CHAPTER 227
Daniel swung away from the crumbling hole and landed on sturdy ground. His eyes swept around him, and he broke into a swift jog. He cleared the vines and kept moving through the jungle. Thick growth surrounded him and he hacked through it with his knife. Daniel pushed onward keeping a brisk gait despite the dense vegetation. He paused once as he felt he was being followed. His gaze shifted over his shoulder and he clenched his blade at the ready. Silence and stillness were all he found. Daniel put his eyes ahead of him again and slashed more of the thick jungle growth aside with his knife. As he moved forward his hips collided with something solid, and he toppled onto it.
Daniel was sprawled over the object, laying at table height. Whatever it was, it was long and narrow, and he was at the end of it. His free hand felt along its surface. It was scaly, fleshy, and warm. Daniel's face backed away, and his eyes focused. He was laying at the snout of a long crocodile-like face. He shifted to his right and met a speckled eye with a pupil that analyzed him with deep speculation. Daniel felt the snout begin to raise, and his body along with it. He slid backwards off of the snout and stood in front of the beast. The creature's long jaws parted slightly and it let out a growly breath from between its sharp gnarly teeth.
Daniel now saw the animal's sixty foot long body stretching back behind it, and the spiny sail raising high over its back.
"You've got to be shitting me."
Daniel leapt to his right and ran past the spinosaur's jaws. The jungle beside him thrashed, and trees came snapping down. He didn't look back, but he could feel the spinosaurus circling after him. Through the dense foliage ahead Daniel saw a long horizontal shape whipping toward him. It mowed down the vegetation as it came, and slapped him in the chest with a broad wallop. Daniel fell on his back and watched the spinosaur's tail spring away from him. He squeezed his right hand and felt that the blade was still there. Rolling onto his belly he looked straight down the spinosaur's oncoming maw.
The spinosaur's long skull was mounted on a long neck, and behind that two sturdy arms carried the front half of its body across the jungle floor with powerful strides. Unlike other carnivores on the island spinosaurus was built for a semi aquatic lifestyle. In the water it was a strong swimmer, but on land its long torso made it front heavy, rendering it a less adept quadruped.
Daniel jumped to his feet and ran in the opposite direction. All the while he heard the spinosaur's four legged booming behind him. Daniel slashed his knife at the dense vegetation. It grew even thicker as he moved through it. Suddenly the jungle in front of him wouldn't budge at all. It was a wall of woody tangles that he realized were the uprooted base of a large tree. Daniel glanced back and saw the spinosaurus barreling at him full force. Its thicker hind legs smashed the plants around them. Though much longer than its front limbs they were still stocky and not suitable for sustained bipedal locomotion. It looked like a giant mutant crocodile running at him, though it did not drag its belly which allowed it to move with more finesse.
Daniel turned back to the broad unearthed root base. He was trapped against it. With his fist and his knife he began hacking and prying through a section that was rotted and soft. Pulling away a tangle of root he squirmed his way among the twisted mesh as the spinosaur's mouth engulfed the space behind him.
The roots shuddered around Daniel and began to crunch under the spinosaur's bite. Daniel wormed his way in further, but there wasn't far to go. The spinosaurus reared up on its hind legs and grabbed the root base with its fore claws. Each hand had three fingers, the innermost being the largest and bearing a giant hooked claw. Using these large fore talons the spinosaur dug after Daniel, periodically snapping its pointed snout into the cramped space he had nestled himself. The dinosaur heaved with its stout powerful back legs and pushed at the massive root base. Soon the log as a whole began to rock and come loose from the earth. Daniel braced himself as the root base rolled until he was entirely upside down. The enormous claws swept in at Daniel time and again, little by little inching closer to him as the rotten roots crumbled away. Still the carnivore could not quite reach him. In frustration the spinosaurus mounted the root base and gripped the entire mass with all four limbs and its crocodilian mouth. Almost immediately the integrity of the rotting wood began to give way, and the root base crumbled apart. Daniel fell from the tangle of wood and hit the ground, flinching as the spinosaur's scaly underbelly dropped over him.
The carnivore began lifting its limbs and shifting around to search for Daniel. Its huge fore talons swept at the root debris to uncover him. Daniel belly crawled away from the swiping claws and found that the destruction of the root base revealed an opening to the hollow inner bowel of the tree trunk. Daniel crawled into the mouth of the log, dodging the spinosaur's fore limbs as he went. With a dive he made it within the log, but not before being spotted by the spinosaurus.
The long jaws snapped in after him, brushing his legs as he curled away from them. Daniel shimmied to the middle of the log which was about twenty feet in length. The spinosaur's snout clapped at him several more times, twisting back and forth in an attempt to squeeze further in. Upon realizing Daniel was beyond reach it paused and sniffed the air. With an abrupt snort and another clap of its jaws the spinosaurus pulled its snout out. A moment later Daniel found himself looking into the carnivore's speckled iris as it angled in to examine the situation.
Daniel looked behind him at the other open end of the tree trunk and wondered if he could make a run for it. He had observed that the spinosaurus wasn't overly fast. He just needed a clear path to get away and then find a quick place to hide.
Daniel turned back to the spinosaur and looked it in the eye. "How do you want to play this, Snaggletooth?"