Chapter 43

Reunited

With a whooshing, vacuum-like noise the engine sprang to life as Tim twisted the ignition key. It was the quietest engine that he had ever encountered, or even heard of; if he hadn't been concentrating on it, he wouldn't have noticed that it had been turned on. After ignition the sound dissipated into a soft, almost inaudible purr, and the display on the screen beeped, and an additional component appeared. In the bottom left the battery shaped representation of the power levels were well within the green, and the solar panels were working like a charm. Above the power levels had appeared an image of the underside of the chassis, with the four wheels lit in bright green, with the power flow shown by the routers leading from the engine.

"Impressive," said Wu.

Tim nodded in agreement. He wouldn't mind having one of these back home at all. He slowly turned the steering wheel, testing it, and found that it worked fine, maybe a bit stiff. Tentatively, he put the car in gear, and took his foot off the brake. With a whir the car began to roll forwards through the tall grass, and he smiled.

"Over there," said Wu, pointing to a gap in the trees, on the other side of the clearing than they had come from. That must be the northern road.

He put his foot on the accelerator lightly, turning the steering wheel until it locked. The car accelerated around in an arc through the clearing, and he could see in the wing-mirror that they had left a twin trail of flattened grass behind them. The gap in the trees appeared in the windscreen, and they floated almost silently forwards towards it. The crunching of the grass beneath them was in fact louder than the engine, and the thick windows blocked out the ceaseless sounds of the jungle. It was now oddly quiet; Tim hadn't heard such a thing as silence for what seemed like forever.

The grass ended abruptly, and was replaced by a track of thick mud, easily wide enough for them to pass through. It looked like it had once been wide enough for the larger maintenance vehicles that they had seen earlier in the garage, but now the jungle had grown back significantly. Roots reared out of the ground, and weeds were poking through the brown, tarmac-like compacted surface of the road.

As they crossed the threshold and left the grass, the ground ahead seemed to fall away. A moment later he realized that the road sloped downwards out of sight. The car crested the hill, and he looked down into the darkness of the jungle. He touched the brakes lightly, slowing their descent, and they plunged into the darkness. The display panel beeped, and indicated that the solar panels had been switched off. But he wasn't concerned about it; they wouldn't be out of sunlight for more than a few minutes, and they had enough stored energy in the battery for far longer than that.

"Can we turn on the air conditioning?" said Wu, squirming uncomfortably.

"We need power for that, why don't you roll down the window?"

"Erm, I'm not too keen on that idea; I'd hate to get eaten now. And it's too hot."

He was right, sitting in the sun long enough to charge the batteries had turned the cool leather interior of the car to a sticky, stuffy box.

Hell, they were going downhill, they didn't need power to drive along. Tim flicked a switch on the dashboard, and a wonderful feeling of glee overcame him and blissfully cool air washed over him. He hadn't felt something so relieving in his life, he could have sworn it. The sweat on his face immediately began to dry, and his head felt like it was giving off waves of heat. Beside him Wu had leaned in closer to the dashboard, the fringe of his hair blown upwards, turning his face from side to side.

The gradient of the hill was becoming quiet steep, and Tim didn't even have to use the gas pedal; he just let the car roll down the hill, occasionally touching the brakes.

It felt liberating to fly down this hill in such a safe piece of machinery, it felt almost like being at a safari park. A stupidly dangerous safari park full of monsters.

The car burst from the jungle as the hill leveled out, gliding out onto a large plateau like space, covered with occasional patches of short, cropped grass. The road was cracked and hard baked, and seemed to have been preserved, probably because of their altitude. Looking left Tim was momentarily shocked. They were over a thousand feet up in the air, running along the edge of a cliff face attached to the northern mountains of the island. Below them the entire island was laid out before them, stretching out to the south. Even from here Tim could see what Guiterrez had meant; the majority of the northern section of the island was almost invisible, sheathed in a thick layer of fog. It was as if the sky had fallen, and the clouds had descended on the jungle. It was eerie to look at it from up here. To their right the plateau continued on for a hundred meters or so before the mountains continued up into the sky sharply, out of sight of his window pane. A fine layer of mist crept downwards from the mountain side, and almost seemed to slither across the plateau surface, before rolling off the side of the cliff face, down towards the island interior.

Towards the south the jungle poked through and formed an endless carpet of greenery, running out of sight. In any normal situation he would have considered it serenely beautiful, but for reasons he could not explain it seemed very…alien.

They drove around the northern edge of the island for around ten minutes, the almost perpetual flatness of the ground allowing for very easy travel. The lack of vegetation was calming, and the free availability of sunlight without the restricting tree canopy ensured that their electricity supply remained topped up. The ridge road slowly began to descend on a very slight gradient, sloping downwards. Off to one side Tim could see that the road raveled up into a back and forth motion down the cliff face down towards the island floor, a mile away.

The slope continued downwards for another minute, and then an immense slab of rock jutted out from the mountain side, and would have impeded their progress. However a large tunnel had been bored through the rock face, connecting with the other side.

Tim flicked on the headlights just before they passed into it, and twin pools of light were cast on the gravel coated floor and the jagged walls. The sunlight was cut out abruptly, and the only light available came from their car and from the soft glow at the other end of the tunnel. However, before the display panel had a chance to register that the solar panels were no longer receiving sunlight, they had passed out of the opposite end of the tunnel, and back into daylight. They were now only at half the height, roughly five hundred feet up from the floor of the island. The plateau had now disappeared, left behind at the other end of the tunnel.

Wu grunted in surprise as up on the right a large recess had been excavated into the rock face, starting approximately fifty feet from where the tunnel ended. A ten foot high, cyclone wire fence had been erected, running parallel with where the rock face would have stood had the recess not existed, however now it was severely weathered by standing up in the elements for so long.

The cavernous space had jagged walls and gouging marks all over it; machines had obviously dug or blasted their way through the rock. It was a considerable feat of engineering, and it should have been judging by what lay within it. The metal framework of a six story building towered above them, the dull rusted metal blending almost seamlessly into the mountain. Large scaffolding structures and ragged pieces of tarpaulin drooped from the clammy structures. The first floor had been almost completed, the walls sealed with thick cement and the beginning of sophisticated, new age style carved wood panels had been layered over the top. The rest of the floors were open space, with only the second story having a floor made from wooden paneling.

Tim tapped the brakes lightly until the vehicle slid smoothly to a standstill, and the car sat quietly the sunlight for a moment as they turned to observe the building.

"Looks like the Iguanodon Inn," said Wu.

"Yeah," said Tim. "I've seen the conceptual designs for this place; it would have looked pretty snazzy if it had ever been finished. It was built to cater for well over a hundred; helipad on the roof, perimeter fence, and every amenity that you could ask for. It would have replaced the safari lodge eventually, or rather, formed a more permanent base. This place is a hotel."

As they watched three of the little dinosaurs that they had seen at the garage leapt from a large cluster of ferns gathered around an abandoned forklift off to one side. The mist that layered the floor obscured most of their bodies, and only the top of their torso, neck and heads were visible. Two of them screeched, and bent their heads low, opening their tiny jaws and chasing the other one. They sprinted across the allotment before the 'prey' tripped over and disappeared from view into the mist, and the other two were on it in seconds. For a moment Tim thought they were going to attack it, but they simply squeaked in excitement and danced around their kin.

"It's those things again," said Tim in annoyance.

"What do you think they are?" Wu murmured, peering out of the window intently.

"They don't look like any of the animals listed to be here. But the photo's I've seen are only of adult specimens. You're the master Doc here; you saw them when they were just infants. What do you think?"

"They remind me of the Compies, but they're larger and tougher. Perhaps they're Metriacanthosaurus infants, the coloration isn't that off."

Tim nodded, but he didn't feel very satisfied. It was reasonable thinking, but it didn't fit. Compies were too small, and the Metria would have had infants far larger, not to mention the fact that the Metria that they had encountered lived miles away, on the valley floor.

"Maybe they're not from here," said Wu suddenly.

Tim turned, frowning. "What do you mean?"

"The Pterosaurs aren't indigenous to this island. They came here from Isla Sorna, which had a far larger compliment of dinosaurs."

Tim shook his head. "The Pterosaurs flew here, that's the only reason they were able to travel the distance. These guys," he indicated the wingless lizards frolicking on the other side of the dilapidated fence, "cannot fly."

Wu sat for a moment, and then raised his hands. "I don't know then. The only other thing I can think of is the ra-"

A low pitched, almost inaudible growl cut through the air and the vehicle's windows like a hot knife through butter. The dinosaurs, which had been playing right in front of the double doors of the building, froze instantly. They didn't make a sound, they just stood absolutely still.

After a moment they gave a triple version of the same growl, the sound vibrating through the air effortlessly. Tim and Wu turned in their seats in shock as a loud screech blasted from a grove of trees behind them. The infants screeched back instantly, and began to slink off slowly, like children who had been caught in wrongdoing. They nimbly hopped up onto the large base of the fence and wriggled through the wiring, hopping down onto the ground ten meters behind the Jeep.

Wu and Tim watched them tensely for a minute before the screech came again, this time from somewhere within the building, on the first floor, out of sight.

"Come on," said Wu, looking warily out of the glass of the car, "let's get out of here."

Tim nodded, and took his foot off the brake, accelerating sharply away from the Inn. The wheels span for a moment before biting, a cloud of dirt spewing up into the sky. The car's engine became slightly louder, which for some reason felt more reassuring to Tim, and they drove once again along the mountain side.

Tim tapped the brakes and slowed the car as the road ahead turned at a complete right angle in front of them. They had been driving for several minutes, and had reached the end of the mountain road. Three hundred feet above the valley floor, the road twisted and turned beneath them, zigzagging downwards. A thin metal guardrail was the only safety measure which had been put in place to prevent the vehicle from wandering too far off the track and falling headlong into the jungle.

Tim breathed slowly as he turned the wheel in a broad, smooth motion, and the nose of the vehicle swung around the one hundred and eighty degree turn. The road began to slope downwards steeply, and Tim applied the brakes heavily as the potholes and pebbles made them jump and bounce precariously on the edge on the cliff face. The suspension squealed, and Tim cursed as he stamped on the brakes as the next turn encroached rapidly on them. The car skidded on the dirt as they floated dangerously around the corner, the bumper grazing the guardrail.

"Je-sus!" growled Wu in agitation, gripping the seat with one hand and the dashboard with the other.

Tim gripped the steering wheel grimly as he swung around once again, the engine whining momentarily as the rear axle came off the ground as they rumbled over a large rock.

Glancing over the island for an instant, the world seemed to be shaking around him, and he was only dimly aware of the fact that they were almost at the bottom. Just one last corner.

Determined, Tim glared at the next turn as if it were a charging bull, and he was the matador. Three seconds, two, one. Boom! The front wheel on the right side plummeted down a concealed, deep crack in the ground. The wheels screamed in protest as the cabin jerked upwards. Beside him Wu's head slammed into the ceiling, his body falling back into his seat in a bundle.

"Argh!" shouted Tim as he hauled the steering wheel to the side, and the car swerved to the side, but it's momentum kept it careening forwards. Tim closed his eyes, and felt a rattling jolt as they slammed into the guardrail, the metal squealing as it came into contact with the driver's door. The car came to sudden stop, and the engine spluttered into silence.

Tim opened his eyes, and exhaled slowly.

"I'm not sure exactly what your grandfather did to this island to piss off Mother Nature," mumbled Wu from the space beneath his seat, "but whatever it was, we're paying for it."

Tim peered out of his window, and shuddered. The guardrail had been bent out of shape by the impact, and now held the car in place, which was hanging over the lip of the cliff. He was looking down three hundred feet at the valley below. From here he could see the fog which sheathed the ground, floating in between the trees, carried on the wind. Half a mile away he could see the black silhouettes of the roofs of the buildings poking through the roof of the mist. They were very close now.

He pushed the gas pedal, but nothing happened; the speedometer remained at a standstill. He reached down, and turned the ignition. With a whoosh the vacuum pump started up, and the car gave a shiver, coming back to life. The movement triggered another squelching sound from the guardrail.

"Hurry up, get up out of here, or we'll have to grow some wings real quick," said Wu, leaning against his window to counterbalance the car.

Carefully Tim put the car in gear, and in a single moment stamped on the accelerator and turned the wheel all the way towards Wu. The single pair of wheels which were touching the ground whirred, and slowly began to move forwards, the gravel crunching under the tires. He stamped on the accelerator, and the car roared sideways, and kept on course by the railings the second pair of wheels slammed back onto the ground. They jolted forwards just as the rail behind them gave a wrench, and the steel fittings came loose, the metal sent clattering down the side of the mountain.

Tim sat for a moment, staring down at the jungle, sweating pouring down his face.

"That was close," said Wu.

"Yeah," said Tim. He looked at the display panel for a moment, noting that the solar panels were fully charged. Lightly, he stepped onto the gas, and they edged downwards to towards the dirt trail which led into the jungle below.

The engine hummed quietly as they slid effortlessly through the jungle, the only sound to be heard was the odd squawk of a jungle bird or twigs breaking on the ground underneath them. The fog had been encroaching on them slowly for the past minute, but Tim skidded to a stop at the sight of the wall of fog which lay before them. It appeared to be almost solid, a swirling mass of pristine whiteness.

"Weird," said Tim, looking at it with distain.

"This happened every so often," said Wu, "you couldn't see anything outside through the windows."

"Great."

Tim moved the car off slowly, the engine rumbling, passing into the fog. Their viewing distance was cut right down to just a dozen meters or so. The vegetation around them took on a more ghostly appearance. Tim had to be careful to make sure that he stayed on the right path; just seeing the road was now difficult enough.

A moment later the trees gave way, moving off on either side, and they entered a large clearing, stretching away in front of them. Tim sighed, and looked out at the grassy plain. They drove on, through the fog. To their left a fence loomed out of the whiteness, twelve feet high and made of heavy bars panted black, a layer of wiring mesh lying in between them. Behind it he could see the silhouette of an elaborate, single-story building running across a large area. A twin set of pyramid shaped structures poked their way above the roof-line.

"The safari lodge," said Wu.

"Look at it," said Tim. "It looks pretty good."

The fence still looked strong and safe, and the building hadn't crumbled whatsoever. It was as if the building hadn't been sitting unkempt for over a decade at all. It almost looked new.

They drove on, and the jungle closed in on them again, and they followed a narrow path leading south.

Suddenly Wu twisted around in his seat, pressing his face up against the window, his breath steaming up the glass.

"What is it?" said Tim, putting on the brakes. The red light caused by the brake lights was carried by the mist, causing an odd glow around the vehicle.

"Thought I saw something," said Wu.

Tim leaned over and looked through his window. He saw the back edge of the safari lodge, dog and trees. But nothing else.

Wu stared out of the window for a few more seconds, and then turned back to Tim, shrugging. "My mind must be playing trucks on me."

Tim looked at him for a moment. Of all of them Wu had been closest to knowing the full truth, but only Tim had access to the InGen data, and the satellite data which had been collected over the past decade.

Tim turned back to face forwards, and stepped on the accelerator, and the car moved off once again. They drove through the thickness of the jungle for two minutes, the path twisting and turning. Tim flicked on the headlights, which helped to cut through the fog, and he followed the twin beams along the overgrown path, his eyes flitting back and forth as he watched out for any corners or overhanging branches.

The radio crackled from the floor underneath Wu, in the space where he had fallen when they had crashed on the cliff. Wu bent down and picked up it.

"We hear you," said Guiterrez's voice quietly.

Wu smiled next to him. "How? This car is quieter than anything I've ever seen," he said into the mouthpiece.

"As silent as it is out here in the fog, you can hear a pin drop."

"Where are you?" said Tim, turning the wheel in his hands.

"The visitor centre. The engine sounds louder, so you're going in the right direction."

Tim accelerated, and they burst out into a seconds clearing. Immediately, a structure reared out of the mist in front of them. Even though half sheathed in the ground-based cloud layer, it was unmistakably a prison.

The raptor holding pen was as imposing as it had ever been, and had been so strongly constructed that even today it would make an impressive containment facility. The wiring which surrounded the perimeter of the ceiling had a large tear at one point, the thick wires bent out of shape and charred. Above on the watchtower, spotlights hung loosely from their fittings, the electronics exposed. One of the railings had come loose, claw marks gouged into it.

But neither of them noticed this. They attention was focused on the viewing platform. The usually uniform grey pattern of the concrete had been completely overlaid by arcing, deep red smears of blood. Claw marks had been cut into the walls at various points. And on the metallic grate floor were what would once have been living organisms. Now they were merely a mass of rotting flesh.

"Oh my god," breathed Wu.

Tim merely sat and observed the carcasses, feeling a very real shiver run up his spine. So it was true. They were here.

The car pulled up at the visitor centre silently, and Tim looked up at Anderson, Guiterrez and Edgar standing like sentinel ghosts at the top of the concrete staircase leading to the double doors. Wu popped the door open beside him and emerged into the mist. Even though the mist had caused the temperature to drop in this area, Tim wrinkled his face in discomfort as warm, humid air rushed into the car, destroying their air conditioned environment.

He sighed, and turned the engine off. He climbed out of the car, slamming the door shut.

"Finally," said Guiterrez. "Can we please do what we came to do?"

Tim smiled, and nodded. "Oh yes."