Greetings dear readers,

After a two-month break, I have the pleasure to publish the first chapters of the second half of this story.

Enjoy.


Every parts of the cave's ceiling that the I. rex had not destroyed, they were by the earthquake. The latter forced Dearing and Grady to huddle against the walls, the arms raised above the head to protect themselves from falling rocks.

As the last blocks that made the ceiling fell, Grady glanced at the recess in the wall opposite of them.

"Are we dumb?!" He exclaimed.

He stepped back, grabbed his backpack and gathered all his strength in his arm to threw it over the edge of the gaping hole.

"Now let's climb the walls of this recess ..." he said afterwards.

"Climb them? But there are no grips!"

The water level suddenly dropped. A noise similar to that of an emptying tub or sink became perceptible. Aware that this didn't looked too good, they hurried to swim to the recess.

"We must try. I have a solution to this issue."

Moments later, as the earthquake had passed and all the water was gone, the two were climbing the walls of the recess in a very special way: Back to back, legs bent and arms crossed, they were vertically walking on the rock step by step, at a slow but regular and coordinated pace in order to not exhaust each other.
Although Grady had told her to stay focused on climbing, Dearing couldn't help but to think about the method suggested by the parker because it seemed familiar. Vague memories of an animated film she saw when she was a student came back to her mind.

"This idea to get us out of here ... Isn't it from some Disney?" She asked.

"Could be."

"Goddammit…" She hissed, not reassured by this semi-confirmation that implied that he was risking their survival on an idea that came from a film and not based on a real-life situation where it had shown its efficiency.

There was a loud rolling sound and the bottom of the cave, then a pile of rock blocks of various sizes and shapes, began to move, first slowly before suddenly sliding towards the middle of the cave, to its deepest point, and it collapsed, revealing a bottomless abyss.

"Let's save our breath!" He told her. "If one of us fall, the other will fall too!"

Having no other choice, they continued the ascent.

However, fooled by the perspective effect, Grady had not noticed earlier that the higher the recess went, the more it widened, forcing them to gradually unfold their legs in order to keep their feet flat against the walls.
If they pursued climbing, their legs would become too outstretched and with fatigue or, in the case of Dearing and her wounded calf, pain, one of them would yield.

"Fuck…" He said in a sigh, realising the precariousness of their situation.

Suddenly, they began to hear one of the large trees around the cave begin to wobble and being mostly uprooted before falling, with the crown and the upper part of the trunk just above the cave turned abyss. This event was a godsend for the director and the keeper because thick and long vines now hung in the air, some so close that they could potentially reach them by stretching out the arms.

"Ah! A deus ex machina!" Dearing said in a voice mixing hope, sarcasm and disbelief.

"Don't move. I'm going to catch one," Grady said.

Slowly, he freed his right arm and stretched it towards the nearest vine.

He touched it with his fingertips but it wasn't enough to grasp it so he told Dearing that they had to move sideways a few centimeters. Once they did, he made another attempt and this time, he managed to firmly grasp the vine.

"Got it!"

He took the opportunity to test its solidity by pulling it.

"Turn so that you can put your arms around my neck," he told her.

Dearing, who had pressed her back firmly against his to stay in place, took the time to take a long breath and kept looking up.
Passing her left arm in front of her face, she placed her hand on Grady's left shoulder, a little hasty to his taste.

"Easy… Don't rush"

She slowly pulled away her right arm and prepared to turn with the help of her feet in order to face Grady's back.
Thus, she first faced the wall in the back of the recess, then the abyss and the bottom of the cave. The fear of heights seized her and for a second, she froze and began to gasp.

Despite this, she finally put her right hand on the keeper's right shoulder, took her feet off of the walls as blood dripped from her calf and as she moved forward, she gradually passed her arms around his neck.

"Ready? Three... "

She tightened her hold, almost threatening to strangle him, and bending his legs just to have a better momentum once his countdown finished, Grady pushed his feet against the wall and they swing towards the centre of the cave, stopping three meters under the trunk.

"Climb!" He said in a strangled voice.

Dearing loosened her hold around Grady's neck to grab his shoulders before putting one foot and then the other on his hips and jumping upwards to catch the vine.

While adrenaline was rushing in her body, she climbed quickly and once she was on the trunk, Grady began to climb up in his turn.

Fearing that the tree would soon eventually fall into the chasm, they hurriedly crawled on the last meters that separated them from the lower part of the trunk that still rested on the ground.

When they were there, they jumped to the side and walked away for a few steps before dropping to their knees to catch their breath for a moment.

But they were denied the opportunity of having a break.
A loud explosion in the north made them jump and in every direction, trees fell while parts of the old Visitor Center crumbled.

Grady hastily retrieved his rifle and bag, and then they ran towards their vehicle, but not too fast because of Dearing's wound.

They first wanted to pass between the ridge and the pool but a landslide flowing from the first towards the Center dissuaded them from doing so.

They skirted the Center by the north, returning to the road before turning to their right.

The last remains of the conical roofs broke apart from the structure, just like an entire section of the southern facade.
Behind, the landslide swept away or submerged everything on its way at such a speed that when the two companions passed in front of the entrance, a slide went through the threshold, pulled the panels from their hinges and hurtled down the steps, forcing Dearing and Grady to move out of the way.

They stopped at a safe distance, helplessly looking Nature's fury tearing down the ruins and burying them. They turned away from this scene only after seeing the doorway break in pieces and the relief that adorned its top, that depicted the same tyrannosaur skeleton as on both park logos, disappear.
Where the Visitors' Center once stood proudly, there was now only a tide of earth crowned by shaky trees and a layer of vegetation.
The little that remained of Jurassic Park was gone.

Dearing and Grady left the road a bit further to find the path they had taken earlier and all along it, they had to avoid several falling trees and slalom between or climb over the trunks lying on their way.
Aside from the staccato of explosions in the north and rumbling that was similar to the sound of thunder, although continuous, a deathly hush had fallen upon the jungle.

As the jeep was only over a hundred of meters away, Grady began to hear cawing sounds in the north.
He listened attentively to the calls; but Dearing soon realized that they weren't from crows or any other birds but from a different kind of flying animal, one was supposed to be kept captive in one of the park's aviaries.

"Out of the frying pan..." she began.

"…Into the fire…" Grady finished. "Lie down and stay still!" He hissed, pulling her under a dense bush.

Harpactognathuses passed over them, in such numbers that their shadows casted darkness on the ground.
Both were perfectly aware of the danger posed by these pterosaurs and therefore, make sure to stay still and silent.
Once the surprise of their escape past, Dearing and Grady wondered about the latter's how and why and their first hypothesis was that the earthquake damaged the aviary enough to create a breach.

It was not until the pterosaurs were far enough away that they got up, but barely had they got going that they felt like snowflakes falling on them.

When she wanted to remove them from her shoulders, Dearing noticed that the film that had been deposited was not white but rather dark grey. Ash.
This, combined with the powerful earthquake, the sound of explosions, and the continuous rumbling in the sky, made them realize that the eruption of Mount Sibo had begun.
Nothing keeping them in the north, they went back in the jeep and drove southward.
Halfway between the Dreadful Lake and the southern arc of the Embrace, they came out of the jungle and stopped at the top of a ridge.

Facing east, they overlooked the northern half of the Central Fields.
On their left, the Embrace had already passed in the shadow of the thick tempestuous black cloud full of lightning issued by the Sibo and that a strong northern wind was pushing south. Very soon, it was going to pass over the southern arc of the valley, rolling over the summits and the vales like a slow-moving tidal wave.
Flying towards the meadows, they saw the Harpactognathus' swarm and Grady grabbed the pair of binoculars in his bag before opening the roof window in order to follow the pterosaurs without leaving the vehicle.

He saw them turn south, towards the limits of his field of vision.

"The eruption is making them flee to the opposite side of the island," he observed.

Dearing froze.

"The opposite... Burroughs...," she said, horrified. "We have to return there!"

"Our arrival won't change anything, it's already too late. The quetzals, because they too must have escaped, will be there in no time and with sixty pterosaurs sowing panic among twenty thousand people in the streets, we would be safer in the jungle. If we go back, we will have to be very careful. For now, let's just follow them. Take the wheel."

They exchanged places and Grady, standing on the passenger seat with the upper part of his body sticking out of the window, motioned to her that he was ready. Following his indications, she drove quickly in the hope that they would catch up with the swarm.