Jurassic Park:
Edge of Chaos
Prologue: Hunted
Dr. Harold Jenning raced through the dense foilage of the dark jungle-exhausted, horrified, about to die. His clothing was shredded and worn.
He looked over his shoulder, panting. He'd been running forever.
He zig-zagged through a grove of trees, a desperate attempt to avoid his pursuers. But the ruse was futile.
He ran as fast as he possibly could, a broken field sprint, hopping over branches, flying across the open area at top speed. Over a log, through a water puddle.
Running for his life, Jenning stopped and turned.
Now he heard strange hissing noises from within the underbrush.
And it was no snake.
About fifty yards away, the tops of three animal heads rose up slowly, backlit by the full moon. In the distance, the heads could see the human, his image resonating in the piercing, reptillian eyes. The heads descended, back into the foilage.
Cold, reptillian eyes. Eyes of the most piercing amber hue.
Curving obsidian claws stained the bushes with red as they passed.
"Those eyes..." Jenning thought. "Those horrible yellow eyes..."
Long, lizard-like tails snaked through the bushes.
Something new was heard. A not-too-distant high-pitched cawing. A low, haunting moan. A sound that echoed from the darkest nightmares of the mammalian brain.
Jenning stopped suddenly, dead in his tracks, allowing himself momentarily to be paralyzed with fear.
The cawing sounds grew louder and more terrifying. He knew his pursuers well. They always grew louder when they were about to feed...
He had helped breed them. Nurse them, nurture them. An odd paradox, and a dark irony, that he was sought by them now.
For sustanence.
For sport.
Jenning turned back again, an action primitive and irresistable. He had to know that survival was still a possibility.
A single, screaming idea dominated his thinking: escape. He was running on pure survival instinct.
Jenning continued forward, oblivious. Now behind him, four heads rose up in the foilage. And then descended. On all sides of him, the grass rippled as animals moved forward toward him, undetected, inexorable as torpedoes.
His face fell, defeated. Around him, four torpedo trails headed straight for him through the tall foilage. Bodies, streamlined and powerful made their approach. Jenning simply closed his eyes.
It would all be ended soon.
And it was.
In one clawing stroke.