Chapter 27

Lost

"Now what do we do?" asked Rodriguez, slumping against the side of a large tree, mud dripping from his clothes and his face splattered with dried blood.

"I don't know," muttered Tim, clutching a stitch in his side.

"What...what happened to the others?" said Wu, standing a few feet away, his face blank.

"I don't know," repeated Tim, sinking to the floor.

"Damn it, Murphy, you said you had this planned. What do we do now?" grated Rodriguez, digging weakly in his rucksack for his water bottle.

"Look, I don't know. I don't know!" said Tim.

They had run since they had left the Rex nest. They hadn't stopped, not daring to look over their shoulders. Rodriguez hadn't seen anybody else as he ran, and was sure that they must have escaped in another direction. Now the three of them had finally paused as they noticed that they could no longer hear the Tyrannosaurs. They stood in an area of thickly placed trees, with ferns dotted several feet apart. Dim, yellowish sunlight barely punctured the canopy, but it was now far weaker than earlier. It was getting late.

"Well, we ran for around ten minutes. I estimate that we could make around ten miles per hour in the jungle."

"Which means?" asked Rodriguez, gulping water from his bottle thirstily.

"We've could have covered around one and a half miles in that time, maybe. But, in which direction, we don't know."

"Don't you have the compass?" said Tim, rubbing his forehead.

Rodriguez watched as Wu nodded vaguely and pulled his pack from his shoulder, and began rummaging around. A few seconds later he pulled out the small battered compass, and stared at it intently for a few moments.

"Well?" said Tim eventually.

"Well, you have to remember that the island's mountains are magnetic to some degree, so the compass is being thrown off."

"Yes," said Rodriguez, "but not by much, right?"

"…Right."

"Well then," said Rodriguez, taking another drink, pointing in the direction from which they had come, "which way did we come from?"

"Err…we came from the south-west, which means that we were heading North-east."

"And where were we supposed to be heading?" asked Rodriguez. His head was pounding, and the air in the hot confines of the jungle was suffocating.

"West," said Tim. "The lagoon was west. We've gone over a mile in the wrong direction."

"Which puts us in the middle of nowhere," said Wu. "There's nothing around here. Just jungle. For miles. We're lost."

Rodriguez groaned, and closed his eyes for a moment, and took a few deep breaths, trying to soothe the pain in his head. After a minute or so he said, "Everybody knew that we were heading towards the lagoon. Maybe they'll all head there, so we can regroup."

"Well," said Rodriguez, "why don't we check the radios? See if anybody is listening?"

Tim nodded, and pulled out his radio from his pack, and switched it on. Static flooded Rodriguez's ears, and his head throbbed at the unpleasant hiss.

"Anybody out there? Anderson? Harding?" said Tim clearly, his finger on the 'talk' button.

There was a moments silence filled only by a harsh crackle of feedback, before there was a beep, and then Guiterrez's voice filled the jungle.

"Tim?"

"Yeah, Martin, it's me."

"Thank god. Are you okay?"

Tim looked at Wu and Rodriguez for a moment, who both nodded.

"Yeah, we're fine," said Tim.

"We? Who's with you?"

"I've got Rodriguez and Wu with me. We're all fine."

"That's everybody accounted for then," said Guiterrez. He sounded like he was talking more to another person beside him rather than to Tim over the radio.

"What? Who's with you?" said Tim.

"Everybody else," said Guiterrez. "Anderson, Sarah, Malcolm. Oh, and that guy we met in the Rex nest; Edgar."

Tim frowned suddenly. His hand shook slightly, and his knuckles became white as he gripped the radio. Rodriguez looked at him inquisitively. He didn't understand Tim's agitation; the man had told them that he didn't care for Dodgson anymore back in the nest.

"Get rid of him," snarled Tim.

"What?" said Guiterrez.

"Ditch him. We can't trust him."

"He's okay, he's no danger to any of us. Anyway, I, Anderson and Sarah have guns. He has nothing."

Tim still looked troubled. "Just make sure you watch him. Are you all alright?"

"For now, yeah, we're all fine…except for Malcolm; he's a little mucked up."

Tim gave a small jerk at these words, and his face seemed to slacken. Rodriguez narrowed his eyes; Murphy seemed to be suddenly apprehensive, even nervous perhaps. "Mucked up, you say?" said Tim, with a voice quite unlike his own. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well," said Guiterrez, oblivious to Tim's discomfort, "he's out cold. He's pale, sweaty and delirious."

Tim licked his lips, and his eyes were fixated on the radio. "I see…do you know what's wrong with him? After all, aren't you qualified to diagnose diseases and such?"

"I am, with lizard related illnesses…if that means anything on this island I'll never know. But there's no sign of bacterial infection from what I can see."

Tim nodded vaguely.

"And…where are you now?" he said quickly.

Rodriguez got the feeling that Murphy very much wanted to change the subject as quickly as possible, before anybody had time to dwell upon the matter of Malcolm. Rodriguez couldn't see why, he probably had one of those tropical diseases. Malaria or something. It was suspicious for Tim to act like this. But as he turned to look at Wu, he saw that he too looked disturbed by what Guiterrez was saying.

He frowned, and looked at the two of them, who were both staring blankly, apparently in thought. Rodriguez had the sudden feeling of being kept out of the loop. There was something else going on.

"We're all at the Lagoon," Guiterrez was saying.

"Ah, yes, we thought you might have headed there," said Tim, grabbing the subject as if a lifeline.

"Well, we didn't end up here on purpose," said Guiterrez.

"We need to re-group. You stay there, and we'll come to you."

"Hey, wait just a minute," said Rodriguez, standing up. "We're not doing that. I'm not going back that way, the Rex's are back there."

Tim looked at him for a moment, and then nodded.

"Yes, okay," said Anderson impatiently, slightly quieter than Guiterrez's voice, as if he was standing a small distance away from the mouthpiece. "But where are you?"

Tim gave a grunt. "In the middle of the jungle, about two miles north-west of the Tyrannosaur nest."

"So you went in the opposite direction?" Sarah's voice said.

Rodriguez smirked at Tim as his eyebrows twitched in agitation. "I wasn't too worried about the direction I was running at the time."

"Alright, fine, we're going to have to work something else out."

Tim nodded again, and threw his rucksack onto the group, and unzipped it. Dropping to his knees, he passed the radio to Wu, and pulled out a large piece of paper. Unfolding it, he revealed it to be the map of the island that they had seen previously on the helicopter. He laid it down on the muddy ground, and ran his finger in a circular motion near the middle of the island, off to the right slightly. "That's around where we are right now," he said.

Then he drew a line across the map, leftwards, towards a large blue blob, showing the lagoon, which was slightly elongated from north to south. "That's where they are."

"Maybe we could go around," said Wu, drawing an arch with his finger, instead of a straight line between the two points, "to get around the Tyrannosaur nest."

There was a crackle of static, and then Anderson said, "No, that'd take too long. It's getting dark. We can't do anything today; we need to find safe places to hold up for the night. Mr. Murphy wouldn't happen to know of any places like that, would he?"

"For you, yes," said Tim, "but not us. We'll have to sleep in a tree or something."

"Are you sure that would be safe? I mean, if you roll over while you're sleeping and fall out…"

"Better than sleeping on the ground, isn't it?"

"…Yes. Okay, what did you have in mind for the rest of us?"

Tim ran his hand over the map again, tapping an area quarter of a mile away from the lagoon, at the periphery of a small field. There was a cluster of small grey squares there, marked 'Hb Mntn'.

"What's that?" asked Rodriguez, eyeing the map curiously.

"Maintenance shed. It contained supplies and materials. And it also dispensed food to the herbivores."

"Is it safe?" asked Anderson.

"The walls are made of concrete, and the entrance is made of heavy steel bars. It should still be in good shape. It's your best chance, anyway."

"Sounds good," said Anderson. "Where is it?"

"You say you're at the lagoon. Where exactly at the lagoon?"

There was a brief pause, and there was the sound of movement from over the radio, and Rodriguez rubbed his head and sighed at the thought of spending the night in a tree.

"We're around midway between north and south of the coast of the lagoon, on the east side," said Anderson finally. There was a slight crunching hiss drifting over the radio as Anderson walked. Rodriguez was reminded of somebody walking on a beach.

Tim put his finger on the location that Anderson had specified, and then nodded. He waved his hand at Wu, asking for the radio.

"Okay, Anderson," he said, "head south-south east, for around quarter of a mile."

"But that'd take us back into the jungle," said Guiterrez.

"Yes, but only for a few hundred meters. Then it opens out again into a field. The buildings are positioned at the tree line. Shouldn't take more than fifteen minutes to get there."

"Make that half an hour, seeing as we're carrying Malcolm," said Guiterrez.

"…Okay then," said Wu.

"Do you know which animals live around that field?" asked Anderson.

"This map is well over ten years old. Although it does detail the territories and paddocks of the dinosaurs, that's from when we determined their homes for them. During that time they could have moved anywhere, migrated."

"So you're telling us that you have no idea," said Sarah.

"Basically," said Tim, "yes."

"What if we run into any problems?" said Guiterrez.

"We keep the radios on," said Wu.

"No," said Anderson, "we can't do that. It'll run the batteries down, and we need to keep them as long as possible."

"Okay, then we turn them on every half an hour, just to be sure that we're all alright."

"Half an hour sounds good to me," said Guiterrez.

"Alright guys, we'll discuss more later, for now we need to get going. The sun is getting way too low," said Rodriguez.

"He's right," said Anderson, "we need to go."

And with that, there was a click, and his voice was replaced by endless hisses and crackles. Rodriguez didn't feel much up to moving. In fact, he felt very much like lying right there, on the ground, and going to sleep. The jungle was getting darker now, and the reduced light gave everything a slight golden glow. But Tim was already walking around the trees within their small area, looking for an adequate tree to sleep in.

"So, what was the deal with Malcolm then?" said Rodriguez sleepily.

Tim didn't answer immediately; he just continued to stare up at the treetops. "There could be a lot of things wrong with him. Could be a result of blood loss, infection or fatigue. I'm not an expert."

"Neither am I," said Rodriguez, rubbing his head again, "but you know something about it."

"What are you talking about?" said Tim absently, standing beneath a thick tree, with a bunch of large branches suspended over thirty feet in the air.

"You didn't look too comfortable when Anderson was explaining about his symptoms."

"I'm concerned, that's all," said Tim, and began to climb the tree which he was beneath, being pushed up by Wu.

Rodriguez stood up slowly, and nodded. As he walked towards the tree, he realized one thing; they weren't telling him everything.