Jurassic Island
Chapter 9 – Chaos
Castle stood there in the rain, watching as Kate ran after Sally, disappearing down the jungle path that supposedly would lead to the restrooms, Todd… and a ferocious Tyrannosaurus Rex. His chest heaved with each massive breath. He blinked slowly, trying to calm the worried palpitations of his heart. He couldn't help but worry. But his wife was a fierce and strong woman. She could take care of herself, and he felt confident that she would not take any unnecessary risks. Taking one last calming breath, Castle turned and darted across the road, skipping over the metal track, and sprinting towards the overturned Explorer.
The car had been brutally torn apart. The chassis was ripped and the wheels were bent. Several metal pieces stuck out at odd angles, the edges jagged and sharp. Castle blinked, wiping the rain out of his eyes. He skidded to a stop, dropping to his knees to glance down into the car's interior. One of the kids, the girl, was squirming in the mud that was slowly feeling the cabin.
"Hey, I'm here," he called out over the din of rain. The young teen looked up and relief flooded her dirty face. Castle scrambled closer to her, and bent his back, grabbed her hand. Mindful of the torn and jagged metal, and the shattered glass, Castle gently pulled the girl out from under the wreckage. When he got her out, her wide terrified eyes looked up at him pleadingly.
"He left us, he left us," she cried, tears running down her face.
Castle pulled to his chest, rubbing her back reassuringly, before pulling back and brushing her matted blonde hair away from her face. "That's not what I'm going to do," he assured her. "I gotta help your brother now. Okay?"
She nodded, seeming to just barely acknowledge his words. Castle inhaled deeply, and dropped back down to his knees, craning his neck so he could glance underneath the wreckage and locate the boy. He heard a grunt, and spotted him. He was covered in mud, nearly blending in with it.
"I'm stuck," the boy grunted.
"Okay, okay," Castle said, his eyes flirting around until he spotted the boy's foot wedged between the edge of what had been the Explorer's back window and the ground. "Just don't struggle. I'm going to help you." He furrowed his brow as his mind started to work on a solution.
But his thoughts were interrupted when the teenage girl started to scream. Castle scrambled back on all fours, moving as fast as he could. He reached her quickly, and placed a hand on her quivering shoulder, attempting to calm her. But then he heard and felt an impact tremor. Turning his head, Castle's eyes went wide when he saw the massive bulk of the tyrannosaur as it lumbered out of the jungle foliage. It shook its box-shaped head, and sniffed at the air. The teen cried again, and the tyrannosaur tilted its head in their direction.
Moving fast, Castle put a hand over the girl's mouth, stifling her screams, and held her close to his chest. "Don't move," he hissed out with as much conviction as he could, though truth was, he wasn't entire sure if it was fact or not. After all, he never finished reading Dr. Grant's book. "It can't see us if we don't move."
The tyrannosaur reared its head back and roared. It was a deafening sound. Castle tried with all his might to keep his muscles from trembling with fear as the prehistoric monster stomped towards them. He closed his eyes, and inhaled through his nose in an attempt to calm his nerves. Chasing after criminals with Kate was one thing, but coming face to face with one of the most famous predators in history was another. When he opened his eyes, he was met with the horrifying sight of the Tyrannosaurus Rex standing right in front of them.
It silently opened and closed its powerful jaws. Its nostrils flared as it sniffed the air. Castle kept his hand clamped over the teens mouth. Her entire body was quivering against his, and he was worried they might have to make a run for it. The tyrannosaur's snout swung in their direction, stopping just inches from his face. Castle could feel the heat of its breath as it inhaled and exhaled. He bit his tongue to keep himself from screaming in complete and utter terror.
The beast pulled back, seemingly satisfied with whatever it had smelled. Castle started to relax, thinking they'd been lucky. But then the tyrannosaur was lowering its head and snarling, nudging the back of the overturned Explorer with its snout. The car groaned as it spun, and Castle and the teen had no choice but to move. The mighty prehistoric king growled in delight, cocking its head and narrowing its eyes as it caught sight of them cowering behind the bent wheel.
From inside the wreckage, the boy started crying, shouting out for help. The tyrannosaur shifted, arching its neck to glance down at the Explorer. The boy screamed when the tyrannosaur roared. It stepped forward, bobbing its head up and down as if it were playing some game with the trapped boy. Castle's heart pounded in his chest as he frantically tried to think of something to do. He still had the teen girl clutched to his side, sobbing hysterically as the tyrannosaur continued to play with the boy.
There was nothing he could do. They were all trapped.
The tyrannosaur was growing tired with the game. It nudged the car, attempting to flip it back over. The boy's cries and screams only encouraged the beast further. With each nudge of the tyrannosaur's mighty snout, the beat-up overturned Explorer was pushed back, forcing Castle and the teenage girl to move with it. He arched his neck over his shoulder, and groaned. They were being herded towards the edge of a sheer cliff.
Metal scraped and screeched as the tyrannosaur pounded against the car, pushing it up against the concrete barrier to the paddock. Trapped between the concrete and the car, Castle was left with very little options. Gripping the teen's hips, he heaved her up onto the top of the barrier. Still terrified, but somewhat calmed, the girl reached down to help him climb up after her. She immediately latched onto him when he found his balance.
The tyrannosaur bellowed loudly, angry. It was definitely pissed off. It rammed against the car, sending it up over the edge of the concrete barrier. Castle and the girl stumbled back, very nearly falling over the edge into the jungle canopy below.
"Hang on," Castle shouted over the cacophony of noise, grabbing at the teen, and holding her close as the tyrannosaur pushed the car closer to the edge. All the while the boy continued to scream. Castle wished there was something he could do, but he was useless against the sheer awesome power of the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
He stumbled back, his eyes dropping for a moment. It was like fate was watching over them, because in that moment, he saw the loosed cable wires that had once made up the electrified fence. There were moments during his shadowing of Beckett and assisting in homicide investigations when Castle would swear it felt like a light bulb would flash on above his head and he would be struck with an insanely brilliant theory or idea. This was one of those moments.
"Hold on, and don't let go," Castle instructed the girl, as he bent his knees and encouraged her to latch onto his back.
The teen hooked her legs around his middle as she scrambled up onto his back, squeezing like a vice, and looped her arms around his neck. He grabbed the cable wire, grimacing at the knowledge his soft writer's hands would probably get torn to shreds, and carefully eased over the edge of the barrier in a slow descent. The thunderous roars of the tyrannosaur hovered over them as it continued to assault the Explorer. Within minutes it would be tumbling over the edge.
Castle gritted his teeth and grunted as he braced himself against the sheer concrete wall. He hissed out a breath as he slowly worked at rappelling down towards the jungle floor. He made a mental note to thank Kate for talking him into tackling a rock-climbing wall during one free weekend. The girl desperately clung to his back, whimpering softly as she watched the car holding her brother inching closer and closer to certain doom. His palms hurt like hell, and he knew the cable was eating into his hands, but he wouldn't let go. He worked through the pain, slowly moving down and away from danger.
There was one more mighty roar from their oppressor, and then the headlights of the car were tipping over the edge of blinding them. Castle hissed out a breath and used all his strength to swing them out of the way as the Explorer plummeted by them.
"Charlie!" the girl sobbed, her arms tightening around his neck, nearly cutting off his air.
Swinging them back around, Castle glanced down just in time to see the car crash into the tops of the trees below. The teen's head dropped against his shoulder as she cried, her tears mixing with the heavy rain pounding against them. Somewhere above them, the Tyrannosaurus Rex was roaring in triumph. Castle could swear he felt a headache coming on as he gradually continued their slow descent.
XXX
The control room was filled with an uproar of noise. It was chaos. Alert klaxons blared, and the security monitors flashed. Warning and error messages kept popping up on computer screens. Almost every station seemed to suddenly be malfunctioning.
"What the hell is going on?" Hammond questioned, leaning heavily on his cane as he stalked down the ramp to join Arnold on the central platform.
His chief control officer looked stricken, staring disbelievingly at the large flat screen in the center of the room. It displayed the operations map of the island, and over half of it had blinking red lines around the outlined sections.
"Ray!?"
"Park systems are going down," he stammered out, plopping down into his seat and punching the keyboard. "WiFi is down. Hardline phones are inoperable. Security fences are going down, not all… but a whole lot of them are down." Arnold pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and closed his eyes as he pinched the bridge of his nose.
"What!?" Hammond asked, growing frustrated. "Is it the storm? Is it affecting our system?"
"No," Arnold shook his head, putting his glasses back in place. "It's not that. This storm isn't as bad as the one we had two years ago. It's something else."
"Like what?"
"I don't know, I'd have to…," before he could finish his sentence, Arnold was already standing up and rushing down the stairs towards Dennis Nedry's station. Hammond shuffled after him, grunting with the effort to make it down the stairs to catch up. Arnold sat down at Nedry's station, and glanced around at the mess with disgust. "Look at this station. What a complete slob!" he murmured, before just shoving the trash off the desktop and onto the floor. He then turned his attention to one of Nedry's work terminals.
"Ray," huffed Hammond, coming to a halt behind him, leaning heavily on his cane. "What the hell is going on?"
"Fuck," Arnold cursed, running his hand over his thinning hair. "It looks like some virus has infected the network, and it's systematically working its way through the entire mainframe. I can't do anything to stop it. It's too sophisticated. Beyond my expertise."
"Well, where the hell is Dennis? Its his job to stop this sort of thing from happening," Hammond said, looking around. Several of the other control room staff just looked on dumbly. "Well!? Someone find him. Check the vending machines!"
Muldoon pushed off from his perch on the railing, stepping down to join them. He crossed his arms over his chest as he peered down at the computer code Arnold was scanning. "What about the raptor pen?" he asked.
Arnold furrowed his brow as he typed in a command that brought up a window that displayed all the dinosaur paddocks security systems. "No, no… it's still on. But… shit, half the park is out. The perimeter fence, and the individual paddock fences along the main park tour are out."
"The Explorers?" Muldoon asked, his eyes narrowing.
"Stopped… Oh God… they stopped right in front of the tyrannosaur paddock."
Muldoon was moving before he could even finish his sentence. Hammond spun in place and watched him dart up the stairs, snatching up one of the radios and hooking it to his belt, before he jogged up the ramp and grabbed his SPAS-12 shotgun off the gun rack.
"What are you doing, Robert?" Hammond demanded.
"Someone's got to go out and check on those people," Muldoon jabbed a finger in the air, pointing at the large monitor displaying the operational map of the island. "They're sitting ducks for the tyrannosaurs."
Hammond shook his head. "It's just the female, remember? We transferred the male along with the juvenile to Site B last weekend."
"Even worse," Muldoon growled, checking the cartridges in his shotgun. "You've paid billions to make them, yet you don't even bother to learn anything about them, do you?"
"Well, I never—"
"The female is the alpha," Muldoon interrupted, gritting his teeth in frustration. "She's bigger, and stronger than the male. And she's just had her baby ripped away from her. She won't be happy."
"Look, she's just an animal," Hammond shrugged his shoulders, not sure what any of that had to do with anything.
"Ray?" Muldoon called down to Arnold, ignoring his boss.
Arnold gave a nod. "Go get them, Robert," he said, before turning his attention back to Nedry's computer terminal, trying to work out how to call up the system diagnostic program the computer programmer had been running. "Damn it, Nedry… where are you?"
XXX
Voom! Voom!
The rain was heavier now. But being in the hooded Jeep, Dennis Nedry was protected from it. He pressed his foot down hard on the accelerator. The window wipers were moving across the windshield at top speed, giving Nedry the little visibility he had. He glanced anxiously at his wristwatch, cursing. He was running late. If it weren't for this stupid storm, he would have already made it to the dock, where Dodgson's man was waiting.
Nedry pulled the wheel left as he made a sharp turn. The dirt road had taken on a lot of water and a puddle was hidden in the darkness. He gripped the wheel as the car hydroplaned. And, not thinking, Nedry rammed his foot down on the brakes.
He lost control of the car. It went wide, spinning in circles. Nedry was tossed around inside, and he wished he had buckled his seat belt. The spinning seemed to last forever. Suddenly, it stopped with a metallic screeching noise. Nedry received one final jerk forward before the car went completely still.
His head was lying on the rim of the steering wheel. As he sat up he felt a pain in his leg. He reached his hand down, and squeezed his thigh. Damn. He must have pulled a muscle or something. And the upper part of his forehead, above his right eye, was bleeding. Other than that he was okay, or was he? He glanced down at the internal compass on his digital wristwatch. He was facing west now, the opposite direction he wanted to go. Nedry squinted out the windshield. His eyes darted across the hood, noticing that it had been crunched in. He held his breath. The mechanic rumble of the engine could still be heard. The car was alive. That was a start. But what had crushed the hood in?
His question was answer very quickly. A big three-toed foot came down on the hood, this time completely smashing the interior. There was a burst of sparks and the engine died.
Oh shit.
He quickly kicked the door open and tumbled into the foliage.
The dense fronds and palms of the jungle surrounding the service road engulfed him immediately. Behind him, he could hear the roar of the tyrannosaur. But he did not look back, he kept moving forward, huffing and puffing with each step. The wet fronds slapped him as he moved as quickly as he could through the jungle, scratching at his face. One frond snapped back so hard it knocked his glasses off. Cursing, he dropped to his knees with a groan, blindly groping around in the wet ground.
Time was critical, and he really couldn't afford to waste it. Tentatively, he heaved himself up with a grunt, using a fallen tree trunk as leverage. "I can afford new glasses," he muttered, thinking of the huge payout that awaited him once he delivered the Barbasol shaving cream can with the dinosaur embryos hidden within. He checked his digital wristwatch again, checking the built-in compass. He knew he wasn't too far from the dock. If he hurried, he should make it in time.
He stopped after what he thought was an eternity of scrambling through the wet, muddy, foliage. He leaned on the side of a nearby tree trunk, heaving in deep gulps of air. At least the tyrannosaur hadn't given chase. Instead he could hear the car being smashed and ripped apart. So he probably wasn't as far from the road as he thought he was. He really wasn't built for this sort of thing. His feet hurt, and his legs ached. All he wanted to do was sit down and rest. But he couldn't.
Shifting his bulk, Nedry turned, taking a step forward, and gave a sudden cry of surprise. Where there should have been ground, there was only air. He fell on his ass and tumbled down the steep slope, hitting the trunks and branches of the small trees that made the slope their home as he feel. The tough thicket of underbrush scratched and ripped at his clothes, some cutting gashes on his face and arms. As he continued to slide down the muddy slope, he attempted to grab the occasional branch to stop his descent. All unsuccessful.
Eventually he reached the base of the slope, collapsing face first into the meandering stream at the bottom of the hill. His face was gushing with blood from the freshly cut wounds and his entire body ached from the fall. This is so not fair, he thought. Groaning in agony, hurting all over, Nedry used the last of his strength to roll over onto his back, resting his head in the soft muddy bank of the stream, allowing the soothing babble of the creek to lull him into unconsciousness.
XXX
Castle leaned against the side of the concrete wall, chest heaving as he recovered from the exhaustive rappel. He glanced down at Zoe. The teen had curled in on herself almost the moment they touched solid ground, sobbing. He did his best to soothe her, but he knew there was really nothing much he could do except offer up platitudes, which were useless at a time like this. He wiped at his brow, and pushed off the wall, and stumbled along the knotted and gnarled roots of a big tree. He glanced up, spying the crushed Explorer.
"Charlie!?" he yelled the boy's name.
Zoe sniffled and blinked her eyes, looking up. He turned back, and offered a hand. She gave him a weak smile of thanks as he helped her up. She stumbled alongside him as they approached the base of the tree.
"Charlie!" she cried out, silent tears running down her cheeks. "Charlie, can you here me?"
Nothing. There was nothing but the pitter-patter of rain against the tree canopy above their heads. Castle was just about ready to give up, when suddenly a small cry echoed out from the treetop.
"Zoe!"
"Charlie! Charlie!" she shouted up, her eyes flooding with relief and hope. She stumbled forward, but tripped on one of the roots.
Castle helped her up to her feet, running a comforting hand along her arm and shoulder. "I'll get him," he said, as he made to move forward, when suddenly Zoe stopped him. She was clutching his arm tightly, her grip a vise nails digging into his bicep.
"Don't leave me," she pleaded, trembling all over, eyes wide with terror.
Castle turned towards her with sympathetic eyes. After they'd reached the ground, and before she'd shut down, he had managed to get her name and some small bit of background out of her. The coward who had ran when the children needed him most was their stepfather. He only really brought them to Jurassic Park as a favor to their mother.
Castle pulled the girl into an embrace. "Shh," he soothed. "I'm right here, Zoe. I'm going to look after you. But I have to help your brother. I want you to stay here and wait for me, okay?"
"He left us… he left us," she stammered out.
He cupped her face in his hands, and looked her straight in the eye. "That's not what I'm going to do," he asserted, leaving no room for debate. Her bottom lip quivered, but she caught it with her teeth, biting down on it as she nodded in understanding. "Good." He planted a kiss on her forehead, and then settled her into the culvert sticking out of the concrete wall.
Castle then turned towards the big tree, with its impressive branches and hanging vines. He took a deep breath, once again thanking the fates that Kate had talked him into those rock-climbing lessons.
"Alright, Rick," he muttered to himself, placing his hands on his hips. "Time to get your hero on."