Welcome To Jurassic Hell

Ch. 63: Wake Me Up When we're NOT Hanging Upside Down, please!

Consciousness is slow to return.

I first hear Kenji's panicked voice, followed by a grunt that sends small vibrations though my body.

I gasp awake, instinctively going to stand up, only to find that I...

Wait, I'm hanging upside down?

"What the hell..."

Ben gasps awake next to me, and it's then I realize Sammy is also awake, and Kenji isn't in his seat anymore. Instead, he's fallen onto the front seats that have down turned into the floor of the chopper — this feels a little too familiar.

Suddenly, my body jerks forward as the helicopter slips through the tree, stopping again as it catches on another branch. I groan as it jostles my chest a bit, though it isn't as bad as it would've been if this had happened a few weeks ago. Kenji slips then, and Sammy barely managed to unlatch her seatbelt in time to catch him from falling through the front. I follow in carefully undoing my own, safely stepping onto one of the front seats.

"Where's the pilot?" I hear Sammy whisper. Sure enough, looking down at the cockpit, I see no pilot, no woman in sight.

Where did she go?

"Ah!"

I yelp at the cry. When I look to see where it came from, I see Ben's leg outstretched, trying to hook onto a nearby vine hanging close by. The strain of the reach wasn't what brought the sound from him though, and, seeing his hand holding his head, I gasp at the sight of blood leaking through his bandages.

"Oh my God, Ben-"

He groans, but otherwise ignores the pain and keeps going for the vine.

"I'm fine, just...just kinda sore."

"You're bleeding," Sammy whisper-cries.

"Yeah, well, I'll be a lot worse if we don't get out of here."

Finally done with the seatbelt, he undoes it so he can achieve more distance. I quietly send him words of caution as his foot gets closer to the green rope. We all hold our breaths as he gets closer to grabbing it, the tension even more thick with the sounds of blood dripping onto the seat below me. I ignore it for now, knowing what he'd said before was right. Once we were back on the ground we could worry about his injuries, but this was do or die.

We all gasp as Ben's foot hooks around the vine. This action jostles the copter again, and I nearly have a heart attack when it flinched further downward a few inches. Even through that, Ben manages to keep the thing on his ankle, and slowly lured it in until he can grab it. We all soon find ourselves holding onto it as we stare down at the jungle floor far below.

"Now all we have to do is-" Ben starts, but Kenji stops him.

"Don't say it."

"Jump," I finish for him.

The helicopter groans and moves more. The branches it hangs onto finally snap, and I know that's our queue to leap.

"Jump!" I scream. And that we do, ending in a fiery explosion, and us hanging a few feet off the ground, not dead.

"Yes! Yes!"

"Okay, now we just need to get down."

"And, uh, how exactly do we do that?"

{}{}{}{}

By climbing down, duh.

When Sammy finally hits the ground, it's like we're allowed to once again breathe. She jumps and clings to me with a happy cry.