Rabbit
Chapter One

Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Summary: The crew of a small interplanetary research vessel encounter something new.
Notes:

There were worse places to be.

The plains seemed to go on forever, a sweeping golden sea of rippling grass, stretching from horizon to horizon, broken only by wandering silver threads of water, and one great trench through which wandered a deep river. A few ancient willows stood sentry near the river, lazily nodding at their posts beneath a sky of clearest blue dotted with little white clouds. Beside the river was a small house of sorts, greatly out of place with the surroundings, painted a stark white, trimmed in black and gold, gleaming wetly in the sun. It was, in fact, not a house at all. It was a research vessel, nesting contentedly on the ground after its eight month journey from Earth to this beautiful new world of strange plants and animals. Within its safe confines lived a crew of eight people, who would dwell on this new planet for five years.

Henrik already knew he was not going back. He had been on this planet three years now, and he had no intention of leaving. He did not miss Earth in the least. He did not miss the smell, the pollution, the constant bickering about whether or not global warming was real as the ice caps melted and the polar bears died. He did not miss watching a planet in agony die a slow death at the hands of the moronic cockroaches infesting it, and anyone who wanted him to return was just shit out of luck. When his time here ended he would simply opt to stay for the next five years. Henrik Nielssen was going nowhere. Besides, why should he? He could get all his favourite TV shows in the ship’s rec room, he could get coffee in the kitchen, he could even call and email the few friends he had on Earth. Everything he liked about his home planet he could access here, and all he had to do was wear his military uniform and, with fellow soldier Geoff Perkins, successfully guard the six researchers from harm. This was hardly a Herculean task on a planet where so far the scariest thing they had seen was a type of enormous, fuzzy, butt-ugly moth that the local birds avoided like the plague because it smelled of bleach-soaked death.

Henrik stood before the ship, watching the sun creep towards the horizon, listening to the sounds of nature around him change from the daylight twitter and trill of birds and insects to the clack and chatter of strange little nocturnal animals. He stepped aside as small elderly beast wheezed and complained past him, heading to the ship. It looked exactly like a grizzly… if grizzlies were nine inches high at the shoulder.

“Hello Ben,” he said to the creature.

Ben ignored Henrik in favour of finding his “den”, which happened to be a small locked cupboard that used to store some of the medical supplies. It now housed a cranky and disrespectful little bear-like animal that the researchers had dubbed a pocket bear. They did not know much about them yet, but they did know that once one of the creatures made up its mind, nothing changed it. That was why the medical supplies were stored in a different cupboard now.

“Hey! Henrik!”

Henrik slowly turned his head to look at the man calling his name. It was Geoff.

“Is that anyway to address a superior officer?” asked Henrik.

“You’re right. Terribly sorry Major Puffy-Fluffy-Bunnykins.”

“Much better.”

Geoff walked up to Henrik, a lit cigarette in his mouth. Henrik raised an eyebrow.

“I thought you were quitting.”

“I’m working on it,” said Geoff. “Had something kinda creepy happen.”

“Creepy?” said Henrik. “Like how creepy?”

“Well I was helping our intrepid palaeontologist with those bones she found last week when something in the grass giggled at me.”

Henrik looked at him in confusion. “Giggled? Like what kind of giggle? Like tee hee hee?”

“No it wasn’t a little kid. It wasn’t human at all. It was like… like… you know the noises hyenas make? They call them laughing hyenas because of that noise they make. It was like that, only it must have been a hyena weighing five hundred pounds. And that’s not all. You know those little grass antelope? I found a dead one.”

“Geoff those little grass antelope are dumber than dirt, I’ve seen Chloe catch them. And she’s three.”

“Yeah well when Chloe catches them she just hugs them and makes them eat animal crackers. She doesn’t shatter every bone in their bodies and… and you know what? Gather everyone up in the common room. I’ll show you what I found.”

Henrik shrugged. “Okay.”

He walked into the vessel and pressed a button on the ship’s intercom, leaning close to the device and speaking in his best ‘sexy pilot’ voice.

“Good evening ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Our cruising speed is zero, our altitude is ground level. If you look to your left, you will see grass. In the meantime Lieutenant Geoff Perkins has asked us to gather in the common room for a game of show and tell. Please put your trays in the upright position, and Miss Nikki it may be advisable that you leave your three-year-old daughter in the play room, I don’t think she’s going to want to se this.”

Henrik left the intercom and walked up one flight of stairs to the common room to meet with the other six members of the expedition. Seven if one counted Chloe, but she was not an official member of the crew. She was an unexpected contingency that her mother Nikki had not realized she was carrying until three months into the voyage. Nikki was waiting for Henrik in the room, Chloe in her arms.

“What’s going on?” asked Nikki.

“Geoff found something kinda creepy,” said Henrik. “He thinks we should be made aware of it. Well hello Miss Chloe, what have you got there?”

Chloe held up the tiny pale gold baby antelope. “Kitty!”

“It was wandering around crying,” said Nikki.

“Well that’s odd,” said Henrik. “Baby grass antelope don’t normally make noise.”

“Well this one was crying her heart out,” said Nikki. “I offered her a bottle and she sucked it dry. I think something got her mother.”

“Like that takes a lot of effort. Why would evolution make something this dumb?”

“They’re not dumb, they’re just… not programmed to run away from people yet. They react pretty quickly when they see Ben stomping around.”

A tall thin form wandered into the common room, yawning. “This better be good, I was asleep.”

“Hello Eddie,” said Henrik. “Where are the other three musketeers?”

Eddie sat down heavily in a chair. “Asleep, probably. You know those tasty edible mushrooms we found? They have side-effects. Namely they’ll put you to sleep in fifteen minutes and you don’t wake up again for a day and a half.”

“Well when Simon, Jollie and Rob awake from their enchanted slumber, make sure you fill them in on what happened, okay?”

Eddie nodded, yawning widely.

“Jolle is awake,” said a short woman with a mass of unkempt black hair, wandering zombie-like into the room. Following Jollie was Gina, their resident palaeontologist.

“We’re alive!” said Gina.

“Speak for yourself,” said Eddie.

“I’ll put Chloe with Simon and come right back,” said Nikki.

“So has Simon decided to take the job of Daddy?” asked Henrik.

“Well I’m not going to try to track down the pilot I had the drunken one-night stand with before take-off,” lilted Nikki. “Besides, Simon wants the job. And I like him.”

“Just hurry back.”

Nikki went to put her child with her future husband, then returned to the common room just as Geoff arrived, holding a box that they used for collection specimens.

“Ladies and germs,” he said, “we have a large predator in the area.”

“How can you tell?” asked Eddie. “So far the biggest predators we’ve seen are those little pocket bears, and they don’t bother us.”

“What makes you think we have a big predator?” asked Gina.

Geoff reached into the box and pulled out the remains of a female antelope, likely the mother to the little one Nikki had found. He set the small animal down on the floor, then stepped back.

“A pocket bear didn’t do that.”

Gina walked over to the carcass, peering at it. “He’s right. A pocket bear would have left ragged tears and claw marks. And it wouldn’t have broken the bones like this. Whatever ate this antelope smashed through bones and all and just swallowed it down. That takes a big powerful animal.”

“And I heard it,” said Geoff. “It was making… freakish noises. Like a hyena, but… I can’t describe it. Like a hyena but a hell of a lot bigger. In fact that was what caught my attention – that noise.”

“What happened?” asked Gina.

“I heard this freaky giggling noise, and… I went to look. And when I got there I found the antelope in pieces and whatever made the noise was gone.”

Gina held her hand up to Henrik, who offered her his bowie knife. She took the huge blade and used it to carefully remove a vertebra from the spine of the antelope, holding it up.

“Guys this bone is chopped cleanly in two, as if by gigantic scissors. Look at the markings. You can actually see where the upper and lower blades met.”

“You think maybe humans did this?” asked Geoff.

“Well I wouldn’t rule it out,” said Gina, “but if it was done by a human then he must have been using one hell of a set of garden shears. And we haven’t seen any sign of human habitation since we’ve been here. Either way I say we keep more of an eye out. We’ve had it pretty cushy here. If a large predator has moved into the area then chances are it’s not going to differentiate between us and prey.”

“I thought you found something humanoid out in the grass,” said Eddie.

“Well it seems humanoid,” said Gina. “But the bones are around fifteen hundred years old. Chances are it’s an extinct species. I’m going to go out tomorrow and see if I can locate the head. Geoff can you bring this little guy down to the lab? I want to have a good look at it, see if I can get some idea of who the killer is.”

* * * *

Days passed. There may have been a large predator prowling the area, but they saw very little of it, although they were occasionally treated to eerie midnight serenades as the creature called out in the darkness. The only other sign of its presence was when Nikki found one of the massive auroch-like bovines wandering the area with an enormous wound on its shoulder. That was three days after Geoff found the antelope. Nikki shot the creature, sending the section with the injury to Gina before carving the rest of the beast into steaks to bolster the team’s food supplies. Gina said she estimated the wound to be six days old, but she would know more after a close examination.

Five days after the auroch was shot, Henrik was reclining on the beat-up couch in the common room, playing a sorely-outdated but still amusing video game, when their chief researcher blew in. The first thing Gina did was gleefully up-end a cardboard box of bones onto the pool table, heedless of the game in play. Geoff and Nikki sighed resignedly, setting their pool cues aside as Gina began sorting the bones.

“Wanna see something cool?” she asked with way too much enthusiasm.

“Sure why the hell not,” said Henrik. “What is it? And why is it on the pool table?”

“Because if I waited for you guys to come into the lab I would die of loneliness.”

He rose from the couch and walked over to the table, watching as Gina arranged the bones.

“Is this the thing you found a couple weeks ago?” he asked.

She nodded. “Yes, and I can’t wait to show it to you. First off, what do you notice about it?”

“It’s human.”

She shook her head, grinning widely, clearly very excited. “It’s not human. Not even close. I don’t know what this baby is but if it’s human then I’m a ring-tailed lemur. My guess is it’s a case of parallel evolution.”

“What’s that?” asked Geoff as he put the pool balls away.

“It’s when two things look the same but are in no way related. Like modern dolphins and prehistoric ichthyosaurs. If you saw them together you would assume they’re related because they look so much alike but the truth is they have nothing in common other than body shape and possibly some eating habits. No, ladies and gentlemen, this is not human.”

Henrik grinned. “Gina you are just way too excited. So… how do you know it’s not human? It’s got two feet, two hands, one… head…” He looked around. “Where’s the head?”

“I’m saving it for last,” said Gina.

“She’s gonna do Hamlet with it,” said Geoff.

Oh har har,” said Gina. She laid three pieces of bone on the table, then picked up a femur. “Let’s start with the long bones. They are eleven percent longer than those of a human of comparable size. I checked. And the bones have these strange little strut-like growths reinforcing them, probably to ensure the strength of the bone. The longer the bone, the more easily it breaks. Now! Onto the pelvis.” She arranged the three large bones she had put down moments ago.

“It’s broken,” said Nikki.

“It’s not,” said Gina. “I’ve been studying it, and I’ve learned that the pelvis in this creature is held together with tendons. Look, you can see here… and here… those little holes are where the tendons connect. The pelvis is apparently designed to expand and contract, though I can’t for the life of me figure out why.”

“Childbirth?” asked Geoff.

Gina and Nikki exchanged glances. “I don’t know about you, but any baby that requires an expandable pelvis to escape the womb is not one I would want to bear,” said Gina. “And in this case it would be unnecessary because the indications are that this is a male pelvis. However we do have to keep in mind that this is not a human being. Now… look at the rib cage. Notice anything?”

Nikki, Geoff and Henrik gazed at the rib cage in silent awe. “It’s like a breast plate,” said Geoff, running his hands over the broad ribs that were nearly fused into a single shield of bone.

“It’s built to take a hell of an impact, too,” said Gina. “Everything about this creature indicates an insane amount of power. It has bones reinforcing bone, and then… these strange little tendons keeping everything secured, but allowing all these enormous plates of bone to shift and give, making it almost impossible for something to break. The fellow is not only designed to be fast, but he can take a hell of a hit.”

“All right,” said Geoff, “this is starting to sound too much like the opening scene in a horror movie. So I have to ask – would a bullet stop this thing?”

Gina nodded. “I’m… reasonably certain it would. But not if he got to you before you got to your rifle.”

“Well that’s comforting,” said Henrik as Nikki picked up a femur to examine. Gina walked over to the cardboard box, reaching into it to take hold of something, but not yet pulling it out to show them. She gazed at her three companions.

“People, this is one big bad mother. Alive and upright, this bad boy would be well over eight feet tall, and all whipcord muscle and sinew. He’s built for speed, and he looks like a lightweight, but with all the structural reinforcements he could probably go head to head with a rhino and walk away if not win. And… he’s a carnivore.”

“How do you know that?” asked Henrik.

Gina pulled out the skull, which she had carefully assembled using flexible tubing to simulate jaw tendons. It was mounted on a stand, and she set the whole affair on the pool table before stepping back.

“Here you see the weapons this creature fights with. Where we would have three upper and three lower molars, he has a single perfect blade, two on the top, two on the bottom, each over two inches high at the peak, sloping downwards towards the back of the jaw, and fitting snugly into slots in the upper and lower mandible. You will notice the nifty little backwards-facing hook at the front of each blade. They are, in effect, surgical implements, they work much the same way a pair of rib cutters would, only far more efficiently. You will also notice the hinge on the jaw, and how it far more closely resembles that of a large constrictor than that of a human. The reason for this is simple.”

She took hold of the lower jaw on the model and began drawing it down.

“Now see how once the mouth opens past a certain point, all these tendons suddenly engage, and the jaw dislocates. The purpose of these tendons is simplicity itself – to ensure the jaw snaps back into place with a mind-boggling amount of force. Geoff can you pass me that remaining bone in the box?”

Geoff picked up a large bone. It was clearly quite fresh and not part of the skeleton.

“This one?”

Gina nodded. “That’s it. Now we all remember the auroch Nikki shot five days ago. The bone that Geoff is holding used to be the lower left foreleg of that auroch. Geoff, can you please put that bone lengthways in our predator’s mouth?”

Geoff did, carefully fitting the bone into place. Then Gina released the lower jaw. It shot upwards, slamming into place with an explosive noise, shearing the bone cleanly into pieces with surgical precision. Gina picked up one of the pieces.

“People, this predator has evolved to prey on this bovine.”

“How do you know?” asked Henrik.

Gina drew out of her pocket a large flat piece of bone. “This is a part of the shoulder blade of the same auroch – a bovine weighing fifteen hundred pounds. What do you see?”

The three stared at the bone, Nikki drawing a soft gasp of horror.

“Blade marks. On the shoulder….” she said.

“Very good,” said Gina softly. “That’s exactly what those cuts in the bone are. Blade marks. Now look at this.”

She took the bone and fit it between the cutting blades of the creature’s teeth. Cuts and teeth matched perfectly.

“Ladies and gentlemen, a living example of my fifteen-hundred-year old skeleton is prowling this area.”

For a long time, everyone was silent. Then Henrik cleared his throat.

“Well where did he come from? Why is he here?”

“My guess is he’s following the auroch,” said Gina. “The auroch never came down this far south before because they like the cooler climes up north. But then this summer the glacier did not retreat as far as it usually does, so it was too cold for the grass to grow, so they came down here to graze, bringing their predators with them. Chances are that’s how our skeleton got here, a similar event hundreds of years ago. This is a hell of an animal we have on our hands, people. He eats three-quarter-ton cows for breakfast.”

“I guess we better be careful,” said Nikki.

“I’ll tell the others,” said Henrik. “From now on nobody strays away from the ship on their own, either Geoff or I must be with them, at least until the auroch go back north and this bad boy goes with them.”

* * * *

Henrik stepped out of the research vessel they called home and stretched, enjoying the feel of the sun on his face. Smiling, he walked down to the small enclosed yard where their most unexpected expedition member was playing with her toys and pet antelope under the watchful eye of her mother. Henrik bent down and picked the child up.

“Well hello Captain Chloe, how are you today?”

“I farted!”

“Well I’m very glad to know that, it’s important for the crew to hear these things.”

Nikki walked over and claimed her daughter. “And what have you got planned for today?”

“Oh the usual, walk around and make sure no giant cows are coming to trample us and their bone-slicing predators are coming to eat the remains.”

Nikki sighed. “What I wouldn’t give for an abandoned village or an arrowhead. Something. If I had known there would be nothing for me to do here I would have stayed home. Of course if I had known I was pregnant when we left Earth I would have stayed home anyway.”

“Well you have another two years before your shift is over and you can go back to Earth, we might find something for you to… anthropologize.”

Nikki raised an eyebrow, grinning. “Anthropologize? Cute, Henrik. You just invented a new word.”

“Hey I wents to college, I are smarts. Well if anybody needs me I’ll be down at the river, fishing. I mean… patrolling the area.”

“Uh huh.” Nikki looked down at her small daughter. “Chloe do you want to come inside?”

“Nuh-uh. Anima cack-ers.”

Nikki rolled her eyes. “All right but tonight we eat all our dinner, okay?”

“Nuh-uh.” She pointed at Henrik. Nikki scowled at him.

“Henrik I shall get you back for warping my daughter with your grandmother’s Norwegian recipes.”

“Hey, pickled herring is good for her. It’ll put hair on her chest. Make her strong to row the longboats.”

“Just what every little girl aspires to be. A hairy Viking.”

Nikki put her daughter in the small gateless yard, constructed for the sole purpose of allowing a little girl to play outside without wandering away, and gave the child a box of animal crackers. Henrik walked to the river, making his way down the steep bank. In the summer months it was a shallow stream, but in the winter and early spring it was a deep powerful river, rising nearly six feet and filling the deep trench that it now trickled through. In the summer catching fish here was easy, as large fish became stuck in what were now essentially big puddles. As Henrik approached one of the bowls carved into the riverbed, he saw Geoff standing beside the deep basin, looking down at the fish.

“What’s up?” asked Henrik.

“I was thinking we should catch some of those little guys and let them go further down the stream, give them a better chance at survival.”

“You big softie.”

“Well we’re here eating the fish… may as well make sure we replaced the ones we took.”

“Geoff? You really are a weenie.”

“Aw come on, look at those worried little faces!”

Henrik looked down at the fish. They did not look worried, especially not when there were three dozen expectant fish-noses peeking out of the water, waiting for Geoff to toss them something to eat.

“Have you been feeding those fish?” asked Henrik.

“Maybe,” said Geoff.

“Geoff don’t feed the fish.”

“But they’re all stuck and starving.”

“Stuck, yes, starving, no. There is lots of fresh water flowing in constantly, they get lots of bugs and bits of plant to eat…”

“But they’re so cute…”

“Geoff don’t feed the fish. They have evolved to survive this. They will be fine.”

Geoff bent over to address his finny minions. “Henrik is a poopy-head, isn’t he? Yes he is! Fishies want some snackies?”

He reached for his pocket. The small pond began to boil with shiny sleek bodies. Henrik rolled his eyes.

“Geoff you are a very sad excuse for a soldier.”

“No I’m not. I’m raising an army.”

“Well that’s great, we’ll be in terrific shape if we ever have to invade Atlantis.”

Henrik wandered further down the river, looking for fish to catch that were not Geoff’s pets. He rounded a bend, and paused, confronted by a small cave that was not there the day before.

“Geoff! Get over here.”

Geoff left off feeding the fish and ran to see what Henrik was shouting about, pausing as he too saw the cave.

“Where did that come from?”

“No idea,” said Henrik. “C’mon, let’s look. But be careful. We don’t know what’s in there.

The two men cautiously approached the cave. Henrik noticed that the entrance was newly-dug; the clay and stone wall dug through by something large. He bent down to pick up a few bits of the clay.

“There’s blood.”

Geoff meanwhile had poked his head into the cave. “In here too. There’s a natural opening in the roof. Judging from the amount of blood I would say some large animal got injured, climbed in here to lick its wounds, then couldn’t get out again.”

“Strange that an animal would have sense enough to burrow through the thin wall to the river,” said Henrik.

“Animals are smart,” said Geoff. “People don’t give them enough credit.”

“Well let’s go up the bank and see what’s up there. C’mon.”

The two men climbed up the bank, now on the opposite side of the river from their ship, and surveyed the mess they found. The ground was churned up, the long grass was broken down and ripped out in clots, and there was a ghastly scattering of old blood splashed everywhere. Henrik picked up a clump of shaggy brown hair.

“Looks like whatever wounded our auroch lost its fight here. This was a hell of a battle, look at this.” Henrik picked up a strip of flesh. It was rotting and days old. “Does this look like it could maybe match the shoulder wound our auroch had?”

Geoff nodded. “Yeah could be. Hey maybe we should get back to the ship. Whatever dug its way out of that hole is gonna be sick and unhappy and we’ve got six people back at the ship who need to be warned.”

They made their way back to the ship, following the river bed to the narrow path that led up the embankment. The first thing they saw was Nikki, frozen in horror, her eyes enormous, her hands clamped over her mouth to stop herself from screaming. Henrik looked to the yard where Chloe was playing, and felt himself go cold.

It was lying in the yard, bleeding from the hip and thigh. The creature had to be over eight feet in height, humanoid, yet so clearly not human. The limbs were long, and it lay in a dog-like position to ease any strain on its damaged leg. The hair on its head was black, wiry and matted, and the eyes were an eerie greenish-yellow. It was little more than sinew and bone. Sitting directly before the creature was Chloe, and her box of animal crackers. She would eat one herself, then offer one to the creature beside her. Henrik watched as the jaws opened and delicately accepted the morsel, swallowing it whole.

Gina walked quietly up to stand between Henrik and Geoff. Henrik glanced at her, then looked back at the creature.

“How long has it been here?” he asked.

“Not long,” said Gina. “Ten minutes or so. I think it’s starving. He’d have to be pretty desperate to show up in broad daylight and mooch cookies off a toddler.”

“At least he’s just mooching,” said Geoff.

“He hasn’t given any indication of hurting her,” said Gina. “I’m assuming it’s male, though who knows, this is a new species. It has no body hair, as a male homo sapiens would. It may be female.”

“Doesn’t look female to me,” said Henrik. “Looks like someone crossed a werewolf with a cheetah. Look at the jaw line.”

“Off hand I’d say he’s got a face reminiscent of Aegyptopithecus, but more refined,” said Gina. “More evolved and like a modern human’s. This isn’t an animal. He’s got leather breeches, flat soled boots, even a knife in his belt, and a metal knife, not stone. That takes a certain level of social sophistication and civilization to accomplish. He has tattoos as well, see? It’s not real easy to see from here.”

“Oh-oh!” said Chloe. “Last cookie. You can have it.”

She offered the tidbit to the creature, which he delicately accepted with jaws that could cleave her skull like butter. He held it, seeming to realize she was out of treats. He extended his head towards her, offering the cookie back. Then, when the child failed to notice what it was doing, it uttered a freakish, hellish noise that caused Geoff to flinch visibly.

“That’s it! That’s the noise! That’s what I heard weeks ago! That fucking… giggling noise!”

Chloe accepted back her cookie, munching it while she played with her toys.

“It must be how they call their young to come eat,” said Gina.

“You mean that thing has babies?” said Geoff.

“He may have a family hidden somewhere. In which case we should get him inside before mama shows up. Or… in the event that is mama… we should definitely get him inside before daddy shows up. Her. Whatever.”

“Yeah I have a funny feeling that’s not gonna be easy,” said Henrik. He cleared his throat, and called “Chloe!”

The child looked up. So did the monster. Henrik swallowed and tried to keep himself restrained and his tone of voice light. “Chloe come on, Uncle Geoff is going to take you to look at the fishies.”

“Yay!” She got up and ran straight to Geoff, who scooped her up and backed away, carrying her down to the river, followed closely by Nikki. Henrik and Gina gazed at the creature. It gazed back with a cold, fixed stare.

“He does not look friendly,” said Gina.

“No he does not,” said Henrik. “You go get the tranquilizer gun.”

“We can’t sedate him, we don’t know how it will affect him!”

“Well we can’t leave him in Chloe’s play-yard!”

“Let’s approach him first. He didn’t hurt Chloe, he might not hurt us.”

“You first.”

Gina rolled her eyes. “Weenie.”

She stepped over the fence and slowly walked towards the creature, Henrik following after her.

“Hi big guy!” she said sweetly. “How are you? You look like you hurt yourself pretty badly, can I…?”

Gina stopped, and did Henrik. He watched in cold horror as the creature rolled his eyes back in his skull until only the whites were showing. He unslung the lower jaw, revealing the formidable cutting blades, then slammed his jaw shut, the blades striking and producing an explosive sound like rams colliding. It echoed across the plains like gunfire, vanishing into the distance.

“I believe that was a threat,” said Henrik. “Was that a threat?”

“Oh I would say that was a threat. Let’s back away slowly, shall we?”

“Yes backing away sounds like a good idea.”

They backed away, watching as the large being tried to get up, struggling valiantly before collapsing.

“That leg is broken,” said Henrik. “Gina we have to sedate him.”

“It would be a fabulous opportunity to study him,” she said. “Well… okay. We’ll try. Get the gun.”

Henrik did, returning within moments with the loaded tranquilizer gun. He pointed it at the creature, which watched him with wariness and curiosity. Clearly it had never seen a gun before. The gun was near-silent as it fired, the dart driving deep into its target. Henrik and Gina retreated, waiting for the drug to take effect.

Disclaimer:

All original fiction and the characters, places and situations with them are copyright Alyx Shaw, and may not be published, copied, distributed or archived without the author's prior written consent.

The characters, places and situations described in these stories are fictional unless otherwise stated in the story headings.

(C) 2008 Alyx Shaw