Janet screamed for Bob and bolted toward Sotak, her hands fumbling to bring up the unfamiliar rifle strapped to her back. She finally pulled it around when something hit her from the side. Two hard feet hit her simultaneously in the small of her back throwing her into the side of the tractor treads and onto the ground. The rifle flipped out of her hands, the retaining strap tangling around her elbow.
The attacker grabbed her leg, the instant hardening of her body-armor was the only thing that prevented her leg from breaking. The raptor shook her like a doll and panic filled Janet’s heart as she tried to twist around.
Janet didn’t even hear the shot but she saw it crease by her head and through the rough outer feathers and skin on the shoulder of the dinosaur. It immediately dropped her leg, throwing her against the Silcrete foundation and rolling across the clearing. The beast let out a high warble filled with pain and rage. The air was suddenly saturated with the sharp smell of ammonia and the beast ran off.
‘Are you ok Janet?’ Bob shouted as he ran over to her still trying to scan the brush into which the raptor fled.
Janet untangled herself from her rifle strap and climbed back up to her feet, ‘I’m fine. They pulled Sotak into the brush. Be careful in there! Bob, wait!’
Bob flies into the brush. He can hear them pulling the body through the trail ahead of him. He can hear Sotak’s muffled but angry shouts that seem to be getting further and further away. Suddenly the scrub-bush in front of him erupts and a black, angry bird flies out, knocking him down to the ground.
Janet pulled through the bushes in time to see the dinosaur on top of Bob and she fired. The bullet seemed to pass through the black bird-like creature. It screeched and hissed at her and fled when she didn’t stop her rush.
‘Bob, are you …’
‘Yeah, yeah I’m ok. Thanks but get outta my way. Come on!’
They ran down through the rough brush and into a marshy field. Then the trail disappeared. Bob and Janet looked around frantically for any sign of the attackers.
‘They must have left a trail, come on let’s backtrack and …’
‘Bob, Janet, Sotak!’ The call lifted into their Hive Tabs. ‘Where the hell are you guys. You’re supposed to be over here working.’
‘Anton, quick! Follow our marker. We’re over here in the brush to the northwest. We were attacked and they dragged Sotak off. Hurry!’
Dan’s voice lifted into the net, ‘I’ll be right over with a reaction team.’
‘Hurry and bring David. We lost the trail and I don’t know how long Sotak can hold out!’
‘Try and find the trail but don’t mark it up too bad or even David won’t be able to track them.’
‘Oh, Sotak! Where are you?’ Janet moaned as she searched the brush.
* * * * *
Sotak Luti was wrenched from behind and landed on the ground. The foot that kicked him in the back would have broken his spine if he had not been wearing his armor. There was still enough force in the blow to knock the air out of him.
Darkness enclosed him as the jaws enveloped his helmet and a sharp, overpowering smell penetrated into his sinus. Then the beast began to shake him.
He tried to grab onto the jaws. He could hear Janet screaming but he couldn’t grab onto the jaws around his head. The violence of the shaking was tremendous. It was all he could do to keep his neck from breaking. Worst of all, he couldn’t breathe right.
Sotak felt his body being drug across the ground. Every time he pulled, the beast shook him again. Twice it tried to stomp onto his chest and it knocked the breath out of him. The armor protected him but he couldn’t breathe right and the smell. That God-awful smell was overpowering. He could feel himself slipping away, losing control of his limbs.
Everything seemed a dream. The violent shaking stopped. At last it was peaceful, if only the smell wasn’t here.
He lay there for a few moments and then he felt his blouse lifting. Janet must have found him.
An incoherent cry left his throat as his numbed brain registered the almost fire-like pain of his skin ripping. It felt as though someone was running coarse sandpaper across chest and stomach. Rubbing and scraping his chest raw with a thousand tiny cuts. Even now he knew his cries were little more than a wimper. If only the pain would stop. Every whimpered breath brought in that awful suffocating smell. If only he could …
* * * * *
‘This is what I was afraid of.’ David Pope mumbled as he walked around the area where Sotak was last seen. ‘There’s been so much running around here that all hope of finding faint trail is gone. Do you see anything Buddy?’
‘Hey Buddy, let’s walk in a ways.’ Alex called over to the four foot tall Hype. The Hypsopholidont looked over toward Alex with his broad tooth-filled face and soft pheasant-colored feathers and shook. The broad orange comb running down the back of his head flipped as he moved into the brush to help track the victim.
They scurried around the perimeter a bit until David first spotted the trail. ‘Well thank goodness. I was beginning to feel a little less than competent when working with Buddy here. I finally got to find something first. Let’s go!’
They moved on into the brush. A bent twig or displaced clump of moss was often the only sign of the passing. Other times Buddy pushed ahead based solely on the scent trail of blood spoor.
The trail led out near the rim of the river valley and then down through a broad glade filled with horsetail ferns. Here the trail clearly passed through the broken path of five-foot tall ferns. They follow it faster now, relying on their numbers for protection. They are aware that an attacker could erupt from the dense cover at any point.
Flies fill the air and small biting insects swarmed around them as sweat dripped from the brows of the humans. They ran faster and faster in their effort to arrive and save Sotak, feet sinking into the soft moist carpet of moss and peat. Then Buddy stops. A loud buzzing sound fills the air ahead of them.
Carefully and silently David, Alex and Corey move ahead toward the sunlight filled clearing ahead. The clearing is one of crushed and trampled ferns and in the center…
Corey turned to vomit, the contents of his stomach retching uncontrollable into the field. Ahead of them is a flat area covered in blood. A mangled body lies in the center of the ferns, at least they think it’s a body.
David walks up to the remains, his fists clenched tightly on the stock of the rifle. ‘Well, unfortunately I think we found him.’
‘My God, what did they do to him? In all my years in the field I’ve never seen anything like this.’ Alex voice trembled across the clearing.
David reached into the back pocket of his jacket and began unfolding a large black bag. ‘Unfortunately I have seen it before. Once before. It was a cat. A killer cat that we were hunting through the villages. When it wasn’t hungry it would hunt for the pure pleasure of the kill. Those were the worst kills. Sometimes it did this to the victims.’
‘Most people don’t realize it but a cat has a very rough tongue. It’s very much like the skin of a shark. If they lick you it’s like sandpaper rubbing against your thigh.’
Corey, finally under self control again, is bleary eyed in rage, ‘Where did all the blood come from. This place is an unbelievable mess?’
‘It came from Sotak.’ David replied. ‘You don’t get all this from a knife or gunshot and this isn’t even all of it. They licked off every bit of exposed skin that they could. They even managed to pull his shirt and pants armor up when it relaxed. Remember it only stays hard under trauma. Then they lapped up his blood.’
‘Somehow they managed to keep him alive during this. His heart continued to pump out blood as each lap dug deeper into the flesh. Drinking until the flow finally stopped.’
‘My guess is we missed them by only a few minutes. They’re still around here.’
‘We need to return him to the station and organize a hunt. It’s obvious they’ve developed a taste for human blood.’
References
2. Upchurch, Paul; Barrett, Paul M., and Dodson, Peter. (2004). "Sauropoda". In Weishampel, David B.; Dodson, Peter; and Osmólska, Halszka. (eds.). The Dinosauria (2nd ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 259–322. ISBN 0-520-24209-2.
3. Oceans of Kansas: A Natural History of the WesternInterior Sea. By Michael 1. Everhart. Bloomington: Indiana, University Press, 2005
4. Lackner, Klaus S., and Wendt, Christopher H., "Self-reproducing machine systems for global scale projects," Document LA-UR-93-2886, 4th International Conference and Exposition on Engineering, Construction and Operations in Space/Conference and Exposition/Demonstrations on Robotic for Challenging Environments, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 26 February - 3 March 1994
5. Patterson, J.H., The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, 1986, New York: St. Martin’s Press, ISBN 0312510101,
The Paluxysaurus , references 1 & 2, was first found in the town of Paluxy, Texas near the Paluxy River. It is known from the remains of at least four individuals found in a bonebed. It was a four footed, very large sauropod that could reach lengths of sixty feet or more with a neck and head of thirty feet. The skeletal remains show that it stood about twelve feet high at the shoulders and the nostrils were turned up on top of the snout, instead of out like Brachiosaurus. This unusual nostril pattern has led to speculation that the species may have supported an elephant-like trunk.
The freshwater and inland sea that covered central United States was about three hundred feet higher than the present ocean level. The sea and land in this time frame supported a broad and very diverse mix of the historic life forms seen over the past hundred million years along with many plants and animals that would seem familiar to today’s traveler.
Scientists have found fourteen species of fish and many types of shark. Waters abounded with both salt and freshwater clams, snails, bivalves, and mollusks; and brackish-water oysters. Sea waters contained an amazing variety of ammonites, extinct relatives of the chambered nautilus, as well as plesiosaurs (reptiles), mosasaurs (a finned and flippered relative of snakes), and giant marine turtles.
Some have commented that the gory and unhappy ending of Mr. Sotak Luti seems unbelievable. The incident however is one of many such cases that have actually occurred with cats in India and Africa. A good source for further reading can be found in reference #5.
Chapter 5 : Carnage
“Given the same amount of intelligence,
timidity will do a thousand times more damage than audacity”
Karl von Clausewitz on tactics
The long rays of a hot young sun beat down from a clear sky entirely devoid of haze. Cool sea breezes blow across the plateau to provide some relief to a small group standing in the shaded, narrow neck of land separating the research station from the wilderness of the mainland. The obvious presence of handheld weapons throughout the group of humans is not unusual. Even the presence of a small number of Hypsilophodonts among them has become normal. The strangeness of the gathering lies in the fact that groups typically do not assemble at this location. Particularly since the gathering lies outside the safety of the gates to the Cretaceous Station research facility.
Two men stand toe-to-toe at the center of the group; one of them, Anton Dotschkal, has a glow about him. A red suffusion that emanates up the back of his sweat-streaked neck and then travels behind and over the ears to flush brightly across his cheeks. A vivid display of reaction that pales in comparison to the fires burning brightly in his eyes.
‘Are you out of your ever loving, desk bound reactionless mind?’ Anton clearly enunciates in a low, deadly tone, spitting directly into the Matt Zoeller’s face. ‘You want to hunker down here behind your passive automated defenses! There is no way you can simply ignore what is happening until after the board members leave! Just what do you intend to do when we suddenly lose some more of our Hypes or even worse, another expedition member? How do we handle the board members then?’
To his credit, Matt Zoeller weathered the verbal onslaught quite well. He remained cool and calm before the heated torrent. ‘Mister Dotschkal, I’m sure Daniel can handle the situation. We simply have to pull back our resources onto the plateau and ignore the threat of these animals. They will grow tired of the area and simply leave when there is no food supply. I realize this will delay our construction plans for the rest of the Station but we can make up for it later.’
‘You underestimate them Matt! These are not simple-minded animals who will run away and allow you to go about your ivory tower research for some obtuse galactic set of principles. They are a physical reality of the here and now! If you want to continue your work then you either have to leave the area and move elsewhere or directly address the problem. You cannot ignore them and, since we can’t simply pack up and leave, we have to remove the problem and we need to do it quickly. Right now! If we don’t act now then we will lose more people and I’m talking about human lives here.’
‘No Anton, I don’t think so. This is too much of a distraction. If we ignore it then it will resolve itself.’
‘No, no, no! At this point we’ve been attacked three times. I’ve lost a very valuable man who also happened to be a good friend. Look, you need to consider two very important facts. First one is that they have already penetrated our so-called tight defenses here on the plateau. Even the Hypes didn’t realize their six family members were dead until we discovered the bodies. Don’t forget, these poor Hypes were hunted and dragged from right out of their tunnels. That’s half an unprotected step away from our sites on the plateau.’
‘Second, these guys have developed a taste for human blood. Have you talked with our big game hunter about this? Then you need to do it! David will tell you that when that happens they lose interest in other food sources. That means the threat isn’t going to go away. That means that we will be losing more people from right out of our own Station very soon particularly since they know how to get past our security. We need to do something and we need to do it right now while we have a lead on them.’
Mark Nolen and Dan Drake walked out from the gates as they listened to the exchange and stood next to the parties, waiting for the right moment. ‘Hi Anton. Sorry to interrupt but just what are your intentions.’
‘Ah Mark, Dan! Glad to see you. We need to move now while we have a warm trail. We’re heading over to the tractor site and we’re going to hunt down these bastards that killed Sotak. All of us have had hunting and military experience on one level or another and if we approach in a group we should be able to drive them into a kill zone. Matt apparently objects to it. He thinks we should wait them out but we all disagree.’
‘Ah yes, I heard that part of it. By the way, where is David? I asked him to be here.’
As if on cue, a dark figure emerged from the jungle trail. Rifle held before him, sweating and breathing heavily from the obvious exertion of a hard run through the jungle.
‘What the Hell are you doing running through the wild area by yourself?’ Dan called out to the winded naturalist.
David pulled up beside the group, his breathing already near normal. ‘Hi Dan, one minute and I’ll explain. I figured the discussions would be going this way. Good, glad to see you all here, you just saved me a lot of time and trouble.’
‘Mr. Nolen, I would like to see if we can resolve this problem. We’re pretty sure there are only two of them so far but, who knows, if we let them continue to hunt then they may call in others of their kind. They obviously like our hunting grounds.’
‘I want to set up an old-fashioned game drive. I’ll need four more shooters to setup a kill-zone. If I could I would ask Anton, you Dan, Alex and Corey to join me.’
‘We’ll set up a group of drivers to beat the bush, need about twelve to fifteen or so. They’ll star
t at the kill site and follow the scent trail. There will be safety in their numbers and they can drive the two dinosaurs ahead of them into an area of our choosing.’
‘Great idea!’ Anton cut in, ‘In the mean time, we’ll circle around to the narrow end of the ridge line and set up our shooters. That’s a natural choke point and we can bracket them in both high and low.’
‘No, I don’t have enough people and if we use our technicians as drivers you are going to get someone killed.’ Dan replied immediately. ‘This isn’t a gamelands deer drive you know. These brushlands are deadly and anyway, who other than you can follow the trails quickly enough. The dinosaurs will simply out distance your drive. They’ll simply skirt around the edges of your group. Worse yet, people will get lost or bump into lord knows what. Then how many dead will we have?’
‘Well, I guess we could ask Buddy and some of the other Hypes to man the drive.’ Mark interjected. ‘They have an interest and a stake in this too. They’ve also been good trackers in the past.’
Dan simply shook his head. ‘We don’t have the time to organize the Hypes. Furthermore, they aren’t hunters. No good, they won’t be able to …’
David had taken a step or two back from the group as they argued and turned to face the dense brush around them. He lifts his hands and whistles out a complex call. The brushland around the group erupts in a continuous stream of warbles, rattling screeches, hisses and whistles. The calls came from all around the humans. Random calls soon coalesce into a low thrumming beat that billows up and down the scales with shrieking interjections of blood curdling screeches. Branches begin to rustle and the brush-line around the humans erupts with black feathered dinosaurs that appear out of nowhere. They stand around eight foot tall, many with a yellow crest that runs magnificently down each one’s back to flair out in a multicolored broad tail that whips savagely behind them as they bob up and down in place before the small group of humans. Their head feathers bristle in a fierce display to end in a yellow neck ring as the Hypes cower back into a tight grouping behind the humans.
Hunter's Moon (Cretaceous Station Book 2) Page 13
