When Hoskins had heard the sound of the motorcycles' engines moving away from the area, he had sighed with relief, before waiting a few moments and turning his flashlight back on.
His smartphone being still in his pants pocket, he had took it soon after to try to make a call to someone trusted but the thick cloud of ash completely disrupted the network and after several attempts, he had abandoned and had resigned himself to reach a safe place by his own means.
His goal was now to reach the employee village, which he supposed was still safe and could serve as a stop on his way to Burroughs.
Using the compass app on his smartphone to orient himself, he was walking southward through the woods, using his flashlight and his phone's screen to lit his way.
In this area, the trees were not as tall as they could be in the eastern part of the island or in its inaccessible parts and the vast majority did not exceed eight to ten meters in height but their crowns were dense and even when a lightning flash set ablaze the sky and briefly illuminated the darkness that had fallen on Isla Nublar, its glow struggled to break through the foliage.
Hoskins was alone with his flashlight and his smartphone and his military experience was not enough to calm the oppressive feeling of the darkness around him.
Suddenly, a prolonged and high-pitched who-ah ripped the air and surprised, Hoskins turned to the source of the sound and lighted it with his flashlight.
He relaxed.
At mid-height of one of the nearby trees, an owl was perched on a branch, its wings folded against its body and looking with its big eyes at the director of InGen's security division.
He moved on but a few seconds later, he heard a branch crack and foliage rustling as a large animal walked in the wood.
Hoskins searched for a hiding place without further ado, looking in every direction with the beam of his flashlight.
He saw a large tree's snag.
As the animal approached, Hoskins had no choice but to head towards the snag but noticing that it was hollow and that the cavity was large enough for him, Hoskins sneaked inside and curled up.
He turned off his cell phone and his flashlight and waited calmly.
The animal, hidden from his sight by the bark and the darkness, came near the snag.
A smell of carrion reached Hoskins' nostrils.
The creature from which this smell emanated did not seem to be very heavy for its size as each of its steps seemed light.
Suddenly, there was a series of repeated snaps, made by the animal's beak mandibles knocking together, giving Hoskins goose bumps. It was the only Quetzalcoatlus that had escaped the massacre at the end of the Battle of Burroughs.
The pterosaur stopped near the snag and continued to snap its mandibles for a moment before moving on silently.
Hoskins did not turn his lamp back on until the sound made by the Quetzalcoatlus as it moved faded but acting with cautiousness, he decided to stay a few more minutes inside the snag.
He finally crawled out of it set forth but he barely walked a few dozen of meters that his foot stepped on a long and soft object as thick as an arm.
Said object suddenly started to move and Hoskins felt curved and sharp teeth sink into the flesh of his calf, raising him a cry of surprise and pain.
He fell and dropped his phone and flashlight.
In the light of the latter, he saw that a two meters long boa had closed its jaws around his calf and was coiling around his leg.
A boa bite was not lethal of course, although it was very painful, but if Hoskins did not get rid of the snake fast enough, the snake would cut off the blood flow in his leg by constriction effect and make it unresponding which in the current context, would be fatal in the case he needed to flee.
The ex-soldier grabbed each of the jaws and moaned in his effort, spreading them so that the teeth retreated from his flesh before moving them away from his calf, keeping them that way as he straightened up before throwing the snake. He took back his flashlight and his cell phone, and moved away from it.
The boa did not chase down Hoskins and watched him limping. Then it crawled under a thicket and disappeared.
By biting, the boa had made Hoskins to lose some blood and its scent was smelled by nearby predators.
Initially alerted by Hoskins' cry, one of them arrived at the scene and a lightning flash revealed it as the last Quetzalcoatlus.
The pterosaur lowered its beak towards the human blood that stained the low plants and began to follow the trail of drops left by Hoskins.
