[Complete] [62,000] [Action/Thriller] Extinction Kingdom
Plot Synopsis;
Nathan Roberts is the chief Game Warden of “Extinction Kingdom” on Isla Tamaz Rex, a wildlife preserve with animals that the world has not seen in millions of years. While the island’s main focus is publicly on the animals, everyone who works at the parks knows that the island's guests/tourists have the true high priority. Nathan’s job is to keep the dinosaurs contained and happy while the guests stay safe. All the while, being the personal caretaker of a Kentrosaurus, Taipan, who was abandoned by the herd.
But Nathan is not alone in his work, he is joined by two of his best friends; Dr. Clara Harris–the island's Chief of Animal Welfare–who views all the dinosaurs as just any regular animal she has worked with over her career, and treats them all with gentleness and kindness, and Luis “Lou” Alvarez–the island’s chief mechanical expert–the man who keeps Extinction Kingdom operating and everything alive and contained, and is treats every situation with a joke or one-liner. Together, the three of them keep Extinction Kingdom running while dealing with the upper board members who view the island as just a regular zoo and not a place with a biomass of over 200 tons and more teeth than you can count.
But things can’t go smoothly forever, and some animals should maybe stay extinct. The park's new upcoming attraction, a Giganotosaurus named Rojo, has always shown signs of malicious behavior. And when Rojo escapes during a transport to his enclosure and disappears into the forest, the island quickly falls into chaos. But Rojo isn’t alone, with the island's pack of Achillobators–large dromaeosaurs–escaping and causing terror, the island's giant crocodile–a Deinosuchus–attacking, and a stampede unlike any seen by man.
It is up to Nathan, Lou, and Clara to guide the guests to safety while dealing with the dangers of 165 million years of evolution.
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Content Warnings Include; Graphic Violence, Death, Guns and Firearms
Looking for any and all kinds of feedback. This is my first novel, so I know it’ll be far from perfect.
Looking for opinions on the overall story, on the pacing, the characters and their interactions.
Would prefer feedback within a week or two, but I’m not on any hard schedule.
Please DM me if interested.
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Here are the first two chapters, for a sample of the prose;
Chapter 1: A Challenge
The morning sun was rising high into the sky as the safari bus made its way up the hill and through the forest. The reinforced bus, which on any other safari would be completely open top, had been modified with steel bars for the passengers’ protection from the animals. The driver, a young African man named Axel Bello, checked the tracker tablet on the dashboard to make sure he was approaching the herd from a good angle that also had easy escape in case they needed it.
As he approached the top of the hill, which would have a nice view overlooking the plateau the herd normally relaxed in in the morning, he looked back at the passengers on this tour. It was a mix of people from all over the world; Half a dozen Asians chatted in a language Axel didn’t understand, a group of college-aged guys from the U.K. who were trying to play it cool and tough, and two moms wrangling three kids between them.
As the bus crested the hill, Axel grabbed the microphone off the dashboard. “Alright folks, the herd will be just over this hill. Now remember, these animals can be very dangerous, so please make sure to be quiet and don’t use flash photography. And if an animal approaches, do not try to touch or feed them, they might see it as a threat.” Axel heard a few of the Asians assumingly translating what he said into the others language. As the bus crested the hill, the sunlight was at the perfect angle, and the lake that was revealed to the guests reflected the light in the most perfect way. “Ladies, Gentlemen, and all others; our herd of Triceratops & Pachyrhinosaurus,” Axel said with joy in his voice. Even after years of working at the park, these animals were still stunning to him. All the guests in the bus lurched up, taking pictures and chatting. Axel could see the kids pointing at them, even those college guys perked up and started getting giddy.
The Triceratops prorsus were the larger of the two animals, with the largest ones reaching twenty-six in length, standing almost eleven feet at the top of their frills, and weighing eight tons. Their bodies were covered in a mix of dark green or beige with stripes of royal blue and yellow. The males had larger frills, which showed a rather beautiful mix of orange and purple.
The Pachyrhinosaurus lakustai reached about eighteen feet in length, eight feet at the top of their frills, and weighed two-and-a-half tons. Even though they were smaller, they were stockier than the Trikes. Their bodies were mostly a light maroon red with light orange underbellies. On the center of the frills of the males were two large green spots. Instead of the large horns of the Trikes, they had wide, flattened nasal bosses and bony growths across their snouts like nature had overdone it with a chisel.
“Pachyrhinosaurus lived in modern-day northern Canada and Alaska about seventy to sixty-six million years ago, and Triceratops lived in modern-day Northern Plains of the U.S. sixty-eight to sixty-six million years ago,” Axel explained as the group of guests snapped pictures. “Despite this, the two most likely did not ever interact as it is not believed that their natural ranges overlapped with each other. However, the two species do not seem to mind living with each other here on Isla Tamaz Rex, even with the Packies out-numbering the Trikes two-to-one.” Axel stood out of the driver's seat and started listing off facts of the animals. “The horns and bosses of the Trikes and Packies have a solid bone core, which is what was found in the fossils, but are covered in several layers of keratin, the same material that a Rhino horn is made out of. If you look close enough, you might see the matriarch Triceratops named Dolly–she’s a bit larger than the rest of the herd and is recognizable due to her left horn being broken off. The horns and bosses of these animals were not only used to defend themselves from predators like tyrannosaurids but also for combat with other members of their species for things like territory and dominance.”
As he spoke, he tracked one of the older Pachyrhinosauruses males wading through the tall grass, its frill marked with scars. Off to the right, a group of juveniles bunched around a shallow area of the lake. A mother nudged one of them forward with her snout. Dolly, the Triceratops matriarch stretched up to the sky and shook her head, flinging water droplets off like a wet dog.
Through all the “oh”-ing and “aw!”-ing, one of the children near the back pointed out the car and said, “What’s that one doing?” Axel looked out toward where the kid was pointing. At first, he didn’t see it–then a younger male Pachyrhinosaurus stepped out from the trees. It was pacing in place, nostrils flaring, letting out sharp, huffing snorts as it fixed its gaze on the bus.
A challenge.
“Oh, goddamn it. Don’t you do it,” Axel whispered to himself. The Pachy scraped the ground with a hoof, then kicked back. “If everyone could please sit down and hold on for a moment,” he said, putting the bus in reverse. Some of the guests started to chatter, everyone now looking at the Pachy, and Axel could sense some getting nervous. “Everyone, please remain calm. This is normal behavior for younger dinos if we get too close. I’m just gonna back us up, and he should leave us alone.”
Axel lightly put his foot on the gas, and the safari bus started in reverse. The Pachyrhinosaurus maintained eye contact with the bus. He didn’t move, just watched what his adversary would do next. Axel thought they were in the clear when he heard a very loud metallic, peeling screech. Axel turned for a moment to see what it was—he had accidentally backed the safari bus against one of the trees.
Axel hurriedly turned back to the Pachy, who reared up slightly on his hind legs and charged the vehicle. Axel’s stomach dropped. He slammed on the gas, but it was too late. The Pachy put his head down and slammed into the front left corner of the bus. There was a wave of screams from the guests. One of the college guys shouted, “What the hell did he do that for?!”
“Everyone, hold on please!” Axel shifted the gear of the bus and gunned it in reverse. The Pachy followed, not letting up. He bumped against the side of the bus again, but it wasn’t a very hard hit. Axel could hear the kids screaming and one of the moms trying to comfort them.
Axel managed to back into a large enough area and swung the bus around, dodging another ram from the Pachy. Axel looked over at him and saw him lining up against the bus and rear up again. “Everyone, please get to the left side of the vehicle!” he shouted, and went for the .454 Casull under his seat in the park's Emergency Box. Probably wouldn’t kill the Pachyrhinosaurus, but might scare him off.
Right as the Pachy was about the charge, Axel heard a loud engine roaring and a horn blaring. The Pachy dropped down and stood his ground as a red topless Jeep pulled in between him and the safari bus. Axel could see the man in the Jeep wearing a bush hat. He watched as the guy kept his eyes on the Pachyrhinosaurus while reaching over to the shotgun seat and grabbing a device from it.
He raised it and aimed at the Pachy before the device let out a low-frequency sound that made Axel cover his ears. He could hear screams from the passengers on the bus, but saw the Pachy back up for a few seconds and eventually run back into the forest towards his herd. The man sat in his Jeep for a few seconds after the Pachy left and then turned back to the bus.
He got out of his Jeep, leaving the sonic emitter but grabbing a large rifle from behind his seat, and approached the bus. Axel now got a better look at the man, with a rather solid frame, who he could now see was wearing brown pants, a woodland camo BDU top with the sleeves rolled up, and a bush hat on his head. He recognized him immediately; he should have when he pulled up. “Hello, Mr. Roberts. Thank you for that.”
Mr. Roberts approached the bus without saying a word, Axel unlocked the door, and Mr. Roberts boarded. He turned to the passengers, “Is anyone hurt?” he said in a voice which was slightly higher-pitched than you would expect looking at him. The passengers shouted, the worst Axel heard was one of the college kids shouted “my neck hurts.”
Mr. Roberts turned back toward Axel. “You handled that well, Axel. Just head straight back to base. I’ll radio ahead so medical staff can check on the guests.” He turned to the crowd. “I apologize for the scare, folks. Normally, these situations don’t escalate like that. Looks like he thought this bus was another bull challenging him. But hey, at least you’ve got one hell of a story to tell.” He offered a small smirk. “We’ll get you back to base and make sure everyone’s okay.”
As he turned to leave, one of the Asian tourists called out, “Does this happen often?” Mr. Roberts paused for a beat before glancing back, “You can bring ‘em back, but you can’t change what they are.” Without another word, he hopped off the safari bus and headed back to his Jeep.
Chapter 2: Welcome To Extinction Kingdom
Nathan Roberts drove his topless red Jeep Wrangler eastward along one of Isla Tamaz Rex’s many worker roads. The warm Atlantic wind blew past his face, even through all the forest of the island. Out here–one hundred and eighty miles west of the Moroccan coast–Isla Tamaz Rex was its own little kingdom. Thirty-two square miles of thick forest and jungle, inland valleys, and too many things with teeth.
He didn’t mind the climate on Tamaz Rex. The heat didn’t bake you alive like the Serengeti did. The humidity was annoying, sure, but the animals thrived in it. Plenty of shade, cool water, and dense forest to regulate their temperature. Besides the occasional rainfall or sand blown over from the Sahara, it was a perfect paradise, as long as you didn’t get too close to its inhabitants.
Nathan Roberts was forty-four years old, six-foot exactly with a stocky frame. He had grown up outside Omaha, Nebraska, and worked on his family's small ranch since he could walk. But where he really loved to be was the Omaha Zoo. He loved the animals–but more than that, he loved knowing them; how they moved, how they thought. By his mid twenties, with a Bachelor’s in Biology, that same curiosity had worn thin on his family. A few hard words got said–nothing dramatic, just enough to make it feel permanent. Soon after, he packed a duffel, bought a one-way ticket to Tanzania, and didn’t come home.
The nature reserve in Tanzania seemed eager to have a young, hard working kid to do all the things nobody else wanted, and Nathan was eager to prove himself. And he learned fast too, he was always good at reading the animals and figuring out what they wanted. He worked in parks and preserves in Kenya, Zimbabwe, Botswana, even the Congo for a stint. He stopped counting years and started counting migrations. Left behind roads, found tracks.
Some days, he still missed Africa. The space. The freedom. Out there, a man could drive for hours and not see another soul. Here, he was never truly alone. Not with the park’s eyes on him. Not with the feeling of something always watching from the trees.
Nathan drove his Jeep into the parking lot of the Talon Trail, the home of the park’s Achillobator giganticus. In the lot was a tour bus that was used for guests, with the doors open.
His brown rugged trooper boots hit the pavement, one of the few paved places out in the park. His khaki cargo pants–which had seen better days as evidenced by a line of stitching below the right knee–were tucked into his boots. He wore a slightly sun-faded woodland BDU top, unbuttoned and sleeves rolled, over a short-sleeve chambray shirt. A green waxed-canvas bush hat shaded his face, which was a gift from his cousin–the only family member he still talked to.
He reached into the backset of his Jeep and pulled out his .416 Rigby bolt-action rifle, and slung it over his shoulder. He looked at the walls of Talon Trail–thirty-foot-tall reinforced concrete with a walkway along the top for staff. Near this area were spaces of steel electric fences instead. But between those–the raptors and the guest–were forty feet of moats, twenty feet on both sides, to keep the animals far away from those fences and walls. The moats weren’t part of the original design for Talon Trail, but after the Achillobators kept attacking the electric fences and trying to scale the walls, it was eventually added. For both guests safety and the animals' own.
Nathan walked into the guest viewing station for the raptor enclosure. Near the door read;
Talon Trail
Witness the brain and brawn of the Achillobators
The exterior of the viewing building of Talon Trail was a rather beautifully made Moorish structure that stood about three stories tall, but once he opened the doors, the inside was quite different. It was a much more modern, clean interior–tiled floors, stainless steel beams–with TV screens showing pictures of each of the Achillobators along with their names and a fact or two about them. Towards the interior, where most of the guests were, was a large viewing window that overlooked the heart of Talon Trail; a broad, diamond-shaped plain, about the size of a major league ballfield–carved open for feeding displays. Talon Trail as a whole was roughly a square mile in area, most of it was covered in forest and ferns.
But the part of Talon Trail that the guests loved the most was the viewing tunnels. Three separate tunnels ran across the moat and were just below ground level into part of the open field. Like an underwater tunnel in an aquarium, their rounded tops gleaming with the distortion of layered acrylic and polycarbonate. Several inches of engineered transparency separated tourists from the predators, and all along those tunnels were security measures in case any of the Achillobators got too bold. Nathan didn’t like to go into the tunnels. Sure, he helped design them, and he trusted the parks engineers, but the tunnels made him feel too closed in. Even with the layers separating them, he felt like the Achillobators could still trap him–but maybe that was the point; to show the guests how dangerous these animals could be.
Nathan took a left and walked up the staff staircase to the enclosures control room. As he entered, one of the workers at a control panel said to another, “I think the Greeks are ready for their meal.” Another older worker stopped sipping their coffee and pointed at the younger worker, “No. You don’t get to call them that until you’ve worked on this island for two years.”
Nathan didn’t pay too much attention to the workers as he went through another security door and up another set of stairs to the security viewing level of the building. On top of the control room was a small observation deck that was mostly used by security as it gave a great view of the open plain the Achillobators fed in. The field was surrounded on two sides by forest and vegetation and the other two by the moat, but there were trails in the brush that the Achillobators liked to use. There was no sign of the Achillobators yet, but there soon would be. He could hear the elevators rising even from three stories up. Down in the center of the field came an ox carcass that were propped up on metal stilts, having their heads moved around by mechanical arms below them. Out of a speaker there were ox sounds playing. There was no movement in the enclosure for a second, and Nathan could see guests in the tunnels waiting for the Achillobators to appear.
Nathan saw the first bit of movement off to his left, a quick flash of yellow. Then another. After that one stopped, there was movement in another area, then again, and again. The Achillobators always moved one by one. If they were all moving together, then there was usually something wrong.
He’d seen lions do something similar in the Serengeti–flanking, one at a time, until the prey was boxed in. The raptors were just as patient. Just as efficient. And just as deadly. They knew where their prey was, and they were getting ready.
A large raptor, covered in yellow feathers with black spots–with the pattern of a leopard–walked out into the clearing in front of the ox. The animal was sixteen-feet long and stood at around five-feet tall at their head. They didn’t attack it, and stayed on the very edge of the clearing, looking at the ox. The machine hand moved the head to follow the raptor. Nathan saw the guests in the tunnels watching in anticipation, the guide being silent.
After a moment, came a loud, high-pitched shriek from one of the raptors, and then at once he watched as four large Achillobators lunge into the clearing and jump onto the oxen carcass. They toppled it off its stilts as the speaker played distress sounds. The lead male Achillobator, Odysseus–Nathan could tell due to his size, stature, and the amount of scars on his face–used his large toe claw to slice through the neck. The speaker went quiet.
For the next minute or so, the raptors tore into their “kill.” Despite how chaotic their feeding looked, he could see the synergy of the animals. No one stayed for too long, a quick jump in and ripped off their chunk of flesh before retreating and letting another animal in, and waiting for another chance to bite. Two of the juvenile Achillobators entered, half the size of the adults, they weren’t given as many chances to feed in the carnage, but they took their share.
Down in the tunnels, tourists watched like they were ancient Romans watching a gladiator fight. Nathan never really understood why the people were so eager to see the dinosaurs tear something limb-from-limb. It didn’t gross him out, he’d seen this all before; Hyenas on the Serengeti and Painted dogs in Botswana. Individually impressive, together unstoppable. It was just how eager the guests were that got to him. Maybe they had just never seen a human be the victim to an animal feeding frenzy like that… he had.
The alpha female–named Helen–walked out to join the feeding. She made a quick shrill and the others parted for her. She was slightly larger than the other adults, at eighteen-feet long and six-feet tall, with a crest of royal blue feathers. She tore the head off of the Ox's and was carrying it away. She took the head over to one of the viewing tunnels, to the awe and amazement of the guests. To Nathan, Helen seemed to make eye contact with the guests before swinging her neck and launching the head into the tunnel with a loud thunk. Even through the distortion, Nathan could see a group of guests jumping back and out of the way. Helen didn’t seem to care, she just watched them for a moment before his attention turned back to his meal.
Over his radio Nathan heard, “Anyone have eyes on AG-10?” Nathan looked out for the missing animal, it was odd that any of the Achillobators would be missing the feast. Then over the radio, another voice said, “He’s on his way.”
Before he could guess what that meant,he watched the last juvenile Achillobators come running out of the brush from the left. But he didn’t go for the feeding. He ran straight past the frenzy, took a leap, and landed on top of one of the viewing tunnels with a loud smack. The sound of scratching glass filled the air. Down the side of the tunnel was a new claw mark. It wasn’t too special; there were a few others along the tops of the tunnels throughout the enclosure. The juvenile watched the tunnel, watched the people inside's reaction to him. He walked down parallel to the tunnel, every few yards biting the air next to the tunnel, before he got too close to Helen who screeched at him and the juvenile ran off to join the feast.
Nathan exhaled, he hadn’t even realized that he was holding his breath. As he relaxed, he felt his hand come off of his .416 Rigby–he hadn't noticed that his reflexes kicked in and he went for his gun.
After several minutes, most of the carcasses were gone and what was left was being taken by the largest Achillobators. Nathan went down the stairs into the control room, as he walked through the older employee said to the younger, “Log that AG-10 jump, I want to keep track if he keeps doing that. And maybe ask if maintenance or an engineer could just take a look at that panel he scratched–make sure it’s all good.”
As Nathan was about to exit, one of the handlers ran up to him. “Mr. Roberts, you saw that right?”
“Yep,” Nathan said.
“ Do you think it was aggression?”
“No,” Nathan said flatly, “He just wanted to see if he could.” She nodded uneasily and made a note on her tablet, and Nathan kept walking.
This was just the first stop of the day.