ADAPTATIONS
6 - Ol' Quarantine
Ellie smiled at her close friend and gave him a comforting hug. "Have any ideas where Veronica and the others can stay?"
Grant didn't hesitate before responding. "As far from here as possible."
Ellie nudged the man, giggling. "C'mon honey, be serious."
"I was!"
She shook her head, still laughing, and visually searched the dig site of the trailers. She mentally listed what each of the different sized trailers were used for until her eyes fell on one across the excavation, off to the side. "What about the storage trailer? It's big enough to fit at least five people. It just needs a little cleaning, is all, and I'm sure it'll be fine."
The man gave her a confused frown. "You mean Ol' Quarantine? That trailer hasn't been used to house someone in at least a couple of years. Maybe closer to three, come to think about it. Just the fumes alone from the chemicals and gas would be enough to make anyone sick."
"Like I said, it'll take a little while to clean before it will be livable." Ellie led Grant through the tents and vehicles dotting throughout the excavation to where a worn out, white and tan trailer sat across the way.
Grant fished around in his pocket to get a set of keys out and unlocked the door, opening it. The place was cluttered with boxes stacked on top of each other as they sat in masses on the floor, kitchen counter and bar tops as well as the trailer's rust colored couch. A blanket of dust covered everything in the trailer and Ellie glanced over to the even more flustered scientist beside her. They weren't aware the trailer was in such a disorganized mess as the over powering odors of gas, cleaning solvents and materials needed for preserving some of the fossils greeted them.
Grant's face wrinkled in slight disgust, commenting. "It's going to take more than a little cleaning to make this place completely livable again, Ellie."
Ellie grimaced and second guessed her decision. "Well, maybe after letting the place vent out for two or three days after being cleaned up..." The people met the other's questioning expression, Ellie shrugging. "Maybe there's somewhere else they could stay?"
Grant sighed out, "The only place I can think of is the bunk room in my trailer." He planted his hands on his hips. "But I really don't want her anywhere near me."
"It's just until we can get the storage trailer livable for them, honey, then they stay there." Ellie reassured when gesturing to the trailer. "They do need a place to stay for those few days, though, in the meantime." The woman further entered the trailer and frowned. "The sooner we start cleaning this place up the sooner they'll be able to move in." Grant coughed back the burning in his throat from inhaling the fumes.
From behind the two, Derek poked his head into the trailer. "Doctors?"
Pet was behind him. She coughed and covered her face with her hand, proceeding into the trailer. "Oh man, this place reeks!" The hybrid studied the interior of the building and frowned, seeing two five-gallon gas cans sitting next to the couch as well as several other jugs of chemicals and stained boxes. "What is this, some type of trailer bomb?"
Ellie gave Grant a comforting yet uncertain smile as he groaned a sigh. He watched the hybrid wipe a finger across the kitchen countertop, Ellie speaking. "This is the only uninhabited trailer we have." Both women looked to the other, Ellie trying to smile reassuringly. "Give it a week of cleaning and venting out and the place will be good as new."
The hybrid then shot a blank expression behind her shades to the woman, Derek's voice breaking in. "Excuse me? Good as new?"
Grant replied with a smirk on his face. "It's either this or a tent."
"At least the options beat the hell out of what I lived in for the past few years." Pet studied the cluttered mess of boxes stacked everywhere and frowned as Derek came into the trailer, next. Both Grant and Ellie weren't sure if the young woman was kidding or serious in her comment. "Where, exactly, am I supposed to put all these damn boxes?" She started to open one. "What's in these things anyway?" She rested her shades on top of her head, revealing her blue-green eyes.
Ellie joined the hybrid and out of curiosity, started going through boxes too. "I would imagine unused equipment, storage containers…." The two women started shifting through the contents of one of the boxes. "Oh wow…silverware and cooking utensils."
Grant snidely commented. "Well at least you don't need to buy spoons or forks."
Pet started shifting through another box. "Rat traps?" She held up a couple traps still in their packaging and tossed them aside as she dug through the box some more. "Bloody hell, whoever packed these boxes needs serious help." She removed a spatula from the box as well and tossed it into the dust filled sink. Derek pulled open the tabs of another box and peered inside it, finding it full of small plastic food storage containers. The hybrid peered into the box and grumbled. "Great. More stuff to wash."
Grant gave another glower at the hybrid and brought his attention to Ellie. "I'll be back in a little while. I still need to go through all those readouts from earlier. Will you be staying here?" The woman shrugged and nodded her head. "Alright." Grant gave the hybrid another cautious stare and strode away to resume his work.
Pet glanced around the trailer famously known at the excavation as Ol Quarantine and questioned. "Hey Derek, where's Robert?"
The addressed man shrugged. "When I last saw him, he was talking to Hammond on the satellite phone by the Jeep. Who knows now? He's probably off trying to hunt down a wild pig or something..."
The hybrid snickered and began un-stacking a few boxes off the counter. "I have an idea."
"Oh shit, look out. Pet has an idea!" Derek knew he was about to get hit and blocked her oncoming slap he knew was aimed at his stomach. "Honestly, what was your idea?"
The hybrid dumped out the contents of one of the boxes and set the empty container to the side. "We organize. I'm noticing a lot of these boxes aren't really designated for storing one certain thing, like paint brushes being tossed in with napkins or chisels mixed with cleaning solvents. So..." She picked up a handful of unsharpened pencils and set them aside. "Now, I remember seeing a box of baggies...where was it?"
Derek reached into a box he had moved to the floor and held up a small blue and green Ziploc bag box for the hybrid to see. "You mean this?"
Pet reached for it, but the man moved it out of her grasp. "What will you do for it?" He playfully smiled at her, but she didn't smile back. About that time, the box was snatched from his hands by Muldoon, the game warden tossing the box to the hybrid. "Party pooper." It surprised Derek how a partially handicapped man could still be so damn quiet when walking up behind someone. It must be from all those years of relying on stealth to sneak up on his targets he was hunting.
Pet smiled to the newly arrived man. "Thank you, Robert."
Not realizing it, Muldoon joined Ellie to peer over her shoulder to see what she was doing. Pet saw this and smiled, Muldoon noticing her. He wrinkled his brow at the hybrid in confused as she gestured to Ellie with her gaze, winking. Meanwhile, the scientist was too distracted with her organizing and didn't notice the two. Whether he wanted to admit it to himself or not, he always fancied Dr. Sattler. Leave it to Pet to notice the subtly in things, whether it was expression or body language.
Derek bit back his own smile for his uncle's sake and met the older man's annoyed stare. Muldoon gestured to his nephew, the younger man's smile widening. The bounty hunter's gaze then fell on Pet as he reached over and slapped her in the back of the head. Pet stopped working to glare at the instigating young man. He pointed to his uncle. "Hey, he told me to."
With a screech, Pet pounced on Derek as he laughed out, "Oh yes, please baby, I love it rough!"
Ellie jumped back at the sudden attack from the hybrid, not expecting it, and gasped when she saw the two fall to the floor in a scuffle. Muldoon shook his head. "Not to worry. This is normal for them. It's when they start getting along, you should worry."
Coming into view was Billy, stopping in his tracks when he saw the two wrestling people almost tumble out of the trailer. "Whoa, watch out guys."
Derek looked to the other man, not noticing the hybrid rear back to punch him in the shoulder until he felt it. "Ohhhh you bitch." Pet scoffed and got off her straddling the man. Quickly thinking, Derek hooked his foot around her booted one and attempted to trip her, only to fail. In reaction to, she kicked behind her to strike him in the calf of his leg. Derek moaned behind a laugh. "So that's it? But we just started the foreplay!"
Ellie saw the protégé and questioned. "Did you need something, Billy?"
"Alan sent me to come help you guys." He awkwardly and cautiously entered the trailer, assisting the other man to his feet.
Did Pet just hear him right? Alan sent him to help them, as in her? She was confused by this and shrugged, taking another box and emptying it on the countertop as well.
The hybrid stated, "The more help, the merrier."
Billy studied the interesting woman and whispered to Derek. "Quite a girl you got there."
Derek panted a laugh, but shook his head instead. "Ah hell no. She's not my girl. More like a sister, maybe...a very aggressive sister."
The hybrid could hear their whispering behind her, but played it off. She opened the box of gallon sized baggies and pulled out a couple, shoving the handful of pencils into one of them. In light of the short conversation, Billy joined the young woman as Muldoon slimmed his uncertain gaze down on him.
Pet could sense the man's shift in emotion and met his uneasy gaze. He mouthed, "Your eyes" to her.
Not realizing her eyes had changed, she calmly turned from the protégé and slid her shades back on. Had Billy noticed? She hoped not. The man neared closer to her, questioning. "You need help with anything?"
The hybrid could feel herself blush and she tossed the bag of pencils into the empty box nearby. "Well, what I'm doing is dumping out boxes and sorting through stuff to organize it all."
"I see." Billy took note of the mostly empty box with bag of pencils in it. "I'm guess that box is for office supplies?"
"Yup."
"Okay." He got a baggie for himself and picked up a few pens, a box of staples and erasers scattered amongst the plastic cups, loose empty vials, boxes of candles and other stuff.
By the time midafternoon had settled over the dig site, several stacks of boxes had been reorganized and repacked with the contents written on the side. The group of people stood back to study their progress, Ellie smiling when she saw Grant standing on the wooden stairs leading to the trailer. He leaned inside and nodded. "Looking good, so far."
Pet, who was seated on the partially cleared off couch next to Muldoon, groaned. "I think the smell of gasoline is stuck in my nose forever."
Ellie approached her close friend and noticed the bits of dried plaster on his hands, shirt and khakis. "Preparing the fossils, I see."
Grant looked at his hands and tried to dust off the loose bits. "Yeah, the museum team will be arriving next week to get what fossils are ready. I want the plaster to be settled by the time they get here, unlike last time."
Grant's attention fell on Billy, who defended himself. "Hey, don't look at me. I told them the samples weren't ready yet. Not my fault they didn't listen!"
The more Muldoon studied the lead paleontologist, he started to notice something different in his eyes versus earlier in the day. It brought to question what it was that had the man so bothered. Was it the hybrid's presence or the sudden, blind siding discovery he had been played by Hammond's careful choice of words?
Grant continued. "I've taken the liberty of setting up the extra beds in my trailer so there would be enough for everyone. I figured the ladies could bunk together and Billy, if you don't mind a little extra company for the next few days until Quarantine is habitable again?"
Billy had always been one for his privacy, but knew there was no arguing his way out of this. It was just for a little while so what's the worst that could happen? He nodded in acknowledgment. "Yeah, sure. That's fine."
It was Grant's turn to nod, him doing so in approval. "Good. It's settled, then."
He turned and left, Muldoon excusing himself to follow the other man. "Dr. Grant... a word?"
The addressed man paused and glanced back at the other. "Something wrong?"
The ex-game warden lowered his gaze down on the man. "I was going to ask you the same thing."
"Everything is fine as far as I know," Grant coolly stated, but his eyes said otherwise.
"Look, if it's about earlier, I apologize for-"
Grant held up a white speckled hand to wave off the apology, smiling as professionally as he could muster. "No, no it's fine. I already spoke to Mr. Hammond about it not too long ago." The memory of the conversation burned at the man's insides, but not with anger. "Speaking of...did you know he was in such bad health?"
The tone of the conversation was now grim instead of the forced 'everything is alright' from before. "As a matter of fact, I did."
"He told me he has weeks, maybe two months most left to live." Grant felt the reality and weight of the situation strike him in the chest just as it had upon initially hearing them spoke from Hammond himself. "He's drying, Mr. Muldoon, and has asked in a dying wish that I see to the girl's safe being. He said something about a more permanent arrangement for her, but didn't give me the specifics." Both men stared at the other, Grant's appearing on the brink of a breakdown of the sorts. "I didn't know what to say. I don't even know what to do! What if In-Gen comes back?"
"Leave that to my nephew and I," Muldoon comforted. "Derek has connections to people who have connections inside InGen. Not a day goes by that he isn't keeping up with those connections." Grant cocked a brow. "Resourceful little shit, he is. No worry, though. Should we get wind of anything about to come this way before you do, we'll take our exit."
The paleontologist appreciated the man trying to help, but he was still stressed by the weight of everything. "Everything is just a damn mess right now." Grant heavily sighed, glancing around at the many, oblivious volunteer workers. "I owe her my life and for Ellie's, too, but what's to say someone doesn't find out about her, here, and word gets around?"
"It is something that has been discussed within our circle. We'll see to it Pet keeps to herself."
Grant looked over at Quarantine to see his protégé, the hybrid and Derek emerge from the trailer. He wasn't too particularly fond of how close Billy was standing next to the woman. He could hear her say, "I had to get out of there. That place is giving me a headache."
Muldoon glanced back to see the three and frowned at the same thing the scientist. was. "This was something I feared, but hoped not happening." His grey eyes settled back down on the excavation overseer. "That unwanted male attention to someone I regard as a daughter more than anything. I'm not saying I don't trust him, but Pet is in a very sensitive position right now and I don't know what kind of person he is."
Grant grumbled to himself. "I understand your concerns, completely, Mr. Muldoon. I'll have a word with my protégé, Billy, in private. Hopefully that will be that."
