He had not known him for long, but the death, the bloodshed, it was all too much for him to cope with.
He was gone. His head was still floating like some morbid ball on the water's surface, edging away with the splashing currents as the river dinosaurs continued to feed, bathing in their prey's own blood as they rent and savaged his body. Their eyes were bestowed with a primal, predatory light like that of wolves when they tore into a caribou carcass, flecks of meat and blood thrown about as they thrashed their heads from side to side like crocodiles to tear the flesh off the corpse. He recoiled, and stumbled backwards, upset, in turmoil, head vibrating and breathing coming in tear-filled gasps. It all came so soon, so suddenly, like a curveball hurled in his direction. He was so upset.
Alan's head was flung several metres away from the frenzy by one of the adult carnivores, left to be nibbles upon by fish and crustaceans. The dinosaurs delved into their meaty prize, one of them holding Alan's tattered shirt in its serrated-toothed jaws, while the other was busy cleaving off his thighs, and the tiny youngsters were pecking away at his eyeballs. One of the adults reared it's filthy, blood-and-flesh-caked head, and seemed to redirect its attention towards this live prey on the riverbank. Brushing away a salty tear, Shane sniffled, before picking himself up and retreated.
At the base of a broad-branched banyan tree, the quivering, emotional wreck of a man huddled beneath the tree's shade. As a man, he did not like to admit it, but he was a natural born coward, born to hide rather than fight. His only shield had just been ripped to ribbons right before his eyes, there was no hiding from these prehistoric monsters now. Without Alan, he was nothing more than a pathetic little weasel in this merciless, dinosaur-eat-dinosaur world.
"Shane, I need you to toughen up a little. You can't keep going on like this, stuttering and jumping outta' your skin at the slightest sound. Ya' gotta' man up if you're going to face what's beyond your comfort zone. Its crazy scary out there, I know, but if you don't quit being like this something's going to gouge your eyes out in a second.So to get your inner fight out, I'm gonna let you go on that adventure I was talking about."
"Need me to toughen up..." Shane gasped, the lump in his throat beginning to soften. The five words repeated themselves again and again, and Shane began pondering over them. His cowardliness, the perpetual stutter seemingly ingrained in every word he spoke, he really was what Alan had made him out to be. The others! What would become of them if one man was dead while the other was a depressed wreck? And what about Jake, his arm still critically mauled, waiting for him to return and heal him. The raging maelstrom of thoughts and reckoning in his mind was getting fiercer and fiercer, shaking his soul to the core. And, just as suddenly as he had started, the storm subsided, and the decision was made.
Picking himself up on his scabbed, scratched legs, Shane edged out, growing ever more certain in his footsteps, emerging from under the comforting shade of the banyan and came to face the big, wide wilderness, with its rushing deltas, never-ending forests and colossal mountaintops. What Alan had set out to do by bringing him along had successfully been accomplished, and Shane knew, deep down inside, that he was going to save Jake, that he was going to be the one to step up and lead his companions out of this prehistoric hellhole.
The morning sun began to intensify, and Shane's spine began to mark out in sweat at the back of his shirt. Hunger began to gnaw at the walls of his stomach, and he clutched it, trying to restrain his pangs. He dug around in his pocket, fishing for any leftover berries or meat, before finding his grip on a couple wild fruit, warmed and softened but still edible. Lifting them to his teeth, he munched, scanning the landscape once more.
The delta outlet was beginning to diverge even more, some channels snaking off into the treeline, while other flowed towards a series of colossal, craggy mountains situated in the distance. The last channel was flowing into a grove of peculiar-looking trees. Shane squinted, before his eyes widened in remembering what they were. Mangroves, he thought, looking at their oddball roots, the curved appendages emerging out of the ground much more than regular roots. The ends of the roots too stuck out of the ground like brown cones, dotting the marshy ground like seasoning on a freshly-roasted spring chicken.
The river water flowed among the tall-rooted mangroves, and as they moved in, Shane noticed the water changed from a diluted blue to a somewhat greenish shade. The vegetation was strangely uniform too, while the thickets had a diversifying range of foliage, this particular area seemed dominated by only mangroves, with not a single other species of plant able to be seen in their empire. Shane stepped back, seeming to revert to his old ways, but he shook his head. The strangest, and often the most dangerous areas held the greatest rewards, and if the luck of the draw had it, he could somehow nab a herb to heal Jake's lacerations. Hope overcame risk, and Shane had set his mind.
"I'm going in," he muttered to himself.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Much like the exterior of the mangrove forest, the inside was chock-full of the same vegetation, with some duckweed and water shrubs thrown in for good measure. Besides that however, the swamps were deserted of every kind of plant excluding mangroves, which the swamp happened to be brimming with, the long-rooted trees taking the area by storm like some massive colony of insects. A few determined ferns had tried to sprout beneath the mangrove trees, but, judging from the shrivelled brown remains that they had left behind, their attempt was not all that successful.
On both of Shane's sides were two huge walls of mangroves, the seemingly impenetrable barriers of rake-thin stems barely supporting the luscious green mass of broad, spoon-shaped leaves above them. The roots were the most eye-catching however, an unruly, tangled grey-brown mass. They almost resembled a fish net in that sense, surrounding Shane, their trapped victim, their gangly bodies cordoning off the outside like a force field.
Shane gazed around, suddenly terribly distressed, eyes darting to and fro. Everything looked the same. Nothing but a cramped kingdom of mangrove trees! It was as if he was imprisoned in some sort of organic cage, the mangroves' evil roots trapping him within their holds, for this time, the enemies were not what lurked among the trees, but the trees themselves.
A rustle. He balled his fists, in an unconvincing fighting stance. No, it was just the wind, but he was not going to be this fortunate all the time.
But the thought of Jake languishing back at the campsite, weakening from blood loss spurred him on, no way was he trading another's life for his own. There was a small channel of water that was unimpeded by any vegetation, so Shane chose to travel down that route, clenching his fists tightly round the surrounding trees' trunks for support. Although he was certainly moving, albeit somewhat slowly, he seemed to make no progress as he moved, the vast sea of trees giving him no landmarks to gauge how deep he was in the swamp. Still, he stuck to his motive, and began combing the marshy land for any medicinal herbs or plants.
A good half an hour passed, and a feeling of uncertainty crept up his spine. Not only did it seem he was walking in circles, but it was the fact that it was eerily silent, not a breath nor a splash within earshot. The silence soon affected poor Shane, as he felt there was a sort of anomaly going on here. Usually there would be the shrill shrieks or melodious chirping of small theropods, maybe the snapping of a twig as a hadrosaur strolled by, but it as deathly quiet as when the carnosaurs had slain Alan. Yet despite the roaring silence, Shane could still feel the piercing stare of a beast hunkering down, crouching in the shadows of the mangroves, biding its time to strike at its unsuspecting victim.
No, Shane knew, it was just his Shane continued to scamper along the path carved by the sickly green swamp water, desperate to find some sort of plant that could possibly treat Jake's grievous wounds. He continued to trudge along the watery path, and found that there were several more streams, all of them coalescing into a large pit of clayey-looking sand. The sand was almost liquid, a sticky look to it, but Shane did not think much of it . In the middle stood a lonely mangrove tree, leaves swaying dreamily in the breeze.
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"A landmark...that's something," Shane muttered a sliver of hope beginning to rise in him. That was before he noticed the deep gash slashed into the tree trunk, and flashbacks of the encounter with the Allosaurus came flooding back to him. Remembering Natalie's words about predators scratching tree trunks to mark their territory, he did a quick scan of the area, fervently hoping that his luck had not run out.
Then, he heard the sound of an animal lunging at something ferociously, its quarry escaping its jaws by a hair's breadth, and the carnivore's bellow of rage and indignity. Shane looked in the direction of the noise. When he saw the creature, terror did not grip him with its icy fingers like it usually did. Rather, he was intrigued by the animal, which was partially submerged in the marshy water like a lurking crocodile. Catching a glimpse of this new, two-legged mammal clad in some sort of blue fabric in its territory, the dinosaur rose, revealing itself.
When biologists caught the alleged news of the Australian platypus a couple centuries ago, they doubted the existence of such an oddball. A beaver with a duck's beak and feet stitched onto it that laid eggs, they dubbed it, and threw it into the wastebucket of hoaxes. This bizarre dinosaur was no less peculiar-looking. A crocodile's head topped with a blueish crest was attached to the lithe frame of a predatory dinosaur, making it resemble some hybridized monstrosity. The animal's legs seemed less well-muscled than the ones of ordinary theropods, however, and in turn, the arms were seemingly beefier than what Shane remembered the Allosaurus's forelimbs were like. A large sail, dotted with jaguar-like rosettes and jet-black stripes sat atop its body, which was as sickly green as its habitat. The sail had a large notch indented in it, slicing down from top to bottom. The dinosaur was what paleontologists would call the "fish hunter", Icthyovenator. Preferring a more fish-oriented diet than its big-game-hunter brethren, the megalosaurs, the animal's straight, conical teeth were best suited for gripping its slippery prey.
Interestingly, the animal gave no more than a quick glance at Shane, the crocodile-dinosaur skulking back amongst the shaggy barrier of mangrove roots. Now, at that moment, something inside Shane was telling him to follow the creature. And like a dog would do to its master, he obeyed the voice in his head, about to lift his feet to stalk the swamp-dwelling beast.
But he could not lift them.
Shane stared down, his moment of calm rudely interrupted by a razor-sharp icicle of panic, as his legs became steeped knee-high in the sand, which seemed to have a death grip on his legs. His face became aghast with horror, at first hyperventilating, before those gasps escalated to full-on hollers for help. The parts that were already beneath the quicksand felt cold and hard. Worse still, they were rendered immobile, and the harrowing realisation caused powerful bursts of adrenaline to surge through him, and his struggle intensified.
Most terrifying of all, however, was that, millimetre by millimetre, slowly but noticeably, the sand seemed to begin rising! But no, it was not the sand that was rising, but it was Shane himself, that was being swallowed alive, bit by bit. The sloshing yet inescapable substance was already at his thighs, creeping up , sucking him down into their bottomless depths.
"AHH-AG-AARGHHH!" was all his crazed mind could make his mouth produce as he fell into the black abyss of despair.
Trapped.
Immobile.
That was Shane's situation now, in the midst of a secluded swamp, imprisoned by the quagmire that he had stumbled into. Struggling only worsened the grip that the quicksand had on his crotch, and all the adrenaline that his body could produce could not help him out of this one.
"SOMEONE, PLEASE, PLEASE I'M BEGGING YOU, GET ME OUT!" he yelled, the holler weaker than the last one, his throat red and raw after having been strained for the last five minutes.
Desperation got the better of him, however, and what he thought would be the solution flashed through his head. Shane stuck his veiny hands into the quicksand, and only managed to get them stuck too! Now he was stuck in an arched, bent-over posture, his hands firmly planted, and sinking, into the sand along with his legs. He could only imagine the screaming agony that his back had to endure in his current position. What a dumbass I am, Shane mused to himself. Utter defeat began tugging at his heart with its gnarled claws, and the adrenaline that powered through his body began diminishing, and he shook his head solemnly, as if accepting that his time was up.
On the bright side however, there seemed to be nothing in the vicinity that posed a real threat, save for the faded silhouette of a large lizard amidst the mangroves, the animal emitting ghostly, shuddering chatters as it waded nearer.
Shane was too preoccupied with the pain in his back to bother with the approaching animal. It was not as if he could do anything if the animal decided to attack, and plus it was turning dark, with the purplish twilight sky being streaked with the last rays of orange sunlight, and he had experienced enough nights in this hellhole for his dislike of the dark to become a phobia. He stared glassily as the shadow of the animal, becoming fuller and more detailed as it trundled over, seemingly as depressed as he was then, with its slouched posture and the way it half-heartedly crawled over.
Suddenly, as if electrocuted, the reptile swerved its head back swiftly, and in an instant was electrified into a scrambling gallop, and at that moment Shane saw two new, more gracile-looking figures pursuing the lowly reptile. Pushing through a small clump of mangroves, the terrified, careless prey doomed itself as it splashed into the same body of quicksand Shane was trapped in!
The animal, no more than a metre long, was nearly just as strange as the icthyovenator from earlier, a small crocodile's body thrown together with a squashed, compact head with a pair of bulbous eyeballs sticking out from two fleshy sockets. This was Simosuchus, the only known herbivorous crocodilian species. Unlike Shane, it slammed into the quicksand with such force that it was swallowed up to the neck, the sand somehow "constricting" its throat and preventing it from vocalising and possibly breathing.
The two pursuers' appearance were no less strange as they too emerged from the tangled mess of mangrove roots, pure idiosyncratic creations of evolution. Kaprosuchus, terrestrial versions of crocodiles that hailed from Africa. Their legs were noticeably lengthier and more athletic than those of their modern relatives but what truly made them stand out from the crowd was their head. In it was a prison of three-inch-long tusks that somewhat resembled those of warthogs and boars. At the snout's tip was a large lump of keratin and above the eyes were what appeared to be miniscule, yet razor-sharp horns.
By then, the sky was a sheet of navy blue, and the predators' eyes twinkled like the other nighttime hunters Shane had seen. "Life was a good game while it lasted." he rasped with apparent sorrow and hopelessness, while the animals circled the pool of quicksand, wheels spinning in their heads.
The swamp sung with the hisses and howls of unknown beasts, its own melody of death, for that was what it was: a death-hole deadlier than nearly anywhere in this realm. The allosaurs and raptors did not hunt here, and the hadrosaurs took a detour around these marshes during their annual migrations, as it was a place swarmed with disproportionate numbers of carnivores, so many that the ecosystem of this little tucked-away corner of the Southern Deltas was crumbling apart, self-destructing with its own overflow of predators.
Two minutes passed.
The Kaprosuchus pair continued to encircle the quicksand. The glint in their eyes just intensified. Shane's heart hammered faster, but he knew he was powerless to do anything. His knees had already sank, and now he was ensnared waist-high in the gloppy, yet iron-gripped liquid.
Ten minutes.
Shane's arms were being hauled in deeper, his elbows now at the edge of being whelmed under inches and inches of quicksand. With the liquid tugging at both his arms and legs, Shane felt like he was being yanked in two, like a piece of meat being ripped apart by two mongrels at opposite ends. The agony forced glistening tears out of his eyes, as the Kaprosuchus watched on with unsympathetic gazes, calculating their next move. As if indulging in the pleasure of tormenting him, one of the predators let loose a terrible gurgling hiss, before rapidly clapping its spike-tusked jaws wickedly. He shut his eyes, praying to God that the animal would impale him on its spike teeth and end the madness once and for all.
Twenty more minutes.
The crocodilians continued to encircle the pit of quicksand, but this time they were more uneasy-seeming, darting around more erratically than earlier. The glint in their eyes did not waver.
Beams of dim moonlight bore down on the swamp, and as one of the Kaprosuchus raised its head to hiss again, a sliver of light struck its head. Obviously it had gotten itself into numerous skirmishes judging by the crisscrossed scars that traced along its jawline and cranium. Some of the light illuminated the animal's neck, and a death-accepting Shane took a glance at the lot up neck. He was stunned.
There, by the light of the waning moonlight, he saw a black collar fastened tightly round the animal's throat. A tiny device sat at the top of the collar, and emitted a fast-flashing green light that for some reason Shane had only noticed by then. Wait what? he thought. Were they not the type of collars wildlife trackers fitted onto creatures they had captured for study?
Then, in a jarring blur of black, the beast shot into the air.