Make it Through the Chaos

Chapter 1-Bleeding Out

Chapter 1- Bleeding Out

You would think being on an island full of dinosaurs would have been the most traumatic part of my life, and you know what, it still ranks pretty high, but life after the island, that was the kicker.

The first few years after we made it off of Nebular were pretty okay, I managed to adjust back to my old life; I wrote a book that told the story of the Nebular Seven, omitting certain parts of our journey. The group met up every so often, and we kept in constant contact with one another. Ben and I were still going strong, which surprised me at times, but I couldn't be happier. Things were quiet and good.

But then, things changed. I guess you can't have good things all the time, eventually the pendulum has to swing in the opposite direction, and it did.  If I think about it, the last truly good memory I have, was the summer I went to see Ben, on Mantha Corp's secret island right before everything changed. I felt at peace there and safe. When I flew back that summer I didn't realize I was going home to a completely different world; a world where dinosaurs had come to the mainland. 

At first, it was chaos, then, slowly it became the new normal, humanity as it always does, adapted, and found a way to carry on. But everyone handled it differently, Brooklynn became a full-fledged investigative journalist, Yaz started searching for ways to help people adapt to living in a world full of dinosaurs, Sammy bought a little ranch of her own, Ben ended up going to college, Kenji well he did a lot of things, he weirdly became a back to nature type, and Darius and I both ended up joining the Department of Prehistoric Wildlife. For me, joining the Department of Prehistoric Wildlife felt like the right thing to do, I had experience, I had faced dinosaurs daily and I knew how to survive it, and now I was using that knowledge to protect people and dinosaurs. But in the chaos of everything changing, I always felt like I was holding my breath waiting for the other shoe to drop, and then, one day, it did.

It was a normal day, sunny but not too hot, which I was thankful for as I sat in the back of my truck watching a carnivorous dinosaur through the scope of my dart gun as it stalked a herd of cattle gathered in the field below me. Over the past few years, I had gotten rather good at long-distance shooting, as well as close courter shooting, tracking, and trapping; ultmantly, all the skill that meant I was good at getting up close and personal with dinosaurs. This meant that I had gotten a reputation for being very good at hunting down those dinosaurs that were the most menacing, which is why I was in a truck in the middle of Wyoming's backcountry staring at a..... well I wasn't really sure what kind of dinosaur it was, that was always Darius's thing. 

I lay flat on my stomach, lining up my sights, waiting for just the right moment, but suddenly a sharp ringing startled me, pulling me out of my fixated state. It was my phone. I look down with a sigh, before sitting up, putting my rifle to the side, and answering the phone. 

"Hello!" I hissed as I hopped out of the truck bed. There was silence for a moment, giving me enough time to climb back into the cab of my truck, running my hand through my hair in annoyance. 

"L-Lilly," Darius's voice on the other end stuttered, his voice sounded horse as if he had been crying, and I immediately knew something was wrong. 

"Darius, what's wrong?" I asked feeling panic building inside my chest. 

" It's" he began and then paused, "Lilly, it's Brooklynn, she" he paused again and I felt like I couldn't breathe, I knew the words that were coming next. "She's dead Lilly. It was Allosaurus. DPW got the call, but when I got there, she was already gone" Darius explained.

It felt as though all the air had been shoved out of my lungs. After everything, the island, all those dinosaurs, we survived all that, she survived all that, and now, she was just, gone. I had just talked to her. She had asked me to help with her investigation since I had just left the DPW, and I had agreed. We were supposed to meet at Sammy's place in a week, and now she was just gone. I sat there for what felt like forever, trying to make myself breathe, all I felt was anger.