CHAPTER 5 – KILLER INSTINCT

Raptors. Murderous, vicious, and evil. There was no other way to put it. Those animals were perfect killing machines. They were always the scourge of the park, and they have the animals of their era a bad name. I knew from the start that they were going to be trouble, even when they were still cute, playing with their rag toys. After you've spent enough time around man-eaters, you get their scent, you see how they work. I could see it in their eyes.

But they were different. Different from anything I've ever seen; and I've seen it all.

Lions, Tigers, Bears, Cougars, whatever; when it comes to killing humans, they're all the same. Ninety nine times out of a hundred, it's the human's fault. As a general rule, animals that've had interactions with humans before are afraid of them, and know how dangerous we can be. Even those that don't treat us with a certain respect, because who knows what we could do?

So when they do go for us; all the mauling and so-called unprovoked attacks were caused by the person surprising them, coming up from behind them, or appearing over the crest of a hill. It was a defensive reaction.

But the Raptors knew from the beginning how dangerous they were, and what they could do to us if they ever got the chance. Their eyes were just...empty. See, when you look into the eyes of a Lion, you can feel his primal instincts. But these lizards are just flesh, and teeth.

And when they finally got out, they had one hell of a time. Afterwards, I knew they'd enjoyed it. They enjoyed killing.

And at first we thought it was just us they were after. But it turned out that they couldn't even be trusted with each other. God damn scientists, they just don't know when to stop. Creating eight of those things was the biggest mistake of all. That's far too large a number of animals that dangerous, especially intelligent ones like they were. Because there'll always be one who rises above the others.

And she's a bitch.

Robert Muldoon, 1991

Robert Muldoon

June 30th, 1991

Velociraptor Paddock, Isla Nublar

"How many?" said Muldoon, rubbing his chin as he stared down at the ground.

"Five," murmured Cox, bending over the mass of scaly skin.

The entire floor around them was red, splattered with blood, for almost ten feet in every direction. Dotted around them were several, nine foot long corpses. Muldoon stood over one of them now, looking down into the staring eye of the dead Velociraptor. Its jaws lay open, motionless, the claws curving over backwards. Post-mortem contraction was beginning to set in, the body bending over slowly backwards, the head moving up over the back towards the tail. A large gash ran from its ribcage all the way along its flank, across the stomach and tapering at the thick bone, the large muscle bulging through; it had been cut right down to the bone.

All of the Raptors in the clearing had been sheared to pieces.

"You sure we've got them all accounted for? If one of them was loose..." he said, looking around at the jungle surrounding them. They'd put the Raptor paddock in the middle of an area of dense foliage; another mistake. They stood in a clearing, an indication that it was artificial – a nest of sorts.

"No, we've got them all. Five here, three incapacitated," Cox murmured, indicating the truck on the other side of the fence, parked up on the road.

Muldoon nodded as a bunch of men in blue quarantine suits came bustling into the area, and began spraying the ground down with disinfectant, washing away the blood. Muldoon and Cox obligingly stepped away from the bodies, back towards the open gate which allowed passage in and out of the paddock.

It had been much harder than they had anticipated capturing the three remaining Raptors. There was no way that they could enter the paddock at any time when they were conscious; they were simply far too dangerous. So they had to tranquilise them from outside, and that meant getting a clear shot in a jungle. Getting them to come to the fence had taken most of the night. The Raptors knew something was up; there was never so much activity around their fence when they were fed.

But Muldoon had been patient, dangling the deer carcass five feet from the ground on a crane which extended over the top of the fence.

They came eventually of course; they were still animals, and they still got hungry. But it wasn't at all how he had expected. He thought he had been ambushing them. But it turns out that the Raptors were just as full of surprises as he had anticipated; and that was saying something. The entire thing had been silent. They had emerged from the trees like ghosts, charging towards the fence at astonishing speed. They were so fast, too fast. Whooshing sounds of escaping gas had wrung in his ears as workmen all around him rained darts down into the enclosure. It had taken them a long time to get them down. The Raptors had thrown themselves against the fence, darts sticking out of their necks and their powerful thighs. Sparks had exploded from the fence, lighting up the space under the canopy of the jungle like a Christmas tree. Men had rushed forwards to spray the underbrush with extinguishers as small fires burst to life as the sparks settled on the ground. The Raptors had fallen to the ground, apparently unharmed.

It had taken them five minutes to fall to the ground, unconscious. And even then, they lay there growling. Muldoon had never come across such hardy creatures.

Now Muldoon and Cox passed through the gate, passing two armed men standing sentinel. Their sniper rifles glinted in the reduced light; they nodded curtly. Muldoon nodded back, and they passed out onto the road.

The truck's engine rumbled quietly at the side of the road, covered by the sound of deep snarling. Men stood around it on all sides, some holding long sticks, and others holding heavy shotguns. They milled about restlessly, hesitantly stepping around the three cages which were being loaded onto the back of the truck by the massive crane which loomed above them.

"How's it going?" shouted Muldoon to the supervisor, who was shouting and waving his hands at the crane operator.

He turned to face them for a second, and gave them a thumbs up, before turning back to give instructions.

The first of the cages was suspended in mid-air, ten feet up, moving slowly along towards the ground towards the flatbed lorry.

The cages were made of thick steel, but had dozens of small holes cut into them so that vets could administer drugs, they could continue to tranquilise the animals, and so the Raptors could be observed. But they also served as convenient holes to poke in the muzzle of a gun. Nobody in the clearing would have any problem getting rid of the Raptors; it was only because they were so valuable that they were still alive.

Six men followed it on the ground, looking up and pattering along carefully, keeping their long cattle prods aimed upwards. Suddenly there was a shriek, and the cage shook on its tether violently, the crunching sound of metal floating through the air.

Men immediately rose up onto the tips of their toes and began jabbing their shock prods through the holes in the cage. There was an electrical sizzle, and a high-pitched, blood curdling scream.

Then silence.

A moment later the electrical motor of the crane started once more and the cage began moving once again.

Muldoon approached the second cage, his eyes fixed on the cold anodized metal. He nodded to one of the workmen, who looked at him quizzically, stepping aside. He approached the cage, and saw the other workmen tense; he was within two feet of the thick metallic box, and they had all been strictly instructed never to get that close. Last time somebody had done so, he had been slashed across his shins by...Her.

Went right down to the bone.

He was staring at Her now; 'Big One' the men called her. It was pretty appropriate. Not that she was physically larger than the other Raptors, but there had never been any question that she was the Alpha female in the pack.

It was getting dark now, especially under the jungle canopy, as the sun began to set in the background. A floodlight had been activated behind him, and through one of the small holes, as his vision adjusted; a single, reptilian eye came into focus, surrounded by thick brown scaly skin. The vertical pupil stared right back at him. There was no hint of movement whatsoever.

Muldoon felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end; as per usual.

There was nothing in those eyes; just death.

"What have you done, Big Girl?" he whispered to her, his voice gravelly.

For a moment she didn't move. And then, she snarled. It rose slowly and seamlessly from nothing, and carried on for several moments, before dying away. It could have been nothing at all, barely more than a slight vibration in the air. But even Muldoon, who was battle hardened after years of handling dangerous animals, felt his heart begin to beat harder.

But he kept his stare steady, and slowly turned away from her.

Shaking his head, Muldoon led Cox over to the Wrangler parked up awkwardly further down the road, and they climbed in. The supervisor could take care of the rest; they needed to get back and brief Hammond and Arnold about this.

With a roar the engine sputtered to life, and he put the Jeep in gear. They accelerated off down the road, the chilling sound of a final cold snarl chasing after them.

It was dark now, and he had to switch on his headlights to see the maintenance strip road ahead of him. Cox switched the radio on beside him.

"Control, this is Cox," he said, "remaining Raptors have been successfully contained, are en-route to visitor complex."

There was a brief pause, followed by a crackle of static, and then John Arnold spoke, his voice muffled, no doubt by a cigarette.

"Got it, Noah. Is Robert with you?"

"I'm here," said Muldoon, spinning the wheel in his hand as they drove up onto the ridge road, heading north towards the visitor centre.

"What's the final death count?" said a voice. It was Joel Anderson, the new assistant technician.

"Five dead," said Muldoon.

"Shit," Anderson's voice murmured; his quiet voice crackly over the radio.

"Hammond's not going to like that," Arnold said, his typing carrying across the channel easily. It was always irritating talking to Arnold over the radio; he only stopped typing when you were talking to him in person.

"Yeah well, he'll get over it. The less of them that are running around, the better off we'll be," Muldoon said.

"We'll file the report when we get back," Muldoon said. "See you soon."

"Right, Rob," Anderson said in the background, "just great."

The radio clicked off, and they drove along in silence for a moment, before Cox spoke darkly, staring forwards.

"Do you think she could have killed them all by herself?"

They came to a fork in the road, and Muldoon accelerated on the main road which ran north-south on the island, a wide road with this tarmac; this was to be the central road that the tour cars would run on when Jurassic Park opened.

"What else?" he said eventually, shrugging. "Do you think there was a conspiracy, some kind of Raptor uprising?"

He laughed to himself in the cab.

"No, I mean, maybe there was a split, and the three of them killed the other five..." Cox was murmuring to himself more than to Muldoon.

"No," said Muldoon, "the others haven't shown any signs of that kind of violence."

"Rob, come on, let's be honest. We only see the bastards two percent of the time, we can barely get a glimpse of them on the security cameras and nobody's going to go looking for them in person. We don't know what they're really like."

Muldoon was unconvinced. "There's just something about Her. She's just different from the others somehow. I could see it in her eyes; she was born a potential murderer."

"They're all potential murderers, for Christ sake! If it was just her killing off all the others; why did she kill them, and why not the other two?"

"I don't know. I'm going to try and apply reason to their actions. But it was Her; I know it was Her."