Atlantis Rising: Chapter 4
Previous Chapter: Phoenix Rising: Chapter 3
Homepage: Atlantis
13:07 Hours, Military Clock, August 7th, 9437 BCE, Foothills of the Azore Mountain Range, Atlantis Mainland
The torrential rain would have long ago obscured all vision. That is, human vision. But Velociraptor eyes worked a little differently. The Alpha-Female of the Raptor pack sniffed the air apprehensively. This would be a big kill. If they could bring it down.
Like most prehistoric and modern predators, the Raptors knew every inch of their territory. Everything that trespassed into that zone was dead, everything, except for a pod of Diplodocus.
The great giants were about 80 feet long, head to tail, and about a third as tall. Most people thought that Diplodocus walked with their heads upright, the better to eat the greenery from the taller trees. But in reality, the Diplodocus's long neck served its main purpose as a counterbalance for the extraordinarily long and muscular tail.
In fact, the bone structure in the neck of the Diplodocus suggested that it was physically unable to lift its head above much higher than its body. That, and the difficulty of pumping blood all the way uphill from its body through its 25-foot long neck. People used to think of dinosaurs were huge, plodding monsters that had to stand in water to support their great weight. Another dino misconception.
These Diplodocus were "plodding along" at a clip of 15 miles an hour. Not bad for something 30 ft tall.
The Alpha-Female gave a quick, bird-like chirp to her surrounding pack. Her two lieutenants, designated A2 and 3, rose out of the grassland next to her, otherwise unnoticed. Even A1, the Alpha-Female, didn't always know where they all were.
A4 called back a quick confirmation from his position, hidden just inside the rainforest borders. A5 rose out of the grass behind A1, in the rear guard position, while A6 and A7 were hidden further up front in the forest on the advance-scout position. 7 Raptors in all. Enough to take a Stegosaurus. Hopefully enough to take the Diplodocus.
A7 had already scouted ahead and singled out their target; a smaller one with a limp in his right forefoot.
A1 gave another quick verbal command and the entire pack started out at an easy loping pace that they could maintain almost indefinitely. About 20 miles an hour, a third of their top speed.
Fifteen minutes and about five miles later, the Raptor pack came up against a mountain pass that was the only entrance to the luscious forested valley and the great sweetwater lake in the middle, fed by crystalline tributaries trickling down from the mountains. Usually it would have been beautiful, but the dense rain cast a shroud of obscuring fog that cut the Raptor's visibility down to mere meters. It would be even worse for the herbivores, though.
A Diplodocus eye was simply not as advanced as a Raptor's eye. Evolutionarily speaking, the predator was the hunter, and in order to survive and be successful, that meant finding the quarry before you could kill it. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the herbivores, such as the Diplodocus, needed to have another sort of advanced sense in order to detect the predators coming.
Because the Raptor's mottled skin and slim, narrow quills were colored naturally to blend in with a large host of surroundings, the herbivores usually fell on sound as their detection system, where as carnivores used sight and smell.
The Raptor pack swiftly and silently darted amongst the trees, bent double. A hunter's run.
They knew this territory. It was theirs. This whole valley was their territory, and the pack knew all of its ambush spots, defensive positions, and most importantly, the secret entrance to their nest, hidden inside a large cave.
Silently, the pack wove in and out of the thick, leafy trees, utilizing any cover possible, and when there was none they hugged the ground and sprinted at 60 miles an hour towards the next piece. The smell of urine and fesces was heavy in the air; the Diplodocus heard was relieving themselves in a corner of the glade. Right out in the open, with nothing but two Stegosaurs to keep guard.
Ordinarily, a Raptor pack wouldn't mess with a Stego. They were basically armored trucks. However, they were from the late Jurassic period, as were the Diplodocus, and so the Raptors shouldn't have even been seeing them, as they were from the late Cretaceous. Hundreds of million years later.
The Raptor pack shifted uneasily. Getting past the Stegos wouldn't be a challenge, but once they were past they would be cut off, trapped in a corner. Luckily Diplodocus tended to stampede at the sight of Raptors, and they could only hope the Stegos would get caught up in it. Alternately, they would make a good dessert.
The smaller Diplo with the limp was fortunately close to the outside of the pack. The biggest were always on the outside, but after that it really didn't matter. The Diplos were about to find out different. A1 gave a piercing cry, audible to her Raptors only. She and her lieutenants moved up, while the four others peeled off and took up ambush positions by the mountain pass.
The Raptors crept closer, hidden beneath wild 6 foot tall grass. The Raptors were on average 6 feet tall, but bent double, they could maneuver undetected.
Suddenly A1 gave a shriek, and the entire pack leaped forward, A2 and 3 actually vaulting over the Stegos in their haste, about twice their height. A1 darted under its great, lumbering mass, then jumped at the largest Diplo, leaving deep gashes in its thigh.
The Diplos gave a startled cry, then as one ran for the only exit, where the four other Raptors were waiting. The three up front started herding their target towards the waiting ambush site.
Raptors couldn't smile. It's a proven fact. The muscles in the face required to perform that sort of action just didn't exist in a Raptor. But someone should have told that to the Alpha-Female, because the glint in her eyes and the muscle tension across her face could only be interpreted as glee. The thrill of a sucessful hunt. So far, anyways.
But nothing in nature ever went as expected, even interactions between one part of it and another. Things were looking great for the Raptors until A3 got a little too cocky, cutting right across one of the larger Diplos' path and jumping onto the foreleg of their prey.
The larger Diplodocus saw the infuriating little predator and reared back onto its hind legs, balancing incredibly, its body and neck soaring into the air. A2 glanced up, gave a startled yelp, and then was squashed by the multi-ton quadruped.
A3 made an unhappy growl deep in his throat, slashing again at their target.
If it had been a duo of Ceratosauruses, or even a pair of T-Rex, the herd probably would have stood their ground and fought. Their tails weighed a lot, and the Diplos could whip them around fast enough to cut a Rex's hide, but the Raptors were too small. Too many of them. Too quick. You swing at one and it suddenly disappeared, only to have his buddy take you out from the other side.
So the Diplos stampeded towards the only exit of the whole valley, wich was a narrow mountain pass dominated by a gushing whitewater river in the middle and steep cliffs on both sides. Big enough for three or four Diplos to pass side-by-side. It was beyond the cranial capacity of these herbivores to realize it was all a trap.
The Diplos all charged for the cliffs, breaking off chunks of stone here and there as they stampeded. It would later seem to archaeologists that the whole episode was rather like the scene in King Kong, but of course these dinos wouldn't have known that.
The narrow pass was suddenly thronged with sweaty meat. Unlike in Jurassic Park, where Diplodocus were displayed as great lethargic monsters with rounded bellies and fatty limbs, these Diplos were all corded muscle. It just wasn't possible to get that many calories from plants.
Rather than risk being stepped on again, A1 and 3 branched off to the side and sprinted up the cliffs. They had only a short time before the target came through.
The rest of the pack was already waiting.
One minute, the cliffs appeared to be clear, the next, they were crowded with Raptors, who leaped from their hiding place onto the back of their target Diplo.
A1 and 3 aimed for the head, as they had previously planned, while the rest of the Raptors hooked onto the legs and started herding the Diplo into the river. It was crucial that the Diplo went down in the river, where it could drift down to the cave, otherwise they would never get the meat anywhere.
The Alpha-Female ripped at the Diplo's eye, clawing and slashing, and A3 did the same on the other side. Now the Diplo was blind as well as panicked.
The Diplodocus did the expected thing; it shook its gargantuan head and wailed out its open mouth. A1 took advantage of the outburst by reaching down and slicing through the Diplo's jaw muscles with a couple quick slashes from her middle "Killing Claw" on her foot.
The Alpha-Female saw the Jugular vein pulsing in the side of the Diplo's neck, and with bloody claws she reached out and slashed...
The Tyrannosaurus Rex stood abruptly, sniffing the air expectantly. Yes, there was no doubt about it, that was blood in the air. Lots of it.
From his camouflaged position atop a shallow inclined hill, the Rex could see the herd escaping through the valley without being seen. And something was happening just inside the pass, something involving blood.
Might as well go see what happened.
The great dinosaur gave a last, bleating cry, and then toppled with a great splash to the river, casting clear, non-polluted cascades of water over the rich riverbanks. The waters around the bleeding body turned a startling reddish-brown. The color red appears darker underwater. The Diplo was still alive, but it couldn't move and it was half drowning when it rested its head in the water.
Not a bad day, all things considered. They had only lost one, but that wasn't of much importance. There was always another young male back at the nest that needed training up. And this Diplodocus would feed the whole pack for months.
Provided they could keep the meat.
Their only warning was a slight shake of the trees by the pass. Then the T-Rex was barreling down on them at thirty miles an hour.
The Rex gave a roar that scattered the Raptor pack, sending them scurrying into the forest. It planted its great foot on the dying carcass, giving another scattering roar to the six pairs of Raptor eyes poking out of the foliage, then proceeded to eat, pulling long strips of meat up.
The Alpha-Female was not about to stand for this.
As soon as she was sure all her Raptors were in position, she set up a roar, not quite as impressive as the Rex, but as it was taken up by each member of the Raptor pack it became very intimidating. The Rex jerked his head up, jaws still working mechanically on a chunk.
The Rex swung around and stared down A1.
But then A3 came in from one side, slashing at the Rex's hip and lodging on his back. A3 tore into the Rex's neck muscles, his feet firmly secure, while A4 and 5 jumped on his other side and carved lines out of his stomach.
A6 and 7 went straight for the neck. The Rex whipped around, his giant head catching A7 and knocking him back to the ground, but A6 landed, and then A1 darted under the Rex and tore at the vulnerable belly tissue.
The Rex couldn't take this. Too many at once.
It roared and charged over to the wounded A7, bloody jaws closing around the man-sized dino's chest, piercing it with his 6 inch razor teeth. The Rex lifted its head and shook the Raptor with its powerful neck muscles, tearing out flesh, then roughly tossed the dead Raptor aside.
The Rex shook A3 off and then quickly trampled the Raptor. Two dead.
Then A1 got clocked with the Rex's huge leg and went flying into the river. The Rex charged after her.
A1 stood up, dizzy from the hit, and darted to one side just as the Rex pounced, but then the Rex's tail caught her and she went flying again.
The Rex turned, water and blood splashing around his legs. Only one Raptor was left, A6, and he was slashing in a blind passion at the Rex's neck. But the Rex's tiny brain only had room to chase A1.
The Rex stomped closer through the rain. To the Raptor's heightened sense of smell, the Rex was overwhelming at this close range. Its jaws wreaked of rotting flesh. And they were closing on her...
Suddenly the Rex gave a startled jerk and fell to the ground. One of her Raptors had taken out the creature's hamstring muscles and now it couldn't move.
A1 gave no mercy to the wounded beast. It had killed two of her Raptors and it had almost killed her.
The Rex was now virtually defenseless. Without its powerful legs, it was nothing. The creature's stubby arms couldn't move it.
A4 rubbed his snout with his bloody claws, eager for the kill. A1 gave a verbal command and the Raptors flew at the fallen animal. It didn't take long.
A good day's work, all things considered. A1 gave a loud, ringing roar, loud enough to be heard by her fellow Raptors in their cave, calling for help to drag the meat through the river back to the nest.
