Chapter Twenty-Six
June 8th, 1993
The park is quiet. In Hammonds absence, it seems some sort of pregnant, tenuous calm has settled upon the island. Muldoon, when he has appeared, has worn a severe look. The man is not happy. The incident is obviously still a sore spot for him. Possibly a poor reflection on him, he feels, but from what I gather, he is not to blame. The British are known for their indominable spirit, and I am certain he is no exception. He will survive this.
My own spirit feels somewhat rejuvenated. I have distanced myself from the velociraptors and other park workers. In fact, todays observations were spent entirely in the field. My mind pre-occupied, I decided to rise early and spend the day roaming the paddock that Hammond used to first present to me upon my arrival. A mixed species paddock, I was able to monitor interactions between brachiosaur, parasaurolophus and some gallimimus. The weather was beautiful, and the fresh air helped clear my head from the past few days mayhem.
I was almost lulled into believing the parks future was not in question. The peace and tranquillity that can be experienced whilst in the presence of the herbivores was both healing and addictive, a remedy for the worries I, and others, have for this park. The research notes I gathered today should reflect that, the behaviours of the animals indicative of creatures of peace, creatures able to find a harmony in this world they have been brought into.
For a day, I was able to mostly forget my concerns and my fears, and just soak up the wonder of this parks magic. I am sure this is what Hammond has in mind when he, if he, opens to the public. For all his manipulations and puppeteering, the man has clear vision of the joy he wants to bring to people. Whilst impossible in reality, the power of this park will have guests believing it is something they can see and touch. A way to reach back into the past and touch what was once out of reach.
And whilst a pleasant thought, the reality is that the past can never be touched. You can never go back. Something I should have considered, before I said yes to Hammond. Before I said yes to a future that didn't involve Charlotte.
Today made me forget all that. Made me see things clearly, see things and observe in clarity and a not unwelcome feeling of optimism. And I was happy. Content. And today has made me believe in making a future here. One of peace. One of acceptance. Maybe not from my colleagues. I highly doubt I will find much in the way of human companionship here, outside of Roberta. But an acceptance of my life here, of my calling. Something I can nurture. Something I can grasp with my own hands and hold onto.
Something that nobody can take from me.
Dr. Jane Marsden.
Jane's eyes snapped open and she gasped in the air. Beautiful, clear, essential air. Her lungs dragged it in faster than she could control, her chest heaving and throbbing, painful as her lungs expanded. She coughed, retching and gagging as that air passed down her throat, past her raw, crushed and bruised windpipe.
Her hands went immediately to her neck, her fingers closing around her throat, the skin tender to the touch. She groaned, and she knew the tears were coming. Then the fear came. Her eyes grew wider as she scrambled up, her heels kicking at the carpet as she struggled to get away from Adam. To get away from the empty depths of his eyes. Only he wasn't there.
She looked up at the ceiling of the office and saw the flickering light of fire dancing there. She frowned, wondering why the room was on fire. She dragged in more air, noticing the smell of smoke this time. Her senses felt fuzzy, but the acrid stink of smoke was bringing them all back in a clamouring riot.
The carpet felt fuzzy on her fingertips, her throat and neck painful. Her eyes, once she'd blinked away the tears, were taking in the scene around her quickly. But the dominant sense was that of utter noise. Utter chaos, outside, through the doors by the helicopter. The helicopter! Their way off this island and back to safety, back to what she knew.
She pulled herself up on the edge of a desk and looked out of the doors, the bright glare of the fire and carnage stunning her, the light painful to look at. Her eyes felt so sore, and she blinked away the stinging tears. The smell of the smoke from outside was making her throat dry. Drier than it already was. She swallowed involuntarily, and it felt like she was swallowing a lump of needles the size of a tennis ball. She retched again, bringing fresh tears to her eyes. She wanted to curl up. To hide from the flames. To hide from the chaos. From those hands and those eyes she saw whenever she closed her own eyes. Those hands, wrapping around her neck. Squeezing, squeezing, squeezing.
She could still feel the pressure. That awful, relentless pressure. She drew in another ragged breath, swallowed another painful lump. Her hands were shaking, her arms numb. Felt like she had no control over her own body. Felt like he'd stolen her strength away. Her life. Yet here she was. Still breathing. Still alive. She bit into her bottom lip in an effort to stop it quivering.
She took another breath, willing the calm to come back, needing it to come back. Difficult when just beyond the doors was a scene of destruction, with the only chance of escape the centre piece of the fiery display. She felt a rumble, in the ground, travelling up through her thighs. She looked beyond the burning wreckage and saw a huge shape, swaying and lumbering through the flickering fires and columns of smoke. The rain, mingling with the flames and smoke, made for a blurry viewpoint, but she could recognise a tyrannosaur easily. Didn't take much to put what had happened together. The animal was thundering beyond the inferno, tossing its head and swinging its tail. It was avoiding the flames, but Jane could see it was fascinated by them. There was an inquisitive quality to its movements.
The tramping of several feet shook her from watching the animal and sent a nauseating flurry of nerves throughout her guts. Her hands shook and her throat felt like it was being squeezed all over again. She heard voices, male voices. She cast about, unsure of what to do. Terrified of what to do. Terrified of him if he came back. And he was coming back. She could hear his voice now, arguing with another. The South African. The voices were getting louder.
Jane looked about the office desperately. She needed somewhere to hide, but there was nowhere. Nowhere felt safe anymore. In a panic, she lay back down on the floor again, hoping to affect how she thought she must have lay as Adam had choked the life from her. She shifted her ass, trying to get her legs to lay in a lifeless manner. She fussed with an arm, not sure if it lay across her or off to the side. A door banged open and she was out of time. The voices were around her. She closed her eyes and prayed she could slow her breathing. The pounding heart in her chest made it seem unlikely.
There was a thump behind her somewhere, and then she could hear breathing, fidgeting. Then his voice.
"… don't know what you want me to say. It was your god-damn men that opened fire and provoked the god damn thing. What did you expect?"
"I didn't expect my landing zone to be surrounded by incendiary fuels and oils, and I didn't expect a massive fucking lizard to come tramping out of the jungle.'' The South African was angry, his voice dripping venom. "A damn warning might have been nice, about what to expect here."
"I told him the animals had been released,'' snapped Adam. "If he didn't tell you, that's his fault. Not mine."
"Oh that's great, that great. I like your accountability. Still doesn't un-fuck the situation though does it, eh? Or bring my chopper back."
Jane heard Adam sigh. "I've been trying to un-fuck everything since the word go here, Cutter! You don't know what I've had to do to try and get this done."
"Well I can see some of your handy-work from here. Is this what you call un-fucking? She looks pretty fucked to me." The voice sounded right above Jane. She thought she could see a darker shape beyond her closed eyelids. She held her breath, terrified her face would twitch. Her throat felt horribly dry, and sore, and the urge to clear it was unbearable.
"She knew too much,'' said Adam, almost miserably. "She was a problem." The shape moved away, Cutter's voice going with it.
"So what now?"
"What do you mean what now?" said Adam.
"How do we get off this rock?"
"You guys were meant to be sorting that! Don't you carry radios or satellite phones in those vests?"
"No. We don't." said Cutter. "There's nobody to call anyway. We're not exactly a sanctioned bunch of chaps." Adam sighed again, the hissing breath turning into a snarling growl of anger.
"God damn it! Can't anything just go right?" Jane heard a loud thump on one of the desks. "Right. There's a communications room in this lab. We call him. If Dodgson wants this research, he can damn well get us another ride out of here. Call your guys in here. I need a few more things from the storage rooms up top and then we go."
Jane heard grunting, then boots passing by her and another set of steps moving away and up the stairs. Broken glass crunched. Someone whistled.
"Rhodes. Clem," shouted Cutter. "In you come." Jane heard more boots tramping, then new voices. One was British, the other American.
"Everything's toast out there," said the British voice. "There's nothing to salvage. Sorry Skip."
"Forget it Clem,'' replied Cutter. "I'll buy a new one when we close this contract."
"Hey, look over there. Headlights. Someone's coming this way." This from the American. Must be Rhodes then. His accent had a southern drawl.
"Take cover. Watch and wait. If they look either dangerous or useless, drop them. We don't need any more complications. I'm going to find the good Doctor." Jane heard weapons being cocked and the shuffling of feet. Cutters boots moved away and began climbing the stairs. She let out the longest breath, as gently as she could. Painfully slowly, she opened an eye and tilted her head to the side. She could see the knees and boot soles of Rhodes and Clem. They were either side of the door pillars, spaced out by a few metres. She could see they were facing outside. Watching.
Her mind was racing. Adam said there was a communications room. Could she find it? Could she use it? Who would she call? At this point calling anyone sounded good. And who was this Dodgson person? Clearly someone worth killing for. Jane's stomach twisted again at the memory of Adams hands around her throat. She couldn't just lay where she was forever, hoping for the best. She had to get out of here. She had to get away from them. What if one of them put a bullet in her head for good measure? What if Adam came back and checked her, and then made sure of the job? She felt the bile rising in her throat, the sour taste of spit in her mouth, and her hand clenched. No.
She glanced at Clem and Rhodes, dark figures, and dangerous ones too, but they were watching outside, their focus outwards. Hardly daring to breath, Jane rolled onto her side, keeping low, and then onto her stomach. Wincing, she drew her knees up and began to crawl away, her heart pounding in her throat at the terror of discovery. Every scrape of her knee on the carpet, every placement of her hand she expected one of them to hear her, to notice and come and see what was making the noise.
She glanced at the men. They were still watching outside. She put her hand on the desk to steady herself and felt the touch of paper on her fingertips. On instinct she pulled the sheet towards her and looked at it. It was the rejected research paper she had seen before. The one with the S. Aegyptiacus proposal. Something was scribbled on it in handwriting that she hadn't seen before. It was two letters, LD, and then what looked like a phone number. She frowned, and then without thinking folded the paper and gently tucked it into her pocket.
She could feel the sweat trickling down her back as she crawled out from the cover of the desk and moved towards the corridor where she had confronted Adam. She was completely out in the open now. If one of them turned, they would see her. She crept on, putting more distance between them.
She reached the underside of the gallery landing, the darker shadows absorbing her. She felt the knots release ever so slightly the further she got. The dancing shadows from the fires outside were dropping away as she crept further down the corridor. She didn't know where it led, she didn't care. It was away from the men. Away from Adam.
She heard a door open, back out in the office and on the landing, and then Adam's voice.
"Right. The sooner we get away from here the better. I've got enough to keep that asshole Dodgson happy. Get your men to grab my cases below and…what the fuck?!" Boots running on the landing. Thudding, banging steps. "Where the hell is she?"
"Who?" said Cutter.
"Jane Marsden! The woman I just killed! The woman who was lying right down there!"
Jane scrambled to her feet and moved quicker, staying quiet and not waiting for the men to start the search. Wishful thinking. They would come for her. He would come.
She could hear them shouting now, hear the pounding of boots and a few doors slamming. She kept going, her heart thumping again, and her hands wildly feeling her way in the dark. Outside, through the slits of windows, she could see the fronds of the jungle vegetation, illuminated suddenly by flashes of lightening. Thunder rumbled moments later, an ominous growling of natural fury, building and building, gathering momentum. She kept going.
She heard feet pounding behind her, and her heart almost leapt out of her mouth. They were coming. So soon. She tumbled around a corner and found herself in a dimly lit stairwell, with wide steps leading both up and down. A sign said something, on the wall, but she couldn't read it. Didn't have time. She was about to race up the steps when she saw the dark shapes of two objects against the wall behind her. Vending machines. She looked back at the stairs, seeing the gleam of metal on the steps. If she went up the stairs they would hear her, for sure. She looked behind her and saw the slim gap between the two machine. A slice of dark shadow between the objects. She moved, taking her chance, and wiggled her way into the gap. Her arm grazed the cold edge, and her chest pushed up painfully against the side, but she kept pressing herself into the dark, as deep as she could go, which didn't feel near deep enough at all. A flash of lightening lit up the stairwell, cutting across the floor and illuminating the gap between the vending machines, stopping just short of her shoulder. She held her breath.
A man appeared, followed quickly by another. Their movements were quick, catlike. Their stances low, the weapons in their hands pointed out in front. One wore a t-shirt beneath his vest, the bottom of a tattoo poking from beneath the sleeve. The other had a ponytail, his hair pulled back in a horrible fashion and giving his forehead the appearance of going on forever. The one with the ponytail looked up the centre of the stair well.
"You hear anything?" he said, in his southern drawl. This one was Rhodes then. Clem shook his head.
"Nah. She could be anywhere in this place."
"Could have sworn I heard something from this direction,'' said Rhodes, turning away from the stairwell. He was facing the vending machines now. Facing Jane. She still hadn't taken a breath. Rhodes sniffed. "You smell that? Smells like sweat." Jane's eyes widened.
"That's just you,'' said Clem.
"Shut your hole, Englishman." Rhodes sniffed again. "I'm tellin' ya. Getting a scent here."
"Just get on and check the sodding stairs,'' said Clem, taking a few steps towards the flight leading down. A flash of lightening lit up the side of his face, pockmarked and pale. He had a receding hairline, the hairs sparse on his head.
Rhodes was frowning after him, wrinkling his nose. Janes lungs were bursting, she needed to breath, needed to draw in the precious oxygen. Rhodes was so close now. She opened her mouth and gasped, unable to hold it any longer. The gunshots that rang out from outside made both men swivel round, ignoring any sound Jane made.
"Shots,'' said Rhodes. Clem nodded.
"Let's go. We aint going to find that woman this way."
They jogged back down the corridor, their steps fading into the pattering of the rain on the windows. Jane felt a tear trickle down her cheek, the sweet and cool air that was rushing into her lungs forgotten as she felt the relief flood through her. Her body felt weak, and only by leaning against the machine in front of her was she able to stay standing. They had been so close. She drew in more breath, trying to calm herself. The minutes stretched by, seeming like an eternity as she hid.
What was happening here? She thought they had been so close to salvation. Instead, the nightmare just kept getting worse. Much worse. Whatever his reasons, Adam was involved with some dangerous people. Maybe this Dodgeson person? She didn't know. Not much was making sense. Only that he had killed Sturridge and tried to kill her. And for what? For some sort of arrangement? There had to be more to it.
Maybe there was. Maybe….
Her breathing steadied, the tumultuous beating of her heart evening out. She could feel it, creeping up from her toes, through her legs and stomach. That stubborn streak again. Survival streak, maybe? Whatever it was, it fuelled her. Was it that hatred again? That drive to fight back, to not give in. She saw Adams blank expression in her mind, and her gut twisted again, but with it came that urge to bite back. That urge to stand her ground, which she'd learnt the hard way. That ability to defy the snide looks and cruel comments, and now the attempts on her life.
She focused on Adams face in her mind, and her hand balled into a fist. She wouldn't run. She'd done enough of that. From the animals she'd at first admired, and from the people she had just begun to trust.
She slid out from between the machines and pressed herself against the wall, her hands steady this time. She took a final breath, and with it she followed back down the corridor where Rhodes and Clem had gone. Back towards the office.
She used the shadows, creeping along as quiet as she could. Outside, the storm helped masked her movements, the lashing rain and rumbles of thunder giving her confidence. Then she felt the vibrations through the floor, and the sounds of a tyrannosaur. Something was happening outside. Someone had fired shots earlier. Maybe at the animal? Was it the people in the vehicle that had approached? Maybe people that Jane knew? Perhaps Clint had found Sidney Wallace? Maybe they had made their way here? Jane's spirits lifted a bit, not wanting to trust her suspicions, but needing answers.
She edged along the wall, seeing the open plan office ahead. There was no sign of Adam, or the other men. Just the empty office and the flickering lights of the fires outside. She could hear the stomping of the tyrannosaur, and then its snarling roars, and then suddenly someone ran through the doors. No, two people. A man and a woman. Dirty and soaked through, both panting heavily.
One of them was Barker, Jane realised. She could see his dark hair and heavy face in the flickering light. She didn't know the woman. It wasn't Grace, or Anna. Maybe they hadn't found the others after all. Barker and the woman knelt behind a desk, watching outside. Barker looked nervous, twitchy. As if he was deciding something. Jane found she couldn't call out to them. Not from fear of Adam and the men, but something seemed wrong with what she was seeing.
Barker suddenly dashed away, back towards the doors and outside. The woman gasped, watching him, her eyes glued to something beyond the doors, out of Jane's sight.
Moments later Barker reappeared, dragging someone else with him. It was Gail. They collided with a desk and tumbled to the floor, spilling the chrome cases and papers that belonged to Adam. Glass tinkled and crunched, and Jane heard the angry bellowing of the Rex outside, its stomping steps moving away. Had Barker just saved Gail? Jane watched as they picked themselves up, Barker rising to his feet and Gail groaning as she turned to sit on the floor, her back to a desk. The other woman knelt to her.
Barker was picking something up from the floor, keeping his distance from the women. His whole body looked tense. They were speaking to each other, in low voices. Jane couldn't quite hear above the sounds of the storm outside, but the words sounded hostile. Barker was an obnoxious individual, but there was something else going on here. Something had changed since she last saw him.
He moved around the desk and knelt by the cases on the floor. One of them had fallen open, the glittering contents strewn across the floor. Jane swallowed the lump in her throat and moved a foot, ready to call out, and then the door banged, up on the landing, and she shrank back into the shadows. A door handle dug into her side, and she pushed it open slowly, ready to slip inside if she needed to. A quick glance inside and she saw a sink, and a small table. Possibly a small kitchen of some sort, probably a staff room.
Angry voices rose in volume out in the office, and she risked a peek out. She frowned, trying to make sense of the scene in front of her.
Barker was stood with a case in one hand and a pistol in the other, pointing it directly at Adam, who stood opposite him, Cutter and his men fanned out behind him. Jane wished Barker would pull the trigger. Wanted it more than she wanted to know why he had a gun. Had he always had one?
They were talking again, their voices sounding tense and irritated. Jane caught few words, but it sounded like a negotiation. What was happening? She edged closer, trying to hear more.
"…so I'm coming with you.'' Barkers voice sounded firm. He raised the case above his head, and Jane saw Adam sigh, his eyes never leaving Barker or the case.
"Fine."
"What about them?" said Cutter. Adam murmured something, and Cutter nodded. A moment later and Rhodes was walking towards Gail and the woman, pulling a handgun from a holster. Jane's guts began to twist again. What the hell was going on?
There was a shout, and then a blur of movement, and suddenly automatic gunfire blared out through the office, the echoing sounds of the weapons filling Janes ears as she ducked away, moving into the small kitchen and keeping low, expecting a stray bullet to come whizzing past her. She heard running footsteps, and panting, and then Adam was shouting, yelling at the men.
Jane opened the door a fraction, peering through the gap into the dark office. Adam was pointing at Barker.
"You. With us then. And you had best keep that case safe. You drop it, you're dead. I don't need hangers on. I don't need any of this." Adam spat onto the floor, his face a sneer of anger. "This is turning to utter shit. Fuck this. Fuck them all. We just have to get out of here now. We head to the communications room. Now."
He turned on his heel and began to move down a different corridor, Barker and the other men in tow. Barker? With them? Why didn't Adam just kill him? How was Barker involved? Jane's head was swimming with questions, and blurry with exhaustion.
She put a hand to her throat, feeling the tender skin, a reminder of the price of getting too close to this. She grit her teeth together and moved out into the office, darting between the desks and keeping low. She looked out of the glass doors, watching the smouldering ruin of the chopper, and the thrashing trees of the jungle beyond. There was no sign of the tyrannosaur. Just fire, and smoke, and the bitter sting of hopelessness.
She shook her head, not giving in. This wasn't over. Her foot bumped against something on the floor, and she saw her hammer. Adam's blade too, a nasty looking kitchen knife, lay opposite it. She picked them both up and tucked them into her belt, the lump of metal of the hammer a familiar feeling already. She ran a finger over the head of the tool, feeling the mottled surface of the iron. Cold, unfeeling. Just like she had been all these years. Just like she needed to be now. Adam was headed for the communications room. Which meant so was she. If she couldn't call for help, she could damn well make sure he couldn't either.
She turned to face the corridor he had disappeared down when there was a groan from the corner of the room. She half jumped out of her skin, pulling her hammer and tensing up, not sure if she was ready for this after all.
Something moved in the shadows in the corner, something on the floor. It groaned again, and Jane saw an arm reaching into the air, curled fingers grasping, searching. Bloody fingers. She moved towards the figure slowly, her hand gripping her hammer tighter and tighter.
Dr. Lee Denton lay on his side against the wall, one hand reaching into the air, the other placed over his stomach. A long trail of blood, smeared into the carpet, disappeared out of the doors. His face was pale, drenched with rain or sweat and smeared with a bloody handprint. His short hair was flat against his scalp. He was dying. Jane knelt by his side, feeling awkward as she took his hand, her fingers interlacing with his. They were cold, freezing inside her warm hand. His lip quivered.
"I'm sorry. I thought…." He winced, a small cough shaking his body. Jane said nothing. She didn't know what to say. "I got scared," coughed Denton. "The village…I had to get away. I heard them…..the raptors…"
"It's alright,'' said Jane, knowing it wasn't. For so many reasons.
"I saw the helicopter come here. I thought…I thought maybe…my Father…What do they want?" He coughed again, blood dribbled out of his mouth. Jane could feel her knees getting damp from the pool of it that Denton lay in.
"Its alright," said Jane, feeling his fingers looing their grip.
"I thought…they were here for us…for me…" His fingers suddenly gripped back, his hand pulling Janes. "Dr. Marsden, Jane, it hurts…I don't want to die." His eyes bore into hers, pleading.
"It's alright,'' said Jane. She placed her other hand on the side of his face, knowing it meant nothing. It didn't matter. His eyes stared past her. She let his hand drop away, thudding down with a wet slap next to his body. His mouth hung slack, a slight droop to his lower jaw. Jane frowned. Cutter may have pulled the trigger, but Dentons death was Adam's doing. Jane stood up and looked down the dark corridor, wanting to follow. But knowing she couldn't.
The others. Williams. Viv, and Julia. They needed her now. She had promised them. And she wasn't going to break that. She wasn't going to leave them.
She left Denton without looking at him, crossing the office and climbing the stairs back up to the landing, darting along and plunging into the shadows, back the way she had first come. Back into the depths of the lab.
Outside, the storm raged on, battering the windows and igniting the sky with burst of white light. Hellish shadows and silhouettes jumped at her as she moved through the building, never trusting she wasn't a moment from discovery, from another attempt on her life. Scraping echoes and thumping bangs were a constant, as if the building were alive, its heart beating and reminding Jane it was watching her.
She found herself on another landing, with tall windows to her right, looking out between the hills of the valley that the lab sat in. In between the flashes of light and the swaying tops of the jungle canopy, Jane thought she saw fleeting glimpses of sauropods, maybe the brachiosaurs. A flash later and they were gone, replaced by the leaning trunks of trees, just phantoms that stayed in her vision when she blinked. She watched the rain running down the glass for a moment, lost in its chaotic direction as each drop slithered into another, never following the same route.
Somewhere outside she heard the rumbling challenge of a tyrannosaur, or maybe it was any other dinosaur, defying the elements. She ran a hand through her hair and moved on, descending some stairs and turning a corner to find herself in a small lobby.
On one wall were two doors, the universal symbols of a man and woman on each door. She moved towards the one with the female figure on, gently pushing the door and slipping inside. Beneath her boots the carpet changed to tiles, her soles clacking on the porcelain. She pressed her back to the door, somehow thinking that she could keep out any or all of the horrors she had seen if she just kept the door closed. Her elbow brushed the lock, and she hastily turned it, hearing a reassuring click as the bolt slid home.
She moved to one of the three small sinks, each one with a mirror and opposite a stall, the doors all ajar, the edge of the white lavatories just visible in the gloom. Above the central mirror was a small pull-switch light. She tugged on the beaded chord and flinched away from the sudden light, her eyes stinging and phosphenes dancing and swimming in her vision.
Once her sight cleared, she dared to look at her reflection. A ghost looked back.
She was gaunt, her face looking slimmer than usual. Beneath the mud, grime and blood, a pale face stared at her. Her lips were dry and cracked, and she could feel her cheeks were bruised, the purple skin hidden beneath the dirt. Somehow her glasses were intact, if not just flecked with the evidence of the past few days. Her eyes looked feverish, bloodshot. Worse than bloodshot. Her left eye had a blob of red in the white, a network of thin vessels snaking their way from it across the rest of her eye. Another token of Adam. She looked at her neck, her lip curling.
She could see exactly where his hands had been. She could see the imprints and red marks that his fingers had left, like a scar. She swallowed, feeling the tender muscles protest. A row of small cuts lined the edge of her neck on one side where his fingernails had dug into her. She took it all in, as if admiring a macabre painting, noting each blemish, each bruise, each reminder of what he did. Of what he almost did.
Her hands squeezed the side of the sink and she took a long breath, finally dragging her eyes away from the haggard spectre in the mirror. She looked at one of the toilets, and in that moment became aware that she hadn't relieved herself since this morning, back at the docks, patiently waiting for Debbie to finish before they had all followed Sidney Wallace out into the unknown. Before Debbie had been torn apart. Her bladder sent a stinging pain through her, and she moved into the stall, peeling off her damp pants and sitting on the cold seat, closing her eyes and waiting for the warmth.
It took far too long. When the urine finally trickled out, she could immediately smell it, a tart odour letting her know just how dehydrated she was. It brought a dryness to her mouth unrelated to Adam's tokens, her parched tongue desperate for liquid. Her stomach soon growled after that. Seemed her body was catching up now that she had allowed herself this short reprieve.
She pulled some thin paper from the dispenser and wiped herself, wriggling back into her cold wet clothes and buttoning them up. Her fingers felt stiff. She realised she had been clenching her hands. She didn't bother to flush, just moved back to the sink and turned the faucet, letting out a gasp of relief as water flowed into the basin. She stuck her face under the stream and gulped in the water. It was cool, and she had never tasted anything so wonderful.
She drank long and deep, satisfying her thirst. Once sated, she splashed more water on her face, watching the water in the sink mixing with the dripping dirt and blood, a swirling blend of brown, red and black. She took a moment to wipe her lenses with a paper towel before taking one last look at herself in the mirror. That lonely woman who used to observe everything and stay quiet was a stranger to the person that looked back. Unfamiliar, yet not unwelcome. She sniffed and unlocked the door, moving back out into the lobby again and moving through the building once more, a shape amongst the darkness.
After a few minutes she soon recognised the entrance lobby of the lab. She looked outside and saw the dark shapes of the ATV's, still sat out in the rain, still and untouched. A flash of lightening lit up the forecourt, showing nothing but the abandoned vehicles and writhing jungle beyond.
She made her way down the corridor that Julia and the others had gone, once more feeling her way with one hand, the other hooked under the head of her hammer. She could hear water leaking down from somewhere, tapping into a puddle on the floor. The wind howled through a gap somewhere, a wailing song of sorrow.
A set of stairs confronted her, and she saw a light glowing from up on the next floor, its warmth looking inviting. It lit up just enough of the stairwell for her to read the floor guide next to the steps.
Level three – Medical
She moved up the steps, two at a time, and made her way to the light. The door to the medical office swung open easily, and the usual smell of sterile equipment and saline met her, reminding her of unpleasant visits to the nurse in high school. She heard someone shifting on what could have been a mattress, or maybe a soft chair, and the closing of a drawer. She felt the flutter of relief as she rounded the corner, knowing she had made it across the lab, away from Adam and those men.
Blood was smeared across the floor, a trail of bloody boot tread prints lead away from a clinic bed, the white paper sheet and mattress saturated with red. Medical equipment and paraphernalia were strewn across the room, and four compsognathus chirped and skittered amongst it all, tugging at the bloody bandages that lay across the floor or digging with their small feet in the open drawers of a cabinet against the wall. There was no sign of the others. Just blood, and footprints leading back out of the room, and the small green dinosaurs gleefully scampering amongst the mess. One of them cocked its head at her, a bloody rag hanging from its mouth, its beady eyes pure black. Where had they gone? Why had they gone?
All at once that feeling of being alone again crashed into her. That solitude she had once coveted now made her cower, made her feel cold. Were they dead? Was she truly alone now? Just her, with nobody but Adam and his murderous friends and the compsognathus for company. Just her, alone. Like she had left Charlotte.
Thunder rumbled overhead, and the light in the ceiling rose dimmed, throwing the room into creeping shadows, dark shapes growing from the corners. She hugged her arms, at a loss as what to do now. Where to go.
The thunder trailed off, and then she heard the barks. Then the answering barks, and then the hideous crescendo of their screams, their unique language. She rushed to the small window that overlooked the forecourt. It was pitch black outside, the dim light from the medical room making visibility outside impossible. All she saw was her reflection in the glass. The light faded some more, and then there was a flash of lightening, revealing the forecourt, and the pack of raptors approaching the steps of the lab.
At the back of the pack, Jane saw the unmistakeable figure of the female, snapping at the males and driving them towards the building. Then the outside went dark again, and the light above her finally went out.