Disclaimer: John Hammond, InGen, Jurassic Park, Isla Nebular and Isla Sorna are all things that I have unconscionably stolen from Michael Crichton's novels Jurassic Park and The Lost World, as well as the movies of the same name. I have drawn on both forms of media (the books and the movies) for this story. It does not follow one or the other specifically… it is implied that John Hammond is still alive in this story, but I use dinosaur elements from the books… and a few that were in neither. None of the characters from Jurassic Park or Lost World, in either variation, appear in this story. Instead, I have chosen to plunk down a new set of characters on the island. The events described take place sometime between the Jurassic Park Incident and the San Diego Incident. Well, I guess that's all there is to say, except… enjoy the story.
Los Cinquo Muertes
Chapter 1: Survey
39
DISCREPANCIES
Upon their return to the campsite, Meiller
and the others set up a covered area protected by the rain by stretching out a
large tarp and tying the corners to the four foldable shelters. By doing so,
they allowed the members of the survey team to come out from the trailers and
shelters without having to worry about being drenched by the torrential rain,
which had not shown any signs of relenting since it had begun that morning.
Lunch had consisted of a platter of
sandwiches, which had become soggy in the oppressive humidity of the island's
climate. The team members had munched dispassionately at their food without
speaking, their silence filled by the sound of rain falling on the tarp,
shelters and trailers.
Afterwards, there wasn't anything much to
do but wait. Everybody was restless, moving from one point of the impromptu
tent to another. Only Meiller and his soldiers seemed to be more or less at
ease – for soldiers, that is.
Alice was sitting on an empty crate,
holding herself for warmth and staring off into their dreary surroundings.
Benny walked over to her, smiled and said:
"Mind if I mull here with you?"
"By all means, pull up a crate," Alice
replied, cracking a smile.
Benny did so, taking another crate that
was lying nearby and flipping it over so that he had a flat surface to sit on.
He placed it next to Alice and straddled it.
"So where have you been?" Alice asked. "I
haven't seen you since you got back this morning."
"I was over in the trailer. I'd found a few
entries relating to dinosaurs in our computer encyclopaedias, so I figured that
while I was waiting I might as well look up some information. I managed to find
an entry for all the species on the island – well, that is, for all the species
that we've seen so far. There might be some we haven't seen."
"Ugh. Please don't say that. I think
there's plenty of them running around right now without throwing in some more
species."
"Sorry."
There was a heavy silence as the dropped
topic seemed to hang in the air.
"You know," Benny finally said, "I've
noticed something weird about this island."
If Benny had suddenly grown an arm out of
his ear, Alice couldn't have given him a more shocked look. Seeing her
wide-eyed stare, Benny quickly added:
"I
mean, something else that's weird. On top of what we've got already."
"I probably don't want to hear this, but
go ahead anyway."
"Well, along with quick description of the
dinosaurs, the encyclopaedia also included an estimate of when they existed.
You know that humans and dinosaurs never co-existed, right?"
"Well, duh."
"Right. Well, anyway, the dinosaurs as we
know them existed during the era of geological time known as the Mesozoic,
which in turn is subdivided into the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous. The
dinosaurs appeared during the late Triassic and went on all the way to the end
of the Cretaceous, when they suddenly went extinct."
"Supposedly went extinct," Alice
pointed out.
"Yeah, well, that's what I'm getting to. I
don't think these dinosaurs are descendents of survivors of the KT event."
"KT event?"
"Sorry. That's the name given to whatever
happened at the end of the Cretaceous that caused the mass extinction. Anyway,
the point is that between the appearance of the first dinosaurs and their
extinction, there was over 150 million years."
Alice whistled softly. "So they were
around longer than they've been gone."
"Yes, and much longer than us. In that
period of time, there were species upon species, all of which evolved, thrived
and died out over millions of years, rotating continuously just like old
mammals."
"Yeah, so?"
"The problem is: the species on this
island don't correspond. Most seem to come from the late Cretaceous – the
T-Rex, the Triceratops, the Ankylosaurus and that ostrich thing that I've
tentatively identified as Gallimimus – although even there, there are
discrepancies of sometimes a dozen million years. But even worse, I think that
Tiny might be a Compsognathus. And they lived in the late Jurassic – a
difference of almost eighty million years."
"Big difference."
"Tell me about it."
"So… what does it all mean?"
"It means that I'm almost certain now that
this dinosaur ecosystem isn't natural. I mean, unless there's been some kind of
multiple rifts in various timeframes that they came through – and I'm not even
going to start explaining what's wrong with that idea."
"How, then?"
Benny blew air out his lips and rocked
back on his crate.
"Well, that's the million dollar question,
isn't it?" There was a moment of silence as Benny thought. "Ellis said
something about the company that had said up here being involved in genetics.
It could be that they built – genetically engineered – these animals. But that
doesn't work either. You have to have some kind of base plate for that kind of
construction – and there haven't been any valid base plates in millions of
years."
Alice shrugged vaguely. She didn't know
anything about that.
"So what's the point? What difference does
it make to us if the ecosystem is natural or not?"
"If it's artificial, there might be a way
to reverse whatever process resulted in having dinosaurs here."
"I think we should focus on getting off
the island first. Then we can nuke 'em or whatever."
"That wouldn't be much of a solution."
"Well, yeah, I mean, I was joking."
"I meant a solution to a greater problem.
If the dinosaurs came into being here through artificial means, then very
likely those methods could be repeated. Not just here, but anywhere else in the
world."
Alice had the sudden image of cities
overrun with prehistoric behemoths. She felt gooseflesh rise on her arms.
40
THREE
HORNS AND A TRAILER
Lorkon Folker had eventually retreated to
the covered area with the rest of the team after a few minutes in the downpour.
A little rain was one thing, but these torrential showers would leave him
sneezing and sniffling for a week if he stayed in them.
He was catching a quick breather resting
against the muddied side of one of the trailers when he heard a slight clanging
noise. At first, he dismissed it as being no more than the usual clatter of
cutlery characteristic of any dinner, but glancing over at the centre of the
covered area, he saw that lunch had been over for a while now. He saw the rain
falling beyond their relatively dry haven, and from the straight angle of the
drops' descent, he could tell that there was no wind blowing to produce the
soft metallic noise either.
Intrigued, he rose to his feet and
concentrated on listening. The sound seemed to be coming from rather close by.
Tracking its source, Folker bent down towards the soggy ground. This time, the
clanging sound was accompanied by something that could be best described as
snuffling. Folker leaned in the mud and, bracing himself with his hands, peered
under the trailer.
From this new perspective, Folker could
see that he hadn't been the only one who had wished to look under the trailer.
Sticking out underneath the trailer from the other side of the rectangular
attachment was the bony head of a dinosaur.
Folker could only see the animal's head as
the rest was blocked out either by the trailer itself, or by the round, bony
crest that was part of its head. The frill was dotted with small pieces of bone
polished by the elements. Two eyes were set into the beast's mottled grey-brown
skin and they were topped by horns almost half-a-meter in length. The
dinosaur's head ended in a sleek black piece of bone on the jaw and the
corresponding location above the creature's mouth that looked almost like a
beak one would find on parakeets, giving the creature an avian look despite the
menacing horns. A smaller horn topped the 'beak' area.
The dinosaur seemed to not have noticed
Folker's observation as it continued to sniff at the muddy ground under the
trailer, and the blackened trailer components that hung above their heads.
Folker thought it looked like a smaller version of the Triceratopses they had
seen in the clearing – possibly an infant.
"Hey, you," he whispered.
The Triceratops ceased its snuffling and
looked up at Folker, drawn by the new sound. It seemed to regard Folker for a
moment, and then it began bleating in an alarmed way.
"No, no, no, calm down," Folker attempted
to shush the young dinosaur.
But his efforts were to no avail as the
Triceratops seemed to become even more agitated. It tried to yank itself back
out from under the trailer, but did so too abruptly. The bony frill that
protected its neck from predators got struck in some of the gears that assured
the proper functioning of the trailer. The Triceratops' bleating redoubled as
it tried to extract itself from the cramped, dark space.
Folker ineffectively tried to silence the
beast, but the trapped Triceratops refused to be cajoled by the strange animal
calling to it, and tried to forcibly dislodge itself from it's snare underneath
the trailer. It seemed to pause for an instance, then yank it's head backwards.
Although the crest remained stuck, the force of the Triceratops' pull was so
hard that the trailer actually rocked. This seemed to give the dinosaur an
idea, as he brought his head upwards so that his large horns touched the base
of the trailer's floor. With a bestial grunt, the Triceratops pushed against the
bottom of the trailer, causing it to lift slightly.
Folker saw what the creature was doing,
and saw furthermore that with each blow against the floor of the trailer, the
trailer leaned over more and more. Putting two and two together, Folker
scrambled out from underneath the tipsy trailer and tried to get to his feet.
He had one leg up when the other slipped in a patch of mud and brought the
botanist back down to the ground again, though he was out from under the
trailer.
Looking up, Folker could see the top of
the trailer shift against the cloudy backdrop of the sky as the Triceratops
gave yet another mighty shove. It returned back to it's original position, then
shifted forwards once again. This time, however, it did not hover in the air as
before but kept on arcing towards him. Folker cursed as he realized that the
trailer was going to fall on him if he did not move fast. Since getting up had
not worked before (and he doubted he had the time anyway), Folker pushed off to
one side with a hand and a foot, then wrapped both his arms around himself and
tried to place his shoulders so as to continue to momentum created by his
initial shove-off. This had the effect of making the botanist go rolling
through the mud, spinning on a head-to-toe axis.
He did not stop until he heard the wet,
sucking sound of the trailer hitting the muddy ground, at which point there was
nothing left to do either way. He tentatively opened his eyes, and saw a puddle
that seemed to stretch to the limits of his vision. With a start, he realized
that he was looking at the ground. He felt something wet on one side of his
head and pulled an arm out from under him to run his fingers against his
cheeks. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw his fingers come away not with
blood, as he had feared, but with plain, ordinary mud, which had no doubt
splattered against his face when the trailer fell.
Speaking of which…
Folker finally glanced over to his side.
Lying a mere thirty centimetres away was the ribbed roof of the trailer. Folker
released a breath he was not aware he had been holding, and then dropped his
head back into the puddle.
41
INTRUDER
Benny was still sitting next to Alice when he heard the first of the odd
bleating noises. The sounds, though foreign to their ears, nevertheless had an
air of urgency to them, like an alert klaxon on a submarine. Benny sprung off
of his crate and sprinted towards the source of the noise, Alice a few steps
behind him.
They skidded to a halt in the mud in front
of the trailer just as Folker spun out from underneath the toppling attachment.
The trailer landed relatively softly, the brunt of its impact taken by the
muddy ground. Benny, Alice and the other gathered team members were splashed
with silt thrown into the air.
Lying on its side, the trailer was not as
high as when it stood upright, so Benny could see over the top of the trailer
and past it to the animal prancing about behind it. He instantly recognized it
as a Triceratops, much like the herd they had seen in the clearing. This one,
however, was barely a meter high and shorter than his brethren at the watering
hole. Benny deduced that it was not yet fully mature.
Meiller rushed in next to Folker and
lifted him by the shoulders from the puddle he had been resting in.
"It's okay, I'm alright," Folker said,
kneeling in the mud and waving away Meiller's assistance.
"Are you sure?" he inquired.
"I'll be fine," Folker reiterated, rising
shakily to his feet.
The Triceratops, which had been shaking
its head as if to assure itself that its crest was well and verily dislodged,
froze as it noticed it was the centre of attention.
"What happened?" Benny asked.
"That thing," Folker said, pointing to the
Triceratops, "was sniffing around under the trailer, then it got stuck. So it
started hitting at the bottom, and toppled the trailer over."
The Triceratops had by now decided that it
did not like the oddly coloured bipeds any more than it did being stuck under
the trailer, and resumed its bleating noises. It sounded more like the honking
of a car horn than a klaxon this time, but it was still loud. In addition,
there were several empty cans attached to a piece of string hanging from its
two main horns. The Triceratops had ensnared part of the stringed-up perimeter
alarm as it crossed the boundary into the encampment; the sound of the metal
cans striking each other were what had alerted Folker to a foreign presence in
the first place.
The dinosaur began ducking it's head at
the assembled group and pawing at the ground. It looked like a bull readying
itself to charge, only no bull had ever been born with a trio of hard horns
sticking out of its head.
Meiller stared at the creature for a
moment, and then unslung his rifle and brought it to bear at the Triceratops.
"No!" Benny cried out, grabbing the barrel
of the weapon and pushing it skywards.
"Look, this is no time for animal
activism. We can hug a bunch of trees once we've gotten this potential
bulldozer out of our camp."
"Slaughtering innocent animals aside, have
you thought about what would happen if you do shot that thing?" Benny asked the
corporal. "You shot, it dies, and we find ourselves with a big dead Triceratops
in the middle of our camp. Now the smell of fresh blood from the bullet wound
is going to start attracting predators, and once the predatory dinosaurs on
this island realize that there's a pile of ready-to-eat meat sitting right
here, we're going to have an influx of carrion along with the bigger
carnivores."
"So we move the body."
"Do you have any idea how much the carcass
of a dinosaur, even an infant, weighs? Neither do I, but I'd be willing to bet
that it's a substantial amount. Assuming we can mount the dead body onto a jeep
and drive away, it's still going to take time to get it loaded, which is more
time that the campsite is at risk. And even then, that Rex had one of the
greatest olfactory senses ever in recorded palaeontology. There's nothing to
guarantee that once it pigs out on the carcass, it won't follow the scent back
here."
"So what would you have us do? We can't
let it stay here. It's already knocked over one trailer. Besides, that honking
of his is sure to bring some curious animals to check out this place as any
smell is."
"Well, we have to find a way to lure it
away from the campsite."
"How do we do that?"
"I'm not sure yet."
"Great. That figures."
"How about we attach so food on a string
to one of the trailers and drive away from here, the dinosaur following," Alice
proposed.
"Not a bad idea," Meiller pondered.
"Anybody got a piece of steak or something?"
"A Triceratops won't eat or follow a
steak," Benny said. "It's a herbivore – a vegetarian."
"Are you telling me," Meiller asked,
pointing to the three-horned beast, "that that monster wouldn't go for a nice
juicy steak if given the opportunity?"
"No more than a deer would," Benny
answered.
"So what does it eat?"
"Judging from the position of its head and
the shape of its beak," Folker put in, "I'd say that its diet must consist of
shrubbery, ferns, and maybe the occasional piece of fallen fruit."
"We can't exactly tie a fruit basket to a
jeep and hope it follows," Meiller pointed out.
The Triceratops brayed, reminding
everybody of its immediate and potentially lethal presence. Meiller kept his
rifle trained on the beast. If it made any moves towards the assembled group,
he would shoot. Let them deal with the consequences once the immediate danger
was out of the way.
"Alright, the fruit idea is out," Folker
said. "So what do we do now?"
Benny stared at the dinosaur, looking for
inspiration. It wasn't making any forward gestures, but neither had it calmed
down. It's paws beat against the ground, splashing in the mud. Its head kept
ducking and rising, the metal cans on the string snared around its horn
clanging against each other…
"That's it! The string! We can lasso it!"
Alice gave him an odd look.
"Lasso? Like cowboys do to cows?"
"Sure. We get a loop around its neck, tie
that to a jeep and lead it away from the camp."
"And I don't suppose you would have
a lasso handy, just lying around somewhere?" Meiller inquired.
"Well, no. But I could probably make one
quickly with a little help."
"Fine. Do it. But if that thing comes any
closer, it's dead meat."
Benny grabbed Calvin, one of the
workhorses, and rushed off to one of the two remaining trailers to build a
lasso before the infant Triceratops got too edgy.
42
COLLARING
THE LION
Alice and the rest of the team stood
around unmoving, staring at the Triceratops while Benny and Calvin worked on
crafting a lasso. It continued to paw the ground for a few moments, then
stopped. It brayed once again, though the alarm seemed to be gone from its
voice. It began to snuffle at the ground.
"What's it doing?" Alice asked Folker.
"Don't look at me. Benny's the biologist."
Alice glanced at him, and then turned back
towards the Triceratops. She wondered if it had caught scent of something on
the ground, because it seemed pretty interested by it. It raised its head back
up at the group, cocked to the side. In doing so, the cans on the string
clicked together, and the Triceratops looked up sharply, trying to find out
where the sound had come from. Since the string was ensnared on its horns, it
was unsuccessful in its attempts.
"I wonder…" Alice muttered to herself. She
took a few tentative steps towards it.
"Uh, Alice? What are you doing?" Folker
asked.
"Removing the thorn from the lion's paw,"
she answered, keeping her gaze focused on the dinosaur in front of her.
"I'm not sure that's a very wise idea,
Miss Richley," Meiller said.
But Alice ignored him, and continued
walking towards the Triceratops at a calm, measured pace. It tracked her with
its eyes, but did not make any aggressive moves.
When Alice had reached its height she
stopped, and starting moving her hand outwards. The team watched with bated
breath as her hand hovered in the air, then slowly slipped towards the
Triceratops' head.
When she made contact, the dinosaur didn't so much as flinch. The
skin beneath her hand felt scaly and leathery, like that of a snake's, but it
also held warmth that came from under the creature's skin, rather than simply
being the lingering heat from the sun like other reptiles she had handled.
Slowly, so as to not startle the
Triceratops, she reached for the string with the metal cans. She picked it up
by the cans themselves, because she was afraid that if she picked it up the
string, the cans would clang against each other, and the Triceratops might
suddenly move its head to find the source of the sound, goring her with one of
it's horns in the process.
Once she had removed the importuning cans,
she slowly walked away from the Triceratops. When she had reached the rest of
the group, she stopped and put them down. The Triceratops was still looking at
her, and it seemed much more relaxed than before.
"That wasn't very smart," Folker told her.
"You could have gotten hurt."
Alice shrugged.
"But I didn't."
Folker was about to reply, when Benny and
Calvin returned from the trailer.
"What took you so long?" Meiller asked,
not having budged from his isosceles stance, eye still in the aiming cylinder
on his rifle.
"Sorry. This stuff isn't very malleable,
even with our tools. It was hard to bend without breaking it."
"That's not rope," Folker observed.
"It's fiber cable. Looking at the size of
that thing, I wasn't sure ordinary rope would hold."
Benny held in his hands the cable, made of
several smaller strands and coloured dark blue.
"How do we get it around its neck?"
Meiller asked.
"Can't we just throw it?" Folker replied.
"Around that neck crest? I don't think any
loop large enough to let that frill pass through would hold on its neck."
"That's right," Benny said. "We're going
to have to tie it around its neck."
"Really? Give it to me then," Alice said.
"Uh… I'm not sure–"
"Trust me on this one, Benny. It knows
me."
Alice took the cable from his hands, and
began slowly walking towards the Triceratops. It glanced up at Alice as she
approached, then went back to snuffling the ground, as if the young woman was
of no concern to him.
Standing next to the Triceratops, Alice
glanced at the impromptu rope in her hands. Benny and Calvin had made it
flexible, so she could easily loop it around the Triceratops' neck just by
leaning over its body a bit. Once she had the end of the cable in one hand, she
tied a knot to complete the loop, leaving a little room for slack. No sense in
strangling the poor thing, after all.
If the Triceratops noticed that it had
just been collared, it gave no indication of it. Alice backed off, slowly, and
handed the other end of the cable to Meiller, who had placed his rifle back in
the holster against his hip. Keeping an eye on the dinosaur, Meiller walked
over to one of the jeeps and tied the other end of the cable to the attachment
previously used for the trailers.
Once the rig was prepared, he got into the
jeep and started the engine. The jeep began to crawl along the muddy ground.
When the cable tensed between the somewhat mobile jeep and the immobile
dinosaur, the Triceratops gave a little hoot as the cable began pulling its
neck.
For a moment, Benny was worried that it
would try and fight the pull of the cable, but the Triceratops took a few steps
forwards and ceased struggling when it saw that doing so relieved the tension
around it's neck. As the distance between the jeep and the dinosaur increased,
the cable pulled, and the Triceratops took another few steps forward.
This went on for almost two hours, because
Meiller didn't want to upset it or even choke it by cranking up the speed on
his jeep. Their procession through the jungle was a slow one, but after the
second hour Meiller decided that they were now far enough from the campsite
that he could release the beast without worrying that it would come and bother
them again. The Triceratops was a little edgy at first when Meiller approached
it, but when it saw that the odd-looking biped was trying to get the thing
around it's neck off, it let the corporal remove the cable collar. Free, the
Triceratops resumed snuffling at the silt on the surface.
Meiller hopped back into the jeep and
pulled a U-turn in the tight confines of the jungle. He crawled past the
Triceratops at low speeds so as not to irk it, but once he was a few meters
past he pushed the jeep back up to it's maximum and headed back to the campsite
with all due haste.
43
TURBULENCE
As far as assignments go, Linda Howshenski
thought this one was rather pleasant.
She had spent the last few days lounging
on a sandy beach on a tropical island. It was like a paid vacation. Sure, he
had to make certain that the plane was kept in tip-top condition, especially
after the call they'd gotten from Samson about the other plane crashing. And
granted, it was a bit worrisome that they hadn't been able to raise the survey
team. But what little she did do was still a welcome break from the usual demanding
schedule of an Air Force pilot.
Not even the torrential rain could put a
damper on her good mood. She thought the sudden change in weather was
surprising, and it had rained all day long with almost constant force. Not
having visited areas with such rainy seasons before, the downpour held for her
the interest of a novelty.
The plane's sass was open so that she
could sit on the side, staring out into the rain. The sand of the beach had
long ago turned a dark brown, but the foliage beyond the beach almost seemed to
glow with a lively green. Leaves and ferns swished as fat drops of water from
the heavens pelted them. In the background, above the din of the rain, she
could hear the occasional trilling of birdcalls.
One of them sounded remarkably close by,
in fact. Rather large, too.
Intrigued, Howshenski scanned the lush
jungle perimeter for signs of life. Other than birds and one gecko, they hadn't
seen any of the island's fauna during their sojourn. She thought she spotted a
dark shape looming in the leaves, and she reached over for her binoculars to
get a better look. As she did so, the shape separated itself from the
surrounding jungle and stepped onto the beach.
"What the hell?" Howshenki whispered,
dropping her binoculars as the creature on the beach was more than big enough
to be seen without aid.
It was a sinewy thing, standing a little
over a meter on a pair of muscular looking hind legs. A long, thin tail swished
behind it, tracing arcs in the sand. A pair of arms protruded from the side of
its body, bent at the elbows, fingers (or are those claws?) hanging. The
head looked like something out of a science fiction B-movie, distinctively
reptilian and mounted on a neck that looked as thick and well built as its
legs. It had two eyes, and they seemed to be staring straight at her.
"Hey, Darren, come over here and check
this out."
Her co-pilot walked up behind her, and
quickly spotted the odd beast on the dark sand.
"What is that?"
"Damned if I know," Howshenski replied.
The creature craned it's neck skywards,
and made noise like a cough or a bark, only much more mellifluous. A few
seconds later, another animal just like it emerged from the jungle, and then a
third after that.
"I'm not sure I like how this is turning
out," Husser said.
"Me neither. Close the sass," she
instructed, getting out of the opening, her hand instinctively falling next to
her sidearm.
Two more of the creatures came out of the
jungle, and together the creatures launched themselves at the plane. Howshenski
was impressed by their speed and grace. They reminded her of sleek fighter
jets, on the prowl for enemies to prey on.
"Close the sass," she repeated as she drew
her pistol. As Husser closed the door, she fired off three shots. Two hit the
beach, doing no more than rising some sand, but the third round lodged itself
firmly in the leg of one of the beasts, causing it to cry out as it toppled to
the ground.
Then the metal frame of the door blocked
her view. She waited to see if she would hear the resounding impact of those
things smashing into the side of the plane, but ominous silence reigned.
"What the hell were those things?" Husser
finally asked.
Howshenski shook her head, choosing not to
reply since she didn't know the answer.
Something thumped above them.
"They're on the roof!" Husser cried out.
"Cockpit," Howshenski instructed, and
sprinted towards the front of the plane herself.
She pulled up short when she saw through
the cockpit window a couple of the beasts standing on the nose of the plane.
From this close, they could see that the creatures had sharp claws on their
feet and hands, and when one opened it's mouth to hiss at them, rows of
dangerously pointy looking teeth.
Husser scowled and ground his teeth
together.
"Whatever they are, they aren't bullet
proof," he said, taking his pistol out of his holster and aiming at the
monsters.
"No!" Howshenski screamed, making a grab
at his gun arm, but it was too late. Husser fired several round into the
nearest beast, fracturing the window and sending it sprawling off the nose of
the plane. Husser didn't have time to realize the extend of his mistake before
another of the creature broke through what remained of the cockpit window and
lanced it's head right at his throat, gripping it in its jaws.
Howshenski brought her own firearm to
bear, blowing whatever passed as the creature's brains clear out of the other
side of its skull. Released, Husser fell to the floor, and Howshenski could see
that his tour of duty as her co-pilot was now effectively terminated. The beast
had ripped a huge chunk of meat right out of Husser's neck, which was now
bleeding profusely because there was a gaping hole where part of his jugular
once was. Husser twitched on the floor, but they were no more than death
spasms.
Howshenski jumped back as another one
snapped its head through the window, biting at her. A lot more of them had
arrived by now, and they had begun squirming through the shattered glass to get
at the inside of the plane. Howshenski fired a few more rounds, then turned
around and fled into the passenger compartment.
She had seen these things run, and she
knew that there was no way that she could escape from the plane on foot. The
monsters were in the cockpit, so she couldn't get at the controls, although
with one of the cockpit windows blown out, there wasn't much point in that. She
still had some ammo left, though she was outnumbered, and considering the
agility that they had shown she doubted she'd last long in a straight out
fight.
She spotted the restroom at the back of
the passenger compartment. Depending on their sense of smell, she might be able
to hide there. It was a slim chance at best, but it was the best she'd come up
with so far, so she rushed towards it. She threw the door open, fell onto the
seat, closed the door again and locked it, all in one swift gesture. Alone in
the cramped space, she popped out the clip from her pistol and inserted a fresh
magazine.
Once again, there were no sounds to be
heard. If the animals were still in the plane, they were being rather stealthy
about it. Howshenski began to hope that they had left, although she wasn't
going to open the door to check.
A sniffing sound shattered that hope. She
could tell it came from right outside her door, at ground level. There were
another set of those honk/barks she had heard them emit earlier, and suddenly
the door began to shake as something was apparently throwing itself at it. As
the shape of the door began being marked by dents from the other side,
Howshenski raised her pistol and pointed it at the deformed door.
"Come on, you assholes. Come and get me."
The door broke down, and they did.