The Grant Files: Stranded on Isla Sorna

Chapter 9

The two watched as a looming shape emerged from the fog --

A nightmarish vision stalking purposefully forward, a full grown Pteranodon, standing over seven feet high, walked upright on clawed feet, his thirty-foot wings folded bat-like at his sides. The creature saw the two teenagers and fixed on them with a demonic glare. Eric and Jami screamed in unison and dashed back down the teetering catwalk.

"Dad!" Eric called for his father.

"Jasmine!" Jami exclaimed, then a beat, "B-BILLY!"

The Pteranodon rose to its feet, spread its thirty-foot wings and flew directly at the two. At the other end of the catwalk, hearing Eric and Jami's screams, Paul charged onto the catwalk, searching in the fog. "Eric!" The man cried for his son.

"It won't hold!" Billy exclaimed, worried about Jami.

"Jami!" Jasmine cried fearfully, frantically searching for her locator and commlink in the darkness, "shit, shit, shit!"

Suddenly, Eric and Jami emerged from the fog, racing toward the other three, and then the Pteranodon swooped out of the fog, opened its giant rear claws, and snatched the terrified boy from the catwalk, leaving the terrified girl to stagger into the arms of her honorary sister. Paul Kirby watched in stunned, abject horror as the Pteranodon carried Eric directly overhead -- "ERIC!" The flying pterosaur struggled with the boy's weight. Paul watched helplessly as Eric was carried high across the canyon, he ran back along the catwalk in a desperate attempt to keep his son in sight.

Unable to follow the man, Jasmine held onto her honorary sister with arms wrapped around her torso underneath the backpack on her shoulders, keeping her close. Holding her locator in her hand, she realized that she could wait to contact her companion later, so she opted to wait for Amanda and Grant. Billy moved back up the platform to try to keep the pterosaur in view and with a new idea, he raced all the way back up the stairs to the observation room; he had a way to save Eric, he just needed to find someplace to jump. Jasmine heard his footsteps pounding away from her, "Brennan, where are you going?" The alien slayer demanded, aiming to go after him but upon hearing a whimper, she settled for a grumble.

When he reached the canyon wall, Paul turned a corner and ran along another enclosed catwalk leading deeper into the canyon. Grant and Amanda now came pounding down the catwalk trying to catch up with Paul. "Paul! Where is he? Can you see him?" Amanda shouted.

"I'm trying! That thing took him down this way!" Paul shouted in reply.

The Pteranodon carried Eric deeper into the canyon. The creature's wings beat steadily overhead, and the wind was fierce. Eric looked down and saw the river far below. The Pteranodon swooped over an isolated outcropping of rocks at the end of the canyon and dropped Eric into -- a large bowl of mud and branches the size of a satellite dish. Eric landed right on top of a pile of bones picked clean, mixed among them was one human skull. Before Eric had time to cry out, he looked up to find six Pteranodon hatchlings closing in on him with sharp-edged beaks. He picked up the human skull and whipped it to the hatchlings. They easily ducked it and kept coming.

While Amanda quickly moved to follow her husband, Grant was standing beside his daughter and honorary niece, a hand on his daughter's back but he looked up to see Billy leaning out over the edge of the observation room. "Billy?" The paleontologist suddenly realized what the young man was about to do and rushed forward.

"I CAN GET HIM!" Billy shouted back, an excited-terrified grin on his face.

Noticing what was going on from Jasmine's shoulder, Jami's head jerked up as she pulled away from her honorary sister, racing toward her father and the man she loved. This gave the alien slayer enough time to turn her locator on so her companion could find her exact location, and hopefully, help them off the island as well as find the device she had been using on the plane to message him the words 'locator on' before putting the device back in her pocket, leaving the locator in her hand. "NO!" Grant and Jami exclaimed, the latter reaching her father's side with Jasmine on her heels.