|
Carnosaur Chapter Summeries - Chapters 1-6
By CastorTroy
CHAPTER 1
The chapter begins with a farmer, Des Cartwright, being woken up in the middle of the night by his wife, who noticed that the chickens are acting strange. Des, thinking its either a fox or a wolf, gets up to scare the critter away as his wife goes back to sleep.
As he gets ready to go out and scare off the animal, he begins to wonder how an animal could have gotten in, because he had checked the fencing earlier that day and it was fine.
As he goes to get his rifle, he hears the sound of a cage being overturned out in the chicken coop, and he begins to think that it’s probably a local dog. He goes outside, where we, the reader, discover that it is the middle of summer.
Des approaches the 3 chicken big sheds, which the chickens from all 3 were going crazy. And after hearing a crashing noise from the middle one, he heads towards that shed.
The chickens get even louder as Des walks into the shed, walking down the aisle, looking for the dog. He goes into another aisle and sees that a whole section of cages had been knocked over. The cages had also been ripped open, with nothing left but some feathers.
Suddenly he picks up on a bad smell, and he begins to get scared, despite the gun in his hand. He turns and starts heading back to the other aisle, and towards the door, when a creature steps out in front of him, blocking his path.
It was 6 feet tall, with skin the color of dried blood. It’s a deinonychus, however Des doesn’t even guess that it’s a dinosaur. He just knows it’s a giant 2-legged reptile with teeth and claws, and it’s after him.
The deinonychus charges towards him, screeching. It reaches him and grabs him as it lifts its foot up, slashing his stomach open with its claw. Dez falls to the floor, firing the gun, but to no effect. The deinonychus reaches down and starts eating him, starting on his face and neck first.
Des’s wife, Julie, wakes up again, hearing the screech, and then the gunshot. Worried for Des, she gets changed and goes outside. She runs to the middle shed, calling out for her husband.
She goes inside the shed and sees her husband’s mutilated body, with the deinonychus in the process of eating it. (Take note that the descriptions are also pretty graphic. Even more so then in the Jurassic Park books.). Julie screams, which causes the dinosaur to look up at her and ran, jumping on her, knocking her down.
It runs past her and into the yard, running away with a screech. Julie has a heart attack.
A teenage girl, Pat, sneaks away from a dance with a rich boy that’s the son of some important political figure, in his car, out in the country. She feels no attraction to him, but wants to have sex with him for his car and money.
During sex, she sees a shape go by the window and a second later, something touches her foot, which was hanging out a window. She freaks out and the boy, Jeremy sits up, planning on beating up the ‘nosey people’. Suddenly a clawed, leathery hand breaks through the window and rips open Jeremy’s neck.
When it pulls out, it drags Jeremy out as well, kicking and screaming. Pat sees a fair-sized two-legged lizard walking away, dragging Jeremy’s body with it. She freaks out and turns on the car, slamming on the gas. She zooms down a hill and crashes into a tree, causing her body to fly out the front window, hit off the tree, and rest on the front hood of the car, her neck and back broken.
CHAPTER 2
David Pascal is a reporter in his late 20’s. He works for a local Newspaper in Warchester, England. He goes into his work, the only other person there is a co-worker, Jenny, who he had once had a relationship with, but ended it because she was a better reporter and knew that if she got offered a job at a bigger newspaper in the city, she would leave him to go to it and to save him the pain, he ended it.
He goes through his morning ritual, looking at news stories and deciding which ones to write up, not wanting to do any because he’s tired of nothing ever happening and having to do all ‘boring’ news stories. (Some stuff does happen, like dirty cops and sex scandals, but the newspaper’s owner refuses to print that kind of stuff, wanting to print only things that’ll help the town’s reputation.)
David has a fear of never leaving the town and ending up a drunk with no life, like one of his other co-workers.
He find himself still attracted to her both physically and mentally, still having feelings for her. They have a basic conversation about how he looks grumpy in the mornings, and he tries to change the topic so as to not turn the conversation into an argument.
David states that he’s going to the police station to listen in on their calls and police radios, so he could maybe pick up a better story. Jenny states he spends more time there then he does at the Newspaper building.
David arrives at the police building and has a friendly discussion with three of the officers that he knows pretty good. One of them, Keith Driscoll, he grew up with. Keith makes a joke about hiding all top secret papers, when David walks in, which causes a good laugh from him. After that they have a discussion about how nothing new ever happens there and they go through the exact same routine every day with no excitement.
David sees a flicker in the eyes of one of the officers and sense that something is up and they aren’t telling him something. Keith says that they got a call from Stanley Pitt, an important political figure, who was saying that his son hadn’t come home the night before. They go on to say that no reports of any accidents have come in, but a women from the next town over said that her daughter, Pat, had come to this town to the dance and never came home last night either. When Pat’s friends were questioned they all said that she was getting a ride home that night with Jeremy Pitt.
Everyone guesses that they hooked up somewhere for the night and will both show up later in the day. The cops also state that their Sarge and another officer are out cruising around, randomly looking for them on the route they suspect Jeremy would have taken.
David is happy after he finds out that Pat is only 15 years old. That means he can do up a news article, pinning the son of a big political figure, with statutory rape.
A call comes in from someone who finds Des and his wife dead out at their farm, and by the sounds of it, it appears they were murdered. Discoll orders one cop to stay at the station and try to get a hold of their Sergeant, and orders the other to come with him. David is getting really excited now because there had never been a murder in Warchester before and two interesting things have happened in one day so far! David ends up tagging along with Driscoll and the other cop.
At the chicken farm, they come across the wife first, who had died from a heart attack. David, who had originally thought he would be sick if he saw the dead bodies, began to think that it wasn’t as bad as he first thought it was going to be.
Then, after a short walk-through of the inside, they see the husband, Des, ripped up and gutted, laying in a pool of blood. Between seeing the body, and smelling it, David feels like he’s about to throw up. David makes the observation of bite marks on the body, as if something had tried to chew the body.
Discoll and the other officer quickly agrees that it was definitely an animal that killed Des.
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.
CHAPTER 5
David and Jenny were waiting in their jeep, just up the road from where Penward’s men and Bodycombe had parked their vehicles, looking back with binoculars. They see Penward and Bodycombe rush back to a jeep, to where one of Penward’s men have a map out and points to something on it. Everyone except all the regular police officers, get into their vehicles and begin to drive away.
David and Jenny decide to follow them, but stay a bit behind first, allowing the vehicles to have passed them for a bit, first.
They follow the convoy down the highway, being passed by a helicopter in the air, going in the other direction, heading to the Penward Estate. Under it was a large board tied to the bottom of the copter, with some kind of tarp covering it, concealing what was on the board. David makes a comment about how they must already have the tiger and they missed all the excitement.
Before long, Jenny realizes where the convoy is going and she gets a shocked look. She tells David how the Smythe-Graves are good friends of her family. When they arrived, they had to park down the street, because Penward’s vehicles filled up and blocked the driveway.
They didn’t see a single person, but could hear voices coming from the backyard where the stable was. They go to the back and see that the center of attention seems to be the stable.
They approach the stable, but one of Bodycombe’s men, Ian Nolen, blocked their way and told them not to go in, no matter how much David pleaded. Jenny asked what happened and Ian explained that the tiger killed a women and a horse in there, and Jenny is shocked by the news.
Jenny asks about the kids and Ian explains that the boy was found, uninjured, and was now inside the house. Jenny says that there is also a little girl and Ian says that they haven’t found anybody else, but they did find a trail of blood leading up from the woods. He goes on to explain that they think the tiger attacked the pony there and then chased it up here, and that a group of Penward’s men were in the woods, searching for the rider of the pony.
Jenny is devastated that Fiona is probably dead as well, and Ian tells her that if she wants, she can go into the house and comfort the boy until someone comes to pick him up, since she’s a familiar face to him. She agrees to do it and takes off.
After she’s gone, David asks how the tiger was caught. Ian admits that he doesn’t know. He explains that Bodycombe is still trying to get the full story out of Penward. David looks over and sees Bodycombe yelling and shouting at Penward at the other end of the yard, but Penward keeps a straight face and doesn’t go above his normal calm voice.
Ian goes on to explain that all they know is that Penward’s men arrived in time to tranquilize the tiger before it killed the boy, but not before it got the mother. David make a comment about how they wasted no time in getting the tiger away from there. David once again gets the feeling that Penward is covering something up.
David looks over and see two men come out of the forest, carrying the body of Fiona. Ian states that there are now 6 victims and that they’ll have to shut Penward’s zoo down after this. David decides to go break the news to Jenny. As he walks across the yard, he hears the sounds of sirens heading in the direction of the house.
David walks in to find a police officer standing nearby with Jenny sitting next to the boy, who is drinking milk and is surprisingly very composed.
Simon asks when his mommy will be back and David realizes that the boy hasn’t yet grasped the situation. Jenny tells him that she doesn’t know, but his dad will be there soon. He asks where his sister is and Jenny looks at David, who closes his eyes and shakes his head. Jenny winces and tells Simon that she’s with his mommy.
Someone knocks on the door and the officer goes to let them in, knowing that it’s the ambulance. David asks Simon if he saw the Tiger, and Jenny gets mad at David for asking the question. David asks the boy if he minds, and the boy says no and then David says to Jenny that Simon doesn’t mind talking about the tiger, and then for Simon’s benefit he adds on ‘Plus he knows it was only make believe’.
This seems to infuriate Jenny and she threatens to never talk to him again if he doesn’t leave. David ignores her and asks Simon if he saw the tiger and Jenny gets to her feet and yells at David to get out. She starts pushing David out the door, and right before she slams the door in his face, Simon says he doesn’t mind talking about the tiger, but he knows it wasn’t a tiger, but a dinosaur.
An hour later David and jenny were heading back to town in Jenny’s jeep, and she is still furious at him for his questions. David tells her to ‘get real’. The boy wasn’t upset by the questions and if he had been, David wouldn’t have continued with them.
Jenny counters that by saying that by talking about it, he could have caused Simon to face reality before he was ready to. She then also adds that plus it was all for nothing, and David replies that he’s not so sure that it was.
Jenny reminds him that Simon said he saw a dinosaur, and David says that a giant tiger showing up in a backyard is fantastic enough that Simon wouldn’t have need to change it to a dinosaur in his mind, plus he seemed so calm and matter-of-fact about it. Jenny argues that he probably doesn’t even know what a dinosaur is, and that he just heard one being mentioned on TV or something. David then argues against that by saying that every little boy that age knows more about dinosaurs then most adults.
Jenny asks David if he believes Simon actually saw a dinosaur and David says that he believes that Simon believes he did, and that it was no Siberian Tiger and that Penward is definitely lying and covering something up. Jenny asks why Penward would do that and David states that that’s exactly what he wants to find out.
Jenny counties the argument by saying that Simon isn’t the only one fabricating stories. She states that David wants a big story so bad that he’s seeing one where there really isn’t. David states that it wasn’t his imagination that the prints were cleaned up back at the chicken farm, or that Penward’s men rushed the ‘tiger’ off before anyone else could see it.
Jenny finally gives in and admits that it does seem a bit odd, but the idea of Penward having a dinosaur is laughable. David explains that Penward is always financing expeditions around the world to bring him back dangerous, rare exotic animals. Maybe this time they brought back something, very rare.
Jenny laughs at him, saying that dinosaurs have been extinct for millions of years and the thought of them running around today is pure science-fiction. David states that he’s not saying that Penward has a dinosaur, just that he has a creature that resembles one. Jenny asks why he would be keeping it a secret and David suggests many theories that include Penward illegally smuggling it in, or stealing it from somewhere, or he just doesn’t want tons of news coverage on him.
Jenny admits that David is making it all sound logical, but ti seems so far-fetched, and they have no proof. David states that he’ll find the proof, even if he has to break into Penward’s zoo.
CHAPTER 6
2 weeks pass and during that time, every news crew in the country had been in Warchester and had since left. The story was still all over the news and the mayor of the town, Stanley Pitt (Jeremy’s father), stated that he would not rest until Penward is found guilty of manslaughter, however later that day dropped all charges and gave Penward a pat on the back for a job well done in capturing the tiger.
David and his friend Johnny MacGibbon, who is also a reporter for the same newspaper as David and Jenny, are in a local pub. David is complaining about Penward and how people like him who get away with everything, makes him sick. MacGibbon states that obviously someone was putting pressure on Stanley Pitt for him to have backed down suddenly. He goes on to say that if you’re rich, you can pretty much buy your way out of any crisis, in which David argues that that idea is stupid. MacGibbon tells David that he has a lot to learn, but its not just Penward’s money, but also his connections. MacGibbon then lists a bunch of examples of how far Penward’s connections really go. He then asks if David heard anything new about Penward’s zoo.
David states that Penward issued a statement saying that he’ll be increasing security around his zoo, putting a thicker wall on the outside and putting up electric fencing on the inside and that it would cost a fortune that would go towards whoever builds the fences and walls. MacGibbon tells David that Pitt’s security company is being paid to do it. He goes on to explain that there have been large cash deposits in the bank accounts of family members of the other victims, and since then, none have talked about the incidents. He also says how Bodycombe seems to have dropped his investigation as well.
David suggests that they work together and write a story on all this, blowing it all out of the water. He says that the important officials may be bought out, but the people of the town are still scared that another of his animals well get loose, no matter how many new fences he puts up. At the very least they could get his zoo closed down.
MacGibbon says to count him out, that going against Penward is suicide and he’s not going to waste his job on it. David is still convinced that the animal Penward had re-captured was not a Siberian Tiger, despite the fact that Penward revealed the dead body of one the day after it was supposedly re-captured.
David is mad that since the incident he hasn’t been able to sneak into Penward’s zoo, or even be aloud to join the other reporters that were invited there to see the tiger’s corpse.
David explains how he’s tried to contact the little boy that saw the creature, but he had been taken to another town and he couldn’t locate him. MacGibbon reminds David how their boss, Brownlowe had ordered them to leave the Penward case alone.
Jenny walks into the bar with Tony, the manager of the bank. David realizes that they’ve been seen together a lot in the past few days and that bothers him.
MacGibbon sees the look on David’s face and tells David that he’s making a mistake by letting her slip through his fingers and that it might not be too late to fix what he ended once before. David continues watching the pair, feeling jealous.
Jenny and David have hardly talked since the incidents and David knows that its mostly because of his questioning of the little boy, and partly because of as she called it ‘Outrageous conspiracies and theories.’
David sees jenny laugh at something that Tony says and David finishes his drink and tells MacGibbons that he has to run because he has an errand to run before he goes home.
Before long David was driving away from Warchester on the highway, heading for a pub called ‘The Phoenix Arms’, which was greatly used by Penward’s men on their time off.
6/27/2006 11:11:19 AM
Comment on this fan fiction!
|
|
|
