ADAPTATIONS

23 - The Progress on Excavating

Another day and another set of issues. Grant could only guess what, seeing how Derek was back at the dig site. No doubt there would be bickering between he and Veronica as well as the pranks, and lewd comments. Then came having to listen to Billy's gripes and complaints about the questionable bounty hunter.

If it wasn't for that annoyance's much respected uncle, Grant would've kicked him out of the dig site a long time ago. Just as he thought about the much younger man, Grant saw him out of the corner of his eye go back to Quarantine. Layers of limestone dust covered the front of him, making the scientist wonder if the pain in the ass actually worked or just screwed around. It was hard to tell with him, sometimes.

Derek entered the trailer to find Pet seated at the kitchenette bar and chowing down on a bowl of soup with chunks of raw meat floating in its broth. He grabbed a green colored glass out of the cabinet and opened the fridge's freezer door for a handful of ice. What he found instead surprised him. Almost all of the freezer, including the racks in the door, was packed full of Ziploc bags of different sizes of what looked like meat.

Derek blinked. "Um, Pet, why are there bags of a mutilated body in the freezer?"

The hybrid answered through a bite of raw meat. "I went hunting."

"For who? It looks like you dismembered someone after they pissed you off."

Pet swallowed her bite and scooped up a piece of meat for another. "Alan told me of this spot where deer frequently went so, I thought I'd check it out. He was right."

Derek wiggled his hand through a gap between three packages for a few pieces of ice. "Who all went?"

"Robert, of course. He refused to let me go without him. Alan went too, and so did Billy." Pet smiled to herself. "Although, Robert told me Billy threw up. I guess seeing me kill something was too much for him."

Derek threw his head back and laughed, almost dropping his glass of ice in the process. "Damn it, and I missed it!" He poured some water from the gallon jug between the sink and coffee pot and took a hefty swig. "Good job, Pet. You found yourself a real winner." He sat down beside the hybrid and grimaced at her idea of soup. "At least you cut the hooves off."

Pet huffed a laugh. "Nah, I finished up the hooves last night." She shot him a mischievous sneer.

"I can't tell if you're being serious or joking."

Pet ate the last piece of meat and drank whatever kind of broth that was supposed to be and put her bowl in the sink. "Time to get dressed in some warm clothes and attempt to work some more on the fossil."

She worked as long as she could until the temperatures became unbearable for her. That night, it dropped down to twenty-eight degrees. Pet shivered beneath the layers of extra blankets she scrounged up in Quarantine as well as a quilt Billy donated to her cause. It wasn't enough. She was still cold. Another hot shower was debated but there was only so much hot water.

Quarantine's front door opened and closed, followed by the sound of Derek's Challenger roaring to life.


Two hours later, uncle and nephew returned from wherever they went. Muldoon was rather vocal as he expressed his opinions. "You are never driving the Jeep! Not after how I saw you drive that car of yours!"

"I'm not that bad!" Derek chided.

"I thought Pet was bad at driving, but you! You have a death wish!"

Pet heard the sound of several plastic bags and items be placed on the kitchenette bar top. Derek laughed. "I think you're over exaggerating, Uncle Rob."

"It's below freezing tonight and you're driving eighty-five down the bloody highway like it's the Autobahn! Ever heard of black ice?"

"Is that a rapper or something?" The sound of uncle smacking nephew upside the head made Pet smile. "Y'know, that can be very demoralizing to my psych."

"You can be very demoralizing to anyone's psych!" The ex-game warden sounded as though about to lose his patience.

Pet was laughing, now, as much as it hurt her aching joints and stiff muscles.

Derek knocked on Pet's bedroom door and cracked it open. He saw her peering at him over the tops of her comfy layers and held up a big blue plastic bag with a box in it. "We got you something from in town we thought you might like." He took the box out of the bag and held it up for the hybrid to see. "It's an electric blanket." The bag was tossed aside in exchange for Derek going for his knife strapped to his ankle. The tape securing the box closed was cut and the box opened. "Maybe now, the rest of us can get some blankets without you hogging them all." Pet snorted. Derek pulled all the blankets off the hybrid to find her fully dressed in her insulated pants, two pairs of fuzzy socks and her heavy black fleece lined jacket. "How are you still cold with all that stuff on and under almost every blanket we have?!"

The light blue, queen sized heated blanket was tossed over the hybrid and plugged in. Derek turned it on and fidgeted with the heat control. Pet pulled the cord running to the control out of his hands and looked at it for herself. The orange light was glowing, showing it was on and adjusted the dial to the number six setting.

She snarled at the man. "Can I have the quilt back?"

Derek rummaged around in the three down comforters on the floor before finally finding the worn out quilt the hybrid was talking about. "Why? Because it smells like your toy?"

Pet threw it over the heating blanket. "It smells better than you. I swear, you bathe in a bottle of that God-awful body spray every morning. It's called body spray, Derek. Not body wash."

Derek heard Terrence laughing from the kitchen and poked his head out of the room to see the other man newly emerged from the bunkroom. "No one asked for your opinion. Shouldn't you be doing something, anyway, like overdosing on Ritalin?"

Terrence smirked. "Remember I still have some of that laxative should you feel yourself getting too full of shit…or yourself."

Derek rolled his knife around in his hand and grinned menacingly at the man.


The next morning, Pet was up with the rest of Quarantine's occupants. Thanks to the heated blanket, she was nice and toasty and feeling quite energetic. Then Derek opened the trailer door to step outside. The tranquil smile on Pet's face shattered at the sight of snow making the dig site look like a winter wonderland.

"This is bullshit," Pet screeched.

Derek deeply breathed in the brisk air and exhaled a vapor cloud. In his hand was a cup of steaming cup of hot coffee. "It's called snow, Pet. Not bullshit. I know you've never seen snow before in the parts of the world where you come from."

"It's too cold for my liking, so…" she nudged Derek out of the way with a socked foot in his back and shut the front door. "Go enjoy it by yourself."

Terrence sat on the couch and watched the morning news on the wall mounted TV.

The hybrid, still wearing her many layers of winter clothing, sat down on one of the barstools. She intended to cook breakfast; she just needed a few minutes to decide what to cook. "Sometimes I'm so tempted to take him out behind Quarantine and rid of him like a sick dog... but that would be a waste of a good bullet. Ammo is getting to be expensive, lately."

Muldoon decided to pour him some juice, instead, and joked. "There's always your old .22. The ammo is fairly cheap enough, still."

The hybrid's face contorted in mild disgust. "The .22? Really? Do you know how many bullets it would take before finally offing him?"

"I didn't say it'd be clean or easy on him." The two people met stares, Pet shrugging.

"I heard that," Derek yelled from outside the trailer. "The walls are pretty thin." He poked his head back into the trailer. "Remember that the next time you and boy toy decide to play leap frog late at night." Pet snorted and lunged off the barstool to attack the man, but the door was slammed in her face first.

"When are you going stop talking shit and finally grow a pair and stand up to me? Or are you just going to sabotage my stuff like you did in Kenya? Like the time you swapped out the rest of my shampoo with hair bleach?"

Derek was heard laughing on Quarantine's front steps. He opened the door again, this time to come inside and looking a bit chilled by the cold. "Oh, you're one to talk! You put icy hot in my boxers!"

"You put icy hot in my bra!"

Terrence grumbled. "I didn't need to hear that."

Derek continued. "What about the time you shook up my soda can before I had a chance to open it? Then handed it to me all nice and sweet like? Only to find out what you'd done!"

The hybrid pointed a clawed finger at the man. "That was pay back for shaking up my beer!"

Muldoon bellowed out, "Will you two shut up? It's too early for your childish squabbling."

Pet frowned at Derek and went to the coffee pot to pour her a cup, too before starting pancakes for breakfast.


Three hours later, Grant and Billy were extremely close to excavating a long bone in the fossil's tail. Pet kept hearing it be referred to as a Caudal Rod, which she guessed was just one of a few by the way the scientist was talking. Apparently, it was what kept a raptor's tail stiff and rigid. Watching and listening to them was like witnessing a delicate surgery. As Grant carefully scraped one side of the rock base locking the fossil piece in the ground, Billy did the same on his side.

Pet was laying down beside Billy and spending more time watching the two men work rather than working herself. Once the fossil piece was freed from the earth, Grant gently placed it in a long rectangular box. Within another two hours' time, a few small fossil pieces making up the tail tip were also removed.

Grant was smiling like a school boy as Billy was laughing joyously. His hazel looked at pondering blue-green ones. "From here, extracting some of the Caudal Vertebrae to the Illium will go much faster. The other Caudal Rods still need to be removed, though."

Grant sat up and dusted off his hands; not like it mattered with how layered in limestone dust he was. "The more the vertebrae are dug up, the easier it'll be to locate the other rods. It's when we get to the core of the fossil and the overlapping of pieces that things tend to slow down. Looking at the way this particular fossil is positioned, trying to dig out the Humerus, Radius and Ulna with how they're laying across the rib cage and Sternal Plate might pose a problem. Whoever does the excavating on the core will have to be extremely careful so as not to accidently damage the pieces directly underneath the other."

Pet blinked and pursed her lips. "I'm going to pretend I know what you two just said."

Grant gave the blissfully confused hybrid as friendly of a smile as possible. Afterall, she was created to be a cunning predator, not a scientist. "You'll get the hang of it."


With the ecstasy of excavating several fossil pieces, Grant decided to celebrate by inviting his site workers to Catfish's for a few drinks. Though it was far from his first time ever digging up a fossil, it still felt like the first time, every time.

The drive to town wasn't as bad as some feared. By now, half of the snow had thawed, making the highway slightly more drivable than it would have been earlier, however, the same couldn't be said for the dirt road leading from the dig site to the highway. It was mud soup that had the museum truck, the Jeep and 4Runner sloshing around until their tires hit the solid pavement of the highway. As tempted as Derek was to drive his car, even he knew better than to chance it.

Forty-five minutes later, the entourage of vehicles pulled up to the bar and grill they planned to dine at. The hostess greeted the favored customers and led them to their usual tables off in the back corner. Two tables had to be joined together to fit the entirety of the group and they sat down. Derek was overly pleased to see his favorite waitress, a young African American woman by the name of Camille, serve them. The same couldn't be said for Camille giving Derek a warning glare, daring him to open his mouth. She handed the customers their menus albeit more throwing Derek his.

Camille saw the lead scientist appearing more jovial than normal and knew it had to be a good day. "How's the dig site going, Dr. Grant?"

The man beamed. "We got some of the fossil pieces dug up." He liked using 'we' as it wasn't just him taking the full credit for the work. His dig site workers had a hand in the achievement, too. He flipped open the menu to the dinner section.

"I thought it would be too cold to do any work today." Camille turned herself at an angle to block Derek's eyeing her up and down from her peripheral vision.

"It's only going to get colder from here." Grant's comment made Pet stop reading over her menu to stare at him in borderline panic. "I can't let that stop the progress on excavating."

"Just make sure you stay nice and warm so you don't get sick." The attractive waitress took her check pad and pen out of her black apron and looked at the customers. "What can I get everyone to drink?"

Pet spoke first. "I'll have a coke." She wanted to ask for a beer, but knew she couldn't. That whole no ID to show proof of age was a mood killer.

Billy ordered a soda as well, knowing the hybrid at his right couldn't drink in public.

After everyone placed their orders, Camille left to fill the orders. The hybrid verbally jabbed, "You know she's probably going to spit in your drink, right Derek?"

Derek, seated across the table and a couple seats down, replied. "She wouldn't be the first person to do that. If she's smart, she'll know to spit in the glass, first, before having the bartender whip up the double Jack and coke. That way I can't see the evidence of my drink being tampered with."

The hybrid scoffed and got up. "I'm going to the lady's room. I'll be back in a minute." She waited for a snarky comment from the bounty hunter but it never came.

In her walking to the bathroom, a man seated at the bar and obviously drunk, stated. "Hey, hey! There's my little bone digger girl!"

It was already well known to most of the dig site volunteers that frequented Catfish's that this particular drunk had taken an interest in the hybrid. He gave her a sharp smack on the ass, drawing a high level of ire from the excavators at the table. Despite Muldoon's slight disability in his right hip from the Big One's attack, he was still quick to get to his feet, followed by Derek and Terrence.

Billy didn't hide a laugh. "This isn't going to be good."

Before the three angered men could come to Pet's aid, she had forcefully punched the man with a burst of anger that sent him tumbling off the barstool and onto the ground. She hissed a snort and stepped over the now unconscious man in her proceeding to go to the restroom.

Terrence looked from the drunk and to the hybrid. "I bet he won't be doing that again!"

Camille didn't seem too bothered by this. The bartender did. He rushed around the bar and to the fallen patron. He stared down at the floored form and then to the three men nearby. "Normally people get kicked out for causing trouble, like physical violence, but in this case...I think it's him who caused the trouble." He waved a younger man over, who had been cleaning up a table, to assist him as he tried to rouse the man.

Camille returned to the table with what drinks were ready, except Derek's seeing how the bartender was preoccupied. "That son of a bitch deserved it. I don't know how many times he's done that to a few of the other girls that work here. He's horrible with Lucy, the dayshift bartender."

The drinks were passed out and Pet returned to the table just in time to order her food. "I'll take the chicken and gravy over rice, please." Derek ordered the exact thing, smiling at the hybrid. "Do you always have to order the same thing I do?"

"I call it utilizing your idea."

"I hope you choke you on your utilizing," she growled back.

Brown eyes lit up with a sly smile. "What? You want to utilize me?" Derek wiggled his brows at the woman seated across the table from him.

Pet cut her yellowing eyes down on the man. "Do you want to be knocked out, next?"

Derek wickedly chuckled. "Foreplay in public? And with chew toy right there? Pet, for shame!"

Muldoon did his usual move by smacking his nephew upside the back of the head. "Will you ever learn to shut your damn mouth?"

Grant sighed. "That's what I've been wondering..."

Derek appeared offended, though everyone knew better. "What?"