The sound of distant thunder brought me back from unconsciousness, I was feeling pretty dazed from the fall, But everything seemed to be ok. I got up and took a look around; I was unarmed (seeing as I had clumsily lost my previous weapon), but I was in luck: over to the right of the gate was a small box, containing another pistol, this time a Desert Eagle.

“How many of these guns are there on this island?” I asked myself as I checked the clip for ammunition. “Hmm, still full.”

I got up and stumbled forward. My legs ached a lot, no thanks to that fall, but I was fit enough to walk.

Ahead of me was the other side of the unfinished Monorail Track. I decided to follow it as it looked to be the only obvious way onward. I cautiously stepped around the corner, my pistol still drawn. A sudden noise held me where I stood.

To my awe, ahead of me was a broad spiked animal, feeding on a bush to the right. It didn’t really seem interested in me but I kept my pistol drawn, Just in case.

I continued on, following the Monorail Track. To the left there was another box, with a pistol in it – this time it was a revolver, a Smith and Wesson to be exact. I picked up the gun and carefully examined it, again it was fully loaded. As I stuffed it into my shorts I heard a rustling sound over to the right. A sharp glance yielded nothing but a large rock. I kept the desert eagle tightly clutched in my hands, and felt my nervous finger tense warily over the trigger. Slowly, I crept past the rock, aiming at it, as if something was there.

I was right. From behind the rock came the scaled, gnarled visage of a small Velociraptor. It looked up at me, and just stared with its glassy reptilic eyes fixed on mine. Long enough, obviously, to realise I was a threat.

It arched its back, then rose on its hind legs and started to make a loud honking noise. Not the kind of sound you would marry up with a super-efficient killing machine, I remember thinking. In the distance I heard another call.

“Its calling for backup!” my mind blared at me. In an instant, I took aim. In an instant, so did The Raptor. It crouched and pounced, with almost divine agility and speed — a god among killers. I fell under its weight, dropped the Eagle, and lay in the daze of a woman expecting to be mauled.

The Raptor arched its neck and opened its cavernous jaws above my face, ready to bite — its cruel crocodile-like grimmace etched with bloodlust.

Suddenly, as if answering some unspoken plea from my mind, a loud roar echoed through the trees, and the great spiked body I had seen before knocked the raptor away and came firmly down between us. Having come so close to a kill, however, the Raptor wasn’t going to back down. It dashed once more with its incredible speed, this time aiming for my barbed saviour. With one swift, clean motion, the bulky rugged shape swiped the Raptor with its massive tail. In the time it took to blink, my would-be killer lay in a broken heap at the foot of a tree, with only a few snapped branches and blood stains to show where impact had occured. Its macabre grin remained, chiseled and sparkling with the blood that had flowed into the furrows of its face.

With a stunning sense of anti-climax, my ‘friend’ lumbered back to its bush and resumed its feed. Finally I could see clearly its serrated tail, crowded with boney talons, being dragged heavily across the ground in its wake, like a plough digging furrows in a field. It was a Stegosaurus.

“Thanks” I muttered quietly to myself. It didn’t respond in any way (subconsciously, I was almost expecting it to reply ‘Don’t mention it’), so I got up and looked around. My first objective was to find that missing pistol, so I drew the Wesson I had previously picked up, and looked around. To my dismay, my original gun was nowhere to be seen. I would have to make do with the Wesson.

Depressed, cautious and aching like mad, I made my way towards a set of crates ahead.

“Looks like I’m going to have to use one of those crates to climb up and over that mound” I thought out aloud. I took aim and fired at one of the crates stacked high above me, it fell with a loud Bang.

Slowly, I pushed it up against the mound. As I did, something caught me in the corner of my eye. I turned and looked down, and to my surprise It was a large silver handgun. I tossed the small and seemingly useless Revolver aside, and stuffed the large hand gun in my shorts. With a quiet hop, I deftly mounted the crate and stumbled over the mound.

Ahead of me loomed a small shed. Hoping it had something useful inside, I hurried over, my heart racing with excitement, but unfortunately, all the shed contained was a shotgun — rusted over and useless.

“Don’t worry Anne,” I said consollingly to myself, “It would have been no use to me, what with this arm and all”. Somehow that just made things feel worse.

As I turned to exit the shed, my face met a by-now familiar, curved and toothy grin. I returned the grin, whipped up the pistol and fired…

To be continued…