The door has opened. Greg rests his head back against the side of the counter, his broken arm bound tight to his chest and his knees drawn up. He's breathing hard, and in the silence the sound of his own breath is deafening. Sherlock is pressed very close beside him, motionless as a statue.
"What is it?" breathes Greg.
"Velociraptor."
Greg swallows. He doesn't know much about dinosaurs, no, but you don't have to be a genius to know what velociraptor means.
Not good.
It is very still and very quiet. Greg stares hard at the oven a few feet ahead of him, trying not to think about what is behind. His hands are shaking, and he balls them into fists.
"It's inside." he whispers.
Sherlock swallows beside him. The room is dead still. All he can hear is his own breathing. He's never breathed so loudly in his life. They sit side by side in the darkened kitchen, pressed together behind the counter, and everything is frozen. Greg trembles. The dinosaur snarls, a low terrible sound that ripples through the dead air and Sherlock goes rigid beside him. Greg stops breathing.
And then it begins to – what exactly? Not a roar, not a scream. The raptor opens it's mouth and lets out a series of staccato noises, almost like the squawking of some awful bird, not roaring, it's more as though it's shrieking, calling and it's the most horrific nauseating unnatural sound he's ever heard and he balls his hands so tightly into fists that his nails cut into his palms. Out of the corner of his eye, Greg sees Sherlock's hands fly up and clamp tight over his ears. Greg screws his eyes tight shut and prays for it to end.
The shrieking stops. Silence falls again, and from where he is seated on the floor he can see nothing of the monster that is behind them. Nails click on the tiles. A snarl. Two. This is the noises of death, and they are loud in the absence of sight. Sherlock's hands do not move from where they are clasped against his ears. The detective's eyes are shut. Greg touches his leg, gently, but he does not respond.
Another low click of claws on the floor. Not seeing is agony. Greg trembles. He has to look, has to see, has to come face to face with what he's up against. He goes up on his knees to make himself taller, and quickly, softly, one hand still on Sherlock's knee, he turns, craning his neck to see over the countertop.
Two of them. One pair of terrible green eyes turn toward him and he gasps before he can help himself and crouches back down behind the cover of the counter. His heart is beating so quickly it feels as though it might beat through his chest. Palms wet, Greg waits for death, but the raptors do not move. No attack comes. Sherlock has opened his eyes, but his hands stay tight over his ears. There is little in the controlled gaze of those blue eyes that suggests fear, but Greg knows Sherlock's terror when he sees it, and right now, the man is terrified. He can see it somewhere in his eyes.
What had he seen in the eyes of those things? Velociraptor. Not the dead lizard eyes of the T-Rex, no this was different. There was something in their eyes. Something clever. Something human.
They're inside and they know we're here.
One of the dinosaurs snarls again, and the tapping of claw on tile begins anew. Sherlock is perfectly still, lips pressed together, staring at the wall opposite. Greg touches him on the arm. "Follow me."he breathes, barely using his voice. He does not know how well a pair of velociraptors can hear, and he does not wish to find out.
On hands and knees (or rather on one hand- the other arm is still wrapped in a makeshift sling against his body) he begins to crawl along the ground. With one arm he is clumsy and slow, his undamaged arm forced to take the weight of his body upon his knuckles. Sherlock is behind him. Greg's heart skips every time his hand hits the floor, panicked at the thought of breaking the heavy silence in the room. Dinosaurs have good hearing. They crawl like children, on hands and knees, moving as quickly and as silently as they can. He does not look at the dinosaurs, but he can feel them there.
Greg pauses when he and Sherlock reach the far end of the kitchen, as far away from the raptors as he can get. His good arm is aching from crawling. The pain in his bad arm is agonizing. He turns to look at Sherlock, both of them down on their knees, like animals. They are, today. In this kitchen, with the dinosaurs, they are animals. They are prey.
Sherlock rises a bit on his knees, to look for the dinosaurs, but Greg drags him back down to all fours. They have to stay down, below the counters, below eye level of the raptors. The kitchen is very large and very quiet. Greg nods to Sherlock. His one good hand touches the cold tile, then his knee, then the other knee, and he creeps stealthily in this way along another aisle, back toward where the door is. Sherlock follows without argument, and it occurs to Greg that Sherlock is following him blindly. "Follow me." he had said, a command, and Sherlock had listened. It is not only his own life in the balance, but Sherlock's. If he makes a mistake he leads Sherlock to his death.
One of the dinosaurs snarls again. Greg's heart is beating painfully in his temples. He glances over his shoulder, terrified, and Sherlock meets his gaze. Crawl. The raptors are one aisle over. If they can pass by, unnoticed, if they can get behind the dinosaurs and reach the door, if they can lock them in the kitchen, then things will be all right.
He tells himself to keep his eyes fixed ahead, and yet his gaze drifts from the door to the two monsters in the next aisle, their long necks and horrible green eyes. One opens its mouth just a bit and exposes rows and rows of tiny sharp teeth. Greg tears his eyes away and keeps crawling.
How close they are now, separated from the raptors by only a row of countertop. Greg is forgetting how to breathe. If they can do this, if they can pass one another unseen, then perhaps there is a chance.
And then a noise ripples through the air, an awful sort of high growl, and Greg's breath catches and he stumbles, his good arm nearly giving out from under him. His heart is hammering against his ribs and he stops where he is, sitting back against the counter, pulling his knees back up to his chest, his back against the metal. Sherlock mirrors him on his left side, pressed tight against him. They huddle there, together. He does not dare to move or breathe. The raptors are directly behind them and he stares hard at the opposite wall, the silence of the kitchen. It's agonizing, not seeing, knowing that certain death is behind you and you mustn't look. He slips one arm around Sherlock and holds him close against him. Sherlock starts at the touch, but does not make a sound.
Click
They're both very still.
Click
It's the sound of claws on the tile floor. They're moving. The raptors are moving.
They sit side by side, shivering, breathing loudly in the silence and trying to muffle it. Click, click, click, click, the dinosaurs are walking. One growls again, very close, and Sherlock jumps beside him. Greg swallows hard, blinking furiously, staring at the dishwasher on the opposite wall.
For a moment he is completely sure they are dead. This will be how it ends. But then the clicking starts up again, click click click down the aisle, and when Greg turns to look the raptors are moving away.
He looks at Sherlock, and Sherlock nods, and Greg puts his weight down on his good arm and moves again down the aisle toward the door, silent as a ghost, with Sherlock behind him. The clicking of claws on tile continues. The door is still many feet away. Greg glances again behind him, to make sure Sherlock is still there, and that is when the silent stillness of the room is broken in a burst of noise.
He's not sure what has happened, only that suddenly the pots and pans from the counter are raining down on his head and he yells in panic before he can help himself, but it is lost in the din of clattering metal. Careful measured crawling becomes a mad scramble as he and Sherlock hurry down the aisle on clumsy hands and knees through the mess of kitchenware, pressing themselves tight against the counter at the very end, against a rack of hanging spoons. Sherlock is trembling hard now. One of the raptors' heads pokes through the space in the counter from an aisle over, and Greg closes his eyes tight. It's heard them. It's over.
Except that neither moves a muscle, and the kitchen becomes very still and very quiet, and the raptor withdraws it's head and they are still alive.
Click
Click
Click
Sherlock lets out a long breath beside him and Greg realizes that he too had stopped breathing and gulps for air. Greg closes his eyes and leans his head back against the counter where they're hiding.
They're fine. His heart is racing. As long as they don't make a sound they're fine, fine as long as they don't make a sound, the dinosaurs are in the bloody kitchen with them but as long as they're very still and very quiet and do not move or make noise as long as they're quiet and one of the soup ladles he's leaning against detaches itself from the rack and hits the floor-
In the deathly stillness of the kitchen, the tiny clatter is like a gunshot. Two terrible snarls hit the air and they freeze.
"Go" hisses Sherlock and does, scurries down the last aisle as fast as his gangly knees and arms can carry him. Greg crawls after him, but loses his balance. His head hits the floor and he scrambles to pull himself up with one arm. Sherlock has already rounded the corner, out of sight, and Greg shuts his eyes and gives a quick prayer of thanks.
There is snarling from beside him, and he turns to see both dinosaurs examining the soup ladle on the floor. Velociraptor, his mind supplies, giving his death a name. They are only inches apart. Greg watches, slumped against the counter as one of the raptors raises it's head and Greg sees the rows of teeth and adds a quick extra line to his prayer.
Please god let Sherlock get out of this
They'll take the time to eat him, won't they? They'll be busy enough with him that Sherlock will have time to get out. He tries to send a telepathic message to the detective (make a fucking run for it when they're killing me don't look back just run and lock the door) but he's not sure it goes through and he watches as the two pairs of green eyes turn toward him -
Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap
The dinosaurs straighten up, their horrible heads snap around, looking for the source of the noise. It's the tapping of metal against tile and Greg realizes as the raptors growl and turn away what it is, it's Sherlock, driving the raptors away from Greg but towards him.
"Fuck." says Greg softly.
The raptors move like lightning across the floor, not with the lumbering power of the Tyrannosaurus Rex but with a liquid sort of grace, almost cat-like. Toward Sherlock. Greg seizes a pot off the counter and hurls it at the floor as hard as his good arm can manage. He watches over the countertop as the dinosaurs stop and turn away, prowling back through the aisles to investigate. Greg crawls for it, hurrying across the tiles as the raptors come nearer-
Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap
Greg curses under his breath as the tapping starts up again, peeking over the counter to see the dinosaurs pause, confused. He can't tell where Sherlock is, but the creatures can because they take off at a run toward a corner of the kitchen.
Fuelled by panic, Greg drags himself to another rack of large spoons and tears them off one by one with one hand, throwing them as far as he can down the aisle, filling the room with the sound of clattering cutlery. And then he crawls again as the raptors' growling hits the air, his bare knees aching from contact with the floor and his arm shaking from the strain. He throws himself around a corner, chest heaving as he struggles to breathe. He's feeling lightheaded. Slowly, he peers back into the aisle. The two raptors are picking their way through the mess of cutlery. He tears his gaze away and shuts his eyes again, trembling. Deep breath. In, out.
Then crawl. He moves silently, as quick as he can down the aisle in the opposite direction, listening to the raptors claws click on the floor one aisle over. Sherlock, somewhere, is being mercifully silent. The bandaging on his arm is becoming heavy with blood.
At the end of the aisle he pauses, turning his head both ways. He can hear the raptors somewhere to his left. Sherlock is nowhere to be seen. The large poorly-lit kitchen is a maze of shadows and reflective surfaces. "Sherlock?" he breathes. No reply. He had not expected one.
He licks his lips, nervous, and slowly crawls forward, away from where the raptors are, ducking into an aisle when he hears them growling. His heart is drumming painfully in his chest. The aisle is long and dark and silent. "Sherlock?" he whispers softly. No reply comes. He keeps going, his knees raw and bleeding from crawling.
Is Sherlock searching for him the same way? Up and down aisles on all fours, trembling, listening to the growling and the clicking of the dinosaurs nails on the floor, wondering if he will come face to face with one at any moment. Surely he is, and somehow in this double manhunt they continually miss one another. Sherlock is nowhere to be found. He cannot see the raptors: their presence is made known only through sound. He feels very alone. It could not have been more than three or four minutes that he crawls through the kitchen alone in this way, but it feels like much longer.
He reaches the door. Freedom. Safety. The raptors are still a few aisles over, their terrible heads swivelling this way and that as they search. But it's useless. He can't leave; not with Sherlock still somewhere in the kitchen. Greg sets off down the aisle where the pots and pans had been overturned, carefully picking his way through them. He is holding his breath. The slightest touch, the smallest noise, and it is over.
His arm gives out from under him, and the pans clatter loudly as he collapses to the ground. The raptors are making that noise again. Metal clangs and bends as one of them leaps onto the countertop. Greg drags himself back to his knees, floundering in the mess of cookware. He raises his head just enough to see it: the sharp teeth and huge claws and green eyes and the eyes look straight at him for the first time, straight into his eyes, and Greg freezes.
Velociraptor.
"Run!" commands Sherlock, who has appeared from around the corner and seized Greg's hand in his, and then they are on their feet and running and the raptor has pounced toward them and is running and making this horrible shrieking noise and 65 million years of evolution later survival is once again reduced to running fast and Greg has never really been that much of a runner.
It's a five second run to the door, and it is a blur of adrenaline and noise and terror. Sherlock throws open the kitchen door and seizes Greg by the hand and shoves him through. One of them is screaming. Maybe both. The raptor leaps with claws out and Sherlock jerks backward through the doorway. The door is hanging open, and the raptor lunges for the crack as the detective throws his body against the heavy door with all of his wiry strength and the dinosaur's head snaps at the air as Sherlock tries and fails to shut the door on it.
Greg is up off the floor and onto his feet in a second, throwing himself against the door next to Sherlock, and they are both screaming as the raptor is forced inside and the heavy door slides shut. "LOCK IT." screams Greg "LOCK IT!" and Sherlock seizes the lock in one hand and twists and the door is locked. Greg collapses to his knees, but Sherlock stays standing. Both are gasping for breath. In the aftermath of the chase the silence is incredible. Sherlock is very still, looking through the small circular window. On the other side, the raptor looks back.
Greg picks himself up off the floor for a second time and grabs a handful of Sherlock's shirt. "Come on." he gasps, tugging the detective away. "Jesus, Sherlock." Sherlock is quiet. "Jesus -"
He hugs him, and Sherlock does not protest. They clutch at each other, adrenaline to adrenaline, pounding heart against pounding heart. "Well," gasps Greg after a long while, holding onto Sherlock to stay upright. "Well, at least – at least we found – the raptors, they're not – they're not with John -"
He is shaking. Sherlock is grim.
"No." says Sherlock. "There were more than two."