Clever
I
The ferns dripped with gore as the jungle's background noise slowly resumed from its tense silence. Panting, Muldoon flipped over to his stomach, sending a fresh gout of blood pulsing from the ragged gash in his side. The shotgun barrel was still hot, but his mind hardly registered the comparatively minor pain as he grabbed its reassuring weight, listening intently for the packmates of the two velociraptors that had been ripped in half by his buckshot.
Nothing but the birdcalls and the monkeys. Could he truly have been this lucky? Muldoon realized that he had not dared breathe in over a minute and his lungs were burning enough to be distinguishable from his actual wounds. He exhaled slowly, replaying the events in his head.
"We can make it if we run."
No, we can't.
"Why not?"
Because, we're being hunted... (wasn't it obvious?)
"Oh God..."
In the bushes, straight ahead... It's alright.
"Like hell it is!" (The note of panic brought back memories of Africa, a picnic by comparison!)
(The shotgun's buttstock presses into his shoulder comfortingly. There it is, grey on the green.)
Run, towards the shed. I've got her.
(He had wanted to do this for months. Should have, despite Hammond's protests. The botanist runs; the 'raptor stays with him. Good. She's in a sporting mood today.)
She wasn't very sporting at all, in the end though, was she? ...flushing the dangerous quarry towards your hunting partner, how very basic. How very frighteningly advanced. How buggered he was. How everyone was. Absolutely buggered. He allowed himself another five breaths before he slowly, painfully, pushed himself to his knees, then raised to his feet, steadying himself with the shotgun, careful to not point the barrel at himself as he did so. The best habits don't die hard, they never die at all, he mused.
The blood leaking from his side was starting to soak down his shirttails and into his shorts. He stripped the shredded garment from his torso and tied it as tight as he could stand against the deep trenches the talons had carved into his left side, just high enough to not disembowel him instantly. He had lost a lot of blood, but he might make it if he could find a better dressing soon. And if something else hadn't picked up on the coppery scent of violence already. And if everyone else wasn't already dead. Too many ifs, for his taste, but there was nothing for it. Getting his bearings, he decided to head back to the Command Center—the botanist was on her own, bless her heart. He staggered back down the game trail, when something nagged him to stop.
The trophy. Of course. He pulled his own talon, a Kabar fighting knife, from its sheath. It was a gift from a former U.S. Marine with whom he'd hunted hippos with on the White Nile, so many years ago. The big, redfaced man who ended up losing a foot to a black mamba on the way back to camp, cursing floridly in his flat Yank accent... Muldoon shook his head; if there was a worst possible time for a trip down memory lane, this was surely it. The amber eye of the big mama stared balefully up at him, seeming to calculate even in death. He knelt over the carcass, wincing at the pain in his side, and cut the talon from its right foot, placing it flesh and all into his shorts' cargo pocket. Pushing himself to his feet once more, he resumed his painful journey back to dubious safety.
