Chapter 3
Land of giants
Afternoon found Charlie chewing on tree bark with obvious displeasure. She didn't eat it, but munching on it tricked her stomach, allowing her to stand the hunger a while longer.
She heard the small beaked ones, feeding on ripe fruits and weeds amidst the trees' roots. They were incredibly near, fearless of the raptor. Have Charlie being capable of it, she would have felt it as a mockery. She wasn't that far from thinking it, anyway.
She snarled angrily at them, but stopped abruptly. The very effort to let out a growl made her entire body ache. All the little scratches on her skin healed quickly, and even the cut on her thigh stopped bleeding soon enough, although it would be a nasty scar; a lasting remainder of never get close to a three-horned ever again.
The little dinosaurs jumped, scattering on all directions, but never went too far, and came back quickly.
Charlie stood up slowly, groaning. She has had more than enough mockery.
The raptor limped through the forest, sniffing for food, water, or her sisters. Finding the later would bring the rest, plus the consolation and care she was desperately longing.
A rustle of leaves caught her attention. Something crawled beneath the carpet of dead foliage.
The raptor sank her muzzle under the leaves, sniffing. Her jaws gave a sudden click when they snipped on something soft and slimy.
Charlie grimaced as she raised her head, the salamander still twisting between her jaws. She wasn't very fond of the taste, but she threw her head back, opening her maw and swallowing the whole thing. She changed her mind: she now hated them.
Salamanders and frogs were the only thing she could catch in her condition. She had tried on the bats at the cave, snatching them as they flew out at night. She caught a pair before they learned of the danger, and began to fly just out of her reach. Rats had also learn to stay away from her, which left her with no option but to leave her refuge and climb down the slope to find something to eat. With her hurt, stiff body, it wasn't a pleasant trip.
There was another rustling of leaves. Charlie curled up her lips in disgust; her stomach growled. She sank her muzzle under the leaves again.
The trumpeters drank with an eye on the raptor lying under the palm trees near the pond. Charlie hissed at them, cranky, but didn't move.
Even after drinking, she still had the taste of salamanders on her mouth, and was constantly rubbing her tongue against the ceiling of her mouth to clean it. Irked, she decided to lay down under the shade, eyeing the herds that stopped by to take a sip.
As soon as the three-horned showed up, and one of them put its sight on her, she ran away, as fast and discretely as she could.
Charlie sighed, lowering her head to the ground. The searching of the day had been infructuous, still no sign of any of her sisters. Instead, the choppers appeared twice through the day, and she was sure of having heard vehicles just outside the woods; further from human territory that they've ever been before.
Charlie closed her eyes. She had been moving north again, slightly west, following the mountains to the farthest corner of the island. She knew humans probably wouldn't venture into the most arduous terrain. With any luck, she would find easy food and a place to rest and heal sooner.
Perhaps even her sisters were already there…
What was that?
The raptor opened her eyes briefly.
There was it again.
She heard a fearful shriek, and the long, alarmed hooting of the trumpeters.
Charlie raised her head, twisting around, trying to spot danger…
And then she heard it: an ominous roar; one that she remembered with a shudder.
There was a commotion. Charlie saw birds flying startled on the distance, as the sound of panicked cries and fierce growls filled the air. It all came up from the further corner of the grazing fields.
Charlie recognized the shrieks: it was a flat-bill. It sounded like it was… in pain. It sounded like it was afraid.
The distress call of the herbivore strung a chord on Charlie's instinct; she stood up. And then she hesitated.
Flat-bills were four tons, thirty six feet long creatures; hulking mountains of muscle that traveled in herds. Even if they had not spiked tails, or horns, or armor, Charlie now knew better than to mess with them.
And there was something, out there, hunting them down.
She heard the booming, chilling roar.
It was not worth it. Or so her mind told. Her guts had a different opinion.
After some minutes, the young huntress made up her mind. She would take her time to get there, but she would risk a trek.
As she ventured through the fields and into the dense forest, Charlie thought of Nameless. She was the only one she knew could bring down something that big.
She hadn't found her either, although she was someone she didn't looked for so badly, really. There was something off with her; she talked like one of them, moved like one of them… but her pale skin, her red eyes, her wicked long arms, her sheer size… all of that made Charlie feel uneasy.
She didn't quite like her. But she was alpha. Blue considered her that. And so did Echo and Delta. Charlie had to, too.
The good side was that she would not be alone anymore. She didn't quite like Nameless, but she was part of her pack. She would take care of her. Maybe she knew where the others were too. They would be together again.
A victorious, fearful roar flew with the wind. Charlie stopped, uneasy.
That certainly wasn't Nameless. And it certainly was uncomfortably close.
It was dusk by the time Charlie moved forward through the forest; the smell of fear, grass, water and recently removed earth joined to give away the place of the struggle, near the riverside. Far away she could hear the dismayed cries of the flat bills, but apart from that, it was completely silent; too much, unnervingly silent.
She slowed down as she approached; she picked the scent of saliva and blood, and a familiar, menacing aroma mixed in. The one she smelled on the concrete place.
And suddenly, a crack; like branches snapping.
It was bones. Bones being crushed.
She flattened her body as close to the ground as she could; tall reeds grew on the river banks, and she kept herself hid among them. Her legs and sides ached, the wound on her leg became a stabbing pain, but she didn't dare to stand. She crawled like a lizard…
And a deep growl froze her on place.
She could barely see through the stems, but she could make out the bulk of the flat-bill's body.
The menacing stench floated around, buzzing inside Charlie's head like the cloud of flies that surrounded the corpse.
Still, she was hungry. That alone numbed her fears, and made the unattended corpse more appealing.
She dared a little more forward, ready to sprint: it was a relatively short distance, just enough for her injured leg to endure. A quick bite, then a dash back to the woods. Easy.
She prepared, tensing her muscles.
A giant, three-toed foot stomped in front of her.
She slowly looked up. A bulky muzzle, sopping with blood raised above the reeds, bathed in the red light of sunset. A pair of nostrils sniffed loudly, and a warning growl erupted from jaws with dagger-like teeth, protruding from the upper jaw.
From where Charlie was standing, the massive body blocked the light: it was just a big, black mass, outlined in golden and red.
It was even bigger than Nameless, or so Charlie thought.
She forgot all intention of getting closer. She forgot her hunger, too.
The head of the giant violently turned towards her. Two amber orbs fixed on the raptor.
Charlie felt her heart skipping a beat.
Monstrous jaws opened in a deafening roar, as the earth shook under the beast's feet: a very familiar scenario, of which Charlie didn't want to know the end.
The raptor used her whole body to escape: hind legs, paws and all, pulling her forward through the bushes, sure that it was her final day on the earth. She didn't stop to realize that the monster actually wasn't chasing her, content with driving the intruder off, until she was back under the cover of a tight group of trees nearby.
Charlie's body hurt every nerve it had, making the young raptor wail. Then she heard the growl coming from the riverside, and reduced her yelps to a scared, shy whine.
Sundown fell on the island silently as a hungry, sore raptor cowered among the ferns, licking from time to time a reopen wound, fearful of the monsters the world was apparently full of.