Hoskins emerged from the jungle and started to cross the central fields, searching for the ridge just north of the Long Lake.

He had followed the direction of the south since as he had remembered the park's maps, he had recalled that as it ran southward towards the Long Lake, the wood he had just crossed narrowed up to the point where it formed a hundred-meters wide strip.
By following this strip, he had been able to benefit from the cover of dense vegetation for as long as possible.
However, the prospect of going out in the open did not thrilled him because although the wood did not give way to the fields abruptly, as a transition zone made of smaller trees and shrubs existed between the two, he was more exposed there than in the wood.
If he ever had any other close encounter with a predator and if the latter detected him before deciding to hunt him, he would have no chance of escaping it.
Especially in the middle of this pitch black night. They could see him but he couldn't see them.
It was therefore with a strong apprehension that he trod the grass of the fields.
The sooner he finds the ridge and the lake, the better.

He tightened his jacket around his body.
The vicinity of Mount Sibo may have changed into an inferno because of the lava and the fires, many in the more remote areas from the volcano or the fires had felt the temperature drop significantly since the beginning of the eruption.

At the bend of a curtain of thickets, he had a rather undesirable encounter.
Only the animals' breathing sounds and their feet trampling the grass had betrayed their presence and instinctively, Hoskins had turned with his flashlight to lit them.
About ten meters from him, there was a group of eight Pachycephalosaurus, a herd consisting mostly of females and their young, and led by a male with particularly pronounced blue mottles.
Most of the individuals were lying against each other under the shrubs, as if to shelter themselves from the ashes, but the male and one of the adult females were standing up, keeping watch.
Their poor sight being compensated by a finer hearing and a developed sense of smell, the pachycephalosaurs had heard Hoskins arrive and felt his scent, but failing to determine what he was and his flashlight's beam disturbing them, they became nervous.

When Hoskins inadvertently passed the beam over the male's eyes, he irritated him.
Before Hoskins could do anything, the pachycephalosaur scraped the ground with one of its hind feet, bleated and rushed towards Hoskins head first, charging him.

Hoskins struggled against the urge to run away and instead of doing this, he stood his ground and waves his arms while shouting in affirm yet calm voice, imitating that nature guide in Africa he had seen on a Youtube video, stopping an elephant charge (what Hoskins ignored is that the involved elephant was making a mock charge, whose purpose was to determine whether the person it was facing was a threat or not. It it had been a true charge, the guide would have behaved differently.).

The pachycephalosaur stopped a bit more than two meters from Hoskins, raised his head, sniffed the air, and let out a worried bleat.

His congeners raised their heads and inhaled the air in their turn.

Then, they moved away, walking at a quick pace and the individual which had charged Hoskins came to join them.

Once they disappeared into the darkness, Hoskins put his hands on his knees and let out a breath, persuaded that his plan had worked.
It wasn't actually the case, they hadn't been frightened by him.

He heard a snap.
The latter came from behind him, somewhere on the wood's eaves, about a hundred and fifty meters from where he was standing, and the wind was pushing in his direction a particular smell of carrion.

Hoskins turned around and when a lightning set the sky over the central field ablaze, the surroundings were illuminated for a little more than a second before falling back in darkness.
But during this short moment, Hoskins saw it, the Quetzalcoatlus, or at least its head and neck, as the rest of the body was concealed by a thicket.

The pterosaur was staring at him.
It snapped its beak several times.

Then Hoskins turned around and ran for his life.

X

"I found Hoskins!" Harriman suddenly announced.

The fate of the security division's director being one of the major concerns of Jurassic World employees, everyone turned to the technician.

"Where is he?" Grady asked him as he ran to his post, followed by Dearing and Sembène.

On Harriman's screen, they saw Hsokins on one of the windows, running in the middle of a grassy expanse, looking scared, fleeing something.

"Just north of Long Lake I think," Harriman answered after giving a look to the topography and the vegetation. "The bad news is that the last quetzal is chasing him."

The pterosaur appeared shortly after, galloping on its wings, narrowing the distance between it and its prey.

"He won't be able to escape. He's screwed..." Grady realized.

"And goodbye to our intel on the Indominus... Damn!" Dearing swore. "Wait, since we called back all the drones and that there is no CCTV camera in this area, how are we able to have him on our screens?"

Harriman knew the answer and she soon realized that the camera was getting closer and closer to Hoskins and the pterosaur.
Something was wearing it.

The technician displayed two other video transmissions showing them but filming the scene from a different angle while converging towards it.

X

Running at the same speed as a galloping bear, around forty kilometres per hour, the Quetzalcoatlus caught up with Hoskins in no time and once he was within the reach of its beak, he tried to grab him.

Some of those who watched the scene helplessly in the control room wondered briefly why the pterosaur hadn't take off to chase the director of the security division, but they soon noticed that, on one hand, the terrain was too flat for an effective takeoff and on the other, the Quetzalcoatlus' wings had been injured.
Although it could still fly, it avoided doing it as much as possible in order to avoid further damage.

To dodge the gigantic beak of the pterosaur, Hoskins began to describe zigzags and managed to keep the distance between him and the predator for a while, until he stumbled.

The pterosaur stopped at his level and arched its neck back but instead of striking its prey with its beak, it screamed at something that stood behind Hoskins.

The latter turned and in the light of his flashlight, he saw three achillobators move cautiously in their direction, with the tapetum lucidum of their eyes shining in the darkness.
Their feathers were bristling and they responded to the quetzalcoatlus with a growl, telling it to back off from the potbellied human. He was theirs.

But the pterosaur was not intimidated and it spread its wings wide before making its beak's mandibles snap.

In return, they spread their arms, stick out their chests in order to seem bigger, drew their lips back and hissed.

The Quetzalcoatlus put its wings back on the ground and moved forward until its claws were at Hoskins' level before stretching its neck forward to peck at Blue. She avoided the beak by leaping backwards but she pounced on the flying predator's neck just after.

Delta and Echo followed and a clash breaking out, Hoskins took his chance.

Avoiding the Quetzalcoatlus' claws, he rolled sideways for several meters before getting up quickly and running away from the clashing predators, heading for the woods located north-east of the nearby Long Lake.

As the shrieks and hisses increased in vehemence behind him, he noted that the intensity of his flashlight's bulb was starting to fluctuate considerably.
If the batteries ceased to work before he could reach the wood, he was certain to become a dead man soon enough.

He accelerated and saw ahead the eaves of the wood.
He saw trees, large trees on which he could climb and get to safety.
But before them, there was some twenty meters of meadow still left.

The flashlight went out but Hoskins still continued straight ahead.
If he had to climb blind, he shall do it.
He suddenly realized that a few seconds had elapsed since the predators became silent.
He wondered if the fight had already ended and he soon had some form of answer since he heard something treading the blades of grass on his left at full speed, as well as on his right

He managed to turn his torch back on in the middle of his race but when he could saw once again his immediate surroundings, he stopped abruptly and frozen out of terror, he dropped the flashlight and let out a swear.

The achillobators had caught up with him and were blocking his way.
They were standing a few meters away from him and while Blue was facing him, the other two were each on one of his flanks, with Echo on his left and Delta on his right.
They had blood on their snout, neck and chest, but the blood in question being mostly dried and seeing no evidence of perforation on their bodies, Hoskins noted that they seemed to have come out unscathed from their clash with the Quetzalcoatlus.
While Blue still had her camera strapped to the side of her head, Delta and Echo had lost theirs in the meanwhile.
Hoskins knew perfectly well that running away wouldn't help him as they would catch him easily, especially since their eyes were better adapted to darkness than his.
He thought for a brief moment about trying to coax them or at least keeping them at bay by imitating the gestures that Grady had adopted two days earlier when he went to rescue his intern from the claws of the very same animals that had cornered the ex-soldier but Hoskins was aware that it would be futile. Those creatures were smart and were able to recognize one human being from another. They had seen him shot Charlie and like many social animals that could have strong relationships with some of their congeners, revenge wasn't an unknown concept to them.
Hoskins was now disarmed and facing alone the achillobators, he was nothing but a prey, and a plump one moreover, not the type that a predator would let go.

The torch's light disappeared forever and Hoskins knew that his time had come.
He froze, prayed for everything to be over as soon as possible, and waited for them to leap on him.

He heard Blue step forward but it was not her that pounced on him first but Delta.

Before he could scream, her jaws suddenly closed on his throat and her teeth sank into his neck, blocking his airways.

As Hoskins gasped like a fish out of water, Delta's claws tore his jacket and shirt like paper.

His skin quaked at the contact with the cold claws but there was another pain fast enough, at the level of his belly, burning like a white-hot knife's blade.

Hoskins then felt a thick, slimy and warm mass sliding down on his waist out of his torn abdomen, his own innards he realized with horror.

Another of the achillobators, Hoskins did not know which one since he wasn't able to see anything, came to bite them and tear off some.

The pain was indescribable but Hoskins couldn't scream. He had the impression that his lungs were empty, that his limbs were getting number, and that he was slowly losing his senses, not fast enough to his taste.

His legs tried to kick, in vain, and a part of his thigh was ripped off in response but Hoskins barely felt this bite as his nervous system was needed elsewhere.

A flash of lightning illuminated the sky above him, briefly lighting the scene of which he was the central point.

He had a moment of surprise when he felt the bones of his neck being crushed with force.
Then, Vic Hoskins was greeted by the void.