CHAPTER 10
Jim's leather boots creaked around his ankles and toes as he walked among the raptors. The sound of his hot breath rushing around inside the paper mask was loud in his ears. The moment he'd stepped within the enclosure his heart was pounding against his chest. Without pulling the trigger he cautiously jabbed at one raptor and the next with his three-foot long taser prod. None of the dinosaurs so much as flinched. They were all lying motionless now. Not even the short coarse down on their necks and backs twitched.
Jim looked at Bill with fierce eyes. "I want that taser on full charge."
The prod was rattling in Bill's shaky hands as he guarded the doorway. Sweat poured down his fear filled face. He upped the charge and extended his telescopic prod out to six feet.
Jim pointed a finger. "Remember. If anything goes wrong you lock that gate."
Bill nodded, and sweat shook off his nose and eyebrows. His body fidgeted anxiously.
Jim crouched down next to the first velociraptor and set his taser on the ground beside him. He thoroughly eyed its body up and down. There was no movement of the chest cavity. There was no movement of any kind. He leaned his head close to the dinosaur's mouth and strategically placed his fingers between the raptor's teeth. Slowly he spread the animal's mandible from its upper jaw and peered inside. Shiny strings of saliva globed to the floor as he did this. Using his index and middle finger he gently depressed the dinosaurs tongue to get a clear view down its throat.
Bill stared expectantly waiting for a result of some kind. He saw Jim pull a penlight from his breast pocket and shine it down the young raptor's gullet.
Finally Jim sighed. "I don't see anything." He clicked off the penlight and stuck it back in his pocket.
He was about to move on to the next juvenile when suddenly the raptor's teeth snapped shut and bit the fingers clean off of his right hand. Jim screamed in horror as blood spurted down over his fingerless palm. He reached for his taser but the young raptor wasted no time. It clambered over Jim's back and began slicing its killer hind claws into his kidneys.
"AAAAH! Help! Help!" Jim Shrieked. "Get her off, Bill! Shoot her! Shoot her!"
Bill was in shock. As blood streamed across the cage in ribbons he stepped forward, but the other two velociraptors leapt from the floor. He struck the first raptor with the end of his taser and blasted it to the other side of the enclosure where it smacked against the concrete wall in the back and fell unconscious. The second raptor dodged his defenses and sprang for Bill's torso. Bill felt four limbs worth of claws dig into his gut and shoulders. A set of razor sharp teeth mauled at his face, and he fell to the floor. He stared at the ceiling in a daze, his intestines uncoiled over his thighs.
Two young velociraptors left the cage walking over Bill's still breathing chest without sympathy. As they exited into the hall of the carnivore nursery they shook blood from their hands and feet with light flicking motions and licked blood off their curved talons. Two young velociraptors were now on the loose.