Chapter 19

Slice of life

"We have a dead Para on the Crossroad" The radio crackled "Can you go check it out?"

"Do you have anything on the cameras?" Luz answered, as she walked towards the jeep, where his driver and two other men with the InGen uniform awaited.

She already knew that cameras probably didn't catch anything. The crossroads were well into the limits of the secure zone, and into the Sorna's real wilderness.

No place outside Hammondtown was precisely good for a walk, but animals had learned to stay away from what they now considered human turf, and fiercely territorial as they were, they stayed on their side of the island, rarely bothering the installations or the people who lived in there.

Dinosaurs had their country, and humans had their little corner of civilization; still, the latter had to constantly check the happenings and whereabouts of the animals, for the sake of the fragile ecosystem. They had already dealt with a prion outbreak in the nineties.

What killed the Para could have been anything: old age, a bad wound… but it was better to make sure.

"I'm on my way" She said "Need something from here?"

"How about a couple of Snickers and a Mountain Dew from the vending machines?"

"How about no?" She said, smiling.

She climbed on the passenger's seat and the vehicle started silently, rolling across "Main Av." and towards the gates.

The three heavy plates slid sideways to let them pass. As the wall itself, they were built with thick concrete over a steel frame; a powerful hit could crack them, but never completely break them.

The jeep passed the extensible bridge across the moat, and continued along the open trail into the jungle.

Luz looked back on the mirror; the walls of Hammondtown raised above the tree line, after a wide, clear area; the light gray against the green, sharp angles against the tangled, organic shapes of the jungle. With the vigilance towers and everything else, Luz always thought of the installations as some kind of medieval castle, misplaced in a land millions of years younger.

As the jeep got further along the road, Luz's radio came to life again, with the same voice as before.

"Roader Five, I see you coming"

"Roger" She answered "See you on the way back"

They passed a thick group of giant trees, and she looked above, to the canopies that formed a ceiling over them. She knew where to look, but it was really hard to find the smooth surface of the outpost, shinning with the few light beams that could penetrate between the branches.

The Crossroads were a wide, open area surrounded by forest, where the conspicuous trails of the animals had flattened the grass, creating grooves. It was on the way to a nearby drinking trough, and all kind of dinosaurs crossed it.

As they got closer, the flies and carrion birds announced the presence of a large, dead body, and just as they stopped, the smell of the carcass, exposed to the sun, hit their nostrils.

Luz and one of the InGen men climbed down the vehicle, the driver and the other man alert of the surroundings, ready to give the alarm for the other two to come back. All of them had assault rifles with them, and the woman had a revolver inside the holster on her hip.

Sorna wasn't a place to play around.

As Luz and the InGen man got closer to the large body lying in the field, they could hear the chirps and hisses from the compys, the little scavengers gorging on the flesh and then running away, scared by the humans' steps.

It was a young Parasaurolophus. The bright colors of the adults were still pale, and even when it was as big as a cow, it was still growing when it died; it lay on the side, its limbs beginning to stiffen.

The woman covered her nose and mouth, waving away the flies as she inspected the body closer.

"So?" Said the man "What was it, doc?"

"It wasn't sickness, that's for sure" She said "He was fine, well fed… I guess something got it"

The compys had bitten a lot around the big gashes in the animal's belly, so it was hard to say if the wounds were what killed the dinosaur or were the scavenger's doing. Still, the long, deep cuts…

The woman scanned around, looking for a trail. She found a long track of blood, blackened on the grass, coming from the deep of the jungle, the only evidence from the animal's last steps.

"Keep your eyes open" She said, as she carefully followed the trail of blood towards the forest. Whatever wounded the young dinosaur could still be tracking it down.

She stopped at a safe distance from the thick foliage. She knew about the Carnotaurs, and even though it hardly could have been them, she preferred to stay away from where the deceiving predators could hide.

The stumbling animal opened a trail from the forest, and getting into the darkness of the jungle, the woman could distinguish from where the animal had come…

There was a call, far into the forest, although she felt it unnervingly close.

It had sounded like a bark.

Luz was done with the investigation. She trotted back to the vehicle, where the other men seemed as upset as she was, and together they started the way back to the base.

"Couldn't it be an Allosaurus?"

The man sitting in front of her leaned back on his chair. He scratched his chin, the long, curly hair falling behind the angular shoulders. The other men always said Wayne looked like a scarecrow dressed like a tourist, and Luz had to agree with that.

"No, no..." Luz leaned against the thick Plexiglas wall, barely noticing a rocking "They are messier, and sure as hell you don't just stand up and run after an Allosaur mauling. It had to be the Rangers"

"Well, they're moving awfully north then…" Wayne said, raising his eyebrows and turning around on the chair, to face the computer screen.

Luz walked to be next to him as he typed, leaning forward to watch at the same monitor. A map from the island was deployed, divided in several color areas and crossed by equally colorful lines, creating a mess of shapes.

He typed some more, making all colored areas disappear and leaving only one, labeled as RANGERS.

After some more commands, a different colored area appeared, superimposed to the first one.

"They're widening their turf" Wayne said.

"Payne probably wants to try his luck against the Northerners." She said, standing up.

"You think so?"

Luz nodded.

"As far as I know, it had been a good couple of years for them."

The woman bit her lip, tapping her foot.

"They never get that close from the town anyway." Wayne said.

"Not yet" Luz sighed "It will be a pain in the ass if they decide to move next door. We would have to change the girls' training."

She groaned

"By the way, how's the Dino Whisperer doing on Sorna?" The man said after a few moments.

"Nothing yet." She answered, shaking her head "He says the tracking tabs never worked very well in the mountain range, and his girl hadn't left the north in a good while. Between that and avoiding Rexy…"

"They haven't caged her yet?"

Luz shrugged.

"The best of the best…" She said.

"Hey, seriously, I need some coffee up here, so if you don't mind…"

Luz closed the cage's door, smiling at the man behind the bars.

"I'll send some with Edwards"

The round structure trembled and started its way down slowly, the purr of the mechanism that lowered it barely perceptible.

As the metallic sphere crawled down, like a huge spider hanging from its web, Luz looked up, at the transparent structure wrapped around the tree trunk, like a crystal ring. She even could see Wayne going back to the computer, until the foliage covered her sight.

Back in Hammondtown, nothing seemed to be out of place; some routine checking of the hatchlings in the nursery, a general checkup of the girls… and then feeding Grady's girlfriend. Her favorite.

"Hey Doc!" Said someone

She was walking out from the young raptor's den, and turned to greet the big, white smile that approached.

"Oh, Barry, Heaven must have sent you!" She said "You think you can do me a favor?"

"Pardon Doctor, I'm out to patrol duty." The man said, a devilish grin sparkling in his eyes "You need to show her you don't fear her"

Luz rolled her eyes, making the man laugh. He patted her shoulder and walking past her, towards the jeep area.

She climbed the stairs to the catwalk, with the usual bucket of meat chunks in hand.

She had been in Africa, South America, the Alaskan wilderness… not only she knew all the basics of a good hunter (tracking, the direction of the wind, prey trails…) but also learned a lot about the animals' behavior, both in theory and out on the field.

In her years in the wild, she had seen a lot of things, and she felt as she didn't fear anything. Even the dinosaurs, once she knew them better, were nothing but animals: not monsters; not aliens; just animals that, even when extremely dangerous, once she knew them better, were just as lions, or wild dogs, or many of the other creatures she had studied.

Then she met the raptors. And then she met Grady's.

Raptors weren't like the other animals: a glance on their fiery eyes was enough to know; they didn't stare like animals at all. One could feel them pondering, calculating… she couldn't put it in words, but behind those eyes she felt the same, if not more intelligence that she had seen in chimpanzees.

Except that there wasn't any resemblance, any familiar link between her and the raptors. She always found unnerving being analyzed by a non-human intelligence; a non-human, non-even-mammal, merciless intelligence.

And she hated when they put her on charge of Grady's one. She was the worst of them all.

"Here girl!" She said from the catwalk, making her own clicker sound.

The animal took its sweet time to appear, slowly sliding from the bushes, lifting her head to stare at the woman.

"OK…" Luz said. "There you go!"

She tossed the meat, and even heard the chunk falling in the leafy ground. The raptor didn't even flinched, staring intently at her. The woman snared.

She knew the blue striped raptor recognized her, and seemed to relish on unsettling the woman. She could growl, or snarl, or snap at other caretakers, and sometimes even at Owen, but when it came to Luz, she only stared silently, intensely, following her every movement. She gave the woman the chills.

Only one time the raptor had attacked the electric fence, making sparks rain all around the woman that screamed as she had never screamed in her entire life. Owen had almost choked laughing, but since that day, the raptor never tried another attack, and she never got too close to the fence by herself.

She tossed some more chunks before letting go a frustrated groan. The floor was littered with the pink, bloody treats, and the damn animal hadn't even moved.

"Fine…" She finally said "Grady can't blame me. I fed you."

Owen had always insisted in the fact that the raptor had to eat from the hand of whoever was feeding her, and not only picked it from the floor; he said it helped to form a bond.

But his raptor ate only from his hand, and even if she wanted to, she didn't dare to risk hitting the animal in the nose with a meat chunk, trying too hard to make things easy for the creature. Things between them were tense enough.

So she just tossed the food around, and the raptor later picked it. She ate. Mission accomplished.

Why the hell did Grady want them to form a bond, anyway? Auburn and the girls were tamer, smarter, and she imprinted on them from the moment they hatched. They were the focus of the investigation right now, and Grady's one… she was probably going to be put down, anyway.

Luz walked toward her quarters, as the sun descended under the waves of the Pacific.

Hey guys! How's it going?
Well, not much action in this chapter, but I deemed important to show some of the everyday life in Sorna. They probably never get bored, I guess.
Anyway, I'm sorry if I don't respond your review today, but I'm really tired, there's work tomorrow, and I'm going to sleep right now, but I promise to answer them as soon as I can.
Thank you again for tagging along, and have an amazing week!