The mission seeming to drag on, Dearing and Leon waited as they could in Grady's jeep.
They had remained tense for a long time, fearing that Hoskins and his men would get agitated following a radio call that would have told them that the mission had turned badly, but as they didn't get any news since the Slayers entered in the mountain, their tension had gradually relaxed.
The former director and the intern had talked for a few minutes and then, once they had been out of conversation topic, the first had settled herself in her seat and finally fall asleep.
It was only the need to go to the toilets that woke her up.
Opening her eyes, she noticed that the windscreen was covered with a dusting of ashes.
Dearing put the vehicle's key in the ignition and activated the windscreen wipers that revealed a world of darkness outside whose only colour aside black seemed to be a shade of dark grey.
Like a snowfall, the ash was falling all around and if it had been of a lighter colour or white, it would have evoked a winter atmosphere worthy of a December month in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere.
The sound of the windscreen wipers cleaning woke up Leon, who had also fallen asleep.
"Leon? I don't recall if there are any toilets around here. I have to pee…"
"In the holding building. First door on your left when you enter, right next to the broom closet," he replied with a half asleep voice.
"OK, thanks. I'll be back…"
She turned the key in the ignition to turn off the engine but left it there before getting out of the vehicle and head to the tent, as she had received earlier the instruction of informing Hoskins' men if she had to go somewhere.
Under the tent, Hoskins had a radio in his hand and was listening carefully to what his interlocutor was saying, but his attitude was nervous and the two mercenaries who were with him were looking at him with worried eyes. Had the mission gone wrong?
Before she could ask the question, a third mercenary appeared in front of her.
It was a blonde woman in her forties, quite tall and thin with hollow cheeks.
She seemed to have a tired look all the time because of the dark rings under her eyes. A smell of tobacco emanated from her.
"What do you want? She asked coldly in her raspy voice.
"I just need to go to the toilets," Dearing answered.
"Oh that's problematic ..." said a fourth mercenary, a spry young man between twenty-five and thirty years old. "I don't see any and we can't go in the jungle to find you a quiet place."
"There is some in the building, you donkey!" The blonde mercenary retorted to her colleague. "Let's go," she said curtly to Dearing, "and you too. I don't want to stand guard alone."
They walked to the holding building and once they were at its entrance under a canopy, the blonde mercenary opened the door and allowed Dearing to enter with a nod while taking a cigarette packet out of her vest's pocket.
"You have two minutes," she said to Dearing before putting a cigarette in her mouth and lighting it.
Dearing found the toilets and as they were quite close to the entrance door, she still could hear the mercenaries talking:
"How can you smoke in the middle of this ash fall, Maggie?" The youngest asked to his colleague. "You're not afraid of drying your throat."
"What's going on? You want to moisten it maybe? We can do that whenever you want sweetheart!" She teased him.
"Oh easy cougar or I call the wildlife services so they can come and take care of you! You're not repulsive you know, although you reek of cigarette, but you're almost old enough to be my mother!"
"Age is just a number my dear ..."
"Don't call me my dear! It's so awkward..."
Two minutes later, Dearing came out of the toilets and of the building.
She and the two mercenaries set off to return to the tent, but as they were doing this, one of the mercenaries in the tent suddenly locked his eyes on one of the laptop's screen, the one where the footage of the achillobators' cameras was displayed.
He turned his head towards the trio and in the middle of his pale face, his eyes opened wide.
He opened his mouth, like if he wanted to shout and warn them but before he could do that, the young mercenary who walked behind the two women was brutally pushed to the ground, in the beaten earth and the ashes.
He tried to get up immediately but a foot resting on his back prevented him to do so and a sharp curved object thrusted itself into one of his kidneys, making him yell out of pain.
Maggie and Dearing turned around and let out together a single cry of terror.
One of the achillobators, Echo, had the sickle-like claw of her left foot dug into the body of the young mercenary and her scarred snout, lit by Maggie's flashlight, was only a few centimetres from the faces of the two women. She looked at both of them and the camera strapped to her head transmitted their footage to the tent.
Echo replied to their cry with a barely audible hissing and as they started to run, she lowered her head and twisted her prey's head.
Another cry was heard, coming from the opposite side of the camp, but before the mercenary who let it out could do anything else, Delta leapt and grabbed onto him, sinking her claws in his abdomen.
Being much bigger than him and weighing as much as a big male tiger, the soldier immediately tilted backwards and as he fell, she closed her jaws on his skull before shaking her neck, pulling the mercenary's head up until his neck was teared.
Hoskins and those in the tent heard something in the nearby thickets and fled, sprinting towards their hummer.
Blue and Charlie burst out of the jungle in their turn and chased them.
Not only did the achillobators had approached the camp with the greatest discretion, taking everyone by surprise, but they avoided to make the slightest sound, even during their attack, comparable in a certain way to the silent flight of an owl that was about to swoop on its prey in the darkness of the night, which gave them a surrealist aspect accentuated by the soft sound of their running on the ashes.
While Charlie was catching Hoskins and the mercenaries with him up, Blue spotted Dearing and Maggie. She rushed towards them all claws out and the neck stretched forward, crossing the camp in a blink of an eye.
Seeing her just in time, Dearing dived forward as the achillobator leaped towards her. Thus, instead of landing on her, Blue hit and knocked down Maggie, making her lost the handgun she was holding in her hand.
Dearing straightened up immediately and ran towards the jeep while Blue rebalanced.
Her keeper's mate distancing her, Blue instead focused on Maggie, who was lying flat on her stomach.
The latter tried to get up to follow Dearing but Blue stopped her by digging one of her sickle claw into her thigh.
The soldier's features deformed under pain and she moaned but before the achillobator lowered her head to bite her, she unsheated her knife and turned briskly, taking Blue by surprise and the achillobator avoided in extremis being stabbed in the chest.
Alerted by the Maggie's scream of pain, Dearing turned around and saw her fighting Blue, trying to stab her each time she lowered her head in an attempt to bite her, managing only to make her jaws snap.
She wanted to help Maggie but having no firearms at hand, she resolved to shout and throw stones at the predator in an attempt to make her move away from the soldier but it was in vain, as Blue was totally focused on her prey and like an eagle fighting against a fox which had dared to fight back even if it was the prey and not the predator, she was flapping her wings and hopping while hissing with vehemence.
On her side, Charlie had managed to catch one of the mercenaries by the ankle but her mischievous nature had pushed her to play with him before killing him and thus, she hadn't yet inflicted any lethal wound.
While she was having fun with his leg, constantly nibbling it and moving it in all possible directions, he managed to unsheathe his handgun and shot a bullet in her side. She growled in pain and got angry, opening her jaws wide and ready to close them on his throat.
Someone fired behind him and Charlie, shot in the head, dropped dead.
A hand helped the mercenary up fast enough, Hoskins'. The director of the security division, holding in his other hand a pistol, pulled the wounded man towards him and almost threw him inside the hummer but just as he was about to help Maggie, she was slain by Blue.
After narrowly avoiding an attack that would have cut off her fingers, Blue had bitten the arm holding the knife before pulling it and dislocate it, making it useless.
Her prey being disarmed, she had slashed her face with a claw swipe so quick, deep and strong that the claws sank into the flesh, reduced Maggie's face to shreds and put out one of her eyes.
At the moment Hoskins turned his eyes towards them, the raptor finished her prey by closing her jaws around her neck before ripping off her throat.
Unable to do anything, Hoskins sat in the back seat next to the injured mercenary, closed the door right away and ordered the driver to leave.
Meanwhile, Dearing had rushed inside the jeep where Leon was waiting for her, completely horrified after watching the entirety of the attack.
InGen Security's hummer passed by them and took the road that led to the Reserve and the Cartago's Aviary.
She wanted to follow it and when she turned the key in the ignition, the headlights were put on but the engine, partly clogged with ash, didn't started.
She tried again, unsuccessfully, and by looking through the rear windscreen, Leon saw that the hummer had not even stopped to wait for them.
"Start, God fucking dammit! Start!" Dearing roared while hitting the wheel with the palm of her hands.
She worriedly glanced at the achillobators, whose shadows stood against the only light source nearby, the one that came from the tent.
Busy eating the bodies of the mercenaries they had killed until then, they had come closer to Charlie and were pushing her with the tip of their snouts, as if to vainly try to wake her up.
But the vehicle's sputtering disturbing their moment of mourning, they got irritated and turned to the jeep before moving away from their fallen sister and fade into the darkness.
