creatures on Isla Sorna, some of which were approaching adolescence and be ripe for transport from Sorna to Nublar. He just had to pick which ones.
On instinct he felt compelled to call out and have the oldest Tyrannosaurus as the first animal picked, sure to be a big draw for the kids. But then he paused. John Hammond tapped at his chin as he observed the growing Tyrant Reptile, who was currently ripping apart a cow carcass.
Dr. Henrey Wu and Laura Sorkin, the two chief geneticists, paused and both raised an eyebrow.
Wu grunted and cleared his throat, "Mr. Hammond? You want the first?"
Hammond hummed momentarily before shaking his head, "No, we'll hold off."
Even Sorkin mentally backpedaled, "W-Wait what?"
Hammond nodded his head to his own accretion, "We'll start with mostly herbivores. Should be more containable and need less space."
"Are, are you sure about that?" Wu muttered, "What about drawing crowds?"
Hammond just shook his head and waved a hand, "Baaah, they'll be more than drawn in at the word 'dinosaur'. Besides we'll still have the Rex by time we open, but probably better we get out feet beneath us with the herbivores first. Crowds and kids love big dinosaurs anyways-"
The old man smiled as he paced over to another paddock and motioned towards the behemoth within with his amber headed cane, "Not too many folks bigger than that one."
A long, bellowing, almost blaring honk like what one would hear out of a foghorn called out, quieting even the Tyrannosaurs.
"Besides, be safer with the vegetarians!"
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Isla Nublar, 6 years later
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The loading forklift hummed while billowing out its taxed exhaust. The smell of diesel fumes filled the damp, thick tropical air. But that wasn't what caused the multiple armed men comprising the loading teams to recoil when the lift and its cargo lurched out of the foliage addled dirt road. It was the audible hissing of what was inside the metal container the forklift was carrying that did. Waiting for the lift to set the container down in front of one of the park's holding pens, a tanned man touting a ranger's hat and shotgun warily waved to his comrades and shouted over the whirling machine and hissing animal.
"Alright now, pushers move in. Loading team move it," Robert Muldoon barked as several park workers approached the crate and attached the handles to the surface.
Muldoon motioned to the good dozen or so men armed with stun guns and in a few cases, rifles, "I want tasers on full charge."
The container clicked onto the rails beneath it and at the loading team approached it to grip the sides and slide it across the rails and into the holding pen. A shriek was heard and something banged on the inside of the container, affording a brief glimpse of sharp quills poking out from between the air slits. A worker barked and stumbled back to grab his chest.
Muldoon kept his voice low as he patted the worker's shoulder, "Alright, steady. Get back in there now, push. Get back in there, Don't let her know you're afraid."
With much reluctance, he complied and soon he and the other loading team got the crate up to the gateway to the paddock.
"Loading team step away, Gatekeeper-" Muldoon muttered with his subordinates being all too eager to comply, "Joffrey, raise the gate!"
Joffrey, a seasoned veteran of dangerous animal care and longtime worker at the park. He was three days until retirement when the owner of gleaming orange eyes glared at him. A brilliant shrieking cry, almost like the screaming brakes of a car, sounded off as the creature within the crate charged forward and slammed into the gate he was opening. The recoil of such force at such speed caused the entire container to slide back on its rollers several feet and for Joffrey to lose his footing and fall to the side. Then it all seemed to happen at once.
Joffrey tried to scrambled to his feet only to get yanked back towards the container and scream out in pain as multiple serrated fangs dug into his leg to the bone. He yelled and clawed at the ground and container wall to try and gain a purchase and not get pulled back. Muldoon rushed to his side and grabbed his old friend around the middle, having to drop a shotgun in the process. The game warden glimpsed the gleaming orange eyes, filled with rage, leering back at him. The creature, the monster grabbed Joffrey's leg and chomped down on his thigh while holding onto his body with its arms and kicking back with powerful legs to continue pulling away.
Multiple workers with stun guns and electric prods rammed their weapons through the air slits, electrocuting and jabbing the monster over and over again to little effect. A broad tail lashed out and slammed into the container wall in the direction of most of the workers. Many of them screamed and recoiled in bloody display as their hands, arms, and in several cases, faces and eyes, were gouged into by quills that stayed lodged into their bloody flesh.
"Shoot her!" Muldoon roared as Joffrey slipped further in.
The monster refused to go down, veiled in a shower of electric prod-borne sparks, ricocheting gunfire, and Joffrey's blood. It glared back at Muldoon even as it finally started to convulse. It was making its intentions clear when it tore off most of Joffrey's thigh and bit down again on his stomach, vice-like jaws and large fangs refusing to give. It never took its eyes off Muldoon. It wasn't going to eat Joffrey, just kill him. And it would do the same to Muldoon.
"SHOOT! HEEER!"
Joffrey's arm went limp and it slipped out of Muldoon's grasp to the echoing cracks and rumbles of gunfire.
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South Africa
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"Look at the angled plates the teeth all line up to form, perfect for shearing through the toughest vegetation one might find in a forest. Tooth replacement was all at once so I could eat the toughest shrubs."
"That doesn't sound very scary!"
The flannel shirt and four layers of dust wearing Dr. Grant turned around, his line of sight parting the volunteers like Moses did the Red Sea to reveal a heavy set youth, younger than eight or so, in a baseball cap and striped shirt.
"More like a, six foot Bambi!", the five year old barked; obviously in the 'bratty' phase.
Dr. Grant sighed as he walked forward with his hands on his hips.
"Try to... Imagine yourself in the Jurassic period," he started.
Dr. Sattler her palm to her face, knowing what was coming, "Oh god..."
Dr. Grant patted the air with his hands to indicate height as he started to spin his tail. One he had kept prepped and ready for just such an occasion. Most people who want to come to a fossil dig, let alone in South Africa, are wanting to find the predators. Tyrannosaurus, Albertosaurus, Allosaurus, Deinonychus, the lions, tigers, and wolves of their day; regardless of if those genera even existed on the continent they were on. Not as many are eager to dig up a complete, remarkably complete as it was relatively big, herbivore the size of a man. After all so many movies show herbivorous dinosaurs as little more than helpless protagonists fleeing from the predator or cannon fodder for the predators to tear to pieces. Most people don't know the deer, moose, or bison are far more dangerous to people than wolves, tigers, and lions ever were in terms of body count.
"You get your first good look at this 'six foot Bambi' when you enter the clearing, but he already knew you were there long before you emerged from the brush and is already facing you. He might resemble a deer or bird in manner, chewing on leaves and bobbing his head. And," Grant motioned with his hand to his eyes and the child's, "You think he'll flee because he's not a carnivore like , but no, not Heterodontosaurus. You stare at him, and he just stares right back… And that's when the attack happens, not from the front- but from the side."
Grant swung his arms inward with raised index fingers, making a shark whistling sound to indicate movement. He stopped just short of the Eric's eyeballs, causing them to widen.
"From the other two Heterodons, you didn't even know where there…," Grant chuckled as he paced away slightly, "Heterodontosaurus is a herd animal, moving about in troops or sounders like chimpanzees or wild boars, moving about as a group and viciously protecting their foraging grounds from other competitors. Often they'd gang up on an enemy if they got an opening."
Noticing how he was now losing young Mr. Kirby's attention, Grant retrieved something from his pocket.
"And he gnashes at you with this," he quipped while revealing a long, almost dagger-like fang with visible serrations running across its lengths, "Five inch, serrated fang, like a hacksaw, two on each jaw. Mostly used for chopping tough plants but they're plenty sharp just like a boar or ape's."
When Grant held up the fang and got close to him, Eric Kirby's eyes became like dinner plates.
"They're not predators so they don't bother to rip out your jugular like a lion. Not instantly… Instead he rips into you here-"
Grant mock-slashed the youth across the thigh, letting images pertaining to four such fangs sawing into his flesh and pulling the muscle from the bone sink in.
"Ooor here,-"
Grant motioned again, this time knifing the tooth across the kid's collar to summon a vision of such dagger-like fangs gnashing into the muscle and arteries present.
"-Or, maybe across the belly," Alan muttered with a slight chuckle as he dragged the fang's tip across the now quivering youth's stomach and tensed the point to his shirt, "emptying out your intestines, make you go into shock and die of blood loss… Point is, you are alive until they decide to kill you."
He cocked an eyebrow and looked Eric Kirby in the eye with a smirk, "So, try to show a little respect?"
The kid rapidly nodded, now thoroughly traumatized the next time he so much as looked at a pig.
Author Note: Heterodontosaurus is a genus that is not nearly as big as it is in this story. I did this on purpose and I'm lampooning the odd size changes a lot of JP dinosaurs are subject to. The real life species, Heterodontosaurus tucki is roughly house cat to jackal size.
UP NEXT:
The break out replacement!