Ch. 30 Caves

Ch. 30 Caves

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= It was so obvious that no one was potentially able to outrun a previously extinct tyrannosaurus rex, and Nick knows it, so in a fit of adrenaline, he sprints ahead of Sarah and Kelly and spots something off to his left.

It's a waterfall, apparently right in front of a sheer rock face. But there's something about the way the water is falling that tells him something.

"Follow me!" He grabs each of them and hauls them forward, the two females keeping a firm hold on the three cubs, they simply run straight at the waterfall.

In their eyes, apparently, he intends to jump right into the rock, and he's dragging them along with him.

"WHAT ARE YOU-" Nick interrupts the loud cry of Sarah and orders the two to jump. All of the lunges right at the waterfall and disappear through the masking water.

There is a small recess, which is what Nick had hoped for. It's only four or five feet deep, but it's just enough for him, Sarah, Kelly, Ezra, Renee and Bumble to cower behind the flowing water. Breathless, terrified, they can here the mayhem outside.

"Shhhh..." Nick shushes the group and then an enormous splash occurs, something bursts through the cascading water and crashes into them. It's Burke.

"Get out of the way!" He growls and bulls his way up against the far wall, as far away from the water as he can.

Just then, another shape pushes past the waterfall. It was the tyrannosaur. Burke had given way their seemingly perfect hiding spot.

The four scream with the cubs roaring as the rex's jaws snaps left and right attempting the capture the group, almost searching for them, falling just inches short. They squeeze as far back against the wall as they can get.

The rex can't quite get its head all the way through the opening, so it uses its tongue. A long, dark blue shape slithers out of its mouth and touches the humans, trying to wrap around them, to pull them out of the cave.

Burke, blind with panic, forces himself even further into the cave, which pushes Kelly holding Bumble further out.

"You're pushing her out!" Sarah cries, protectively shooting an arm out so that she accidentally drops Ezra but luckily Nick quickly grabs the small cub before the T-Rex succeeded in grabbing the poor thing.

Dr Burke doesn't listen, he throws elbows to make room for himself. Although, his movement dislodge a portion of muddy earth, and flurry of enormous stone snakes, eight or nine inches long each, pour out of the wall and swarm over his face and neck.

Burke screams and instinctively leaps away, toward the flowing water.

And surprising that's all the leverage the rex needs. It curls its tongue, wrapping Burke up in it and pulling him between its teeth. Screaming mortified, he is dragged out, through the waterfall, and disappears. Sarah, Nick, and Kelly stare in horror as the white screen of water turns pink.

The screams fade as Burke is carried off by the rex, but suddenly another figure bursts through the flowing water, startling them.

It was Ian, soaked in water, he throws his arms around Kelly and pulls her tight. He holds onto her as she cries, and he won't let go again. He looks up, over her shoulder, and sees Nick standing there, breathing hard.

"Thank you."

Before they could be victorious, another head pops up through the red stained water. Igniting more screams before they find a familiar pair of white eyes.

"Madison?" Nick asks and the creature growls softly before pulling out. Malcolm guides his daughter and the Smilodons cubs out where they see the giant white creature kneel on the ground, Roland on her back.

"Come on! We have Ajay to save." Roland tells the group as he helps Kelly on with Sarah, Nick followed. Just then they hear continuous screams and so Madison decided to pick Malcolm up in her mouth.

"Madison!" Her head lifts up to see a tin man flying over, hovering at her head. "You aren't injured are you?"

"She's been with me, I just tranquillised a T-Rex with Madison dear beside me." Roland pats the girls bulky neck as Malcolm lands between him and Kelly before they began sprinting off.

On all sides of the Hunters, the grass ripples as animals move forward toward them, undetected, inexorable as torpedoes and these creatures are on target. One hunter is suddenly dragged down, yanked silently below the surface of the tall grass.

In his place, a long, lizard-like tail rises up as the animal drops its head to make the kill. Behind him, two more Hunters are taken down, and two more animal tails rise up in their place. A Hunter ahead hears the rustling of the grasses and turns. His face turns white as, behind him a velociraptor springs out of the grass.

The Velociraptor runs upright on its powerfully muscled hind legs, the second two of each foot bearing an extra-large curved claw, carried in a retracted position, with which it slashes on attack.

Like now. This raptor snarls and runs into the body of the Hunter, taking him down. A feeding frenzy ensues. The Hunters run in all direction, but are pulled down and vanish into the twitching long grass.

Another raptor enters from the right, leaps high into the air, past the full moon, lands into the chest of more human prey, and takes him down, into the grass.

Behind them, Ajay's face falls, defeated. He looks around, realizing he too is now stranded in the middle of the long grass. Around him, four torpedo trails head straight for him.

Ajay simply closes his eyes.

Although that never happens even when he hears the noises of these beasts, instead he is welcomed by the jolting of his body being thrown up. Followed by the wind sprinting past like he was somehow flying.

Next thing they all knew, Madison mistakenly plummets off the side of a hill. Everyone letting go off her back as she crashed into a large piles of rocks, some digging into her skin painfully.

The group of survivors roll out at the base of the incline, landing in a series of hard smacks against the ground and they didn't waste a breath as they scramble to their feet, but luckily it appears the raptors did not follow them over the edge.

Kelly and Malcolm, the first to their feet, gasps, looking ahead in wonderment. The others all rise and stare.

"God help us." Sarah mutters, being helped up to her feet by Tony Stark who lands on the ground with the group.

"Where's Madison?" Tony asks, looking around with Roland jogging off somewhere. Returning with a girl with purple and pink hair slinging an arm over his shoulders.

"Surprisingly, I ain't dead." Madison laughs.

Now they find that they're standing in a flat, sandy area lined with boulders at the sides. The flat area stretches fifty yards side to side and as far as they can see ahead. But that's not what amazes them so.

Everywhere, the sand is dotted with dinosaur skeletons. Some are huge, apatosaurs, sixty feet from head to tail tip. Others are smaller, herbivores of many different kinds.

The more intact skeletons lie on their sides, their ribcages arcs of pale bone. But just as many have been ripped apart, bits of carcass tossed in every direction.

"Look, there it is!" Ajax calls out and shoots a finger to point in the distance. And they turn to find at the far end of the streambed, they can see the skeletal remains of the workers village looming in the moonlight.

They start running again, tiny figures moving among the mountainous skeletons by the light of the full moon.

As the eight exhausted humans and three cubs now back in Madison's rucksack runs through the dinosaur graveyard, Malcolm notices the shapes around them are changing. They're not bones anymore at all, they're pipes, the animal skeletons now given over to the lifeless remains of manmade objects, rotting machinery.

Sarah couldn't help but cheer in victory. "We made it!"

They hurry over a small rise and find themselves at the edge of what was once Isla Sorna's worker village. The size of a football field, the town is divided by a main street that's dotted on both sides by stores, residences, cafes, a gas station.

All the way at the far end is a large, blocky, four-story building. But the town is a mess. The hurricane that hit here must have been ferocious, for everywhere things are smashed, broken, upended.

The jungle steps into the building, growing up, around, and over everything. Huge root systems snake through the street, making it almost impassable.

"The jungle. It's always ready to return." Malcolm whispers, unconsciously grabbing hold of his friends hand along with Kelly.

Nick points to the four story building that dominates the far end of the street. "That's gotta be the operations building, the communication center might be inside!"

END OF CHAPTER THIRTY