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Carnosaur chapter summeries - Chapters 3 and 4
By Aragorn
CHAPTER 3
Police Sergeant Harry Monroe had received the call from the station, about Des and his wife being murdered, and it causes him to feel uneasy as he drives the road. He temporarily abandons the search for Jeremy, much to Jeremy’s father’s distaste, and heads on over to the chicken farm himself.
On the way, the other officer with him, Hazelmere, spots something shining in the sun, off the road and in the distance. They decide to go check it out, and so they get out of the car and begin walking. Even though its early morning, the heat for the day is already really high.
Soon enough the find the crashed car, and the dead girl, and assume it was due to drunk driving. Upon inspection though, they find out that Jeremy is still missing and that the girl had been the one driving when the car crashed. While inspecting the car, they find evidence of a struggle of some kind and assume that Jeremy tried to rape the girl and she managed to force him out of the car and drive off, slamming right into a tree.
They turn and stare into the surrounding trees, having a short conversation about where they think the boy is, both coming up with some theories, but neither have them being able to prove any until they find Jeremy.
They follow the tracks made by the car, back to the spot where it had been parked, but there was still no sign of Jeremy. They find a patch of dried blood on the ground, and then another not far away, and then another not far after that.
They follow the trail of blood into a clump of bushes, and judging from the amount of blood, it appears to them that the girl had defended herself against the boy before driving off.
They continue searching through the bushes until Hazelmere finds a bloody shoe. Then they saw why it was bloody: The foot was still inside.
Suddenly the nearby trees and bushes move. Something is heading towards them.
Back at the chicken farm, David held back his nausea, as they all began discussing what kind of animal could have killed Des.
David suggests a big cat of some kind, and Driscoll states that none have ever lived in the area. David then suggests that maybe someone was secretly raising one and it escaped.
At that point the other cop points out how there are no prints in the blood, and the others all find it strange as well, that there are no prints to go by. Driscoll and David go back outside, glad to be in the fresh air, and go over to a man named Gooch, who had found the bodies when he went there to work.
They begin to question him, asking if he cleaned up anything in there before they arrived, and he says that after he saw the bodies, he took off and never went back in there again. Discoll asks if anyone else has been around and Gooch replies that he hasn’t seen anyone else, if anyone else had been around.
Discoll suggests that someone murdered Des and then made it look like a wild animal did it. He states that his wife, Julie, doesn’t have a mark on her, and if it had been a wild animal, it would have attacked her as well. Gooch informs them that Julie had a bad heart and that she could have easily died from a heart attack, and that her arrival could have scared the animal, if it was an animal, away.
Driscoll accepts that theory and states that they have to put the town on alert and seal it off. He also says they have to warn the public and issue a wide-scale search for the animal, bringing in reinforcements from all over the country, including helicopters, police, hunters, and marksmen.
The other police officer, McCaffrey, walks out from the chicken shed and states that he took a look at the cages and that they were ripped to shreds, and that whatever animal did it, was really strong.
Driscoll goes back to his squad car and radios into the Station, with what they found and brought the other officer up to pace with what was going on.
Suddenly Jenny’s jeep comes around the corner and parks alongside the police car. Jenny tells David that Brownlowe, the owner of their newspaper, was looking for him and wanted to talk to him and the police station said he was here.
David tells her that they are on to something big and tells her to go look in the shed. She goes, curious as to what David found so interesting.
Driscoll comes back from his car and says that its definitely a wild animal and informs everyone that the Station got a call-in from Monroe, saying what he found. He already put the town on alert, and he had also stumbled upon some of Sir Penward’s men. Monroe went on to explain that they told him that they were hunting an escaped animal from Penward’s private zoo, which had a perfect safety record, until now. They are informed that it’s a Great Siberian Tiger.
Sir Penward was a rich man that had his own zoo around his mansion, Penward Hall, in which he travels the world, collecting dangerous exotic animals. The majority of the town disagrees with having so many wild dangerous animals nearby, but until now no danger has ever come of it.
With Driscoll’s permission, David runs to use the phone in the house, so he can call all this in, in hopes of creating a news story that’ll boost his career and finally get him out of that town.
While relaying the story to his Newspaper company, he gets stopped, saying that there is already a story out on this. David is shocked, and asks how that’s possible. It turns out that a spokesman for Penward issued a public announcement half an hour before saying that a Great Siberian Tiger had escaped from Penward Hall by climbing fences that were thought to be unclimbable. The animal wasn’t found missing until early in the morning, in which Sir Penward and his men went out, hunting it down. It has been tracked down to the area of the forest near Warchester and Sir Penward is confident that it will soon be re-captured without further loss of life.
David questions the ‘without further loss of life’ sentence and the secretary at the home officer explains that a list of victims of the tiger was released by the spokesmen, and reads him the names and says that Sir Penward is taking full responsibility for them.
David hangs up and finds it odd that they knew about all the deaths, half an hour before, when the police didn’t even know about the deaths that soon. Then he remembers the missing animal tracks from the shed and realizes that while tracking the animal, they had already been there, and covered something up. But what did they cover up?
CHAPTER 4
When David goes back outside, Jenny is waiting for him and gets mad at him for not warning her about the dead bodies. Jenny states that she’s heading over to Ashton Woods (The forest where Jeremy’s foot and Pat were discovered). She agrees to give him a lift there, in exchange for all he knows about the story so far.
After they get out on the highway, David tells her all he knows and they try to figure out why Penward would try to cover up the fact that one of his tigers escaped, if he was going to make a press announcement about it anyway.
Jenny just writes it off to Penward being arrogant and how he thinks he owns the land and the police and everyone in it, however David thinks that there’s a cover-up of some kind going on.
David tells Jenny that soon, every news team in the country will be swarming over their town, and that they need to team up together to find a different angle on the story that’ll exploit Penward’s true intentions and blow all the other stories out of the water.
When they reach Ashton Woods, they find a long line of vehicles parked on the side of the road. One of Penward’s search helicopters fly overhead as David and Jenny get out of the jeep and start searching the forest.
Soon enough they come across the search operation, finding that Penward’s men far outnumbered the police that were in the search. All of Penward’s men basically looked the same with the same clothes and same haircuts. They always kept to themselves and never came into town to mix socially with the townsfolk.
Before long, David spots Sir Penward himself, talking to Bodycombe, a police investigator that worked alongside the police force in Warchester. David walks closer so he can hear the conversation.
The two are having an argument, Bodycombe mad at Penward for not waiting until reinforcements came, and Penward insulting the local police.
David takes the opportunity to step in and question Penward about already being at the farm and not notifying the police about the dead bodies. Bodycombe introduces Penward to David and Penward tells David to get lost. David refuses to do so until his question is answered.
Bodycombe threatens David with arresting him for obstruction, if he doesn’t get lost, telling him that this is a police matter. David gets mad and storms off.
Jenny catches back up with David and makes a joke about how well he handled that, but David just ignores her, not in the mood.
Fiona Smyth-Graves, a 9-year old girl, is riding her pony on a dirt trail through a forest near her home. The horse acts strangely all morning, always coming to sudden halts and only moving again with many minutes wasted from Fiona trying to get it going again.
Then one time when it stops, nothing Fiona does to it can get the pony moving again.
10 feet ahead of them, something walks out onto the path from the forest, causing the pony to get scared and rear up. This causes Fiona to fall off the pony before it turns and runs away in the direction that had come from.
Her view is fuzzy due to hitting the ground hard, but she sees what appears to be a two-legged lizard, at least the size of her, run past her and go after the pony.
Fiona gets to her feet and sees that the creature has the horse on the ground, tearing some flesh from it. She gets made at the creature for going after her pony and throws a rock at it, hitting it in the back.
The creature snarls and turns to face her, stepping towards her. As Fiona steps back, she grabs a large branch as defense. As the creature gets closer to the girl, the pony gets back up and runs off.
The creature gets irritated and jumps at the girl, slashing her with its claw on its foot. She’s dead before she even hits the ground, her head cut open by the claw.
When the creature lands, it turns and runs back after the pony again.
Fiona’s mother, Teresa is just finishing cleaning out the horse stables, when she hears the pony give a frightening cry in the distance. She leaves the shed and looks out into the forest. All she sees is her 8-year old son, Simon, playing in a sandbox.
She asks her son if he heard the pony and her son reassures her that he did also hear it.
Teresa scans the edge of the forest again and suddenly sees the pony run out, Fiona not with it. Then she also spots something behind it, chasing it. She suddenly realizes what the creature is, but doesn’t believe it.
Teresa sees that the horse is heading towards the stable, where she is, and that it will lead the creature there as well, and in order to get there, it has to go right through the sandbox.
Teresa calls out for her son, but he ignores her, too transfixed in watching the chase. She runs and picks him up and begins running back to the stables, planning on shutting the door to the barn.
However the pony rides past them and into the stables, putting nothing between them and the creature. She reaches the stables as well and puts her son down in a pile of hay as she turns and closes and locks the stable doors, just as soon as a big bang causes the doors to shake as the creature runs into them. Simon begins to cries as the pony whines.
Then another thud comes and a claw bursts through the wooden doors, right next to Teresa’s head, causing her to scream. The pony goes nuts, stomping and rearing up around the whole place. Teresa goes to protect her son from the pony, at the same time that the claw is making a bigger cut in the wooden doors.
Suddenly the creature breaks in and smashes through the door. Teresa shoves her son into a corner and turns to face the creature, the only thought on her mind is to protect her son. She screams as it screeches at her.
It lashes its two claw out, slashing her from her neck down, gutting her. She’s dead seconds later. The creature goes for the pony next, ripping into its neck, killing it.
Simon watches, but nothing really sinks in, as if he was just watching a show on TV.
The creature turns and starts to head for him, when the doors burst down and 2 men walk in and shoot the creature with some kind of feathery dart. The creature screeches and turns to the men, but its legs buckle and within seconds it’s on the floor, unconscious.
One of the men goes to Simon and tells him that what he’s seeing is just a dream and that none of it is real. The man carries Simon out of the barn, in which Simon sees a helicopter resting in his yard. He sees other men rush out of the helicopter with guns and nets.
He gets put down in the porch of his house and the man goes back to join the others. All the men have a discussion of weather or not it was smart to leave the boy, and the one that carried him into the house says that everything will be fine and that he is only a small child and that no one will believe him anyway.
3/25/2004 3:24:26 PM
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