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The Worst It Gets chapter 4
By climbhigh8589
Chapter 4
The group of five walked through a field, the scorching sun directly above their heads.
Cassie glanced at her watch, wich also told the temperature. 110° F, it read. Yep, it’s pretty hot out here, she thought. They had been walking for quite some time now, and everybody looked exhausted. Exhausted is an understatement. They looked like they were on the brink of collapse.
“Uh, anybody want to walk in the shade?” she asked.
They all looked at her.
“Great idea,” they said.
“Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only smart one here.” She said sarcastically as they walked into the jungle.
Once in the jungle, they came upon the rotting corpse of a dead duckbilled hadrosaur. It had scratch and bite marks all over it.
“Hmm, looks like a raptor killed it.” Cassie said.
“Maybe, but look at the bite marks,” said Billy, “The position of the marks suggest a shorter snout than a raptor had. And the claw marks. There are five marks, meaning it had five fingers. Raptors have three fingers.”
“You’re right,” said Cassie, observing the marks.
“Look at the footprints!” yelled Ian. He was kneeling next to a little puddle mud.
They walked over and saw what he meant. Cassie examined the print. It too had five toes, unlike a raptor, which had four toes. They shape of the print was almost human-like. Also, there were little indents at the ends of the toes, probably where razor-sharp claws would be.
“Do you know what it is?” she asked Billy, who was studying the print too.
“I have no idea,” he replied, “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
“Well, lets get out of here before it comes back,” said Douglas fearfully, “If it could take down an animal that big, it must be pretty dangerous.”
They all agreed. They walked deeper into the jungle, staying alert. Soon, they entered a fog-shrouded field. The fog was so dense that they could barely see each other.
“Everybody stay together!” yelled Ian, sensing movement somewhere around them.
Suddenly, a velociraptor jumped out of the fog moving lightning-fast, it pounced on Regan. As it began tearing him apart, three more raptors broke out of the fog and went after the others.
“AAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhHHHHHHHHHHH!” screamed Regan as the raptor began eating him alive.
“RUN!!!” yelled Ian. The remaining members began running blindly in the fog.
At first the raptors were 30 feet away. But they were gaining on them quickly. Soon they were only 20 feet away…then 10.
In front of them, a huge building appeared. Its concrete structure and heavy metal doors looked like it would protect them. They ran up to the door and tried to open it, but the rusted hinges wouldn’t budge. The raptors kept coming.
Only five feet in front of them, the raptors suddenly stopped. They sniffed the air, making snarling noises. Their intelligent eyes looked over them, as if calculating something. The biggest raptor, the alpha male, stared at them, looked to the building, and then barked in alarm. With a final snap, it whipped its head around and ran off into the fog, followed by the other two.
They all sighed in relief.
“That was an unusual display of raptor behavior.” Said Billy, startled by the actions of the raptors.
“Yeah, that was pretty weird,” said Douglas. “Maybe something’s coming. I think we should go inside,”
“Yeah,” replied Ian.
He walked up to the door and began yanking at it. With a loud creak, the whole door broke off the hinges and fell to the ground with a thud. Douglas was about to step in, but Ian stopped him.
“Wait. Something isn’t right. I think it was something in here that scared the raptors away.” He said.
“Well, it had to be something pretty scary, because hardly anything scares a raptor.” Commented Billy.
“Yeah, that’s the part that scares me.” Ian replied.
Inside, the building was completely dark. Next to Cassie, Douglas withdrew a flashlight, and turned it on with a click. The beam sliced through the darkness, revealing vines creeping up the walls, rotting furniture, and dead bodies. The smell was horrid.
“Looks like something dragged them in here,” said Douglas.
“Yeah, but I wonder who they are.” Replied Ian. He walked down a hallway, his footsteps echoing loudly off the walls.
“You guys go ahead. I’m going to see if these dead people here have anything we can use.” Said Douglas.
“Okay, sure.” Said Ian, pushing through a rusted door labeled LABORATORY. He heard Billy and Cassie follow not far behind him.
The door opened, revealing a huge room. Inside were incubation tanks, dusty computers, and formaldehyde tanks. On the vine-covered walls, charts and graphs were barely visible. There were desks, with papers and files lay in messy heaps. Some of the incubation and formaldehyde tanks were broken open, and glass shards lay all over the floor.
Billy walked between the rows of formaldehyde tanks, reading the labels. Most of them were plant-eaters. Although they were dirty on the outside, the tanks were still intact, and the specimens still preserved inside. Then he came to the last tank. This one had been broken open, as if whatever had been inside broke out. He read the label, and then gasped in horror.
It read:
HYBRID
VELOCIRAPTOR MONGOLIENSIS
AND
HOMO SAPIEN
On the floor next to the tank, there was a bunch of papers. These were the papers describing how the raptor-human hybrid had been created. He was about to go tell the others, when suddenly to his left, he heard a snarling noise from a darkened room. Ducking behind one of the tanks, Billy watched to see what the snarling sound came from. For a while nothing appeared, but then a creature jumped out. Whatever it was, it definitely wasn’t a dinosaur.
It was about 7 feet tall, and stood completely erect. It had a short snout with a mouth full of teeth. It had medium-length arms with five fingers ending with razor-sharp claws. It had long, powerful legs with five-toed feet. It resembled a velociraptor, but it didn’t move like a dinosaur. Instead of reverse-joints on the legs that dinosaurs had, it had legs similar to that of primates. It had to be one of the hybrids. Nothing like that creature existed in the natural world.
The hybrid sniffed the air, and began walking toward the tank Billy was hiding behind. The claws on its feet clicked on the tile floor. Its intelligent eyes scanned the area, searching for something, it seemed.
Meanwhile, Cassie and Ian were still examining some empty eggshells on the floor. What they were finding was amazing. The scientists here were creating genetically engineered super-dinosaurs. They were creating creatures that could wipe out the human race if they got off this island. And the problem was they were intelligent to get off the island. Cassie was appalled. She looked around, trying to find Billy. He was nowhere in sight.
“Hey Ian, where’d Billy go?” she asked.
Ian looked up. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Billy?!” She yelled.
Billy was still behind the tank when Cassie yelled his name. The hybrid heard her, whipped it’s head up, listening.
Cassie called again. With a growl of excitement, the hybrid began walking in the direction Cassie was yelling from obviously excited with finding new prey.
Stop yelling, he thought desperately. The hybrid continued approaching the others, silently stalking. He had to keep the hybrid from getting to them. Picking up a piece of glass, he threw it to the left. It clanged loudly to the ground. This caught the hybrid’s attention, and it halted.
Good, thought Billy, go to the glass.
But the hybrid wasn’t stupid. Instead of going after the glass, it looked in the direction the glass had come from. Jumping over the tank Billy was behind, it landed right in front of him.
Chapter five coming soon.
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1/24/02 8:09:09 PM
(Updated: 1/25/02 5:16:03 PM)
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