Galaxia

by Kevin McLaughlin

His thoughts were cut short when she drew in a short, sharp breath and said, “Velociraptors. Yes, yes. I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me before. I know what these are now.”

  Jan took a step closer. He had to admit he was curious. “What are they, then?”

  She tapped a finger on her lips as she stared at the crude X. Her eyes practically glowed from the exultation of whatever eureka moment she’d had. “You suggested that these reminded you of velociraptors. Now, I’m quite certain that it’s because they are velociraptors, at least in part. Somehow, the memory didn’t come to me until now.”

  “Memory? You remember the Jurassic Period?”

  “Ha-ha, such wit. Besides, they were from the Cretaceous Period. But no, I mean during my earlier days as a researcher. I saw those creatures’ hind legs earlier and it should have clicked then and there. If you had a good look at them, you probably saw that they have a long, massive, sickle-like claw on their feet.”

  He nodded. “Yes. A very deadly weapon, it would seem.”

  “But not only that,” she went on. “An old mentor of mine—this nutter of an older scientist I used to study under—had an interesting notion that velociraptors would have used their hind claws to mark out their territory. I’d bet anything that this is what these scratches are. And if that’s the case, we have a lead on how to study what kind of behavior they engage in.”

  “Hmm,” he murmured, his face scrunched in thought, “you may be right. But they are not only velociraptors. They also have fur—”

  “Yes, they seem to be cross-bred with primates of some kind like chimps or gibbons or mandrills or some such. Primate raptors…primaraptors, maybe? It works about as well as devilcrow, if you ask me.”

  “Raptor has the advantage of simplicity,” he pointed out, “although primaraptor is more accurate.”

  Laura ignored him for now. Again, she was focused on a problem that churned within her own head. “It doesn’t make any sense, though,” she mused. “How on earth would the Zoo acquire DNA from a species that’s been extinct for tens of millions of years? Could they have acquired it from lingering biomatter in a fossil buried under the desert? Really, the only other possibility would be if a person had—”

  Something hissed and both of them looked up, their veins running with ice. Jan’s rifle was already poised and ready to fire

  Unfortunately, she was directly between him and the creature. Despite how fast his reflexes were, they were not fast enough. Before he could adjust his position, the primaraptor struck.

  In a frightening blur of motion, it shoved her aside with its shoulder and toppled her against the X-marked tree. Without pause, it bowled into him and one of its clawed forelimbs raked at his gun. He tried to throw himself to the side, but it seemed to have anticipated this and held him in place. The powerful swipe of its arm sent his rifle to the ground with a clatter and he stumbled back, lost his balance, and barely managed to duck his head and twist it aside as the vicious jaws snapped at him. Its teeth brushed the right side of his helmet.

  Then, it shrieked and flung its head around like a mace-wielding soldier in a medieval battle and pounded it into Jan while it moved forward against him.

  He fell, his back landed on a root, and he cried out in pain. Even with the protection of his suit, the breath was knocked out of his lungs, and he forced himself to roll back and away as the creature lashed at him with its huge foot-talon. The sickle-like claw left a gouge a good four centimeters deep in the root where he’d been scant seconds before.

  Jan wheeled around a tree and used it both for momentary cover and as an axis on which to pivot himself in the direction he’d fled from and toward Laura. By the time he’d fully regained his footing and his bearings, the mutant had already grabbed her and began to drag her away.

  “Laura!” he yelled. She had tried to fight and escape, but the beast was simply too fast and strong for either of them. As he stumbled forward and tried to find his fallen rifle, the creature and the woman vanished into the jungle.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Laura saw Jan hurl himself back to tumble away from her and then downward. He darted behind a tree to escape the primaraptor and it turned toward her.

  She tried to hide behind the nearest tree—the one with the clawed markings—while she scanned the jungle floor for the gun. She couldn’t see it and the mutant surged toward her, already almost on top of her. All she had was the knife. Her hand slid to locate it.

  The mutant’s jaws snapped over her left shoulder and bore her down while one of its forelimbs wrapped around her to immobilize her arms. She screamed when the points of its teeth broke the skin, but they did not dig deep and simply held her securely. Before she knew what was happening, it pulled her off balance, pushed her forward first, then dragged her back.

  Utterly helpless, she more or less fell in the direction it indicated and in the way it seemed to be urging. The creature behaved as if this were a practiced routine, an exercise it had done many times before and could carry out flawlessly without having to think or try very hard.

  “Jan!” Laura cried as she struggled against its grasp and tried to find some way to twist away from it.

  It responded with a low, menacing sound, half-growl and half-hiss, and squeezed its jaws a little tighter around her shoulder. Blinding pain seared down her arm and through her chest and neck and she went limp and simply allowed it to pull her along for now. It also brought up one of its feet so she could see the claw glinting in the dim sunlight like some cruel, curved knife.

  Direct resistance was useless, obviously. Instead, she focused her efforts to resist her own fear rather than her captor. Panic would not improve her situation in the slightest. There had to be something else she could do in the meantime—something constructive.

  Clearly, the mutant had no intention to kill her outright. It was taking her somewhere and saving her for some other purpose.

  “Think, Laura,” she muttered under her breath.

  It would probably stash her somewhere—stuck to a tree, perhaps, like the remaining men and women of Klaus’s ill-fated platoon. That was not exactly a good thing, but it did mean she would be more or less okay for a short while, at least. It also meant she would still have a chance to escape or perhaps Jan might be able to find her. One way or another, she might survive this.

  As the primaraptor hauled her through the jungle, she tried—without actually thrashing around enough to anger the beast—to crush weeds, snap twigs that passed her hands, or do anything else she could easily accomplish that would leave a trail. She’d seen that in a movie or something once. Who would have thought that she’d actually need to use it?

  She also attempted to observe and examine the creature, to focus on its appearance and behavior. Anything she could learn would help.

  Her earlier assessment of its physiognomy was still accurate, she decided. It was very much like a velociraptor and it did have distinctly simian qualities. Its forelimbs and hands were like those of a monkey or chimpanzee, with fingers and opposable thumbs. She also noticed, for the first time, that its tail was also monkey-like. It bore only the slightest resemblance to that of a raptor or other reptile and was mostly of uniform thickness, long, furry, and curling.

  The fur, too, seemed to change color. She was fairly sure she had noticed this phenomenon earlier but now, there was no mistaking it. From the reddish-orange shade it had been when it had attacked, it had turned yellowish-chartreuse and then full green, which allowed it to blend in with the surrounding vegetation.

  Did the change in hue have something to do with its mood or intentions? Was it some kind of signal it sent out to other creatures—perhaps other members of its pack? She would need to observe more before she could answer these questions.

  It occurred to her, oddly enough, that she should be more scared than she was, but pure scientific curiosity was one hell of a powerful force.

  Another part of her brain had, partially for ideas and partially as a way to keep
herself calm, begun scanning for Doctor Who episodes that might be of use. There were many with monsters of some kind but unfortunately, the only one she could recall offhand that involved dinosaurs was the one with the beasts on a spaceship, rather than in a jungle. Not only that, she had read something about how they couldn’t afford computer-generated velociraptors, anyway, as that would have been too expensive, so they substituted a baby Tyrannosaurus rex.

  That episode also had involved the original Queen Nefertiti and the guy who played Argus Filch in the Harry Potter films, but neither of those pieces of information was of the slightest relevance to her current situation. Still, she did feel a little calmer, thinking about all that.

  They reached a slight shelf of earth where the ground rose vertically by about half a meter. The primaraptor simply leapt up and hauled her along with it.

  “Fuck!” she exclaimed as pain seared through her body again when the creature’s movement tore and twisted at her shoulder. It hissed threateningly once more to warn her to be quiet.

  “Well, I wouldn’t scream like that if you were gentler, you stupid, hairy bastard,” she said quietly from between gritted teeth. Fortunately, it did not bite down again now that they had scaled the miniature ridge.

  They wove between trunks in a dense area of jungle where, she noticed, the trees were bigger and thicker. Twisting and turning around them, she saw her captor from a couple of slightly different angles and gasped.

  Until now, an odd protuberance had been hidden from her sight and it was only when the creature pivoted that she saw it at last. A weird bulbous growth emerged from the back of the raptor’s hip or haunch area. It was located in such a position, she surmised, that it would be out of the way for most activities the beast might need to undertake but would still be within reach of its jaws.

  She squinted and tried to analyze her glimpse of this before it left her sight, which it did once the primaraptor straightened once again. Then, the truth dawned on her. It wasn’t a growth but an egg sac attached to the creature’s body with a patch of the same tough, sticky substance that had bound Klaus’s captive soldiers.

  They reached another tree, not quite a giant but definitely the biggest one she’d seen in this part of the Zoo so far. Around it was a comparatively clear area with only scant vegetation. They moved to the far side of it and without warning, the mutant tossed Laura roughly against the broad, rough-barked trunk.

  She grunted as the teeth-wounds in her shoulder struck the hard surface and her bones and teeth rattled from the impact. When she looked up, the creature stood in front of her and leered at her with a menacing expression. Its eyes stared and gave off a strange sense of advanced intelligence mixed with its primitive reptilian essence.

  It occurred to her that it might be hungry, after all. It might simply have brought her there to devour her in peace and without having Jan around to threaten it or interfere.

  “Oh, shit,” she mumbled and lowered her hand again to Jan’s knife, which was still tucked into her belt.

  The mutant reared on its hind legs and raised its head as though it were about to utter a loud roar. Summoning its friends to dinner, she wondered? Something sank within her at the thought of that. Fighting off one with only a knife would already be virtually impossible. Against multiple beasts, she had no chance whatsoever.

  But no—the expected screech or roar did not materialize and instead, it seemed to cough or choke something up. A bulge formed low in its throat and worked its way upward, a little higher with each undulating movement and the repulsive hacking sound it made. Then, she understood.

  A dark, brownish sludge appeared in its mouth and leaked from the corners. Before she could do anything, it pounced on her and held her shoulders against the tree while it vomited the sludge all over her feet. She shuddered at the awful smell and grimaced when she realized it had already begun to stick to her feet and ankles, the ground, and the tree’s base like the powerful organic glue it was.

  After a moment, her captor took a step back and faced her as it had done a moment before. Once again, it threw its head back and began to cough up another wad of adhesive phlegm.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” she muttered and closed her hand around the knife’s hilt at her belt. She drew it, moved quickly while the creature was distracted, and bent forward to slash through the already hardening brown goop first on the left side, then the right, and finally between her ankles. The blade was sharp enough that it cut through even the thick, viscous material with relative ease, and the crusty chunks fell away to leave only a cursory coating of residue on her feet.

  The primaraptor didn’t seem to have noticed but it was almost done regurgitating its loathsome payload. This was her only chance.

  She turned, grasped the large trunk, swung around it to put the tree between her and the mutant, and ran. As she raced across the scant, weedy undergrowth of the small clearing and into the denser foliage beyond, she slowed only briefly to snatch up an object she saw half-buried in the earth. She heard the creature behind her make a choking, spitting sound before something plopped on the ground.

  Silence followed as though the raptor were frozen in confusion. Then, it shrieked with rage.

  “This isn’t going to work, Laura,” she told herself as she slipped the object she’d taken into her side-satchel. She noticed some of the disturbances in the plant matter that she’d left behind and tried to stay near them, bearing generally in the direction she’d been taken from but also trying to bob and weave in the slim hope that she might confuse the mutant.

  The primaraptor had already begun to pursue her. She could hear its footfalls and the rustling as it forced its way through the trees and bushes. It was not stalking carefully through the jungle but trampling toward her in a near-blind rush of fury.

  Laura reached the small shelf-ridge and had to slow for a second to jump down without losing her balance or crashing into a tree. She landed with both feet solidly in the dirt, already prepared to bolt forward into the jungle and freedom.

  But in that split-second delay, the sounds behind her ceased. The monster leapt over the ridge, above and then ahead of her, and suddenly, it stood between her and escape.

  “Shit!” she exclaimed. Now, she was well and truly screwed.

  It opened its jaws again. This time, she was somehow sure, it would not bother to simply clamp down in order to drag her back. Now, it would strike to kill.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Jan moved through the jungle at a steady trot. While he needed to cover the distance as quickly as possible, he knew he must not exhaust himself by running. Laura probably had at least a small margin of safety—the primaraptor had taken her alive when it could simply have killed her immediately. That notwithstanding, he was not about to leave her survival to mere chance and had to hurry.

  He weighed all the factors involved, both those aiding him and those against him.

  There were definitely some that would work to his benefit and advantage. The creature and its human prisoner had left a very obvious trail. The mutant was sleek and stealthy but large enough that it could not move through the jungle without causing noticeable disturbances. And in this case, it dragged a captive—an adult human not much smaller than itself and one who actively resisted. This left a very clear trail of bent branches, trampled weeds, broken leaves, and even footprints in the muddy ground.

  Furthermore, having to force Laura along would undoubtedly slow the creature. On its own, it could move with great speed, but he doubted there was any way for the two of them to move, at the maximum, any faster than the pace at which he now tracked them. Unless they were somehow able to give him the slip altogether, he would catch up, and probably sooner rather than later.

  But there were other, disadvantageous factors as well that he could not ignore.

  They had a head start on him, for one. It had cost him precious moments to regain his balance, find his fallen rifle amidst the vegetation and detritus of the jungle floor, and orient
himself toward the point where they’d disappeared into the foliage, find the trail, and begin to follow it. Sometimes, a head start was all it took for a hunter’s quarry to escape.

  There was also the possibility that the primaraptor might lead him into a trap. The bastards had done so before and might well do so again. They were certainly intelligent enough to carry it out. He might find the woman and her captor, only to be ambushed by six others. He tried, therefore, to scan around him while as he focused on the trail and to listen for telltale signs of other beasts lurking about without slowing his pace.

  Finally, and most strangely, he could not see the creature at all, even when he thought he caught a brief glimpse of Laura. If she were free, she would have tried to run toward him or run in another direction and would certainly make a great deal of noise. But she did not, so she must still be in the mutant’s grasp.

  The oddness of the color-changing fur finally resolved into clarity. The creature used this to camouflage itself against the jungle’s greenery.

  For a brief instant, he found himself almost overwhelmed with something like awe or admiration, stunned that nature—even guided in this case by some extraterrestrial imperative—could have produced such a fearsome predator.

  His contemplation of this was rudely interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a body crashing loudly and haphazardly through branches and brush. It was followed—without any significant pause—by a horrible, piercing, wrathful shriek.

  By God, he thought, the woman had escaped again. She seemed to be rather good at that. He pinpointed the location of the rustling sounds and brute-forced his way through the jungle toward them.

  He only hoped he had enough ammo. Mentally reviewing the events of the previous night, he recalled that the first devilcrow from the horde that had pursued them had required a three-round burst to neutralize it, followed by one extra bullet to finish it off. That meant he still had most of a magazine but no spares beyond that. He considered switching to single-shot, but that might not give him enough power, especially considering how fast the monsters were. He left the rifle in burst-fire mode instead.