Sam and Talat sat on the couches, waiting for the next transport. Audrey however was raiding the emergency supplies.
"You're not going to go back out there are you?" Sam asked, voice filled with awe. She had just had more excitement than she had seen in her whole life.
"Did you see the tree? They were prepared for us to come here. They have been watching us, planning their attack." Sam's face paled. "The others will be safe as long as they stay inside, but…" Audrey shook her head. She knew the emotional toll it took being hunted. It made it very easy to do stupid things. "I need to keep them alive."
"I'll go with you." Sam stood to her feet.
"That's really sweet, and I'll tell them you offered." Her tone clearly implied that was all it was. An offer.
"No. I'm serious. I want to help!"
"Great. Then wait for the transport and ride it back to civilization. It's going to be hard enough keeping me alive out there. I can't be worrying about you too."
Sam opened her mouth to argue.
"Can you fire a rifle? How fast can you climb a tree? What is the best way to get past a dinosaur that has thermal sensing pits?" Sam closed her mouth. "As I said, the offer was sweet, but you are helping me best by staying safe."
Sam nodded and dropped back into her seat. Talat whispered something to her, but Audrey was too busy loading up to notice. She had already called for reinforcements, but they would take hours to arrive. She needed to go now. She swung her refilled pack over her shoulder and headed to the stairs. "Lock the garage behind me and don't open it unless I tell you too, okay?" Sam nodded and followed behind. Audrey flipped on the lights and went down the stairs. Sam rolled the security door across the top of the stairs blocking her from view. Audrey heard the lock as it engaged. Good. Life was so much easier when people followed instructions. At the bottom of the stairs, Audrey passed through another palm operated door, locking it securely behind her. She was a strong believer in better safe than sorry - for other people, anyway.
In the garage, Audrey climbed into one of the emergency jeeps. Positioning herself right in front of the garage door, she pressed the button to raise it, then floored the accelerator. She burst out so fast and hit the drop door button to close the gate behind her. Knowing exactly where the tree was, she was able to avoid it, the flames crackling along it still. A deinonychus swung its head following her escape from the building. It barked, but Audrey barely noticed as she tried putting distance between herself and it.
Now that she was driving, Audrey didn't have the luxury of using heat sensing goggles to locate her adversaries. She was just going to have to use her regular senses. As she bounced down the track - this one an actual track since several vehicles had moved between the terminal and the compound - she tried to watch for deinonychus following, but they were too well camouflaged and she couldn't determine movement while moving herself. She sighed. She would just have to get close, then find a good place to scope the environment out. These jeeps could take a serious beating, so she would be relatively safe while she remained inside. It was her only real option, so there was no point complaining to herself about it.
The road passed through a particularly muddy, almost swamp-like area. The people who built the compound had gone to the effort of throwing gravel down so it was actually almost a real, dirt road. Audrey picked up speed, hoping to have some lead on the deinonychus.
Suddenly in front of her, a shadow darted in front of her and stopped, startled. Audrey jumped on the brake pedal, yanking on the steering wheel. The car swung round, clipping the animal. The front tire hit the soft edge of the marsh causing that side of the car to drop. The momentum pushed the car so that it flipped and dropped, landing roof down in the mud.
"Gashes and gouges!" she grumbled. She pushed her weight against the door as she opened it and she splashed down into the mud. She was about a kilometre still from the camp, with deinonychus on her tail and who knew how many in front of her. Just to make it really clear she was still being hunted, she heard a bark back down the road. It was not far enough away. She had to get away from the car before they arrived or she would have no hope of hiding from them. On the back panel of the car, there was a shotgun. She grabbed it and shoved the weather proof pouch full of bullets that were with it into her pocket. Then she dropped down into the mud and army-crawled away from the car.
Seeking deeper patches of water, she was able to almost swim in some sections, but she made sure she stayed covered in mud. She moved as slowly as possible using the natural mounds and troughs as camouflage. Periodically, she would pause and turn towards the car. The deinonychus appeared too soon after. The creature that had been hit in the accident joined them, though was injured. Its hindleg dragged a little. Next time the pack needed to run, it would be left behind, assuming they didn't kill her first.
Audrey watched as the predators searched for her. Both her scent and her heat would be masked by the mud. She now just had to remain still long enough for the dinosaurs to give up. Watching them carefully, Audrey was able to inch closer and closer to the tree line. The deinonychus had long moved away from the car and were stepping through the swamp still looking for her. She was very aware that she could only see the two of them at this moment. There was a third not far away. But she could not stay in the swamp forever, so every time the deinonychus were looking away, she would slowly, carefully creep back.
It was an age before the mud hardened into lumpy grass patches. But Audrey was not excited to reach it. The grass was just a sign that the relative safety of the mud was about to disappear. Somehow, she needed to get from the mud into the trees. She was sure she could avoid D1 & D2, but D3? She had no idea where she was. D1, the limping monster was on this side of the car, but D2 was over on the far side. Even if D1 saw her, Audrey could outrun her, even without the distance now between them. D2 would realised momentarily, but Audrey was sure she could make the tree line and hunker down before they reached her. She slathered one last thick layer of mud across herself and scanned the treeline. Still no sign of D3. She would have to risk it.
Audrey leapt to her feet and bolted for trees. Behind her she heard a bark. She assumed it would be D1 giving the alert. There was no way she was going to take the time to look. Once in amongst the trees she found a fig, and dove between its roots and its host tree. She again would be hard to see, smell and feel.
Steadying her breathing, she focussed on her senses. Her ears strained, listening for sounds of crashing through the trees. Deinonychus may be agile hunters, but even they would crash through a forest. And there it was. Over to her left, where she'd entered the trees. She couldn't see it at all, she just had to rely on her hearing for now. It sounded like a single creature. At times it moved closer. But mostly, it moved away until Audrey could no longer hear it. She waited another ten minutes until she heard the chirrup of an insect, then the slither of a lizard in a bush.
Slowly, silently like no deinonychus could move, Audrey made her way closer to the compound. Her ears were key. The trees close to the compound were familiar to her. She had stalked through them many times, so she knew her approach.
While waiting in the arms of the fig, she had plenty of time to think. These deinonychus knew where the humans went frequently. That meant they knew about the lookout towers, so she couldn't go there. They probably even knew about her favourite trees, the ones she would climb to get a good view of the compound from outside of it. That meant she couldn't use any of them. Instead, she would use a tree that's lowest branch was just a little too high to be used easily.
She had pulled out the cords in her jacket and pants and knotted them together and tied them to the rifle. Setting the rifle on the ground, she slung the three metres of rope in the air. It caught easily on the branches. It didn't need to lift anything, just stay there right now. Then, taking a few paces back, she ran at the tree and leapt as high as she could. She caught hold of the lowest branch and using the same momentum, swung her legs up and around the branch. Painfully, she inched down the branch to the trunk where there was another branch that she could hook her legs over before wedging herself upwards until she was on top of the branch. Grabbing the end of the rope which was still attached, she pulled the gun up. She still had to lie on her belly to get it around the branches, but she was in a tree with her weapon. Time to find out what was happening in the compound.