Chapter 4

Contact

Malcolm walked across the parking lot outside the chapel, towards his gleaming red Pontiac GTO, which was parked awkwardly over two parking spaces. The sun shone brilliantly directly above, the buildings in the distance were blurred by the heat wave. Sarah Harding was walking alongside him, wearing a pair of designer sunglasses. Malcolm was forty-eight years old; streaks of grey were beginning to show on the flanks of his head and sharp lines were beginning to form on his face. Sarah was almost thirty six, but had retained the appearance of a far younger woman, with her ginger hair flowing down past her shoulders. Harding and Malcolm made an unlikely couple, with Ian dressed completely in black and Sarah wearing mud spattered khakis, looking muscular and energetic.

"Nice lecture today," said Sarah.

"Yes, the applause from the audience was interesting," said Ian.

"They just came to see you talk about what happened, you don't give many talks like that one. Although, they did seem a little over enthusiastic, I thought I'd gone deaf afterwards."

"To say the least," Malcolm snorted.

"Yeah well, what did you expect?"

"I expected a little more people than usual, but not a hundred school kids."

"Do you think they understood what you were saying?"

"No. I doubt they heard anything except the words 'Jurassic Park'. None of them looked competent enough to know the first thing about Chaos Theory, and I doubt they would care to."

Harding shrugged and detecting Ian's irritation decided to change the subject.

"Kelly called last night, she wants to know if you're still on for Saturday," said Sarah.

"Ah, yes. She's been looking forward to that," said Malcolm as an old Ford Sedan rumbled past them.

"Where're you taking her?"

"We're going out to dinner. She doesn't have much time to relax now she's in college. Want to come?"

"Sure, I could use a good meal. Our apartment hasn't had much in the ways of good eating at the moment. And are you conducting some kind of experiment?"

"What do you mean?"

"That thing in the fridge, I thought you were trying to grow a friend from that mold."

"Hey, that turkey was still good," said Malcolm as they reached the car. Harding gave a hoot of laughter as Ian pulled out his keys.

"How do you feel about lunch?" he said as he unlocked the Pontiac.

"Yeah, ok." As they both made to get into the car they both heard a shout from behind them, further down the street. Malcolm squinted in the harsh sunlight. A man was running towards them, his arms waving in the air. They both paused and looked at each other, perplexed. As the man came closer they saw that he was a bearded man of around forty, but he looked haggard and his clothes were rumpled. He bore the resemblance of somebody who had not slept in several days. As he reached them he bent over slightly, panting.

"Dr. Ian Malcolm?" he asked between breaths.

"Yes," said Malcolm.

"I need to speak to you immediately."

"And you are?"

"Dr. Martin Guiterrez, I've been trying to contact you since Thursday."

"Yes well, I've been away on business. I'm afraid I don't have time to talk to wild theories about the InGen islands. I was just going to lunch with Dr. Harding here—"

"No, you don't understand. You're the only one that can help. We have a big problem down in Costa Rica. We've found…creatures on the beaches."

Malcolm paused, his hand on the door handle.

"And there's something else," Marty continued. "A mysterious disease is spreading. We first detected it a few weeks ago, so far it's showing up along the west coast alone. The victims are showing really strange symptoms, and several fatalities." Malcolm looked up, his expression blank. He stood for a few moments, considering Marty.

"If you're concerned about disease I suggest you contact the proper authorities to deal with it. Costa Rica has one of the best health care services in the world, I'm sure they'll be able to deal with it."

"Dr. Malcolm, please. This is different. It's unlike anything we've ever seen before. Considering that it's only appearing along the west coast I'm assuming that it's pretty obvious what this means."

"Could you be more specific?" Malcolm sighed. Guiterrez's eye twitched.

"I'm talking about the InGen islands, Dr. Malcolm. I'm talking about Jurassic Park."

Marty looked over his shoulder, as if checking to see if they were being watched. He looked up and down the streets and then started to look into the windows of nearby buildings. He spoke wearily as he continued to look around.

"Look, I can't say anything more here. Could we go somewhere a little more private?"

"What are you worried about? There's nobody here but us," said Malcolm, exasperated.

"Dr. Malcolm, please!"

Malcolm stared at him. Guiterrez seemed agitated, almost frightened. The situation must be serious if Guiterrez was worried about being followed, but who would do such a thing Malcolm didn't know. If something concerning InGen then he could be one of the only people that could find out the full truth. He made a mental note to call them as soon as possible. Not that he didn't trust them; after all they had been in contact with him since Tim Murphy had taken over the company, giving him generous grants for his continued counseling on their newer projects. But he had to find out what was going on. Pulling open the door of the car and folded the seat forward, providing room for Guiterrez to climb into the back seat.

"Hop in," he said.

The clink of cutlery and load chatter filled their ears as they ordered their meals from the waitress. Malcolm had chosen this restaurant purposefully, if Guiterrez was right in being concerned about being followed then it was unlikely that they would be overheard. Harding sipped coke from the bottle and watched the Guiterrez with polite interest as he continued to jerkily look over his shoulder at the other tables. Finally, he decided that it was safe to speak and turned to face them, and a smile spread across his face.

"Good choice," he said and took a swig of his beer. Malcolm tossed his menu aside and leaned forward slightly.

"Why did you come to me?" asked Malcolm.

"Look, there are only a handful of people I figured could help me. And out of all of them you're the closest." He ticked them off on his fingers. "Grant is in Luxemburg doing lectures, something about his new theories on raptor behavior. Sattler is on holiday in France with her kid. Nick Van Owen is doing a National Geographic piece somewhere in Sumatra. When I couldn't contact you I phoned your secretary, she said you'd be here in Santa Fe for the next few days. I drove here as soon as I could."

"You drove here?" asked Harding. "All the way from Costa Rica?"

"Yeah, as you can see I haven't slept much." Guiterrez sighed deeply and ran his hand over the two day stubble on his chin.

"Is this really that important?" asked Malcolm.

"I'm afraid it is. We've detected a strange disease that's cropping up all along the west coast, and at the same time we're getting reports of strange creatures on the beaches in the same areas."

"Where did you first hear about this?"

"I got a package in the mail from a guy called Dr. Sharp over in the new hospital they're setting up, it's on the outskirts of the Cabo Blanco Biological Reserve. A guy had come in during the night and died very quickly, but Sharp couldn't figure out what had happened to him. He'd sent me a sample of the man's blood, so I took a look at it. His blood work was seriously messed up, I had no idea what had happened to him, but it was obvious that this was some kind of unknown allergen."

"You don't know what it is?"

We have absolutely no idea what it is. It's not a virus from what we can tell; white blood cell counts don't go up at all. As far as we can tell it's not airborne, only a handful of people have contracted it so far, but the problem is that it's spreading."

"Contagious?"

The waitress returned with their meals and they fell silent, smiling politely until she was out of earshot before continuing. Malcolm looked down at his food in distaste; he hadn't really been concentrating on what he had ordered. But Guiterrez was tucking in as if dying of hunger, taking bites so large it was almost absurd. They both waited for a few moments for him to swallow the mouthful of chicken, swilling it down with another swig of beer. He sighed appreciatively and picked up a bread roll and began to speak again, as if he had only just remembered that Malcolm and Harding were there.

"Yes, this allergen seems to be very contagious. It seems to be spreading through bodily contact, entering through cuts or being ingested. We've tested all of the water and food supplies, and found nothing. But the problem is we--," he looked over his shoulder, "we've seen this before. Around ten years ago we got reports of people becoming ill, along the west coast. People were getting splitting headaches, diarrhea. It's almost periodic. I think it has something to do with these…things that are washing up." Malcolm sat for a while, looking down at the tablecloth, nursing his diet coke. When he spoke his voice was somewhat constricted.

"Why hasn't this been on the news? The media would have caught wind of something like this."

"I have no idea. We've put all of the infected patients under quarantine and for now it seems contained, but I don't know how long we can keep it that way. Several of them have died; they develop aneurisms and go into shock. It's not pretty, and it's extremely painful. There's another thing. Some guys came to see me just before I got Dr. Sharp's sample, told me to contact them if I heard anything. I think somebody's trying to cover this up."

Malcolm snorted. "It wouldn't surprise me," he said, stabbing at his salad.

"Have you contacted InGen?" said Harding through a mouthful of beef casserole.

"I've tried, but they're not returning my calls. But they've got something to do with this."

A high electronic trill filled the room, and people at neighboring tables began looking around for the source. Frowning, Malcolm pulled his mobile phone from his pocket, glancing at the lit display screen. It read 'Murphy, Tim', Malcolm looked up at Guiterrez. "Looks like you're right." He clicked 'answer' and lifted the phone to his ear.

"Hello?"

"Ah, Dr. Malcolm," said a confident voice.

"Tim. How are you?" asked Malcolm.

"I'm very well, thank you. However, it seems that we may have a small problem."

"Tell me about it," Malcolm said, staring at Guiterrez, who was looking at Ian intently.

"Excuse me?" asked Tim, his demeanor changing slightly.

"A Dr. Guiterrez has come to see me, concerning a mysterious disease cropping up down in Costa Rica." There was a long silence. Then Tim spoke, but his voice had become tenser.

"How did he come across this?"

"Apparently some of your animals are washing up along the west coast."

"I know. As I say, I need your help. Would you please come down to InGen Headquarters as soon as possible and I'll explain everything. I could use Dr. Harding as well, if she would agree. And this Dr. Guiterrez, I'd like him to come too."

"What's this all about—"

"I'm sending my jet to come and get you immediately, be at the Los Alamos airport at five o'clock today," Tim interrupted, whose mind seemed elsewhere. Malcolm could tell that they weren't going to get any further over the phone, and sighed.

"Alright, I'll see you soon," he said and rang off. Harding and Guiterrez were looking at him enquiringly, Marty had stopped eating, his half eaten bread roll halfway to his mouth.

Malcolm stood up and threw down some cash to pay for the meal. "I guess we're taking a little trip to New York."