The T. Rex

"Velociraptor," Merman whimpered as he pulled his face back into room 128. His bulging eyes and panicked scowl told a story of what he had seen in the hallway. "Definitely a velociraptor."

But when Ives peeked her eyes into the hallway, what she saw was a small dinosaur the size of a golden retriever. She noticed its stiff tail and alert eyes, watched it lift its nose into the air as if it smelled something foreign or unfamiliar—likely them.

"It's not a velociraptor," she whispered, still peeking out the door.

"It is, it is!" Merman cried, pushing his way past Rodriguez to the far side of one of the guest beds. He flattened himself on the floor between the box spring and the wall.

As the dinosaur sniffed the rug, Ives noticed its fangs and claws, both sharp and frightening, but in the way a muskie's mouth looked intimidating hanging on the wall; she wasn't sure what damage it could do to something as large as a human. She also noticed no sickle-shaped claw jutting between its toes, the raptors supposed trademark.

Before she could report any further to the team, the small dinosaur lifted its snout toward the ceiling and released another bark into the air—a noise far louder and far more wild than one would expect to emerge from such a small creature. The noise ricocheted down the hallway, splintered into the hotel room, and shook the mass-produced paintings hanging on the walls. Merman whimpered again; Ives braced herself, convinced that the dinosaur would hear him.

"Can't you just shoot the thing?" he whined.

Rodriguez and Gemma ignored him, though they aimed their rifles at the door frame. Gemma crept closer to Ives, took slow, careful steps as she peered down the length of the barrel. Over her comrade's shoulder, she peeked into the hallway and spotted the small dinosaur, back to sniffing the rug. "Coelurus," she whispered. "Not a velociraptor. If we yelled really loud, I think we could scare this one away."

As if on cue, an enormous sound reverberated through the building—shook the mass-produced paintings, but also rattled the light fixtures, resurrected dust on the baseboards. Ives felt the sound in her lungs, force her eyes shut; she was too distracted by the way the sound knocked her on the ground to even interpret what it was. When it stopped, it still echoed through the halls of the Iguanodon Inn.

When she was able to open her eyes, Ives watched the coelurus skitter down the hall, swerving around strands of dust as they fell from the ceiling. At the other end of the hall, she heard the unmistakable cearadactylus squawk and the violence of their wings as they fought their enormous bodies into the air.

"What the fuck was that?" Rodriguez whispered.

A muffled and incoherent sound rose from behind the bed where Merman hid; Ives worried that he may have been whimpering, or even crying.

"It came from outside," she said. "It seems to have scared off the dinosaur in the hallway, maybe the flying ones in the pool too."

"Then this might be our only chance to sneak out of this room and make it back to basecamp," Gemma said, her rifle still pressed against her cheek, its barrel still aimed into the hallway.

Merman's head popped up from his hiding spot, a disembodied head painted in primal fear. "Basecamp?" he said glasses slipping off the bridge of his nose. "Fuck basecamp! There's no way I'm going back out there!"

"Basecamp was chosen specifically because it is one of the few areas on the island where the animals do not go," Rodriguez said. "Even without two security professionals establishing a perimeter, it is literally the safest place for us to be right now—much safer than the bed you're currently hiding behind."

"What about...whatever made that sound outside?" Ives asked.

"That's why we have these," Rodriguez said, hoisting his rifle into the air. His smirk was cocky, but somehow comforting.

Still, something about Rodriguez's statement threw Ives off. It wasn't just the implication that this exhibition's planners knew exactly what they would find when they arrived on Isla Nublar. Instead, she wondered why the basecamp was so safe. What makes is it safest? she thought. And how safe is "safest" on the world's most dangerous island?

But before she could consider it any further, Gemma was leading them out of the room, her rifle aimed down the hallway at the wall of windows facing the pool. She took silent steps down the hall, coiled in a half-crouch that made her seem both balanced and ready. Ives peeked back Merman, tense and wincing, shepherded by Rodriguez, who pointed his rifle down the far end of the hall where the coelurus had vanished.

As they passed the pool, Ives confirmed that it was empty save for the desk chair and tables; neither shrubs nor dinosaurs swayed on the deck. The closer they got to the lobby, the more potent the rotten smell became; it stung Ives's nose, spun her mind in the same disorienting manner as it had before. Merman whined quietly behind her, but her attention was too consumed to concentrate on his words.

The stench was worse in the lobby proper, like a zoo animal carcass left to rot in the heat of its own shit-slathered enclosure. Ives wondered what could cause such an overwhelming odor, but didn't want to know the answer. To distract herself, she focused on Gemma's slow, gentle gait—the way her feet swept over one another as she stepped past the dark reception desk, through puddles of light on the poured concrete, across a stamped Jurassic Park logo, its depths grey with dried patches of mud.

Ives was relieved to squeeze through the Inn's front doors. She took a long, deep breath, though was surprised to find the hot breeze carrying another stench—still rotten, though fresher, more focused and vibrant—competing with the acidic smell of fruit rotting on the branches. The last time she walked through the Inn's decrepit courtyard, she was hassling Brent; now she worried about whether he was safe or not. She stifled the urge to shout his name.

One by one, the team crouched beneath boughs heavy with lemons as they followed the path around the crumbling fountain. At the edge of the courtyard, a vast prairie loomed divided by wavering fence lines and a roadway hidden by weeds. In the distance, a dark, emerald jungle separated the prairie from the sky. For an instant, Ives felt safe—if there was a dangerous dinosaur, they would see it.

Beneath her feet, Ives felt the ground vibrate unevenly—An earthquake, she decided in an instant as she knelt down and pressed an open palm to the dry dirt and stiff grass. It was the only way for her to rationalize the sensation, to prove this wasn't some sort of dinosaur-inducedfever dream.

The way the tyrannosaurus rex lunged at Gemma, swept her in its mouth and away from her team, ensured that its prey was safely clenched in its mouth before she had a chance to comprehend what was happening, let alone respond.

Ives noticed the vast shadow looming over her, the breeze of a muscular tail swinging over her crouched body, the rotten smell of sweat and heat and decay like an oppressive weight—all of this before she realized that woman leading their team was no longer standing beside her. She stood up and noticed the dinosaur ten yards away—a swallowtail fluttering around its stiff, speckled tail the color of Moroccan clay—but knew not how to respond.

Behind her, a rifle spat noisy and percussive, shells glinting in the sun as they landed in the nearby dust, but all she could do was stand in the sun, surrounded by clamoring weeds, and tremble.

Merman screamed obscenities in a high-pitched, desperate wail, his body a hologram of panic and despair, but her only response was to lock her knees and release every other muscle in her body.

Only when the tyrannosaurus turned to face the rest of the team—Gemma's body crushed between its jaws, its yellow eyes locked on Rodriguez's rifle—was Ives able to react consciously. "Run," she muttered, shoving Merman backwards towards the Inn. "Run!" she repeated, the tyrannosaurus's hideous growl vibrating the roasting air. "Run!" she screamed, and scrambled as fast as she could past Rodriguez and Merman back to the front doors of the Inn as the world shook, once again, beneath her feet.