Chapter 39: Rescue

Sobek couldn't say he understood everything of that situation, but he was sure he understood enough. When he arrived he had seen that the smell of blood and fear he had smelled actually came from a little girl, who was being held still by some highly disreputable men. With his amplified hearing then he had heard the words of the political official, and there he understood what was happening. Sobek had never been one who took no interest in third world news when he was on Earth, so he was well acquainted with situations like this: forcing a girl to marry a grown man for political or financial reasons. Also under the circumstances, he was pretty sure her family was unwilling and that it was all orchestration. At that point he had seen red. Sobek had killed and devoured many life forms and no longer felt much attachment to humans, but he too had lines that he had not crossed. Even though his dinosaur body saw puppies and children only as easy prey, he tried to maintain a modicum of humanity and morality by not targeting such prey. Of course, he had never gone so far as to physically and psychologically harm puppies and children for his purposes. That would have been too much even if he was now a wild animal. And so he got really pissed off and had come out into the open. It had been a stupid move: if they had had heavy weapons he could have been seriously injured and possibly even die. Fortunately that didn't seem to be the case. The small bullets fired at him only created an annoying sting on his skin. With one paw he swept the people beneath him away. He didn't even need to lower himself too much: with a single blow more than ten men were thrown into the air. He didn't know if they were dead, but they certainly couldn't move anymore. He let out a second roar, unleashing even more fear in the hearts of the survivors. People started running towards the vehicles. Sobek could see that they only had two cars, and not that big either. He had to act quickly: he was fast, but not fast enough to keep up with a speeding car. With quick strides he walked to the nearest one and kicked him; the car rolled for several meters, crushing two people along the road, and crashed into the other vehicle. In an instant, the two vehicles caught fire. The flames, smoke and darkness of the night gave the giant spinosaurus an extremely monstrous aura. Imagine seeing a giant lizard as tall as a house and as long as three buses roaring in the middle of a fire that casts a red, quivering light on its scales, and with a huge sail on its back that gives it even more imposing looks. In the eyes of humans he looked almost like a dragon emerged from stories. He noticed that the guy who used to hold the baby had now left her on the ground to run away. He had abandoned a little girl tied with tight knots to save his pathetic life. What a worm. Sobek wouldn't have let him go: he reached for him and lowered his jaws on him. He didn't think it was possible, but it didn't feel bad at all to devour a human being alive. When his bones split between his teeth he felt only joy at his death. He hadn't let him go, and he wasn't going to let anyone else go. Everyone had to die. Perhaps with a clear mind Sobek would never have thought of such concepts, but now he was in the midst of murderous fury mixed with hunting instinct, which made him an unconscious killing machine. His normally calm and calculating mind was replaced by an umprecedent outrage. Other soldiers tried to shoot him, but it was all in vain. He devoured them, one after another. The screams became less and less in just few minutes. When he found that official who had had the courage to force a little girl to marry, he didn't even devour him: he crushed him directly with his hind legs. He was very careful not to kill him immediately: full of a strange sadism, he gradually increased the weight until his spine broke. In all that mess, Mika was running like a desperate man. His only thought now was to save his life: he didn't care about being caught by the police. However, his hope was vain. For remaining alone on the edge they had gone far into the forest. The city was tens of kilometers away. He would never arrive there with his own feet. When he heard the heavy footsteps behind him, he couldn't even scream. His voice was now missing because of the shortness of breath. The survival instinct forced him to accelerate his run, he tripped several times, threw all the things he was wearing to the ground, he even abandoned the gun, but it didn't help. There was no way he could outrun a beast nearly seven meters high. Eventually he felt a strong push on his back and fell to the ground. While he was still lifting his face from the mud he felt something close like a trap around his pelvis and he was dragged upward. From his upside down position he could look the creature in the eye: he saw only a murderous intent with no equal, and in the strange light caused by the flames they seemed to him as red as blood. Then the dinosaur increased the strength of its jaws and cut him in two cleanly. Mika screamed in pain, the greatest pain he had ever felt in his life. The cut half fell to the ground and incredibly did not hit the ground with its head, which gave it a few more seconds of life. With his last strength he looked up and could finally see clearly the monster in front of him, illuminated by the dim light of the flames: a crocodile face, sharp claws, a long, tapered body that resembled both a snake and a crocodile, and a huge wing on the back... "S... Satan..." Mika murmured terrified. His tortured mind could only associate the figure in front of him with that name. He had never been a religious man, but he remembered the theology lessons his father had given him. And that monstrous body, that hairless skin, the claws and the flames behind them were very reminiscent of the illustrations of the demons... "Are you here to take my soul...?" He was unable to say nothing more: the dinosaur's muzzle fell upon him. Mika for the first time in his life found himself praying, he prayed to his father, he prayed to his brother, he prayed to his ancestors, he prayed to God that he wouldn't let him do that horrible end, but no one answered that call: the monstrous jaws closed up what was left of his body and crushed it as if it were made of paper. And that was how Mika, second son of the illustrious Magni family, met his death. Once devoured, Sobek used his nose to find any other survivors. He only found a couple that had hidden in a hole, which quickly ended up in his stomach. A human was a terrible meal for an animal of his size, to say the least, but he found that he didn't mind at all. "Apparently my new body affects me more than I thought... not only do I not feel the slightest disgust at killing humans and eating them, but I also begin to enjoy it. Human flesh is really good..." he thought Sobek wiping his muzzle with his paw. "Or maybe it's because I hate these people and therefore devouring them gives me pleasure... I don't know, I have to think about it" He had to be careful. If he hadn't used caution he would have ended up becoming someone who took pleasure in the carnage. In a way, however, it already was. He spent his days hunting dinosaurs, mammals and reptiles: what changed with humans? They were all animals, the only difference was that humans had some more cognitive ability. Sobek shook his head at that thought. Still, he found that what he had thought neither frightened nor disgusted him. This could be a good thing considering that in the future he would have had to lead an army of dinosaurs to conquer the world, but... still shouldn't he have felt a little fear of himself for such thoughts? No. It was incredibly quiet. "I wonder how much of my humanity is actually left..." Sobek thought, but the more he thought about it the more he became convinced that he had only kept his intelligence as a human: he no longer felt any attachment to that kind of hairless bipedal apes. He could kill them as well as he could take care of them. Seeing it in general terms, he felt as if they were stray cats: he could feel pity for them, feed them, look after them, offer them a warm shelter and even adopt them and give them all his love, but he would have no qualms about kill them if they were troubling him or doing things he didn't like. "Speaking of human beings for whom I feel pity..." Sobek suddenly realized that he had unintentionally created a big problem for himself.