CHAPTER 79
Seth was eying up the underside of the observatory. It looked so close now, but the burning in his muscles was telling him it was still so far away. He paused for just a moment. His lungs were huffing. Reaching for the next ladder rung his body trembled.
Dianna yelled up to her son, coaching him. "Just thirty more feet, Seth. You can make it."
He nodded and pulled onward. The words of encouragement weren't making his muscles hurt any less. Seth glanced over at the next ladder. The two velociraptors were almost even with him.
His mom called up again, "honey, you've gotta hurry!"
At that moment the safety caging around the ladder shuddered and Seth almost lost his grip. An immense gust of wind came with it. The culprit was Star Fire. The quetzalcoatlus had been slamming against the cage since they started climbing the ladder. Now she was getting more violent about it. The pterosaur gripped the mesh and flapped her wings. She stabbed her beak at Seth but couldn't fit her mouth through the small openings in the cage.
Seth corrected his fumbling hands and feet and kept climbing. He squinted through the pounding wing flaps that thrust wind at his eyes, and he winced each time the ladder shuddered. Star Fire wasn't giving up, and it was slowing him down. With another jarring impact Seth's sneakers slipped off the rung below him. Kyra was climbing just above Seth and also lost her footing. The bottom of her shoe crunched down on Seth's knuckles.
"Ow! Ahhh!" he shouted.
Kyra sprang her foot away as quick as she could. "Sorry."
At the bottom of the group Ms. Murdock was getting more and more concerned about her situation. The first of the two velociraptors below her had caught up. The hunter was now taking snaps at her boots. Joan jammed her heel into the raptor's snout, but it didn't deter the beast. The dinosaur slipped down a couple of rungs, shook its head, and continued to pursue.
Ms. Murdock called up to Bryce, "Doctor Conners, I need a weapon."
Bryce nodded as Star Fire slammed into the caging again. All he had on him was a knife, and he knew that wasn't going to help Joan. He called up to Dianna, "I need your pistol."
The cage shuddered again as Dianna reached for her gun. It was an awkward stretch to pass it down to Dr. Conners. "Be careful, Bryce. That's all we have left."
As Dr. Conners reached up to get the weapon he nodded and said, "got it."
Securing the pistol, Bryce hugged the ladder as Star Fire jolted them again. The rushing wind of the pterosaur's wings ripped at his clothing. It was so strong he had to keep his eyes shut. Worst of all, it was keeping him from climbing. This in turn stopped Joan.
"Dr. Conners!" Ms. Murdock yelled. She now had a raptor biting and pulling at her boot. "Dr. Conners, give me the weapon!" She kicked and tugged, but the raptor had its teeth sunk into the leather of her boot.
Bryce reached the gun down past his knees and stretched it toward Joan. He squinted through the beating pulses of Star Fire's wings and guided the weapon toward Ms. Murdock's hand.
Ms. Murdock struggled to reach the weapon. Her fingertips grazed the metal of the gun time and again, but the velociraptor was holding her back. All the more, the dinosaur squeezed its jaws around her boot. Ms. Murdock felt the teeth sinking through her flesh. The pain was growing fast. It had become physically impossible for her to pull against the raptor's will. Joan cringed as the hunter reached up with one arm and hooked a set of fore claws into her calf muscle.
Doctor Conners felt a panic flood through his veins. Joan's fingers were trembling downward. He repositioned himself on the ladder and reached the gun down farther, but it wasn't enough. With a clatter of metal clangs Ms. Murdock fell away from him. As she dropped nearly six feet her limbs rattled down the ladder rungs. In a last attempt to stop herself she wedged her back against the safety caging and gripped the mesh with her flailing hands. Joan strained to hold on but the velociraptor had a death grip on her leg. She looked up at Dr. Conners who had the pistol aimed to shoot, but she could see in his eyes that he knew he couldn't hit the raptor without hitting her. Ms. Murdock shook her head at him as though to say, don't waste the bullet.
Dr. Conner's face held a plethora of mixed feelings. Joan could tell he didn't want to accept the situation, but then she saw his finger relax from the trigger. Content, Joan closed her eyes and let go of the cage. She supposed perhaps that she might at the very least slow down the velociraptors and buy everyone else just a little more time. Her final thought was that Dr. Conners had made a wise decision.