Predator If It Bleeds 39

As he leaned forward to look through the slanted windscreen, he saw the fallen shapes. The cattle, their bodies torn apart and shredded. Jerrick wrenched the combine to a halt, sick and infuriated. Leaving the engine thrumming, he popped open the cab door, swung down to the tread, then leaped to the ground. He raced across the bloodstained grass, appalled by what he saw. Six of the cattle lay before him-or what remained of them. The smell of blood in the air was like a heavy mist of bitter iron. Jerrick gritted his teeth and narrowed his eyes as he tried to understand what he was seeing.

One of the cow's heads had been torn off and lay discarded, the big bovine eyes staring sightlessly, pink tongue lolling out of its mouth, red blood spattered everywhere in the grass. Its side had been raked open, ribs splintered, entrails pulled out like confetti. One of its hind legs had been
ripped off and cast aside. The other five cattle were just as mangled, and Jerrick found it difficult to determine where one carcass ended and another began. He breathed in and out, his nostrils flaring, his blood boiling.

When he heard one of the cattle lowing from the other side of the grassy hill, Jerrick just reacted. He ran, thrashing through the grasses, nearly slipping on a sheen of blood and loose intestines. He reached the top of the rise, saw other dead carcasses strewn about, and gaped.
The last surviving cow bleated in terror as it tried to struggle away. Long red gashes marked its side. But it couldn't escape the monster.

Jerrick recognized the horrific creature that had killed seven colonists last year, the most fearsome indigenous predator on Hardscrabble. The gruzzly was like a nightmarish crossbreed of a dinosaur and a grizzly bear. Black, spiky fur covered the
huge frame. Its pointed, scaly face was like a flattened crocodile's. It had a plated belly, and sharp spines covered its tail. The wide paws were tipped with claws the size of threshing rakes.

Last year, the gruzzlies had unexpectedly come out of the nearby hills, massacring livestock as well as colonists, even though the taste of Earth animals-or people-was not appetizing to them. The native predators simply slaughtered their victims and left the bodies strewn about. Gruzzlies attacked anything that moved.-pg.210-211 chpt.8