CHAPTER 345

Seth stood. He looked down at his kill with what, at first, felt like a mix of emotions, but then it boiled away to nothing but indifference. As he dripped with blood he looked over the body and spotted two more pteranodons creeping out of the woods, but they had stopped. They were staring at him and passing glances at each other in between. Both creatures were perplexed and appeared uneasy about proceeding.

Seth stepped around the pterosaur corpse and raised his weapon. "Whose next?" He walked toward them. "You wanna taste of the beast?" He pointed to one pterosaur with the butt of the pistol. "You wanna taste of the beast?" He shifted to the other.

The two pteranodons fidgeted and backed away, but Seth was out for blood. He charged forward with the gun raised high. He was fully prepared to slay again, but a roar broke the air and shook him so powerfully that he stumbled to a halt. All of the pteranodons scattered. A tree fell in the nearby woods. Branches snapped. Heavy foot falls fell closer and closer. Seth panned the surrounding forest with his eyes and ears. He recognized the roar. The Version B spinosaurus was circling back around.

Seth looked down at his blood soaked chest. He was a walking bullseye. His brain moved fast. He dropped to the ground and grabbed fistfuls of dry earth. While rolling through the dirt he rubbed the soil into his clothes, across his skin, and through his hair. It took all but a matter of seconds, but the spinosaurus was now at the threshold of materializing. Seth sprang to his feet making certain he still had the gun in hand. He listened for the direction of the spinosaur's approach and then hid behind the opposing side of a tree. There he waited with the pistol held against his chest.

Seth's eyes were forward, his body still. Out of his peripheral he saw movement, though he did not dare turn his head to look. The large form of the spinosaurus was moving through the trees, thudding with every step, and cracking branches as she went. It had slowed its pace significantly. The beast was searching. It's bulk boomed and huffed right up to the opposite side of Seth's tree, and there it halted.

Seth heard it breathing and grunting. At one side of his peripheral he saw the dinosaur's long tail and massive thighs. At the other, the creature's long snout was looming. As the spinosaur's breath became calm Seth started to notice another sound. There was a soft patter, like a gentle drizzle of rain. This perplexed Seth for a time, but he remembered the spinosaurus had just been in a fight. The beast was bleeding on the ground.

The spinosaurus looked over at what was left of Reuben's body and sniffed the air. Seth was wondering if it could smell the blood on him too. The spinosaurus grumbled and stumped over to the carcass. Seth got the impression that the creature was limping a little. He heard a gobbling sound and some squealing from a handful of compsognathus that tried to remain on the body as the spinosaurus lifted it off of the ground. The spinosaurus stumped back over Seth's way, and he heard a great deal more compsognathus chattering. In his peripheral he saw the dinosaurs jaws come into view with the dangling shape of Reuben's ragged corpse hanging off them. Seth saw a lot of movement as a dozen compsognathus scattered around the body, still trying to chew off pieces of flesh here and there. With a grunt the spinosaurus slapped Reuben's corpse against the tree trunk Seth was hiding behind, and all the little chicken sized dinosaurs plopped down in the dirt around Seth. Fortunate for him they were all too stunned and startled to even notice his presence. They all simply scampered to their feet and darted in different directions. Very quickly they dashed into the woods and were gone.

Seth heard more gobbling sounds as the spinosaurus got a better hold on Reuben's corpse, then he saw the body curl around the tree followed by the head of the spinosaurus. Seth slipped himself in the opposite direction, keeping just out of view. Reuben's body slumped against the dirt as the dinosaur's head lowered. A great deal of sniffing followed.

Seth remained still. Already, Reuben's corpse was droning with a cloud of flies, and some of them quickly found their way to the pterosaur blood on Seth's skin. Despite the itching and crawling he felt, he did not move, even when they were on his cheeks and eyelashes.

Slowly Reuben's body dragged back the other way. The spinosaur's footsteps started to thud through the forest as the beast departed. Seth felt that the only reason he hadn't been found was because there were already so many other traces of blood around the area. As the footsteps pounded further off Seth relaxed, took his first breath, and brushed the flies away.