The rain didn’t stop. They spent the rest of the day watching whatever was in the plain, usually the pattern was possibly seeing a distant dinosaur before it ran into the trees before it was clear. There were barely sparks of anything conversational. The land darkened, more than before, and it fell into the night. The fire was lit again for the night in an attempt to keep any predators away. It dulled, not long after they had fallen asleep.

* * *

The light was buzzing above, occasionally flickering anytime a hard wind had beaten the building.

“Damn, the weather here is so bad,” Grace thought, in the conference room with the others, “It’s only been a few weeks and it’s been raining more than I think I’ve ever seen.”

They were mostly silent, all of them, until Kelvin spoke up.

“What’s the point of these again?” he commented, “We don’t study the same thing, so why meet?”

“You’re on an island during hurricane season, Dr. Horace. You meet to discuss progress on our studies and to make sure that nothing… impactful, happens,” said a voice from behind, with a strong British accent.

All of them turn to the back of the room where they see what appears to be a security guard, but wearing an unimaginably thick vest and what appeared to be a large caliber rifle on his back. His frame was weirdly small, not something someone with his percepted job would have. His face was, blurry? Like it was smudged, unidentifiable to the eye.

“And who are you?” asked Kelvin, with a pinch of annoyance in tone.

“It’s-”

A screen of white flashed.

“- and I’m here to make sure you’re staying out of unauthorized areas. After all, technology isn’t always so reliable. I’m sure you agree with me on that, don’t you Dr. Horace?”

Kelvin darts his gaze away, to the floor and to the window.

Darla cleared her throat, “Well, thank you Mr.-”

Another flash.

The faceless man left through the garage, as they heard a car rev up and fade into the rain.

“Nice guy,” remarked Darla, “Anyways, I also feel we need to discuss the information. After all, this island has never been fully explored and there’s a possibility of new species.”

“Like a new Amazona species,” interrupted Carl.

“Yes, that too. But, anything new?”

It was followed by another silence.

“No, we haven’t found anything,” Grace said.

“Then the meeting’s dismissed. See y’all soon.”

The guys left immediately into the garage, with Grace following suit before Darla stopped her.

“Grace! Can you stay behind for a minute?”

She turned, as the others left, and stayed.

“Yes?”

“I was wondering if you could come up to the North with me, I have a problem. Something big’s been scrounging around my research station. I haven’t seen it good, barely a silhouette, but I found something like emu or rhea footprints that you should see.”

“Why me? Ratites seem more like your cup of tea.”

“Because the silhouette doesn’t look anything like a ratite. It doesn’t sound like a ratite. Besides, I’ve seen you study. You're the one of the most observant out of all of us, and you're the best artist. I think you can get an accurate illustration of it if it decides to bolt.”

“Hmm, seems interesting. I’ll do it.”

“Great! Come on, let’s go. We should be watching for it soon, now’s about the time it comes around.”

The conversation blinks out of mind and to somewhere else, to the damp bushes watching for the creature.

“Be as quiet as possible, it’s hearing is impeccable,” whispered Darla.

Rustling quieted her, as they focused on where it came from. Out peaked something weird. It was seemingly an emu, covered in stringy grayish brown feathers speckled in a darker brown, with a crown of black upon its head. It looked exactly like one, but its beak was abnormal in that it was not there. It was a snout, a long thin snout, with what looked to be a proto-beak. Not quite developed but still a bird. Then it took a step out, showing more of its body and its weirdly large wings. They weren’t short and stubby, but clearly arms with dark brown feathers ordained in light blue, forming a large wing, not like an emu in the slightest.

“What the hell?” Grace thought as it stepped out near-entirely.

It was larger than an emu, that was without a doubt, but still shorter than a human. Its morphology was entirely different also, only its feather patterns were reminiscent of an emu. The body was not fully out, as past its legs it continued into a tail.

“Oh my god, it’s a new species!” she whispered loudly.

The emu-thing’s gaze quickly looked at them. It raised up higher, and it was just studying the bushes for where the sound came from. Darla put her hand over her mouth, and matched its staring. Grace swiftly yet quietly pulled out her small black sketch-book, full of notes on birds, and started sketching. It stepped closer. She got the frame. Another step. The head detail. It was only a yard away. Got the neck. It stops. The arms are done. It brought its neck further to find them. The body’s in-progress. It bolted. Darla, with her camera already out, took a picture of the fleeing creature, halfway into the bushes and darting far from the building. Silence.

“Did you get the sketch,” Darla asked bluntly but still quietly.

“Yea,” Grace responded, passing it over to her, “How good’s the picture?”

“Not good, I barely caught the body but I did catch the- tail fan? What the actual frick.”

She showed Grace the picture, which is blurred, catching everything past legs, including a long tail and a tail fan with two light blue spots.

“Huh, but you got the parts I didn’t. I can finish the sketch and submit it to whoever we submit it to.”

“Sounds good.”

Grace slowly opened her eyes. The rain had stopped, and the bright sun shone directly into her eyes. But, it was blocked suddenly by something. It moved up, then back down, clicking its mouth like an ostrich or…

Grace’s eyes shot open as she remained still and studied the animal. She looked at its mouth and saw its underdeveloped beak, and then she glanced past its head to the neck and body, which were covered in the stringy feathers that were all too recognizable. It breathed into Grace’s face, before it moved to investigate Adam, sweeping its tail fan past her.

“Huh, I thought they’d be more up North. Maybe they’re just widespread,” thought Grace. Despite the morning sun’s gaze, she managed to make out a small band of these creatures around the camp, all near identical except for the babies. Similar to the adults, their patterns were almost indistinguishable from a baby emu. Tannish feathers, with darker speckles.

Grace moved a bit, which caused the herd to flinch and look to the movement. Grace was still again as one of them clicked to another, and that one approached her. It got close to her, like the first, and smelled. It backed away, and started making a shrilling alarm call, nothing like Grace had heard before, causing the others to get stressed and some started running. The ones that stayed were still looking at Grace, before their heads darted to Adam’s tent and ran as well, making their alarm as they fled. Grace started moving again, stretching and moving any stray brown hairs out of her face. She got out, stretched more, and caught something on the ground at the corner of her eye. She looked to see a dead emu-thing on the ground with a slit wound under its jaw, actively bleeding out.

“Morning! I got us ornithomimus for breakfast. At least, I think it is. Either that or struthiomimus, but I’m like 95% sure it’s ornithomimus,” said Adam, coming out from his tent as well and gesturing to the lifeless carcass.

“Jesus, Adam, we have plenty of non-perishables. We shouldn’t have to kill anything for the next few weeks,” Grace said to Adam, slightly annoyed and a bit frightened.

“Oh, I didn’t think of that. Well, we’ve got a bird-mimic to eat,” he said, taking out his knife.

“Wait, can I at least study and sketch it?”

“Uh, sure.”

Grace moved to the ATV to get the sketchbook and pencil out of the duffle bag, before she walked back to the body and sketched it. It was like muscle memory, with more detail because of it not moving.

Once she was done, she said, “Alright, I’m good. Do your thing.”

Adam took the knife and started to skin it underneath, as Grace turned her back to him. Mainly to avoid vomiting at the sight of the organs coming out.

“So, do you turn into Rambo often or is this just a one-time thing?”

“What do you mean? My uncle owned an ostrich farm, I know how to wrangle something like this. Let alone something smaller.”

“Yeah, but this gets spooked easily.”

“It helps when it’s right next to your face and you're in the perfect position to grab it.”

Grace could hear squelching as Adam was still working with it.

“I’ve got a pretty big strip, you think we should work with that or should I get something else?” he asks.

“Yeah yeah, that works,” she said, trying not to gag, “I’m gonna guess you didn’t get the pots or pans from the camp, let alone a spoon?”

“Yeah. But we could always just stab it with a stick and roast it like that.”

“Uh, sure.”

* * *

“So, how’d you end up here?” asked Grace.

The fire was starting to die again, and the carcass was moved more towards the grassland from the growing number of flies descending onto the body like a plague. It was a swarm, visible even from a few yards away.

“What d’you mean?” questioned Adam in between chewing.

“Why did you accept to come here, and why were you asked in the first place? You don’t really act like a mercenary.”

“Oh, I uh, just needed some extra cash.”

“Really? Extra cash? You signed up to go onto an armed rescue team for some extra cash?”

“Don’t question it,” he said threateningly, as his grip visibly tightened on the stick, “I was short on cash and I had experience as a merc.”

“Jesus, man,” thought Grace.

She finished the filet and set down the stick, walking over to her makeshift tent to gather the duffle bags. She took the first, containing most of the canned foods and water bottles. Then the second, with the keycard, flashlights, and guns. She loaded them onto the back of the ATV, still with room for herself, and put the key in the ignition. But through the trees, a call so clear and airy had rung out of the trees, from deep in the forest. It sounded dark or forbidding, strange yet familiar. She took the key out and put it in her pocket, walking to the edge of the trees and into the thicket.

It wasn’t like the labyrinth that was the Marabou, but the bushes and underbrush were taller than Grace and the trees’ canopies were not wide enough to shade the floor and keep the shrubs low. The trees themselves were tall and thin pines, unlike the dense and short mangroves of the covered swamp. They were almost uniform in growth, so close together that you couldn’t see more than a couple yards ahead. The call returned once again, coming from not much further in the trees.

Grace crouched, as if the foliage didn’t already hide her, and slowly approached the sound of the brush rustling. She opened the sheath of leaves to see what was making the calls, and in the forest was the herd of crested dinosaurs. They were browsing on the knocked-over trees, stripping the needles and breaking off the branches. There were calves, she recognized one as the calf that came into the camp. One of the smaller adults, a female, approached two of the calves. One of the calves ran up to it, its mouth wide open, making a little squeaky whine like a hungry puppy. The mother regurgitated a milky liquid into its mouth, before the second baby did the same thing and it fed it.

“Huh, it makes crop milk. I thought they would lactate,” thought Grace.

While others were browsing, some were laying on the forest floor, resting. The largest, which was previously browsing, raised its head and honked the call, the crest resonating the sound. From far away, it was a grim, strange call. Almost haunting. From up close, it sounded more natural, and friendly but still threatening. Its nostrils flared, smelling the wind. It then moved its head to face Grace.

“Oh no,” she thought, realizing the direction the wind blew.

She was upwind of the herd.

She stood still and stared at the male. All of the herd, which also started smelling her, were either retreating or backing away, but the male stood firm and stared.

“Please don’t be in rut,” she whispered calmly, slowly rising and backing away from the male.

The male still stared, by now the entirety of the herd was now gone, knocking over the pines as they ran. The male then stood up and snorted, coming down hard on its front hooves. It then turned and walked away silently, weaving through the trees towards the herd.

A moment of silence followed, as Grace looked to where the dinosaurs retreated.

“Parasaurolophus,” said a voice from behind her.

She whipped around and punched, but it was caught when she saw it was Adam.

“Calm down, it’s just me,” he said, letting go of her fist, “I followed the calls after you left. Figured that you’d need help.”

She sighed, “Jesus, just don’t sneak up on me.”

She pushed past him to walk back to the ATV, and he followed.

After navigating through the maze of trees once again, they make it back to the camp and see the band of ornithomimus gathered again. They were pecking at the ground, grazing on the grasses before moving towards the forest on the right. Grace looked over to it and saw more of the herd in the forest, taking care of nests and smaller juveniles. When the duo emerged from the forest, the grazers propped their necks up and ran at the sight of them.

“Ok, I’ll drive,” stated Adam, getting into the driver’s seat.

Grace tossed him the keys and sat on the back with the supplies. He started it and a pop was heard, coming from behind. The sound of alarm calls from the ornithimimus came from the trees.

“You fucking serious.”

Adam got off and inspected the engine, before moving to the exhaust, crouching.

“It just backfired. I think it has something to do with the ignition, it didn’t look too well off when I checked it.”

“Layman’s terms?”

“Engine’s not working and might not start after who knows how long.”

“Mhm. How much longer, if you had to guess?”

“I dunno, I’d say maybe like a couple hundred miles more, judging by the mileage.”

She nodded and he got back on the ATV. He started it again, it backfired, but they drove off. As they left, they passed the nesting ground of fleeing ornithomimus, panicked from the quad-bike backfire. The duo drove off to the large structure in the distance.

During their drove, they spotted more species, with Adam pointing out what they were.

“Tsintaosaurus,” he said when driving past blue and tan ornithopods with crest patterns unique in each individual.

“Thescelosaurus,” to a feathered small herbivore that weirdly looked like a secretary bird.

“Ankylosaurus, er- Euoplocephalus? I can’t tell,” he stuttered to a wide and reddish-brown herbivore with plated armor, similar to the carkylonyx down south.

The drive took nearly four hours, surprisingly without predators picking up their scent. They approached the building at the end of the third hour, inspecting it from some yards away. It was large and looming, like an oversized warehouse. The side was made of cracked dark gray bricks, vines and trees growing like a small jungle. Near the top were foggy windows, almost all broken, some with cobwebs that glowed from the sun’s reflection on the dew resting on it. Down to the right of the wall were shorter but still titanic stone fences, looking like they were nearly fifteen feet tall and walls themselves. The tops were ordained with barbed wire, connected to electrical wires leading into the building. From the outside it looked like the yard of a maximum-security prison. To the left of the wall there were a couple sets of metal doors. One for people to go in and out of, but still very wide, wide enough to fit small carts. There were several large truck doors, one half looking like they could drop off the cargo from trailers. The other half were taller and thinner, and more fortified, like they were meant to hold something in. In front, there was a large asphalt lot, with a path leading to the stone fences.

The duo walked towards the small doors, Grace with keycard in hand, and she put the card up to the old scanner. It was unresponsive.

“Y’know, I don’t know what I was expecting,” she said bluntly, turning to Adam, “Whatever was powering it, it certainly isn’t on. Any ideas?”

“Maybe those walls over there lead inside. It definitely housed something,” suggested Adam, pointing to the barbed walls.

They started walking over to it, which felt like a mile. The fence was just as cracked as the building’s, but it was lighter with faded yellow stripes near the top. They walked around it to see a much shorter and delicate fence, made of chain link, but still obstructing what's behind through concrete panels in front along with more barbed wire on top. A gate with a slightly ripped, thick tarp covering it was right by the giant fence. It had vines growing all-over it, along with it being rusty, so it wouldn’t be hard to break it down. However, through one of the tears, a padlock could be seen. The chain link wasn’t tall enough to climb, but something to stand on would be able to get the two up and over.

“Stay here,” said Adam, as he ran over to the ATV.

Once he got to it, Grace saw him get on, heard a backfire, and saw him get closer on it. Once he reached the same spot, he got off the ATV with one of the duffle bags and threw it over. He then climbed onto the fence, under the barbed wire. He lost balance and fell, some of the wire with him.

“You alright?” asked Grace.

No response, before the gate flew off its hinges, nearly hitting Grace, and landed on the asphalt. He stood holding one of the two rifles and with barbed wire stuck to his back, over the destroyed gate and smashed padlock.

“Uh, need some help there?” she asked, gesturing to her back.

“What do- Oh you mean the wire. I’m fine, but it wouldn’t hurt to get it off.”

She grabbed it by parts without barbs and pulled it off, seeing it barely pierced his vest. Out of the corner of her eye, something small blurred by. She quickly looked to see no creature, but instead a large hole in the short chain link. It looked as if a herd of bison plowed it down, and the area surrounding looked well-traveled.

“Uh, Adam?”

“Yeah?”

“You need to look at this.”

“What?”

“There is a giant hole in the fence.”

“Yeah, I saw it when climbing over, what about it.”

“Something just passed by it.”

He looked to Grace at this point, before taking his eyes back to the ATV, grabbing the second rifle and a couple tranq darts.

“Take this, just in case.”

“And what if we can’t put it to sleep before it kills us?”

He then grabbed two magazines of bullets and put them in his pocket, before giving Grace a magazine and the rifle. She nodded and they both turned towards the area previously obstructed by the fence. It was a long runway of asphalt, the stone fence leading all the way down before capping it at the end. It was worn and cracked, with the ruins of golf carts and cars knocked over or resting on it. On the left side, the one bordered by the giant stone fence, it had various openings, some with a giant rusted steel gate at its heels. The ones on the ground were covered in impressions of footprints and crushed underneath the weight of the dinosaurs stampeding over them.

The duo picked a gate and entered, walking past the dented slab of metal and old doors that only people could walk through, and came into a paddock. Its walls were enormous, almost claustrophobic, and also lined with barbed wire. The paddock was mostly grass, save for a decently sized forest in the right corner and a small wetland covering the back. To the left corner, there was a large trough with steel rods, like one for cattle but larger and more fortified. Right behind the basin is a tube, looking barely large enough to fit a human. Adam looked at it, then looked to Grace.

“No. Nope. Absolutely not, we’re not climbing up that,” denied Grace.

“I was going to suggest we use that broken door,” he replied.

Grace looked past him to see a half-open door like the ones on the building’s wall, but smaller.

“Oh, great!”

They walked inside and were immediately taken to the smell of mold and must. Inside was a vast puzzle of corrals, holding areas, loading areas, and all divided by a large wall at what seemed like the half-way mark. The fences indoors were like one for elephants, thick circular bars of steel, each the edge of corridors for various species unknown to the duo. Some fences, however, were walls of stone and lined with metal.

“For smaller species?” thought Grace, questioning.

“What’re we here for again?” asked Adam.

“Uh, shelter? I vote we just get enough supplies to make a shelter, find out what this place is, and then leave.”

Grace walked ahead of Adam, through the gap and towards the divider wall, followed by him. They stopped when a stick from outside snapped loudly, sounding more like it was a log that was broken. A bellow followed.

They both took out their rifles and aimed towards the door outside, as a shadow and a grumbling bellow approached.