Patches of shrubbery littered the sandy plains. Captain Hemple, Lieutenant Mason, 2nd Lieutenant Clarke, Sergeant Major Scott and Staff Sergeant Jones marched in a line toward a forest to the West. It was one hundred meters from where they had re-emerged but it felt like a mile underneath the heat of the sun.
Hemple removed his baseball cap and wiped the sweat off his forehead.
"Sir!" Staff Sergeant Jones shouted.
Hemple halted his team. He moved to the rear of the line where Jones was crouched and looking through the scope of his M14 rifle.
"What is it Jones?" Hemple said. He crouched beside the Sergeant.
"Something up ahead, sir. It looks like… A hyena or a wolf."
"Describe it." Hemple said, as he squinted at a dog like form.
"It's golden-yellow and it's got black spots."
"Sounds like a hyena." Hemple said.
"It's moving towards us, sir."
"Let's fall back to the forest. If it follows us we can ambush it," Hemple patted Jones on the shoulder. "Everybody double time to the forest!"
The strange scent trail attracted the beast. It wouldn't stop bounding toward the scent. It kept going and going, as fast as its heavy body would allow it. It had to keep going, it had to find what was emitting that smell.
It was starting to mix with the smell of the plant life. It was in the forest! The beast turned toward the forest. It started growling. As it approached the forest the creature slowed down. It cautiously entered the forest. There was something unsettling within there. But the strange scent overthrew its wariness.
It entered the forest. The creature's ears pricked up at the sound of rustling in the thicket of bushes. It growled as it picked up the scent from there. Just as it was about to peer into the bushes…
BANG!
"Well done Jones," Hemple moved to the corpse of the giant dog-like creature. "Now. Does anybody know what the hell this thing is?"
The squad surrounded the body of the beast that had pursued them.
"That's one ugly mother." Mason said, as he looked in disgust at the creature.
"You're not going to believe this, Hemple." Owen said, kneeling at the creature's feet.
"What is it?" Hemple stepped over the torso of the beast and was at Clarke's side.
"It hasn't got claws." Clarke pointed out.
"Then what is it?"
"The ends of its toes are hooves." Clarke looked up at Hemple.
"So what? It's a dog-goat?" Mason shrugged.
"What if its aliens?" Staff Sergeant Jones suggested. The team looked at him. "I'm just throwing the idea out there. What with the light portal and the weird environment."
"Right we'll camp here for the night, these deciduous trees will be good cover for us." Hemple started, "We'll have a shift team looking out toward the plains where we came from, to see if that light portal will open up."
"What if it doesn't open up?" Scott asked the Captain.
"Then we're fu-."
A roar erupted from the forest. It was followed by mournful cries and rhino-like sounds.
"This is getting too weird." Scott said.
"Let's go see what that was." Hemple moved deeper in to the forest. He looked back and saw his team still standing by the dead creature, "Come on, we may have drawn more predators to our position with the dog-goat-thing."
XXXX
So this is Tent Four, Cutter thought as he looked at a large rounded tent. It was secluded from Outpost Thirty-One.
A land rover was parked outside the tent. It was black, so that meant it had to be ARC property.
Cutter looked up to the sky. He shielded his eyes from the rain with his hand, he could just about make out the shape of two A-10 Warthog jets in the clouds. There was a booming sound then followed by a muffled zipping sound.
"Ground attack aircraft. The IdL soldiers are somewhere in the Nature Reserve."
Cutter turned round, he saw a British-Caribbean man, Private David Doody, whom he had met on an operation to Guns Island. It was strange to see him wearing casual civilian clothes, a black flack vest and pistol holster.
"Doody? I thought you returned to Hereford."
"After the Guns Island incident I couldn't turn down a job like this," He smiled, "Oh and its Lieutenant, now."
"Oh, okay Lieutenant." Cutter smiled.
"Step in to the tent, sir." Doody stretched his left arm out, indicating to the tent entrance.
Tent Four was not as imposing as Cutter thought it would have been.
There were three monitors hooked up to a keyboard. The central screen showed a crosshairs with a dot in the centre scanning the island.
The right screen showed a matrix of numbers and a line that occasionally rippled.
The left screen showed a screen capture of the crosshairs locked on to a part of the island, not far from Outpost Thirty-One. On the lower left side was the time and date.
Date of Detection: March 10th, 2007
Time of Detection: 19h:35m:45s
Location: IdL Nature Reserve
Cutter leaned forward, to get a better look at the screen, "So this is where you think the SAS team have disappeared to?"
"We know it's where they disappeared to." Doody had his arms behind his back..
Cutter turned back to face Doody, "Okay, so when do we go?"
"We?" Doody raised an eyebrow.
"Well aren't you going with us?"
"I suppose Tent Four can look after itself?" Doody smirked at Cutter.
"Right, so how do I go about getting there?"
"You'll have to walk along the road through the reserve."
"So what if there's a creature incursion?"
"I'm glad you asked," Doody said, the Lieutenant turned around and opened a metal trunk. He turned around to face Cutter again. This time he was brandishing an assault rifle.
"What the hell is that?" Cutter raised an eyebrow.
"The ARC has a contract with Prospero Industries. They sent us these prototype auto-tranq guns." Doody grinned as he handed the weapon to Cutter.
Cutter took it and jiggled it about. "Quite light. So what is it and what does it do?"
"It's an Electro Muscular Disruptor version One-A Experimental or you can just call it an EMD-X," Doody started, "It is an electric charged weapon that energizes each taser-dart, after you cock it, with a certain volume of voltage. The selector switch has been converted to charge the dart with the selected current of energy," he paused for a few seconds, "To energize the first shell simply push up this switch to the voltage number," He pointed to markings adjacent to the switch, just above the trigger on the left side of the weapon, "The first option is ten volts, the second one is fifteen and the last is twenty."
"So how did you get them from Prospero?" Cutter asked.
"We simply said that we were in the business of securing High Valued Targets without causing any serious injury to them."
"I take it that was Jenny that concocted that story?" Cutter smiled.
"Who else?" Doody chuckled.
"Right, well I'll be on my way then."
"I'll notify the squad of your arrival. Oh and you'll need this." Doody removed a PDA from his left jean pocket.
"Okay and what does this do?" Cutter slung the tranq-gun over his shoulder and inspected the PDA that was handed to him.
"It tracks the team via a black box." Doody tapped on a small black box that was attached to his flak vest.
"Another Prospero invention?" Cutter asked.
"You bet," Doody clapped his hands, "Now. With this PDA you can track the location of my squad and it will map out a route for you."
Cutter pressed the "on" button and immediately the little device drew a green line through the dirt path that he had taken and zoomed out to show him a two mile distance from his location to that of the squad.
"What if I encounter the opposition force?" Cutter looked up to Doody.
"Don't worry. The OpFor have been pushed back in to the far east of the island."
"Okay then, I guess it's time to for me to go now."
"Good luck, Cutter." Doody smiled.
XXXX
Hemple, Mason, Clarke and Jones hid behind a collapsed tree. They traced the sounds to a large lake surrounded by trees.
"Look at that…" Clarke said, "It's rhinos with dinosaurs…"
They counted ten of the long necked reptiles with at least five of the rhinos.
The rhinos did not have the classic ivory horn. Instead they had a heart shaped protuberance from the end of their heads. They were eight feet in height and at least twelve feet in length.
The reptiles had scutes running down their necks and covering the top and sides of their bodies. They were ten feet tall and thirty five feet long.
Nearly all the creatures stayed around the lake.
"Okay, I think we can say this isn't an alien planet." Mason said.
"What the hell is it then?" Clarke asked.
"I think we travelled back in time." Mason suggested.
"But I thought mammals came after dinosaurs, what are dinosaurs doing here?" Hemple said.
"Maybe it's that Lost World hypothesis that that Levine guy had suggested a few years back?" Jones said, "You know, like maybe those dinosaurs were able to survive in this part of the world and have been successful since."
"For the first time you've actually made sense of something Sergeant." Hemple smiled.
"Gee, thanks sir." Jones said, smiling too.
"Right, let's get back to Scott," Hemple stood up, "He hasn't reported any other predators lured by the dead goat-thing." He started off back in to the forest.
"You know as they say," Mason started, as he stood up and followed the Captain, "No news is good news."
XXXX
Cutter found the Nature Reserve especially unnerving. He had been in many atmospheric situations since his time with the anomalies. He had been in many strange forests but never felt as if something was watching him.
The trees formed an arch over the dirt path, it almost blocked out all light.
He had felt the eyes of a creature watching him. His instinct told him it wasn't human.
The only sounds he heard were the pattering of rain against the leaves and branches of trees, the occasional twin rotor helicopter flying over the forest and the sounds of jet fighters flying in to the "Red Zone" and offloading their ammunition.
Cutter was getting close now to the location of the squad. He'd feel a lot safer knowing he wouldn't be alone.
A barking sound had caught his attention. It sounded almost reptilian. It was quickly followed by an alligator-like bellowing sound.
This isn't good… Cutter started to pick up the pace and jogged toward the blip on his PDA. He could see the toppled land rover.
"Hey! Hey!" He shouted out to three black clothed men sitting around the vehicle.
"It's Professor Cutter!" one soldier shouted.
Cutter was greeted by three ARC soldiers. Two were brown haired and considerably shorter than Cutter. The other one stood behind him and was at least six-five in height. They all had the same weapon as Cutter, the EMD-X.
"Professor Cutter," said the taller soldier, who surprisingly sounded very American.
"And you are?" Cutter turned around.
"My name is Major Johansson, I'm in charge of this team." Johansson held out his right hand to Cutter.
"Well, it's a pleasure to meet, you." Cutter shook his hand.
Johansson walked over to the two shorter soldiers and placed both hands on their shoulders, "This is Sergeant Bishop and Corporals Wicks."
"Nice to meet you two." Cutter nodded.
Both Bishop and Wicks were British Soldiers.
"Right," Johansson said, "We'll take you to the anomaly site. We've set up camp there."
Johansson led the way through the trampled foliage. Cutter noticed, as he looked at the ground, three toed foot prints in the earth.
Cutter moved out of the single file and walked next to Johansson.
"Major, did you inspect the vehicle for any damages that could have given us an idea as to what attacked the team?"
"Yeah, it looked like it was head-butted. So we thought Pachycephalosaurus, but then we noticed bite marks on the doors."
"So, we're dealing with a theropod dinosaur."
"We've narrowed the bites down to two members of the Abelisauridae."
"I'll take a wild guess and say: Carnotaurus and Majungasaurus."
"That's right Professor," Johansson said, "I also think whatever is here, has been on this island for a long time."
"What makes you say that?" Cutter looked up at the Major.
"I've been doing some research and I was able to link this to an old story that the conquistadors were claimed by an invisible force that was thought to have been summoned by the now extinct natives of this island."
Cutter looked straight ahead as he pushed the leaves of plants away from himself, "So, this anomaly has been closed for almost five hundred years and has only reopened now?"
"It would seem so, Professor."
