Awakened by the smell of meat and his neighbours' agitation, Boomer opened his eyes, raised his head and yawned, opening wide his jaws lined with sharp teeth. Boomer was an adult male Metriacanthosaurus, eight meters long and over two meters tall, with a dark brown body, orange and black stripes from tail to head, and the latter also featured beige and lime stripes as well as small crests above the eyes.
His paddock, located north of the Predators' Camp, included a clearing, a few trees and a waterhole. It was big enough for him to stretch his legs and trot if he was in the mood but he had learned fast to know its slightest corners and outside of the feedings every two or three days and the futile roaring contests with neighbouring carnivores, Boomer's existence had become very mournful. A few local animals would occasionally enter his enclosure by accident, but he had grown tired of chasing them, so much that he wouldn't have moved if one of them had been within a few paces from him. The worst was that he felt lonely. Metriacanthosaurs did not necessarily hunt in packs and some in the Five Deaths were content with a solitary life, but Boomer always had company and, in Jurassic World, a pack of two adult females and four juveniles, which he had with one of the females. All but him had perished when the park fell.
Aware it was feeding time, the carnosaur got up and left the shade of the tree it had dozed under, heading for the fence a few feet away. Pressing his scarred muzzle against the steel bars, taking care to not touch the electrified wires between them however, he watched the keepers and their vehicles approach.
Boomer hated Men. Not because one of their sabres had scarred him, but because they had killed two of his sons and their mother and then taken his freedom back. In the realm of ashes that Isla Nublar became, the Metriacanthosaurus had carved out a territory for himself in the southern high plateau, where he had followed the herds that had fled from the north and the heart of the island when the great mountain had thundered and spewed its smoke into the sky and its fire at its base, burning the forests and soiling the streams with ash and soot... Each day, refugees had arrived in the south, which had been left intact compared to the scorched north, and among them, there had been other predators, large and small. Boomer had been able to repel some of them for a while, but some were either bigger than him or acted in groups, chasing him from the best carcasses. Then the Men, who had retired to their caves and their trees of stone around the large salt lake and who had for the most part left the island, had returned in large numbers, reclaiming the territories they had lost, putting many of the animals they found in the bellies of their metal monsters. As for the others, they killed them and Boomer had seen them bring down the mighty Mamenchisaurus before burning their corpses. It had been a huge waste of good meat... They ended up capturing him too and when he woke up after being stung by one of their stingers, there was nothing but walls of metal and he had only seen the Sun again when he was put in that paddock, located in an unknown land cooler than the island where he had lived.
The Metriacanthosaurus heard excited grunts and coos, coming from a paddock to his right. They were those of the carnotaurs, those damn horned and long-legged Easterlings which had invaded his territory on Nublar, just before the men captured them.
The keepers and the group had just fed the animals at the Predators' Camp. While Mark and Allison had fed those in the southern part of the Camp, mostly small species, Juan, Marisol and the group had fed those in the paddocks on each side of the wide grassy strip in the northern part. Thus, they had fed the largest animals in the camp, with the exception of the Kaprosuchus and Clafoutis the Estemmenosuchus which occupied marshy paddocks in the southern part, and among these were the Baurusuchus and Blue. She finally showed up, but she ignored Owen again, much to his disappointment, contenting herself with carrying her food deep into her paddock, letting the group observe her only for a short moment.
While one of the vans was parked at the edge of a grove straight ahead, the group and Juan were walking next to the tractor, driven by Marisol. The other van, driven by Allison, had gone ahead of them and was already parked at the back of the large predators area, whose paddocks were organized around a loop. Beyond the grove, which bordered part of the Metriacanthosaurus paddock, was another enclosure, set further back and hidden behind dense vegetation. It could be accessed only by a path and by its entrance, nailed to a trunk, there was a panel, on which was drawn the head of a Dilophosaurus, a predator from the early Jurassic which featured two twin crests on its head. The dinosaur had its mouth open and its frill, similar to that of the Frill Lizard, was opened. Under the drawing, the following message was written in both Spanish and English:
Warning, Dilophosaurs!
Wearing a visor, long-sleeved clothing and gloves is mandatory!
Management declines all responsibility in the event of an incident where this instruction wasn't followed.
"At Jurassic World, visitors could only watch the dilophosaurs through bay windows," Juan explained to Franklin and Zia, "but here, their fence is made of mesh, and thus, they can very well spit on you even if you're several meters from the fence. If the venom lands on your skin it will tingle a lot but by rinsing it thoroughly, it will pass and you will just have some red blotches for a day or two. On the other hand, if you get some in your eyes, you'll be good for the hospital and there will be high chances you'll become blind. Usually, only Mark takes care of them and if you ever want to see them, it will only be in his presence or mine. Understood?"
"Yes," they replied.
Marisol stopped the tractor in front of Boomer's paddock and the keepers left a calf in a smaller adjoining paddock. Shortly after, the gate between the two paddocks slid open, letting the Metriacanthosaurus enter the secondary enclosure and while the carnivore fed, the gate closed behind it, locking it there for the night. Thus, keepers could clean his main paddock the next morning without running the risk of being eaten.
Continuing, they passed in front of the entrance to an alley on their right, which passed between Boomer's secondary paddock and another, which contained a pair of Carnotaurus, then sitting in the grass and sunbathing. They were theropods of light build and medium size. Whereas one of the individuals, pale red with black mottling, was about seven meters in length, the other, mostly black with orange markings on its face and along its back, exceeded it by about a meter and had a broken horn. Juan told the group their names: Ariadne and Asterion.
Their arms were tiny, stump-like, and the fairly thick and sturdy-looking skull contrasted with a thin lower jaw, while the eyes placed at the front of the skull provided binocular vision and depth perception. Looking at their skin, composed of thin scales and rows of larger bulbous scales which ran on the sides from head to tail, Claire shivered as it reminded her the Indominus, which had carnotaur DNA.
Like some of the Predators Camp paddocks, those of the large carnivores were surrounded on part of their perimeter by a low wooden fence which acted as a railing. As they walked along the carnotaurs paddock, the group noticed that the grass between the railing and the paddock's large fence was quite tall, enough for the strands to almost touch the lowest electrical wires.
"We really need to cut the grass there," Juan said to Marisol with a worried look, speaking in a low voice and in Spanish in order to not worry Franklin, who was watching the predators with a bit of nervousness.
She nodded.
"If the others aren't overloaded tomorrow, we'll send them here," she said, designating the group with a slight nod. "Because if we ask that Yank to send the workers, she will forget or do it only at the end of the week. And by then, those two ugly may very well realize they have an opportunity…"
Two paddocks further, the group saw a third carnotaur, which was also pale red with black mottling but he was larger than the other two, with a length of nine meters. Zia noted in horror that his body was covered in burns.
"That one took a hit…" Franklin remarked.
"Ah Toro…," the head keeper said, "or Toro-800 as we started to call him after we retrieved him. Third degree burns, broken ribs, abdominal injuries, nothing can stop him..."
"Hugh Glass can eat his heart out," Owen commented.
"How did he got his burns?" The DPG veterinarian asked.
"We're not sure. The carnotaurs had their paddock in the Cartago sector, but a good chunk of the valley was ravaged by a forest fire during the Fall. We assume he was burned during it. It's a miracle that he survived."
For her part, Claire thought it was surprising that the operation saved this animal instead of culling him, if only out of pity. Given his repulsive appearance, she knew InGen would probably sell him for less than the other two. And if no one ended up wanting him, what would be his fate?
Allison joined them, they fed the carnotaurs and then moved on to the next animals: Miriam and Pierce, the Acrocanthosaurus pair. The group saw them lying in the middle of the paddock, one with its head resting on the back of the other.
They reached the gate of the acrocanthosaurs' night paddock, which Juan opened and the van reversed inside, only stopping at the edge of a particularly trampled area of grass. Meanwhile, one of the predators, the one whose head was resting on the ground, had opened its eyes and was watching the keepers and the group busy by the back of the vehicle. It got up, abruptly waking up the other which hissed in displeasure.
While they were unloading the first beef carcass, Franklin noticed their awakening and seeing one of them approaching the fence with a heavy tread, he gulped and winced, intimidated by the predator. The latter stopped at the fence between the two paddocks, watching their every move and sniffing the carcasses' smell while the other joined him.
The first carcass having just been placed, the group started unloading the second but the two predators, excited, got agitated, biting each other or head-butting the portal, startling several within the group, including Franklin who immediately turned his gaze towards the portal, fearing that it would break under the blows and let the acrocanthosaurs reach them. They were so big that he was sure they would still be hungry if they ate them all and the two beef carcasses. Most of the keepers hadn't stopped however, contenting themselves with watching them with one eye and they didn't seem very worried. Anyone would think that all this agitation was normal…
The IT technician wondered how they managed to be so calm and in a joking mood when they were in the presence of some of the most dangerous animals on the entire planet. Earlier, in the Predators Camp, they had had a fit of craziness during which Mark had climbed onto the trailer and showed to the heavens the same cow foetus he had given him earlier while one of his colleagues had put on the music from the Lion King, making some sort of trashy pastiche of that famous scene from Disney's animated film.
Once the second carcass was placed not far from the first, the group and the van left the paddock and shortly after, Juan entered a code in a box and the gate between the two paddocks slid, finally allowing the two acrocanthosaurs to access to their meal and devour it hungrily, tearing off great shreds of flesh with their long, curved teeth.
They watched them for a while and then ended their tour of the area with the baryonyxes, whom Mark and Allison had fed fish and chickens earlier while the group was busy with the carnotaurs.
The carnivores' feeding being over and the day coming to an end, Juan took the couple and the DPG trio to the keepers' office. There, he described more precisely the tasks they were going to have in the following days, explaining the instructions and their assignments in the different sectors.