II
Pushing through the ferns, the Australian hunter's mind swam in a haze of thirst and trauma and memories. The crocodile who'd pulled one of their porters under in Ethiopia, retreating into deeper water where the boy had ostensibly drowned. He was only fifteen. What was his name? John something. His brother hardly cared, just another victim of the river. He hadn't actually seen the crocodile at all, it happened too fast, but for some reason he saw her eyes on its scaly face in his mind. He knew then that he always would see those eyes, figuring things out, in all his nightmares, assuming he lived long enough to have the luxury of sleep again.
Muldoon stumbled on a log but was up again in a flash, the burning in his side having become just another constant sensory input. Acknowledged. Good Copy. He was a corporal in the Australian Army again, in the jungles of Vietnam, his first taste of Hell. He hated the jungle then and he hated it now. He remembered coming off the plane, noticing immediately the stark difference between the boisterous boys deploying with him and the haunted veterans chain-smoking to stop their hands shaking while they waited to go back to the world. Quiet young Corporal Muldoon, platoon sharpshooter, setting a company record for confirmed kills that still stood as of six years ago, when he'd run into his former squad leader in a bar in Johannesburg.
Those reflexes had killed the Viet Cong, and they'd killed the 'raptors. Wasn't man The Most Dangerous Game, after all? Hah. That fella'd never met a velociraptor, lucky bloke, and had the good sense to die before Hammond's nonsense ever came to light. Hammond. He'd known Hammond for a long time, he had, but that wasn't going to stop him from choking him out with his own stupid cane. How many times, how many times had he recommended extermination? Muldoon knew. When he looked down from the enclosure wall at the Big Mama, he knew he was looking at himself seven million years removed, and he knew.
The sweat poured off of him, refusing to evaporate in the humid tropical air, failing to cool him. He was already close to heat exhaustion, if not stroke; losing blood made it harder to regulate the body's temperature in addition to the rapid dehydration. At this point water might be a bigger priority than the Command Center. He stopped his pitiful stagger and looked around, a lifetime of survival training flickering dully through his exhausted mind. These vines, one of them had water, right? He hacked at one with the Kabar and sucked desperately at it. There was no gushing of sweet life-giving moisture like he'd feverishly hoped, but there was a trickle of bitter fluid and that was enough. He hacked at another, and continued his death march.
Abruptly, the forest gave way to a clearing of tall grass. Had he gotten lost? A big game hunter, Muldoon knew what could lurk in that seemingly-empty golden ocean. He squinted, but couldn't see any of the telltale rustling, the stalks moving contrary to the soft undulation of the wind. There was a snapping from the woodline across the grass, and he swung the shotgun into the pocket of his shoulder with practiced swiftness, but it was only one of the long-necked herbivore-types, the brontosaurus or brachiosaurus or whatever. It was foraging peacefully, unaware of the new circumstances that now defined its survival, but its presence was reassuring to him. He took a deep breath, and started his crossing.
Emerging from the grass some moments later, he marveled at his continued good luck—and looking down, he found the double bootprints of him and the botanist on their ill-fated journey to the power shed. He had found the path, and his salvation was close at hand.