Chapter 31

Storm

Wu listened intently as the rain hammered endlessly on his head, stinging his scalp. The radio spat as it became soaked despite Tim's best efforts to keep it dry. Wu felt empty as Anderson repeated his previous sentence.

"Rodriguez is dead."

Wu slumped against the trunk of the tree, his clothes soaked and heavy. He felt suddenly defeated. They had kept going all day, avoiding death by the skin of their teeth several times. But now one of them had died. It was somehow strangely more real now, the danger seemed closer to home. He really could die here, on this island. He never wanted to come back here, it was a terrible idea. The very existence of this place shouldn't even be. It should have been destroyed years ago.

"Fuck!" they heard Guiterrez shout over the radio. The fury within his voice was evident even over the roar of the rain. The sound of him pounding the concrete walls of the maintenance shed carried clearly to their ears. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" he continued to shout, pounding the walls ever harder.

"Calm down," said Edgar's voice.

"You calm down, you sneaky bastard!" roared Guiterrez, and there was the sound of a loud thud, and Wu knew that Guiterrez had hit Edgar.

"Martin, stop!" said Sarah.

Scuffling sounds came over the radio, and Wu closed his eyes against them. He wanted to go home. He didn't want to be here. Maybe they could have created the cure to the DX virus from scratch, maybe they had never needed his research at all. All he wanted was to leave this island and never come back. He looked at Tim, who sat morosely, shocked, still.

"Tim, we need to get out of here," he said quietly.

Tim looked at him sadly. "So much death, to get us this far. To turn back now would be an insult to the lives lost," he said quietly.

"How can you say that?" asked Wu loudly. "If you carry on we'll only lose more life. Malcolm is holding on by a thread from what they've told us. He can't go on any further."

"Our lives don't matter in the scale of things."

"What?!"

"Henry, what happens if we leave now, without that cure?"

Wu stopped. The disease would mutate, and spread throughout the population. Without a natural oceanic barrier, or proper quarantine, there wouldn't be any stopping the virus. It could spread throughout the Americas. And worst case scenario; infected people carry the virus overseas. A worldwide epidemic.

"People die," he said finally.

"Millions of people die," Tim corrected him. "Now, the question Henry, is; Are you willing to sacrifice few to save many?"

"Perhaps I could make the cure from scratch. I may not need to research."

Tim shook his head. "Henry, we went over this in New York. It'd take months to start again. And from what you told me, you were close."

Wu couldn't find another argument. And he could see that there was no way that he was going to change Tim's mind.

"Tim," said Anderson's voice over the radio, "you guys should get over here."

Wu shook his head vigorously. No way; he wasn't leaving this tree in the dark, not after what he had just heard. That thing was down there, waiting for him, he was sure of it.

"We can't risk it, John," said Tim.

"You have to," said Anderson, "this storm isn't going to quiet down anytime soon. You need to find shelter, or you're going to go into hypothermia. And we can't have that now."

"Right now," said Wu, "I'm taking hypothermia over being eaten alive."

Tim was shaking his head. "We can't. We have no way of knowing what's out there. If there's more of them, or whether that one isn't still hungry. We have to stay here for the night."

"Fine. But we have another problem," said Anderson, "Malcolm. He's not fit enough to move. He'll die by the time we get him to the visitor centre. He has to stay here."

"That's fine."

There was a pause on both ends. Wu frowned at Tim; how could Tim be considering leaving Malcolm behind?

"What do you mean 'that's fine'?" asked Guiterrez.

"You continue on to the visitor centre. Me and Wu will head north."

Wu looked sharply at Tim. He hadn't even mentioned this plan to Wu, nor could Wu find any reason why they would head into more dinosaur territory instead of heading towards where the visitor centre was located.

"Why?" asked Sarah.

"The eastern garage."

"What's there?"

"The park's maintenance vehicles are stored there. If we can get there, we can drive back, pick up Malcolm and head to the visitor centre."

"How? There's no road here."

"Yes, there is. Underground. There's a door at the back of the shed."

There was a pause. "Okay, but how are you planning to make them work. The fuel would have dried up years ago, and that's if the cars work at all, which I highly doubt."

"The last shipment that the island received before the island was shut down by Nedry, the ship that took Wu home contained the new vehicles that we were planning to put into service to replace the gas powered Jeeps."

"And what are those?"

"Electrically powered. They're larger, more advanced versions of the golf cart vehicles we used to use. Powered by batteries. The power should be on by now, and they'll be charging up right now. Hopefully by the time we get there we'll have enough juice to hitch a ride."

"That could work," said Anderson finally.

Wu had to agree; as much as he detested the idea of wandering even further into the island, there was a definite logic to the plan.

"But still," Anderson said, "how do we get to the visitor centre?"

"Follow the lagoon around, and you'll find the jungle river which heads north. If you follow that, eventually you'll come to within quarter of a mile of the visitor centre."

"And how are we supposed to know when to turn off?"

"Just keep up our radio checkpoints, and I can guide you to it. The only problem is this god damn storm."