Dinosaur Safari (novella)

[Kahotep]

These are the first four scenes of a novella I started yesterday. The premise, which was inspired by Jurassic Park, is that dinosaurs have been cloned and now populate a national park in Guatemala in the year 2060.

Ranger Ricardo Hernandez drove the jeep down the narrow dirt road that meandered through the Guatemalan jungle. He was a tall, muscular middle-aged Hispanic man wearing a beige slouch hat over his jet-black hair. His wife and colleague, a pretty young African-American named Melody, sat next to him, studying the GPS screen installed into the jeep’s instrument panel. The jeep was represented on the screen as a bright red dot moving up a brown line going through green space.

“Now do you see anything on there?” Ricardo asked Melody.

“Still nothing,” she sighed back.

“Damn.”

They had been driving for half an hour, and they hadn’t seen anything more impressive than an insect. Ricardo knew the patience of the Murphies, the brown-haired white American family behind him, was dwindling quickly, as was his own patience. Admittedly, animals could not always be trusted to show up on time to please tourists, but given how much time had passed since the safari’s start, one would expect to catch at least a trace of them.

“Are we ever going to see the dinosaurs?” Alyssa Murphy, an eight-year-old girl with curly hair, whined.

“If we are lucky,” Ricardo said, “Apparently they are very shy today---”

“Ricardo!” Melody exclaimed, “We’re heading towards some trikes!”

Melody pointed to the GPS screen. In the upper right corner was a cluster of bright green dots, each with the letters TRIKE next to it. The red dot was moving closer to the green dots.

“Thank God!” Ricardo said, then addressed the Murphies, “Ladies and gentlemen, my wife has notified me that we are approaching a herd of Triceratops. You can take your cameras out, but please turn the flash setting off, as the animals are easily aggravated by the flash. Also keep all hands inside the vehicle and do not feed or provoke the dinosaurs.”

Five minutes passed, and the red dot on the GPS had reached the point on the brown line that was right next to the green dots. Ricardo hit the brake pedal, stopping the jeep, and then everyone turned their heads to face the jungle on the right. They could hear deep bellowing, heavy footsteps, and the rustling of vegetation, but they couldn’t see anything just yet. Everyone’s heart pounded faster, and the little girl was shaking with barely contained excitement.

Then the Triceratops emerged from the undergrowth. Growing as big as elephants, the dinosaurs walked on four short, muscular legs with elephant-like feet. Each of their heads, big enough to carry a man, sported a round, rigid frill projecting from the back as well as three horns from the face, two long ones from the brows and one short one from the nose. The trikes cropped vegetation with hooked, parrot-like beaks.

Whatever one felt about cloning dinosaurs and placing them in a national park in Guatemala, there was no denying that to see these behemoths from long ago in person was an awesome experience. Although he had taken people on these safaris for five years now, Ricardo still felt the same overwhelming sense of childlike wonder when looking at the creatures that he did when he saw them for the first time.

“How can you tell which of these are male and which are female?” Mr. Murphy asked after he snapped a photo of the herd.

“The male is the big one with the red spots on his frill,” Melody answered, pointing to that trike, “All the rest are females.”

“How come there’s only one male?”

“In most dinosaur species, there are only one or two males per herd. They mate with all the females. It’s like a type of polygamy.”

The male trike stared at the jeep for five seconds and then approached it, bellowing loudly and brandishing his head threateningly.

“What he’s doing?” Alyssa asked, “He looks pretty angry.”

“He’s trying to scare us off,” Melody explained, “He thinks we could be dangerous.”

“Will he attack us?”

“He could, but this jeep is equipped with a special system that shoots supersonic waves that stun any dinosaurs who get too close at the press of a button. Those waves can keep even T. Rexes back. Let me press that button right now.”

Melody pressed a red button on the instrument panel. Nothing happened. The male trike was now stomping the ground.

“What the---let me try again.”

She pressed the button again, but still no result. Pressing the button again and again still didn’t send out the waves.

“Oh ,” Ricardo muttered, “It appears our dinosaur-repelling system has malfunction---”

The trike now erupted in a charge towards the jeep, tearing through the brush. Alyssa screamed.

Ricardo started the jeep and accelerated it so that it zipped away from the charging dinosaur. The jeep continued racing down the dirt road for three minutes until Ricardo slowed it down to a more leisurely pace.

“That was a close one,” he said, “That trike could have easily overturned the jeep, squashing us all.”

“Mr. Ranger, what if we meet a T. Rex?” Alyssa asked.

“Since our dino-repelling system isn’t working, we’re going to keep as far away from T. Rexes as possible on this safari. However, if we do run into a T. Rex, I have a tranquilizer rifle handy. Now, we are about ten minutes away from the next visitor center. We’ll spend fifteen minutes there to recuperate before continuing on with the safari.”

##

Miguel Ortega, a slender Hispanic man with a little black mustache, and his team of ten men sliced through the undergrowth with their machetes. They weren’t supposed to be here in the Guatemalan National Dinosaur Preserve, but they had stopped caring about the legality of sneaking into wildlife preserves many years ago. Besides, there was a lot of money at stake. Fifty grand US to be specific, offered by a Japanese oil tycoon in exchanged for a stuffed male T. Rex.

Even if it weren’t for the money, however, Miguel was still more than happy to go on this hunt. People had dreamed of hunting Tyrannosaurus rex ever since its fossilized remains were first uncovered, but such fantasies remained just that until technological advances in the 2020s had made it possible to clone dinosaurs using DNA extracted from soft tissue found inside fossil bones. Now, in 2060, he would be the first to actually go on such a hunt. The promise of prestige and money propelled him forward and suppressed any fears he may have felt.

The snap of a dry branch broke the jungle chorus. Miguel and his party froze.

“What do you think that was?” Jacinto Garcia, a colleague of Miguel’s, whispered.

“I have no idea,” Miguel said.

They waited for ten seconds, waiting for another sound, but heard nothing but the usual jungle sounds.

“Whatever it was, it wasn’t interested in us,” Miguel said, “We should press---”

Miguel was interrupted by loud squealing and the rustling of leaves. A panicking Baird’s tapir ran out of the brush and cut through Miguel’s party. Racing after the pig-sized mammal was a two-legged animal eight feet tall at the shoulder. The creature caught up with the tapir and snared it with long jaws lined with jagged teeth, then thrashed it like a chew-toy until it was dead.

“Now what the hell was that?” said one of the hunters.

Miguel studied the predator as it fed on the tapir. Almost twenty feet long from its snout to its aloft, counterbalancing tail, it was clearly some kind of theropod dinosaur. In fact, it looked almost like a miniature T. Rex; it even had similar two-fingered little arms. However, the dinosaur was much more lightly built, with long, slender legs.

“It’s a Nanotyrannus,” Miguel declared, “Close cousin of the T. Rex.”

The Nanotyrannus raised its blood-soaked snout from its kill, faced Miguel’s party, and let out a shrill screech, as if warning the humans not to get any closer.

“Follow me!” Miguel commanded, and the rest of his party followed him as he ran through the jungle.

##

“I have to go pee,” Alyssa complained.

“We are almost at the visitor center,” Melody said, “There is a restroom---oh .”

A large fallen tree lay across the road ahead of the jeep.

“What happened?” Mr. Murphy asked.

“There’s a fallen tree blocking the road,” Ricardo explained, “One of the dinosaurs must have knocked it aside.”

“How are you going to get it out of the way?”

“We have some chainsaws in the trunk. Melody and I will grab those and saw out a piece of the tree so we can go through. In the meantime, you and your family need to stay inside the jeep.”

“How long will you take?” Alyssa asked Ricardo.

“More than fifteen minutes. I’m afraid you’ll have to hold it in.”

“But I can’t! I have to go really bad.”

“Little senorita, the jungle is a dangerous place for a little girl. There are dinosaurs, jaguars, and venomous snakes out there. I am not letting you out of this jeep.”

“Mr. Hernandez!” Mrs. Murphy exclaimed, “I do not want my daughter to urinate in her underwear. She gets cranky when that happens. You must let us out now! It will only take a few minutes.”

“I will repeat myself one last time. Stay in the jeep! It is for your own---Senora Murphy?”

She and her daughter had jumped out of the jeep.

“Stupid gringos,” Ricardo muttered under his breath. He stopped the jeep, then he and Melody got out.

Mrs. Murphy had taken Alyssa to the left edge of the road five yards behind the jeep. Alyssa was now pulling her pants down and squatting in the bushes. Ricardo and Melody stormed towards them, Ricardo seething with anger.

“Senora Murphy!” he roared to Mrs. Murphy, “If you dare disobey me like that again, I will leave you here in the jungle, and you’ll have to hike back to the park entrance all by yourselves! Have I made myself clear?”

“How dare you threaten me like that!” Mrs. Murphy yelled back to him, “Leave us here and we’ll sue you!”

“Why you---!” Ricardo lunged towards her, but Melody held him back.

“Calm down, you two!” she said, “Mrs. Murphy, Ricardo is right. Could you please---”

Monkeys in the treetops started hooting in panic.

“---take your daughter back to the jeep? It’s not safe here!”

There was the racket of small understory trees being knocked aside. Then a Nanotyrannus sped out of the jungle, snatched Alyssa off the ground with its jaws, and then vanished into the jungle on the other side of the road.

“Alyssa!” Mrs. Murphy screamed at the top of her lungs. She then turned to the rangers, her face red. “Why the hell didn’t you do something to save her?”

“The dinosaur moved too fast,” Melody explained, “We didn’t have enough time to get our guns out. I’m sorry.”

“Do you now see why you should have obeyed us?” Ricardo growled to Mrs. Murphy, “Your own daughter is dead thanks to your stupidity! I hope you’re feeling proud as a parent!”

“Ricardo!” Melody said, “Don’t rub it in. She knows she did wrong. Now Mrs. Murphy, please go back to the jeep while Ricardo and I go through that log.”

Mrs. Murphy did as she was told, then Ricardo and Melody pulled out a pair of chainsaws from the jeep’s trunk and used them to saw a section off the fallen tree. Next, they strenuously pushed the section out onto the curbside, creating a gap through the tree that the jeep could pass through. When all that was done they put away the chainsaws and re-entered the jeep.

“I could sure go for some cold water once we reach the visitor center,” Ricardo panted, wiping the sweat off his face, “Then once we get back on the road, it’s straight back to the park entrance. These Murphies have seen enough for one day.”

“Mr. Hernandez,” Mr. Murphy said, “I must apologize for my wife’s actions. She has always been stubborn. I used to think that was admirable, a sign of her inner strength, but now that it has led to our daughter’s death…” He broke down into sobbing.

“Do not feel guilty,” Melody said, “It was not your fault.”

“By the way, what was that thing that took Alyssa?”

“Nanotyrannus, or nano as we call them for short. They’re smaller cousins of T. Rex, typically growing eight feet tall and seventeen feet long. I promise you, the next time we bump into those things, we’ll be better prepared for them.”

Ricardo started the jeep again.

##

More than a thousand years ago, a great city named Chakmool had thrived in what was now the northern portion of the Guatemalan National Dinosaur Preserve. The Mayan natives constructed out of limestone many grand observatories, ball courts, noblemen’s palaces, and terraced pyramid-temples that reached more than a hundred feet in height. As magnificent as this city was, it did not last. Like all the classical Mayan cities, it was abandoned around the 900s, perhaps because of environmental overexploitation, and the jungle came in to devour the architecture.

Now, Miguel and his party were walking down Chakmool’s mossy roads. Although Miguel did his best to wear a stoic expression, he could not help but feel a chill in his back. One reason why was that something about being in a place where thousands of people once lived made him feel like he was stepping into a haunted house. He had to suppress his tingling, childish suspicion that there were ghosts lurking around the ruins.

“Did you see that?” he heard Jacinto whisper.

Miguel froze.

“What did you say?” he addressed Jacinto.

“I saw something move through the ruins to our left.”

Miguel scrutinized the area to his left, searching the vegetation and ruins for anything suspicious.

“What did it look like?” he asked Jacinto.

“I don’t know, it was just a blur.”

“Maybe you’re just seeing things. It’s easy for an imagination to go wild in a place as sinister as this.”

Miguel then heard deep, almost metallic-sounding honking coming from ahead of the party. His spine grew even colder.

“What was that?” Jacinto asked.

“Some kind of dinosaur, no doubt. Follow me, and be quiet.”

They stole down the road until they arrived at a large, overgrown plaza. A herd of dinosaurs had gathered in the middle of the plaza, grazing on undergrowth using duck-like bills. Each of these dinosaurs grew approximately forty feet long and ten feet tall and milled around on four dainty legs. They were relatively plain-looking as far as dinosaurs went, lacking any frills, spikes, or horns.

“Anatotitan,” Miguel said under his breath, then turned to address his party, “They’re only harmless duckbills---plant-eaters. We can walk past them safely.”

One of the duckbills jerked its head up and made a cry that was half honk and half roar. The call echoed off the ruins. The dinosaur then erupted into a charge towards the humans, bellowing ferociously.

Miguel spun to face the duckbill, then pulled a double rifle free from the gun sling around his body and aimed it at the dinosaur. Before he could press the trigger, the duckbill reached a yard away from him, reared up, and kicked him onto his back with its front feet. Miguel reached for his gun, but the duckbill’s right front foot came crashing down on it, breaking it in half.

Jacinto got out his own gun and fired it at the duckbill, but the bullet only grazed its neck. Enraged, the duckbill clamped its mouth on his head and threw him into an old stone stela, cracking many of his bones.

“Jacinto! No!” Miguel screamed, and then he pulled out his machete and thrust it deep into the duckbill’s chest. The dinosaur moaned, wobbled on its feet for several seconds, and then fell onto its side. The ground shook upon the duckbill’s collapse.

Miguel then ran towards where Jacinto was lying and kneeled over his blood-soaked body.

“Jacinto, my friend, are you alive?” he said, shaking him violently, “Don’t die on me!”

Jacinto did not respond. He just lay there, perfectly still. Not even his chest moved.

Miguel’s eyes welled up with tears. Jacinto had been his best friend for over thirty years. They had been on so many adventures together, hunting the world’s most dangerous game and fleeing from authorities who wanted them for poaching. He had intended to give Jacinto one quarter of the money they would make off this hunt. Now that would never happen.

After three minutes of mourning, Miguel returned to his party and picked up Jacinto’s dropped gun.

“It appears that I was wrong about the duckbills being harmless. From now on, don’t trust any dinosaur we encounter. We want to stay clear from them all until we find that T. Rex. Now let us press on.”

Miguel looked across the plaza and saw that the rest of the duckbills had disappeared. Feeling that it was now safe, he led his party across it.

[gaius_caesar]

wow that's a nice story you wrote there...

[Kahotep]

Thanks, but someone on another forum suggested that I rewrite it, so here goes:

Not long after English paleontologist Richard Owen coined the term "dinosaur" in 1842, human beings began to fantasize about encountering these animals from millions of years before the evolution of the human species. Among the first authors to write a scenario in which such an encounter took place was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who in 1912 penned The Lost World, a novel about English explorers discovering a plateau populated with dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. Since then, numerous books, movies, and other media have told stories about humans meeting non-avian dinosaurs. Some of these stories were set in a fictionalized version of the prehistoric past in which cave-dwelling humans lived alongside dinosaurs. Others, most notably the story of King Kong, told of modern-day humans finding a lost world just like the one Conan Doyle imagined. Still others, such as Ray Bradbury's short story A Sound of Thunder, had human time travelers from the future encountering dinosaurs in their native time periods.

In 1990, science-fiction author Michael Crichton published a novel which put a new spin on the old dinosaur/human confrontation story. The novel, titled Jurassic Park, had its dinosaurs cloned from DNA recovered from fossilized mosquitoes and placed in a zoo-like park on an island off the coast of Costa Rica. Havoc ensued when an unscrupulous park employee shut off the fences, allowing the dinosaurs to escape. The novel became a bestseller and was adapted by director Steven Spielberg into an even more popular movie.

Jurassic Park made many people feel hopeful that dinosaurs could someday be cloned, but the idea remained in the realm of science fiction until the 21st century. In 2005, a team of scientists from North Carolina State University recovered soft tissue that had been encased inside the 68 million-year-old bone of a Tyrannosaurus rex. Soft tissue was also found in an 80 million-year-old bone belonging to a hadrosaur (a duck-billed herbivorous dinosaur) in 2009. Both these discoveries challenged a former belief that the fossilization process destroyed all dinosaur soft tissue and lent hope to the possibility that DNA itself would be found in dinosaur remains.

In 2013, at last, virtually complete DNA strands were recovered from inside a Triceratops bone dating back 66 million years, dispelling any lingering doubts that cloning dinosaurs was feasible. A year later, an international organization calling itself the Dinosaur Revival Project formed, extracting DNA from the bones of various dinosaur species and using it to produce cloned dinosaurs which were then distributed to zoos and wildlife parks all over the world.

In 2021, the government of the Central American nation of Guatemala set aside a large portion of its jungle-swathed Peten Basin to be used as a federally protected wildlife preserve for dinosaurs from North America's Cretaceous Period. This preserve, named the National Dinosaur Preserve of Guatemala, became a major source of income for the Guatemalan government in the following decades, attracting tourists from all over the world to view dinosaurs in a natural setting.

Unfortunately, not everyone coming to the park wanted to just look at the dinosaurs…

##
 
Taichi Hidaka seemed the least likely character to be seen in El Mono Feliz. He was, after all, the CEO of Sekiyu Ltd., Japan's largest oil company. A billionaire like him was used to fancy parties hosted at five-star hotels, not smoky bars populated by sweaty commoners and located in one of Guatemala City's slummier districts. As he navigated his way around the bar, the customers could not help but stare at him. Taichi couldn't tell whether they were looking at him simply because he was unusual or because they envied his affluence. Either way, he was grateful he had a pair of bodyguards at his side.

"Hey! Senor Hidaka! Is that you?" he heard a voice shout over the muttering din of customers.

Taichi followed the voice to a table where a burly middle-aged man with slightly grayed black hair sat.

"Welcome to Guatemala, Senor Hidaka!" the man said with a pleasant smile, "I am Miguel Ortega. Nice suit you are wearing. I trust you have brought the money?"

"As a matter of fact, yes," Taichi replied, pulling out a silver suitcase and opening it to show that it was filled with bundles of hundred dollar bills, "Five hundred grand US as you requested."

Miguel grinned greedily as he stared into the suitcase's interior.

"Excellent! Now, what dinosaur species do you want to have stuffed?"

"One Triceratops, one Dryptosaurus, and one Tyrannosaurus rex."

"You're after the dangerous dinosaurs, I see. Well, I've hunted all sort of dangerous game in my life, such as elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and tiger. Dinosaurs shouldn't be much more difficult. Let me discuss this with an amigo of mine, Jacinto Garcia."

Miguel then pulled out his cell phone and dialed Garcia's number.

"Jacinto," he spoke into the phone, "I have here a client from Japan who wants us to bag some dinosaurs for him. He offers five hundred grand US for them. I called you to ask you if that sounded like a good deal...Wonderful. We'll organize an expedition into the preserve next week. Adios."

Miguel hung up.

"Well, Senor Hidaka, we have ourselves a deal."

##

Ranger Ricardo Hernandez stole cautiously through the tropical undergrowth, armed with a tranquilizer rifle. His black American wife and colleague Melody walked beside him, studying a handheld GPS screen. The two rangers' skins were wet with sweat, not only from the stifling heat and humidity, but also from fear. An Acrocanthosaurus living near this part of the preserve had turned rogue within the last two weeks, killing four humans, so Ricardo and Melody had been assigned to relocate the animal to a more remote region of the preserve.

"Ricardo," Melody whispered to her husband, "The acro's coming towards us from the northeast. We need to hide now!"

They darted to a nearby patch of elephant ear plants and crouched among them until they were fully hidden. They sat still as statues, looking towards the northeast in anticipation of the acro's arrival. After a minute passed, they heard heavy footsteps pounding on the jungle floor, followed by low growling. The rangers' backs felt colder as the footsteps grew louder.

Then, from the shadows, the acro emerged. Forty feet long and twelve feet tall, the dinosaur had a dark red ridge running down its back. It strode on two powerful legs with bird-like feet and had short, muscular arms each with three sickle-shaped claws. Its jaws were four feet long and lined with teeth shaped like little daggers. The creature's left eye glowed like an ember, but the right eye was missing, the flesh around it having been torn off.

Ricardo lifted his gun, peered through the scope, and tried to pin the crosshairs on the acro, but the gun kept trembling in his arms. This shaking grew worse as the acro drew nearer. A voice in Ricardo's head shouted at him to shoot now, but he could barely control his quaking.

Ricardo finally pressed the trigger. A tranquilizer dart rocketed out of the gun's barrel. It did not hit the acro.

The acro roared, saliva flying from its cavernous mouth. Then it stormed towards the rangers, shaking the earth with every step. The rangers spun around and raced away, dodging trees and plants. In little time, the acro caught up, then grabbed Ricardo by his bushjacket with its teeth and thrashed him around like a dog with a chew toy. Ricardo's gun dropped from his hands onto the ground.

"Ricardo!" Melody screamed. She spun around and ran towards Ricardo and the acro, then picked up the gun and aimed it at the dinosaur's chest. The creature swiped its hand claws at her, but she dodged them by stepping back. Then she pressed the trigger.

The acro dropped Ricardo and screeched towards the sky. It then wobbled dizzily on its feet until it finally fell onto its right flank. A shockwave rippled across the jungle floor when the dinosaur collapsed. Once it had fallen, the acro slowly closed its eye and drifted off to sleep.

"Ricardo!" Melody exclaimed, running towards her husband, "Are you OK?"

"Yes," he moaned back, grimacing in pain, "That was a close one."

Melody helped Ricardo back onto his feet, then pulled out from her pocket a pistol-shaped device with the words "Animal Vacuum" written on its barrel, aimed it at the tranquilized acro, and pushed a red button. A bright green vortex appeared out of the Animal Vacuum's barrel, sucked the acro off the ground into it, and then disappeared back into the Animal Vacuum. Melody put the Animal Vacuum back into her pocket and got out a handheld radio.

"HQ, come in HQ," she spoke into the radio, "We have sedated and captured the acro. Please send a chopper here now."

"Roger that," a voice responded.

"Tell them to bring a cold bottle of water," Ricardo said, wiping sweat off his dusky skin, "I could use some refreshment. I think I've had enough adventure for one day."

##

Miguel, Jacinto, and nine other men had now entered the National Dinosaur Preserve of Guatemala, having gotten here by digging a tunnel underneath the electric fence marking the preserve's southern boundary. Now they hiked northward through the jungle, guns slung around their backs. Jacinto studied a GPS screen while Miguel sliced through the undergrowth with a machete.

"According to this GPS, there is a Triceratops herd near us to the northwest," Jacinto reported.

"How many trikes are there?" Miguel asked.

"Ten adults, two males and eight females."

"Good God, that's enough to trample our entire group. Men, stop chattering and move quietly after me. We do not want to spook the dinosaurs."

Miguel put away his machete. Then he and the rest stole through the jungle like a pride of hunting lionesses through savanna grass. In fifteen minutes, they could hear rustling and deep bellowing and smell the pungent odor of dung. Miguel felt his heart pound with excitement as they continued. Then, after passing through a thicket of ferns, they found the Triceratops herd.

The trikes were four-legged dinosaurs that grew the size of elephants. Their three-horned, bony-frilled heads were massive enough to carry a fully grown man. The dinosaurs cropped off plant fronds with hooked, parrot-like beaks. Two of the trikes had bright red spots on their frills; Miguel presumed indicated that these individuals were male.

Although Miguel had seen and hunted many large animals before, none made him feel awestruck as these dinosaurs before him did. It felt like he was staring sixty-five million years into the past.

These animals must be worth way more than five hundred grand, Miguel thought.

Miguel raised his gun and aligned it with one of the male trikes. Before he could press the trigger, however, one of trike's eyes turned to stare at him, its pupil shrinking to a tiny dot. The trike then raised its massive head and thunderously bellowed towards the sky. Immediately the female trikes turned and stampeded away, crashing through the trees, while the two males charged towards the poachers.

"Run!" Miguel screamed.

On his order, the poachers dashed from the two male trikes, but the dinosaurs caught up in seconds. One of the trikes swung its head back and forth, sending two men flying off the ground. The other trike gored one man with its nose horn and trampled two under its feet. It then started towards Jacinto. Before it could run over him, Miguel yanked him out of the way. He then fired a glowing red beam out of his gun into the trike's side. The trike roared, then turned and bolted towards Miguel. Miguel fired the gun again, this time hitting between the trike's two brow horns, and the creature fell to the ground, momentum pushing its body across the jungle floor several feet until stopping.

The other trike, having seen what happened to its compatriot, suddenly stopped its attacks, then turned and ran off in the direction the females of its herd had gone, bellowing in panic.

"How many men are still standing?" Miguel panted.

"Six, including us," Jacinto reported, also panting.

"Damn. Down from eleven to six within one hour of being here! At this rate, we will all end up dead!"

Miguel pulled out his cell phone and dialed Taichi Hidaka's number.

"Senor Hidaka," Miguel spoke into the phone, "I am sorry, but I demand a higher pay than your offer of five hundred grand. You see, I have just lost five out of eleven of my men, and I need extra money to compensate for their losses."

"I see," Taichi's voice responded icily, "How about one million? That should cover both those losses and any further ones."

"That will suffice," Miguel replied.

"Very well. I warn you, though, that the one million is my final offer. Do not ask for anything more. Sayonara." Taichi hung up.

"What a cold son of a ," Miguel muttered to himself, then he announced to his men, "All right, we will rest here for fifteen minutes before moving on. Do not leave my sight."

Miguel looked at the massive trike corpse before him. He pulled out an Animal Vacuum and sucked the dinosaur into it.

"One down, two more to go," he said to himself, "My most dangerous hunt has just begun.

[M D]

Very Nice