ADAPTATIONS
27 - Weirdo with a Rifle
September in Montana was now Pet's favorite time of year. It wasn't too cool but wasn't too hot either. In July and into parts of August, the sun shining made conditions sweltering to work in, but not in September. She was laid out across the ground in front of what remained of the half-excavated fossil, mind focused on her working. Grant was right; when it came time to dig up the core of the fossil, excavating progress was going to slow down. As was the case, now. It seemed she was making very little progress on unburying the Humerus before any work could be done on digging up the Scapula. Pet couldn't wait for the weekend, as it was only Thursday.
Coming around a bend in the road was a dust cloud following a hunter green Dodge Ram pickup. The truck slowed and then stopped before a mass of trailers and tents matching the coordinates given by Robert Muldoon. Without a doubt, this had to be the excavation of the renowned paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant. Who else would collect a mass assembly such as this in the middle of nowhere? Roland Tembo slid out of the front seat and reached into to the tail bed to retrieve a brown leather backpack and beige rifle case containing his Nitro Express.
Just as the truck had done, olive drab boots kicked up the loose dirt as they made their way between the trailers and tents. They stopped, however, when catching sight of a large canopy positioned and stretched over what could be presumed as the fossil. There was a number of people beneath it, some he could see the faces of and others he couldn't, in their kneeling and laying on their bellies, brushing and chipping away the casing of earth around the fossil.
Billy noticed the newcomer, first, and was unsure what to think. Standing out like a sore thumb was a man dressed down in a long sleeve, light brown shirt and khaki pants with a grey hat resting on a bald head. Slung over one shoulder was a brown backpack and in another hand was what appeared to be a rifle case.
This oddball didn't have to take his shades off for Billy to know he was the sole receiver of an otherwise inquiring gawk. Promptly, the junior scientist got to his feet and approached the stranger. Pet thought nothing of this and didn't bother looking to the new comer, seeing how people came and went at the dig site on an almost daily basis.
Billy stopped in front of the man, cocking his head at him. "Can I help you?"
Roland arched a brow at the much younger man, layered in a coating of limestone dust. "Just point me to the man in charge of this little shin dig."
"That would be Dr. Alan Grant," Billy answered. Several moments passed, the newcomer not speaking, which made Billy slightly uncomfortable. "If you'll follow me, please..." he motioned for the other to follow, both men going to the main office trailer.
Billy opened the trailer door to reveal Grant hunched over the kitchen bar and meticulously cleaning a Sacral Vertebra from the Velociraptor fossil. The senior scientist looked up from his work to stare at the newcomer in bafflement. Something told him this guy wasn't there to dig up fossils.
"Good afternoon," he greeted cautiously, eyes fixated on the rifle case. Was that really necessary? "Something I can help you with?"
"Where is she," Roland questioned in demand.
Grant squared his already skeptical gaze down on man. "She, who?" This was it. InGen figured out where Veronica was and had sent another person to track her down and kill her.
Roland slid off his sun glasses and dropped them into his shirt's front pocket. His attention shifted over his shoulder to Billy, who got the point and excused himself. The office trailer's door was quietly closed and once Billy was out of sight, dashed to Quarantine.
Roland returned his sole focus to the scientist. "The girl, the hybrid. You'd know her as Pet or Veronica. I know she's here so enough with the playing dumb and tell me where she is."
The man's demanding tone of voice struck a nerve with Grant. That or the fact this man was here, obviously armed and looking for the hybrid. "InGen has already been here in search of her. They found nothing, so-"
Roland had to commend this gentleman on his sternness to defend the hybrid. "Let me make myself clear, Dr. Grant. I'm not here on behalf on InGen. I'm here on request of my good friend, Robert Muldoon. I received a phone call some time ago from a man named Simon Masrani asking a lot of questions pertaining to my goddaughter." Grant's expression softened hearing of the newcomer's relation to the hybrid. "Such as what I knew of her, when I last saw her and if I possibly knew her current whereabouts. After I gave the sod a piece of my mind, I called Robert relaying my concerns. If I didn't know any better, I'd say this Mr. Masrani is trying to hunt the young woman down to finish what Peter Ludlow and the rest of those bastards at InGen started."
Across the camp, Billy banged on Quarantine's front door. A shirtless Derek opened the door and raised a brow at the junior scientist. "What's up, Boy Scout?"
Billy really hated the vast assortment of nicknames the bounty hunter had for him; chew toy, boy toy and now boy scout. He scowled and debated vocalizing his disdain but knew it was of no use. "There's some weirdo with a rifle looking for Veronica."
Derek's gaze thinned down. "Hold that thought." He closed the door behind him and yelled out, "Uncle Rob! Personality! Some asshole with a gun is here, looking for Pet!"
Muldoon stepped out of the bunk room, buttoning up a grey short sleeve shirt. Before he could inform his nephew of his knowing the newcomer, Derek was already gone. "That would be Roland," he grumbled.
Terrence stared at the older man. "Who?"
The office trailer's door swung open again, this time revealing the unsuspecting Pet. She was about to say something only to fall silent when she saw her godfather standing across the kitchenette bar from where Grant stood.
Pet squealed, "Roland!" and crashed into him in a tight hug.
The man was just as excited to see her as she was him. "Veronica! Am I glad to see you!"
She held the man at an arm's length, grinning wildly. "What are you doing here? Did Robert call you?"
"Actually, I called him."
Derek didn't care about the questionable stares and whispers he was getting over the sight of his pistol holstered in the back of his pants and looking so obviously pissed off. It was the first time they had ever seen him armed with a gun and on the verge of using it on someone. He was always so jokester and easy going and that's how dig site residents knew him as.
Even Billy was concerned and kept back at a distance when following him to the office trailer. Derek jerked open the office door with one hand while drawing his pistol from behind him with the other.
Cocking it, he aimed it at the man in question, glaring. Standing next to him and uncomfortably close for his liking was Pet. "Back the fuck away from her!" Derek growled, his brown eyes glowing with rage. Roland stared at the young man, unimpressed, and slid off his hat, allowing it to hang off his neck behind him. "Don't make me ask you again, Cue Ball!"
Pet took one look at Derek, armed and ready to shoot, and screeched a growl. She stood in front of him to block his aim at Roland and bared her carnivorous teeth in a threatening snarl. This surprised Derek and he subtly cocked in head in question to her action. Pet's nostril's flared as she slid off her loosely laced boots to show the extent of how far she was willing to go.
Derek knew Pet wasn't one to risk her life for just anyone and slowly lowered his gun. Whoever this bald-headed putz was, the hybrid was willing to challenge anyone threatening him. The pistol was disarmed and shoved back into its holster. Infuriated brown eyes remained locked on the pair of dark green eyes refusing to blink off him.
Muldoon ran into the trailer with Terrence behind him and stopped, seeing the familiar man and laughing out loud. "Roland! You son of a bitch!"
Roland's features lit up in a smile. "Robert!" The two men met in a friendly hug, completely throwing off Derek and Terrence. The new comer shot his attention back to the much younger man amongst them. "This must be your little shit of a nephew you were telling me about." Normally, Roland preferred to conduct himself as a gentleman, as any man should in public, but after having a gun pointed at him all manners were out the window.
"That's right." Muldoon sighed, planting his hands on his hips. Billy nonchalantly made his way over to where his mentor stood, both men trying to wrap their heads around what was happening.
Pet shouldered Derek out of the way, blushing with embarrassment for his action. "You'll have to forgive him. He's a bit trigger happy."
Derek kept a keen, dark eyed watch on Roland. "What the hell did you expect? Boy Scout came running up to the trailer hollering about some asshole here with a rifle and looking for you!" He looked at Pet. "My first thought was some InGen idgit was here to kill you!" His attention shifted over to his uncle. A twinge at being upset on how often he was kept out of the loop tightened his insides. First, it was the lacking of informing that Mr. Personality was expected to arrive and now this. "What the hell, Uncle Rob?! You couldn't tell me you were expecting someone else to show up, here?"
Roland stared blankly at the cocky younger man. "What's it to you?"
Pet interrupted the two in hopes of stopping their arguing from escalading. "Okay, enough." She looked to her best friend and guardian. "Roland said he called you. Why? What's going on?"
"Apparently, that Masrani fellow is trying to find you." Muldoon's grey eyes centered down in concern on Pet. "He's been calling people who have had contact with you, trying to find out where you are."
Pet's eyes shot over to where Grant and Billy stood. "Masrani hasn't called you, yet, has he?"
Grant shook his head. "No, he hasn't. At least not that I know of. It's possible he could have called the satellite phone, here, and one of the site workers answered it and forgot to tell me."
Roland blinked. "You don't stress the importance of relaying important phone calls to you?"
Blue eyes met dark green. "Most of the important phone calls I receive are from people wanting to know more about Jurassic Park. Newspaper editors, aspiring paleontology college students, dinosaur fanatics and even book writers have been known to call and sometimes obsessively wanting to speak to me. Unless someone states being from the museum or university, missed calls aren't usually relayed to me by my request." The answer made sense to Roland and to those also present in the trailer.
The hybrid looked back at her best friend and guardian. "When were you going to tell me about Masrani trying to find me? Obviously, you've known about this for some time."
"I didn't want to scare you," Muldoon comfortingly stated. Pet still stared at him, though speechlessly.
Derek scoffed. "So that means you couldn't at least tell me?"
Roland questioned. "Who are you, exactly, to the lady?"
Derek laughed humorously. "Lady? Man, what world are you from? Pet's no lady, if you haven't noticed." A quick and harsh back fist to the gut sent him hunching forward. "See?"
Roland gave a "Ha!" in return. "Serves you right, too! Just because she doesn't wear a dress and doll herself up like some runway model doesn't mean she's not a lady. She's still a woman and will be respected as such."
Derek wheezed, "Yeah, whatever old man," and tried to stand up straight.
Roland looked over to Terrence, who was scowling disapprovingly at him, and gave the strawberry blond man a first real head to toe stare down since arriving. "I remember you! You were that anti-poaching bastard trying to get me arrested!"
Everyone looked over to Terrence, eager to hear all about the details. "You shot and killed a gazelle on private property."
"Correction, I shot a gazelle outside private property that ran and jumped over a damaged section of the fence around the property, where it just so happened to die."
"You were caught on the private property with a dead animal in your hands!"
"I was collecting my kill, Mr...?"
Derek cut in. "Personality. Mr. Personality."
Terrence's blue eyes were acidic and burning holes into Derek just as Muldoon buried his face in his hand. Billy stifled back a snicker as Grant sighed in exasperation. He could sympathize with the annoying bounty hunter on one thing, just because Muldoon didn't want to scare the hybrid with rumors, could he at least keep others posted on what was going on? That way, when something happened or someone arrived, no one was blindsided by the suddenness of it all.
Over the course of the rest of the afternoon, Roland had thoroughly explained himself and his purpose for being at the dig site to those it mattered to. Now, he sat lounged back in a lawn chair situated around Quarantine's patio table with Muldoon seated next to him. In their hands was a beer, both men chatting.
Roland pointed his beer bottle at Grant standing by the fossil alongside Billy and Pet. "So that's the great Dr. Alan Grant. The scientist Veronica has been worked up over for who knows how long."
Muldoon took another swig of his beer and nodded his head. "The same."
"Who's the kid standing next to him?"
"Dr. Grant's protégé, Billy."
"Hmm," Roland hummed behind his own swig of beer. "Good thing I didn't knock him in the face, then. I'm sure that wouldn't have settled well with the good doctor."
"Pet would have probably thanked you, though." Muldoon could see his good friend raise a brow in question, insisting he continue. "They used to be a thing, here some while back."
"Oh? What happened with that?"
"He blames it on reasons. For starters, Derek was always giving him shit every time he was around. I don't blame him for getting fed up with it. Some of the things my nephew did was a bit uncalled for and inappropriate."
Roland looked from his good friend and back to the three people. "Such as?"
Muldoon inhaled a deep breath in preparation for a longwinded explanation. "Sexually suggestive comments no matter who was present, what he calls 'good gaming' Pet even though he knew how much it pissed everyone off. Then came Derek's constant bullying, antagonizing and demeaning of the chap; calling him Chew Toy, and now Boy Scout. I think what finally did it was Derek shooting him with a tranquilizer dart. I wasn't so favorable of him, at first, but he proved to be trustworthy after a while. The past two times Pet has gotten sick, he stepped up and helped. Even willingly drove to the nearest town forty minutes away to buy her some of her favorite soups after a big snow the night before." Another drink of beer. "I honestly didn't expect them to last as long as they did. I just knew the moment he found out about Pet's secret that it would be the last I'd see of him."
Roland scoffed a laughed. "How did he handle that?"
"It took him a few days, but he came back around. He even got over his issue of her hunting and killing her prey with her bare claws." Roland was laughing, now, and richly at that. "He threw up the first couple of times and gagged during a few more after that." Muldoon drank down another hefty swig and sat the empty bottle down on the ground next to him. "By the way, there's about thirty pounds of deer sausage left in the freezer. Help yourself."
Roland pointed with his beer, again, this time at Pet. "From her kills or yours?"
"Both."
"Just thirty pounds?"
Muldoon got up to get another beer out of Quarantine's fridge and grabbed a second for his good friend. "There was close to one hundred and fifty pounds two weeks ago, and no where to keep it stored. We ended up having to give a lot of it away." The bottle was tipped up and a drink of the fresh, crisp beer enjoyed.
Roland studied his close friend and thought of the other man as a fish out of water at the dig site, lost on what to do with himself now that he was out of his element. "What about you, how are you holding up?" No answer immediately came, Roland seeing a barely noticeable twitch pull at the other's right eye.
Another deep swig and finally an answer came. "The only reason I'm here and continue to stay here is because of my little girl. I know how much being here means to her. Growing up, she always joked about running away to America to work with that man." Muldoon cocked his head in thought, watching Pet and the senior scientist laugh at something a site worker said. "I don't have it in me to take that away from her. She's already been denied so much in life, thanks to InGen."
"She can't stay here forever, Robert, and neither can you."
"I'm aware. I've been giving it some thought of maybe going somewhere south where it's warmer for her. Here, she's miserable in the winter and spends more time lethargic than active."
Roland took a drink of his own beer. "Come back to Africa. Maybe not so much Kenya, since Masrani has taken over the zoo in Mr. Hammond's stead, but there's other places with plenty of open area she can roam and hunt."
"Here I was thinking of Mexico or even somewhere in South America."
The two men sat in silence for several minutes, watching the daily life of the excavation workers play out before them.
Roland pointed at Terrence, next, helping move a fossil from one tent and into another for plastering. "What about his story? Mr. Personality, is it?" Muldoon chuckled to himself. "Dare I ask how that name came about?"
"Pet, actually. He was my replacement when I was transferred to Isla Nublar. The very first time we met him, he was acting like a kid hyped up on too much sugar. We thought it was just him being excited with starting a new job. The nickname was meant a joke, but it stuck the more we came to suspect he really did have an over excessive personality disorder."
Roland hummed to himself in thought. "That was in Kenya. What business does he have, here, now?"
Muldoon finished off the rest of his second beer in two swigs. "That bloke, Ludlow, hired him to lead a team of mercenaries to Jurassic Park after everything went to hell to hunt her down and kill her. Ludlow wanted her brought in alive and if not alive, then sufficient proof that she was dead and no longer a threat to the company. He could've shot her anytime he wanted, but didn't. Instead, he gave Ludlow her collar as proof of her demise." Muldoon's right hip was starting to bother him and he adjusted how he was sitting to elevate some of the pressure on it. "I used to greatly dislike him, but after what he did to keep my daughter safe, I thought what was one more person, here, to see to her safety should InGen come back around here."
Roland nodded in acceptance to the explanation. "So who in this little sand box expedition knows about the girl's secret?" He thought he already knew, but wanted to double check to make sure.
"Dr. Grant, of course. His apprentice, my nephew, Terrence, you-"
Pet squealing in delight got both men's attention and they looked away from to Terrence to the hybrid roughly thirty feet away. Ellie had returned to the dig site and was carrying a month-old baby in her arms. She was walking towards the fossil's tent, where Grant and Billy still stood. Pet was over joyed and running towards the new comer.
Muldoon continued. "Then there's Dr. Ellie Degler née Sattler. She was also present at Jurassic Park when everything wrong happened."
Pet clapped her hands excitedly at the baby, wrapped up in a light blue blanket. "Oh my gosh, he's so adorable! Hey there, little Charlie!" She took one of the baby's hands in hers and giggled.
"Yeah well, not all the time," Ellie sighed. "He refused to lay down for a nap earlier this afternoon and was a whiny mess because he was tired..." She smiled at the two men walking up behind Pet. "Hey guys." Ellie readjusted her handle on the baby. "I figured I'd give the baby sitter a break. Poor girl is about to go insane! It'd be nice if Mark could've come for a few days but he got busy with work."
"Can I hold him?" Pet questioned pleadingly at Ellie, her clawed hands reaching for the baby. Without argument, she was allowed to hold the blanket wrapped baby and she gently cradled him.
Billy sighed. "Great. Now she'll want one, too."
Pet took a pacifier Ellie handed her and wiggled it into baby Charlie's mouth. "I can't have kids of my own, unfortunately. I'm incompatible with regular people."
Grant subconsciously smiled at the sight. How something so potentially deadly could be so tender and motherly. He wondered if Pet's gentleness with Charlie was the human part of her or the raptor's, based on what he remembered Pet telling him about how fiercely protective and yet surprisingly gentle raptors were of their young.
