Isle of the Extinct

Twenty-Two: Red

Natalie would have hyperventilated, but she had to stifle her breaths. The hot, almost fiery breath of the Carnotaurus was being buffered by her thin, torn clothes, and she knew that once it grew tired of the momentary distraction Michel had slipped towards it, its jaws would come sweeping around the corner, coming down on one of them like a guillotine. Right after, the last thing she would see was a jail of razor-bladed fangs enclosing her head, in the process of shredding it to ribbons. Her thoughts seemed worryingly contagious, she could feel the wet trickle of cold sweat running down Shane's sideburn, feeling the extreme dread exuded by his body as she huddled closer to him, and it was then she became unsure if she should have placed such confidence in him.

"Don't die...just don't die..." Shane whispered to no one in particular. It was definitely a mistake to do so.

Again came the savage, snuffling grunts of the horned beast, mixed with the maddening tink, tink of the glass test tube, half-filled with Endernium, rammed into the metal counter that they barely concealed themselves behind. Just barely. The animalistic snorts had bound her frontal lobe in an icy grip, her limbs were practically screeching to run, electrified by pure terror, but they were ordered not to make a move. All they could do was tremble uselessly in protest as an uninsulated whiteness pervaded her face, and her eyes, bloodshot from lack of sleep, stared ahead unabatedly, unwilling to even twitch a muscle. The Carnotaurus drew ever nearer, triggering another quiver to rattle her spine. Just then, she heard and felt one of its great feet slamming jarringly into the metal counter, sending juddering tremors through the material and her mouth flew open, a horrified screech almost spilling out from her raw, parched throat. By then, her clothes were already steeped in cold liquid, and she lunged to grip the corner of the counter unsteadily as she breathed harder. Tonight, there was going to be bloodshed.

The sight of one of the shattered windows in the wall began bleeding into her peripheral vision, thin shafts of moonlight casting themselves against the facility's shapeless shadows as if saluting the arrival of the early hours of the morning. For a moment there was a glimmer of hope to intercept the barrage of terror-stricken thoughts ravaging her mind, but only for a moment. It was their golden ticket to escaping this metallic hellhole, but the question was how they would reach it. This was the very epitome of being so close but yet so far, but she, they, had to cook up an escape fast, knowing full well their pathetic distraction had only so much of an effect on such a killing machine.

Gesturing towards the window, Natalie plucked up enough courage to edge her head towards Michel, who was huddling nearest to their escape. Her gestures became quicker, more heated as she began hurriedly mouthing the word "go" several times. Fatigued, and as a result, feeble-minded, Michel seemed terribly dumb to what the paleontologist was signalling to him, blankly looking at her before the groaning, low-frequency growl of the dinosaur jolted him, again triggering another flood of perspiration to swamp his entire body.

"For real?" he mouthed back with apparent incredulity and almost cowardly fear. Who could blame him?

"Just be a man and do something good with how rash you are!" Large, cordlike veins bulged from Natalie's forehead, and she gritted her teeth, heart threatening to explode from her ribcage as she did so. Only then did Michel oblige, but his movements were excruciatingly subtle, sidling across the cold floor, his back tight against the metal table behind him as he tried to slow his breathing down. His furtiveness seemed almost unusual for a hothead like himself, but he knew it took only one simple misstep for this house of cards to come tumbling down on them.

Then he heard the muted thumping of the Carnotaurus's feet, and as if he had eyes at the back of his head, he could almost see its great black shape stalking around the compound, hearing it snarl and pant and knock stray objects over in its pursuit for fresh blood, and his heart pumped even faster as his whitened face twisted into an obscene rictus of terror, fingers scrabbling on the freezing, sterile ground.