Note: Yay! Chapter four! Yeah, this one's longer than the last one. Please enjoy.


Stephen caught her as she stumbled out. There was a cut above her left eyebrow and blood was running down her face. She was unconscious. Stephen put one arm under her shoulders and the other under her knees. She was surprisingly light.

"We need to get her to a hospital," Nick said. "Abby, you go with Stephen. Connor, you stay here with me and Captain Ryan."

"Alright," Abby followed Stephen as he started to walk towards the truck. She opened the back door and hopped in after the woman was set in.

About ten minutes had passed. The ride had been silent and both were worried about the woman.

"Is she alright Abby?" Stephen asked.

"The bleeding's stopped and she's got a strong pulse," Abby replied quietly. "I wonder how long she's been trapped in that era."

"Maybe after we get her to the hospital she can tell us," Stephen drummed his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel.

"Don't need…hospital…" moaned the woman.

"She's waking up," Abby took the cloth from the woman's head as she sat up. "Careful now, you have a nasty cut."

The woman reached up and touched her head, getting just a tiny bit of blood on her fingers. She leaned her head back against the window.

"I've been through worse," she grumbled and opened her eyes. "Am I in a car?"

"Yes," Abby answered warily.

"What year is it?" the woman asked.

"2010," Stephen answered as he looked over his shoulder.

"Finally, my own time! Sort of," the woman pushed back her long hair.

"What do you mean 'sort of'?" Abby asked.

"I walked through an anomaly ten years ago and I've been lost since," the woman replied.

"How do you know what an anomaly is?" Stephen questioned.

"Found an old book that had some information on them," she answered.

"What's your name?" Abby looked at the woman.

"Hunter," she extended her hand. "Hunter Aiken."

"Abby Maitland," Abby shook her hand. "And that's Stephen Hart."

"So where am I?" Hunter asked.

"Just outside of London, England," Stephen answered.

"Well I'm quite a long way from home," Hunter chuckled. "I'm from Colorado."

"And you walked through an anomaly there? In America?" Abby asked.

"Yeah," Hunter nodded. "You don't need to take me to a hospital. I'm fine, honest."

"Are you sure?" Stephen asked.

"Positive," Hunter replied with a small smile.

"Let's go ahead and go back to the anomaly site then," Stephen stopped the truck and did a u-turn.

"Now that you're awake, can you tell us what era you were trapped in?" Abby asked.

"Well, I was stuck in the Jurassic era for a while," Hunter replied. "And then another anomaly appeared and I walked through that one, hoping that it lead home. It went into the future."

"Do you know how far into the future?" Stephen inquired.

"Far enough that only a few underground buildings were still standing," Hunter rubbed the part of her lower left forearm that had a cloth bandage covering it. "Some of the creatures there are really nasty."

"Were there some freaky looking bats?" Abby's interest started to pique.

"No, but there's some freaky looking winged fuzzy reptiles," Hunter grinned. "They taste like chicken."

"What other kind of creatures are there?" Abby asked. "Were there reptiles?"

"Oh sure, down by the beach," Hunter closed her eyes, remembering. "Since it was warmer by the sea there were more reptiles. There were some lizards that looked like over sized anoles. They were around three or four feet long!"

"Wow," Abby's face showed complete amazement. "What did they eat?"

"They had developed beaks kind of," Hunter explained. "They ate crabs, stole sea turtle eggs, and snatched big bugs out of the air. The dragonflies there grew up to two feet long."

"You'd need a really big slipped for those," Abby joked.

"No kidding," Hunter smiled. "You can shoot them out of the air by chuckin' rocks at 'em."

The rest of the ride back was filled with Abby and Hunter talking about what happened to Hunter while she was in the Jurassic and the first year of her being in the future. By time they were back at the anomaly site Ryan and his men were already set up for anything that decided to come out.

"What are they doing back so soon?" Connor questioned as the engine cut and two of the doors opened.

"Cutter, you have to hear what Hunter has to say about this anomaly," Stephen said as the three of them started walking through the tall grass.

"Hi," Hunter took her backpack off her shoulders and dropped it to the ground. "This anomaly leads into the future."

"How far into the future?" Nick asked.

"Five thousand years or so," Hunter crossed her arms and looked at the flickering anomaly. "It's hell if you don't know how everything works there."

"How long were you trapped there?" Connor looked at the tall woman.

"Nine and a half years there," Hunter answered. "I was trapped half a year in the Jurassic."

"Well then maybe you can tell us what kind of creature came through here," Nick said, his eyes locked on Hunter. "Whatever it was had a scorpion tail over two meters high."

"A Digger?" Hunter's eyebrows rose. "I didn't even know one was that close to the anomaly."

"What is a Digger?" Connor asked.

Hunter kneeled down, wincing slightly at what Connor guessed the cloth bandage on her leg was covering. She dug around in her backpack and pulled out a leather bound book. It looked very used and worn. She opened it up, browsing through the pages that had various sketches on them.

"This is a Digger," Hunter held open the book to a page that had a hand drawn picture on it.

The beast was very weird. It had three pairs of arms, only one pair being the main pair. It had powerful back legs and a long scorpion tail.

"They're nearly seventeen feet tall and forty five feet long," Hunter turned the book towards her and silently read the information written at the top of the page. "They burrow under the ground and spear prey with their tail. They're not venomous but are very vicious. They live on pure instinct and are just about as dumb as a post. They can hear and feel movements on the surface and that's how they track their prey."

"Wow," was all Connor could utter.

"Bad thing is you can never see 'em coming," Hunter closed the book gently. "Good thing, like I said, they're dumber than a post."

"So how do you suggest we get it back through the anomaly?" Abby asked.

"I suggest you kill it," Hunter slung her backpack back over her shoulder. "I don't know how you'd pull that one off though. They have armor plating covering everything except their head."

"So we shoot it in the head," Ryan stated.

"Do you have a gun that can penetrate seven feet of dirt?" Hunter questioned and put her hands on her hips. "Yeah, didn't think so. Diggers hardly ever come out of the ground unless their prey is huge."

"How huge?" Stephen stepped up next to her.

"Bigger than them," Hunter shrugged. "Don't know where you'd get something that big."

"Do they have any natural predators in the future?" Nick asked.

"None," Hunter replied. "Except for another Digger. But then that wouldn't help us because you'd still have a Digger on the loose."

"Um…guys," Connor interrupted. "The anomaly's getting weaker."

The anomaly started to shrink and the light started to dim. Then it just disappeared. The group stood around looking at each other.

"Do you guys have a tracking device?" Hunter looked at Abby, knowing that she had worked at the zoo.

"Yeah, sure," the blonde dashed off to the truck and started to dig around in some of the cases.

"What are you planning on doing?" Nick inquired.

"We don't really want a Digger on the loose without knowing where it is, now do we?" Hunter grabbed the gun Abby handed her and started to jog to the back of the house. "C'mon."

"I think she's taken over," Stephen whispered.

"She knows these creatures better than anybody else," Nick replied. "We'll let her do what she's doing."

Once on the back porch, Hunter gazed out at the trees. They were very much like the forest she'd lived in for a quite awhile. The trees' trunks were spread quite a way apart but the branches tangled with one another at the tops, there were a few bushes, and a few patches of grass and weeds.

"We need to attract it," Hunter picked up a ball sitting on the porch and threw it.

Nothing happened.

"We need something bigger and heavier," Hunter glanced up at the trees and at the nearest one. "Stay here."

"You're not going out there," Stephen grabbed her arm.

"I know what I'm doing," Hunter pulled her arm away and ran on her tiptoes to the tree. She leapt at the nearest branch, grabbed it, and pulled herself up. Very easily she scaled up the tree until she was well above the reach of the tail. With the gun and her backpack secured tightly to her body, she started to kick at the branch she was standing on while holding a thick branch above her head. The branch started to bend and broke, landing heavily on the ground.

"Look," Connor pointed to where the dirt shifted and the tail sprung up.

Hunter took the gun off her shoulder and looked through the scope. She lined up the red dot right in between two plates of armor on the tail. When she fired the tracking device stuck perfectly. The tail swung around, smacked the tree, and then disappeared back under the ground.

"Where'd you learn to shoot like that?" Stephen called up to her.

"My dad and me used to hunt a lot," Hunter settled herself on the stump sticking out where the branch used to be. "But when you're a potential meal for anything and everything in the future, you get pretty good at aiming. And I've had nine and a half years of practice."

"Abby, where's the creature heading?" Nick leaned over to look at the small screen on the tracker.

"Um…she's heading…" Abby started to read off the coordinates.

"That was a male," Hunter corrected. "A female wouldn't have had that dark brown stripe."

"Okay, he's heading north, towards a forest," Abby finished.

"Is it near any houses?" Hunter asked when she landed on the ground, wincing at her leg.

"No," Abby answered.

"It'll be fine there," Hunter sat down on the porch. "If it's the one I saw three days ago, which I think it is, it should stay full for another week. It was only attacking because it sensed prey. It's gonna go curl up under the ground and sleep for awhile."

"Well then I guess we're done here," Connor started to walk back towards the trucks.

"We still need to figure out how to kill it," Ryan said as they followed.

"Have you guys seen 'Tremors'?" Connor turned around and started walking backwards. "On that movie there were giant worms under the ground and they killed them by getting them to eat a lit stick of TNT."

"Man, I love that movie!" Hunter chuckled as she caught up with the rest. "It used to scare me and I told myself that something under the ground couldn't be that scary. That was before I found the Diggers."

"Do you think that we could get it to eat a stick of TNT?" Abby crossed her arms.

"No, they only spear their prey and drag it under the ground," Hunter sighed. "But it's still a good idea in case some Graboids come through an anomaly."

"Graboids?" Abby raised her eyebrows.

"That's what they called the worms on 'Tremors'," Connor explained.

When they got back to the trucks Claudia was waiting for them. She was leaned up against the truck the anomaly team used.

"Who's this?" she asked and nodded to the beat up brown haired woman.

"This is Hunter," Abby said. "She came through the anomaly."

"How long were you trapped there?" Claudia asked.

"Nine and a half years stuck in the future and half of a year stuck in the Jurassic," Hunter replied and crossed her arms.

"She knows about the anomalies," Nick added in. "She knows about the creature that's still out there. She could be valuable to the team right now."

"Well that's for Lester to decide," Claudia opened up the truck door and climbed into the passenger seat.

Hunter slid into the middle seat up front and Nick jumped into the driver's seat. Connor, Abby, and Stephen sat in the back. After Ryan's truck pulled out and started to drive down the driveway, Nick followed.


Note: Does Hunter seem too much like a Mary-Sue? Tell what you think when you, if you do, review.