“Raptors? Mammoths?” Ryan asked, looking from Ellenshaw to Anya and Sarah.
“You know, those lizard-looking chickens you just shot up,” Charlie said as he, Anya, and Sarah turned back to look at the animals they had assumed were just small rocs laying dead and dying in the fallen ash.
“To tell you the truth, I was really hoping that Carl was a bit touched in the head when he told us about them things,” Sarah said as they continued to look at the nightmarish advanced evolutionary form of an extinct Velociraptor.
“What in the hell?” Ryan asked as he stood, because he had to see this.
As the others looked on in amazement, they saw a larger-than-normal raptor stride easily from the trees. It stood directly over the raptor that was wounded and writhing on the ground. Ryan would swear later that the brightly colored feathers of the six-and-a-half-foot reptile plumed out from its long and flightless wings and rose along its spiny back. It seemed to be posing for the humans who watched it. Then to their amazement the sharpened spearlike stick came down into the wounded raptor’s chest. It suddenly stopped moving and lay still. They would swear later that the raptor never looked away from them as the spear came down, its bright yellow eyes challenging the humans.
“Okay, it’s official, I don’t like this place,” Jason said as he lowered himself to a kneeling position.
Virginia had slid to a stop and jumped from her roc. She saw the wide eyes of the master chief as he realized just what it was she had been riding. The roc screamed and then ran off just as Will Mendenhall made it over to the both of them.
“Glad to see you’re still alive,” Virginia said as she knelt beside Jenks and his dismembered drones. He continued to work as Virginia pecked him on the cheek.
“Nice horsey you had there, Slim,” Jenks commented as he tore a set of wires free from a drone.
“Yeah, a little hard on a woman’s ass, though,” she said as Mendenhall silently agreed.
“What are we doing, Master Chief?” Will asked as he hurriedly tossed his and Jenks’s M-4s to Sarah and Anya before turning back to the frantically working navy master chief.
“Slim, slide the blasting cap into that wad of C-4 in drone number one. Captain, do the same on two. I’ve got to rewire this telephoto lens to send the charge through.”
“What’s the plan here, Harold?” Virginia asked as her slim fingers easily pushed the inch-long cap into the block of C-4.
“In case you failed to notice, Miss Nuclear Sciences, we have a herd of giant bison and even larger Frankenstein elephants charging down to the camp, which so happens to include the doorway. We have to turn them before they get here.”
“Master Chief, the raptors are all out in the open, they’re forcing the bison and mammoths to charge!” Charlie called out as he started to follow Jenks’s last order to him. He emptied the full load of tracer rounds into the fast-moving bison herd.
“Jesus, we may as well be shooting at a brick wall,” Jason said. “Jenks, we’re out of time here!” Ryan also started firing in hopes of scaring the frightened animals even more than the raptors pushing them.
Jason, Anya, Charlie, and Sarah watched the trees come alive as thousands of raptors slowly broke from cover alongside the racing animals, adding to their terrified panic.
“Okay,” Ryan said as he stood up to see the full picture. “That is a lot of raptors.” He watched as the bison were now only a quarter mile away. “I’ll never laugh at another made-for-TV movie again.”
Behind them the first of the two drones flew skyward and quickly vanished in the increasing ashfall.
The initial shock of Jack’s planned attack went off with spectacular results. The raptors that were caught playing or lounging were taken by surprise, probably for the first time in their lives. They saw the charging rocs and the men who sat upon them. Collins, Everett, and Farbeaux fired into the running raptors, not really caring if they hit anything at all. The object was to scatter the nest, so to speak. They needed the time to search for the coupling. Even the fatter, older raptors thought it better to retreat and reevaluate the strange behavior of the rocs, the raptors’ only natural enemy. It was by sheer luck that the rocs had been chosen to carry the men. But as most professional soldiers will tell you, battles are decided by a healthy dose of that particular charm — luck.
Henri and Carl would stay mounted since Jack was the only one of the three to even know what the coupling looked like. As he ran toward the raptors’ booty pile, a single feathered menace, who had not had a chance at running, turned on Collins and charged. Jack, while looking over the large pile of colorful and shiny detritus, raised his nine millimeter and quickly dispatched the charging raptor as he was far more interested in the impossible task ahead of him: finding the coupling in this mess before the raptors found out they had been had and returned with a little payback.
Carl and Henri rode to the ancient and crumbling frame of the downed saucer and fired blindly into the trees surrounding the nesting area of the raptors.
Jack almost had to turn away from the smell as he kicked at the first pile of treasure. That was when he saw the arm with a bright and shiny wristwatch upon it. It was obviously one of the Russians who had been taken as a spoil of war. He grimaced and started in earnest to pull items from the large stockpile of absconded items. Seeing a colorful stone that had obviously come from Erebus, he also saw there was five MRE packets, their mylar wrap shiny to the raptor eye. He was looking at a near impossible task to accomplish before the nesting raptors found the courage to return. Still, he went crazy looking.
Henri felt the presence of the raptor before his roc recognized the smell of the animal, turned, and was so taken by surprise that rider and bird fell to the floor of the nesting area. The ash plume rose and hid the Frenchman for the briefest of moments, but not before Carl saw what had scared the roc so bad. There, standing inside the damaged frame of the million-year-old saucer, was the largest raptor they had seen. This one was over six feet tall and stared down at the men as if they were intruding on its home. Everett hurriedly tried to correct and fire at the same time but his roc also screamed and fell backward. Carl was able to maintain his precarious hold on the bird but he lost his nine millimeter in the process. As he corrected the fall of the roc his eyes caught on something shiny in the clutched digits of the raptor’s left hand as it surveyed the chaos of his nest. The world shook but the raptor only stared out as if the men and rocs were but a minor inconvenience. This one was not to be intimidated.
“Jack!” Everett shouted as he frantically looked for his lost weapon, but it was now buried so deep in the fallen ash that he gave up. Henri was just getting to his feet when he saw exactly what Everett was yelling about.
Collins kicked at a smelly pile of collected objects when he heard Everett’s shout. He turned and his eyes immediately fell upon what the roosterlike raptor was holding in its tightly clutched right hand — the shiny stainless steel power coupling. Evidently it was his prize and his alone. As he watched, Farbeaux quickly moved toward the saucer. He saw the raptor’s eyes turn his way and knew that he was had before he ever made the twenty feet. The raptor’s eyes went wide and its feathered arms flared outward and its neck’s down feathers went to full attention. It hissed again as the Frenchman came on, firing the M-4 as he did so. The raptor screamed as a round nicked its winglike arm. The creature opened its slim jaws and the teeth were apparent as it leaped from the skeletal remains of the downed saucer. Instead of sizing up the Frenchman it charged him. Suddenly Farbeaux realized that the elongated twenty feet wasn’t that long at all. The rooster was upon him.