Welcome To Jurassic Hell

Ch. 20: Seeing Red

The search goes on for another half hour, and I force myself to walk as stable as possible through it to keep from alerting the others of my pain. Yasmina is now at my side, and we've come to a silent agreement that we are now...friends? Something along those lines — point is, I'm not mad at her anymore.

I shouldn't have been in the first place.

The others, however...

I ignore the strange looks Sammy keeps giving me, for reasons unknown — but I don't give a shit, since she didn't get to be mad at me for what she'd also done — while Brooklyn continues her ridiculous video-thing instead of helping us. Kon's disappeared somewhere, and Brooklyn and Sammy are sitting at one of the only upright Jurassic World tables. Doing nothing.

"I still can't find anything..." Darius mutters. He approaches us with heavy shoulders and tired eyes, and it breaks my heart how hard he's been working, while everyone's just paying him back with slacking off.

"Us, either." Yaz informs.

Not a few moments later, Kon suddenly appears riding around the corner on his electric scooter; sunglasses over his eyes, and a paper Jurassic World souvenir bag in each hand.

"Anybody order frozen pizza from the world's dopest delivery boy?"

I cringe at the robotic voice coming through the Dino-Walkie-talkie device the group had found a while ago. But it goes away quickly and my mouth fills with thick saliva at the sound of frozen pizza. Of food.

"Food? Finally!"

Kon stops and tosses the bags full of boxed pizzas onto one of the tables, and we all take a seat.

Unfortunately for us...the pizza was completely inedible. They're frozen to a rock, so much so that it makes an awful clashing sound when thumped against the tables.

We decide to set the food out in the sun to see if it'd thaw, and lay around for a while. Kon sits with his chair tilted back, sunglasses on, and feet on the table; Darius reads patiently through the park's information guide, licking his finger and turning a page every so often; Yasmina has her foot on our table, while I lay my sore head in my folded arms on the wooden surface; and Brooklyn and Sammy impatiently sit at their own table, looking about ready to eat the damn Mosasaurus at this point.

After we sit around for who-knows-how-much longer, Sammy finally speaks up.

"Okay, is the pizza thawed now?"

"I'll check." Kon mutters. He walks over the pile of boxes, and reaches out to grab one only to be stopped by a small group of Compy's, who chirp and growl at him and make him fall backward. They guard the pizza in a possessive form that angers me to the gut — they can get their own damn food from just about anywhere, while we're food less! They can go find something else!

Suddenly, the small group grows bigger as dozens of Compy's suddenly start to pop out of nowhere. They jump off the umbrellas, dart under our chairs, hiss at us from our tables; and we all scream and jump away in fright.

It gets to the point where they're practically readying to pounce on us, and for a moment, I'm actually scared. The one that glares me down is showing off his teeth to the point where I have to imagine what they'd do to my skin and my insides, and I try to back away only to receive a low growl from the beast.

Sammy tries to grab the pizza and throw it to get them away, but I can't think clearly enough to follow the others.

Because in a moment, I see red. So much red that clouds my vision, and leaves only a dull sense of everything around me. It causes me to glare back down at the little dinosaur, threatening it with the fire that currently burns in my eyes. It doesn't move, only growls louder, and that only makes the red darker and my senses fade further.

In a flash of a second, I have my hand on something — I faintly note it to be a sharp shard of wood that had come from one of the torn umbrellas — and I slash at the dinosaur with all I've got. It jumps backward and avoids the first blow, but it's not so lucky the second time when the end of the wood sliced just through the thing's neck. It squealed horrifically as a tiny drop of blood dripped from it's new wound, and skirted away before I could do anymore damage.

By the time all that anger had dived down, and I could feel myself calming, all the Compies had been chased away by the others, who hadn't noticed my momentary anger against the little thing. But I didn't regret it, I didn't regret if it bled to death because of my attack. Oh, hell no!

If anything, I wished I could do it to every damn dinosaur here!

Because of them, I-

"Blake? You're bleeding!"

Darius pointed at my hand, and I looked down to see that it was indeed filling with red liquid in the cup of my palm. There was a nice slice across it, and I winced.

But...that was all I did.

I didn't quench, didn't cry or scream at the non-existing pain. I didn't even vomit.

No, I just winced, shrugged, then tore a piece of fabric off my already shredded pants. I wrapped the piece around my hand and tied it tight so it put pressure on the wound, I then finally dropped the piece of wood that had caused the injury, and sat down in one of the chairs in exhaustion.

So much had happened in a matter of seconds, I couldn't process it.

"Um...Blake? Are you okay?"

I looked up at everyone's concerned looks, and shrugged.

"Just a cut, I've had worse." I say. Which was in fact true, though I really wouldn't like to get into that at the moment.

They all gave me a mix of horrified and confused looks, which then confused me. What were they so freaked out about? It's not like-

Oh. Wait...

"You...Blake, you didn't...did you-"

"So? What if I did? I'd rather kill than get killed."

"Yeah, but-"

I don't allow Darius to finish, turning around and heading back towards the Mosasaurus paddock.

Something inside me was different, I knew. I was changing, getting used to pain and anguish as the hours went by. I shouldn't be changing as quickly as I am, but it was happening.

I was talking more than I usually would, I was barely affected by a cut...I was lying about my pain. I wasn't acting like myself at all!

I stood at the hole in the paddock, warily of the distance from the road to the water, and stared ahead.

What was happening?